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AN: BTW, my Sirius is based off Willy Cartier (lookwise) because when I first read the books I used to see Sirius as very pale but seeing some fanart etc made me see him more as poc, and I saw this Sirius aesthetic that used Willy Cartier and it was just bomb.

Also I forgot to mention it in the first chapter but I struggled with their ages A LOT because I'm bad at math but I'm sure I got them right!

It's a couple of weeks later and madam Pomfrey is helping him to the infirmary when she stops still in her tracks. Remus is leaning into her heavily as his own legs can barely carry him and he's nodding off into unconsciousness because consciousness hurts.

"Mister Black?"

There is a figure slumped against the closed infirmary doors, and madam Pomfrey lightly bumps it with her feet for lack of any hands free – Remus should probably care, but he doesn't really.

The figure jumps to its feet as if it's not ungodly early and it's Sirius Black – he's in his pyjamas, reindeer-patterned trousers and a particularly ugly yellow jumper. He's whipping at his hair because it's all messed up and in his mouth.

"I'm sorry, I know you usually don't—" Madam Pomfrey just kind of waves her hand at him and she lets him pull open the heavy set mahogany doors.

Remus is kind of nodding off all through her fussing and she puts murtlap juice on his wounds but his whole body just kind of aches and he wants to sleep. He is vaguely aware of Sirius pushing up a chair next to the bed but to be honest there's these bright little lights playing behind his eyelids and you would think that's fun but it feels like he's burning from the inside out.

Pomfrey makes him sit up to drink a sleeping potion and he grimaces as his body is forced to move – it's kind of weird because it appears that Sirius is tucked up in a chair next to his bed and is kind of awkwardly trying to reach over to take Remus's hand. Remus is really not feeling this whole idea of moving his arm but Sirius looks kind of confused with a little frown on his face so Remus gives in and allows the other boy to squeeze his hand as he swallows the potion.

"You're really gonna have to explain moon charts to me," Sirius says, and then kind of tips his head against the back of his chair, "thought it wasn't until next week."

It's really kind of unfair because less than ten seconds later Sirius is already dozing off. He's kind of snoring too.

Remus knows he should probably be annoyed, but Sirius' hand is actually really comfortable in his own and the sleeping potion is super effective and that's that.

When he wakes up his body is not burning anymore, but he still feels pretty damn awful. He blinks a couple of times just to make sure he's not hallucinating because Sirius is still in the same chair besides his bed, long legs slung over the side of it and reading a magazine – or pretending to read a magazine, because Remus can see him staring over the brim of it.

From the looks of it, it's already noon, yet Sirius appears not to have moved – he's still wearing that hideous yellow sweater.

There's a lot of emotion, stuck in Remus' throat, and he tries not to think about it too much but he can't help it because this is just a very nice thing to do for someone, he thinks, and it thumps in his head and in his heart, too. He swallows this thing away but then he's pretty sure his spine is being stabbed in multiple places at once as he tries to turn on his side to properly face Sirius – so he's really grateful and everything, but his friend is just going to have to bear with him as he professes his thanks to the ceiling.

He opens his mouth but Sirius beats him to it, grinning: "let us not go on a tirade of how uncharacteristically friendly this is and how nice this makes me because there's no way in fuck that I'm going to skip hand in hand with Snivellus any time soon and I'm pretty sure I'm still 99 percent a total a-hole."

Now that isn't really fair, Remus thinks, because sure, Sirius is a total tosser to most people and he's a total twat to all Slytherins but he's not really an a-hole because sometimes he makes Remus toast with that marmalade he really likes and when Remus's hair is not being atrocious Sirius tells him and sometimes in summer Sirius brings him lemonade while he's studying outside and when Remus falls asleep during one of Binn's classes Sirius takes notes for him – horrible almost illegible notes, but notes. And all of these things are not things a-holes do, but then again the idea of Sirius and Severus holding hands and skipping is a little disturbing so there's no real coherent thought for Remus to voice.

"Yes well," Remus eventually concedes – there is a pattern in the wood of the ceiling that he's never noticed before, kind of round like cookies, "Peter would've probably forgotten altogether."

"And he wouldn't have got you this," the raven lowers his magazine to reveal a pile of chocolate frogs which he'd been hiding in his lap – some of them have Christmas wrappers oddly similar to the reindeers on Sirius' pyjama pants, "though technically he did as they're from his secret stash," Sirius makes sure to accentuate the "secret" with air quotes, both hands up in the air.

There's a thank you stuck this time, he's sure that of all the emotions in his throat gratitude is the one he wants to voice towards Sirius – because chocolate. But then he has those eyes on him, no moonlit seas this time but a cloudy sky and he knows better.

"That's a horrible sweater," he says instead, and lets Sirius break off a leg quite savagely and then feed it to his mouth so he himself has to do minimum effort.

"Is that so?" Sirius' lips are chapped and they go up in a smirk as he watches Remus drool, sloppily trying to devour the chocolate faster so he can get more, "You should know, it's yours."

For a moment Remus believes him, too, but then he remembers he hasn't owned anything the colour of mustard since too much of the good stuff had gotten him stuck on the toilet for two days when he was nine, and just like that they're both grinning.

"So mister moon stroll man on a scale from one to ten how much pup-appeal were you jazzing with last night?" Sirius breaks off the head of the next frog with a bit of an eyebrow wriggle thrown in Remus's general direction – he's still staring at the ceiling but he just feels the insufferableness of his friend's grin all the way over from the bed.

"Pup-appeal?" he groans – like yesterday wasn't so unbearable after all, and he'd much rather go back to before Sirius was here than have to deal with all this ridiculousness, which is only like one part truth and six parts lie.

"Ever since you said it happened when you were five I couldn't get this image out of my head," Sirius says very solemnly – then, he makes exasperated hand-movements that Remus follows from the corner of his eye, "Baby moon stroll man turns into an over-excited puppy but there's no fur, just a lot more of your auburn fluff hair. I had a dream, it was awesome."

Remus wants to die of mortification; Sirius was having dreams of him as a puppy and that was so far from the truth it wasn't even funny – or at least, only a little funny.

"Sirius," he whines – because he's in pain and Sirius is kind of insufferable, "I turn into a deadly mauling monster!"

"When you were five?" Sirius raises both eyebrows sceptically, and then breaks another frog in pieces, this time eating half of it himself.

Remus glares at the ceiling. He wants to huff and fold his arms in front of his chest but he's aching so he just settles for staring witheringly at the cookie-shaped pattern and hopes Sirius feels his seriousness.

"My father could tell you stories," he says in a tone that he hopes sounds a little threatening.

Sirius though, gives him an entirely unimpressed look and stuffs some chocolate in the brunette's mouth as he retaliates, "you don't scare me moon-man."

In all seriousness Remus wants to not find this funny because this is his life they're talking about but then again, it really is very funny so he just continues to almost choke on the chocolate as he bursts out laughing.

Sirius, in turn, gives him more chocolate and sits with him for the rest of the day – by the time Remus is feeling good enough to feed himself chocolate they've already eaten through half the stash, and his stomach is bloated and his whole mouth feels like chocolate but when Sirius smiles at him his teeth are brown and he thinks maybe this is what happiness is.

AN: YAAAY! HE FEELS HAPPINESS. Also yes moon-man because Sirius would be inventive like that –cough-