February 6th, 1982: Sirius Black

He's dead asleep when the crack of Apparition wakes him abruptly. It's pitch black in Sirius's bedroom, and he can't help thinking that it's too goddamn late at night for anybody to be making house calls when he hears James say, "You need to get up, Padfoot. It's Moony."

That gets Sirius's attention. He's still bleary-eyed and fuzzy, but he struggles into a sitting position and tries to rub the crust out of his eyes, the drool off his cheek. "What about Moony?"

"He got hit on a raid, and it's bad. He's asking for you."

"He is?"

"Yes, and we have to go now. We might not have a lot of time before…"

Sirius fumbles blindly for his wand and launches himself out of bed. Unsteady on his feet, he nearly topples over. "I'm ready. Let's go."

"If you're still sleepy, I'll Side-Along you. Lily can't afford to un-Splinch anybody right now."

"Great. Thanks."

The atmosphere at the Potters' house is tense. Here, it's still broad daylight; Mad-Eye Moody is lying unconscious on the couch while Lily runs her wand over Remus's writhing body, a stream of what sounds like nonsense Latin to Sirius coming out of her mouth. "Shit. Remus? Remus?!"

As Lily runs her wand tip along the torn skin of Remus's stomach, her wand is shaking right along with her unsteady hand. "I'll take care of Mad-Eye," says James. "Sirius, can you help Lily?"

"Anything," breathes Sirius.

"Good. Take his hand."

Sirius does so, rushing to Remus's side and crouching down beside him. "What next?"

"That's it. Make sure he knows you're there. Try to keep him talking—we can't let him fall asleep."

Sirius nods, kisses Remus's forehead, and holds on. "Moony? It's me. Are you still with me?"

"Padfoot?"

It terrifies Sirius how weak Remus's voice sounds. He strokes a few stray hairs off of Remus's sweaty forehead. "You're going to be fine."

"I didn't want—if I don't make it, I didn't want—"

"Don't think like that, Moony," Sirius whispers.

"I didn't want to die without you knowing—"

"I know, Moony. I know."

"You don't know," Remus insists. "When I was poisoned, I thought I was going to die without ever… and I still didn't tell you. But I'm not that person anymore." He coughs. "I love you. It's always been you."

"I…"

Sirius chances a glance at Lily, who interrupts herself to murmur, "I won't listen. Pretend like I'm not even here."

Sirius swallows, looks back at Remus. He's pale, too pale, and clearly in pain, and Sirius knows he screwed up, but if there's even a chance that he can make things right between them—and even if there's not, he owes it to Remus to be honest, doesn't he? "I'm sorry we never talked about what we did after we did it. I needed time to come to grips with—I loved you. I still love you. I just—I miscalculated. I was trying to get close to you again so that I could tell you, but—"

"But you were acting like it never happened. I thought you were trying to pretend like… to get back to what it was like before we ever…"

"That's why you were avoiding me?" breathes Sirius. "That's why you were acting so weird around me?"

Remus winces suddenly, and Sirius never forgot, can't forget, that Remus could be bloody fucking dying right now, but the motion reminds him acutely of it. "Remus, you have to hold on, okay? You have to stay awake. You have to live long enough for us to sort this out and—and give it a proper go. You can't die before we even get to try."

Remus looks away. "If I get through this—"

"When you do. None of that 'if' talk allowed."

"—We shouldn't hook up just because we had a moment when we were scared. We have to do—do the right thing."

Sirius lifts a hand to Remus's cheek. "Yeah, but I'm still going to love you. I can't just turn it off. Do you know how?"

"No," mumbles Remus. His eyes look sad. "I don't know how to turn it off, either."

"Look at us," remarks Sirius, smiling.

"I think you've stabilized," Lily breaks in quietly, "and that's everything I know how to do. If there's any internal bleeding I didn't catch, we'll know it in a few hours if your organs start to fail, but hopefully that won't happen. You can sleep now if you want to, Rem."

"Will you stay?" He's looking at Sirius, who nods—and then Remus closes his eyes and drifts off immediately to sleep.

xx

It feels like torture for Sirius to pull himself away from Remus's side a few short hours later to Apparate back to Hogwarts to teach, but he manages it, somehow. It seems to take years for the day to drag on, especially his last class of the day, which also happens to be his most painful class every week: teaching the sixth year Slytherins.

Look, for the most part, Sirius likes teaching. He wouldn't have ever thought he'd take to it, not after he had so little respect for most of his professors when he was a student, but he has. Transfiguration is something he's good at, and it makes him feel good to get through to students who seem to be struggling with the material—to put everything he's learned to use helping other people succeed.

But sixth year was the year that the war became real to Sirius in the most horrific way imaginable: his actions directly resulted in two girls' deaths that year. And on top of that, if she were still alive today, Marlene's youngest sibling, Meredith, would have been a sixth year Slytherin—and Sirius has to acutely feel her absence with every class of hers that he teaches.

At least, he reflects, Meredith's death isn't one of the ones on Sirius's shoulders—but it's just as bad because it probably is on Peter's. After all, Meredith was killed alongside the entire McKinnon family when Death Eaters decided to target Marlene, probably using Peter's intel to do it. Every time he teaches this class, he has to look into the face of Helen Brown with the full knowledge that her best friend isn't sitting beside her because Sirius put his faith in the wrong person and included Peter in the Order of the Phoenix.

When he's teaching, he likes to circulate around the room to help out with students' attempts at whatever they're supposed to be transfiguring that day. He saves Helen, who's working today with her friend Deb Cygnet, for last. "This is looking pretty good," he remarks upon seeing the tortoises that they've almost, almost managed to transmogrify into seagulls. "But you'll want to be careful—see how the feathers here are looking a little scaly? You should be able to fix that if you—"

"Professor Black," interrupts Helen. No matter how long he teaches, Sirius will never get used to hearing his students call him that, especially not the ones who used to be best mates with Sirius's dead ex-girlfriend's little siblings. "Can we pick your brain about something?"

"Sure," he says resignedly.

"Why did you disband War Stories?"

She's talking about the student organization Sirius cofounded with his fellow Gryffindors when they were all sixth years, a few months before Liz and Millie's deaths. To be fair, War Stories was probably a good idea at the time: it was a unifying and, most importantly, safe way to bring students together to talk about everything from politics to pureblood society to Muggle-born deaths. It would have been fine if they had stopped there, but they hadn't. When they didn't—when Liz and Millie paid for it—it had seemed disrespectful for the people responsible to continue an organization that purported to help people survive this war, not make them victims in it.

He can't admit this to Helen and Deb, though, not if he wants to maintain the illusion that their Transfiguration professor isn't a flagrant vigilante who breaks the law on a nightly basis. Instead, he tells them a half-truth. "I think it was just too hard, you know, after Death Eaters murdered our classmates. It hit too close to home for people."

"Well, we were thinking…" Helen exchanges a look with Deb, who nods at her. "We were thinking—okay, I was thinking—that we should start it up again. The war has only gotten worse since you graduated, and it seems like people could make use of a forum to talk openly about it—especially some of the people in Slytherin with me."

"Okay," says Sirius, not entirely sure where Helen is going with this. "If it's my blessing you're after—"

"It's not just that. I was wondering—hoping—that you'd be willing to come back as our faculty advisor."

This takes Sirius aback. "War Stories never had a faculty advisor before. We ran it on our own."

"Yeah, but it'll seem more legitimate if it's endorsed by an adult, won't it? Besides, you've been as affected by the war as any of us."

Sirius stiffens. "How do you mean?"

"Well, Meredith's sister was your girlfriend, wasn't she? Even if you'd broken up by the time she died. The kids who've lost people to Death Eaters know that you're not just telling them—you know—empty platitudes."

Sirius chews on this for a moment. "Look, if you want to start it up as a student-led group again, go for it, but—"

"Don't say no yet. Please? Just—think about it."

He's rescued by the bell ringing at that moment, but it stays on his mind as he hurries out of the classroom and back to his quarters. The plan is to Floo from there back to Lily and James's house—so he's startled to find Remus sitting in an armchair in the living room, facing the fireplace on the opposite wall.

"Remus? I know we had plans for you to come over today, but after yesterday, I didn't think you were actually coming."

Remus flinches, then twists around to look at Sirius. He looks tired and worn and sad. "Hey, Sirius."

"Are you okay? How do you feel? I would have thought Lily would want to keep you at her house for observation for a while."

"She did for a while, but I got a clean bill of health about an hour ago. I just figured I'd… I know that, when I was out of it, we said a lot of things."

The bubble of hope in Sirius's chest flickers and dies. "I won't hold you to any of it if you don't want me to," he mumbles.

Remus's eyes soften. "You know, that was a hell of a time to tell me you love me. I don't know if you know this, but you'd never said it before."

Sirius laughs darkly. "Of course I know that. I tormented myself for months, maybe even years, over it, and when I was finally ready to say it…"

"You decided I was the spy," Remus says softly.

Sirius hesitates. "Yeah. I decided you were the spy."

Remus looks away. "And you didn't just say it because you thought I was dying?"

"Moony, of course not. I meant every word, and I would have told you anyway as soon as I thought you'd… well… as soon as I thought you weren't going to crush me the second I tried to say it."

Remus doesn't answer at first, leaving Sirius to believe that he is going to crush him now that Sirius has gone and admitted it. He's not ready, Sirius realizes suddenly. Sirius has put him through a hell of a lot, and Remus isn't ready, and he shouldn't have to be. So instead of asking for an answer, he changes the subject. "You know, Helen Brown asked me today if I'd be faculty advisor if she starts War Stories up again."

"Helen Brown? That was Meredith's friend, right? The Slytherin?"

"That's the one. I never thought I'd see the day anybody brought War Stories back, but—"

"You should do it," says Remus firmly.

Sirius raises his eyebrows. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. It was a good idea at the time, even if it resulted in…"

They're back onto a subject that Sirius knows they should be avoiding. He clears his throat. "Come here for the full moon on Monday."

Remus stares blankly back at him. "Are you mental? With the students here and everything?"

"We'll be in my quarters the whole time. No one will even know you're here. Lily's still brewing you Wolfsbane Potion to take a week out of every month, anyway, so it's not like you're going to be a threat to anybody."

"But—why can't you just come to my flat like the last two months? Em and Alice will be there with me at home, of course."

"So now you're worried about what it's going to look like?" Sirius cocks an eyebrow, and Remus blushes a little. "Just tell them you're coming over, and then come over. It's not like anything's going to happen. Bestiality isn't my thing, and it isn't Padfoot's, either."

Remus rolls his eyes, but he doesn't look convinced, and can Sirius blame him? It's just a transformation, but it's so much more than a transformation.

It's not like Remus has been giving Sirius so many signals that he wants to go out with him, because he hasn't. They've sat together at Order meetings, and Remus snuck into Sirius's Hogwarts quarters a couple of times for dinner, and one time in January, Sirius spent the night at Remus, Emmeline, and Alice's flat in Edinburgh when it wasn't a full moon. Even then, he hung mostly around Emmeline, who ribbed him for leaving her all alone at Scrivenshaft's and subjected him to a lot of bad guitar playing while Remus helped Alice move over the last of her stuff from her old place with Frank and Neville. Before Sirius knew it, it was one o'clock in the morning, and Alice and Emmeline were heading back to bed in their room. Not long after, Remus left Sirius alone in the living room, where Sirius slept on the couch.

But sometimes he looks at Remus, or their elbows brush together, or Remus recounts something funny that somebody told him during the time that he and Sirius weren't really speaking, and Sirius feels like he can't breathe. It's not like he was constantly miserable without Remus in his life, even if all he ever did were Scrivenshaft's shifts and Order raids and butterbeer with James and Lily on the weekends. He learned to live without Remus, to scab over the hole in his heart, and he was happy enough. Sort of.

But he's also missed his best mate, his almost-something-more, even more so now that Marlene is dead and Peter is the villain, now that he feels like he's going to go out of his mind if he loses one more person close to him. Even if Remus is somebody he lost unequivocally a long time ago, he just needs to believe the impossible: that the irreparable is reparable.

And so here he is, one step away from begging that Remus come to Hogwarts for his next full moon, as if tangling his fingers in Remus's fur while he's falling asleep without anyone around to watch will undo all the months he spent believing Remus was the spy, sealing their separate fates. Sirius can live without Remus—he did it for months, and he could do it again—but he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to do it anymore. Now that he knows Remus is safe…

"Come here," Sirius presses. "The girls know that I'm an Animagus now. Tell them we'll be running in the Forbidden Forest together like we used to, except this time, you'll have your mind."

"Just like we used to? Prongs obviously can't come, and Wo—uh, Peter…"

"We don't need Peter," says Sirius harshly, even though he feels a little sick inside. "And Prongs will understand. He's been Apparating off to the Canadian wilderness to transform out there when he's supposed to be sleeping."

"Really?" says Remus with interest, seeming to seize the opportunity to talk about something lighter. "Does Lily know about this?"

"Mate, it was Lily's idea," Sirius says smugly. "She's just as happy to be free of that cottage as he is. She knows what it means to him to be able to stretch his legs."

"I'm glad Canada is working out," says Remus. "I keep waiting for the day that Mary and Cattermole have to follow them out there. How long do you think Muggle-borns have to stay in Britain before things explode?"

"Runcorn won't go that far," says Sirius dismissively. "Not when he's still only the interim Minister. The special election is still a month away."

Remus smiles wryly. "And in a month, Runcorn's going to win. Alice finally managed to get Crouch on the ballot this week, but he's losing in the polls. People don't have a lot of places to turn right now. If people start to trust Runcorn—and they will, because he's the figurehead who's been handed to them to listen to—and he starts telling them that Muggles and Muggle-borns are their enemies—"

"But he won't."

Remus insists, "But he will. Sooner or later, Voldemort is going to use that to his advantage. He's too power-hungry to lead a quiet life of immortality in the shadows. He doesn't just want to live—he wants to dominate."

"So, then, what's the plan?" says Sirius.

Remus furrows his eyebrows. "I think anyone who doesn't totally submit their allegiance to Runcorn is going to become a target, and I think that submitting your allegiance to Runcorn is going to be synonymous with submitting your allegiance to Voldemort, one way or another. That's as much as Mad-Eye has been able to gather, isn't it? Either whatever the hell Dumbledore is planning in his leave of absence pays off, and soon, or…"

"Yeah. About that," Sirius says.

Remus looks sympathetic for a moment, but then he sees the look on Sirius's face. "Wait. Are you telling me—you got the memory?"

"I got it," says Sirius, and he pulls a small glass vial out of his pocket. There's a silvery, fluid-like strand wriggling slightly inside of it. "I was waiting until I saw you again to tell you, before I knew you were going to go and almost get yourself killed last night. I got it, and we're going to break into McGonagall's office and watch it."

"You devious man," says Remus, grinning from ear to ear. "McGonagall has orb duty tonight, doesn't she?"

"Yep," Sirius replies, popping his lips on the P.

It wasn't easy, getting the memory from Slughorn. Sirius tried buttering him up first, spent a solid month lounging around Slughorn's quarters in all his free time to eat crystallized pineapple and drink Madam Rosmerta's mead with the man, setting himself up as someone Slughorn can trust. When it finally came time that Sirius felt ready to broach the subject, he wasn't sure exactly what he was supposed to be asking for—Dumbledore never gave him a straight answer as to what memory of Slughorn's he was supposed to be extracting—but he barely had to say the word Dumbledore for Slughorn to cotton on.

And then Slughorn shut down—iced Sirius out for weeks. It didn't matter how much he spent down his inheritance from his Uncle Alphard on gifts for Slughorn: the man refused to take any of them.

It wasn't until recently that it occurred to Sirius that flattery wasn't the only way to get through to Slughorn—and he went back to Slughorn's office with stories in tow about his dead brother, Regulus.

To be honest, Sirius doesn't know a lot about what happened to Regulus. His body turned up in the English Channel over two years ago, weeks after he disappeared, a month after Sirius received some kind of cryptic letter asking—no, begging—Sirius for a meeting. He still remembers its exact wording: Sirius, I was wrong. We need to meet. There's a lot you don't know that you need to know. Can you meet me next week? I'll send the time and place in a second letter tomorrow. But Sirius never wrote back, and the second letter never came.

His brother was killed because he saw what a monster Voldemort really was, because he tried to use his closeness to Voldemort against him to save innocents. Voldemort had the charm and the tools to lead a good, talented, promising Slytherin boy like Regulus astray and to destroy his future and the futures of so many more like him, the longer he remains in power—or so Sirius told Slughorn. He thinks the story was almost enough to win Slughorn over—but it wasn't until he let Slughorn in on the Fidelius Charm, when he told Slughorn that the reason he stopped hearing from Lily Potter was because Voldemort had forced her and her family into hiding, that Slughorn relented and reluctantly turned the memory over, begging Sirius not to think ill of him when he saw it.

"I don't need to see it," he had said. "I'm giving it directly to Dumbledore. Knowing that you and I can be a small part of carrying out his plans is enough."

He had lied.

"We'll have to use this, of course," he adds, pulling the folded-up Invisibility Cloak out of his pocket and dangling it in front of Remus. "Or else the portraits will all report back to McGonagall that we snuck in."

"And how exactly do you propose opening the door, closing the door, opening the cabinet that holds the Pensieve, adding the memory, jumping in with the Invisibility Cloak somehow still covering us, pulling ourselves back out, closing the cabinet door, opening the office door, closing—" He breaks off when he sees the second, much larger vial that Sirius pulls out of his pocket. "Is that—is that Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder?"

"It won't stop them from seeing that someone broke in, but it'll at least stop them from seeing what we do in there. It wasn't cheap to order enough of this to keep the office dark for a whole ten or twenty minutes, let me tell you. Good thing I'm on a Hogwarts salary now instead of paychecks from Scrivenshaft's. My inheritance from my uncle is almost gone, and importing this from Peru was—"

"Wait a minute. If you had to wait for this to ship from Peru first, then how long have you been sitting on this memory instead of giving it to Dumbledore to actually use?"

"Only a couple of weeks," Sirius says—quickly, as if that will stop Remus from absorbing the meaning of the words—"but—"

"You got the memory a couple of weeks ago? That was before Doc disappeared! When we get to the end of this thing, a couple of weeks could be the difference between multiple members of the Order, dozens of Muggles, living or dying—"

It's Sirius's turn to roll his eyes. "If you're telling me you don't care about looking at the memory—"

"Of course I want to see the memory," Remus huffs.

"Well, all right, then. It's probably going to be another couple of hours before McGonagall leaves for Prongs and Lily's house, so if you want to leave and then come back…"

"…No," says Remus haltingly. "I can stay. But I do have to pop back home for a moment to take my potion."

"Hurry back. I'll keep the bed warm," says Sirius without thinking.

He's expecting Remus to look horrified, but he doesn't. Instead, Remus's mouth falls open, and he just stares at Sirius for a second before shaking his head a little and grabbing a handful of Floo powder.