Damn, that one was hard - and by that, I mean I usually write at least 2000 words in one sitting (UD chapters are between 6000 and 7000) and there I could only manage 100-400 words at a time. I knew what I wanted in the chapter, but it wouldn't articulate on its own...
Chapter 40: Cup of no-tea
Remus put two cups of tea on the table and sat down with a heavy sigh.
"Breakfast of champions?"
Remus scoffed – especially as Sirius was already sipping at his tea.
"Last year your breakfasts were usually firewhiskey. You don't get to judge."
His friend made a face – and Remus didn't ask, even if he didn't quite understand what had been going on during last year, even if he wanted to know, because Sirius had never liked drinking, before, and even last year it hadn't seemed like he truly enjoyed any of it.
Sirius certainly hadn't been willing to explain back then.
"Last year I mostly didn't eat breakfast. The drinking was unrelated to any eating endeavor."
Remus almost said something, then – but decided not to, still.
Another day, perhaps. Today he was feeling a bit nauseous and didn't feel like eating, either. Tea it was, and perhaps – he'd see later about actual food.
"Not good today?"
Remus scowled a bit, but didn't fully grimace. It could be worse. He'd spent the last transformation at the Black estate with Sirius and his dogs – and Harry carefully locked up in the manor itself. The only thing that could have made it better was wolfsbane potion, but they had yet to find a master potioner willing to supply.
Remus hadn't been kidding, when he'd told Harry that it was a very complicated potion to make. Even people like Sirius, who had a good hand at potions, tended to mess it up every other attempt – and failed wolfsbane potion was not something you wanted to drink.
No more than a dozen witches and wizards in the UK were licensed to make wolfsbane potion as a commercial product – and Snape wasn't willing to make any, not even for money, unless there was an important reason to do so.
On one hand, Remus could understand how unpractical supplying one of the enemies – a dirty werewolf, for most of the Death Eaters and sympathizers – with something that would actually make their life better when there was no pressure from his role as a double agent would be to defend to Snape's "other colleagues".
On the other hand, it was obvious that Snape still wouldn't want to even if there had been no position as a Death Eater to defend.
Then again, Remus did get why Snape hated him so – even if the man was blowing that resentment out of proportion, once again, taking an arguably-justified grudge and making it into retribution of a frankly debatable nature. Even back in school, Snape had always been like that. Parts of it, Remus mused, had been entirely on James and Sirius – but parts of it had also been on Snape only.
Still, better to stop thinking about it now, because Remus had moved on from Sirius' worst moment years ago, even if he'd never forgotten that his friend had a breaking point, like everyone else – only, Sirius' breaking point wasn't dangerous only for him, but rather for everyone around him.
...They'd been talking about his health, right.
"The usual fatigue. The full moon's forgotten by now, but I never have enough time to fully recuperate from one month to another, so there's an underlying ache that always remains."
Sirius remained silent for a moment, before asking quietly:
"It's worse than it used to be, isn't it? Even from before we all became animagi and started spending the full moon with you?"
Remus paused, unsure of how to answer that.
His friend added:
"I mean, I was there, and so were the dogs, these last months. You didn't end up biting yourself or breaking anything in a rage. But you're still... tired. Even a week later. When it was the four of us, that used to be enough. You'd still be sick for a couple of days, but after that... And before, it took you a bit longer, but there was still a length of time during which you felt alright, none of that 'underlying ache' you've just mentioned."
"Ah... Sirius. It's just... I'm not a teenager anymore. I'm thirty-six, now, and I don't have half the energy I did back then."
It made sense, that Sirius wouldn't have thought of it – or at least, that he'd want Remus to make what was going on more obvious, even if he had suspicions.
The wizard sitting across the table from Remus knew nothing about growing old normally.
Sirius had spent eleven miserable years in Azkaban, probably in worse pain overall than Remus – though the transformations themselves were horrible, and it was likely Sirius had never gone through anything similar, Remus, him, hadn't been in pain and hunger and depression all the time. Close, but not quite.
The three years since then had been better, but still far from stellar. His friend had gone through phases without eating while on the run, and even during the time in Grimmauld he'd been suffering from the aftermath of Azkaban.
Then, all of a sudden, Sirius had found himself yanked back into his old, youthful body, without a care for the abuse he'd lived through nearly half his life. Godric knew he deserved it, but that also meant Remus' best friend still had no idea what it meant to be a normal thirty-something-year-old.
Not that Remus himself was a normal thirty-something-year-old, since those weren't typically afflicted with lycanthropy – but having grown a bit older still meant the same thing it did for everyone else: it was becoming more difficult to bounce back from body-stressing experiences.
The untypical part of Remus meant he had one of those every twenty-eight days.
"...Oh."
Sirius didn't seem to know what to say to that, so he just took another sip of tea.
Remus frowned and looked over the cup's edge.
Right.
"...Are you pretending to drink from that cup even though you've already finished it?"
Sirius blinked at him.
"Absolutely."
"...Alright. Did you... sleep well?"
Remus had no guest room here – that was what happened when you couldn't even rent a decent place and had to live in a decrepit family house you didn't have the know-how or the money to renovate. Emmeline had come by and checked the wards when she'd joined the Order, but there was still a lot of work to be done, by her own admission, before the house could be considered more than just livable. On her advice, Remus had been strengthening the walls with arithmantic strings and transfiguration – at least now, there was no risk of the place collapsing on him. Four years ago, he hadn't been so sure.
Sirius took another imaginary sip from his cup of no-tea.
"Your couch's great, don't worry. My body thinks it's twenty-one, remember."
Yeah, that.
"Still weird. Probably good for you, considering, but weird."
"Don't tell me about it. I'm still marveling at sleeping without constant nightmares and waking up not starving after years of gnawing hunger. The only downsides are the shadows under my eyes, can't get rid of those except with illusions and even then it doesn't last, but since I had those before getting a brand-new body, it's not like I actually lost something."
Remus took a moment to look his friend over, as Sirius brought up the fact that this body wasn't quite... natural. And by natural, he meant both mother-given – Sirius probably didn't mind that one so much – and Dark-Arts-free.
It was true that he couldn't quite remember Sirius having such shadows under his eyes at twenty-one – not constantly at least. The contrast with his silver-cold eyes was harsh, and it added an almost-otherworldly touch to his face, in a not-quite-obvious, slightly-weird-and-unnerving way.
Sirius had always looked sharp, but now, something about him looked just a bit too crisp to be natural. Remus couldn't tell you why, exactly – even the shadows under his friend's eyes should be just that, shadows – but it was there.
"...No disturbing hidden cost to your resurrection, then?"
"Isn't the Bellatrix hanger-on bad enough for you?"
"True."
Sirius finally let go of his empty cup and stood up.
"Ah, anyway. Thanks for letting me stay the night. Not that I'm ungrateful about Regulus' return to life and all that, but even without the whole question of allegiances pushing us apart we still have a lot of... problems. One night away did wonders."
"I suppose that's one of those things coming from having siblings?"
Remus' parents had talked about more children, once upon a time – and then Greyback had bitten him, and he'd become high-maintenance, so to say. His mother had taken a new job where she only worked mornings to be there more often for him until he'd left for Hogwarts, and his father had become their main source of income while searching through the wizarding world for elusive experts on lycanthropy. They hadn't had the money or the time to think about another child.
He had absolutely no idea what having siblings was actually like.
His friend scoffed.
"Sure, there are the usual accusations of 'mom and dad let you do that and not me' and 'they compared me to you about absolutely everything', but I've been told it's not actually normal to wonder if life would have been easier for your sibling if you hadn't existed at all. Or to have more than fleeting moments of uncertainty about whether being yourself is actually worth the estrangement. Regulus is still convinced I didn't try hard enough to fit in and try to keep at least some kinship with those family members who weren't so bad, while I'm adamant that there was nothing I could have done that wouldn't have led to conflict of some sort even if I hadn't taken the french leave. We've grown up, both of us, so things have changed, but it doesn't mean there is no resentment."
Sirius had said all that while wandering around the small living room, gathering the outer robes he'd taken off to sleep, his shoes, his wand and a few other things. Remus couldn't see his friend's face, thus – but he could hear the scathing edge in his words.
Sirius hadn't been one to talk about his family, before. Not to Remus or Peter, not even to James. He'd mention some things, sure – but there had never been any kind of deep discussion on the matter. The last year had seen him much more open on the subject, and even that had been mostly the really bad stuff being thrown into the open without much context or introspection whenever Kreacher would get on Sirius' nerves.
Remus supposed this change of pace was two-fold, with both Sirius' return to a healthier body and loss of his criminal-on-the-run statute, and his brother's reappearance.
"If you say so... Do you think you'll manage anyway?"
His friend shrugged while putting on his wand-holster.
"Eh. It's not like Regulus hasn't come around about a lot of things. I can deal with that, if he's not saying I'm wrong about the rest of it all the time. Besides, he and Amanda have been talking about getting a place to themselves. I mean, one with proper wards, not their house in the suburbs."
Remus blinked.
"...Wasn't that house a good place to hide, though? It's not in a wizarding area, and they could still get basic wards installed. I'm sure Emmeline would do it if you asked."
"Yeah, no. The Ministry went there, and after that the Daily Prophet somehow managed to get the address too. It was in the third article about Regulus' return. The place is burned."
Death Eaters probably wanted Regulus Black's head – or to force him back into their ranks, for all Remus knew – Sirius was likely right: it was a bad idea for the couple to go back there.
The elder Black let himself fall upon the couch with his arms pressing against his forehead.
Remus was starting to think his friend didn't know what to do for the day and had decided to attach himself to the werewolf who'd let him sleep over instead – that sounded like the beginning of a weird fairy tale, one where the threat wasn't the werewolf but rather the protagonist himself.
...Things always got interesting with Remus' friends involved– even if "interesting" wasn't always a good thing – and Sirius was the only one left.
The werewolf was obviously going to regret this, but:
"Come with me today."
Sirius' face was hidden under his arms still, but his attention visibly shifted.
"Oh?"
"I'm trying to get Emmanuel Drennan to let me see him, because he has an exclusive contract with Cheryl Barnes and she's one of the few potioneers licensed to brew and sell wolfsbane potion."
Emmanuel Drennan was the only man bearing that old name aside from his father, and he'd notoriously become a recluse a bit more than a year ago without a single explanation. His fiancée hadn't heard of him for months, and even then she'd only gotten a letter saying he wouldn't see her again. He'd been sighted at his grandfather's funerals in January, but had said a word to maybe three people, including his own parents.
Remus knew all that for only one reason: Cheryl Barnes worked for Drennan – he'd paid for the muggleborn witch's lessons at the Academe after Hogwarts, where they'd gone to at the same time – and was perhaps the only contact the reclusive son of the House of Drennan had kept after becoming a shut-in ghost.
And where Drennan had become a – rich, comfortably housed – hermit, Cheryl Barnes had a reputation for having always been... shy. Contacting her was complicated, and the ongoing war wasn't helping at all. She and her husband kept a discreet life with their children, and they left the matter of her work to Cheryl's old friend. You didn't get anywhere near the potioneer without a recommendation by Drennan...
...And you didn't get anywhere near Drennan unless he found your epistolary skills interesting enough to warrant his attention.
"I've tried writing several times, but he hasn't answered once."
Sirius's mouth opened slightly, as if he was thinking of what to say before actually commenting – he probably knew everything Remus did on the subject of Emmanuel Drennan and then some, because that was the kind of thing Sirius just knew about everyone, especially if they came from a family like the Drennans. No that he especially cared for gossip – but he was the kind of person who thought knowing a person's life meant being able to anticipate their reactions, and back when he'd been quarantined into Grimmauld Place, old editions of the Daily Prophet had been his only link to what had gone on in the lives of others during his years in Azkaban.
"...I'm pretty sure half the Doth family tried camping out by Drennan Keep when he disappeared from their daughter's life and it didn't get them anywhere. What makes you think it'll be any different for you? You don't even know him. Try Frank, maybe, they are cousins through Augusta, though I think the Drennans haven't been very united since the first war..."
Remus shook his head, amazed at how useful having a genealogical encyclopedia for a friend could be, when that friend wasn't busy sulking and cursing half his family tree.
"I have no idea how you remember those things, but you're probably right, Frank is more likely to get an answer... And what do you mean, the Drennans haven't been united? They aren't known for any particularly extreme stance on blood matters, no?"
Sirius scoffed from the couch.
"The House of Drennan doesn't have a stance at all, you mean. They believe that their family members are entitled to making their own opinions on all matters, including prejudice, and that they have a right to defend those beliefs even if it means getting at each other's throats. Just look at Frank's mother, she married a Longbottom and hasn't been talking to her sister Freesia since she went and wedded Ferdinand Goyle. As for the current lord of the House, their brother Tilden, he said 'fuck it' and married a muggle. Their son is one of the very few noble heirs with close muggle ties, and you can bet the Goyles don't give a damn about that kind of thing."
Remus stared at his remaining best friend, because this was all getting ridiculous.
Sirius noticed the long silence and let his arms fall back upon his chest, one eye squinting at the dumbfounded-looking werewolf sitting at the table.
"What?"
"...If I ask you about my ancestry, is there any chance you'll know less than I do about it?"
"On your muggle side, sure."
Since Remus didn't answer that – the implication was clear, that Sirius knew a lot more about his friend's family on the Lupins' side than the person involved did himself – the wizard started counting on his fingers, as if to prove a point:
"The Lupin family as a wizarding bloodline is four centuries old and comes from France. Your ancestors have routinely enough married muggles and muggleborns, ensuring your general status as a halfblooded family. Funnily enough, one Elinas Lupin married a Pressyne Forest in 1904, and since then the first names in the family have been oriented towards myths and legends. You are second cousin with the lead singer of the Weird Sisters, Myron Wagtail, since his grandmother was Melusine Lupin. There is a..."
"Stop! I get it, you are omniscient and I shouldn't have doubted your all-encompassing knowledge of wizarding genealogy."
After a small moment of unease – most likely due to the very hurtful fact that no, no one here knew everything, or else they'd have known for Peter, maybe they could have helped him before he lost his way, and certainly Sirius wouldn't have spent eleven years in Azkaban and Remus as many without even one of his friends – the man grinned back, sinking deeper into the shitty couch:
"I think our closest blood relation is through Anthony and Leandra Wintringham, who married in 1828 and had two daughters. Edna was my great-great-grandmother, and Agatha was your great-great-great-grandmother. Which means we are fourth cousins once removed, though people rarely look so far back."
Remus made a face at his friend, sensing that this was all leading somewhere and he most likely didn't want to know – but Sirius had ignored him when he'd asked for it to stop, so there probably was no point in hoping for ignorance.
"Once again, why the hell do you know that?"
"If it'll make you feel better, know that Wormtail is third cousin with Snape. And James was third cousin with the Yaxley siblings. Anyway, the Wintringhams are on my father's side, so you don't have to worry about being related to Bellatrix."
Sirius paused for a moment there, and Remus felt an unexpected sense of dread rising in his guts.
"...Or Andromeda and Nymphadora, for the matter. I mean, you probably have some very, very distant ancestors in common with them too, three or four centuries back, but at that point, who's counting, right?"
Oh no. This was not where Sirius was going, was it?
Of course it was.
"Say, Remus."
The werewolf considered the pros and the cons of using his wand to smother his best friend with the ratty pillow on the couch – only until he passed out, of course – before Sirius could say more.
"Do you intend to get closer to my family through marriage?"
Shit. The pillow bounced off Sirius' head without doing any damage whatsoever.
Remus groaned in defeat.
"...Not you too..."
"Yes me too."
Remus made a face, looked at the door – sadly, getting up and leaving wouldn't resolve the problem and it would still be there when he'd get back – looked at the Black slouching smugly on his couch – that was a problem he'd chosen for himself, and therefore not one he could rightly complain about – and finally let his head fall in frustration.
The sound of his forehead against the wooden table was sharp enough to resonate through the pain.
"Alright."
Remus didn't rise his head back up, though. One concession was enough, and if that meant his friend would have to listen carefully to take in his words, that wasn't his problem.
"I... like Dora. A lot. However, I have absolutely no interest in allowing anything to happen. I'm more than a decade older than her, and..."
"Thirteen years, to be exact."
"Stop being useful, thanks. I was saying... I don't know, what was I saying?"
Damn it. He'd lost track.
"Wouldn't know. If I did, I'd be useful, and you told me not to do that."
Remus took a moment to ponder his friend's apparent lack of care on the subject.
It wasn't, per se, that Sirius didn't sound interested – he'd brought it up, after all – but more that he held no hard stance on the matter? Remus wasn't sure how that could be, considering they were talking about his cousin's daughter, who was a whole lot younger than the werewolf himself – and, oh, here was problem number two.
Werewolf.
If Dora ever wanted children, Remus refused to be on the other side of it. No one had ever reported werewolves having children, let alone healthy children. It was impossible to know if the curse was hereditary, and that wasn't a risk he was willing to take.
People who said shit like "but as long as you love the child it will be worth it" obviously hadn't gone through turning into a werewolf – bones breaking and flesh changing, mind slipping away, and then, then, waking up uncertain of what you'd done during the night, of who you'd maimed, killed, infected – every full moon since they were five years old. They hadn't lived through the fear of someone you knew learning the truth and throwing you away. They hadn't struggled to keep a job through the tiredness and the chronic pain, with the very possibility of losing that job either because of absences or because of a secret uncovered. They hadn't spent months eating only one time a day because they couldn't find any kind of new job, because they couldn't ask for recommendations from previous bosses who'd grown suspicious.
Remus himself was lucky that his own family hadn't thrown him away, that Dumbledore had ensured his education – that he'd never broken his wand, even. There were several times over the years when he wouldn't have been able to buy a replacement – maybe some second-hand wand, ill-fitting and reluctant to work for him, maybe – had that happened.
No, it was one thing to accept that an afflicted individual was still the same person, but it was an altogether different matter to willingly inflict lycanthropy on a newborn.
...And that was only on the matter of children.
There were a lot of other issues with them getting in a relationship – even ignoring their age difference, only because he'd been bitten as a child. It would paint one more target on Dora's back, for Greyback, for many Death Eaters, too. She might get shunned by association in a way that simply being friends wouldn't cause. She might end up being the only source of income for months at a time whenever he lost his job because he'd missed too many days without a proper explanation.
It was barely a secret anymore, now, that Remus was a werewolf. It still wasn't written in his job applications, but... Well. Snape had made sure everyone would know.
The man hadn't changed much from their school days, on that point. Back then, he'd never cared that his retaliations were always so much worse than the first offense – when he wasn't the one starting it, too. And after that, he'd had the galls to get outraged at the result of Sirius getting completely out of hand once, as if he hadn't tried some pretty sketchy things over the years...
Stop.
Remus had no desire to keep thinking about Severus Snape of all people, or to ruminate – once again – the consequences of that man's grudges and choices. He'd done enough of that since he'd left Hogwarts for a second time.
Anyway, everything about the situation was complicated, and Remus was far from certain that such a relationship would be, in fact, worth the complications.
'Love defeats all' was easy to say when you'd never experienced the circumstances that had to be defeated. Saying 'I will endure it for you' was easy when you hadn't endured it yet.
Not to say that Nymphadora's life had been without hardship – but so far, she hadn't yet known those, specifically. And even should she, indeed, endure... why should she have to?
There were, surely, better-suited partners for her. Younger, healthier people who'd make her just as happy – for less of a cost, too.
Remus took a deep breath.
"I... I think you already know all my points, Sirius. No need for me to make you a list, you know me, you're one of the very few people who know me. And you may agree, or not, I don't... I'm not sure, right now. But. That's how I feel, and it's not going to go away. Not if you tell me I'm being stupid, you wouldn't be the first Black to try and sell me that line, and not if you think I should just bring a clean end to this mess. It's not..."
"It's not that easy, uh?"
Remus found himself interrupted mid-speech, mouth still open, which had him looking up.
Sirius was now sitting properly, his head tilted to face the table on the other side of the room. His eyebrows were slightly raised – but without falling into the sarcastic 'tell me more' expression that so often befell his friend's face, masquerading as false innocence or rapt interest – and his mouth showed a small downturn, as if...
The werewolf wasn't quite sure what to make of his friend's face.
Remus whispered, more to himself than to Sirius:
"No, it's not easy at all."
Sirius grimaced and jumped on his feet.
"Alright, you're coming with me to muggle London. I need a leather jacket, and you could use a new pair of pants yourself. My treat. Don't struggle, it's useless, my mind's made."
Remus' first instinct, of course was to protest – more out of habit than pride, because his friends had occasionally bought him clothes and small, useful objects. Nothing expensive, nothing enchanted, but just a few less sickles and knuts to his expenses, every once in a while.
Peter had been particularly good at knowing how much would be too much, back then. At finding the line between help and pity. If only their friend had seen the line between fear and betrayal, too...
Sirius rolled his eyes and said:
"You heard me. We're going, and after that you're writing a letter to Frank about Emmanuel Drennan. And, to finish on the matter of Nymphadora..."
That shut Remus up, perhaps much better than anything else could have.
Sirius was already at the front door and putting his cloak on, so Remus reluctantly reached for his own outdoor gear, keeping a wary ear out for whatever his friend wanted to say.
"See, the thing is, Dora is a Black woman by Blood. She may have her father's family name, but that doesn't change who her mother is. Being practical, she will get what she wants. Andromeda wanted Ted, and the consequences be damned. Narcissa wanted Malfoy, and no matter what I think on the subject, she did get him. Lestrange never had a chance. I think... Anyway. My aunt Lucretia wanted a Prewett, and she got a Prewett. My mother, may she rest in hell, wanted Dear Old Dad, which was probably not a very good idea considering they were second cousins, but hey, it's not like one of their two kids has serious mental issues, right? Hmm, getting distracted here, sorry. My point is, Black women get the one they want. The only one who failed so far is Bellatrix, and I say thank god for that, but I wouldn't count on Dora changing her mind, ever."
Sirius pushed the front door open and started walking, fast. Remus had to rush to keep up – wait, wasn't he against going at first? – and shot a spell at the doorbell to activate the absenstewards.
Sirius didn't stop talking, though:
"Not unless you do something drastic to convince her that you either don't like her, which would be a lie, or that you are a terrible person and it would be better for her to move on, but then I might have to punch you instead because you'd have thrown away your principles. And because whatever you'd have done to convince her would have to be pretty shitty. Friends punch friends who fall into the shitty side."
The said two friends reached the gate that stood alone at the limit of the Lupin property. It was a ridiculous little old thing with no obvious utility, except that the compulsive need to cross through the gate and not anywhere else on the property hadn't faded in three hundred years, and it discreetly applied an anti-apparating jinx that could only be removed by crossing back. Old school and needlessly complicated magic, but it did the job – Emmeline had seen no point in switching it out for something more modern.
In a pinch, it would also work as a bottleneck for possible attackers. You want to walk in, you have to pass the gate.
Sirius stopped short, hand already outstretched in that manner he had of force-side-apparating people – for once mindful of the one he'd be forcing it on.
Still, Remus wanted to finish this conversation, rather than have it pop up again in the near future.
"Sirius. Can't you... I don't know, tell her not to? This is a bad idea for her, and I am not in a place where I can truthfully promise anything, you know that. Dora doesn't, not yet, but you do, and..."
Remus' voice fell short. It wasn't easy to say out loud that you had issues – on top of the furry one everyone and their neighbor knew about after Snape's stunt – even if it was to your best friend who had at least as many problems as you did.
The wizard who looked like Remus' best friend had fifteen years ago gave him a look filled with regret – which meant that he wouldn't.
Sirius shook his head.
"She'll just sink her teeth harder if I try that, Remus. Besides, I'm not certain it would be a bad thing for you both. Not sure it'd be good, either, but still. I do hope I'll see you happy one day."
They'd thought that possible, the four of them, decades ago.
They'd believed that things could be better – not as bad, Sirius and Remus had thought in the privacy of their minds, as Peter and James had joked about a bright future, but not once had they talked about it, not even to the other.
They'd been teenagers, back then – and Sirius had known that something was wrong with him for years already, and Remus had been dealing with his curse for perhaps longer. But still. They had friends, and magic, and a future.
Voldemort hadn't been so blatant in his actions yet, even if he'd already started recruiting followers.
They'd been four boys, and that had allowed them to imagine that solutions would be found, that they would keep going and getting better, happier. Together.
Sirius' throat constricted a bit at that thought, but he pushed it aside.
"That being said... I'm your friend, Remus. I get that all this isn't necessarily easy for you. I will never begrudge you your doubts and fear. Dora might not quite get it yet, she's young and she hasn't gone through the kind of things we did, but I do, I have."
There was no point listing all the things they'd both gone through.
"Just. Don't pull a Wormtail. Don't make a horrible decision because you kept it all to yourself."
Even if he wouldn't say it out loud, Sirius did suspect that the betrayal hadn't happened without warning, like a coat made to be overturned in an instant. Something had happened – and too much, since then, too many sins to be forgiven, too many choices made by Peter himself even when he could have done otherwise, too many wounds inflicted in the name of...
Of what? Sirius didn't know. He had no real idea of what had pushed Peter to the brink – terror, probably, it was always terror with Peter – and that, maybe, he could have forgiven.
But the scurrying around, the lies, the refusal to own up to his mistakes? Peter had only made things worse, again and again, and now Sirius didn't feel like being understanding.
Azkaban had taken that possibility away – and Peter had pushed him there.
Sirius blinked – chased the shadows of the island out of his mind – and focused back on Remus.
It wasn't that Remus might make that kind of mistake – Remus wasn't Peter – but everyone made mistakes. Peter's were fueled by terror, Sirius' by betrayal, James' by overconfidence.
Remus' mistakes usually came from doubts.
"If doubt takes you over... Come and talk to me, alright? Tell me why, and we'll see if it's only fear speaking, or if there's an alternative you haven't thought about. Let me be there when you need someone to talk to, because you were there when I needed someone to be present last year, because I was absent for so long..."
"It wasn't your fault."
Sirius waved the argument away – he wasn't interested in it one way or another, not right now, it wasn't the point.
"I just mean, if you two do make it work and you still end up freaking out, I'm there. Come to me. We'll talk it through, and you'll see what's best for the both of you, and you'll talk with her then."
Remus stared at him for a moment before finally letting a shaky little laugh out.
"You're taking this all very well, considering. Much better than me, if anything."
"Oh, no, I am freaked out. You're my best friend, and she's my cousin's daughter. I held her baby-self in my arms and played cards with you as a teenager in the same month, I'm sure."
But that was years ago.
"I never thought of the two of you that way before, see. It wasn't even supposed to be a possibility, not until I saw Dora try and flirt with you. Though, she's the culprit there. If anyone is to blame..."
Well, as long as everything went as it was supposed to. Children having crushes on adults was normal, and it was the adult's responsibility not to make anything of it – but Nymphadora wasn't a child anymore. She was young, true – and that meant she could be naive in ways they'd long lost – and on that point Remus would have to be careful, to ensure that he was neither misleading her nor getting blinded by her enthusiasm.
Still.
She was an adult, now, and even should she not understand everything about her own wishes, there was a moment you had to learn for yourself that things weren't as easy as you'd like. That sometimes, there was no perfect solution, only acceptable compromises – and sometimes, those didn't exist, either.
"I do have doubts too, you know, but I know you have them as well, so. It's not like you are gleefully cradle-robbing without a second thought."
"...Right."
Sirius rolled his eyes.
"I'm just saying, you guys have to work it out for yourselves, but I am willing to lend an ear and offer another perspective if you need me too. Are we going or not?"
"I..."
"Oh, one last thing! Will you accompany me tomorrow? I've got a rendezvous with Narcissa after having threatened her son's life when I went to Hogwarts, so I'd appreciate a lookout."
Remus stared at him as if waiting would give more meaning to the words he'd just heard.
"...You did what?"
The cousin-threatening offender huffed:
"Don't give me that look. The idiot needs a reality check, and I need to drag my cousin, kicking and screaming if necessary, out of Voldepants' influence. What she'll decide after is her problem, and..."
"Is that why Dumbledore took you aside after the meeting yesterday?"
Sirius paused, squinted, and didn't answer.
"Anyway. Will you be my lookout?"
Remus took a moment to massage his brow, trying to parse through the bullshit his friend was using as a smoke shield.
The discussion between Dumbledore and Sirius, just before they'd left for Remus' house, had definitely involved that subject. The headmaster of Hogwarts couldn't let people, not even those he trusted, threaten the lives and futures of his students. The werewolf wouldn't be surprised if Sirius refrained from visiting the school in the future, or if he somehow always ended up with an escort.
"...I guess... But I'm not intervening if Narcissa Malfoy decides to claw your eyes out. I'll only be there to take care of any potential baggage wearing black hoods and white masks she might bring with her."
"Perfect! Bella will come along too, and maybe I should ask Andromeda... Not Regulus, I'm cultivating an image of helpless memory loss for him, and Dora would make this all into a date, it's a bit too early for that yet..."
Sirius lost himself in those considerations for half a second before violently shaking his head and getting back on point – a trip to muggle London, looking for a leather jacket and pants.
"Now, side-along?"
The wizard reached out once again with a large smile, and Remus took a step back.
"Do you want me to barf?! You know I can't deal with side-along apparition when I'm nauseous!"
Without missing a beat, Sirius took out his wand and started raising it:
"Knight Bus, then!"
Remus batted the offending arm – hand and wand – away. His friend was definitely doing it on purpose, here.
"I can apparate on my own, you twat!"