Author's note: As a word of warning, if the epilogue left you on a positive note and you want to leave it as such, you may not want to read the finale, which is quite bittersweet.
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He was not an expected guest, and her house in Crete did not fit two guests - they offered, each at a time, to Transfigurate her couch into a bed, to make a spell to turn the floor into a mattress, but he refused each time, obstinate in his new Muggle way. He'd find a way to sleep well, and his way was to bother the both of them, until they all would go to sleep in blissful tiredness.
That night, that first night after he arrived, he could not help himself, and neither could he in the days or nights that followed. He lowered his head and bit into the warmth of her thigh, slowly, tasting Lena's warm skin with a patience he had never experienced as a wizard, feeling her muffled voice vibrate through her flesh and through his teeth and lips.
He'd fucked witches and Muggles since he became a Muggle - somehow, being a Muggle doppelganger of the convicted and somehow still on-the-run wizard was a strange turn-on for some witches. He couldn't care less and found the whole situation quite amusing, and he knew he was in no position to judge, as it brought him warm figures on cold English nights, and at times quite a nice breakfast when he wouldn't make an ass of himself.
But none of them could satisfy him as Lena had done, with the arches of her back, with her soft stomach in which he could dig his fingers in like dough, with how she curled her arms and legs around him, even as she was busying herself with Remus - she still had her legs wrapped around him, pulling him closer to her flesh. He had her like putty in his hands, moving his teeth higher and higher on her thigh until they reached a point in which he only mocked large bites, grazing her with the tip of his front teeth, with his moustache and the stubble of his beard, feeling the inside of her thighs become riddled with goosebumps even in this sweltering heat.
He watched her and Remus for a moment, terribly amused by how assertive her hands were in grasping his face and caressing his jaw, how she was guiding him and his own hands. Sirius found himself wondering just how exactly their first encounter went, and figured he would ask him some time.
After all, Remus couldn't have started it, no, not when he had needed Lena's help to be able to not make himself a fool in front of Tonks - she surely must have initiated it at first. But how come the all-too-shy-Remus accepted her?
"It must have been the Felix Felicis." came the answer a few nights later, from a mess of bodies, drenched bedsheets, and three pairs of tangled legs. Remus's voice came alongside a slight panting, as they were all in the middle of entangling themselves even more into each other, chest pressed against Lena's back and holding her tightly against himself, his fingers sinking in the skin above her pubis. Ever since that day when they all forgot about the existence of Voldemort, he became the Remus he used to know - more assertive, more sure of himself. And this time, there was no Felix Felicis involved. There hadn't been any since. "Otherwise, I would have never-"
"Never?" Lena interjected, turning her head from Sirius, and curling her nose at Remus in laughter. Ever since she left England, she laughed with her whole body, which only added to the pleasure Sirius felt, and was sure Remus must have felt as well, as she, contorted as she was in between them, inadvertently contracted her entire body in laughter.
"Never?" Sirius repeated and raised his head, and looked above Lena's head to meet Remus's gaze. He laughed this time, loudly and voraciously, towards them both, pushing his body with one hand to thrust deeper inside her and have her change her grin with the round sound of a gasp.
He found himself laughing more as well. Louder, more often, without feeling a pit of guilt in his stomach each time he as much as had the shadow of a smile. All for the price of his magic, those memories of Dementors fading more and more.
"You're no better, Sirius Black." Lena murmured in between short gasps, placing her hand back to grasp Remus's head and have him pay attention to both Sirius's face and what she was saying.. "Your Felix Felicis was alcohol, had always been. Why, you are drunk right now!" she grinned, strands of her dark hair catching in the sweat of both her face and Remus's.
She may as well have been right - many details of the past couple of months before Voldemort's defeat were now fuzzy to him. He could barely remember Greyback's murder, however had no idea where he was buried or what happened to the body, he could almost remember the face of the old man that used to be Hedda Ablai's husband - did the old man just die of old age hours after they met him? - he remembered he escaped Hogwarts a good year ago on a Hippogriff, however he could not remember what the name of the creature was, was or what happened to it.
But did it all matter?
He was not quite sure. There were moments of melancholy, even in that little nest he had paid for Lena in Crete, moments when he wanted to talk to Remus about James, moments when he realised neither of them were now aware of the existence of Voldemort. Their memories - but not only theirs, the memories of all wizardkind in Britain - had been affected. Irreversibly so, as with him a Muggle, Grimmauld Place was an unlockable fortress, Hedda Ablai unreachable, and her book with the ritual effectively untouchable.
One time, a letter arrived.
An owl, large and dark, much different to the exotic owls and magical birds she had started to breed once again in her garden, the same as when he first met her, carried a letter which she read briefly, before using her wand to light it on fire. He grabbed the combusting letter from her hand, and used it to light himself a cigarette, crumbling the remains in his hands as he noticed a name he remembered.
"He still writes to you?" he laughed, amused as he recognised Karkaroff's name scribbled.
"He does, the poor fool. I haven't answered since."
"Since?"
"Since-... you know. Since it happened. Since then." she shrugged, wrapping the ties of her robe better around her waist, before taking a seat near Remus.
Sirius looked at each of them, and extinguished his cigarette, leaning in. He had been so focused on Harry, on caring for him, getting everything sorted, re-teaching him magic from zero, asking him questions about his parents, the parents he had hallucinated night after night when under the spell of the ritual creature-
"Sirius? Are you alright, mate?" Remus asked, leaning in himself with a look of concern on his face.
- Lily and James, who were now alive only in Sirius's memory. His final burden. His and only his alone, as no one else should be burdened with this. With his own mistake, the one he had originally made when trusting Peter Pettigrew all those years ago.
"What do you both remember, from back then? From when we were in that house, and we found Pettigrew, I mean." he said, avoiding mentioning Voldemort on purpose, yet another character only he alone seemed to remember. "Remember, Remus, you were-"
"Good old Severus, trying to trick Peter that I was him to lure him in our trap. Tonks was Polyjuiced into Lucius Malfoy…"
"I still remember when she said the potion tasted like blended snails." Lena chuckled. "Bless her. And you were Karkaroff, with the accent as well."
Their memories had been fully erased of Voldemort, fully erased Death Eaters - Peter Pettigrew had been a rogue wizard who had finally been killed, as a final fuck you from Sirius, who knew very well that the Ministry would not accept the existence of the escaped Pettigrew, not without Voldemort erased. Lucius Malfoy had become simply a hoity-toity posh snob like many others in such families, a simple rich wizard who may have been a practicant of dark magic and supporter of the erasure of Muggleborns, however he had never rallied, allegedly or not, behind a wizard to put into plan any of his twisted beliefs. Snape was simply an unlikable professor, and Karkaroff had returned to Durmstrang as a Headmaster, pitiable, confused, and seemingly still writing letters to Magdalena, in spite of not knowing for certain why he had become so attached to her. And neither did Lena - remembering simply that he had done something quite awful.
"He had indeed." Sirius nodded, re-lighting his cigarette.
"What had he done? Him, Malfoy, Severus Snape…"
He looked at her, at the both of them, and closed his eyes, taking a long swig of his cigarette.
"These are conversations that are to be left in gloomy England, not brought here, Lena. Visit me one day, if you really wish to know." he murmured as a response. Even with closed eyes, he saw her reaction in his mind, and his ears picked up the rustling of her light robe as she stood up and stepped outside, catching her chuckling and her amused response of 'as if'.
"Sirius."
"Hm?"
"You are hiding something, aren't you? I've known you for far too long." At that, Sirius opened his eyes, and slowly, painfully, nodded. "I can feel it too, you know. I'm not sure what, but here, and here-" Remus pointed towards his temple, and then to his heart, to a surprised Sirius. "I can feel that there is something… not missing, but something feels wrong, not as it should be, and I've been feeling it since that day. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm quite sure that you do."
As he continued to speak, Sirius found his jaw was painfully clenching, in expectating for Remus to confess that he had been aware of it all. And a part of him almost wished that he would indeed have said that, that he would have said 'yes, Sirius, I remember James too, and you are a selfish git for keeping that all to yourself, and a bloody idiot to boot.'
But alas, he did not.
"It's something we'll have to get used to." he finally said. "Like me being a Muggle now, and you fraternising with Muggles."
If there was something he wished he could have forgotten, it would be his melancholy and short-lived moroseness. Yet the villagers, with their fetes and foods and drinks, managed to soothe his troubled soul night after night, not caring that he was a Muggle, as long as he was a guest of wizards.
He had made a habit of this life. Most of the year, he'd be in England, travelling with Harry during the holidays, even managing somehow to be snuck in and see one of his Quidditch matches - somehow, despite both of them not knowing about each other's existence, Harry and Ron Weasley still managed to find each other, and funnily enough, Harry confessed at some point, under diverse threats from Sirius and promises of them sharing some firewhisky, that he developed a crush on Weasley's little sister.
Yet for a few weeks each year, he could be found in Crete - eating well, partying even better, and enjoying the company of Lena and Remus. At some point in the next year or so, during one of their visits to Crete, Remus announced that he had asked Tonks to marry her, to his great surprise, and that she had accepted.
"I'd have said don't go around marrying the first lass you lay, but, you know…" Sirius made a face towards Lena, who was busying herself talking to a villager, before bursting into laughter, moving to pat Remus's shoulder. "I am very happy for you both, really. What are your next plans, then?"
"I'll come here less and less. My happiness is shifting back to England. It's been nice and all, and Lena has been nothing but lovely, but I need to move on, Sirius."
"Have you told her yet?"
Remus shook his head.
"Not yet. I want to have a proper send-off. I don't know what I would've done with Tonks, if I even would have accepted when she first asked us to go have a meal, if it weren't for her. And you? You've always been partial to the bachelor life, haven't you?"
"I'll keep on coming here. Enjoying life." Sirius nodded, partly to himself, partly to answer Remus's question. "I'll keep on emptying the Black vaults, maybe find a job as a Muggle. I'll keep on living as life is meant to be lived. I've had enough regrets for lifetimes on end."
That night, he watched as Remus announced to Lena that he had gotten engaged, and watched them embrace tightly, and how she kissed him on his cheeks, and his forehead, and how she almost jumped in his arms, and her excited little face light up at the news. Yet when she turned towards Sirius, he noticed, for a fleeting moment, a deep sadness hidden behind her eyes, as she held tightly onto his friend, and he knew that within himself, there was still and will always be an incurable sadness of unknown origins and unknown dimensions, that he tempered that night, after Remus's departure, with Lena, as they had always done.
"Leni?"
"Hm?"
"Pretend I'm Remus, love. Pretend it's that night, and we both have had Felix Felicis. Show me what you've done, and how."
That night, she had been gentler than ever with him, and by the end of it, his heart was somehow, inexplicably, lighter, yet the longing in his soul was still there.
And it always would be.