Oleander Silence (The Ghosts That Haunt Remix)
Remix Author: Nichole
Original Story: A Sequence of Ghosts by Raven
Summary: Remus and Sirius are just doing what it takes to get through.
Rating: R
Fandom: Harry Potter
Three am on Monday morning the streets are damp and the sky is black, and he falls hard.
He hits the floor with glass beneath him; it crunches when he breathes in sharply to try and catch his breath enough to groan. He stares at the sky through shattered glass and only cringes when heavy footsteps approach.
And it's slow and fast, the way the figure moves, and Remus would move too, except he can't because apparently he just came crashing through a second story window. The streetlights outside are the only light here, dim yellow, catching the jagged edges of glass to make it look sharper than sharp should be.
(He spares a moment to think that Sirius is going to kill him if he ripped his coat, but that's a stupid thought and what does he care what Sirius thinks anyhow.)
There are fingers around his ankles and hands fumbling up like a blind man looking for a clue or his sight; like James used to grope around mornings looking for his glasses, and he may have hit his head, too, because it takes until the fingers are tightening around his collar to see that—
“James?"
--there was a reason behind making that comparison.
"Remus?" James asks, blinking and squinting and, well, just this side of desperate as he lets go quickly.
Remus laughs, short and harsh, because, well, of course. He understands the desperation. The lights from outside hardly light James at all, just wash yellow across his face and leave the rest of him in shadow. The rest of everything in shadow, really.
He only knows where he's landed because he knows where James crashes sometimes.
"Of all the windows," Remus says, "in all the pubs, in all the world."
Blinking, James takes a shaky breath. "Remus?" he asks again, rubbing at his eyes. "You… You don't look…"
"Are you alright?" Remus props himself up on his elbows, in the middle of a pool of broken glass, and tilts his head. "How long since you've slept?"
For his part, James just looks more defeated than Remus feels on full moon days. (When he's on the edge of out of control and his fingernails are breaking off in the dirt while he tries to get a grip good enough to keep him from falling over.)
"Not long," James answers after a moment, the words dragging off his tired tongue. "Couple of days…"
Remus sighs deeply, pushing himself up onto his hands and then onto his feet. There's an actual pingpingping of shards of glass falling from him as he stands. He takes it as some consolation that the room only sways a little as he wraps his hand around James' arm and drags him back to bed.
James is asleep by the time Remus brushes off the rest of the glass and toes off his boots. He settles at the foot of the bed, the coat as a pillow, and is asleep before James starts snoring the way his body'd learned in self-defence sometime during first year.
---
Remus dreams of nights when the moon didn't burn him. Nights tucked tight in his bed at home, under quilts his grandmother had made that always smelled a little bit like sunshine.
His pillow then was soft, the crisp white cotton his mother always preferred, and he'd curl small fingers into the edge of the pillowcase when he slept.
The moon outside arced silver through his window, and he could look outside to see the stars and his mother would laugh softly, the way that all things are when you're looking back onto your youth. And she'd tell him, "Remus, get out of your head and go to sleep. You're too young to be so much like your father."
He'd never thought to be afraid of the dark or monsters under the bed. He'd wave his fingers in the moonlight bleeding through the thin curtains and make shadows on the wall, pretending his hands were that of a man, large enough to lift the heaviest books.
When sunlight came slinking in, almost unwelcome, he'd breathe the scent of morning glories slowly climbing, growing, turning toward the sun to greet the day.
---
He wakes to the sound of London traffic and the desperate chill of heavy fog dawns. The kind of morning that sinks grey into bone and refuses to leave.
The bartender at the Leaky Cauldron is knocking hard on the door, saying, "Mr Potter, thought you'd want to be woken up."
When the noise stops, James groans, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.
Remus thinks very hard about doing the same.
---
There's a shine to leather when Sirius wears it—even in the dim light of the candles in their kitchen—that always makes Remus stop, just for a second, to watch.
His hair is black as coal—black as his sense of humour, as the leather he wears, and ink smudged onto Remus' fingers. Black as his fucking name—and dripping wet onto the carpet, and he's laughing so hard he's clutching at his middle with one hand and the wall with the other. Blunt fingernails scrape and fingertips slick with grease from his motorbike streak the peeling pink-flowered wallpaper with black. His grey eyes dance and fall down into the very core of Remus where they play with his insides like toys.
And Remus is by the window, and there's a breeze blowing in that sends goosebumps up along his arms. The glass of the window is thick with grime, and no light comes through it that isn't tinted brown-grey-yellow. But right now the storm that's brewing outside subsides, just for a moment, to make way for the sun to warm the back of his neck.
Sirius stops laughing, but his mouth is as wet as his hair and sinfully wind whipped red and still bowed in a cocky, joyful smile like Remus hasn't seen on him in ages and Remus… Remus sometimes forgets that he's allowed this.
Forgets that the way Sirius moves (slowly approaching with his head cocked to the side like he's just waiting for Remus to stop him dripping on the floor, his grease blackened fingers pulling at buttons and layers as he does until he's shivering in the same breeze that Remus is) is his to have, if he wants it.
Sirius laughs again. And he smells of petrol and dog and rain, but he's Remus', if Remus would bother to remember.
So Remus reaches out and takes to remind himself.
---
Remus still jumps when he catches sight of his reflection in supposedly empty places. He doesn't recognise himself when he kicks at puddles on the pavement.
His fingertips are still faded-black-blue from the dye in his hair and he rubs at his eyes tiredly. The contacts burn and he's been awake long enough to not want to open his eyes when they close.
He's got his fingers curling tight around the base of his wand in his pocket, though, because there are footsteps behind him that have been that way for just a little too long now.
The alley he ducks into is strewn with rubbish and piss, and rats scramble and skitter every which way. He kicks the fattest, largest one off the toe of his boot as it falters there, and he turns around with his wand drawn just in time to watch as no one passes by.
"Bugger," he growls, and then, "Fuck."
The footsteps stop, at least, for the rest of the long way home.
Remus can't help but think of all the trouble he's going through to save a life he isn't all that fond of.
---
Sirius paces, back and forth and back and forth, in front of the one window that opens. It's too cold outside for it to be, but that doesn't stop him. The clouds are rolling in the sky and the breeze that blows them wraps around Remus and chills him to already frozen bones.
But he's Sirius Black. Normal, mundane things like the fact that it's fucking freezing outside don't effect him. He's above it all.
"You," he growls, "are such a liar, Remus."
Remus isn't, actually, but he doesn't tell that to Sirius because then he'd have to tell him the truth, and that would be endlessly, achingly worse.
"You'd know all about lies, wouldn't you, Sirius," Remus sneers instead. He shakes his head and steps back, away from Sirius and the window and the urge to shove Sirius through the window. "Know all about lies and lying, yeah? Don't be daft, Moony, she's my cousin. I'm just going for a walk, Moony. You can trust me, Moony. Oh, Remus, I love you," he mimics. Just that little bit too much; he's pushed just that little bit too hard.
Sirius has his fists clenched and he paces faster like he can't decide if he wants to stay or go.
To be fair, Remus isn't sure if he wants him to or not either.
"You're daft," Sirius snarls, and picks up his drink before slamming it back down. The end table has one leg that's shorter than the others, and it rocks under the force of the glass coming down. Remus has books piled so high on it that it's a wonder the whole thing doesn't topple over. "You don't know a fucking thing."
"I know enough, Sirius. I know that you come home with the stench of sex like a cloud around you. You want my attention? Well, you've fucking got it, haven't you? You want my trust, that's a different matter."
"I'm just doing what I can," Sirius says, suddenly, shockingly still—his voice the same whisper it was after, when he'd crawled into Remus' bed in the infirmary and nuzzled at bandages and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you, if you let me. Christ, please, Moony, I'm so sorry."—"I'm just doing what it takes to get us through this, Remus, I swear to you."
And Remus has a feeling crawling around with claws sharp as a dragon's are in his stomach that makes him cold and afraid. He thinks—knows, knows and doesn't want to know—that Sirius is telling the truth, which makes it suddenly harder, and harder to breathe. And it's worse, like this. Because Sirius actually fucking believes what he's saying.
And he wants to say, now who's being daft? Or, you stupid fool, Sirius, this is always your problem and you'll never change. Or, Christ, you're as selfish as you've always been.
What he finally says, chokes out like words that burn his throat after a night of howling at a moon that won't listen to his cries, is, "So am I, Sirius."
But that's not enough for either of them, really, and Remus doesn't think it's ever going to be.
---
Lily, grace and beauty that she is, all but drops the baby in his lap as she goes to fix the tea.
Harry looks up from his spot on Remus' knee doubtfully, and Remus, truth be told, doesn't blame him a bit.
"Hello, Harry," he says, and holds on just tight enough to keep the baby from sliding to the floor. "Er—"
"Honestly," Lily laughs, "I'd have thought you'd got used to him by now, Remus."
She makes to hand him a chocolate biscuit, and just manages to avoid it being caught in Harry's slightly sticky grasp.
"Well," he says, and chews thoughtfully. "Never held a baby before."
"You have," she answers, brow furrowed as she racks her mind for an example of the—"It hasn't always been Sirius with him when you've been over has it?"
Remus shrugs, and looks down at Harry's messy head of hair. Harry's got his mother's eyes though, and they're trained on Remus too. He'd laugh at how little room he has for escape, except that he can't do that many things at once just now.
"So," Lily says, slow as honey on a cold day, "did you really crash through James' window at the Leaky the other night?"
"It was an accident."
Remus smiles a bit to himself as Harry snatches the rest of his biscuit.
"But—"
"What comes up," Remus says wryly, "must come down."
"That the same reason you stayed? Same reason for your hair and your eyes?"
Remus swallowed, and looked up at her again finally just long enough to know he shouldn't have. "Yeah. Close enough to, at any rate."
Lily laughs, but it's soft and sad like her laugh never was before. "Well," she says, "the path of true love never did run smooth."
"So I've heard," Remus answers, quietly grateful for the way she's always known when to quit.
---
And these are the days that just won't stop, not even for you.
Love,
Sirius
Remus crushes the note in his tired fist, his skin so pale it matches the paper.
He sits down hard, because he can't stand anymore. The chair wobbles, because all of their furniture does. It creaks like old bones do in the cold, too, when the wind is chilling because Sirius left the bloody window open again.
Remus laughs, and fingers the corners of thick paper stolen from his desk once he's flattened the note under his palms.
And he laughs again, short and bitter, and wrinkles his nose against the smell of burnt eggs and blackened toast kept warm beneath a keeping charm, but none the better for it, naturally.
The plate is light blue—and chipped around the edges once, twice, more times than Remus is, even, if he were counting such things—and it doesn't match with anything else. Remus is pretty sure it'd make a lovely sound if he could gather the energy to throw it against the wall that he can't stop staring at some days.
The wall with streaks of black grease, fingerprints and Sirius's hand, a stinging reminder of the way those fingerprints burned into Remus. Marked him like he'd never let Sirius do before, because this was different, wasn't it? And he laughs, a sharp and bitter sound that hurts and it isn't worth it because it isn't funny even.
He scrubs at places scabbed over with rust and blood and lies when he's in the bath, trying to rid himself of marks always just under his skin.
Remus pushes the note back where it came from with just the ends of his fingers, like he's afraid of getting dirtier than he already is, dirtier than he has been for years.
He walks away from the table exactly as he found it, save a few wrinkles. An oleander sits on top of a love note next to the milk jug, deceptively sweetly scented.
It doesn't cover the smell of eggs cooked too long, though, and he eats an apple instead but his stomach still turns when it hits.
---
Sirius sits with Harry on his knee like he's got a lap that was meant for a child to sit on.
He'd make a horrible father and everyone knows it, because he isn't like James. Sirius can't ever manage to rise to the occasion and surprise you.
James grew up when Lily said yes. Lily said yes and James wasn't like them anymore. He knew what it was that forever meant.
James found something in soft kisses and red hair and laughter like bells on a clear afternoon in the sunshine that was better than blood and wanting and love in dark corners when no one is looking. Lily said yes, and she said, "James, I've got something to tell you," and James looked up and stood up and grew up.
But they all watch Harry watch Sirius with wide eyes as Sirius reads Muggle stories that end in happily ever after, and it almost makes sense, then.
There's a feeling in Remus that might be regret, but probably isn't, because Sirius would make a horrible father. Sure he'd be good at the big things, use this curse and this hex and hold your broom that way, there's a good boy, don't eat acid candy but give it to first years every chance you get. But he could never do the little things, the this is your bed and your room and your life, and the monsters under your bed aren't as scary as I am, and I love you, so don't you worry, and this is a story that ends in happily ever after and I love you.
And Remus thinks, well, he wonders, if life could be like that outside of fairytales.
Somehow he doubts it, but no one else seems to.
---
The last sound you make is the same as the first. Not a cry, but just one sharp inhalation. You die with the same noise you were born with and that is the lesson you learn when you're dropped unarmed into the battles of a war that shouldn't have to be yours.
That's the lesson you learn when you don't step, or walk, but run, over and away from the bodies of those fallen beside you.
So Remus knows some things now that he didn't before, and he's got the bitter, salty taste of regret and learning boiling on his tongue for always now, and he can't… He can't swallow it down, no matter how he tries.
---
The bathtub has claw feet like a truly ancient thing, and the feet were painted over with gold probably some time during the year Remus was born, but the paint is peeling now, flaking off and only aided by the moisture here.
It's permanently off-colour. Aged-yellow-not-so-white. There's a ring around the inside that's been there since forever, maybe, and it never goes away no matter what spell they toss at it.
Remus' knees are damp from water he's splashed on the floor and he laughs, suddenly, almost drowning himself as he does, as he twists away from the water running from the tap.
"Sirius!"
Sirius laughs then too, warm against the wet skin on his neck, and shoves his head back under the water. "Silly git," he says, and Remus knows he shakes his head even if he can't see it, and slips his fingers in Remus' hair to help to wash out the dye.
He runs his fingers through Remus' hair and makes slow circles with blunt fingernails along Remus' scalp.
The water runs off his head blue and it'll stain the tub, but it'll be their stain this time.
"So," Sirius tries again, "why're you doing this?"
"Need a change," Remus answers, and closes his eyes as the water goes as clear as it ever does.
---
He finds a photograph in the pages of Sirius' sixth year Charms book.
And it might have been the four of them, but now it's just the two: Moony and Padfoot in front of the fire burning hotter than hot to fight the chill that castle and stone are always subject to, even on warm days.
Sirius is looking at Remus beside him, like he knows all the secrets that Remus hides, and can't wait to taste and test them all.
And Remus has his eyes closed, his lips parted in protest of something that—
He knows why he stays, why he comes back every time. That's never been the question.
Sirius fumbles his keys in the lock and swears, and Remus puts the picture back where he found it and sighs when Sirius tosses his coat over Remus' head instead of hanging it.
---
They fall into the trap that evening sets while afternoon dismantles morning.
Sunday morning they lie in bed next to each other, and Sirius slides his palm molasses-slow up and over and cups the curve of Remus' ribs and his belly. And he laughs softly against skin dampened by night and sweat and Sirius' mouth in the grey light of Too Bloody Early to Wake, You Git.
And they drowse through lunchtime, listening to the sounds of Muggles on the streets, laughing and playing and screaming and fighting and loving and loathing and living.
Remus laughs at that, a dry chuckle and it makes Sirius cringe, but it doesn't make him get out of bed.
Dusk slinks in through the window with the whisper of autumn sliding nearer, all orange-pink-purple and it burns. Remus rolls and presses his mouth places his mouth likes to be and Sirius arches and Remus thinks that this is… It's something, Remus can't decide what, though. Just something.
Sirius makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat that is something like "ooheww" and something like "I love you" and nothing like "I love you" because he says it with his teeth bared against Remus' neck and they lie to each other as they lie next to each other and there are clouds rolling across the blackening sky like…
Something not quite right.
They're warm beneath mostly kicked off blankets, and Sirius can't catch his breath, and Remus likes that the way he likes the sounds Sirius makes when he's got Remus' cock in his arse and he's just… just on the edge of again and never again, and there's nothing better and there's nothing worse.
When the noise outside dies to nothing more than the whistling of bone-achingly cold wind, Sirius crawls out of bed and Remus thinks very hard about not doing the same.
---
Remus never got the allure of bruises blossoming.
Maybe because once every month he wakes up covered in them and maybe because once every month he's got the urge to shove Sirius so hard he breaks and he wants to taste the bruises as they form under Sirius' skin and he wants to make those bruises with his mouth and his hands and—
He remembers sitting in the garden as his mother would weed the way Muggles do (The way it should be done, she'd say, magic takes away from the plants.) and he remembers nights wrapped in a quilt beside her watching moonflowers blossom sliver white in the light of the star that pulls them.
Remus presses his thumb into the hollow of Sirius' throat lightly, drags his thumbnail across the skin there until Sirius is shivering and he wants so badly to just…
"I'm just your fucking toy," Remus says, sneers, and pushes Sirius away. "Just here to give you what you want, yeah? You want love and reassurance and affirmation and absolution for your sins, Sirius, find a fucking priest, I'm done."
He grabs Sirius' coat as he storms out, but it doesn't matter too much. He knows he'll be back. They both do.
---
They have two-day-old Indian take-away for dinner. The food is spread out on chipped and battered plates that should've been rubbish long ago and only aren't because they never got around to it.
Sirius watches him, over the top of his glass, and he looks sad and like he's forgotten something that—Well, forgetfulness is something they share, anyway. Like Remus forgets, when he crooks his mouth in as close to a smile as he can across the table, that Sirius is going to be looking at his fingers curling tight around his knife so he can pretend he doesn't have something to say.
Somethings and nothings and lies are all they have; are mostly what Remus wants to say. And how could you and why did you and I'm not surprised and I—
"Remus?" Sirius says, asks really, like he's afraid, and Remus would laugh and he would cry and he would scream at the fucking ridiculous injustice, except he's known since Sirius backed him against the Charms bookcase in the library and said, "Remus?" that this wasn't going to end anything like he used to dream it would.
―hate you, you bastard.
Remus looks up from his plate, and smiles, and says, "Yes?" because he wants nothing more than to make him say it.
"I've got to go out," Sirius answers, letting knife and fork clatter onto his plate hard enough to chip it more.
"When will you be back?"
Sirius is already walking toward the door, hardly looking back when he says, "I don't know. Don't wait up."
"I hadn't intended to," Remus answers under his breath, watching Sirius looking around, so careful to not look at him.
"Good. Where's my coat?"
"By the door."
"How'd—"
"How do you think?" Remus asks, "Not like you'd ever put it there where it belongs."
"I'm going," Sirius says, grabbing his keys and closing the door behind him softer than he's ever done before.
Remus throws what's left of their dinner, plates and all, in the rubbish bin. It's not nearly as satisfying as throwing them against the wall would be.
---
He leans against the ledge of the open window, fingers of one hand around his smoke and his other hand curls in on itself from the rain outside, a drizzle of heavy wetness that fails to be the storm promised by the clouds in the sky.
It looks like it's been brewing for days, months, bloody years even. Like it should be the storm that Eve saw when she bit into the apple (once past the skin it was all precious sticky sweet on her tongue and Remus fancies that she realised then that what she thought was perfection before was nothing compared to that) and then she opened up her mind and her womb and got this as her reward; as her punishment.
Remus sighs, and the smoke from his fag curls around him, like paper curls when it's wet and like Padfoot curls at his feet on sleepy dog days and like he curls his fingers into Sirius' hair when it's wet because it's always been impossible to not.
And he feels like paper, swaying with the breeze—flipping and twisting and flying without control—and warping with the rain, falling heavier now, in drops that fall into his cupped palm and make him shiver with the cold he'd forgotten to feel.
He thinks if he could just get a grasp on something then it'd be better. But, but, but. He doesn't know.
He doesn't know, and Sirius is a fucking liar, and Remus knows that, and he knows that he cares, and he knows he cares too much, but he doesn't care enough.
Remus knows he doesn't want to leave, and he knows that Sirius curls his fingers into Remus' clothes when they sleep—when Sirius dreams of god-knows-what with his foot kicking the way dogs do—like he doesn't want to leave either, and that leaves them somewhere very inconvenient.
Because he can't keep living like this. Letting himself be lied to because it's easier, and because Sirius has a mouth that can make Remus burn, even when he's soaking wet and dead set against it.
And he thinks that Sirius could be the death of him. Sometimes he knows it, even. And mostly on nights like this—when he knows that he's been stupid for too long, and he's got loneliness and regret heavy in his belly because Sirius isn't here, even when he is—mostly he wouldn't mind.
He can't help but wonder if it'll always be like this, and he can't help but hope, though he can't say what he's hoping for.
They live inside a paradox, and try to fill the emptiness with words and silences like that will fill up all the ways Sirius doesn't trust and Remus doesn't see. Like they can live inside where it's Sunday mornings in bed all the time, with Sirius' fingers in Remus' mouth and moving together in the quiet uh uh uh of as close as they come to loving.
Remus snuffs his fag on the heel of his boot and drops it to the pavement down below.
He only sees them coming because he's looking out the window and—He laughs, and laughs and—Sirius always was the brave one, even if only in his stupidity.
He opens the door and they say, "Remus Lupin?" and he can't stop laughing, even though it bloody hurts because it's that or—
"Yes…"
A blaze of red like the colour of Sirius' mouth kissed raw and then the last thing before nothing is the thought that, well, he could be happy ending here. It's time something ended, after all.
---
"What is your name?"
"Remus Lupin."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-one years five months."
"Are you a werewolf?"
"Yes."
"Do you know where you are?"
"No."
"Do you know what date it is?"
"Yesterday was the thirtieth of October."
"Do you know the current whereabouts of Sirius Black?"
"No."
"When was the last time you saw him?"
"I don't know. Maybe around ten."
"Have you ever worked for Voldemort? Are you a Death Eater?"
"No."
"Are you a werewolf?"
"Yes."
"What is your name?"
"Remus Lupin."
---
He doesn't get out until after Harry'd been sent to live with his aunt. The sunlight burns his eyes after days of dark and questions.
Dumbledore could've got him out sooner, but he was busy taking care of Harry. He was busy taking Harry away.
The celebrations have stopped, at least. He doesn't have to look up to see stars and fireworks shooting across the too blue sky, though he'd heard all the guards talk, he'd listened to the joy in their voices.
"—missed the services," Dumbledore is saying.
Remus is sick in the next alley they pass.
---
He imagines James slumped with an old man's walk, his bones aching like Remus' do, and Lily with grey in her hair, and Wormtail tripping over fallen things still, and Sirius laughing, young as he was and young as he'll always be.
He closes his eyes as he looks out the window and let's himself think of Sirius crouching in a dark corner, begging under the light of the relentless moon as regret and guilt rip him apart like he's ripped Remus apart and the dementors feed on it all.
He dreams Sirius is warm in the bed beside him, his palm the perfect fit to the bone of Remus' hip, like puzzle pieces, same as always.
Remus fancies Sirius with his face and hands dirty, crying, begging, seeing what he's left Remus with and aching with it. Being forced to live with it the way Remus is. It's got to be worse punishment than Azkaban.
He fantasises Sirius being slowly torn apart piece by piece. First they take James and then Harry and then Lily and then Wormtail and then they take Hogwarts. They take his fingers and the way they wrapped around parts of Remus. They take his toes and the way they'd curl into cotton sheets when Remus pressed lips to his belly. They take his wrists and the lines and the veins and the small bones underneath the paper-thin skin there, they steal away the scrape of Remus' teeth across when the moon was too close for it when they do. They steal away Sirius' spine, the way it curved beneath Remus' fingertips, the way it arched and they steal away his throat, his voice, the way he'd gasp and shudder when Remus pressed his fingers just there.
Remus imagines that they're still back in school, crowded into one small bed, breathing each other in the stifling late night air behind their bed curtains with hands carving into places where they can't stop touching because this is all so new. He imagines first kisses and last kisses and one-more-kisses.
He imagines that it didn't end this way, and he imagines that he doesn't hate himself for imagining.
---
When it happens, when he sees the name that shouldn't be there on the map, it still doesn't make any sense at all.
But there is one fluttery feeling of something inside of him. Something like hope, maybe, or relief, or just the surge of maybemaybemaybe that makes him think, later, that twelve years were nothing.
(No, not nothing, they were everything.)
When he sees Sirius he can't help but touch. Can't.
And it's the same as it always was.
---
He wakes up alone the morning after (after, after, he's lost count of mornings after moons) on the cold kitchen floor. The linoleum is curling in the corners, under the drawer under the sink, he sees, and groans.
And he shivers, and wraps around himself, just for a minute, in the not-so-warm sunlight of early morning coming through the window.
The owl that's spent the last several minutes tapping on said window is none the happier for it, though.
Finally, he drags himself—limbs heavy and aching, bones like fire under his skin and joints so aching that he's lost, for the moment, as to what could be worse—across to the chair at the kitchen table. He groans again as he releases the window catch.
The owl flies overhead a few times before dropping the letter in front of him and leaving through the window again quickly.
Remus,
I am aware of today’s date and do not, therefore, expect this letter finds you well. However, this news could not wait. I am sure you know you are not Sirius’s only correspondent and will not be surprised at what I am about to tell you. Due to circumstances which he himself will explain, Sirius will be joining you in Camden within the next few days
Take care of yourself until then, and inform Sirius that Harry is currently safe with his relatives, and should by no account be moved.
Yours,
Albus Dumbledore
Remus swears, very softly, and settles himself into wait.
---
It happens again. Of course. He doesn't pretend to be surprised.
Sirius stands before him, dirty and shifting and tired, hardly Sirius at all, even, just a shadow of himself and Remus can't—
Remus can't help but touch.
Can't help but put his arms around dog and then man and inhale the scent of fur and age and things lost to time, mostly, maybe.
---
Sirius finds him outside, wrapped in a quilt older than they are, watching the skyline.
Remus sighs, and offers part of the blanket. "Old habits," he says, shrugging in as close to he'll come to an apology for this.
"Watching the moon?"
"The flowers," Remus answers, shifting to let Sirius beside him. "Just something I used to do with my mum, is all."
The moon is a quarter to full sitting heavy on the horizon across from them. They watch in silence as moonflowers bloom on the roof of the building next to them, silver white and sweetly scented.
He stays awake long after Sirius is snoring on his shoulder.
---
Every sound at number twelve, Grimmauld Place was wrong.
Their voices were dulled, pulled down and padded by dust before they could reach ears. The shuffle of feet, the clanging of buckets, the swishing of wands, though, those were too loud, echoing through silent, empty rooms.
Sirius prowled around the house like a caged animal, just waiting for a chance to escape.
Remus worked at cleaning, at making the place fit for living in ("Never will be," said Sirius, "only fit for dying in.") as he pretended not to notice the way Sirius startled at every sound.
"Penny for them?" Remus asks finally, after too long of nothing but oppressive emptiness and dust.
"Not worth it," Sirius replies darkly, aiming his wand at a moth-eaten curtain. When it falls, he smiles. Sirius enjoys the destruction.
Much as he hates it, Remus is grateful to see something in Sirius Now that is similar to Sirius Then. It's grounding to know he wasn't wrong about not having lost him.
---
They find the portrait completely by accident.
Remus grabs the banister when his foot almost slips across dust on the staircase, and it burns because, well, of course the banister would be made of silver, wouldn't it?
Sirius turns around so fast at the gasp of pain Remus makes that he loses his footing, and, naturally, knocks into Remus on his way down the steps so they land flat on their backs next to each other.
Thankfully, Remus thinks, they were only just near the bottom.
By the time he manages to think it though, they're both choking on a cloud of dust like none Remus has seen before today as curtains fly open and a voice, high and shrill and mad is shrieking, "Traitors! Fools! Defiling the house of my fathers!"
Nothing, nothing, nothing will make Remus want to deal with this moment.
---
Remus sighs softly, watching Sirius stand near the newly cleaned window looking outside like he's bid goodbye to his freedom again.
He's got wrinkles around his eyes, lines that pull down near his mouth like he never should have. Frown lines and crows feet aren't things for Sirius Black to wear, but they're his scars much as Remus' are, and it makes him suddenly, impossibly sad.
Sirius' scars weren't supposed to be this way. Weren't supposed to multiply and deepen with the years, (and years and years locked away in the place and Remus never stopped to think he didn't deserve it) they were supposed to stay at four. The one on his elbow from a bad break during a Quidditch game, the curving line on his shin from falling in the snow and hitting rock, the almost invisible spot from slipping and biting through his lip when he was focusing on telling Remus secrets he couldn't say, and the one on his hip from the swinging branches of the Whomping Willow.
He was never supposed to be old. Remus had never counted on that.
June night was falling over London outside, heavily oppressive but nothing compared to the house. This place could strangle a person so easily, and he wanted so badly to not have to do this. Wanted it just as badly as Sirius.
It'd been a long day, though, and he sighs again before saying, "Sirius." Just his name, just enough to get his attention, to make him look.
"Yeah?"
Remus smiles softly, fondly, and moves forward to brush the cobwebs out of Sirius' hair. "Time to stop, I think," he mutters, mostly to himself, as he pulls his hands back.
He turns around and starts walking up the stairs again, careful this time of the banister.
"Now what?" Sirius asks behind him.
The light is dimmer upstairs. Softer, maybe. It makes the place seem warmer, at any rate, as flames bounce and dance on burning candles. It seems smaller, too, but that's better, maybe, if it'll keep Sirius from suffocating in the heavy dust of the house he grew up in.
(But that's not true. Sirius didn't grow up here anymore than Remus did. Sirius grew up surrounded by stone, the warm halls of Hogwarts castle. He grew up in the shack, with the walls always almost falling down as Remus howled; in James and Lily's house when they said the word godfather; during the cold nights standing watch during the war; in chilly mornings when they stood beside the new graves of people they used to know. Sirius grew up in the darkness of Azkaban, even, but he didn't grow up here.)
Remus pauses with his hand wrapped around the knob of the door to the one bedroom they'd cleaned out and says, "Sirius—"
"Let's," Sirius says quickly, "go home."
"No," Remus answers, every bit as reluctantly as Sirius said his name the first night when he'd shown up on Remus' doorstep. "We have to… We have to stay here, Sirius."
"There's no room."
In the flickering light of the hallway Sirius' eyes look too big, too wide, like he always did when they were younger to get his way with Remus. Huge with the slow edge of puppy dog and child that would always make Remus cave before.
"We'll make room," Remus says quickly, before he can change his mind. He looks away, looks behind Sirius to their footsteps showing in the dust leading up to the door. He smiles again lightly, to try and make this light. "The bed's bloody big enough for six."
He opens the door finally, stepping inside to try and pretend he isn't a little unnerved by the way Sirius is staring.
"Fine," Sirius says finally, like he had a say in the matter at all. Remus is still relieved by his acceptance, though he can't say for certain why.
Sirius budged up right on the edge of the bed closest to the window. The left side, like he'd always slept on before, but Remus is… is doing his very best to not think of that.
Remus falls asleep first, listening to the sound of Sirius breathing beside him.
---
They laugh together in the downstairs hallway—softly, so as not to wake the portrait—at the latest trick of the Weasley twins.
And it's different, but it isn't. It's the two of them laughing at a prank gone right, snickering together in a dark corner with their heads bent close and their bodies turning toward each other to hold in the secrets.
Sirius doesn't look older when he laughs, he doesn't look haunted by ghosts and dementors and screams. He just looks like Sirius the way Remus knew him at Hogwarts. Like Sirius that first week in their place when they'd tried painting the walls the Muggle way and the fumes had driven them to opening every window to June outside, singing the praises of the city below them. When Sirius had stopped, with white streaked across his perfect nose to smile at Remus with absolute joy in his eyes and wave his arms, spraying specks of paint over everything and saying, "Look, look at this, Moony, we're home."
He didn't realise he'd stopped laughing until he realised Sirius had. And Sirius was watching him back, too, maybe holding the same memories that they'd both been denied for years.
It was quiet in the hallway, now, dark and just a little oppressive, but—
The other rooms were brighter, filled with redheads and noise and laughter even when there might not be a reason. There were sounds of life and living just outside the place in which they stood, and he wasn't surprised when Sirius stepped closer.
He wasn't even surprised when he let Sirius back him up against the wall with hands carefully, nervously, placed on his hips. (Still fit, oddly. Sirius was all bones now, but Remus was too. They'd decreased at the same rate over the years, apparently, but he wasn't going to think about that now because… because…)
"Remus?" Sirius asks, nudging at Remus' cheek with the tip of his nose, and he sounds scared, the same why he did so, so long ago. And Remus lightly curls his fingers in the folds of Sirius robes because it's the same as always, isn't it? Too many bloody years gone by, but it's still just the same, and Sirius is close enough to breath in, wearing the same wild scent he always used to and Remus can't not.
Sirius slides his hand just a little, away from Remus' hip until it's palm-flat against the hollow flat of Remus' belly now and he laughs, sadly, and says "Remus" like he means "Will you?" or "Let me" or "Please."
"Yes," Remus says, though he means to ask. Means it as a question. He does.
But Sirius gently brushes his lips across Remus' in a dry slide and, and, and…
Same as always, Remus is lost to it.
---
"We're too old for this," Remus says, left hand on his chest and right hand dragging through the overgrown grass they lie on.
Sirius beside him laughs, all devilish charm and the urge to brush off truth, to forget again that they aren't teenagers anymore. He shifts, drags his fingertips up Remus' arm in that just-barely way that Sirius knows makes him shiver. "Never too old for this, Moony."
The sun was warm, bright and yellow, and Sirius laughed in joy from it as they watched Molly in the garden. Remus sighs, sliding down just a little to tangle his ankle around Sirius' calf. "Are," he mutters, but it sounds petulant even to his own ears.
Sirius twists until they're hip to hip, and he's apparently absorbed every bit of heat from the earth because Remus burns—even through too much fabric—when he shifts just that little bit closer.
---
"James."
"Old hat, Sirius."
"You knew?"
"I knew. Thought the jealousy would kill me sixth year summer hols."
---
They aren't the same people they were thirteen years ago, and it simmers under Remus' skin that Sirius Now can do to him the same things as Sirius Then.
Sirius wakes up from nightmares in the middle of the night, and wakes Remus up by touching here and here and here like skin to skin is grounding. He drags fingernails down Remus' scars and mouths at too visible bones like that's the only way to know he isn't there, and Remus is only too happy to go along.
They both pretend they didn't leave off where they did. They act like it didn't end in secrets and lies and betrayals last time when it was, was…
Was something different than this, is the hope he almost won't admit to having.
"Moony," Sirius whispers into his skin in their bed at night. "Moony, Moony, Moony."
He tries not to make the same mistakes he did then.
---
"Did you love her?"
"No, I didn't love her. I was sixteen and you had James. I liked her and I thought she was beautiful."
"She was. So were you. You were and I… I loved you."
---
It wasn't enough. It never was.
---
"How long until the full moon?" Molly asks him quietly over tea.
"Just a few days," he admits, resisting the urge to rub at his forehead in a useless effort to ward off the growing aching there.
"Are you… Are you taking your potion? The wolfsbane?"
"Yes," Remus answers, smiling vaguely.
"You… You may be alone this time. Will you be alright?"
"I'll be fine, Molly. I've survived plenty of transformations alone when Sirius was in Azkaban, and plenty more before they'd mastered their transformations. I think I can manage one more."
---
"Professor Lupin?" Harry asks, hesitant at the door to the room Remus and Sirius had shared. He shifts on his feet and casts a shaky shadow across the floorboards.
Remus thinks, only a little bitterly, that he'd held this child as a baby and now he was being pushed to be a man. It was no wonder he was so angry. He's too young for this and Remus is too old.
None of it was fair, but he'd stopped expecting fair a long time ago.
"Yes, Harry?" he answers, when he realised Harry is waiting for a reply.
"I was… The coat of Sirius' that you gave me? It… It had this in the pocket, on the inside and I thought… Hermione said I should give it to you."
Remus moves slowly from his desk to the door, taking the postcard from Harry's hand. "Thank you," he whispers, scraping the pad of his thumb along the edge of it. "Are you…"
"You loved him, didn't you? I mean…"
"Yes, Harry, I loved him."
"I'm sorry," Harry whispers, lowering his head. "I'm sorry."
"Why are you sorry?"
"Because… Because it's my fault. It's my fault and I'm sorry you lost him because of me."
Awkwardly, Remus reaches out, his hand shaking on Harry's shoulder. "When Sirius met you, when he held you for the first time, you were only a few hours old and James had only just managed to pry you away from Lily. He looked at you then, just a tiny thing in his arms, and no one doubted for a second that he'd give his life to save yours."
Remus sighs again, softly, and pulls away his hand. "I'm sorry that you lost him as well, Harry. Thank you for bringing this to me."
Nodding, Harry leaves without ever looking him in the eye, but really it's just as well. Remus can't manage to stop from blaming Harry just yet either.
---
The postcard was one of many unsent.
It's got a picture of Paris is spring on one side and Remus' writing on the other. It reads:
Sirius,
There's too much space on a bloody postcard, which failed to make sense after the first two drafts. I'll never fill up the spaces because there is so much I'm not allowed to tell you. But I will say I miss you. Wish you were here and all that rot.
Full moon is tomorrow though, so I guess I'll see you then.
All my love,
Remus
He slides it into his book for safe keeping, and watches the garden from the window until it's time.
fin
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Oleander Silence (The Ghosts That Haunt Remix)
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