On their third year at Hogwarts, Sirius almost had to say goodbye to his circular dormitory with four four-poster beds and move to a “special accommodation”. They still joked about it years later, mostly James and Sirius, who would end up with a rolled parchment whacked on their heads because Remus didn’t find it the least bit funny.
Half an hour after Mrs. Black stormed out of Professor McGonagall’s office, Sirius found Remus sitting cross-legged on the spiral staircase leading to their dormitory (thank Merlin, their dormitory), blocking the way, with Sirius’s trunk still tucked beside their dorm’s door, as if he were preventing anyone from taking those trunks elsewhere. He had a scowl on his face ás he nursed his bruised knuckles. “Irwin Smith should learn when to keep his mouth shut.”
“Never liked that little bugger very much.” Sirius dropped himself next to his friend. Their shoulders brushed. “Hey, don’t be upset. At least now I don’t have to live in a separate dorm just because my Faerie ancestor decides my manhood needs some tweak-and-twist.”
For rowdy schoolchildren, who could barely keep their fingers clean and sit still for more than two minutes, not being able to stay with your best friends could feel like the end of the world. When they grew older and had more things to worry about, such a thing would be resolved with a wave of a hand, but for now they had the excuse of being thirteen-year-old to make it A Big Deal.
“I don’t like it when adults have so much power over our lives,” Remus said grimly. At the back of his mind, he was thinking about Dumbledore, standing in the Lupins’ doorstep with a bulging bag of sherbet lemons and a promise of education for a werewolf. “First year. After you were Sorted, your parents were this close to disenrolling you from Hogwarts and sending you off to some magic school in bloody Japan.”
“It was China, actually,” Sirius corrected him. With a flick of his wand, a box of tart cake he’d nicked from the kitchen materialised out of thin air. This time it was chocolate tart. Never lemon tart, though; Remus disliked lemons.
“It was just as absurd,” Remus finished the whole slice of cake in two swift bites. A frown creased his smooth forehead as he looked at Sirius. “You don’t even know their language.”
Sirius folded the leftover cake wrap into a bird and launched it into the air. “As it turns out, I do know a bit, Moony.” A slow smile spread on his face, and damn it if it wasn’t the most beautiful (and infuriating) smile Remus had ever seen. “Or should I say… Yue?”
“What does that mean?” Remus narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“It can have different meanings depending on the tone. But in our case, it means ‘the Moon’.”
Remus’s breath hitched. You ruddy, multilingual Hogwarts heartthrob. Sirius had no right to ambush him with apple tarts and speak his name so sweetly in another language in one evening! Sweet was something he rarely associated with Sirius. He was sometimes nice, yes, but also arrogant and bold and had low sentimentality. Then he’d surprise you by being shrewdly perceptive and weirdly romantic in the least foreseeable way.
“Sounds like a bloody girl’s name,” Remus huffed. He was only half-honest; he actually quite liked how it sounded. Sirius barked out a laugh, a sharp, staccato thing, and teased him mercilessly by crooning Oh, m’lady Yue, princess Moony, just because he had the very irritating habit of clinging onto whatever people disliked to take a piss on them, and no matter how resilient they were, getting pissed off was invariably the result. But after that day, Sirius seemed to forget all about it, and he never brought it up again.
Nonetheless, the name somehow stuck with Remus. He knew it was supposed to sound beautiful, arousing a sense of mystery — definitely more discreet than “Moony” which was a cheeky shout-out to anyone about his lycanthropy. What he didn’t know was that 20 years later, this name would revisit him in the form of an opened Pandora’s box.
###
“—and all the posters were set on fire, Moony, that Peruvian Instant Flame I acquired from the black market couldn’t have worked better. Well, I mean, it went a bit too far when Rosier's robe caught fire, but that pompous cunt has about eighty-five different robes anyway, so who cares? Worth everything to see them jump around yelling like there was a Chizpurfle ripping their knobs off—”
Remus let out a small laugh. He shifted on the bed, reaching for the nightstand to stub out his cigarette on the ashtray. The bed creaked loudly under his movement, but again, every piece of furniture in the Shrieking Shack was so old they sounded like choked kneazles after the slightest physical impact.
“You said it was anti-Muggle posters?” Remus settled back on the mattress, shirtless, half-lying. He’d been getting hard since Sirius stepped back into this room after his quick shower, smelling like heaven. “Apparently no one taught the junior Death Eaters about propaganda. They should learn one or two things from Goebbels.”
A thin layer of dust covered every surface in the Shack, but it was likely swept away by Sirius’s rapid movement — pacing, talking animatedly, making his sleep robe swish around. Seventeen-year-old Sirius Black was like a whirlwind. A hard and proud — and very hot — whirlwind.
“What a bunch of pathetic fuckers,” Sirius said contemptuously, but it didn’t take a masochist to see the beauty in it. “Tawdry, arse-licking little swines. They declared Voldemort the closest thing to a god.”
Remus made a low whistle. “Greece laughed, and Alexander drank himself to death.”
“Oh no, don’t compare Alexander the Great with moldy Voldy. I’m actually quite fond of the old chap.” Sirius’s voice was smoky, velvety, like a drop of fine whiskey rolling from the tip of the tongue, down the throat, to the lungs where it burnt . Moments like this his presence became too strong, heady and scorching, especially as he reached for the turntable and started a record, body swaying to the tune, drenched in the languorous scent of mashed cigarettes, half-eaten cakes, sprawling tangles of blankets and dusty bed curtains. Aroused by the sight of their discarded clothes lying everywhere — on the threadbare couch, on the bedside table, across the broken piano where Remus had attempted an out-of-tune Twinkle Twinkle Little Star yesterday. They were young, well-educated, and not without a vision. They liked giving opinions on things, overusing witty or otherwise crude words, then chalking it up to the recent radical movements. Past mistakes had taught them one or two things about life, but not too much at the ripe old age of seventeen. A war loomed ahead of them, but they were in love and unafraid.
Before Remus realised, Sirius had knelt on the floor, shoulders sagging. neck craning. “Padfoot?”
Sirius didn’t react at once to the call. But then, slowly, he shifted, and, on his hands and knees, he crawled towards his young lover.
“Geez Padfoot, didn’t know you were so fastidious. Mopping the floor with your fancy kimono sleep robe.” Remus grinned like Christmas had come early. In his trousers, the erection was straining to the point of painful. He propped up on the bed with one elbow, extending a hand. “C’mere, you wanker.”
Sirius did as he was told. But when he was a few inches away from the tip of Remus’s fingers, he stopped. Still on all fours, his body a heavenly arch, he flicked his tongue out in a dog-like manner, starting to lick Remus’s hand clean. Clean from the lingering smell of cigarettes and sweet taste of chocolate tart, sensuous tongue tracing the line of pale scars.
The steady eye contact he maintained while doing it was maddening. He was an arsonist, setting Remus's whole on fire.
“Fuck, Padfoot—” Remus gripped Sirius’s jaw, breathing heavily down Sirius's face. Sirius licked his own lips sinfully and swallowed, like he’d just eaten a particularly delicious meal. “Remind me, why are you fond of Alexander?”
“I’d prefer you not mentioning another man when we’re about to fuck, Moony.”
He ignored the fact that it was Sirius who’d brought it up first, instead focusing on the blissful heat of Sirius’s hand when it crept up his thigh, playing with the belt of his trousers. “Oh? So we’re fucking now?”
“Unless you have another idea,” challenged Sirius, tightening his claw on Remus’s waist before diving in, his face buried in Remus's groin.
His impatience made Remus want to laugh. He loved Sirius, loved him even when he was short-tempered and irritable, scowling at James when he was being disgusting with Lily or scolding Remus for his daily scheduled (and reasonable) self-deprecation. He loved Sirius even at his own expense — wounds from The Prank not yet closed or forgotten. God, wasn’t he just hopeless.
“Lucky you, Padfoot,” he tore the condom packet open with his teeth while stroking Sirius's hair. “Because fucking you has become my new favourite thing.”
With a swift movement, he pulled Sirius up the bed, holding Sirius on top of him. The hard length of Sirius’s erection pressed on his stomach behind the burgundy sleep robe (his skin was tantalisingly white against the deep red). Remus drank all of him in: Sirius and his precocious eyes, the bodily maturity he'd witnessed Sirius's growing into. He untied Sirius’s obi with haste, and Sirius’s trembling fingers fumbled with his flies.
“Hands on my shoulders,” he said, a little hoarsely. Then, after years withdrawing in his own shyness, hiding his heart’s desire, it had come to him almost easily: “I want you to ride me, like the way you ride your blasted motorbike.”
Like the big waves that carry the lone raft to their rhythm, up and down, up and down . Near the shore, the water was whipped white with joyous winds.
As Sirius fucked himself on Remus’s cock, Sirius thought, vaguely, in the delirium of intense sex, that maybe someday, Remus would allow Sirius to take his seeds, would agree to put a baby into him. Let the remnants of Faerie genes do the miracle. Sneakily, in the library when nobody noticed, he’d done research; lycanthropy doesn’t pass down from parents to children. He wanted to raise a child in a way he’d never been raised, build them a home they never have to run away from. In the back of his hormone-addled mind, resonating with the wet sounds of their bodies meeting, there was a whispering voice. Rewrite on your parents’ mistakes , it said. Do it better than them. Four years ago, this thought had never crossed his mind, and he would have laughed his arse off at the sheer idea of it. Interesting how fast an adolescent’s mentality could develop over only a few years.
“Let’s move in together after graduation,” Sirius panted, not stopping his movement to meet Remus’s thrusting of his hips. A drop of sweat rolled off his jaw and landed on Remus’s naked, heaving chest.
“Not fair, Sirius,” Remus grunted, “Must we have this talk right now?” His lover pounded up into him, hands on either side of his waist, shoving Sirius down his cock.
“We haven’t separated since eleven.” Sirius leaned down to peppered kisses along his stubbled jawline, then on the scorching heat of his mouth. “From one night per month to many nights we spent in this Shack, and the rest of our time in our dormitory.” A sharp thrust from Remus sent his breath to a tremor. “Leave Prongs and Wormtail be. I want only you for myself. Only you. Only you… ”
“Territorial bastard,” Remus let out a disbelieved laugh. He looked almost child-like when he laughed like that, chestnut brown hair fanning out on the pillow, so open and free and loved. “Alright. I’ll think about it.”
A flash of second later, Sirius was laid flat on his back, the air punched out of his lungs.
“We will live together, and no adult will dictate our lives anymore,” he said, hooking his legs around Remus’s waist. His lover aligned his cock to his entrance, pushing in. “We will join the Order, fight together, and we will win this bloody war.”
###
If only life could be painted in rose colour.
Sirius could feel distrust slither its way between them, ever-present like a festering wound, growing as a parasite. It took the shape of the bodies they’d found in Muggle houses. It took the shape of human heads, decapitated, lying around the guillotine the Lestranges had brought from France, of beggars who were casually killed in Diagon Alley, and it was just another day. It took the shape of Regulus’s absence, missing for months without a trace, of his mother’s scream when the last shred of sanity deserted her. It took the shape of the gaping wound on James’s chest, the glistening tears in Lily’s hollow eyes. It took the shape of the hunch on the back of Caradoc Dearborn’s mother, at his funeral, of what was left of Benjy Fenwick in the debris, whose last word was Tell Emmeline I love her.
Now, it not only took the shape of Remus's weeks spent on ‘secret missions’, but also of Remus’s anti-Polyjuice security questions he used on Sirius.
“What was the first thing I said to you, after the Shrieking Shack incident?”
“When, the exact date, did we last sleep together?”
“What were Mrs. Potter’s last words?”
“Which object sat in the corner of the room where we last had an argument?”
It used to be different. It used to be “How many toilets in total did we blow up at Hogwarts?” , or “What did you tell me, after you first kissed me?”. Right after which, Remus would lower his wand, pull Sirius into his strong arms and kiss him, comforting, quiet. And he would look at Sirius in a way couples did in old movies (like Casablanca ), murmur “Sorry, Padfoot, it’s just the Order’s protocol” ( “Here’s looking at you, kid.” ) Now, Remus didn’t immediately lower his wand after the questions had been answered. He would stare at Sirius, his wand raised, his eyes full of what made Sirius feel like he’d died twice: Distrust.
Are you my Moony?
Distrust grew between them like the third member in their disintegrating relationship, more substantial and real than the little moon that was growing quickly inside Sirius. It was a cannibalistic creature with insatiable greed. Feed it, and it would demand for more and more, until nothing was enough, until it chomped off its feeders’ hand, arm, head, eventually consuming them whole. It ate from many hands, but still made sure its feeders never saw each other. It made them unrecognisable, not just to their loved ones, but also to themselves. It made them no longer human. Even with their guts and hearts between its teeth, they let it live. After all, there wasn’t only one Distrust. At an exponential speed, they multiplied.
Because there were also Distrusts in the Order. They were hushed conversations that died upon Sirius’s entrance, strained, cold smiles from those he’d once called friends. Handshakes that were released too quickly, Emmeline Vance’s mutter can’t be trusted under her breath. Eyes veering towards him at every mention of casualties and failed missions.
What an arrogant prick, they whispered. A thin-lipped pureblood, living within a frame. Staring down at us, as if we had to beg for his generosity. He doesn’t belong here.
Sirius couldn’t stand it; it felt like something inside was trying to tear him apart and break out. Harry doesn’t need you, he told them, barely containing his anger. James and Lily don’t, and I certainly don’t need you . Go fuck yourselves for all I care. He could be so careless when he was hurt. The more people acted like they wanted to chain and muzzle him like a mad dog, the more he fought back, baring his teeth.
And so it went: in front of Remus, who didn’t trust him and whom he didn’t trust, Sirius crushed the pregnancy result in his fist.
Remus stepped into the flat they shared, now so unfamiliar that it barely recognised him. His movements were awkward, hesitant, as if he’d forgotten where to hang his cloak, which switch was for the light. Cold and hard, distant. Wrapped in his secret self, dwelling in the gaunt shadows. The gently smiling, confident Remus he’d once had — he had gone with the wind.
It felt like ages since they’d touched. The last time, it was days of battles and fuck. Ripping each other apart, limb from limb.
Was Remus pained by the wide chasm that lay between them, too? His frame was too thin, his lips torn, his eyes tired and lifeless, and there were too many new scars. Within a split second, longing struck Sirius with the force of a freight train, that he wanted nothing more than to tell Remus: I’m carrying our child. To hold Remus in his arms, forget all about this war, and get the fuck away from this gaping wound of a country. But he’d failed at the first step. He couldn’t reach out for Remus. There was sand in his throat, and he couldn’t lift a finger.
Are you my Moony?
Sirius was twenty-one. He was fighting a losing war, and he was pregnant. With his first and only love. People say love is not always happy. They aren't wrong; it can feel like a terrible illness.
###
“Lily cried her eyes bloody, you know. When she heard about Marlene.”
They fell into silence, and between them were the ghosts of their dead friends. Fabian and Gideon. Now Marlene. Sirius dated her for a while, before he and Remus got together, and she ran into Dorcas’s arms. Now they were both dead, buried side by side in a little graveyard with the rest of the McKinnons, the letters on their tombstone reading: Peace At Last.
It sounded almost beautiful.
“Don’t even think about dying,” James warned. There was grey on his black hair, made visible by the harsh fluorescent light.
“You know,” Sirius’s mouth twitched, “It’s a miracle I’ve made it this far, given the number of people I pissed off.” There was a ghost of his old smirk in there. “Besides…”
He looked down at his swollen stomach.
“I can’t fuck it up. Because I still have Harry, and now this little one.”
Sirius rubbed the round bump in slow circles, hoping the child could feel it. Could feel how much he loved them.
“I’ll never get used to this,” he continued, “Y’know, having a child inside me. But at least they’re safe here within me. Out there, it’s no good.” He tried not to think of the prophecy about Harry, of the fear something as terrible might repeat. “Once little Yue is born, we don’t know what will be waiting for them.”
Little Yue. The old name felt like a lifetime ago, but the glorious blush on Remus’s cheeks back then had been enough to make him unable to think of any other names. People in the Order had begun to suspect — that it was some sort of Dark Magic. That the child was fathered by a Death Eater. And Sirius knew where that came from: he had passed out in pain and woken up to the attentive hand of Narcissa Malfoy, who was without her Death Eater husband and holding her newborn son. Apparently someone had heard about it, and the rumour had spread faster than wildfire.
Sirius was fed up to the back teeth with all that nonsense. His little Yue had no fault. The name was enough to say the only thing that mattered: my child is Moony’s.
“Does he know?” James suddenly asked. He sounded worried.
“This is not the right time,” Sirius replied tersely. “We don’t see each other, so he wouldn’t notice anyway.”
“If so, then when? When will it ever be the right time?”
“Bloody hell, Prongs, ask the universe,” Sirius retorted, annoyed. Then, more despairing: “... I don’t know.”
When is the right time? Sounded like a cliché line in old movies. Only the romance in him was dead. The chance of love surviving this war was about the chance of a human surviving on Mars. In war, the concept of time bends, like it does in a black hole.
James didn’t say You can’t do this alone . He didn’t have to.
“I would do anything for Harry, you know.”
“We know,” James said sadly. “But we can’t let you be our Secret Keeper.” Sirius's anger flared.
“So now even you distrust me too?” His voice sounded too high to his own ears. Too wrong.
“You know too well it’s not that, Padfoot,” James told him quietly, in a no-nonsense tone. “It would all be too much of a responsibility on yourself, when you’re still out fighting and still have, what do you call them” — he gestured at Sirius’s stomach — “Your little Yue.” James looked very serious. “You would do almost everything for Harry, but this , you wouldn’t. You couldn’t .”
Sirius just wanted to break something, then and there. Even if he wasn’t the Secret Keeper, they’d still hunt him down. And then Sirius wouldn’t only be fighting for his life, but also his child’s. His child’s. This body wasn’t fit to carry a kid. Given the amount of violence he’d committed, this body had been weaponized into a war machine. With a corrupt mind, twisted personality, full of flaws and fears. A lost cause. He had hoped to give the child the best of himself. Now, only the most terrible parts of him were holding him together.
Children hate adults. Then they turn exactly like them when they grow up, and it’s nothing new.
“How about Remus?” asked James grimly, his brow furrowing. “You don’t trust him?”
“I do,” Sirius replied, not very convincingly. “But that’s not the point, is it? We barely see him anymore. What if there’s an emergency? What if Voldemort decides to destroy the whole Godric’s Hollow — ‘better kill mistakenly than miss an enemy’? How will we contact him then? How can he do his job as the Secret Keeper, when he’s always away?”
This was war. Wars twist realities. They couldn’t afford to take risks, not when the price was too high.
“There’s only Peter, then,” James said finally. He was twenty-one, but he looked eighty.
“Yes.” Sirius felt empty and soulless. “It has to be Peter.”
He tried not to wallow in guilt for not trusting Remus with this. Thinking of Remus, dissociated and isolated, unsafe somewhere out there, unknowing he was father of an unborn child, only made Sirius lose every will to fight. He couldn’t allow that.
They’d grown up inseparable. And now they’d drifted apart. All childhood dreams have to die someday.
###
Today was the third of November.
James was dead. Lily was dead.
Sirius opened his eyes, staring at the grey ceiling of his holding cell.
His child was dead. Little Yue was dead.
“Miscarriage,” the people in white robes had told him, without sympathy, while trying to hold him down by magical chains. “We gave her a proper burial.”
And his wrecked body had stopped struggling at once.
(“If only I knew that’s what it takes to keep you still,” one of them had sneered.)
He felt like his blood had dried out.
Her . It was a little girl.
Had been.
The light was dim. The room was grey, smelling sour.
Water leaked from the ceiling. A steady drip, drip, drip.
Like the blood that had leaked from between his legs. In the middle of a blasted-off street, twelve corpses, and one finger.
He had laughed, because Sirius Black had turned into a murderer.
To no one’s surprise, including his own.
Someone entered the cell. Someone faceless.
“Sirius Orion Black, you’re subjected to a lifetime sentence at Azkaban for the mass-murder of twelve Muggles and Peter Pettigrew, as well as the treason that led to the death of Lily and James Potter. Since there will be no trials, the Dementors will soon be here to collect you.”
He didn’t stir.
Azkaban. So what.
He would rot and die there. So what.
Nothing matters.
Today was November the third. It was his birthday.
###
Grimmauld Place was a crumbling museum of bygone glamour. That was the surface beauty of it.
Grimmauld Place was filled with Sirius’s presence. That was the essential beauty of it.
For twelve years, Remus had been walking along the edge of the abyss, eyes closed, heart frozen. A sick man that, hadn't it been for the survival need to move and breath, would remain paralyzed. But now this somnambulistic wandering had come to a stop. From the ashes that had long grown cold, the flame of life had been awakened.
it was heart-warming to see Sirius so good with the kids. All the young Weasleys were fascinated by him, and Harry adored him. Hermione, less enthusiastically so, but Remus knew she still cared.
Hadn’t it been for her, Harry and Ron…
The pit of Remus’s stomach clenched. He didn’t want to touch the murky waters there, but he still felt very ill every time he took the Wolfsbane Potion. It was a lesson, written in blood, a reminder of what could have been the consequence of that fateful night, in the Forbidden Forest, because the potion phial had not been within Remus’s eyesight. Because Remus hadn’t stopped once to look at the lunar calendar. Because Remus had forgotten to drink the Wolfsbane before he rushed down to the Shrieking Shack.
Ironically, those fateful actions that determine the defining course of our lives are often far less conscious than we later imagine in moments of reflections.
And sometimes, those reflections made him bolt out from his sleep, sweat-streaked, mouth open in a silent scream. They were all the same nightmare: the hooded, dark figures of the Dementors looming over Sirius, their decaying hands gripping tightly around his arms, his legs, his neck... With a long, rattling breath, their putrid mouth pried his lips open, the same lips Remus had countless times kissed so passionately, the same lips that reigned Remus's heart, and he could only watch as life was drained out of those grey eyes, as the soul was sucked out of his lover, until everything left of him was an empty shell that barely existed — a fate worse than death...
“Remus?” Sirius called him from the kitchen, soul intact and alive. “Harry and I are baking chocolate tart with Ginny. You want to join us?”
After all, it was Remus and Harry who did most of the work ( “Would you mind, er, preparing the dough, Professor?” ) Both Sirius and Ginny, as it turned out, were utterly pants at baking, so they settled for doing the dishes instead ( “Freddie Mercury already died in 1991, Sirius.” - “What a shame! I really liked that chap.” ) From behind, they looked painfully familiar. Almost like Sirius and Lily. Just like when he stood with Harry, they could be Sirius and James.
And when he laughed — his head thrown back, his eyes two crescent moons — it felt like no time had passed. An ageless, timeless smile. A smile that chased away all the darkness, that made Remus internally sigh, Oh, Padfoot… Harry had said it made his godfather look like his younger self, laughing in the picture of his parents’ wedding.
If only Harry knew how long and tirelessly Remus had worked to bring his smile back.
It was like rushing forth into a strange land where angels feared to tread, searching for a long-lost treasure. And once he'd found the treasure, he simply couldn't rip his eyes off it, afraid that one moment of looking away, it would disappeared like a dream. In Order's meetings, conversations during dinners, his eyes always find their way to Sirius — to the way he spoke, his slightest movements, his subtlest display of emotions — drinking him all in, in such conspicuous manner sometimes, he suspected even Harry noticed. The understanding look on Harry's face whenever he caught Remus staring at Sirius's eyes—his lips—made Remus feel as if all his wildest, filthiest fantasies had been laid bare.
“I’ll tell you, that kid is touched in the head.”
Of all the things he needed to hear in the world, Phineas Nigellus Black’s input ranked at the very bottom. But one day, the old portrait had stopped calling Remus an abominable half-breed, and started speaking to him.
“You don’t see it, because you aren’t here often enough. But whenever there’s no people in this house, he starts to behave like a madman. Talking to himself, seeing things that aren’t there, wandering about like a sleep-walker. Sometimes he goes into full-on hysteria. Lapsing in and out of consciousness, giving up his feeble grasp on reality. Muttering those names, James… Lily… my little Yue…” The old man raised one brow. “Repeatedly.”
For once, the other portraits lining the blackened walls had said nothing.
“Stay with him, as much as you could,” Phineas Nigellus had said finally. Then, as if feeling the need to justify it, he added: “You’re important to him.”
It wasn’t common for a Black to ask for a favour, especially on another’s behalf. So now you care about him, because he’s the last of the Blacks. He had stared at the portrait coldly then, before walking away.
James. Lily. Little Yue. The order in which they had left this world, haunting his lover for 4000 days and nights he’d spent in Azkaban, and afterwards. There are wounds that even time cannot heal. Sometimes, Remus could feel it, in the way Sirius’s grey eyes followed him from the darkness.
Tonight, he went up to visit Walburga Black’s chamber, still sweaty and breathless from the Order’s mission (infiltrating the Ministry to plant listening devices).
The spacious chamber had been changed to accommodate its new, feathery residents. Furniture was shoved in the corners, making space for Buckbeak, the outlawed hippogriff, and about a dozen of artfully-crafted cages, each of which housed a different tropical bird. There was a rustic smell of cigarettes. Liquors in the cabinet, artificial magnolias in an old, lustreless vase.
He saw Sirius sitting cross-legged on his dead mother’s bed.
The sight ached. It was just like their Hogwarts days, when Sirius used to sit like that on his four-poster bed in Gryffindor Tower. His frame was still a little too thin, but he had started to fill out again. His hair was no longer matted and limp around his face. And his eyes—alive. The young Remus would wax poetics about Sirius Black's eyes for hours on end, about how they had the depth of a forest snow cave, the glimmer of moonlit waterholes in deserts... Now, what saved his heart was simply seeing life behind those dear eyes.
Sirius had been quiet for a while. He was always like that, grounding himself, locking his mood away, trying not to let it affect other people. Only in his privacy, one could see it — the cigarettes, the liquors. An outlawed beast. Walburga Black's fake flowers that almost crumbled to dust, but not thrown away.
There was a small piece of paper between his hands.
“I found one of Lily’s letters.”
And Sirius handed him the thing like it was a fragile wonder. Holding it close to the candlelight, Remus loosened his tie and squinted to read; the paper was well-worn, and warm where Sirius’s fingers had touched.
Dear Padfoot, Thank you, thank you, for Harry’s birthday present! It was his favourite by far. One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself. I’m enclosing a picture so you can see…
At the end of the letter, she had signed it with Lots of love, Lily. He could almost hear her voice in the words.
“A great chunk of my memory was chopped off, but I still remember this,” Sirius said, eyes on the floor, unblinking. “That day, I went to a children’s toy store, and Harry’s broomstick wasn’t the only thing I bought. I…” he swallowed, “picked up some smaller things too.”
Before he realised, Remus had started mouthing kisses along Sirius’s jaw, leaving wet trails on his lover’s skin as he undid his own shirt buttons. The kissing became more heated as he laid Sirius out on the bed, unfazed to the morbidity of sex on Sirius’s dead mother’s bed, in the same room with birds of all sizes.
“I put them in a small box.” Remus settled himself between his legs, rubbing against him fervently. “Every once in a while, I would take them out to look at them. And I would wait.” Long, insistent fingers reached down, wet and slick, starting to work him loose. “Even now, a part of me is still waiting.”
Remus felt a low noise tear itself out from his throat, like a wounded animal. He pinned Sirius down.
Afterwards, it was a broken dam. He took his lover — his oldest friend — hard and fast, then slow and deep. Gripping Sirius like he was afraid he'd disappear. It was no longer the fucking when they had still been young. They were too old now, too broken. Their lives, just like this house, were the haunted museum of too many mistakes. Devastated by misunderstanding and hate, drowning under too many punishments. After twelve years of seperation, they'd become half-strangers. They had to learn each other’ self again, just like how they were relearning each other’s body. But there were things that remained unchanged: at least the shivering and gasping mess they were making of themselves now, or if not — the frantic kisses they exchanged between climaxes and shallow breaths — had to mean something, after all these years.
“Hold my hand, Moony,” Sirius said roughly, urgently. “Hold my hand, and— Fuck! — press it hard. Harder .”
Remus held his hand then, snapping his hips at an abandoning pace, his eyes fluttering close at the sensation. He looked like he could die here, on Sirius's body. And it would be a bliss.
The Black family tree was a curious, unpredictable thing. Remus and the kids had learnt that much after they had cleaned the house, plucking out every doxy that hid behind the ancient tapestry. And he’d seen it there, linked with the charred, burnt mark where Sirius’s name had once been: a single golden line. But unlike the others, this one led to nothing. A branch cut short.
She would be thirteen years old now, had she been given a chance to live. But if so, then Lily and James wouldn’t have died, Wormtail wouldn’t have succeeded, and Sirius wouldn’t have gone to Azkaban. A series of the “what-ifs”, of the paths not taken. Wondering too much about them would never change what had already been written. What truly mattered now was that they were both here, breathing, in each other’s tender embrace. They had survived too much to stop now.
And there were reasons not to stop. There was love. It'd been said the chance for love to survive the war was about the chance of humans surviving on Mars, but Sirius had loved him then. After all these years, Sirius still loved him now. He was a Martian.
“What would you say,” Remus kissed his eyes, his nose, "If I wanted to move in here with you?" Kissed, kissed. “You're an absolute berk, but you can be good for me. We can share a four-poster bed..."
"Eat chocolate tart. Be two miserable old twats," Sirius grinned, his eyes crinkling.
"I wouldn't expect anything less, Padfoot," he replied with a smirk. "Let's be roommates again.”
Sirius laughed warmly then, craning his neck up to kiss his forehead. It was the sharp, staccato laugh that Remus had fallen in love with at thirteen-year-old, and again now, at thirty-five. Remus searched his face hungrily, as if he’d never been able to see him enough.
As if he would never be able to see him enough.
.