Mother and Son
“Come, now; you’re fourteen. A man. There was a schoolboy— not as old as you—Bonaparte, and when a schoolmaster at Brienne asked him who the deuce he thought he was, that’s what he said: a man!”
Roger Peyrefitte | “Les amitiés particulière”
o0o
With Mrs. Potter’s kiss still warm on his cheek, Remus bid goodbye to the Godric’s Hollow and embarked on his journey back to Hogwarts. The hustle and bustle of the King’s Cross station, the clanking and grinding of the train engines finally jarred him back to reality after the airy, dreamlike atmosphere that enveloped every corner of the Potters’ estate.
The manicured luxuriance of the house had reminded him of a part of his childhood, as a little boy clutching his mother’s apron and following her around when she was a kitchen assistant for a grand hotel on Knightsbridge street. In the Potters’ house, there had been Venetian glasses polished to an almost otherworldly gleam, soft magical rug that muffled every footstep, and an ever-present scent that lingered like the afterglow of summer — all of them were architected and preserved by one Euphemia Potter, a woman of quiet elegance whose mind was as sharp as her kitchen knives. The only time Remus had seen her expose strong emotions was when she asked him about Sirius, with knitted eyebrows and an excruciatingly deep concern.
“The girl is good-looking and smart and all that, but she is too full of herself.”
They watched as Narcissa Black chased two second-year students out of a horseless carriage, taking the whole carriage for herself.
“Actually, I take it back,” James said, holding open their own carriage to let the terrified second-year clamber in. “She is an absolute nightmare.”
But what a beautiful nightmare she was. She wore a supercilious air like it was merely an accessory, and when a silvery light from the old-fashioned street lamps shone on her cool face, the indescribable beauty of it was one belonging to old, romantic fairy tales, like Snegurochka –– The Snow Maiden . But once Narcissa was aware of their presence, all the romanticism dissipated, leaving nothing but a repulsive, contemptuous scowl before her carriage disappeared in the dark forest.
“Charming,” Remus raised an eyebrow before he gave a warning nudge at a livid James Potter, whose hand was twitching for his wand. They really didn’t need the bastard diving headfirst into a hex duel before their school year even started.
“She doesn’t look very happy, does she?” Peter said, “Everyone knows she would rather cut her tongue out than call him her fiancé.”
“Who cares if she likes him or not?” James retorted viciously, in defence of his best friend, “He hates her guts. Right?” He spoke to the nervous second-year kids in the carriage, who obviously had no idea who were the “he” and “she” they were talking about. “Even they nod. See?”
Strangely enough, this was the first time only three Marauders made their way from London to Scotland to attend the beginning of term at Hogwarts. Sirius had been absent at the King’s Cross Station, and for once the Hogwarts populace hadn’t seen the Potter-and-Black dyad strutting along the train corridor between the admiring eyes, shoulder to shoulder. A house-elf had appeared instead, delivering a cryptic message that Sirius would meet them later in the castle.
“Kreacher does not want to meet the filthy friends of his unhinged Young Master, but he thinks they should know Young Master won’t be with them until nine o'clock,” the house-elf’s eyes had glinted with malice. “Young Master should’ve known better, after the extreme disappointment he brought upon his noble mother…”
That was probably the most direct glimpse they’d ever received about domestic tension under the roof of House Black, with Sirius himself rarely speaking of it. When the family solidarity was fractured, it was only natural for the servants to take sides; only that it’d never been Sirius’s side. If anything, his overwhelming absence seemed to energise Peter. “Disappearance must mean something since the rise of this Dark Lord, doesn’t it?” he said in a tone that Remus didn’t like at all. “And the Blacks are a Dark family. What do you lads think? I propose that they must have done something bad to him,” whispered Peter Pettigrew, deduction expert.
James didn’t seem impressed. “You two have shared a dorm for a good three years, Pete. You will sound very thick if you keep stating the glaring obvious.” Peter’s face fell, but the hair rumple James gave him then kept him from fretting further. “Good old Pete, if only you’d understood sooner,” he heaved a sigh. “I don’t give a flying fuck about prickly fiancées or creepy house-elves, but if I am not having Sirius at my fingertips by nine o’clock sharp, I’ll blow up Walburga Black’s little madhouse myself, see how long she can be Noble and Most Ancient,” he sniffed arrogantly, mimicking the gesture of blowing up something with his spread fingers.
Remus found himself not anymore paying attention to his friend’s bragging. He thought of Sirius’s last letter, with a hidden darkness that bled from the ink. It’s been five days since I last saw the sunlight, it said, Hogwarts is a real thing and not a figment of my imagination. Are you real, too? They weren’t the words written by a fourteen-year-old with a healthy state of mind –– if anything, they had been deliriously wrung out of loneliness and confinement. Those words had followed Remus into his dreams, weaving through his subconscious like strange tides. For days after the letter arrived, the bastard had visited him in his sleep quite often, with a sole and very persisting determination to disturb him.
Are you real, too? The boy would say with a private half smile, loping in an easy grace with hands in pockets, before he disappeared behind a swathe of white veil, bright and fluttering like countryside laundry strung across a garden. It didn’t pose any threat, but he always had a strange lurch in his stomach whenever dream-Sirius disappeared behind that fluttering thing. One night, that very lurch had wrenched him out of a delicious eight-hour sleep and made him spend the entire waking lapse cursing his friend endlessly.
“––and then, of course, it will only be a matter of time before we tell Narcissa Black exactly where she can stick the engagement–– What a lovely pleasure, Evans!” James suddenly halted his rhapsody at the familiar sight of fiery red hair. “I was wondering if you fancied a date with m––”
“Goodbye, Potter,” replied the red-headed flatly. “Talk to me when you’ve found your brain back.” Jesus, Remus thought he was half in love with her.
“Ça va,Lily?” he called after her carriage.
“ Ça va bien, Remus!” she called back, with a hint of a smile in her voice. James grunted something unintelligible, and Remus smirked pettily. Call him a prick but he liked playing with James Potter’s jealousy, being the only Marauder that Lily Evans tolerated and all that.
The rest of the evening passed in a haze of growing anticipation. By five to nine, they could hardly sit still when Bertha Jorkins came to tell them Professor McGonagall wanted a word. McGonagall’s office had become a sort of vacation destination for the Marauders, only this time they all knew waiting for them there wasn’t admonition or detention.
But none of them, in a thousand guesses, would have ever predicted that waiting for them in Professor McGonagall’s office wouldn’t be their friend, but Walburga Black herself.
“Mr. Potter, Mr. Lupin and Mr. Pettigrew,” Professor McGonagall arched an eyebrow, sounding relieved after what could've been a very unpleasant evening to her. Standing across her desk was a frighteningly tall woman, dressed in complete black. Her presence seemed to impose shadows over the space, and she reminded Remus of the description of the Dementors — all because of the thin dark veil that covered her face.
My parents would never go with me to King’s Cross, first-year Sirius had once told them, fresh out of Grimmauld Place and haughty. They believe it is a place of peasantry.
It was also the statement of what people knew about the leaders of House Black. For their unapproachable image, rarely seen in public venues, their personalities were veiled in mystery.
When Mrs. Black’s white-nailed fingers lifted the veil to reveal her face, for the first time, Remus suddenly understood profoundly every connotation that could have underlied his friend’s remark.
The first impression was a pair of grey eyes. LikeSirius’s eyes, he recognised, although Sirius had never regarded them with such a conceited contempt, like they were nothing but specks of dirt. Other than that, both the mother and the son’s eyes were identical, a fact that was nothing but terribly ironic. Mr. Black’s gaze wielded the effect of the Reductor Curse; one look, one silent Reducto, and the object was reduced to cinders.
The second thought was that the gravity felt like it was denser around this woman — all with her features strongly marked, jet black hair willfully plastered, long curls armouring her broad shoulders. Walburga Black might not have been an excellent beauty in her youth, but now, at the age of forty-nine, she was better-looking than ever with those shrewd, deep-set eyes, and an imperious grace that she carried so effortlessly. Even her choice of fashion was meant to leave a lasting effect: Mediaeval bodice with wide sleeves, long, finely-cut black robe which gave an impression that Night was softly trailing behind her. The sickening paleness of her death-mask face reminded Remus of the Queen Elizabeth I painting in the National Portrait Gallery.
The moment Mrs. Black opened her mouth, it was all terror.
“What a troupe we have here.” Her voice sounded like a brewing storm. “And there I thought I suffered enough displeasure for tonight.”
“They have been summoned by me, Mrs. Black,” replied Professor McGonagall coldly, “These young men have every right to know their friend is well and will rejoin them shortly." Her tone was composed but with a restrained impatience. She, too, held herself with an air of authority and was looking remarkably regal.
Mr. Black’s gaze sharpened, rounding on Professor McGonagall. Her eyes levelled at the professor with a look that was reserved exclusively for something deeply offended her, nevertheless unassailable –– the Head of the House she despised, and yet the fact that it was the House chosen for her son was irreversible.
“When you said ‘fine', were you implying my son was left uncared for by his own family?” her tone was coated in frost.
“The accusation is uncalled for, Mrs. Black,” Professor McGonagall, however, sounded no warmer, and in more ways than one even sterner than Mrs. Black. “Sirius Black is a Hogwarts student, shall I remind you. It is a natural concern for his friends to find that he didn’t attend the very first day at school, which makes it my responsibility, as the head of his house, to assure them he is returning safely tonight, and I believe this is exactly the reason you came here, in my office .”
Mrs. Black looked as though someone had just snatched her black veil off and tore it into two pieces. It was an intriguing scene, though: two witches, equally tall and unyielding, stood face-to-face, eyes locked in a cold, silent battle.
“Friends?” Mrs. Black breathed out, “My son has no need for these kinds of friends. They better go back to where they’re from or—”
The flames in Professor McGonagall’s fireplace turned emerald and flared high.
“Not a bad word about my friends, Mother . ”
The voice was clear and sharp, deepened through the summer of their separation. It was cold enough to smother down any heat, yet it still sent violent sparks of white-hot fire through Remus’s veins, making him twist his wrists reflexively. And, from the heart of the emerald flames, stepped out the one friend that Remus hadn’t seen for far too long. His soft black hair was flying like the flames under his feet, sparking light for a brief moment and settling down at the extinguish of fire.
He looked different. Cold. Unapproachable.
Before anyone could utter more words, James was across the room in a heartbeat, enveloping his friend in a bone-breaking hug. Sirius didn’t smile. But he returned James’s affection, throwing his arms around James clumsily, one hand card through James’s messy black hair as he muttered, “ Jim”...
“Very, touching.”
Mrs. Black’s cool voice was like a piercing needle, and the warm bubble they’d created burst under its incision.
“A fraternity of the ages, indeed — so profound that my son has completely ignored his family's mannerisms,” she smiled. “How many times have I told you, Sirius, that a Black never exhibits such a vulgar display of emotions? But of course, Merlin forbade a mother to come between the passions of young hearts, so it seems.”
Sirius quietly loosened his grapple on James, yet still clutching his arm. Besides him, James' nostrils were flaring in a barely-restrained anger.
“ Passions of young hearts, ” he mocked after Mrs. Black with his most obnoxious laugh. “Sorry that our torrid affairs wedged something dead up your arse, your ladyship.”
“Mr. Potter!” Professor McGonagall cut in sharply. But Mrs. Black simply ignored James, as if he was nothing but a hideous mud stain on the rug.
“Sirius,” she suddenly turned to her son, calling him sweetly, almost phlegmatic. Her grey eyes were unblinking through the black veil, her lips curving into a terrible smile. Remus saw his friend repress a shudder.
“At this point, you must understand you’re a man with duties you cannot discharge,” she took a few steps closer to Sirius, her white-nail finger trailed along the edge of McGonagall’s table. “Look at how old you are now,” Mrs. Black raised those fingers, feigning counting. “ Fourteen. By your age, your father was already participating in the family business while winning the Most Promising Newcomer award by Transfiguration Today . By your age, your grandfather had represented Great Britain at a conference held by the International Federation of Warlocks. Do you know what that means?”
She narrowed her eyes, and the room grew colder as the weight of her words settled.
“It means,” she continued, still with that false, matronising tone, “that it’s time to change your manner of becoming.” Her tone shifted to something calculated, no more feigned maternal affection. “I want you to start it by finding more respectable acquaintances, with which Narcissa can certainly help you. No more these…” She gesticulated at them, her lips curling.“ Friends ,” her nose wrinkled up in pure disgust, “whose company you may find fit today, but will definitely be unfit in the future. For a simple matter –– their blood and status amount to nothing for our family––”
“Mrs. Black!” The preaching was interrupted by Professor McGonagall, who raised her voice dangerously high. “You shall not insult my students while standing in this school!”
“A school that has been for centuries under House Black’s patronage!” Mrs. Black laughed derisively, in a manner that told McGonagall exactly where she thought the professor should shove her behest. “But does it matter anymore, McGonagall, since you and that senile old fool are both determined to corrupt this school with your stupid Gryffindor ideals, to my greatest disappointment? My son should have been Sorted into Slytherin, where he could be with descendants of the pure-blooded families — by which I mean those who not only know how to uphold traditions, but also maintain order!”
“Mr. Black is my student.” Professor McGonagall replied simply, not even deigning to conceal her defiance. “A Gryffindor, through and through. I shall not stand by and let you rob him of it.”
A terrible shade of anger rose on Mrs. Black's cheeks; the last thing she wanted to hear in this world was that reminder––
“Mother, please. ”
Sirius’s voice was quiet but steady as he locked his gaze onto his mother.
The plea was like a broken curse; Mrs. Black cut eye contact with Professor McGonagall and turned to her son again, her posture like a giant crow. It was quite terrifying how their grey eyes resembled and yet brutally clashed with each other — a battle of willpower between mother and son.
“ Remember my last words, Sirius. ”
It took Remus a few seconds to realise she was speaking to him in French. She raised a regal hand towards her son, waiting for him to kiss it as an act of goodbye.
Sirius moved towards her, with every eye in the room on him. For a fleeting moment, it was as if he would bow to take her hand with a press of his lips, just like a model son.
But Sirius Black had never been a model son.
Instead, he leaned close to his mother with a woeful look, and in a single, deliberate motion, licked her nose bridge.
Mrs. Black's face blanched.
“Remember my last kiss, Maman.”
He gave his mother a two-finger salute before grabbing a jaw-slackened James and storming out of Professor McGonagall's office, Remus and Peter close by, all leaving Mrs. Black’s banshee-like screams far behind. They tore through the corridors, roaring with wild laughter, drunk on the triumph of having their friend back and on the terrorisation of Walburga Black.
“Did you hear it? Did you hear how Minerva called me her student?” Sirius yelled, practically overflowing with zeal. “Godric, I love that woman!”
The four of them were together again — the musketeers in their dashing swords and shining armours. Sirius was no longer the quiet boy stepping out of McGonagall's fireplace to face his tyrannical mother. Now, with those bark-like laughs he looked almost like an overexcited dog chasing after a boomerang. When James ruffled his long dark hair, the boyish corners of his mouth quirked in a way that could switch in an instance between sulking and smiling. The world may fall apart and compose itself again with just a simple turn of that mouth.
Before they reached the Fat Lady portrait, Sirius stopped to loosen his tie and unbutton his rough-neck shirt, getting rid of the last remnants of Grimmauld Place from him. As the waistcoat was peeled off, Remus caught a fleeting, stomach-lurching scent. Whether it was bergamot or vervain, he could not tell.
“Missed me?” he smiled, moonwalking towards them with hands tucked in his pockets. His bright eyes curved slightly, scanning all over their faces as if he would never be able to see them enough.
“That’s it,” Remus clapped brotherly on James’s shoulder. “I’ll leave his melodrama to you, James. Good luck. Pete and I are going to sleep.”
“Remus!...”
“Pete, you’re going?”
“Moony!” groused Sirius as he tried to block Remus’s way, hands springing out of pockets. “I come back from a bloody snake den after three months of having only house-elves for company –– and all you have to say is ‘I’m going to have my beauty sleep’ ? Where’s my hug? Where’s my ‘I missed you’ ? Not even a ‘Cheers, mate, I’m glad you’re still alive, otherwise we really don’t know how to finish the Marauders Map with one of its creators conked out’ ?”
“For one thing, the Marauders Map is mostly done and needs no more intervention–– Fuck!” Remus snatched his hand back, which was now bearing a reddish teeth-mark on the back of the palm. “Wanker. You bit me.”
Sirius looked quite deranged. He smiled broadly, grinding his shark teeth as he turned to his next victim. “Jim?”
“It’s your fault,” Remus turned to James, rubbing his hand. “He becomes like this because you indulge him.”
James seemed to take this seriously. “No hugs, no cheers until you tell us what happened today,” he warned, holding Sirius’s jaw hostage with his Quidditch grip. “Why weren’t you onboard the Hogwarts Express? Why did you skive off the Sorting Ceremony? I will Accio a muzzle if you so much as bare your teeth.”
Muzzle or not, what he received was a gurgling answer. “I overslept, is all,” said Sirius, put out.
“Arrant nonsense. You never waste a minute to get out of that house,” James said, keeping his friend’s jaw in place. When Sirius attempted to turn away, he pushed him over to Remus not so characteristically. “Squeeze the truth from him, Lupin.”
“Doesn't matter. I am here after all, aren't I?” Remus pinched him on the waist. “Ow ow! Right, okay,” he sighed in defeat. “Today Mother and I went to visit Grandmother Melania in Berkshire. Her house-elf was sent to us this morning, informing me that she wanted to see me right then.”
“Just how many house-elves does your family have in total?” James inquired, appalled. “And doesn’t your Grandmother know today is your school day?”
“She is no longer in her lucid mind, and it’s been years since she last summoned me.” His voice dropped lower. “She is the last of my grandparents who’s still alive; to my family, her wish is the absolute imperative.”
“So what did she have to say to you?”
Sirius’s discomfort seemed to grow. “Nothing, it was just—”
“Did it have anything to do with the engagement?” Peter said suddenly.
With a blink of an eye, Sirius’s expression faltered.
“You all heard about it, didn’t you,” his voice was tight.
They all fell into an awkward silence. James frowned at his friend, the look in his eyes full of concern.
“Well, then I have nothing to say about it, for it’s just a carefully-crafted plan for me to fuck my cousin and sire an heir, so that they can get a good riddance of me,” he gave a small laugh. “Anyway, can we just leave it for now?”
He shook his discomfort away, arms flinging back over their shoulders with a dangerous glint in his eyes. “I have a more interesting story, lads.” As they resumed their pace back to the common room, he told them in this husky, thrilling voice that always made people dying to listen. “Remember Evan Rosier and his unhealthy obsession for his sister? One evening over the summer, the wanker got completely smashed at the Yaxley annual ball, smashed! And he sobbed his eyes out on my shoulder, whinging about her forthcoming marriage to Pius Thicknesse…”
Sirius's excitement to be back at Hogwarts had returned with an all-conquering force. His bark-like laughter — that absurd little laugh –– blew a light-hearted breeze that had nothing to do with September night. As he barged through the common room, many wary gazes followed him with whispers hushed to silence, but he didn’t seem to care a whit. There were days when Sirius was begrudged by people who couldn’t look past his Black name –– but definitely not today. When Lily Evans snapped at him for scaring off the first-years, he greeted her in a way that suggested there was no one in the world he so much wanted to see, which caught her strongly off guard.
“Sirius!” James’s voice echoed from their dorm room, startlingly loud. “Come on, you snail, what are you waiting for down there? Come up here and fly with me, before Remus confiscates our broomsticks!” And oh how fast he’d run then, taking two steps at a time up the stairs towards his friends, as quick as a black kestrel…
Later that night, when Tower had hushed to silence and everyone else was asleep, Remus found himself unable to lay still.
He rolled out of his bed, rummaged through his robe pocket and pulled out a cigarette. Filthy habit , the trolley witch on the Hogwart Express had chided him, before she beckoned him over for a fag herself.
Pulling the curtain shut around his bed, he began sorting his stuff before the new term –– old clothes that needed some Ironing Charm, a few knick-knacks to be added to the pinning collection above the headboard. Just by looking at these trinkets, one could tell the evolution Remus’s ambition over the years: at twelve, it had been Chocolate Frog cards and a movie poster from Lawrence of Arabia ; at thirteen, star charts and infographics on fantastic beasts; and now, pencil drawings, clippings from the scholarly journal Transfiguration Today, and The Beatles’s Revolver album cover. As he worked, Peter's snores set a spasmodic rhythm for the room, and James drifted off into a mumbling sleep-talk about Quidditch’s fouls.
Through the thin haze of smoke, a chain of images were being played like a cinematic record in his head: Mrs. Black’s stone-cold, earth-flattening eyes, devoid of mercy as she said Their blood and status amount to nothing for our family ; an old woman dwelling in the shadows of a country palace, half-witted and half-mad, urging her grandchildren to walk down the aisle in a forced union; Sirius’s smile as he laughed everything off, waltzing through hallways of thorns on bleeding feet. Remus’s eyes fluttered close. What was the scent that he’d smelt, bergamot or vervain? Why hadn’t he ever noticed it before? He tipped his head back, slumping down against the headboard. Bergamot or vervain, bergamot or vervain, bergamot or—
“Moony?”
The smoke was caught mid-breath.
Bergamot.
The curtains were pulled open as Sirius slid into his bed. He quickly hid the burnt-to-the-end cigarette behind his back.
“Moony.” The bastard didn’t ask before intruding. “There was definitely something off about those Bertie Bott’s taffies we ate.” The bastard didn’t ask before sitting on his ironed clothes. “ Lumos. Look, my hair hasn’t changed back.”
Under the wandlight, Sirius’s hair was striking bright red, nearly the same shade with Lily Evan’s. They’d done several rounds of Bertie Bott’s latest release Transmorph Taffy before going to sleep, which had left them with fits of laughter as the sweets temporarily gave their faces absurd transformation –– a cheetah’s nose, some mammoth-like fangs, a pair of lengthened eyebrows, a fiery change of hair colour. Most of the magic had worn off as they climbed to beds, but Sirius still looked like his hair was set aflame.
Remus silently thanked all the gods he didn’t believe in for not creating Sirius Black with a ginger head.
“I know you’re keeping some antidote taffies.” Sirius extended his hand, becking a finger. Remus reached towards his nightstand, grabbed one of the taffies and dropped it on Sirius’s waiting palms.
“It’s turned ice blonde, you wanker. This is downright criminal –– now I look like a poncy Malfoy or some Rosier twat.”
Remus didn’t even glance at him. “Serve you right for rumpling up all my clothes.”
The two boys slipped into their bantering and kicked at each other until both of them were laughing. Eventually, Sirius did have his hair return to its usual raven-black, and Remus did manage to rescue the rest of his clothes. Sirius called him an exemplary, buttoned-up tosser, and he told Sirius it was still better than a moron who hadn’t done his tie right once in his life. “It’s fashion, mate, and I believe John Lennon and Paul McCartney over there would agree with me,” Sirius said, eyeing the artful Revolver album cover with unconcealed interest. But Remus’s gaze settled on another artwork, allowing himself to properly look at his friend for the first time after three long months apart.
For all it was worth, Sirius Black, in his late fourteen, was an arresting figure. Yet it hardly did him any justice –– his dark good looks tended to intimidate people more than draw them closer, keeping them at a certain radius with all those sharp, haughty lines. And it didn’t seem like a dignified sort of good-looking, eliciting a little shiver from the beholders.
But — hold on there — the moment that mouth split a smile, everything would be flipped upside-down. The sharpness would melt from his face, the cool intensity of those eyes would give way to a gleaming light, crescent-arching in a warm, startling smile –– one that resonated slightly with Romy Schneider. And then there was the crowning feature: when he smiled, his lips would part just enough to reveal a crooked canine tooth. It was that single snaggletooth that made all the difference — the single imperfection on the face of flawlessness. It gave his looks a sense of self-possession, softening the hard edges of Black family genes.
“What are you hiding behind your back?”
“Nothing.”
Sirius gave him a pointed look. He grabbed Remus’s arm and yanked it forward, eyes widening at the sight of the cigarette. “You bloody smoker!”
“An overstatement. The Hufflepuffs are all walking fire alarms by now –– someone from here’s gotta do it,” he waved the cigarette. As soon as Sirius attempted to grab it, he snatched it out of his reach. “Not here, not now.” Sirius made a pained expression. “Tomorrow, probably. You shouldn’t smoke much, anyway; you’ve got mild asthma.”
“No, I don’t.” Dove-grey eyes narrowed. “My family never said anything about it.”
Inbred purebloods and their unwavering, stupid belief in their infallibility, thought Remus. He flicked his wand, and vanished the burnt cigarette. “Tomorrow,” he promised, “In the open air.”
There was a soft thud, the sound of Sirius flopped onto Remus’s bed, dropping his head against the mattress. “Tomorrow! Forget tomorrow, I’ll take anything now ,” he said, voice muffled as he stared up at the bed ceiling. “Anything to remind me that I’m actually back at Hogwarts. Great fucking relief.”
Hearing the emotions in his voice was like looking straight into the sun with bare eyes. He raised his hand languidly, extending a finger towards the looming figure above until it brushed the underside of Remus’s jaw. “You’re also real. And smell nice.” He blinked lazily. “Like smoke and warm, ironed cotton.”
Remus couldn’t believe Sirius existed sometimes. He stared at his friend’s droopy eyelids warily, which started looking like they were about to shut asleep anytime soon. “I’m not gonna bridal-scoop you to your bed if you fall asleep,” he warned, “I’m gonna kick you out.” But Sirius didn’t seem to be listening anymore. He probably had his mind somewhere else now, laying on Remus’s bed, eyes closed, dark hair fanning out. He looked like a fallen angel.
Andromèdes. Brown eyes and pale arms.
“I wish I were a bird, so I could fly far, far away.”
And then he stood there, watching the name “Andromeda" curl and blacken on the hand-woven fabric, devoured by flame until it disappeared entirely.
His family hated fire. Centuries ago fire had destroyed their dearest thing, and they had never forgotten. Fire was chaos, was destruction –– something only turned to when they wanted to obliterate something so thoroughly that even regret couldn’t bring it back from the ashes.
“I have a question,” Sirius’s voice suddenly broke through the silence. His eyes snapped open, and they found Remus with a rapt clarity. “Promise you won’t laugh.”
Great. Bugger o’clock in the morning and Sirius Black was feeling deep. “Go on, then.”
“Have you ever got the urge to burn something?” There was no humour in his tone. “Burn to destroy ?”
Remus, after all, didn’t laugh. He stared blankly at the other boy for a while, measuring the cost-benefit of a truthful answer. Then he gave his friend a simple nod.
“Not only have I wanted to,” he said, “I have actually done it. When I was nine, I burned my father's personal belongings after finding out the reason why Fenrir Greyback was after me.” His voice suddenly lost its usual warmth. “Burn to destroy, as you put it, didn’t you?”
Sirius’s rapt gaze was softened. Looking at the gentleness in there, one might find it hard to reconcile him with the roguish boy who'd just tantalised his mother like it was a sport.
“But now I don’t want to talk about it, you know.”
“I know, Moony,” he said, a quiet understanding in his voice. The rest of the story was left untold there in a mutual agreement. Sirius’s eyes now dwelt upon Remus with an indecipherable expression. It was when Remus realised, every time like the first time, how special those eyes were, and how something so familiar still wielded the power of taking him aback. Give him a telescope, and those fucking eyes alone could make goddess Selene up above the Moon blush.
“Do you know what my mother’s maiden surname is?”
Remus frowned, thinking of the woman he’d met a few hours ago in Professor McGonagall’s office. Half of him wanted to believe she was from another very pure, very powerful family –– Lestrange, Rosier, or Selwyn. The other half shuddered at the thought of her raven black hair and slate grey eyes, of the illustrations he’d seen in a biology book, and a few flippant remarks Sirius had made about him being his own cousin…
Sirius didn’t wait for a response. He looked down at his hands, stretching his fingers and studying them in a way that they were foreign to him.
“Narcissa will be the next.” The next in the line of Black women who didn’t have to change their surname when they got married.
“My family is afraid of fire. That’s why no one can produce real fire in our house, except Mother and Father.” Sirius bent his head against the mattress, a thoughtful look on his face. “That was the only thing that prevented me from burning the ancestral tapestry that has my family tree on it. But of course it wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t end the vicious cycle.”
Minutes rolled languidly into night, after Remus finally lay down on the bed, his friend nestled in his arms. He wasn’t exactly comfortable to cuddle, but for Sirius he could give it a pass. They were fourteen-year-old boys and more broken than not; they could be as homoerotic as they wanted, damn it. “Black has to belong to them,” his friend patted gently on his back, as if he was the one who needed it. “But Sirius always belongs to us,” he said with a silent yawn.
“I’m crying in a river here.” Feeling the other boy’s eye-roll, Sirius smacked his head.
“Imagine what all those inbred kids would call you. Hmhm. Uncle Moony.”
“Fucking hell, Sirius. Isn’t it too soon to talk about this?”
“Never too soon for the Black family, Lupin. Uncle Cygnus had Bella when he was thirteen.”
Then he laughed at the horror on Remus’s face. If endogamy felt a little too obscene for the late twentieth century, underage childbirth should warrant a one-way ticket straight to Azkaban. “Don't fuck Narcissa until you're of age, will you?”
It took Remus a moment to realise the two boys had just stumbled into their first, strange encounter with the subject of marriage. Growing up as a werewolf, Remus didn't think he would ever marry, as the image of him in front of an altar wearing a dress robe and swearing eternal love was nothing but a vision from another universe. His parents' fractured marriage didn't give him reasons to see potential in it, especially since the tragedy that had fallen on him at the age of five. He’d come to accept, even with some self-assurance, that he would be the single person downing champagne and shouting congratulations at his own friends' weddings. For him, that seemed enough.
But as distant as marriage was to him, it had arrived all too early to his friend, and suddenly now he found himself struggling with the idea of another person claiming Sirius in a way that he never could. For the first time he wondered what it would be like to marry this person. He could conjure a few images — like late night embraces or laundry that smelled of bergamot — but nothing was clear enough to hold onto. It was always difficult to imagine Sirius as anything other than his very present.
“How long will a marriage last?” he heard laughter in the other boy’s voice before night weighed down on his eyelids. “Twenty years? Fifty years? A lifetime?” His voice became smaller as he drifted into sleep. “A momentary bliss if you love the person.”