emerge
Like the twilight hour of a winter sky, Sirius is both there and not. He’s finally genuinely fallen asleep by the time Remus himself wakes up, jolted out of an exhausted dream by Peter heaving a particularly violent snore. Whether than was an hour ago or seven, there’s no way of knowing, but when the quick, bird-like figures of Healers flit inside with pouches of colourful leaves, Remus takes the opportunity to slip out and phone his mum. He asks if she could bring the box of clothes by; that starchy collar makes him itch just by looking at it. She says she loves him. She says she thinks he needs a haircut.
Startlingly, by the time he gets back, Sirius is awake and sitting up. Somebody has brought him a tray of food that he stares at despondently. Remus sits down and swallows and tries his very best to sound cheerful.
He’s there; he’s also not. Sirius nods and answers any questions he’s directly asked. He smiles, sometimes even nearly laughs when one of them says something particularly funny. It’s just like there’s this layer of film over his gaze, a performative air to his actions. He minimises eye-contact, hides his hand beneath the blanket, and has to have most things repeated. The year seems to have caught up with him- all of the jubilance and normality he was able to push forward with has exhausted its momentum. Reality draws its rattling tin charriot in, wheels tumbling from long-rusted walls.
A delayed trauma response, the healer assures him, as they talk quietly in the corridor. He’s here to remove the selected scars, which Remus doesn’t stay for, as Sirius seems too uncomfortable to be able to ask him not to. Still, he supposes maybe there’s a bit of healing in pointing out the marks on your body that you don’t want and watching them fade away. An awful jealousy tickles his throat and he shoves it savagely beneath pink skin. Interestingly, Sirius is quite particular- the one bisecting his eye smooths over, and his throat too, but not his collarbones. Some are formed too darkly to ever fade, meaning the bridge of his nose will remain forever insipid and the bottom of his ear is permanently torn. All of the carved drawings and brutalised words are methodically melted away but Remus can’t tell what else, as Sirius remains tight-lipped about anything beneath the hideous shirt, with the exception that he insists on keeping whatever marks he has on his waist.
They let it go without too many questions. Exhaustion, it seems, has hit everyone hard.
The idea that there’s no more war just seems incomprehensible. Conflict governed their entire adult lives, disunity reining for as long as any wix of their generation might remember. Overnight- gone. What world is left? What morals remain, what causes? Curiously, the fact that none of them had a hand in it also gives a dull sort of a hurt, although Remus supposes it shouldn’t. He wasn’t exactly in a position to go about killing Voldemort himself. It just feels like all that suffering, all the grief and the blood, has been undermined in a single action. One spell, from one wizard, to overcome a lifetime of living on edge, in fear, one spell for death and destruction and inequality permeating every aspect of history?
Somehow, it doesn’t seem enough. With his over-calloused heart, Remus knows, with a sick sort of surety, that there must be more to the story.
At mid-morning, James appears, laden with an enormous stack of teetering get-well cards he apparently picked up from the front desk. Pink, blue, yellow and silver envelopes spill across the bed- like Easter in Antarctica- revealing his beaming, bouncing grin. This relieves Wormtail from fretting duty long enough to make a lunch run and he heads off towards Sirius’s old favourite place in the unspoken hope that it’ll spark something. Quietly, Remus sits down beside the slow-motion figure and watches him dextrously unpick pink ribbons and carefully break seals. The lack of fingers definitely bothers him more than the arm- half of his hand is pretty much nonexistent, so he uses his knees, brought right up to his chest to hold things steady. Many times Remus has to bite his tongue to resist offering help because, if he has ever known Sirius Black at all, then pity will be their worst enemy. If Remus had to guess, he would say the digits are a lot more of recent of an injury. It feels too raw even to ask. James, pretentious prat that he is, brings a gilt letter-opener, but he hastily returns it to his pocket when Sirius eyes fill with trepidation.
So much feels different, today. Every step, every attempt at conversation, is taken carefully and delicately.
Again, Remus leaves the room when James decides to breach the topic of Effie’s passing, just the month before he went into hiding. He knows it’ll hurt both of them but it has to be cleared out, even Remus reluctantly agrees. They’ve never had the chance to talk about it before. He really doesn’t know what to say, so he sits in the corridor and thinks about nothing instead. His best friend, grief, is so foreign in anyone else’s hold. Still, James calls him back in before long, just as he’d started deliberating another hot drinks run. His face is wet but Sirius is just sort of grim and quiet. Bitterness is the only emotion to escape his eyes. “Alright, then?”
“We’re alright, I think,” James answers, after a beat, sniffling. “Aren’t we, Padfoot?”
He knows James has had it rough lately, but he hadn’t realised quite the extent. His mother and best friend both within the space of a year, whilst raising a newborn and being unceremoniously forced to pull his entire life into a screeching halt. The isolation has hit him hard- he’s a social person, has always revelled in the company of friends and strangers alike. He’s really fucking strong, James Potter. Doesn’t often get enough credit for it either. Sometimes people assume that cheery, energetic souls like his have never known hardship, which is a right load of bollocks. It’s why James and Sirius made such a good pair- James, who burned with energy, afflicted and gifted with such intense feelings and responses because of it, contrasting Sirius, who always withdrew into his own way of existence, aloof and sometimes a little mysterious. Peter fell somewhere short of either, with short, sharp bursts of anger or excitement that fizzled and flared. Remus isn’t sure what he is- he tends to let things stew until they burst, he’s been told, always far too turbulent in the red areas and a little too vacant elsewhere. Remus can control almost everything except for his temper. Moony’s in a mood, Sirius used to say, teasingly, and received nothing but grumbling complaints for it. The amount of times he and Sirius used to get asked if they were fighting because of their prolonged silences wasn’t worth counting and it was often awkward to explain to an outsider that they both just happened to have quiet, introspective natures.
“That’s good,” Remus says, softly, instead of any of this, “My mum says she’ll drop by soon, too.”
James turns back to Sirius. “Is it alright if Dad comes to see you today too? Or would you rather wait until tomorrow? It could be a little much for one day. Either way is completely fine.”
Sirius gives a slow, non-committal shrug.
“Okay.” James says, softly. “Okay, Padfoot.”
Sirius is staring down at his hand. He wriggles the good side, eyes trained on the strange void space of his missing palm and fingers. Something like disappointment is lurking in the hollows of his face.
“Does it hurt?”
“Hm?”
“Your hand,” James repeats, “Is it hurting?”
“Not really,” Sirius says, “Nothing really does.”
“Oh,” Says James, and takes the mangled fist in his own loose one, pressing it between warm, tan skin as if he can love it back to life. Sirius just watches, apathetic. Remus turns away and stares at the doorway, thinking of green grass and summer days until Peter returns.
He lays out their lunch on the end of Sirius’s blanket, where his feet would be if he hadn’t been curled up into a little comma all day. James sidles into bed with Sirius, ignoring their complaints of terrible hygiene when his socked feet flop all over the place, and Remus sits back in the rocking chair, leaving Wormtail leaning against the side of the footboard. They eat greasy, piping-hot chips and stringy cheese like it’s their last supper, talking about Peter’s eventful trek up to Islington with terrible manners. Apparently it’s still snowing. If Sirius recognises the takeaway, he doesn’t mention it; it seems rather disillusioned to him, the food, and he picks at bits and pieces with slow-blinking eyes and long pauses.
When the time comes, Remus leaps to tidy up just to have something useful to do with his hands. There’s only so many paper napkins he can shred as a twenty-two year old. Still, he hesitates at Sirius’s styrofoam box because it’s still mostly full.
“Hey,” James says, bumping their shoulders. “guess what?”
Sirius turns to look at him. “Mhm?”
”I brought cake.”
He lifts the corner of his mouth. “You’re the best.”
“I know!” James says, gleefully. He unpacks a Tupperware box of pre-sliced coffee cake and they eat crumbly, buttery slices with the remaining un-shredded napkins. Sirius has his whole one, and then says something quietly to James that leaves him grinning.
Just as Remus is about to ask, the door swings open. They tense like traffic-beam rabbits on the side of his Mam’s driveway, which is an apt description because suddenly there she is- Hope shoulders her way into their quiet, crumby space, Lyall a step behind, and waves brightly. “Hello, Remus, love! And James, my, you’re looking almost grown these days! And Peter, sweetheart, hello, down on the floor.”
Remus stands up, knees clicking, and hugs her. “Hi, Mam.”
”Alright?” Hope asks, quietly.
“Been better.” Remus chokes, into her neck. “I hate hospitals.”
“I know, love.” She pats him on the back, withdraws, and kisses his cheek. Her eyes sweep the room, coming to rest on Sirius. “It’s so nice to see you all. Especially you, Sirius.”
From the doorway, his dad agrees. He brings with him a familiar bag, the edge of a leather sleeve trailing from the top. Remus takes it from him with a thankful nod and brings it over to the bed, guiding his taken-aback mother a few steps closer to their hurricane-eye, this battered man. James and Remus exchange looks, just as Hope and Lyall do too. Sirius is vacant again, it seems- staring wordlessly at his mother like she’s an unexpected ghost. She looks back at him like he’s a rabbit she’s just mangled under her tyres. It could be comical, if it weren’t so tragic.
“I thought you might like some of these,” Remus murmurs, lowering himself down beside Padfoot again, holding the bag at eye level. “I kept some of your stuff- your favourites, I think.”
He says nothing. His eyes are wide as the universe.
James gives him an experimental poke and adds, “Your burial robes are a little unflattering, Padfoot.”
”Thank you.” Sirius whispers, hoarsely.
Relived, Remus leaves the gift atop the duvet. Peter quickly lurches into conversing with his parents on some topic of Ministry employment. To his quiet pride, Sirius picks up the bag and swings his feet right on over the side of the bed. He takes a deep breath. Remus knows, from overhearing a duo of healers, that his right knee was shattered and his left ankle likely wrongly healed; whilst neither of them ought to hurt anymore, the homo-sapien brain is a funny thing. Another deep breath is taken. James joins in the pay rise chat, with one eye fixed anxiously to the other dark-haired man. Five casualties casually white-knuckle the raft of normalcy.
“Here,” Remus offers, holding out his flat palm, just like Sirius has a hundred times before, after rough moons and nights out alike. His corduroy jacket is on the back of the chair which would leave just a woollen jumper sleeve between their arms. Maybe it’s too much. Maybe there are easier ways to stand up. Nevertheless, Sirius only hesitates for a moment, eyes flitting from Remus to the door, before he grasps it. His grip is surprisingly firm, although Remus has to resist the urge to shudder at the slightness, the ease at which he can encase all of these fragile bird-bones in his own. He slides to his feet with unsteady grace, lurching forwards and falling against Remus’s side. Despite himself, a body against his own feels like honey, like heat, like home.
“You’ve got your own bathroom.” Remus says in a low voice, far below the other’s chatter. “Perks of being a war-hero, I guess.”
Sirius humphs and leans his weight against Remus again. Does it feel more comfortable this time, or is it a trick of the fragile brain? Together, they limp across the room and towards the closest exit. Padfoot deposits himself against the doorframe whilst Remus sets the bag on the floor and makes to go explain the concept of the maintenance wizards to his baffled mother. But it’s barely a minute later that the door creaks open again and a set of pale fingers curl around the edge. “Moony?”
“Yeah?” Remus answers immediately, making brief eye contact with an anxious-looking James before he turns back around. Something inside of him is bobbing as if boat-bound, giving a hopeful sort of sea-sickness to his stomach.
Padfoot gestures to the bag, something close to shame on his face. “Could you…?”
“Are you sure?”
”If you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” Remus supplies, softly, and he makes his way inside, squishing between the shower and the sink. The door clicks closed. Really, bathroom is a strong word for this space: it’s about the size of a broom cupboard, crammed with yellowed porcelain utilities and plastic safety features, furnished with one of those horrible, scentless soap dispensers that are probably horrifically unhygienic. Even being dead for a year doesn’t get you anywhere close to luxury, it seems. His movements heavy with shame, Sirius sits warily on the edge of the closed toilet and stares upwards. Their knees are a hairs-breadth from brushing, just held back from a fluttering touch when Remus leans against the sink, finding himself almost sat it its tiny square basin.
“I did my trousers.” Sirius says, red-cheeked. Absurdly, he is cowed by the mortification of needing help. Doesn’t he know Remus would fall to his knees and beg to be allowed to bring him tea in the morning? Give his life to rub the knots from his back, tie his shoe laces before he walks up the steps to their flat one last time? “It’s just the buttons are a bit… fiddly.”
Wordlessly, Remus zips Sirius’s fly. It’s not in any way sexual, or even a charged action- he does it the way Sirius would do it himself, the way Remus would tuck his hair behind an ear. Simply. Carefully. Tenderly. Unbuttoning the hideous shirts proves to be a pointless task, because even then it doesn’t stretch enough to be taken off- how anyone put it on his body in the first place is nauseating- so Remus carefully snips it in two and slides off the layers. The moment holds like the stretch of a well-kneaded dough, whilst he takes in this new and old, young and familiar body. There are few scars left- the old ones from the very first moon still webbing over his shoulder, and two long scabs linger on his waist. Straight, neat, uniform. His back remains criss-crossed with a small multitude of ropy tissue, up and down in strong strokes that are wilder, more layered. Skin and bones and scars- that’s all there is to him. No tattoos. Not anymore. Just bone, flesh, hurt. Still pretty, though, and Remus whispers this to him, as he presses a butterfly of a kiss onto a valleyed collarbone. He selects a green cotton shirt and a low-neck sweater, old and worn by wear, then frowns when they hang loosely over the stump. “Would you rather roll it up? Or just leave it?”
Sirius tilts his head. “Roll it.”
So Remus tucks his sleeve up around the missing arm and secures it with a sticking charm, green fabric pillowing the gnarled skin in an odd contrast. “Anything else?”
Sirius shrugs, looking right at Remus. Silver-storm eyes reflect his own. “Do you have a mirror?”
It hasn’t occurred to Remus that Sirius might want one but it now seems obvious; of course he should want to see how he’s changed. Godric knows Remus would, if he’d been on the receiving end of at least half the horrified looks that Sirius has in the last two days. A year is a long time to go without seeing your reflection and Sirius had always been a little obsessive over his. Whereas Moony would avoid mirrors like the plague, hating his scars and his awkward height and his bumpy nose, Sirius would stare forlornly at himself for minutes on end. He never gave a reason; just continued this ritual, as if he could outstare the boy in the glass, throughout their teenage years and on into adulthood, one of the many quirks that Remus learned to expect from sharing a living space. Silver would always remind him of Padfoot- his eyes, his rings, his mirrors- which gave him a peculiar fondness for the metal, often conflicting his own so-called allergy. There was even a pair of pocket mirrors that Sirius fastened into a sort of walkie-talkie system for himself and James, Remus remembers vaguely.
He picks up his wand and tries to recall the incantation for mirrored surfaces.
“Speculo Ostendere.” Sirius supplies, hopefully. Remus gives him a grateful smile and casts, peeling a large, watery mirror out of the yellowed wall above the sink that folds down like an overripe fruit skin.
Sirius approaches it with the air of a slow, startled cat. First he touches his face, one hand along pointy cheekbones, then his shoulders, narrow and hunched. It’s disbelief in his eyes, Remus guesses, although it’s damn near impossible to name. Is there a world for seeing yourself in pieces?
“I’m so fucking ugly.” Sirius says, viciously, after a long moment. He curses, closes his eyes. “I look deformed.”
“Don’t say that,” Remus demands, “You’ve been through a lot. You’re allowed to have changed.”
Sirius, eyes still closed, murmurs, “I don’t know why I thought I would still look like I did at seventeen.”
“We’re older.” He hums, trying to tread softly. He places a warm hand on Sirius’s shoulder. “It’s okay not to be seventeen anymore.”
Acid in his tone, Sirius says, “I want to be.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
“You can’t.”
”Don’t tell me how I feel.”
“You were so angry as a teenager,” Remus counters, wondering how they can still argue so easily after thirteen months apart, when even such soft touches feel like open heart surgery. “We fought so much. You didn’t know what to do- leaving Hogwarts was hard. Our last year was terrifying.”
”I want it back.” Padfoot says, churlishly. Finally, his eyes open and they meet the weariness of the ones in the glass. Perhaps it softens him. Perhaps it steels him. “I just want it back.”
“Everyone does,” Remus says, gently, “don’t they?”
Sirius says nothing. Slowly, he finishes dressing, pulling blue socks over his pale feet, and Remus doesn’t know how to apologise, how to fix it. Sirius burns with an unholdable, foldable, hideable hurt- the sort that lingers in silences and lurks in your shadow when the sun comes out.
“Sirius,” Remus says, just like he did in that blank, dark room, only two days ago. That’s all. Just his name. A call- an echo into that long, dark tunnel, for the silver stars that line the ceiling. It means come back. It means I’m looking for you.
Barely there, Sirius says, “My piercings closed up.”
“I’ll do them for you again.” He insists, almost desperately. Desperately. They do everything desperately these days; desperate favours, desperate duels, desperate journeys. In Remus’s short experience of adulthood, it appears that life or death is all that seems to matter in this stage of existence. Well, life doesn’t, not properly, but death always has. “You’re still you, right?”
“That’s the funny thing.” Padfoot tilts his head, canine-esque. “I don’t think I’m much of anything, anymore.”
The yellow light buzzes. The spell is beginning to waver. “You’re Sirius Black. You have been for twenty years. Why stop now?”
“Don’t, Remus.”
“Don’t what?”
“Please. Just- stop.”
“Stop what?” Remus repeats.
“Stop with all the happy-go-lucky shit! Stop pretending we’re not different! That it didn’t hurt!” Sirius snaps, bone-wearily. “It’s not what it was. I’m not what I was.”
”So?” Says Remus, just as stubbornly.
“Look at me!”
”I’m looking.”
“Tell me you don’t see it.”
Normally, Remus would try for a joke here- fishing for compliments, Padfoot?- but it catches on his tongue. “I see you. I see everything that’s happened to you, right there on your skin.” A tapestry. A story book. More than a lifetime, at twenty-three. “What do you see?”
“I see hands,” Sirius says, “I see other people’s hands and other people’s words and other people’s stupid way of thinking all over me.”
With a final sigh, Remus vanishes the mirror. This doesn’t feel helpful. This feels like the burn of an old wound, healed on the surface, stinging when it’s pressed upon.
Sirius closes his eyes and says, quietly, “Your mum’s going to wonder why we’ve been in the bathroom so long.”
“Padfoot,” Remus says, raising an incredulous eyebrow. “She’s not going to think we’re shagging. You’ve just come back from the dead.”
Something sparks in the stagnant air. Not magic- a deeper feeling. Between the awkward lighting of a dim yellow bulb and all of the pale surfaces, the shadows of the room are making odd, flickering motions. “We have been in here for a while.”
With an involuntary grin, Remus admits, “She used to give me such looks every time I took you out for a smoke.”
“I don’t think your mum knows how two blokes work, Remus-”
“-I should hope not,” Remus interjects.
“-But it actually takes longer than two chicks.”
“Right, thank you for that.” Moony says, shaking his head. This is how Sirius is meant to be- quick, bright, teasing. Shining like a midnight sky. “Lovely. I’ll just go explain it to her then, shall I?”
It feels good. It feels right. Is it real? Does that matter? Remus thinks that perhaps if they can still laugh in sync, still talk like it matters, then it could one day be vincible.
“So…” Sirius says, after a beat more, “we could leave, or we could just sit in this tiny cramped bathroom forever?”
“I don’t know, there’s this certain ambience, you know?” Remus finally bumps their knees, from where Sirius is pretty much squished between his legs in the limited space, “I think it’s the dripping tap.”
“Mhm.” Sirius says. “Very sexy. Let’s go.”
And they do- they leave, shuffling back out into the paper-white room, falling face-first into a conversation, somehow, on wizarding prison systems. He’s never left his friends alone with either of his parents before and, if he had the energy, he supposes it would make him nervous. They’ve met at train stations, of course, and plenty of pickups from each other’s houses pre-apparition age. And there were countless little coffees or drop-ins whilst he was in London too, where his practical, gossip-loving, woollen-jumper-clad mother would stride alongside his leather-jacket and necklace-adorned boyfriend, magic whizzing from his fingertips, and they would go window shopping and order cheap hot drinks. One time she got it into her head that they were both about to come down with scurvy (untrue- Remus often keeps a stack of raw carrots in his fridge for the crunch close to full moons) and sent several plastic tubs of various stews through their mailbox. They got on well, Sirius and Hope, even when they made each other nervous. Peter and James she was less sure of, although she did often (very passionately) insist on how good it was he had finally found some proper friends. Now, as if a scene from a fever-dream, his mother is ardently comparing the Wizengamot trial system to the way a farmer would separate his sheep in a race. It’s baffling and heartwarming all in one.
Still, Remus doesn’t feel like adding much, really, and neither does Sirius, so they listen in amused silence, Sirius propped against his shoulder in bed. James shoots them a warm, loving look, with quiet compliments on the outfit change.
“Cut my hair,” Sirius says suddenly, into their little bubble of quiet. Nobody else seems to hear it; it’s not meant for anything outside their shared pocket of air.
“Now?” Remus answers after a beat, surprised.
“Now, later. Tomorrow, in a year.”
“Today works.”
“When your mum goes?”
“Sure.” He regards the long, scraggly locks. Obviously they’re matted from so long unbrushed, but not as filthy as they were the night he was found; a healer must have taken care of some of the worse parts, he thinks gratefully. “I’m not a hairdresser, though. Might want to ask one of the others.”
Padfoot shakes his head.
“Lily could do it.” Remus suggests, again. “She does James’s.”
“No,” Sirius insists, quickly, and then refuses to speak any more on the subject. They lapse into noiselessness. Remus’s father receives an owl and hurries away with a brief hug and a strange, aborted handshake with Sirius- like he wants to say something, offer some kind of comfort, but pulls back at the last second. By this point, Padfoot is drooping, sliding down into the mattress with sheer weariness. Instinctively, they all lower their voices. Remus tries to keep himself very still. All his focus lies in that steady chest beside him, rising and falling and rising again, and the whistle of his slightly raspy breathing. Long term pneumonia, it sounds like- lambs can get it, when spring comes around too wet. The world narrows to that noise. In, out. Up, down. In, out. Up, down. Distantly, he registers the other people in the room, the swirling conversation acting like a background lullaby. But, although the lights are too bright and the chairs too creaky, none of it bothers their sanctity. Not when he’s right there. Not when the body is warm and the lungs are red.
“Is he asleep?” A voice murmurs, after a long while. Remus nods his confirmation, unable to tear his eyes away from that untroubled, overlined face. Such long lashes. Such deep circles. Such a long time to go without this view.
“He’ll be okay.” Hope says, with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You all will be.”
“Will he?” Remus says, suddenly feeling very young. A child, somewhere else in the hospital, is wailing.
“Of course.” She smiles. “He didn’t seem all that different to me, even after all that. I didn’t want to ask, love- but he looks very, very…?”
”Very?”
”Different, perhaps. Worn out.”
“Yeah, he got pretty hurt.”
She scoffs. “He’s missing an arm! Fingers!”
“I noticed.” Remus can’t help but half-snap, suddenly feeling testy and strangely protective over his friend’s secrets.
Patiently, far too used to his temper, his mum asks, “Has he been a prisoner of war? Your grandad was one of those, you know. I heard lots of his stories from camps like that growing up. Awful, awful places.” But Remus says nothing. She hesitates, and then probes again, “Is that how he was so injured?”
“Something like that.” He says, staring straight ahead. His fingers twitch, the pinkie then the ring. In, out. Up, down. “Remus. Look at me.”
He doesn’t. Can’t. Won’t.
It’s her turn to sigh. “I get the feeling, love, there’s been a lot you haven’t told me about your war. I think it’s a lot more serious than we ever talked about. I don’t want secrets, Remus. I don’t want to be a family that never talks about the things that hurt them.”
“It’s not your world, Mam,” He says, automatically, “I don’t need to be dragging you into all this.”
“That’s not true and you know it.” She’s fierce and quiet all at once, her face appearing set and steady when Remus finally brings himself to look at her. Practical, his mum. Practical in her love, in her emotions, in her words- always able to squeeze that little bit more from him. “It’s my son. It’s my son’s boy. My son’s friends. My husband. My family.”
He blinks. “But-”
“No. Enough of this ‘your world’, ‘my world’ nonsense. Stop splitting it all up. We live on the same damn planet.” Her tone softens. “He’s hurt. You’re hurt. Surely, my love, you can at least tell me why.”
Something anciently coiled and long dried begins to unclench in his stomach. Like the heaving body of some great snake, it winds heavily through his body. A cold shudder runs up his spine. Remus clears his throat and digs down for the courage to whisper the elephant in the room. “He was tortured.”
“Oh,” says Hope, and he suddenly worries that it’s too much, too heavy for his sweet, ordinary muggle mother- but she takes a deep breath, right down to her pragmatic, no-nonsense core, and just continues. “For what? By who?”
”By Voldemort.” He itches his nose. “For information on where the Potters lived because there was prophecy that James’s kid could be the one to overthrow him.”
They sit in relative quiet whilst she processes this. Somewhere, the stranger’s kid is still crying. “Oh, love,” she finally repeats, looking down at their sleeping saint again, “it’s some miracle he still has the mind he does, isn’t it, then?”
The mind he does. The mind he had. What a funny turn of phrase. Are they different? Should he worry about the difference? Remus, finally jiggered, gives a weak nod. “I’m still worried about him.”
”Of course you are. Just like I always worry for you, love, when the moon comes around.”
He shakes his head and resists the urge to chew the inside of his cheek. “There was this moment, yesterday, where we were talking, all fine and everything. Then it was like a switch flipped- he just disappeared. Wouldn’t answer us. Wouldn’t look at us. Like he couldn’t even see me anymore.”
Her eyebrows pinch together. “Well, what were you talking about? Could it have reminded him of something?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Remus casts his mind back. “Uh, I think it was James wanting to bring people over to his house. Something about how Sirius could break the Fidelius- that’s the spell that keeps it hidden- now he’s back.”
”Well,” she says, simply, “isn’t it obvious?”
”“Isn’t what obvious?”
She mutters something about boys. “Don’t you think he’s been asked to tell people where James Potter lives enough already?”
“Oh,” says Remus, cordially, as if his whole world hasn’t clicked into place.