flight
“I can go home tomorrow.”
“Really?” He sets down the scissors. It feels outrageously soon- surely there must be weeks of recovery left? Surely they can’t have fixed it all already? Little feathers of wet black hair cling to his skin, like a dusting of diseased snow. Remus brushes them into the sink. They drop into the pile already gathered, left lying in a white cot like something long dead. Squinting, he shifts back a little to check his handiwork. Not awful; not brilliant. Some other, blurrier, third thing. The sort of clip his mother might give to a flystrike lamb.
Sirius had chosen a point just below his ears and simply said cut, so Remus had obediently done so- now he’s trying to soften that severe line into something less harsh, more natural. They haven’t spoken, really. The bathroom fills with the snick of silver scissors (borrowed from a healer) and the rustle of dry clothing. He runs the tap and wets his brush a little more, releasing a sharp click from his elbow. His eardrums are suddenly sensitive, yearning- he wants silence, but only the sort of silence that Sirius makes. He wants to hear the cloth of their jumpers brush, the swish of his hair, his socked feet on the floor, his stomach gurgle and only his. Remus survives through being able to hear them both breathing, slightly out of sync, like two old clock towers in an almost tandem.
Drawing him back to the present, Sirius says, “There’s not much more they can do for me. I’ll get a consultation in the morning, and then…”
Remus swallows. Sirius is perched on the counter, knees bent and squished beneath him, staring determinedly at his reflection. Remus wants to know what he’s thinking, feeling, what he’s trying to achieve. His eyes are hard, forced down into acute angles. The grey of them feels like cool, sharp steel. “Do you feel ready?”
A half shrug with both eyes still firmly fixed forwards is the only acknowledgment Sirius gives. Remus hums nonetheless, returning to the back of his head. Snip. Snip again. Too much- oh well. He cuts a little angle into the next piece so it doesn’t look so stark.
Before they started, Sirius had washed his hair quickly over the tiny sink, which has tired him out an alarming amount already. It’s still brittle and dry but no longer matted at all (there are spells for that, it turns out, and James knew them all). Something of its former pride lurks inside the rough-cut glory, maybe. Remus holds a strand between two fingers and just lets the wet hair splay over skin. The white of Sirius’s scalp each time he parts it is almost shocking- such contrast, an oxymoron of colour in a vintage film. “What would you like to do, then?”
Haltingly, Sirius says, “I was hoping I could come back to our flat?”
“Oh.” Remus pauses. He stares, hard, at the mass of ink-dark hair in his hands, and resolutely not into the swallowing eyes in the mirror. “Sirius, I don’t… I sold the flat. I’m sorry, I just…”
“Right.” He says, distantly. “Okay. Right. So- where, uh, where are you staying?”
With a flush that creeps all the way down his neck, Remus answers, “Back with my parents.”
“Is that because of…?”
“Money.” He says, stiffly. “And grief.”
“Right.” Sirius repeats.
“I’m sorry.”
”It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I miss it too, you know. I hate all these backwards steps I’ve taken.”
“You were alone.” Padfoot says, steadily, although clearly still upset. “You probably missed me as much as I missed you.”
He almost laughs, and they lay the conversation to rest. If it were an earlier time in their lives, Sirius would have raged and shouted, spiralling them into a long argument, but he’s too quiet now. Somewhere along the line, they’ve learnt to bite their tongues.
Remus disperses the mirror with a murmur, then discards the trailing of hair too. It’s too tempting to set it on fire. Shame bubbles inside of him. It’s daft- it’s only Sirius. Remus just wanted this New-Sirius to like him that same way that Old-Sirius liked Old-Remus. It’s never been awkward before- it’s not necessarily uncomfortable now, but there’s a sigh always in the air, a sag to conversation that once stretched taut. Sirius must feel it, Remus thinks. The weight of all that’s happened between them.
Only, when he does dare a look at his expression, Sirius’s gaze is filled by something blue and intense. In his face lurks longing, and his eyes cloud with a sorrowful sort of want. Tracing his focus, Remus looks down at his own wand, still loosely clasped. “Are you alright?”
Sirius says, “I miss it.”
“Magic?”
He nods. “I didn’t realise how much a part of me it was. I haven’t held a wand for a year. I don’t even know where mine ended up.”
Something alights in Remus’s scattered brain. “Shit,” he suddenly exclaims, patting down his pockets, “I meant to say, Padfoot- I’ve got it.”
“You do?” Sirius slides to his feet, bounding back over to Remus with such an excited tone, as if he can’t quite contain his hope, that it makes Remus smile in turn.
Finally extracting it from his twisted jacket, he takes a second to wipe the blood off the base before passing it over. “Found it in Serpent’s End, looking for you.”
With giddy thanks, Sirius turns it over in his hands. He adjusts his grip and takes a few deep breaths. With a quick wave, a bloom of yellow flowers burst forth, which Sirius promptly tugs away and presses into Remus’s chest. He takes them, grinning. They’re honeysuckle. They smell like coffee and ammonia.
He lies in bed, flexing two prosthetic fingers in a fascinated loop. They’re a little more than just fingers, actually, metal moulding into the missing chunk of his palm too. Peter seems rather frightened of them- Remus must admit, the skin-like structure, despite their silver colour, is a little unsettling. “Can you feel them?”
“No.” Sirius informs him, curtly, and finally sets his arm down. He shuffles the paper back onto his lap and uncaps the pen with his teeth. “Have I anymore visitors today?”
“I think Dorcas might pop by. But you can sleep, if you’d like. I’ll wake you.”
“Don’t worry.” He dismisses, making another attempt to scratch something down. S-I-R-I-U-S. “M’not too tired.”
“Could give Harry a run for his money with that script,” Remus jokes, over the thrumming pride at such a simple, stupid action. “I mean, learning letters? Already?”
“They grow up so fast!” James agrees, bursting into the room in his usual dramatic fashion. He lives for loud entrances and drawn-out exits. “Look who I found in the hallway.”
Dorcas Meadowes is a beautiful wreck, Remus thinks, as he lays eyes on her for the first time in far too long. Her hair is shorter, her eyes harder- that deep coffee brown is bitter and creased. Her makeup is smudged to the left. She greets them all with something of a smirk anyways, drawing a chair for herself from thin air. Remus suddenly feels like he should give them space- he and James both unconsciously lean back, waiting for someone else to set the tone for the conversation to come.
Curiously, Sirius speaks first. “How have you been?”
“Better than you, I should think.”
“I don’t know.” He smiles dolefully. “There are different types of torture.”
Out in the hallway, ten minutes into an incredibly awkward, egg-shell conversation, Remus takes one look at his best friend and says, “Are you alright, Lily?”
“Oh,” says Lily, fussing over something or other in her bag, “of course, yeah.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She finally glances up, giving him a funny look. “Why?”
“You look…”
“Spit it out.”
“I don’t know- sad?”
“So poetic, Remus.” She snorts. “Yes, well, I suppose I am, a little. Aren’t we all, these days?”
He doesn’t know what to say to this. “Where’s Harry?”
“With Peter.”
“Dorcas’ll be going soon, I think,” he says, to fill the sudden silence, “if you wanted to chat to her.”
Lily tips her head back. She takes a deep breath. “No, that’s alright.”
He can’t help but frown- have they had a falling out? “What’s up with you, then?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Talk to you?”
“Don’t- just leave it, alright?”
His eyebrows press together, an involuntary motion of concern that he’s never been able to train away. “You know where I am if you need me, then.”
“Maybe I’m tired, Remus.”
“As long as that’s all.”
Her eyes narrow, so green it’s breathtaking, like the strike of a snake, the edge of an emerald. He knows that face- she’s going for the kill. “Could you go cry into Sirius’s hair instead, please? I don’t want to have a heart to heart right now.”
Sharply, Remus says, “That’s not fair.”
“Let’s not talk about fair.”
“Jesus, Lily,” he snaps, “shout at me if you like, but, god help us, what does that mean?”
“It’s just-“ She hisses through clenched teeth and cuts herself off. Grief sizzles in the air, sparking into the frayed fuses of emotions. “It’s not fair. That you get to have this back, have him back, and I…”
“Oh.” Remus says, quietly, and promptly feels like a massive wanker. “I’m sorry.”
She leans back, making the hospital bench creak and groan. “Don’t be sorry. Be happy- you’ve got Sirius. Enjoy it.”
“I miss her too.”
“She was my best friend.” Lily can’t meet his gaze and returns to rifling furiously through her bag, angrily clicking jars and bottles shut. Her cheeks are red and splotchy. “I would do anything for her to pop out of some basement somewhere. Alive. I wouldn’t care if she was crazy, or- I don’t know, one-legged. A muggle. If she’d converted and been a death eater all this time. I just want her back, Remus. I want Marlene back.”
He wraps a hand around her shoulders. Their two bodies knock against each other like falling trees. Her perfume is sweet and pretty. Her hair could do with a wash but that’s fine because his could too. Should he hold her like this still when she’s married? Should he call for James? Remus can’t help but feel like James would have better words to say, better feelings to share.
Helpfully, just that moment, the door opens and Dorcas makes a quick exit, striding down the corridor with her long coat flapping. Remus wonders when he’ll see her again, if ever. He wonders how unrecognisable grief is going to make her. Although she doesn’t seem to notice them, James does, hurrying out of Sirius’s room to perch on the armrest, one hand immediately in Lily’s. “Hey, what’s up? Are you alright, love?”
Lily sniffs. “No, not really.”
Over the top of her head, as she leans over to press into his chest, James mouthes what did you do?
Remus, vaguely offended, gives only the world Marlene in response. James nods sadly and kisses her forehead. “I’m sorry. I know. I love you. I’m sorry.”
Suddenly feeling out of place, Remus stands. “I’ll go sit with Sirius, then.”
“Remus,” Lily says, fiercely, with a white-knuckle grip on James’s hand. “have this. You’ve got that one wish that not even magic could grant- please, let yourself have this.”
Remus nods, tells them both that he loves them, and leaves the lump in his throat well alone.
“Easy goes, Padfoot,” Remus murmurs, offering back his elbow as he finally gets the knackered old doorknob to twist and they lurch together through the threshold. Sirius looks tired; it’s his permanent state, lately, which Remus relates to. They’re old, old souls. “My Mam’s out for a bit, seeing a friend. Should be back for tea.”
He risks a glance back. A pace behind him, Sirius is taking in the narrow corridor. It’s crammed with too-small wellies and jackets fallen off their pegs, a box of kindling for the fire, a stack of books to be returned so where or other. In wide grey eyes, two yellow bulbs reflect twin suns. He’s had the boys over to stay before, of course, plenty of times when they were young. There’s a floo connection in the village that James used to abuse like it was his birthright. For a few weekends a year, they romped the hills and topped-and-tailed in Remus’s twin bed, in the later years a muddy Padfoot and a smug Wormtail resting on their feet. Hogwarts is a hole in his heart, and in runs deep- but Remus is glad it does. That depth means the world to him.
Loudly, he clears his throat and says, “I’ll put the kettle on.”
Like a wide-eyed shadow, Sirius trails him into the kitchen. He bumps his fingertips across the tops of pictures frames and the spines of books, leaving prints in the dust. Remus would quite like to frame one; Sirius Black was here, and here he’ll stay. Obviously not in Remus’s house, of course. They can’t live with his parents forever. Remus barely copes as it is. No, at some point they’ll find their own space again, their own rhythm of life.
“Oh,” Sirius bursts out, as he rounds the kitchen island, “Mist! Hello! Hi! I’ve missed you, my darling.”
Remus smiles, flicking on the kettle and spinning around so his back presses against the cool counter. Curled up beside the stove, Remus’s old collie wags her tail and leans over to give Sirius an affection lick. She’s all grey around the muzzle now, and barely moves from her worn wicker basket. Hope brought her home from work when he was a kid, just for a night or two whilst they were tight on space, and she’s pottered around their kitchen ever since, snaffling scraps and winning his friends hearts. Her and Sirius have always got on fabulously- he insists she’s a very intelligent conversationalist, with many opinions on the both modern and traditional farming practices (he can’t tell if this is bullshit, and was always too unsure to ask James to verify). It’s true that she does seem to recognise something dog-like in Sirius, and always approached him first when he came to stay.
From his position crouched on the floor, giving Mist tiny tickles under her ruff, Sirius says, “She must be really old now, right?”
“Twelve or thirteen, I’d say.” Remus answers, fondly. The two of them make a right pair- grey-speckled, drooping eyes, both overjoyed to see the other. The kettle whistles; he turns, fetches the tea pot, and pours the water by hand.
When he enters the living room, Sirius is flipping through his records. There’s not many- Hope likes country stuff, which she keeps in tapes in her car, so these are all Remus’s, with a few of Lyalls old-school classics tucked away at the back.
“Remus,” Sirius utters, plucking one from the shelf, “you didn’t tell me that Bowie and Queen have a song together!”
“I didn’t exactly think it was a priority while you were on your deathbed, you know?”
“Of course it is!” He insists, “Merlin, Moony, this is news! This is- this is revolutionary! Is it good? Have you heard it? Can we listen to it?”
Thoroughly amused, Remus gestures to the player James had given them. “Go ahead. Tell me what you think.” He had used to say that a lot- every time Sirius asked him for his opinion, it would be, why don’t you try it? or you tell me. He’s pretty sure it’s his Mam’s fault for drilling such a sense of identity into him; one of her most rigid principles is a sense of self, of giving everything a go. It could also be his bisexuality, as James speculated, which allows him a tendency for trying everything.
Sirius places the record with a levitation charm, obviously not trusting the silver fingers for a job so delicate. As the first few notes of under pressure ring out, he moves to the centre of the room to sway and listen. His body is a pillar, an icon, an archway. He stands like a solider, whereas as Remus stands like a child without a hand to hold.
Despite not knowing the words, Sirius picks the chorus up quickly and is mouthing along before long. He tips his head back. Hair tumbles across the shoulders. It looks like an ocean; he looks like the world, all at once. Tapping his socked feet and swaying his hips, it’s almost as if nothing about Sirius Black has changed. If not for that slighty unpracticed edge to his stiff elbows and knees, it’s a scene from a photo that Remus would have long since burned. He suddenly very glad that it’s a long song, as he leans back and stares up at that pretty, pretty face. Emotion swells inside of him. He turns his face into the incoming wave and lets it wash over, whispering sweet nothings through his empty head.
Eventually, when the instrumental winds down as the ending chorus fades out, Sirius lowers the volume and puts it on repeat. In complete silence, they listen to it a second time. When this is over, Sirius takes off the record, slots it delicately back into its sleeve and comes to sit down again, hugging the cover to his body.
“So?” Remus prompts.
“I love it.”
“Me too. I thought you would as well.”
“It sounds exactly how I wanted it to.”
“How did you want it to sound?”
He smiles. “Like it would be good for dancing.”
And Remus looks at him fondly because all songs are good for dancing when you’re Sirius. “Is it your new favourite?”
“No, still The Game. But this is its own category, I think. I like the outro- cause loves such an old-fashioned word.”
“So it is.” He agrees, and hands Sirius a mug of tea.
When their cups are empty, Remus takes them to the sink. As he returns, Sirius is staring contemplatively at the back of the record. “Moony?”
“Padfoot?”
“What did you really write on my grave?”
Remus sits on the other side of the sofa and wedges his body into the corner. He swallows. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“It says mischief managed.”
Sirius smiles. He keeps his gaze trained on the object in his hands, one finger tracing the title. Remus hadn’t thought he would ever need to explain it to Sirius, so he’s glad he didn’t ask any more questions. It was the closing of a chapter, the day of Sirius’s funeral- the end of the marauders, of the life he’d had and the future he’d wanted.
And, yet, here they are.
Remus inhales. A faint jangling noise sounds from the kitchen as Mist scratches her collar. Outside, a fine layer of mist is drooping down over the hillside, like the haze of a tired eye. He left the garden gate open; it creaks with the breeze. There won’t be visitors, and his mother will close it when she gets back. “I forgot to tell you, but Moody came to see you the first night you were in St Mungos.”
“He did? What’d he want?”
Remus shrugs. “Said to let him know when you were better. Wanted some answers about the whole You-Know-Who thing, seemed to think you were involved or something.”
“Voldemort.” Sirius corrects. “You can say it now.”
Reluctantly, Remus nods. He hates how nervous a single word can make him.
“Well, how did he go down, in the end?”
“Killing curse. Dumbledore’s doing, apparently, but could have just of easily been a rebound of his own spell. What we don’t know is why this one worked when none of the overs ever have.”
“I think,” says Sirius, slowly, “that he must have found all of the horcruxes after all.”
Somewhere deep down, that word rings a bell. It has the same ring to it as deep, heady magic of the restricted section. “Horcruxes?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Who?”
“Professor Dumbledore. He must have hunted them all down- pieces of Voldemorts soul trapped in objects.”
The many absences of the headmasters flit through his mind. The burned, blackened hand he’d breezed over explaining, the frequent delays and dozens of new privacy measures. The good-natured twinkle in his eye becoming rushed, a little weary. He always had a habit of keeping information in orbits, like the rings of a tree, getting tighter and tighter with his secrets until you weren’t sure who knew what at all. A memory flicker in a recess of Remus’s head. “He sent me and Kingsley to negotiate a cup from some goblins. It was really weird- he set us rules about touching it, about telling people about it. The whole thing felt wrong. I know Emmeline and Caradoc had to smuggle something out of Malfoy Manor with Snape, too.”
Sirius nods. “He can’t have got them all by himself. I suppose when I killed the snake that would have been one of the last straws- perhaps Dumbledore got wind of it and knew to strike.”
This is new information. Remus’s head snaps up to stare and Sirius. “You killed his snake?”
“I did.”
“How?”
His laugh is biting as he says, “How did you think I lost so much of my hand?”
With a hard swallow, Remus says, “Did you know it was his soul-thing?”
“Yes.”
“Did Snape tell you?”
“No,” Sirius says, perhaps with a glimmer of smugness, “I told Snape. They let Regulus come to see me, a few months in, I think. He was thinking of deserting. Mentioned the horcruxes. I told him to tell Snape- and he must have, I guess. I guess he’s our war-hero in some way, somehow.”
“Deserting?” Remus asks, with an odd feeling brewing. He’s always been vaguely curious about Sirius’s so different, so rarely mentioned little brother. That year between them felt like a lifetime. As an only child, the concept of siblings was fascinating and incredibly complex. “Did he not believe anymore?”
“Oh, no, he did. Just didn’t want to work for a half-blood, especially one that killed all his pure little friends. Mother slapped too much pureblood into him for that.”
Suddenly, Remus needs something to do with his hands. He shifts, stands, and then walks over the record player. One of his dad’s background albums will do- he slots it on as gently as he can with his rough, angry hands and then takes a handful of deep breaths. Some soft, familiar folk voice croons about true, sweet love through the speakers.
As he returns to the couch he says, “You know, in the muggle world, they call that ‘abuse.’”
Across the universe of his shabby old sofa, Sirius flinches back. His gaze is a million miles away. He turns his head away. “Yeah,” Sirius finally says, very quietly, “we have that word too.”
Remus swallows. This is a tightrope they’ve walked a dozen times over the years, in the wintery quiet of each other’s bunks, but Sirius has never admitted anything so blatantly before. The closest he’d come to this festered, gaping truth was The Night on Effie’s lawn that James has told him of only once, in such a wobbly voice that Remus had never dared to ask again. The Night on the lawn, when Sirius tumbled over the wards, muttering nonsense, apologising and apologising until he spat blood. Bruised to high hell, bloodied like prey, and shaking so violently that he struggled to even feed himself for days afterwards. James doesn’t bring it up often, if ever. Sirius never has, not properly, not more than just a wave of the end of his cigarette and the night I ran away.
Escaped by the skin of his teeth, Remus privately thinks would be a better description. And here he is again, a miracle boy once more, the two-time champion of death. “So,” he prompts, as Padfoot continues to stay quiet. Perhaps he was thinking of the same thing. “Regulus?”
Sirius turns back. “Right. Regulus- you have to know, Moony, that our parents didn’t like us. We didn’t like them. I’m not sure if I ever liked Regulus- I definitely don’t now, that’s for sure. But, you know. I’d die for him still, I think.”
“You love him,” Remus says slowly, “But you don’t like him?”
“It’s siblings.” Sirius explains, reaching out an uncertain hand to smooth the crease in Remus’s brow. Neither of their bodies are smooth like they once were. “You’re an only child, it’s hard to understand. Brothers and sisters are just… different.”
“Like that time Sylvia stole Peter’s Fizzing Whizzbees and he complained about nothing but it for the whole term, then went and hugged her at the platform?”
“Yeah,” Sirius almost smiles. “Something like that. I hate him, mostly. I can’t ever forgive him for being in a fascist, fanatical murder-club, but I do think about him almost all of the time anyways. Can’t help it.”
“Fascist.” Remus snorts. “Never should have Marlene bring you those fucking anti-authoritarian pamphlets.”
“Oh, I loved those.” Padfoot says, with a twinkling gleam in his silver eyes. “All the punk music we listened to that one day, too- do you remember that?”
“‘Course,” says Remus, although there had been many a day. “Darling Marlene. Merlin, I miss her to hell and back.”
“Darling Marlene.” Sirius echoes, disconsolately. “Darling, darling Marlene.”
“People tell me that she died a proper hero.” Remus tells him, hollowly. They said the same for Sirius. People die in war every day. Nothing Marlene died for, that Dorcas lost her mind over, that so many muggleborns were slaughtered for, ever made one jot of a difference. Not those young death-eaters that aurors cracked down upon, nor the ministry wizards they murdered. It was all meaningless, in the end. All violence is. One man’s folly for the deaths of thousands.
Sirius, as always, sees right through his bullshit. “Still died, though, didn’t she?”
Thickly, Remus murmurs. “I miss her.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“We can go up to her grave,” Remus offers, “when you’re well.”
He shrugs. “I’ve never put much sentimentality into stones.”
Remus hums, biting back a hysterical laugh. “No, me neither.”
“But if we could go to a couple of our old spaces- maybe look at some pictures and shit, that would be nice.”
“‘Course. That old art gallery is still open, or it was last time I was in London.”
“Do you have any of her Siouxise records left? Scream? That was her favourite, wasn’t it?”
Remus thinks it might have been. The worst hurt is that he can’t ask her anymore, which leaves him aching with the feel of old bruises. “I’ll buy it back-I suppose we get all of your inheritance vat, if you’re not quite dead.”
“Shame.” Padfoot says, wickedly.
“Dreadful.” Remus agrees, kissing his pale fingers. “At least all of the Noble-and-Ancient shit was good for something.”
He takes this as a cue. Sirius is still skirting around the topic but, by the fact they’ve not completely abandoned it yet, he judges it’s safe ground to plough on. “So, Regulus. You were telling me why it’s complicated.”
Silence yawns for a long moment. Eventually, Sirius exalts a sigh, full of misery and exhaustion. “It’s just, basically, you have to realise we both wanted to escape our parents. They liked him better, but he didn’t like them at all- not after he grew beyond toddlerhood, anyways. When I was sorted into Gryffindor, that was it decided for me- I wanted out, and I would get there by being as un-loveable as I possibly could. Regulus thought the same thing. I went right- towards the order, Dumbledore, all of the light-type stuff that Walburga found impure.” He pauses, as if collecting himself. The story falls out lazily and with an air of quiet calm, but the look in his eyes is of a desperate sort of desire for Remus to understand, to express this in a way that matters. Even after all these years, it clearly still stings. “And Regulus went the other way. He threw himself leftwards, into Death-Eaters and blood-purist ideals, all of the things our parents found too far-out and modernist. He even followed a half-blood to get there. It never worked. He wanted control, I wanted escape, and they wanted tradition.”
Remus thinks about what he ought to say. Is comfort due? Is pride? His feelings lie somewhere between pity and anger, really, for both Walburga and Orion and their wards. “If you hadn’t been Gryffindor, I think you would have come to us anyways.”
“Who knows,” Sirius says, vaguely, “it’s all over now. I used to believe all those prejudices as a kid, so maybe I would have just carried on with them. My mother would have pushed me into a ministry career- the Wizengamot, I’m pretty sure.” He laughs, a harsh, cracking sound. “Guess they ended with two fucking disappointments, didn’t they?”
Remus wished he knew better comforts but he hasn’t been held by his mother like this for so long, and he never knew any lesson so well as the ones she taught him. He presses Sirius to his chest anyways. Hope is a bird in a bird-cage. It can’t sing so loudly if you let it go- but isn’t that freedom nice?
Later, they’ll sit on his bed. It won’t matter that the sheets are unwashed, or that Remus’s hips ache from the stairs. It’s winter but it’ll smell like summer. The window will be open. The cigarettes will be tasteless and thick. On the bedside drawer rests a doodle of a small woman in a very large dress, angry graphite lines wiggling out of her head as she tries to unjam herself from a doorway.
Sirius will prop a guide to butterflies between his knees until the brimstones blend into meadow browns. Remus will be thinking of flat-hunting and slowly, ever so naturally, they’ll link hands atop the duvet.
“I want a tattoo,” Sirius will say, out of the blue. “A moth. I want a moth.”
Remus will smile- a quick, secret smile. A Sirius-smile, a fresh-grass smile. Soon, he’ll tell Sirius about the butterfly on his breast bone. About the large black-ink tendrils of its wings. About the creature over his heart that’s caught forever in flight.