Time.
Life was never easy for them, no matter how happy they were. The ghosts of their past visited them, still. Remus never drove a car again. He never got to sit behind the wheel. No matter how hard he tried, he just didn’t learn to trust himself enough to not fuck it up.
Sirius loved Remus with his whole entire heart, and he’d come far, but sometimes he could still hear his mother’s words in his ears, and some of that old pain would return. He never cried, though. Not for them.
A few months after the evening when Sirius and Remus exchanged rings, Lily and James shared the news of what was awaiting them. Sirius had cried when he got the role of godfather. Quickly after that, it was set into work for them to move. James would move in with Lily in the flat on the top floor of the building with the record shop, and Remus would move in with Sirius above Ink Deep. Remus’s old room soon enough became a nursery, and James’s old room became a guest room.
“We didn’t get to live together that long, did we?” James said to Sirius on the day of their moving.
“Nah, I suppose not, Prongs, but it’s okay. This is a whole new chapter. It’s—”
“—London. Yes. I know, you bloody sap.”
Marlene and Dorcas decided to open up an animal shelter that summer after having brought their cat, Lucky, home. They couldn’t get kids as Remus knew they wanted, but in a way, the animals became their children. That seemed enough for them.
The animal shelter opened in December of 86’ and they all showed—Lily being incredibly pregnant. That meant Dorcas quit her job in the record shop, and a new man took her place: Frank Longbottom.
In January, Harry Potter entered the world, bringing so much more love and joy to their lives. Sirius adored his godson, and many evenings for months were spent babysitting.
The Black brothers’ relationship was stronger than ever, and every Sunday, Regulus would come to their flat (he’d moved to London, then) to eat dinner with them. Often, Lily and James would join. Marlene and Dorcas would be there when they could as well as Peter, but Mary was very busy starting her own dance company.
Peter continued to paint, now showing all his art to all of his friends. He was making a name for himself on the world in capital letters stretched across the oceans.
Andy, who’d been working in close quarters with doctors ever since Remus introduced her to his doctor, expanded her business and managed to provide Remus with pain relief that lasted up to twenty-four hours in a row. She, too, had made a name for herself, stretched into the skin of the people she helped all around the world now that the medical world had joined her research.
Remus’s leg never got better. A miracle never occurred.
Dennis died in 88’ and not a lot of people attended his funeral. No family, not a lot of friends, but they were there. Sirius, Remus, and Lily. Despite treatment from doctors, nothing could stop the infection from cutting Dennis’s life too short.
Remus spoke at the funeral, stumbling over the words while fiddling with his wedding band. His eyes were crying rivers and after, Sirius held him tightly.
In 92’ they adopted a dog that Harry instantly fell in love with. Big, black, and furry, straight from Marlene and Dorcas’s shelter.
“I think he should be named Padfoot.”
“That’s your name, love.”
Sirius clicked his tongue.
They ended up calling him Fang because Harry adored his teeth.
Not long after, the two of them, and Fang, went to Edinburg. Remus loved it there.
In 95’, Remus published his first-ever poetry book, diving into his life of love, tragedy, and healing. He didn’t become famous. He hadn’t expected to, but when an older man, so old he had completely white hair, stopped him in the street and told him that his book had changed his life, it didn’t matter to Remus that he didn’t earn a lot of money on it.
He’d changed someone’s life.
Lily and James had their second child, a girl whom they named Flea after Monty who passed in 94’. When that had happened, Sirius had been in bed for days, only getting up for the funeral.
When the 2000’ came around, their love for each other was stronger than ever. At the ages of forty and forty-one, they somehow still managed to feel like teenagers drunk on each other.
They’d moved, then, and Remus no longer worked at the record shop. Instead, Sirius had opened his own tattoo shop and Remus was in charge of the economy.
When it became time for it, James and Lily sent Harry to St. Paul’s, and James and Sirius relished in the stories Harry shared with them, offering him tips on how to sneak out and create mischief. Lily scoffed at them.
Around them, the world evolved. CD’s became a thing, but Remus would always prefer his records. The televisions turned flat, and the cars looked like something out of a sci-fi film. It was odd and scary—that, with the climate crisis that roamed the planet.
In 2013, it became legal in the UK for same-sex-marriages to happen, so at age fifty-three and fifty-four, Remus and Sirius married for the second time in their lives with the same rings as the first time. Now it wasn’t just for them, it was for everyone.
Years passed. They never got to have kids, nor did any of them want to. Sirius wanted the Black line to die with him and Regulus, and Remus had never longed for it. He was content with Harry, Flea, and Sabrina, who was Peter’s child with his wife Allison.
They lost Fang in 2014. He’d been a companion for many years who now got his well-deserved rest. It didn’t stop them from feeling heartbroken, though. Both of them, regardless of everything they’d gained, felt like they’d lost too much in their life.
In 2020, Sirius died. The coronavirus got him and never left him. At age sixty, just before he turned sixty-one, Sirius was lowered into the ground.
He never got as old as he could've got, but he wasn't as young as he could've stayed.
He died in Remus’s arms in their home. Remus hadn’t been smitten by the close contact, somehow, but often, he wished he had. When he spoke at Sirius’s funeral while looking out all the familiar faces—James, Lily, Marlene, Dorcas, Harry, Flea, Peter, Allison, Sabrina, Regulus, Evan, and Mary—he could hear Sirius’s last words before his breathing evened into nothing.
Thank you for making me happy.
Sirius didn’t go to the Blacks’ graveside in Bristol. Instead, he was lowered into the ground in London, the city he loved so much, with a free spot ready next to him. It was reserved.
For two years, without fail, Remus visited Sirius’s grave every single day. Every single day, he brought flowers and a book of poems he’d written. He’d published many by then, and every single time he opened it to a new page, he heard Sirius’s voice in his head: C'mon. Poetry means nothing until it has sound.
So every single day, Remus read Sirius’s stone a poem. He knew his other friends also visited the grave but they never did it with each other—at least not with Remus. His pain towards Sirius was too personal to let other people in.
Remus read to Sirius because the dead weren’t truly dead if you continued to give them something to listen to.
He wrote a poem about that, and then found himself storming into the living room to show it to Sirius, who, surely, would be sitting on the couch reading a book.
Except, he wasn't.
Sirius was gone. Remus forgot that a lot.
On an Autumn day, a bit over two years after Sirius’s passing, Remus didn’t come with flowers to his grave. Instead, Remus Lupin took his last breath in the same bed he’d shared with Sirius. The one they’d bought together when they created their tattoo shop. Remus sunk into the sheets, and his legs at last stopped working.
That night, the moon was full, and the brightest star in the sky blinked.