18th June 1997
It was silent. He was always the sort to make note of noise no matter how turned down everything was. A radio might've been switched off but you'd could still hear the static if you paid close attention. A window shut, curtain the final barrier, but sound still slips through anyways. Birds with the morning song, laughter following friends down the pavements, a dog's bark from a neighbour never met but face known well. Silence didn't exist. Couldn't exist. Shouldn't exist. Quiet, yes. But never silence.
Sirius was loud. Alive, he would have used that word back then. He filled space and breathed air into his lungs and kissed words off his own lips to make space in the air for his own and talked through the night. Whispers against skin touching so close that they could never be considered whispers, too loud to be whispers. He was loud and alive. Was loud when alive.
Is loud still, filling space in his mind, now he's dead.
Haunting. A phantom figure dancing around his head he doesn't quite know how to lose. Nor would he ever want to.
Silence. There's one way to soften the noise. To rid himself of it completely. He greets grief now like an old friend. It hands over the bottle with a solemn smile. He knows what the death of a loved one feels like. It almost feels like a routine, at this point. A curse, to love and to lose. Mum, Marlene, Dorcas, James, Lily.
Sirius.
He'd lost him before of course. Slowly, then all at once. Lost the memories like photographs caught in a fire. Still there, but latched onto by flames. Tainted for years upon years upon years until the crime was passed on to another.
But this? There is the loss of a life you had loved, then there is the loss of the love of your life. So close to as close a happy ending they could have had without the fallen soldiers of their past. Grief a chapter closed. A new one started. A family, as untraditional and messy and fragile as it may have seemed but a family nevertheless. The orphan and the wolf and the runaway prisoner. A family still. But now a family broken. Unnecessarily.
A few hours before...
It was a pleasant a day as ever, outside that is, until he reached the steps to Grimmauld Place. It wasn't a day for a meeting nor was it a day where he'd invited anyone over for tea or to make use of the vast space for dinner plans so it would be just him. It was, of course, once not. He’d shared it. Or rather, placed himself in the home that belonged to another. Because he had belonged to that other so it hadn’t felt like placing himself in a place he didn’t belong at all. It seemed senseless to stay. He could have very well packed up what little stuff he had transferred from his flat to this place and taken it back there once more, but his flat was once theirs.
They’d burnt a hole in the curtains, or rather Sirius did, when he had smoked out the window and the breeze blew the fabric into the lit end of the cigarette. They stripped the walls from a ditsy blue floral to a cream they never got the chance in the end to repaint. They bumped their heads on the alcove on what seemed like a weekly basis and that never seemed to be a lesson learnt. It was a heavy pain, before they began again. But this time around it would be malignant, rotting. So he wouldn’t let himself return there again.
So Grimmauld Place was where he lived and Grimmauld Place was where he returned home to on what looked like just another June day. Bright outside, dark and loathing within the walls. They never did get the chance to rebuild it. But it was better that way, gentler on the heart which was heavy enough already. He saw Sirius in his mind. Felt him in his soul. He couldn’t bare to see him everywhere too. The real Sirius, that was. The one who lay beneath him and between him and sat right there in the centre of his chest, preserved by memory with a teasing grin.
Once inside he passed the portraits and the first few doors, ignoring the playful voice in his ear whispering about the potential of the place. Or more so how distasteful Walburga would have found Grimmauld if it was colourful and bright and light instead. He supposed then she’d find it in just as poor taste this way, with the dust lining the furniture and the cobwebs hanging from the walls. He could ask, he supposed, what she thought of it’s downfall. Rub it all in. He’d had a few low nights of arguments with the portraits before he realised talking to a ghost about a ghost was about as far in the past he could have gone. But where else was there but the past? Everyone he knew was stuck there.
For a small, closed group of people with this date sitting heavy with a melancholy weight on their shoulders, he knew he had calls to make. To comfort and assure as much as anything else, really. ‘I’ll be fine’ and ‘You don’t need to come over’ and ‘I’ll just make dinner and read a book like always’ and ‘yes don’t worry I’ll call if I need you’ over and over again to Molly then Andy then Emmeline then Mary. It was the same not long before on a different date. Another now, to add to calendar. The conversations were brief, and besides that did hold some lightheartedness. Molly talked of the boys and Ginny and Harry fell into that which was always nice. Tonks was stationed near to Hogsmeade so was feeling particularly nostalgic of her own school years so she’d chatted for a bit about that, less tender memories there than the ones he held. Emmeline promised to be over soon whether that be for a meeting or not. Mary talked of nothing but the life she’d made since the war, separate to them all and to magic. He appreciated that the most.
There was something saddening about eating alone at a table made for many. He hardly felt up for company, felt tired to the bones like it lived in his marrow, but longed for the quiet company of another. Where they’d sit in silence and just being there together was all that was needed. Talk for the night discarded, movement too. Just existing. Though he supposed then that he wouldn’t have felt that desperate need for the kind of person he felt comfortable enough to sit doing nothing with if the person he could sit doing nothing with was still here.
Grief was like walking along a frozen lake. He was wary, of course, with each step. He had grown a little more confident with each day that he could, in fact, keep moving. But there was still that chance that he would fall through, always. And on a day like today he felt the sun burning, resting it’s touch on the ice and threatening to push him through. He almost heard it then, cracking, so intense in sensation it threatening to tug up the contents of his stomach and dispel it onto the floors. Or maybe the cracking was his heart, once again, the final blow. It had just taken a year for the damage to kill him.
He had the sudden urge to switch out his dinner for one of the bottles he had tucked away under the sink out of the eyesight of Molly because if she’d known he had it she’d have taken it away because ‘a grieving man should never drink’. And he’d have said he wasn’t grieving after a year but they both would have known it wasn’t true so she would have taken it anyways when he wasn’t looking. But he needed, desperately, to quiet the noise. To rid himself of it all, if just for a night. And if any night he could give himself permission to fall back to the habits of a twenty one year old Remus this was it.
That was how he found himself in Sirius’ childhood bedroom, half of what was in the bottle drunk, half left swinging in hand, liquid swashing like a tumultuous sea.
He pressed his back against the wall, sliding down it until he hit the floorboards with a thud, the slam of the bottle in hand hitting it following not long after. It was as much of Sirius as could be found in a house built by the Blacks. Red covering what was dark. Golds over greys and green. It was sixteen year old Sirius, the rebellious son, the marauder, the fearless and shameless teenager, preserved by magic or elves or something else he did not know, behind this door. The boy he’d fallen in love with, and continued to for years to follow. It was where the love began so young, and from that seed, it bloomed.
From a love long-lasting, you learn. And from secrets shared he knew that if he shifted the floorboard that was lifted ever so slightly just beneath the bed he’d find it loose. He remembered that, somehow. Remembered at one point back in fourth or fifth year he was told that when they’d written letters to the other each Summer that that was where Sirius had kept them, and where he had left them too. Remembered that, because he mourned them when he fled quickly in the night.
He returned to the wall with a box which once, from the label on the front slightly worn down with age, appeared to have contained dress shoes, but now contained their beginning. And their ending, well, it was just him wasn’t it? Would they ever end? Had they died when Sirius did? Or would they die with him instead? There couldn’t be a day on earth that he would love another. Sirius Black owned his heart and lived in his bones and took up every thought in his mind whether he meant to or not.
There were letters, he’d expected that. Pages and pages of them he couldn’t bare to read then and wasn’t sobered enough for it either even if he wanted to and maybe that was for the best because he wasn’t sober enough or sane enough to not start uncontrollably sobbing through every word. Though he wouldn’t have had the nerve to drag himself up here without it, or maybe the alcohol just had washed away any kind of self-preservation, so he hardly thanked it for any of this. Maybe just the numbness. He’d thank it for that.
There were photos too. Paused moments in time and he wished he could have paused time back then rather than chased it away. He wished he could have found a way to rewrite it. Rewritten it with Lily and James and Harry having his parents and him and Sirius together the whole way through til then and the war over before it even started. Then he’d have Marlene and Dorcas too and Mary would’ve never needed to love him from a distance and they’d be old and complaining about futile matters and watching their kids grow up. And the monster with scars would have left the world first not the bright lights flickering out of existence too early, burning up too quick, stolen from the skies too soon.
There he was. Him, young. Padfoot next to him with the others in the background paying little attention to them while they paid every attention to the other. They hadn’t defined anything but could they ever be defined even later on? Was there a word in any language to describe the kind of love they shared? Was there a label for it? It existed even there, back then, in the fields by the lake with Lily behind the camera. He knew the day, not the date though because dates weren’t a thing that stuck in his mind until they sat upon a grave.
“I don’t mind, you know. If you got rid of it all.”
He was broken out of whatever trance the memories seemed to have placed on him, letting his head slump sideways and temple touching the wall. Really, his mouth should have fallen open, eyes widened and face gone completely aghast at the sight of sable curls and sharp edges that could cut. He should have contemplated every trick that might’ve been played on him. Every illness that might’ve struck his mind. But he settled on one thing: grief. And the only thing that really came to mind at the sight of the man who he hadn’t seen in three hundred and sixty five days was the fact he’d spent those three hundred and sixty five days wishing to see him again, even just once.
Remus smiled, though leaving his eyes in those moments before, laced with sorrow. “I’d never do that.”
Sirius legs were stretched out beside his and Remus had half the thought to shift his leg across and touch, just a small touch at first. But if he wasn’t real he didn’t want to spoil it. “Keep the photos though.” Sirius told him, pointing towards the images clutched in his grasp. “I was actually quite attractive, back in Hogwarts. Though I didn’t appreciate it at the time, as much as I might’ve pretended to.”
Remus just stared. Soaked him all in. If this was all he’d get, a drunken image, he’d drown in it as long as he could. Maybe this would be it for him now, a drunk. A nightly occurrence, chasing a ghost. He’d be Pygmalion, if that were the case. A pathetic existence, if a meagre phantom image created by his mind of the man he loved is all he’d have forevermore. But better than the alternative, than nothing at all. “I did.”
Sirius nodded, looking straight ahead, not yet at him. “Sometimes you did. Sometimes you didn’t. It took us time to get it right, didn’t it, Moons? All that time and we didn’t have very much of it, in the end.” He turned his head to look then at Remus, graphite eyes softening to silver. “It won’t always be like this.” He told him, a sad smile pulling at his mouth.
Remus sucked in a breath. “Why wouldn’t it?” He asked, coming out desperate with a sweet kind of sadness, voice lifting at the end like a funeral song. “What’s going to change it?”
“Time.” Sirius laughs sadly.
“Time.” Remus huffed, laughing a little too through tears now slipping through the walls he’d placed up. “No that’s. That’s.” He huffs again in a frustration he maybe thought he shouldn’t have given to the man he loved who he hadn’t seen in a year but understanding was at the very being of their love and Merlin was he angry that he left him there alone too. “I can really feel the clouds parting, Pads.”
“Yeah, you’re funny.” Sirius rolled his eyes.“At least this time around you can pass out on my mother’s carpet not ours. Merlin knows I’ve done that enough times here in the past.”
“There’s not enough in here for that.” Remus frowned, lifting the bottle up to display it, the amber enough for him to stand in the shallows where he'd prefer to drown.
“Yeah.” Sirius sighed, and he shifted himself to fall into Remus’ lap as if he were a dog and Remus had to suck in a breath as to not fall apart completely and he closed his eyes for a moment, screwing them shut before he realised this moment is one he wanted to plaster to the walls of his memory so long as he breathes so he forced them open once more, placing the hand not clutching the bottle onto Sirius’ head to begin intertwining his fingers with curls. “Then you’ll go to an offie like the one by our old flat. Or maybe the exact one if you’re feeling like torturing yourself further. And you’ll buy a couple more bottles. And maybe some cigarettes. And then you’ll smoke them in here, which you’ll regret, ‘cause you’ll never quite get the smell out and the others will be able to tell. And Molly will drop by later even though she said she won’t. And Dora if she isn’t at work tonight. And you wont want to sound sad or pissed so you won’t let them up here. Which means tomorrow you’ll have to see them both and you’ll say you fell asleep early. And you’ll say the same to Harry, because he would have called for you through the fire and you wouldn’t have been around to answer. But none of them will believe you. And you’ll feel guilty and hungover and just. Shit. All day. And it’ll go on like that. Until it doesn’t. ‘Cause one day. It won’t, Moony.”
“What are you doing here?” Remus asked then, choking on a sob.
Sirius lifted himself back up and the loss of the pressure against him hit him deep in his chest, carving away at his bones, until Sirius’ palm was pressed against his cheek and Godric, this man has his heart in his hand and has taken it with him to the other side because it’s dying, dying, maybe even dead already but alive here now that he is. “I’m here because you need me. And because I don’t want to see you soon.”
Remus exhaled loudly, like a drought through an open window. He let his eyes fall back in petty annoyance but snapped back quick to not let the sight of Sirius slip away, like if he looked away he might be lost when he looked back, even with the warm touch against his skin. “Oh thanks, Pads. And here I was missing you terribly.”
“You know what I mean. Start living, Moony. Stop killing yourself with this grief. I’ll be waiting for you, just not yet.” Sirius said then, taking his face in both hands to kiss him sweetly on the forehead.
“Will you stay?” Remus asked, the question coming out like a plea, a beg, a child’s voice, maybe. Or maybe simply just the voice of a grieving widower who wasn’t ever really a widower. A lover who had lost twice and this time for certain. A man cursed with grief and reached the peak of it.
Sirius rested his thumbs against Remus’ eyelids, gently closing his eyes for him like he were a doll. “I’m here, always.”
And when he opened them again, Sirius was gone.
Again.