Moony
It was late - early - when Sirius snuck back in the Slytherin dorms. It had been something of a pain to get past the door since usually Sirius either had Harry or one of the firsties with him to give the password. He made it in the end though and he safely tucked the cloak and map in Harry’s trunk before he climbed in his bed.
His bed where Harry was sprawled out, snoring softly.
Sirius would have grinned at the charmingly innocent picture that Harry made with his mouth half open, his lashes dusting his cheekbone. If it hadn’t been one of the worst nights of Sirius’s life, he would have grinned.
As it was, Sirius only climbed in the bed and tried to move gently enough that he didn’t wake Harry.
No luck.
Sirius no sooner pulled the blanket up, barely resisting the urge to bury his face in Harry’s shoulder to sob, than Harry shifted around and whispered to him.
“I couldn’t find you,” Harry said. “Where were you?”
Sirius didn’t know why he felt so damned guilty or how he would even explain to Harry what he had been doing all night.
“Don’t worry about it, Pup,” Sirius said back. He reached over to brush the hair off Harry’s forehead and felt a sting of emotion behind his eyes when Harry unconsciously tilted his head to chase Sirius’s hand.
Sirius laid there for hours, just like that. He watched Harry breathe and he tried to use the serene image to chase away the aching images of Remus transforming alone.
Remus howling, Remus attacking himself.
It made Sirius feel sick to see how lonely Remus was, how desperately hurt he was.
Sirius used to picture Moony having to transform on his own when he was in Azkaban. It was different to imagine it than it was to see it. Sirius thought Remus would be lonely and slipping back in his ocean of hatred for something that was as much a part of him as his eye color.
Remus wasn’t just lonely and angry, Remus was in agony and it was killing Sirius. Every cell in Sirius’s body screamed for him to join Remus in the Shrieking Shack, to pull him out of his deep unhappiness… Sirius nearly did. It had been close.
Sirius had been a breath away from leaving his spot and telling Remus everything when he thought of Harry. That had been the only thought that barely kept Sirius in his spot - forced to watch instead of help.
It had been agony for Sirius and Remus both.
Harry filled Sirius in on his detention the next morning. Sirius congratulated him on telling Snape off and mourned that Harry hadn’t just killed him. Harry was probably the only person in the castle who could literally get away with murder.
What would the Minister do? Send the Boy-Who-Lived to prison for killing the man that caused the death of two beloved war heroes? Not likely.
Harry also told Sirius about a medical examination he had to undergo for quidditch.
“I don’t know what all it said,” Harry murmured to Sirius during charms. The others were floating feathers while Harry told Sirius about his evening. Flitwick tended to ignore their antics as long as they were able to show the charm and didn’t get noisy.
“Shit,” Sirius swore quietly. He tapped his wand on his desk, idly changing the color of the wrap on Parvati Patil’s head, while he thought about how much damage a medical exam could bring them.
“Snape was cagey about it,” Harry said. “He wouldn’t even let me see it. I dunno, Siri, it could - I mean how would I explain a basilisk bite?”
Sirius winced. “We should mimic it,” he decided. “It’s the only way to know what he knows.”
With that decided, Harry tried again to figure out where Sirius had been during the night. He pestered him all through Charms and Herbology. Sirius would have told him at lunch, but Harry actually stopped him.
“Theo learned to read lips,” Harry said, loudly enough to catch the Nott boy’s attention.
“I did not!” Theo denied, blushing a dark red.
“He’s been trying,” Blaise told Sirius with half of a smile. “You and Harry are making him insane.”
“Blaise! Merlin, shut up!” Theo yelped. The kid looked terrified when he looked at Sirius and he should be. If he had been listening in on private conversations between Sirius and Harry then he had reason to be worried.
Sirius stared down the table at where Theo tried to shrink himself down between Pansy and Vincent. Theo had enough of a backbone to hold Sirius’s gaze, but he wasn’t going to say a word.
“It’s really hard to read lips when you’re blind,” Sirius warned him quietly. “I’d mind my business if I were you, if you like having your sight.”
Theo nodded quickly and Sirius quirked his first grin of the day.
“I’ll tell you later,” Sirius promised Harry, referring to his nighttime activity. It shouldn’t have been an issue, it shouldn’t have made Sirius feel guilty, as if he couldn’t care about Harry’s happiness and Remus’s peace at the same time.
It was that Sirius and Harry were so damned tangled up in one another that Sirius felt Harry’s unhappiness more acutely than anyone else’s. Sirius also thought that Harry was… well… a bit jealous of Remus, actually.
Sirius wouldn’t have thought so, not until he saw Harry’s patronus. It was… something.
They would probably have to address that —
“There’s no life for me without you.”
— at some point.
Sirius wasn’t in a rush though, they had plenty of other things to worry about rather than a possible crush.
There was Voldemort and Peter and Petunia and Dumbledore… Sirius needed access to his vaults, he and Harry needed to make sure Grimmauld Place was impenetrable… There was plenty to do. Sirius didn’t need to think about Harry being jealous of Remus.
Which didn’t explain why Sirius thought nothing of Harry and Remus all through the rest of his classes that day.
Harry was… Harry was Harry. Harry was the most important person in any world to Sirius. He was his most treasured, most loved. Sirius had been trusted with Harry’s well-being and there was nobody that Sirius wanted to see laugh and smile more than Harry.
Merlin knew that Harry didn’t do it often enough. When Harry smiled it wasn’t hard to imagine why he had dozens of kids willing to sit through his defense class. There was something compelling about Harry, a mixture of vulnerability and innocence that hid behind distrustful eyes and sarcastic quips.
Not that Sirius was comparing them, but if he were… Harry was different from Remus in so many ways. There were a few similarities: their shyness, their dislike of the spotlight. They were both clever and considerate, stubborn and headstrong, but that was roughly where their similarities ended.
Remus could be abrasive, Harry was nearly guileless. Remus could sink into a pit of depression to put Sirius’s moods to shame, Harry was too much a soldier to have pity parties. Harry was forgiving and trusting, Remus took years to trust someone and could hold a grudge for just as long.
Not that it mattered, but Sirius had more in common personality wise with Remus. Sirius and Harry had more experiences in common.
They had lost people they loved, knew how cold the world could be. They went through the veil together and they knew what the future could hold.
It made sense for Harry to be a little confused, Sirius himself wasn’t immune to that.
Harry was Harry… but Sirius was Sirius.
Sirius borrowed a potions book from Maugens to brew the potion for the diagnostic charm that Snape cast on Harry. There were a lot of onlookers who watched Sirius casually brewing in the middle of the common room until he told them all to piss off.
Harry sat backwards in one of the desk chairs with his chin propped on the back of it. He grinned when Sirius told everyone else off.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so popular,” Harry teased him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have told them I’m a fucking Parslemouth,” Sirius muttered while he focused on the potion. It wasn’t overly difficult, but there were quite a few steps to it and Sirius never did have the patience for brewing.
“You’re the one who threw the party,” Harry said.
“It was a joint party,” Sirius countered. “Don’t talk just now, I’ve got to count.”
Harry fell silent immediately and Sirius began counting his counter-clockwise stirs. When he reached seven, he made the mistake of glancing up at Harry.
Harry was staring at Sirius as intently as he searched for a snitch - as single-minded as he was in a duel. It was more distracting than conversation would have been, all that focus on Sirius.
“Eight,” Harry said quietly, his eyes locked on Sirius’s. He smiled then and it was childish and sweet and one day it would be different.
Harry’s smiles were hard to earn but Circe they were worth it.
Sirius quickly looked back down at the potion and scolded himself as he counted more slowly in his head.
It was the damn patronus that had stupid shit popping up in Sirius’s mind. It had been a shock to see the patronus and then to see Harry’s, that was all.
Sirius needed a bloody healer.
It took him nearly an hour of brewing before the potion was finished. Maugens helpfully inspected it and agreed with Sirius that it was the correct color and consistency.
“Bottoms up then,” Sirius said when he gave Harry a carefully portioned vial of it. Judging by Harry’s hilarious grimace, it must have tasted like arse which was a good sign that it had been brewed correctly.
“Ready?” Sirius asked, pulling his wand and ignoring the general unease in the common room. It was as if the students all thought that all Sirius did was mental things and that Harry was a fool for drinking the potion.
“Ready,” Harry said.
Sirius didn’t know what to expect from the results he received from the test, but it wasn’t what appeared.
“You want the bad news or good news first?” Sirius asked Harry.
“Er… maybe a muffling charm first,” Harry said, anxiously glancing around at the others. Everyone was making a good show of pretending to not pay them any attention, but Sirius could sense it the same as Harry.
Sirius flicked his wand and then made a point to turn his back at where Theo sat with Blaise and Daphne.
“The bad news is that this says you’re sixteen,” Sirius told Harry, passing over the parchment at Harry’s ‘give me’ hand motion. Harry started reading it immediately and Sirius kept talking.
“The good news is that I think Vernon and Petunia Dursley are going to have a horrible accident this winter,” Sirius said, working hard to clamp down on the cold magic swirling inside of him.
It wasn’t a shock that Harry had a bunch of shite wrong with him, it was that it was rubbish and made Sirius feel like he should earn some of the years he spent in Azkaban.
Malnourished? While Sirius heard from the Weasley boys that the other kid in Petunia’s house looked plenty fed? A dozen sprains? From some - some bloody muggle putting his hands on Harry?
Absolutely not
There was no Moody to stop Sirius again.
Harry chewed his lower lip as he read and Sirius firmed up plans. The winter hols were approaching and two weeks would be plenty of time to visit the Ministry, Gringotts, and Little Whining.
There were plenty of spare wands in Grimmauld Place and, if Sirius wanted to get extra creative, there was also a deranged house-elf who was unwillingly loyal to either Sirius or Harry.
Harry would alibi Sirius, Sirius would make Lily’s bitch sister suffer. Then Sirius would make sure Harry never missed a meal again… like the one they were currently missing.
That might be an issue, Sirius wasn’t exactly the image of healthy habits when it came to mealtimes. They would figure it out though, it would be fine.
Everything would be fine and Harry would never have an exam with malnourishment on it again.
“Siri…” Harry took a much more fatalistic view of the results. He waved the parchment and pointed at the top of it when Sirius raised a brow. “It says I’m sixteen.”
“Yeah, happy birthday,” Sirius said. He shrugged when Harry looked quite serious about it. “I wouldn’t worry, Pup. Little errors could pop up when potions aren’t brewed just right or an incantation is mispronounced. Hell, if I tapped your forehead instead of the center of your head it might have given me the wrong birthday.”
“It’s Snape that has this,” Harry said. “You can’t honestly think he’s going to forget that it says I’m sixteen.”
“He did the exam after you told him off, right?” Sirius checked. “There you have it,” Sirius said after Harry nodded shortly. “Hopefully he’ll assume he cast it wrong and it won’t matter.”
“If he doesn’t assume that?”
Then Snape would run off to Dumbledore with the results and Dumbledore’s interest in Harry would be turned up to a frightening new height.
“Then we see if my French is as rusty as I suspect it might be,” Sirius decided. He put away all the mess he had made and cleaned his cauldron with a few waves of his wand.
“Let’s go get dinner,” Sirius told Harry, gently taking the parchment from Harry’s hands and tucking it in his pocket before he slung his arm around Harry’s shoulders. “I’m dying here.”
“We can’t just run to France,” Harry said, rolling his eyes fondly. Sirius assumed it was fond anyway.
“I’d go to bloody Timbuktu before I let something happen to you,” Sirius swore.
“Er… thanks,” Harry said, inching more securely in Sirius’s side. Sirius liked that Harry was a bit shorter than him, it made it easier to keep him close.
“Are you going to tell me what you were doing last night now?”
Sirius had actually hoped that Harry had forgotten that. It seemed so silly, so small in the big picture of all the things that happened since they fell through the veil (since Sirius fell and Harry followed)… it shouldn’t matter at all.
Sirius still took a bit of time to prepare himself for conversation while they walked through the castle together. It was past curfew, Sirius was missing another detention, and the empty halls weren’t inspiring any confidence in him.
They were nearly to the kitchens when Sirius gave in to the imploring stare Harry had.
“I sat in the forest,” Sirius admitted in a rush. “I wanted to be with Remus.”
It was the wrong thing to say, the wrong way to word it. Sirius didn’t want to be with Remus, he felt he should. Sirius should have wanted to be there and not went out of obligation and sat in silence while they both ached.
“Sirius!” Harry stopped in his tracks and pulled away from Sirius, leaving the right side of Sirius’s body cold. “You can’t - what were you thinking?” Harry demanded, crossing his arms and frowning. “What if he’d seen you?”
“I don’t know!” Sirius said, throwing his hands up. “I don’t know what would have happened. I don’t know why I went, alright? Circe, Harry! You’re acting like - like some housewife who’s mad I went to see a mate!”
“I am not!” Harry stepped backward and his face lit up in red patches. “You think I’m - what? Jealous?”
“Aren’t you?” Sirius said challengingly. If they were going to talk about it, they might as well do it then.
“No,” Harry said hotly. “I am not jealous, Sirius. Jesus. Maybe I just don’t want bloody Lupin asking how you know so much and getting you in trouble.”
“‘Bloody Lupin’,” Sirius said with a bite of laughter. He shook his head. “You’re being ridiculous. Admit you’re jealous. You’ve had an issue with Remus ever since I told you about the two of us.”
“Because you hid it from me!” Harry yelled. “You lied about it! We’re supposed to be in this mess together, Sirius! You can’t just hide huge things about your life from me!”
“It wasn’t your business,” Sirius said. “Not every person I’ve been with is your business. I don’t know about every person you’ve ever kissed, do I?”
“What? All one of them?” Harry laughed then, as angry and bitter as Sirius. “Sorry I didn’t have a chance to tell you about my really passionate and brilliant kiss with Cho, I think I got a bit distracted with Ron’s dad nearly dying.”
Cho? Who the hell was Cho? Sirius didn’t remember a Cho or a kiss that Harry had with her.
“Who is Cho?” Sirius asked, sidetracked by that information.
“Oh, you’re unbelievable,” Harry huffed. He turned away from Sirius and began storming back the way they walked from. “I’m going to bed,” Harry called over his shoulder to him.
“Great! Starve!” Sirius yelled back. “It’s not like I walked down here so you could eat or anything!”
“Screw you, Sirius!”
“You probably wish!”
Sirius hadn’t meant to say that, he didn’t know why he did. But damn if it didn’t piss Harry right off.
Harry spun around and Sirius didn’t so much as blink before Harry’s wand was in his hand and slinging something to Sirius. Sirius dodged it and pulled his wand at the same time. The first spell Sirius could think of that would make a point but wouldn’t hurt Harry was levicorpus. Harry dodged it and it ricocheted off the wall, chipping the bricks.
“You’re so self-absorbed you think everything is about you!” Harry said as he sent another spell at Sirius. Sirius tossed a shield up that absorbed it and summoned the brick dust at the same time as he transfigured it to become a group of snapping turtles.
“Everything you’ve done lately is about me,” Sirius pointed out, smirking when one of the turtles bit Harry’s ankle before Harry sent them away with a rush of harsh wind.
Sirius couldn’t help but run his mouth while they dueled, neither of them giving an inch. They weren’t aiming to injure the other, but they were fast, fierce, heated.
And loud. Sirius didn’t actually realize how loud they were being.
“You went to the Ministry because of me, you went through the veil because of me, you hate Remus because of me.” Sirius caught a jinx to his left arm that made it go limp and numb, it only drove him to fight harder.
“BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT YOU, YOU BLOODY MORON!” Harry screamed as he threw a sudden whirl of spells toward Sirius. It took Sirius everything he had to counter them all off, one at a time, and he would have done a better job if Harry wasn’t - once again - fucking distracting him.
Harry was shouting nonsense and glaring at him with big eyes that were staring straight into Sirius’s hateful and horrible soul.
“I AM SO SORRY THAT I MADE THE HORRIBLE MISTAKE OF CARING ABOUT YOU! AND I’M SORRY THAT YOU’RE ALL I HAVE! THE ONE GOOD THING I’VE GOT!”
“I AM NOT A GOOD THING!”
“BOYS!”
Harry - Circe, he was infuriating - didn’t lower his wand when someone entered the corridor that was filled with smoke and spells, screams echoing and more emotions than two walls could contain. Oh, no, not Harry… Harry had to have the final spell.
“Argh!” Sirius was suddenly lifted in the air by his ankle and he dropped his wand in surprise. It hit the floor in a clatter just as Remus stepped through the smoky spell-fire.
“What on Earth is going on here?” Remus asked, looking from where Harry stood at one end of the corridor to where Sirius dangled in the air at the other end of the corridor. Sirius was breathing harshly, Harry - Harry’s eyes were wet.
They made a sorry pair - Sirius the sorrier of the two.
Harry didn’t look or speak at Remus any more kindly than he did Sirius.
“Nothing, Professor,” Harry said shortly. “I’m sorry for the noise.”
“The noise?” Remus hardly spared Sirius a glance as he flicked his wand, slowly lowering Sirius to the floor. “It’s past curfew. You’re dueling in the corridor. I’m sure you’ve broken at least half a dozen rules, boys.”
When neither of them felt like explaining themselves, Remus ordered them to follow him to his office. They did it in silence, only Sirius’s loud breathing and Harry’s quiet and subtle sniffles could be heard.
“Quit that,” Sirius whispered to Harry behind Remus’s back.
“Quit what?” Harry demanded just as quietly.
“Crying.”
“I’m not crying.”
“You sound like you’re crying.”
“Boys! Enough!” Remus said firmly, pausing to give them a Serious-Professor glare. It wasn’t that strange to be glared at by Remus, it was odd to be scolded by him like a child.
“What has gotten into you two?” Remus asked as he ushered them in his office. “I’m disappointed in you both.”
“We didn’t realize how late it had gotten,” Sirius said. He took the seat across from Remus’s desk when he was pointed to it and Harry took the other.
Sirius took a moment to look around while Remus settled across from them. His office was nice, it was filled with all sorts of creatures and defense equipment. Sirius could smell Remus’s cologne the second they entered the room, it was mixed with the scent of Wolfsbane and chocolate, bringing fifty memories at once rushing in Sirius’s mind.
It smelled like Remus’s bedroom, Remus’s bed, all of Remus’s jumpers that Sirius used to wrap himself up in.
Harry sniffled again.
“Okay, let’s start at the beginning,” Remus said calmly, apparently unsure which boy to look at. His eyes wouldn’t rest, not until Sirius decided to offer up a reasonable explanation.
“We missed dinner and went to get food. We had a bit of a disagreement and it got out of hand.” Sirius looked down in what he hoped was an apologetic gesture. “I’m sorry.”
That was more true than anything - Sirius was sorry.
“Harry?” Remus asked. “Is that what happened?”
“Yes.”
“Alright.” Remus seemed to take the expiation at face value. “That’s five points from Slytherin each for being out after curfew then another five points each for dueling in the corridor.”
Hypocrite.
“Now…” Remus settled back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach, where Sirius knew a new and horrible scar would be. “What was this disagreement about?”
Sirius shut his mouth and he saw Harry do the same thing.
What were they meant to say? Sirius accused Harry of being jealous - which he was - over the very man speaking to them? Harry cared too much about Sirius and it was going to end up killing him as it did everyone who ever cared about Sirius?
Fuck Sirius having anything in common with either of them… Harry and Remus had the most in common.
“You don’t want to say?” Remus asked. “Fine. I’ll tell you what I know then, okay?” Remus leaned forward again and had managed to master the way that a professor could lecture an entire group of students without singling any one specific student out.
“You two are best friends,” Remus said. “Best friends don’t fight like that for no reason. If I had to guess, I would say there was something very wrong that happened.”
Harry shifted in his seat and looked away, out toward the dark windows. “We don’t want to talk about it,” he said, shaky but firm.
Sirius could hear the hurt in Harry’s voice and it killed him just as it had when it was Remus’s piercing howls that tore him apart. Sirius wished he could reach for him, say all the right words, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know how, didn’t know if he should.
Remus’s expression softened, for Harry.
“I know being at Hogwarts can be tough,” he said kindly. “It’s difficult to get used to and it can be overwhelming at times. I’m not so old that I don’t remember when I was a first year. You know what I had though? The same as you two… I had a best friend. And he wasn’t perfect, he was far from perfect, but things were better with him. Do you understand?”
Sirius looked at Harry and felt a swell of frustration in him. Why did everything have to be so complicated? Why did Harry - why did Sirius - have to care so damn much?
“We’ll be fine,” Sirius said, watching Harry. “Thanks for the brilliant advice though.”
Remus frowned and nodded after he rubbed his face with his hands.
“Alright then. If either of you ever need to talk, you can come to me, you know.”
Harry muttered a quiet thanks and stood abruptly, leaving just as quickly. He left Sirius standing there with his legs heavy, his tongue tied, and an explanation trapped in his chest that he didn’t know how to get out.
“Sirius…”
It was the first time that Remus had truly addressed Sirius directly and Sirius turned back to him, wondering if he knew. Did he figure it out? Did he know? Could Remus recognize Sirius despite everything else?
As Harry had?
“Whatever’s going on with you two, don’t let it ruin your friendship,” Remus told him. “It seems like the two of you need each other. Do you understand?”
Sirius nodded, though he didn’t understand. All he knew was that Remus was hurting him, he was hurting Harry, he was fucking angry, confused… and the one person who could make it better had just walked out the door.
“Who was it?” Sirius asked Remus. “Your best friend? What was their name?”
“Peter Pettigrew,” Remus said without even bloody hesitating. “He was a good friend and a good man.”
Harry had half a dozen flaws, but he wasn’t a damned liar and when Sirius introduced himself, Harry recognized him.
Sirius returned to the Slytherin common room not long after Harry and was surprised to see that Harry was waiting up for him on the sofa. Harry had his legs pulled up to his chest and his chin on his knees. Their eyes met and neither of them moved.
Sirius spoke the silence first.
“We need to talk.”
“Yeah, we do,” Harry agreed.
Sirius could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he walked over to sink on the sofa beside Harry. Sirius couldn’t fuck it up, he just couldn’t. Not with Harry, never with Harry.
“What’s your real issue with Remus?” Sirius asked, unable to hold back on his frustration over the issue. “Why does it matter that I haven’t told you every bloody person I’ve been with?”
Harry fiddled with the lining of his trousers and his shoulders twitched as if he wanted to shrug them.
“I don’t know… I… maybe I am jealous,” he said quietly. “This - it’s like now there’s two of you, and I don’t mean Sirius Orion and Sirius James. There’s Lupin’s Sirius who wants my dad back and who bullies Snape and who’s reckless and charming. Then - then there’s…”
Harry trailed off and Sirius needed to know what he was thinking, what was going on inside his head.
“You don’t have to say it,” Sirius said, suddenly inspired and praying to Morgana that he wasn’t about to ruin everything. He reached out to touch the side of Harry’s face and when Harry looked up at him, Sirius whispered the one word that would keep Harry from having to explain.
“Legillimens.”
It was easy to slide in Harry’s mind, as smooth of a movement of Sirius’s consciousness as anything could be.
There was resistance for a second, just a brief moment, then it disappeared and Sirius could see everything that Harry couldn’t say:
Sirius at fifteen, laughing with James, at Snape. Sirius was arrogant, brilliant, handsome. He looked at Lupin a few too many times with soft eyes, but he was still the focus of the memory.
Sirius in the Shrieking Shack, embracing Lupin. Then Sirius again, talking about how James was like a brother to him and how he was Harry’s godfather. Sirius looked deranged, not as handsome as he was in the photos of James and Lily’s wedding.
Sirius in the fire, disappointed and disapproving.
“You’re not as much like James as I thought.”
Those memories were a little grey, tinged with a filter of unhappiness. When they cleared away, there were new ones in place.
Sirius laughing as he dueled in the Ministry. Sirius winking at Harry just before a spell shot off by Bellatrix hit him in the chest - Sirius falling backwards, a laugh still falling eerily from his lips.
Harry screaming - Circe, his scream - and wrenching himself from Lupin to bolt for the veil.
“Not Sirius, not Sirius… please, not Sirius.”
Sirius standing in front of Harry at the train station, young with hints of how he would look in a few years.
Sirius dueling again, lit up and manic looking as he controlled magic with what seemed like minimal effort. Sirius looking over his shoulder a few times, making sure Harry could see him.
Harry, chasing after Malfoy’s snitch, annoyed with him for goading him into it even if it felt brilliant to be flying. He looked down for a second, checking for a trap or stupid prank of Malfoy’s, and his grip on the broom faltering when he saw Sirius. Sirius looked up at him like he was a shooting star and it made Harry’s stomach flutter with nerves.
There were a dozen more memories like that; Sirius laughing, Sirius wrapping his arm on Harry’s shoulders. In all of them, there was a possessive tinge, something that claimed Sirius as Harry’s.
“Lupin’s Sirius and mine.”
Sirius inhaled raggedly as he forced himself out of Harry’s thoughts. Harry had moved while Sirius had been in his mind and they were facing each other, their faces close enough to make Sirius sweat.
“I don’t know what this is, what’s wrong with me, but I can’t lose you,” Harry murmured, his breath warm on Sirius’s face. “I can’t.”
He couldn’t, Sirius could feel that. Harry needed Sirius like Sirius needed him - irrationally and entirely.
“Me neither,” Sirius said, his voice barely a whisper.
Harry slowly moved forward, or maybe it was Sirius who moved, until their foreheads were touching and everything was alright.
The rest of the world melted away for a while - Voldemort and Dumbledore, Peter and Remus - and Sirius felt some semblance of peace settle inside of him.
Harry knew Sirius, he knew him. Harry knew Sirius and whatever it was between them… it was real and it was terrifying, but it was solid. It was the most solid connection that Sirius had felt with anyone in so long that he could feel his throat swell with the same tears that he snapped at Harry for showing earlier.
It was wrong, but damn if Sirius felt like fighting for what was ‘right’ anymore.