Christmas
"So what have you been up to Remus?" Sirius asked him giddy as ever, as if Remus hadn't just been witness to the most blood-curdling telling off of the century.
"Not much," he was munching on the scrambled eggs they served that morning.
"We can't have that, now can we?"
"You smell like a fireplace." It wasn't just that, there was something there the wolf didn't want to go unaccounted for. A metallic smell that didn't belong to the ash and soot and magic around Sirius. Something he couldn't put his finger on.
"You're just a master detective, Remus. I got here by floo powder." Sirius, waved at his ensemble covered in soot, "clearly."
"What about you take a shower?" He did smell too much like a fireplace. Neither Remus nor the wolf were too fond of the smell.
After breakfast, they went back up to their dorm. Sirius stared at the pile of letters on his desk, a second of eye contact but he didn't say anything, "Don't think my trunk will arrive soon," Sirius changed the subject, "Think I could borrow your clothes today? We're about the same size." They were about the same size, both quite skinny and still no adolescent growth spurt, yet, where Sirius was skinny in a lean way, Remus was skinny in a scrawny way. As similar and different as night and day.
Remus sat on his bed, waiting for Sirius to get out of the shower, looking over his map, maybe he could map out the edge of the forest or the restricted section. They didn't have James' invisibility cloak through, so it might be a bit challenging. Sirius would enjoy that.
Sirius came out of the shower with the towel wrapped around his waist, "I forgot the clothes, pass them to me Remus?"
"Hmm." Remus bunched up the set of clothes and passed it, the raven haired boy turned around to head back to change, and then it clicked. On Sirius' calf, fresh, fresh scars, barely stopped bleeding. The smell between the ash was blood. Sirius' blood.
The door locked again and Remus was red, something inside him was burning up, something he didn't understand, but something inside of him was profoundly angered, still he couldn't place it.
"Remus?" Sirius was out and dressed at this point, "Quite alright there, mate?" He snapped out of it quickly enough. Sirius looked a little silly in that mossy brown secondhand jumper Remus lent him, not much like him, but he seemed much more at ease than when he arrived that morning. "Is it my hair? I didn't burn it off did I?" Sirius rushed at the mirror, he was perfectly fine.
...
"Let's ask McGonagall to borrow some brooms, I'll teach you some tricks!" Remus was still terrified about flying, even in flying lessons, he never went more than a few feet above ground. At this point, they'd already played chess (Sirius beat Remus the first time, when he taught him how to play, and lost the following two matches), exploding snap (Sirius won each time), and some magic card games Remus couldn't get the hang of (Sirius won as well). At that point, it was either boredom or map-making, which didn't seem that exciting now that he was with Sirius.
"Or!" Remus was trying to buy himself time, he was not getting on a broom without a grade, "I could show you something." Remus was loading blanks but somehow managed to get a bullet in, "I found a hidden passageway."
Sirius was as close to starstruck as he could be, a little nerd in him that made him read all those magic books he didn't want to and all those old recounts of Hogwarts was creeping up in his smile, his grin, his Sirius Black grin. Remus came clean about having been making a map of Hogwarts while they made their way to the One-Eyed Witch statue, which was thrilling for Sirius for some reason unknown to him.
"It smells like sweets on the other side," Remus pointed his wand at the hunched back of the statue and with a swift "revelio" the hunch folded into itself to lead way to a tunnel dark and a little dingy.
"Your smell never ceases to amaze me Remus, you're brilliant! Bet if we go in right now, we can get back by dinner and no one will be any the wiser." Sirius couldn't keep his eyes from the dark tunnel.
"We'll be in big trouble if we're caught away from school."
"Where's your sense of adventure, Mr. Lupin!" Sirius had a foot in already. "Come on, let's check it out."
Sirius lit the way with his wand, they'd leaned that charm earlier, it was one of the easier and more useful ones, Remus thought, if you couldn't see as well in the dark as him, the wolf senses didn't seem to dim with the lack of light. The dark haired boy led the way, Remus kept in silence the whole journey, Sirius kept listing off the possibilities, he'd heard of a magic room hidden in the castle with anything you needed, of a haunted place, a secret chamber, a hidden room below the lake, a tunnel to the ravenclaw common room, a secret entrance to the slytherin common room, just on and on and on and on. But it was none of that. Not a single one, what the found at the end of the tunnel was much better, it was the storage room of Honeydukes. The unwatched storage room of the sweets shop in Hogsmade, the town right outside Hogwarts. They had just, they both had to do a double take, they had just found a secret tunnel into an unguarded room filled with sweets. That was the best Christmas gift they could've ever dreamt of. Sirius stocked his pockets with Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Acid Pops and Fudge Flies, while Remus filled his with Chocolate Frogs, as many as he could fit and a few in his two empty hands. The door creaked and they ran back into the tunnel.
...
McGonagall stepped into the Gryffindor common room, an odd occurrence in itself. Remus and Sirius were buried in a pile of various candy wrappers and boxes in front of the fireplace. "Here I was wondering why you two didn't show for dinner. Mr. Lupin, Mr. Black." It was hard not to notice their absence when there were about six students total at the moment. "You missed quite the show from Professor Flitwick and his charmed suits of armour."
"Sorry about that Professor," Sirius said, there was still a bunch of every flavour beans on his hand.
"We're sorry." Remus' hands were dirty with melted chocolate frog, framing half his lips as well.
"At least you two are not suffering from hunger." She fixed her glasses to the top of her nose. She pointed at an unopened Chocolate Frog, "may I?"
"Certainly Professor." Remus nodded.
"I find that chocolate can get us through most of life's problems." She tucked it into her robe, "Marry Chrtistmas, Sirius, Remus." It was very weird to hear Professor McGonagall call them by their names. Probably a Christmas miracle in itself. But there was something warm in her voice, she was happy to be a teacher at Hogwarts, and she probably really liked them, which was comforting for the both of them.
...
Morning came and Sirius and Remus were passed out in front of the fireplace. Tucked into a blanket neither one of them had put there, the wrappers were all gone as well. Remus was the first to open his eyes. Sirius wasn't like James and Peter, he didn't snore and turn around in his sleep, he was like a dog, he curled up and stayed like that until someone woke him.
He was sleeping oh so peacefully until Remus sneezed. His eyes wide open, gleaming with life, "IT'S CHRISTMAS MORNING REMUS!" He didn't register they had been tucked in by someone, he just blasted up to their room, and sure enough there were a few presents there for each one of them.
Sirius' pile was much bigger than Remus, much of it was due to a big box wrapped in muggle wrapping paper, it had a letter from his cousin Andromeda. He unwrapped it eagerly, like a dog when tempted by food. It was a muggle record player, the letter explained, and a vinyl record for one David Bowie album, Sirius was thrilled, and David Bowie sang for the rest of their morning as they kept opening their gifts.
James' family had sent each of them a set of quills. Remus hadn't known how to react to that, he was greatly appreciative, of course, but he wasn't used to that, he didn't even know James' parents, and he hadn't got anyone anything, he couldn't have had, he didn't even have any money, wizarding or not. Matron had sent him a wrapped pack with three pairs of socks. It was about three socks more than he'd expected, since he thought as soon as he was left at the station, Matron had forgotten about him until summer.
Lily had sent a card, Remus figured, since it was pink and had a little of her scent still on it. He stacked it up on the pile of letters he'd gathered on his nightstand.
"Hey Remus," Sirius said in an uncharacteristic soft voice, "I kind of made you something," he was so hesitant. Like he was calculating his every word.
"Huh?"
"Yeah."
"Oh. I didn't get you anything, I'm so sorry Sirius."
"No! It's not like that. Promise you won't get mad! It's a spell, I made it as best as I could, Alexander Wilde sort of helped with finding the books I guess, but he didn't know it was for you, so I---" This was so different than the Sirius he was used to.
"What is it?" Remus put his hand on Sirius' knee to slow him down.
"Here." He pulled out his wand. "Can you try to read the letter?"
He grabbed Lily's letter, it was nothing but ink splotches for him. A blur of doodles at most.
"Can you make out any of it?" Remus struggled against his own brain in a loosing battle, focusing and un-focusing on the letters, unable to thread them together. Sirius put his wand to Remus forehead, he looked up, something inside him turned at the wand so close to him, some primal need to bite the hand holding the wand off, "Trust me Mr. Lupin." Sirius smiled and that was enough to calm him down, if he trusted anyone to put his wand to his forehead it was either Sirius or James. James had less of a probability to accidentally make him into a balloon, but still, he trusted Sirius' intentions enough. "LectiunculaMagna!"
"Try it again." Sirius was still hesitant. It didn't really feel like anything happened to Remus, but Sirius was hopeful still. And since his head wasn't blown up, yet, he could give it a go.
Dear Remus,
"Shut up Sirius, I can do try without you reading along." Maybe it was the frustration he constantly felt when trying to read that came through his voice, but Sirius had his mouth shut and raised his hands in a symbolic white flag.
I hope you're having the most lovely time at Hogwarts.
"Sirius I swear!" He hadn't opened his mouth. But he started biting his own bottom lip, trying to contain himself.
I've been thinking about what I could do to help you have a more exciting time.
"For fuck's sake!"
Sirius broke down, "IT WORKS!" He realized it as soon as he heard Sirius' voice outside.
"YOU!" Remus stared at him in disbelief.
"ME!" Sirius grinned from ear to ear.
"I'm sorry I couldn't figure out how to do it with another voice though." Sirius said as if he hadn't just given Remus a life-changing gift in the best way possible.
"SIRIUS! I CAN READ!" Remus hugged Sirius as tight as his strength could muster, tears were forming to the side of his eyes, "I CAN READ SIRIUS!"
He let go of his friend, "I'm also sorry for asking Alexander for help, but the hearing voices inside your head is right up his alley, but the howler was what really gave it to me I think," Sirius had something between pride and shyness in his voice.
"I don't care Sirius! You're bloody brilliant! Absolutely bloody brilliant!" Remus kept reading the letter. He couldn't believe he was reading it himself, he kept going back to it. He read everything in his desk pile. Turns out James had been practising flying all break, every day, noon and night. And Peter had gone on holiday with his family to America. Sirius had written to him as well, and those were the best ones, because he actually had Sirius' voice in his head reading it to him, he noticed how elegant his words were written down, and how much Sirius' voice had that faint little french accent when he read the letters, the subject matter was more along the lines of "I hate it here, please Merlin let me go back to Hogwarts", but Remus didn't think anything could bring him down from his cloud now.