It all happened so fast, each spell was so fleeting, each action so forgettable. They had ran into the Ministry with barely a second thought, Sirius had chased after Harry without a single word.
They had been in Grimmuald Place when they got the news, him and Sirius, when they found out You-Know-Who had lured Harry into the Department of Mysteries. Sirius had grabbed Remus' hand and demanded the other to apperate them there without a second thought - twelve years in Azkaban had put him very out of practice - and stupidly Remus had done so.
What if he hadn't? What if he'd told Sirius to take a moment, what if they hadn't run into the fight so quickly, what if they had fought differently?
When Sirius had started to battle Bellatrix, Remus had thought nothing. Sirius could handle himself, and so could Remus. When Sirius had laughed and taunted her, Remus hasn't been worried. When Sirius had ducked and danced around her, Remus may have even smiled.
But the Sirius stopped ducking, and the smile Remus loved so much began to fall.
It was as if everything had slowed down, Sirius falling in a graceful arc as his body tipped backwards, eyes slowly drawing towards Remus, his look full of so much sorrow and so much love.
If there was noise, Remus heard nothing. If Bellatrix's triumphant laugh had filled the air then Remus was none the wiser. All he could hear was the sound of his heart drop, the sound of his feet hitting the floor as he ran across the room. All he could see was Padfoots face, was the way Harry reached him just as his Godfather fell through the veil, the way their hands brushed and Harry tried to go through with him.
And then Remus was pulling Harry back. He was pulling Harry back and suddenly sound came back with him, the sound of Harry's screams, the shouts of desperation as he bellowed Sirius' name, as he fought back with all the strength he had.
"He can't come back, Harry." His words are broken, shattered. "He can't come back, because he's––"
Even then he can't say it. He can't say it even as Harry shouts in his arms. He can't say it as he drags the boy away, eyes fixed on the veil through which Sirius had fallen through, never to return.
Before they had left Grimmuald Place there had been laughter. There had been him and Sirius, Sirius mouth against his lips, smile pressed into his skin. Returning to Grimmuald Place not an hour later, it was not these smiles that followed him back, not those touches of love or echoes of laugher. Instead it was Harry's screams that followed him back, back to the now empty halls of the Black family home. Not that it was empty in the usual sense. No. It was bustling with movement, with voices and bodies but void of the one thing Remus craved the most. Of the person he loved the most.
They wouldn't even have a body to burry.
At least with James and Lilly they had had a body to burry. With Marlene, with the others.
Sirius', like his brothers, would be an empty grave. Would be another funeral. Would be another person who had left Remus behind.
Apperating back to the house, the headquarters was alight with movement, Order members racing around in desperation. The news of Sirius' death had followed him back to London, the knowledge of the slowly crumbling safely of their hideout coming with it.
Who would the ownership of the house fall too now was the question on everyones lips, the thought on each of their minds. They cared not that Sirius had died, only what his death meant.
He had been the last Black heir. That was what they were saying. That meant, by pureblood law, everything went to the next pureblood relative to him.
"Bellatrix is next." Moody pointed out as they all stood in the tapestry room, each face a picture of fear as Remus stood blankly, all feeling draining out of him like blood from a body, pooling on the floor at his feet as his flesh became numb, as his heart shattered in his chest. "Bellatrix will inherit all of it."
Fear rippled through the room, echoing across the walls and yet passing right past Remus and his blank, grieving mind.
It wasn't the first time the worry over the Black inheritance had been voiced. Of course Dumbledoor had brought it up many a time before, as Moody did now, but the first time it had been brought up to Remus was 16 years earlier, presented in the mutterings of a grieving man in a home that would soon no longer welcome him.
Closing his eyes, Remus could remember it clearly. He could remember the way Sirius' body had been splayed over his, could paint the curve of his spine, the colours of his skin. He could remember the way the room around him had smelled, splattered in the scent of the rain that clung to the morning dew outside, brought in by their own wet and weary bodies.
It was after Regulus had died, after the news of his departure that Sirius had realised he was the soul heir to his family. When he had explained it to Remus, he hadn't understood what Sirius had been saying. They both knew his mother would withhold the Black fortune from him as long as she could, and there was no point even thinking about the money in his inheritance held until she withered away.
It was after that that Sirius had been focusing on, that he had looked to.
"If I die," his head had rested on Remus' chest, maybe so he didn't have to look at the other while he said it, or maybe simply because he could, "it will all go to whichever of my oldest cousins is still alive. Beatrix and then Narcissa. God my family would have found a way to make sure it won't go to Andromeda."
Even then Remus hadn't known where it was going, hadn't thought of the words that would come next.
"If I die I want it to go to you instead."
Remus had paused, then laughed, and then responded with confusion and bewilderment and explained that the only way that even that could be ensured was if somehow Remus became part of the Black family, and that could only be done one way and surely Sirius wasn't- I mean, when even James and Lilly hadn't tied the knot yet and they were- well—
Then Sirius had asked him to marry him, and stupidly he'd said yes.
At first Remus convinced himself that they had only done it to ensure the Black fortune went down with Sirius, that the other surely couldn't love him enough to want to marry him, even of their marriage had only been a hastily signed sheet of paper with no one but an officiator to bear witness.
After Lilly and James marriage, Remus had bought both of them rings. They weren't proper wedding rings, that would be to obvious, too dangerous. Instead they were simple bronze bands, one engraved with a star, and the other a moon.
When, a year later, Sirius had been dragged, kicking and screaming off to Azkaban, Remus wished he'd never bought them. He wished he'd never fallen for that stupid man, and twelve years later he would fall for him over again.
He wished he'd never fallen for that stupid man that time again too, because there's nothing like loosing someone you love twice, especially as the second time, you have so many more memories do cling too, and this time Sirius black wasn't coming back.
"The house isn't going to fall to Bellatrix." His voice shook when he spoke, and by the look on the others faces, they had heard it too. Most of those that has been busy pouring over possible places to relocate to relocate to or been hastily packing away belongings stopped. They stopped and waited for him to continue, and Remus once again wished he had never spoke.
"What?" If Remus had been paying more attention, he would have been able to figure out who the voice belonged too. Instead the words blurred together in his mind, and all speech became one.
"The house isn't going to fall to Bellatrix." He repeated, the sentence being the only thing he trusted to say at that point in time.
"How are you so sure?" Another unidentifiable voice, more words he wished not to speak.
"I-" like everything else, he found himself unable to form the words that needed to be said, to carve the confession that rested in the back of his throat.
This time, as Remus was looking up at the others, he could tell it was Moody's voice that spoke. He could tell it was the Auror's words that accused him, even as his eyes moved away from the people in the room and towards the tapestry Sirius had hated so much. It was magicked in a way that it would weave in the newborn Blacks as they came and went, his own name joining Sirius' before they were burnt away by the hatred of a family that had never deserved either of them.
They could only imagine the anger on Walburga's face when Remus had appeared on the tapestry, names bound by marriage, another way Sirius scorned the Black name.
"The Black estate and fortune by law go to the next surviving male heir of the name Black. Seeming Sirius was the last, it will pass to the oldest of his relatives, that being the Lestrange woman." Moody reasoned, magic eye flickering around the room.
"It goes to the next heir," Remus took a breath of air, "or, if applicable, the spouse of the recently deceased Black."
It was as if the rest of the room took his next breath with him, all eyes held on Remus.
"As with the rest of his money and estates, I have inherited Grimmauld Place, and of course am enthusiastic to have it stay as the hideout for the Order. As well as that, the fact the Black fortune is no longer being withheld from a fugitive and instead lays in my hands instead, means it is now available to our use. I am more than willing to put forth most of said fortune towards funding the fight against You-Know-Who. Anyway I can help."
There was a moment of silence at first, a minute in which no one knew what to say, what to do, how to respond. Moody, words vastly ignored by the others, demanded how they could trust his word on this, what this change of ownership would mean for the order. The rest of them sat, silent, staring, until Tonks spoke up, words quiet, broken. "You were married?"
Remus nodded feebly. "Yes."
"How long?"
"We got married just before James and Lilly did." His words trembled. It was just him left. Him and Peter. The Werewolf and the murder once more. "We didn't tell anyone though. Thought it would be safer."
"So Lilly and—"
"No." He replied grimly. "They never knew."
"And you? Were you-?"
"No we weren't— we didn't... Sirius proposed the marriage for this purpose." The words caught in this throat, lies wrapping a noose around his neck. "He wanted to ensure nothing would fall to his cousins, and that everything would be secure if an occasion like this came foreword. That was all." In saying it, he hoped the words would distance himself from everything, that if he said it, for if even a moment he wouldn't have to stand here as the widow of a man he'd never truly had the chance to love. Instead he could push his grieving aside and pretend he was a friend, he could let the sadness fester like he had with James and Lilly, let himself focus on the importance of now before he crawled into the holes of the past.
For a moment he needed to pretend he was not the husband of Sirius Black, as to them he was not.
He needed time to grieve the man he loved, but now was not that time.
He got pitied looks enough for being a werewolf. He didn't need it for this too. He didn't need pity for being the man with the dead friend. With the dead husband. With the friend who turned to the dark lord and betrayed them all.
He got enough pity from himself. Pity for being a man who couldn't stop loving someone he thought had murdered everyone he was close to. Pity for clinging to the memory of Sirius during his time at Azkaban. Pity for falling for him even harder when he got out. Pity for loosing him, for mourning him all over again.
"And how can we trust you word on this?" Another voice he couldn't distinguish. "How do we know your not lying? That you're not saying this to try keep us here until Bellatrix and other Death Eaters can arrive and round us up?"
Remus nodded over to the tapestry. It was like everything around him was muted. Colours were fading away and the words that surrounded him fell dimly on his unhearing ears. "I've been struck out same as Sirius. You can see the bond of marriage. Walburga hated that Sirius made non-pure blood friends, let alone the fact he married a half-blood Werewolf. If not you can call Kreacher down, he has to listen to my orders now which should be proof enough."
"Maybe tomorrow." A tired voice decided (maybe Mrs Weasley?), people in the room following their example and placing down whatever they had been hurriedly packing away. "For now I think we all need rest. Sleep."
Sleep. Maybe that was what he needed. Maybe with sleep, Remus could open his eyes and it would all be a dream. Maybe it would all be a nightmare, a nightmare in which soon he would wake up from in Sirius' arms. He would wake up and he would be able to press himself against the body of the man he so desperately loved.
Closing his eyes, Remus was met with an empty bedroom, a dead husband, and a nightmare that one was forever unable to wake up from.
————
Tonks was the first to properly approach him on the topic, to find him, head thrown back against the wall up in the attic with Buckbeak and fire whiskey in hand.
She had sat down behind him, took a swig from the glass, and cried. She told him Sirius had been close to her mother, Andromeda - Sirius' cousin. She said that her mother always felt guilty that she had abandoned Sirius to his family, had taken the escape offered her at Hogwarts and left her cousin to face the wrath of the Black family on his own.
She said he had been one of the only one of that lot that had ever been worth a damn. She said he was the only one who had tried to fight back against the family he had been born into, and she would forever blame herself that in the end, it had been that family he so proudly rejected that had killed him, that in truth he had never really been able to escape it.
Remus smiled, laughed, and agreed.
When an hour and another bottle of whiskey later she asked him if he had loved him - if he had loved Sirius Black - he told her he had done so with his whole heart, and she smiled sadly at him as everyone seemed to do nowadays.
It was better she told the others than him, or better off if no one was told after all. What did it truly matter that he had loved Sirius Black? Who would remember their tragedy of a love? They wouldn't go down like Lilly and James, their love wouldn't be framed in the history books he so desperately clung to.
In the end, Sirius Black, to all but those stood currently in the house he hated so much, would forever view him as a traitor, a murderer. And himself? Remus Lupin would only ever be remembered as the Werewolf. That is it. He would not be remembered, like the others, as someone who had lost so much, someone who had given their all for the Order, for that was not a fate he was destined.
He would not be remembered as the man who loved Sirius Black, the man who lost everything. Instead he would be another forgotten name, drifting endlessly with nothing to keep it afloat yet not able to sink it either.
In the end his fight, like so many others, would mean nothing. Even if they won, who would know? Lilly wouldn't, nor James. They wouldn't even know their son had said his first words, let alone survived the war. Dorcas wouldn't, neither would Marlene or Regulus or Evan or Mary. And Sirius? Sirius had died with the knowledge they were outnumbered, overwhelmed, that they were about to face Voldemort with no way to fight back.
Everyone that mattered was dead, and here Remus was, the last one left, yet the one the least deserving of so.
They had deserved to live so long and yet he, a Werewolf with a life expectancy under 45, growing weaker with each moon, was left beside gravestones, with bodies that were never recovered, with the knowledge they had all failed so many.
Sometimes, there was nothing in this world he wouldn't do to join them.
————
The first time Remus sees Harry after Sirius' death isn't for a month or so, and even then the Professor found himself trying to avoid the child, to prolong the time till he would have to talk to him, to share the grief of the life they both had lost. You see, it was easy to pretend to everyone else. Many of them barely knew Sirius, so Remus could blend in is sorrows with theirs, gauge the way he pretends to move on through how they did.
For Harry it would be different. It would be different because Sirius had been Harry's godfather, and they had both loved him. Only everyone knew Harry had loved Sirius, had known how much he looked up to him, how much he looked forward to having a future where Sirius, as his godfather, could be a part of it. Few knew of the future Remus had hoped for himself, and few ever would.
The Order had decided to stay with their headquarters at Grimmauld Place, so that was where Remus had ended up spending most of his days, meaning it wasn't until Harry had been moved into the Burrow and Remus had been invited over for the boy's birthday that he saw him again. There of course were meetings and missions to go on, things that had pulled him away from the house Sirius hated so much and back into the world as he had been now, but even then everything seemed muffled, distant.
You'd think, having lost Sirius once before, Remus would have found it easier a second time around. You'd think the pain would hurt less, the ache would fade faster. It seemed he was wrong about a lot of things.
Harry at least seemed to be coping slightly better than Remus, but he still had that look on his face, the sort of look that bled it's way into his smile as the distraction of laughter faded away, and one was left with their own mind once more. He had that look that showed that, like Remus, each empty chair reminded him of the person who should be sat there, each stray dog made air clog in his throat, each head of shoulder length black hair made him look twice.
Remus was so used to being the last one left to grieve, he forgot that he wasn't the only one drowning in sorrow, the only one to which the lights faded as he was woven away by the constricting bars of his own mind, the only one who had loved Sirius Black.
He was so used to being the only one left, that he had become selfish. And maybe it had helped him survive, but it wouldn't help Harry, and maybe simply surviving wouldn't help him either.
"I miss him." They were the first words Harry spoke to him when they met again, the first words spoken, looking over the fields around the burrow from an open window, wishing for someone that would never again be theirs.
"I-" words caught in his throat, pointed a knife against his heart. "I miss him too." The words were safe, simple, they lined him up with the sorrow everyone else felt without setting him apart from the rest, and yet at the same time, they were too simple. For how can you convey such loss in such a simple phrase?
"He shouldn't have died."
"None of them should have."
"We were going to be happy—" Harry's voice cracked. "He said I could live with him. He promised me everything would be okay."
He promised me that too, Remus thought, to scared to say the words out loud.
Sirius had made him a lot of promises. He promised that Remus could trust him back at school, and had broken that. He promised Remus he would never leave him, and spent the next twelve years in Azkaban. He promised Remus they would win the war, and when they did they wouldn't have to hide anymore. He promised they would live together, him, Harry and Remus. He promised they could be a family, promised Remus would be 'Uncle Moony' not 'Professor Lupin', promised he would not have to be another funeral Remus would have to attend alone, promised he wouldn't abandon Remus like everyone else had.
Not again.
He promised Remus he would live. For him.
In the end, it seemed Sirius had never been that good at keeping promises.
Standing next to Harry, Remus said none of this, and instead he looked to the sky, searching the night until he found the brightest star in the sky. He found the star and showed it to Harry, and told him it meant that Sirius would always be watching over them, because while he wasn't here, it was because he was in the sky watching over them instead.
It had been his one comfort in the first war, his comfort when he was off doing errands for Dumbledoor, whenever he wasn't laying in Sirius' arms. He had comfort that Sirius, the brightest star in the sky would be watching over him. The idea felt silly now, inconsequential, for what was a silly star in the night sky when the world around them was crumbling.
He still clung to it though. Like a lifeline he would cling to it until he could cling no more because if he didn't, if he let go, he would realise that he was alone again. That yet again he was the only one left.
"He had a house sorted you know." Harry looked up to the other as he spoke. "It was going to be his gift for you. For your sixteenth. A house for you two-" Remus chose his words carefully, removing whatever trace of him had been laid down by Sirius- "so that you could move there with him instead of spending summer here at the burrow."
The house of course, along with everything else, belonged to Remus now. The house with the small muggle kitchen and it's modest two bedrooms. A bedroom for Harry and a bedroom for them.
Remus had visited once. He'd taken one look at the pictures on the walls, the echoes of the man he loved so dearly, and had never returned.
"He was uh, he was never able to make a will, that with him being a fugitive and all, so everything ended up going to me." Remus distracted himself by picking at the skin around his fingernails, all too aware of the way Harry was staring at him to ever dare looking up. "He was- he talked to me about how he wanted a lot of it to go to you. Said it was the least he could give you for not being there when you needed him."
"Professor Lupin I can't-"
"This is his decision not mine." Remus cut in, desperation seeping into his voice. "I am not about to deprive you of a dead mans fortune, just because by technicality it all went to me. Think of it as an extra birthday present." He added hastily, seeking for any excuse that would be accepted by the child. His own presents for the boy consisted of an interesting book on the Dark Arts, and an old Muggle tale that had been one of Sirius' favourites.
He'd been rather preoccupied to properly look for something, and had just been happy they had been accepted.
At the mention of gifts, the words seemed to spark a sort of realisation in Harry's mind as he suddenly dug into his pockets with haste, puling out an object wrapped in cloth which he stared at for a moment, frozen, before slowly offering it to Remus.
Cataloging his Professors confusion, Harry offered a quick explanation before pushing it on the other more hastily, refusing look him in the eye. "Sirius gave it to me. For you."
Warily, Remus took the object into his hands. "When?" His mouth suddenly felt dry, hands clammy with sweat.
"When he died." Harry responded mournfully. "As he fell through the veil. He told me to give it to you. I just forgot and then..." he trailed off. "I wrapped it up to keep it safe."
Whatever it was, it was light, the weight barely perceivable through Remus' racing thoughts. It was only when he reached to pull back the cloth, did he realise his hands were shaking. There, sat in his palm was a ring. A small bronze ring, with a crescent moon on the front, and five words engraved within:
'I carry your heart, Moony'
The words were stupid, silly, and Sirius had laughed when Remus had presented it to him, the ring around his own finger carrying the same words, yet with Padfoots name instead of his own and an engraving of the very star he was named after.
It had come from some poem, something Sirius had, years earlier thought clever and witty. He himself had never had much care for literature. That had been Remus' thing, which was exactly why, drunk and stumbling into the door room on the valentines of their fifth year, Sirius had used the dumb poem to profess his love to Remus.
'I carry your heart with me' he had said, 'I am never without it, whatever is done by me is only your doing my darling'.
Remus, who had been fully sober, and an equal amount confused had laughed as Sirius had only stumbled further, had professed that Remus was his fate, that he wanted 'no world, for beautiful you are my world' and that he was 'whatever a moon has always meant, and whatever a sun will always sing'.
After that he'd climbed his way onto Remus' bed, half straddling him as he had whispered in his ear, offered to tell him 'the deepest secret nobody knows'. He told Remus 'the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide; and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart'.
None of it made any sense. He made no sense. Drunken ramblings filled with blushed cheeks and flushed skin yet he repeated it again, he stared in Remus' eyes, ran his hand through a lock of his hair and told him he would carry his heart.
"I carry your heart Moony, I carry it in my heart." Sirius had mumbled, words soft against Remus' skin and dangerous to his thumping heart. Then he had leaned down and kissed him, and everything started to make a bit more sense.
By the time morning came Sirius had been mortified. Apparently it had been a poem he'd found my some 'E.E Cummings' bloke, chosen partly because the man had a hilarious last name, and partly because Sirius knew Remus loved literature, so wanted to show his love to him through that too.
When Sirius had, years later, seen the words engraved on the bronze bands he had thrown back his head and laughed, and said he'd never loved Remus more.
It seemed so silly now, sat in the palm of Remus' hand. So silly that such words had brought so much joy, had housed so much love.
"It's you isn't it." Remus barely heard Harry's words over the beating of his own heart. "You're Moony."
"Yes."
"What is it?"
His voice was hollow as he spoke, laced with shock, loss. "It's his wedding ring."
Whatever words Harry had prepared in response seemed to die in his throat, seemed to shrivel up and fade away. There was a sense of betrayal in his eyes, a sense that showed Remus he was hurt, hurt they had never told him, hurt by the prospect they might not have trusted him.
"You loved him too." Harry's words shook.
Closing his eyes, Remus found himself tired of lying. "I loved him more then I could ever express." The words were like a blessing, a breath of fresh air, the loosening of the noose that was still too tight around his neck. "I never knew if he told you about... he was your Godfather. I thought it should be his secret to hell."
"I think he tried. Once." Harry's eyes were glued to the ring in Remus' hand. "When he showed me his family tapestry. His face was burnt out, and there was a name next to it that had been burnt out too. I think- I think if I'd asked about it he would have told me. I never asked."
"We kept it secret for a reason." Remus hummed. "We never even got the chance to tell your parents." He smiled at a memory, turning to Harry slightly. "Thats not to say they didn't know of course. Sharing a dorm with us at Hogwarts, its fair to say your father had the displeasure of walking in on us more than once."
"You were together that long?"
"Mmmh. Even with him in Azkaban, I don't think I ever stopped loving him." The weight behind the words was left unsaid, the meaning hidden under the what the words really said. Remus Lupin would never be able to stop loving Sirius Black. Not at school, not in Azkaban and not in death either.
Remus would love him until the end, and consequencially that was what happened. Remus would love him through Dumbledoors death - something they would have discreetly celebrated together - through the trials that came by Voldemort's returns and the challenges recruiting for the fight that would unearth.
Remus would still love Sirius as he stepped onto the battlefield at Hogwarts, as he brandished his wand and charged into the fight. Remus would love Sirius even as he laughed on the battlefield, even as he ducked beneath spells, or when he was too late to duck beneath them too.
He would love Sirius Black even as the smile he had loved so much began to fall, as his body, tipped in a graceful arc fell backwards, and eyes full of so much sorrow and so much love failed to open once more.
If there was noise, Remus heard nothing. If the sounds of battle had filled the air then Remus was none the wiser. All he could hear was the sound of his heart drop, the sound of his body hitting the floor as he his eyes racked across the room. All he could see was Padfoots face, a hand welcoming him home. For, in the end, it did it matter how he would be remembered, how people would think of him or what they would say. Closing his eyes and embracing the cold around him, all that mattered was that he would be with those he had been held away from for so long. To that thought, Remus Lupin-Black died with a smile, and fell in love with Sirius once more.