Remus
Remus spends nearly a week angry at his Ma. When Sirius had shown up the day after Halloween, asking Ma hesitantly if she’d help him buy that house down the lane, Remus had barely kept it together; he’d gone with, of course, the fury simmering under his bones as Hope Lupin contacted her friend who introduced them to the broker, who took them on a tour of the house and answered their questions and Remus was pleasant, he was, but he can barely remember anything about that day, too occupied with reining in his emotions. As soon as Sirius had left, smiling in a way Remus hadn’t seen him smile since Harry was born, Remus couldn’t hold it in anymore.
He hadn’t yelled, he remembers that much. He had been too angry by then to raise his voice. But he’d told his Ma off, and snapped at her, and was cold, and then spent the next week ignoring her and making it very, very clear what he thought about her encouraging—hell, inviting—his ex-whatever-they-were to come live a twenty-minute walk from them.
“You don’t know what it’s like, having to see him,” Remus had said, voice cracking, “how much it hurts.”
He wakes up the day after the full, aching all over but with a pain potion on his bedside table. Listening to his Ma make him tea, Remus remembers her voice, the way she’d explained that Sirius needed support, that Harry needed family, and she—as a tribute to the little girl she had gotten close to, the girl who was Remus’ best friend, his platonic soulmate—had agreed to help raise Harry, and she would do it with or without Remus. He lies there, contemplating the effort and movement it would take to grab and down the pain potion, knowing that Sirius was the one that brewed it and left it for him, knowing that Sirius is not in the house and did not spend the moon with him but probably would have if only Remus had had the courage—or selfishness—to ask. He tries to cling to that sense of betrayal he has felt for the past week, that lost and empty feeling he had watching Sirius be excited about living in a home with Harry, of being a family with Harry, and then Remus has to admit to himself that he’s being petty.
“Harry is more important, I know,” Remus tells his Ma when he finally gets his courage about him to apologise a full day later, “I shouldn’t have made it all about me.”
“I wouldn’t have told Sirius to live in this town if I didn’t think it were perfect for him,” Ma replies carefully, “but I will admit I did move a bit behind your back, and that Harry was not the only reason I did so. You have a right to be angry with me; I don’t know everything that went on between you and Sirius, but I still hoped to keep you in each other’s lives, without asking if that were something you’d even want.”
“I don’t know if it’s something I want,” Remus admits, and the confession burns. “I don’t know if I can forgive him, if I can forgive myself… There are things I want but don’t think I can have.”
“Maybe it’s worth trying.” His Ma places a hand on his cheek, smiling sadly at him. “It might be scary, but maybe the opportunity is worth being brave for.”
Remus chuckles wetly at her words, an echo of the assurances she gave him before his first year at Hogwarts, terrified of going to school for the first time, of not making friends, of people finding out his secret. His terror had overcome his excitement the moon before school, and he’d nearly refused to go, but Hope had told him to be brave, and maybe it would be worth it. Remus still thinks that was why he ended up in Gryffindor.
Sirius arrives shortly after, and seems pleasantly surprised at Remus’ greeting, which means Remus has not been as successful in hiding his feelings this past week as he thought he might have been. They go again to the house, which Sirius is officially the owner of. Now that he isn’t busy trying to be angry while pretending to be civil, Remus can see a quaint sort of beauty to the place, can understand a bit of why Sirius might like it.
“Well, there’s a bit of work still to be done,” he says lightly, looking around at the unkept grass and the breaking fence.
“Nothing a bit of magic can’t hasten,” Sirius replies jovially.
“Absolutely not, especially not the outside,” Hope says sharply, “we’re a bit ways out, but it’s only a ten minute walk to the nearest neighbour. Can’t work too fast.”
Remus grins at Sirius. “Guess you’ll have to learn how to mow a lawn.”
In the end, Hope agrees that they can probably use magic to fix up the inside, at the very least, and Remus spends the next few weeks helping Sirius with his interior decorating, a task that warrants much patience and stamina, as Sirius’ tastes and styles change every hour, and he sounds just as excited about each and every idea. Thankfully, Sirius’ transfiguration skills are nothing to scoff at, even after five years in Azkaban, and he is able to conduct most of the colour changes as soon as he thinks of them. Remus even finds himself getting into it a bit when they get to Harry’s room, caught up in finding the perfect bed and the perfect wallpaper, the perfect curtains and decorations.
Sirius is happy and excited in a way Remus knows is rare, running around like an eager puppy, his mind moving fast in the way it only ever did when they were planning pranks. He hires some local men to help cut the grass (the novelty wore off quite fast for the lawn mower) and weed the garden before it gets too cold to do so, chattering away with them and making friends. His energy is intoxicating, and Remus drinks it in, leaning against the porch watching him work and sweat and smile. When Sirius is like this, Remus can almost let himself forget the broken trust between them, forget their history. He can almost imagine that they are moving into a house together, settling down as a couple in a new town, happy and in love.
But sometimes Sirius will look at him, and Remus is reminded of the way those grey eyes turned cold as steel, as silver, is reminded of the ways Sirius can and has and still may hurt him. This house, he reminds himself, is for Harry and Sirius, not for me.
Still, Remus comes every few days to help Sirius with the house, because of Harry. He pushes aside his hurt deep, deep down. And he smiles and forgets and pretends as much as he can, letting Sirius’ energy feed into his own.
It’s because of all this that he doesn’t notice the way Sirius clings to him in the evening, makes excuses and asks for help and finds new things for them to work on even though they’ve been working on the house all day, and it’s time to separate and go to sleep. He doesn’t notice how Sirius has been coming to the house earlier and earlier, eager to start working, until he walks through the front door one Saturday morning and everything is an aggressive red and gold, from the floors to the ceilings.
“Padfoot?” Remus calls, concerned.
Padfoot comes skittering down the steps, paws far too large for the stairs, and it’s only a hasty transformation back into a human that keeps Sirius from colliding into Remus. “Moony, you’re finally here!”
“Er, yes. It’s… nine o’clock.”
Sirius waves his arm dismissively. “I’ve been here since yesterday. Didn’t think it made any sense to go back to the flat—do you like the changes I made?”
“The… Red and gold?”
“Gryffindor colours!” Sirius grins, but there’s something strained at the edges of his smile, something Remus now realises he’s seen, in the mornings and evenings.
“Oh, Sirius,” the sigh escapes him as the realisation hits, followed quickly by the guilt. I thought you were doing well, how could I have missed this? He thinks, but thankfully doesn’t say. Estee had thrown a fit when he’d said something similar, when she’d… Remus pushes the thought away.
“You… don’t like it?” The light is dimming from Sirius’ eyes.
“Well, it is a bit… much,” Remus says, looking around. “Perhaps the ceiling doesn’t have to be red?”
“But then it’ll be white, and white is boring.”
“All the red is a bit like blood,” Remus points out, and Sirius flinches.
“Right, right, not that.” Sirius raises his wand and waves, moving from room to room and changing the reds to whites and pinks.
“I thought we were settled on the colour schemes for all the rooms, Padfoot.”
“Well, yes, but then I was in the sitting room and I didn’t like the sage, and I thought it might be nice to have it look like the Gryffindor common room, and then thought maybe the whole place could be a Gryffindor tribute.”
“You liked the sage green. I thought it’d go well with the flowers you’ll be planting outside the window.”
“It did! Does.” Sirius shrugs a bit uncomfortably; Remus watches carefully. “I think I just… didn’t like what it looks like in the dark, y’know.”
“You’re having nightmares, aren’t you.” Remus states it like a fact, but Sirius’ face drops as he nods yes hesitantly, miserably. “You don’t like being alone, do you? That’s why you’re always asking me to stay.”
“It’s not so bad, during the day,” Sirius admits, “and when we’re working on the house I feel… happy, and like I belong, and I really do love it here. And when the guys come over to work on the yard or I go into town I feel fine. Great, even. But then…” Sirius sinks into a (newly cream-coloured) armchair with a sigh. “I’ve been staying here for the past few days. I can’t go back to the flat. Too many bad memories, and it feels more like home here. But even then… When you’re gone…”
Remus sighs. “Have you spoken to your healer about it?”
“What?” Sirius looks at Remus in confusion. “Who?”
“Your healer, the one who was helping you at St. Mungo’s.” Remus shifts uncomfortably. Sirius gets a bit weird when they talk about his post-Azkaban hospital stay, and Remus is still not sure if it’s because he never visited him, or because Sirius would rather forget those days. It’s probably both, he thinks, and tries not to bring it up.
“Oh, well I mean no. I’m not there anymore.”
“No, but… He might have some insights, I guess, a few things you can try.”
“I’m thinking of brewing a few potions, those might help. And the house does help, it was much worse before that.”
“Yeah, I could tell. This place has been good for you, Pads, and I’m glad that you have it.”
Sirius gives Remus a strained smile. “Even if I keep changing the decor?”
“If changing the decor makes you happy, you can keep changing it.” It’s not my place, anyway, Remus doesn’t add. Sirius had been muted the first time he’d asked for Remus’ opinion and was told, “whatever you like, Padfoot, it’s your place, not mine.” Remus will breach the topic of leaving when it’s time to leave—when they’ve found Harry.
“I think I liked how it was before, actually.” Sirius grins sheepishly at Remus. “Help me change it back?”
Remus sighs, but smiles fondly back at Sirius. They don’t mention nightmares or healers that day, but the next day Remus brings an overnight bag and they transfigure the desk in the study into a temporary bed for him.
The first night, Remus lies in bed, hearing the clicking sound of a dog pacing above him, and when he wakes in the morning Sirius is already in the kitchen, tea ready and breakfast on the stove. This continues for a week, each day Remus testing the waters by saying he needs to go home, or go to work, and each time Sirius asks him when he’ll be back, that desperate look in his eyes. So Remus comes back, day after day, pretending he isn't scared that one day he'll return and it will be Sirius gone, not him, and day after day Sirius is there, pretending that everything is okay now that Remus has come home.
It’s destructive, and wrong, Remus knows. He doesn’t even know how much he helps Sirius during the nights, but he can’t seem to leave, can’t deny him when he knows now that Sirius is relying on him, leaning on him. Maybe it’s the guilt from not visiting at St. Mungo’s, maybe it’s Remus’ own loneliness making him reach out to his only real friend, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s been in love with Sirius for longer than he’s known was love was, and has never truly been able to deny Sirius, even when they were children.
I’m going to ruin you, Remus thinks one night, listening to Sirius sob upstairs. You’re hurting and I’m too broken and wrong to help fix you. I can't even fix myself, much less anyone else.
I need to leave, Remus reminds himself after a breakfast filled with too-bright eyes and too-wide smiles. Before I destroy this house and everyone in it.
Hope doesn’t comment on the fact that Remus is rarely home, now, only asks how Sirius is or visits the house herself to see the progress and invite them over for dinner. Remus half wishes she’d ask, just so he can talk to her about it, just so he can ask her what he should do, if he’s doing the right thing, how he can help Sirius. The other half is grateful she keeps silent, because he doesn’t know what he’d say if she asked him what he's doing, what they are doing. He doesn’t know what he’d do if she told him to talk to Sirius, really talk to him, because he knows he should but doesn’t know how, can’t get his body to move when he hears Sirius awake in the bedroom above his or clattering about in the kitchen at odd hours of the morning when both of them should be asleep.
Instead, about a week after Remus decides to semi-move in with Sirius, Remus hears Sirius scream himself awake (“James! No, no, James—“) and something inside him breaks. He should go up there and comfort his friend, he knows, remind him that there are still people who care about him—that Harry is still out there—but instead, he changes and slips out the door as quietly as he can, the sound of James’ name echoing in his ears. When he’s far enough into the woods behind the property, Remus apparates to one of the wizarding clubs he used to frequent before France. He’s barely dressed for the scene, but some quick transfiguration and glamours fix that, and before long the bouncer is letting him in and Remus is losing himself in drinks and a man is pressing against him on the dance floor, then in the bathroom, then offering him something to take before he takes Remus home.
Remus is still high and maybe a little drunk when he slips back into the house, too out of it to overthink why he decided to come back to Sirius’ instead of his mother’s home.
All the lights in the kitchen and sitting room are on, despite the early hour and the barely-lightening sky, but Remus doesn’t pay it much heed, stumbling through to find his room and the bed they keep saying is temporary.
“Oh, decided to come back, did you?” The voice makes Remus jump, whirling to where Sirius is sitting, arms resting on his knees as he peers up at him.
“Er…” Remus blinks, unsure how to respond. Sirius, despite the lights, is a little fuzzy still.
“Where have you been?” Sirius sounds like a wounded lover, and Remus scoffs.
“You’re not my keeper; why do you care?”
“You’re the one staying at my house—“ Sirius rises to his feet in his anger, but Remus is taller than Sirius, has been for years, and he only rolls his eyes.
“Only because you begged me to, because you can’t stand to be alone in your own fucking house—“
“Well you should just leave then, if you don’t like it here!”
“I tried! I keep trying! I—Merlin, every day I tell myself I’m going to leave—“
“Oh, fuck you! I’m not some charity case—“
“—and I’m going to ruin everything, and I couldn’t stay here, listening to you cry—“
“You bastard, you’re an absolute wanker—“
“Just let me go, will you—“
“I never forced you to stay! If you want to leave then leave.” There are tears in Sirius’ eyes. “Why did you even come back?” His voice breaks at the last word. “Where did you go?” He whispers.
“I—“ Remus suddenly feels too high for this; he closes his eyes, but that only serves to make him sway. “I just—needed a breather.”
“A breather,” Sirius echoes.
“I needed… to get out for a while.” Remus tugs self-consciously around his clothes, still in their transfigured forms. He wishes he were sober enough to transfigure his jumper back; wishes for the comfort of knits, even though he thinks he might overheat in them with the alcohol in his system and the heat Sirius keeps on in the house on top of the warming charms.
“Are you… drunk?” There’s a specific sort of hurt in Sirius’ voice, and he swipes his arm angrily across his eyes.
“Erm… Yes. I think.” Remus squints. “Mostly high, I think.”
Sirius scoffs. “Could’ve invited me, at least,” he mutters bitterly. “Who knows, maybe I need to get out for a while, too.”
“No,” is Remus’ immediate response. Sirius scowls, but Remus keeps going, “you don’t need this. You… you need something else. Something… something better. Better than me.” There’s a weight, suddenly, on Remus’ heart. “I’m too broken, Sirius. I’m too wrong to help you. I can’t…”
“You think I’m not broken too?” Sirius asks, harshly, swinging his arm out widely. “I—I have had the shittiest night, Remus, and I came down and you—you were just gone, no note, nothing, and I didn’t know when you’d be back, or if you’d be back, and then turns out you’d just gone to have some fun without me, because I’m too much for you, because you don’t know how to help me—maybe I don’t need you to help me, have you ever thought of that? Maybe I just need you here.”
“If that was all you needed then you’d be better!” The words burst out of Remus, a rare moment of him raising his voice, and it’s shocking enough that he falls quiet from it.
“Remus…” Sirius is openly crying, now.
“Oh, shit, please don’t cry,” Remus manages, reaching his arms out uselessly. “I don’t want you to cry.”
“Well you’re doing a shit job if you don’t want me crying.” Sirius collapses back onto the sofa, dropping as if cut from strings. “Remus… Moony… You’re right. I’m not better. You… You being here helps, a bit, but… sometimes it hurts more than it helps.” He’d known this, of course, but Remus winces at the admission anyway. “But it hurts more when you’re gone.”
“It hurts to be here and know I’m hurting you. Or that you’re hurting but I can’t help. I—“ Remus presses his hands to into his eyes, as if it will bring sobriety to him sooner. “We should talk about this,” he manages, “in the morning.”
“It is the morning.” Sirius sniffs.
“When I’m sober, then,” Remus amends, “because I—I have… things I want to say, logical things, sensible things, and I can’t… I don’t know how to say them. And if I say them now I’m going to say them all wrong.” He pauses. “And I think I might throw up soon.”
Sirius scoffs, but then sighs. “Fine. Go to bed. But I’m not taking care of you if you get sick.”
Remus nods, then regrets the motion. Now that they aren’t fighting, or yelling at each other, he feels tiredness pressing down on him, and his thoughts are hard to grasp. He wanders into his room, but then pauses. He blinks, trying to understand where his bed has gone, and behind him hears Sirius snort in derision.
“Right, I transfigured your bed back into a desk. Didn’t think you’d be back, see.”
Looking around, Remus spots his things unceremoniously spilling out of a garbage bag. “Um.”
“Just go upstairs, Remus.” Sirius sounds incredibly weary. “Go, sleep it off, don’t be sick anywhere outside of my toilet.”
Remus turns to obey, heading up the stairs—thankfully, he’s much more sober than he had been sneaking out of that man’s flat, where he’d nearly brained himself on the outside banister before deciding to fuck it all and apparate from there instead of a socially-appropriate alleyway. He’s asleep in Sirius’ bed, nose buried in his pillow, before it occurs to him blearily that there are two upstairs bedrooms.
Remus wakes to a pounding headache and the sun shining directly into his eyes. He groans and buries his face into his pillow, then immediately sits up in shock. The pillow smells like Sirius, and through the pang of longing and nostalgia it brings, he remembers, with sickening clarity, their fight last night.
He isn’t ready to talk—he doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready to talk—but the alternative is to sit in this room, in Sirius’ bed, until the man himself comes to kick him out and force him into the conversation anyway, so Remus doesn’t feel like he has much choice. He groans again, scrubbing his hand over his face. The thought comes, unbidden, that things would be much easier—for everyone, and maybe for himself—if he had joined Estee—but no. Remus pushes the thought out. No, he tells himself, because who would have found out about Harry, then? Who would have gotten Sirius’ flat ready for him and found him a house?
Who would have hurt Sirius as much as you did last night? The beast asks in return. He would be better if you weren’t there to fuck things up. You only ever ruin things.
Remus scowls at the pillow that prevents him from flopping back into bed and going to sleep. His fingers itch for a cigarette and his head pounds. He wonders if Sirius would let him drink through their conversation; he thinks he’ll need it.
On the bedside, Remus sees a potion sitting innocuously beside his wand. It’s the only one of a few bottles with its cap still on, and a quick sniff tells him it's a hangover potion—Sirius must have left it there for him, because typically the hangover potions are left in the kitchen cupboard; Sirius likes to take them with breakfast. (There had only been a few nights where they had overindulged in alcohol together; typically on nights Sirius felt he couldn’t sleep, or nights he wanted to ask about memories he might be missing. Sirius’ alcohol tolerance is shot after the years in prison, so he doesn't partake quite as much or as often anymore, but Remus has long since mastered the art of numbing pain through drink, and had no trouble demonstrating it to Sirius when they did get the bottles out.)
Remus’ stomach lurches a bit at the thought of Sirius coming into his room and seeing Remus there, passed out in his bed, when there is a perfectly empty and unused bed just across the hall; and it rolls at the thought of Sirius bringing the potion up, either as a gesture of goodwill or a sign that he wants Remus out and lucid as soon as possible. Remus is inclined to think it the latter, and he downs the potion before he can dwell on it long enough to be sick.
Unfortunately, the clearing headache soon tells Remus it’s time to face the music. He stalls as long as possible, splashing his face with water in the bathroom and avoiding eye contact with his reflection in the mirror (thankfully, Sirius has not gotten around to enchanting his mirror, so Remus is saved any snide remarks from inanimate objects). Finally, though, he becomes anxious Sirius might come up and find him snooping around in his bathroom after sleeping in his bed, and decides to head downstairs before that can happen.
Sirius—or, well, Padfoot—is on the sofa sleeping, but his ears prick up when Remus’ feet hit the last stair, and he opens his eyes to look at him. For a second they stay there, dog and man, staring at each other. Padfoot’s eyes, although doglike, retain Sirius’ color and a spark of cunning that cannot be found in an ordinary dog. He sees through Remus with doleful eyes, pleading, accusatory. Remus cannot look away. He feels caught, somehow, more so than he had when entering the house earlier this morning; somehow, Sirius’ bed feels the most taboo of the three he’d been in last night.
Finally, Padfoot looks away with a slight huff and transforms back into Sirius, who arranges himself in that haughty, aristocratic sprawl Remus remembers from their Hogwarts days. His face is a mask of indifference, but his eyes betray his hurt, and he watches Remus as he sits carefully in the armchair closest to the door.
“Well,” Sirius says when Remus is situated, “sober enough to talk, now?”
Remus winces, but Sirius doesn’t react, so he nods. “Thank you for the potion,” he murmurs.
Sirius scoffs, “yeah, well, I couldn’t bloody well have you sick in my bed, could I?”
Remus presses his eyes shut. He wishes he were still hungover, or high, or anything to explain the way the ground feels unstable beneath his feet. “I’m sorry,” he says to his knees.
“You’re sorry.”
“Yes. I shouldn’t have… Yesterday was…” Remus takes a deep breath. “I should not have gone out, yesterday night. Not like that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. Not without telling me, at the very least.”
“I didn’t exactly plan it,” Remus shoots back, feeling Sirius’ condescension like a knife in the chest. His hands shake, and he presses them harder into the seat beneath him.
“No? So you just up and decided to leave in the middle of the night, did you? Was that before or after I woke you up with my nightmare?”
Remus flinches and doesn’t answer.
Sirius sighs, deflating. “Look, Remus, you don’t need to do this. You don’t need to be here. I know… you have no obligation to me, and I have my own shite to deal with. My problems… my problems aren’t your problems, I know that.”
Remus shakes his head, because he’s wrong. Sirius’ problems include Harry, and his wrongful imprisonment, and Remus owes it to both of them to do what he can to fix it all. “I… want to help you,” Remus says, and Sirius huffs; probably rolls his eyes, but Remus isn’t looking at him. “I want to help you with the house, and with Harry—“
”Remus—“
“No, I do, you’re—you’re my friend, Sirius, and—“
Sirius scoffs and stands up. “You’re friend?” He spits, “your friend, who you keep at arms length? Who you used to fuck? Your friend who you hate? Who you can’t stand?”
“I don’t hate—“
“Yes you do!” Sirius gestures wildly, eyes wide, “you do! You haven’t forgiven me.” His voice breaks halfway through as he makes eye contact with Remus. The hurt in his eyes keeps Remus from speaking. “You haven’t forgiven me for everything, and—and I don’t expect you to. I was… awful to you, and I’m sorry, and I’ve regretted it ever since, and you have every right to hate me and want nothing to do with me.”
“But that’s the problem, Sirius!” The words burst from Remus’ mouth before he has even fully processed them. “I…” He takes a deep breath to collect his thoughts. “I spent five years hating you with every fibre of my being. You were… everything wrong with the world, the cause for every bad thing in my life, the root of all evil. And sometimes I would turn it all over in my head and wonder how you could have done that to James, and then remembered all you’d done to me, and… and I just hated you.”
Sirius breaks eye contact to look at the ground. He nods brokenly. “Right—“
“But you hadn’t done all those things.” Remus continues, “you hadn’t betrayed James and Lily—but you’d still betrayed me. And I—I had wronged you, and I knew that no matter how much I hated you for what you’d done to me, you had done nothing to deserve Azkaban, and I—I couldn’t even decide how much I did hate you, because all of my hatred had been wrapped up in losing my best friends.” Remus closes his eyes. “When you… when you kicked me out, I didn’t hate you. I was angry, and hurt, and maybe with more time or if we hadn’t been in a war I would have hated you. But I hadn’t. I was just hurt you didn’t trust me, angry you’d let paranoia get in the way of our friendship.” Remus opens his eyes and continues, talking to the floor. “The hatred… that only really appeared after. But when I discovered you hadn’t done all that, I… I didn’t know how to feel. Didn’t know if I still hated you. Didn’t know if I still cared for you.” Remus hears Sirius’ breath hitch, but he refuses to look up at him. “And that… that’s the problem. I don’t know how to feel about you, because you… you broke my heart, Sirius. You took nearly a decade of friendship and… And I feel like I can’t hate you for it because you’ve more than atoned for all your sins. What is the point of not forgiving you when you spent five years in a place worse than hell? What is the point of still dwelling on a fight that occurred when we were young and afraid and prepared to die at any moment? We are all we have left, and I want to be your friend. I want to help you, and I don’t want those ten years of friendship to be broken. But I… I’m afraid we’re both too broken to fix anything, let alone our friendship.”
There is silence, and Remus hears Sirius slowly lower himself back onto the sofa.
“So, what?” Sirius finally murmurs after a few moments. “We just… give up? Part ways? I don’t… I can’t lose you too, Moony.” Sirius wipes his eyes surreptitiously.
“I don’t want to lose you either,” Remus replies, surprised at the honesty in those words. But of course he doesn’t want to lose Sirius again; if he only cared about Harry, he wouldn’t have moved in, wouldn’t have spent so long with Sirius, would have only focused on finding Harry and helping with the muggle legalities. “But it’s not as simple as that, Sirius.”
“Why not? Why can’t it be?”
“Because it isn’t. Because… there are things I don’t know I can forgive you for; things I don’t know I can forgive myself for.” And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? All of Remus’ hurt and broken trust mixing with his guilt, a scale with all the things Remus blamed Sirius for against all the things he blamed himself for. It’s all our fault, he remembers Sirius saying, over a month ago, now, and remembers agreeing.
Sirius scoffs and shakes his head. “You were a bastard last night, but I hardly think you’ve done something unforgivable.”
“Sirius, I let you rot in prison for five years.”
“And I broke your heart,” Remus’ breath hitches at those words, because he knows Sirius is only repeating what Remus had just told him, but to hear him say it so casually, as if Remus’ heart isn’t still in pieces in his hands, feels like a punch in the gut. “I think you’re a bit justified in not looking into my imprisonment, all things considered. Not like you put me there.”
“No, but I didn’t look in on Harry, either.”
Sirius presses his lips together and looks away briefly. “Well, I think we both let Harry down,” he says, which is absurd, because Sirius had literally been in prison. Remus tells him this. “No, but—“ Sirius takes a shaky breath. “But that… that night…” Sirius falls quiet, pressing his lips together and staring off into space.
“That night?” Remus prompts immediately, not unkindly; he is used to this, now, these moments when Sirius gets lost in his memories. Usually they are not good memories, and Remus has learned to snap him out of them as soon as possible, before any episodes run the risk of violence.
“That night…” Sirius seems to force himself to look at Remus, who meets his gaze. Sirius looks tortured, which hurts to see, but at least his eyes aren’t a cold silver anymore. “That night, I had Harry in my arms. I brought him out of the house, and… Then I gave him to Hagrid so I could chase after Peter.”
It feels like a bucket of cold water is dumped over him. Suddenly, small things Sirius has said make more sense; his guilt towards Harry, of course, but also his occasional comments about abandonment, about losing Harry, about not wanting his anger to get the better of him. How much must he regret that night, Remus thinks.
“You couldn’t have known,” Remus finds himself saying, as Sirius cries quietly. “That was not… You couldn’t have known, Pads.” Sirius lets out a sob, and Remus wonders where his own feelings have gone. He’s numb, again, not the way he was numb last night—that destructive, monstrous way that is actually a symptom of too many emotions than too few—but the numb he felt after first seeing the Potter’s graves, the numb after the police gave him Estee’s note, the numb after learning about Sirius’ innocence. The numb he began trying to drink and shag his way out of, then tried to drink and shag his way back to.
Finally, Sirius seems to finish crying. He clears his throat and wipes his eyes, and Remus absentmindedly finds himself conjuring a handkerchief for him.
“Would you like me to put the kettle on?” Remus asks, because he doesn’t know what to do, now, or what to say.
“That would…” Sirius clears his throat again, then blows his nose. “That would be nice.”
Remus nods, then stands to move to the kitchen. After a few, he hears Sirius get up and follow him.
“Remus…” Sirius starts, “do you… do you think we could start over? Between us. Clean slate; no blaming, no guilt.”
“I don’t know, Sirius,” Remus admits. “That’s… a lot of history to erase.”
“Could we try?”
Remus closes his eyes. He can see it, now; more tiptoeing, more pretend. More moments where Remus looks at Sirius and hurts, then smiles when their eyes meet as if he doesn’t feel his heart breaking. More moments of sitting in his room while Sirius cries alone; or worse, sitting beside him like they had just now, numb and unable to provide any real comfort outside of his presence. More days of failing the man he loves.
“I’m sorry for everything I’ve done, all the ways I hurt you. I want… I want us to be good again, Moony. I know I’m broken, but… but I’m trying, and I—I don’t think I’m too broken to try to fix this—our friendship. If you want…”
You might not be too broken, but I am. Remus sighs and moves to get two mugs and teabags. “We can try,” he says. “I can’t promise it’ll work. And I don’t know if I can forget everything between us. But… I can definitely try to forgive you, if you’ll try to forgive me.”
The kettle begins to whistle, so Remus reaches over to pour the tea.
“I forgive you,” Sirius says, and he’s suddenly right beside Remus, nearly touching him, reaching for the nearest mug. He’s so close he has to look up through his eyelashes at Remus, eyes flickering quickly around his face before dropping down to his tea. Remus feels like he can’t breathe with Sirius this close, and he watches in silence as Sirius prepares his drink.
Finally, Sirius draws back, moving a safer distance away, and Remus is struck with the realisation that he will never be able to forget and start over, because nothing will let him forget the fact that he loves Sirius and always will. Sirius may forgive him now, Remus thinks, but they will fight again, and he will fuck up again, and everything will be ruined, again.
Back during the war, Remus hadn’t been able to deny Sirius anything. Even knowing Sirius could—and, indeed, had—betray and use him, he had barely given up a fight when Sirius asked him to move in after Hogwarts, had let him crawl into his bed for comfort, had let him kiss him at James and Lily’s engagement party. And then he had slept with him, an admittedly selfish move, and thought—for a brief, terrifying moment—that Sirius might be looking for a real relationship with him, which he knew could never end well. But he established, quite firmly in his opinion, that they were only friends and would only ever be friends; yet when Sirius came back for more, Remus had given him everything he wanted, all while pretending his heart was still safe in his own chest. And then it had all ended badly, as predicted, because Remus was not someone a person could love, and Sirius was not someone a Dark creature could trust.
And now, years and years later, standing in Sirius’ new kitchen, Remus finds himself unable to voice his pessimistic thoughts. Sirius wants them to start over and be friends again, and Remus knows it would be impossible, not only because his love for Sirius will never disappear; but Remus sips his tea and says nothing, watches Sirius make breakfast (lunch, more like) and says nothing, eats his food and says nothing. And then when Sirius asks if he should transfigure the desk back into a bed, Remus lets him.
He’ll stay until Harry is found, he decides. He’ll pretend until Sirius has Harry, and is better, and then he’ll leave before he can ruin Harry, too.