Chapter 7
Breakfast that morning had been a quiet affair. Students sat with their rolls of parchment open in front of them while their breakfast plates sat forgotten off to the side. Many of the professors had decided to give quizzes in the last days before Easter break, so a lot of students were scrambling to fit in a last-minute study session.
A symphony of hoots echoed through the Great Hall and Remus looked up as the owls flew overhead, dropping parcels and letters onto the cluttered tables. A letter fluttered above him before it dropped unceremoniously into his oats. Remus made a face and then flicked off the goopy mess before it seeped through the envelope. It was a letter from his mum. There was a stamp in the upper right-hand corner that made Remus sigh; his mother would never get used to wizard post.
Remus read the letter then rolled his eyes and shoved the whole thing in his book bag with a huff. He had written her over the last weekend and had been expecting her response for a few days. It was nothing short of what he expected.
“What was that?”
“Mum’s mad I’m not going home for hols.”
“You’re not going home for hols?”
“Since when?”
“Decided to stay a few days ago,” he said, taking a bite of toast now that his porridge was spoiled. “Moons on Saturday.” Peter and James both hummed with understanding. It was a lot easier on his body for him to stay at school for the full moon. Pomfrey always sent him home with his own supply of potions, but it wasn’t the same as having a doting Medi witch to take care of him. It was already going to be a tougher moon without his pack, but going home would tack on three or four extra days of recovery.
Sirius looked between Remus and James, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. “I’ll stay with you.”
“No,” Remus quickly tried to shoot the idea down but was steadfastly ignored.
“What, Pads? You’re supposed to be going home with me. My parents are expecting you.”
“Sorry Prongs. Tell them I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.”
“Pads no—” Remus tried again with little success.
“Alright, mate. I’ll tell them you’re falling behind in history of magic. Maybe that’ll get Dad off my back for a while.”
“No, Pads,” Remus said with a tone of authority that he rarely used. “Go to the Potters. I’ll be fine here.”
A look of something unidentifiable flickered across Sirius’s face before he could school his expression. “I don’t want to go to James’ house. I’ve changed my mind.”
“Bull shit,” Remus countered.
“No really, I’d much rather stay at school,” Sirius challenged, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Stop being stubborn, Sirius”
James and Peter exchanged an awkward look and got up from the table while their friends were occupied in their glaring match. They were used to their arguing and found it was usually best to steer clear and let them work it out themselves.
“Please just go home with James,” Remus tried to level with him. “It’s going to be boring here. I’ll be in bed for the first half of it, anyway.”
Sirius dropped his voice and leaned in so that only Remus could hear him. “Not if you have Padfoot.”
Remus shook his head. “You won't be able to control me on your own.”
“I—” Remus had a point. Prongs had always been crucial in herding the wolf back to the shack before dawn. “What if we stay in the shack?”
Remus visibly deflated. It reminded him of third year when the three of them had approached him with the idea in the first place. They knew Remus would not be receptive to the idea so they had arguments for every reason Remus could possibly think of to turn them down. He couldn’t deny that it would work and would even make his transformation easier, but— “I don’t want to be the reason you miss out on going to the Potters’. You love it there.”
“I love it here, too,” he said louder than they had been talking. “Do you not want me to stay?” he added more quietly.
Remus looked down at his own hands, clenched on the solid wood of the table. He didn’t say anything. Something selfish inside of him wouldn’t let him deny that he would absolutely love it if Sirius stayed at school just for him.
Sirius searched his eyes, imploringly, and seemed to find something in them that told him he had already won their little argument. “Listen, I’ve already decided I’m staying so you can stop being a right dick about it.”
“Fine,” Remus huffed, though he was secretly glad that Sirius was staying.
“Fine,” Sirius snapped. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked around him for the first time. He realized James and Peter had both left already. In fact, most of the Great Hall had cleared out, only a couple of stragglers were left behind.
“Let’s go,” Remus told him. “Before we’re late.” He left the great hall in long strides and was secretly glad that Sirius was able to keep up.
...
Sirius was up late, reading one of Remus’s muggle books by wand light in his bed. The book he was reading was about a boy who had been kicked out of his school and didn’t have anywhere to go so he just wandered around New York City. He didn’t really understand the point of it, but it was fun the read the smudged notes Remus had scribbled in the margins. The book was battered so much that half of the cover had ripped off and over half of the book was underlined with shaky lines of ink.
Remus had gone to bed shortly after dinner where they had said their goodbyes to James, Peter, and the girls for the week. James had asked him again if he was sure he didn’t want to go home with him. “My parents said you’re always welcome, mate,” but Sirius had just shook his head before Remus opened his mouth to encourage him to go. They split up after dinner, James and Peter heading towards the front of the school with the other students who were to go the train station and Remus and Sirius heading back up to the dorms. Before he could even make it halfway up the first staircase he felt a hand on his shoulder. He paused. “Don’t get yourself hurt this time, alright?” James hissed in his ear.
“Mind your own damn business,” he shook the hand off his shoulder and took the remaining steps two at a time to catch up with Remus, who had been oblivious to the ordeal.
Sirius heard Remus wake up with a groan before his curtains flew open and Remus staggered to the bathroom. The door slammed behind him, but Sirius could still hear the sound of Remus emptying his dinner into the toilet. Sirius winced but it wasn’t uncommon for him to be sick the night before the moon, so Sirius stayed where he was but kept listening just in case. After a moment, Sirius could hear the toilet flush and the sound of the tap turning on.
When Remus came out of the lou, he was slightly pale and shiny with sweat. He lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe his brow and Sirius had a hard time looking away from his exposed torso. He was thin but had a hint of definition around his abs, and a wonderful trail of hair leading below his pajama pants.
Remus made a small, surprised sound in the back of his throat when he noticed Sirius staring but Sirius still didn’t look away. “Feeling alright?” he asked instead.
“Yeah, usual.” Remus said with a shrug and sat down on his bed across from Sirius’. “What are you reading?”
“Oh,” Sirius said and lifted the forgotten book out of his lap, showing Remus the title on the front cover even though half of it was gone.
“One of my favorites,” Remus smiled. He lay his head back down on his pillow but didn’t close his curtains.
“I know. Are you going back to bed?”
“Still a bit nauseous,” he mumbled. “Could you grab my rolling stuff from my trunk?” Sirius hopped up to do what the other had asked of him. Remus’ trunk was an organized mess, full of books and wrinkled tee shirts but everything had its place. He found what he was looking for quickly—a plain wooden trinket box where he stashed his rolling papers, weed, and tobacco.
“Here,” Sirius tossed the box, so it landed on the bed close to his knee. He made to sit back down on his own bed, but Remus reached out and tugged at the hem of his shirt.
“Come over here for a minute,” he said, and Sirius obliged. He wasn’t cold but he still slipped under the covers anyways while Remus sat on top of them. Propped up on his elbow, he watched attentively as Remus scooped up what was left of the weed. “I was supposed to pick up this week,” Remus groaned.
“You have potions though, right, to help with the transformation?” Sirius asked quietly within the four posters of the bed.
“Smoking is the only thing that helps,” he shrugged and then licked his tongue across the paper to seal the edge.
Remus leaned over him, almost completely on top of him, and rifled through his bedside table to find his lighter. “Oh,” he said dumbly, and then Remus held the lit joint up to Sirius' lips and he inhaled. Since James and Peter were away, they didn’t bother going to the window to blow the smoke outside. They would just have to deal with the smell when they got back.
“So, we’ll have the whole week after tomorrow. What do you want to do?” Remus asked, blowing a billow of smoke from the corner of his mouth.
“I think we can think of a few things,” Sirius said with a smirk. He was excited for the week to come. Even the moon, though he resented the fact that Remus would have to go through the pain of the transformation. It was rare that they got to hang out just the two of them. Sure, there would be a couple of other students around for the week, but most had gone home for the break.
“We can work on the map some more, I’m sure there are some secret passageways we missed,” Remus offered. Sirius smiled, nodded his head. He had been daydreaming about doing other things with Remus, things that he wasn’t about to say out loud, but working on the map would be just as fun.
They talked for a little after that, mostly about nothing, and sat in companionable silence when they had nothing to say. The spliff was starting to hit him and his eyes felt heavy while the rest of him felt light. “Do you ever think of the future?” Sirius asked, breaking a moment of silence that had fallen over them.
Remus thought for a second, thinking of the right thing to say. “I used to avoid it,” he said. “Thinking about it, ya know, but now it doesn’t seem so bad.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Sirius chewed on the nail of his thumb. He thought about the implications of Remus’s words. Was it because of him? Sirius felt giddy with the thought but quickly pushed it out of his mind. Of course, he couldn’t take full responsibility—Remus had so many people in his life that he cared about. Sirius was just glad that he was amongst those people. And he really did know what he meant. Before he got to Hogwarts, his future – the future his parents had planned for him—didn’t seem so bright. It wasn’t until he met his friends that he even considered that he could have something different. Now he just had to get through a couple more summers in the House of Black.
He realized that he had zoned out for who knows how long and looked over at Remus to see if he noticed. The tension in Remus’s jaw had eased and his lips hung partially open. His speech was lazy, mostly mumbled and dripping with the accent that was always much stronger when he was tired.
Remus had trailed off in the middle of his sentence and rolled over onto his side. Sirius thought he had fallen asleep but when he moved to go back to his own bed, Remus mumbled “Just stay,” into his pillow.
Sirius was too weak to resist. He laid back on the pillow that smelled so much like Remus and fell asleep.
-----
Sirius woke slowly the next morning as the sun filtered in through the tower windows. They had left the bed curtains open the night before and the light was now bothering him, but he was too comfortable to reach over and close them. Warmth radiated off of Remus’s body and Sirius pressed his arm against him to be able to feel it. The last dregs of winter had been lingering in the early mornings and late at night.
He laid in bed for a long time. He could tell when Remus had woken up by the way his breathing changed, but neither of them said anything. Remus closed his eyes tighter against the sunlight and Sirius lifted his thumb to smooth out the wrinkles between his eyebrows. Remus hummed but didn’t say anything.
Eventually, he heard Remus’s stomach growl. “Do you want to go to breakfast?” Sirius laughed.
Remus shook his head and nuzzled deeper into the pillow. Sirius let out another small laugh. “You want me to get you something.”
“Bacon if they have it.”
“Alright,” Sirius said but would definitely bring him back more than just bacon. He closed the bed curtains and threw on the trousers that he had left in a pile on the floor between their beds.
Some students were already leaving breakfast when he got down to the great hall. He must have been lying in Remus’s bed for longer than he thought. His plan was to wrap up as much food as he could carry and take it back to the dorms, but before he reached the table he saw Amos Diggory, a seventh-year Hufflepuff who had a reputation for selling weed and cigarettes to the younger kids. He remembered Remus’s words from the night before, it's the only thing that works.
“Diggory,” he called out without a second thought.
“Black?” he asked with one brow lifted. He was tall, just as tall as Remus, and had wavy blonde hair and a neat mustache above a full set of lips. He was wearing muggle clothes; tight-fitting blue jeans with a gorgeous brown leather belt that peaked out from under a tee shirt that looked too small. It worked for him. Sirius had never really talked to him, but he knew Remus and James were both friendly with him. He supposed it was maybe a little weird that he was talking to him now, but Remus’s words kept swimming through his mind.
“Do you have—” Sirius trailed off. He wasn’t sure how to ask for it; it was usually Remus who picked up, as he called it.
Diggory seemed to understand what he wanted despite his loss for words. The blonde looked around, towards the teachers’ table to make sure none of them were listening. It was a lot emptier than it usually was, only Hagrid and Professor Sprout sat behind the long table.
He eyed Sirius thoughtfully for a moment, cautiously, but then seemed to make up his mind. “Alright, follow me,” he said with a charming smile. Sirius wasn’t one to be intimidated by older students, but the Hufflepuff was attractive and probably cooler than any of the marauders put together, as much as it pained him to admit.
They didn’t talk as they walked towards the kitchens, but Diggory whistled a tune lightly under his breath. It sounded like a song Remus liked. Sirius followed him all the way through the Hufflepuff common room, where Sirius had been a couple of times for parties but it looked even cozier in the daylight with piles of pillows and cushions that students could sit on, and into his dorm.
The dorm was a mess, messier than their dorm even much to his surprise. Sirius stood awkwardly in the doorway until the other told him to close the door.
“Alright, so how much do you want?”
Sirius reached into his pocket and pulled out the two galleons he almost forgot he had. “I have this much on me right now. Is that—”
Diggory snatched the coins from his hand before he was able to finish his sentence and replaced it with a green nugget wrapped tightly in some kitchen wrap. “Well, you know where to find me when you want more. And keep it on the low, will ya?” Sirius turned to leave but Diggory stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, “and tell Lupin I said hi,” he said with a wink.
----
Sirius shook a snoozing Remus awake and motioned for him to sit up. “Cheers,” he said groggily as Sirius gave him a chocolate chip muffin from the tray he was carrying.
He had passed the kitchens as he left the Hufflepuff common room and decided to stop there instead of going all the way back to the great hall. The elves were more than happy to make a special breakfast plate, extra bacon, when he told them it was for Remus Lupin. It turned out to be more like a platter and Sirius had to use a levitation charm to make it all the way up the tower with their provisions.
Remus picked at his breakfast, favoring the bacon and sausages. When Sirius was satisfied with the amount the other had eaten, he pulled the baggy from his pocket. Remus perked up at the smell alone. “Cheers,” he said with a lot more enthusiasm than he had before. “Where did you get this?”
“Diggory,” Sirius said with an indifferent shrug, but his red cheeks gave him away.
Remus laughed. “Fit isn’t he?”
“So fit,” Sirius groaned and flopped down onto his bed. He rolled over and watched Remus as he rolled a spliff for them to share. Sirius was always impressed by how easy it looked for him to do without using magic. Sirius had tried rolling his own cigarettes a couple of times, but they never turned out quite like Remus’s.
Their beds were close enough that they didn’t have to move to pass the spliff. Neither of them said anything as they passed it back and forth and the silence was starting to overwhelm Sirius. He eyed the record player that took up most of his desk – he never used it for studying anyways— wishing to turn it on to fill the silence but didn’t want to bother Remus with the noise if he wasn’t feeling well. “How’s your head,” he asked after a moment.
“Haven’t had any complaints,” he replied with a cheeky smile.
Sirius moved to throw his pillow at him but thought better of it when he saw the other flinch. “I meant how are you feeling?”
“Umm,” Remus seemed to assess himself, “not too bad. It’s nice to not have to go to class.”
“Yeah that’s good, right?” Remus just hummed. He noticed Sirius fidgeting with a loose thread on his pillowcase, twirling it around his finger. He grabbed his wand from his side table and flicked it towards the record player.
“Thanks,” Sirius breathed as the first notes of Immigrant Song started to play. “It doesn’t bother you, does it?”
“No, it helps to have something else to focus on,” Remus answered.
They spent the better part of the day just like that. The elves had given him enough food to last them more than a few days, so they snacked on bacon and biscuits when they got the munchies. They made their way through most of their combined record collection, flipping and changing the discs with magic instead of getting up to change it themselves. Remus was in and out of sleep for most of the day. He slept when the pain in his joints got to be too much for even weed to help and when he was awake, his eyes were glued to the alarm clock on his nightstand, dreading the passage of time.
“We better start heading down,” he groaned when the sky was starting to change colors. He heaved himself up from his bed. His knee cracked as he stretched, and he dressed quickly in clothes that were just barely clean enough to wear for the short walk to the shack.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Sirius called out as Remus walked through the door and donned the invisibility cloak.
Remus met Madame Pomfrey on the grounds and tried his best to keep up a steady stream of conversation with her to mask any sounds Sirius made under the cloak. It would have been too hard for him to get passed the whomping willow on his own so he had to follow as close behind them as he could without giving them away.
“Could you walk any louder,” Remus complained after Pomfrey had left for the night. She had stayed longer than usual, fussing over Remus whose face was pinched in pain.
Sirius revealed himself. “Sorry, it’s kind of hard to walk quietly when I have to jog to keep up with you.”
Remus ignored the quip and settled beneath the quilt on the bed. “Change into Padfoot.”
“Yeah, yeah I’ll change when it’s time,” Sirius waved him off. The sky was still full of golden light, and they still had a few minutes to spare before the moon started to rise.
“No, change now,” he said through clenched teeth. Something in his tone made Sirius realize that he meant it. While he never looked relaxed before a transformation before, Remus was now holding his body more rigidly than usual and Sirius knew it was going to be a bad moon. He cursed himself, how did he not notice how much pain the other had been in all day? It hadn’t seemed any worse than usual. He changed and let out a low whine.
“Come up here, and don’t bark please.” Sirius obeyed and nuzzled his snout into Remus’s bare side.
Remus worked on the pointless breathing exercises Pomfrey had taught him as he carded his shaking fingers through Padfoot’s fur. The imminent change was pulling and tearing at every fiber of his being, and it took everything in him not to scream out. Padfoot looked at him with distress showing on his dog face. How can I help, he wanted to ask his friend.
Remus pushed his muzzle until he was flush up against the white lines of his soul mark and let the buzzing he felt under his skin lull him into a state of comfort. It didn’t take the pain away, but it gave him a distraction and that was all he needed to not let it consume him. In minutes, the light in the room had changed from golden to blue and Remus knew the transformation was close. He could feel it taking over him.
“See you in the morning, Pads.” He gasped, arching off the bed like the possessed. He screamed, once, and then a darkness fell over him.