Chapter 8
Sirius waited all of ten minutes after Remus was settled into his usual hospital bed before showing up at Pomfrey’s door. She let him in without a fuss this time but made him promise not to wake the sleeping Remus. He snored softly as Sirius sat himself in the chair next to his bed and waited.
He eventually woke with a groan and Poppy was on him before Sirius could get a word out. She made him drink three different potions, all of which made him scrunch up his nose in disgust. “I know, I know,” Pomfrey comforted. “Mr. Black, a moment?” She nodded her head towards the large double doors, indicating for Sirius to wait out in the halls.
Sirius opened his mouth to protest, but Remus beat him to it. “It’s ok, he knows,” Remus said, his voice hoarse from screaming through a night of transformations.
Pomfrey pursed her lips; she had figured as much. A Black didn’t come to the hospital wing every morning after the full moon without putting two and two together. Not to mention, she had overheard enough of their conversations to know that the three other young men who hovered consistently around her ward were fully aware of the situation. And the scars, too, that were impervious to healing charms and resisted fading, were a dead giveaway if you knew what to look for. She was just proud that the boy she had become fond of over the years had a good group of friends.
She got back to work, scanning his body with a diagnostic spell for the second time that morning, being more thorough than she had been at the shrieking shack where Sirius had watched from under the cloak. Remus glanced over at the other boy during the process and Sirius gave him a small smile. “Well, you don’t seem too bad this morning,” she said in her sweet voice. “Just rest up a bit and we’ll get you out of here in no time.”
Sirius hopped up on the bed as soon as Pomfrey had walked away, the heels of her shoes clacking against the sterile tile until they faded off into the distance. “Morning. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” he shrugged. “How was Moony?” he added in a barely there whisper so Pomfrey wouldn’t hear them.
“Cuddly,” Sirius said with a smug smile on his face.
“No, really.”
“You were very cuddly, actually.” And he had been for the most part, much to Sirius’ surprise. The wolf had paced the small room for a while before settling down. He spent the rest of the night whining and clawing at the floorboards until Padfoot sat next to him and tongued the inside of his ears.
“I’m sure,” Remus said unconvinced. Sirius moved his hand to scratch his nose and Remus noticed a bit of blood that had dried to the color of rust on his sleeve. “What’s that? Did I hurt you?” Panic had started to seep into his voice.
Sirius shook his head and brought his hand to the other’s lip that Pomfrey had covered in a thick salve while he was sleeping. “No, but you did nick yourself a bit.”
“Oh?” Remus brought his hand up to feel for himself. It was sticky under his fingertips. He remembered now, sort of. The transformation process was always a blur, but bits and pieces came back to him. It was when he was changing back, he remembered. Sirius had his arm around his shoulders, holding him closely as he screamed and rocked in pain. Most of him had changed back already, but his claws had not yet retracted back into his hands. He must have scratched himself. He remembered Sirius pulling his sleeve over his hand and holding it to his face but he wasn't sure if it even registered at the time that he was bleeding, and he passed out shortly after.
“Oh,” he said again flatly, trying to keep the feeling that bubbled up inside of him at bay. It would be yet another scar on his face for everyone to gawk at.
“It doesn’t look bad,” Sirius said softly. “Don’t worry.”
Remus sighed and tried to push the thought out of his mind. It wasn’t his first scar, and nowhere near as bad as the one that slashed across his face, but he still felt a deep pang of sadness at the new feature. There was no use dwelling on something he couldn’t change, though. He was able to find solace in the fact that at least it was himself and not his best friend that he had permanently maimed.
“Can I ask you something?” Sirius asked from beside him. Remus hummed, still ruminating. “When you put Padfoot’s face on the—” he paused and pointed to Remus’ side which was covered by a thin hospital blanket. “What was that about?”
Remus shrugged. “It’s just the feeling of it— it’s a good distraction.”
“The feeling?”
“Yeah, you don’t feel it?”
Sirius wormed his hand under the blanket and held it against the other’s side, pushing away the paper gown Pomfrey had slipped on him in the shack for privacy. Sirius held his hand there for a long time, concentrating, and Remus knew it was a long shot, but he hoped he wasn’t the only one who felt it.
“Must be a werewolf thing,” Remus muttered after Sirius was silent for too long.
“What does it feel like?”
“Like magic?” Remus’s voice tilted up in question. He racked his brain for another explanation. “Like a prickly feeling, under the skin. It changes, feels different all the time.” He shrugged; he couldn’t even begin to understand it let alone explain it to the other boy.
“It hurts?”
“Not always,”
“Now?”
“No, it feels good right now.”
Sirius hummed and rubbed his thumb in soothing circles around the indented lines of the soul mark. “Still tired?” he asked when Remus closed his eyes against the touch.
“A bit,” he answered.
“Rest, then. I’ll be here,” he said as he continued to stroke the werewolf’s hip.
Remus sighed and did just that, sinking deeper into the stiffness of the hospital bed pillow.
“Happy Easter, by the way,” Sirius whispered but Remus had already slipped under.
...
Maybe it was the glass of wine the Lovegoods let them have with their dinner, but after Pandora had gone to sleep, Regulus stayed up and penned a letter to his brother from his makeshift cot on the floor. It was short and simple, but he hoped it would bridge the gap that had seemed to wedge its way in between them.
Brother, he wrote. I hope you are doing well.
The sounds of his quill scratching on his parchment filled the quiet room and Pandora let out a soft snore as she rolled over in her bed. He paused, waited for any signs that she was awake, and continued when he was sure she was still sleeping.
The sun was close to rising by the time he had finished the letter, even though he had hardly written a few lines of parchment. He had a hard time coming up with the right thing to say. It seemed like in the past few years, everything he said to Sirius made him upset. So, he hardly said anything.
But Sirius was trying, at least. He had stopped him on his way to the great hall to apologize to him. It had caused him some trouble of course. Word got back to their mother, and he received an angry letter the next morning about fraternizing with unsavory people, never mind that it was his own blood brother. He had to assure her in a pages-long letter that he wasn’t letting Sirius be a bad influence on him.
It had helped though. The apology, that is. He knew he couldn’t be as brave as Sirius, couldn’t live his life as openly as Sirius, but he still wanted him in his life. In any way he could while sneaking around his parents and the House of Black.
Regulus toed on his slippers and made his way through the quiet house and out the back door. The night was still but a slight chill lingered in the air. The Lovegood home was small and quaint, but their yard was large and backed up against a field of tall grass. The back porch was cluttered with artifacts, both muggle and magic, and a white sheet hung limply from a clothesline. Regulus scanned the yard and found what he was looking for. Behind a wooden swing set that was left over from Pandora’s childhood was the coup that housed the family’s two tawny owls.
The grass was dewy and turned the fabric of his slippers an even darker green. He didn’t mind the wet shoes, but when he peered inside the coup and saw that it was empty, he cursed and kicked his foot against the wooden base until his toes throbbed. He was ready to take it as a sign. It was pointless, anyway, to try to reconnect with Sirius. What had he been thinking?
He turned to make the short walk back to the house but before he was able to, Barrel, the larger of the two owls, swooped in with big eyes and a field mouse clutched between his talons. “Oh,” Regulus said with a start. The owl just blinked at him and held out his occupied foot for Regulus to tie his now crumpled letter onto. Regulus grimaced as he worked around the dying mouse but eventually got the thing secured. “Take this to the Potter residence, please,” he whispered into the night.
...
James woke as the sun rose on Easter morning. He was slumped, uncomfortably, in the reading chair in his father’s den. He looked around, confused as to why he wasn’t in his bed but shrugged it off. He figured he must have fallen asleep there after dinner the night before. His teacup, half full of now cold chamomile tea, remained on the side table to confirm his suspicions, and the throw blanket from the back of the couch was thrown over his legs. Mum's doing, he thought.
There was a light rapping on the window and James recognized it as the noise that had woken him up in the first place. A light brown owl sat annoyed on the windowsill and James got up hurriedly to open the window. James untied the letter that was attached to its leg. Sirius’s name was written in an elegant curling font on the outside of the folded-up piece of parchment. But why would Sirius be getting mail here when all their friends knew he was at school?
James unfolded the parchment enough to see the letters R.A.B. printed neatly at the bottom of the short letter. Oh, he thought, Regulus. James resolved not to read the note, even though he really wanted to, and tucked it away in his pocket to give to Sirius later when he got back to school.
“Wait here,” he told the bird, then shook his head. “Why am I talking to an owl,” he muttered to himself.
He sat down at his father’s desk and rifled around the clutter to find some spare parchment. He had to let the younger Black know Sirius wasn’t with him. Their relationship was strained enough without Regulus thinking the other was ignoring him, and from their talk in the crawl space behind the tapestry, James knew his friend was desperate to change things. He thought back to the day on the train as they returned to school for their second year when Sirius had seemed so protective of his brother, but things had changed only a few hours later when the first years sat for the sorting ceremony and Regulus was sorted into Slytherin. He knew that Sirius didn’t hold it against him now, but to 12-year-old Sirius it was the biggest betrayal.
Regulus, he penned.
I just got your letter. Don’t worry I didn’t read it. Well I only opened it enough to see who had written it and saw it was you so I wanted to write you to tell you Sirius isn’t here. He stayed at school for easter hols to catch up on his history of magic homework. It was a last minute decision so that’s probably why he didn’t get the chance to tell you himself. I’ll save your letter for him though and give it to him when I get back.
Anyways I hope your having a good holiday. Mines good, mums making a roast tonight. Sirius told me you went to the Lovegoods for the break. Da knows Mrs. Lovegood from the lab, says she makes the best pumpkin pasties. Please tell her hello for me.
You aren’t in any trouble are you? If you are I guess I probably should have read your letter but I didn’t think you would like that. If you are in trouble than you can always flew here or I can wake Da up to go get you or something like that.
Anyways I hope your ok.
Write back,
-James Potter
James didn’t receive a response until well after midday. The Potter family was having a cup of tea on the terrace when the same owl that arrived in the morning landed on the wrought iron gate of Mrs. Potter’s garden.
It was a short note, but James was glad to hear from him anyway, if only to assure himself that he was in fact not in trouble.
Potter,
Your handwriting is almost completely illegible. Were you holding the quill with your foot?
I’m fine. You can discard my previous letter. It’s not important. And don’t mention it to Sirius.
-R.A.B.
The letter made James throw his head back with laughter. It wasn’t the first time someone told him his handwriting was messy. It reminded him of how Remus always complained when James took notes for him while he was in the hospital wings, even though his wasn’t much better. At least you can read mine, he would quip back when James brought it up every time.
“Who’s that, dear?” his mum asked, looking up from her teacup.
“Just a friend from school.”
“Sirius?”
“No, someone else,” he said, tucking the letter into his breast pocket. He never got around to throwing it away in the bin, couldn’t bring himself to do it. Later that night, when he changed into his pajamas, James transferred both letters from his pocket into his quidditch playbook where they remained pressed between two forgotten pages.
...
The rest of the week in the Gryffindor Tower seemed to pass by in a haze of smoke, records, and bedsheets. With nothing to do, Remus and Sirius fell into a leisurely routine of domestic bliss. They stayed up until dawn and woke up well past noon every day, tangled up in Remus’s sheets until the night when Sirius spilled a glass of pumpkin juice and Remus complained that he could still smell it even after they used scourgify on the soiled sheets. After that, they switched to Sirius’ bed and nothing else changed. Sirius couldn’t even remember the last time he had a nightmare
They ate pastries from the tray of food the elves had given them and smoked enough weed to stay high for the rest of the week. Ever since the morning after the full moon, Sirius had taken to worming his hands under Remus’s shirt to paw at his mark. There were times when his hand dipped too low and grazed the mottled scar tissue of his bite, which made Remus cringe and flee to the lou for way too long, but Sirius would apologize when he came back out and things went back to normal.
They shared cigarettes in bed and listened to every album in the dorm at least three times. At one point they even tried to sneak into the girls’ dorm to borrow some of the records Marlene and Mary had left behind, but the stairs had dropped out from under their feet, and they tumbled all the way down to the common room together. Sirius had tried to angle himself as it happened in an attempt to break Remus’ fall and he was mostly successful, but the other boy still winced as he stood and had to grasp the stairway railing until the pain from an old injury passed. They spent most of that evening lazing in the common room until Remus was able to brave the stairs once again.
On Saturday, Remus woke up and reached for his cigarette case on the nightstand only to find it empty. He was out of tobacco too, had used the last of his pack the day before. Sirius was already awake, sitting on the floor and painting his toenails with black nail polish. “Do you have any cigarettes?” Remus asked him.
“Hmm, no, I think we’re out,” he said. Remus groaned and dropped his head back down on his pillow dramatically. “Why don’t you get some from Diggory?”
Remus looked to Sirius without lifting his head and raised a single eyebrow at him. He shook his head eventually and added, “I don’t feel like dealing with him today.”
Sirius returned the brush back to the pot of polish and raised his hands in surrender, “Alright, alright. We can make a quick trip into the village then,” Sirius suggested.
“Oh, alright,” he moaned.
Sirius used a drying charm on his wet nails and the two of them got dressed, taking turns in the shower. Remus finished first and was waiting for him in the common room when Sirius came down the stairs. He stopped in front of his chair and raised his arms. “How do I look?”
Remus’s breath hitched. Sirius’s outfit was nothing special, made up of mostly Remus’s hand-me-down muggle clothes, which were his go-to on days when they didn’t have to wear their uniforms, but he made them look better than Remus ever had. There was a new rip in the jeans that wasn’t there when they belonged to Remus, which exposed his knee and lower thigh. He was wearing an old white tee, but he had cuffed the sleeves to show off the muscle he had gained from quidditch. His dark hair fell in perfect waves around his face and his eyelashes looked a little bit darker, a little bit longer than usual. Remus suddenly felt frumpy and underdressed. “Umm, good,” he mumbled. “Let’s go.”
They entered the One-Eyed Witch’s Passage without a hitch since there was no one around and made the trek underground without bothering to light their paths. In the dark of the tunnel, Remus’ pinky brushed the side of Sirius’ hand, and it made Sirius pause before continuing his steady stream of yapping. He was sure it must have been an accident until it kept happening. Sirius let himself smile freely in the dark where he was sure Remus couldn’t make out his facial expression.
Remus eventually held his hand proper, and Sirius counted it as a win even if it was just to help him up from the underground passageway into the less underground cellar of Honeydukes. But Sirius had made the climb on his own many times. Remus knew that and Sirius knew Remus knew that. He didn’t dare call him out, though.
“Thank you,” he said instead, then smacked his hand on his forehead. “We forgot the cloak,” he exclaimed.
“No, we didn’t,” Remus said as he pulled the bunched-up velvet fabric from his messenger bag with a smirk.
“You’re a bloody genius.” They crouched under the cloak together and made their way out of the cellar. The soles of Remus’ shoes showed when the cloak swished around their feet, but they knew nobody would notice them.
“Hold on,” Remus whispered when they were close to the exit. They were in the perfect position, hidden by a display of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans so the shop worker at the till couldn’t see them. Remus slipped his arm out from under the cloak, snatched a chocolate bar from the shelf closest to them, and shoved the thing in his bag.
“You’re not going to pay for that?” Sirius whispered to the other, twisting his body to look at Remus with one eyebrow raised.
“What?” Remus said incredulously. “Not a chance.”
Sirius shook his head and shrugged, resolving to just leave a bit extra next time he stocked up on supplies. They continued on their way. The shopkeeper looked up when she heard the door open, but she went back to whatever she was doing behind the till when she didn’t see anyone.
The town was fairly crowded with witches and wizards from the neighboring villages but, as long as they didn’t run into any professors, they were not likely to be caught. Remus pulled Sirius into the alleyway next to Honeydukes and stepped out from under the cloak. He sighed in relief as he stretched, Sirius could hear his bones pop as he stood to his full height.
Sirius stayed under the cloak but poked his head out from under the hood. “So, what’s the plan?” He asked Remus. “Where do you usually get them?”
“Well, I usually get them back home, but I have a plan.”
“Does it involve shoplifting?” Sirius teased.
Remus huffed. “Like you and Prongs have never done that before.”
“We haven’t. We always leave enough money behind to cover what we took.”
Remus looked at him with his mouth open, then shook his head in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He grabbed onto what he assumed was Sirius’ elbow and Sirius pulled the hood back over his head. Remus whispered the plan to him as they walked towards Galston’s Goods and Imports. It was a store hardly any of the Hogwarts students went to, tucked into the farthest end of Hogsmeade, nearly forgotten. The plan was this: Remus would distract the shop keep and Sirius would sneak behind the counter under the veil of the invisibility cloak and nick a carton of cigarettes. Easy.
“Why can’t I be the distraction?” Sirius had asked.
“Because you fit under the cloak better.”
The bell over the door rang as Remus opened it. The witch at the counter greeted them automatically with a stale look on her face as she flipped through a magazine that lay open on the counter. It looked like she hadn’t had many customers for the day, if any. She seemed young but neither of them recognized her, so she had probably left Hogwarts by the time they started their first year.
“Hello,” Remus said smoothly as he walked up and leaned against the counter the witch was stationed at. “What’s your name? I haven’t seen you here before.”
The girl seemed to perk up as her eyes raked over his entire body. At 15, Remus was already over 6 feet tall, and it seemed like many of the girls he encountered found it irresistible. Sirius got it, of course. Remus had always been taller than him and it was one of the first things that drew him to the other boy.
“Sandy," she answered flirtatiously and twirled a strand of hair between her fingers. “And yours?”
Sirius rolled his eyes under the cloak and moved as silently as possible behind the counter so they could get the cigarettes and get the hell out of there. Remus held the witch’s gaze, trying to make sure she wouldn’t turn around at the worst moment when the carton of cigarettes was inexplicably plucked from the shelf behind her. Their conversation was awkward, and Remus cringed at his own attempts at flirting, but he didn’t dare break eye contact until they got what they came for.
He didn’t catch the exact moment when two cartons had disappeared from the shelf, but he eventually felt a swish of fabric brush past him, and he heaved a sigh of relief that he could finally get away from the witch. “Alright well, it was nice talking to you, Sally.”
“Sandy,” she corrected. “Hey, aren’t you going to buy something,” Sandy called out as she noticed Remus backing towards the door.
He patted the front and back pocket areas of his jeans and shrugged. “It seems like I’ve forgotten my wallet. I’ll have to come by again later. See you.”
As soon as the door was closed behind him, Remus felt an invisible hand wrap around his wrist, pulling him, and then they were running. Remus almost tripped over his own feet several times as Sirius led him to the bare field between the shops and the forest.
Sirius whipped off the cloak and collapsed onto the grass. “Merlin, she was bloody annoying!”
“You’re telling me,” Remus complained, sitting beside him and laying back on his elbow. He was hitting one of the packs against his palm when Sirius pushed him. “Hey! What was that for?”
“Nothing,” Sirius smiled. Remus pushed him back, and soon they were full-on wrestling. Sirius tried to take it easy on him, worried about hurting him, but he quickly found it was unnecessary when Remus had him pinned in less than a minute.
“Alright! Uncle, uncle!” Sirius called out.
“That’s what I thought,” Remus smirked and rolled over onto the grass. They stayed there for a long time, enjoying each other’s company and the feeling of the sun on their skin.
“It’s getting late,” Sirius mumbled when the sky was starting to turn orange.
“Yeah,” Remus replied but didn’t make any movement to get up.
Honeydukes was long closed when they were finally ready to head back. They tried every door and window they could find to get back into the cellar but eventually gave up and took the open path back to the castle. What was another night in detention to them, anyway?
They didn’t meet anyone on the path, though, and made it back without being caught. They stopped by the kitchens, hungry after a day of not eating, and then they were on their way back to the nest they had created for themselves in the Gryffindor tower.
...
Sunday evening came too soon and suddenly James and Peter were back.
“It smells like a smokehouse in here,” James exclaimed as he walked through the threshold of the dorm with his trunk trailing behind him, waving his hands in front of his face and making a beeline for the window to throw it open in an attempt to air out the room. “Were you guys smoking in here?”
Remus shook his head. “No,” he said and went back to the book he was reading on his bed.
“What’s a smokehouse?” Sirius asked.
And just like that, it was like the bubble the two had been living in for the past week had popped. They would have to go back to classes the next day and everything would be the same as it ever was.