Chapter 4
REMUS
FIFTH YEAR
Remus leaned his head back on the armchair he was curled into and let his eyes drift shut, but it was no use. There was no rest for the weary in Gryffindor tower.
On the couch opposite Remus, Mary and Dorcas sat doting on Marlene, who glared at the two of them from the floor. While Mary pulled Dorcas’s hair back in patterned handkerchiefs, the two of them whispered about how cute Marlene was, until she pulled off her silver chain and threw it at the two of them.
James and Sirius were attempting to use Wingardium Leviosa on each other, an amateur spell that was evidently not designed for use on humans. Remus was sure that, by the time they were done, one of them would end up more bruised than him after a full moon.
Dorcas had dragged Pandora up from the Slytherin common room with her, and Pandora was playing chess again Peter across the low coffee table. Someone’s misfired spell had amplified the dialogue of the pieces on the wizard chess board, which Remus was sure were exposing some first years to vulgar language they’d yet to hear.
Lily sat at Remus’s feet with her head on his knees. Her thick red tresses brushed Remus’s ankles every so often. Lily was chatting loudly with Alice Fortescue, who was trying to ignore Frank Longbottom on her other side, pining for her attention.
Anyway. It was proving very difficult for Remus to take a catnap in this environment.
Remus didn’t mind his friends’ antics, really, but the full moon was just a few days away and Remus was feeling its pull. His head throbbed, and he just felt so heavy. On top of that, he had three essays to work on and an exam to study for. Remus’s perfectionistic tendencies withheld him from a few days off.
Remus dragged his fingers through his curls, letting his hands slide down and rest over his eyes. Which he was inclined to gouge out.
After at least a few minutes passed without any shouts of “Wingardium Leviosa!”, Remus opened one eye to peek between two fingers, just to find Sirius Black’s gaze on him. Heat flooded Remus’s face, and he quickly snapped his fingers back together over his eyes. Sirius looked concerned… and intrigued. Remus really didn’t even want to know what was going on in Sirius’s head, until he felt hot breath just a few inches from his ear.
“Hey,” a voice said softly. Remus’s chest felt tight, and he didn’t turn around to face Sirius - just groaned and slouched further down in his chair.
“You okay?” Remus nodded, but Sirius didn’t seem to take this for an answer. He hopped onto the arm of Remus’s chair, kicking Lily in the back of the head with the toe of his boot.
“Oi! Evans! You’re taking up my Moony space!”
“You’re the one kicking me in the head!” Lily retorted, not moving. Remus was glad she didn’t. Whatever “Moony space” was, Remus wasn’t sure he wanted it filled with Sirius at that moment.
Sirius slowly began to tilt, until he fell off the arm of the chair and onto the cushion. He and Remus could barely both fit in the chair, and every inch of Remus’s left side was pressed into Sirius’s right. Remus turned his head the best he could without sending shooting pain up his neck to look down at Sirius, whose eyes were still filled with concern.
“The moon?” he asked quietly. Remus nodded, and suddenly felt a lump begin to form in his throat. Sirius’s full, sad eyes did not leave Remus’s face. Remus wanted to kiss those eyes, the lashes, the irises… he wanted to take Sirius’s eyes for himself and never give them back.
Remus’s breathing began to form an unsteady pattern, until Sirius playfully punched him in the shoulder and the moment was broken. “It’ll be over soon, Moons. Just a few more days of feeling like shit.”
“Hm, yeah,” Remus chuckled, but there was no joy in his smile. Sirius looked at him for one more moment, before saying,
“Alright, I’ll give you your space,” and hoisting himself out of the chair.
No, Remus thought. No, I don’t want space. Not from you. But he said nothing, and watched Sirius swagger back over to James and collapse into him. Remus’s head bumped the back of the armchair once more.
Remus began to make a little braid from Lily’s hair. The girls had taught him how to braid in first year and it took years of practice for him to get the hang of it; his fingers had never been very nimble. He still couldn’t do anything more than a simple braid. The girls had tried to teach him Dutch braids, but that was hopeless.
When Remus looked up from the red hair in his hands, he found Sirius pushing himself up from his position on the floor. Sirius shoved his hands into his pockets and turned towards the stairs. Remus let his eyes follow Sirius until his body retreated around the spiral staircase. Remus glanced at James with inquisitive eyes, and James mimed holding a joint between his fingers. Remus nodded and, after a few moments of indecision, lightly stepped out from behind Lily and walked in the direction of the stairs.
When Remus reached the dorm, he found Sirius leaning against the windowsill, a joint held lazily between his fingers. Remus hesitated in the doorway for a moment until Sirius said, without turning around, “Well, come on. I know you want a drag.” Remus chuckled and walked over to join Sirius at the window. He took a long inhale from the joint before handing it back to Sirius.
“Moon’s in two nights, right?” Sirius asked.
“Yeah.” Remus watched the smoke from his lips stream into the open air.
“Okay.” Neither of them said anything more. A few years ago this would have been a comfortable silence, but Remus couldn’t help but wonder why neither of them had anything to say to each other. Maybe there was nothing Sirius wanted him to know. “Stressed, too?”
Remus groaned. “I’m fine, Sirius. Please stop - checking in, or whatever.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.” Sirius didn’t sound sorry, and snatched the joint back from Remus. The windowsill was small, and Sirius and Remus had to stand just a few inches apart to be in front of it together. Remus turned his head away from Sirius to try and catch his breath.
“Can we just get really high? And can everything not be weird?” Remus asked. He wasn’t sure why he said this, or what he was referring to as “weird”. Sirius didn’t seem to know either, but he nodded, eyes wide.
“The landing?”
“Yeah,” Remus agreed quietly.
“The landing” was a large windowsill only accessible through a window in a seventh year Gryffindor dorm. Sirius and Remus always took James’ invisibility cloak to sneak through the dorm and reach the landing. They weren’t sure that the dorm’s inhabitants even knew it existed; you couldn’t see it very well through the window, and Sirius had only first noticed it from the grounds in third year.
Thankfully, the dorm was empty, but Sirius and Remus did not take off the cloak until they had successfully climbed out onto the landing. It was getting more and more difficult the larger they grew.
Sirius and Remus passed the joint back and forth until the sky darkened, and then they lit a new one. Sirius’s eyes grew more and more unfocused; he had always had a lower tolerance to weed than Remus. They talked a little bit, about schoolwork and quidditch. Nothing serious. Remus didn’t want to talk about anything serious anyway; he had been in enough pain the last few days to just enjoy a few moments.
“Hey, Remus?” Sirius said eventually. The moon was now high in the sky and they had gone through more than a few joints. “I wish I could just…” Sirius reached out and made a motion with his pointer finger and thumb as if to pluck the moon from the sky. “Do that.”
Remus’s breath caught in his throat. “Do what?” he asked quietly.
“Don’t make me use words…” Sirius mumbled.
“No, tell me.” Remus had always been more confident when he was high.
“I wish I could take the moon down.” Remus snorted.
“I thought you said the moon was pretty.”
“No,” Sirius mumbled, as if aggravated that his point wasn’t getting across. “The moon is a bitch. Moony is pretty.”
Remus could have sworn all the breath in his throat was sucked out like a vaccuum. The joint between his fingertips slipped and fell to the grounds below, causing Sirius to turn to him with an open mouth.
“Hey!” Remus didn’t say anything, just looked at the spot in the dark grass where he imagined the joint must have landed. “Why’d you drop it?”
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Remus grumbled. Sirius playfully punched his shoulder and Remus shoved him back. They fought for a few more minutes before growing quiet.
“Did you really mean it?” Remus asked, his voice nearly a whisper.
“Mhm,” Sirius said. “When I was younger I told Mother I wanted to be pretty, but she said that boys can’t be pretty. Boys have to be…” Sirius trailed off and he stared at his hands. Remus wasn’t sure if he was nervous or just high. “Um,” Sirius added. “Boys have to be handsome, or something. But you proved Mother wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Remus asked quietly.
“You’re pretty. You’re a boy and you’re pretty.”
Remus didn’t say anything for a few moments. He hoped the dark would hide the red blush climbing up his cheeks. “Okay,” was all he could muster out. Sirius immediately looked up.
“No, sorry if that was - weird. I didn’t mean it weird or anything. I-” While Sirius was speaking, Remus pulled out a new joint and shoved it between Sirius’s lips to shut him up.
“It wasn’t weird,” Remus said. “We should get some sleep though. We both need it.”
Sirius nodded, and pulled Remus’s unlit joint out from between his lips and put it back in their box.
By now the dorms’ inhabitants were back, and Sirius and Remus struggled to get through the window and out the door under the cloak without causing suspicion. The boys in the room didn’t seem too focused on any unexpected movement, and Sirius and Remus made it back to their own room in a few moments.
Peter and James didn’t ask where the two had been; they could probably figure it out for themselves. Peter and James didn’t smoke and appreciated when Remus and Sirius left the dorm to do it.
Sirius deposited the cloak on James’ trunk and Remus and Sirius headed to the bathroom to brush their teeth. They stood side by side, making occasional eye contact in the mirror before Sirius hurriedly spit out his toothpaste and left to change.
Remus took a long look at his reflection, and tried to cover the scars on his face with his hands. He would need more than two hands to cover them all without obstructing his eyes. Remus wished he could just rip the scars from his face; he’d tried when he was younger, and had learned the hard way that that just made them worse.
Nevertheless, they couldn’t be that ugly if Sirius Orion Black thought he was pretty.