This was the first time Sirius had worn a suit in years. It’s well made, fits the shape of his body and he still feels like it’s suffocating him. He had thought just months ago that he’d wear a suit to James and Lily’s wedding, maybe a dance (and in his darkest secret, hoped that he’d wear one to his own wedding, familiar eyes down the aisle)
He’d never imagined he’d be wearing it to Remus’s funeral.
The funeral home is beautiful. Remus would have loved it is the first thought that enters his head, and with it comes the stab of pain within him that Sirius has learnt to associate with Remus. It’s an old, brick—layed building with budding ivy crawling up its walls, windows firmly closed against the chill of the autumn air. Autumn is his favourite season, Sirius thinks absentmindedly as he climbs the steps, reaches to open the door (was. He always forgets)
"Padfoot’’, James says behind him, and he is suddenly reminded that no, he’s not alone. He turns, and James and Lily and Peter are all waiting for him, faces identically streaked in worry and the never-ending grief of losing someone.
‘'Padfoot’’, James says again, and Sirius faces him, feels nothing but confusion at the disappointment in his face (anger, was that anger? Why was James angry?) James’ eyes are red-rimmed, and his hair is messy in the way it is when it hasn’t been artfully arranged, curling into his eyes. His mouth is a slash of darkness in a too-pale face.
‘'I don’t- Sirius, you’ve barely said anything since- '' James falters, and Lily continues for him, picking up his sentence with barely a pause. Sirius envies that; knowing someone so deeply to the point that you know them better than they know themselves. Who would finish his sentences now that Remus was gone?
‘'-you don’t talk to us, you don’t cry and it’s like you don’t even feel anything for what’s happened!’’, Lily finishes, and Sirius realizes, abruptly, that he’d missed quite a large portion of the conversation.
‘'What’s happened?’’, he asks, bewildered, and James scoffs, tucks his hands into his pockets. But surprisingly, it’s Peter who speaks up – sweet, timid Peter, who had found a safe place in Remus too, like all of them had.
‘'Remus died, Sirius’’, he says, quietly. Sirius’s mind quietens. He knows that. He knows that. Of course, he does. He had been there when they got the news, when James collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut, when something in him shriveled up and died and left him feeling a little like he’d lost a limb.
He thinks back. He doesn’t remember crying. Remus always got worried when he cried, and Sirius hates worrying Remus. So, he hadn’t cried. He’d made coffee, and he’d gotten some sleep, and woken up the next day and felt absolutely nothing.
He knew Remus was dead. Didn’t he?
(So why was it that he still expected to hear the raspy chord of Remus’s laughter after a joke? Why did he still look for Remus when he entered a room, hold his hand out for a palm that would never come, dream of smiles and scars and long fingers of someone that was-)
‘'I know Remus is dead’’, he says blankly, and somehow the furrows in Lily’s eyebrows get deeper. But he’s saved from another intervention when Remus’ mother pops her head out of the door and spots them.
She’s dressed in all black, and her hair is tied back in a bun. Her eyes are so sad. They stay sad, even when she musters up a smile for them and opens her arms. They all fall into her, because this is Remus’ mum, who’d known them since they were eleven, all pompous arrogance and false bravado. She smells a little like Remus does, Sirius thinks, cinnamon and the mustiness of a well-loved book. (He forgot again, that Remus is now a was and not an is)
They’re all ushered inside, and the quiet peace of the air outside falls away. Inside is packed full of people – some of them with brown hair and lanky limbs, the others unrecognized faces that fall away in the crowd. Just another group of people that Remus had left his mark on.
The funeral passes in a blur. He’s sat in the third row, second seat from the left. James on his right, Lily on his left. James has his hand on his thigh, the heavy pressure of his fingers easing a tension Sirius didn’t even know he had. He doesn’t remember anything else.
Mostly he’s thinking of how Remus would have hated this. Hated the stuffy little hall and the assigned seating and the droning indifference of the preacher. Remus would have wanted to be buried outside, where they spent so many of their nights, under the moon that he both loved and hated. James would have had to come as a stag, Sirius imagines quite suddenly, and the picture that summons is funny enough to have him muffling a laugh in the middle of a second cousin’s speech.
James sends him a disgusted look and removes his hand from Sirius’s leg. He stops laughing after that.
He zones out again. He doesn’t remember what he was thinking of, but he’s shaken from it when Lily grabs his shoulder and hisses in his ear.
‘'Your turn’’, she’s saying. ‘'It’s your turn’’.
Sirius blinks. Everyone in the hall has turned to face him, sympathetic eyes trained on his startled face. The podium is empty.
‘'Sirius’’, Lily says again, shoves slightly harder. ‘'Your speech’’.
Oh. He does remember writing a speech, inebriated and unconscious, hidden from judgement under the warm covers of Remus’ bed. He’d thrown it away the next morning.
He gets up, slowly, and almost immediately clutches at the back of a chair for support. He’s not even drunk. Remus would have hated it if he were drunk.
‘'I’m fine’’, he says, shakes off Peter’s concerned hands, and straightens. He’s a Black. He’d been hiding pain since he was five.
When he gets to the podium, the sea of eyes trained on him is a little unnerving. He doesn’t like it, feels too much like he’s on display again. James is making little shooing gestures with his hands, but Sirius doesn’t really know what it means. He takes a deep breath and focuses his gaze on the wall ahead of him.
Oh.
It’s a picture of Remus. It’s a candid picture too, one where Remus is unknowing of the camera, and his smile is open and wide. His eyes crinkle at the corners. Sirius had taken that picture, once upon a time, in sixth year, had liked it so much that he’d owled a copy of it to Mrs. Lupin and kept the original under his pillow. This is the first time Sirius had seen Remus after it happened. He’d forgotten the warmth of his eyes, the colour of them.
Sirius swallows, and the wall in him breaks. Shatters, cuts him with a thousand pieces of no no please why isn’t he here he should be here I can’t without him why isn’t he here why would he leave me please please give him back give him back give him back-
This is what they were talking about. There’s that ache, that hole of emptiness that stretches so deep he thinks it would take him all his life to find the bottom. Remus is gone. Remus is gone. He’s not coming back. Remus. Remus, his best friend. Remus, Moony, their glue, the fourth marauder (how could the marauders be if they were not four how how) Remus, the boy who ate chocolate for breakfast and had twenty odd sweaters and scars too deep for his age. Remus, the boy who thought reading was fun and made friends with all the teachers and had a heart bigger than anyone else’s.
Remus, the boy that was dead.
Sirius bends over, clutches his stomach. His chest is too tight. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. The floor is blurry. He can’t breathe. When he falls, he’s vaguely aware of a panicked hum of sound, growing louder. He can’t breathe.
‘'-Padfoot. Sirius. Breathe. In. out’’, someone is saying, and warm hands are clutching his shoulders (he knows those hands why can’t he breathe). He tries to tell them he can’t, he can’t breathe, not without Remus, but all that comes out is a low keening noise.
‘'Sirius’’, the person says, and they’re grabbing his hand, pressing it to their chest. It’s James. Of course, it’s James. ‘'Sirius, can you hear that? That’s my heartbeat. We’re gonna match our breathing to it, okay? In, out, that’s it’’.
James is taking exaggerated breaths, inhaling and exhaling through his mouth. His chest rises and falls under Sirius’s hand, the pulse slow and steady. Sirius takes a few shallow breaths and tries to focus on the steady rhythm of James’ heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump.
‘'That’s it. You’ve got it. Just breathe with me, Padfoot. Just breathing’’, James is encouraging him, his voice loud in the buzzing static that is Sirius’ brain. His surroundings slowly swim into vision; James, all glasses and visible concern in front of him. Lily, rubbing slow circles on his back, Peter’s shoes next to his knees. The podium. The stage.
Right. It was his speech.
‘'Is he alright?’’, a woman says, sounding frantic. It hurts his head, so Sirius leans forward and tips his head against James’ shoulder, breathes in the scent of his cologne and tries not to think about. Anything.
‘'He’s doing better, Mrs. Lupin’’, James says, quiet. His fingers are brushing slowly through his hair. ‘'I think it just…hit him. What happened. I think we might just take him home and let him rest. Be there when it hits him again’’.
Mrs. Lupin mutters a quiet reply, but- but he can’t go home. It’s Remus’ funeral. It was his speech. All these people here, they came because they loved Remus. Because they knew him. But Sirius had known Remus better than he had known himself. They deserved to know that version of Remus too.
‘'James’’, Sirius says, and feels more than he’s ever felt in weeks.'' James. I want to do the speech’’.
James blinks and stares down at him, a little worried and a bit more confused. Sirius stares at him, and wills him to understand what he can’t convey in words. I want to tell the world about him. I need them to know. I want him to be remembered. I want to remember him.
Slowly James’ eyes soften. There are lines around his eyes, Sirius thinks suddenly, lines that weren’t there before. I’m sorry, he thinks, and hopes that’s enough.
‘'Okay, Padfoot’’, James says, and slowly, gently helps him up. ‘'Okay’’.
When he stands up, he leans on the podium, places both hands flat on the surface and tips forward. But James, Lily, and Peter don’t leave for their seats like he expected them to. Instead, they step back and form a line behind him, nearly touching but not quite, providing silent, solid support.
Sirius takes a deep breath and faces the front. The guests are quiet again, in their seats, though some of them are leaning forward like he’ll collapse any second. He doesn’t have the strength to be embarrassed.
Unwillingly, his eyes find Remus’ face again. He knows that face, every inch of it, every scar and blemish and burn. His hair falls over his eyes, and Sirius knows how that feels too, how soft the strands of hair are. It’s strange to think that the only Remus he can touch now will be cold and unmoving, forever frozen in time. It hurts.
‘'I met Remus when we were both eleven’’, he says. It’s ripped out from him, the words and memories of Remus Lupin. His voice comes out hoarse and scratchy, but the hall drops its last whispers, and suddenly it’s just his voice, echoing in the vastness.
‘'We both went to the same school. Same house. Same dorm’’, and the memories flood him – small, scrawny little Remus, with his oversized uniform, and Sirius, shiny hair and overly loud laugh.
‘'The four of us were inseparable. James, Remus, Peter and me. It was us against the world, the marauders, only the world was just teachers and homework’’. He huffs a laugh, and it scratches against his throat as it comes out. He remembers being eleven and running around the corridors of Hogwarts, excited over everything. He doesn’t think they ever really stopped.
‘'We were real pranksters, the lot of us. You wouldn’t think it, but Remus more than any of us. He made all of the plans, told us where to go and what to do’’.
It had surprised them all, when one day, Remus had leaned over the table and explained in excruciating detail why their prank would go wrong and what they could do to fix it. It had been one of their most successful ones. Sirius hadn’t stopped smiling for a week.
‘'He is – was my best friend’’, Sirius says, and correcting the present to past hurts. More than he thought it would. James makes a wounded noise behind him.
‘'There was nothing I didn’t know about him. I knew his favourite food, the colour of his socks, the different smells of the shampoos he used. I knew that he didn’t like white chocolate, and that he smelled the inside of a book before he read it. And there was nothing he didn’t know about me either’’.
He looks up at Remus again. He can’t stop doing it. He’s never been able to stop, not since he was fifteen and saw Remus Lupin sitting near the fire, holding a book with his knees drawn up to his chest, painted in red and gold. He remembers being sixteen and feeling his pulse jump every time Remus laughed. He remembers being seventeen and eighteen and falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole that was Remus Lupin and not caring, not even once. He remembers being nineteen and twenty and twenty-one, all at once, and feeling his heart clench when Remus looked at him, remembers thinking please, please look at me and never saying it aloud.
He is twenty-two and in love with a dead man.
‘'Except one thing’’, he whispers. He looks at Remus. He imagines them, younger, knees knocking together. He would lean forward, grab Remus’ hand. He’d rush it, screw it up and stumble over his words, but Remus would smile anyway, that slow, syrupy smile of his that Sirius loves especially. Maybe he would say something back. Maybe he wouldn’t. But there are no sad endings in that story.
‘'I was incredibly, stupidly in love with him’’, he breathes, and the admission feels like relief, a door being opened in his chest after years of it being forced shut. Something in him unravels and says finally. Lily makes a punched-out sound, and Peter sucks air in through his teeth. Mrs. Lupin covers her mouth with her hand.
‘'I’ve loved him since I was fifteen’’, he says, and now he can’t stop talking, words flooding out of him. ‘'Maybe even earlier. He was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. I loved him when he laughed and I loved him when he cried. I would have loved him if he hated me. I would have loved him even if I had never met him, I think, because I can’t imagine a world where I didn’t love Remus Lupin’’.
And just as suddenly as they came, the words are gone, and Sirius is a breathless man standing in front of a hall of men and women he doesn’t know but will always feel connected to, because they knew Remus, they loved Remus, and that is one thing they will always have in common.
It’s expected but still sudden, the force of the sorrow that creeps up on him. He hadn’t cried since he’d heard, but tears fill his eyes now, trace new paths down his cheeks. Remus would never know how Sirius loved him. He must have known, surely, that Sirius loved him as all best friends do, but he would never know- never know how much. Never know how deeply it was ingrained in him, carved in his very bones, written into the very threads that formed his life.
‘'He was so loved’’, Sirius chokes out, and James moves forward, Lily and Peter always just a step behind. Their touch is grounding, and still he wishes, just a little, that it were someone else.
He has nothing else to say. They lead him off stage, and Mrs. Hope presses a fleeting kiss to his hand. He can barely summon a smile for her, least of all the people to stare at him, pity in every crevice of their faces. He doesn’t want pity. Not for loving Remus.
James tugs him into a hug the second they step outside. It’s tight enough to hurt, but it’s a good pain, and Sirius melts into it, wraps both arms around his back and lets him hold him up.
‘'I didn’t know’’, James mutters, sounding wrecked. ‘'I’m sorry, I didn’t know- ‘.’
Sirius doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just squeezes tighter and holds on. Lily makes a little noise and rests her face on his shoulder, and Peter lays a tentative hand on his back. They sway there, hiding tears in each other’s clothes, bound together by love and loss and grief.
The trees rustle, and the wind swirls around them, bringing a flurry of leaves. It’s chilly, and the moon has come out. James makes a little sob of a laugh, and together, they all turn their faces towards it, lets the silvery light bathe their faces.
‘'There’s our Moony’’, Lily says, scrubbing a hand across her face.
There you are, Sirius agrees, closes his eyes. There you are, my love.