A Coming of Age Has Come and Gone
Remus was fresh out of the shower, his damp hair leaving droplets of water on his pajamas when Sirius walked in. It was the first time Remus was confronted with him alone since the very first morning. At the sight of him in the corner of his eye, Remus’ head spun around and Sirius’ eyes widened. He halted in the doorway, like a deer in headlights.
“Remus-”
“Whatever fucking apology you have for me, just keep it to yourself. I don't want to hear it” he sighed out irritatedly. Every word from Sirius since that night has been a half-assed sorry, platitudes in some attempt to smooth him over.
Sirius visibly deflated, but Remus couldn’t find any remorse in him. He didn’t revel in it either.
“Please, Remus can I just-” He breathed in deeply, stopping, thinking, for an ever so slight moment. “Can I just explain? I just need you to know”
Remus considered this for a moment, a no was on the tip of his tongue, but eventually, he gave in. He always gave in when it was Sirius.
“Fuck, fine. Just– fine.”
Sirius sighed in relief at this.
“Can we both sit down?” His words were tentative, worried. He meandered through them like he was tip-toeing around broken glass.
“Fine.” He didn’t have many words for Sirius. Sometimes, it felt like his rage was blinding him, sometimes just the thought of it tinged the room red. It scared him, the pure hateful agony he felt. By then, more often than not, it dwindled into some repressed depression. He felt his emotion like he heard something underwater, hazy and bloated.
Remus perched on the edge of his bed, a painful foot or so separating them. Remus’ knees almost knocked Sirius’, and Sirius shifted uncomfortably, trying to avoid Remus’ over-long legs.
“Go on then.” he said harshly “Explain.”
Sirius winced slightly, but, to his credit, took the jab in stride. “I’m so fucking sorry, Remus, I don't know what I was thinking, I wasn’t thinking, I guess. Snape was right there looking so full of himself, and he was saying stupid shit about you and Mary and Lily, and I just thought, I’ll make him pay, y’know? I’ll scare him shitless, scratch him up a bit. I’m so sorry Remus, I just wasn’t thinking. I’m so fucking sorry.”
His heavy breathing was the only sound in the slightly dark dormitory.
“Please, Remus. I miss you so much, I hate myself so much right now and I don’t deserve your forgiveness for even a moment but I fucking miss you.”
Remus started slowly, that blinding rage creeping up. Granted, the apology was actually a nice one, but it was all too little. It was all too soon. He could tell Sirius was telling the truth, which made it worse. To know he could truly ignore the repercussions, just to prank fucking Snivellus . In that moment, he really thought he hated Sirius, which wasn’t something he thought he could do. In that moment, he was glad Sirius hated himself. He hoped he felt a fraction of the loathing Remus felt for himself every full moon, he wished he could hear the desperate curses and bitter thoughts that bounce around his head in the glow of a waxing and waning moon.
So Remus started slowly, “That’s the thing, isn't it? You weren’t thinking. You weren’t thinking about how what you were doing would affect me. You weren’t thinking about how it would even affect you. Can you imagine? What if I had killed him? They’d send me off to Azkaban at least. Or actually, I don't know if they even can send a dark creature to Azkaban, I think they might execute me somehow, euthanize me maybe?” He managed these words with calculated deadpan. A measured indifference shaped perfectly to hurt Sirius, to shock him.
Sirius’ face fell, but Remus just continued. “And what if he doesn’t listen to Dumbledore? What if goes and tells everyone? You think they’ll just let me stay at Hogwarts? No. I’ll be put on the registry and probably sent to some home. Or maybe they’ll just let me stay in transformation cells? Wouldn’t that be kind of them”
“Remus I-”
“It wasn’t your decision to make. It wasn’t you scaring him, or you ‘scratching him up. If it wasn’t for James saving your arse, Snape and I could both be dead. But you didn't think about that, did you?”
“Remus I-”
“Fuck you, Sirius.”
Remus walked out of the dorm, with a purposeful slowness, with a perfected gait of not-caring. He didn’t know where he was headed, couldn’t tell where his feet were taking him, unseeing in the field of crimson that blocked his view. In the end, he had collapsed in some alcove, pressed against the cool panes of an icy window. His feet had chosen the side of the castle with no view of the moon, and he thanked some god above for that.
Angry, hot tears had managed to squeeze from his eyes. Remus couldn’t tell the difference between his sadness and his anger anymore, his wistfulness and his bitterness, they were blended as one. They were twined as horrible siblings. He couldn’t feel one without the other.
He hated himself more than he hated Sirius though, for trusting him, for trusting them all. The eleven-year-old boy on the train was right all along, his friendships never ended well, and these wouldn’t either. He was doomed to a solitary life since he was four years old, and he hated himself for trying to erase that ever-present fact.
He didn’t blame James for eyeing Sirius longingly, it had been two weeks, he missed his friend. He didn’t blame Peter for wishing they could all go back to being mates again, for not understanding why Remus was so mad. At least, he didn’t blame them too much.
He blamed himself for thinking there wasn’t some tragic ending to the good years, for hoping that the months of grayed-over emotion and crushing loneliness were over after that fated moment on the train. He blamed himself for not being able to get over the loss of Sirius, for constantly searching for forgiveness within himself, a desperate attempt to regain Sirius even after all this.
He missed Sirius, almost more than he hated him. He missed the flash of pearly teeth that erupted so beautifully when he laughed, he missed the soft knock of knee on knee when sitting across from each other in the great hall, he missed the way Sirius said his name, unlike any other, like he reveled in the very sound of it. He doesn’t see Sirius smile much anymore, and he sits with the girls at meals. Most tragically of all, Sirius says his name like a weight being dropped now, with a burdensome stress, like a painful sigh.
He remembered all those days, in the awkward years of pre-teen gangliness, when he would sit just like this, pressed up against the bay window in his room in their pretty cottage in Wales. Perhaps a book lay abandoned just out of reach, or pre-moon aches made laying down uncomfortable. Remus would stare out at the night sky, blissfully devoid of a cruel, teasing moon, and fixate on the twinkling stars. Those years were some of the worst and some of the best. The happiness he now knows so intimately was unfathomable to him, so he was at peace in that strange half-hurt.
That lovely ignorance is now ruined. He now knew how it felt to float away, fag between his fingers, back slumped against the forgiving stone of the Hogsmeade tunnel, Sirius glancing at him sideways from his seat next to him. He knew how it felt to be inexplicably warm, warm with the fuel of friendships, feeling like the center of the universe, at their spot in the great hall. He knew how it felt to sing drunken songs in the common room, banners with his name draped on the walls, Sirius’ arm slung over his shoulders, swaying to the Bowie record playing.
So now he looked back on those pre-Hogwarts years and felt dread curl in his stomach, frowning upon those hours, days, months, spent lonesomely, emptily, in the company of only himself and his quiet mother. That was the one thing he missed from those days, that closeness he had with his mother. That had faded when his Hogwarts days started and then disappeared entirely in the wake of her death. Somedays his grief was crippling, and Sirius was often the one to notice when it was particularly hard for him. He would shelter Remus from the loudness of the day, allowing him a pocket of calm to exist gloomily in. For that, he was eternally grateful.
Now that buffer was gone, and Remus was loath to return to that stern, self-pitying pain. He wished that necessary forgiveness would well up in him like the tears flooding from him. He wished desperately to not be so angry anymore. As much as he felt he deserved time, deserved anger, he longed to be over it.
Remus’ mind twisted itself into a dozen knots, and then a dozen more before he stumbled on the true wish that existed within him. It felt glaringly obvious, yet had eluded him with its simplicity. Remus wished Sirius had never done it. He wished that the moon had gone as normal, he wished he could look at Sirius the same, without a doubt in his mind.
Now, that seed was planted in his mind, and in those short weeks had taken root. Remus could prune it, and clip it and smother it, but to ever fully uproot it, he would have to rip Sirius from his life entirely. He thought he could live on with the sapling of doubt, but he did not think he could survive losing Sirius forever.
It had been an uncomfortable amount of time, shifting into the wee hours of the night, and Remus deemed it safe enough to creep back into their dormitory unnoticed. Secretly, he noticed the tell-tale glow of wand light from under Sirius’ covers, revealing he was wide awake, but Sirius did him the courtesy of pretending not to notice Remus’ arrival.
…
The first moon without Sirius was undeniably hard. It was strange to see James enter the shack in the invisibility cloak, with Peter, in animagus form, perched on his shoulder—and not see their ankles emerge under it from the joined mass of all three of them.
The wolf sensed the upset too. Usually, the moons were messes of hazy emotion and wild joy in his memories, but this one was painfully clear. He could replay the unusually intense howls and too-hard scratches in his mind, and feel the tight, hot, energy that seemed to burst from him. Remus could remember more than one occasion where the stag had to brandish its antlers wildly and stomp its hooves to subdue the incensed wolf.
The next morning, he saw Sirius wince at the sight of many more fresh cuts than usual, and more than once Remus was sure Sirius was about to say something. Either way, he stayed awkwardly silent, casting furtive glances Remus’ way.
There were half a million moments in the days after that moon where Remus was dying to shout at Sirius. He wasn’t sure why, just to get some sort of response from him, to break the ever-palpable tension. He wanted to beg Sirius to say something, to show some hint of his inner machinations. At the very same moment, he was desperately thankful for the silence. He wasn't ready to pretend it hadn’t happened, and he couldn’t bear another pointless fight, another token of the growing canyon between them.
Throughout this all, James and Peter were stuck in some purgatory, too loyal to return to Sirius, but wishing very much for some company other than the pensive, wistful, Remus. Remus didn’t even feel hurt when he walked into the dormitory one day and saw James and Sirius laughing about god-knows-what. He was just glad someone had found some happiness after it all. He was almost sorry when he saw their faces fall at the recognition of him in the doorway.
Still, he could not forgive Sirius, even two months after. It wasn't for lack of trying, but every time he attempted to string a few words together in relent, they felt wrong in his mouth. He abandoned his inner peace talks.
…
April came and went. Another moon spent without the dog, but the wolf had calmed a bit. Mud coated the Scottish fields of Hogwarts, and cropped up in splattered messes near the entrances of the castle. It felt unnatural to be sad at a time Remus usually cherished, the return of the warmth.
By the end of that month, there was a sort of tentative truce between Sirius and Remus, they both ignored each other deeply, but Remus tolerated Sirius' silent presence, if only for Peter and James’ sake. Slowly, sometime in may, pranks resumed, in a stilted way. They weren’t the grandiose plots of earlier times, but the occasional dung bomb was planted in the dungeons or sticking charm cast on the Slytherin's chairs.
It was during one of these excursions, one Remus was only participating in to make James happy, that Sirius and he got separated from the others. Like a curse from the gods themselves, they both heard the stomp of filch’s footsteps approaching.
Out of habit, if nothing else, Sirius grabbed his arm and yanked him into a nearby broom closet. In flurries of dust bunnies, they were both ensconced in the dark of that tiny cupboard. Suddenly, Remus was aware of how close they were. His mind flashed to that night before it all, at Remus’s birthday party, where he could have sworn they were going to kiss.
Sirius was staring into his eyes, fervently, almost harshly. Remus attempted to step back, away from him, but his back only knocked into a set of shelves. There were maybe six inches separating them, and it seemed as if they were leaning into it, like magnets begging to snap together. Sirius closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again.
He knocked their foreheads together, pressing temple to temple, Remus slumped slightly to allow him to reach. Remus felt paralyzed by the strange intimacy of it, unable to do anything but relent.
Right as Remus lifted his chin to connect their lips, Sirius interrupted.
“Fuck-” he backed away ever so slightly, as much as the cramped area will allow. “We should talk”
Remus was startled by the frankness in Sirius’ voice, the slight groan in the first expletive. Remus stood up straighter.
“Okay,” he said, “Let’s talk”
Sirius seemed surprised by this, but his eyes lit up just barely, enough to show some hope.
“Remus, I don’t know how to explain to you how I feel. I don’t know how to show how sorry I am. I feel it every moment of every day. I know I don't deserve your forgiveness and I’ve ruined something I should have protected at all costs. I don't know what to do, but I can't lose this. I can’t lose you. These past months have been the worst in my life, so I can’t even imagine how they’ve been for you. I know I can't make up for that, I know I've betrayed your trust, and if this is it, I won't fight it, but I’ll miss you my entire life. I don’t want to miss you.”
He shifted slightly, but only repeated, “I don’t want to miss you, Remus”
There it was, there was that indelibly beautiful way Sirius said his name, like his name was a sacred prayer, like his name was his final words, like Remus’ name was the most gorgeous thing he had ever heard.
“Okay,” Remus sighed.
“Okay?”
“Okay. I don't want to miss you either. I don’t want to miss you Sirius”
A soft smile lit up Sirius’ face, like a flower turning to the sun.
“This isn’t over, though. You hurt me, I'm not sure I will ever be able to fully look past it, and some part of me might never fully forgive you, you have to be okay with that. But, I’m going to try. I’m going to let you try”
“Thank you, Remus.” he replied, then added, “Thank you, moony”.
Sirius hadn’t called him that in a long time, but it felt right. Remus was exhausted, it drained him to hate someone he loved so much, and he was ready to let Sirius try. He was ready to have his best friend back.