When You're Not Strong
Remus had been the one to pick out their little studio muggle flat. The only thing Sirius had done to help was buy it.
It was outdated and cramped, their clothes crammed into their old Hogwarts trunks, the walls a sickly green striped wallpaper and nothing to decorate them except for an old gryffindor banner, a Chudley Cannons poster of his and a couple old polaroids Remus had taken one summer when he, Lily, and Mary had taken Marlene and the marauders on a tour around London.
“It’s like school the sequel,” Sirius had joked, “Minus James’s snoring and Peter’s clothes all over the room.”
“We’ll get better decorations eventually,” Remus supplied casually, his hands shoved in his pockets, “But I think it’s nice.”
“We could’ve afforded something a little bigger, you know,” Sirius told him, glancing over at his partner, who simply rolled his eyes in reply. “I have the money. We could’ve at least gotten a flat that’s loo isn’t the size of a closet.”
“We need to save that money,” Remus reminded him, “Just in case. Besides, I like the size. It’s comforting. All that I care about is that we have a place to call our own. Doesn’t matter how big the loo is or if all of our wall decor consisted of pictures of James.”
Sirius chuckled quietly. “Don’t boost his ego.”
“As if yours isn’t bigger than this room.”
“At least my ego has taste.”
Remus snorted and smiled, shaking his head. “You’re insufferable.”
Sirius raised his brows as the werewolf strolled towards him. “Still want to live with me?”
“Always,” he admitted, then he leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to his lips.
A large grin spread across his face. “That’s my Moony.”
Remus rolled his eyes. “Don’t make me change my mind.”
Three years later, on October 31st 1981, Sirius unlocked the front door of the studio, exhausted from another sleepless night on watch duty.
Having just returned home late that night from a long meeting Moody had held berating them about ‘keeping their guard up during this war’ and reminding them they couldn’t trust anyone, Sirius wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and sleep until noon the next morning.
It was beginning to feel like work to keep his eyelids open and he dragged his limbs as if they were made of lead, so of course he forgot to check to make sure the flat was clear before he shut and locked the door.
He released a long sigh, rubbing his eyes. He had no idea what time it was, but he knew by now it must’ve been the late hours of the night, the sky pitch black when he’d taken the bus home, too afraid to apparate in fear of being followed.
“Sirius.”
He startled, wand already out of his pocket and turned to face the source of the voice, wand pointed at the stranger as his chest heaved, but he was only met by a short girl with dark skin and curly black hair standing in their living room.
“Merlin’s sake,” Sirius gasped, shoving his wand back into his pocket. “Scared me, Mary.”
“Sirius,” she began again, her voice a little wobbly, but he only walked forward towards his and Remus’s bed, his partner’s side precise, whereas he’d forgotten to straighten out his side of the sheets.
“What are you doing here, Macdonald? It’s late and I’m tired. Go home and get some sleep. We could all use it.”
“Sirius,” she tried again, but her voice failed her. All she could do was block him from his bed, her head tilted up to look at him and her jaw set.
“Mary, what has gotten into you? Let me through.”
“Sirius, Lily and James are dead.”
The silence that followed was so unbearable that Sirius thought he’d gone deaf, his ears ringing as he was unable to look away from his friend, her cheeks tear stained, smudging her usually perfect makeup.
Sirius huffed a quiet laugh, barely a puff of breath leaving his lips. “What? N-No, that can’t be right.”
“Sirius,” Mary said as steadily as she could, but her lower lip wobbled, her red lipstick smeared, “Voldemort found them. Someone sold them out-”
“No,” Sirius snapped so sharply that Mary flinched. His heartbeat roared in his chest, accelerating as his thoughts spiraled down, down, down…
There was only one person that could’ve betrayed James and Lily, the only one that knew where they had been hidden.
“He didn’t,” Sirius said, but his voice came out all wrong, weak and trembling like a leaf in the wind, holding on for dear life.
His eyes traveled to the kept side of the bed, as if the man had known he’d never return to their flat, never kiss Sirius on the head in the morning, never share sleepless nights again together, never eat breakfast at their poor excuse for a kitchen table together again. Never never never-
“He wouldn’t,” he gasped, his breaths ragged, because no matter how far his lungs expanded he never seemed to get enough air. “He’d never do that. Moony wouldn’t…”
“Sirius,” Mary spoke softly in that same tone of voice Remus had on the rare occasions Sirius had nightmares of his childhood and had to be soothed back to sleep like a child afraid of the dark, “I’m so sorry.”
Sirius didn’t have time to respond. Even if he would’ve tried, his jaw was locked shut and his mind was racing too quickly to even attempt forming a coherent sentence. Lily and James were dead. And Remus, his Moony, the one he trusted, the one he’d loved more than any other person-
The room spun, the lights blindingly bright, his own uneven breathing the only sound filling his buzzing ears. Mary spoke, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying, her voice distorted and fuzzy.
All control of his body lost, Sirius’s knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor, Mary following right along with him, her arms around his waist as she secured him to her chest, running her manicured fingers through his curls as she whispered words that he couldn’t make sense of, because the only thing that was circling through his mind was:
Dead. Dead. Dead. DEAD.
Sirius Black screamed, but he couldn’t hear the sound of his own agony. The cries of the dead blocked out the living.