Everyone is saying Remus needs to be mad. They think that he’s too weak to be angry, without a proper spine; that it hasn’t fully sunken into him yet and he’s hypothermic in shock; that the post-transformation fever still holds him hostage, with his brain dribbling out of his mouth, not yet capable of understanding what Sirius did.
That’s how everyone has said it—McGonagall, Pomfrey, James, Peter, even Dumbledore: what he did, fervent, disgusted or horrified, and lower than the rest of the diatribes they’ve all spilled toward him while he’s trapped in his hospital bed and unable to escape the oral essays. Sirius did what he did and Remus is supposed to be mad.
In the past couple of days, he’s tried to be mad. Friends don’t do things that could get friends killed, after all. That’s reasonable—Remus agrees with it, even—but the issue with applying that idea is that they aren’t really friends to begin with. They share James and Peter; they share a room; they share a code; they share a blood pact; but they aren’t friends.
How can Remus possibly be mad at him for violating trust that was never there? —or explain its absence?
There is some kind of trust between them, but it isn’t the trust to do what’s right. It’s more like Remus knows Sirius will do his kinds of things and Sirius knows Remus will do his own kinds of things. The trust that they will be who they are, for better or worse, not that they will wound themselves in attempts to be other people—even potentially better people. They both have dark, odd things rattling inside of them. Maybe other people would think it noble to say they’re going to change or something like that, but they’ve forged a quiet agreement that’s the coward’s way: to act as if one can change their nature. Nobody knows better than Remus that it can’t be done; that all one can do is try, and that they will inevitably fail. The only person he’s ever met who agrees with that premise, and hasn’t been an arsehole, is Sirius.
(And perhaps that means they are terrible people, who are calling good people cowards for trying to be good people, because they can’t hack it. Maybe that means they’re both terrible people; maybe. But it doesn’t matter very much in the face of everything else, does it.)
He needs to apologize is the other thing that everybody is saying, or meaning without saying. James is the only one to have actually said it, though Peter nodded with wide eyes when he did; and the looks given to Remus by Pomfrey, McGonagall, and Dumbledore all insinuate that they’ve reached the same conclusion. He needs to apologize; and Remus needs to grow a spine and ask for one.
Remus doesn’t want an apology. To ask for one—and, or, for Sirius to impress one upon him—would be the betrayal of their strange misty trust, of the carefully-carved language they’ve built in the past year.
It’s not the language the four of them share, but one that the two of them cultivated in the moments when James and Peter are off embarrassing themselves and chasing tail respectively, especially since Padfoot has manifested. It wasn’t intentional. One day—Remus doesn’t know when, exactly—it struck him that they had; and on another day that he can’t place, it struck him that Sirius knew about it, too.
On the Friday morning he’s released from the hospital wing, however, he’s nervous he may get an apology. When he arrives at Transfiguration class, after having his breakfast in the hospital wing, Sirius has a wild-blooming bruise on his cheek. The righteousness of James Fleamont Potter knows no bounds; no logic or reason; no explanation, when an act reprehensible has been committed.
Remus hasn’t seen Sirius while he’s been in the infirmary the past few days, but he assumed that it was Madam Pomfrey shooing him away like a stray—an idea that has left him unreasonably angry, because Sirius is Remus’ stray, and if he wants to curl up in the fever of Remus’ too-many blankets and the darkness of his private hospital room, he should be allowed. She’s let in James, who’s sat and stood in the little oven-hot room, talking grandiosely about right and wrong rather than reading his notes from class to Remus, who can’t read after the moon.
He wouldn’t have imagined that it was James who was warding Sirius away from him. He knows better when he slips into McGonagall’s classroom. Their little seating chart is in ruins: the four of them are sitting Remus-James-Peter-Sirius, rather than Peter-Remus-Sirius-James. Neither Peter nor Sirius would do that.
The thought of someone attempting to rend the flesh of their odd little bond from its bones—dismember their ability to nudge each other’s elbows, raise their eyebrows, and share a thought—is terrifying, and Remus won’t let them. He wouldn’t let anyone, he realizes, not even James, doused-in-gold James whose intentions are never fully impure, sweet jackass James.
He sits down, in his wrong seat. In front of them all are small clear glasses, flipped upside-down, entrapping ladybugs.
Sirius doesn’t look at him. His silent and straight posture, staring straight ahead, is the methodology of a day he would rather spend praying in contrition than living. Remus’ hackles rise.
“Are you afraid you’ve convinced me to be angry and I’ll hurt him, or are you still trying to breed strife?” he asks James.
It’s not Remus’ line. He isn’t the one to snark with the aim of harm, but Sirius looks fraught with anguish. If he isn’t fit for his role, Remus can shoulder the weight to keep the space from being empty.
James stiffens, then shrugs. Coolly, he says, “I suppose I just don’t want the chance for any goading.”
Another thing Remus is a bit afraid of, which is why he wouldn’t be the one to snark—not what James says, but what he doesn’t say: the passive implication that perhaps Remus can’t control himself.
Remus regrets sharing his blood with him sometimes. James is his best friend, and he regrets sharing his blood sometimes, because James can’t hope to understand those little pieces. He has an animal in him now, but he doesn’t have something that gets truly… Hungry; like Remus does. —and nothing makes him feel full and he’s afraid that one day he’ll feel he’s no choice but to do something terrible to feed himself and the thing inside himself. James knows he feels this way. It’s why he worries Remus has no choice sometimes. It’s preemptive.
It's protective, and defensive, the way James loves. He means well.
Remus sometimes thinks that people love each other that way—with protection, with defense—only when they don’t understand each other. The way Remus understands Sirius and James and Peter, his cat, the girl he lived across the street from during the summer he lived in Italy; it lacks protection. It trusts that, at least for the most part, one can protect themselves. All one must do, when they find themselves in the transient, metaphysical space they share, is cook a warm meal for two, even if the other isn’t yet there; and roam, while ready to be called home. Remus finds it much simpler.
He rubs his forehead. He doesn’t answer James. If he does he might just start screaming and breaking things. He’s trying not to break things anymore.
McGonagall finishes her lecture and they take the glasses off of their ladybugs. Remus ignores his own, instead looking at his friends’.
They all make their bugs into spoons with one spell; Transfiguration is a breeze for them. James creates a golden sugar-spoon and promptly resumes whatever deep thought he was lost in; Peter crafts a spoon with intricate carvings on its handle; and Sirius, silently, makes a caviar spoon out of his tiny ladybug. By the time Remus looks back at his own ladybug, it’s in flight.
He reaches out and snatches it out of the air. He knocks into the table and it jostles him and he swears, but he catches the ladybug.
“Fifteen points, Mr Lupin.” McGonagall doesn’t even bother looking in his direction as he opens his palm and nudges the ladybug back onto the table. Someone laughs.
“Should never have become a prefect,” Peter mumbles around James; “now everything costs extra.”
“Yeah, it used to only be five points for ‘bitch-shitting-motherfucker,’ wasn’t it,” Sirius says. He’s trying to sound bored, but it falls flat; he just sounds like he’s trembling.
Remus tries to focus on his ladybug as Sirius’ mother-of-pearl caviar spoon floats, on pearly wings the size of a ladybug’s, to perch on the corner of his textbook.
“Padfoot, stop,” James hisses. Remus knocks him in the ribs, as well-natured as he can while still making his point. He knows it’s useless: James isn’t much for other people’s points, once he’s decided his own. Usually, he doesn’t mind, but these are unusual times.
“‘Padfoot, stop,’” says the caviar spoon, high-pitched, as though it’s just taken in a huge gulp of helium. Remus snorts.
James is opening his mouth and turning to give Sirius a bigger piece of his mind when Peter, pitifully, says, “Sirius, can you help, please, I broke my spoon.”
With a scowl, James turns back, rubbing his forehead. Sirius goes on a weak imitation of one of his usual diatribes: “how did you break the damn spoon? No, you can’t turn it back into a ladybug now, the bug’s dead, damn you, how’d you become an Animagus, you bumbling fool…” He even calls Peter by his surname in the same glittering arrogant drawl he used to wear.
Remus tunes him out and finally makes his spoon. Someone nearby has made theirs silver and the fetid odor makes him vomit. He gets an E all the same, since, beneath the puke, his spoon is detailed and not living.
Sirius skips lunch, disappearing into the melding crowd of students headed to the Great Hall and falling away from their cluster. Remus knows other people in his position—not the position of supposed betrayal, but the other one—would tear down the halls in search of him and coax him to come out and get something to eat. But Remus doesn’t; he’ll stay in predictable places, so that Sirius can easily find him when he wants.
In his head, he sets the clock: if Sirius doesn’t show by curfew, he’ll go looking.
“He needs to apologize,” James repeats, for the hundredth time, at lunch.
“No, he doesn’t,” Remus answers for the hundredth time.
“Maybe we should just stay out of it,” Peter tells James for the tenth time.
“An excellent idea, Wormtail,” Remus commends around a chicken leg.
James leans forward over the edge of the table, so he can lower his voice. He presses, “you deserve an apology; and he needs to grow up and give one. He knows better.”
Remus doesn’t answer. This isn’t the place to talk about it to begin with—and if the conversation continues on, inevitably someone will burst out a conspicuous detail—and he doesn’t have much to say to that, anyway. He knows James is half-right: Sirius knows better and he did it regardless.
—but Remus also knows that, in his own way, he will get an apology. It just won’t be the kind that James is after, or that he’ll understand. All Remus can think to say is that if James wants his own apology he should sack up and ask for it. He doesn’t say that yet.
The rest of the day is terse. Sirius doesn’t reappear; it sets James and Peter on edge, which sets Remus on edge, and Remus thinks of him. He thinks of how it will be soon. He thinks of the hollow places they will occupy together.
“Your anxiety is contagious,” Remus mutters as James’ quill flurries over parchment, frantic, in History of Magic.
James isn’t taking notes; he’s sketching. He’s gotten bored of only writing Lily’s name on parchment in class, and has decided to take his affections to new heights—the arts. He’s determined to present her with a beautiful portrait before the end of term, but for now, he’s miserable at it, and he throws his failures to the floor, filling their room. Last week Remus woke up with his head hanging out of his curtains, only to open his eyes and find a malformed Lily, with too-large eyes and no ears, staring at him from the floor. He can only pray James will take Sirius up on his offer to write a sonnet for her.
“Wormtail must leave you bedridden, then,” is the distracted reply.
Peter reddens, and laughs.
Remus ignores the joke. To James he says, “don’t worry about him.”
“Who, Peter? I don’t,” James says idly. He stops sketching. He frowns at the drawing. The ink of her hair has sloshed into the ink of her eye.
Remus tilts his head from side to side, cracking the bad bones in his neck. The human ones always hurt more; he wishes he could have the same bones all of the time—its bones all of the time, but with his own marrow.
He says, “sod off.”
“He’s not doing well,” James answers with a scowl.
James has always seemed to think—especially since Sirius’ issues began boiling and spilling over the edge of the pot in the past year—that he can fix Sirius if he tries hard enough. He has to learn to help Sirius fix himself; and he has to learn to accept the troubles in Sirius rather than ignore them. If he doesn’t, the four of them will be torn asunder.
“D’you think he’s really…” Peter makes a circular gesture next to his ear. “…this time? I mean, he’s been getting, getting worse, but…”
“Of course not,” James snaps, so loudly that Mary MacDonald turns around in her chair and gives him a dirty look.
Remus says nothing. It doesn’t work that way. There’s no permanence to instability or insanity, he’s found. It can be slid in and out of. Sirius has slid in. The times until he slides out must be weathered.
“‘Course not,” Peter parrots hurriedly, shaking his head.
Sirius isn’t at dinner. They weren’t expecting him.
He thinks of the raw eggs he stumbled onto over the summer, the fish he took from the river, while he eats; his stomach whimpers. He’s too hungry to know what James and Peter are saying. He has bigger concerns, frantic and rancorous and animal; a rattle of the restraints; a howl: where is my fucking meal?
He dreams and daydreams about rabbits—and bigger things. He often finds himself, stomach growling, nauseous, digging his nails into his palms until he bleeds, hungry, feeling as though his entrails are shivering. He sneaks down to the kitchens for raw meat at least once a week, but it isn’t precisely what he needs—he needs fresh kills—he needs his own kills.
When he was five, he caught a squirrel in the garden. He brought it in, sat at the kitchen table, and started to eat it. His mam screamed in fright. He learned: the pain is better; the pain is easier to bear than his own mam being afraid of him.
This new closeness with Sirius has taught him that his is not the only nature people may fear. He’s found he can live with others’ fear. (Not his mam’s yet, though.)
Over the summer and Christmas break, he ventured out to the forest. He hunted. He sat on the cool ground, cross-legged, stripping his catch of its skin with his fingernails, and eating it piece by piece, blood dribbling down his chin and ecstasy encasing his whole being. He reached some sort of nirvana, realizing that he was so hungry, and he could finally feast.
But he doesn’t dare go into the Forbidden Forest on his own, and he’s not quite ready to show his appetite to his friends. It’s not fear inhibiting him. It’s that he’s not certain it’s a part of himself that he wants to share with anyone; some things, he’s found, aren’t meant to be secrets out of shame, but because their mystery leaves them delicious and soft. He’s not figured out which this is yet, so he’s returned to the agonizing malnourishment of a normal diet.
They file up to the Tower after dinner. Their dormitory is empty of Sirius. James goes to the loo, ranting about tracking Sirius down; Peter is changing into his pajamas behind his drawn bed-curtains.
Remus almost doesn’t look for the Map on the assumption that Sirius took it, but he does; he looks in its hiding place, in Peter’s pants drawer, and finds it. He sneaks down to the common room, where he stands against a wall so no one can look over his shoulder. He scours the parchment for Sirius’ name.
Sirius Black is not on the Map.
Before Padfoot emerged, Remus would’ve been surprised or worried, but he has a loose understanding. The message of absence requires no thought, only a slight pull at some new thread in the lining of his stomach.
If Sirius isn’t where Remus expected, it’s because Sirius wants him to find him; he’s pressed the onus of initiation into Remus’ hands. Not too long ago, had he only understood that much, Remus would’ve thought it cowardice, but it isn’t. It’s a motion of respect, an admission of guilt, to hand Remus a responsibility: to imply and acknowledge that he cannot necessarily handle one.
It seems rather absurd when he stops and thinks about it: how did the enigmas of Sirius become so much easier to decipher after he met his other self? How can magic and the psyche intermingle so, and become so intimate without intention? Or is he delusional, has he created some Sirius in his head who is just realistic enough for him to believe in? It leaves him unnerved and scraped raw to think about. Right now he has no time to think about it—not until he’s found Sirius.
He puts the Map away. His prefect badge will get him to the tunnel to Honeyduke’s without any trouble.
In the tunnel, he tugs off his tie and stuffs it into his pocket. Without it, he passes well enough as a grown-up. When he tried to buy liquor over Christmas break with his shitty fake ID, he even got away with it, which would be flattering if he looked grown-up the way Sirius does—like he’s too handsome to be sixteen—but for Remus it’s his hollow face and old stare that ensures misinterpretation.
When he comes out of the trapdoor in the storeroom, a kid, not too much older, startles and swears.
Remus gives Caradoc a salute. “I’ll pay,” he assures, “as soon as I can.”
Generally, Sirius or James pays for their passage, but Remus always makes good on his own debts. The first time they came through the trapdoor, Caradoc had looked like he was having a heart attack, but he’s become very agreeable to letting them in, as long as they slip him a few galleons. He’s come to trust that he’ll get his money.
He gives a slight shrug and tips his head toward the backdoor. “Go on, then.”
Remus nods in thanks and goes out into the slippery evening air. He meanders for a few minutes, not sure where he’ll go first.
He’ll go to the Three Broomsticks second, he decides. It’s the less likely choice. Sirius won’t want the crowd: so many people packed in there on a Friday night and the accompanying noise. He’ll want to hear all the thoughts buzzing round his head; he'll want to think his melancholy through as well as feel it.
Remus trudges through the half-mud, the dim rain, until he reaches the Hog’s Head. He shakes his head, raindrops flicking out of his hair.
Inside the pub is crepuscular, a thicker twilight than the outside evening itself. That’s not a problem for Remus; he may not keep the wolf’s bones, but he keeps its eyes.
In the corner, Remus can see him, lying down on the far side of a booth. One knee is drawn up and the other foot’s unworked Doc Marten rests upon it. Leaning against the thigh of the drawn-up leg is the little journal Sirius has started carrying around. The angle of his neck pressed against the dirty wall must hurt, Remus thinks idly. His brow is furrowed, the corners of his mouth turned down in contrition. He probably has his rosary in one of his pockets. Remus would bet money he used the floo here to go to confession before settling in for the day.
Sirius looks up. Remus can see the slight setting of his jaw, the mild bob of his Adam’s apple; the rise of his shoulders; the wide masses of marble sorrow in his eyes and the depth of his dark circles.
He goes to the bar before he goes to the booth Sirius has claimed. The bloke behind it forks over the three shots of whiskey and Remus carries them in the crook of his arm, one foot chary in front of the other, to Sirius’ booth.
Sirius stuffs his journal away, and the fountain pen and ink he was using. His eyebrows knit together.
Remus sets the shot glasses down at the edge of the table and sits on the other side of the booth. Sirius sits up and, elbows on the table, leans forward, hands smushing his cheeks. Up close, Remus can see how red his eyes are, as per his expectations.
He watches Remus down one shot; slam the glass down onto the filthy table. The second. The third.
“I rented a room for the night,” Sirius whispers as the whiskey fizzes down into Remus’ chest.
He blinks. He tries to look like his disorientation is only because of the alcohol.
He thought he’d understood. He thought he knew where they were, how they were, the two of them, and abruptly it feels as if he’s living inside of, hiding inside of, a room when there’s a whole house. He hadn’t known he was hiding, he hadn’t known about the house; the possibilities. He really hadn’t known.
“I thought you may like to be somewhere private,” Sirius continues, still whispering.
He’s oblivious to whatever other universe Remus has accidentally become privy to in the past three seconds. Dizzy from landing back in his seat in the booth, Remus thinks that’s probably for the best if Sirius doesn’t intend to go to that place, or even learn of it.
He licks his lips. He says, “yes,” not fully reintegrated into the proper world. He hadn’t thought a drink would be a bad idea but now that it’s too late, he’s reconsidering.
Sirius nods to himself. He shuffles out of the booth and stands. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rocks back and forth on his feet. He jerks his chin to the stairs leading up to the rooms above once Remus has stood, and Remus follows him.
“I didn’t pay for the whiskey,” he hisses, staring at Sirius’ back.
“I did before you arrived.”
Remus doesn’t speak. If he does, he’ll say he’ll pay Sirius back.
Sirius leads him up the long stairs until they reach the second floor, lit by a single lantern. Stains and scrapes line the walls and floor.
He stops at the first door and fishes a key out of his pocket, a hefty piece of metal. The lock takes some persuasion—with a grunt, Sirius slams his shoulder against the door, while Remus rolls his eyes—but it gives way. He pushes it open and gestures for Remus to enter. With a little shrug, he goes.
He’s lived in some very shitty places. This room ranks with the flat that had a hole in the wall from which cockroaches came and went. He expects this place has about as many bugs—if not so large and conspicuous—and diseases. The walls may once have been white but have yellowed, speckled with gray marks. The room holds nothing but a small bed, over which is haphazardly thrown a comforter with a large dark stain that’s undoubtedly blood or shit or both. There’s a miniscule window with greasy curtains, and a mostly-lost candle slumps on its sill.
He sits on the floor against the wall. Sirius, after locking the door, goes to the window and lights the candle. Then he sits down beside Remus, on his knees, about a foot away.
Remus stares at the candle, a deep blue. Its flame billows a few plumes of black smoke and pitches high for a minute before it calms itself. The flame whistles back and forth so capriciously that it hurts his eyes to watch. Sirius is staring at it, too.
There’s a complicated sensation he gets sometimes, when he’s watching a fire. Some part of him can’t help but think that it’s sentient, watching him back, calculating, waiting. It leaves him nervous—it leaves The Wolf nervous. He wonders, distantly: does Sirius suffer this fear, too, or does his dog know that warmth is safe?
Remus doesn’t. And he doesn’t think he can be taught otherwise, either. It rests in him, cool, retreating from fire, quiet, his shoulders tensed when the flame flickers in his direction as though he needs to be prepared to defend against it. He is training himself not to hate it.
Some sparks from the candle fly out and set alight in the pit of his stomach. This silence is a weak prelude to whatever will actually happen, a necessary gathering. Of what, he can’t be sure. It must matter, but he doesn’t care like it does. It won’t be anything from that other world he accidentally spiraled into; that much is certain.
“I am going to run away,” Sirius says, with measured steadiness, after some time.
A lump nudges itself into Remus’ throat. He knows that it’s a bad place that Sirius calls home. He’s always gotten very quiet at the suggestion of leaving, and Remus has overheard James whispering to him about it more than once. He turns to stone. He stares straight ahead, fog descending over him and draining until nothing is left.
But he doesn’t do that now. He looks at the flame. It must look like safety to him, Remus imagines, from the lurid portrait of half-hidden, half-cradled, totally bare, totally unself-aware want on his face; the slight lean forward, as if he’s pulling against a leash. He always looks like he’s pulling against a leash when he talks of them. They must leave bruises on his throat, all the times he’s choked. Remus wants—for a moment, before he fully realizes the textures of what he’s wanting—for the bruises, wounds, to be tangible, so that he can touch them. —and then he jerks away from that want faster than he’d like to run from the fire.
“Have you made arrangements?”
“No. I don’t know where I’ll go…” Sirius swallows. Fire must look like light to him, Remus imagines, and nothing else; it must not look like burns. “Prongs’ parents have always wanted me to be with them. You know, their second son and all that.”
“But you don’t.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s son,” he says roughly. He shakes his head to himself. “I don’t want to be anyone’s anything.”
Remus slides his hand off his lap. It rests beside his leg, palm up.
“My definition is other people,” Sirius continues. “I can’t live like that anymore.” His voice sags; it gains years and wrinkles and losses.
In his periphery, Remus sees him turn his head. He looks at Remus’ hand. Remus holds it so still it feels as if he’s keeping his very atoms from vibrating.
“You wanted to be your own,” he asks, but it’s not a question.
Trying to kill someone may be a bit far. It crosses lines. Remus shouldn’t understand. He shouldn’t understand the drive, the pulse of wildness independent from his own, that could enthread itself with Sirius and make him want to do it. He shouldn’t understand the anger and desperation for autonomy.
He should not understand. But he does.
“Think of… how spun-out Prongs and I were in first year, meeting you; how obsessed we were with shedding our sheltered existences and—”
“‘Were,’” he interjects dryly.
“Shut up…” Sirius makes a low sound, too weak to be a sigh. “Anyway, it was like that. Escapism;” he speaks low enough now that his ‘s’s hiss. He’s looked at Remus’ hand long enough to qualify for staring rather than looking. He doesn’t reach for it, but that’s not why Remus thinks he held it out, anyway. “I always go too far.”
Yes. He always goes too far. He always comes back, though, too, Remus thinks. Yet he doesn’t speak.
“I hadn’t thought about you getting hurt.”
“I know.”
Sirius looks back at the candle, pensive in heavy thought. He nods to himself, face cut with decisiveness.
Finally, voice strong, he says, “I shall think of you.”
Remus’ dry mouth catches fire from the embers in his belly. His tongue burns.
“No, don’t,” he says. His voice cracks. He hurries to clear his throat as Sirius turns to look at him, frowning, mouth part-open. More sturdily, Remus says: “think of yourself. Then think of me. Make me second.”
Sirius opens his mouth more, then shuts it. He must have heard the plea lining Remus’ teeth. He tugs on the edge of his lip.
“All right,” he acquiesces. He runs a hand through his hair. “But I’ve thought of myself enough already in the past days.” Something soft, burdened but breathing, hides in his eyes. He raises an eyebrow. “May I think about you now?” Remus knows he means to be sarcastic but mostly he just sounds tired.
He scoffs. The threadbare implications of a smile, with its own autonomy, fidget over his mouth. He holds the squirming thing still for Sirius to see.
Sirius doesn’t smile back. He looks. It’s a look so broad and sprawling it seems to cover his whole body. Remus can’t identify it other than perhaps as relief.
He shifts around and lowers himself to the floor so that his head is in Remus’ lap. This is what the hand was for, Remus understands now; not to be taken, but to beckon. Sirius’ hair floats over his lap, soft, silky. He wants to run his fingers through it. But if there will be a time for that—and he’s not sure there will be—it isn’t today.
Sirius reaches into his pocket. He pulls out his rosary. He weaves it loose around his wrists and clutches the rest.
“Are you praying?”
Sirius is quiet for a moment.
Distantly, he says, “I don’t know.”
Remus counts to a hundred in his head before he speaks again.
He tells Sirius, “I shall speak to James.”
Sirius’ breathing stops.
“You’ve dealt with enough of his morality already. I’ll handle this part,” Remus tells him.
Sirius takes in air, slow, like a prolonged muscle spasm.
“Okay,” he says. After another moment, he exhales. He rubs his thumb over the rosary beads.
Remus watches the candle burn.