Vintage tee, brand new phone, high heels on cobblestones
When you are young, they assume you know nothing
Sequin smile, black lipstick, sensual politics
When you are young, they assume you know nothing
It should’ve hurt. Reading about escaped convict Sirius Black, seeing Peter in the paper perched on the shoulder of a Weasley on vacation, knowing that he’d spent the last twelve years hating the man he adored because of a lie – that should’ve hurt. Instead, he felt light. Lighter than he’d felt in over a decade. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly, in an attempt at a smile – the first one in years. The first one since that day he and Sirius spent in Muggle London, shopping for vinyls, losing James and Lily to a malt shop somewhere along the way.
‘This was made for me, don’t you think, Moony?’ Sirius had said that day, holding against his frame a Bowie t-shirt that was on a rack outside the vintage clothing store, his smile so brilliant, it practically glittered. Remus had nodded then, mirroring Sirius’ smile subconsciously.
How many times had the adults in their lives told them that they didn’t know what love was? How they should wait to move in together, wait to adopt a puppy together, wait until after graduation, wait, wait, wait. They’d listened, because they were young and dumb and because they thought maybe those people were right – maybe Albus Dumbledore was right.
It was that idea – the idea that they didn’t know each other as well as they’d like to think, because that’s what everyone kept telling them. That idea sowed the once-insignificant seeds of doubt that would lead to their inevitable fracture. Those whispers did physical damage.
They would say ‘Sirius Black is from a family of Death Eaters, you never know what his true intentions might be’ or ‘There’s something dark in his gaze that makes me wonder where he’s been looking’ or the ones Remus had never heard himself, but was sure Sirius had heard about him, ‘A werewolf is a feral creature. Not as human as some would lead us to believe.’
But I knew you. Dancing in your Levi's, drunk under a streetlight, I –
I knew you. Hand under my sweatshirt, baby, kiss it better, I –
At first, they had ignored them. Nobody else could possibly understand their relationship from the outside. Nobody else was there when they spent all night cuddling in the back booth of the Three Broomsticks until Madam Rosmerta kicked them out into the empty, snow-covered streets of Hogsmeade. Nobody was there to hear the awful rendition of Celestina Warbeck’s You Charmed the Heart Right Out of Me that Sirius sang at the top of his drunken lungs, swaying under the yellowing streetlamps. Nobody watched them sneak into an empty alleyway, Remus pressed to the bricks with Sirius’ hand up his jumper. Nobody heard the illicit way Remus had breathed Sirius’ name. Nobody saw the tell-tale indentions Sirius’ knees made in the piled snow.
But there were certainly witnesses for the way Sirius cared for him. James took particular note of how detailed Sirius was about the frequency of Remus’ bandage changes the day after a full moon (even making him late to class on more than one occasion, despite Remus’ persistent assurances that he was fine, Sirius, I’m fine). Lily could testify on the Sword of Gryffindor how stressed Sirius became on the days leading up to the full moon, knowing the weight it would bear for Remus, knowing how excruciating it was for him. And Peter … well. If Peter hadn’t let James and Lily die, if Peter hadn’t let Sirius take the blame for a crime he hadn’t committed, if Peter hadn’t shown his true colors that night, he could say how violently Sirius defended Remus from anything and everything and everyone that dared speak ill of him. But Peter … well.
And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed
You put me on and said I was your favorite
When Remus was feeling self-conscious about his scars, Sirius was the one who whispered breathy compliments in his ear, left him page-long love notes about his favourite of Remus’ scars, traced his fingers along them to give Remus something better in association. He would spend hours kissing every imperfection of Remus’ skin, breathing life into it, promising to make Remus forget he could ever hate his skin, because Sirius was so in love with it.
They say hindsight gives you perfect vision, and Remus had never understood that idiom so clearly. Sure, it was war and it was hell and it was full of suspicion and terror and trying to do their best to protect themselves and the ones they loved, but at what point did he forget that Sirius was one of the ones he loved? At what point did he let himself believe that Sirius could do the things they said he did? At what point did he believe that Sirius could love anyone else?
A friend to all is a friend to none. Chase two boys, lose the one
When you are young, they assume you know nothing
The longer he dwelled, the more the hurt settled in and made room. Because it had been Peter who had told Remus that Sirius wasn’t coming home at night because he was sleeping with someone else. It was Peter who had told him that he might as well go on that mission from Dumbledore, just to spite Sirius, just to show him what it feels like to be alone and miserable. It was Peter who ultimately took away their right to make a future of their own choosing. And it would be Peter who would pay the price for what he had done, with Sirius cleared of it all.
That thought was what made him light. It outshone the years of nights spent crying himself to sleep with Sirius’ vintage Bowie t-shirt tangled in his fingers, it eclipsed the gnawing thoughts that told him he should’ve been able to see this coming. Because, in truth, he hadn’t been able to see it coming. Peter had betrayed them all, not just James and Lily.
But I knew you. Playing hide-and-seek and giving me your weekends, I –
I knew you. Your heartbeat on the High Line, once in twenty lifetimes, I –
So, he focused on the light. He focused on the memory of his Marauders (with Peter conveniently painted out of his mind) playing hide-and-seek on the Hogwarts Express, much to the annoyance of all the other students and passengers. He focused on summers spent at the Potters, right after James and Lily started dating. He focused on that last ride back to Hogwarts, the one that happened right after a full moon, with his head on Sirius’ chest as he wondered what in the name of Godric Gryffindor he had ever done to deserve a life like he had.
That life was filled with pain before it was filled with anything else, like his mouth filled with blood once every month because his tongue wasn’t used to accommodating the fangs that suddenly grew there. The moment that Sirius Black and James Potter stepped into that life, there were suddenly sugar quills and pumpkin pasties and cauldron cakes and jelly slugs, more than he could eat on a single train ride, and laughs that were louder than anything he’d heard at home.
With a sad smile, he reminisced on that first train ride, remembering the dread that built like a knot in his stomach the closer they got to the castle. This was friendship of circumstance, he’d thought, and these two boisterous, interesting boys would go off together and leave Remus behind. Not out of malice, but out of forgetfulness, because Remus blended.
Instead, at the end of that trip, when those two boisterous, interesting boys stepped out of that carriage and noticed that Remus wasn’t following closely, they stopped. They stopped, both of them peering back into the carriage, where Remus still sat, and Sirius Black smiled as he said, ‘Aren’t you coming, Remus?’ Nothing to that point in his life equaled that moment.
To kiss in cars and downtown bars was all we needed
You drew stars around my scars, but now I'm bleeding
Lots of moments had since equaled, or surpassed, that moment. The first time Sirius kissed him, carefully and quietly and tenderly, the first morning after they figured out the secret of Remus’ lycanthropy, when Remus was so afraid they would abandon him. The first time Sirius told Remus he loved him, in the hospital ward, with tears in his eyes because that prank against Snivellus had gone so dreadfully wrong. The first time they made love, in Remus’ bedroom at his parents’ house the night after Sirius ran away from Grimmauld Place, bruised and traumatized.
Still, with every first, there was a last, and Remus couldn’t help but look back on them now, now that he was allowed to grieve those moments, to process them instead of avoiding them and running away, as he had been for the last twelve years. The last time they had slept in the same bed, Sirius had drawn shapes around his favourites of Remus’ scars – a heart around the gash in his chest, a star at the three lines down his throat, a crescent moon encompassing the bite mark underneath Remus’ collarbone. God, there were so many lasts.
The last time Sirius left their shared London flat with a harsh slam of the front door. The last time Sirius had told Remus he loved him, many months before James and Lily died. Their last kiss, before Remus’ mission, when Remus knew it would be the last one, when Remus knew he wasn’t going to see Sirius again. And he could feel in Sirius’ kiss that he knew it, too.
'Cause I knew you. Stepping on the last train, marked me like a bloodstain, I –
I knew you. Tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy, I –
I knew you. Leaving like a father, running like water, I –
And when you are young, they assume you know nothing
Getting on the train back to Hogwarts took more energy and willpower than he expected, and he was glad he had the foresight to arrive early, to avoid the awkward stares from his future students. Without choice, he’d gone into the same carriage he and his friends had claimed as their own, all those eons ago, the weight of Sirius’ memory moving through him like sea water in his lungs, marking him as deeply and as cruelly as any scar ever had.
He hadn’t known when he stepped onto the train the truth of Sirius’ innocence. In fact, he hadn’t even known of Sirius’ escape before he got to Hogsmeade and saw the movement of a familiar face, but so much more gaunt, so much more manic than Remus cared to recognize. Of course, he’d seen the mugshot before – it didn’t make seeing it again any easier.
The warning of the convicted killer wasn’t the only thing in the paper. He would’ve missed it if someone passing by hadn’t been speaking so loudly. ‘A rat! Of all things to bring on a vacation!’ and, for a moment, Remus smiled in the memory of his departed friend. It was his own amusement that led him to seeing for himself just who brings a rat on their family vacation.
Seeing Peter Pettigrew as Wormtail after twelve years left such an acidic realization in his gut than he quickly retreated to a barren alley to empty it. It was then that he knew. It was Peter. All along. Just as Sirius had screamed as they carried him away, before they muzzled him to shut him up on his way to Azkaban. It was Peter. It was Peter. It was Peter.
But I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss
I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs
The smell of smoke would hang around this long
'Cause I knew everything when I was young
In that moment, all the memories he avoided by believing that Sirius was someone he wasn’t came back to fill him to the point of bursting. He could smell Sirius’ cigarette smoke in his hair, he could feel Sirius’ hands winding softly around his waist, he could hear Sirius whisper all those promises into his ear, he could feel Sirius’ lips against the scar tattooed at his throat.
Those were the things that left him with light in the dark. He couldn’t drown himself in the what-ifs of what might’ve been if this had never happened – it was too late for that and wallowing in them wouldn’t take back the last twelve years. Instead, he chose to dwell on the prospect of the future. Somehow, Sirius had found a way to escape the most impenetrable prison in all of the wizarding world. He knew it was for Harry, that Sirius was coming back to protect him from Peter, but Remus couldn’t stop himself from coming to the sharp realization, with terminal certainty, that Sirius would find a way to find him first.
I knew I'd curse you for the longest time
Chasing shadows in the grocery line
I knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired
And you'd be standing in my front porch light
All he had to do was wait. And maybe fate had brought him to that same alley where Sirius had been on his knees that December night in 1978, or maybe it was the shadow of Sirius pulling him to the dark, the same way it had all those years ago, or maybe it was the deep well of hope that Remus had left untouched for a decade boiling over, somehow knowing.
With his head hanging and his eyes closed, he waited. He wasn’t sure if Sirius would come to this alley today or tomorrow or next week or a month from now, but he would come. It crossed Remus’ mind that maybe Sirius wouldn’t forgive him for believing something so untrue, that Remus would let him suffer alone in that prison for twelve years, and that worry swelled up in his chest, leaving Remus to take an unsteady, terrified breath. And then it all went away.
And I knew you'd come back to me
You'd come back to me
And you'd come back to me
And you'd come back
Because he looked up, with lungs full of new air and eyes wide with tears, to see Sirius Black standing at the end of the long alley, looking exhausted and filthy and, somehow, relieved.
“Moony,” he sighed on a voice that rasped with years of disuse, with a familiar tenderness that sounded the same as it ever had – quite and careful and significant.
With tears streaming unremittingly down his face, Remus spoke, his voice trembling as he took in the image of the man he adored. “I knew you’d come back to me.” When Sirius stepped over and took Remus into his arms, and they breathed each other in, it didn’t hurt. Not at all.
And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed
You put me on and said I was your favorite