Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sitting silently in the solitude of a rundown cottage in a forgotten part of Derbyshire, Remus Lupin was picking apart his latest mistake.

A child stands to make history tonight, whether by living through it or dying by it, and he should be there. If not for security’s sake, at least to give Harry someone to look to in the crowd. Of course, he should be there.

As it stood, Remus was miles away, mentally replaying his last conversation with Albus Dumbledore and becoming more ashamed of his cowardice with each go.

“You would be doing yourself an unkindness drawing attention to yourself amongst the spectacle, Remus.”

He’s hiding, then. As a kindness to himself. Brilliant.

Hiding, as if he weren’t used to this, people gawking in fear. Or worse, promising that they really didn’t have a problem with “his type” until they pulled back so far it was only the problem that remained.

Though, admittedly, things had gotten less predictable since Rita Skeeter so kindly outed him to every person in Britain’s magical world. What was easily dispelled as the rumors crafted by overly imaginative students and their easily convinced parents had now become public record. Remus Lupin was a werewolf.

So, of course, he shouldn’t actually be there. How would that look – to be spotted on the grounds of the school where only last year he had to leave for every reason he shouldn’t have taught there in the first place?

But still, he thought, glancing up at the green, digital clock face on top of his two-burner stove, he should be there.

The glow from the stove was now the only light source in the room, as Remus had let himself worry his way into total darkness, neglecting to even turn a lamp on once he set his eyes on the time nearly three hours ago.

He leaned over the side of the armchair he’d rescued from the bins behind his last apartment and pulled the cord on the small stained-glass lamp he had inherited from his mother. The living room, or more accurately, the small space where the kitchen ended, was illuminated in a soft pink glow.

One grody armchair, a working stove, a pink lamp. He’d done worse.

Adjusting to the light, he faced the clock again. Ten minutes to midnight. Surely, he would have heard something by now.

No sooner had the dial changed to 11:51, was the pink light was suddenly swallowed by a bursting blue light, and the gaseous, translucent figure of a phoenix appeared before him, echoing Dumbledore’s message.

“Padfoot is on his way. Stay where you are and wait for instructions.”

Just as soon as the patronus had appeared, it dissolved into nothingness, leaving Remus alone with a heart pounding so hard he could have sworn his blood had thickened to sap.

Something had happened to Harry.

He forced himself to stand with no plans for what to do after. He was stuck here until Sirius arrived, and then who could say how long after? He willed his breath to slow, for his heart to stop bruising itself against his ribs. He had known this feeling before, and to feel it again would be the last of him.

As the minutes or years or hours passed, he stood like a dumb bull in pasture, mentally inventing every possible worst-case scenario, each finding a new way to scar the bloodied body of a teenager into his vision before he was finally interrupted by a sharp CRACK.

He cleared the room in one step before opening the door to let the soft pink light land on what was left of Sirius Black.

Sirius was about half the man he used to be, in a literal sense. He was somehow even more emaciated than Remus had last seen him. His ribs and collarbone showed so prominently out of the top of his hanging prison robes, Remus had the feeling you could have crushed him as easily as a cat might a baby bird. His long black hair had matted at the base of his neck, and his hollowed cheeks gave way to once brilliant blue eyes that had wilted their way to a cold steel grey. He smelled of decay and when he opened his mouth to speak, he was careful to try and cover the rows of rotting teeth.

“Voldemort had returned,” Sirius said hoarsely.

“You’re sure?” asked Remus, smacked brutally with shock.

“And Harry?” pressed Remus.

“Alive. Safe, for now. But another boy is dead – murdered.”

They stared at each other from opposite sides of the doorway. Summer air that might have otherwise been sweet felt heavy with the realization that the worst of their lives was to begin again. Breaking first, Remus stepped sideways to let Sirius in, locking the door behind him. Remus struggled to figure out what questions he was supposed to ask and in what order.

He turned back to Sirius, who stood right where the almost living room met the barely-there kitchen. His expression was unreadable, and his arms were brought in tight, as though he were afraid to accidentally make contact with his surroundings.

“What happened? Voldemort wasn’t at Hogwarts, was he? What did Dumbledore say? His patronus said he was sending instructions; do you know what they are?” Remus rattled off at him.

Sirius' expression remained the same as he looked at Remus and then toward the floor.

“Remus,” he said, gaze still pointed down, “Could I – can I… take a shower?”

“What? But what about Voldemort? Surely there are more pressing matters?”

“It’s just… been a minute. And there’s nothing left to be done tonight.” Sirius looked up as he said this, and it was clear that that previously unreadable expression was a deep, shameful embarrassment.

“Oh,” said Remus, “I mean, of course. Right. I’m sorry, of course.”

“Thanks, I – ”

“No-I-yes-right-sorry,” stammered Remus, “I’ll get you a towel and a change of clothes just, yeah, put the kettle on. Just through there” he finished his sentence by gesturing to the small bedroom door through which the small ensuite bathroom was visible and then walking toward it to pull a set of pajamas from his dresser along with his singular spare towel and dropped them both on the bed.

Sirius haunted doorway, still looking as if he couldn’t bear the thought of getting too close to anything.

“Thank you,” he said quietly before adding, “You should know that I can’t–can’t be in small spaces anymore, not since–so can I-I’m going to leave the door open, if that’s okay.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” said Remus, trying his best to sound as if this was totally normal conversation with zero pity. “Right, I’ll be just out here when you’re done.”

The two traded places, and Remus heard the water turn on just as he set the kettle on the stove.

This was all so fucking strange. He felt useless for bombarding Sirius with questions like that -- he of all people knew just how demeaning it is to have to ask other people for one’s dignity, what destitution does to you. And yet, this was all a bit cavalier, facing the return of the most dangerous wizard who’s ever lived returning and Remus knowing nothing about it.

He continued on making the tea and was anxious and agitated. By the time Sirius had emerged from the bedroom, it had already gone cold.

“You’re out of hot water,” said Sirius, “and shampoo.” He looked significantly calmer, not to mention cleaner, as he padded out to sit opposite Remus at the small two-seater table that took up most of the kitchen’s floor space. He dressed in the pajamas Remus had left out for him and had taken a fading Puddlemeer United jumper from the dresser himself.

“Both gone to a worthy cause, I suppose,” said Remus, who sipped at his cold tea. “Feel better?”

“You have no idea,” said Sirius, who grimaced at his cold tea before pulling a wand from his waistband and giving the cup a tap to heat it back up.

“That is most certainly true. How’d you manage to get a wand?”

“Dogs love sticks,” shrugged Sirius, clasping his hands around his mug and bringing it to his chest as if he’s just come inside on a winter’s day. “Can’t seem to stay warm without the fur anymore.”

“I can get you a blanket, if you’d like,” offered Remus.

Sirius waved away the suggestion before draining the rest of his tea.

“Although speaking of fur, there is one thing I could really use.”

“It’s a bit late for fetch.”

“I need you to give me a haircut,” said Sirius, the embarrassment briefly returning to his eyes.

“I can do that,” said Remus, “I can’t guarantee you’ll look better, but you probably won’t look worse.”

“I just need you to cut the mats out.”

“Of course.”

Sirius looked at him expectantly.

“Oh, now?”

“Yeah, if you could. Sorry, I know it’s late but—”

“No, don’t be.”

Remus stood from the table and sifted through the only two working drawers in the kitchen before finding a dull pair of scissors.

“I could get most of the top untangled, but the bottom is truly fucked,” explained Sirius as, Remus approached him from behind.

“Well, like I said, it probably won’t look worse.”

Remus placed a hand on Sirius’s shoulder and felt him jump. A gesture that would have meant nothing years ago was now an ocean to cross.

“Sorry,” said Sirius quickly.

“Don’t be,” said Remus, drawing his hand back slightly, “I’m going to touch your head now, is that alright?”

“Yes,” breathed Sirius as he braced for impact. Remus thought better of just immediately going in with the shears and leaned over Sirius to set them on the table where Sirius could see them.

Slowly, he brought his hands to Sirius’s temples and began to run his fingers through his hair. His once thick, shining black mane had muted and thinned with age and starvation. While he had always worn in long in their youth, it was now passed his shoulders and looked incredibly un-Sirius. He had been accurate in his report; the top portion of his towel-dried head was fairly easy to comb through, but the base was a knotted, matted mess that Remus would have to cut free.

Remus continued running his fingers through the parts that he could. It took a few minutes, but slowly, Sirius began to relax into his touch. It seemed overwhelming for him, and Remus could understand why.

While he could bury the loneliness in strangers, in women who thought he might stick around and in men who hoped he wouldn’t, he could say with certainty that Sirius hadn’t been touched with care in over a decade.

“Ready?” Remus asked after a few more minutes.

“You’re not going to give me your haircut, are you?”

“I only know how to do the one. But I’ll leave it as long as I can.”

“Thank you.’

Remus reached back over Sirius and grabbed the scissors from the table, gave him a moment to back out, and then began to cut. As he did, he spoke.

“Can you tell me what happened tonight, Sirius?”

“I can tell you what I can – to be honest, when Harry got back, well, he wasn’t really in any fit state to tell us.”

“Back from where?”

“Did Dumbledore tell you that the final task was a maze?”

“Yes, put your head down for me for a moment.”

Sirius did as he was told before continuing. “The Tri-Wizard cup was turned into a portkey and hidden at the center of the maze. When Harry grabbed it, him and the other boy were taken to a cemetery. Voldemort was waiting for him – and Peter.”

“Peter was there?” Remus interrupted. He had done everything to convince himself that Peter was merely on the run – that he wasn’t really going to return to Voldemort. And yet, he hadn’t really ever believed it.

“Yes, can’t wait to finally kill that slimy bastard for real. They did something, a spell or something, and Voldemort was returned to his body. And he killed the other kid, Cedric, right in front of Harry. Far as I know, Harry just grabbed the portkey and the body and just barely made it out. And Moody—”

“Cedric Diggory was the other boy who was killed?” Remus heard his own voice crack as he pictured the boy who refused to sit any further from the front row in all his lessons. To breathe in that moment felt as though a fist were around his throat, squeezing.

He let his arms fall to his side and had to catch the scissors before they slipped from his hands. Sirius turned to face him.

“I’m sorry, Remus, I forgot he was your student,” said Sirius.

‘Yeah, he was,” whispered Remus.

“But Remus –”

“What?”

“The Death Eater who planted the cup was Barty Crouch Jr – he kidnapped Moody. Been impersonating him all year.”

Remus didn’t even know where to start with that one. He settled on:

“You mean the very dead Barty Crouch Jr.”

“The very same, except very alive. Or I guess less so now.”

“He was killed?”

“Captured and then immediately sent to honeymoon with the dementors.”

“He was kissed?”

“Yes, courtesy of Fudge. No recorded confession, no trial, and absolutely no evidence against Voldemort. Dumbledore is furious.”

Remus just continued to look down at Sirius.

“What do we do?”

“Nothing,” said Sirius, who turned forward in his seat again, “Nothing we can do except wait for Dumbledore and worry about Harry.”

“He’s safe, though, you said he was safe, right?”

“Yeah, but – you should have seen him, Remus. He can’t unsee what he saw tonight, Cedric dying. Nothing can take that back.”

“Suppose he’s one of us now.”

“Probably always has been,” sighed Sirius. “So, do I have any hair left?”

“Yes, but I’m only about halfway through,” said Remus as he raised his scissors again and began work on a particularly difficult mat.

They continued on in silence. Remus wanted to ask more questions, but it didn’t seem as though Sirius felt particularly excited to answer them. Remus even felt the need to breathe quieter with someone else now occupying his space. He brushed the hair that had fallen on Sirius’s shoulders to the floor and gestured for him to turn his chair around. As he cleaned up the hair around his face, Sirius began to look less like the wild animal he has seen in his wanted posters and more like very tired man he was.

“I think that just about does it,” Remus said, bending forward slightly to snip away one last mat before his eyes connected with Sirius’s. With the exception of the adrenaline-fueled hug they shared the summer previous, it was the closest they had been in thirteen years. He felt as if he was meant to do something about that. He didn’t.

Instead, he watched as Sirius pulled back and gave a small, closed-mouth smile in thanks.

“I can fix your teeth too,” Remus added as he settled back into the chair opposite Sirius, pulling his wand from his pocket and vanishing the hair that had collected on the kitchen floor.

“Can you?”

“Yes. I mean, I think so. I’ve had to regrow a few of mine after the moon before, and I think the theory is the same.”

“Do you know what you could get for a werewolf’s fang on the black market?”

“To the knut.”

“That’s bleak.”

“Yeah, it is. Would you like me to try to fix them?”

“Alright then, give it a go.”

“Open up.”

Tentatively, Sirius dropped his jaw and leaned toward Remus. Even in the low light, it was clear the decay was profound, with teeth chipping and crumbling at the ends.

“Here, lean closer,” said Remus, placing a hand under Sirius’s chin. He brought his wand to just barely brush Sirius’s left canine tooth, turned it in his hand like a key, and muttered “denovaro.”

The tooth glowed a brilliant white before cooling down to reveal itself to be perfectly healthy.

Sirius tongued at the tooth repeatedly before saying, “Oh, thank God.”

“I know, I really wasn’t sure if that would work.”

“Seriously?”

“I honestly just figured it couldn’t get worse – here, let me do the rest.”

It was slow work to get through all of his teeth, many of which needed to be repaired multiple times. By the time Remus had finished, his elbows ached from leaning on the table, and his eyes were blurry from the flashes of magic.

Sirius, on the other hand, looked delighted, relieved beyond relief by his new smile.

“Moony, you’re brilliant,” he said, clicking his teeth together, “Thank you, honestly, thank you.”

“We’ll don’t thank me yet, let’s see how the magic holds in the morning,” said Remus, eyeing the clock on the stove for the first time since Sirius arrived. “Or, well, sometime later today I suppose. It’s nearly half three. Ready for bed?”

“Yeah,” said Sirius with hesitancy, “yeah, it’s just that I don’t do too well at night.”

“We can leave the light on,” Remus offered.

“No, that’s fine, you go get some rest.”

“I don’t think it’s a reach to say I’m not the one who needs it.”

“I – alright.”

They stood from the table and shuffled to the bedroom. Exhaustion forwent any negotiation of awkwardness as Sirius sat on Remus’s bed without pretense. Before he could close the door behind him, he was cut off by an abrupt:

“STOP!” Shouted Sirius who looked shocked that he had even said it. “Sorry,” he said, quieter, “Sorry. Could you leave the door open? Please.”

“Yeah, of course,” said Remus, desperately hoping he conveyed normalcy, “Light on, too?”

“I think you can turn this one off if you keep the one in the other room on.”

“Then we’ll do that.”

Remus reached for the top button on his shirt before pausing. This was not the body Sirius knew. Most days, it was one he barely recognized. But, as long as they were being vulnerable… he continued button by button before shedding his shirt on the floor, and letting his trousers find the same. He didn’t bother with pajamas but made the mental note to do laundry in the morning if they were to be sharing clothes.

“Budge up, will you,” he said as he crawled passed Sirius on the too-small bed and collapsed, lying face up and the weight of the day collapsed on top of him. Bone tired, as it were. He took a deep breath before turning to catch eyes with Sirius, who was staring at him.

“You’ve got a lot more scars than I remember,” Sirius said, unabashedly raking his eyes over Remus’s torso.

“I don’t think I need to be the one to tell you that life is hard, Sirius.”

“And nor I you. Night, Remus.”

Sirius lay down beside him and curled in on himself, eyes toward the door.

“Good night.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he could feel sleep dragging him under. The night was fitful, and hot, and marred by the nightmare faces of death eaters and dead teenagers. When he finally managed to pull himself out of his self-contained hell, he discovered he was alone.

Weak morning sun had just begun to pour through the room’s one small window, and from his position on the bed, he could tell that Sirius wasn’t in the other room either. Still weighed down by sleep, Remus pushed himself up and pulled on the clothes still waiting for him on the floor.

“Sirius?” he called, entering the living room with its pink lamp glow now replaced by orange sunrise. The back door, just off the kitchen, sat ajar, ushering in bird song.

As he stepped into the small, overgrown garden behind the cottage, he found exactly what he thought he might: Padfoot, dozing in the grass.

His footsteps stirred the great black dog from sleep. Padfoot perked his head up to look at Remus before dropping it in a very human act of shame. Remus lowered to the grass and sat, tilting his head up toward the light, trying to feel what Sirius felt.

“Okay,” he said, patting the dog on its head. “No small spaces.”

Chapter Text

Smoke Signals OR Harry, August 1995

By the time dawn approached, Harry realized he hadn’t actually slept at all. Falling asleep in unfamiliar places was difficult at the best of times, least of all in somewhere as suffocatingly dank as Grimauld Place, but this night, like all recently, had added disadvantages.

Try as he might to settle his mind, his thoughts shuffled like a never-ending photo carousel. Flash. Cedric. Flash. Dementors. Flash. His wand snapped in two. Flash. Voldemort. Flash, Flash, Flash; a vicious spinning cycle that made his heart race from the top of the night to its miserable and equally wakeful bottom. His chest felt bruised as if a large weight had been set upon it and left there. His sheets were too hot, and Ron’s snoring, which might have otherwise been a comfort, was oppressively loud and overwhelming.

He had felt like this at times when he was little. Shaking scared and locked in his cupboard with no sign that he would be let out anytime soon. Eventually, the darkness would blanket him into calm, and he’d drift off to a sleep where dreams weren’t quite so painful, but that was a lifetime away. After half of the summer of sleepless nights or nights he wished had been sleepless, he had started to feel like something in him had fundamentally changed since the night in the graveyard.

Deciding it would be more exhausting to feign waking up well rested with the others, he sat up in bed, took his glasses from the bedside table, and stared ahead of him as the empty portrait frame ahead of him came into soft focus, barely visible through the obscured pre-dawn light creeping through the heavy velvet curtains on Ron’s side of the room.

Swinging his legs to the floor, his toes had only brushed the grimy carpet before he recoiled and reached for a pair of socks resting on the trunk at the foot of his bed. He was on edge enough without having to feel a decade of crusted magical dirt on the bottoms of his feet.

He reached for his wand on the bedside table for no other reason than not wanting it out of his sight as the threat of its destruction loomed. Padding across the room, he opened and closed the door as gently as possible, though, as heavy a sleeper as Ron was, it was almost unnecessary.

Yesterday morning, he would have done anything to see his friends again. Now, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was better off alone.

He had planned to just wait in the kitchen, make a cup of tea, and wait for the others to find him; lie about how long he’s been up, and mention how great he slept. But when he reached the landing, he was hit by an unfortunately familiar and fairly unpleasant smell.

Though he’d gotten somewhat used to the constant smell of cigarettes that clung to Dudley like a second skin this summer, he was shocked to find it here, of all places. Mundungus and Moody had left promptly after dinner last night. Lupin had left halfway through the meal. Surely it wasn’t a Weasley -- Mrs. Weasley would have their heads, and Hermione would sooner fail a class.

He turned and looked up the looping stairs, at the top of which he assumed he would find Sirius’s bedroom, and by extension, Sirius, who, apparently, also had something keeping him up that night. With a decision that made itself, Harry began to follow the stairs to the top of the house. Quick to release the loose floorboards that creaked loudly under his feet, he wound his way through a darkened museum of Black family portraits and artifacts.

Reaching the final steps, two doors stood opposite each other, clearly dividing the top floor into two. To the right of him, one of the doors was cracked just barely enough to reveal a sliver of slight and muted voices coming from within.

“It’s getting worse, Remus, you have to—”

“What? Do something?

“Yes!”

“Well, I’d love to hear your brilliant ideas.”

“We can ask—”

“Dumbledore seems quite keen to just keep me to just keep me out of sight in the cellar. I think I’m rather done hearing his input, thank you very—” Lupin cut himself off before lowering his voice and saying, “I think you have a visitor, Sirius.”

Harry took a step backward down the stairs, deeply embarrassed by the prospect of being caught eavesdropping. Before he could turn and begin his descent, the landing was flooded with light now pouring from the open door.

“Harry?” said Sirius from the doorway, sounding concerned, “Are you alright?”

“Yes. Yeah. Sorry. I just… smelled smoke,” said Harry, wishing he had escaped in time.

“You hear that?” Sirius said, looking back over his shoulder, “You’re poisoning this house.”

“Not leaving it any worse than I found it,” replied Lupin weakly from inside the room.

Harry thought he had a point there, and Sirius must have too, as he simply shrugged to concede and looked back at Harry.

“I’m sorry we woke you, Harry.”

“You didn’t. I mean, I didn’t really sleep.”

“At all?”

As Harry’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could see that Sirius looked just as exhausted as he felt. Harry just shook his head, feeling oddly pathetic standing on the step below his godfather.

“Well then,” said Sirius, clapping his hands and approximating joviality, “come and join the club.”

Sirius turned to let Harry walk into the room before closing the door behind him, tapping the door with his wand. Harry didn’t hear a lock click, so he distantly wondered if whatever spell was cast was meant to block the smoke from wafting back into the house before all thought was lost at the sight of Sirius’s room.

The room was massive. The walls were painted a spectacular sky blue and were plastered not with the portraits and oil paintings of the floors below, but of an eclectic gallery of posters, letters, and photographs. Above his bed was a massive Gryffindor banner adorned with a felt lion that bared its teeth every few moments. Squeezed in amongst immobile posters of Muggle rockstars, bikini-clad models, and motorcycles were magical photographs that played on loop like miniature films, some of which, Harry hoped, might feature his parents. Opposite the bed, which was dressed in red sheets with a giant gold constellation embroidered in the center, was an ornate writing desk where Sirius now sat, looking kindly up at him.

Had it not been for the embarrassment Harry was already feeling about his accidental intrusion, he could have spent hours looking over every wall, surface, and shelf. Who was Sirius as his parents knew him? And who were his parents to him? As he continued to scan the room, his eyes finally fell upon the source of the smoke.

Sitting on the cove-like windowsill with knees pulled against his chest was Remus Lupin, looking worse than Harry had ever seen him.

“Hello, Harry,” said Lupin, sounding ill and slightly indifferent. He was dressed in a set of dark blue pajamas and a faded, heather grey Puddlemeer United jumper that had been sweat through twice over. His greying hair was plastered to his forehead, and his face was tinged with a green and a grimace that said that he was very much in pain.

Lupin’s hands shook violently as he brought a nearly finished cigarette to his mouth before taking a long drag and blowing the smoke through the side of his mouth out the window.

If Harry had felt intrusive for eavesdropping, this was something else entirely. Lupin looked utterly, disgustingly, strung out. Though usually a little worn looking, he was never short of decorum. Now, he looked desperate, a light in which Harry would have preferred never to have seen him. If the shameful pink that was now competing with the green in Lupin’s cheeks was any indication, Lupin would have preferred it that way as well.

Lupin gave Harry as polite a smile as he could manage before leaning forward and stamping out his cigarette in the electric green ashtray at his feet. It smoked in the dish for a moment before reigniting. As Harry watched, it appeared to un-smoke itself back to mint condition, waiting to be picked up and lit once more. Lupin leaned his head back to the pane behind him and closed his eyes, leaving Harry to turn back to Sirius, who was looking between the two as if to make sure everyone was going to behave.

“Nifty invention,” said Sirius, “too bad it doesn’t do spliffs.”

“Sirius,” Lupin warned.

“No, that you should be smoking anything, Harry,” Sirius said, making a joking attempt at recovery. It wasn’t particularly funny, but Harry laughed despite himself. He supposed a parent might have tried to tell him something like that at one point, but this was the best he could do.

“You can sit,” said Sirius, gesturing to his bed. Being invited in had done little to soothe Harry’s out-of-placeness. Harry sat, looking at his feet for a minute before looking back at Sirius.

“So, can’t sleep, eh?” asked Sirius.

“No,” replied Harry.

“Sleeping at all these days?”

“No.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Harry sarcastically.

“It’s not a bad thing, Harry – well, I guess it’s not very pleasant, but I can’t imagine you’ve had it particularly easy this summer.”

“It’s fine,” said Harry quickly, “I’m fine.”

Any measure of concern these days felt like pity, and Sirius looked concerned. And supportive. And genuinely interested, and it made Harry feel like he was taking up too much space. He wished he knew what he was supposed to do when people cared.

“Of course you are,” said Sirius casually, “is something else on your mind?”

“Yeah, I just…” Harry began, uncertain of how to continue without sounding overly worried, “I’ve just been wondering what happens if they do, you know, expel me.”

“Ah,” said Sirius, leaning back slightly to make Lupin’s reawakened gaze. “Well, I’m sure the last thing you want to hear is ‘it depends,’ but it depends.”

“On what?” asked Harry, annoyed as Sirius had predicted, with that answer.

“On everything,” said Lupin from his place on the window, “On the terms of your sentencing, on what the Ministry deems to be the severity of the crime, on whether or not you’re eligible for appeal. The proceedings of the Ministry of Magic are just as convoluted as any legal system, and the justice department is twice as corrupt. Just ask your godfather.” Lupin said with a dark laugh, which Harry registered as rather cruel. The ever-pleasant, always pliant Lupin was clearly being consumed by pain.

“Hey!” said Sirius in mock offense, before looking back to Harry and adding, “He’s not wrong, though.”

Lupin reached forward to pick up the un-smoked cigarette and brought it to his lips. His shaking hands fumbled with a muggle lighter, unable to maintain enough pressure on the wheel to produce a spark. Sirius watched for a moment before bringing his thumb and forefinger to his own lips and giving a short, sharp whistle. As he did, the end of Lupin’s cigarette caught fire quickly before fading to an ember.

“Save your tricks for someone who might be impressed with them, Black,” said Lupin before inhaling deeply.

“He’s not impressed with my tricks,” said Sirius, looking back at Harry and feigning hurt.

“Not in the least,” said Lupin, also looking at Harry, “he used to do that to muggle girls in pubs.”

“Did it work?” said Harry, shocked at Sirius’s shamelessness.

“Sometimes. Scared a few, caught one bird’s hair on fire – that was bad,” said Sirius before turning back to Lupin, “Lay off the fags, you’ll make yourself sick.”

“Make you sick,” said Lupin petulantly, continuing to smoke.

“Yeah, there’s a possibility of that too,” said Sirius, returning his gaze to Harry. “Point is, yes, getting expelled generally means getting your wand snapped and being forbidden from using magic, but there’s a grey area.”

“The ministry, however daft, knows it takes on a liability when it sends untrained wizards into the world wandless and optionless,” added Lupin, “it’s unlikely you’d end up like Hagrid, Harry. For one thing, what he was accused of wasn’t a simple account of underage magic and a Statute of Secrecy violation. For another, it wouldn’t shock anyone if the ministry felt less than comfortable with the idea of a half-giant having full magical capabilities. Up to this particular administration, I wouldn’t have them either.”

“Legally speaking, it’s a hard time to be a werewolf,” said Sirius, “but he’s right. If we’re feeling optimistic, it’s because the ministry has more to gain by making an example of you by calling you to a hearing than they actually do expelling you.”

Harry wasn’t sure that made him feel better. His only chance of freedom, relying on ministry self-interest, was just another addition to the growing pile of evidence against the world being as just as the adults around him so often made it out to be. He followed Lupin’s gaze out the window and watched as the sun finally poked its head over London.

“Okay,” said Harry after a moment, “but if they do expel me?”

“Then we have options,” said Sirius, “Hogwarts is not the only wizarding school, and Britain is not the only magical society.”

“It’s the view of many magic folk outside of this great island that children should not be tried as adults,” said Lupin, leaning forward to stamp out his cigarette and swing his feet off the window ledge, seemingly gaining strength with the rise of the sun. “In expulsion cases such as this, you would be able to petition for acceptance to another wizarding school, usually Beauxbaton or Ilvermorny, to complete your studies. After you come of age, you’d be able to appeal to the ministry to return to Britain with full magical permission, though many don’t.”

“Why?” asked Harry.

“Food’s better in France,” said Sirius. Lupin rolled his eyes.

“I don’t speak French,” said Harry.

“I can teach you French,” said Sirius.

“You can’t teach him French,” said Lupin.

“I can so teach him French,” said Sirius.

“You cannot teach him French,” said Lupin, “you can’t even give walking directions properly.”

“Okay then, let’s just all hope that I don’t have to try to teach anyone French,” Sirius said with his hands up as if under fire.

“I don’t even want to learn French!” said Harry, exasperated, which was met with a burst of laughter from both Sirius and Lupin.

Though the prospect that he could be saved from future ruin by an acceptance at Beauxbaton was more comforting than a near-muggle existence in Britain, nothing was pushing his biggest worry from his mind.

“What if,” Harry began, waiting for the laughter to subside, “what if they send me to Azkaban?”

“Time to practice your backstroke,” said Sirius, still chuckling slightly.

“Harry,” said Lupin, “They wouldn’t – and practically can’t.”

“But you both saw the Prophet!” Harry said, annoyed that they weren’t taking him seriously, “What if they do?”

Sirius leaned forward and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, looking him dead in the eye.

“So long as I live, you will never set foot in that place, do you understand me?” he said, his tone darker than it had been the whole conversation.

“But –” said Harry.

“But nothing. If they sentence you to Azkaban… then pick out a new name, coz we’re running away to Australia. Remus will come to, won’t you, Reems?” Sirius said, leaning toward Lupin to pat him on the knee. “I bet those loonies love werewolves, the bloody place is already full of regular animals that could kill you.”

“It’s hot in Australia,” said Lupin.

“Canada then,” said Sirius, “My French may come in handy yet.”

“It’s freezing in Canada,” whined Lupin.

“Fine then, we will go to America where it is both hot and cold and you can be miserable and whiny in both directions,” said Sirius, “Everyone choose your new American name. What are Americans called?”

“They’re called, like, Mark,” said Lupin.

“Yeah, they’re called, like, Tyler,” said Sirius, “Personally, I fancy myself a Kyle.”

For the first time all summer, Harry was laughing, genuinely laughing. They all were, over something so stupid as picking fake American names. There was something so relieving about being invited to laugh at his lot in life, instead of being doted on by Mrs. Weasley and tiptoed around by Ron and Hermione.

As they began to settle, the last of their laughter was interrupted by a deep cracking noise and a sharp inhale from Lupin, who grasped at his chest.

“Sorry,” Lupin wheezed, “Ribs still settling back in place.” He winced and again rubbed his chest with the heel of his hand, eyes clenched tight.

“Alright, Tyler,” said Sirius, “let’s let Mark rest.”

Sirius stood from his seat at the desk and tilted his head toward the door to signal to Harry that it was time to leave.

“Come on,” said Sirius once they reached the landing, “we can plan our new life on the road over breakfast. We’ll be regular cowboys.”

Sirius led the way down to the basement kitchen with the ease of someone who has made this journey thousands of times before, though Harry noticed he averted his gaze from his mother’s portrait as they passed.

“Get comfortable,” Sirius said as they entered the kitchen, which felt much larger now that I was just the two of them standing beside the giant dining table, “I’ll put the kettle on.”

Sirius hummed as he worked, letting the tinkling of mugs and saucers fill the air.

“Let me guess, milk, no sugar?” asked Sirius.

“How did you know that?” asked Harry, taking a seat.

“It was how your dad took his tea,” Sirius said, smiling wistfully as he placed a mug in front of Harry and took the seat opposite him. Harry traced the rim of his mug with his finger.

“How did my mum take her tea?”

“She actually preferred coffee, the maniac.”

“It’s odd, but sometimes, when people tell me things like that, I can’t tell if it makes me glad to know or sad I didn’t before,” Harry said, feeling as though he might be revealing too much.

“That’s not odd, Harry, that’s grief.”

“Oh,” said Harry, sipping his tea, turning the word “grief” over in his head. No one ever used that word when talking about his parents. As if he hadn’t earned it, as if losing them wasn’t enough, and only knowing them was.

They both sat sipping their tea in silence for a moment. This, Harry thought, was probably better than sitting down here alone.

“Can I ask you something?” asked Harry as he neared the end of his tea.

“Yes, of course,” said Sirius.

“What’s wrong with Lupin?”

“Remus? I mean, he’s allergic to pears. He’s sort of uncoordinated. Terrible at maths.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Then you know what’s wrong with him,” said Sirius, “Look, the transformation is near fatal at the best of times. Worse in the summer since the moonrise is so short, and even worse when Dumbledore insists he not risk running into any other werewolf for the time being, so we’ve had to lock him in the cellar.”

“Here?”

“We transfigure the door into solid brick so no one’s getting in or out. Though I was hoping he’d eat Kreature this go around. That small of a space is hard on the wolf – harder on Remus. He’s basically regrowing his skeleton once a month, and bones don’t always end up in the right place. He’ll be fine, he’s just… putting himself back together.” Sirius said, clearly ending that thread of conversation.

Harry could tell that there was more to Lupin’s condition than Sirius was letting on, but decided not to press it. He’d felt more at ease this morning with Sirius and Lupin than he had in a long time. While everyone else around him seemed in denial about the severity of everything Harry had been through these past few months, as if his age deterred him from truly experiencing it, his godfather seemed to acknowledge it without comment. Harry didn’t want to lose that.

“Can I ask you something else?” Harry said.

“I’m an open book,” said Sirius.

“What happened to the girl?”

“What girl?”

“The girl in the pub whose hair you lit on fire.”

“Oh, her,” laughed Sirius, “Frankly, I wasn’t around to see the aftermath. Peter and Remus practically dragged me out of the place by my shoelaces. According to legend, James put out the fire and then pretended to chat the poor girl up while Lily stood behind her, secretly regrowing her hair. She was good at stuff like that, your mum.”

“What, fixing people’s hair?” asked Harry.

“No, fixing people’s mistakes,” smiled Sirius.

With that, a parade of footsteps could be heard from above, paired with the ringing voice of Mrs. Weasley calling everyone out of bed. Soon, Harry and Sirius were joined by a sea of red hair, Crookshanks included, and a sleepy-looking Hermione.

“Morning, Harry,” she said, looking oddly pleased to see him.

“Morning,”

“How did you sleep?”

“Oh, um—”

“SIRIUS BLACK!” shouted Mrs. Weasley, silencing the entire kitchen. “Smoking? Honestly!?”

“It’s my house, Molly, I like to think I’m allowed to do here as I please,” said Sirius, crossing his arms, leaning back in his chair, and winking at Harry.

“You need to think about the example you’re setting!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. It was clear to Harry that this was not the only time he’d see them at odds.

“Fine,” said Sirius flatly, looking down the table at a chorus of giggling Weasleys, “Kids. Don’t smoke.”

Chapter Text

It goes like this. They pretend this is normal. They do their best to get along. They don’t acknowledge that it feels better when they don’t. They pretend the last thirteen years didn’t happen. They apologize when one of them mentions they did. They have their tea. They worry about the brewing war. They fuck when they don’t feel like worrying anymore.

Sirius thought they might. He was scared they wouldn’t. He didn’t even know if he still could. After a week at Remus’s, crawling into bed after staying up as late as he could excuse, he finally felt the hands he’d thought about countless nights in Azkaban pull him closer in the darkness.

It was slow. It was awkward. It was devastating to learn that at 35, you could be so disgusted by your own body. He cringed at the feeling of fingers in the depressions between his ribs. He felt precious about kissing with new teeth, as if the slightest nudge would have them shattering. His head was still so full of magical fog that he could barely get hard.

And Remus had the audacity to be sweet and patient with him, instead of letting him suffer his indignity quickly in the name of “trying again later.’

When it was over, when they lay stretched out like they used to, passing a cigarette and looking anywhere but at each other.

The morning after Sirius arrived, they received a less than revealing owl from Dumbledore. The Order was to be reinstated, they were to be members, they were to help search for a headquarters, they were to remain hidden until they received his next owl.

The tortures of not knowing clearly lost on the all-seeing.

They did as they were told.

As they did, Sirius could feel himself becoming human; responsible again for a life observed. He chewed with his mouth closed and quietly learned to stop talking to himself, easier made by the presence of another person. He went to sleep as Sirius and only sometimes woke up as Padfoot and only sometimes outside.

“You’re looking better,” said Remus one morning over tea and toast. They had moved the small table in the kitchen to the garden so that Sirius could spend as much time outside as possible. The stifling drought and unprecedented heatwave had brought the flowers to ruin and left the skin across Remus’s nose pink and peeling, but Sirius continued to wear double layers.

“Are you implying that I looked bad before?” snorted Sirius.

“I’m not implying anything. I’m saying you looked bad before.”

“Much appreciated.”

“Of course.”

“You’re looking rather good yourself. Very alive.”

“Compared to what, looking dead?’

“Or close to, yeah,” said Sirius, turning his eyes to the sky and then back to Remus, “I suppose I know that that means. How soon are we?”

“Two nights from tomorrow,”

“So, three nights?”

“If you’d prefer.”

“I’d prefer you stop making everything unnecessarily complicated.”

“Only when you stop oversimplifying everything, Sirius.”

They had had this argument before, and it had nothing to do with semantics. Imprisoned time together after oceanic time apart was picking at their scabs.

Sirius held his teacup to his chest, attempting to siphon off its remaining heat as he alternated looking at Remus and past him.

Remus was always brighter around the moons. Twitchy, often giddy, but easily annoyed. Usually, this excited Sirius. He became something new. Something difficult to keep hold of. Literally, in most cases, as by the time the dawn of the moon approached, he would double in strength.

James used to call him the Iron Man. Sirius always thought he was talking about the song.

“Fine, then,” said Sirius, “if it suits you. So, what’s the plan? It’ll be nice to get out and stretch our legs a bit.”

“There is no plan,” said Remus, “You’re not coming with me.”

“And, er, why on earth would I not?”

“Because it’s dangerous.”

“I think that bridge has been well and truly crossed.”

“Because it’s different.”

“Meaning?”

“The wolf doesn’t know you anymore, Sirius. You know it didn’t recognize you that night in the forest.”

“Well, we’ve done introductions before. I think we could probably manage that again. Teach old dogs new tricks. Or Old tricks. Or whatever.”

“When we did introductions the first time, it was three against one, there was a safety net.”

“Two against one,” Sirius corrected, “I’m not counting Peter.”

“Yeah, me neither, I suppose,” Remus sighed, bringing his hands to his face to pressing on his sinuses for a moment, before dropping them to his lap. While Sirius, even in the stolen Puddlemeer sweatshirt, still struggled to keep warm in the raging summer heat, Remus had abandoned his usual self-consciousness for a t-shirt.

He was too tall for the chair that sat opposite Sirius. Too big for the table, constantly readjusting his legs, and bumping his knees underneath it, sending their tea sloshing over the tops of their mugs. In the sun, the jagged, runaway scars on his arms nearly shone. In another world, in another life, the man covered in scars who towered over everyone in every room he entered would be a terrifying sight, but to Sirius, he still just looked like Moony.

“Moony?”

“Yes?”

“Moony?”

“Yes, what?”

“Why do you actually not want me to come with you two nights from tomorrow?”

“For exactly the reason I said.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Stalemate. Remus would break first. He always did. He bowed his head and spoke to his lap.

“Because I don’t want you to see me like transform.”

Sirius barked in laughter. God, maybe the t-shirt really was making him feel exposed.

“Moony,” Sirius said, “I do hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I fear I must inform you that I have seen you transform. Many times. None of which I’m likely to forget.”

“Not like this you haven’t,” said Remus, looking up, “Not recently.”

“Supposed I’ve been a bit preoccupied with being on the run and all that.”

“We’re not young anymore.’

“Speak for yourself, I’m a regular spring chicken.”

“Alright, well, I’m not. And it’s getting harder, okay? It’s getting really fucking hard to actually make it through the transition – My body just can’t handle it the way it used to.”

“I’d take you at face value if I didn’t think you had such a talent for telling everyone the sky was falling.”

“Sirius be –”

“What? Serious?”

“Ffffff –” Remus breathed through his teeth before he could force composure. For a moment, he looked as if he were going to flip the table. Sirius almost hoped he would.

“For fuck’s sake, Sirius,” said Remus, desperately trying to steady himself, “For once in your miserable life, I need you to actually fucking listen to me, okay?”

“Okay,” said Sirius, hands up before drawing a halo in the air with his forefinger around the top of his head, “you’ve got me, just get it out.”

“Do you remember the book from the restricted section?”

“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

“No, I don’t,” said Remus.

“No, you don’t,” said Sirius.

On the Corruptive Nature of Infectious Lycanthrope by Bartholomew Dunn was a slim volume, easily concealed in folds of one’s robes and even easier to hide in the boy’s dormitory in Gryffindor Tower. At the time of its publishing in 1921, few academic texts had ever ventured toward understanding the medical nature of the condition, favoring instead to give graphic instructions on how best to kill a werewolf.

Bartholomew Dunn used his final years on Earth to keep a careful record of how lycanthropy would, in advanced age, eventually push a body past the point of being able to fully transition before the stress eventually stopped the heart. Through pages of gut-turning illustrations of partially transformed wolves struggling to fully transform, he concluded that the approximate terminal age for werewolves would lie somewhere in late middle age, though his studies remained inconclusive, as he died half man, half wolf, under a full moon at the age of 55.

They stared at each other across the table, the sound of the birds and the buzz of summer around them dulling as they did. Sirius thought about the weeks following their discovery in the library, of Remus’s swift oscillations between manic, adrenaline-junkie nihilism and depressive catatonia, of the struggle to make a peace that would never come.

“So,” said Sirius, “you think the clock is ticking?”

“I think that I’ve reached the point where, from now on, it will only get harder.”

“All the more reason to have me with you then, don’t you think?”

Sirius reached across the table for Remus’s hand. They were rarely so sweet with each other, but they tried their best when it mattered. And Remus, to his credit, allowed his hand to be held.

“Okay then,” said Remus, “but try not to be a prick about it.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” replied Sirius as he brought Remus’s hand to his lips and laid a kiss across his knuckles.

* * *
Three nights later, as the moon’s light just barely filtered to the floor of the Abernethy Forest where they had apparated just moments before, Sirius, now Padfoot, watched as Remus’s transformation took place in slow motion.

The swift, liquid elongation of his face and spine had been replaced by horrible, echoing cracks of bone and the snapping of tendons as his body collapsed in on itself, as if being crushed by an invisible fist.

Horrible, guttural screams ricocheted off the trees around them, encasing them in sounds of agony.

And it was agony. For both of them. The little Remus has let on was nothing on the actual experience of it. As soon as it began, Sirius begged for it to be over. As the remaining joints finally slammed their way in place several slow minutes later, the wolf was left whimpering on its side on the forest floor.

Padfoot, with his usual lack of caution, trotted up to the wolf where he lay and nudged him with his nose. The wolf whined as it pushed itself to standing, and for a moment, deep somewhere behind its eyes, Padfoot saw Remus looking through at him, before he was swallowed whole.

The wolf snarled at Padfoot, baring its teeth in a show of dominance before arching its neck to the sky and letting out a massive, bellowing howl.

* * *

 

If the transformation to wolf was agony, then the transition back to human necessitated the invention of a new word to capture its suffering.

By the time Remus finally came to on the forest floor, naked and feverish, he could barely breathe. Sputtering, he took desperate, sucking gasps like a man saved from drowning.

Sirius just watched in silence before passing Remus his clothes. There really was no way to be a prick about this.

Sirius stood, cupped Remus’s face in his hands, and brushed away the tears staining his cheek, and told him it was going to be alright. He helped him to his feet and caught him before he fell and helped him get his feet through the legs of his trousers and did up the zipper and button with Remus bearing all his weight on Sirius’s shoulders.

He apparated them back to the cottage. He tried not to think of Remus doing this without him. He put them both to bed.

By the time Sirius woke in Remus’s bed, the sun was setting again, and Remus was tucked under his arm, looking up at him.

“Thank you,” said Remus.

“For what?” asked Sirius.

“I told you not to be a prick about this.”

“I’m not. I’m just saying, there’s nothing you need to thank me for.”

Sirius thought of his first night here with Remus and knew that Remus felt now what he did then. Insufferable shame, embarrassing neediness.

“What did we get up to last night?” asked Remus.

“You were annoyed with me, but you let me tag along while you hunted. I stopped you from eating a vole, which the wolf wasn’t happy about, but I’m certain you’re doing a lot better than you would be if you spent the morning coughing up bones.”

“Likely so.”

Remus pulled himself closer to Sirius, asking silently to be held tighter. Sirius obliged, secretly cherishing this closeness despite its source. They watched the sun set together through the small bedroom window in silence, and as the last trace of it crawled beneath the horizon past the open field flanking the cottage, Remus looked up at Sirius, and very plainly said:

“I want you to kill me.”

“Now? But it’s such a nice evening,” Sirius said, hoping to end the conversation before it started.

“One day, in the future, fifteen years from now, twenty years from now, when it becomes clear that the next moon will be my last. I want you to kill me – I want to die human.”

Sirius knew that Remus was serious, which scared him. He knew that he would do it too, if it came to that, which scared him even more. What wouldn’t he do for Remus?

“Okay,” said Sirius, “but I’ll warn you now. I’m not as good at killing my friends as everyone thinks.”

Remus laughed. It sounded like music.

And so, it goes like this: they pretend this is normal.

Chapter Text

“I asked Sirius about what happens if I get expelled,” said Harry, lying on his bed in Grimauld Place, and staring at the crumbling ceiling.

“What? When?” asked Ron, pulling his trainers off before flopping on the bed opposite him.

“What did he say?” asked Hermione, sitting at the edge of Harry’s bed, looking fatigued.

This was the first the three of them had been alone together since Harry arrived the previous evening. After a day's worth of cleaning that made being at the Dursley’s look like a holiday, the three of them had just finished another loud and overwhelming dinner with the Order before finally being able to excuse themselves in search of peace.

“This morning, before you lot woke up. I think my options are learn French or flee to America,” said Harry

“How do you figure that?” asked Ron.

“Well, Lupin seems to think that if I get expelled from Hogwarts, I could ask Beauxbaton to take me. America seemed more like a last resort in case they decided to send me to Azkaban.”

“Lupin thinks? I thought he cleared out last night,” said Ron.

“No, apparently, he’s spending the full moons here in the cellar. He looked awful. Really messed up. I think he’s been upstairs all day sleeping it off,” said Harry, sitting up on his elbows.

“Wish I had that excuse to get out of cleaning,” said Ron.

“That’s horrible,” said Hermione, side-eyeing Ron, “but the cellar, isn't that dangerous?”

“Dumbledore approved, according to Sirius,” said Harry.

“Well, what did they actually say?” asked Ron.

“Basically, that they don’t think they’ll expel me, which I’m not sure how truthful either of them are being about that, but if they do, the other magical schools sometimes take in wizards who get expelled from Hogwarts. Said it's usually Beauxbaton or some place called Ilvermorny,” said Harry.

“So America isn’t a last resort,” said Hermione.

“What do you mean?” asked Harry.

“Ilvermorny is the American school of magic,” said Hermione.

“Well, I’ve never heard of it,” said Ron.

“Me neither,” said Harry.

“It is remarkable how little you two care about the world around you,” said Hermione, looking between them incredulously.

“Well, I don’t think that changes that my options are still just flee to America or learn French,” said Harry.

“America might cool,” supplied Ron.

“I don’t want to go to America,” said Harry.

“I can help you with your French,” said Hermione.

“I don’t. Want to. Learn French,” said Harry, fully sitting up as he spoke, “I just want everything to go back to normal, before all of this.”

In his head, the sentence ended with “before the graveyard.” If the looks on Ron and Hermione’s faces were any indication, they thought it might end that way as well.

“We know,” said Hermione, reaching a hand out and putting it on Harry’s knee, “We just –”

“Want to help, yeah, I know,” said Harry.

“Besides, mate,” said Ron, “there’s still a really good chance they’ll let you go. Then you don't have to learn French or American.”

“They speak English in America, Ron,” said Hermione.

“Sure, if that’s what you wanna call it,” scoffed Ron.

Harry laughed, smiled at Ron, put his hand on Hermione’s, and hoped desperately that he wouldn’t lose this. That was the part that none of them could bring themselves to say out loud. If Harry were expelled, they would lose him, too.

Before he could say another word, the door slammed open, and the peace they had found drained the room. A cup of hope turned to its side.

“Ah, Hermione, dear, there you are,” said Mrs. Weasley, beckoning for her to walk toward the door. “Time for everyone to get a good night’s sleep, I think. Off you pop.”

“But, mum,” whined Ron.

“But nothing. There’s more work to be done tomorrow, and you’ll want a proper rest,” said Mrs Weasley in her normal, it’s-not-up-for-discussion tone.

“Coming, Mrs. Weasley,” said Hermione, jumping down from the bed.
As her hand slid from Harry’s, he had to stop himself from holding on to it, stupidly realizing that it wasn’t actually all that common for them to hold hands in the first place.

And yet, it felt as though everything worth holding on to was under threat of moving just out of reach. Why not hold on tighter?

“Goodnight, guys,” she said, giving them a defeated smile before leaving the room.

“Night,” said Ron.

“Bed. Now,” said Mrs. Weasley before turning and shutting the door in her wake.

When Harry turned back toward Ron, Ron was staring at him, smirking.

“What?” asked Harry.

“Were you just holding Hermione’s hand?”

“What?”

“Were you, and the answer is ‘yes’ by the way, just holding Hermione’s hand?”

“No, I-no,” stammered Harry.

“Are you lying to me or yourself?”

“I’m –”

“In denial.”

“No!”

“Okay, Harry. Just remember to write her while you’re on the run in America,” snorted Ron.

Harry felt heat rise in his cheeks, wishing he could tell Ron to piss off without digging himself deeper. It wasn't that odd. Ron was making something out of nothing. They had held hands before. And she had kissed his cheek on the train platform in June. Though thinking back, that might have just been out of pity.

“Whatever,” said Harry, before jumping from the bed and pulling his pajamas on in silence. His shoulders ached from scrubbing the floorboards in the drawing room, and his hand felt raw from overwashing.

As he climbed under the covers and set his glasses on the bedside table, he gave Ron a reluctant “good night,” which was returned with a laugh. Harry turned off the lamp and turned to face the wall and hoped the exhaustion might help him find sleep easier.

Before long, Ron was snoring beside him, and Harry, overly tired, felt restless. Trying to stay still long enough to get comfortable in one position made him so anxious that he couldn’t help but move to the next. His skin felt overly sensitive, and everywhere his blankets touched felt itchy and hot. Once again, he felt the photo carousel take over his thoughts.

Flash. The Maze. Flash. The Graveyard. Flash. Wormtail. Flash. Cedric. Flash. Cedric. Flash. Cedric. Cedric. Cedric.

He groaned and turned over again to look at Ron and wondered if he should even bother trying to sleep tonight. If he were lucky and quiet enough, he might be able to get past Mr. and Mrs. Weasley’s room to see if Sirius was still awake.

The thought passed as quickly as it came when Harry remembered just how exhausted Sirius had looked this morning. Keeping someone else awake was hardly the solution to the problem.

He kept thinking of Sirius, however, and the promise to start anew if the worst came to pass. He felt guilty as he looked at Ron in the darkness and yearned for a different life. One without The Dursleys and the Daily Prophet and the Dark Lord.

“America might be cool,” Ron had said. Maybe it would be.

Krum had told him that he was famous in Bulgaria, too. But maybe there was somewhere where no one had ever heard the name “Harry Potter,” and where he could be someone who didn’t see dead bodies every time he closed his eyes.

Sleep finally came to Harry as he dreamed of open roads and skies, of big cities and neon signs, of an obscure every place that was somewhere, literally anywhere else than here.

He was cooled by the prospect of anonymity. As the dream progressed, he exited himself and walked beside his body through sun-lined streets. Turning, curving, going nowhere with purpose. The two Harrys made their way through a giant, rolling park of green before reaching the top of a hill, looking down to see a cemetery at its base, and walking forward with no way of turning back.

Harry knew where they were immediately, but could do nothing to stop the other him from being pinned to the grave of Tom Riddle. He watched, trapped by the same invisible force that paralyzed his voice and body as the scene unfolded as it did that night in the graveyard and every night after. Always in sight, never in reach. He screamed for the other Harry to break free, he screamed for him to save Cedric, he screamed for him to run, please God just run, but he too was being held down.

“Harry, Harry!” said Sirius, “Harry, wake up!”

Harry came to facing Sirius, who was sitting on the side of his bed, hands on Harry’s shoulders.

“Sirius?’ Harry asked, as the room came into blurry reality, fighting against whatever was restraining his arms to his sides.

“Yes, it’s me, you’re safe, you’re alright,” said Sirius.

“Sorry, Harry,” said Lupin, who released Harry from the bear’s grip that he had held him in from behind, before stepping off the side of the bed to stand next to Sirius, “I thought you might hurt yourself.”

Harry’s stomach twisted itself into punishing knots of embarrassment as he realized what had happened. Screaming himself awake was a new one. Maybe the Prophet was right. Maybe he was crazy. He reached, almost reluctantly, for his glasses, unsure if he even wanted to see the sight ahead of him.

The world came into an unrelenting focus, made uglier by the bright light from the lamp beside him and the gallery of concerned faces around him. Sirius gave him a weak smile before saying:

“There, see? You’re okay.”

“I know,” said Harry indignantly, trying and failing to hide his embarrassment.

“Of course you do,” said Sirius.

“Oh, Harry!” said another voice from the door.

Harry could rarely remember a time he was ever so displeased to see Mrs. Weasley, let alone the crowd of Weasley siblings and Hermione peering in at him from the landing. He turned his face down in shame, almost wishing he were back in the dream.

As Mrs. Weasley made to step toward Harry, Sirius put his hand up.

“Molly, please,” he said, “Don’t make this worse. Get the others back to bed, we’ll all be fine in here.”

“Right, right,” said Mrs. Weasley, who was never so quick to agree with Sirius, “Right, all of you back to bed. NOW.”

A stampede of slippers made its way up the stairs, as everyone had had their fill of gawking.

Sirius waited to hear the last door close before speaking again.

“God, can’t a man scream in peace?” he said, clearly trying to make Harry laugh and failing.

“Are you alright?” said Lupin from beside Sirius, giving him an almost Hermione-like side eye.

“I’m fine,” said Harry.

“You’re sure?” asked Sirius, “If you’d like, we can move some of us around so that you can sleep alone.”

“No,” said Harry, “I just –”

Want everyone to leave me alone and never look at me or think about me again, he thought.

“I said, I’m fine.”

“Okay, then,” said Sirius, “I’ll leave you be. Just, you know, if you need me…”

“Right,” said Harry.

Sirius stood up, still looking concerned, but nodded as he walked toward the door.

“Good night, you two,” said Lupin, as he turned to follow Sirius. He took Ron’s want off the dresser and tapped the door with it twice before setting it back on the dresser.

“Soundproofing,” he said, closing the door behind him.

Alone together, Harry could feel Ron staring at him as he forced himself to look ahead.

“Harry,” said Ron.

“What?” Harry snapped, finally looking in his direction.

“It’s just – It wasn’t as bad as everyone was making it out to be,” Ron said sheepishly.

Ron was lying. Harry loved him for that.

Chapter Text

Even if Harry could have fallen asleep again, he wouldn't have let himself. Ron, too, stayed awake after everyone had gone, and Harry hoped it was out of solidarity rather than shock.

While the faces of the dead haunted Harry’s dreams, it was now the living that overtook his waking. Burning bright through the darkness, the terrified faces of each of the Weasleys, of Sirius, of Hermione, pressed in on him, making him feel ill.

The riptide opened in his mind once more as he pictured waking up to those exact looks on the faces of Neville, Dean, and Seamus. Flash. The whole of Gryffindor staring down at him as he screamed. Flash. Malfoy standing above him, laughing. Flash. Flash. Flash.

Maybe it would be best if they just expelled him.

The rest of the night crept by achingly slow, even as his heart raced to find its end. Another night without sleep. Another morning spent wading through sand. Another day lived through cling film.

It had been so long since he had a proper night's sleep, he could feel his muscles ache with longing for rest.

When light finally started to filter through the crack in the heavy velvet curtains, Harry was relieved to stop pretending. Ron stood to pull the curtains back, looking out over another stuffy morning on the edge of a heatstroke day.

He turned to look at Harry and made several attempts to twist his face into neutrality before asking, “You get back to sleep alright?”

“Fine, yeah,” lied Harry, “and you?”

“Fine,” lied Ron.

They looked at each other for a moment before experiencing the simultaneous revelation that the floor was really quite interesting in this light. Harry knew Ron wanted to say something, but he also knew he wouldn’t, which made him feel slightly better.

They pulled on their clothes in silence, both of them opting for yesterday’s jeans since it was unlikely this day would be any less disgusting than the last, cleaning-wise.

“Breakfast?” said Ron, walking over to the door.

“Yeah, I suppose,” said Harry, who remained still. Breakfast meant more than just breakfast; it meant everyone.

“I think you just have to face it, mate,” said Ron. “Besides, I think only one who will actually, you know, care, is Mum.”

Harry nodded and followed Ron out the door and down the winding stairs to the basement kitchen. In the new day’s light, Harry was certain the progress they had made during yesterday’s cleaning spree was more an act of moving the dirt around, foreshadowing another brutal day.

When they arrived in the kitchen. Fred, George, Ginny, and Hermione were already seated around the long, scrubbed table, sipping tea and waiting as Mrs. Weasley busied herself at the stove with breakfast.

When they noticed the new arrivals, Ginny averted her gaze, Fred and George said “Hi, Harry!” in unison, and Hermione gave him an odd smile that was probably meant to be welcoming but warped in her concern to a lopsided smirk.

The only thing worse than shame acknowledged was shame poorly ignored.

“Hi,” said Harry, coolly.

“Oh, Harry,” said Mrs. Weasley, turning from the stove and wiping her hands on her apron, “Did you –”

She stopped herself mid-sentence before she could say “did you sleep aright,” instead stumbling over, but eventually landing on “are you ready for breakfast?”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Harry.

“I am also here and also ready for breakfast, if you’re all done being stupid,” said Ron, earning a chuckle from Ginny and ridding the room of its bitter tension.

Harry wished he could have thanked Ron in that moment. He settled for a smile as he took a seat next to him at the table.

“Eggs are almost ready,” said Mrs. Weasley, “And, you’ll all want a good breakfast, there’s a long day ahead of all of us.”

“Not if whatever’s in the third floor loo doesn’t kill us early on,” said Fred.

“Killing us now wouldn’t be soon enough, if it meant we still had to go near it,” said George.

“Sorry, what’s in the third floor loo?” said Harry, pouring himself a cup of tea.

“The bathtub is sort of… clogged with something,” said Ginny, pulling a face, “we can’t really tell if it's potion of some sort or it's just whatever’s backing its way out of the pipe. George reckons he saw something move under the surface.”

“I don’t reckon, I know I saw something, and you’ll all be sorry when the ancient and most noble shit monster kills us in our sleep,” said George, as he reached out to serve himself from the platter off eggs placed in front of him before receiving a swift swat to the back of the head as Mrs. Weasley hissed a sharp:

“Language!”

“Oh, come on, mum, I’m of age,” said George, rubbing the back of his head.

“Then act like an adult, George Weasley,” said Mrs. Weasley, who turned back the stove to tend the bacon, speaking over her shoulder, “Besides, you Fred and Ginny will spend the morning finishing the floors in the drawing room, and you can do that without your wands, thank you very much.”

“I’ll take muggle floor scrubbing over magical toilet death any day,” said George, under his breath.

“Ron, you’ll be helping me with the third floor loo,” said Mrs. Weasley.

“Oh come on, why me?” said a full-mouthed Ron, spewing bits of egg across the table.

“Because you’re the child annoying me the least at the moment,” said Mrs. Weasley.

“What about Ginny?” asked Ron.

“You’re not actually considering sacrificing your only sister to that thing, are you, Ron?” said Fred.

“Now,” said Mrs. Weasley, ignoring the both of them, “Harry, Hermione, you’ll be tending to Buckbeak’s room.”

“Whose room?” said Harry, choking on his tea to the point that Ron had to give him a great thump on the back to get his breathing right again.

“Buckbeak,” said Mrs. Weasley, with a sense of exasperation that made Harry think that her and Buckbeak were not on great terms at the moment. “Dumbledore had been keeping him hidden in the Forbidden Forest, but now seems to think he’s not safe at Hogwarts for some reason, so he’s currently residing upstairs, in a room that now needs regular mucking. Won’t let anyone besides Sirius get near him, but Sirius seems to think that he might be okay with you and Hermione for some reason.”

Harry was unsure how much Ron had told his mother about their exploits third year, so he chose to just nod and return to his tea. Hermione looked at him across the table, clearly displeased by the idea of cleaning up hippogriff dung all morning but unwilling to incite any Molly Weasley wrath.

“Where is Sirius, anyway?” asked Harry, alerted to his godfather’s absence.

“Upstairs, probably,” said Hermione, “As it turns out, Sirius’s mother was something of a hoarder. There’s a curse on the house that sends anything you try to vanish straight to the attic. It’s why we’ve had to do so much the muggle way.”

“Lupin and Sirius have been trying to clear it out for the better part of the week. They say they’re getting on alright, but mostly we just hear a lot of loud banging noises and shouting,” said Fred.

“Kinda nice to hear your teachers swear,” said George.

“Yeah, makes them feel more human,” said Fred.

The rest of breakfast in slow motion. Harry could feel everyone drawing out every bite, sip, and dose of seconds to avoid their assignments. As he sat sipping his tea, he could feel the exhaustion put a wall of glass between him and reality, softening his vision and dulling the chatter around him.

When Hermione won the battle with Fred over the final piece of toast, and the teapot had been drained by a yawning Ginny, Mrs. Weasley clapped her hands together and started clearing plates.

“Alright, everyone, let’s not make this any more of a hassle than we have to. Fred, George, Ginny: the brushes and buckets are still upstairs from yesterday. When you’re done with the drawing room, you can move on to the office. Don’t give me that look; the faster you get it done, the faster you don’t have to do it anymore. Ron, you can help me finish the dishes before we head upstairs. Harry, Hermione, there are brooms and rakes outside the door for you, and do be careful, he’s really not happy about being cooped up in there.”

Harry got to his feet with the others and let Fred, George, and Ginny pass as he waited for Hermione to circle round from the other side of the table.

‘I’d rather take the angry hippogriff,” said Ron, looking defeated.

"I’d offer to trade, but I don’t want to,” said Harry.

“Is this the worst day of my life?” asked Ron.

“Only so far,” said Hermione.

And with that, Harry and Hermione followed the rest out of the kitchen, leaving Ron to his fate.

“He’s on the second floor from the top,” said Hermione, slipping past Harry to lead the way up the stairs. He watched her legs from the back at eye level and vaguely wondered why he hadn’t noticed them before. She has always been quite tiny, but now he realized she was actually rather strong and moved gracefully up the stairs.

“Huh,” he said out loud before he could stop himself.

“What?” she asked, continuing upward.

“Nothing,” he said, feeling his cheeks burn hot and his ears go red. He had never noticed them before because that's not something you notice about your best friend, is it?

He was happy Hermione kept her gaze forward. He’d rather take a visit to the third floor loo than explain the blush in his cheeks.

When they finally reached the right floor, they were met with a collection of push brooms, rakes, shovels, tarps, and a menacing closed door.

“You should go in first, Harry, I don’t think Buckbeak likes me as much as Sirius thinks he does,” said Hermione, sounding nervous.

“Doesn’t sound like he likes anyone at the moment,” said Harry, stepping toward the door. He raised his fist and knocked stupidly, as if expecting Buckbeak to squawk for him to come in.

“I think he’s probably decent, Harry,” said Hermione with a chuckle, which brought the pink back to Harry’s cheeks.

Slowly, he turned the brass knob and peered through the crack in the door. Buckbeak was lying on a pile of straw in the corner of the room, yellow eyes piercing up at Harry, daring him to come in.

Harry took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and entered the room in a low bow, hoping that if Buckbeak didn’t remember him, he was at least in the mood to entertain guests. Buckbeak snapped at the air and squawked, sending Harry to retreat several steps.

“Come on, Buckbeak, you’re okay,” said Harry in a low voice, attempting to approach again. Buckbeak snapped a few more times before deciding it simply wasn’t worth the effort and laying his head back down into the soiled straw. He looked as defeated as Harry had seen him tied up in Hagrid’s garden two years previous.

“Yeah, I feel about the same,” said Harry to Buckbeak before turning around to see Hermione peering in from the hallway using the door as a shield. “I think you’re good to come in now.”

“Are you sure?” she said, eyeing Buckbeak nervously.

“Yeah, I don’t think he really cares enough to hurt us,” said Harry.

Hermione pushed open the door slowly and bowed to Buckbeak, who didn’t even bother to look up at her.

“That’s rather sad,” she said.

“Yeah, it is. Might as well try and make it better for him.”

“Right.”

Together, the two of them dragged their tools in from the hallway, laid out a tarp, and set about scooping the filthy bedding that had congealed on the floor on top of it.

The room – nearly the size of Sirius’s – had been cleared of all furniture and was now decorated with a layer of wet straw, alfalfa, and the semi-digested carcasses of various rodent species. After a few moments of shoveling, perhaps unearthing the worst of the mess, Harry’s eyes began to water with the stench.

The deeper the layer of bedding, the harder it became to pry off the floor without a heavy dose of shoulder strength to force their rakes under the mass of solidified gunk. Harry could feel the dirty straw working its way into his socks, scratching his ankles and working grime into his trainers.

“Think Ron’s up for a trade?” said Harry, jamming his foot into the kick plate of his rake before being bounced back by contact with the floorboards below.

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you saw that tub, Harry. Besides, it’s not that bad.”

“You think?”

“I used to ride horses when I was little. I’d help out around the barn in exchange for lessons. It’s about the same,” said Hermione, missing the tarp by about six inches and dumping a large rake full of straw and rat bones on Harry’s feet, though he was too distracted by what she has said to notice.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Didn’t know what?”

“About the horses.”

“Oh, Harry, it’s been ages.”

“Still.”

They continued to work in silence, accompanied by the sound of scraping shovels and the occasional pathetic squawk from Buckbeak. Harry felt oddly guilty about not knowing that Hermione had done horseback riding. He wanted to ask her about it, whether she liked it, and why she stopped. But, as they continued to work, he found it harder and harder to break the silence.

God, why was it so difficult to talk to her all of a sudden? And since when had things ever been awkward between them? Was this because he held her hand? Had he just ruined everything?

He mentally kicked himself for being so stupid and threw himself into the work as punishment, straining his back and breaking open blisters on his hands. Once the tarp was full and the floor was visible, the two of them stood back to admire their progress.

“I think we just have to move Buckbeak to get the last of it,” said Hermione, “though that might be easier said than done.”

“Yeah,” said Harry, looking at her in earnest for the first time since they had entered Buckbeak’s lair. Her hair was out of place, and a glimmer of sweat settled on her brow. A layer of alfalfa dust had settled on her t-shirt, and the light from the window behind Buckbeak fell over her shoulder, illuminating her cheeks in a soft glow. It felt like a good dream.

“You look beautiful,” he said, regretting it immediately.

“Oh, thanks, Harry, really nice,” she said, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest.

“No, I – sorry, that’s not what I meant,” he fumbled.

“Oh, really? What did you mean then?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No, sorry, Hermione. I’m just… tired.”

“Oh,” she said, dropping her arms to her side, “No, I’m sorry, Harry.”

“No, don’t be.”

“No, I am –”

“Please don’t be.”

“Okay.

They stared at each other from across, the tarp, Hermione’s face shifting to the look he had seen last night when she had burst into his room with Ginny, Fred, and George.

“We can talk about it, if you like,” she said.

“Think we should just vanish all this up to the attic and let Lupin and Sirius deal with it?” he said, gently kicking the tarp.

“I’m being serious.

“Me too.”

“It might help, Harry.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

The nagging desire to be alone that kept creeping up on him threatened to return once more. What could anyone actually say to him to help?

He turned away from Hermione before she could say anything else and crossed the floor to where Buckbeak was lying.

He sank into a squat and put his hands to the hippogriff's head, stroking his smooth feathers. Buckbeak pushed his head up into Harry’s hand as if to say “thanks, but that’s enough,” before dropping it back in the straw.

“Okay, Buckbeak, time to get up. Then we can get out of your feathers,” said Harry, gently picking up Buckbeak’s head again.

Buckbeak snapped at him noncommittally, but decided not to argue. Slowly, he rocked his way to standing and stretched wings, which touched from wall to wall. He shook like a dog, sending loose stray and alfalfa to the floor before walking over toward Hermione to nip at her hair.

“Hello, Beaky,” she said, jerking her head out of his reach.

Harry let Hermione pet Buckbeak while he scraped the last of the soiled bedding onto the tarp, in part to keep Buckbeak distracted and part in apology to Hermione for… whatever that was. He tied the tarp at the corners and dragged it to the hallway before joining Hermione in petting Buckbeak.

“Is there more straw to put down?” asked Harry.

“Mr. Weasley is bringing some from The Burrow this evening,” said Hermione, “isn't that right, Beaky? New straw for a good hippogriff.”

Buckbeak responded by vomiting another carcass on the floor.

“Thank you, Buckbeak,” she said, considerably less smitten.

“Shall we check in on the others then?” he asked.

“Yeah, we should,” she said.

Neither of them moved. As filthy as their morning had been together, as awkward as it might have felt, Harry wasn’t ready to stop being alone with Hermione.

She looked at him for a moment as if trying to find something. Whatever she might have said to him in that moment, however, was swallowed by a massive BANG booming from the floor above them, followed by unmistakable shouting.

The two of them sped from the room and up the stairs to the top floor to find a ladder leading up to a trap door in the ceiling.

“You have to be KIDDING me!” Lupin shouted from above.

“It’s not that bad!” said Sirius.

Harry and Hermione looked at each other for a moment. Too curious to stop himself, Harry led the way up the ladder. He scrambled out into the attic with Hermione in tow, looking for his godfather.

“Harry, no!’ he heard Sirius yell before another massive BANG that sent him and Hermione soaring backwards.

Landing hard on his back and smacking his head on something sharp as he fell, it took him a second to gather himself. His mouth was full of the bitter taste of magic, there was a heavy weight around his neck, and he found his way to standing with the uncomfortable realization that his trousers had become very, very tight.

“Are you two alright?” said Lupin, stepping into the light before him. Though it was Lupin, as Harry had never seen him before.

His hair, usually muted and lank, was now dark black and gathered into a pompadour. Gold sunglasses had been pushed on top of his head, and he was wearing a familiar-looking leather jumpsuit that only took Harry a moment to recognize. His former Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was dressed exactly like Elvis Presley.

“What the?” he stammered, rubbing the back of his head, “what the hell?”

“Sorry,” said Sirius, emerging beside him, “We should have warned you.”

Sirius was even more of a sight to behold than Lupin. His black hair was now pin straight and flowed to his waist. His eyes were framed with wings of black eyeliner, and he was dressed in a red, sequin gown with a plunging neckline.

“Sirius,” said Hermione, getting to her feet beside Harry, “Why are you Cher?”

“Why are you Dolly Parton?” he rebutted, which greatly confused Harry until he turned to Hermione to find that she was now more blonde hair than person.

She was dressed in a tight red western shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, and had never looked so un-Hermione in her life. Harry’s brain forwent any additional confusion in favor of utter amusement. He had nearly doubled over in laughter before, Hermione lightly smacked him on the shoulder and said,

“It’s not like you’re doing any better; you’re wearing a mesh shirt.”

Harry grasped at his chest and looked down. His t-shirt had been replaced by a heavy leather jacket and a shirt that looked like it was made from a football net. The heavy weight around his neck was not magic but a giant padlock hanging from a chain. Feeling self-conscious, he pulled the leather jacket closer together and looked back at Hermione, then Sirius.

“Sirius, what is this?” said Hermione, annoyed.

“Colonel Mustard’s Last Stand,” said Sirius, flipping his very long hair behind his shoulder.

“General Custer’s Last Stand,” Lupin corrected, about as happy with this situation as Hermione, “And not a man to idolize, by the way.”

Neither of them had the chance to explain what that meant before the sound of footsteps climbing the ladder filtered up through the trapdoor.

“No!” shouted Lupin.

“Oh, let it happen,” said Sirius.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

As soon as they set foot in the attic, Fred, George, Ginny, and Ron were each sent flying exactly as Harry and Hermione had been. As each of them hit the floor, their clothes morphed into brilliantly colored marching band uniforms, and all of them, Ginny included, now sported a spectacular handlebar mustache.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Stg Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band,” laughed Sirius.

“What?” asked Ron, deliriously as he brushed dust off his new hot pink uniform.

“You’re dressed as the Beatles,” said Hermione, face in hand.

“Oh, which am I?” asked Fred.

“I think you’re John, Fred, you’ve got the glasses” said Hermione, “Ginny, you’re George.”

“No, I’m George,” said George.

“No, you’re Paul,” said Sirius, ‘Ron that makes you Ringo.”

“What’s a Ringo?” asked Ron, looking around in bewilderment at the sight before him.

“Great question, Ron,” said Sirius.

“Cool, here’s a better one. Why am I a Ringo?”

“Yes, Sirius,” said Hermione, “Why?”

“You, my friends,” Sirius began, gesturing to a large antique suitcase behind him, “Are looking at the goodbye present I left for my lovely, loving mumsy and popsy before I ran away. I left this on my bed thinking they’d open it to see what I left behind, but unbeknownst to me until about 10 minutes ago, they just vanished it to the attic, the bastards. This little get-up was actually meant for my dad. Thank God we’re the same size,” he finished dramatically.

“You look beautiful, Sirius,” said Ginny.

“Thank you, Ginny,” said Sirius, hand to his heart.

“So, if we’re The Beatles, and Hermione is Gilderoy Lockhart –” said Fred.

“Dolly Parton,” said Hermione.

“Then who’s Harry supposed to be?” asked George.

“Seriously? The Sex Pistols? No Bells? Honestly, Remus, what were you teaching them in that school?” said Sirius.

“Defense Against the Dark Arts,” said Lupin flatly.

“I had meant to leave that jacket for Regulus, but he was stupid enough to get murdered, so it’s yours now, Harry,” Sirius continued, “Looks better on you than it ever would have on him anyway.”

“Sirius,” said Lupin, exasperated.

“What? I’m allowed to be mad at him for dying. Plus, every family has an ugly sibling,” said Sirius, shrugging.

“Yeah, Percy,” said Fred and George in unison.

“Yeah,” said Ginny, “but it is actually –”

“Charlie,” said Ron.

“But we like Charlie,” said Fred.

“He’s just a bit –” said George.

“Square-shaped,” said Ron.

Sirius let out a great bark of a laugh that sounded more like Padfoot than anything else.

“Wow,” he said, “Consensus. Alright, everyone, down the stairs to the kitchen if you please.”

“Why?” asked Ron.

“Because your mother is going to laugh her head off when she sees this,” replied Sirius, leading the charge back down the stairs.

Sirius had been right, of course. The second they had all filed into the kitchen, Mrs. Weasley was beside herself with laughter.

“Don’t you just look darling!” she gasped, “I wish Arthur were here to see this. I have to hand it to you, Sirius, that is quite a piece of magic."

“Thank you, Molly,” said Sirius, looking touched.

“That’s it,” said Mrs. Weasley, “Everyone back in your own clothes and back down here for lunch.”

While the costumes we’re shed, everyone opted to keep a piece of them on through the meal, with all Weasleys, Ginny included, refusing to let Mrs. Weasley vanish their mustaches. Harry kept his padlock necklace, favoring tucking his new jacket into his trunk for safekeeping, and Hermione, despite all her annoyance, decided to keep the cowboy boots.

Lunch was the happiest Harry had felt in a long time. Sirius’s suitcase stored their troubles for a few short hours, allowing everyone to just revel in the absurdity of the day. Almost everyone.

“Sirius, do you plan on wearing that dress all day?” called Mrs. Weasley, from one end of the table down to the other.

“I’ve told you, Molly, it's my house and I’ll do what I like,” said Sirius to a chorus of laughter. As everyone else turned to continue devouring the well-deserved sandwiches set in front of them, Harry watched as Sirius’s smile fell.

“Why so sour?” asked Lupin, who, having shed his Elvis look before the rest of them had even made it down the stairs, was now wearing the Puddlemeer jumper Harry had seen him in the other day.

“It’s just,” sighed Sirius, “they didn’t even open it.”

Chapter Text

It goes like this. Albus Dumbledore has an impeccable talent for holding the sword you throw yourself on just so.

Had it actually been Sirius’s idea to offer up his childhood home to the Order? Likely not, though he couldn't have sworn it was when he suggested it after Dumbledore prattled off vague requirements like “well concealed,” and “London, if not close by.”

At least when everyone thought he was a murderous traitor, they weren't asking him any favors.

Franky, he wasn’t even sure the house would let him in. He was fairly certain his mother’s last “get out of my sight” was magically codified.

Now, standing in the midnight dark square of Grimauld Place with Remus at his side and one suitcase between them, he looked up at Number 12 and wished he could run away all over again.

“Think I’ll spontaneously combust when I walk in there?” asked Sirius.

“What, like a heretic against pure blood evangelism?”

“No, just feels like something my dad would do out of spite.”

“Let’s hope the magic died with him.”

Remus picked up the suitcase at their feet and climbed the crumbling stoop, turning to look down at Sirius, who remained still in the square.

Sirius gazed up at the house, ashamed of the fear it still threaded through his guts. The windows had been frosted over with years of grime, the facade now chipped in places where winter ice had forced small cracks into pitted crevasses. A towering boogeyman turned hollowed ghost; a house to haunt right back.

“Sirius,” said Remus from the stoop, breaking him from his trance, ‘You need to get inside. If you wait out here long enough to be recognized, I might as well turn you in myself.”

“I’m fine where I am, thanks,” said Sirius.

“Alright then, enjoy Azakaban,” said Remus, turning toward to face the door and attempting to turn the ornate pewter doorknob, which remained unmoving and instantly glowed white hot. For a brief moment, Sirius could hear the searing hiss of burning flesh before Remus screamed.

“Shit! Fuck! Shit!” Remus expelled, grasping at the wrist of his rapidly blistering right hand, “You’re shitwank house fucking burned me!”

“Yeah, it does that,” said Srius, still planted firmly in the middle of the square, “You alright?”

“Sirius,” Remus hissed, throwing down both hands, taking shallow breaths, “Get. The fuck. Up here. And. Open the door!’

Sirius stomped his feet like a toddler before picking up the suitcase and joining Remus on the stoop. Already, he could feel himself regressing to the version of himself who had spent so many years trapped behind these walls, now returning to be trapped once more.

He turned his face away from Remus, embarrassed to witness in saying the words that always left a foul-tasting film on his tongue, and muttered:

“Toujours pur.”

The lock clicked, the door cracked, and for the first time in nearly 20 years, Sirius crossed the threshold into the Black family home, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

“Oh holy shit,” said Remus, grasping for Sirius in the dark as the door shut behind them, “what on earth is that smell?”

The space around them was so violently putrid, Sirius’s lungs burned with every breath; the air so thick and sour it felt as viscous as sap.

“Oh Christ, my eyes are burning,” said Sirius, hands clenching his nose and tears streaming down his face, “I think it’s blinded me.”

“Blinded?” said Remus in grave annoyance as he fumbled for his wand, forced to cross his uninjured left hand to his right side, “there aren’t any fucking lights on! Lumos.”

The wandlight tried its best to fill the hallway, but the thick clouds of dust they had kicked up from the disintegrating carpet dimmed it through a chalky filter. The dark paint on the walls peeled from ceiling to floor, and with each step forward, the floorboards sagged deeper under their feet.

Face buried in the crook of his elbow, Remus flicked his wand at one of the ancient, cobweb-covered gas lamps that lined the hallway, filling it with a small flame that was just barely visible through the grimy glass. Af if waiting for their cue, each of the lights began to flicker to life, making the hallway appear as a sinister and long-forgotten mineshaft.

“Can you see what’s causing the smell?” asked Remus through gritted teeth, trying desperately not to taste the air as he cast a fanning spell that wafted the petrified air away from them.
“Probably Kreature’s rotting corpse,” said Sirius, squinting through the darkness, wishing he could unlearn his familiarity with the space around him, before being knocked back by a deafening CRACK!

Stumbling for purchase, Sirius dropped the suitcase on his foot before knocking into Remus, who, in effort to hold himself upright, broke one of the rotted balusters free from the banister leading upstairs. Misstepping a few more times, including running his already abused foot right into the grounded suitcase, Sirius grasped at his now racing heart before looking down in shock.

“Master Sirius,” said Kreature from below, then in a supremely reluctant bow, “you have returned.”

The house elf stooped with age, reeked of filth, and was so dirty he looked as if he had been rolling around in a fireplace.

“Kreature, why are you still alive?” asked Sirius, eyes to the ceiling.

“Kreature lives to serve the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black,” said Kreature, who was barely visible against the filthy carpet save for the dull gleam of cataract-covered eyes.

“The only thing this house has been served in the last decade is a condemnation order,” said Sirius.

“Master Sirius has brought a guest,” said Kreature, ignoring Sirius and creeping closer to Remus, “though, not one Kreature’s Mistress would approve of, Kreature thinks. No, Kreature thinks she would be ashamed of something so vile entering her home.”

“Kreature, do you hear yourself talking?” asked Sirius.

“Kreature knows what this intruder must be. Kreature can smell the beast, Kreature can smell it,” Kreature continued.

“Evidently not,” said Remus.

“Kreature, the only thing any of us can smell is the eternity of putrescence you’ve let pile up in here,” said Sirius, “Now, you will speak to Remus with respect while he is here. That is an order. You will leave us alone until you are called. That is an order. You will go take a bath because you are mouldy, which is also an order. And, if it wouldn't kill you, you could try doing some cleaning for the first time in the last century. Maybe try cleaning if it would.”

As he spoke, Sirius felt a bitter rage boil through his chest. If there had been any comfort in returning to this place, it was that he had won. He was the last one left, the person to put an end to the Black family line. And yet, his Mother’s worshiping spy remained to stalk him in her absence.
“Yes, Master Sirius,” said Kreature, gleefully relishing in Sirius’s frustration before disappearing with the same deafening CRACK.

“Fuck,” said Sirius, aiming a kick at the wall, vaporizing even more grime into the saturated air and causing his aching foot to throb harder.

“Sirius,” said Remus.

“God, it reeks in here.”

“Sirius.”

“What, Remus, what?”

“Did you honestly just tell that house elf to work until he died?”

“Not really, no, ‘that’s an order’ at the end of that part. He only does things if I specify they’re an order. Been that way since I was a kid. Now, if Regulus had said that, he’d be dead already.”

The house seemed to wake at Regulus’s name. The lamps grew brighter, the walls leaned in to listen, the air stirred as a heart might flutter.

“Don’t get your hopes up, he’s dead,” called Sirius up the spiraling staircase, “and where was my welcome home?”

The house remained still.

“Come on,” said Sirius bitterly, avoiding Remus’s eye as he pushed past him toward the stairs that descended before them.

The kitchen, as it turned out, was in no better shape than the hall. The scrubbed table that ran the length of the room was coated in such a thick layer of dust, it looked as though it was covered in a grey snow. The sink was overflowing with oxidized copper pans coated with years of debris and generations of maggots, which, while disgusting, didnt seem to produce the oppressive stench still permeating through Remus’s fanning charm.

If Sirius was going to make it through the end of the night without turning himself in just to find a way out of here, he was going to need backup. He made his way around the table and began ripping open the cabinets that lined the back wall one by one.

“Come on, where is it, Orion, you old boozer?” he said under his breath as he shuffled around jars of once-preserved food that had now degraded into ominous wet specimens.

Reaching the final cabinet at the opposite end of the room, he finally struck gold: twelve dust-covered amber bottles, each sealed with an emerald green wax drip.

“Fancy a drink, darling?” said Sirius, brandishing one of the bottles as he turned toward Remus with a wink, “pretty sure this fire whiskey is older than the house.”

Remus just stared at him from the doorway, wand still raised to circulate the air.

“Sirius,” he said, sounding hurt.

“What? Not like he’s missing it,” said Sirius, shaking the bottle.

“Sirius.”

“Oh God, you’re not going to try and make me feel bad about something else, are you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“What?”

“Why did you let me burn myself on the door?”

“What?”

“Why did you let me burn myself on the door? Repeated Remus, this time holding up his hand so that Sirius could see it properly for the first time.

The flesh was red, angry, and raging. Blisters that hadn’t already popped were taut with fluid, and the swelling raised his palm to twice its normal thickness. From heel to finger tip, his right hand was scorched.

“Oh, Remus, I’m so sorry, I didn’t –”

“Yes, you did. I said that the door burned me, and you said, “It does that.” Was I supposed to figure that out from the comment about your dad setting a curse to burn you? You knew it was going to burn me.”

Sirius was stunned. Had he meant to hurt Remus? He knew the door was cursed, he did, but did he really know that in that moment? His memory had been faulty since Azkaban, but what did that matter? Did he mean to let it happen? Surely, not, but the evidence stood squarely before him

“Remus, I am so sorry, I swear I didn’t remember ‘til it happened.”

“Really,” pushed Remus, his face twisted between disappointment and betrayal, “honestly?”

“I don’t –”

“Don’t what?”
“Know. I don’t know.”

Silence fell between them.

Maybe they’ve finally made a Black of you, Sirius thought to himself, eyes still fixed on the carnage before him.

Sirius felt like crying. He felt like screaming. He felt like falling to his knees and begging Remus to forgive him, to kiss him and make it better.

He also felt like telling him to bugger off, then. Leave, if it mattered that much. Let Sirius enjoy the solitary coronation on the thorned throne of Grimual Place. Tell the Order to take their business elsewhere, so no one could see the despicable person Sirius was born to be. Ditch the politics, and the cruelty still remains.

“Moony,” said Sirius weakly.

“Don’t,” said Remus, shaking his head, forcing Sirius out of his line of vision, “Don’t ‘Moony’ me right now.”

“Moony, I’m sorry,” Sirius pleaded.

“Please,” said Remus with a steadying breath, “Just go back to the hall and get the dittany from the case.”

“Remus, I –”

“Sirius, just go, please. This fucking hurts.”

Sirius dropped the fire whiskey on the table to a great thud and a mushroom cloud of dust. He peddled quickly from the kitchen, wincing at Remus’s hand as he passed. His breath came in shallow sips as he treaded back toward the discarded suitcase.

Falling to his knees to unfix the latch, he rather wished he didnt have to get up. Lying down and dying of shame seemed far easier than facing Remus again. The small glass bottle of dittany, which had been rolled into a pair of socks for safe travel, was meant to be a precaution for the next moon, but once again, Sirius was the most dangerous thing between them.

When he returned to the kitchen, Remus was sitting at the end chair where his father would pretend to take meals, favoring his liquid diet instead.

Remus didn’t look up as he approached, merely extended his right hand in Sirius’s direction, barely able to unfurl his fingers against the pain. Sirius unstoppered the dittany and carefully dosed the solution, watching as the dittany ran to the floor and steam rose from the flesh as the burn was healed.

Once the burn looked weeks old instead of minutes, Sirius placed the bottle on the table and grasped Remus’s hand, expecting him to pull away.

“It might scar,” said Sirius, inspecting the worst of the marks that still remained.

“What’s a few more?” said Remus, still looking down.

“Remus, I’m so sorry,” said Sirius, still cradling Remus’s hand, “Being back here just makes me think I might be more of a Black than I thought. I am in the shape they made me. Euripides or whatever.”

“Sophokles,” said Remus, finally meeting his eye and holding his hand back, “And you’re not, so don’t try to be.”

So, it goes like this. Albus Dumbledore has an impeccable talent for holding the sword you throw yourself on just so you’ll keep feeling shitty enough to throw yourself back down once more.

Chapter Text

Needles OR Harry, Late August 1995

The air had lightened in Grimaul Place in the wake of Harry’s freedom, and, perhaps, in the aftermath of a few more exhausting days of deep cleaning. Now, as the chants of “He Got Off!” faded and the approaching school year began to loom over the last days of summer, Harry’s anxiety over returning overshadowed the relief that he would be able to return at all.

It’s not like he wasn’t pleased, really, but the place that had always felt more like home than anywhere else was beginning to feel like an unknown. At the ministry, the adults who passed him in the hall looked at him like a wild animal, an undesirable creature deserving of its cage.

Sitting at the dinner table after his trial, the cheers and clinking glasses felt more like they were telling him to be happy rather than an indication that he actually was; joy marred by the very prospect of dread.

The only one who seemed to notice his melancholy was Lupin.

“I’m sorry, Harry, I know how excited you were to learn French,” he said quietly after another round of congratulations had circled the table.

“Franky, I’m a little upset you didn’t get the Azkaban treatment,” said Sirius, emerging from a distracted stupor next to him, “We already picked our new names. And besides, you actually did the thing you were accused of.”

“I guess I’m not not being punished,” said Harry.

“How do you mean?” asked Sirius.

“Now I actually have to do my summer homework,” said Harry.

“Harry!” shrieked Hermione, from the other end of the table, activated by the very mention of homework, “You honestly mean to say you haven’t done any of it?”

Her interjection brought an unusual heat to Harry’s cheeks. Normally, Hermione’s overcommitment to school was an annoyance at best. Now he felt something between guilt and affection.

“No point if they were gonna chuck him out,” said Ron before adding, “You can copy mine.”

“I’d rather copy Hermione’s, thanks,” said Harry.

“Oh no, I copied her’s too,” said Ron.

“I also copied Hermione’s,” said Fred.

“Me too,” said George, “Turning in decent work for the wrong classes is likely to get us higher marks than whatever we might have done for the right ones.”

Laughter flooded the room, tangoing with Mrs. Weasley’s ignored cries for Fred and George to “please for the love of God think about your NEWTs.” As the laughter troughed, a weight that had nothing to do with homework settled in Harry’s gut. Catching Sirius’s eye, he forced a smile that must have failed, because Sirius just looked at him and said,

“We’ll be alright.”

The next morning, while good spirits persisted, so did the endless flow of chores. Brushes and buckets in hand, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had joined the floor scrubbing efforts in the drawing room, in a desperate cycle of scrubbing away years of compacted flu powder that sealed away the floorboards surrounding the hearth.

“Think if I told mum I’d actually planned on doing the homework, it might get me out of cleaning for a bit?” asked George, sitting up on bruised knees and attempting to remove some of the grime that now made permanent home under his fingernails.

“If you give her any reason to give us any more work, it’s not Mum you’re going to have to worry about,” said Ginny.

“You sound just like her,” said Ron, wiping his brow and leaving a trail of soot across his forehead.

“I’ve never been so excited to go to school,” said Fred, “Days like these, I yearn for double potions. Pine for it, even”

Harry pushed himself to standing, lamenting the ache in his knees that the rags they kneeled on did nothing to ease. The drawing room, while nothing on Buckbeak’s lair or the third-floor loo (which Harry had the misfortune of seeing before Lupin finally found a spell to drain the sludge from the tub that wouldn’t send it leaking through the attic floor), was still a pit.

Dark soot, ash, and floo powder plastered the floor, mantle, and walls, whose dark papering made it nearly impossible to tell where the filth began and ended. Streaks of burn marks across the wall behind the fireplace gave Harry the impression that they were cleaning up the aftermath of an explosion, remnants of disaster gone by.

“I’m going to empty the bucket,” he said, catching Hermione’s eye as he bent down to retrieve it. He must have looked exhausted as he felt, looping day three with no sleep, as she peered up at him and asked:

“Are you alright, Harry?”

“Doing about the same as the rest of you lot,” shrugged Harry.

“So, terrible then,” said Fred.

“I’m doing fine,” said Ron.

“Really?” asked Ginny.

“No, this is piss,” said Ron.

“Piss indeed,” said George.

Harry let out a breath that he hoped sounded like a laugh and turned to cross the hall into one of the few bathrooms that wasn't too biohazardous to use. He paused for a second before lowering the bucket to the floor, closing the door behind him, and sitting on the edge of the bathtub, relieved to be alone.

Normally, the melodic, hummingbird chatter of the Weasley siblings was a comfort to him, lulling him into the delusion of familial belonging. Now, drained and hollowed as he was, it sounded like the dialogue in one of Dudley’s many beloved and deeply annoying sitcoms. Miles away, overly cheerful, and fodder for loneliness.

Harry looked down at the soot-covered hands in his lap and watched them shake as they had since the night of the third task. His knuckles were swollen, and his fingernails were cracked and jagged at the edges. His eyes burned hot for a moment, but before tears could fall, he stood and sucked in a deep inhale through his nose, stupidly wondering when he became a person who would even cry about anything, let alone nothing at all.

He shook his head, balled and flexed his hands, and readied himself to return to the bombsite. Turning on the tap, he waited for the rusted water to run clean before a vain attempt to wash his hands, where all progress made was soiled the second he reached down to dry them on his soot-covered jeans.

In the mirror, he saw someone who looked almost like him. The reflection, however, had sloping dark circles under its eyes, visible through smudged glasses, and a spot-turned-scab from picking on the edge of his chin. He looked tired in a way that people older than him might and sad in the way that children often do. His hair, jet black and messy as ever, and scar were the only indications that this stranger could be, should be, Harry.

In an instant, the relief of solitude turned to claustrophobia. Harry broke from the mirror, emptied the filthy water from the bucket into the toilet, which had to weigh the pros and cons of flushing before doing so, and freed himself into the hallway, nearly knocking over Mrs. Weasley in the process.

“Oh!” she yelped, clutching her heart.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Weasley,” said Harry, reaching toward her, “are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she said, laughing and waving him away, “Why aren’t you with the others?”

“Emptying the bucket,” said Harry, holding up the bucket to prove whatever innocence was needed.

“Ah ha, well, you can give me that,” she said, taking it from him, “and would you please be a dear and go check on Remus and Sirius in the attic? Not sure what they’ve gotten themselves into, but they’ve been up there hours, and I doubt it’ll be as funny as the suitcase.”

“Sure,” said Harry, as if “no” had even been an option, before beginning his ascent up the winding stairs, hoping whatever they had gotten up to it was less arduous than soot scrubbing.

Reaching the top floor landing, the drop ladder to the attic was waiting for him. He listened for the bickering that often accompanied Lupin and Sirius, but was met with silence.

“Sirius?” he called, craning to see through the trap door.

Uneasy about whatever new House of Black horror might be waiting for him, Harry began to climb, hopelessly hoping the worst he would find was another silly costume.

Poking his head through the ceiling-then-floor, he called “Sirius?” again before his concern began to grow. Thus far, most of the hazards found in Grimauld Place could be relegated to the ‘disgusting, but not technically dangerous’ category. Ideally, that record would remain untarnished.

Pulling himself upward, he found himself in a room utterly filled with junk and utterly devoid of people. The attic, which Harry could now observe properly, was host to a labyrinth of miscellany; piles of books and tarp-covered furniture rounded corners into antique trunks and dress forms. A light reflected toward him from the back of the room, bouncing off a mirror that could have belonged at a funfair.

As he worked his way through the maze, he realized that the light shining off the mirror was pouring from the roof through another trap door, a second ladder ascending into daylight.

Climbing through the trap door clear to the roof, Harry emerged blindly onto a hot expanse of sun-warmed slate.

“We weren’t doing any – Oh, it’s you. I thought our jig was up,” he heard Sirius say.

Blinking through the sunlight, Harry swiveled around to see Lupin and Sirius sitting at an old ice cream parlor table that looked like it had been transported here from outside Florean Forestcue’s Shop. They were both dressed in muggle clothes, jeans and a t-shirt, with playing cards in hand. The hours in the attic worrying Mrs. Weasley appeared to have been far more enjoyable than those in the drawing room.

“Oh come on,” said Harry, “Really?!”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” said Sirius, “It’s not as if we haven’t done our part. You should have seen this place before the rest of you lot got here.”

“You should have smelled this place before the rest of you lot got her,” added Lupin.

“Awful,” said Sirius, “unin-fucking-habitable.”

“It’s unin-fucking-habitable now!” shouted Harry, at which Lupin began to giggle, alerting Harry to the blush across his cheeks and the beer bottles littered round the table.

“Oh, you hear that, Moony, Prince Potter’s too good for my childhood home,” said Sirius, causing Lupin to laugh outright.

“Alright, fine then, I’ll go and tell Mrs. Weasley that you’re finished with the attic, shall I?”

“Such a teenager,” said Lupin, sobering, “Get over here.”

“Yeah, if you’re all done being a swot now, Harry, you can pull up a chair and join us,” said Sirius, opening his arms wide as if to invite Harry somewhere far more exciting than a rusty table on a hot roof.

Head on a swivel as he walked toward the table, Harry peered into the day to see a stretch of flat, townhouse roofs that seemed to span blocks. His time in the depths of Grimauld Place had almost made him forget that this had been the hottest summer on record for quite some time, but now his shirt already felt tight with sweat.

Lupin and Sirius put down their faded cards face down amongst a betting pot of buttons, bottle caps, and gobstones. At a closer distance, the two looked just as dirty as Harry. Both of their faces were riddled with scratches and small punctures as if they had lost a fight with a pincushion, and Sirius’s nose had started to develop a slight sunburn.

“We did actually get a fair amount done today,” said Sirius, “Notice how you made it up the stairs without being game hunted by my mother’s old sewing machine.”

“Amazing how fast that thing moves,” said Lupin.

“Like a cheetah,” said Sirius before standing, pulling out his wand, and duplicating the chair he was sitting on for Harry to join them at the table. “Here you are. Sorry if one of the legs is a bit shorter than the others, I’ve always been shit at chairs.”

Sitting, Harry realized one of the legs was, in fact, shorter than the others, before saying, “It’s fine.”

“You’re wobbling,” said Sirius, who retook his own seat and gathered up his cards.

It was fascinating to see him look so normal, Before arriving at Grimauld Place, Harry had only ever seen Sirius in photographs or prison robes. Flesh has returned to his cheeks, his now perfect teeth clearly mended by very skilled magic, and his t-shirt hung from his shoulders the way in which Harry wished his did when he stood in front of the mirror. The legs of his jeans pooled around his black boots in a way that suggested they were meant for someone much taller. Harry had the vague inkling that they might have belonged to Lupin before turning to look at his former professor in earnest and recoiling in shock.

Etched through his skin like carvings on a tree were massive, pitted scars that shone white and red in the sunlight. Cross hatches converging with meandering caverns of misaligned flesh left only mere suggestions of forearms in their wake. Harry tried to break his focus, but was caught in a wave of awe. The scars disappeared into the faded sleeves of a once black t-shirt and ended just above the wrist, where, on his left arm, they were halted by unmistakable teeth marks.

“Whoa,” said Harry before he could stop himself.

“Harry, stop staring,” said Sirius to his left, somewhere between amused and annoyed.

Harry forced himself to tear his gaze from Lupin, cheeks burning hot in embarrassment as he did.

“Sorry,” he said quickly, looking down at the table.

“That’s alright, Harry,” said Lupin, “It’s an occupational hazard.”

“What, the staring or the scaring?” asked Sirius.

“Yes,” said Lupin.

‘Sorry,” said Harry, again.

“Harry,” said Lupin.

“Sorry,” said Harry.

“Harry, look at me.”

Harry looked up at Lupin, squinting slightly in the sun to see a calm look setting on his face.

“I would rather have you stare in curiosity than look away in disgust,” he continued, with a gentle smile. Harry’s gaze hovered over Lupin’s face for a moment, wondering what he might have done to the delicate, faded scars that crossed his brow that couldn’t be done to save his arms.

Slowly, he let his eyes return to the bite mark on his left wrist, pointed and asked, “Is that where it – he – is that where it happened?”

“This?” said Lupin, raising his arm, turning his wrist back and forth, tone as even and light as it had been, “No, no, this was me. Or, maybe it was you?”

“Yeah, might have been,” said Sirius, “Always did know how to leave an impression.”

“Undeniably true,” conceded Lupin, “No, Harry, you wouldn’t even recognize the bite for what it was. I was so little he nearly tore my arm. It’s all sort of… here.”

Lupin gestured vaguely to his shoulder, covering an amount of space Harry wished was an exaggeration, but knew wasn’t.

“Oh,” said Harry, “So– ”

“Harry, if you say ‘sorry’ one more time, we’re sending you back to the drawing room. Then you won't be able to watch me take old Remus here for everything he’s worth,” said Sirius, gesturing to the detritus scattered across the table.

“Please, Sirius, this is far more than I’m worth,” said Lupin.

“He’s not lying,” said Sirius to Harry before adding, “When I die, I’ll leave you my gold teeth in the will.”

“You don't have any gold teeth,” said Lupin, examining his cards.

“Then I’ll get some,” said Sirius, “and if there’s enough of me left for you to retrieve them when I go in whatever spectacular fashion, they’re all yours.”

“If that’s the case, then Mundungus will have run off with them before your corpse hits the floor,” said Lupin, raising his bet by three bottle caps and a button.

“Yeah,” said Sirius, pulling from his beer, “you almost have to admire his dedication. Suppose we won’t really have to worry much about the inheritance, though, eh, Moony? Way I see it, you and I are gonna die on the same day.”

Something about this made Lupin go still for a moment, eyes locked on Sirius across the table.

“What makes you think you’re gonna die on the same day?” asked Harry, confused.

“Oh, well,” said Sirius, quick to recover, “Against all odds, the two of us have made it this far when no one else did. We’re cockroaches; the only thing killing us now is a full-blown catastrophe. I have a feeling we’re going out in one great big blaze of glory.”

“I have a feeling that you’re going to wrap your motorbike around a pole,” said Lupin.

“Really, Moony? A pole in midair?” mocked Sirius.

“Oh, sorry, I meant wrap your motorbike around a helicopter,” said Remus.

Loosened by the beer, Sirius let out his booming, barking laugh. Throwing his weight back, his chair wobbled and continued to tilt backward until it took a flailing Sirius with it, crashing to the ground in a glorious, metallic crash, sending Lupin and Harry into a fit of laughter as well.

“God,” said Lupin through gasps, “you really are shit at chairs.”

“Are you okay?” said Harry, wiping tears of laughter from his cheeks.

“He’s fine,” said Lupin.

“I could have hit my head!” said Sirius with arms crossed over her chest and legs still over the chair’s seat as if he had merely been rotated 90 degrees.

“Well, did you?” asked Lupin.

“No, the only thing I hurt was my pride,” said Sirius flatly, staring up at the sky from the ground for another moment before rolling over and hauling both himself and the chair back to sitting.

“You know,” he continued, brushing the dirt from his shoulders and plopping back into the righted chair again, “I’d actually like to go out in a plane crash. That’s how celebrities die.”

Sirius winked at Harry and threw an elbow in his direction before slamming his hands on the table, causing the rubbish betting pool to jump.

“You’re already famous,” said Harry, “you’ve even been on muggle news.”

“And most celebrities who die in plane crashes aren't usually the thing the planes are crashing into,” said Lupin.

“Yeah, well, all the same,” said Sirius.

Sirius looked between Lupin and Harry before taking a deep breath and letting his shoulders collapse against the back of his once-failed chair. Letting his arms swing back, he tucked his boot under the table’s cross stretcher and leaned back, balancing the chair on just its back two legs.

Chin turned back neck to the sky, Harry watched as he floated back and forth, rocking on the creaking legs of the fate-tempting chair. Eyes closed, Sirius took deep nasal breaths as if trying to breathe in the last of the afternoon sun, before letting his weight take him forward again, slamming hard against the tile roof. As he landed, Lupin shifted away from the table, making known to Harry that he had been the one to keep Sirius airborne; a perfect double act.

Sirius looked between the two of them again, leaned sideways, and returned with another bottle of beer from the case at his feet. With the tap of his wand, an icy crust coated the bottle, and another cap joined the pile on the table. He brought the bottle to his lips and slurped off the overflowing foam before holding it out for Harry to take.

“To your freedom,” said Sirius.

“Thanks,” said Harry, grasping the beer.

“To your freedom,” Lupin repeated, taking a sip of his own beer.

Taking his cue, Harry brought the bottle to his lips and took a sip. Beer beer was nothing like butter beer. It was bitter, the fizz was more compact, and it danced just on the border of refreshing before pivoting to leave a slight film on his tongue.

Lowering the bottle, he came to find Lupin and Sirius looking at him with some sort of anticipation.

“What?” asked Harry.

“Nothing,” said Sirius, shaking his head, “I was about to say something cheesy about how ‘it should have been James to give you your first beer,’ but all told it probably would have been the two of us all along.”

“Sorry we’re not better influences, Harry,” said Lupin.

“You’re probably my only influences, which I guess makes you the best,” said Harry.

“Here, here!” said Sirius.

“Here, here!” said Lupin.

Three bottles met with a clink over the card table as Harry, Lupin, and Sirius settled into sun-drunk silence, nursing their beers.

Halfway through his bottle, Harry began to feel a warmth around his ears that had nothing to do with the sunset searing his neck. The end of day light had begun to ricochet around London, casting a golden glow that seemed to filter the moment into something more refined than a shitty beer at a shitty table.

Briefly, life felt beautiful, until just as quickly it didnt. In the sunset, in the silence, the lurking dark ache that seemed to always wait for the vulnerability of contentment crept up on him. A second shadow, bigger than his own. Desperate for something to do with his hands, Harry picked at the label on his beer and contemplated how he might excuse himself to continue his summer’s long quest to search for a room he actually felt like he belonged in.

“Why so blue, Sirius?” said Lupin, cracking through sunset’s stupor.

Harry lifted his head just in time to see Sirius shake a troubled look from his face and turn toward Harry.

“I don't know. What’s got you so blue, Harry?” asked Sirius.

“Nothing,” said Harry quickly.

“Nothing, then,” said Sirius back to Lupin.

“It’s just that I just don’t think I can trust myself to be happy anymore.”

He didnt know what made him say it. After all, he had been doing a very good job of not talking about it. But away from Depths of Grimauld Place, away from the unending sprawl of Private Drive, in the sky where death is a thing to be joked about, he finally let the bile he’d been choking back surface, regretting it only slightly when Sirius, in gentle tones, said,

“What do you mean, Harry?”

“Even when I think I’m supposed to be happy about something, the trial, whatever, there’s just always something in the back of my head reminding me it doesn’t matter. Voldemort’s still back, Cedric is still dead.”

“All the more reason to find ways to be happy then,” said Sirius.

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” said Harry.

“It’s not,” said Lupin, “But that feeling, what you’re going through now, it fades.”

“Worst thing about it is that you get used to it,” said Sirius.

“I don’t want to get used to it,” said Harry, “I just want to go back to normal, I want everyone to stop looking at me all the time. I feel like I’m either getting told off for shouting or asked if I’m okay. Even Ron and Hermione are treating me like, like…”

His voice faded. He had no idea what they were treating him like. It was too new, too raw, too weird.

“They have no idea what you’re going through, Harry,” said Sirius.

“And for their sake, you have to hope they never do,” added Lupin, “Harry, life has taken you somewhere they can’t follow. You’ll have to forgive them for not knowing how to be your friend right now.”

“The same way they used to be my friends might be nice,” lamented Harry.

“Then tell them what you’ve told us. They can’t see through you,” said Lupin.

“Well, Hermione might be able to,” said Sirius, “She stares at you quite a bit, you know.”

“Hardly the time, Sirius,” said Lupin.

“Still,” shrugged Sirius, bringing his bottle to his lips again.

“Point is, Harry,” continued Lupin, “we’ve all worked really hard to stick to your timeline. No one is going to force you to talk about it, but everyone’s ready when you are, alright?”

“Alright,” said Harry.

A new silence fell between the three of them, this one more comfortable than the first. For the first time in months, Harry finally felt like he could take in enough air as he breathed. Watching the sun return beyond the sea of roofs, he hoped foolishly that sleep would find him that night.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Sirius, looking between the two of them as the last waves of orange light played their final notes, “Shall we descend for supper? Time to regale everyone with the heroic tale of exorcising a possessed sewing machine, I think.”

The three of them stood, as wobbling chairs scraped atonal chords across the tiles. Sirius took the lead, reaching the trap door in just a few steps, before beginning his descent. As Harry moved to join him, he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. He looked back to see Lupin looking down at him.

“Harry, I know you’d probably quite like to bring Ron and Hermione up here, but you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone where we’ve been,” he said, sternly.

“What? Why?” asked Harry.

“Because, if Dumbledore knew that Sirius was technically leaving the house, there would be hell to pay, mostly by me,” Lupin said, dropping his hand and gesturing toward the trap door, indicating that this was not up for discussion.

“Right,” said Harry.

He could barely understand how this counted as leaving the house, but Lupin sounded sincere. Lowering his foot toward the ladder’s first step, Lupin spoke again, quieter this time.

“It’s just… the only way he can see the sun.”

Harry had no idea how to respond, so he settled for a nod and a quick journey down to the attic.

Sirius waited for the two of them at the bottom, brandishing a large couch cushion punctured by hundreds of sewing needles as if it were a shield.

“Everyone get behind me,” he said, “It might come back.”

Chapter Text

It goes like this: nocturnalism is a habit best developed in tandem.

Had Sirius been alone these nights, he might have well and truly lost it, but god bless Remus’s incessant drive to please.

Pathetic, sometimes, honestly, if he thought about it, but, you know, useful.

For example, at current moment, Remus was doing an excellent job of helping him pretend as if everything were normal and under control. Though Sirius conceded that they were both doing a lot of that for each other these days.

Dont talk about Voldemort the first time. Don’t talk about him now. Don't talk about each other. Don’t talk about the moon fast approaching. Don’t admit it hurts.

See? Perfectly fine.

Lying in fetal position in his childhood bed, ignoring whatever way that made him feel, Sirius watched as Remus, shirtless and barefoot, smoked out the window, clouds of life and exhaustion pouring from his lips as he yawned and rubbed at the dark circles under his eyes.

“You can go to bed, you know,” said Sirius, “you’re supposed to be in Regulus’s room anyway, lest we get another visit from the other insomniac in this house.”

“Are you really so ashamed of me?” said Remus, who remained facing the window.

“Oh, I’m sorry, shall I divulge the nature of our relationship to the entire Order?”

‘Oh, God, no.”

“Now who’s ashamed of who?” said Sirius, pushing himself to sitting, “Guess I’m a little surprised, Harry hasn't figured it out yet though.”

“Don’t be,” said Remus with a smirk, stamping his cigarette in the green ashtray on the sill, “He’s a total James in that area. Utterly unencumbered by anything in his prorifery.”

“Ah, bless him. I always envied James for that, walking throught life in blinders.”

“I know,” said Remus, lifting off the windowsill and crawling over Sirius’s legs to lie prone on his side of the bed, looking up at Sirius through side-eye, “I genuinely thought the daft bastard was being polite, waiting for us to tell him we’d be going at it for the better part of a year. Didn’t expect we’d actually manage to shock him.”

“He was so stupid,” said Sirius, “I’ve never missed anyone so much in my life.”

“What, not even me?” asked Remus, propping himself on his elbows, “I knew you liked him better.”

“Well, you’re here now, so no. But, you’re right, I did like him better.”

“Long as we’re being honest,” said Remus, turning to his back and staring up at the ceiling.

They never were.

Sirius turned over and joined him. Lying side by side, the gap between them felt miles. It was like this every time James and Lily came up, made worse by the fact that they both were desperate to talk about them, to bring them to life in whatever silly way they could. To hear a whisper of a laugh or the ghost of a touch. But before long, the guilt-blame riptide would rip them from the calm waters of nostalgia into dark, uncharted tension.

He could feel the heat burning off Remus’s skin. He always ran hot this close to the moon. Feverish and twitchy. A pot waiting to boil over.

Sirius dreaded walking him once more down the cellar steps and leaving him to his misery, selfishly casting a silencing charm and waiting on the roof until morning. But the cellar was too small for Padfoot, and truthfully, the worst of Sirius was glad to turn away from the transformation, happy to ignore what it had now become.

“Muggles have these too, you know,” said Remus, pointing a scarred arm to the ceiling.

Moving slowly through the plaster were gliding sapphires, glowing faintly down on them, charting the stars above. The stones, set with the magic of the first of the Black family to occupy Number 12, mocked Sirius with their parody of the true night sky. He longed to be back in the countryside, to wake in Remus’s garden covered in the spider webs of a new day instead of the cobwebs of centuries.

“What the sapphires?” asked Sirus.

“No, your royal highness, the stars,” Remus mocked, elbowing him slightly, “muggle children paste glowy, plastic stars on their ceiling. Makes them less afraid of the dark,”

“Dark's a perfectly good thing to be afraid of, I think,” said Sirius.

“Do the stars help?”

“No,” said Sirius, rolling to face Remus, “You do, though.”

“You’ve gone soft, Black,” said Remus.

“Yeah, felt fucking stupid saying that.”

“Sounded fucking stupid.”

Sirius closed his eyes and pretended to be somewhere else for a moment. Anywhere, really. But the dim magic buzz that saturated the air in Grimauld Place was just the same as it had been when he was growing up. Tomorrow, Harry and the others would board the train to Hogwarts, and Sirius wished desperately that he, too, could once again shed these walls and return home.

“Everyone’s gone tomorrow,” said Sirius.

“Mmm,” hummed Remus.

“You’re not asleep, are you?” asked Sirius, opening his eyes.

“You told me I could sleep.”

“And you believed me?”

Remus took a deep breath and rolled over to face Sirius. They mirrored each other, arms under head, knees raised and meeting in the center of the bed, exactly how Sirius and James would sleep when they could still fit on the same mattress in the Gryffindor dormitory.

“What is it, Sirius?” sighed Remus, who, up close, really did look exhausted.

“Everyone’s gone tomorrow,” said Sirius, “and then you’re gone after the moon. And then I’m alone again, and it's worse now ‘cause I’m stuck in this bleeding house.”

“Bit of a step up from Azkaban, though, precious ceiling gems and all,” said Remus.

“I dunno.”

“What on earth does that mean?”

“I suppose when I was in Azkaban, there was no hope that anything would get better, so I didnt have to wait for it to. Now I’m just trapped here, useless to do anything until someone gets a hold of stupid fucking Peter so we can use him to prove my innocence.”

“And so we can kill him,” said Remus.

“Yes, and kill him, obviously.”

“Well, if you’re really so homesick for prison, I suppose we could track down a couple of dementors. I think Harry knows where to find a few.”

“Well, that’s a-whole-nother thing,” groaned Sirius.

“What’s a-whole-nother thing?” yawned Remus.

“Harry.”

“Oh. Yeah, I suppose it is.”

In his hours not occupied by self-pity, Sirius has grown doleful watching his godson fight against his mind’s battalion. Ever exhausted and always jumpy, Harry was teetering over the edge of something he couldn’t bear to look down at.

Sirius knew this state well. He saw it in his friends the first time. He saw it in the mirror now.

“It’s not like I expected him to be alright, but…” Sirius trailed off, not sure he wanted to admit to what came next.

“But?” Remus pressed.

“But I thought I’d be better at this.”

Remus squinted for a moment, as if trying to figure out if Sirius was being truthful, before letting out a sharp:

“Ha!”

“Don’t laugh.”

“But it’s so funny,” snickered Remus.

“You’re the one who always telling me not to be a prick and now I try to tell you something serious and you laugh at me,” said Sirius bringing his hands from under his head to cross them over his chest in offense, “I’m just saying I thought that, you know, because I’m his godfather and because I’ve been through all of this before that I might actually know what to say to him about all of this. I just keep playing that evening upstairs back in my head, wondering if I said the right things.”

“Me having to remind you not to be a prick is the exact reason you’re bad at this,” said Remus.

“You’re being cruel.”

“I’m being honest.”

“Oh well, so long as we’re being honest.”

Silence fell. The miles-wide gap opened even further between them, cracking a chasm deeper into the crust of a cracking facade.

Sirius searched Remus’s face, looking for somewhere to rest his gaze that wasn’t those tired, often disappointed eyes. He settled for worry-bitten lips and thought about how many times those lips had told him not to be a prick, had asked him for sympathy he didn’t know how to give organically. God, this shit was hard.

“I guess…” Sirius began without knowing where he’d end up, “I’ve just never been someone who could stomach not having the best time possible all of the time. And now that I’m out, and I can actually control how I feel again, I don’t want to deal with all this again. I’ve had my fill, I’m good.”

He met Remus’s eyes again, which, while drooping with the weight of the night, had softened again.

“I’m afraid you dont get much of a say, Pads. And, as it stands, we just have to do our best with Harry.”

“Ugh,’ Sirius groaned, “This is awful. We shouldn’t ever have to do our best with Harry. We should just get to fucking live! Drop round on the weekends, buy him things we shouldn’t on his birthday. Why did James think I’d know how to do this?”

“Well, you did say he was stupid earlier,” offered Remus.

“Moronic,” agreed Sirius, “And flighty! Had a kid and then fucked right off!”

“Lazy sod went running the second the going got rough, the bastard!”

They laughed for the moment in the ecstasy of shared grief, of being the only two people on the planet who could possibly know what they knew, who could miss what they missed.
But silence, as it was destined, fell again, bringing with it the selfsame tension as before and always.

Sirius avoided Remus’s gaze again, looking past him as if trying to see if the cigarette smoke was still visible out the window. He felt pickled in these moments, jarred in viscous anxiety; a shelf decoration whose purpose was to harbor poison.

Remus fought against tension too, though he couldn't help but exhale it through his touch as he brought his hand to Sirius’s arm, stroking it to will away the conversation they could never let themselves have.

And why not? Thought Sirius. Why was this the status quo they were so delicately trying to protect? Inhaling sharply before losing his nerve, Sirius finally uttered the question he’d been trying not to ask.

“Do you blame me?”

“What?” balked Remus.

“Do you blame me for what happened?”

“Are we having this talk?”

“Yes. Do you blame me? For James and Lily.”

To Sirius’s dismay, Remus didn’t answer immediately. He’d rather just hear it, know for certain that what he felt deep inside was true. He killed Lily and James Potter and betrayed Remus to do it.

Remus closed his eyes and took steady, deep breaths. Sirius imagined him trying to think of a polite way of saying what he was thinking and felt sick at the idea. Leave it to Remus to break his heart with care.

Finally, his brown, sunken eyes fluttered open and bore burn marks into Sirius’s.

“No,” sighed Remus, “I don’t blame you.”

“Of course you do,” spat Sirius.

“No, I don’t. And I’ll remind you that I’ve had just as long to think about this as you have. The only person it does anyone any good to blame is Peter. He’s lost me enough without losing me you.”

“But you resent me, though,” said Sirius, set on picking every scab so long as it meant that he was right to feel the way he did about himself.

“Of course I do,’ said Remus, infuriatingly losing none of his cool.

“And you think I deserve it?”

“Yes.”

“Then how is that not blaming me?’

“I don’t resent you for trusting Peter. I resent you for thinking it was me. I resent you for the months I spent not knowing why James and Lily stopped answering my letters, I resent you for telling me for years you saw past what I was, and then proving you didn’t. So, yes, I think you deserve that. But, stupidly, I still think you did what you thought was right."

Sirius boiled under the frustration of Remus's passivity, feeling pathetic lying across from him like a child up past his bedtime.

“Yeah, well, I resent you too,” Sirius spat, “You also thought it was me, you left me to rot for years in Azkaban thinking it was me.”

“At least I had proof,” said Remus, raising the corner of his mouth in a pained half-smile, “Do you think I deserve it?”

Suddenly, Sirius was drowned by understanding. The Remus, who once would have leaped at the chance to join this fight, to go down swinging in another screaming match with Sirius that would leave them raw for weeks to come, had gotten old. The lines on his face were no longer carved by claws and worry, but by time. The reason they still hadn't had this conversation yet was that none of it fucking mattered.

“No,” said Sirius quietly, “I don’t.”

“Long as we’re being honest,” said Remus, turning to his back once more to watch the sapphire stars dance across the ceiling.

Sirius joined him. The dawn was at its darkest, daring the new day to rip it from the sky, and with it would come a new unknown.

“Are you ever going to stop forgiving me?” asked Sirius, watching a shooting sapphire zoom across the room.

“Then I’d have no one left to forgive,” said Remus, "I'd probably get more sleep though."

And so, it goes like this: nocturnalism is a habit best developed not at all.