Fic: Mending Bridges (Part 1)
Title: Mending Bridges (Part 1)
Author: xkeijukainenx/1electricpirate
Rating: R
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Words: 30,722
Summary: The story of Sirius Black and Remus Lupin started with a fight - and kept on going. It is mostly the story of two tempers colliding, but there is love to be found even amongst the most broken of bridges.
Author's Notes: This was written for rs_games 2011 and I have never gotten around to posting it up here. This is exceedingly AU, I have fiddled timelines left right and center. I would like to thank my fabulous beta, E, for her epic help, and the rest of my teammates for the moral support. Any errors that remain are mine and mine alone.
Disclaimer: They are not mine, they are Rowling's. If I could have them, I would. But I cannot. Sad.
Originally posted here
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Mending Bridges
Time can change a thing or two,
Time has changed the lives of me and you...
I want another chance, gonna make it last.
You’re begging me for a brand new start,
Trying to mend a bridge that’s been blown apart
-Queensryche “Bridge”
The story of Sirius Black and Remus Lupin started on September 1, 1970, with a particularly loud, pitched battle between one very angry boy and one very scared boy (or perhaps two very scared boys) about who got the bed furthest from the window. Just before the wands had come out and the dangerously amateur hexes had begun to fly, James and Peter had jump tackled them. Thus began the Great Pillow Massacre of 1970, which was eclipsed in severity only by the Battle of the Deadly Duvets of 1975, and the Magnificent Brotherhood of the Marauders began.
Once, in Divination class their largely fraudulent professor had told an amused Sirius that he had been born while Mercury was in retrograde. It explained, apparently, his mercurial, unpredictable and ornery behavior.
Of course, James (who had a secret penchant for both Divination and Astrology) looked that statement up later and discovered that that was all, to use the technical term, poppycock.
Remus secretly thought that maybe the professor had had a point. What it boiled down to was this, as he explained to James one drunken night on the roof of the Gryffindor tower:
“He’s just so fucking rash. Don’t laugh, I’m serious. Does he ever think about anything beyond his initial gut reactions for more than a split second? You never know if he’s angry or ecstatic and it’s liable to change in nanoseconds anyways so you might as well not bother trying to figure it out! And sometimes... sometimes you have to walk on fucking eggshells because he takes offense at the slightest thing and god forbid you incite the wrath of Sirius Black. Merlin, I’d rather be run down by stampeding hippogriffs than be on the receiving end of one of his hexes.”
James laughed; whisky always made Remus somehow more eloquent, rather than less. It was almost infuriating.
“He’s not all that bad, Moony.”
“He is all that bad, and worse. You don’t say it because the two of you are freakishly connected, like you’re two halves of the same batshit insane whole.”
“Oi!”
“I’m seri- bollocks. I mean it, James. He’s so bloody intense, sometimes, it’s terrifying.”
“You know he’s only so touchy about things he cares about a lot, Moony.”
Remus had sighed, and shrugged.
“All I’m saying is that if he blows up the Slytherin dungeon one more time just because Snape looks at me wrong, I’m going to wring his bloody neck.”
“Probably do him some good,” James had said noncommittally, and promptly changed the subject, leaving Remus to stew in his annoyance.
As for Sirius, from day one Remus Lupin was this vast, mindboggling and infuriating puzzle - one that he couldn’t get out of his head no matter how hard he tried. For all that the boy gave off the air of being quiet, studious, and polite, he could fight as good as he got and sometimes with surprising harshness. He was friendly and fun, but he always seemed to be holding something back.
“What do you think he’s hiding?” Sirius had asked James one day, as they were sneaking into the broom cupboard for a midnight fly around the grounds.
“Who?”
“Remus, of course.”
“Who says he’s hiding anything? Seems like a perfectly normal bloke to me.”
“That’s cuz you’re as dense as a brick, Potter.”
“Oi!”
“Where do you think he goes every month?”
“His mum’s sick, isn’t it? He said that, didn’t he? First week of school.”
“Doesn’t explain why he comes back looking like he’s been through a nest of particularly venomous doxys and back.”
“S’gotta be hard, watching your mum be sick like that. S’probably just that he’s tired.”
But that explanation wasn’t enough for Sirius. He spent the two weeks worth of detention they earned for attempting to break into the broom shed after dark puzzling the peculiar question of Remus Lupin and his unexplained absences and even more mysterious scars.
When the answer finally did come to him, and they had convinced Remus to confess to his Furry Little Problem, Sirius had expected his peculiar fascination with his friend to end.
It turned out, however, that the knowing of a thing was even worse than not knowing it: Sirius was moody and upset and over protective for weeks until Remus finally confronted him, shouting at him to, “Merlin, do you have to trail me all the time?! Give me ten inches to breathe in, honestly Sirius, you’re like a ridiculous puppy dog, I’m not going to break. Unless of course I explode with rage which is likely at this point, you insufferable idiot!”
And therewith was born Sirius’s Great Idea; it was, unfortunately, a Great Idea, that had to be kept Top Secret for 5 years, but even in their first year, Sirius had decided that Remus, and in particular keeping Remus safe and happy, was worth anything.
The story of Remus Lupin and Sirius Black’s lives together, if you asked Sirius Black, was mostly a story of two tempers colliding. Remus Lupin was more likely to be diplomatic: he would probably describe it as the story of two people overcoming some serious hurdles (not least of which was Sirius Black’s unbelievably ridiculous and irrational temper that, honestly, is still that of a cranky five year old, even 30 years on) on their way towards each other. This, though, is mostly Sirius’s side of the story. (That’s not to say that Remus’s side isn’t interesting. Sirius just tells it the loudest.)
* * *
October 31, 1982
Sirius growled, low and deep, urging his bike faster, faster, faster through the night sky towards Godric’s Hollow.
Dumbledore’s ban on apparition was driving Sirius crazy. He loved his motorbike but there were more practical ways of getting about the country and it was costing him time, and time was of the essence. He had known as soon as he’d set foot in Peter’s flat, earlier that night, that he had lived up to his nature and ratted them out.
The bike Sirius had bought when he was 17 had been tampered with by four rather enthusiastic boys until it became the fastest available alternative to apparition and floo-travel - it was even quicker than the Nimbus 1500.
But even the bike wasn’t fast enough. He was already too late.
The house at Godric’s Hollow was a hollow, smoking shell by the time Sirius arrived, having driven full throttle from Peter’s - empty, abandoned, silent - flat in sleepy little Ottery St. Catchpole.
Please, not James. Not James. Please, please let it have been someone, anyone else.
The front door swung open at his lightest touch and Sirius shivered, as if he’d been brushed by a ghost.
The living room where he and Lily and James and Remus had all sat, once, and laughed away the evening, was empty. Not a picture frame was out of place. Everything seemed tinged in black and grey as Sirius, breathing fast now, raced up the stairs.
The first thing he saw on the landing was James.
Had it not been for the look on his face, James could have been asleep.
Through his horror and grief and the sudden wave of crippling nausea, Sirius felt an irrational surge of pride: James did not look scared. He looked determined and, most of all, righteously pissed off.
Sirius did not think James had ever been scared of anything in his entire life - except maybe Lily Evans.
“Oh God, Lily,” Sirius gasped when he found her, a vision in a white nightgown with tumbling red hair. She had fallen in front of Harry’s crib and her face was still wet with tears.
In the crib - a devilish wooden contraption that had taken Remus and him hours to build, even with magic - was Harry. Sirius almost couldn’t bring himself to look; he knew there was no chance for the boy if even James had fallen.
It took a while for him to realize that the soft whimpering sound had to be coming from somewhere.
Harry was somehow, miraculously, still alive.
It took Sirius all of two seconds to realize exactly what had happened. He could still feel the traces of the powerful, ancient magic in the room.
“Lily,” he gasped, and felt his heart break for the loss of his beautiful, brave friend.
It took four more seconds to scoop Harry out of his crib and, with one last parting look at James, to apparate directly to Hogwarts.
It wasn’t until later when he was sitting in Dumbledore’s office listening to the old man’s theories that the anger caught up with him. The tidal wave of wrath hit him suddenly and in that instant, with the crystal clear definition that comes only in the middle of a storm, Sirius realized exactly what was going to happen.
He was going to kill Peter Pettigrew. And he was going to do it immediately. To hell with the consequences.
But before he could get up to disapparate and do just that, he felt himself being chained to the chair he was in. Dumbledore’s eyes were cold blue steel, with none of the old twinkle that Sirius had been used to when he was at school.
“Sirius Black,” he rumbled, sternly, and Sirius had the presence of mind to quake slightly in the face of his old headmaster’s rage. “You have always been a creature of rash action first and thinking afterwards. Tonight, however, that will not do.”
But the anger, pure unadulterated anger, made Sirius thrash and spit against the bonds holding him in place. “Just let me go, Dumbledore. I’m going to kill him, I’m going to kill that traitor and you can’t stop me!”
It was half an hour until he gave up the fight, exhausted and broken. Dumbledore watched him, calmly, over the top of his half-moon spectacles. Harry - charmed into a peaceful sleep - stirred slightly in the corner.
“Are you quite finished, young man?”
Sirius huffed, blowing unruly hair out of his face - but his shoulders slumped in defeat.
“While that was a highly entertaining outburst, for all those involved, and while I am sure you are entitled to the anger that you are feeling, it is not conducive to the plight at hand.”
“On the contrary, it’s highly conducive to my killing Peter fucking Pettigrew and enjoying it.”
Dumbledore sighed, motioning with his wand for some tea. While the tea pot poured its contents out into two separate, delicate cups, Dumbledore turned his attention back to Sirius.
“You, Sirius, are not like your family. You would not, in fact, enjoy killing Peter.”
“I really rather would.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You would do it out of anger, and pain, and love for your friends - but you would not enjoy it, Sirius. You are not your cousin, for instance.”
“Bella’s a fucking psychopath.”
“No more than you and I are, Sirius. Unfortunately, her priorities are in the wrong place.” Sirius glowered through his hair. Dumbledore had no way of knowing just how very wrong about Bellatrix he was.
“This is all my fault,” he shouted, once more straining at the metal that was holding him in place. “You have to let me set it right.”
“I have to do no such thing,” Dumbledore replied. Sirius wanted more than anything to punch his serene smile off of his infuriating face. “Do you take sugar?”
“Three,” Sirius spat, discarding his ingrained politeness in a small act of rebellion. He hated Dumbledore and his serenity when James Potter, his brother, the best person in the entire world, was lying dead in Godric’s Hollow and his murderer was running lose like the rat that he was.
“Your teeth will fall out, young man,” Dumbledore quipped, and Sirius wondered incredulously if he was trying to crack some kind of joke. “Now. We have the future to discuss. Namely, what to do about young Harry here.”
“That’s easy,” Sirius retorted. “Harry can stay here. He’ll be safe at Hogwarts.”
“That is not an option,” Dumbledore replied. It sounded as if he were talking about the weather. Sirius growled. “The war is not yet over and headquarters of an army is hardly the place for a child. James and Lily Potter placed Harry in your care and yours solely should anything happen to him or Lily. Unfortunately, that rather presents us with a problem.”
“What?”
“The safest place for Harry is, as I’m sure you could deduce for yourself, with Lily’s sister Petunia.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry?”
Sirius shook his hair out of his eyes and glared up at Dumbledore. “That harpy is getting no where near my godson.”
“Sirius, do be reasonable.”
“No. She is a coldhearted, evil, prejudiced bitch. Her husband is a fat, worthless oaf who thought Lily and any one like her was a freak of nature. Harry is not going to them. They hate him.”
For several moments, Dumbledore pondered this. Sirius could feel his blue eyes sizing him up from across folded hands. “I see. Well. You are the legal godfather and you make the final call, officially. Which leaves us only one option.”
Sirius had been afraid of that. He could barely look after himself, much less a baby. There had to be another option. There just had to be someone else.
And then suddenly it hit him.
“What about Remus?” he asked, his voice tripping and trembling over the name. Dumbledore looked at him inquisitively over the top of his folded hands.
“What about Remus?”
“James and Lily made him godfather too. Made us godfathers.” And Merlin, if it didn’t still hurt to speak the word us and mean himself and Remus. Sirius kicked himself mentally and grit his teeth.
Dumbledore raised a single bushy eyebrow. “Indeed?” Sirius nodded defiantly, raising his chin to face down the scrutinizing glance Dumbledore was giving him.
“Well. Unfortunately, no one knows where Remus Lupin currently is. As you are, I am sure, aware, he disappeared while on a mission some months back.”
“Spare me the bullshit. You know full well I’m aware, Dumbledore,” Sirius spat, glowering once more.
“Well then you understand why that option, were it even legal - which unfortunately it is not - is not open to you.”
“He’s not dead, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Indeed? You are so sure?”
Again, Sirius’ chin jutted out. He refused to mention the charmed bracelet he wore, still, even after all this time and all those fights. As long as it fell warm against his skin, Remus was alive - wherever he was. “I’m sure.”
“Well, that is certainly comforting news.” Something in Dumbledore’s voice made Sirius wonder whether he hadn’t already known himself. “But I’m sure you are aware that there are other things preventing Remus’ assumption of responsibility over Harry Potter.”
“It’s bollocks, it is, Remus not being allowed to care for children. He practically raised me and James and he was a child himself.”
“While I will not debate that statement, given it’s remarkably astute quality from such an unusual source, it remains fact that the Ministry laws regarding werewolves in positions of responsibility for children in this country are unusually water tight. In addition to which, James and Lily made no official record of their desire for Remus to assume responsibility and even if they had, it would not be recognized by the Ministry.”
Dumbledore sighed, and tapped the tea pot to have it replenish their cups. Sirius ached for a glass of firewhiskey.
“Sirius, I am asking you, as a friend and an equal, to stay and take care of Harry. If you leave, and I will not force you to stay, I have no choice but to give him to the Dursley’s, and I must admit that I, too, cannot see that particular arrangement coming to a satisfactory end. I will say only this: James Potter entrusted his son to you, Sirius. Do not throw that away in a moment of anger or a quest for revenge. The sweetness of revenge is but short lived and the weight of your regrets will, I predict, be much heavier if you abandon Harry now. I have said it before and I say it again, now, Sirius - do not burn your bridges with the only family you have left.”
Once more, Sirius wanted to punch Dumbledore in the face. The man was infuriating when he was right.
“Fine,” he spat. “What do you want me to do?”
“Excellent,” Dumbledore said, standing swiftly and hurrying to the corner where Harry slept on. “You are making the right choice, Sirius. Take Harry. I believe Remus and John Lupin were in possession of a small cottage in the Scottish highlands.”
“I know it,” Sirius ground out, accepting the tiny bundle of blankets. “But it’s heavily warded.” Usually that wouldn’t be a problem for Sirius Black, lockpick extraordinaire, but Remus’ wards were infamously vicious. Gideon Prewett had told Sirius he’d come across a Death Eater somewhere outside of Manila who had run afoul of a ward that Remus had put up around one of the artifacts they were protecting there. Remembering his descriptions sent shivers down Sirus’s spine.
Dumbledore gave Sirius a grim nod, but continued to place papers and other things in a small bag on his desk. “Remus Lupin is many things. Among other equally remarkable traits, as you may be aware, he is a shrewd strategist and an even more adept forward thinker. Before leaving, he installed his father in the cabin. John Lupin has since, regrettably, passed on. But I think you’ll find that the cabin is warded to anyone who John or Remus considered to be family.”
Sirius was confused. “Remus will have wanted to make sure his father wasn’t alone, but I don’t... Oh.” As he began to understand, Dumbledore nodded once more.
“While it would be wrong to call one suffering from Remus’s particular affliction an animal, it would be equally shortsighted not to acknowledge some of the particularly canine qualities that tend to manifest themselves in their demeanors. A canine’s understanding of family, if it had one, would most likely include its mate. Thus, if I am correct in my assumptions...” Dumbledore left the sentence hanging, but his eyes were fixed on Sirius’ face.
Once more, Sirius ground his teeth and glared, but he nodded curtly.
“Excellent,” Dumbledore said, clapping his hands together. Sirius wondered vaguely just what was so excellent about the situation. To him, it all seemed rather miserable. “We will go now. The wards will, of course, have to be reset, of course, though it seems a shame as they are so beautifully imaginative.”
Sirius did not tell Dumbledore that he’d been the one to teach Remus how to create personal wards when they were thirteen years old. He did not tell Dumbledore that the thought of being in Remus’ father’s cabin, surrounded by memories, was nothing short of his idea of hell - as if he wasn’t already there. The idea of being cooped up in deepest darkest Scotland looking after a baby instead of being of some use, or finding a way to exact his revenge, was enough to make him quake with anger.
It was all Sirius could do not to apparate away and go after Peter there and then.
As he watched Dumbledore leaving him and Harry in the cottage with nothing more than a few loaves of bread, some cheese and a promise that Minerva McGonagall would be by soon with supplies and news, Sirius channeled his fury into a new, better plan.
Number one: deposit Harry with Remus, wherever the hell he was hiding.
Number two: kill Peter.
* * *
October 12, 1976
Sirius was sulking.
He was very good at sulking. It was a skill he had perfected, under careful guidance from his mother, at the age of three.
The art of a good sulk was to be prided among the upper echelons of Wizarding society. One was somehow infinitely more dignified if one possessed that elusive ability to become so irrationally upset by the minutiae of life that they withdrew, in a stately manner, from the world whilst simultaneously ensuring that their resent was registered by all.
That, Sirius scoffed, was nearly a verbatim quote from his mother.
Sirius was also very good at scoffing. He had had whole an entire summer’s tuition in the practiced skill of a good scoff.
It wasn’t that he minded it so much, being disowned.
Being disowned was something he had expected for a long time, now. In fact, he’d been expecting it since exactly 6:14 pm on September 1, 1970 - exactly one second after the Sorting Hat had shouted GRYFFINDOR from atop his black head.
What he minded was - and this is where Sirius’s sulking, scoffing skulk became quite ridiculous - what he minded was Remus’s frankly ridiculous reaction.
The conversation proceeded like so:
“What was that bloody great bird bringing you at breakfast today, Pads?”
“Hmm? Oh, that. They disowned me.”
“What?”
“They disowned me.”
“I heard you the first time, Sirius. Are you okay?”
“Eh? I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
And then Remus had fixed him with one of his infuriating, disbelieving stares, took a deep breath, and let loose: “Sirius, last week your brother had the poor sense to call me and James prats within your earshot and not only did you give him a slug for a nose, you turned him orange, filled his socks with bundimuns and exploded fifty dungbombs in his bed. Forgive me for not understanding how a tiny insult like that can evoke wrath worthy of Norwegian Ridgeback but a letter from your parents, telling you that you are no longer part of their family or welcome in their home, results in nothing more than a shrug?”
“No one gets to insult my friends but me. The little toerag should know that by now.”
“Sirius, that’s hardly sensible.”
“Who said I had to be sensible?!”
“Can it hurt so much to try once in a while?”
“Let me get this straight, Remus. You want me to get really angry and upset about my worthless parents sending me a letter to tell me I’m no longer obliged to even pretend to adhere to their disgusting standards?”
“Oh don’t be ridiculous, Sirius, I’m just wondering where your sense of proportion has got to. Honestly.”
But Sirius had heard enough. He hadn’t been angry before, but he was vibrating with it now. There was something about the way Remus criticized him that had the ability to set him on edge in record timing.
A small voice which he was very good at ignoring by now told him that he knew exactly what it was about Remus that made his criticism so enraging, but Sirius refused to listen to it. Which, of course, just made him even angrier.
“Fine. You know what, fine. If you want me to be angry, I’ll be angry. I’ll go and get drunk and pissed off and rant about how I’ll miss the way my mother would scream at me and lock me in the basement and I’ll lament that never again will I enjoy the particularly brutal beatings my father doled out on a weekly basis as character building exercises, shall I?”
“Sirius...”
“Fuck off, Lupin.”
And off he’d stormed, stopping on his way to the window only to grab his not-so-secret stash of Muggle whisky before climbing up and out onto the roof of Gryffindor tower.
He’d calmed down after a few swigs of whisky and sat with his back against the wall, watching the stars come out.
When they were young, he and Regulus used to think that the stars were all tiny fairies, stuck in a big duvet, and when night fell they shoved off their covers and came out to play. Their mother, upon hearing such notions, had been quick to stomp them out.
He wasn’t upset about being disowned. The letter hadn’t made him sad or angry or even nostalgic; he literally had no good memories from any time he had ever spent in his parents’ house. He hadn’t even been living there since Christmas of their fifth year, when he’d run away to James’s house after a particularly brutal beating from his father.
He suspected it would take some adjusting to, not having money to throw around as he pleased, but his Uncle Alphard had died that summer and left him a healthy amount of money - Merlin only knew why, but he wasn’t one to look a gifthorse in the mouth.
Pushing his black hair out of his face, Sirius took another swig of whisky.
He reckoned he had another ten minutes of peace before James came to find him.
Honestly, he’d expected Remus to understand why he wasn’t upset about this; it was like escaping a curse, and surely Remus of all people would understand that that wasn’t something to be upset about.
But Remus doesn’t pay as much attention to you as you do to him, said that obnoxious little voice in the back of his head.
“Shut up,” Sirius replied, taking another swig of whisky.
“First sign of madness, you know mate, talking to yourself.” James’s not-so-artfully tousled head poked over the roof. Sirius threw a bit of moss at it.
“Plonker,” James retaliated amicably, hoisting his lanky body up, over and then down again, leaning against the wall next to Sirius. “Moony said you’d come to sulk.”
“I’m sure he did,” Sirius scoffed. It was a world class scoff. James brushed it off without even blinking.
“You need to stop snapping at him, Sirius.”
“He needs to stop treating me like a child, then.”
“Remus treats everyone like a child when he’s uncomfortable and he doesn’t know what else to do, Pads. You know that.”
“So you’re saying I made him uncomfortable?”
James didn’t bother answering; he just raised an eyebrow and reached over to take the whisky from Sirius’s hand.
“How?! How do I make him uncomfortable? Tell me one thing I’ve ever done to Remus that hasn’t been what friends do for other friends?”
“I think that’s rather the point here, mate.”
“You’re telling me I’m too good a friend?”
“Look... Sirius... What I’m saying is... Bollocks.” James took a long swig of whisky before, having summoned all of his Gryffindor courage, bravely ploughing on. “Remember when Peter’s cousin sent us that magazine? And we all decided it’d be fine to have a wank over it together?”
“Not like we’ve not done that before,” Sirius retorted quickly, but there was a note of panic in his voice that was not missed by his best friend.
“The point is, mate, that ... you know ... good friends don’t watch other good friends toss off.”
Sirius felt his face color, but he said nothing. Of course he remembered the incident in question. If only his odd fascination with Moony hadn’t been manifesting more and more in his dreams, he might’ve been able to get through that incident without staring.
“You’ve always been daft about Moony. I know it, you know it, Pete knows it - and now Moony knows it.”
James, in a gesture of grand compassion, passed his best friend the whisky. Sirius took it gratefully, but said nothing.
Silence persisted for a while, until James - unwilling to squander his burst of courage - continued talking. “Look, Pads, I don’t give a shit if you’re as gay as a bleeding maypole, alright? As long as you don’t take a shine to my fine arse, hard as I know it is to resist, you can go at it with the giant squid, for all I care.” Sirius gave a reluctant laugh, swigging at the whisky again. James smirked at him. “So which is it, then?”
“Which is what?”
“Blokes, or the squid?”
“Prat.” Sirius shoved his best friend, his brother, gently with his shoulder before grasping at his own Gryffindor courage, and trying to explain. “Sometimes, I really hate him, James. I want to take his stupid, self-righteous, prefectly werewolf head and shove it in the toilet. And sometimes I want to shout at him for being such an uptight prick. And...and...sometimes I just want to punch that obnoxious, superior smirk off of his face.”
“And other times?”
Sirius’s shoulders sank. “Other times I just want to... I want to kiss it off,” he finished quietly, before taking a restorative gulp of whiskey.
“Thought so,” James replied smugly. “You’re about as subtle as a rampaging hippogriff.”
“He just gets under my skin. All he has to do is look at me with that withering stare of his and I suddenly want to punch something.”
“Punch it with your fist or with your dick?”
“Oi, I’m trying to be serious, you prat.”
“But you’re always Sirius.”
“Oh, you’re clever. You’re really clever. Pillock.”
“Just... be careful, Pads.”
“You really think he knows?”
“No...” James sighed. “I think he suspects.”
“Bollocks.”
“Just be careful. You’re his best friend. He won’t want to lose you.”
“He won’t.”
“Good. Right. I’ve a date with Evans in the common room.”
“By which you mean you’ve decided to stalk her under the cloak, right?”
“Of course,” James replied brightly, standing up - rather wobbly on his feet - and dusting off his robes. “Want to join?”
“A gentleman never lets himself be talked out of a sulk, Jamie.”
“Fine. Your loss. Don’t freeze your poofter arse off.”
James’s hair disappeared beneath the roof and Sirius was left alone with the whisky and his whirling thoughts - though he felt, in rather a clichéd manner, that a rather large weight had lifted from his shoulders.
It wasn’t that he had gone through puberty, taken one look at Remus, and imprinted.
Imprinting was for ducks and geese and things, not for dogs and definitely not for wizards.
Nor would Sirius label himself as gay, or even bisexual.
He did not wake up one morning and decide, I’m going to fancy the pants off of my best friend, thereby making our already complicated relationship even more complex and difficult for myself.
It had simply snuck up on him and he had ignored it until ignoring it became impossible. It wasn’t like he was going to act on it any time soon. It was better to just acknowledge the crush, indulge in some guilty pleasures and let it run its course.
Eventually, he was sure, this would go away.
* * *
November 1, 1982
The cabin still smelled of Remus. As soon as Sirius crossed the threshold, he knew that there was no way he’d be able to live in it for any extended period of time.
The baby in his arms was crying. This had never been in his job description before. Uncle Padfoot had been in charge of entertainment and spoiling the kid rotten; whenever the tears had come, he’d always been able to hand the baby back to it’s mother or father and sit back and watch the touching scene of parent comforting child. Occasionally, he and Remus were called in for babysitting duty, so that James and Lily could find some time for themselves - but Harry was usually in bed by the time they got there, and Sirius had only ever been forced into changing a nappy once before.
Faced with a screaming child, his two best friends dead and his - whatever Remus was to him anymore - missing, Sirius was at a loss.
“Fuck,” he shouted to the empty cabin. “FUCK!”
Harry simply screamed louder.
The Plan, as it became known in Sirius’ head, was rather slow to form.
He blamed that mostly on Harry.
Within three days of their arrival in Scotland, Sirius’ respect for James and Lily and increased tenfold. Babies were not easy, and Sirius suspected that Harry was even more difficult than usual. It did not help matters that the boy was old enough to miss his parents. His calls for “Mum! Da!” kept Sirius awake at night and made his haunted dreams even worse.
After a few months, however, as he and Harry got used to each other’s company, The Plan began to take shape in Sirius’ mind.
The Plan consisted of five main stages: create a map or some means of finding Remus, convince Remus to look after Harry, use the map to find Peter, make him pay in such a way that no one would be able to trace it back to him, return to Harry and Remus and carry on in some semblance of normalcy.
Stages two and four were the sticking points.
The answer came to him suddenly one day as he was fighting a very fussy Harry into a fresh nappy.
Sirius had not slaved for hours and hours over massive books for nothing. He was an accomplished, creative and very talented magical map maker. There was no reason that, having managed to get a map to show exactly where everyone and anyone in Hogwarts was at any given moment in time, he wouldn’t be able to get a map to show him where just two people were in the world - or at least give him a rough idea to work with.
It was a long process. Remus had been the one that was good with the actual runes and tracking spells. Sirius brought the theory, Remus brought the precise and impressive skill. Most people would have assumed the opposite.
Months passed slowly in the cabin. Starved for company other than Harry - who’s vocabulary was limited to “Mum!”, “Da!”, “Sirus!”, and “No!” - the owl who brought them supplies and the old, senile Muggle at the nearest village store, with whom Sirius would have a struggle over Muggle currency conventions on a weekly basis, Sirius had little to do but work on his map. He needed the time, anyways. The world was a large place and runes were not his forte.
Give him a good charm or a nasty hex any day. He could transfigure with the best of him - in fact at the beginning of his seventh year, Professor McGonagall had secretly told Professor Dumbledore that she had no more to teach him; he was a natural.
Runes were too boring for his teenaged tastes, so he’d left them to Remus, who loved the comforting repetitiveness of writing out map runes.
It took him until May of the next year too finish the map.The thick, rich parchment, as big as the kitchen table, was finally covered in lines and lines of painstakingly copied runes. This was the third draft. The first one had spontaneously combusted after Sirius had accidentally combined two runes in the wrong order. The second, Harry had decided was a good place to aim at while he suffered a bout of projectile vomiting. The third one had taken him longer to finish, but Sirius was quite sure that it was the best of all three anyways. Rows and rows of runes covered the page.
Harry was crawling on the floor next to Sirius’ feet, chewing happily on a piece of multicolored rubber that Professor McGonagall had sent him a few weeks before. Sirius glanced at him to make sure he was occupied before leaning over the map. His hands trembled slightly as he tapped wand to parchment and murmured the necessary spells.
“Find me Remus Lupin,” he said, finally, and he tapped the map once more.
The runes exploded in a mess of inky black. Lines ran and tangled and then faded. The map went blank for a moment while Sirius held his breath, not even daring to think that he’d done it wrong, before suddenly a tiny black dot appeared with a label reading Remus Lupin. It took only a few minutes for the full picture to appear.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Sirus?” Harry called from the floor, his puzzled little face creased and covered in drool. Sirius turned to him, grinning for the first time in months.
“How about you and your Uncle Sirius go on a trip, eh little man?”
Harry seemed excited, waving his plastic toy in the air. Sirius put him down on the table next to the map and ruffled his hair.
“Now, the question is,” he said to Harry, pulling a rucksack out of the small cupboard and placing a quick undetectable extension charm on it as he went, “how are we going to get to America?”
* * *
December 19, 1975
The Hospital Wing was normally peaceful at 7 am on a Friday morning.
In fact, the Hospital Wing was generally peaceful all day long; Madame Pomfrey did not tolerate loud noises in her hospital wing.
Today, however, was an exception.
Poppy Pomfrey had seen many things in the world of magical maladies and injuries, but she had never seen a person so close to being in literal ribbons of flesh as poor Remus Lupin had been when a panicked James Potter had burst through the doors with him in his arms. Peter Pettigrew was trailing behind them, a small, shrinking, sobbing mess, wringing his hands with worry.
Sirius Black was noticeable only by his absence; usually he hovered like a particularly determined plague around the Hospital Wing on days after full moons, but he was nowhere to be seen.
It was not long before Albus Dumbledore himself came charging through the swinging doors, his voice - usually so warm and comforting - a shock of quiet, calculated rage.
Severus Snape was there too, shouting something about monsters and expulsion. He had a nasty cut on his forehead.
Poppy Pomfrey was necessarily excellent at silencing charms. She cast one quickly, took a few seconds to gather herself, before diving headfirst into the maelstrom, wand and bandages at the ready.
Hours later, a furious James found Sirius - or rather, Padfoot - skulking in the Shrieking Shack. With a savage flick of his wand, he forced Sirius back. His friend looked up at him miserably from beneath his hair.
“Why? That’s all I want to know. Why?”
Sirius, his arms curled around his knees, looked up at James with empty grey eyes. He had no reasons to give; James, feeling quite justified in his response, punched him in the eye. Twice. Then he spun on his heel and left without another word.
It was two months before any of them spoke to Sirius again. And that was only because Remus, fed up with nights full of morose glares, studying and not much else, made them.
* * *
May 26, 1983
Sirius shifted uncomfortably, grumbling under his breath. “You have got to shut up, kid, and give it a rest.” Harry, however, was having none of it - choosing instead to use his 18 month old lungs at highest capacity. It was, quite frankly, driving Sirius mad.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he pleaded, smoothing sweaty black hair off of Harry’s forehead. As he shifted Harry’s weight again to the other shoulder, Sirius stole furtive glances around him and grimaced. “Harry, please.” He wasn’t worried about being recognized, but that didn’t mean he wanted to draw attention to himself either. It was bad enough avoiding suspicion while boarding an international flight as a scruffy haired, tattooed 24 year old in studded bike leathers and cuban heels. Trying to do the same with a toddler in arms was nigh on impossible. Cursing under his breath, Sirius shifted his godson in his arms once more. “Come on, sprog, quiet down.” Harry replied by screaming some more.
The plump, white haired lady in the seat next to him smiled and clucked her tongue as she leaned over Sirius’ shoulder. “He’s got a pair of lungs, hasn’t he? Haven’t you, lovey?” She stretched out a finger to stroke Harry’s face. Sirius jolted into action, seizing Harry to his shoulder and shying him away from the lady’s touch. Later, he was only glad he hadn’t actually growled at her.
Shocked at his reaction, the woman backed off, shaking her head slightly as she moved to change seats. Cursing again, Sirius got up abruptly, swinging his rucksack over one shoulder and Harry over the other. When he got to the men’s room, Harry was still wailing, tears streaming down his face. Sirius plonked the toddler down on the counter and splashed some cold water over his face.
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.” Leaning heavily on the counter, he turned to look his pint sized charge up and down. Not for the first time in the past few weeks he wondered what on earth Prongs and Red had been thinking, leaving Harry to him. “I can’t do this,” he said to his reflection. “I can’t fucking do this.”
A voice in his head that sounded annoyingly like Dumbledore’s told him that life was more often not about what you couldn’t do, but what you had to. He hated that voice. Unfortunately, it was often right. After a few deep breaths, Sirius turned back to Harry, who - miraculously - had swapped screaming for soft sobs. His face softened as he looked at Harry’s face, and thought for what must have been the thousandth time that he would look exactly like James one day.
At the thought of James, though, Sirius’ scowl came back. He swept Harry up in his arms again and patted him on the back. “Right. Let’s just get through this, alright sprog? We can do this. Right, little man? Come on.” Jiggling Harry back and forth hushed his crying even more and finally, the toddler was reduced to sniffles. “Thank Merlin,” Sirius sighed, picking up his rucksack again. The door swung open and a man in his thirties came through, grinning when he saw Sirius and Harry.
“His first time flying?” the man asked, one eyebrow raised.
“And mine,” Sirius grumbled. “For all that it’s your business.”
“Alright, mate, I was just being friendly.” The man held up his hands and turned away, heading for the urinals. Sirius double checked that he hadn’t left anything at the sinks and made his way to the gate. The flight was finally, finally boarding. Sirius stood in line, his wand concealed up one sleeve. A few surreptitious confounding charms got him and Harry safely on the airplane. After an admittedly brief period of moral scruples, Sirius found himself an empty seat in the business class area of the plane. Harry, he was told, would have to sit on his lap for most of the flight - but Sirius made sure the seat next to him was free, also.
“Right, mate,” he said, lifting Harry up to peer into his - Lily’s - eyes. “You be good. And be quiet. I don’t reckon these classy Muggles up here will be much interested in hearing you scream - as riveting as it is.” Sirius was pointedly ignoring the strange looks he was getting from other passengers as they filed onto the plane. He knew he looked like hell on earth, but suggested inwardly that they try to go clothes shopping or get any sleep at all while trying single handedly to look after a traumatized baby that wasn’t even theirs.
“I am not above using magic on you, mate, if needs be, so you’d best shut up and keep that way, alright?”
As the plane taxied down the runway, Sirius changed his mind and whispered a few words over Harry’s head; the toddler fell asleep soundly against his shoulder and Sirius, guilty, sighed in relief. He hated using magic to calm Harry down - it’s what his parents would have done - but he was nervous enough about this Muggle deathtrap and didn’t need Harry shrieking in his ear to expound his nerves at all.
He was no stranger to flying, but that was all broomsticks and the occasional carpet. If you had told him a year ago that he would be in a Muggle airplane flying from London to New York with a screaming baby in his lap, he would have called you a liar and hexed you to boot. He didn’t like to think of himself as a wizard elitist but he honestly couldn’t understand how, without using an ounce of magic, the Muggles managed to make these contraptions fly across oceans. His stomach was churning as the airplane gathered speed and he cursed - probably too loudly - and gripped the arm rest between himself and the woman in the seat next to him with his free hand.
James used to go on and on about how the incredible and breathtaking speeds were his favorite bits of flying. For Sirius, though, it was always about taking off. The initial kick of acceleration and the rush of freedom that came from his feet lifting off the ground. He loved the speed, of course, and the adrenaline that came from swooping and dodging, but most of all Sirius - who had always been held captive by one thing or other - loved being in the air.
As the plane took off, though, Sirius screwed up his eyes and fervently wished for firm ground beneath his heavy leather boots. “Bloody Muggles,” he mumbled, holding Harry tight against his shoulder and scrunching his eyes. The plane thundered into the sky and the metal bird lurched, and Sirius let off a very unmanly whimper. Remus would have laughed at him.
Bloody Remus and his infernally level head. For all Sirius knew, it was that same, cool and unshakeable rationale that had driven Remus to America in the first place. And it was the same stupidly infuriating practicality that made Remus the perfect solution to all of his problems.
Well. To at least one of his problems. The others, he would have to sort out for himself.
As the plane leveled out at cruising altitude and the pilot beeped on over the intercom to tell them the details about their flight, Sirius pulled Harry closer to him and murmured into his soft baby hair. “We’re coming to find you, Moonykins. You can’t hide from your old Padfoot for long.”
* * *
February 7, 1976
Quidditch practice had been miserable. Why Roger Bell thought it was a good idea to practice feints and dives in what was essentially a monsoon, Sirius would never understand. What he also would never understand was why he seemed to think it was necessary to make them run around on the pitch for hours. For a game that was played purely in the air, Quidditch practice involved entirely too much trouncing about in the mud for Sirius’s taste. The situation was not helped by the fact that his co-chaser, James, refused to even look at him, let alone speak to him enough to work out the kinks in the plays that Bell had fed them.
Grumbling to himself, Sirius shucked his sodden Quidditch robes and stepped under the shower head. “Hot,” he said; but the water that came out was closer to boiling than to hot. “FUCK! Not that hot, stupid piece of shit.” The water ran ice cold, suddenly, to punish him for his rudeness. Sirius yelped and resisted the urge to bash his head against the tiled wall. “Warm, please.”
The whole situation was unbearable. Remus had said, after he’d apologized profusely (something which Sirius Black made a point of never doing), that he’d forgiven him but of course that had been a lie. Then again, he wasn’t sure what he was expecting Remus to do - act like nothing had happened and his best friend hadn’t attempted to make him kill an innocent ball of slime? Even Sirius realized that was clearly not an option. He had also expected James and his inflated sense of right and wrong to be livid with him.
What he had not expected was for the three of them to ignore him entirely for two months.
It is one thing to be hated; it is quite another not to exist.
He hadn’t actually meant for Remus to kill Snape. That much, at least, was clear to everyone; though they were all acting as if he had intended it in cold blood anyways.
He definitely, definitely had not intended it to put Remus in any sort of jeopardy. The last time James had spoken to him was to shout at him, “Remus! How could you do that to Remus?!”
The whole incident was a bit of a blur. Snape was poking fun at him, pushing all the buttons he was so good at pushing that made Sirius see red and seethe with anger. It didn’t help that lately, even thinking about Remus made his skin itch, as if it were three sizes too tight and crawling with bowtruckle grubs.
Sirius had been fairly sure, at that point, that he and Remus were essentially two players on opposite sides of a wizard’s chess set, waiting to see who would make the first move. To be more to the point - Remus was flat out teasing him, and it was infuriating. In an exciting kind of way. Little glances, smirks, quirks of the eyebrow, lingering touches. Sirius had seen Remus (who was by no means as innocent as he would have everyone believe he was) flirt with girls. He knew what it looked like, and he knew when he was on the receiving end of it.
But then, thought Sirius, he’d gone and stuck his massive foot in his even wider gob and fucked everything up, and now Remus hated him.
The shower ran cold again. Sirius, frustrated, reached out of the cubicle, grabbed his wand and waved it angrily at the showerhead. It sputtered indignantly but the water was back at the right temperature again.
Remus said he didn’t hate him but Sirius wasn’t convinced. The boy hadn’t so much as looked at him in weeks. There was no going back there, Sirius reckoned. He had given up even trying after the first few weeks. That bridge was as good as burnt. James would eventually forgive him and Peter would follow suit, but Remus was a lost cause.
Sighing, Sirius picked up the soap and started attempting to get rid of some of the more caked on patches of mud.
“Merlin, what’d you do with all that mud, roll around in it like Padfoot?”
Sirius yelped and the soap went flying. He whirled around. Remus was leaning against the shower block in just his boxers, smirking at him. Quickly, Sirius covered himself up.
“Mo- Remus! What are you...”
“I came to make sure you hadn’t drowned yourself. You’ve been in here for ages.”
Sirius blushed, fixing his stare on the floor tiles in front of Remus’s bare feet. “Can’t get the mud off.”
“You are a wizard, aren’t you?” Remus asked. Sarcasm dripped, thick and heavy, from every word.
“S’not the same.”
“Fair enough.” Remus paused; he seemed to be mulling something over in his head. Sirius waited awkwardly, unsure what to do with his hands or his eyes - or, for that matter, his head. None of this made sense. Remus hadn’t talked to him in weeks, months. And now he was... What exactly was he doing? Other than smirking again. “Need some help, then?”
Sirius’s head snapped up and his eyes widened. “Wh-what?!”
“Do you need some help?” Remus repeated, very slowly, as if speaking to the very young or the very stupid. “Only you’ve got mud caked just about everywhere and you seem to be incapable of dealing with it alone.”
“You hate me,” Sirius said. It was probably not the best thing to say at that precise moment, but all other thoughts had flown rather quickly out of his mind. Now all he could think about were those fantastically large hands on his body and that was not a thought that was conducive to remaining calm, cool and collected.
He so very much wished he could be calm, cool and collected.
Remus sighed and moved away from the wall towards him. Sirius backed up, out from under the stream of water and against the far wall.
“The most infuriating thing about you, Sirius Black, is that you’re very difficult to hate. Even when you are a manipulative, lying, entitled, disloyal bastard, it is impossible to hate you. Those puppy dog eyes. It’s really unfair how effective they are.”
By now Remus was standing under the stream of the shower. Water dripped from his nose. He was close. He was very, very close. Sirius’s brain seemed to have fizzled out. He could feel Remus’ s breath cooling on his warm, damp cheeks. Sirius looked him in the face because there was no where else to look. Suddenly, Remus’s eyes were stern where they had been playful and taunting.
“I want you to listen, Sirius Black, very carefully to what I’m about to say to you.” Remus placed a hand on the wall next to Sirius’s head; they were practically nose to nose. He was barely blinking. Sirius couldn’t breathe. “Are you listening?” Sirius nodded. “Good. If you ever, ever pull a stunt like that again, I will personally separate your vital organs from the rest of your body. Are we very clear on that?”
Sirius nodded quickly, bumping their foreheads accidentally as he did so. “Crystal clear. Vital organs. Gone. Yes. Never again, I swear, Moony.”
“Glad to hear it. There is one other thing. Are you still listening to me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not gay.”
Sirius’s heart skipped a beat. Remus’s nose was actually pressed against his. They were uncomfortably close. Sirius was, he realized, unremittingly naked, and Remus’s closeness and the husky timbre of his voice had not gone unnoticed by his cock. “Oh. Okay. Duly noted. Remus Lupin, not...uhm...not into buggery. Got it.”
Remus continued with a smirk, putting his other hand on the other side of Sirius’s head.
“I’m not gay. But you are extraordinarily good looking, you know.”
“I...uhm, that is...people have been known to...say that. On occasion.”
Remus’s smirk deepened; Sirius’s breath caught in his chest. “You are and you know it, you great prat. But I want you to know,” he paused to press an open mouthed kiss to Sirius’s collarbone, “I want you to know that this is purely a means to an end.” Another kiss, the other collarbone. “I want us to be friends again,” he kissed the area just below Sirius’s left earlobe; Sirius gasped for air. “And if us shagging gets in the way of that,” he kissed the area under Sirius’s right earlobe, “believe me it will stop before you can even say bugger.” Finally, Remus placed a kiss on his lips; they lingered there until Sirius finally got enough of a grip on himself to kiss back, and then Remus pulled back again, still smirking like the kneazle that got the cream.
It took Sirius a few seconds to collect himself; his brain was trying to connect this predatory Remus with his sarcastic and yet ever-so-slightly prim best friend of five years and seemed to be refusing to do so. It was no surprise to him that Remus was a horny bastard, he’d known that much for years, but he’d never even hoped to entertain the thought that Remus might, just maybe, fancy him too.
After a few flustered seconds, though, Sirius felt the past two months of sullen silence melt away and the old Sirius, playful and teasing, was back.
“So sure of yourself, Moony? What if I didn’t want anything to do with you?”
“Oh, don’t give me that shite, Black. You’ve wanted me for years.” And then, suddenly, Remus put his right hand down between their bodies to cup Sirius’s erection. “Tell me again you don’t want me.”
“Fuck,” Sirius gasped.
Remus laughed smugly; his hand squeezed and Sirius whimpered.
“That was kind of my plan.”
That was good enough for Sirius. “Stop talking, Lupin, and kiss me.” And Remus did.
Kissing Remus was like nothing Sirius had ever imagined. He had been with his fair share of people - boys and girls alike, he wasn’t one to discriminate - and he considered himself to be a fair kisser. Kissing Remus, though, was phenomenal. Remus didn’t so much kiss as bite at his lips without teeth (and sometimes with them) and it was marvelous. Sirius’s fingers tangled in the soft hair at the base of Remus’s neck while the other hand skated delightedly over the scarred skin of his back.
“So,” wheezed Sirius, as soon as Remus’s lips were occupied elsewhere and his hand started moving on Sirius’s cock. “So does this mean I’m forgiven, then?”
“No,” Remus muttered into the crook of his neck, licking and kissing at the bruise he’d made there. Sirius pulled his sodden boxers off of his hips with one hand, letting his erection spring free. “You’ve still got a lot more apologizing to do. And punishments. Lots of punishments.”
“Excellent,” Sirius said, spinning them around quickly and pinning Remus to the wall. “Shall we start with the apologies then?”
He sank to his knees and took Remus’s cock in his mouth, and there was no more talking for a long time after that.
The next morning, James pulled open the curtain to Remus’s bed only to be greeted with Sirius’s bare arse and legs poking out of the sheets at the bottom of the bed.
“MERLIN’S SOGGY NEON UNDERPANTS, BLACK. PUT YOUR WHITE ARSE AWAY BEFORE IT BLINDS SOMEONE.”
“Be a mate, Prongs, and bugger off?” said Remus groggily. “Only we’ve only just woken up and he’s half way through his morning apology.”
“Yerghl,” said James, yanking the curtains closed again and running down the stairs as fast as he could.
“Umghr?” asked Sirius, from beneath the sheets.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Remus admonished with a moan, and Sirius decided that he quite liked apologizing, after all.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3