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The Sudden Light and the Trees, Part 9
“That wasn’t part of the memory, you know.” Remus’s hands shook as he poured himself tea from the rough, nut-brown pot. Age, and routine, had won him muscle-memory to fight the frailty in his wrists, but it was still a losing battle.
“I know.” Sirius was quiet now, as if all the apologies had worn him down. Being sorry had always been tiring work for him; Remus’s lip twitched with mild amusement, recollecting Sirius's persistent need for lapses from penitence, but the thought soon turned sorry itself, and sour.
Remus frowned to realise he hadn’t any milk for his tea; holding his mug precariously in two hands, he decided he’d have to make do without. He’d make a run for the shops later, perhaps, when he was feeling stronger. On the way back he’d take up the potatoes, too, and the onions. And then he'd tend to the cleaning. His teapot had just been cleaned but the rest of the dishes still needed a going-over, as did he. Later, thought Remus. I’ll take care of it later.
“So where did it come from?” Remus took a sip; it burned his tongue. “A recollection of Chicken Little?”
Sirius screwed up his face at the muggle reference and shook his head. “Not all memories are real, Moony.”
Remus paused, cup poised by his chin, and frowned. “I find that hard to believe, Sirius. We remember things wrong sometimes, but that doesn’t make them entirely invalid.”
“No, not invalid at all, actually. What I mean is, in your head and all, there are all sorts of thoughts, and there’s no real order to them, you know? You’ve got the same space for memory being used up by fantasies too. It’s all the same upstairs. Every different way you might’ve wanted something to turn out, every wish you ever had and cherished - it’s all there with what really happened.”
Remus, sitting at the edge of his sagging cot in dirty trousers, set his mug down carefully on the battered trunk by the far end. His thick grey brows grew furrowed, and he turned his darkened gaze to Sirius, still with gaping holes sometimes in his form, where the light was getting in.
“There’s no way to tell the difference?”
Sirius looked just as grave when he nodded. “Not until you go through them, no.”
“And we have to do all of them, I suppose,” Remus sighed. “Else I’d be haunted as much by what-ifs as what actually occurred, yes?”
“Something like that, yeah.” Sirius attempted a consolatory smile, shrugging. Remus met the gesture with little enthusiasm of his own. His joints ached and his temper was waning. Why could he not just rest and be done with it, as he'd seen so many manage before him?
He thought of Papa on his deathbed, in their tiny flat above the grocer’s in Paddock Wood, one of the bedroom communities that fed London workers every morning. There was a bookstore across the narrow street, and a chocolate shop just down the way. It was early morning, the sky an overcast bluish-pink. The clouds hung an interminable lull over the city, and in the distance, a train could be heard, a lone cry to the dawn. The produce truck had just lumbered up to the shop below and they were unloading vegetables, fruits, in large crates. The engine was still rumbling, a deafening sound that carried up through the window of their flat.
Papa had been feeling too hot in the night, and loath as Remus had been to let the chill in, he hadn't had the heart to deny the request, and had opened the small frame. But in the morning, as the engine rumble poured into the room, along with the crude, erratic calling of men and women below, Remus wanted nothing more than to close it again, to shut out the world, to have at least those final moments alone with what family remained his own. He would have, too, had his hands not been clasping Papa’s hands, those weak hands made powerful, made overwhelming between Remus’s warmer palms. He couldn’t let go, not now, not when any moment could be the last; he couldn’t let go even for the window, even for some semblance of peace at the very end.
“Can I get you anything, Papa?” he’d asked, his voice not wavering in the slightest. By this point he had already felt death all too often: mother, James, Lily, Peter, the Sirius he thought he’d known. There could be nothing but resignation in his heart now, as Papa’s fingers curled, just so, in his hands.
“No,” the old man smiled, his dry lips forcing the fond gesture. Papa closed his eyes and sighed. “No, I have all that I need right here.”
Something in Remus’s throat clenched at that; he shut his eyes in turn, holding Papa’s hand tighter, and when he opened them - seconds, minutes, ages later - Papa was gone, lying limp and at peace in the small bed, the bundle of quilts, with that faint, sad smile still on his lips and the engine outside still rumbling, the heavy sound pervading all Remus’s muffled grief.
How can you sleep through all that noise, Remus remembered thinking: Papa, how can you sleep?
Remus’s stomach drew into a knot at the memory. His legs felt unsteady and his skin, itchy, unsettled, in the bulk of his dirty clothes. He wanted a bath. He wanted to be clean, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand. So much effort these days, just in standing. He scratched at a forearm, the skin there dry and flaking, and sighed.
“Why must it be so difficult for us, Sirius? Why don’t muggles have these rites of passage; don’t they need them too?”
Sirius shrugged, his dark hair tossed back with the motion. “They do have them, sort of. That whole ‘life flashing before their eyes’ thing, you know?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t require effort, Sirius; that just happens. Why not the same with us?”
“It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?”
Remus frowned, casting a stern look at the now beaming ghost before him. “I am old, Sirius, and not up for riddles.”
“You are becoming a miserable old fuss-pot, aren’t you?”
“Mmm,” Remus agreed with a yawn. “So you’d do well to tell me.”
“It’s simple. What’s the only real difference between muggles and wizards?”
“Magic, obviously.”
Sirius raised an eyebrow expectantly. Remus blinked, his hands moving to grip at the filthy sheets of his cot.
“What, magic is doing this?”
“Magic,” Sirius agreed, almost solemn now. Almost - because the gleam and wink in his eye gave him away soon enough. “Magic does everything, old boy. I thought for sure you’d know that by now.”
And now that it had been said, Remus’s cheeks grew a little flushed at the realisation that somewhere, deep down inside, he’d known it all along.