Fic: Solace
Title: Solace
Fandom: Harry Potter
Author:
carmentakoshi
Beta:
phiso_kun
Rating: PG13
Pairing(s): Remus/Sirius
Summary: Sirius’ life is a journey from moment to moment, but these ones are all tied together by a particular string: the worn thread of an old red scarf.
Warnings: language
Word Count: 3 947
Prompt: 27
You were so smart then
in your jacket and coat.
My softest red scarf was warming your throat.
Winter was on us,
at the end of my nose,
but I never love England more than when covered in snow.
But a friend of mine says it's good to hear you believe in love even if set in fear
well I'll hold you there brother and set you straight
I won't make believe true love is frail and willing to break.
I will come back here,
bring me back when I'm old.
I want to lay here forever in the cold.
I might be cold but I'm just skin and bones
and I never love England more than when covered in snow.
~ lyrics from Goodbye England (Covered in Snow) by Laura Marling
Author's Notes: My first time writing for the R/S Games, and boy has it been a challenge! I feel like I owe about 75% of this fic to my ever-wonderful, ever-insightful beta reader phiso_kun, without whom I would not be presenting this to you all.
I admit I struggled a lot with this piece, it fought me all the way to the finish line. XD Mostly I had trouble adhering to both the prompt I chose and the theme of the Games. I'm still not quite satisfied with the result, but the fest-goers seemed to enjoy it, so it's all good.
But I never want to hear "Goodbye England" ever again.
Solace
It’s snowing outside the cottage, so hard that it’s difficult to see past all the swirling flakes to the house across the way. Or it may just be his eyes adjusting to consciousness.
Sirius has been sleeping in the smoky sitting room but now he’s awake. He stirs on the lumpy couch and wonders where he is and why in Merlin’s name he was napping in the middle of the evening, then it all comes back to him: winter, Godric’s Hollow, the boredom that comes from sitting around in the country for a week with nothing to do.
Then again, this is a good moment, here, in the sleepy warmth. He wouldn’t want to ruin it by actually doing something.
He doesn’t get up but merely shifts his weight on the couch and resettles against the various lumps and crevices. The sitting room is still new to him, but it reminds him of somewhere else. A warm room, just like this one. A fire crackling in the grate, not magical but natural, fed by the hot roasting logs rather than the sparks of a man’s wand.
There’s also a gentle and familiar scraping sound, somewhere at the back of his mind where the little, normal, unnoticed things go: the sound of a turning page in the stillness of the not-snowing sky, in the not-stillness of the flickering fire.
And across the room, on the other divan, there’s the shadow of a hand leaning against a cheek, with the skin rendered smooth, porcelain from the warm fire’s glow. That’s familiar too, as is the sliver of leg visible under the edge of the blanket, not smooth but covered in the thin wiry brown hair he remembers so well he can almost feel it on his fingertips.
Sirius gazes at Remus reading by the fire, a sight so familiar yet so rare in these dark times that it almost rends something in his chest - a lung, maybe, because it’s suddenly harder to breathe.
It’s only the beginning of December, close enough to Christmas to feel its coming but not so close that its infectious cheer is overwhelming. Right now he’s just comfortable, despite his lung and the cold that he secretly hates. Inside this house in Godric’s Hollow, with Remus reading on the divan, with their friends conversing in low eager voices in the kitchen, and with the baby sleeping upstairs, it’s warm and quiet and just right.
And although Sirius has nothing - nothing but the staggeringly high amount of money his now-dead Uncle Alphard has left for him, anyway - he’s content, almost happy here with his little family, if he dared to call them such.
Sirius knows he’s been staring too long when Remus suddenly looks up, one finger pressed against the page to keep his place. Remus’ lips twitch to one side, then the other, as he deliberates whether to encourage the Look or not. But James and Lily sound sufficiently absorbed in each other: Sirius can hear James doing that stupid guffaw he does when Lily’s paying attention to him. He tunes them out and wiggles his eyebrows at Remus instead, and Remus snorts and gives him a look like he wants to throw his book at his head.
Sirius crosses the room to the divan, feeling the draft in the east window as he passes by, and brazenly leans down to kiss him. He feels as though all of Godric’s Hollow can see them but he doesn’t care, it’s the holidays and this is his present to himself and Remus both.
They break apart instinctively when Harry lets out a sudden wail from upstairs, and Remus unthreads his fingers from Sirius’ hair just in time for James to come surging from the kitchen, not even sparing them a glance as he races up to his screaming offspring.
“We could have been fucking and he wouldn’t even have noticed,” Sirius mumbles, and Remus really does smack him with the book then, so hard that he almost mashes his perfect nose against the divan, but even that can’t stop him from grinning.
=====
Remus is late. His flat is silent and the front door has been magicked closed. Sirius had never paid much attention to wards before, preferring to trust his own body and brains to get him out of scrapes and tight spots, but now he regrets it. He has no choice but to wait out in the dark grey hall.
When Remus finally gets back, he’s bedraggled and worn and favouring his right side.
He doesn’t even notice Sirius until he’s right in front of his own door, and only then does he glance sideways towards the huddled figure in the alcove. An electric light sputters down the hall, to no set rhythm. Sirius has been listening to it for hours.
Remus unlocks the door slowly with his non-dominant left hand, not with a key but with a few touches and murmured words. Then he gestures Sirius inside.
Sirius goes. He doesn’t need to be asked to help Remus out of his coat and scarf. The Scarf is familiar as an old friend by now, except tonight it smells of smoke and coal and something sharp and tangy-metallic. Sirius frowns as he holds it in both hands before he tucks in a few snagged-out threads with his fingers and casts a heating charm on the whole thing. Then he winds it back around Remus’ neck.
It’s cold in Remus’ tidy flat, especially in the minuscule sitting room where the piles of books look so iced that Sirius doesn’t think it's even possible to unstick the pages. Remus has washed his hands in the kitchen sink and is trying to start the stove with his left hand, but it’s no good; the gas has been turned off.
“Do it with magic,” Sirius says from the doorway to the kitchen.
“It’s not the same,” Remus snaps.
But nevertheless he crashes the kettle down on the stovetop and waves his hand at it, turning away as a small magical flame lights underneath it. He winces when he reaches up, too fast on the right side, to get the teacups and tea bags from the cupboard, and Sirius moves him gently aside to fetch them without a word. Hands full of porcelain and Earl Grey, he gestures to the table with his elbow, and Remus sits heavily, holding his right arm stiffly by his side.
Sirius makes the tea slowly, stealing glances back at the man huddled at the table. That’s how he’s been doing everything lately - constantly looking over his shoulder like he’s committing a theft, a violation - but Merlin’s balls, it’s not his damn fault, is it? Not when Remus is the one who’s been skulking and sneaking about when he’s not disappeared altogether, spirited off to parts unknown that smell of sweat and wood smoke and-
-blood.
Remus sits in his tiny, freezing kitchen, smelling overpoweringly of blood.
Sirius sets the glazed porcelain cover of the teapot on too hard, and it sounds like a sheet of ice suddenly breaking away, a sharp crack that sounds final. Decisive.
He breathes in through his nose, and then says the words he never thought he’d hear himself say, especially in a circumstance like this: “We need to talk.”
Remus automatically says, “Not now, Sirius.”
“Yes, now.”
Sirius swerves around with the teapot and it takes all his already dubious self-control to not smash it down on the tabletop; he manages it with only another heavy chink of porcelain. He expects to see Remus wince at his treatment of his mother’s second set of antique porcelain, but all he looks is tired. It’s the worst sign he’s seen all day.
Sirius is sick of this shit. He executes the most furious display of tea-pouring ever known to mankind and sits down, hard, shoving one of the two teacups towards Remus. Remus stares at it for a moment before reaching up carefully with his left hand.
Sirius says, “You know they’re saying there’s a spy in the Order.”
Remus stiffens mid-sip, like he’s burned his tongue. Sirius feels heartless and welcomes it. He can’t have a heart when it comes to this, because they both know Remus already has it. It’s his.
“You also know you’ve been acting pretty strangely these days.”
Remus swallows. “I do.”
“And I didn’t ask you why, because you asked me not to. So I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“Well I’m done with that. I’m asking you now. What have you been doing all this time?”
Remus, predictably, says nothing. He sips his tea while gazing out into the middle distance at the centre of the table.
They’ve been in the flat for half an hour and it’s still not any warmer, not even with the magical fire still lit on the stove. The kitchen’s one narrow windowpane rattles as a gust of frigid winter air slams past, howling in the eaves. Sirius’ joints feel stiff with cold but he doesn’t care. He’d stand out in that storm the whole night if it would make Remus answer him.
It’s not needed. Remus sighs, sounding like a much older man, and says, “All right.”
Sirius narrows his eyes. “All right?”
“Yes.”
He drinks deeply, then sets the teacup down with care, with a click of the delicate porcelain that’s lost in the scream of the wind.
“I was with the werewolves.”
Sirius’ mouth opens, but he has nothing to say.
Remus stares into his cup. It’s empty. Nothing left.
The wind batters the panes.
Sirius takes a deep, slow breath. Holds it in. Exhales.
“How long?”
“Six months now.”
“Fucking hell.”
Remus nods slowly.
“I...fucking hell. Fucking shit. Are you...you’re hurt.”
Remus grimaces and looks off to the side. “It’s all right. I healed it up on the way.”
“And clearly you did a bang-up job, seeing as you’re not favouring your right arm and making a face whenever you move it.”
Remus’ expression morphs into something closer to a smile. He has new lines around his mouth and eyes, shadowed ones. Definitely not laugh lines. Sirius imagines that werewolves in their makeshift colonies obviously don’t get to laugh much.
Sirius was so ready to be angry. He had come here expecting anger, from Remus and from himself. He had expected shouting, cursing, resentment. But here there’s only sadness and cold, and a faint whiff of betrayal.
Sirius shifts in the uncomfortable kitchen chair. He feels like a fool.
Remus reaches out halfway across the table, letting the hand of his good arm come to rest, limply, next to Sirius’ hand. For some reason, there’s the edge of a smile in his voice as he says, “You thought it was me.”
Sirius feels colder. He shakes his head. “No. Merlin, Remus. No.”
“It’s all right. I would have thought it was me, too.”
“I don’t. Not...not anymore.”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re just doing your job.”
“As are you?”
Remus nods once more, still not looking up. His fingers twitch on the tabletop.
“Dumbledore...he thought...it would be easier for someone like me to get information from...people like them...”
“You’re nothing like them,” Sirius growls. He feels tense, territorial. He also finds he hates Dumbledore with a newfound passion. “You’re different.”
Remus sighs again, a distraught sound that isn’t familiar at all. “Apparently so. At least, they seemed to think so too.”
“Are they the ones who-”
The right side of Remus’ body stiffens as though expecting a blow, and that’s all the answer Sirius needs.
This is the precise moment when Sirius’ heart breaks. He tries to hide it - Merlin and God and whoever else knows he still has his foolish pride, at least - by bringing his two hands up and lacing his fingers together and squeezing very hard. He presses his lips to the crossed knuckles of his thumbs. He holds the position and breathes evenly, concentrating on the sound of the wind wailing outside.
“I wanted to tell you,” Remus continues. “If I could only tell one person, I wanted it to be you. But we...I thought it would be imprudent, seeing as you’re probably...their Secret Keeper.”
Remus looks up at him then, finally, with the question in his tired, hollowed eyes. Sirius holds his gaze, trying to say all the things he couldn’t say, wouldn’t say, without saying anything at all.
“You know I can’t answer that, Moony,” he says instead.
Remus looks away again. It’s done. It’s solved. But Sirius doesn’t feel any better.
He unclenches his hands and goes to serve more tea, but it’s gone cold in the teapot, uncomforting and useless. They drink it all anyway, without saying anything more.
Later, Remus places both his hands on the table, palms up. His nails are short and dirty, hewn down. There isn’t a trace of ink or charcoal or tea leaves on them, nothing familiar at all except for the skin itself, traced through with the same old lines. Sirius has imprints of those lines all over his own skin, and that’s how he keeps Remus close, how he’s kept him close all this time, even as they’re drifting further and further apart.
Sirius touches the tips of his fingers to Remus’ palms, and they sit there, hand in hand, quiet, listening to the sound of all their demons trying to rush in through the cracks in the window frame. It sounds a lot like the wind scraping in the parapets.
=====
It’s cold. Around him, Caradoc and Prewett and the other Prewett lie dead.
He can still hear screams and spells in the distance but for a moment it’s too much and he can’t take it anymore, so he lies still with the rest of the corpses around him, closing his eyes even to block out the sights of the raging chaos nearby. It’s like he’s reverted back to childhood, which should be a comfort but it’s not. Anything is better than the War but then his years in the House of Black were a kind of war as well. It’s like war is everything he’s ever known and he wishes he could just close his eyes and make everything disappear-
“Sirius!”
Except he can’t close his ears, not while the wind is howling and the spells are hurtling and in the street, children shriek and run from their own wars. He feels so mad now he can almost imagine his mother’s long-extinguished voice crying out for him with potent rage.
“Sirius! Goddamnit, SIRIUS!”
Except that isn’t his mother. He’d know that voice even through the haze of madness, the fog of denial. The sound of it almost allows him to smile grimly against the snow-speckled dirt, because who else would it be, to use such a muggle word as God, to use such an expletive that he’d only ever heard from John Lupin and later his son?
And it’s that, that silly, mundane, wonderful word that gives him the strength to raise his head and roll over onto his back, and for some reason he’s almost grinning although the feel of his arm against Caradoc’s rigid back makes him want to cry.
Remus sees him and is beside him in an instant, and Merlin he’s handsome even though there are runs of blood leaking from his hairline and his face is twisted in an expression of abject relief.
“Sirius! You’re...I...I thought you were dead.”
“Stupidest thing you’ve ever thought,” Sirius murmurs through his cracked lips. “Besides, my squad had my back. They...they took the brunt of the spell...”
And Sirius loses it then, in a way that he never could have had Remus not been there to clutch him close, closer than they’ve been in weeks, and he’s still screaming when Remus Disaparates them away.
=====
He’d lived for the glory, once. He’d wanted to die for it, almost. But everyone in Britain knows his end - his first end - was made in the least glorious manner. Made a disgraced lordling by a heroic rat.
A damn heroic Rat.
=====
Remus looks run down, like a shed standing by two walls in a storm. He’s also the most welcome sight Sirius has ever seen, before Sirius remembers that everyone hates him, perhaps Remus most of all.
It’s just that his face brings back so many memories: memories of winters spent in a crowded warm common room, of pranks and realizations and kisses, of people lost in the battles, of love lost in the war. The past few months have been a haze of remembering, as though the past twelve years had been bottled up and were released, suddenly, all at once.
That Scarf, Sirius thinks inanely, his back against the dirty floorboards, the last time I ruined it, I didn’t have time to make it right.
But none of that matters anymore, not the Scarf, not the War, not even fucking Voldemort, because Remus is hauling him to his feet and embracing him tight, like he was never wronged, like he never stopped loving him for a moment in all the time they were apart, and Sirius can only embrace him back with years of words backed up in his throat, never to be heard by this man or any other.
“The children need us,” Remus whispers as he pulls away.
His fingers clench around Sirius’ shoulders before he lets go, and it’s the last time Remus touches him for a very long time.
=====
It’s Remus who comes to him, to call him away to his death.
It seems inappropriate, yet who else could it be but him? Who else would dare approach him now, with such familiarity and yet such wariness, with such a light in his eyes like Sirius hasn’t seen since before the War?
There’s a heaviness in his thoughts like he knows something is going to happen, but he tries not to feel it because damnit, Harry needs him, and Remus is swearing up and down like his strange Muggle-worded father as he runs around getting ready to leave the house. Sirius had only met John once before the accident that took his life, but he remembers his words, all goddamns and Christ almightys that meant nothing to Sirius at all, which is why they were so striking in the first place.
Remus rounds on Sirius suddenly, looking more tweed-jacketed and run-down than ever.
“You encouraged him, didn’t you?” Remus demands. “You, with your embellished stories of your goddamn Glory Days, your tales of James’ prowess! Now he’s run straight into Voldemort’s arms, thinking he needs to live up to his stupid hero’s name, to his stupid father’s! To hell with both of you!”
Sirius doesn’t say anything as Remus lunges for the dusty coat rack and yanks his scarf from the prongs, twining it halfway round his neck before he realizes that he doesn’t need it, they’ll be taking only a step out into the post-winter chill before they Disaparate to the Ministry.
Remus tears the scarf off, stretching it, no doubt, dropping it to the floor like it burns. They both stand still for the space of a beat, then Remus says, ‘We should go.”
And Sirius says, “I still love you.”
Remus says nothing. He’s thinking. Sirius is thinking too, a little about Remus’ hands and a bit about Remus’ stubble, and quite a lot about how pretty dear Dora has become and how bright her eyes get when she gazes at Remus across the antique dinner table.
Finally, Remus says, “There’s no time for this now.”
“I know.”
“Later. After we save that damn Prongslet.”
“He’s every bit James’ son, isn’t he?”
“And Lily’s.”
“Indeed.”
“Quite.”
And Remus grins, uncertainly, at him, and for a moment they’re both sixteen again and staring at each other in the dim winter light, gearing up for the contact that will forever change the War for them, for all four of them.
They go.
They don’t kiss. There are no goodbyes.
=====
And as he falls, he locks eyes with Remus for just a moment, as Harry’s screams fade into the distance, and James and Lily grab onto him and tear him away.
He goes. It’ll be all right in the end.
=====
Remus wore the same red scarf every winter in all the time he spent at Hogwarts.
It was a disgusting thing, that Scarf, bordering on beastly. By second year, it had suffered a tear and was unskilfully mended with a not-quite mastered knitting charm. By third year, it had been attacked by equal parts mustard and gravy. By fourth year, it had been scorched. By fifth year, it had been uncharitably stretched by at least a foot. By sixth year, it had been frozen solid, shattered, then the pieces magically thawed and reassembled by repentant friends and an irate owner.
By seventh year, it had been worn while Sirius was kissing its wearer for the first time.
That Sodding Scarf - practically a member of their merry band itself, and thus deserving of a proper title - did not look that much worse for wear, in all truthfulness. Over the years, Sirius had gotten extremely proficient at his cleaning and repairing spells, seeing as the sometimes horrific damage having been wrought on the Scarf usually turned out to be his fault. Honestly, he was ashamed. No Marauder should have to be so good at all those girly scrubbing and mending and darning spells. It just wasn’t Marauder-like.
Merlin knew he had done everything he could to avert the learning process, like pointing out new scarves in the colourful displays in Hogsmeade, or presenting Remus with costly scarves made of the finest imported wool and woven with the longest lasting heating charms on Christmas morning. Nothing Sirius ever did, however, seemed to dissuade Remus of his unbearable love for that one particular ghastly scarf. Thus, he found himself doomed to mastering the intricacies of knitting magic, among all that other tripe. He never could act nonchalant enough to tell Remus to sod the Sodding Scarf, not when Remus looked at him like that, like his very universe would collapse upon the loss of that monstrosity.
“Why do you love that horrible thing so much, anyway? Merlin knows you’ve got a million more there in your trunk.”
“I just like this scarf better.”
“It’s old.”
“It still works. And it’s a nice red.”
“I got you a red one. The saleswitch even told me it was the reddest damn scarf I would ever find in the wizarding world.”
“In those words?”
“Precisely those words.”
“She was just trying to make a commission. Besides, it was a gift.”
So Sirius pestered him for years and years, until the winter of 1976, when he found himself spending a few post-Christmas days at the Lupin cottage in celebration of his first holidays after his escape from the House of Black. He was staring at the framed photographs perched on the mantle as he waited for Remus to hurry and get his winter things on, and his eyes happened to fall upon the oldest picture, a slightly cracked image of a sturdily handsome man, standing against a backdrop of pines and snowdrifts, grinning and fighting to keep his footing as he balanced a very young boy on his shoulders. It was a moving sepia print, almost colourless, and very different from the one of Remus’ mum and Remus’ stepdad on their wedding day, something from a different time entirely.
Sirius smiled as he watched the child’s tiny hands grasping for purchase in the man’s woolly scarf, and knew immediately that the scarf would be red.
The End
Fandom: Harry Potter
Author:
carmentakoshi
Beta:
phiso_kun
Rating: PG13
Pairing(s): Remus/Sirius
Summary: Sirius’ life is a journey from moment to moment, but these ones are all tied together by a particular string: the worn thread of an old red scarf.
Warnings: language
Word Count: 3 947
Prompt: 27
You were so smart then
in your jacket and coat.
My softest red scarf was warming your throat.
Winter was on us,
at the end of my nose,
but I never love England more than when covered in snow.
But a friend of mine says it's good to hear you believe in love even if set in fear
well I'll hold you there brother and set you straight
I won't make believe true love is frail and willing to break.
I will come back here,
bring me back when I'm old.
I want to lay here forever in the cold.
I might be cold but I'm just skin and bones
and I never love England more than when covered in snow.
~ lyrics from Goodbye England (Covered in Snow) by Laura Marling
Author's Notes: My first time writing for the R/S Games, and boy has it been a challenge! I feel like I owe about 75% of this fic to my ever-wonderful, ever-insightful beta reader phiso_kun, without whom I would not be presenting this to you all.
I admit I struggled a lot with this piece, it fought me all the way to the finish line. XD Mostly I had trouble adhering to both the prompt I chose and the theme of the Games. I'm still not quite satisfied with the result, but the fest-goers seemed to enjoy it, so it's all good.
But I never want to hear "Goodbye England" ever again.
Solace
It’s snowing outside the cottage, so hard that it’s difficult to see past all the swirling flakes to the house across the way. Or it may just be his eyes adjusting to consciousness.
Sirius has been sleeping in the smoky sitting room but now he’s awake. He stirs on the lumpy couch and wonders where he is and why in Merlin’s name he was napping in the middle of the evening, then it all comes back to him: winter, Godric’s Hollow, the boredom that comes from sitting around in the country for a week with nothing to do.
Then again, this is a good moment, here, in the sleepy warmth. He wouldn’t want to ruin it by actually doing something.
He doesn’t get up but merely shifts his weight on the couch and resettles against the various lumps and crevices. The sitting room is still new to him, but it reminds him of somewhere else. A warm room, just like this one. A fire crackling in the grate, not magical but natural, fed by the hot roasting logs rather than the sparks of a man’s wand.
There’s also a gentle and familiar scraping sound, somewhere at the back of his mind where the little, normal, unnoticed things go: the sound of a turning page in the stillness of the not-snowing sky, in the not-stillness of the flickering fire.
And across the room, on the other divan, there’s the shadow of a hand leaning against a cheek, with the skin rendered smooth, porcelain from the warm fire’s glow. That’s familiar too, as is the sliver of leg visible under the edge of the blanket, not smooth but covered in the thin wiry brown hair he remembers so well he can almost feel it on his fingertips.
Sirius gazes at Remus reading by the fire, a sight so familiar yet so rare in these dark times that it almost rends something in his chest - a lung, maybe, because it’s suddenly harder to breathe.
It’s only the beginning of December, close enough to Christmas to feel its coming but not so close that its infectious cheer is overwhelming. Right now he’s just comfortable, despite his lung and the cold that he secretly hates. Inside this house in Godric’s Hollow, with Remus reading on the divan, with their friends conversing in low eager voices in the kitchen, and with the baby sleeping upstairs, it’s warm and quiet and just right.
And although Sirius has nothing - nothing but the staggeringly high amount of money his now-dead Uncle Alphard has left for him, anyway - he’s content, almost happy here with his little family, if he dared to call them such.
Sirius knows he’s been staring too long when Remus suddenly looks up, one finger pressed against the page to keep his place. Remus’ lips twitch to one side, then the other, as he deliberates whether to encourage the Look or not. But James and Lily sound sufficiently absorbed in each other: Sirius can hear James doing that stupid guffaw he does when Lily’s paying attention to him. He tunes them out and wiggles his eyebrows at Remus instead, and Remus snorts and gives him a look like he wants to throw his book at his head.
Sirius crosses the room to the divan, feeling the draft in the east window as he passes by, and brazenly leans down to kiss him. He feels as though all of Godric’s Hollow can see them but he doesn’t care, it’s the holidays and this is his present to himself and Remus both.
They break apart instinctively when Harry lets out a sudden wail from upstairs, and Remus unthreads his fingers from Sirius’ hair just in time for James to come surging from the kitchen, not even sparing them a glance as he races up to his screaming offspring.
“We could have been fucking and he wouldn’t even have noticed,” Sirius mumbles, and Remus really does smack him with the book then, so hard that he almost mashes his perfect nose against the divan, but even that can’t stop him from grinning.
=====
Remus is late. His flat is silent and the front door has been magicked closed. Sirius had never paid much attention to wards before, preferring to trust his own body and brains to get him out of scrapes and tight spots, but now he regrets it. He has no choice but to wait out in the dark grey hall.
When Remus finally gets back, he’s bedraggled and worn and favouring his right side.
He doesn’t even notice Sirius until he’s right in front of his own door, and only then does he glance sideways towards the huddled figure in the alcove. An electric light sputters down the hall, to no set rhythm. Sirius has been listening to it for hours.
Remus unlocks the door slowly with his non-dominant left hand, not with a key but with a few touches and murmured words. Then he gestures Sirius inside.
Sirius goes. He doesn’t need to be asked to help Remus out of his coat and scarf. The Scarf is familiar as an old friend by now, except tonight it smells of smoke and coal and something sharp and tangy-metallic. Sirius frowns as he holds it in both hands before he tucks in a few snagged-out threads with his fingers and casts a heating charm on the whole thing. Then he winds it back around Remus’ neck.
It’s cold in Remus’ tidy flat, especially in the minuscule sitting room where the piles of books look so iced that Sirius doesn’t think it's even possible to unstick the pages. Remus has washed his hands in the kitchen sink and is trying to start the stove with his left hand, but it’s no good; the gas has been turned off.
“Do it with magic,” Sirius says from the doorway to the kitchen.
“It’s not the same,” Remus snaps.
But nevertheless he crashes the kettle down on the stovetop and waves his hand at it, turning away as a small magical flame lights underneath it. He winces when he reaches up, too fast on the right side, to get the teacups and tea bags from the cupboard, and Sirius moves him gently aside to fetch them without a word. Hands full of porcelain and Earl Grey, he gestures to the table with his elbow, and Remus sits heavily, holding his right arm stiffly by his side.
Sirius makes the tea slowly, stealing glances back at the man huddled at the table. That’s how he’s been doing everything lately - constantly looking over his shoulder like he’s committing a theft, a violation - but Merlin’s balls, it’s not his damn fault, is it? Not when Remus is the one who’s been skulking and sneaking about when he’s not disappeared altogether, spirited off to parts unknown that smell of sweat and wood smoke and-
-blood.
Remus sits in his tiny, freezing kitchen, smelling overpoweringly of blood.
Sirius sets the glazed porcelain cover of the teapot on too hard, and it sounds like a sheet of ice suddenly breaking away, a sharp crack that sounds final. Decisive.
He breathes in through his nose, and then says the words he never thought he’d hear himself say, especially in a circumstance like this: “We need to talk.”
Remus automatically says, “Not now, Sirius.”
“Yes, now.”
Sirius swerves around with the teapot and it takes all his already dubious self-control to not smash it down on the tabletop; he manages it with only another heavy chink of porcelain. He expects to see Remus wince at his treatment of his mother’s second set of antique porcelain, but all he looks is tired. It’s the worst sign he’s seen all day.
Sirius is sick of this shit. He executes the most furious display of tea-pouring ever known to mankind and sits down, hard, shoving one of the two teacups towards Remus. Remus stares at it for a moment before reaching up carefully with his left hand.
Sirius says, “You know they’re saying there’s a spy in the Order.”
Remus stiffens mid-sip, like he’s burned his tongue. Sirius feels heartless and welcomes it. He can’t have a heart when it comes to this, because they both know Remus already has it. It’s his.
“You also know you’ve been acting pretty strangely these days.”
Remus swallows. “I do.”
“And I didn’t ask you why, because you asked me not to. So I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“Well I’m done with that. I’m asking you now. What have you been doing all this time?”
Remus, predictably, says nothing. He sips his tea while gazing out into the middle distance at the centre of the table.
They’ve been in the flat for half an hour and it’s still not any warmer, not even with the magical fire still lit on the stove. The kitchen’s one narrow windowpane rattles as a gust of frigid winter air slams past, howling in the eaves. Sirius’ joints feel stiff with cold but he doesn’t care. He’d stand out in that storm the whole night if it would make Remus answer him.
It’s not needed. Remus sighs, sounding like a much older man, and says, “All right.”
Sirius narrows his eyes. “All right?”
“Yes.”
He drinks deeply, then sets the teacup down with care, with a click of the delicate porcelain that’s lost in the scream of the wind.
“I was with the werewolves.”
Sirius’ mouth opens, but he has nothing to say.
Remus stares into his cup. It’s empty. Nothing left.
The wind batters the panes.
Sirius takes a deep, slow breath. Holds it in. Exhales.
“How long?”
“Six months now.”
“Fucking hell.”
Remus nods slowly.
“I...fucking hell. Fucking shit. Are you...you’re hurt.”
Remus grimaces and looks off to the side. “It’s all right. I healed it up on the way.”
“And clearly you did a bang-up job, seeing as you’re not favouring your right arm and making a face whenever you move it.”
Remus’ expression morphs into something closer to a smile. He has new lines around his mouth and eyes, shadowed ones. Definitely not laugh lines. Sirius imagines that werewolves in their makeshift colonies obviously don’t get to laugh much.
Sirius was so ready to be angry. He had come here expecting anger, from Remus and from himself. He had expected shouting, cursing, resentment. But here there’s only sadness and cold, and a faint whiff of betrayal.
Sirius shifts in the uncomfortable kitchen chair. He feels like a fool.
Remus reaches out halfway across the table, letting the hand of his good arm come to rest, limply, next to Sirius’ hand. For some reason, there’s the edge of a smile in his voice as he says, “You thought it was me.”
Sirius feels colder. He shakes his head. “No. Merlin, Remus. No.”
“It’s all right. I would have thought it was me, too.”
“I don’t. Not...not anymore.”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re just doing your job.”
“As are you?”
Remus nods once more, still not looking up. His fingers twitch on the tabletop.
“Dumbledore...he thought...it would be easier for someone like me to get information from...people like them...”
“You’re nothing like them,” Sirius growls. He feels tense, territorial. He also finds he hates Dumbledore with a newfound passion. “You’re different.”
Remus sighs again, a distraught sound that isn’t familiar at all. “Apparently so. At least, they seemed to think so too.”
“Are they the ones who-”
The right side of Remus’ body stiffens as though expecting a blow, and that’s all the answer Sirius needs.
This is the precise moment when Sirius’ heart breaks. He tries to hide it - Merlin and God and whoever else knows he still has his foolish pride, at least - by bringing his two hands up and lacing his fingers together and squeezing very hard. He presses his lips to the crossed knuckles of his thumbs. He holds the position and breathes evenly, concentrating on the sound of the wind wailing outside.
“I wanted to tell you,” Remus continues. “If I could only tell one person, I wanted it to be you. But we...I thought it would be imprudent, seeing as you’re probably...their Secret Keeper.”
Remus looks up at him then, finally, with the question in his tired, hollowed eyes. Sirius holds his gaze, trying to say all the things he couldn’t say, wouldn’t say, without saying anything at all.
“You know I can’t answer that, Moony,” he says instead.
Remus looks away again. It’s done. It’s solved. But Sirius doesn’t feel any better.
He unclenches his hands and goes to serve more tea, but it’s gone cold in the teapot, uncomforting and useless. They drink it all anyway, without saying anything more.
Later, Remus places both his hands on the table, palms up. His nails are short and dirty, hewn down. There isn’t a trace of ink or charcoal or tea leaves on them, nothing familiar at all except for the skin itself, traced through with the same old lines. Sirius has imprints of those lines all over his own skin, and that’s how he keeps Remus close, how he’s kept him close all this time, even as they’re drifting further and further apart.
Sirius touches the tips of his fingers to Remus’ palms, and they sit there, hand in hand, quiet, listening to the sound of all their demons trying to rush in through the cracks in the window frame. It sounds a lot like the wind scraping in the parapets.
=====
It’s cold. Around him, Caradoc and Prewett and the other Prewett lie dead.
He can still hear screams and spells in the distance but for a moment it’s too much and he can’t take it anymore, so he lies still with the rest of the corpses around him, closing his eyes even to block out the sights of the raging chaos nearby. It’s like he’s reverted back to childhood, which should be a comfort but it’s not. Anything is better than the War but then his years in the House of Black were a kind of war as well. It’s like war is everything he’s ever known and he wishes he could just close his eyes and make everything disappear-
“Sirius!”
Except he can’t close his ears, not while the wind is howling and the spells are hurtling and in the street, children shriek and run from their own wars. He feels so mad now he can almost imagine his mother’s long-extinguished voice crying out for him with potent rage.
“Sirius! Goddamnit, SIRIUS!”
Except that isn’t his mother. He’d know that voice even through the haze of madness, the fog of denial. The sound of it almost allows him to smile grimly against the snow-speckled dirt, because who else would it be, to use such a muggle word as God, to use such an expletive that he’d only ever heard from John Lupin and later his son?
And it’s that, that silly, mundane, wonderful word that gives him the strength to raise his head and roll over onto his back, and for some reason he’s almost grinning although the feel of his arm against Caradoc’s rigid back makes him want to cry.
Remus sees him and is beside him in an instant, and Merlin he’s handsome even though there are runs of blood leaking from his hairline and his face is twisted in an expression of abject relief.
“Sirius! You’re...I...I thought you were dead.”
“Stupidest thing you’ve ever thought,” Sirius murmurs through his cracked lips. “Besides, my squad had my back. They...they took the brunt of the spell...”
And Sirius loses it then, in a way that he never could have had Remus not been there to clutch him close, closer than they’ve been in weeks, and he’s still screaming when Remus Disaparates them away.
=====
He’d lived for the glory, once. He’d wanted to die for it, almost. But everyone in Britain knows his end - his first end - was made in the least glorious manner. Made a disgraced lordling by a heroic rat.
A damn heroic Rat.
=====
Remus looks run down, like a shed standing by two walls in a storm. He’s also the most welcome sight Sirius has ever seen, before Sirius remembers that everyone hates him, perhaps Remus most of all.
It’s just that his face brings back so many memories: memories of winters spent in a crowded warm common room, of pranks and realizations and kisses, of people lost in the battles, of love lost in the war. The past few months have been a haze of remembering, as though the past twelve years had been bottled up and were released, suddenly, all at once.
That Scarf, Sirius thinks inanely, his back against the dirty floorboards, the last time I ruined it, I didn’t have time to make it right.
But none of that matters anymore, not the Scarf, not the War, not even fucking Voldemort, because Remus is hauling him to his feet and embracing him tight, like he was never wronged, like he never stopped loving him for a moment in all the time they were apart, and Sirius can only embrace him back with years of words backed up in his throat, never to be heard by this man or any other.
“The children need us,” Remus whispers as he pulls away.
His fingers clench around Sirius’ shoulders before he lets go, and it’s the last time Remus touches him for a very long time.
=====
It’s Remus who comes to him, to call him away to his death.
It seems inappropriate, yet who else could it be but him? Who else would dare approach him now, with such familiarity and yet such wariness, with such a light in his eyes like Sirius hasn’t seen since before the War?
There’s a heaviness in his thoughts like he knows something is going to happen, but he tries not to feel it because damnit, Harry needs him, and Remus is swearing up and down like his strange Muggle-worded father as he runs around getting ready to leave the house. Sirius had only met John once before the accident that took his life, but he remembers his words, all goddamns and Christ almightys that meant nothing to Sirius at all, which is why they were so striking in the first place.
Remus rounds on Sirius suddenly, looking more tweed-jacketed and run-down than ever.
“You encouraged him, didn’t you?” Remus demands. “You, with your embellished stories of your goddamn Glory Days, your tales of James’ prowess! Now he’s run straight into Voldemort’s arms, thinking he needs to live up to his stupid hero’s name, to his stupid father’s! To hell with both of you!”
Sirius doesn’t say anything as Remus lunges for the dusty coat rack and yanks his scarf from the prongs, twining it halfway round his neck before he realizes that he doesn’t need it, they’ll be taking only a step out into the post-winter chill before they Disaparate to the Ministry.
Remus tears the scarf off, stretching it, no doubt, dropping it to the floor like it burns. They both stand still for the space of a beat, then Remus says, ‘We should go.”
And Sirius says, “I still love you.”
Remus says nothing. He’s thinking. Sirius is thinking too, a little about Remus’ hands and a bit about Remus’ stubble, and quite a lot about how pretty dear Dora has become and how bright her eyes get when she gazes at Remus across the antique dinner table.
Finally, Remus says, “There’s no time for this now.”
“I know.”
“Later. After we save that damn Prongslet.”
“He’s every bit James’ son, isn’t he?”
“And Lily’s.”
“Indeed.”
“Quite.”
And Remus grins, uncertainly, at him, and for a moment they’re both sixteen again and staring at each other in the dim winter light, gearing up for the contact that will forever change the War for them, for all four of them.
They go.
They don’t kiss. There are no goodbyes.
=====
And as he falls, he locks eyes with Remus for just a moment, as Harry’s screams fade into the distance, and James and Lily grab onto him and tear him away.
He goes. It’ll be all right in the end.
=====
Remus wore the same red scarf every winter in all the time he spent at Hogwarts.
It was a disgusting thing, that Scarf, bordering on beastly. By second year, it had suffered a tear and was unskilfully mended with a not-quite mastered knitting charm. By third year, it had been attacked by equal parts mustard and gravy. By fourth year, it had been scorched. By fifth year, it had been uncharitably stretched by at least a foot. By sixth year, it had been frozen solid, shattered, then the pieces magically thawed and reassembled by repentant friends and an irate owner.
By seventh year, it had been worn while Sirius was kissing its wearer for the first time.
That Sodding Scarf - practically a member of their merry band itself, and thus deserving of a proper title - did not look that much worse for wear, in all truthfulness. Over the years, Sirius had gotten extremely proficient at his cleaning and repairing spells, seeing as the sometimes horrific damage having been wrought on the Scarf usually turned out to be his fault. Honestly, he was ashamed. No Marauder should have to be so good at all those girly scrubbing and mending and darning spells. It just wasn’t Marauder-like.
Merlin knew he had done everything he could to avert the learning process, like pointing out new scarves in the colourful displays in Hogsmeade, or presenting Remus with costly scarves made of the finest imported wool and woven with the longest lasting heating charms on Christmas morning. Nothing Sirius ever did, however, seemed to dissuade Remus of his unbearable love for that one particular ghastly scarf. Thus, he found himself doomed to mastering the intricacies of knitting magic, among all that other tripe. He never could act nonchalant enough to tell Remus to sod the Sodding Scarf, not when Remus looked at him like that, like his very universe would collapse upon the loss of that monstrosity.
“Why do you love that horrible thing so much, anyway? Merlin knows you’ve got a million more there in your trunk.”
“I just like this scarf better.”
“It’s old.”
“It still works. And it’s a nice red.”
“I got you a red one. The saleswitch even told me it was the reddest damn scarf I would ever find in the wizarding world.”
“In those words?”
“Precisely those words.”
“She was just trying to make a commission. Besides, it was a gift.”
So Sirius pestered him for years and years, until the winter of 1976, when he found himself spending a few post-Christmas days at the Lupin cottage in celebration of his first holidays after his escape from the House of Black. He was staring at the framed photographs perched on the mantle as he waited for Remus to hurry and get his winter things on, and his eyes happened to fall upon the oldest picture, a slightly cracked image of a sturdily handsome man, standing against a backdrop of pines and snowdrifts, grinning and fighting to keep his footing as he balanced a very young boy on his shoulders. It was a moving sepia print, almost colourless, and very different from the one of Remus’ mum and Remus’ stepdad on their wedding day, something from a different time entirely.
Sirius smiled as he watched the child’s tiny hands grasping for purchase in the man’s woolly scarf, and knew immediately that the scarf would be red.
The End