Fic: Everything
Title: Everything
Author: emilyia
Prompt Number: 22, submitted by ceredwensirius
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Remus/Sirius
Summary: Everything had changed after the war.
Warnings: Angst
Word Count: 1980
Everything had changed.
Even if they hadn't wanted it to, everything had changed. Even if Harry didn't want to be the hero, he had been. Even if they hadn't wanted to lose the ones that they loved, they had.
Remus still wasn't sure how he was going to raise Teddy.
Sirius still wasn't sure how he was going to deal with freedom.
When a war ends, there should be happiness and celebrations. Instead, they were just left picking up the pieces of the fragmented remains of their life.
- - -
He still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, a world bled of colour and endlessly frozen having haunted his dreams. The first time, Harry had come running into his bedroom, wanting to know why his godfather was suffering. He couldn't tell Harry; he is meant to be the one who is strong, who is an adult, while Harry has been torn from adolescence to adulthood as Sirius had so many years ago. It seems like an eternity, now, since Sirius had found himself in Remus' bed in 1980, trying to keep warm through the seemingly endless cold, trying to remember that there was a life beyond the war, beyond what they had been born into. It is what Harry and Ginny are trying to forget, now, he knows... in the holidays before Ginny had returned to Hogwarts, they had barely spent an hour apart; Ron and Hermione had been a fairly permanent fixture too, but everyone was struggling to live in a world so different from what they had come to expect.
Grimmauld Place was suffocating. It technically wasn't as crowded as it had been at the height of the war, but it feels it. Everywhere Sirius turns there is someone... but it is never Remus. Remus is living in the rented nook over Scribbulus Writing Instruments in Diagon Alley, only occasionally showing his - and sometimes Teddy's - face around Grimmauld Place. Even when he does see Remus, it is nothing like what it should be. Remus' face is too lined, older than he should be, scarred by everything that has been left behind. He struggles to smile, any more, and if he does, it was never Sirius who brings it on.
Sirius can make Harry, Ginny, even Hermione smile, but not Remus.
Between the nightmares of silent darkness overwhelming him, there was Remus' smile haunting him. He closes his eyes and tries to remember what the warmth of Remus' arms around his waist felt like, but he cannot remember. The emptiness has been pressing on him too long; it is like a dementor succeeded in removing that memory, the one that would keep him going now, when everything was meant to be fixed once more.
- - -
In an almost desperate move towards normality - or what can be called normal, today, when so much of the world is lying in pieces around you - Sirius reached out to someone that he thought would understand. George, though much younger, had found himself in a similar situation to Sirius after the final battle; his twin brother gone, and, seemingly, his dreams along with them. In reaction to the suffocation, though, George had moved to living in Diagon Alley, above the joke shop which he was now the sole owner of. In all honesty, Sirius wished that he could do something like that... but it was difficult, as the owner of Grimmauld Place, to do so. It had become a symbol, now, to the second incantation of the Order of the Phoenix. He couldn't leave without it being a betrayal to the organisation which had given so much in the war.
Instead, he worked in the back room of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes - even cleared of all charges, the face of Sirius Black was not one that George could sell in his shop. It was quiet work, developing the products which George would transfer to gaudy posters and sell, with all the charm and optimism that his twin and he had always possessed. In the quiet moments, though, when George would come sit with Sirius and help work on the newest products, Sirius could see the lines in his face that no nineteen year old should possess. Once or twice, he had caught George holding something in mid air, as if holding it out to someone who wasn't there to take it.
It made Sirius realise what his life could have been like, had he not been thrown in Azkaban so many years before.
- - -
At six o clock, Sirius heard Remus' voice. It seems like months since they have spoken; the silences overwhelming their conversations when they tried to. It is almost an automatic response; Sirius moving from bed to put on a robe and get downstairs as quickly as he can manage. When he reached the kitchen, Harry is holding Teddy on his knee, tickling the boy's stomach until his hair turns bright yellow in delight.
“...be at the Smith house if you need to floo me. It's just a ” Remus said, oblivious to Sirius' presence behind him.
Harry nodded and smiled. “Morning, Sirius.”
Sirius stared at Remus as Remus turned his gaze to him, worry clouding his features. He cleared his throat, forcing a little smile.
“Good morning, Sirius.”
It is said with all the warmth that Remus would greet Snape, which cut Sirius to the core. Swallowing hard, he pressed the his hands into the pockets of his robe, clenching them into fists before he trusted himself to speak.
“Leaving Teddy with Harry for the day, are you?” he asked, unable to keep the accusing tone from his voice.
Remus looked at him steadily. “Harry has a day off. Both of us have to work.” Shaking his head, he glanced at his cracked watch, then back up at the pair. “And I'm very nearly late. Floo me if you need anything, Harry.”
As Remus' back disappeared into the lounge room once more, Harry turned, looking horrified, towards Sirius.
“I'm sorry, I didn't -”
Sirius shook his head. “He's right,” he mumbled, his eyes still fixed on whether Remus had turned the corner. “I do have work today.”
Harry didn't speak again as Sirius stepped across the room and pressed a kiss to the squirming Teddy's forehead. As Teddy's hair changed from yellow to black, matching Harry's and Sirius', Sirius retreated back up the stairs, into the silence of his bedroom until it was time to leave for Diagon Alley.
- - -
But on the night of the full moon, it was still Sirius who Remus turned to. Guilt was heavy on his shoulders, as the night that Remus hated was the only one where the world felt like it was right again. He would be there before the moon rose, helping put Teddy in bed, and trying not to acknowledge the awkward silences which hung heavy in the air between them. Remus did not like being dependent on anyone, he was proud; but not so proud that he would risk Teddy, not so proud that he could not ask for help... just so proud that he would feel terrible for asking, and would make that fact painfully obvious.
When he transforms, though, that pride is stripped away. Sirius found it disconcerting at first, seeing Moony but not-Moony; Moony with Remus' eyes, Moony with more control than Sirius ever remembered. But it is not purely Remus as a wolf; there are parts of Moony that remain. The first thing that made Sirius realise this was the whining; that was some baser instinct in the wolf, in Moony, something that Remus would never allow himself to do. Each moon, it had progressed from there; on the first Sirius had just stroked Moony's hair until he had quieted; too worried about Teddy to transform himself. The next month, he had transformed only for a few minutes to nuzzle at Moony and calm the whining that way. By the third month, Sirius was wondering whether there was something more that he should be taking from this; something that Moony was trying to tell him that Remus was determined to keep locked away.
It had been so long. Remus had moved on; Teddy was proof of that. He had loved Dora, of course he had. There would be no reason for Sirius to believe anything had changed; life hadn't moved on, really, it had stagnated at the point of May third, the day after Voldemort had been killed. The only proof that time was, indeed, passing, was the moon rising and falling, and Teddy growing each day. Even if it physically moved, though, Sirius saw nothing in Remus that would tell him that there were any further feelings there. In the end, he dismissed Moony's plaintive whines as Moony missing Padfoot, not Remus missing Sirius. The wolf was craving his pack, that was all.
That didn't explain why Moony had been silent until the full moon of May, barely a week after the final battle of Hogwarts.
It niggled at him and niggled at him and niggled at him; Sirius didn't snap, of course, since twelve years in Azkaban hadn't made him snap. But it still irritated him, like a fly buzzing in his ear that he couldn't shoo away. In the end, it was Remus, not Moony, that snapped; after the moon set in the early hours of the morning, Sirius was tugged from his barely-there slumber by the lounge bowing under extra weight. Remus was pressing himself close to Sirius under the blankets, the still-familiar smell and touch enough to have awoken Sirius even from a heavy sleep. Frowning, Sirius shifted to look at Remus. He looked exhausted, worse than Sirius who had woken with every noise through the night, terrified something would happen to Teddy.
“I, I just...” Remus muttered when he felt Sirius move, unwilling to shift from the warmth and comfort Sirius' body had already provided.
“I can't do one night a month,” Sirius cut him off, keeping some distance between them as best he could on the narrow lounge. “Not with you, Remus.”
Remus looked torn, his blue eyes wide and bloodshot. Biting at his lip, he dropped his head to avoid Sirius' gaze, afraid there would be nothing he wanted to see in there.
“...I don't want to do wrong by Dora,” he said finally, every word seeming a struggle for his mouth to form. “And Teddy, I mean...” He trailed off and risked a look at Sirius, his lip reddened and swollen from worrying at it.
“Moving on isn't doing wrong by Dora,” Sirius said, each word carefully considered before he spoke. “She loved you, but... I don't want to force those thoughts on you. And I love Teddy.”
Remus nodded. There was a beat of silence before he closed the gap which Sirius had so carefully constructed between them and pressed their lips together; just lightly, just innocently, almost exactly like he had the first time in sixth year. And in that moment, Sirius knew - even with everything so broken, even with everything feeling wrong, if there was one thing that felt right in the world, that was worth moving forward for. And that was worth trying to pick up the pieces and fit them together, even if it hurt to do so.
If the war was going to live on in their heads, the least that Sirius could do was live with Remus through it. He had been the one to first convince him that there was a life beyond the war, beyond the hell which had become normality; maybe they could do the same for each other, this time, hand in hand with a little boy with turquoise hair.
Author: emilyia
Prompt Number: 22, submitted by ceredwensirius
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Remus/Sirius
Summary: Everything had changed after the war.
Warnings: Angst
Word Count: 1980
Everything had changed.
Even if they hadn't wanted it to, everything had changed. Even if Harry didn't want to be the hero, he had been. Even if they hadn't wanted to lose the ones that they loved, they had.
Remus still wasn't sure how he was going to raise Teddy.
Sirius still wasn't sure how he was going to deal with freedom.
When a war ends, there should be happiness and celebrations. Instead, they were just left picking up the pieces of the fragmented remains of their life.
- - -
He still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, a world bled of colour and endlessly frozen having haunted his dreams. The first time, Harry had come running into his bedroom, wanting to know why his godfather was suffering. He couldn't tell Harry; he is meant to be the one who is strong, who is an adult, while Harry has been torn from adolescence to adulthood as Sirius had so many years ago. It seems like an eternity, now, since Sirius had found himself in Remus' bed in 1980, trying to keep warm through the seemingly endless cold, trying to remember that there was a life beyond the war, beyond what they had been born into. It is what Harry and Ginny are trying to forget, now, he knows... in the holidays before Ginny had returned to Hogwarts, they had barely spent an hour apart; Ron and Hermione had been a fairly permanent fixture too, but everyone was struggling to live in a world so different from what they had come to expect.
Grimmauld Place was suffocating. It technically wasn't as crowded as it had been at the height of the war, but it feels it. Everywhere Sirius turns there is someone... but it is never Remus. Remus is living in the rented nook over Scribbulus Writing Instruments in Diagon Alley, only occasionally showing his - and sometimes Teddy's - face around Grimmauld Place. Even when he does see Remus, it is nothing like what it should be. Remus' face is too lined, older than he should be, scarred by everything that has been left behind. He struggles to smile, any more, and if he does, it was never Sirius who brings it on.
Sirius can make Harry, Ginny, even Hermione smile, but not Remus.
Between the nightmares of silent darkness overwhelming him, there was Remus' smile haunting him. He closes his eyes and tries to remember what the warmth of Remus' arms around his waist felt like, but he cannot remember. The emptiness has been pressing on him too long; it is like a dementor succeeded in removing that memory, the one that would keep him going now, when everything was meant to be fixed once more.
- - -
In an almost desperate move towards normality - or what can be called normal, today, when so much of the world is lying in pieces around you - Sirius reached out to someone that he thought would understand. George, though much younger, had found himself in a similar situation to Sirius after the final battle; his twin brother gone, and, seemingly, his dreams along with them. In reaction to the suffocation, though, George had moved to living in Diagon Alley, above the joke shop which he was now the sole owner of. In all honesty, Sirius wished that he could do something like that... but it was difficult, as the owner of Grimmauld Place, to do so. It had become a symbol, now, to the second incantation of the Order of the Phoenix. He couldn't leave without it being a betrayal to the organisation which had given so much in the war.
Instead, he worked in the back room of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes - even cleared of all charges, the face of Sirius Black was not one that George could sell in his shop. It was quiet work, developing the products which George would transfer to gaudy posters and sell, with all the charm and optimism that his twin and he had always possessed. In the quiet moments, though, when George would come sit with Sirius and help work on the newest products, Sirius could see the lines in his face that no nineteen year old should possess. Once or twice, he had caught George holding something in mid air, as if holding it out to someone who wasn't there to take it.
It made Sirius realise what his life could have been like, had he not been thrown in Azkaban so many years before.
- - -
At six o clock, Sirius heard Remus' voice. It seems like months since they have spoken; the silences overwhelming their conversations when they tried to. It is almost an automatic response; Sirius moving from bed to put on a robe and get downstairs as quickly as he can manage. When he reached the kitchen, Harry is holding Teddy on his knee, tickling the boy's stomach until his hair turns bright yellow in delight.
“...be at the Smith house if you need to floo me. It's just a ” Remus said, oblivious to Sirius' presence behind him.
Harry nodded and smiled. “Morning, Sirius.”
Sirius stared at Remus as Remus turned his gaze to him, worry clouding his features. He cleared his throat, forcing a little smile.
“Good morning, Sirius.”
It is said with all the warmth that Remus would greet Snape, which cut Sirius to the core. Swallowing hard, he pressed the his hands into the pockets of his robe, clenching them into fists before he trusted himself to speak.
“Leaving Teddy with Harry for the day, are you?” he asked, unable to keep the accusing tone from his voice.
Remus looked at him steadily. “Harry has a day off. Both of us have to work.” Shaking his head, he glanced at his cracked watch, then back up at the pair. “And I'm very nearly late. Floo me if you need anything, Harry.”
As Remus' back disappeared into the lounge room once more, Harry turned, looking horrified, towards Sirius.
“I'm sorry, I didn't -”
Sirius shook his head. “He's right,” he mumbled, his eyes still fixed on whether Remus had turned the corner. “I do have work today.”
Harry didn't speak again as Sirius stepped across the room and pressed a kiss to the squirming Teddy's forehead. As Teddy's hair changed from yellow to black, matching Harry's and Sirius', Sirius retreated back up the stairs, into the silence of his bedroom until it was time to leave for Diagon Alley.
- - -
But on the night of the full moon, it was still Sirius who Remus turned to. Guilt was heavy on his shoulders, as the night that Remus hated was the only one where the world felt like it was right again. He would be there before the moon rose, helping put Teddy in bed, and trying not to acknowledge the awkward silences which hung heavy in the air between them. Remus did not like being dependent on anyone, he was proud; but not so proud that he would risk Teddy, not so proud that he could not ask for help... just so proud that he would feel terrible for asking, and would make that fact painfully obvious.
When he transforms, though, that pride is stripped away. Sirius found it disconcerting at first, seeing Moony but not-Moony; Moony with Remus' eyes, Moony with more control than Sirius ever remembered. But it is not purely Remus as a wolf; there are parts of Moony that remain. The first thing that made Sirius realise this was the whining; that was some baser instinct in the wolf, in Moony, something that Remus would never allow himself to do. Each moon, it had progressed from there; on the first Sirius had just stroked Moony's hair until he had quieted; too worried about Teddy to transform himself. The next month, he had transformed only for a few minutes to nuzzle at Moony and calm the whining that way. By the third month, Sirius was wondering whether there was something more that he should be taking from this; something that Moony was trying to tell him that Remus was determined to keep locked away.
It had been so long. Remus had moved on; Teddy was proof of that. He had loved Dora, of course he had. There would be no reason for Sirius to believe anything had changed; life hadn't moved on, really, it had stagnated at the point of May third, the day after Voldemort had been killed. The only proof that time was, indeed, passing, was the moon rising and falling, and Teddy growing each day. Even if it physically moved, though, Sirius saw nothing in Remus that would tell him that there were any further feelings there. In the end, he dismissed Moony's plaintive whines as Moony missing Padfoot, not Remus missing Sirius. The wolf was craving his pack, that was all.
That didn't explain why Moony had been silent until the full moon of May, barely a week after the final battle of Hogwarts.
It niggled at him and niggled at him and niggled at him; Sirius didn't snap, of course, since twelve years in Azkaban hadn't made him snap. But it still irritated him, like a fly buzzing in his ear that he couldn't shoo away. In the end, it was Remus, not Moony, that snapped; after the moon set in the early hours of the morning, Sirius was tugged from his barely-there slumber by the lounge bowing under extra weight. Remus was pressing himself close to Sirius under the blankets, the still-familiar smell and touch enough to have awoken Sirius even from a heavy sleep. Frowning, Sirius shifted to look at Remus. He looked exhausted, worse than Sirius who had woken with every noise through the night, terrified something would happen to Teddy.
“I, I just...” Remus muttered when he felt Sirius move, unwilling to shift from the warmth and comfort Sirius' body had already provided.
“I can't do one night a month,” Sirius cut him off, keeping some distance between them as best he could on the narrow lounge. “Not with you, Remus.”
Remus looked torn, his blue eyes wide and bloodshot. Biting at his lip, he dropped his head to avoid Sirius' gaze, afraid there would be nothing he wanted to see in there.
“...I don't want to do wrong by Dora,” he said finally, every word seeming a struggle for his mouth to form. “And Teddy, I mean...” He trailed off and risked a look at Sirius, his lip reddened and swollen from worrying at it.
“Moving on isn't doing wrong by Dora,” Sirius said, each word carefully considered before he spoke. “She loved you, but... I don't want to force those thoughts on you. And I love Teddy.”
Remus nodded. There was a beat of silence before he closed the gap which Sirius had so carefully constructed between them and pressed their lips together; just lightly, just innocently, almost exactly like he had the first time in sixth year. And in that moment, Sirius knew - even with everything so broken, even with everything feeling wrong, if there was one thing that felt right in the world, that was worth moving forward for. And that was worth trying to pick up the pieces and fit them together, even if it hurt to do so.
If the war was going to live on in their heads, the least that Sirius could do was live with Remus through it. He had been the one to first convince him that there was a life beyond the war, beyond the hell which had become normality; maybe they could do the same for each other, this time, hand in hand with a little boy with turquoise hair.