Fic: Bruises (Harry Potter -- Remus/Sirius) PG
Title: Bruises
Author: kingzgurl
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Word Count: 3,200
Rating: PG
Timeline: Non-Magical AU-Marauder’s Era
Summary: For the Mission Insane prompt: Sick. Remus hates being treated differently because he’s sick, until he finds friends who see him for who he is and not his disease. (Not gonna lie, the boys are rather OOC here)
***
Remus Lupin was seven years old the first time he fell out of the crab apple tree in the back yard and had a bruise that lasted longer than a month. When he was eight years old and was pushed down during a foot race at school, the bruises on his elbows and the nosebleed that would not stop scared him for the first time.
He could see it in his mother’s eyes as they sat in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. He was still holding a kitchen towel to his nose-the second one since he fell-and it was nearly soaked through. Even at eight years old Remus knew something was wrong, and the fear in his mother’s eyes only confirmed his suspicions. His father sat stoically next to his mother, holding her hand a little too tightly to be comforting.
The Sunday comics beckon him from the table in front of him, but Remus didn’t dare remove the towel from under his nose to reach for them. He is saved from his temptation by the door opening and a smiling nurse announcing “The doctor will see you now Remus.”
It’s nearly an hour before the doctor stops poking and prodding at him. His arm is sore from where they took blood and he doesn’t have to look to know it’s already bruising in the crook of his arm. He had been given something to stop the bleeding, but it makes him tired and he tries desperately to listen when the doctor takes his parents outside to talk to them.
He only hears snatches of conversation that doesn’t make sense to him as he falls into a restless sleep.
“His white blood cells are low.”
“Six chances in ten…”
“I think we caught it in time.”
He dreams of running, of playing, and flopping out in the grass with his best friends on a hot summer day, but when he wakes up in a hospital bed, those dreams couldn’t seem further away.
His friends visit sometimes. They tell him about who won the races at school that day and what they’re learning about in history and math. They complain about how hard their eights times tables are and how they wish he could come back to school, but as the weeks turn into months, they don’t come as often, and Remus sometimes thinks it’s a good thing.
When he wakes up on the morning of his ninth birthday, there are balloons and presents on his tray table and a clump of soft brown hair on his pillow. His father is snoring loudly on the sofa in his room and it’s still early enough that his mother had stepped out for coffee or a shower before she thought Remus would wake. Holding the hair in his small hand, he buries his face into his pillow and begins to cry.
Ten months later, his doctor announces that he is all better and can go back to school in the fall, but Remus knows it won’t be the same. All the kids know by now… he’s Remus Lupin, the boy who is going to die. Maybe not now, if his doctor is right, but someday the disease will kill him.
When he returns to school he won’t be allowed to play at recess or participate in physical education class. He friends won’t want him to play with them after school because his mother will want to be there to make sure he doesn’t “over-do it”. And at school, the kids will avoid him as if he is contagious and the teachers treat him like a china doll that might break at any moment.
He’s tired and upset when he gets home one day that spring, after being forced yet again to stay in the library while his class gets to play dodgeball, and he doesn’t immediately notice the old man sitting in the living room with his parents until he’s thrown down his paper-light rucksack in the hall. He can’t carry textbooks like the other kids, after all. He might get hurt!
“Remus, could you come in here?” His dad asks, not commenting on the thrown bag because he doesn’t scold Remus anymore. At ten years old he never thought he would want his father to be cross with him, but he hated the way his parents treated him differently now.
Remus drags his feet but goes anyway and sits on the chair across from his parents (not too quickly, because his mother will tell him to be careful if he flops down the way he wants to).
“This is Headmaster Dumbledore,” his mother introduces him. “He’s here from Hogwarts Academy. Apparently one of your teachers recommended you go there next year.”
‘Oh great.’ Remus thinks to himself, ‘Another school for kids who are dying and can’t go to regular school.’ He wants to scream at his parents, ‘I’m fine! Why won’t you understand I want to play at recess and have friends again!’
“Do you know what Hogwarts Academy is Remus?” Dumbledore asks kindly.
Remus shrugs and doesn’t look up from his hands in his lap. It doesn’t matter anyway. His parents will send him where they want to. Dumbledore’s next words catch his attention though.
The older man tells Remus about a regular school where kids go to learn and make friends. It is a boarding school, so the kids live at the school, but the kids are just regular kids. They aren’t sick or dying or unable to play with their friends because they might bleed.
Remus tries not to get his hopes up, because it sounds too good to be true. He could start over. No one would need to know about the bruises. He could be normal again. He looks at his parents, knowing his mother is going to say it’s too dangerous or his father is going to say they cannot afford it, but he can hope.
“We have a fully trained nurse who is always on call,” Dumbledore continues. “And I am here to offer a full scholarship if you would like to go to Hogwarts young man.”
When neither of his parents say anything, Remus turns to the headmaster and nods. “I would like that very much sir.”
Dumbledore’s eyes sparkle as he smiles and pats Remus on the shoulder. “Very good. Well then,” he stands up abruptly, “I shall see you on September first young man. Thank you very much for the tea Mrs Lupin, it was delightful.”
Remus is in such a daze over the prospect of going away to school in just a few short months that he doesn’t notice the man leaving or his parents discussing things. The next day at school he doesn’t even care he cannot play dodgeball because he’s reading up on Hogwarts and finding himself daydreaming for the first time in months about running and playing and flopping down in the grass with new friends.
***
Remus’ parents don’t stop him from getting on the train on September first. He can see their worried faces from the compartment window, but he smiles at them happily and waves goodbye as the platform disappears and he realizes for the first time that this is really happening.
He is curled up on the seat with a book when a tangle of black hair and long limbs falls through his compartment door. A short blond boy stands in the doorway and cheers, which causes Remus to realize the tangle on the floor was actually two boys about his own age wrestling.
“Come on James! Get him in a headlock!” The blond boy shouts as the boy with messy black hair (who Remus assumes is James) tries to get his arm around the other boy’s neck, only to get pinned hard to the compartment floor by a boy with long, dark hair and flushed cheeks from laughing so hard.
“Oi Pete! I thought you said the compartment was empty?” The long-haired boy shouts at the blond boy and tips his head toward Remus. “Obviously it isn’t.”
“Oh,” Remus moves his feet off the seat. “There is plenty of space if you want to sit here… or I can go somewhere else…”
Peter shrugs from the doorway. “Whoops.”
“Don’t be dumb, you were here first.” The long-haired boy stands up and offers Remus his hand. “Sirius Black. Sorry about these two. They’re not fit to take in public.”
“Remus Lupin,” Remus shakes his hand and smiles shyly at Sirius.
“Oi, you shouldn’t be talking Padfoot!” James struggles to sit up, rubbing the back of his head from where it had hit the floor of the compartment. “I’m James and that’s Peter.”
Remus nods, his assumptions having been correct. “This is my first year at Hogwarts… I don’t know anyone.”
“Ours too,” Sirius grins and takes the seat next to Remus. “Just met these two nutters in the hall.”
“Watch it Black,” James warns. “We’ll make you a nutter too.”
Sirius shakes his head and, for the first time since he fell out of that crab apple tree, Remus laughs in genuine amusement.
***
Hogwarts is everything Remus had imagined it would be and more. He has three best friends, he gets to run, play, and flop in the grass without his parents worrying, and the pranks they play on the other kids are legendary. Remus had never been happier, until the day after they’d been exploring an unused classroom and Remus finds a bruise in the middle of his back from where he’d bumped into a stack of desks.
Two weeks later the bruise hadn’t faded and a few more had shown up. Reluctantly he heads up to the infirmary after giving his friends the excuse he’d forgotten something in the classroom. He was no stranger to Madame Pomfrey or the infirmary, none of his friends were, but this is the first time he’s been nervous to be here.
He’s fifteen, but he feels like he’s eight years old all over again as he waits for her to run some tests. When she takes blood and the bruise begins to form almost immediately Remus doesn’t need to wait for her to tell him what he’d already suspected. That bruise is enough of a diagnosis.
After a meeting with the headmaster, Remus writes a letter to his parents. He told them it was back, but that he would be staying at school this time. There was an oncologist coming to see him in the morning and he’d already had his records sent over for the doctor to read.
The doctor confirms what they’d already known and begins the same form of treatment that had worked seven years before, with the hope they had caught it early enough this time.
His friends were too observant for their own good sometimes and noticed his absences that were becoming more and more frequent and lasting longer. They’d ask him about it, but he just told them his mother was ill and he had been busy visiting her and keeping up with school work. They bought his excuses for a while, but it soon became obvious they didn’t believe him as he lost weight and his skin became too pale to be healthy, but like the good friends they were, they never pushed him for the truth. He would confide in them in his own time.
Two months into treatment, Remus miraculously found the energy to climb the stairs to his dormitory one evening. James and Peter were mysteriously absent, but Sirius was sleeping in Remus’ bed for some strange reason.
“Padfoot?” Remus sounds tired when he sits on his bed. “Budge over. You’re in my bed.”
Sirius opens his eyes and moves over, but doesn’t get out of the bed. “I know. Was keeping it warm.”
Remus shivers. He hadn’t realized how cold he was until he pushed his jeans off and crawled beneath the blankets. “Thanks.”
Sirius waits until Remus gets settled before he moves in closer and wraps his arms gently around the thin boy. “How have you been?” Sirius asks quietly, stroking Remus’ back lightly.
“Tired,” Remus whispers, adding for the first time, “Scared.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Remus shakes his head almost unnoticeably. He notes that for the first time Sirius had said ‘I’ rather than ‘we.’ “Just stay here tonight?” He knows it isn’t normal for a fifteen year old boy to ask another boy to sleep in his bed, but Sirius is warm and the soft breath in his thinning hair comforts him for some reason.
“Can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
Remus sleeps soundly that night for the first time since he had gotten sick.
After that night, Remus’ health takes a downward turn and he stops going to class and moves into the infirmary. A corner of the room has been curtained off for him and his oncologist is there every day. Madame Pomfrey fusses over him, but it’s different this time because Sirius has become a permanent fixture in his bed, only leaving for classes and a quick shower in the morning.
James and Peter are there every day, sitting in the chairs next to the bed while Remus leans against Sirius, planning new pranks and working on homework. Remus’ parents show up after another couple weeks because his doctor has told them they should visit to discuss Remus’ options.
There is a new treatment this time that hadn’t been available before. It’s more aggressive, but it has a high success rate. His parents rent a flat near Hogwarts when he begins the treatment and he has to move to the hospital in town.
Every night Sirius is there, holding him and keeping him warm, and his parents go back to the flat to sleep. His parents don’t mention Sirius’ place in Remus’ life and nor do any of the boys discuss it, but it’s a comfort for Remus when nothing else is. Winter fades into spring before the treatment starts to work. Every morning Remus wakes up with strands of brown hair on Sirius’ shoulder and the pillow, but he doesn’t cry anymore. When he has the strength to sit up and eat again, he spends every evening stroking Sirius’ long hair. He doesn’t talk and neither does Sirius, but even as tears gather in his eyes, they don’t fall.
Sirius and his friends stay with him through it all. They visit every day, and a few weeks before the end of their seventh year, Remus is allowed to move back into the dormitory at school. The end of term ball is coming up and Remus doesn’t have a date, but it doesn’t matter because no one is going to want to go with a sick boy that has no hair.
The night of the dance, Remus goes to visit his parents in town. Sitting with his mother on the couch, he cries softly. He hasn’t cried in her arms since he was young, but even if he’s gone into remission, there is no guarantee it won’t come back again a third time. She strokes his back and he is reminded of the beautiful boy with the long black hair who has been with him every step of the way.
Before everything had happened that year they had talked about moving in together after school. He wouldn’t be surprised if Sirius didn’t want to do that anymore, and he quietly tells himself that maybe it would be for the best if they parted when school ended, because somewhere along the way he had fallen in love with his best friend. Sirius could give him comfort no one else could and had been there with him through the lowest days. He knew when to try to cheer Remus up and when to just stay quiet and hold him. He never pushed for more than Remus would give him, and was more than happy to take anything Remus offered.
There’s a knock on the door that startles all of the Lupins in the quiet living room, but it’s Remus’ father who finally answers the door.
When he steps back to let the visitor in, he immediately looks at Remus with tears in his eyes.
Sirius steps through the door in a handsome suit with a garment bag draped over one arm.
Remus pulls away from his mother to stand and cross the room in disbelief. A single tear falls down his cheek as he touches the smooth skin on Sirius’ head where his perfect hair had been just that afternoon. He doesn’t need to turn around to know that his mother his crying, but he looks Sirius in the eyes, asking him a silent question. ‘Why would you do this?’
“Will you go to the dance with me?” Sirius asks softly, not breaking eye contact. “I’m sorry it’s so late, I just got caught up the last few weeks with the most amazing man I’ve ever met and he disappeared before I could ask him today.”
Remus blushes and nods, still stroking Sirius’ head when he whispers back, “Sorry… I didn’t think you were going to ask me.”
“There was never anyone else I wanted to take, Remus.”
“Your hair…” Remus whispers, unable to understand why he would cut off the hair he was so vain about.
“It’ll grow back,” Sirius smiles and kisses his cheek before handing him the bag from his arms. “You need to go change, we’re already late.”
With a huge smile and flaming red ears, Remus takes the garment bag and disappears down the hall to change. He isn’t sure how he got so lucky to have Sirius in his life, but he knows that his life would be much darker without the brightness of that smile. It doesn’t take him long to change, but when he returns to the living room he realizes his mother is still crying and hugging Sirius.
Remus’ suit fits him perfectly, something that had surprised him when he dressed. He’d lost a lot of weight and none of his clothes had fit him properly in months, so Remus had no idea where Sirius got his measurements. He made a mental note to ask him later and finally stepped in to pry his mother off his friend.
“Mum, you need to let him go… we’re late already.”
“Oh Remus, you look so handsome!” His mother’s tears began anew and soaked the shoulder of his suit when she hugged him.
His father, with tears in his own eyes, gently pulled his mother away, holding her as they said their goodbyes. Seeing his parents so happy and touched, it was a sight Remus likes to think he’ll never forget.
That night, in fact, was one he would never forget. With Sirius’ hand in his, Remus walks into the dance with his head held high and his friends flanking them. There are some stares and quiet whispers, but as he dances with his best friend he realizes that he has no reason to be scared. If it comes back again, he’ll face it as he did this time, with Sirius at his side to lean on.
Author: kingzgurl
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Word Count: 3,200
Rating: PG
Timeline: Non-Magical AU-Marauder’s Era
Summary: For the Mission Insane prompt: Sick. Remus hates being treated differently because he’s sick, until he finds friends who see him for who he is and not his disease. (Not gonna lie, the boys are rather OOC here)
***
Remus Lupin was seven years old the first time he fell out of the crab apple tree in the back yard and had a bruise that lasted longer than a month. When he was eight years old and was pushed down during a foot race at school, the bruises on his elbows and the nosebleed that would not stop scared him for the first time.
He could see it in his mother’s eyes as they sat in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. He was still holding a kitchen towel to his nose-the second one since he fell-and it was nearly soaked through. Even at eight years old Remus knew something was wrong, and the fear in his mother’s eyes only confirmed his suspicions. His father sat stoically next to his mother, holding her hand a little too tightly to be comforting.
The Sunday comics beckon him from the table in front of him, but Remus didn’t dare remove the towel from under his nose to reach for them. He is saved from his temptation by the door opening and a smiling nurse announcing “The doctor will see you now Remus.”
It’s nearly an hour before the doctor stops poking and prodding at him. His arm is sore from where they took blood and he doesn’t have to look to know it’s already bruising in the crook of his arm. He had been given something to stop the bleeding, but it makes him tired and he tries desperately to listen when the doctor takes his parents outside to talk to them.
He only hears snatches of conversation that doesn’t make sense to him as he falls into a restless sleep.
“His white blood cells are low.”
“Six chances in ten…”
“I think we caught it in time.”
He dreams of running, of playing, and flopping out in the grass with his best friends on a hot summer day, but when he wakes up in a hospital bed, those dreams couldn’t seem further away.
His friends visit sometimes. They tell him about who won the races at school that day and what they’re learning about in history and math. They complain about how hard their eights times tables are and how they wish he could come back to school, but as the weeks turn into months, they don’t come as often, and Remus sometimes thinks it’s a good thing.
When he wakes up on the morning of his ninth birthday, there are balloons and presents on his tray table and a clump of soft brown hair on his pillow. His father is snoring loudly on the sofa in his room and it’s still early enough that his mother had stepped out for coffee or a shower before she thought Remus would wake. Holding the hair in his small hand, he buries his face into his pillow and begins to cry.
Ten months later, his doctor announces that he is all better and can go back to school in the fall, but Remus knows it won’t be the same. All the kids know by now… he’s Remus Lupin, the boy who is going to die. Maybe not now, if his doctor is right, but someday the disease will kill him.
When he returns to school he won’t be allowed to play at recess or participate in physical education class. He friends won’t want him to play with them after school because his mother will want to be there to make sure he doesn’t “over-do it”. And at school, the kids will avoid him as if he is contagious and the teachers treat him like a china doll that might break at any moment.
He’s tired and upset when he gets home one day that spring, after being forced yet again to stay in the library while his class gets to play dodgeball, and he doesn’t immediately notice the old man sitting in the living room with his parents until he’s thrown down his paper-light rucksack in the hall. He can’t carry textbooks like the other kids, after all. He might get hurt!
“Remus, could you come in here?” His dad asks, not commenting on the thrown bag because he doesn’t scold Remus anymore. At ten years old he never thought he would want his father to be cross with him, but he hated the way his parents treated him differently now.
Remus drags his feet but goes anyway and sits on the chair across from his parents (not too quickly, because his mother will tell him to be careful if he flops down the way he wants to).
“This is Headmaster Dumbledore,” his mother introduces him. “He’s here from Hogwarts Academy. Apparently one of your teachers recommended you go there next year.”
‘Oh great.’ Remus thinks to himself, ‘Another school for kids who are dying and can’t go to regular school.’ He wants to scream at his parents, ‘I’m fine! Why won’t you understand I want to play at recess and have friends again!’
“Do you know what Hogwarts Academy is Remus?” Dumbledore asks kindly.
Remus shrugs and doesn’t look up from his hands in his lap. It doesn’t matter anyway. His parents will send him where they want to. Dumbledore’s next words catch his attention though.
The older man tells Remus about a regular school where kids go to learn and make friends. It is a boarding school, so the kids live at the school, but the kids are just regular kids. They aren’t sick or dying or unable to play with their friends because they might bleed.
Remus tries not to get his hopes up, because it sounds too good to be true. He could start over. No one would need to know about the bruises. He could be normal again. He looks at his parents, knowing his mother is going to say it’s too dangerous or his father is going to say they cannot afford it, but he can hope.
“We have a fully trained nurse who is always on call,” Dumbledore continues. “And I am here to offer a full scholarship if you would like to go to Hogwarts young man.”
When neither of his parents say anything, Remus turns to the headmaster and nods. “I would like that very much sir.”
Dumbledore’s eyes sparkle as he smiles and pats Remus on the shoulder. “Very good. Well then,” he stands up abruptly, “I shall see you on September first young man. Thank you very much for the tea Mrs Lupin, it was delightful.”
Remus is in such a daze over the prospect of going away to school in just a few short months that he doesn’t notice the man leaving or his parents discussing things. The next day at school he doesn’t even care he cannot play dodgeball because he’s reading up on Hogwarts and finding himself daydreaming for the first time in months about running and playing and flopping down in the grass with new friends.
***
Remus’ parents don’t stop him from getting on the train on September first. He can see their worried faces from the compartment window, but he smiles at them happily and waves goodbye as the platform disappears and he realizes for the first time that this is really happening.
He is curled up on the seat with a book when a tangle of black hair and long limbs falls through his compartment door. A short blond boy stands in the doorway and cheers, which causes Remus to realize the tangle on the floor was actually two boys about his own age wrestling.
“Come on James! Get him in a headlock!” The blond boy shouts as the boy with messy black hair (who Remus assumes is James) tries to get his arm around the other boy’s neck, only to get pinned hard to the compartment floor by a boy with long, dark hair and flushed cheeks from laughing so hard.
“Oi Pete! I thought you said the compartment was empty?” The long-haired boy shouts at the blond boy and tips his head toward Remus. “Obviously it isn’t.”
“Oh,” Remus moves his feet off the seat. “There is plenty of space if you want to sit here… or I can go somewhere else…”
Peter shrugs from the doorway. “Whoops.”
“Don’t be dumb, you were here first.” The long-haired boy stands up and offers Remus his hand. “Sirius Black. Sorry about these two. They’re not fit to take in public.”
“Remus Lupin,” Remus shakes his hand and smiles shyly at Sirius.
“Oi, you shouldn’t be talking Padfoot!” James struggles to sit up, rubbing the back of his head from where it had hit the floor of the compartment. “I’m James and that’s Peter.”
Remus nods, his assumptions having been correct. “This is my first year at Hogwarts… I don’t know anyone.”
“Ours too,” Sirius grins and takes the seat next to Remus. “Just met these two nutters in the hall.”
“Watch it Black,” James warns. “We’ll make you a nutter too.”
Sirius shakes his head and, for the first time since he fell out of that crab apple tree, Remus laughs in genuine amusement.
***
Hogwarts is everything Remus had imagined it would be and more. He has three best friends, he gets to run, play, and flop in the grass without his parents worrying, and the pranks they play on the other kids are legendary. Remus had never been happier, until the day after they’d been exploring an unused classroom and Remus finds a bruise in the middle of his back from where he’d bumped into a stack of desks.
Two weeks later the bruise hadn’t faded and a few more had shown up. Reluctantly he heads up to the infirmary after giving his friends the excuse he’d forgotten something in the classroom. He was no stranger to Madame Pomfrey or the infirmary, none of his friends were, but this is the first time he’s been nervous to be here.
He’s fifteen, but he feels like he’s eight years old all over again as he waits for her to run some tests. When she takes blood and the bruise begins to form almost immediately Remus doesn’t need to wait for her to tell him what he’d already suspected. That bruise is enough of a diagnosis.
After a meeting with the headmaster, Remus writes a letter to his parents. He told them it was back, but that he would be staying at school this time. There was an oncologist coming to see him in the morning and he’d already had his records sent over for the doctor to read.
The doctor confirms what they’d already known and begins the same form of treatment that had worked seven years before, with the hope they had caught it early enough this time.
His friends were too observant for their own good sometimes and noticed his absences that were becoming more and more frequent and lasting longer. They’d ask him about it, but he just told them his mother was ill and he had been busy visiting her and keeping up with school work. They bought his excuses for a while, but it soon became obvious they didn’t believe him as he lost weight and his skin became too pale to be healthy, but like the good friends they were, they never pushed him for the truth. He would confide in them in his own time.
Two months into treatment, Remus miraculously found the energy to climb the stairs to his dormitory one evening. James and Peter were mysteriously absent, but Sirius was sleeping in Remus’ bed for some strange reason.
“Padfoot?” Remus sounds tired when he sits on his bed. “Budge over. You’re in my bed.”
Sirius opens his eyes and moves over, but doesn’t get out of the bed. “I know. Was keeping it warm.”
Remus shivers. He hadn’t realized how cold he was until he pushed his jeans off and crawled beneath the blankets. “Thanks.”
Sirius waits until Remus gets settled before he moves in closer and wraps his arms gently around the thin boy. “How have you been?” Sirius asks quietly, stroking Remus’ back lightly.
“Tired,” Remus whispers, adding for the first time, “Scared.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Remus shakes his head almost unnoticeably. He notes that for the first time Sirius had said ‘I’ rather than ‘we.’ “Just stay here tonight?” He knows it isn’t normal for a fifteen year old boy to ask another boy to sleep in his bed, but Sirius is warm and the soft breath in his thinning hair comforts him for some reason.
“Can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
Remus sleeps soundly that night for the first time since he had gotten sick.
After that night, Remus’ health takes a downward turn and he stops going to class and moves into the infirmary. A corner of the room has been curtained off for him and his oncologist is there every day. Madame Pomfrey fusses over him, but it’s different this time because Sirius has become a permanent fixture in his bed, only leaving for classes and a quick shower in the morning.
James and Peter are there every day, sitting in the chairs next to the bed while Remus leans against Sirius, planning new pranks and working on homework. Remus’ parents show up after another couple weeks because his doctor has told them they should visit to discuss Remus’ options.
There is a new treatment this time that hadn’t been available before. It’s more aggressive, but it has a high success rate. His parents rent a flat near Hogwarts when he begins the treatment and he has to move to the hospital in town.
Every night Sirius is there, holding him and keeping him warm, and his parents go back to the flat to sleep. His parents don’t mention Sirius’ place in Remus’ life and nor do any of the boys discuss it, but it’s a comfort for Remus when nothing else is. Winter fades into spring before the treatment starts to work. Every morning Remus wakes up with strands of brown hair on Sirius’ shoulder and the pillow, but he doesn’t cry anymore. When he has the strength to sit up and eat again, he spends every evening stroking Sirius’ long hair. He doesn’t talk and neither does Sirius, but even as tears gather in his eyes, they don’t fall.
Sirius and his friends stay with him through it all. They visit every day, and a few weeks before the end of their seventh year, Remus is allowed to move back into the dormitory at school. The end of term ball is coming up and Remus doesn’t have a date, but it doesn’t matter because no one is going to want to go with a sick boy that has no hair.
The night of the dance, Remus goes to visit his parents in town. Sitting with his mother on the couch, he cries softly. He hasn’t cried in her arms since he was young, but even if he’s gone into remission, there is no guarantee it won’t come back again a third time. She strokes his back and he is reminded of the beautiful boy with the long black hair who has been with him every step of the way.
Before everything had happened that year they had talked about moving in together after school. He wouldn’t be surprised if Sirius didn’t want to do that anymore, and he quietly tells himself that maybe it would be for the best if they parted when school ended, because somewhere along the way he had fallen in love with his best friend. Sirius could give him comfort no one else could and had been there with him through the lowest days. He knew when to try to cheer Remus up and when to just stay quiet and hold him. He never pushed for more than Remus would give him, and was more than happy to take anything Remus offered.
There’s a knock on the door that startles all of the Lupins in the quiet living room, but it’s Remus’ father who finally answers the door.
When he steps back to let the visitor in, he immediately looks at Remus with tears in his eyes.
Sirius steps through the door in a handsome suit with a garment bag draped over one arm.
Remus pulls away from his mother to stand and cross the room in disbelief. A single tear falls down his cheek as he touches the smooth skin on Sirius’ head where his perfect hair had been just that afternoon. He doesn’t need to turn around to know that his mother his crying, but he looks Sirius in the eyes, asking him a silent question. ‘Why would you do this?’
“Will you go to the dance with me?” Sirius asks softly, not breaking eye contact. “I’m sorry it’s so late, I just got caught up the last few weeks with the most amazing man I’ve ever met and he disappeared before I could ask him today.”
Remus blushes and nods, still stroking Sirius’ head when he whispers back, “Sorry… I didn’t think you were going to ask me.”
“There was never anyone else I wanted to take, Remus.”
“Your hair…” Remus whispers, unable to understand why he would cut off the hair he was so vain about.
“It’ll grow back,” Sirius smiles and kisses his cheek before handing him the bag from his arms. “You need to go change, we’re already late.”
With a huge smile and flaming red ears, Remus takes the garment bag and disappears down the hall to change. He isn’t sure how he got so lucky to have Sirius in his life, but he knows that his life would be much darker without the brightness of that smile. It doesn’t take him long to change, but when he returns to the living room he realizes his mother is still crying and hugging Sirius.
Remus’ suit fits him perfectly, something that had surprised him when he dressed. He’d lost a lot of weight and none of his clothes had fit him properly in months, so Remus had no idea where Sirius got his measurements. He made a mental note to ask him later and finally stepped in to pry his mother off his friend.
“Mum, you need to let him go… we’re late already.”
“Oh Remus, you look so handsome!” His mother’s tears began anew and soaked the shoulder of his suit when she hugged him.
His father, with tears in his own eyes, gently pulled his mother away, holding her as they said their goodbyes. Seeing his parents so happy and touched, it was a sight Remus likes to think he’ll never forget.
That night, in fact, was one he would never forget. With Sirius’ hand in his, Remus walks into the dance with his head held high and his friends flanking them. There are some stares and quiet whispers, but as he dances with his best friend he realizes that he has no reason to be scared. If it comes back again, he’ll face it as he did this time, with Sirius at his side to lean on.