Fic: Swan Song
Swan Song
By minnow_53
Disclaimer: These characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Era: Summer 1978, just after Hogwarts.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: School is over. Remus dreams, Sirius tries to be straight, and both of them suffer.
Thanks: To astra_argentea for a quick beta, and mackittenx for letting me use part of her comment in the summary!
Dedication: For insight2, a couple of months late for your birthday. It’s angsty, it’s not quite MWPP, and I only fitted in the baby cat very tangentially... :( But it was inspired by your comment, and I hope you’ll enjoy it anyway.
On my journal, and now crossposted to the_kennel and remusxsirius.
Swan Song
All of a sudden the days started to hurtle downhill, and Remus couldn’t keep up but watched helplessly as everything came to an end. He hardly had time to catch his breath before trunks were being packed and dorms stripped of their posters and ornaments.
The last full moon fell shortly before the end of term, and next came the final party in the Gryffindor common room. There were plentiful supplies of cake and magic crackers for the celebration, and Peter smuggled in a bottle of some dubious-looking alcoholic substance with a very drunken witch on the label; presumably Old Ogden’s wife.
By one o’clock, most of the Gryffindors had drifted up to bed. And then, it was the last night: the very last night of all, because Sirius was going back to his flat in London and Remus was going home.
‘We always said it would just be a school thing,’ Sirius said, a bit defensively, as he nuzzled against Remus, who had never said anything of the sort. ‘Anyway, we’ll probably run into each other.’ As Remus lived a good hundred miles from London and was still nervous about Apparating, that was hardly likely, but there was no point discussing it.
Just a few sleepless hours later, it was the last morning and the last ride on the Hogwarts Express, and Remus knew that his wonderful seven-year adventure was finally over.
The Lupins lived in an ugly little house in the suburbs of an ugly little Wizarding town. The dreary setting was redeemed for Remus by the boy next door, a Squib from a very devout Wizarding family who fled London when he failed to get his Hogwarts letter. He and Remus were great friends, and spent their holidays hanging out in the town centre by the shopping precinct, smoking roll-ups and checking out the local girls.
The Squib, though, Remus found when he arrived home, was away, and not just for the summer. ‘Andrew’s doing something called a gap year, before starting at his university,’ Mrs Lupin explained, in her most didactic tones: Muggle education was her area of expertise. ‘He’s gone to Australia.’
She waved her wand to Summon the teapot from the kitchen. ‘You must have a haircut, dear. You look a terrible mess! We don’t want the neighbours thinking your problem is getting worse, do we?’
‘No.’ Remus grabbed a snack and headed up to his room. ‘Got an owl to write.’
He wrested open his trunk, scattering clothes and books until he found a quill and parchment; but then, he stopped dead. What could he say, after all? ‘Dear Padfoot, I’ve been away from you about an hour and I miss you’? Sirius would think he’d gone soft in the head.
He tuned into the WWN for inspiration, but instead got Glenda Chittock interviewing Celestina Warbeck. ‘I love your wonderful robes!’ Glenda was gushing. ‘Do you sing in them?’ Remus switched his wireless off again without waiting to hear the answer.
His mother called up, ‘Remus! Can you help me set the table, dear?’
‘Use your wand,’ he muttered to himself, but went down anyway to lay out knives and forks. There would be no escape from his parents until later that evening, because his mother was planning a special family meal. Considering there were only three of them in the family, Remus felt his return hardly warranted a special occasion, but parents were a bit funny about things like meals so he didn’t grumble. Not too much, anyway.
He amused himself by imagining that there was a knock on the door, and Sirius was standing there, tearful and dishevelled, begging Remus to come back to him. It took some doing to envisage Sirius in such a state, and by the time Remus had made the necessary mental adjustments, he realised his mother had stopped clattering cutlery and was looking at him with a worried expression.
‘Remus, dear, are you all right? You’ve set three extra places,’ she said.
‘I’m fine. Mum, could I have a couple of my schoolfriends to stay this summer? If they can come?’
Even as he said it, he wished he could take the words back. The last thing his friends would want was to visit some hick town and sit around watching the grass grow for a week; or even a weekend.
‘Which ones?’ his mother asked brightly.
‘Oh, forget it. They won’t be able to come anyway.’ Then, for the guilty pleasure of saying the name out loud, he added, ‘Sirius. Sirius Black. Oh, and James and Peter, of course.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘I told you to forget it,’ Remus said irritably. Unfortunately, at that moment his father appeared from the fireplace, and took in both his words and his tone.
‘Remus! Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I should think so too. Any more and you’ll be grounded. I don’t care if you are eighteen. While you’re living under this roof, you’ll obey our rules.’
It was a bad start to the evening and to the holidays: and, apparently, to the rest of his life, as Remus found over dinner when he mooted the subject of moving to London.
‘I can get a job,’ he expatiated, not noticing that his father had stopped eating and was looking cross again. ‘Sirius has a flat in London, and I’m sure I can stay there till I find something.’
That was a lie. Sirius hadn’t been completely tactless about it; he’d even taken their relationship into account, and decided that Remus was owed some information, if not explanation. ‘I’ve asked Prongs to share,’ he told Remus. ‘I thought of asking you, but we don’t want this to drag on, do we? And Prongs is looking forward to seeing London, going to the clubs and so on. Besides, Lily might be staying from time to time, so there won’t be room for anyone else. It’s a really small flat.’
Mr Lupin thumped his fist on the table in exasperation, making both Remus and Mrs Lupin jump. ‘Oh, you can get a job in London, can you?’ he asked, with heavy sarcasm. ‘As Minister of Magic, I suppose? Forget it. Your mother and I have decided that you’re best off staying right here, where everyone knows you. Mr Mintov is looking for a delivery boy, and he’s agreed to give you a trial.’
Mr. Mintov owned the corner shop. He was a former Beater for the Bulgarian Quidditch team, a heavyset man with an accent that very few people could understand. He was quick to use his wand when customers offended him, and as a result most of them preferred the new Muggle supermarket near the bypass. ‘You go in for a dozen eggs and come out with donkey ears and a tail,’ Andrew’s mother had complained once.
‘That’s not exactly going to be arduous, is it?’ Remus said. Mr Mintov had initiated his home delivery service in order to salvage a few of his customers, when he finally noticed the numbers had dwindled considerably, but he was a bit too late. Only a couple of elderly witches actually used the service, and families new to the area.
‘That’s the point,’ Remus’s mother chirped. ‘It’s not going to be too challenging, and Mintov won’t mind if you’re, er, indisposed for a few days every month.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Remus said. ‘Indisposed. Like I have a headache or something.’
‘Well, looking on the bright side,’ Remus’s father said, ‘he’s rather scared of you. So he won’t raise his wand to you or anything.’
‘Don’t care if he does,’ Remus muttered. ‘At least it would be a bit exciting.’
Mr Lupin arranged his knife and fork tidily on his plate, indicating that the discussion was over. ‘I’d have thought you’d had enough excitement to last you a lifetime.’
Which it would obviously have to, Remus mused later, as he got ready for bed. His small single room seemed tiny and bleak compared to the dorm he was used to. The only sound was an owl hooting somewhere in the distance, and his father droning on to his mother downstairs; eventually, Mr Lupin switched on the wireless and dance music drifted up to Remus’s room.
When he was a child, he’d always been reassured by the sound of his parents downstairs, going about their night-time rituals. Now, he felt trapped. The house might as well be a prison, he thought bitterly.
He lay down on his bed on his back, hands clasped behind his ears, and drifted into a daydream, or not so much a daydream as an evocation of a happier time. It involved Sirius, of course; him and Sirius, right at the beginning of what had turned out to be a very truncated odyssey.
Sirius had started it, which made it seem rather unfair that he’d then ended it too: or did that count as balance?
‘I can’t ask James,’ he began that cold November day as they walked through the grounds and down to the lake.
Remus was quite happy that Sirius had dragged him away early from lunch to ‘discuss a new project’: he had visions of working on Arithmancy charts or casting runes. Of course, he wasn’t so happy when he found out what the project involved. In fact, he was dumbfounded.
‘Experimental sex,’ Sirius said, kicking a round pebble across the lawn, and ignoring the look of total horror that Remus was sure must show on his face.
Sirius was aiming, in the autumn term of Sixth Year, to cram in all the experiences his parents would most disapprove of. No doubt sleeping with another boy seemed suitably rebellious, though he watered down the forbidden aspects so Remus would agree.
‘Muggles do it all the time at their boarding-schools,’ he assured him. And, presumably to appeal to Remus’s academic side, he added that some of the French Romantic poets had done it too, though he omitted to mention that most of them got syphilis. Sex with friends was decadent, Sirius said, like the absinthe the poets drank and their early deaths.
‘I don’t want to be decadent,’ Remus said, faintly alarmed. ‘And I’ll probably die young anyway. Werewolves do.’
‘Course you won’t,’ Sirius said, flinging a comforting arm over Remus’s shoulder; a purely friendly gesture, so he didn’t duck away. ‘And it probably isn’t that decadent, anyway. Bohemian, maybe.’
‘I just want to be normal,’ Remus said, starting to feel a bit panicked.
‘Hey, you will be. Having it off with another guy is perfectly natural.’
They shuffled through the autumn leaves under the willows by the lake and crouched on the bank. ‘Pity the Giant Squid’s hibernating,’ Sirius said, adding, just for good measure, ‘It’s only for fun, you know. I’ve still got tons of girlfriends.’
‘But why me?’
‘Listen,’ Sirius said, his brow furrowed with the difficulty of explaining, ‘I’m bored with girls. I can shag a girl any time.’
‘You didn’t tell us you’d actually shagged girls.’
‘Just stop being so bloody contrary, Moony. Anyway, girls aren’t a challenge. But you are.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’ Sirius sounded exasperated. ‘Sex with a werewolf. Now, that’s got to be interesting. Exotic, even.’
Remus doubted it. ‘But Padfoot, you’re always telling me how boring I am when I go on about work. I’m sure there are more interesting boys you can experiment with.’
‘Shut up, Moony. We’re going to sleep together. Whether you like it or not.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Remus said stubbornly, turning back to the castle. ‘I’m going to the library. I’ve got NEWTs to study for.’
Sirius didn’t give up easily, however. He took to passing Remus notes in Charms, with messages like ‘You’re looking just gorgeous this morning, Lupin. I can’t wait!’ Remus would go scarlet, of course, and Incendio the scraps of parchment at once, which earned him several detentions and a warning about his prefect’s badge.
For a few days, he suspected that James and Sirius were playing a prank, paying him back for some imagined slight. But then he saw the way Sirius looked at James when James looked at Lily, and realised there was actually a rift between them. When Remus saw Sirius’s forlorn face as he watched James and Lily talking together, he started feeling sorry for him, especially when Sirius sighed deeply. In fact, he was so distressed that he finally capitulated, exactly one week, seven hours and ten minutes after the original proposition; it would have been a bit sooner, but he had to wait for the common room to empty.
The second he’d turned to Sirius and said, ‘Oh, all right, I’ll sleep with you,’ he regretted it. Sirius stopped looking like a lost little boy and took on a predatory, slightly arrogant expression, obviously having known all along that he’d win.
Remus decided now that Sirius was probably rather like his father and Mr Mintov: because Remus was a werewolf, he somehow didn’t count or matter the way a full human did. He was useful but expendable. ‘Project’ had been the key word, the one Remus should have weighed more carefully.
There was a knock at the door and Remus came abruptly back to the present. School was over, Sirius was gone, and he was stuck in this house for ever and ever. ‘Come in.’
‘I brought you some nice cocoa,’ his mother said, a bit apologetic. ‘Dear, why are you lying here in the dark?’ She waved her wand and the lamps came on, shattering Remus’ train of thought. He was annoyed at being interrupted but drank the cocoa anyway. It helped him sleep, and he managed not to dream about Sirius.
The next morning an owl arrived with a letter, dropping it neatly besides Remus’s bowl of cornflakes. Remus was irritated by the way his heart beat faster as he picked up the envelope; and he felt unduly disappointed when he saw the Hogwarts crest. ‘Dear Mr Lupin...new secret society to fight Voldemort...Order of the Phoenix...’ He was glad it wasn’t from Sirius, because his mother was watching anxiously as he read it.
‘From the Registry?’
‘No. From Dumbledore. It’s a Resistance group. If I join I’ll have to go to London for meetings.’ And of course, the other three would also be invited, he was sure.
‘My older brother was in the French Resistance.’ Mrs Lupin’s lip trembled a bit: she was born into a Muggle family, and her brother had been killed towards the end of the second Muggle war. ‘He was very brave.’
‘I could be brave too,’ Remus said.
‘Well, of course you could! But I hate thinking of you in such danger.’
‘We’ll be fine. Dumbledore wouldn’t let Voldemort hurt us.’
‘Remus! Don’t say that name in this house!’
‘Sorry, Mum. But Sirius always says it. And the others.’
‘Well, the Blacks...’ She let her sentence hang in mid-air.
‘He’s not one of them! He left home.’ Remus found to his horror that his eyes were prickling. Anger, he thought. He wasn’t missing Sirius. He wasn’t hurt at the way Sirius had treated him. He wasn’t going to think of Sirius, daydream about him, or, worst of all, talk about him.
‘I’m off for a walk,’ he said, hoping his voice sounded casual.
It was overcast and hot, too hot for the uphill walk into town, but he did it anyway, to burn off his frustrations and confusion. He wanted an excuse not to Apparate, and anyway he needed the exercise; it would give him time to think.
In winter, the twenty-minute walk was more fun, especially when you were with a friend. Even when they were quite old, he and Andrew enjoyed counting the Christmas trees in December, and comparing Mrs Twinkey’s magic revolving angel with Mr Barnes’s real fairy. In summer, the windows were blank, net-curtained: the Wizarding suburbs were no more exciting in July than any others, and a lot of residents were on holiday.
He ended up outside the local branch of Gringotts, on the black marble bench where he’d often sat with Andrew, drinking Butterbeer and watching Andrew try to pick up girls. Andrew, like Sirius, was incredibly persistent. He methodically hit on every girl who walked by, ignoring the many rebuffs, until a couple of them finally relented. With some irony, Andrew usually ended up with the witch, Remus with the Squib. And Remus was always the one to be paired off with the random Muggle girls who wondered into the town looking for decent shoe shops.
It didn’t seem fair. Remus, besides being a good, and now fully-educated wizard, was far better-looking than Andrew, who had spots he couldn’t cure himself and red hair - his family were distant relatives of the Weasleys. Perhaps it was because Andrew accepted it as his due that the (comparatively) brighter, prettier girls would gravitate to him, and confidence was half the secret: better than any amount of magic, Remus sometimes felt.
Remus had done a lot of snogging with the girls apportioned to him, mainly because Andrew was there and he didn’t want to seem, well, queer or anything. He hadn’t gone any further though, and he was beginning to suspect Sirius hadn’t either, for all his hints at a rampant sex-life.
Even when he and Remus had been together for quite a while, Sirius remained evasive about those many encounters that had caused him to become so jaded with girls. At the time, Remus put this down to reticence, to a certain pureblood discretion, but now he wondered whether even Sirius had actually done more than fumble with breasts or endure a sloppy kiss: girls, or the girls round here, always kissed sloppily, which Remus hated.
‘Remus, that’s what kissing is,’ Andrew used to say, half-amused, half-annoyed, when he noticed Remus wiping his mouth surreptitiously on his sleeve afterwards. ‘My girl was just as bad, and you don’t hear me complaining, do you?’
Sitting alone on the bench, he suddenly missed Andrew almost as much as he missed Sirius. He wished Andrew’s parents hadn’t become so progressive over the years that they’d encouraged him to complete his Muggle education. Remus would have liked someone to talk to, to drag along to that first Order meeting, would have liked to face Sirius - and the others - with a friend in tow.
Of course, in that case Sirius might get the wrong idea, and think that he and Andrew were a couple. While Remus wasn’t at all reluctant to make him jealous, if that were even possible, he really wouldn’t want him to think he was shagging Andrew.
Shagging Sirius was a different proposition, of course. For a start, Remus could quite understand how even another boy could find Sirius attractive, once he thought about it. He didn’t draw back the first time Sirius kissed him, a chaste kiss that did nothing for Remus, but which Sirius seemed to enjoy; he gave a sharp intake of breath, then put his arms round Remus too tightly for comfort and kissed him again, a lot less chastely this time. Remus knew what to do, from all the girls he’d snogged; he was both relieved and pleased that Sirius didn’t kiss sloppily at all.
When they went beyond kissing Remus found himself out of his depth at first. He soon realised that he obviously didn’t know Sirius quite as well as James did, didn’t know him well enough for their early fumblings to be taken lightly, or be less than stressful. He’d be feeling bruised and exposed - everything was suddenly too close, too personal, and he tried to regain some distance by turning away from Sirius and staring up at the ceiling. Sirius, though, would lie there, his eyes bright, his face flushed, and say, ‘Isn’t it brilliant, Moony? Aren’t you glad we did it?’
And Remus would think no, he wasn’t glad, though he could see how it might get better, with practice. He wondered how much Sirius really enjoyed their gropings and caresses; maybe he was just trying to convince himself. James would probably have put his glasses back on, laughed and said, ‘Padfoot, that was dreadful, mate. Let’s stick to girls.’
But it did get better; it did get brilliant. There was an evening in the Shack when they were lying so close that they seemed to be sharing breath and blood and bone, and suddenly the act came into focus, and Remus felt as if someone had switched on a light in his head. It was both exhilarating and terrifying, like falling off a cliff without the power to fly. After that, he couldn’t see Sirius as just a friend, or their relationship as transitional. Every time he closed his eyes he'd find himself hovering above a dim room, looking down at himself and Sirius clinging together, sweaty and flushed, trying to catch their breath between kisses.
Sirius, Remus thought, shifting on the black marble seat, was ubiquitous this morning, even though he was so far away he might as well have been on the moon. He wondered what Sirius was doing at that moment. Getting up late, because he hadn’t got a job yet, perhaps waking with a girl next to him, reaching out for her with that charming, persuasive smile...
‘Hello, Remus. Home for the summer?’
Remus looked up again, blinked. The shopping precinct was quite busy now: he realised he must have been sitting there for at least an hour. All the witches were flocking to town with their children, exhausted in advance by the prospect of six weeks in which to keep them entertained.
He shielded his eyes - must get sunglasses this year - and saw he was being addressed by the woman who lived a few doors down, the mother of five pretty witches who were greatly sought-after. One of them was with her.
‘I’m home for good.’ He hated the way that sounded. ‘School’s finished now.’
‘Of course. Well, you’ll be able to do your bit against You-Know-Who. You’ve had an invitation to the Order, haven’t you? Your mother mentioned it when I spoke to her on the way to town.’
Damn gossiping women. Another thing he hated about home.
‘Amanda’s got an invitation too. Perhaps you could Apparate together.’
Remus recognised Amanda from school; she was in the year above him, one of the Ravenclaw beauties who always eluded boys like him.
‘Hi, Remus.’ Amanda sounded amused. ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to hold your hand, do you? But it would be fun to go together. I don’t know if anyone else in my year’ll be there.’
Remus was surprised to see her. He’d have thought that the lovely and clever Amanda would have gone into Auror training straight after school, and probably be married or engaged by now: wizards often married very young, especially in times of war.
‘Amanda’s doing a special course in town,’ her mother said. ‘Floristry. She’s not got long to go till she’s fully qualified. She’s going to take over Flowery Spells in September, aren’t you dear?’
Remus had never heard of a Ravenclaw ending up as a florist in a town like this one, especially not one of the beauties.
‘London’s such a long way away,’ Amanda’s mother suddenly blurted out, her face red. ‘The girls...all of them. I worry, you see. Oh, I know you’re in danger anywhere, but at least here they’re near home. At school, they have the Headmaster. There’s nobody in London. Nothing to protect them.’
‘Mum,’ Amanda said, in a warning tone.
Her mother ignored her. ‘I don’t want her to join the Order. I don’t want her to be noticed. But when your mother mentioned... Well, I feel Amanda’ll be doing her bit, so she needn’t keep nagging and nagging me about finding a job at the Ministry. You’ll take her there and bring her back, won’t you? You’ll look after her?’
Amanda was now tugging at her mother’s arm. ‘Come on, Mum. Lupin doesn’t want to hear this. I’ll see you later,’ she called back at him.
‘Sure,’ Remus said. It would be good to appear at the meeting with a beautiful girl, he reflected. Serve Sirius right. And it also would be a relief to have someone to Apparate with.
The local religious fanatic was now setting up his stall outside Witchworth’s, performing the Sonorus spell so he could spend the rest of the day proclaiming passages from The Life of Merlin, all of which Remus was already familar with from History of Magic lessons. Of course, he couldn’t recite the whole Good Book by heart, the way the fanatic did.
‘And I say unto ye, the wands shall never be silent...’ the rich voice intoned, as Witchworth’s emptied abruptly.
Remus followed the other shoppers into the Pentagram Centre, the main shopping precinct. Today’s theme was holidays in the sun, appropriate for a July day. The whole centre was gilded and bright, with sparkling floors and a cooling charm to keep customers at a temperate level.
He passed through the golden portals of Page and Binding: if he was stuck here for the next seventy years, he might as well have something to read. Their window display featured a beach scene, a gigantic sandcastle made entirely of the current bestsellers. The Book of The Week was piled up high, with a neon sign announcing that it was perfect reading for those Romanian seaside resorts. The very giggly authoress, who looked about ten, was sitting behind the cash-desk signing copies. Remus absent-mindedly took a book from the pile and joined the queue snaking round to the back of the shop.
As he waited, he flicked through the novel. It was long, about 500 pages, with very detailed descriptions of sex between a witch and various wizards, apparently a different one in every chapter.
‘Zorgon caressed me with his eyes,’ Remus read. ‘Then, he ripped off my dress with a wave of his wand. His hands and lips accosted my body, as he pounded into me with his enormous manhood...’ Bloody hell.
A fat woman pushed in front of him, muttering about people who didn’t move forward. Remus looked up from the novel and realised he was the only man in the queue. He hastily ducked away, returned the bestseller to the wrong place, and hid in the Divination section until he was sure the signing was over and the authoress wouldn’t come looking for him with a copy of a pornographic novel he didn’t need: just thinking of Sirius was bad enough.
He spent the next couple of days hanging around in the garden, trying to get a tan during the few minutes the sun appeared every hour. He lay on his stomach on one of his mother’s best towels and tried to concentrate on one of the books he’d eventually bought on his outing.
After a while the lines of print started to blur, like the boundaries between memory and illusion. Remus drifted into a pleasant remix of a Saturday in the Shack, endowing Sirius freely with extra qualities, like adoration and remorse. ‘I made a big mistake, Moony,’ he whispered, his hands running down Remus’s body in an extremely pleasurable way. ‘Will you forgive me?’
‘Maybe.’ Remus decided to make him suffer a bit first, but the thought jolted him back to reality. He had no desire to punish Sirius, even in his fantasies.
He returned to his spy novel and tried very hard to concentrate on the plot. Soon, though, he found himself sunbathing with Sirius on an imaginary beach beneath a striped umbrella. They were about to have sex underwater when the first drops of rain started to fall, and Remus had to gather up the towel and go inside.
On the fourth day, he caved in and sent Sirius and James an owl, complaining about the future his parents had mapped out for him. Neither of the others answered, which seemed, for some reason, to fuel Remus’s obsession. He suddenly found it almost impossible to stop talking about Sirius, and didn’t even manage to include James and Peter in his comments.
By the twentieth ‘Sirius says...’ his parents were starting to look at him a bit oddly.
‘Sirius never bothers to read instructions,’ he informed them when his mother was checking out a new spell to stop the oven from overheating. ‘Sirius likes apple pie,’ he babbled, at lunch, completely powerless to stop his mouth moving and the words coming out.
They exchanged a glance. ‘Well, of course you’re missing your friends, dear. When’s that meeting?’
‘Not till August. August 15th.’ Which left nearly two weeks, including one full moon, until he saw Sirius, and the others.
Mr Lupin decided that Remus had had enough holiday, so on the following Monday he went to Mintov’s shop to start what his father called his apprenticeship. Within hours he was making his first delivery, two cans of beans and a fresh batch of hellebore, to a witch who lived a short way out of town.
Flying miles on a broomstick gave Remus plenty of opportunity to daydream, though he was a bit alarmed that his ruminations on Sirius were becoming more frequent and graphic. He decided it was probably just frustration: he was used to sleeping with Sirius, and his body was indignant at the lack of contact. ‘I’ll have a cold bath after work,’ he resolved, trying to concentrate on the patchwork pattern of yellow, ploughed and green fields beneath him.
But even the woods around the town reminded him of Sirius, of several piercingly intense encounters on the dry, sandy soil by the Forbidden Forest where the pine-trees grew, their summer scent so different from the Christmas one. They smelled of August in the South of France, and when Sirius talked about his childhood holidays Remus could almost hear the sea and feel sand under his naked skin.
In his daydream, Sirius whispered, ‘I love you, Moony,’ and fixed Remus with a melting gaze. Remus shifted uncomfortably on his broom; to hell with the cold bath. He wished he could go straight home and up to his room.
He had to remind himself quite severely that in real life Sirius had never looked at him like that. During sex, his eyes would get dark and stormy, and if he noticed Remus glancing at him he’d turn away, concentrating on the sensations.
When they weren’t actually in bed together he looked at Remus quite normally, but on the last morning he made a point of avoiding Remus’s eyes. As they got off the train, he ducked slightly, mumbled, ‘See you round, Moony,’ and left with James, their heads close together, laughing already about their plans to take London by storm. No doubt they were having a wonderful time right now, as Remus made his way home after work.
He found the house empty, and remembered vaguely that his mother had said she was going to see her friend’s daughter’s new baby: it had just about penetrated his Sirius-infused consciousness. And she’d also left a note reminding him where the bread was kept - as if he didn’t know! - and suggesting a couple of quick charms for sandwiches.
There was a loud crash in the back yard, and Remus, running out to see what it was, thought he was hallucinating. A huge black motorbike stood on the lawn - his father would kill him - and Sirius was dismounting, waving his wand to dispel the ominous black smoke pouring from the exhaust.
Remus was taken aback by his sheer solidity. Real Sirius was very handsome, of course, and had an oil streak down one cheek: this emphasised his looks in a way, but also detracted from the ethereal beauty he was starting to possess in Remus’ daydreams. He was a bit taller, too - obviously, he’d had a growth spurt in the brief time since school. Apparently, life with James was suiting him. He seemed pleased enough to see Remus, though he lacked the pleading, worshipful expression that dream Sirius sported.
Remus’s instinct was to rush forward and fling his arms around him, but just for once, his will obeyed him and he managed to hold back. Instead, he waited for Sirius to clap him on the shoulder and ask, ‘So how’s it going?’
‘Great,’ lied Remus. ‘What are you doing here?’
Sirius had a way of invading body space that was confident rather than intimate, though Remus wasn’t complaining either way. He moved in on Remus, keeping his hand on his shoulder. He smelled faintly of petrol and perhaps cigarettes: he always swore to the other Marauders that he didn’t smoke, but nobody believed him.
‘Oh, I just got her,’ Sirius said, waving casually at the bike, though his voice couldn’t hide his obvious pride and pleasure in the machine. ‘Teaching her to fly. Thought I’d give her a trial run and come and see you.’ He glanced up at the overcast sky. ‘Looks like it’s going to rain again. Can we go inside? I assume there is an inside. I’ll just put an Impervius on the bike.’
Remus, with some atavistic sense of the rights due an aristocratic guest, took Sirius in through the front door rather than the back, and instantly wished he hadn’t. He’d never noticed before how shabby the hall was, with its lino curling slightly at the edges: his mother’s Permanent Sticking Charms weren’t very reliable, and his father always claimed to be too tired from work to cast household spells. He’d spent most of his life trying to isolate shapes and faces in the increasingly blotchy paint, and had himself, in adolescent tempers, contributed to the scuff marks on the bottom step, which he often gave a kick as he went by, just for old time’s sake. And he was dreadfully aware that the smell of last night’s meal still lingered - his mother overcooked Brussels sprouts almost to the point of extinction.
‘Nobody home?’ Sirius asked, peering round curiously. Something flickered at the corner of his mouth, and Remus hoped he wasn’t going to burst out laughing at the dilapidated state of the place.
‘No, my mother’s out.’
‘Prongs and I got owls. And Peter. From Dumbledore.’
‘Yes, so did I.’
Sirius’s face split into a wide grin. ‘Thought so! We’ll see you there,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fun. Marauders reunion and so on. Got your other owl by the way.’
You could have answered, Remus thought, but just said, ‘Yes. So you know I’m stuck here for ever.’
‘Prongs was thinking we could mount a rescue mission, but we decided you’d get out soon enough anyway. With the war escalating and everything. We’re going to need everyone we can get on our side.’ Without skipping a beat, he added, ‘Regulus joined the others. My mother told me. She wrote me a letter about how he’d die a hero and I was such a coward.’
‘She wants Regulus to die?’ Remus thought of Amanda’s mother and felt slightly sick.
‘My mother,’ Sirius explained, ‘tends to be a bit metaphorical. Goes with the general lunacy. Plus, I gathered from Andromeda that she’s been drinking more than ever since she heard, so she’s probably not quite as happy as she’d like us to believe.’
Remus offered Sirius a cup of tea, which Sirius refused. ‘Your mum’ll probably be back soon, and I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Fine.’
‘So what’s your room like, then?’
‘Is that it? It’s just a room.’ Remus was evasive. His room, he felt, probably screamed ‘Sirius’ to the skies, so many daydreams and dreams and visions of the other boy it had held. Besides, he couldn’t remember whether he’d bothered to make his bed that morning. Perhaps his mother had, but in any case the room wasn’t looking its best, if it ever did.
But Sirius was already bounding up the stairs. In the ten long days without him, Remus had somehow misplaced any recollection of his energy and wild enthusiasm. His Sirius was definitely insubstantial, he now realised, pleasantly amenable, quite unlike the real Sirius. He wasn’t altogether sure how to reconcile the two, but then the real Sirius opened his door, stopped dead and looked around, sniffing like the dog he sometimes was, and the two images clicked, and all Remus wanted was to hug Sirius, hold him close, and never let him go. The longing was so intense that he was sure Sirius must feel it too.
Through Sirius’s eyes, Remus saw the familiar bedroom transformed from a cohesive space into its various, less than glamorous components: a threadbare carpet, an armchair patched by so many spells that it was impossible to discern the original chintz pattern, the calendar with kittens on it that an aunt had given him. Though Remus was fairly tidy, the bookshelves were decorated with a row of dirty mugs: his mother brought him cocoa every evening, and he always forgot to take the empty cups down again. And, suddenly looming very large, his childhood iron bed stood against the far wall. It hadn’t been made: he hastily pulled up the covers.
‘Mm. Utilitarian. Looks like a hospital bed,’ Sirius remarked, bouncing on it. He took out his wand and muttered a silencing spell. Remus froze.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to be tactless. About the hospital, I mean. Look, I need to ask you a favour. ‘
‘Just take the spell off. I’m not doing any more experimenting with you,’ Remus said stubbornly, even though every fibre of his body was yearning to, and it took almost more control than he could muster to get the words out. ‘I’m not going through the withdrawal symptoms again.’ And what if Sirius hadn’t meant that? He couldn’t take the words back, unfortunately.
He couldn’t take back the unconscious pun, either. Sirius sniggered, then said, ‘Withdrawal, right. I know exactly what you mean. And that’s the problem, actually. You see, our thing... Of course, it was only a little phase. Oh, I mean, it was a great phase and all that. But now Prongs has fixed me up with this girl. And he doesn’t want his best mate to be bent.’
Remus felt as if he’d been slapped. ‘Did he actually say that?’
‘Even Prongs isn’t that crass, Moony! But it’s pretty obvious he wouldn’t like it. You know, he wasn’t ever happy about us. You and me. Though it meant absolutely nothing more than, well, a wank. I told him that, and we made an agreement that it wouldn’t go on after school.’
‘You and James decided you’d break up with me?’ Remus wished he had some minimal power over his words; once again, they seemed to have a life of their own.
Sirius reached out and pulled Remus down on to the bed with him. ‘Hey, Moony. Don’t get all huffy. It wasn’t breaking up. Not like with a girl. We had a great time, we’re mates, no hard feelings, right? Damn, I’m worse with the double meanings than you are.’
Remus smiled obediently. ‘Yeah, right.’ He didn’t want to ask Sirius to let him go; besides, he felt more at home in his skin than he had since the holidays started. He just lay on the bed facing him, not moving, allowing Sirius absent-mindedly to stroke his hair.
‘Anyway. What’s happened is that I’ve got a girlfriend. And I used to let everyone think I’d had it off with tons of girls, but I never really got the chance to, not at school.’
Remus bit his tongue before he could say, ‘Even as a project?’ A wild hope rose in him, a hope that was definitely misplaced, he knew that even before he recognised it for what it was. Sirius wasn’t going to say, ‘It was you all along, Moony.’ He was James’s friend, really, before he was anything else, and if James wanted him to be straight, Sirius would do his best to oblige.
‘I want to sleep with girls now,’ Sirius continued, predictably. ‘Only - well, I suppose I’m out of practice. We sort of did it, but I had to think about us before it would actually work. And that meant I was thinking of you. Which is really perverted, isn’t it?’
‘Depends,’ Remus muttered.
‘I’m probably missing our thing a bit,’ Sirius conceded. He stopped stroking Remus’s hair abruptly, as if he’d just noticed what he was doing. ‘I need to get it out of my system, so I can start again.’
‘And you think sleeping with me now will get it out of your system?’
Sirius glared at him defiantly. ‘If it doesn’t, it’ll give me something new to fantasise about while I’m trying to sleep with her. Okay? I think I ran through just about every single time on our last, um, attempt.’
He gave his wide grin again and added, ‘Maybe it won’t work with you either. Maybe I’m just impotent. Rather than bent, I mean.’
Remus had to laugh at that. ‘I think I’d prefer to be bent.’ And he probably was, he realised, and suddenly he didn’t feel like laughing at all.
They kissed, a bit clumsily at first, then gradually with the old familiarity and expertise. After a while, Sirius broke away and said, ‘Not impotent then.’
And a while later, he asked, ‘Have you been sleeping with anyone else?’
‘No,’ Remus mumbled, through a mouthful of black hair. ‘Why would I?’
‘I dunno. All those pretty boys you could be screwing. And before you throw me out, that was just a joke.’
Remus didn’t ask why he shouldn’t be screwing pretty girls, like Sirius was planning to, though the words smarted a bit. ‘I can’t be bothered with stuff like that,’ he said.
And after that exchange, it was sweet and fast, though Remus wished the moment could last forever. He didn't turn away when Sirius looked directly into his eyes, with an expression not a million miles removed from the one in Remus’s daydreams: open and yearning, and almost, almost as if he really liked Remus and wasn’t just using him yet again.
They dozed off in each others’ arms, tangled in Remus’s rather grubby sheets; moments later, though, Remus was jerked awake by the sound of footsteps down in the kitchen, and shook Sirius roughly.
‘Hey, Padfoot, you’ll have to go. My mother’s back.’
Sirius leaped up and dressed so fast that Remus felt slightly dizzy watching him. ‘Better Disapparate to the bike then. Bye, Moony. I’ll keep you posted about the girlfriend, okay? And let us know your NEWT results.’
There was the usual crack, and Remus ran over to open his window for a last glimpse of Sirius, who was now mounting his bike and switching on the engine. Remus prayed his mother wouldn’t be looking out of the kitchen window.
He waved wildly, hoping that Sirius would wave back, but he didn’t even turn round. The bike sputtered into life, then took off gracefully into the sky.
Remus stood watching it until he couldn’t see even the faintest trace of smoke from the exhaust. He was still standing there when it got dark, and his mother called him down for dinner. Even then, he scanned the horizon once more, by the light of the waxing moon, before he reluctantly tore his eyes away, closed the window and drew the curtains tightly shut.
End
By minnow_53
Disclaimer: These characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Era: Summer 1978, just after Hogwarts.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: School is over. Remus dreams, Sirius tries to be straight, and both of them suffer.
Thanks: To astra_argentea for a quick beta, and mackittenx for letting me use part of her comment in the summary!
Dedication: For insight2, a couple of months late for your birthday. It’s angsty, it’s not quite MWPP, and I only fitted in the baby cat very tangentially... :( But it was inspired by your comment, and I hope you’ll enjoy it anyway.
On my journal, and now crossposted to the_kennel and remusxsirius.
Swan Song
All of a sudden the days started to hurtle downhill, and Remus couldn’t keep up but watched helplessly as everything came to an end. He hardly had time to catch his breath before trunks were being packed and dorms stripped of their posters and ornaments.
The last full moon fell shortly before the end of term, and next came the final party in the Gryffindor common room. There were plentiful supplies of cake and magic crackers for the celebration, and Peter smuggled in a bottle of some dubious-looking alcoholic substance with a very drunken witch on the label; presumably Old Ogden’s wife.
By one o’clock, most of the Gryffindors had drifted up to bed. And then, it was the last night: the very last night of all, because Sirius was going back to his flat in London and Remus was going home.
‘We always said it would just be a school thing,’ Sirius said, a bit defensively, as he nuzzled against Remus, who had never said anything of the sort. ‘Anyway, we’ll probably run into each other.’ As Remus lived a good hundred miles from London and was still nervous about Apparating, that was hardly likely, but there was no point discussing it.
Just a few sleepless hours later, it was the last morning and the last ride on the Hogwarts Express, and Remus knew that his wonderful seven-year adventure was finally over.
The Lupins lived in an ugly little house in the suburbs of an ugly little Wizarding town. The dreary setting was redeemed for Remus by the boy next door, a Squib from a very devout Wizarding family who fled London when he failed to get his Hogwarts letter. He and Remus were great friends, and spent their holidays hanging out in the town centre by the shopping precinct, smoking roll-ups and checking out the local girls.
The Squib, though, Remus found when he arrived home, was away, and not just for the summer. ‘Andrew’s doing something called a gap year, before starting at his university,’ Mrs Lupin explained, in her most didactic tones: Muggle education was her area of expertise. ‘He’s gone to Australia.’
She waved her wand to Summon the teapot from the kitchen. ‘You must have a haircut, dear. You look a terrible mess! We don’t want the neighbours thinking your problem is getting worse, do we?’
‘No.’ Remus grabbed a snack and headed up to his room. ‘Got an owl to write.’
He wrested open his trunk, scattering clothes and books until he found a quill and parchment; but then, he stopped dead. What could he say, after all? ‘Dear Padfoot, I’ve been away from you about an hour and I miss you’? Sirius would think he’d gone soft in the head.
He tuned into the WWN for inspiration, but instead got Glenda Chittock interviewing Celestina Warbeck. ‘I love your wonderful robes!’ Glenda was gushing. ‘Do you sing in them?’ Remus switched his wireless off again without waiting to hear the answer.
His mother called up, ‘Remus! Can you help me set the table, dear?’
‘Use your wand,’ he muttered to himself, but went down anyway to lay out knives and forks. There would be no escape from his parents until later that evening, because his mother was planning a special family meal. Considering there were only three of them in the family, Remus felt his return hardly warranted a special occasion, but parents were a bit funny about things like meals so he didn’t grumble. Not too much, anyway.
He amused himself by imagining that there was a knock on the door, and Sirius was standing there, tearful and dishevelled, begging Remus to come back to him. It took some doing to envisage Sirius in such a state, and by the time Remus had made the necessary mental adjustments, he realised his mother had stopped clattering cutlery and was looking at him with a worried expression.
‘Remus, dear, are you all right? You’ve set three extra places,’ she said.
‘I’m fine. Mum, could I have a couple of my schoolfriends to stay this summer? If they can come?’
Even as he said it, he wished he could take the words back. The last thing his friends would want was to visit some hick town and sit around watching the grass grow for a week; or even a weekend.
‘Which ones?’ his mother asked brightly.
‘Oh, forget it. They won’t be able to come anyway.’ Then, for the guilty pleasure of saying the name out loud, he added, ‘Sirius. Sirius Black. Oh, and James and Peter, of course.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘I told you to forget it,’ Remus said irritably. Unfortunately, at that moment his father appeared from the fireplace, and took in both his words and his tone.
‘Remus! Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I should think so too. Any more and you’ll be grounded. I don’t care if you are eighteen. While you’re living under this roof, you’ll obey our rules.’
It was a bad start to the evening and to the holidays: and, apparently, to the rest of his life, as Remus found over dinner when he mooted the subject of moving to London.
‘I can get a job,’ he expatiated, not noticing that his father had stopped eating and was looking cross again. ‘Sirius has a flat in London, and I’m sure I can stay there till I find something.’
That was a lie. Sirius hadn’t been completely tactless about it; he’d even taken their relationship into account, and decided that Remus was owed some information, if not explanation. ‘I’ve asked Prongs to share,’ he told Remus. ‘I thought of asking you, but we don’t want this to drag on, do we? And Prongs is looking forward to seeing London, going to the clubs and so on. Besides, Lily might be staying from time to time, so there won’t be room for anyone else. It’s a really small flat.’
Mr Lupin thumped his fist on the table in exasperation, making both Remus and Mrs Lupin jump. ‘Oh, you can get a job in London, can you?’ he asked, with heavy sarcasm. ‘As Minister of Magic, I suppose? Forget it. Your mother and I have decided that you’re best off staying right here, where everyone knows you. Mr Mintov is looking for a delivery boy, and he’s agreed to give you a trial.’
Mr. Mintov owned the corner shop. He was a former Beater for the Bulgarian Quidditch team, a heavyset man with an accent that very few people could understand. He was quick to use his wand when customers offended him, and as a result most of them preferred the new Muggle supermarket near the bypass. ‘You go in for a dozen eggs and come out with donkey ears and a tail,’ Andrew’s mother had complained once.
‘That’s not exactly going to be arduous, is it?’ Remus said. Mr Mintov had initiated his home delivery service in order to salvage a few of his customers, when he finally noticed the numbers had dwindled considerably, but he was a bit too late. Only a couple of elderly witches actually used the service, and families new to the area.
‘That’s the point,’ Remus’s mother chirped. ‘It’s not going to be too challenging, and Mintov won’t mind if you’re, er, indisposed for a few days every month.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Remus said. ‘Indisposed. Like I have a headache or something.’
‘Well, looking on the bright side,’ Remus’s father said, ‘he’s rather scared of you. So he won’t raise his wand to you or anything.’
‘Don’t care if he does,’ Remus muttered. ‘At least it would be a bit exciting.’
Mr Lupin arranged his knife and fork tidily on his plate, indicating that the discussion was over. ‘I’d have thought you’d had enough excitement to last you a lifetime.’
Which it would obviously have to, Remus mused later, as he got ready for bed. His small single room seemed tiny and bleak compared to the dorm he was used to. The only sound was an owl hooting somewhere in the distance, and his father droning on to his mother downstairs; eventually, Mr Lupin switched on the wireless and dance music drifted up to Remus’s room.
When he was a child, he’d always been reassured by the sound of his parents downstairs, going about their night-time rituals. Now, he felt trapped. The house might as well be a prison, he thought bitterly.
He lay down on his bed on his back, hands clasped behind his ears, and drifted into a daydream, or not so much a daydream as an evocation of a happier time. It involved Sirius, of course; him and Sirius, right at the beginning of what had turned out to be a very truncated odyssey.
Sirius had started it, which made it seem rather unfair that he’d then ended it too: or did that count as balance?
‘I can’t ask James,’ he began that cold November day as they walked through the grounds and down to the lake.
Remus was quite happy that Sirius had dragged him away early from lunch to ‘discuss a new project’: he had visions of working on Arithmancy charts or casting runes. Of course, he wasn’t so happy when he found out what the project involved. In fact, he was dumbfounded.
‘Experimental sex,’ Sirius said, kicking a round pebble across the lawn, and ignoring the look of total horror that Remus was sure must show on his face.
Sirius was aiming, in the autumn term of Sixth Year, to cram in all the experiences his parents would most disapprove of. No doubt sleeping with another boy seemed suitably rebellious, though he watered down the forbidden aspects so Remus would agree.
‘Muggles do it all the time at their boarding-schools,’ he assured him. And, presumably to appeal to Remus’s academic side, he added that some of the French Romantic poets had done it too, though he omitted to mention that most of them got syphilis. Sex with friends was decadent, Sirius said, like the absinthe the poets drank and their early deaths.
‘I don’t want to be decadent,’ Remus said, faintly alarmed. ‘And I’ll probably die young anyway. Werewolves do.’
‘Course you won’t,’ Sirius said, flinging a comforting arm over Remus’s shoulder; a purely friendly gesture, so he didn’t duck away. ‘And it probably isn’t that decadent, anyway. Bohemian, maybe.’
‘I just want to be normal,’ Remus said, starting to feel a bit panicked.
‘Hey, you will be. Having it off with another guy is perfectly natural.’
They shuffled through the autumn leaves under the willows by the lake and crouched on the bank. ‘Pity the Giant Squid’s hibernating,’ Sirius said, adding, just for good measure, ‘It’s only for fun, you know. I’ve still got tons of girlfriends.’
‘But why me?’
‘Listen,’ Sirius said, his brow furrowed with the difficulty of explaining, ‘I’m bored with girls. I can shag a girl any time.’
‘You didn’t tell us you’d actually shagged girls.’
‘Just stop being so bloody contrary, Moony. Anyway, girls aren’t a challenge. But you are.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’ Sirius sounded exasperated. ‘Sex with a werewolf. Now, that’s got to be interesting. Exotic, even.’
Remus doubted it. ‘But Padfoot, you’re always telling me how boring I am when I go on about work. I’m sure there are more interesting boys you can experiment with.’
‘Shut up, Moony. We’re going to sleep together. Whether you like it or not.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Remus said stubbornly, turning back to the castle. ‘I’m going to the library. I’ve got NEWTs to study for.’
Sirius didn’t give up easily, however. He took to passing Remus notes in Charms, with messages like ‘You’re looking just gorgeous this morning, Lupin. I can’t wait!’ Remus would go scarlet, of course, and Incendio the scraps of parchment at once, which earned him several detentions and a warning about his prefect’s badge.
For a few days, he suspected that James and Sirius were playing a prank, paying him back for some imagined slight. But then he saw the way Sirius looked at James when James looked at Lily, and realised there was actually a rift between them. When Remus saw Sirius’s forlorn face as he watched James and Lily talking together, he started feeling sorry for him, especially when Sirius sighed deeply. In fact, he was so distressed that he finally capitulated, exactly one week, seven hours and ten minutes after the original proposition; it would have been a bit sooner, but he had to wait for the common room to empty.
The second he’d turned to Sirius and said, ‘Oh, all right, I’ll sleep with you,’ he regretted it. Sirius stopped looking like a lost little boy and took on a predatory, slightly arrogant expression, obviously having known all along that he’d win.
Remus decided now that Sirius was probably rather like his father and Mr Mintov: because Remus was a werewolf, he somehow didn’t count or matter the way a full human did. He was useful but expendable. ‘Project’ had been the key word, the one Remus should have weighed more carefully.
There was a knock at the door and Remus came abruptly back to the present. School was over, Sirius was gone, and he was stuck in this house for ever and ever. ‘Come in.’
‘I brought you some nice cocoa,’ his mother said, a bit apologetic. ‘Dear, why are you lying here in the dark?’ She waved her wand and the lamps came on, shattering Remus’ train of thought. He was annoyed at being interrupted but drank the cocoa anyway. It helped him sleep, and he managed not to dream about Sirius.
The next morning an owl arrived with a letter, dropping it neatly besides Remus’s bowl of cornflakes. Remus was irritated by the way his heart beat faster as he picked up the envelope; and he felt unduly disappointed when he saw the Hogwarts crest. ‘Dear Mr Lupin...new secret society to fight Voldemort...Order of the Phoenix...’ He was glad it wasn’t from Sirius, because his mother was watching anxiously as he read it.
‘From the Registry?’
‘No. From Dumbledore. It’s a Resistance group. If I join I’ll have to go to London for meetings.’ And of course, the other three would also be invited, he was sure.
‘My older brother was in the French Resistance.’ Mrs Lupin’s lip trembled a bit: she was born into a Muggle family, and her brother had been killed towards the end of the second Muggle war. ‘He was very brave.’
‘I could be brave too,’ Remus said.
‘Well, of course you could! But I hate thinking of you in such danger.’
‘We’ll be fine. Dumbledore wouldn’t let Voldemort hurt us.’
‘Remus! Don’t say that name in this house!’
‘Sorry, Mum. But Sirius always says it. And the others.’
‘Well, the Blacks...’ She let her sentence hang in mid-air.
‘He’s not one of them! He left home.’ Remus found to his horror that his eyes were prickling. Anger, he thought. He wasn’t missing Sirius. He wasn’t hurt at the way Sirius had treated him. He wasn’t going to think of Sirius, daydream about him, or, worst of all, talk about him.
‘I’m off for a walk,’ he said, hoping his voice sounded casual.
It was overcast and hot, too hot for the uphill walk into town, but he did it anyway, to burn off his frustrations and confusion. He wanted an excuse not to Apparate, and anyway he needed the exercise; it would give him time to think.
In winter, the twenty-minute walk was more fun, especially when you were with a friend. Even when they were quite old, he and Andrew enjoyed counting the Christmas trees in December, and comparing Mrs Twinkey’s magic revolving angel with Mr Barnes’s real fairy. In summer, the windows were blank, net-curtained: the Wizarding suburbs were no more exciting in July than any others, and a lot of residents were on holiday.
He ended up outside the local branch of Gringotts, on the black marble bench where he’d often sat with Andrew, drinking Butterbeer and watching Andrew try to pick up girls. Andrew, like Sirius, was incredibly persistent. He methodically hit on every girl who walked by, ignoring the many rebuffs, until a couple of them finally relented. With some irony, Andrew usually ended up with the witch, Remus with the Squib. And Remus was always the one to be paired off with the random Muggle girls who wondered into the town looking for decent shoe shops.
It didn’t seem fair. Remus, besides being a good, and now fully-educated wizard, was far better-looking than Andrew, who had spots he couldn’t cure himself and red hair - his family were distant relatives of the Weasleys. Perhaps it was because Andrew accepted it as his due that the (comparatively) brighter, prettier girls would gravitate to him, and confidence was half the secret: better than any amount of magic, Remus sometimes felt.
Remus had done a lot of snogging with the girls apportioned to him, mainly because Andrew was there and he didn’t want to seem, well, queer or anything. He hadn’t gone any further though, and he was beginning to suspect Sirius hadn’t either, for all his hints at a rampant sex-life.
Even when he and Remus had been together for quite a while, Sirius remained evasive about those many encounters that had caused him to become so jaded with girls. At the time, Remus put this down to reticence, to a certain pureblood discretion, but now he wondered whether even Sirius had actually done more than fumble with breasts or endure a sloppy kiss: girls, or the girls round here, always kissed sloppily, which Remus hated.
‘Remus, that’s what kissing is,’ Andrew used to say, half-amused, half-annoyed, when he noticed Remus wiping his mouth surreptitiously on his sleeve afterwards. ‘My girl was just as bad, and you don’t hear me complaining, do you?’
Sitting alone on the bench, he suddenly missed Andrew almost as much as he missed Sirius. He wished Andrew’s parents hadn’t become so progressive over the years that they’d encouraged him to complete his Muggle education. Remus would have liked someone to talk to, to drag along to that first Order meeting, would have liked to face Sirius - and the others - with a friend in tow.
Of course, in that case Sirius might get the wrong idea, and think that he and Andrew were a couple. While Remus wasn’t at all reluctant to make him jealous, if that were even possible, he really wouldn’t want him to think he was shagging Andrew.
Shagging Sirius was a different proposition, of course. For a start, Remus could quite understand how even another boy could find Sirius attractive, once he thought about it. He didn’t draw back the first time Sirius kissed him, a chaste kiss that did nothing for Remus, but which Sirius seemed to enjoy; he gave a sharp intake of breath, then put his arms round Remus too tightly for comfort and kissed him again, a lot less chastely this time. Remus knew what to do, from all the girls he’d snogged; he was both relieved and pleased that Sirius didn’t kiss sloppily at all.
When they went beyond kissing Remus found himself out of his depth at first. He soon realised that he obviously didn’t know Sirius quite as well as James did, didn’t know him well enough for their early fumblings to be taken lightly, or be less than stressful. He’d be feeling bruised and exposed - everything was suddenly too close, too personal, and he tried to regain some distance by turning away from Sirius and staring up at the ceiling. Sirius, though, would lie there, his eyes bright, his face flushed, and say, ‘Isn’t it brilliant, Moony? Aren’t you glad we did it?’
And Remus would think no, he wasn’t glad, though he could see how it might get better, with practice. He wondered how much Sirius really enjoyed their gropings and caresses; maybe he was just trying to convince himself. James would probably have put his glasses back on, laughed and said, ‘Padfoot, that was dreadful, mate. Let’s stick to girls.’
But it did get better; it did get brilliant. There was an evening in the Shack when they were lying so close that they seemed to be sharing breath and blood and bone, and suddenly the act came into focus, and Remus felt as if someone had switched on a light in his head. It was both exhilarating and terrifying, like falling off a cliff without the power to fly. After that, he couldn’t see Sirius as just a friend, or their relationship as transitional. Every time he closed his eyes he'd find himself hovering above a dim room, looking down at himself and Sirius clinging together, sweaty and flushed, trying to catch their breath between kisses.
Sirius, Remus thought, shifting on the black marble seat, was ubiquitous this morning, even though he was so far away he might as well have been on the moon. He wondered what Sirius was doing at that moment. Getting up late, because he hadn’t got a job yet, perhaps waking with a girl next to him, reaching out for her with that charming, persuasive smile...
‘Hello, Remus. Home for the summer?’
Remus looked up again, blinked. The shopping precinct was quite busy now: he realised he must have been sitting there for at least an hour. All the witches were flocking to town with their children, exhausted in advance by the prospect of six weeks in which to keep them entertained.
He shielded his eyes - must get sunglasses this year - and saw he was being addressed by the woman who lived a few doors down, the mother of five pretty witches who were greatly sought-after. One of them was with her.
‘I’m home for good.’ He hated the way that sounded. ‘School’s finished now.’
‘Of course. Well, you’ll be able to do your bit against You-Know-Who. You’ve had an invitation to the Order, haven’t you? Your mother mentioned it when I spoke to her on the way to town.’
Damn gossiping women. Another thing he hated about home.
‘Amanda’s got an invitation too. Perhaps you could Apparate together.’
Remus recognised Amanda from school; she was in the year above him, one of the Ravenclaw beauties who always eluded boys like him.
‘Hi, Remus.’ Amanda sounded amused. ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to hold your hand, do you? But it would be fun to go together. I don’t know if anyone else in my year’ll be there.’
Remus was surprised to see her. He’d have thought that the lovely and clever Amanda would have gone into Auror training straight after school, and probably be married or engaged by now: wizards often married very young, especially in times of war.
‘Amanda’s doing a special course in town,’ her mother said. ‘Floristry. She’s not got long to go till she’s fully qualified. She’s going to take over Flowery Spells in September, aren’t you dear?’
Remus had never heard of a Ravenclaw ending up as a florist in a town like this one, especially not one of the beauties.
‘London’s such a long way away,’ Amanda’s mother suddenly blurted out, her face red. ‘The girls...all of them. I worry, you see. Oh, I know you’re in danger anywhere, but at least here they’re near home. At school, they have the Headmaster. There’s nobody in London. Nothing to protect them.’
‘Mum,’ Amanda said, in a warning tone.
Her mother ignored her. ‘I don’t want her to join the Order. I don’t want her to be noticed. But when your mother mentioned... Well, I feel Amanda’ll be doing her bit, so she needn’t keep nagging and nagging me about finding a job at the Ministry. You’ll take her there and bring her back, won’t you? You’ll look after her?’
Amanda was now tugging at her mother’s arm. ‘Come on, Mum. Lupin doesn’t want to hear this. I’ll see you later,’ she called back at him.
‘Sure,’ Remus said. It would be good to appear at the meeting with a beautiful girl, he reflected. Serve Sirius right. And it also would be a relief to have someone to Apparate with.
The local religious fanatic was now setting up his stall outside Witchworth’s, performing the Sonorus spell so he could spend the rest of the day proclaiming passages from The Life of Merlin, all of which Remus was already familar with from History of Magic lessons. Of course, he couldn’t recite the whole Good Book by heart, the way the fanatic did.
‘And I say unto ye, the wands shall never be silent...’ the rich voice intoned, as Witchworth’s emptied abruptly.
Remus followed the other shoppers into the Pentagram Centre, the main shopping precinct. Today’s theme was holidays in the sun, appropriate for a July day. The whole centre was gilded and bright, with sparkling floors and a cooling charm to keep customers at a temperate level.
He passed through the golden portals of Page and Binding: if he was stuck here for the next seventy years, he might as well have something to read. Their window display featured a beach scene, a gigantic sandcastle made entirely of the current bestsellers. The Book of The Week was piled up high, with a neon sign announcing that it was perfect reading for those Romanian seaside resorts. The very giggly authoress, who looked about ten, was sitting behind the cash-desk signing copies. Remus absent-mindedly took a book from the pile and joined the queue snaking round to the back of the shop.
As he waited, he flicked through the novel. It was long, about 500 pages, with very detailed descriptions of sex between a witch and various wizards, apparently a different one in every chapter.
‘Zorgon caressed me with his eyes,’ Remus read. ‘Then, he ripped off my dress with a wave of his wand. His hands and lips accosted my body, as he pounded into me with his enormous manhood...’ Bloody hell.
A fat woman pushed in front of him, muttering about people who didn’t move forward. Remus looked up from the novel and realised he was the only man in the queue. He hastily ducked away, returned the bestseller to the wrong place, and hid in the Divination section until he was sure the signing was over and the authoress wouldn’t come looking for him with a copy of a pornographic novel he didn’t need: just thinking of Sirius was bad enough.
He spent the next couple of days hanging around in the garden, trying to get a tan during the few minutes the sun appeared every hour. He lay on his stomach on one of his mother’s best towels and tried to concentrate on one of the books he’d eventually bought on his outing.
After a while the lines of print started to blur, like the boundaries between memory and illusion. Remus drifted into a pleasant remix of a Saturday in the Shack, endowing Sirius freely with extra qualities, like adoration and remorse. ‘I made a big mistake, Moony,’ he whispered, his hands running down Remus’s body in an extremely pleasurable way. ‘Will you forgive me?’
‘Maybe.’ Remus decided to make him suffer a bit first, but the thought jolted him back to reality. He had no desire to punish Sirius, even in his fantasies.
He returned to his spy novel and tried very hard to concentrate on the plot. Soon, though, he found himself sunbathing with Sirius on an imaginary beach beneath a striped umbrella. They were about to have sex underwater when the first drops of rain started to fall, and Remus had to gather up the towel and go inside.
On the fourth day, he caved in and sent Sirius and James an owl, complaining about the future his parents had mapped out for him. Neither of the others answered, which seemed, for some reason, to fuel Remus’s obsession. He suddenly found it almost impossible to stop talking about Sirius, and didn’t even manage to include James and Peter in his comments.
By the twentieth ‘Sirius says...’ his parents were starting to look at him a bit oddly.
‘Sirius never bothers to read instructions,’ he informed them when his mother was checking out a new spell to stop the oven from overheating. ‘Sirius likes apple pie,’ he babbled, at lunch, completely powerless to stop his mouth moving and the words coming out.
They exchanged a glance. ‘Well, of course you’re missing your friends, dear. When’s that meeting?’
‘Not till August. August 15th.’ Which left nearly two weeks, including one full moon, until he saw Sirius, and the others.
Mr Lupin decided that Remus had had enough holiday, so on the following Monday he went to Mintov’s shop to start what his father called his apprenticeship. Within hours he was making his first delivery, two cans of beans and a fresh batch of hellebore, to a witch who lived a short way out of town.
Flying miles on a broomstick gave Remus plenty of opportunity to daydream, though he was a bit alarmed that his ruminations on Sirius were becoming more frequent and graphic. He decided it was probably just frustration: he was used to sleeping with Sirius, and his body was indignant at the lack of contact. ‘I’ll have a cold bath after work,’ he resolved, trying to concentrate on the patchwork pattern of yellow, ploughed and green fields beneath him.
But even the woods around the town reminded him of Sirius, of several piercingly intense encounters on the dry, sandy soil by the Forbidden Forest where the pine-trees grew, their summer scent so different from the Christmas one. They smelled of August in the South of France, and when Sirius talked about his childhood holidays Remus could almost hear the sea and feel sand under his naked skin.
In his daydream, Sirius whispered, ‘I love you, Moony,’ and fixed Remus with a melting gaze. Remus shifted uncomfortably on his broom; to hell with the cold bath. He wished he could go straight home and up to his room.
He had to remind himself quite severely that in real life Sirius had never looked at him like that. During sex, his eyes would get dark and stormy, and if he noticed Remus glancing at him he’d turn away, concentrating on the sensations.
When they weren’t actually in bed together he looked at Remus quite normally, but on the last morning he made a point of avoiding Remus’s eyes. As they got off the train, he ducked slightly, mumbled, ‘See you round, Moony,’ and left with James, their heads close together, laughing already about their plans to take London by storm. No doubt they were having a wonderful time right now, as Remus made his way home after work.
He found the house empty, and remembered vaguely that his mother had said she was going to see her friend’s daughter’s new baby: it had just about penetrated his Sirius-infused consciousness. And she’d also left a note reminding him where the bread was kept - as if he didn’t know! - and suggesting a couple of quick charms for sandwiches.
There was a loud crash in the back yard, and Remus, running out to see what it was, thought he was hallucinating. A huge black motorbike stood on the lawn - his father would kill him - and Sirius was dismounting, waving his wand to dispel the ominous black smoke pouring from the exhaust.
Remus was taken aback by his sheer solidity. Real Sirius was very handsome, of course, and had an oil streak down one cheek: this emphasised his looks in a way, but also detracted from the ethereal beauty he was starting to possess in Remus’ daydreams. He was a bit taller, too - obviously, he’d had a growth spurt in the brief time since school. Apparently, life with James was suiting him. He seemed pleased enough to see Remus, though he lacked the pleading, worshipful expression that dream Sirius sported.
Remus’s instinct was to rush forward and fling his arms around him, but just for once, his will obeyed him and he managed to hold back. Instead, he waited for Sirius to clap him on the shoulder and ask, ‘So how’s it going?’
‘Great,’ lied Remus. ‘What are you doing here?’
Sirius had a way of invading body space that was confident rather than intimate, though Remus wasn’t complaining either way. He moved in on Remus, keeping his hand on his shoulder. He smelled faintly of petrol and perhaps cigarettes: he always swore to the other Marauders that he didn’t smoke, but nobody believed him.
‘Oh, I just got her,’ Sirius said, waving casually at the bike, though his voice couldn’t hide his obvious pride and pleasure in the machine. ‘Teaching her to fly. Thought I’d give her a trial run and come and see you.’ He glanced up at the overcast sky. ‘Looks like it’s going to rain again. Can we go inside? I assume there is an inside. I’ll just put an Impervius on the bike.’
Remus, with some atavistic sense of the rights due an aristocratic guest, took Sirius in through the front door rather than the back, and instantly wished he hadn’t. He’d never noticed before how shabby the hall was, with its lino curling slightly at the edges: his mother’s Permanent Sticking Charms weren’t very reliable, and his father always claimed to be too tired from work to cast household spells. He’d spent most of his life trying to isolate shapes and faces in the increasingly blotchy paint, and had himself, in adolescent tempers, contributed to the scuff marks on the bottom step, which he often gave a kick as he went by, just for old time’s sake. And he was dreadfully aware that the smell of last night’s meal still lingered - his mother overcooked Brussels sprouts almost to the point of extinction.
‘Nobody home?’ Sirius asked, peering round curiously. Something flickered at the corner of his mouth, and Remus hoped he wasn’t going to burst out laughing at the dilapidated state of the place.
‘No, my mother’s out.’
‘Prongs and I got owls. And Peter. From Dumbledore.’
‘Yes, so did I.’
Sirius’s face split into a wide grin. ‘Thought so! We’ll see you there,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fun. Marauders reunion and so on. Got your other owl by the way.’
You could have answered, Remus thought, but just said, ‘Yes. So you know I’m stuck here for ever.’
‘Prongs was thinking we could mount a rescue mission, but we decided you’d get out soon enough anyway. With the war escalating and everything. We’re going to need everyone we can get on our side.’ Without skipping a beat, he added, ‘Regulus joined the others. My mother told me. She wrote me a letter about how he’d die a hero and I was such a coward.’
‘She wants Regulus to die?’ Remus thought of Amanda’s mother and felt slightly sick.
‘My mother,’ Sirius explained, ‘tends to be a bit metaphorical. Goes with the general lunacy. Plus, I gathered from Andromeda that she’s been drinking more than ever since she heard, so she’s probably not quite as happy as she’d like us to believe.’
Remus offered Sirius a cup of tea, which Sirius refused. ‘Your mum’ll probably be back soon, and I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Fine.’
‘So what’s your room like, then?’
‘Is that it? It’s just a room.’ Remus was evasive. His room, he felt, probably screamed ‘Sirius’ to the skies, so many daydreams and dreams and visions of the other boy it had held. Besides, he couldn’t remember whether he’d bothered to make his bed that morning. Perhaps his mother had, but in any case the room wasn’t looking its best, if it ever did.
But Sirius was already bounding up the stairs. In the ten long days without him, Remus had somehow misplaced any recollection of his energy and wild enthusiasm. His Sirius was definitely insubstantial, he now realised, pleasantly amenable, quite unlike the real Sirius. He wasn’t altogether sure how to reconcile the two, but then the real Sirius opened his door, stopped dead and looked around, sniffing like the dog he sometimes was, and the two images clicked, and all Remus wanted was to hug Sirius, hold him close, and never let him go. The longing was so intense that he was sure Sirius must feel it too.
Through Sirius’s eyes, Remus saw the familiar bedroom transformed from a cohesive space into its various, less than glamorous components: a threadbare carpet, an armchair patched by so many spells that it was impossible to discern the original chintz pattern, the calendar with kittens on it that an aunt had given him. Though Remus was fairly tidy, the bookshelves were decorated with a row of dirty mugs: his mother brought him cocoa every evening, and he always forgot to take the empty cups down again. And, suddenly looming very large, his childhood iron bed stood against the far wall. It hadn’t been made: he hastily pulled up the covers.
‘Mm. Utilitarian. Looks like a hospital bed,’ Sirius remarked, bouncing on it. He took out his wand and muttered a silencing spell. Remus froze.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to be tactless. About the hospital, I mean. Look, I need to ask you a favour. ‘
‘Just take the spell off. I’m not doing any more experimenting with you,’ Remus said stubbornly, even though every fibre of his body was yearning to, and it took almost more control than he could muster to get the words out. ‘I’m not going through the withdrawal symptoms again.’ And what if Sirius hadn’t meant that? He couldn’t take the words back, unfortunately.
He couldn’t take back the unconscious pun, either. Sirius sniggered, then said, ‘Withdrawal, right. I know exactly what you mean. And that’s the problem, actually. You see, our thing... Of course, it was only a little phase. Oh, I mean, it was a great phase and all that. But now Prongs has fixed me up with this girl. And he doesn’t want his best mate to be bent.’
Remus felt as if he’d been slapped. ‘Did he actually say that?’
‘Even Prongs isn’t that crass, Moony! But it’s pretty obvious he wouldn’t like it. You know, he wasn’t ever happy about us. You and me. Though it meant absolutely nothing more than, well, a wank. I told him that, and we made an agreement that it wouldn’t go on after school.’
‘You and James decided you’d break up with me?’ Remus wished he had some minimal power over his words; once again, they seemed to have a life of their own.
Sirius reached out and pulled Remus down on to the bed with him. ‘Hey, Moony. Don’t get all huffy. It wasn’t breaking up. Not like with a girl. We had a great time, we’re mates, no hard feelings, right? Damn, I’m worse with the double meanings than you are.’
Remus smiled obediently. ‘Yeah, right.’ He didn’t want to ask Sirius to let him go; besides, he felt more at home in his skin than he had since the holidays started. He just lay on the bed facing him, not moving, allowing Sirius absent-mindedly to stroke his hair.
‘Anyway. What’s happened is that I’ve got a girlfriend. And I used to let everyone think I’d had it off with tons of girls, but I never really got the chance to, not at school.’
Remus bit his tongue before he could say, ‘Even as a project?’ A wild hope rose in him, a hope that was definitely misplaced, he knew that even before he recognised it for what it was. Sirius wasn’t going to say, ‘It was you all along, Moony.’ He was James’s friend, really, before he was anything else, and if James wanted him to be straight, Sirius would do his best to oblige.
‘I want to sleep with girls now,’ Sirius continued, predictably. ‘Only - well, I suppose I’m out of practice. We sort of did it, but I had to think about us before it would actually work. And that meant I was thinking of you. Which is really perverted, isn’t it?’
‘Depends,’ Remus muttered.
‘I’m probably missing our thing a bit,’ Sirius conceded. He stopped stroking Remus’s hair abruptly, as if he’d just noticed what he was doing. ‘I need to get it out of my system, so I can start again.’
‘And you think sleeping with me now will get it out of your system?’
Sirius glared at him defiantly. ‘If it doesn’t, it’ll give me something new to fantasise about while I’m trying to sleep with her. Okay? I think I ran through just about every single time on our last, um, attempt.’
He gave his wide grin again and added, ‘Maybe it won’t work with you either. Maybe I’m just impotent. Rather than bent, I mean.’
Remus had to laugh at that. ‘I think I’d prefer to be bent.’ And he probably was, he realised, and suddenly he didn’t feel like laughing at all.
They kissed, a bit clumsily at first, then gradually with the old familiarity and expertise. After a while, Sirius broke away and said, ‘Not impotent then.’
And a while later, he asked, ‘Have you been sleeping with anyone else?’
‘No,’ Remus mumbled, through a mouthful of black hair. ‘Why would I?’
‘I dunno. All those pretty boys you could be screwing. And before you throw me out, that was just a joke.’
Remus didn’t ask why he shouldn’t be screwing pretty girls, like Sirius was planning to, though the words smarted a bit. ‘I can’t be bothered with stuff like that,’ he said.
And after that exchange, it was sweet and fast, though Remus wished the moment could last forever. He didn't turn away when Sirius looked directly into his eyes, with an expression not a million miles removed from the one in Remus’s daydreams: open and yearning, and almost, almost as if he really liked Remus and wasn’t just using him yet again.
They dozed off in each others’ arms, tangled in Remus’s rather grubby sheets; moments later, though, Remus was jerked awake by the sound of footsteps down in the kitchen, and shook Sirius roughly.
‘Hey, Padfoot, you’ll have to go. My mother’s back.’
Sirius leaped up and dressed so fast that Remus felt slightly dizzy watching him. ‘Better Disapparate to the bike then. Bye, Moony. I’ll keep you posted about the girlfriend, okay? And let us know your NEWT results.’
There was the usual crack, and Remus ran over to open his window for a last glimpse of Sirius, who was now mounting his bike and switching on the engine. Remus prayed his mother wouldn’t be looking out of the kitchen window.
He waved wildly, hoping that Sirius would wave back, but he didn’t even turn round. The bike sputtered into life, then took off gracefully into the sky.
Remus stood watching it until he couldn’t see even the faintest trace of smoke from the exhaust. He was still standing there when it got dark, and his mother called him down for dinner. Even then, he scanned the horizon once more, by the light of the waxing moon, before he reluctantly tore his eyes away, closed the window and drew the curtains tightly shut.
End