A Mirror With Memory
Written by throughadoor.
Remus opened the door in his dressing gown and there was Sirius, leaves matted in his hair, robes no more than carelessly draped rags, eyes bright in their sockets like the shown-through light of the stars painted behind him.
"He's back."
"Right, then."
They got drunk, because there was no use trying to sleep and not much else to be done, sitting at the kitchen table because Remus didn't have any other chairs for the occasion of company. After three shots of Goblin Scotch in silence, Remus set down his glass and said, "So, good to see you. Thanks so much for writing."
Sirius poured them another drink and gulped his down without comment, finally saying, "'Dear Remus, having rats for dinner, wish you were here' really makes for a charming post card, don't you think?"
"It's a good thing, then," Remus said, "that you didn't send any." And then he laughed and it tasted like shattered glass in his mouth. And then he poured himself another drink.
Four tips of the bottle later, Remus said, "How did it happen?"
Sirius shook his head. "It was awful. Harry--"
Remus gripped the bottle and watched his knuckles turn very white.
"He's fine," Sirius said. "But he was there."
Remus poured them another drink.
After Remus couldn't feel his fingers, Sirius said, "I'm a ruddy awful godfather." His words were slurred together like spoonfuls of molasses.
Remus swung a hand with the intention of clapping Sirius on the shoulder but he lost his balance and ended up gripping the edge of the table in an effort not to fall out of his chair. "That's not true!" Remus said, even though he had no idea what constituted properly godfatherly duties, in Sirius' head or otherwise.
"'S true, yes it is true," Sirius lamented. "Don't even have a photo of Harry in my wallet."
Remus let out a burst of laughter. "Do you even know what a wallet is?"
"'Course I do," Sirius said, making several swipes at thin air before Remus realized he was trying to reach for the bottle. "On my way here, this old Muggle fellow gave me some water and a ham bone and showed me a picture of his godson, kept it in his wallet."
"And this is while you were Padfoot?"
Sirius eyed him as if to say, so? "I just wish I had a picture of him, is all," Sirius muttered. "Don't see him nearly as often as I ought to."
Remus sat up, which was rather difficult, considering that he was relatively certain he no longer had a spine. "I have one," he said.
"Yeah?" Sirius brightened. "Let's see it."
When Hagrid had written during Harry's first year to Remus and the other surviving members of the Order, asking for photos of James and Lily, Remus had sent a set of their wedding pictures and a note asking if he might have a photo of Harry in return. The photo Hagrid had sent sat on top of Remus' usually untouched pile of letters and things from school, on the top shelf of the hall linen closet. He retrieved it for Sirius, and laid it out on the kitchen table, but not after knocking into several corners and nearly shutting his thumb in the door.
It was a photo of Harry playing Quidditch, perhaps taken for the school paper or some such thing. The motion that the photo had captured was of Harry making a seemingly impossible dive for the Snitch, and they watched over and over as he made the miraculous catch and brought the Snitch into his grasp.
He was, after all, The Boy Who Lived, The Boy Who Looked Like James, The Boy Who'd Seen Voldemort Rebirthed. Sirius traced the line of capture with his finger tip. "Bloody hell," he said.
*
"Want to play Exploding Snap?"
Remus and Sirius were sitting side by side on an ancient moth-eaten velvet sofa in a dusty sitting room. Remus eyed him, and Sirius shrugged, palms out. "What?" he said. "I'm bored."
"You're twelve."
Sirius nodded, looking around meaningfully. "Rather feels that way," he said, "being back here."
Dumbledore had been decidedly underwhelmed when Sirius had made the offer of his parents' home for the headquarters for the new Order, and Remus knew that Sirius was furious because he'd been counting on it as one of the few ways he could do his part, given that he was a fugitive with a now-useless disguise. Remus suggested, and Arthur a few others thankfully agreed, that they should at least take a look around the next time it was safe to get into London, and now Remus and Sirius were kicking at each others' heels in the sitting room while Dumbledore and Mad-Eye checked the strength of the hexing fields on the gutters or some such thing.
"Should we go see how they're doing?" Remus asked.
Sirius huffed slightly. "The house is Unplottable, has hex-proof siding and a banshee alert system," he said. "Believe me, the last thing I want to do is stay here, but it really is ideal."
Remus tried to imagine Sirius all alone in this drafty and empty house, and it was almost as impossible as imagining him growing up here as a boy. "You'd live here?" Remus asked, surprised that he was already saddened at the idea of the end of Sirius sleeping on his too-small loveseat and the two of them tripping over each other for tea in the morning.
"Somebody will need to," Sirius said. "Ought to be me, I know what needs to be disarmed and such. And there's the wretched house elf somewhere and I'm the only one he'll answer to."
Remus nodded. He looked around the room, surveying its gloomy cloth-draped furniture, the foreboding mantle, the decaying velvet curtains that dripped down the walls. "It's just hard to imagine, you growing up in a place like this," he said. Possibly it had something to do with Hogwarts, and the way boarding school made the three months you weren't away seem like the non-reality, but still. This oppressive place was nothing like Sirius.
Sirius grinned. "Want to see a picture?" he asked, bounding up from the sofa. "There used to be one over the mantle, here."
He pulled back a thick set of red drapes on the wall above the mantel, and indeed there was a photograph in an ugly and ornate frame, a scowling dark-haired family in formal portrait sitting poses. But there were only three of them, none of whom Remus recognized as Sirius but who he placed as his parents and his younger brother Regulus. He saw bits of Sirius in each of them: his proud nose, his thick curtain of hair, but no likeness of Sirius himself, at any age. The only evidence which betrayed that Regulus was not an only child was a slight shadow of a stain behind the stern Mrs. Black's shoulder. It seemed almost to be a burn mark, and one might imagine it to be in the shape of the silhouette of their oldest son.
Sirius stood taking in the tableau, and Remus sat watching Sirius with his hands twisted in his lap. After a moment, Sirius turned around, grinning like a nightmare. "Well," he said. "Welcome home indeed."
*
"Do you want some tea?"
"No."
"Coffee?"
"No."
"Hot chocolate?"
"Nah."
"Hemlock?" Remus said finally.
Sirius looked up from his sullen study of the knots in the wooden table top. "Over ice?" he asked hopefully.
Remus shook his head, rapping his knuckles on the table nervously. Upon learning the news of the Azkaban breakout, an emergency meeting of the Order had been called in the middle of the night. The others had left at dawn, but neither Remus nor Sirius could bear to return to bed, so they sat at the kitchen table, mostly in silence. Remus was merely exhausted beyond the possibility of sleep with fatigue and worry, but he could see that Sirius was nearly strumming with frustration, more angry than ever that he was forced to remain housebound.
Remus looked up suddenly, startled by the hooting of an owl above the kitchen table. It was a Prophet delivery issue, the day's edition in its beak. He hadn't even realized they'd been sitting at the table long enough that papers were being delivered. He dug some coins out of his cloak, which lay discarded on the bench, paid the owl and accepted the paper.
"Oh," he said, hand to mouth, "oh, no."
"What?" Sirius asked listlessly. "What else could have possibly happened?"
"It's, ah," Remus fought the urge to say that nothing else had happened and stuff the paper out of sight, but Sirius would find out eventually, no point in delaying the unpleasant news. "You'd better take a look."
He spread the Prophet out between them, and the headline -- MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN, MINISTRY FEARS BLACK IS "RALLYING POINT" FOR OLD DEATH EATERS -- greeted them mockingly.
"That son of a bludgering," Sirius started, slamming his fist on the table, "Cornelius Fudge! I'll show him a crazed murderer -- I'll kill him!"
"You can't."
"Thanks, Moony, you think I don't know that?" he said, waving his arms. "I can't even write a Letter to the Editor." He added in a mocking tone, "'Dear Sir or Madam, I wish you inform you that your January 27th issue is full of bloody rubbish.'"
This was, of course, the outburst of frustration Remus had been expecting since Snape had implied at the end of the meeting that those members of the Order who were able to leave their houses keep a close eye out for unusual happenings. Remus was forced to admit himself, however, he hadn't quite seen this turn of idiocy from the Ministry coming
Remus looked down at the paper again, and noticed for the first time the small photograph of Sirius in the lower right hand corner. It was the same Azkaban-issue mug shot that had haunted Remus' guilt-ridden nightmares for most of the year after Sirius escaped Azkaban.
Just looking at the photo was enough to refresh a flood of unpleasant emotions: the sickening misconception that Remus had carried with him for twelve years, the cold shock he'd felt the first time he'd seen the photo, unbelieving that Sirius could have grown so gaunt and unrecognizable, and the guilt he'd felt every time Sirius' eyes had peered out from behind the mat of hair in the papers and in shop windows during the year he spent at Hogwarts.
The truth was that even though Remus felt hopeless and exhausted and unsure that there was anything to be done to stop Voldemort's re-ascension to his former power, he was happier to have Sirius beside him this morning than he had been at any point since James and Lily had died.
"It's not even a terribly flattering photo, is it?" Sirius asked, breaking the long silence.
"It's really not," Remus said, laughing because there was really no other option. "It's really not at all."
*
Remus stood in the doorway and surveyed what appeared to be an entirely empty room. He'd offered to help Sirius clear out the last of the bedrooms on the fourth floor, but he was unsure what was left to be done here. "This one should be easy," he said, "since it's empty."
"It makes sense," Sirius said, standing with his back to Remus, looking out the window. "It was my bedroom. So I rather expect they burned anything I left behind."
"Oh."
Remus scuffled at the floor, feeling a bloody insensitive idiot, even though there was no way for him to have known that. Sirius had been horrified by his parents as long as Remus had known him, and he had always managed to avoid having James, Remus or Peter over during the holidays.
"Except," Sirius said, running a hand along the dark and ornate wallpaper. "Maybe," he muttered, humming under his breath and reaching for his wand. He drew a line with his wand point along the edge of torn-laden winding rose, and the paper pulled itself away from the wall. "Excellent," he said. "Stashed some things here the summer before I left, but I didn't imagine they'd still be around. Look at this, Remus."
Remus accepted the photo from his outstretched hand and found it to be a pleasant surprise: the Gryffindor House Photo from their fourth year.
"I haven't seen this in ages," Remus said, studying the impossibly young faces. It was entirely possible that he'd binned his own copy, he really had no idea. His own stack of school things in the linen closet at his cottage received about as much attention as whatever Sirius had hidden in the wallpaper for the last fourteen years.
"Me neither," Sirius said, standing shoulder to shoulder with Remus so they could both book. He added, "Er. Obviously."
Remus recalled being lined up each year under the direction of Professor McGonagall for the House Photo, but he could not remember what he'd been thinking when that particular photo had been taken. His much-younger image was smiling weakly up at him through considerable pallor, which suggested the nearness of the full moon.
There were more than a hundred students crammed in the photo, arranged by year, and Remus paid little attention or recognition to the students who had been several years older or several years younger, the ones he hadn't known by name when he was at school. But the ones in his same year, and many of those in the years directly above and below, these faces he remembered.
More than what seemed like a fair share of the students smiling up from the photo were dead. James and Lily, obviously, though Remus still felt a stab of pain in his stomach to see Lily beaming radiantly and James casting her a hopeful glance. But also Edgar Bones, Frank Longbottom and Alice Wyrd-later-to-be-Longbottom, Gideon and Fabian Prewett, Mariel Samuel and Neile Dedmon they'd all been victims of the first war as well.
How the rest of them faired, Remus didn't know. Consequence of being a known werewolf and the close friend of both the martyr and the traitor who killed him had made Remus eager to keep to himself these past years.
He forced himself to regard Peter's eager, smiling face, searching his expression for any sign that he would later betray them all. There was nothing, though, at least not that Remus could see.
"Can you tell, just by looking, do you think?" Sirius asked.
"I thought I'd be able to," Remus replied, "but I really can't."
"You thought--" Sirius trailed off, sounding confused.
"Wormtail," Remus said, not feeling up to saying his given name out loud. "I keep thinking I should be able to tell by looking at him, but I can't."
"Oh."
Sirius sounded short and embarrassed in the same way Remus' had when he first entered the room, this room, the room where Sirius had lived and slept the first sixteen years of his life.
"What were you talking about?" Remus asked.
"It's nothing," Sirius said quickly, and for the first time Remus located the image of Sirius in the photograph.
It hurt to look at a picture of Sirius so young when the real-life Sirius, eyes haunted and face like a crumpled newspaper, stood beside him. The Sirius in the photograph was grinning at the camera with a kind of brash fearlessness that Remus had only seen in shadow since Sirius had escaped. Remus watched the photo for a long moment, wishing he could look up and see Sirius looking so carefree again.
Then, so quickly that Remus almost missed it, Sirius in the photograph turned away from the camera, shot a glance to the side and then returned to his forward gaze and silly grin. In the split second when Sirius had been looking away from the camera, he'd bit his lip and cast his eyes toward -- wait, that couldn't be right.
He'd been looking at Remus.
"Oh," Remus said. "Oh."
*
They climbed out of their respective sides of the bed and began to dress while it was still dark, and while Remus was half-certain that he was still asleep, besides. Remus moved slowly, and he had one arm still hanging out of his robe when Sirius stood fully-dressed before him, so it was easy for Sirius to slide one hand inside Remus' robes and cup a cold palm against Remus' stomach.
"I don't want you to go," Sirius said into Remus' neck. "It's too dangerous."
Remus laughed. "That's rich, coming from you," he said. "If Dumbledore would let you come, too, we would have left last night."
It was true; both what Remus said but also that the mission would be dangerous. Bulgaria wasn't exactly the best place to find wizards sympathetic to the Order's causes. But he was only planning on spending a few days, and he had safe contacts, he wasn't worried. He was strangely touched that Sirius was so concerned, even if he imagined Sirius' caution was misplaced envy.
"You'll be careful, right?" Sirius said, sliding his hand around the curve of Remus' side so that the heel of his hand fit into the small of Remus' back, using this angle to draw their bodies closer together.
Another rather laughable sentiment, but Remus smiled against Sirius' temple and said, "Yes. I promise."
Sirius leaned in, then, and kissed him, and Remus kissed back, even though it was not even dawn and his feet were cold and his robes were still half undone. It was the first time he'd been shagging someone often enough to think of sharing a bed in what amounted to basically ever, but it was hardly a grand romance, so he took these quiet moments when he could get them.
They stood like that, somewhat awkwardly entwined and silent, and kissing, for a minute or more. When Sirius broke away, he said, close in Remus' ear, "Everyone thinks we did this before, you know."
Remus wondered idly who "everyone" meant, if he was responding to some cruel remark from Snape or the ghost of James or whether it even mattered. "We're doing this now," he said. "That reminds me, there's something I want to do before I leave." And he really, as much as he'd rather stand like this all day and well into next week, he really did need to leave.
He slipped out of Sirius' embrace and led him downstairs, past the portraits, who were thankfully sleeping an uneasy sleep in the dusty light of dawn, and into the first floor sitting room.
"Sit," he said, moving Sirius toward the sofa. He reached for the camera that was sitting on top of the mantle.
He'd found the camera in the attic while he'd been helping Sirius look for Kreacher one night last week, and he'd checked it over for all manner of Dark modifications, just to make sure that taking a person's photograph with the camera wouldn't paralyze them, or that developed photographs wouldn't display the image of anyone who wasn't Pureblood as being horribly disfigured. But he could see nothing wrong with it, and so even though it was old, it would serve his purposes. He'd even managed to suss out a way to set it on an automatic timer.
"What are you doing?" Sirius asked, puzzled.
"I'm taking our picture."
"But why?"
"Because," Remus said, stepping away from the camera and sitting next to Sirius on the couch. "I'm tired of looking at old photographs. I want to be able to see us like this." He elbowed Sirius in the rib, but then placed a stiff arm around Sirius' shoulder. "Don't forget to smile," he added.
When Sirius' hand found his, it was shaky, but he held it carefully against his own shoulder. Remus looked straight into the camera when it flashed, but he rather imagined that his developed image would betray him later, and that he'd see himself looking just to the side, only at Sirius.
Remus opened the door in his dressing gown and there was Sirius, leaves matted in his hair, robes no more than carelessly draped rags, eyes bright in their sockets like the shown-through light of the stars painted behind him.
"He's back."
"Right, then."
They got drunk, because there was no use trying to sleep and not much else to be done, sitting at the kitchen table because Remus didn't have any other chairs for the occasion of company. After three shots of Goblin Scotch in silence, Remus set down his glass and said, "So, good to see you. Thanks so much for writing."
Sirius poured them another drink and gulped his down without comment, finally saying, "'Dear Remus, having rats for dinner, wish you were here' really makes for a charming post card, don't you think?"
"It's a good thing, then," Remus said, "that you didn't send any." And then he laughed and it tasted like shattered glass in his mouth. And then he poured himself another drink.
Four tips of the bottle later, Remus said, "How did it happen?"
Sirius shook his head. "It was awful. Harry--"
Remus gripped the bottle and watched his knuckles turn very white.
"He's fine," Sirius said. "But he was there."
Remus poured them another drink.
After Remus couldn't feel his fingers, Sirius said, "I'm a ruddy awful godfather." His words were slurred together like spoonfuls of molasses.
Remus swung a hand with the intention of clapping Sirius on the shoulder but he lost his balance and ended up gripping the edge of the table in an effort not to fall out of his chair. "That's not true!" Remus said, even though he had no idea what constituted properly godfatherly duties, in Sirius' head or otherwise.
"'S true, yes it is true," Sirius lamented. "Don't even have a photo of Harry in my wallet."
Remus let out a burst of laughter. "Do you even know what a wallet is?"
"'Course I do," Sirius said, making several swipes at thin air before Remus realized he was trying to reach for the bottle. "On my way here, this old Muggle fellow gave me some water and a ham bone and showed me a picture of his godson, kept it in his wallet."
"And this is while you were Padfoot?"
Sirius eyed him as if to say, so? "I just wish I had a picture of him, is all," Sirius muttered. "Don't see him nearly as often as I ought to."
Remus sat up, which was rather difficult, considering that he was relatively certain he no longer had a spine. "I have one," he said.
"Yeah?" Sirius brightened. "Let's see it."
When Hagrid had written during Harry's first year to Remus and the other surviving members of the Order, asking for photos of James and Lily, Remus had sent a set of their wedding pictures and a note asking if he might have a photo of Harry in return. The photo Hagrid had sent sat on top of Remus' usually untouched pile of letters and things from school, on the top shelf of the hall linen closet. He retrieved it for Sirius, and laid it out on the kitchen table, but not after knocking into several corners and nearly shutting his thumb in the door.
It was a photo of Harry playing Quidditch, perhaps taken for the school paper or some such thing. The motion that the photo had captured was of Harry making a seemingly impossible dive for the Snitch, and they watched over and over as he made the miraculous catch and brought the Snitch into his grasp.
He was, after all, The Boy Who Lived, The Boy Who Looked Like James, The Boy Who'd Seen Voldemort Rebirthed. Sirius traced the line of capture with his finger tip. "Bloody hell," he said.
*
"Want to play Exploding Snap?"
Remus and Sirius were sitting side by side on an ancient moth-eaten velvet sofa in a dusty sitting room. Remus eyed him, and Sirius shrugged, palms out. "What?" he said. "I'm bored."
"You're twelve."
Sirius nodded, looking around meaningfully. "Rather feels that way," he said, "being back here."
Dumbledore had been decidedly underwhelmed when Sirius had made the offer of his parents' home for the headquarters for the new Order, and Remus knew that Sirius was furious because he'd been counting on it as one of the few ways he could do his part, given that he was a fugitive with a now-useless disguise. Remus suggested, and Arthur a few others thankfully agreed, that they should at least take a look around the next time it was safe to get into London, and now Remus and Sirius were kicking at each others' heels in the sitting room while Dumbledore and Mad-Eye checked the strength of the hexing fields on the gutters or some such thing.
"Should we go see how they're doing?" Remus asked.
Sirius huffed slightly. "The house is Unplottable, has hex-proof siding and a banshee alert system," he said. "Believe me, the last thing I want to do is stay here, but it really is ideal."
Remus tried to imagine Sirius all alone in this drafty and empty house, and it was almost as impossible as imagining him growing up here as a boy. "You'd live here?" Remus asked, surprised that he was already saddened at the idea of the end of Sirius sleeping on his too-small loveseat and the two of them tripping over each other for tea in the morning.
"Somebody will need to," Sirius said. "Ought to be me, I know what needs to be disarmed and such. And there's the wretched house elf somewhere and I'm the only one he'll answer to."
Remus nodded. He looked around the room, surveying its gloomy cloth-draped furniture, the foreboding mantle, the decaying velvet curtains that dripped down the walls. "It's just hard to imagine, you growing up in a place like this," he said. Possibly it had something to do with Hogwarts, and the way boarding school made the three months you weren't away seem like the non-reality, but still. This oppressive place was nothing like Sirius.
Sirius grinned. "Want to see a picture?" he asked, bounding up from the sofa. "There used to be one over the mantle, here."
He pulled back a thick set of red drapes on the wall above the mantel, and indeed there was a photograph in an ugly and ornate frame, a scowling dark-haired family in formal portrait sitting poses. But there were only three of them, none of whom Remus recognized as Sirius but who he placed as his parents and his younger brother Regulus. He saw bits of Sirius in each of them: his proud nose, his thick curtain of hair, but no likeness of Sirius himself, at any age. The only evidence which betrayed that Regulus was not an only child was a slight shadow of a stain behind the stern Mrs. Black's shoulder. It seemed almost to be a burn mark, and one might imagine it to be in the shape of the silhouette of their oldest son.
Sirius stood taking in the tableau, and Remus sat watching Sirius with his hands twisted in his lap. After a moment, Sirius turned around, grinning like a nightmare. "Well," he said. "Welcome home indeed."
*
"Do you want some tea?"
"No."
"Coffee?"
"No."
"Hot chocolate?"
"Nah."
"Hemlock?" Remus said finally.
Sirius looked up from his sullen study of the knots in the wooden table top. "Over ice?" he asked hopefully.
Remus shook his head, rapping his knuckles on the table nervously. Upon learning the news of the Azkaban breakout, an emergency meeting of the Order had been called in the middle of the night. The others had left at dawn, but neither Remus nor Sirius could bear to return to bed, so they sat at the kitchen table, mostly in silence. Remus was merely exhausted beyond the possibility of sleep with fatigue and worry, but he could see that Sirius was nearly strumming with frustration, more angry than ever that he was forced to remain housebound.
Remus looked up suddenly, startled by the hooting of an owl above the kitchen table. It was a Prophet delivery issue, the day's edition in its beak. He hadn't even realized they'd been sitting at the table long enough that papers were being delivered. He dug some coins out of his cloak, which lay discarded on the bench, paid the owl and accepted the paper.
"Oh," he said, hand to mouth, "oh, no."
"What?" Sirius asked listlessly. "What else could have possibly happened?"
"It's, ah," Remus fought the urge to say that nothing else had happened and stuff the paper out of sight, but Sirius would find out eventually, no point in delaying the unpleasant news. "You'd better take a look."
He spread the Prophet out between them, and the headline -- MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN, MINISTRY FEARS BLACK IS "RALLYING POINT" FOR OLD DEATH EATERS -- greeted them mockingly.
"That son of a bludgering," Sirius started, slamming his fist on the table, "Cornelius Fudge! I'll show him a crazed murderer -- I'll kill him!"
"You can't."
"Thanks, Moony, you think I don't know that?" he said, waving his arms. "I can't even write a Letter to the Editor." He added in a mocking tone, "'Dear Sir or Madam, I wish you inform you that your January 27th issue is full of bloody rubbish.'"
This was, of course, the outburst of frustration Remus had been expecting since Snape had implied at the end of the meeting that those members of the Order who were able to leave their houses keep a close eye out for unusual happenings. Remus was forced to admit himself, however, he hadn't quite seen this turn of idiocy from the Ministry coming
Remus looked down at the paper again, and noticed for the first time the small photograph of Sirius in the lower right hand corner. It was the same Azkaban-issue mug shot that had haunted Remus' guilt-ridden nightmares for most of the year after Sirius escaped Azkaban.
Just looking at the photo was enough to refresh a flood of unpleasant emotions: the sickening misconception that Remus had carried with him for twelve years, the cold shock he'd felt the first time he'd seen the photo, unbelieving that Sirius could have grown so gaunt and unrecognizable, and the guilt he'd felt every time Sirius' eyes had peered out from behind the mat of hair in the papers and in shop windows during the year he spent at Hogwarts.
The truth was that even though Remus felt hopeless and exhausted and unsure that there was anything to be done to stop Voldemort's re-ascension to his former power, he was happier to have Sirius beside him this morning than he had been at any point since James and Lily had died.
"It's not even a terribly flattering photo, is it?" Sirius asked, breaking the long silence.
"It's really not," Remus said, laughing because there was really no other option. "It's really not at all."
*
Remus stood in the doorway and surveyed what appeared to be an entirely empty room. He'd offered to help Sirius clear out the last of the bedrooms on the fourth floor, but he was unsure what was left to be done here. "This one should be easy," he said, "since it's empty."
"It makes sense," Sirius said, standing with his back to Remus, looking out the window. "It was my bedroom. So I rather expect they burned anything I left behind."
"Oh."
Remus scuffled at the floor, feeling a bloody insensitive idiot, even though there was no way for him to have known that. Sirius had been horrified by his parents as long as Remus had known him, and he had always managed to avoid having James, Remus or Peter over during the holidays.
"Except," Sirius said, running a hand along the dark and ornate wallpaper. "Maybe," he muttered, humming under his breath and reaching for his wand. He drew a line with his wand point along the edge of torn-laden winding rose, and the paper pulled itself away from the wall. "Excellent," he said. "Stashed some things here the summer before I left, but I didn't imagine they'd still be around. Look at this, Remus."
Remus accepted the photo from his outstretched hand and found it to be a pleasant surprise: the Gryffindor House Photo from their fourth year.
"I haven't seen this in ages," Remus said, studying the impossibly young faces. It was entirely possible that he'd binned his own copy, he really had no idea. His own stack of school things in the linen closet at his cottage received about as much attention as whatever Sirius had hidden in the wallpaper for the last fourteen years.
"Me neither," Sirius said, standing shoulder to shoulder with Remus so they could both book. He added, "Er. Obviously."
Remus recalled being lined up each year under the direction of Professor McGonagall for the House Photo, but he could not remember what he'd been thinking when that particular photo had been taken. His much-younger image was smiling weakly up at him through considerable pallor, which suggested the nearness of the full moon.
There were more than a hundred students crammed in the photo, arranged by year, and Remus paid little attention or recognition to the students who had been several years older or several years younger, the ones he hadn't known by name when he was at school. But the ones in his same year, and many of those in the years directly above and below, these faces he remembered.
More than what seemed like a fair share of the students smiling up from the photo were dead. James and Lily, obviously, though Remus still felt a stab of pain in his stomach to see Lily beaming radiantly and James casting her a hopeful glance. But also Edgar Bones, Frank Longbottom and Alice Wyrd-later-to-be-Longbottom, Gideon and Fabian Prewett, Mariel Samuel and Neile Dedmon they'd all been victims of the first war as well.
How the rest of them faired, Remus didn't know. Consequence of being a known werewolf and the close friend of both the martyr and the traitor who killed him had made Remus eager to keep to himself these past years.
He forced himself to regard Peter's eager, smiling face, searching his expression for any sign that he would later betray them all. There was nothing, though, at least not that Remus could see.
"Can you tell, just by looking, do you think?" Sirius asked.
"I thought I'd be able to," Remus replied, "but I really can't."
"You thought--" Sirius trailed off, sounding confused.
"Wormtail," Remus said, not feeling up to saying his given name out loud. "I keep thinking I should be able to tell by looking at him, but I can't."
"Oh."
Sirius sounded short and embarrassed in the same way Remus' had when he first entered the room, this room, the room where Sirius had lived and slept the first sixteen years of his life.
"What were you talking about?" Remus asked.
"It's nothing," Sirius said quickly, and for the first time Remus located the image of Sirius in the photograph.
It hurt to look at a picture of Sirius so young when the real-life Sirius, eyes haunted and face like a crumpled newspaper, stood beside him. The Sirius in the photograph was grinning at the camera with a kind of brash fearlessness that Remus had only seen in shadow since Sirius had escaped. Remus watched the photo for a long moment, wishing he could look up and see Sirius looking so carefree again.
Then, so quickly that Remus almost missed it, Sirius in the photograph turned away from the camera, shot a glance to the side and then returned to his forward gaze and silly grin. In the split second when Sirius had been looking away from the camera, he'd bit his lip and cast his eyes toward -- wait, that couldn't be right.
He'd been looking at Remus.
"Oh," Remus said. "Oh."
*
They climbed out of their respective sides of the bed and began to dress while it was still dark, and while Remus was half-certain that he was still asleep, besides. Remus moved slowly, and he had one arm still hanging out of his robe when Sirius stood fully-dressed before him, so it was easy for Sirius to slide one hand inside Remus' robes and cup a cold palm against Remus' stomach.
"I don't want you to go," Sirius said into Remus' neck. "It's too dangerous."
Remus laughed. "That's rich, coming from you," he said. "If Dumbledore would let you come, too, we would have left last night."
It was true; both what Remus said but also that the mission would be dangerous. Bulgaria wasn't exactly the best place to find wizards sympathetic to the Order's causes. But he was only planning on spending a few days, and he had safe contacts, he wasn't worried. He was strangely touched that Sirius was so concerned, even if he imagined Sirius' caution was misplaced envy.
"You'll be careful, right?" Sirius said, sliding his hand around the curve of Remus' side so that the heel of his hand fit into the small of Remus' back, using this angle to draw their bodies closer together.
Another rather laughable sentiment, but Remus smiled against Sirius' temple and said, "Yes. I promise."
Sirius leaned in, then, and kissed him, and Remus kissed back, even though it was not even dawn and his feet were cold and his robes were still half undone. It was the first time he'd been shagging someone often enough to think of sharing a bed in what amounted to basically ever, but it was hardly a grand romance, so he took these quiet moments when he could get them.
They stood like that, somewhat awkwardly entwined and silent, and kissing, for a minute or more. When Sirius broke away, he said, close in Remus' ear, "Everyone thinks we did this before, you know."
Remus wondered idly who "everyone" meant, if he was responding to some cruel remark from Snape or the ghost of James or whether it even mattered. "We're doing this now," he said. "That reminds me, there's something I want to do before I leave." And he really, as much as he'd rather stand like this all day and well into next week, he really did need to leave.
He slipped out of Sirius' embrace and led him downstairs, past the portraits, who were thankfully sleeping an uneasy sleep in the dusty light of dawn, and into the first floor sitting room.
"Sit," he said, moving Sirius toward the sofa. He reached for the camera that was sitting on top of the mantle.
He'd found the camera in the attic while he'd been helping Sirius look for Kreacher one night last week, and he'd checked it over for all manner of Dark modifications, just to make sure that taking a person's photograph with the camera wouldn't paralyze them, or that developed photographs wouldn't display the image of anyone who wasn't Pureblood as being horribly disfigured. But he could see nothing wrong with it, and so even though it was old, it would serve his purposes. He'd even managed to suss out a way to set it on an automatic timer.
"What are you doing?" Sirius asked, puzzled.
"I'm taking our picture."
"But why?"
"Because," Remus said, stepping away from the camera and sitting next to Sirius on the couch. "I'm tired of looking at old photographs. I want to be able to see us like this." He elbowed Sirius in the rib, but then placed a stiff arm around Sirius' shoulder. "Don't forget to smile," he added.
When Sirius' hand found his, it was shaky, but he held it carefully against his own shoulder. Remus looked straight into the camera when it flashed, but he rather imagined that his developed image would betray him later, and that he'd see himself looking just to the side, only at Sirius.