Harry Potter: Written in the Stars
Title: Written in the Stars
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG for Language and Mild Violence
Word Count: 7,471
Author’s Note: Written for rs_games Team Sirius with the prompt "It is not down in any map; true places never are. ~ Herman Melville" Yay my team won! That makes three years of backing the right horse at rs_games! I love the challenge a lot, but this will probably be the last year I will actually write for it as my commitment to the pairing sadly took a hit when I met Sam and Dean and hasn't really recovered. But I had fun writing this, and I hope people enjoyed it! It's maybe not my finest work, me being mostly out of touch with the characters and writing on a very tight deadline (thanks to my own bad planning), but I'm kinda happy with how it turned out, anyway. :D
Summary: Non-Magic Space AU: By escaping from the prison planet Azkaban, Sirius Black has just become the most feared man in the known universe. Remus remembers another Sirius-a man he fell in love with. Twelve years later, he still can't shake the belief that someone somewhere made a mistake, and Sirius Black never should have gone to Azkaban to begin with.
Original Link: http://rs-games.livejournal.com/113071.html
It's the face on the screen that catches him. Remus isn't really in the habit of following the news, hasn't been for over a decade. Usually he walks right past the hologram stands and the large, purple creature that calls out the headlines. But today, well, today Remus gets unlucky. One glimpse of that face as he's pushing through the station, and that glimpse is all it takes. He's frozen in place, eyes locked on the video looping in front of him. This face is the reason Remus gave up on staying informed-back when it was everywhere he looked. Then it was terrifying and deranged and much, much too familiar. It's new now, changed by all those years of isolation and starvation and god knows what. Nobody has ever praised the natives of Azkaban for their hospitality.
The sight of him still turns Remus's stomach as he walks by. It still fills him with fear and dread and, worst of all, pity. He looks every bit as dangerous as Remus now knows he always was, but he's so thin, his eyes begging for something-probably something horrible, a hunger even Remus is too human to identify. But with the sound cut out of the transmission, it's easy for Remus to imagine that he's just asking for someone to listen. Someone to believe him. Just like he asked Remus all those years ago, and Remus nearly had. Nearly still does.
He shakes his head, wishing that could be enough to chase away all the memories, and puts one foot in front of another. Focuses all his attention on walking so that he doesn't slide back into-
Well, it's wasted effort. Remus does think about him all day. Every second. There's a newsstand on every corner as he makes his way to work, and all the headlines bear the same warning. While he's teaching, the students disappear in front of him, replaced by the faces Remus knew when he was a student, that one face in particular. Even now, sitting alone in the teacher's lounge, Remus thinks of one thing and one thing only.
He tries to stomp the thoughts out, but of course it's useless. Twelve years he's been trying to stomp these thoughts out, and if he was ever going to succeed, it wasn't going to be today.
"You knew him, didn't you?"
Remus doesn't glance up. He knows who's speaking-Filius Flitwick, the mechanics professor, who has the great misfortune of being a dwarf from a dwarf planet, and the even greater misfortune of having decided to try engaging Remus in conversation. Remus knows what he's talking about, too, but he decides to play dumb. Go through the motions. Practice will make perfect, and Remus isn't naïve enough to hope people will be sensitive. He's going to be having this conversation a lot in the next few weeks. "Who?"
Flitwick takes the seat to Remus's left and, resignedly, Remus sets his book down. "The convict. That Black fellow," he says. "Can't say you haven't heard he escaped. It's everywhere."
"Oh, that," Remus replies. "Yes, I knew him." He raises the book again, hoping that will be the end of it.
"The Prophet says he might be coming for Hogwarts. After the Potter boy, of course."
"Yes, I…" Remus shifts uncomfortably. If he's what they say he is-and Remus knows he is, even if he still hasn't accepted it-that's exactly what he would do. Remus takes a deep breath. "I figured the same."
"I wouldn't worry about that too much," Professor Burbage says, picking out another empty seat at the table. "No one gets on the station without being cleared. As long as Harry stays on board and no one approves a shuttle for entry with a mass murderer strapped in for the ride… It should be enough."
Remus does his best not to look cross as he smiles at her and says nothing. The things he wants to say are just going to make the conversation drag and likely hurt the poor woman's feelings. There's already a small group of people gathering around. The last thing Remus wants to do is encourage the crowd.
"The man managed to sneak off a prison planet with a hostile atmosphere and even more hostile guards. There isn't another planet near Azkaban for light years and there hasn't been a shuttle to or from it in months. And instead of being dead, like he should be, he was just spotted on Earth of all places." Flitwick scoffs, but Remus can read the healthy undercurrent of fear. "He obviously isn't going to be deterred by something as simple as safety inspections."
"No," Burbage insists. "Dumbledore can outsmart some lunatic from Azkaban. He would have to know magic to get in here."
"Or have friends on the inside." Remus tries not to look up at that, at the sneering voice and the man it belongs to. He can feel Severus's eyes on him, knows any reaction to that will be taken as a sure sign of guilt.
"There's no one here as would help that man," someone says. Remus is too fixed on trying not to scream to bother figuring out who it is.
"I wouldn't be so sure," Severus says. "He may have friends in high places." There's a dark chuckle, and finally Remus can't help it. He looks up, meets Professor Snape's eyes with his own. "Or low," he adds, with a smirk at Remus before he turns to go, ever dramatic swish of black fabric following him.
"What do you suppose that means?" Flitwick asks, leaning in. The crowd around them has begun to thin as the alarm rings and announces the end of break.
It means there was a time when Remus's universe was Sirius Black first and everyone else second, and there's at least one person at Hogwarts who remembers this. Remus gives Flitwick his best attempt at a dazed expression, shakes his head, and shrugs his way out the door.
_______________________________________________________________
He's curious, this new boy. Curious enough that he's holding Sirius's attention, though God only knows why. He hasn't done anything interesting-hasn't even given a hint that he knows how to do anything interesting-since he took the last seat in the shuttle compartment (and that was 45 minutes ago). All he's done is sit. And read. And Sirius would swear he looks up every now and then, smirking when anyone says something funny, his eyes dodging from speaker to speaker, clearly following the conversation. He doesn't add to it. He turns pages, slow and deliberate, and Sirius should not give a single care in the world, because soon they'll be back at school and this boy will be just another kid their age who wanted to be a part of their group but couldn't think of anything to say when he had the chance.
Sirius glares at the boy, who doesn’t seem to notice, and tries to turn his attention back to his friends.
"So anyway, then there's a revolution in China and…"
Great, Sirius thinks. James is on one of his Earth history rants, and Peter is enraptured (or at the very least doing a supreme job pretending), and that means nothing amusing is going to be discussed for at least an hour. For all the good James does during a prank war, Sirius's best friend has the insufferable habit of sometimes showing that he's not an utter moron after all.
Sirius isn't asking for much here. All he wants is a little attention, and the luxury of not having to compete with the People's Republic of some place called China on some planet James's family abandoned centuries years ago to get it.
He stands up and moves across the compartment, falling easily into the space next to the fourth boy. The boy, brown hair falling over brown eyes and pink scars running down his cheek, hardly lifts one eye to acknowledge Sirius.
"What's this, mate?" Sirius asks. The boy blinks once and then looks back down at his book. Sirius grabs it out of his hands and closes it, observing the cover. It only now hits Sirius that it really is a book-pages of paper bound together like in all of James's stories about back on Earth this and that. "Earth literature?"
The boy doesn't object to being robbed. His mouth hangs open for a few seconds, then he closes it and nods.
"Where can a man go to escape all this rubbish?" Sirius asks. "Between you and this one," he inclines his head toward James, "you'd think Earth was the damn center of civilization."
The boy shrugs, tries to take his book back. Sirius holds it up, out of his reach.
"What, can't you talk?"
"It was the center of civilization," the boy responds informatively. "In fact, your ancestors-"
Sirius cuts him off right there. The last thing he wants to know any more about than he already does is his ancestors. "Yes, so I've heard. About eight billion years ago."
"It was actually less than a thous-"
"What's your name?" Sirius asks.
The boy looks annoyed for a moment, then casts his eyes down. "May I have my book back, please?"
"That is a mouthful," Sirius tells him. "Your parents were not kind people, were they?"
The boy's eyes dim a little, and Sirius feels very sick for a moment. He knows better than to make light of that, if it's true, or at least he should.
"I'm Sirius," he says as warmly as he can manage. He holds out a hand, and feels a strong sense of relief when the other boy takes it.
"Remus."
"Well, then, Remus." Sirius grins. "Are you going to share that chocolate I saw you trying to hide and tell me about your book?"
"I hadn't been planning to, no."
"Excellent!" Sirius replies. "You may begin."
Remus sighs loudly, but one side of his mouth tugs up and his eyes, which had seemed so dull a moment ago, are suddenly very bright. Almost playful. He shuts the book and begins to recite the story as if it's scribbled into the back of his head. It's something about a whale and a crazy man chasing after it, and it really sounds rather awful except that Remus is as giddy talking about it as James gets discussing the War of the Daffodils or whatever that bloke with the seven wives was involved in.
The shuttle lands before Sirius even realizes they're close. It's not until the compartment door slides open and James and Peter reenter the cabin in their uniforms that Sirius remembers where they are and why.
"You'll want to get changed," Peter says to Sirius, but then he looks awkwardly at Remus as well. "Both of you."
Remus nods, folding a page of Moby Dick and tucking it into his bag. Sirius watches him, and Remus must notice, because he takes the book back out. "If you want to read it for yourself, you can borrow mine. It's my third time, I'll find something else."
Sirius eyes the book disdainfully, a million clever retorts coming to mind. All the lines he's already used on James about how he'd rather be swallowed by Venusian plants or fall into a black hole than spend an hour of his life reading out of a book. He opens his mouth to say as much, but what comes out instead is, "Yeah, I'd like that. Thanks."
Remus smiles then, both sides of his mouth turning up for the first time all day. Sirius's insides flip a little. He can't help it, they do.
"How old are you?" Sirius asks.
"Sixteen," Remus says.
"Same as us," James cuts in. "Why don't we know you?"
Remus shrugs. "New," he mumbles.
"But Hogwarts doesn't take students late," Peter says. "What did you do until now? Did you go to another school?"
Remus shakes his head, and Sirius isn't sure why he's even noticing, but Remus looks uncomfortable. He's even less sure why that bothers him, but it really, really does.
"No matter," says Sirius. "Come sit with us at the feast."
Remus looks at him, his whole face lighting up like he doesn't quite believe it. "Really?"
"Sure," James says, putting an arm around Remus's shoulder as he makes a line for the door. "We'll show you the ropes. I'm James Potter. This here is Peter Pettigrew, esquire."
Peter puffs up in that way he has when he understands nothing that is going on but is just happy to be a part of it.
"Potter?" Remus says with excitement. "Not like the British war general from the Anglo-Martian wars of 3400?"
Sirius thinks he sees a slightly calculating look somewhere in the boy's eyes, like Remus knows exactly the effect those words will have on James. But it's buried under a very convincing façade of innocent wonder, and James is too thrilled to pick up on anything else. His eyes go wide and he pulls Remus in closer. "This is the start of something beautiful," James says. "I can tell."
Sirius watches them leave, feeling endlessly fond of his idiot best friend and oddly endeared to the straggly stranger by his side.
"You fancy him, don't you?" Peter asks, staring from the door James and Remus left through and then back to Sirius.
Sirius huffs out a laugh as it hits him. "I guess even Pettigrews get things right sometimes," he says, pushing a button so the door swooshes open in front of them.
_______________________________________________________________
There's a prickling at the back of Remus's neck. He can feel eyes on him every moment of the day. He tells himself it's people gossiping. Some of them must know what Sirius Black used to be to him. Some of them must believe Snape's half-formed accusations are true. It's just them. Just his co-workers and students and the worried parents who have come to visit the school today and make sure everything is still safe. Remus is crazy if he thinks it's anything else.
But he knows the weight of Sirius's eyes on him, couldn't ever forget that this is what that felt like. The thrill, electrifying and horrifying at once, of having someone like Sirius notice someone like Remus. There's no way. No way, Sirius is not here, can't be.
"Is it true, professor?"
Remus turns slowly and does his best to smile. "Yes, despite their gentle appearance the Xantors are a dangerous-"
"Not about the lecture, sir," Harry interrupts. "About Sirius Black."
Remus flinches inwardly and leans on the nearest desk. Harry deserves to know the truth. Harry needs to know the truth, really. But Remus finds it entirely uncalled for that he be the one to tell it. "What about him?" Remus asks, finally finding his voice.
"He killed my parents? Told the Death Eaters where to find them?"
Remus nods stiffly.
"And that other bloke? He tortured him to death for trying to save them?"
"Peter," Remus clarifies. "Yes, that's what they say he did."
"Say?" Harry asks. "I thought he confessed."
"He never confessed. He just never denied it."
Remus bites down on his tongue. Sirius never denied it publicly. Remus can still see him as if it was yesterday, standing in their quarters, that manic look in his eyes as he begged Remus to believe him. But Sirius had blood on his hands and was the only one who knew where to look, and when Remus begged him for anything-any flimsy explanation he could convince himself was true so he could trust in Sirius again-Sirius went silent until the police battered down their door and took him away.
"So you think he might not have?"
Remus blinks a few times before he can focus on Harry. Accept it, he tells himself. It's been twelve years. Just accept it. "No, he must have. No one else it could have been."
Harry's young features go hard and angry. "And now he's coming for me?"
"They think so," Remus says. "But don't you worry about it. You're safe at Hogwarts. Just stay at Hogwarts, Harry. And…" he looks up to meet Harry's eyes, can't help that a sympathetic smile sneaks in with the chastising tone. Remus was a marauder once, too. He can't help understanding. "Don't you and your friends go stealing shuttles to look for him, all right? I hear that's something you do."
Harry looks about to fight for a moment, but finally he shrugs and turns away. "Okay, professor."
Remus watches him leave, then sighs, knowing there's no chance in an infinite number of universes that any son of James Potter is going to keep that promise.
_______________________________________________________________
"Come on," Sirius pleads, burying his face in Remus's neck. Remus squirms in his arms and makes a half-assed attempt at escaping.
"For the last time, no," Remus says.
"It's the championship!" Sirius lets go of Remus only to throw his hands in the air for effect. "How can you call yourself a man?"
Remus sticks his tongue out. "Just because I don't enjoy floating around after homicidal balls-or watching my friend and boyfriend risk their lives floating after said homicidal balls-does not mean I'm any less of a man."
"Even Lily enjoys quidditch, Remus. I mean, honestly, there is no gravity on this moon. The fans have to be tethered to their seats! It's brilliant!"
Remus shakes his head. "I'm staying right here, on Hogwarts, where everything stays on the ground without bungee cords, thank you very much."
Sirius frowns. "You spent the first 16 years of your life grounded. You don't even like space. I thought you'd be itching for this."
Remus shrugs. "Well, I'm not."
"What about me?" Sirius tries to keep his voice level. "Don't you think it might be nice to know you're watching? Lily's never missed a game and she's the least supportive girlfriend ever. She actually bets against us half the time, but at least she shows." Sirius crosses his arms over his chest. He's throwing the kind of tantrum even his mother would envy, but he can't help it. This is a year and half of waiting for Remus to just show up for one measly little quidditch game and still nothing.
Remus sighs, sits back down across from Sirius and takes both of Sirius's hands in his own. "Can you please just take my word for it that I have a good reason?"
Sirius pushes him away. "No," he says, standing and storming out.
It's not until four hours later, when he's halfway through the Quidditch game he and Remus had been fighting over, that Sirius finally gets it. He comes to in pain, black swirls slowly giving way to fuzzy vision. His head is pounding and his back is sprawled on moon dust and he realizes his oxygen tank has cracked and the air he's breathing is thinner than anything he could have imagined. He's breathing the atmosphere-the actual atmosphere of some moon light-years from where Sirius's lungs know how to breathe. And he's not dead. He remembers the bludger flying at him, the hit that must have shattered his tank and caused him to fall, he can feel the bruises as they bloom all over him. But he's not dead.
He sits up, a crowd of doctors and worried teammates all standing in a circle above him, each looking more shocked than the next. They are all thinking what Sirius is thinking, which is that he really should be dead and yet he is not and what the hell? Sirius promptly passes out again.
The next time he wakes up, he recognizes the bright white of the medical wing. He sees Madame Pomfrey in her light blue uniform, checking the vitals on someone across the room. He also sees Remus sitting by his bedside, holding Sirius's hand so tightly it hurts, and staring with a look of abject terror on his face.
"Morning, sunshine," Sirius says with a slur.
Remus scowls. "Don't you smile at me," he says. "I told you quidditch was a deathtrap."
"I know what you are," Sirius says, squeezing Remus's hand. "I won't ask you to come to quidditch anymore."
Remus's eyebrows draw together. "I don't know what you're-"
"You're a lycan," Sirius says. "Or something like that."
Remus shakes his head. "Shut up. You're high on pain medication. You're not making any sense."
Sirius raises a finger to his boyfriend's lips. "The textbook. Defense Against Hostile Species last month." He pauses, smiling brightly. "I actually did my homework that night."
Remus puts in the obligatory eye roll and Sirius continues, "Lycans turn into wolves under extreme stress and during full moons. Which I'm assuming also applies if they actually go to a moon."
"You sound insane," Remus replies, voice edging up hysterically.
"What was the thing about breathing?" Sirius asks. "Oh, that's right. They can breathe in any atmosphere, right?"
"Yeah, I suppose," Remus replies.
"And when they're wolves, they'll attack anyone. Anything. Except their pack. Their mates."
Remus turns a little pink and looks away.
"And sometimes…sometimes they transfer some of their qualities to their pack mates, too?"
"I don't see where you're going-"
"So if, say, someone cracks their oxygen tank on some random moon, but they've been sucking face with one of these lycans for a little over a year, there's a chance they'll have learned to breathe there anyway."
Remus looks up, frightened as he meets Sirius's eyes. "Don't hate me, Sirius," he says. "Please don't hate me."
"Hate you?" Sirius sits up. "Remus, you saved my life."
Remus barks out a quick, bitter laugh. "Like that matters. I'm still a monster."
"Only on mornings they don't serve coffee." Remus makes an annoyed sound, standing to leave, and Sirius reaches out for him. Remus pauses, lets Sirius get an arm around his waist and drags him back down. "Hey, listen to me." Remus pulls a face and refuses to look at Sirius, but Sirius knows he has his boyfriend's attention. He pushes brown hair away from Remus's neck and presses his face to his skin. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."
"Yeah," Remus murmurs. "Wait until James or Peter finds out. Wait until someone tells their parents a freak like me somehow got on their school station. God forbid, wait until we get grounded near a moon and you see what I really-"
"How did a freak like you get on my school station, anyway?" Sirius asks, fast forwarding through Remus's neurosis. "Dumbledore at least has to know, right?"
Remus nods, Sirius's head boggling with the movement. "It was all his idea. I was just off on my planet minding my own business."
"But why, then? I mean you're not supposed to be allowed to-don't make that face at me. I'm glad you're here, I just want to understand. Find out my boyfriend's been hiding this brilliant secret from me for a year, I think I earned the gory details."
"There are few details, and none of them are gory," Remus says, but he turns and gives Sirius a playful smile. "I wasn't like the rest of them. I did my studies on other planets sometimes, I passed as normal. I'm lucky, I'm only affected by the lunar cycle."
"Yeah, why is that? I thought lycanthropes slipped between man and wolf depending on their moods. By those standards, you should have turned and swallowed me and James at least five times by now."
"I'm only half. My mother is human, my father is pure werewolf."
"But the contamination is enough to-" Remus makes a wounded face, and Sirius jots down a mental note to burn the text book that put the words into his mouth once he gets out of the hospital. "Not-didn't mean to use that word."
Remus bites his lip. "It's okay, Sirius. I get it. I read the chapter, too."
"Tell me about your parents," he says. "I want to hear how it happened."
"She came to Hogwarts, just like us. And I guess she would have fit in with you and James just fine, because she snuck off once. Stole a shuttle, ended up landing on Lupine in the middle of the full moon. She should have been shredded."
"But?"
"My dad is the wolf that just so happened to stumble upon her. He didn't hurt her. He kept watch all night, fought off a few predators, or so they say. She woke up the next morning next to some complete stranger instead of the wolf she fell asleep wrapped in. Scared out of her wits, but she was alive."
"So, just like that his instinct knew not to hurt her? Before they'd properly met, they were already mates?"
Remus sits back, gives Sirius a reserved smile. "I knew the first time I saw you."
Sirius smacks his shoulder weakly. "You old dog."
Remus's smile breaks into a full grin. "She stayed with him, you know. Never came back to school or anything. Even though she'd seen what he was. Loves him anyway." Remus looks down. "I always thought that was kind of beautiful."
Sirius reaches out, slips a finger under Remus's chin, and turns his face. "You're not going back there, though?"
"I hate it there. I hate the people, the wolves. I hate turning." Remus shakes his head. "I wanted to come learn about space and everything, don't get me wrong. But I was so scared to be around normal people I almost said no. It wasn't until Dumbledore told me the station never got close enough to any atmosphere to be influenced by the moon-"
Sirius frowns. "What about after we graduate? We'll have to be grounded somewhere."
"My plan had been to go back home with my tail tucked between my legs and be thankful I got a couple of good years."
Sirius grabs his hand. "No, no, that won't do. We'll figure something out."
"We?" Remus asks, looking up. "You really intend to stand by me despite my-"
"Only if you let me call you Moony," Sirius replies, and then Remus shuts him up with a kiss.
_______________________________________________________________
Remus doesn't know what's pushing him. The wolf, maybe, buried but always awake. That idiot piece of him that chose a monster for its mate 15 years ago and will never be able to change its mind. He misses Sirius today. When everyone is scurrying through the halls, trying to hide from the specter of Sirius Black and his escape from Azkaban, Remus aches to see the man. Touch him. Remus would tear him to shreds if he really did see Sirius, but he would still love him at the end of it.
So he walks slowly down halls they used to terrorize in a much more benevolent fashion-unleashing stink plants they found on some acidic planet or covering the walls in creatures that looked dangerous and were really just as scared as the students who saw them and ran screaming to their dormitories-trying not to think of all the times he'd pressed a murderer against the cool, silver walls and kissed him until even their mutated lungs couldn't wait for air any longer. His classes are done for the day, he should be on a shuttle back to his planet. Preparing, because on Ogblotz, where Remus lives and where there are three moons, he spends almost every night howling and scratching at his own skin.
Instead, he stops in front of the wrong shuttle bay, the one marked restricted, the one with the code he and James and Peter and, of course, the infamous Sirius Black, rewired the year before they graduated so that they could steal the shuttle there-an old piece of space junk called The Beakbeat 4000. If Sirius is at Hogwarts, this is where he must have come from, and Remus should really have alerted someone to this before he came here looking alone, but, well.
"Coulda, woulda, shoulda," he mumbles under his breath as he punches in the code, and the gates slide open, revealing the inside of the Buckbeat, just as out of shape as she was all those years ago.
Remus casts a look over his shoulder to be sure no one is watching and then steps in, letting the sensors lock the entrance behind him. The air inside the shuttle is thick, stifling, like no one's dared to breathe inside of it for a very long time. Remus, unlike most of the people watching out for Sirius Black, knows that this does not necessarily mean he's not there.
He has the same eerie sensation he's had all day. Someone is watching him. Someone has been just a step behind, too quick to see when he turns around, but definitely a shadow in the corner of Remus's eye. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, sits at the control seat and gazes out of the panoramic window ahead, remembering the distant parts of the galaxy the Marauders had seen through it. His fingers brush over the tips of the buttons, and he wonders what would happen, who would miss him and what they would suspect and whether or not he would get caught if he just pressed go and left Hogwarts School of Aeronautics and Space Adminstration behind him.
There's a sound of something shifting in the cabin. It's quiet, too quiet for anyone else to hear, but Remus doesn’t have to turn, doesn’t have to check or wonder if he's been imagining this all day.
"So you can still breathe out in deep space, huh?" Remus asks.
There's a long period of quiet. Remus swivels his chair around and looks from one end of the shuttle to the other. It's empty. It's all empty. "I know you're there," he says, though he's almost starting to question the excited scratching of the wolf inside of him. It senses mate, it shouldn't be wrong.
Finally, a tall, black-haired man steps out from the shadows. He doesn't look like the boy Remus loved, but he doesn't look like the maniac on the posters, either. He's clean-cut and newly shaved, like he got all dressed up for this. He looks at Remus with wide eyes and a skittish expression, but he tries to smile anyway. "Moony," he says. "You were supposed to turn me in, you know."
_______________________________________________________________
If you'd told Sirius two years ago that dating an alien liable to turn into a giant, bloodthirsty canine if he accidentally got too close to the wrong planet at the wrong time was going to be the least of his worries after graduating, he might have laughed. It was easier to laugh at things before this was true.
Before the Death Eaters came, cloaked in black, from some unidentified planet, anonymous and merciless. No one knows what they want or why, no one gets close enough to take a guess and comes out of it alive. Everyone has their explanation, of course. Some say the Death Eaters are extinct alien breeds looking for revenge or some small, overlooked threat that got tired of being stepped on by the natives of their planet and decided to hit the galaxy looking for respect. Some even think it's the lycanthropes, not content with the damage they inflict as wolves, hoping to up the body count.
Sirius has his own theory, one that's much more likely than any of the others. He's seen the Death Eaters from afar on missions for the Order, he's watched the way they hold themselves under their cloaks. He recognizes their cold, self-referential manners and the wickedness of their laughter all too well. Sirius would be willing to bet anything that what’s hiding under those robes is just people-humans, so proud of their unmingled Earth blood that they've turned into something much more terrifying than the aliens they kill so casually. Sirius knows them because he used to be one, before he gave up family and took up pack instead.
And now…now pack is about to be ground to dust by Sirius's kin. Peter is ribbons in his arms, James and Lily must be-well, from the look of it, Peter's been lying here a long time. Disposed of. He did his part. Sirius can only assume they found the Potters hours ago.
"Everything?" Sirius echoes. "You told them everything?"
Peter tries to nod. It's grotesque, the way his neck is sliced and the movement of his muscles only reaches half of it. Sirius does his best not to look away. "Where to find Lily and James, how to get in," he shudders, "Sirius, the things they did to me. I couldn't help it."
"Shh," Sirius says. "I know, Pete. It wasn't your fault."
He grits his teeth through it. It really wasn't Peter's fault, Sirius knows that. Most people aren't able to withstand the Death Eaters' torture. But some have. Frank and Alice Longbottom did, and Sirius can't help thinking that he would have if he'd been the secret keeper. Peter had always been just a little bit weaker than the rest of them.
"Sirius, I'm sorry," he chokes. "I'm so sorry. I'm…"
Sirius shakes his head and tells Peter it's okay, even though it isn't, because there's no use in hounding a dying man. Lily and James must be dead by now. Even little Harry-Sirius flinches, not willing to form the thought. And after the Potters are dead, they'll move on to housekeeping. Remus is a monster to them. Sirius has to find him. Save him. Remus is the only one left to save.
"Peter, what about Remus? Did you tell them about Remus? Did you tell them about Ishmael?"
Peter shakes his head. "They were obsessed with Harry, they just wanted to know where Harry was. I kept our secret planet a secret."
Sirius doesn't feel relief exactly, not with everything that has gone wrong, but it makes him pull Peter to his chest and hold him that much tighter. Remus will be okay. When Sirius goes after the bastards who did this and gets himself blown to pieces, at least Remus will survive.
"Sirius, promise me," Peter says, his voice finding a last hold.
"Anything, mate. Anything."
"Don't tell them I did this," he says. "I don’t want this to be how people remember me."
Sirius nods and brushes bloody blond hairs out of his friend's eyes. "Of course," he says, because he's not thinking clearly yet, and he doesn’t realize what keeping that promise is going to cost him.
_______________________________________________________________
"I wanted to kill you myself," Remus replies, words calm and cool. It's true and it isn't. There are parts of Remus hungry for blood, and he knows if he was a full-blooded lycan, he would have transformed by now. Snapped Sirius's bones with his teeth and basked in the sound of it. But there's another part of him that came here hoping, wishing, maybe Sirius didn't do it and maybe Sirius had a perfectly good reason for not telling him all those years ago and maybe Remus is so desperate for that to be true that he almost doesn't care if it is or isn’t, as long as Sirius is convincing.
"By all means, Moony, I'm no one to stop you." Sirius spreads out his arms defiantly. "I came a long way to see you. Kind of assumed that's how this would end."
"But you came anyway," Remus says. "That was risky."
"Worth the risk." Sirius advances slowly, like he's waiting for Remus to strike, and takes the first seat he reaches. "To see you."
"Don't," Remus snaps.
"If you really believed what they say about me, you'd have killed me by now. And good thing, too. I'd have deserved it."
"But you didn't?" Remus asks, trying to sound skeptical rather than excited.
"Come on now, really. Would I have come home that night if I was on the run?"
"But you didn't defend yourself, Sirius. I would have helped you if you'd said something. Or if you hadn't looked so-"
"Shaken? I was covered in Peter's blood. I was terrified you'd be dead, and…James and Lily were…I wasn't thinking straight. You can't think I would-James, James was my brother, Remus. And Harry was-"
"Is," Remus says. He pauses for a moment, then sighs. "No, I never did think it was you. But you were the only one who-"
"Peter," Sirius says. "It was a last minute thing. Supposed to distract the Death Eaters, but I guess they got wind of it. Peter was the one who knew where to find them."
"How can I be sure?"
Sirius makes a speculative face, then there's a flash over his features. He runs to the map on the wall, points to an empty space. "Home, Remus. Is it how we left it?"
"This isn't really the time to remin-"
"Answer the question," Sirius says, turning from the map to glare at Remus. "Ishmael's still not on the maps. I've checked. Even on the run, I stopped to check. Why didn't you tell them about it?"
Remus shrugs. "Wasn't any of their goddamn business."
"Why didn't you go back, then? We picked it for a reason. Not a single moon, and you're living on some planet with three of them instead?"
"I couldn't go back," Remus answers with a cool laugh. "And what, Sirius? Live there alone? Try to be happy when it was supposed to be our secret?"
"But the proof, god dammit, it was there. It's still there. Sitting on the dining room table, that's where I left it."
"What are you talking about?"
"The papers. We all signed papers. Me and James and Peter, when we changed the location and James told Peter instead of me. If someone had just gone home, they would have found proof. I was innocent, Remus. I'm still innocent."
Remus puts a hand over his mouth, shaking his head. "No. That's not possible. That's stupid. That's a stupid thing to-"
"It's stupid but it's what happened."
"Sirius, you didn't say anything."
"I promised," Sirius replies. "All that torture they blamed me for? I didn't do that, but he was a wreck when I found him. They wouldn't believe me, they said I had to be a traitor if the Death Eaters left me untouched. I wasn't there when it happened, I wasn't the one they came for. And he was-if you'd seen him, Remus, you'd have forgiven him for talking. The last thing he asked was to be remembered as something other than a traitor, I just could-"
Remus steps forward, wraps his arms around Sirius. "Shh, I understand. Sirius, I get it."
Sirius pushes at Remus. "You don't have to believe me now. You can wait until we see the papers."
"No, I believe you. I mean, I want to see them. I want to go back home with you and find the papers, but not because I don't believe you."
"How can you be so sure?"
Remus smiles sadly. "I always knew you were innocent, Sirius. I just didn't know how."
"So now what do we do?"
"We could free you." Remus puts in coordinates to the planet they once thought they were going to spend their life on. He feels lighter than he has in over a decade as the worn shuttlecraft begins to shake and stutter its way into space. "Bring the papers back and prove you didn't do it."
"They'll never believe it now," Sirius says. "It's been too long, it'll be too embarrassing to admit a mistake like that. They'll say the papers are faked. You'll be taken to Azkaban for helping me. I can't let that happen, Remus. Just come with me for one night, I want you to see that I'm innocent. And then you can return to your life and forget about me."
"Or…" Remus leans forward, grabbing Sirius's shirt and tugging him forward. He kisses him, waits for Sirius to slide back into the easy rhythm. "We could disappear," he whispers against the other man's lips. "Together, forever. On our secret little planet."
"Mmm," Sirius says, kissing back. "That's lunatic."
"Why?" Remus pulls away from the embrace. "Isn't that what we always wanted anyway?"
Sirius nods, then bites his bottom lip. "What about your job, Moony?"
"The most prestigious school in the universe will be able to find someone perfectly qualified to teach defense, I assure you."
"Your house?"
"It's a shack. It's hardly more than a cardboard box, and one I've nearly torn to shreds with all the full moons. I've got a better house. On a planet with no moons. With you."
"What about your reputation?" Remus lets go of Sirius, rolling his eyes, and Sirius steps forward. "I'm not joking. What are people going to think when you disappear the same time I escape?"
"That I'm holed up with you on some remote planet committing horrifying wanton acts of debauchery with a murderer?" Remus smiles. "Ah, but they always saw it coming, you know. Everyone knows what I am these days. They send out a little warning notice the first week of school."
Sirius scowls. "That's outrageous."
"Yeah, so? Damn my reputation. I don't care."
"What about Harry?"
Remus relaxes back against the control panel, careful not to rest his body on any buttons or switches. "His father's clone, it's rather remarkable."
"That's not what I meant."
"Isn't it?" Remus asks, lifting an eyebrow. "I don't just mean he looks like him."
"What do you mean, then?"
"That we can probably explain the whole mess to him in a week or so," Remus says. "He's got the map."
"Our map?" Sirius asks. "How the bollocks does he have our map?"
Remus laughs. "Through a complicated series of coincidences and cock-ups as I understand it. Point is, he's got the only piece of paper in the universe that has our secret little place on it, and he'll come looking for you. I tried warning him against it, but of course…"
Sirius smiles so wide he looks young again. "Told James's son not to come looking for trouble? Are you daft?"
"I suspect I am." Remus shakes his head ruefully. "He has these two little friends-they're a really remarkable team. They've stolen shuttles and made it to galaxies we couldn't have dreamed of."
Sirius's face lights up with pride. "Raised him right, you did."
"When I could," Remus says.
He doesn’t get a chance to drop into melancholy, explain all the reasons Sirius has probably already guessed that Harry was raised on Earth by family members so terrified of Space they tried to pretend it didn't exist. In front of them, their planet has already become visible, a light yellow blot against the backdrop of black. The atmosphere on Ishmael is volatile, nothing can live there except for the plants and animals that evolved there. And, of course, creatures that can learn to breathe any air they try.
That's why it went undiscovered, unnamed, and most importantly unmarked. At least until Remus and Sirius found it, needing a place to hide away when Hogwarts was closed for the holidays and none of the members of Remus's pack could stand the thought of letting him transform on his own, stranded on some planet full of wolves who scared Remus almost as much as the moon did. Ishmael is where they went to be alone. It's where they started their life all those years ago.
Sirius grins, pushing the lever controlling Buckbeat's speed forward all the way. "Here already," he says as they cut through a veil of clouds. Remus can make out their house, the small bit of farmland they marked out and cultivated. All exactly as they left it. It's probably the only place in the universe that's still safe for both of them.
"Harry will be okay, right? Breathing when he gets here?"
Remus smiles. "He's part of the pack. The other two might have to stay on their shuttle, but who knows? They're certainly his family by now."
Sirius nods absentmindedly. "We have a lot of cleaning to do to make this place ready for guests."
"And all the time in the world," Remus agrees, snaking his arms around Sirius and pressing a kiss to his neck. They stumble as the shuttle lands with a thud and tangle their hands as the shuttle door slides open and the hot air on the planet's surface envelops them.
Together they take one step, each set one foot down on firm ground, and they're home.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG for Language and Mild Violence
Word Count: 7,471
Author’s Note: Written for rs_games Team Sirius with the prompt "It is not down in any map; true places never are. ~ Herman Melville" Yay my team won! That makes three years of backing the right horse at rs_games! I love the challenge a lot, but this will probably be the last year I will actually write for it as my commitment to the pairing sadly took a hit when I met Sam and Dean and hasn't really recovered. But I had fun writing this, and I hope people enjoyed it! It's maybe not my finest work, me being mostly out of touch with the characters and writing on a very tight deadline (thanks to my own bad planning), but I'm kinda happy with how it turned out, anyway. :D
Summary: Non-Magic Space AU: By escaping from the prison planet Azkaban, Sirius Black has just become the most feared man in the known universe. Remus remembers another Sirius-a man he fell in love with. Twelve years later, he still can't shake the belief that someone somewhere made a mistake, and Sirius Black never should have gone to Azkaban to begin with.
Original Link: http://rs-games.livejournal.com/113071.html
It's the face on the screen that catches him. Remus isn't really in the habit of following the news, hasn't been for over a decade. Usually he walks right past the hologram stands and the large, purple creature that calls out the headlines. But today, well, today Remus gets unlucky. One glimpse of that face as he's pushing through the station, and that glimpse is all it takes. He's frozen in place, eyes locked on the video looping in front of him. This face is the reason Remus gave up on staying informed-back when it was everywhere he looked. Then it was terrifying and deranged and much, much too familiar. It's new now, changed by all those years of isolation and starvation and god knows what. Nobody has ever praised the natives of Azkaban for their hospitality.
The sight of him still turns Remus's stomach as he walks by. It still fills him with fear and dread and, worst of all, pity. He looks every bit as dangerous as Remus now knows he always was, but he's so thin, his eyes begging for something-probably something horrible, a hunger even Remus is too human to identify. But with the sound cut out of the transmission, it's easy for Remus to imagine that he's just asking for someone to listen. Someone to believe him. Just like he asked Remus all those years ago, and Remus nearly had. Nearly still does.
He shakes his head, wishing that could be enough to chase away all the memories, and puts one foot in front of another. Focuses all his attention on walking so that he doesn't slide back into-
Well, it's wasted effort. Remus does think about him all day. Every second. There's a newsstand on every corner as he makes his way to work, and all the headlines bear the same warning. While he's teaching, the students disappear in front of him, replaced by the faces Remus knew when he was a student, that one face in particular. Even now, sitting alone in the teacher's lounge, Remus thinks of one thing and one thing only.
He tries to stomp the thoughts out, but of course it's useless. Twelve years he's been trying to stomp these thoughts out, and if he was ever going to succeed, it wasn't going to be today.
"You knew him, didn't you?"
Remus doesn't glance up. He knows who's speaking-Filius Flitwick, the mechanics professor, who has the great misfortune of being a dwarf from a dwarf planet, and the even greater misfortune of having decided to try engaging Remus in conversation. Remus knows what he's talking about, too, but he decides to play dumb. Go through the motions. Practice will make perfect, and Remus isn't naïve enough to hope people will be sensitive. He's going to be having this conversation a lot in the next few weeks. "Who?"
Flitwick takes the seat to Remus's left and, resignedly, Remus sets his book down. "The convict. That Black fellow," he says. "Can't say you haven't heard he escaped. It's everywhere."
"Oh, that," Remus replies. "Yes, I knew him." He raises the book again, hoping that will be the end of it.
"The Prophet says he might be coming for Hogwarts. After the Potter boy, of course."
"Yes, I…" Remus shifts uncomfortably. If he's what they say he is-and Remus knows he is, even if he still hasn't accepted it-that's exactly what he would do. Remus takes a deep breath. "I figured the same."
"I wouldn't worry about that too much," Professor Burbage says, picking out another empty seat at the table. "No one gets on the station without being cleared. As long as Harry stays on board and no one approves a shuttle for entry with a mass murderer strapped in for the ride… It should be enough."
Remus does his best not to look cross as he smiles at her and says nothing. The things he wants to say are just going to make the conversation drag and likely hurt the poor woman's feelings. There's already a small group of people gathering around. The last thing Remus wants to do is encourage the crowd.
"The man managed to sneak off a prison planet with a hostile atmosphere and even more hostile guards. There isn't another planet near Azkaban for light years and there hasn't been a shuttle to or from it in months. And instead of being dead, like he should be, he was just spotted on Earth of all places." Flitwick scoffs, but Remus can read the healthy undercurrent of fear. "He obviously isn't going to be deterred by something as simple as safety inspections."
"No," Burbage insists. "Dumbledore can outsmart some lunatic from Azkaban. He would have to know magic to get in here."
"Or have friends on the inside." Remus tries not to look up at that, at the sneering voice and the man it belongs to. He can feel Severus's eyes on him, knows any reaction to that will be taken as a sure sign of guilt.
"There's no one here as would help that man," someone says. Remus is too fixed on trying not to scream to bother figuring out who it is.
"I wouldn't be so sure," Severus says. "He may have friends in high places." There's a dark chuckle, and finally Remus can't help it. He looks up, meets Professor Snape's eyes with his own. "Or low," he adds, with a smirk at Remus before he turns to go, ever dramatic swish of black fabric following him.
"What do you suppose that means?" Flitwick asks, leaning in. The crowd around them has begun to thin as the alarm rings and announces the end of break.
It means there was a time when Remus's universe was Sirius Black first and everyone else second, and there's at least one person at Hogwarts who remembers this. Remus gives Flitwick his best attempt at a dazed expression, shakes his head, and shrugs his way out the door.
_______________________________________________________________
He's curious, this new boy. Curious enough that he's holding Sirius's attention, though God only knows why. He hasn't done anything interesting-hasn't even given a hint that he knows how to do anything interesting-since he took the last seat in the shuttle compartment (and that was 45 minutes ago). All he's done is sit. And read. And Sirius would swear he looks up every now and then, smirking when anyone says something funny, his eyes dodging from speaker to speaker, clearly following the conversation. He doesn't add to it. He turns pages, slow and deliberate, and Sirius should not give a single care in the world, because soon they'll be back at school and this boy will be just another kid their age who wanted to be a part of their group but couldn't think of anything to say when he had the chance.
Sirius glares at the boy, who doesn’t seem to notice, and tries to turn his attention back to his friends.
"So anyway, then there's a revolution in China and…"
Great, Sirius thinks. James is on one of his Earth history rants, and Peter is enraptured (or at the very least doing a supreme job pretending), and that means nothing amusing is going to be discussed for at least an hour. For all the good James does during a prank war, Sirius's best friend has the insufferable habit of sometimes showing that he's not an utter moron after all.
Sirius isn't asking for much here. All he wants is a little attention, and the luxury of not having to compete with the People's Republic of some place called China on some planet James's family abandoned centuries years ago to get it.
He stands up and moves across the compartment, falling easily into the space next to the fourth boy. The boy, brown hair falling over brown eyes and pink scars running down his cheek, hardly lifts one eye to acknowledge Sirius.
"What's this, mate?" Sirius asks. The boy blinks once and then looks back down at his book. Sirius grabs it out of his hands and closes it, observing the cover. It only now hits Sirius that it really is a book-pages of paper bound together like in all of James's stories about back on Earth this and that. "Earth literature?"
The boy doesn't object to being robbed. His mouth hangs open for a few seconds, then he closes it and nods.
"Where can a man go to escape all this rubbish?" Sirius asks. "Between you and this one," he inclines his head toward James, "you'd think Earth was the damn center of civilization."
The boy shrugs, tries to take his book back. Sirius holds it up, out of his reach.
"What, can't you talk?"
"It was the center of civilization," the boy responds informatively. "In fact, your ancestors-"
Sirius cuts him off right there. The last thing he wants to know any more about than he already does is his ancestors. "Yes, so I've heard. About eight billion years ago."
"It was actually less than a thous-"
"What's your name?" Sirius asks.
The boy looks annoyed for a moment, then casts his eyes down. "May I have my book back, please?"
"That is a mouthful," Sirius tells him. "Your parents were not kind people, were they?"
The boy's eyes dim a little, and Sirius feels very sick for a moment. He knows better than to make light of that, if it's true, or at least he should.
"I'm Sirius," he says as warmly as he can manage. He holds out a hand, and feels a strong sense of relief when the other boy takes it.
"Remus."
"Well, then, Remus." Sirius grins. "Are you going to share that chocolate I saw you trying to hide and tell me about your book?"
"I hadn't been planning to, no."
"Excellent!" Sirius replies. "You may begin."
Remus sighs loudly, but one side of his mouth tugs up and his eyes, which had seemed so dull a moment ago, are suddenly very bright. Almost playful. He shuts the book and begins to recite the story as if it's scribbled into the back of his head. It's something about a whale and a crazy man chasing after it, and it really sounds rather awful except that Remus is as giddy talking about it as James gets discussing the War of the Daffodils or whatever that bloke with the seven wives was involved in.
The shuttle lands before Sirius even realizes they're close. It's not until the compartment door slides open and James and Peter reenter the cabin in their uniforms that Sirius remembers where they are and why.
"You'll want to get changed," Peter says to Sirius, but then he looks awkwardly at Remus as well. "Both of you."
Remus nods, folding a page of Moby Dick and tucking it into his bag. Sirius watches him, and Remus must notice, because he takes the book back out. "If you want to read it for yourself, you can borrow mine. It's my third time, I'll find something else."
Sirius eyes the book disdainfully, a million clever retorts coming to mind. All the lines he's already used on James about how he'd rather be swallowed by Venusian plants or fall into a black hole than spend an hour of his life reading out of a book. He opens his mouth to say as much, but what comes out instead is, "Yeah, I'd like that. Thanks."
Remus smiles then, both sides of his mouth turning up for the first time all day. Sirius's insides flip a little. He can't help it, they do.
"How old are you?" Sirius asks.
"Sixteen," Remus says.
"Same as us," James cuts in. "Why don't we know you?"
Remus shrugs. "New," he mumbles.
"But Hogwarts doesn't take students late," Peter says. "What did you do until now? Did you go to another school?"
Remus shakes his head, and Sirius isn't sure why he's even noticing, but Remus looks uncomfortable. He's even less sure why that bothers him, but it really, really does.
"No matter," says Sirius. "Come sit with us at the feast."
Remus looks at him, his whole face lighting up like he doesn't quite believe it. "Really?"
"Sure," James says, putting an arm around Remus's shoulder as he makes a line for the door. "We'll show you the ropes. I'm James Potter. This here is Peter Pettigrew, esquire."
Peter puffs up in that way he has when he understands nothing that is going on but is just happy to be a part of it.
"Potter?" Remus says with excitement. "Not like the British war general from the Anglo-Martian wars of 3400?"
Sirius thinks he sees a slightly calculating look somewhere in the boy's eyes, like Remus knows exactly the effect those words will have on James. But it's buried under a very convincing façade of innocent wonder, and James is too thrilled to pick up on anything else. His eyes go wide and he pulls Remus in closer. "This is the start of something beautiful," James says. "I can tell."
Sirius watches them leave, feeling endlessly fond of his idiot best friend and oddly endeared to the straggly stranger by his side.
"You fancy him, don't you?" Peter asks, staring from the door James and Remus left through and then back to Sirius.
Sirius huffs out a laugh as it hits him. "I guess even Pettigrews get things right sometimes," he says, pushing a button so the door swooshes open in front of them.
_______________________________________________________________
There's a prickling at the back of Remus's neck. He can feel eyes on him every moment of the day. He tells himself it's people gossiping. Some of them must know what Sirius Black used to be to him. Some of them must believe Snape's half-formed accusations are true. It's just them. Just his co-workers and students and the worried parents who have come to visit the school today and make sure everything is still safe. Remus is crazy if he thinks it's anything else.
But he knows the weight of Sirius's eyes on him, couldn't ever forget that this is what that felt like. The thrill, electrifying and horrifying at once, of having someone like Sirius notice someone like Remus. There's no way. No way, Sirius is not here, can't be.
"Is it true, professor?"
Remus turns slowly and does his best to smile. "Yes, despite their gentle appearance the Xantors are a dangerous-"
"Not about the lecture, sir," Harry interrupts. "About Sirius Black."
Remus flinches inwardly and leans on the nearest desk. Harry deserves to know the truth. Harry needs to know the truth, really. But Remus finds it entirely uncalled for that he be the one to tell it. "What about him?" Remus asks, finally finding his voice.
"He killed my parents? Told the Death Eaters where to find them?"
Remus nods stiffly.
"And that other bloke? He tortured him to death for trying to save them?"
"Peter," Remus clarifies. "Yes, that's what they say he did."
"Say?" Harry asks. "I thought he confessed."
"He never confessed. He just never denied it."
Remus bites down on his tongue. Sirius never denied it publicly. Remus can still see him as if it was yesterday, standing in their quarters, that manic look in his eyes as he begged Remus to believe him. But Sirius had blood on his hands and was the only one who knew where to look, and when Remus begged him for anything-any flimsy explanation he could convince himself was true so he could trust in Sirius again-Sirius went silent until the police battered down their door and took him away.
"So you think he might not have?"
Remus blinks a few times before he can focus on Harry. Accept it, he tells himself. It's been twelve years. Just accept it. "No, he must have. No one else it could have been."
Harry's young features go hard and angry. "And now he's coming for me?"
"They think so," Remus says. "But don't you worry about it. You're safe at Hogwarts. Just stay at Hogwarts, Harry. And…" he looks up to meet Harry's eyes, can't help that a sympathetic smile sneaks in with the chastising tone. Remus was a marauder once, too. He can't help understanding. "Don't you and your friends go stealing shuttles to look for him, all right? I hear that's something you do."
Harry looks about to fight for a moment, but finally he shrugs and turns away. "Okay, professor."
Remus watches him leave, then sighs, knowing there's no chance in an infinite number of universes that any son of James Potter is going to keep that promise.
_______________________________________________________________
"Come on," Sirius pleads, burying his face in Remus's neck. Remus squirms in his arms and makes a half-assed attempt at escaping.
"For the last time, no," Remus says.
"It's the championship!" Sirius lets go of Remus only to throw his hands in the air for effect. "How can you call yourself a man?"
Remus sticks his tongue out. "Just because I don't enjoy floating around after homicidal balls-or watching my friend and boyfriend risk their lives floating after said homicidal balls-does not mean I'm any less of a man."
"Even Lily enjoys quidditch, Remus. I mean, honestly, there is no gravity on this moon. The fans have to be tethered to their seats! It's brilliant!"
Remus shakes his head. "I'm staying right here, on Hogwarts, where everything stays on the ground without bungee cords, thank you very much."
Sirius frowns. "You spent the first 16 years of your life grounded. You don't even like space. I thought you'd be itching for this."
Remus shrugs. "Well, I'm not."
"What about me?" Sirius tries to keep his voice level. "Don't you think it might be nice to know you're watching? Lily's never missed a game and she's the least supportive girlfriend ever. She actually bets against us half the time, but at least she shows." Sirius crosses his arms over his chest. He's throwing the kind of tantrum even his mother would envy, but he can't help it. This is a year and half of waiting for Remus to just show up for one measly little quidditch game and still nothing.
Remus sighs, sits back down across from Sirius and takes both of Sirius's hands in his own. "Can you please just take my word for it that I have a good reason?"
Sirius pushes him away. "No," he says, standing and storming out.
It's not until four hours later, when he's halfway through the Quidditch game he and Remus had been fighting over, that Sirius finally gets it. He comes to in pain, black swirls slowly giving way to fuzzy vision. His head is pounding and his back is sprawled on moon dust and he realizes his oxygen tank has cracked and the air he's breathing is thinner than anything he could have imagined. He's breathing the atmosphere-the actual atmosphere of some moon light-years from where Sirius's lungs know how to breathe. And he's not dead. He remembers the bludger flying at him, the hit that must have shattered his tank and caused him to fall, he can feel the bruises as they bloom all over him. But he's not dead.
He sits up, a crowd of doctors and worried teammates all standing in a circle above him, each looking more shocked than the next. They are all thinking what Sirius is thinking, which is that he really should be dead and yet he is not and what the hell? Sirius promptly passes out again.
The next time he wakes up, he recognizes the bright white of the medical wing. He sees Madame Pomfrey in her light blue uniform, checking the vitals on someone across the room. He also sees Remus sitting by his bedside, holding Sirius's hand so tightly it hurts, and staring with a look of abject terror on his face.
"Morning, sunshine," Sirius says with a slur.
Remus scowls. "Don't you smile at me," he says. "I told you quidditch was a deathtrap."
"I know what you are," Sirius says, squeezing Remus's hand. "I won't ask you to come to quidditch anymore."
Remus's eyebrows draw together. "I don't know what you're-"
"You're a lycan," Sirius says. "Or something like that."
Remus shakes his head. "Shut up. You're high on pain medication. You're not making any sense."
Sirius raises a finger to his boyfriend's lips. "The textbook. Defense Against Hostile Species last month." He pauses, smiling brightly. "I actually did my homework that night."
Remus puts in the obligatory eye roll and Sirius continues, "Lycans turn into wolves under extreme stress and during full moons. Which I'm assuming also applies if they actually go to a moon."
"You sound insane," Remus replies, voice edging up hysterically.
"What was the thing about breathing?" Sirius asks. "Oh, that's right. They can breathe in any atmosphere, right?"
"Yeah, I suppose," Remus replies.
"And when they're wolves, they'll attack anyone. Anything. Except their pack. Their mates."
Remus turns a little pink and looks away.
"And sometimes…sometimes they transfer some of their qualities to their pack mates, too?"
"I don't see where you're going-"
"So if, say, someone cracks their oxygen tank on some random moon, but they've been sucking face with one of these lycans for a little over a year, there's a chance they'll have learned to breathe there anyway."
Remus looks up, frightened as he meets Sirius's eyes. "Don't hate me, Sirius," he says. "Please don't hate me."
"Hate you?" Sirius sits up. "Remus, you saved my life."
Remus barks out a quick, bitter laugh. "Like that matters. I'm still a monster."
"Only on mornings they don't serve coffee." Remus makes an annoyed sound, standing to leave, and Sirius reaches out for him. Remus pauses, lets Sirius get an arm around his waist and drags him back down. "Hey, listen to me." Remus pulls a face and refuses to look at Sirius, but Sirius knows he has his boyfriend's attention. He pushes brown hair away from Remus's neck and presses his face to his skin. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."
"Yeah," Remus murmurs. "Wait until James or Peter finds out. Wait until someone tells their parents a freak like me somehow got on their school station. God forbid, wait until we get grounded near a moon and you see what I really-"
"How did a freak like you get on my school station, anyway?" Sirius asks, fast forwarding through Remus's neurosis. "Dumbledore at least has to know, right?"
Remus nods, Sirius's head boggling with the movement. "It was all his idea. I was just off on my planet minding my own business."
"But why, then? I mean you're not supposed to be allowed to-don't make that face at me. I'm glad you're here, I just want to understand. Find out my boyfriend's been hiding this brilliant secret from me for a year, I think I earned the gory details."
"There are few details, and none of them are gory," Remus says, but he turns and gives Sirius a playful smile. "I wasn't like the rest of them. I did my studies on other planets sometimes, I passed as normal. I'm lucky, I'm only affected by the lunar cycle."
"Yeah, why is that? I thought lycanthropes slipped between man and wolf depending on their moods. By those standards, you should have turned and swallowed me and James at least five times by now."
"I'm only half. My mother is human, my father is pure werewolf."
"But the contamination is enough to-" Remus makes a wounded face, and Sirius jots down a mental note to burn the text book that put the words into his mouth once he gets out of the hospital. "Not-didn't mean to use that word."
Remus bites his lip. "It's okay, Sirius. I get it. I read the chapter, too."
"Tell me about your parents," he says. "I want to hear how it happened."
"She came to Hogwarts, just like us. And I guess she would have fit in with you and James just fine, because she snuck off once. Stole a shuttle, ended up landing on Lupine in the middle of the full moon. She should have been shredded."
"But?"
"My dad is the wolf that just so happened to stumble upon her. He didn't hurt her. He kept watch all night, fought off a few predators, or so they say. She woke up the next morning next to some complete stranger instead of the wolf she fell asleep wrapped in. Scared out of her wits, but she was alive."
"So, just like that his instinct knew not to hurt her? Before they'd properly met, they were already mates?"
Remus sits back, gives Sirius a reserved smile. "I knew the first time I saw you."
Sirius smacks his shoulder weakly. "You old dog."
Remus's smile breaks into a full grin. "She stayed with him, you know. Never came back to school or anything. Even though she'd seen what he was. Loves him anyway." Remus looks down. "I always thought that was kind of beautiful."
Sirius reaches out, slips a finger under Remus's chin, and turns his face. "You're not going back there, though?"
"I hate it there. I hate the people, the wolves. I hate turning." Remus shakes his head. "I wanted to come learn about space and everything, don't get me wrong. But I was so scared to be around normal people I almost said no. It wasn't until Dumbledore told me the station never got close enough to any atmosphere to be influenced by the moon-"
Sirius frowns. "What about after we graduate? We'll have to be grounded somewhere."
"My plan had been to go back home with my tail tucked between my legs and be thankful I got a couple of good years."
Sirius grabs his hand. "No, no, that won't do. We'll figure something out."
"We?" Remus asks, looking up. "You really intend to stand by me despite my-"
"Only if you let me call you Moony," Sirius replies, and then Remus shuts him up with a kiss.
_______________________________________________________________
Remus doesn't know what's pushing him. The wolf, maybe, buried but always awake. That idiot piece of him that chose a monster for its mate 15 years ago and will never be able to change its mind. He misses Sirius today. When everyone is scurrying through the halls, trying to hide from the specter of Sirius Black and his escape from Azkaban, Remus aches to see the man. Touch him. Remus would tear him to shreds if he really did see Sirius, but he would still love him at the end of it.
So he walks slowly down halls they used to terrorize in a much more benevolent fashion-unleashing stink plants they found on some acidic planet or covering the walls in creatures that looked dangerous and were really just as scared as the students who saw them and ran screaming to their dormitories-trying not to think of all the times he'd pressed a murderer against the cool, silver walls and kissed him until even their mutated lungs couldn't wait for air any longer. His classes are done for the day, he should be on a shuttle back to his planet. Preparing, because on Ogblotz, where Remus lives and where there are three moons, he spends almost every night howling and scratching at his own skin.
Instead, he stops in front of the wrong shuttle bay, the one marked restricted, the one with the code he and James and Peter and, of course, the infamous Sirius Black, rewired the year before they graduated so that they could steal the shuttle there-an old piece of space junk called The Beakbeat 4000. If Sirius is at Hogwarts, this is where he must have come from, and Remus should really have alerted someone to this before he came here looking alone, but, well.
"Coulda, woulda, shoulda," he mumbles under his breath as he punches in the code, and the gates slide open, revealing the inside of the Buckbeat, just as out of shape as she was all those years ago.
Remus casts a look over his shoulder to be sure no one is watching and then steps in, letting the sensors lock the entrance behind him. The air inside the shuttle is thick, stifling, like no one's dared to breathe inside of it for a very long time. Remus, unlike most of the people watching out for Sirius Black, knows that this does not necessarily mean he's not there.
He has the same eerie sensation he's had all day. Someone is watching him. Someone has been just a step behind, too quick to see when he turns around, but definitely a shadow in the corner of Remus's eye. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, sits at the control seat and gazes out of the panoramic window ahead, remembering the distant parts of the galaxy the Marauders had seen through it. His fingers brush over the tips of the buttons, and he wonders what would happen, who would miss him and what they would suspect and whether or not he would get caught if he just pressed go and left Hogwarts School of Aeronautics and Space Adminstration behind him.
There's a sound of something shifting in the cabin. It's quiet, too quiet for anyone else to hear, but Remus doesn’t have to turn, doesn’t have to check or wonder if he's been imagining this all day.
"So you can still breathe out in deep space, huh?" Remus asks.
There's a long period of quiet. Remus swivels his chair around and looks from one end of the shuttle to the other. It's empty. It's all empty. "I know you're there," he says, though he's almost starting to question the excited scratching of the wolf inside of him. It senses mate, it shouldn't be wrong.
Finally, a tall, black-haired man steps out from the shadows. He doesn't look like the boy Remus loved, but he doesn't look like the maniac on the posters, either. He's clean-cut and newly shaved, like he got all dressed up for this. He looks at Remus with wide eyes and a skittish expression, but he tries to smile anyway. "Moony," he says. "You were supposed to turn me in, you know."
_______________________________________________________________
If you'd told Sirius two years ago that dating an alien liable to turn into a giant, bloodthirsty canine if he accidentally got too close to the wrong planet at the wrong time was going to be the least of his worries after graduating, he might have laughed. It was easier to laugh at things before this was true.
Before the Death Eaters came, cloaked in black, from some unidentified planet, anonymous and merciless. No one knows what they want or why, no one gets close enough to take a guess and comes out of it alive. Everyone has their explanation, of course. Some say the Death Eaters are extinct alien breeds looking for revenge or some small, overlooked threat that got tired of being stepped on by the natives of their planet and decided to hit the galaxy looking for respect. Some even think it's the lycanthropes, not content with the damage they inflict as wolves, hoping to up the body count.
Sirius has his own theory, one that's much more likely than any of the others. He's seen the Death Eaters from afar on missions for the Order, he's watched the way they hold themselves under their cloaks. He recognizes their cold, self-referential manners and the wickedness of their laughter all too well. Sirius would be willing to bet anything that what’s hiding under those robes is just people-humans, so proud of their unmingled Earth blood that they've turned into something much more terrifying than the aliens they kill so casually. Sirius knows them because he used to be one, before he gave up family and took up pack instead.
And now…now pack is about to be ground to dust by Sirius's kin. Peter is ribbons in his arms, James and Lily must be-well, from the look of it, Peter's been lying here a long time. Disposed of. He did his part. Sirius can only assume they found the Potters hours ago.
"Everything?" Sirius echoes. "You told them everything?"
Peter tries to nod. It's grotesque, the way his neck is sliced and the movement of his muscles only reaches half of it. Sirius does his best not to look away. "Where to find Lily and James, how to get in," he shudders, "Sirius, the things they did to me. I couldn't help it."
"Shh," Sirius says. "I know, Pete. It wasn't your fault."
He grits his teeth through it. It really wasn't Peter's fault, Sirius knows that. Most people aren't able to withstand the Death Eaters' torture. But some have. Frank and Alice Longbottom did, and Sirius can't help thinking that he would have if he'd been the secret keeper. Peter had always been just a little bit weaker than the rest of them.
"Sirius, I'm sorry," he chokes. "I'm so sorry. I'm…"
Sirius shakes his head and tells Peter it's okay, even though it isn't, because there's no use in hounding a dying man. Lily and James must be dead by now. Even little Harry-Sirius flinches, not willing to form the thought. And after the Potters are dead, they'll move on to housekeeping. Remus is a monster to them. Sirius has to find him. Save him. Remus is the only one left to save.
"Peter, what about Remus? Did you tell them about Remus? Did you tell them about Ishmael?"
Peter shakes his head. "They were obsessed with Harry, they just wanted to know where Harry was. I kept our secret planet a secret."
Sirius doesn't feel relief exactly, not with everything that has gone wrong, but it makes him pull Peter to his chest and hold him that much tighter. Remus will be okay. When Sirius goes after the bastards who did this and gets himself blown to pieces, at least Remus will survive.
"Sirius, promise me," Peter says, his voice finding a last hold.
"Anything, mate. Anything."
"Don't tell them I did this," he says. "I don’t want this to be how people remember me."
Sirius nods and brushes bloody blond hairs out of his friend's eyes. "Of course," he says, because he's not thinking clearly yet, and he doesn’t realize what keeping that promise is going to cost him.
_______________________________________________________________
"I wanted to kill you myself," Remus replies, words calm and cool. It's true and it isn't. There are parts of Remus hungry for blood, and he knows if he was a full-blooded lycan, he would have transformed by now. Snapped Sirius's bones with his teeth and basked in the sound of it. But there's another part of him that came here hoping, wishing, maybe Sirius didn't do it and maybe Sirius had a perfectly good reason for not telling him all those years ago and maybe Remus is so desperate for that to be true that he almost doesn't care if it is or isn’t, as long as Sirius is convincing.
"By all means, Moony, I'm no one to stop you." Sirius spreads out his arms defiantly. "I came a long way to see you. Kind of assumed that's how this would end."
"But you came anyway," Remus says. "That was risky."
"Worth the risk." Sirius advances slowly, like he's waiting for Remus to strike, and takes the first seat he reaches. "To see you."
"Don't," Remus snaps.
"If you really believed what they say about me, you'd have killed me by now. And good thing, too. I'd have deserved it."
"But you didn't?" Remus asks, trying to sound skeptical rather than excited.
"Come on now, really. Would I have come home that night if I was on the run?"
"But you didn't defend yourself, Sirius. I would have helped you if you'd said something. Or if you hadn't looked so-"
"Shaken? I was covered in Peter's blood. I was terrified you'd be dead, and…James and Lily were…I wasn't thinking straight. You can't think I would-James, James was my brother, Remus. And Harry was-"
"Is," Remus says. He pauses for a moment, then sighs. "No, I never did think it was you. But you were the only one who-"
"Peter," Sirius says. "It was a last minute thing. Supposed to distract the Death Eaters, but I guess they got wind of it. Peter was the one who knew where to find them."
"How can I be sure?"
Sirius makes a speculative face, then there's a flash over his features. He runs to the map on the wall, points to an empty space. "Home, Remus. Is it how we left it?"
"This isn't really the time to remin-"
"Answer the question," Sirius says, turning from the map to glare at Remus. "Ishmael's still not on the maps. I've checked. Even on the run, I stopped to check. Why didn't you tell them about it?"
Remus shrugs. "Wasn't any of their goddamn business."
"Why didn't you go back, then? We picked it for a reason. Not a single moon, and you're living on some planet with three of them instead?"
"I couldn't go back," Remus answers with a cool laugh. "And what, Sirius? Live there alone? Try to be happy when it was supposed to be our secret?"
"But the proof, god dammit, it was there. It's still there. Sitting on the dining room table, that's where I left it."
"What are you talking about?"
"The papers. We all signed papers. Me and James and Peter, when we changed the location and James told Peter instead of me. If someone had just gone home, they would have found proof. I was innocent, Remus. I'm still innocent."
Remus puts a hand over his mouth, shaking his head. "No. That's not possible. That's stupid. That's a stupid thing to-"
"It's stupid but it's what happened."
"Sirius, you didn't say anything."
"I promised," Sirius replies. "All that torture they blamed me for? I didn't do that, but he was a wreck when I found him. They wouldn't believe me, they said I had to be a traitor if the Death Eaters left me untouched. I wasn't there when it happened, I wasn't the one they came for. And he was-if you'd seen him, Remus, you'd have forgiven him for talking. The last thing he asked was to be remembered as something other than a traitor, I just could-"
Remus steps forward, wraps his arms around Sirius. "Shh, I understand. Sirius, I get it."
Sirius pushes at Remus. "You don't have to believe me now. You can wait until we see the papers."
"No, I believe you. I mean, I want to see them. I want to go back home with you and find the papers, but not because I don't believe you."
"How can you be so sure?"
Remus smiles sadly. "I always knew you were innocent, Sirius. I just didn't know how."
"So now what do we do?"
"We could free you." Remus puts in coordinates to the planet they once thought they were going to spend their life on. He feels lighter than he has in over a decade as the worn shuttlecraft begins to shake and stutter its way into space. "Bring the papers back and prove you didn't do it."
"They'll never believe it now," Sirius says. "It's been too long, it'll be too embarrassing to admit a mistake like that. They'll say the papers are faked. You'll be taken to Azkaban for helping me. I can't let that happen, Remus. Just come with me for one night, I want you to see that I'm innocent. And then you can return to your life and forget about me."
"Or…" Remus leans forward, grabbing Sirius's shirt and tugging him forward. He kisses him, waits for Sirius to slide back into the easy rhythm. "We could disappear," he whispers against the other man's lips. "Together, forever. On our secret little planet."
"Mmm," Sirius says, kissing back. "That's lunatic."
"Why?" Remus pulls away from the embrace. "Isn't that what we always wanted anyway?"
Sirius nods, then bites his bottom lip. "What about your job, Moony?"
"The most prestigious school in the universe will be able to find someone perfectly qualified to teach defense, I assure you."
"Your house?"
"It's a shack. It's hardly more than a cardboard box, and one I've nearly torn to shreds with all the full moons. I've got a better house. On a planet with no moons. With you."
"What about your reputation?" Remus lets go of Sirius, rolling his eyes, and Sirius steps forward. "I'm not joking. What are people going to think when you disappear the same time I escape?"
"That I'm holed up with you on some remote planet committing horrifying wanton acts of debauchery with a murderer?" Remus smiles. "Ah, but they always saw it coming, you know. Everyone knows what I am these days. They send out a little warning notice the first week of school."
Sirius scowls. "That's outrageous."
"Yeah, so? Damn my reputation. I don't care."
"What about Harry?"
Remus relaxes back against the control panel, careful not to rest his body on any buttons or switches. "His father's clone, it's rather remarkable."
"That's not what I meant."
"Isn't it?" Remus asks, lifting an eyebrow. "I don't just mean he looks like him."
"What do you mean, then?"
"That we can probably explain the whole mess to him in a week or so," Remus says. "He's got the map."
"Our map?" Sirius asks. "How the bollocks does he have our map?"
Remus laughs. "Through a complicated series of coincidences and cock-ups as I understand it. Point is, he's got the only piece of paper in the universe that has our secret little place on it, and he'll come looking for you. I tried warning him against it, but of course…"
Sirius smiles so wide he looks young again. "Told James's son not to come looking for trouble? Are you daft?"
"I suspect I am." Remus shakes his head ruefully. "He has these two little friends-they're a really remarkable team. They've stolen shuttles and made it to galaxies we couldn't have dreamed of."
Sirius's face lights up with pride. "Raised him right, you did."
"When I could," Remus says.
He doesn’t get a chance to drop into melancholy, explain all the reasons Sirius has probably already guessed that Harry was raised on Earth by family members so terrified of Space they tried to pretend it didn't exist. In front of them, their planet has already become visible, a light yellow blot against the backdrop of black. The atmosphere on Ishmael is volatile, nothing can live there except for the plants and animals that evolved there. And, of course, creatures that can learn to breathe any air they try.
That's why it went undiscovered, unnamed, and most importantly unmarked. At least until Remus and Sirius found it, needing a place to hide away when Hogwarts was closed for the holidays and none of the members of Remus's pack could stand the thought of letting him transform on his own, stranded on some planet full of wolves who scared Remus almost as much as the moon did. Ishmael is where they went to be alone. It's where they started their life all those years ago.
Sirius grins, pushing the lever controlling Buckbeat's speed forward all the way. "Here already," he says as they cut through a veil of clouds. Remus can make out their house, the small bit of farmland they marked out and cultivated. All exactly as they left it. It's probably the only place in the universe that's still safe for both of them.
"Harry will be okay, right? Breathing when he gets here?"
Remus smiles. "He's part of the pack. The other two might have to stay on their shuttle, but who knows? They're certainly his family by now."
Sirius nods absentmindedly. "We have a lot of cleaning to do to make this place ready for guests."
"And all the time in the world," Remus agrees, snaking his arms around Sirius and pressing a kiss to his neck. They stumble as the shuttle lands with a thud and tangle their hands as the shuttle door slides open and the hot air on the planet's surface envelops them.
Together they take one step, each set one foot down on firm ground, and they're home.