#2: FIC: The Nineteenth Autumn, R/S, PG-13
darong's Big Birthday Fic, finally.
Title: The Nineteenth Autumn
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Pictures may take a while to load, depending on your connection speed. Otherwise, none.
Summary: What might have happened between August 1979 and November 1980. AU, if you squint.
Disclaimer: All not mine.
Notes: For darong; happy birthday. Special thanks to ailura, awesome awesome beta reader. (Reposted here, because the old post was locked.)
It started like this: After their NEWTs James went off to Auror school so he could earn enough money to buy Lily’s engagement ring, and Peter vanished into the unknown depths of the Ministry of Magic. Sirius and Remus, on the other hand, found jobs in James’ father’s business, where they found themselves handling inordinate amounts of Dark Creature extermination, as well as the sale of High Quality Sneakoscopes.
August 1979
Remus could smell motor oil and hot metal long before Sirius Black, Dark Creature Exterminator, walked into Potter & Sons, ltd.
Sirius Black in August 1979 still entered rooms as if he was accompanied by a small tempest of his own; nothing stood still in his presence. The photographs pinned on his side of the wall came alive in a flurry of colour and movement, and memos on his desk rustled urgent greetings. He reshuffled his files with a clatter, flicked the lamps on and off with his wand until they were of a perfect brightness and found a completely new spot in the office to haphazardly throw down his leather jacket.
Remus clutched his eagle-feather quill a little tighter, and continued writing in the ledger.
“Morning, Moony,” Sirius said, his voice scratchy from flying at high speed through the cold morning air.
“One second,” Remus gritted out, working on the accounts with a look of utmost concentration on his face. These would need to be done by the end of the morning; his bicycle was broken, meaning that he would be making deliveries on foot later on and needed all the time he could get.
Sirius stopped at his desk and set down a mug of freshly brewed Earl Grey, charmed to stay steaming hot. “Don’t have a second, Moony; I’m zipping off for a bit of Boggart banishing ‘round Knightsbridge,” he said breezily, attempting to arrange a stack of Sneakoscope orders on Remus’ table but only succeeding in making them more disorganised than before.
Remus didn’t look up, but flicked his quill sideways and down, indicating his annoyance. “Off you go, then,” he said absently. “Don’t want you running late.”
“Don’t want you forgetting that delivery of Sneakoscopes,” Sirius retorted, tapping Remus’ table with his wand for emphasis. Remus flicked his quill again in a jerky up and down motion, which meant, “Bugger off, you”.
“There’s tea; it’s a cold day,” Sirius said in a last-ditch attempt to get Remus’ attention, but upon getting no response, he made an exasperated sound and buggered off.
“Oh, sod it,” Remus muttered five seconds later, having realised that he’d copied a whole list of values into the wrong column. He squinted at them in irritation, trying to make out the numbers even as he felt the beginnings of a headache gathering behind his eyes. He walked over to the door so he could get out for a while to clear his mind, and discovered that Sirius had left his leather jacket hanging on the doorknob.
October 1979
It was a particularly cold Sunday in autumn, and Remus found Sirius on a bench in the park opposite the Auror Academy, huddled in his leather jacket, cupping a cigarette to himself like a warm secret.
“Just like sodding James Potter, standing us up like this,” Sirius grumbled when he saw Remus, and shifted over to make room on the bench.
“I brought sandwiches,” Remus replied, by way of greeting.
They spent the next half an hour watching a small child (gender unidentifiable) learn how to ride a bicycle, and then they started on the sandwiches, slowly, to make them last. Around them the trees blazed up in orange and red and yellow; the child - a boy with a very high-pitched voice, Sirius asserted - flew through the curling leaves with a wild shriek of exhilaration before going down again, cushioned by the breathlessness of childhood and thick layers of jumper.
Remus glanced over at Sirius for a moment, watching him pick at a piece of lettuce that was poking out of his sandwich, and then take a puff of cigarette. Exhale, coiling brief darkness diffusing quickly from between his lips.
Sirius Black, it seemed, was the only person in the world who could smoke and eat a sandwich at the same time.
“So anyway,” he said, with his mouth full of sandwich, “This Lord Voldy-whatsit. D’you reckon he’s for real?”
Remus swallowed his mouthful carefully. “Seems real enough to me.”
“Yeah?” Sirius’ tone sounded offhand, but Remus could tell that he was anything but cavalier when he said, “Prongs and those blokes down at MLE, they’ll have to deal with him, won’t they?”
“Yeah,” Remus replied, afraid to say what went unsaid, that if this new Dark wizard was as terrible as they all said he was, James might get hurt, or killed. Instead, he looked out in the distance and said, half to reassure himself, “And Dumbledore. He’ll take care of it.”
December 1979
Sirius left for the countryside a week before Christmas, on an assignment to rid a customer’s house of bundimuns. Remus, in the meantime, filled out more pages in the thick, leather-bound ledger, and made the Christmas deliveries for the usual Sneakoscopes, as well as Potter & Sons’ Pocket Foe Glass. He drank too much tea, helped Lily and James (more Lily than James, for James was mostly away for Auror business) redecorate their house at Godric’s Hollow, and tried not to read more than two paragraphs of the Daily Prophet each day.
With winter came Christmas, and also more news of Voldemort. The Dark Mark appeared even more frequently over the smoking ruins of wizarding houses, ominous semaphores in the darkness that said: you are no longer safe.
Lily’s face took on the drawn look of someone perpetually plunged in anxiety; slowly the twinkle of her green eyes faded, she smiled very little and laughed even less. They talked about Hogwarts when Remus came over, Hogwarts and James and how James’s mother knew just which colour curtains would suit the house. He slapped yellow paint on the walls of the master bedroom and wondered if Sirius was still at McKidd’s, ripping up floorboards to scour away the last of the bundimuns, speaking with a wizarding foreman about which rooms were the most heavily infested and needed restructuring.
“God, McKidd, that’s tough,” Remus imagined Sirius saying, staring at the expanse of green mould with an expression of mingled disgust and awe on his pale face. And then he would go back outside and leave his leather jacket on his motorcycle, so nothing would get on it while he worked on the house.
Christmas Eve drew near, and as the festivities continued the moon became fuller; there was now no sign of Peter and no word from Sirius, apart from a badly taken photograph scribbled over with a felt-tip permanent marker. Remus pinned it up onto Sirius’ side of the wall, along with a bit of leftover holly Lily had wanted to discard.
With the beast in his blood, scents grew sharp and painful; the slightest sounds made his head throb. He slept the same way that he used to as a boy, with his hands fisted in the sheets, in fear that he would claw himself into a feral stranger while he slept. Alone, it was much easier to be afraid, to wonder irrationally if he would stay a werewolf forever after he transformed and have to be put down by the Ministry.
On the eve of Christmas Eve, Remus holed himself up in the scratchy cocoon of his sheets, dreading the next night’s searing transformation. Already he trembled and shook, fitful and feverish, wrists and ankles anticipating the icy bite of Ministry-issue chains.
He dreamt of darkness and burning, of waking and words, of Sirius’ voice. It was saying, in an urgent whisper: Oi, Moony, wake up.
“Oi, Moony, wake up,” Sirius whispered again, tapping impatiently on Remus’ window. “It’s bloody freezing out here.”
Remus pulled the sheets off of his head, only to see the outline of Sirius’ face through the frosted-over glass of his window. He stumbled out of bed and shuffled over, pulling the window open with some difficulty.
“Thanks, mate,” Sirius told him, clapping ice-cold hands on Remus’ shoulders but removing them abruptly when he saw Remus’ shudder
“You’re back,” said Remus, half disbelieving, half relieved.
Sirius grinned blindingly at him, despite the fact that he had just survived an eight-hour motorcycle ride through the winter air and there was an icy night breeze blowing in through the window. “It’s Christmas Eve, Moony; what did you think I was going to do, leave you alone?”
February 1980
Winter blurred into spring, a wash of colour to chase away some of the damp starkness. Remus received a promotion; he now delivered Foe Glasses and Remembralls permanently, having convinced James' dad that he was good with breakables.
Sirius started pinning up increasingly inexplicable photos with no labels on them - the sky, partly cloudy; one leaf, green; a darkened alleyway that contrasted sharply with an odd beam of light in the background.
“The composition for that isn't very good,” Remus told Sirius one day, pointing at the darkened alleyway.
“Not supposed to be,” Sirius replied, poking fondly at the photograph with his wand. “That's what makes it unique.”
This was how Sirius’ photographs were: brief, fleeting point-and-shoot moments; poetry, on Muggle film; the vivid colour and light of the frivolous or pedestrian. This was how Sirius’ photographs were beautiful.
With spring came good news - a child; James and Lily's. Now Remus had more reason to anticipate the days to come: the soft swell of Lily's belly, James' restless energy, and later a baby's squalling to add to the clatter of the Potters' household.
With spring also came news from James, gleaned through his numerous Auror sources. Sirius' brother, originally missing, was dead.
Remus had never liked Regulus in school; he had always been a poor copy of Sirius, all immature arrogance and impotent anger, paler, sharper, more mean spirited. Sirius might have loved him despite this, might have hoped that a distant shadow of their childhood still remained in his once-baby brother. Remus didn’t think he would ever know for sure.
And this is how a first kiss would begin:
In a darkened alleyway, deep browns and reds in the shadows, light falling awkwardly due to the disorganized jut of walls and roofs. This was where Remus found Sirius, white and speechless.
There were no words now, just the tight scrabble of Sirius’ fingers as they clutched at the front of Remus’ woollen vest; a wet huff of breath; the still closeness between them, thick and aching. A touch of fingers clenched around fabric, a touch of skin, forehead to forehead, noses bumping. A touch of lips.
August 1980
It was August of 1980, and Harry James Potter was making his steady transition from being a dear, cooing little thing, to a small monster capable of screeching at entirely unearthly volumes. Sirius Black, official godfather of said small monster, contented himself with shouting instructions to Remus Lupin, official nothing-at-all and default babysitter, from the comfort of the living room. In the meantime, Remus struggled to amuse Harry with rubber ducks in the upstairs bedroom.
“Have you tried levitating them?” Sirius yelled, for the second time that afternoon.
Remus swished and flicked fruitlessly; Harry squalled right through the ungainly flight of the three yellow ducks. Holding his wand in a manner that allowed the ducks to remain aloft, Remus reached down to tug at Harry’s nappy so he could give it a cautious sniff. Baby powder; still fresh.
“Stop sniffing his bits, you pervert,” Sirius said, and Remus looked up to see him standing in the doorway. He stepped over to pick Harry up, and there was suddenly a very strange sound that Remus recognised as silence.
“I was not sniffing his bits, I was checking his nappy,” he protested, watching Sirius bounce Harry up and down in his arms.
“I’m hurt,” Sirius declared mid-bounce, “That you’d sniff little Harry’s bits and not pay mine the least bit attention.”
“Oh shut up, he’s asleep now.”
“He only fell asleep because his godfather’s here,” Sirius said proudly. “The moment I stepped through the door: absolute silence.”
“That’s because you’re so bloody boring, even babies can’t seem to stand your presence,” Remus snapped, directing one of the rubber ducks to hit Sirius’ shoulder with a satisfying thwack sound.
Sirius bared his teeth in a wolfish grin and, before Remus could back away, pressed a quick kiss to his lips. Remus was inclined to respond in kind, but a loud ahem caused them to spring apart abruptly.
“For Merlin’s sake, at least put the baby down before you start snogging,” Lily said in rebuke, scowling as she removed her innocent child from the arms of Sirius Black, possible godfather of Harry Potter (currently pending for probation), sometimes dog, and complete pervert.
Later that night they climbed into Remus’ bed together without any awkwardness between them, just a collective weariness and a mutual need for warmth.
“You still smell of baby’s vomit,” Remus told Sirius, squirming away from him.
Sirius laughed apologetically, and got out of bed again to cast a quick cleansing charm. After a pause, Remus grudgingly let him slide in under the covers.
They lay there in the darkness, squashed awkwardly against each other because the bed was far too small for the haphazard sprawl of Sirius’ limbs.
“You’re like ice,” Remus complained, his voice too loud in the pressing silence.
Sirius responded with a muffled chuckle, and then his hands were catching the front of Remus’ nightshirt, pulling him close. For a moment Remus watched Sirius look at him, eyes bright in the darkness. Then he squirmed a little, buried his forehead into Sirius’ shoulder, and fell asleep.
November 1980
Only now did they call it a war, even though it had been raging on for years already. And now, on the brink of one of the harshest winters ahead, the wizarding world cowered before Lord Voldemort, frightened into a trembling silence by the impending collapse of the Ministry.
The sale of Sneakoscopes and Foe Glasses was brisk, but the digits on Remus’ ledger faded and blurred in the face of the overwhelming numbers in the Prophet: they counted the dead, the seriously injured, the missing.
Of the series of Sirius' snapshots not many would remain; he both hated and loved them in their poignant brutality. Rubble and dust littered their surfaces, harsh landscapes of the once familiar, made more distant by the grey layers of snow and the angry thrust of bare trees against the sky. And yet there were moments of colour: the matching grins on James and baby Harry's faces, illuminated by evening firelight; Lily's determined studiousness as she swotted over thick books on magical theory; and Remus, face partially obscured in the shadows cast by the blackout charms they had to put up.
There was no concerted resistance force, no single Order put in place to fight against the Dark Lord. There were too many spies and too few reasons to trust anybody. Sirius went on skirmishes with James and the other Aurors every night, but his wandwork set him apart from them, all pureblood twirls and flourishes that had been ingrained at a young age, sharp contrast to the Aurors' economical point-and-curse methods. Remus could not follow, because too many of his kind had already sworn loyalty to the Dark Lord, and werewolves were no longer welcome. Instead, he smuggled messages with his deliveries; parchment carefully stuffed into a box, orders for contraband potions ingredients hidden up the sleeve of his cardigan.
It was near midnight when Sirius stumbled into Remus’ bedroom, his right arm bleeding profusely. Remus got out of bed almost immediately, for anxiousness had kept him awake in the darkness for most of the night.
“Bastards, the lot of them,” Sirius growled as Remus set to healing his arm. He poked his fingers forlornly through the ugly-looking gash in the sleeve of his leather jacket. “My jacket will never be the same again.”
“Better your jacket than your entire arm,” Remus told him matter-of-factly, sealing up the cut rather neatly. He paused for a moment, letting his wand hover over Sirius’ newly healed skin. “Better your arm than your life.”
Sirius glanced sharply at him. “Moony-”
“Don’t tell me not to worry, Sirius,” Remus snapped, fatigue and anxiety making him short-tempered. “Not when you’re out there every night, and nobody’s safe.”
There were many other things Remus wanted to tell Sirius, things that he thought about in the day, when there was nothing to accompany him but an overactive imagination and the battered boxes of Sneakoscopes tied to the back of his bicycle. He wanted to say, don’t go; he wanted to say, I can’t lose you; he wanted to say how afraid he was, now that Voldemort was after Harry and nothing seemed to be secure any more. Increasingly, however, he found himself unable to put words to his fears, almost as if verbalising them would cause them to come true; a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“We’ll be all right, Moony,” Sirius told him reassuringly, changing into his nightclothes and settling down onto Remus’ bed. “The two of us, we’re not going anywhere.”
“We don’t know that,” Remus began to say as he lay down next to Sirius, but within seconds Sirius was curled up against him, fast asleep.
The few hours Remus had alone with Sirius were too precious to squander on sleep. Instead, he lay awake and listened to the sound of Sirius’ breathing, trying to warm Sirius’ icy limbs with the press of his own skin. Beyond the blackout charms they had put up, grey darkness curled languidly outside the windows, and everything was still and silent, poised for a fitful awakening.
When McGonagall Apparated outside the entrance to Potter and Sons, Ltd., the worried expression on her face told Remus that this was not going to be one of her usual messages.
“Bad news, Remus,” she told him, hustling him back into the shop and casting some rather complicated silencing charms at the door. “We need you to go into hiding.”
Remus stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Hiding? I'm hardly-”
“You'll be taking Harry, he's not safe right now,” McGonagall continued, pressing a sherbet lemon into his hand. “We’ll contact you once you’re there.”
“What about Sirius-” Remus began, helpless with confusion.
“He can’t know,” McGonagall said, but upon seeing Remus’ stricken expression, she added, “We’ll tell him as soon as it’s safe.”
“We can’t do that, Sirius has to know-”
“Do it for Harry, if not for anything else,” said McGonagall.
“What’s wrong with James and Lily?” Remus asked, irrational panic cold in his gut.
McGonagall stiffened visibly. “Nothing’s wrong with James and Lily, we just need you to trust us with this, Remus. Please.”
Remus wanted very badly to refuse, to ask McGonagall to find someone else - for who in their right mind would trust lycanthrope to care for a small baby, especially during a war? This wasn’t the time to make decisions like this; Sirius would be back soon, he’d know what was going on-
“I can’t-” began Remus, but something in McGonagall’s expression stopped him from finishing his sentence. Instead, he nodded mutely.
Relief flooded McGonagall’s face. “I will tell Sirius, I promise. And thank you.” McGonagall’s eyes darted to the sherbet lemon in Remus’ hand.
“Swallow it,” she said tersely.
He placed the sweet in his mouth, feeling rather silly to be eating one at a time like this, but almost immediately an image surfaced in his mind like a forgotten memory. He could recall the place now, a small cottage tucked away in the mountains.
“All right then, Remus, Godric’s Hollow first,” McGonagall was saying briskly.
There would be no turning back now, Remus knew, not until the war was over. Before him stretched bleak and endless days in hiding, with nobody for company but baby Harry. This would be his choice, and he would live by it.
Remus took one last look at the shop, at Sirius' wall, covered in photographs squashed chaotically against each other. He thought of Sirius’ persistent we’ll be all right, his adamant hopefulness. After a moment's consideration he pointed his wand at a random picture and accioed it over. A piece of Sirius, for the loneliness ahead.
Then he stepped out of the door, locked the place up, and went on his way.
Picture credits
All the images used do not belong to me; I merely photoshopped them for my own purposes.
August 1979 - Dublin Street, taken from www.rootsweb.com
October 1979 - A door at Dublin Castle, photographed by bregalad_ent
December 1979 - Monastic Ruins in Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland, photographed by bregalad_ent
February 1980 - A street in London or Dublin (cannot recall), photographed by Colin Gregory Palmer
August 1980 - a baby (gender unidentifiable), gettyimages
November 1980 - two boys running down a street, gettyimages
Title: The Nineteenth Autumn
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Pictures may take a while to load, depending on your connection speed. Otherwise, none.
Summary: What might have happened between August 1979 and November 1980. AU, if you squint.
Disclaimer: All not mine.
Notes: For darong; happy birthday. Special thanks to ailura, awesome awesome beta reader. (Reposted here, because the old post was locked.)
It started like this: After their NEWTs James went off to Auror school so he could earn enough money to buy Lily’s engagement ring, and Peter vanished into the unknown depths of the Ministry of Magic. Sirius and Remus, on the other hand, found jobs in James’ father’s business, where they found themselves handling inordinate amounts of Dark Creature extermination, as well as the sale of High Quality Sneakoscopes.
August 1979
Remus could smell motor oil and hot metal long before Sirius Black, Dark Creature Exterminator, walked into Potter & Sons, ltd.
Sirius Black in August 1979 still entered rooms as if he was accompanied by a small tempest of his own; nothing stood still in his presence. The photographs pinned on his side of the wall came alive in a flurry of colour and movement, and memos on his desk rustled urgent greetings. He reshuffled his files with a clatter, flicked the lamps on and off with his wand until they were of a perfect brightness and found a completely new spot in the office to haphazardly throw down his leather jacket.
Remus clutched his eagle-feather quill a little tighter, and continued writing in the ledger.
“Morning, Moony,” Sirius said, his voice scratchy from flying at high speed through the cold morning air.
“One second,” Remus gritted out, working on the accounts with a look of utmost concentration on his face. These would need to be done by the end of the morning; his bicycle was broken, meaning that he would be making deliveries on foot later on and needed all the time he could get.
Sirius stopped at his desk and set down a mug of freshly brewed Earl Grey, charmed to stay steaming hot. “Don’t have a second, Moony; I’m zipping off for a bit of Boggart banishing ‘round Knightsbridge,” he said breezily, attempting to arrange a stack of Sneakoscope orders on Remus’ table but only succeeding in making them more disorganised than before.
Remus didn’t look up, but flicked his quill sideways and down, indicating his annoyance. “Off you go, then,” he said absently. “Don’t want you running late.”
“Don’t want you forgetting that delivery of Sneakoscopes,” Sirius retorted, tapping Remus’ table with his wand for emphasis. Remus flicked his quill again in a jerky up and down motion, which meant, “Bugger off, you”.
“There’s tea; it’s a cold day,” Sirius said in a last-ditch attempt to get Remus’ attention, but upon getting no response, he made an exasperated sound and buggered off.
“Oh, sod it,” Remus muttered five seconds later, having realised that he’d copied a whole list of values into the wrong column. He squinted at them in irritation, trying to make out the numbers even as he felt the beginnings of a headache gathering behind his eyes. He walked over to the door so he could get out for a while to clear his mind, and discovered that Sirius had left his leather jacket hanging on the doorknob.
October 1979
It was a particularly cold Sunday in autumn, and Remus found Sirius on a bench in the park opposite the Auror Academy, huddled in his leather jacket, cupping a cigarette to himself like a warm secret.
“Just like sodding James Potter, standing us up like this,” Sirius grumbled when he saw Remus, and shifted over to make room on the bench.
“I brought sandwiches,” Remus replied, by way of greeting.
They spent the next half an hour watching a small child (gender unidentifiable) learn how to ride a bicycle, and then they started on the sandwiches, slowly, to make them last. Around them the trees blazed up in orange and red and yellow; the child - a boy with a very high-pitched voice, Sirius asserted - flew through the curling leaves with a wild shriek of exhilaration before going down again, cushioned by the breathlessness of childhood and thick layers of jumper.
Remus glanced over at Sirius for a moment, watching him pick at a piece of lettuce that was poking out of his sandwich, and then take a puff of cigarette. Exhale, coiling brief darkness diffusing quickly from between his lips.
Sirius Black, it seemed, was the only person in the world who could smoke and eat a sandwich at the same time.
“So anyway,” he said, with his mouth full of sandwich, “This Lord Voldy-whatsit. D’you reckon he’s for real?”
Remus swallowed his mouthful carefully. “Seems real enough to me.”
“Yeah?” Sirius’ tone sounded offhand, but Remus could tell that he was anything but cavalier when he said, “Prongs and those blokes down at MLE, they’ll have to deal with him, won’t they?”
“Yeah,” Remus replied, afraid to say what went unsaid, that if this new Dark wizard was as terrible as they all said he was, James might get hurt, or killed. Instead, he looked out in the distance and said, half to reassure himself, “And Dumbledore. He’ll take care of it.”
December 1979
Sirius left for the countryside a week before Christmas, on an assignment to rid a customer’s house of bundimuns. Remus, in the meantime, filled out more pages in the thick, leather-bound ledger, and made the Christmas deliveries for the usual Sneakoscopes, as well as Potter & Sons’ Pocket Foe Glass. He drank too much tea, helped Lily and James (more Lily than James, for James was mostly away for Auror business) redecorate their house at Godric’s Hollow, and tried not to read more than two paragraphs of the Daily Prophet each day.
With winter came Christmas, and also more news of Voldemort. The Dark Mark appeared even more frequently over the smoking ruins of wizarding houses, ominous semaphores in the darkness that said: you are no longer safe.
Lily’s face took on the drawn look of someone perpetually plunged in anxiety; slowly the twinkle of her green eyes faded, she smiled very little and laughed even less. They talked about Hogwarts when Remus came over, Hogwarts and James and how James’s mother knew just which colour curtains would suit the house. He slapped yellow paint on the walls of the master bedroom and wondered if Sirius was still at McKidd’s, ripping up floorboards to scour away the last of the bundimuns, speaking with a wizarding foreman about which rooms were the most heavily infested and needed restructuring.
“God, McKidd, that’s tough,” Remus imagined Sirius saying, staring at the expanse of green mould with an expression of mingled disgust and awe on his pale face. And then he would go back outside and leave his leather jacket on his motorcycle, so nothing would get on it while he worked on the house.
Christmas Eve drew near, and as the festivities continued the moon became fuller; there was now no sign of Peter and no word from Sirius, apart from a badly taken photograph scribbled over with a felt-tip permanent marker. Remus pinned it up onto Sirius’ side of the wall, along with a bit of leftover holly Lily had wanted to discard.
With the beast in his blood, scents grew sharp and painful; the slightest sounds made his head throb. He slept the same way that he used to as a boy, with his hands fisted in the sheets, in fear that he would claw himself into a feral stranger while he slept. Alone, it was much easier to be afraid, to wonder irrationally if he would stay a werewolf forever after he transformed and have to be put down by the Ministry.
On the eve of Christmas Eve, Remus holed himself up in the scratchy cocoon of his sheets, dreading the next night’s searing transformation. Already he trembled and shook, fitful and feverish, wrists and ankles anticipating the icy bite of Ministry-issue chains.
He dreamt of darkness and burning, of waking and words, of Sirius’ voice. It was saying, in an urgent whisper: Oi, Moony, wake up.
“Oi, Moony, wake up,” Sirius whispered again, tapping impatiently on Remus’ window. “It’s bloody freezing out here.”
Remus pulled the sheets off of his head, only to see the outline of Sirius’ face through the frosted-over glass of his window. He stumbled out of bed and shuffled over, pulling the window open with some difficulty.
“Thanks, mate,” Sirius told him, clapping ice-cold hands on Remus’ shoulders but removing them abruptly when he saw Remus’ shudder
“You’re back,” said Remus, half disbelieving, half relieved.
Sirius grinned blindingly at him, despite the fact that he had just survived an eight-hour motorcycle ride through the winter air and there was an icy night breeze blowing in through the window. “It’s Christmas Eve, Moony; what did you think I was going to do, leave you alone?”
February 1980
Winter blurred into spring, a wash of colour to chase away some of the damp starkness. Remus received a promotion; he now delivered Foe Glasses and Remembralls permanently, having convinced James' dad that he was good with breakables.
Sirius started pinning up increasingly inexplicable photos with no labels on them - the sky, partly cloudy; one leaf, green; a darkened alleyway that contrasted sharply with an odd beam of light in the background.
“The composition for that isn't very good,” Remus told Sirius one day, pointing at the darkened alleyway.
“Not supposed to be,” Sirius replied, poking fondly at the photograph with his wand. “That's what makes it unique.”
This was how Sirius’ photographs were: brief, fleeting point-and-shoot moments; poetry, on Muggle film; the vivid colour and light of the frivolous or pedestrian. This was how Sirius’ photographs were beautiful.
With spring came good news - a child; James and Lily's. Now Remus had more reason to anticipate the days to come: the soft swell of Lily's belly, James' restless energy, and later a baby's squalling to add to the clatter of the Potters' household.
With spring also came news from James, gleaned through his numerous Auror sources. Sirius' brother, originally missing, was dead.
Remus had never liked Regulus in school; he had always been a poor copy of Sirius, all immature arrogance and impotent anger, paler, sharper, more mean spirited. Sirius might have loved him despite this, might have hoped that a distant shadow of their childhood still remained in his once-baby brother. Remus didn’t think he would ever know for sure.
And this is how a first kiss would begin:
In a darkened alleyway, deep browns and reds in the shadows, light falling awkwardly due to the disorganized jut of walls and roofs. This was where Remus found Sirius, white and speechless.
There were no words now, just the tight scrabble of Sirius’ fingers as they clutched at the front of Remus’ woollen vest; a wet huff of breath; the still closeness between them, thick and aching. A touch of fingers clenched around fabric, a touch of skin, forehead to forehead, noses bumping. A touch of lips.
August 1980
It was August of 1980, and Harry James Potter was making his steady transition from being a dear, cooing little thing, to a small monster capable of screeching at entirely unearthly volumes. Sirius Black, official godfather of said small monster, contented himself with shouting instructions to Remus Lupin, official nothing-at-all and default babysitter, from the comfort of the living room. In the meantime, Remus struggled to amuse Harry with rubber ducks in the upstairs bedroom.
“Have you tried levitating them?” Sirius yelled, for the second time that afternoon.
Remus swished and flicked fruitlessly; Harry squalled right through the ungainly flight of the three yellow ducks. Holding his wand in a manner that allowed the ducks to remain aloft, Remus reached down to tug at Harry’s nappy so he could give it a cautious sniff. Baby powder; still fresh.
“Stop sniffing his bits, you pervert,” Sirius said, and Remus looked up to see him standing in the doorway. He stepped over to pick Harry up, and there was suddenly a very strange sound that Remus recognised as silence.
“I was not sniffing his bits, I was checking his nappy,” he protested, watching Sirius bounce Harry up and down in his arms.
“I’m hurt,” Sirius declared mid-bounce, “That you’d sniff little Harry’s bits and not pay mine the least bit attention.”
“Oh shut up, he’s asleep now.”
“He only fell asleep because his godfather’s here,” Sirius said proudly. “The moment I stepped through the door: absolute silence.”
“That’s because you’re so bloody boring, even babies can’t seem to stand your presence,” Remus snapped, directing one of the rubber ducks to hit Sirius’ shoulder with a satisfying thwack sound.
Sirius bared his teeth in a wolfish grin and, before Remus could back away, pressed a quick kiss to his lips. Remus was inclined to respond in kind, but a loud ahem caused them to spring apart abruptly.
“For Merlin’s sake, at least put the baby down before you start snogging,” Lily said in rebuke, scowling as she removed her innocent child from the arms of Sirius Black, possible godfather of Harry Potter (currently pending for probation), sometimes dog, and complete pervert.
Later that night they climbed into Remus’ bed together without any awkwardness between them, just a collective weariness and a mutual need for warmth.
“You still smell of baby’s vomit,” Remus told Sirius, squirming away from him.
Sirius laughed apologetically, and got out of bed again to cast a quick cleansing charm. After a pause, Remus grudgingly let him slide in under the covers.
They lay there in the darkness, squashed awkwardly against each other because the bed was far too small for the haphazard sprawl of Sirius’ limbs.
“You’re like ice,” Remus complained, his voice too loud in the pressing silence.
Sirius responded with a muffled chuckle, and then his hands were catching the front of Remus’ nightshirt, pulling him close. For a moment Remus watched Sirius look at him, eyes bright in the darkness. Then he squirmed a little, buried his forehead into Sirius’ shoulder, and fell asleep.
November 1980
Only now did they call it a war, even though it had been raging on for years already. And now, on the brink of one of the harshest winters ahead, the wizarding world cowered before Lord Voldemort, frightened into a trembling silence by the impending collapse of the Ministry.
The sale of Sneakoscopes and Foe Glasses was brisk, but the digits on Remus’ ledger faded and blurred in the face of the overwhelming numbers in the Prophet: they counted the dead, the seriously injured, the missing.
Of the series of Sirius' snapshots not many would remain; he both hated and loved them in their poignant brutality. Rubble and dust littered their surfaces, harsh landscapes of the once familiar, made more distant by the grey layers of snow and the angry thrust of bare trees against the sky. And yet there were moments of colour: the matching grins on James and baby Harry's faces, illuminated by evening firelight; Lily's determined studiousness as she swotted over thick books on magical theory; and Remus, face partially obscured in the shadows cast by the blackout charms they had to put up.
There was no concerted resistance force, no single Order put in place to fight against the Dark Lord. There were too many spies and too few reasons to trust anybody. Sirius went on skirmishes with James and the other Aurors every night, but his wandwork set him apart from them, all pureblood twirls and flourishes that had been ingrained at a young age, sharp contrast to the Aurors' economical point-and-curse methods. Remus could not follow, because too many of his kind had already sworn loyalty to the Dark Lord, and werewolves were no longer welcome. Instead, he smuggled messages with his deliveries; parchment carefully stuffed into a box, orders for contraband potions ingredients hidden up the sleeve of his cardigan.
It was near midnight when Sirius stumbled into Remus’ bedroom, his right arm bleeding profusely. Remus got out of bed almost immediately, for anxiousness had kept him awake in the darkness for most of the night.
“Bastards, the lot of them,” Sirius growled as Remus set to healing his arm. He poked his fingers forlornly through the ugly-looking gash in the sleeve of his leather jacket. “My jacket will never be the same again.”
“Better your jacket than your entire arm,” Remus told him matter-of-factly, sealing up the cut rather neatly. He paused for a moment, letting his wand hover over Sirius’ newly healed skin. “Better your arm than your life.”
Sirius glanced sharply at him. “Moony-”
“Don’t tell me not to worry, Sirius,” Remus snapped, fatigue and anxiety making him short-tempered. “Not when you’re out there every night, and nobody’s safe.”
There were many other things Remus wanted to tell Sirius, things that he thought about in the day, when there was nothing to accompany him but an overactive imagination and the battered boxes of Sneakoscopes tied to the back of his bicycle. He wanted to say, don’t go; he wanted to say, I can’t lose you; he wanted to say how afraid he was, now that Voldemort was after Harry and nothing seemed to be secure any more. Increasingly, however, he found himself unable to put words to his fears, almost as if verbalising them would cause them to come true; a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“We’ll be all right, Moony,” Sirius told him reassuringly, changing into his nightclothes and settling down onto Remus’ bed. “The two of us, we’re not going anywhere.”
“We don’t know that,” Remus began to say as he lay down next to Sirius, but within seconds Sirius was curled up against him, fast asleep.
The few hours Remus had alone with Sirius were too precious to squander on sleep. Instead, he lay awake and listened to the sound of Sirius’ breathing, trying to warm Sirius’ icy limbs with the press of his own skin. Beyond the blackout charms they had put up, grey darkness curled languidly outside the windows, and everything was still and silent, poised for a fitful awakening.
When McGonagall Apparated outside the entrance to Potter and Sons, Ltd., the worried expression on her face told Remus that this was not going to be one of her usual messages.
“Bad news, Remus,” she told him, hustling him back into the shop and casting some rather complicated silencing charms at the door. “We need you to go into hiding.”
Remus stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Hiding? I'm hardly-”
“You'll be taking Harry, he's not safe right now,” McGonagall continued, pressing a sherbet lemon into his hand. “We’ll contact you once you’re there.”
“What about Sirius-” Remus began, helpless with confusion.
“He can’t know,” McGonagall said, but upon seeing Remus’ stricken expression, she added, “We’ll tell him as soon as it’s safe.”
“We can’t do that, Sirius has to know-”
“Do it for Harry, if not for anything else,” said McGonagall.
“What’s wrong with James and Lily?” Remus asked, irrational panic cold in his gut.
McGonagall stiffened visibly. “Nothing’s wrong with James and Lily, we just need you to trust us with this, Remus. Please.”
Remus wanted very badly to refuse, to ask McGonagall to find someone else - for who in their right mind would trust lycanthrope to care for a small baby, especially during a war? This wasn’t the time to make decisions like this; Sirius would be back soon, he’d know what was going on-
“I can’t-” began Remus, but something in McGonagall’s expression stopped him from finishing his sentence. Instead, he nodded mutely.
Relief flooded McGonagall’s face. “I will tell Sirius, I promise. And thank you.” McGonagall’s eyes darted to the sherbet lemon in Remus’ hand.
“Swallow it,” she said tersely.
He placed the sweet in his mouth, feeling rather silly to be eating one at a time like this, but almost immediately an image surfaced in his mind like a forgotten memory. He could recall the place now, a small cottage tucked away in the mountains.
“All right then, Remus, Godric’s Hollow first,” McGonagall was saying briskly.
There would be no turning back now, Remus knew, not until the war was over. Before him stretched bleak and endless days in hiding, with nobody for company but baby Harry. This would be his choice, and he would live by it.
Remus took one last look at the shop, at Sirius' wall, covered in photographs squashed chaotically against each other. He thought of Sirius’ persistent we’ll be all right, his adamant hopefulness. After a moment's consideration he pointed his wand at a random picture and accioed it over. A piece of Sirius, for the loneliness ahead.
Then he stepped out of the door, locked the place up, and went on his way.
Picture credits
All the images used do not belong to me; I merely photoshopped them for my own purposes.
August 1979 - Dublin Street, taken from www.rootsweb.com
October 1979 - A door at Dublin Castle, photographed by bregalad_ent
December 1979 - Monastic Ruins in Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland, photographed by bregalad_ent
February 1980 - A street in London or Dublin (cannot recall), photographed by Colin Gregory Palmer
August 1980 - a baby (gender unidentifiable), gettyimages
November 1980 - two boys running down a street, gettyimages