Bewitched | wolfstar au

Eighty-seven (part one)

"Wait, hold on," Sirius shifts through the photos. "Let me find it..." he mumbles, brows furrowed. "Ah, here."

Remus leans in to take a closer look. He can feel his eyebrows lift up as he processes it.

It's Regulus. With a massive snake wrapped around his neck. He's wearing a black t-shirt that looks at least two sizes too big for him, and his jeans are rippedcat the knees. His hair is longer than it is now, and curlier. It covers his forehead. He's glowering at the camera, a hand casually resting on the snake as if it's the most mundane accessory.

"Oh my God," Remus breathes out.

"I told you so," Sirius whispers. "That thing used to creep me out so much,"

"What happened to it?" Remus asks, still unable to move his eyes away from the massive creature. It looks like it weighs twice as much as Regulus.

"Mother killed her," Sirius sighs. Remus' head practically whips up. "What?"

Sirius shakes his head. "My mother's really charming like that," he grins. Remus can only stare at him.

"It's okay, really," Sirius sighs. "She probably saved someone's life doing that anyway," he adds.

"Sirius..."

"Let's move on," Sirius says firmly, putting the photo away. He skips a couple of photos before stopping at one.

"This was my first time having Nutella," he points at a photo of a sandwich that looks way too good to be true. It's lying on a plate with pale pink roses painted on it. Next to it, there's a cup of tea.

Leave it to Sirius to make a sandwich look like a model.

"James made it for me and Reg... When he sneaked out to see us."

"James sneaked out to see you?"

"No, no," Sirius laughs. "He would've probably ended up waking his parents. And then his dad would've given him a lift. I was living with him at the time, remember? It's Reg who came to see me. For Christmas."

Remus nods. Regulus must've been so lonely, stuck at home with no one but his parents.

'And with the way our parents were, I felt like I had no one.'

The next photo must've been taken on the same day. It's Sirius ruffling Regulus' hair. And the next one is all three of them—James, Regulus, and Sirius—in front of a tall Christmas tree. Sirius and James are wearing matching red and green jumpers, but Regulus is only wearing a black t-shirt. But he's smiling in this one, pressed in between James and Sirius.

Sirius smiles at the photo, shaking his head fondly.

"This is when Auguste came to visit," he shows Remus another photo. It depicts a clearly younger Auguste and a girl who looks exactly like him but in a much, much more feminine way. Her hair is the same colour, but her eyes are brown. She's grinning while squeezing Auguste's cheeks. "And this is Aurelie, whom you haven't met yet. But you should. She's amazing,"

"Really?"

"Yeah," Sirius smiles. "A bit crazy... but you know, we all are."

He starts to make his way through the photos again. "This is James' Patronus," he points at a photo of a beautiful stag made of shimmering blue light. Remus stares at it in awe. "It's... It's beautiful," he says. "I know, right?" Sirius laughs. "That idiot got lucky. Mine is a dog,"

"Dogs are cute," Remus comments, propping his chin on his palm and turning his face to Sirius.

"I think they stop being cute after they reach three feet, Remus," Sirius laughs. "Look, here's our Patronuses together. We tried getting them to fight, but they wouldn't."

Remus smacks his forehead.

"Come on," Sirius grins, nudging him with his elbow. "Don't tell me you've never thought of it,"

"I mean, I haven't..."

"Bo-ring," Sirius pulls a face.

Remus shakes his head, and settles for watching him as he starts looking through the photos again. The light catches in his cheekbone, and the skin right above it is still rosy with his laughter. Remus wants to kiss him there.

It takes him a while to realize that Sirius has stopped moving. He tears his eyes off of Sirius' face and moves them down to his hands, where his pale fingers are clutching a photo of two boys.

One of them is Sirius. And the other is...

"This is my boyfriend," Sirius says quietly. "Was," he corrects himself, closing his eyes. "He was my boyfriend."

Remus places a hand on Sirius' curled fist before looking at the photo again. The boy in the photo is, as far as Remus can tell, not from Hogwarts. His skin is a warm brown, and his hair and eyes are dark. He's wearing a white t-shirt, an arm looped around Sirius' shoulders. They're both grinning.

The next photo shows them kissing. The angle is a bit awkward, and it's a bit too close to their faces, so Remus assumes Sirius took it himself.

Sirius says nothing, just watches Remus as he goes through the photos, one by one.

Remus finds a photo of James hugging a Quidditch trophy. And then another of Sirius and the boy. They look so happy in it, cheeks pressed together and eyes crinkled up as they grin at the camera. The next one is a photo of their hands clasped together. In the photo, Sirius' fingers aren't as pale as they are now.

Then there's a photo of Regulus holding an invite to the Slug Club. And then five or six of Sirius and the boy again. They're holding hands or kissing in all of them, as if they simply can't appear apart. And the more photos Remus flips through, the less he sees of James or Regulus.

'Then he found his boyfriend and nothing else mattered anymore.'

Remus stops when he finally sees a photo of something other than the two of them. It's James and Lily. They're at the Three Broomsticks, and there are two tall glasses of Butterbeer in front of them. Lily's head is on James' shoulder, and James has an arm wrapped around her.

Remus has seen the two of them together just like that so many times.

A couple of photos later, Remus finds a photo of the boy just by himself. He's draped across an old-looking couch, legs dangling from the side. His arm is behind his head, and his other hand is holding a cigarette. His shirt is off. He's looking at the camera with half a smile, but his eyes are dull and sleepy.

In the next photo, Sirius is there. They both are. Under a streetlight, from what the lighting looks like. And in this one, Sirius is holding a cigarette, too.

Three photos later, Sirius' smile isn't the same.

And two more later, it looks like the smile of a ghost. His face is thinner, and his eyes look bigger. His cheek is pressed on his boyfriend's shoulder. Remus can only see the boy's hand. His face is cut off from the photo.

They're sitting on that same couch. And they're both holding cigarettes.

The photo before the last drives Remus' breath out of him. It's just a hand, pale and thin. But the wrist is darkened with purple, like a trail of dead violets half-covered with snow. The veins are drawn across in pale blue-green, and the image of violet ink splattered across this same wrist flashes through Remus' mind.

But this is no ink.

The last photo shows the foot of a grave. Only the very bottom of it. No name, no picture. No sign of whose it might be. But Remus doesn't need any clues. The grass around it looks freshly trimmed, but there are footprints all over it. Bouquets of flowers lie in front of the stone, drained of their colour. They look sad, and they look tired. And all of them are dead.