fatal love

chapter 155

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth

Remus had to go back to the New Forest just a week after Sirius got back. When he came home, Sirius held off on telling him the bad news for as long as possible, until well after the sun had set.

"So..." he said tentatively, when he couldn't put it off any longer, "Moody sent a Patronus this morning, while you were sleeping."

Remus grunted, thumbing at the pages of his book and not looking up. "What'd he want?" he asked disinterestedly.

"Um, well... there've been reports coming through from Scotland. There were some werewolf attacks in Hogsmeade last night."

Remus froze as he took in Sirius' words. "... Hogsmeade?" he asked quietly. "Scotland?"

"Yeah," Sirius said, speaking as quickly as he could, "but look, Moony, you know it's not your fault, right? No one knew this was going to happen."

Remus sat very still. "How bad?"

"Not... not awful. But, uh, three houses were hit, no one inside made it out."

"Okay," Remus said evenly, his shoulders tense and eyes fixed on the page of his book.

"Moony, don't do this," Sirius begged. "There's nothing you could have done."

"I might have!" Remus snapped. "I was in Scotland last year, I was with them! I- I should have stayed, I could have-"

"Moody told you not to," Sirius said, trying to calm him down. "You were told to try with another pack, and that's what you've been doing."

"But if- if I'd fought Moody harder, if I'd forced him to let me stay, then- then maybe-"

"We don't know that," Sirius argued. "We don't know if you'd have been able to do anything."

"Exactly! We don't know!"

"Remus, come on, calm down, please."

"Ha!" Remus laughed, his face dark. "No offence, Sirius, but this isn't really a 'calm down' situation!"

"I... I know," Sirius said. "I'm so, so sorry, Moony. It's awful. But you really can't blame yourself, okay? It's just a shit thing that happened."

Remus rolled his eyes, getting up from the sofa without looking at Sirius and grabbing his coat.

"Where are you going?" Sirius demanded.

"Out."

"Remus, come on."

But Remus ignored him, storming out of the house and slamming the door behind him. Sirius cursed to himself, but with nothing else to do, he turned off the lights and went up to bed.

What was he going to do, chase after him like some damsel? It wasn't Sirius' responsibility to do that - if Remus wanted to go out and do Merlin knows what, just because he was in a bad mood, then he could do that. Sirius wasn't going to stop him.

He fell asleep pissed off, only to be woken up in the middle of the night by Remus coming back steaming drunk. He heard Remus stumble up the stairs, and then the door to their room swung open, letting in all the light from the hallway.

Silently, Sirius rolled over, not giving Remus the satisfaction of a reaction.

He heard Remus stripping, tossing his clothes all over the floor, and felt his weight as he fell into bed next to him. Remus didn't speak either, and for a while, they just lay there.