Sirius found himself watching the day begin from the owlery tower. It was one of the highest points in the school, leaving him with a scenic, kind of picturesque view of the sunrise, letting the morning settle into the world around him as if this was a movie, or an oil painting, set perfectly on canvas, as if his morning was perfectly planned and arranged with beauty and perfection intent. The reality however, was very far from that, as although the view might have been wondrous, what had brought him there certainly wasn't.
He reckoned he was at least doing a pretty decent job of holding himself together, of not breaking down, of not bursting into tears, of keeping himself together, keeping his head on his shoulders and focused on what it was that he had to do. Sirius had been very particular in deciding just what it was that he had to do. Often he let himself skirt around responsibility, avoid everything that wasn't pressing, just push every off, push everything away, to an infinite number of tomorrows; he found that he was awfully good at it all, and in fact found himself rather frequently getting away with it. But things were different this time.
This time around things mattered. This time around it all held an awful lot of weight, and it was the fact that the weight it held wasn't just on Sirius himself, but on people he cared about, on other people around him, and to a lesser extent everyone he knew. He'd come to conclude that deciding what he should do wasn't a matter of fancy and choice, but instead based on what was right, and what overall, he had to do, to fix things, to try, to at least attempt to make everything better, even if up in his head, he couldn't visualise a world in which he'd ever managed to fix things.
He stood idly beside the owlery window for a good few minutes. It wasn't that he was wasting time, although in his heart he might have been, instead, he found himself waiting. He ended up waiting for perhaps a little longer than he would have liked to, but he excused Regulus, his brother, who was only thirteen, far too young for all of this, far too young to be getting up so early in the morning to meet him secretly, and that was only the start of it.
Regulus met him with a small, almost timid, smile and a nod, closing the door to the staircase behind him as he entered the room, his eyes darting across to the owls resting up on their perches. He found himself watching them for a moment, entranced by what Sirius had even given a second's thought to. Sirius only came to pay the dozens of owls any kind of proper attention at all as he followed his brother's gaze over to them.
The two brothers were different in many ways; Regulus was attentive where Sirius was not, for instance. They definitely shared more similarities than they would perhaps care to: more similarities than they had noted at least. Two opposing houses meant nothing compared to blood - they were still very much brothers, and they still loved each other, even if the ways they thought to show it were suppressed and hidden, even buried deep underneath the mess of prejudices and loyalties they had been smothered with - it was far too much for two teenage boys really. It was all far too much for two teenage boys really, yet still, there they stood, in the owlery that morning, watching the sunrise.
Sirius finally grew comfortable with the idea of breaking their silence, growing tired of watching Regulus' eyes dart between the birds, as if indexing each and everyone of them to his memory. Sirius couldn't deny that he just didn't think they mattered that much: it was perhaps something he would have cared little enough to voice aloud, if perhaps they found themselves in entirely different circumstances, if perhaps he hadn't come to realise that life wasn't so much about picking people apart on the basis of how they differed to you, but more so about focusing on the things you had in common, the things that brought you together - good or bad.
What had brought the two brothers together that morning still lay unspoken, like a cool breeze in the autumn air. Sirius couldn't fight the instinct in the back of his mind, the overwhelming want to just will it all away, his wish for more than anything, it would all just disappear. Needless to say, it wasn't something they could treasure, yet still, it wasn't something they could hide away from - not anymore. Sirius had recently found that it did matter, even though of course it had before, suddenly it just had weight, reason, gravity, and a baring sense of responsibility no longer wavering over, but pressing directly into his chest.
Sirius hadn't wanted to pull his brother into it all. Admittedly, now that Regulus was there with him, he couldn't deny that his company and his share of the responsibility was something Sirius was immensely thankful for. Initially, however, he'd imagined that he'd like Regulus to have as little to do with it as possible, because as much as Sirius did tend to argue that he disliked him, that the two didn't get along, Regulus was still his brother, his young brother, and he couldn't deny the instinctual urge to protect him.
Regulus had been insistent, and he'd had a point, because it was their father, not just Sirius'. It was the family they shared and the blood between them that had brought them together, but it was much more than that which ensured they stayed. Sirius had never really hated his brother half as much as he claimed too. Regulus had only ever looked up at him with admiration. Still, with all their cards laid out on the table, the two eyed one another with disbelief, with a certain wariness, with fear in their eyes. They weren't scared of each other, just of what would become of it all, what would become of the both of them, what would become of them together, as they had unified for the first time.
"What have you written?" The words left Sirius' lips with much more ease than he had accounted for. He had never set out to be pessimistic, but in his head, this whole situation had been difficult, complex, a jumbled mess of dislikes and fears, and in reality, he found that it was hardly living up to his expectations.
It was then, with Sirius' words fading away into the air, gently, slowly, almost a little reluctantly, that Regulus turned back to face his brother and reached into his jacket pocket. He produced a folded up piece of parchment, yellowed slightly at the edges, and held it out to Sirius between long, bony fingertips. Regulus had always been thinner than his brother; he was awkwardly lanky, almost, and looked as if he might never properly grow into his bones. He was also definitely on the path for ending up taller than Sirius too, which was just something that Sirius wasn't quite yet ready to admit.
Sirius took the parchment from his brother, making little haste in unfolding it, straightening it out a little, before beginning to read the letter Regulus had written in a thick black ink, that had smudged and pooled in several places. He found that his younger brother's handwriting wasn't the easiest of things to read but he got there in the end, making sense of the messy, inconsistent, sprawled cursive in no longer than a minute.
"You're being too nice about it all." Sirius finished, pulling his head back up to face his brother, his tone almost bitter as he thrust the parchment back towards him. "There's nothing nice about it." He continued just as Regulus had opened his mouth to speak. "Nothing nice about it all."
Sirius turned back towards the window, taking in a great sigh, a breath of cool morning air. He watched the skyline for just a moment, focusing on the trees of the forbidden forest, and how it seemed to stretch out forever. It seemed endless. Sirius had found that rather recently, a lot of things did too.
"Polite." Regulus finally found the time to get his words across. His tone was a stubborn kind of assertive that Sirius found himself unable to care for very much, but still he stood idly and listened, only if little more than for the fact that Regulus was his brother. "I'm being polite. There's a difference. I didn't expect you'd know it, seeing as you've hardly bothered to be polite in your life."
Sirius found himself silent. Oddly so, for never once had he just let people make such judgements about him, especially with no repercussions. It was an odd morning. It was all too odd in general really. The thing was that Sirius just reckoned that Regulus really wasn't all that wrong in his observations. It quickly became apparent that Regulus had expected Sirius to retaliate just as much as Sirius had expected himself to. Instead they were left with a silence, a gap to fill, as Sirius found himself thinking, his mind drawn back to Regulus' letter.
"Maybe it's better you're nice about things." Sirius didn't take pleasure in admitting that he might have been wrong. He certainly carried a stereotypical Gryffindor stubborn sense of pride, and he definitely made no secret out of it, yet still, the morning and the situation seemed to call for something else entirely. "Polite, whatever." He corrected himself, watching the way Regulus' face quickly changed and his lips parted to speak.
"I don't know." Regulus admitted, taking a great heave of a sigh as he sat down upon the windowsill, placing the letter beside him, between him and Sirius. "I mean, how are you supposed to tell anyone this? Let alone how are you supposed to tell your mother this, and how are you supposed to expect her to go against your father, even with all that's happened. It's not normal, all this family hierarchy and prides, all these expectations, it's not normal, it's really not."
Sirius found himself smiling for the first time that morning. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he definitely found that he was warming up to his brother. Things were changing, even if this was just the beginning. "It's not." He agreed, reaching down and picking up the letter once more. Silence settled back in around them as Sirius read it over once more.
"It's good." He decided, beginning to set it down again but stopping himself instead. He locked eyes with Regulus and bit his lip, losing himself in thought for just a moment. "I don't know how else you could say it. I don't know how else you can explain all that's happened and hope that she might believe it. I couldn't do better. She likes you much more anyway, she'd never believe a word I say."
"That's not normal." Regulus continued, watching as Sirius just held the letter there for a moment. "None of this is normal." His voice grew a little louder, and then faded back out to little more than a whisper. "None of this is fucking normal."
Sirius opened his mouth, searching for something to say, something that he hoped might console his brother, might fix their situation impossibly, but Regulus interrupted him before he had even began. "He murdered our uncle. Our dad murdered our uncle. And I have this horrible fucking feeling nothing's going to come of it. No one's going to care. It's just going to get brushed under the rug, washed away and forgotten."
"It can't be." Sirius told him, his voice growing with sincerity. "Not this time." He found that he was unusually sure of himself, even in a way that he found began to surprise himself. "This is just the beginning. It's going to grow, everything's just going to get worse unless people put a stop to it now. So even if they don't listen, even if our... mother doesn't listen... even if that happens, it won't be ignored forever. It can't be."
Regulus nodded. He remained sat on the windowsill, wishing for even a drop of Gryffindor bravery, of something of his own to believe in as he watched his brother, the brother he admired despite everything else, muster all the courage in the world and give his letter to a tall brown owl nearest the window. Sirius watched the owl fly off until it was just a spot on the horizon, almost invisible in the distance. Regulus wanted to join him, but he suddenly felt as if his feet were bolted to the ground.
Sirius turned back to face him eventually, quickly recognising the concern, the regret burning in his brother's eyes. He let out a sigh, making his way across the owlery to sit down beside him.
"She has to know." Sirius assured him, his voice holding more confidence that he truly felt that he had. "We can't let him get away this... it's murder... it doesn't matter if he's our father. Blood doesn't matter anymore. Blood doesn't count for shit."
"Yeah." Regulus gave a nod, stretching his legs out across the owlery floor. "The people that thought blood really mattered are the people that allowed us to get into this mess into the first place. The boxes, the murder, it's all... it means something, and that's what scares me the most."
Sirius fell silent that time, suddenly overwhelmed by the unavoidable truth in his brother's words, and the matter of beginning to imagine what that could possibly mean, for him, for the both of them, for the rest of the world.
-
It wasn't that Remus had been avoiding Lily, it was just that he had been making excuses for himself to avoid being in her vicinity, especially alone, especially in a situation that gave them an opportunity to talk, to talk about things that might have carried a little more weight than Remus found himself particularly prepared to deal with. He reckoned that probably did sound a lot like he was avoiding her, and if he was being totally honest with himself, he kind of was.
Above everything else, he was scared. Remus found that he only tended to get properly scared when it absolutely didn't matter at all. He found himself significantly more comfortable and at ease with transforming into a werewolf on the full moon than he was with talking to one of his best friends about something that might matter vaguely enough to be sort of mildly uncomfortable. He never claimed to understand how his mind worked, after all.
Inevitability found itself to soon catch up to him however, as he had always been well aware that he couldn't avoid Lily forever. They were friends after all; they saw each other, they spoke to one another, and that was a fact of life that Remus struggled with avoiding. Remus had found himself getting away with a good few days, almost bordering on a whole week before inevitability finally struck in the form of his Arithmancy class - a class he shared with Lily, a class in which his only proper friend was Lily.
It wasn't that he didn't like her or anything quite as drastic as that. Admittedly, he didn't even want to avoid her, he just wanted to avoid certain topics of conversation. He just wanted to avoid a certain outcome and facing up to a certain reality. That outcome, that reality, was of course the matter of Sirius' sexuality, what had happened after he'd came out to them, and just what Lily reckoned that meant for Remus' crush. That stupid little crush that Remus was still so very intent upon denying, upon repressing with all that he had. Deep down, he realistically knew that repressing it was easily the worst thing he could do about it, but he found for some reason, under a different light, it just seemed an easier alternative than properly facing up to it. Even for just a moment.
Remus had been late to class. It wasn't a practice he frequented or was particularly fond of, despite the behaviour of his closest friends. He made his way in quietly, doing his best to avoid being noticed as he kept to the back wall, sneaking himself into his seat, the one beside Lily, as if he'd been there the whole time.
He didn't for one second imagine that he'd actually get away with it, but for some reason, it seemed as if luck had decided that it was on his side that day. Remus didn't reckon he deserved luck's favour or anything of that ilk, but he definitely just sat down and accepted it without question. He wasn't the person to go out of the way to push and test his luck. Remus was a little different from his friends in that regard, as that was certainly a prominent trait held by James, Sirius, and Peter - Peter to a lesser extent, but it was still prevalent and definitely multiplied in the presence of the other two boys.
Remus couldn't help but feel that he was just a little different from the other three in quite a multitude of ways, these were just concerns that he'd never felt the courage to voice. He'd always imagined it would cause more mess than it really was worth. One trait that he'd always felt had really separated him from the other three was his sexuality. It might have just been him over exaggerating his situation out of anxiety alone, but he always felt that it was the one thing that had distanced him the most from them; that reason had partly been why he'd been so hesitant to come out to his friends. Of course, however, that had all changed the moment Sirius came out, and Remus rather suddenly began to question himself entirely, wondering if he had any cause to declare himself as that different at all.
In all honesty, Sirius' sexuality had caused an awful lot of mess up inside Remus' head. Admittedly, some of it was good, welcome, some mess to clear the silence, some mess to form into answers, in the place of nothingness, finally a response to so many questions. There was however, no avoiding the fact that it had pretty much turned his head on its side; somehow everything had changed for Remus, and he really didn't have the slightest idea as to how he was supposed to feel about it.
Deep down, he'd always really known that his crush on Sirius didn't seem like it was in much of a hurry to go away. He'd just always been so persistent with lying to Lily, hoping that if he repeated it aloud, enough times to enough people, it would all go away; he never quite believed that himself, but he'd found himself stuck with the belief that he might as well just have tried. With the matter of Sirius' sexuality, however, it seemed a lot harder to bury. It just seemed all the more real, and Remus couldn't help but wonder what Sirius might think, about him, about all of this, if he ever did find out.
Part of Remus might have even prefered it when he'd thought Sirius was straight, because at least then he could hide this all away, he could avoid it, he could let it fade away in the back of his mind, and really there had just been a whole lot less for him to worry about.
"Where have you been?" Lily turned to face him momentarily, not straying her gaze long enough from the front of the room to attract any unnecessary attention to the two of them, but for long enough to ensure that she'd captured Remus' attention, and that he couldn't just try away and shrug it off.
Needless to say, Lily had noticed Remus' behaviour over the past few days, and what had been definite attempts on his part to avoid her. It wasn't that she was offended, or particularly hurt, or anything like that. In actual fact, she found herself hit with confusion, more than anything else.
Remus gave a shrug, not caring if Lily caught it out of the corner of her eyes or not. He then proceeded to lean back in his seat, stretching his long legs out from under their desk and out across the classroom floor. He was far too casual, very much at peace, and all in a way that confused Lily; she found that she didn't quite know what to think at all.
"What's up with you?" Lily continued to ask, hovering her gaze over Remus for a moment longer this time around. "Something is up." She told him, making no question about the fact. "You're avoiding me. You don't want to be here, you don't want to talk to me. What's wrong?"
Remus simply shrugged once more, wishing more than anything that he crawl back inside himself and hide away, like a caterpillar's cocoon, except he had no desire to be something big and beautiful when he came out the other side. He just wanted things to return to normal, whatever normal could possibly mean. He just wanted calm, he wanted happy, he wanted the familiarity he'd once known.
Lily was clever. There was no denying that. Remus knew it. Lily knew it. The whole Arithmancy classroom around them knew it. Near enough the whole school knew it. Still, she found herself confused, fixated on just what had lead Remus into his situation for a good ten minutes that followed. She allowed the two of them to fall back into silence for that time: it was a decision that Remus appeared to be more than comfortable with. Lily didn't want to properly accept it, but the truth simply was that she was just more than a little stumped by Remus' current situation and just what it could possibly mean.
But Lily was clever, and the inevitable realisation came sooner rather than later, once the classroom had grown out of a calm silence, away from the steady tone of their professor, and had instead filled with a low constant hum of chatter, conversation from the students as they worked upon a task that neither Remus nor Lily had cared enough to listen to. That definitely had to be a first, for the both of them, at least.
"It's about Sirius." Lily caught Remus' attention with the gentle nudging of her elbow into his. He quickly turned away from the window, from the horizon where he'd left his gaze free to roam and fade away into the blue grey nothingness of the afternoon skies. "You don't want to talk about Sirius." Lily made haste in elaborating. "That's why you've been avoiding me."
Remus let out a groan, knowing very well that Lily clung to the truth stubbornly, and that there was very little chance he could just run away from all of this, especially not now, especially as they sat in class together for another good forty minutes or so. "Something like that." He eventually concluded, deciding it was best to be just as vague as he could get away with.
Lily had already come to a firm and solid conclusion about it all, so in reality, it wasn't as if Remus' response had actually mattered all that much. She sat in thought for a moment or two longer before she came to face Remus once more. "You never stopped liking him. That crush never went away."
Remus did his best to hide his face away behind his hair. That, however, proved rather difficult considering the length of it. He reckoned that wasn't at all fair as it was definitely the kind of thing Lily could get away with easily. Sirius too, now that he thought about it. He had however decided that in that moment, the last thing he needed to think about for any excessive period of time was Sirius, for fear that he might let something slip. Not that Lily wasn't already well aware of the whole story.
"I'm right." Lily came to conclude her findings for herself. Remus didn't bother to argue his case, or even attempt to correct her; she was right and she was well aware of it, he couldn't even imagine to begin to change her mind about that one. "We should talk about it, you know? I know you don't want to, so we don't have to, but we should. I just want to help you, I mean, what could go wrong?"
"Everything." Remus let out a sigh, burying his head down onto the desk for a moment. He didn't particularly ever want to get up, but he found that he had few options as to otherwise. "Everything could go wrong." He told her, shaking his head as he came to entertain the possibilities, just for a moment.
"You really think that?" Lily stopped for a moment, watching Remus with intrigue in her eyes. He gave a nod in response. "Because I don't think so at all. You know what I think?" She didn't wait for him to nod this time. "I might as well just tell you, seeing as you don't want to talk about it, so this will be all you'll let me tell you, but, you know what, Remus? I honestly think he likes you too."
-
Remus had perhaps thought that Lily's intentions had been to put his mind at rest. He imagined that she might have thought that what she'd told him in that Arithmancy class had settled his mind, had allowed him to stop worrying and get some peace up inside his own head for once in awhile. That really was not the case. In fact, Remus found that if anything, it only made him worry more.
Everything had just multiplied. Everything that had suddenly felt much more real before, now felt catastrophically overpowered, looming over his life, casting a great shadow over him and following him no matter where he went, no matter how hard he tried to escape it. Remus had thought it had felt real before, but suddenly it was as if his whole perception of the world and his emotions had been entirely turned on his head.
He couldn't help but be just slightly agitated by all of this, more upset with Lily than he'd been before, not that they'd ever particularly fallen out, but there was suddenly a part of him that definitely reckoned that he could view this as her fault. But it wasn't. Remus wasn't that kind of person to blame others for the sake of it. Lily had meant well, and all that was to blame was himself and his inability to just suck it up and accept the way things were, get some courage for once in his life - he was a Gryffindor after all.
Remus would have liked to imagine that Lily's words hadn't haunted his head for the entire remainder of the day, but he really wasn't one for lying to himself, as even when the truth was unpleasant, it was still the truth, and there was nothing he could do to change that. In the end, he put it down to anxiety, to nerves, to the pressure of it all weighing down on him. He'd already felt something changing in the back of his mind, he was well aware of it, but he found himself terrified to face up to its reality, to how he knew he'd find himself looking at Sirius differently, and to how it felt an awful lot like everything might change.
Again, Remus didn't want to say that he'd made a particular attempt to avoid anyone, but there was no denying the fact that once classes were over for the day, he didn't go back up to Gryffindor tower as he usually did, instead he strayed away from the crowds of Gryffindor students making their way across the school, and instead made his way to the ground floor of the castle, walking quickly through several corridors, praying that no one he knew would find it within themselves to pay him enough notice to start a conversation.
Thankfully, he made it down to the courtyard without interruption, and allowed himself to take a great sigh of relief as he perched himself on the wall, sitting up with his back against the brick work, and his long, skinny legs, stretching out into the courtyard below. He couldn't help but feel as if he looked awfully out of place, sat there alone, with his only company in the form of the few students milling around as they made their way across the courtyard, on their way to their common rooms and the like.
The courtyard tended to be populated in the summer months, when the weather was nice enough to sit outside in, even as the afternoon fell into evening, but in late October, in the cold afternoon breeze, Remus found himself so very much alone. He wasn't upset by this - it was what he had wanted, after all. He'd came outside seeking the peace and quiet held in the company of his own head, and his own head alone, it was just that once he was faced with it, once he was faced with it all, it didn't quite feel how he felt it should have.
The thought struck Remus several minutes later: perhaps he didn't want to be alone. Perhaps it was just a reflex now - halfway instinctual, to run away from everyone when things got complicated. He didn't like the idea of it all, but he found that there was just little use in denying the reality of it. Remus was very well aware of what he should have done, how he should have handled this all from the start, and he was just as well aware of how he'd strayed so far away from that path.
Part of him did indeed want to give up, to go back inside, and up to Gryffindor tower, to face his friends, to pretend nothing was different, to meet Lily's gaze for just a moment, and speak of the whole world in one blink. There was just so many thoughts up in his head as of late, so many feelings, conflicting emotions in excess, and most of all, Remus found that he just didn't know what to think. The truth was that just so very little made much sense anymore.
He danced awkwardly around the idea of admitting that he'd been wrong, of getting up and going back inside for what felt like forever. He quickly found that he was much more content to simply toy with the idea than to actually go through with it. In the end, he got so lost up inside his own head that the world ended up making a move for him. It wasn't a move he'd expected, and it certainly wasn't one he would have asked for, but despite himself, he found that as he caught sight of Sirius Black making his way across the courtyard towards him, he was nothing but relieved to see him.
Remus was quick to make sense of that relief, of that sudden rush of emotion that had been so quick to consume him, as Sirius wordlessly took a seat beside him on the wall. Nothing had changed. Despite what Remus had been so certain of, nothing was different, and Lily's words were just words. He found relief in the fact that they were still just Remus and Sirius, and that the world wasn't crumbling to dust right around him. With that, he couldn't help but smile.
Sirius hit him with an odd expression, one of slight confusion, before returning the smile. It was then that a warm surge hit Remus like a gust of air that had radiated from deep within him, perhaps from the pit of his stomach or the bottom of his heart. He wasn't quite sure what it was or what it meant, but for that moment he felt safe, he felt comfortable, and he felt very much alive.
"I'm nervous." Sirius was the first to speak, as if he could sense the mess unfolding right behind Remus' temples, as if he was so very well aware of it, well enough to know that he shouldn't bring it to life on his tongue, that words and the act of verbalising it could do nothing more than harm.
"Nervous?" Remus found that remembering how to use his vocal chords again hadn't been anywhere near as difficult as he'd imagined that it might have been. Briefly, he wondered if perhaps he wasn't in anywhere near of as much of a mess as he thought he was.
"Constantly, yeah." Sirius let out an awkward kind of self-deprecating laugh that seemed to be comprised much more of a badly masked sigh than it was of actual laughter. Remus picked up upon it, but decided to save them both the hassle of confronting him with it. "It's just... waiting for my mother's reply. It's just... writing things down, about what happened with my dad, what happened with everything... the truth... and... you know."
Remus was aware of the fact that he didn't know the full story; he knew very little of the intricate details, and people's personal emotions regarding it all, but he had a basic understanding of it all, a good enough grasp to begin to understand just what might be in that letter to Sirius' mother, and just why it might have left Sirius in the state it had.
"You should try and take your mind off of it." Remus knew that it was lacklustre advice at the very best, but he was trying, and he reckoned that definitely did count for something, if only so little in the grand scheme of things.
"Yeah..." Sirius leant back against the brickwork, shooting Remus a testing glance, as if he was unsure what kind of state Remus was actually in, as if he was unsure just what kind of blunt and honest he could get away with being. The both of them were hardly in the most fantastic of states, and Sirius wasn't entirely sure that it was beneficial for them to wallow around in their self pity together, but he wasn't particularly keen to get up and leave, and it didn't look that much like Remus was either.
"Why did you come out here?" Remus couldn't stop himself from asking; the question had been at the tip of his tongue since the moment he'd locked eyes with Sirius, it had just been delayed somewhat, muffled in the silence, and pushed aside by other things. "Instead of going up to the common room with James. I know you just had a class with him."
Sirius decided it was best if he gave a very vague shrug in response. He did have an answer - that wasn't the problem. The problem was his reluctance to air it aloud, to talk properly about anything, coupled with his reluctance to drag the uncomfortable silence on around them any longer. "I saw you out here." It was an abridged version of the truth, but it was the truth nonetheless. "So I decided to come sit with you. I've not seen you since this morning."
"Yeah." Remus nodded; the last class the two had been in together was Transfiguration which had been their first class of the day. Somehow that morning seemed like it was a thousand years away: back then he'd been avoiding Lily, with the same amount of mess on his mind, but just in an entirely different form.
"You don't want to talk. I can see that." Sirius decided to cut right to the obvious; he grew tired of small talk and useless courtesies - Remus was his best friend, he reckoned that even now he could afford to be blunt. "I don't really want to talk either. I guess we've both got some shit up in our heads and that's alright. I mean, that's what heads are for, thinking about shit, and driving yourself up into a state about it."
Remus managed a small laugh at that. He glanced up for a moment, meeting Sirius' eyes with an intrigued kind of hopefulness. "That's what heads are for." He added with a nod, seeing that it definitely encouraged Sirius to continue.
"I want to sit with you though." Sirius held his gaze for a moment, before biting down on his lip and swifting pulling his head away, instead turning to look out across the courtyard, at the outside world, at the beauty of nature, seeming so distant and far away from the mess they had involved themselves in. "If you don't mind. It doesn't have to be here. We could for a walk, I mean. Or whatever. I just want to get away from everything else. I guess that you do too."
Remus gave a nod, stretching a little and reaching into the inside pocket of his robes. He glanced across at Sirius for a brief moment, considering something, weighing up a bad idea inside of his head: unable to distinguish if it was just bad or full on terrible. In the end, he concluded that it was the best he had and slid off the wall and onto his feet.
Sirius eyed him curiously for a moment, before following him, watching the way Remus rummaged around in his pockets for entirely too long, before he chose to break the silence once more. "And what exactly are we doing? Where are we going?"
Remus' lips fell into a lazy smile: nothing more than mildly amused at the confusion on Sirius' face. "For a smoke. Out in the grounds. You don't have to come." He watched the way Sirius' face contorted into an unreadable expression, only to quickly relax again. "I guess I'd like it if you did though."
"I guess I'd have to come then." Sirius hit him with a grin, and a look in his eyes that seemed to speak of the fact that they had always been so very well aware of the fact that Sirius would have never declined his offer. Not in a million years.
-
The two remained in what mostly constituted towards a silence, sharing little more than the occasional look with one another as they took a walk around the outskirts of the grounds, hidden away from the rest of the world under the shadows of the trees, casted long and dark as the sun continued to fall in the sky. It was definitely bordering on evening by now, not that either of the two boys seemed to much mind - there was a certain peace they found in their situation, a peace they found in each other. Regardless, it was certainly longer than either of them had anticipated on staying out for, and if the air had been cold before, by now it was bordering on freezing.
It wasn't long before the less than pleasant weather and its equally as unwanted effects made themselves known to the both of them. "You're shivering." Remus broke the silence to proclaim, gesturing absent mindedly across at Sirius with his index finger.
Sirius gave way to a smile, almost pathetic smile. He wasn't quite sure as to what else he could say for himself, because really he was - he was shivering, he was cold, he wanted to get warm and to go inside, but he found that those were just things he couldn't do, not just yet anyway, not as they remained in silence, and the world weighed heavy on his mind. He wondered if he was just as pathetic as his smile had been, but quickly conclude that it perhaps wasn't worth his consideration; it would do him no good at the very least.
"You are." Remus suddenly found his voice again, his will to converse, the kind of confidence that had been very much absent for the whole day, for longer than that even. If Remus was being entirely honest with himself, he just hadn't been the same since the last full moon. "Sirius, come on! Don't look at me like that, you're shivering, you're cold, you're-" Remus reached out to touch him, wrapping his fingers around Sirius' forearm, and pulling back in shock. "You're freezing!"
Sirius shrugged, brushing his hair back away from his face, and turning to face Remus who had come to a sudden stop for the first time since they'd started walking. As much as Sirius had been wanting a rest, for it all to stop, knowing the constant prolonging of everything would get them nowhere, and would help with nothing at all, he couldn't help but feel his heart pounding in his chest as the stood there, and gradually at first, but then suddenly all at once, the world began to catch up to them.
"You should go in and get warm." Remus' tone was insistent as he reached forward and touched Sirius' arm again, perhaps as if he'd been hoping that Sirius might have warmed up even just a little in the space of the minute that had been. Of course, however, Sirius hadn't.
"Not without you." Sirius told him, hanging his head low and exhaling slowly. He knew very well that this was it, this was the moment, this was the opportunity, this was the time they had to turned convuled obsessive thoughts into words, and not just words, but sentences too. This was the time for coherence, for making sense out of everything; the inevitable truth that loomed over them, and they were both just so very well aware of it by now.
"Don't be ridiculous-" Remus began, shaking his head in disbelief, and hoping for some stupid reason that it might have been enough to convince Sirius of his case. Perhaps, deep down, perhaps in the part of his head where he was entirely honest with himself, he didn't quite want Sirius to go - not really at least.
"You're being ridiculous!" Sirius raised his voice, finding that he could, as they stood out there in the cold, so very much alone. He found himself falling into the trap of an awkwardly placed laugh, bred only out of anxiety, and the nerves inside him that tingled and hummed for so long that his body grew numb all over.
"Am I?" Remus stepped back, suddenly hesitant, and hitting Sirius with an entirely new look in his eyes. Except the look wasn't new, Remus had worn it many times before, this was just the first time Sirius had seen it, the first time it had been directed at him. Then Remus felt the tingling too, at first originating from the pit of his stomach, then came the very sudden realisation that this had been that difference he'd feared, because there they were, looking at each other entirely anew, and even with words unspoken, things were changing.
It was perhaps then that Remus came to accept that there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it. But certainly, it was with that which he came to change his mind, and realise that pushing everything back, avoiding the world and everything in it just the very best he could would come to no positive end. The only way out was to embrace the change, not to suppress it.
"Yes." Sirius told him, gently this time. He then opened his mouth, as if to say something more, but stopped himself rather quickly, instead finding his way to Remus' eyes. The two remained frozen like that for a moment, as if to stop, to give in, to let the world change around them, and then to let themselves adjust, for them both to finally let their guard down, not just to accept the change, but to embrace it.
"I'm sorry." Remus didn't open his mouth for a good few minutes, but once he did it came naturally, as if that was how things should have been, and as if to speak any sooner would have broken everything down completely.
"I am cold." Sirius told him, being entirely honest not just with Remus, but with himself too. At first, it might have all seemed rather trivial, but in his heart, he wasn't speaking of the weather, of the cold around them, but of things that mattered just so much more. "I'm not scared anymore, though." He continued, his heart relaxing as if to open up inside his chest without warning.
"Oh." Remus let out what sounded an awful lot like a gasp, his heart still hammering inside his chest. Until, of course, it grew to little more than a flutter, and then to nothing, to calm and still, just for a moment. "No." He concluded, shivering a little too. "I'm not either."
"You were right, you're always right, you know that?" Sirius began, his heart beginning to return to its normal pace in his chest as his voice grew louder, and blood seemed to continue to move through his veins, as if in that few minutes it had indeed stopped, entirely.
Remus shook his head, finding himself very much unable to put any kind of trust or real belief in what Sirius had just said. "I'm not." He assured him, as the two stood there, and the world grew colder still, all around them. The autumn didn't care, the world didn't care for the two of them, stood there as individuals, they didn't have forever, the cold certainly wouldn't wait for them.
"Maybe not all the time then." Sirius suggested, running a hand back through his hair, brushing enough away from his face for Remus to see his cheeks heating up to a dangerously dark shade of pink. "You're right when it matters though, right when it matters to me. Remind me to listen to you, like all the time. Even when I don't want to. Even when I won't listen. Remind me that I have to."
Remus had been seconds away from continuing to argue his case, somehow insistent in proving a useless point, when he stopped himself, and came to draw his attention to what had rather quickly revealed itself as the real matter at hand between them. "How?" He asked, meeting Sirius with a genuine kind of concern in his eyes. "How would I do that? How can I make you listen when you don't want to? You do just shut my words out entirely. You're very stubborn, you know that right?"
"Yeah." Sirius might have argued otherwise, in fact, he felt as if he should, but the call of the situation, of circumstance, of the cold, of the look in Remus' eyes, spoke louder than anything had before, and his head was keen to listen this time. "I know. Don't use words then. Remind me why I should listen to you, remind me why I should trust you, always. Because I should."
"Always?" Remus came to repeat his words, but with a certain hesitance this time around. Sirius simply nodded at him; the look in his eyes was enough to convey the rest of it. "I wouldn't be sure how."
"Find a way." Sirius told him, eyes falling to the ground for a moment. "I trust you, I do. You just have to make sure I remember that, you know? My head gets in a mess. A fucking hell of a mess sometimes."
"Mine too." Remus watched him for a moment, attempting to do his best with the very few pieces Sirius had provided him with. He was certain he could make sense out of it all, but not just yet. He would have wished that time was on their side, but he figured by now that he'd had his fair share of it. His fair share of exceptions and allowances too.
"You're freezing." Remus couldn't help but draw his attention back down to Sirius shivering form. "This is getting ridiculous now, I'm being honest. We should go back inside. You'll get sick."
"Not yet." Sirius argued, stepping closer to Remus, heart so steady in his chest. "Not yet." He repeated, holding the taller boy's gaze as he tilted his head to look up at him.
"Why not?" Remus didn't much like to question what Sirius seemed to hold in his mind as the obvious, but he found somehow that he did just have to. "When? Why not yet?"
"When my head makes sense again. When I can go back inside and face myself again, when I don't have to hide out here anymore." Sirius paused for a moment, watching the way Remus' expression began to shift. "I thought you understood."
"I do." Remus insisted, reaching forward and fully wrapping his hand around Sirius' wrist this time. "I don't want to go back inside and face everything very much myself, I just... you're so cold. I'm worried about you, alright? And that matters more." Remus shook his head, almost as if to curse himself for the honesty of it all. He let his cheeks flush red, for it was the truth, and that was just that. "That matters more."
"That goes two ways." Sirius told him, biting down on his bottom lip. "I'm worried about you, I'm worried about everything up in your head. I want to make sure you're okay before we go back inside. That matters more, to me."
Remus shook his head, very much unwilling to accept Sirius' words as they were. "It shouldn't. That's stupid. You could freeze, and I'm just... a bit weird up in the head. A bit fucked in the head. Those are two entirely different things."
Sirius shrugged, dipping his head a little. "I'm not that cold." He lied. Despite his respect for Remus, he made what he'd call his very best job of hiding the truth. Still Remus didn't buy it, for a start, he knew him too well.
"Bullshit." Remus told him bluntly, moving closer to wrap both of his hands around Sirius' wrists. "That's absolute bullshit." He met his gaze, doing so much to hold it for a good minute, that he missed his hands, slowly slipping down, losing grip upon Sirius' wrists, only to be caught again by Sirius' fingertips, curling in around his.
Then Remus' heart really did stop for a moment. He looked down at their hands, and then up at Sirius for a moment, in particular at the odd kind of peaceful look in his eyes that did so much to contradict the situation. It was then that everything began to make sense.
"Sirius..." Remus let out what could only be described as an embarrassingly muffled kind of gasp, as he looked down at their hands, as they remained there, for what anyone might call far too long now.
"Remus." Sirius repeated, looking up at him, holding onto his hands tighter, almost fearing that Remus might pull away, or even run away from him. It was the same kind of fear that had been prevalent before the walk, before the air around them had cleared and they had taught themselves how to properly breathe again.
"I'm cold too." Remus admitted, suddenly so fixated on the presence of Sirius' hands, so very cold against his, but growing warmer as time passed on. But they didn't have forever, and Remus didn't have enough time to wait for them both to warm up completely. They didn't have the time to wait for the world to catch up to them on this one.
He'd been hesitant for so long but Remus got there eventually. It all got to him eventually. He watched Sirius, he watched his smile grow lazy and his lips open to speak, but Remus decided that this was it, that he didn't want to hear him insist to him that he was perfectly warm and alright for a single moment longer.
It was then that Remus made him listen. Not with words, as he knew how Sirius would shut them out, instead, he made him listen as leaned forward and his mouth met Sirius' lips. And suddenly neither of them were quite so cold anymore.
-
"It scares me." He admitted. "Just a little bit."
The sky quickly grew darker and the evening soon fell into the night. It was simple, expected, a constant routine, and perhaps something he should have come to rely upon, but still, somehow, this time around at least, it had caught him by surprise. Perhaps it was simply down to its presence as a sign, as a reminder, as to rather bluntly inform him of just how much time had passed, in a way that he couldn't quite avoid.
"That's not a bad thing." She assured him, her voice calm and steady as if she'd rehearsed for hours about each and every perfect thing to say. "Fear is important. Fear makes us real, fear makes us human."
They had been talking for hours now. It was the kind of conversation that neither had particularly expected, but what had originally been a short little encounter had grown into something else entirely, and so very late that evening, Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black found themselves sat on the windowsill, eyes focused out into the great inky blackness of the night sky. They were supposed to be out of their common room this late, and they were both very well aware of that, but they were both content in the belief that no one could and no one would find them close to the top of the astronomy tower on what looked like one of the cloudiest nights of the year.
"Makes us human." Lucius repeated, almost as if he found himself somewhat hesitant to believe it. There was however a stern look in Narcissa's eyes that he found himself inclined to trust, or at least easily manipulated into doing so. "I guess it does. I don't feel very human though, I just feel scared, more than I feel human. Like I'm just a vessel for worry, for bad emotions or something like that."
Narcissa couldn't help but glance across at him in concern, finding that her concern only grew as Lucius' eyes remained dull, almost as if they were entirely dead, almost as if he was too. "What do you mean?" She found herself asking, suddenly losing her talent to retain her cool, suddenly losing far too much of herself in that moment.
"It has to be the box, hasn't it?" Lucius' tone was dull, monotone, almost dead, and directed more so at the night sky and the horizon outside of the castle than it was to Narcissa. It wasn't that she minded in terms of personal offence, she just couldn't help but be concerned as she followed Lucius' gaze out across the grounds, finding herself lost out in the darkness for just a moment.
"Yeah." She nodded, coming to a rather makeshift conclusion about this all. "It seems like it." In all honesty, Narcissa didn't have the slightest idea what it was that could possibly really be going on in order for Lucius to be feeling that way, but the more she thought about it, the more that the box really did seem like a likely suspect.
"I have to get rid of it." He turned back to face her after what seemed like forever. It was then that Narcissa came to notice how he was indeed shaking all over. "I have to." He repeated, suddenly more sure of himself than he'd ever been.
"You should." Narcissa gave a nod of agreement, finding that she wasn't the slightest bit sure of how Lucius might go about it, considering that it was afflicted with dark magic, and that there was certainly much more to it than what meets the eyes.
"No." Lucius shook his head, stubborn but finding some sort of peace, some sort of relief in that. "I have to." Narcissa didn't think to argue back.
They let the night fade out around them, and eventually, as the silence grew too comfortable, as if it was prepared to make some sort of permanent residency around them, they gave up and made their way back down to the Slytherin common room. Neither of the two got very much in the way of sleep that night, both with far too much on their minds. The truth of it all was however that they had tried, and that just had to count for something.
-
Lucius skipped his first class the next morning. It wasn't a practice he found himself particularly well acquainted with, well at least no more than the average student was, but he found no doubt in his mind about this being the right thing to do. It wasn't as if he'd ever had so much of a solid grip on what could be deemed as right or wrong either, but he came to conclude that perhaps that just didn't matter quite so much anymore; the lines between wrong and right had blurred indistinguishably already.
To his merit, at least he didn't skip his first class to sit around doing nothing, or to make trouble with his friends, or perhaps to allow himself the liberty of an extra hour in bed. Instead, Lucius Malfoy did something that he really did not frequent doing, and made his way through the dungeon corridors and towards Professor Slughorn's classroom. He'd made certain that Slughorn didn't have a class that morning, and that he'd be tucked away in his office at the back of the room, doing much less than he should have been.
However Lucius wasn't here to comment upon his general lack of effort and work ethic, or even to provide a sob story and demand an extra favour, which was something Professor Slughorn had definitely proved usual for, instead, Lucius Malfoy was here to talk. To talk properly to the professor, as his head of house, about a certain problem he'd found himself with.
He found himself awfully hesitant about it all, and for a moment had even hoped that he'd messed up somewhere and might accidentally walk in on a second year Potions class or something, anything that might have been able to give him the perfect kind of excuse to turn away from this all, to hide what lay inside his robes back up in his dormitory, back in that chest of drawers, back away from confrontation, under the pretense of safety or something of that nature.
Despite it all, Lucius did indeed find that he managed his into the Potions classroom, stopping for a moment to hear the door creak behind him as it swung on its hinges to fall back into place at the frame. He then proceeded to walk with an unnecessary amount of care, listening to every echo of his footsteps against the cold stone floor. In fact, he wouldn't at all have been surprised if he'd been told that it had taken him all of ten minutes to finally make his way across the Potions classroom floor to Professor Slughorn's office door. But he made his way there in the end, and he just reckoned that had to count for something.
Taking a deep breath, doing all he could to prepare himself, Lucius raised one hand up to knock against the door, yet just before his knuckles could quite make contact with dark brown wood he faced, he found himself awfully startled by the sound of a voice, raised from inside.
"Do come in." He instantly recognised it to be the voice of Professor Slughorn, but didn't quite find himself with each courage to properly question just how he'd come to ask him to enter before he'd even managed to knock. Instead, Lucius simply made his way inside, taking a seat before Slughorn's desk, watching as the professor followed his movements across the room, with wide blown eyes, perhaps as if he didn't quite believe it.
It took a moment or two but Professor Slughorn eventually did enough to pull himself together and clear his throat. He glanced Lucius over once more before straightening up in his chair and finally coming to address him properly. "Lucius Malfoy. What exactly can I do for you?" He followed his words up with what Lucius could only describe as a foul, unpleasant kind of laugh, that was perfectly suited to the man that sat before him. Despite that, Professor Slughorn was his head of house, and there was nothing he could do to change that.
"I..." Lucius began, pulling his gaze away from Professor Slughorn and his desk entirely. Instead, he trailed his eyes around the room, finding himself suddenly somewhat fascinated by his surroundings. It was all, of course, a terrible last ditch effort by his brain to distract him amidst all this mess. "I..."
"Do go on." Slughorn leaned closer, growing ever more intrigued by just what had brought a person like Lucius Malfoy to his office with such a concerned expression on his face. "I am quite fascinated by this all. The slow footsteps across my classroom, the creaking door, how long exactly did it take you to gather the courage to come visit me today?"
"Too long." Lucius admitted, hanging his head low, as if in shame. He would have much prefered if that particular matter had remained unspoken, but it became quickly apparent that perhaps Professor Slughorn didn't share the same philosophy.
"Ah." Slughorn let out a sigh, stretching back in his chest, as he came to examine Lucius for a moment longer. "Don't concern yourself with it, you're Slytherin not Gryffindor, what do we have to concern ourselves with courage for?" His voice grew a little sour at the mention of Gryffindor; it was far too typical, really, to the extent that it began to bore Lucius Malfoy, of all people.
Lucius decided that perhaps it was for the best to simply shrug his statement off than to actually construct any form of practised sort of response to it. "I need your help, Professor." He pulled his gaze up to meet Slughorn's. Professor Slughorn appeared rather taken aback by this, as if perhaps it was a duty that he had never expected to be accounted for in all his years as head of Slytherin house.
"You do?" Slughorn did his best to continue as if he was entirely prepared for this, even straightening up in his chair, and doing his best to hold Malfoy's gaze. In all honesty, Lucius found that he might just have to give him credit for trying.
Lucius found that perhaps their idle awkward excuse for conversation had already gone on for far too long, and in the place of uttering another useless, half way pathetic excuse for a response, he reached inside his robes and produced the box he'd tucked away inside of them. He placed it out on Slughorn's desk between the two of them.
Professor Slughorn looked down at it expectantly, as if waiting for it to transform into a bird with glistening gold feathers or something of the like. It did not. The box remained a box. Or at least it did to the eye, to Slughorn, who was yet to make very much sense of the situation.
"A box?" Slughorn grew tired of waiting, and instead pulled his eyes up to meet Lucius', he grew impatient as he awaited some form of instantaneously explanation on Lucius' part.
"It's not just a box." Lucius told him, lowering his voice in what he hated to admit was fear. Professor Slughorn seemed to sense this, and began to glance frantically between Malfoy and the box, the expression on his face making it awfully clear that he had very little idea as to just what he should think.
As the silence grew, it had to come to break, and it did so as Slughorn himself seemed to break, falling into a nervous forced fit of laughter. He glanced back up at Lucius, hoping perhaps that he might share such laughter. He did not. Professor Slughorn's face grew rather solemn exceptionally quickly. "It's not just a box?" He repeated, less certain than Lucius had been.
"You have to destroy it, Professor." Lucius told him, finding for the first time in his life, he found himself inclined to place any amount of trust in Professor Slughorn. "I don't know how. It's dark magic, Professor."
Slughorn pulled out his wand, extending it towards the box, however, just as he parted his lips, before the words of the spell had even escaped him, the box slide away from him with great force, propelling itself through stacks of parchment and student records across the table. Professor Slughorn drew his wand back in disbelief, finding that he really wasn't at all sure what to do. He cleared his throat, trying for a second time, not really expecting that it would work, expecting instead that the box might propel itself across to the other side of his desk. That was not what happened, the second time the box burst into flames, a million shades of emerald green, burning right before the two of them on the desk. This time Slughorn watched astounded as the flames burned to embers, and the box remained there, unsigned, amidst a burnt out and blackened mess.
Then Slughorn made the mistake of reaching out to touch it, curious to see if the box had survived the flames without even attracting heat. He never quite got to answer that question, as instead he found that as he touched it, the green flames appeared again out of nowhere and spread to his fingertips. He recoiled in horror, reaching for his wand and casting a quick spell to extinguish them. His horror only grew as the spell remained entirely ineffective.
"It's trying to stop you. It won't let you destroy it." Lucius explained, perhaps all too comfortably as his head of house sat across from him, literally on fire. He reached for his wand and directed it across at the Professor, casting the very same charm Slughorn had, only for it to work perfectly this time around.
Slughorn let out a very relieved sigh, putting his wand firmly back into his robes, and sitting well back from the box. "Yes..." He trailed off, hesitant to pull his eyes away from it. "Dark magic... dark magic indeed." He let out a sigh, looking up and meeting Lucius' gaze once more. "How on earth did you get your hands on this?"
"It was given to me." Lucius supplied, voice low once more. He got up from his chair, holding Slughorn's gaze for a moment more. "It needs to be destroyed. It needs to be. You can't just lock up or hide it away. It needs to be destroyed." He raised his voice quite a significant deal louder than he should have when facing a teacher.
Slughorn seemed far too startled by what had just happened to raise much concern. Instead, he just nodded his head slowly, almost in a broken fashion, as if he had almost forgotten how. "Yes. It will be. I will make sure Professor Dumbledore himself sees to it."
Lucius smiled, feeling relief for the first time in far, far too long.
-
The few days that had passed almost felt like forever. Sirius had never been particular patient, or at all good with calming his nerves, and for those past few days, he reckoned he'd been the most nervous he'd ever been in his life. It was the unknown that really killed him; the feeling of not knowing quite what could become of this all, of the letter, of his mother's response, and then everything else in turn.
For those few days, he'd found that perhaps all he'd wanted was to receive a response, was just to know, just to know exactly what it was that was going to happen, just how the world might turn forward from there. It was however the very moment that he did finally receive a response that he came to wish he never had. In that moment, as the sun slowly began to rise into a still rather dark sky, as he held a letter from his mother in his hand, that Sirius really did begin to wish that nothing had ever come of this at all. That they'd done nothing, and let the world continue to rot away all around them.
But there was nothing he could do about that now. In fact, he really did feel that there was nothing he could do about anything now. For a good full ten minutes he stood there, very much confused and very much alone. For a good full ten minutes he stood there in silence, hardly daring to even breathe as he read the letter back through for a second time. Nothing came of it. Nothing changed. The words remained as they had been written, and that was when Sirius began to cry.
He was a state. He knew he looked it. Stood there by the common room window at half past five in the morning. Silent except the slight muffled sounds of tears. Still except for the slight shaking of his hands, as they struggled to keep the letter from dropping to the floor.
Sirius was a little bit astounded, perhaps just more so with himself. The thing was that he'd just never imagined he'd feel quite that lost before. He never quite imagined that he'd feel anything quite this low at all. But he did. He clung to that, to the truth of it all, because that really was the only thing left for him. He sat there, motionless now, truly silent, wishing only to be vacant from his body, to be vacant from this world entirely, as the sun began to rise in the sky, and as if to combat it entirely, the skies opened up, and it began to rain.
It was October after all, nearly November too, it was cold and horrible and miserable and he should have expected nothing less. Yet somehow he didn't. Somehow he looked upon an overcast sky and believed, even if just for a second, in a clear sunny day. He looked down at the letter from his mother and quickly realised that he'd made the very same mistake; she never was going to listen to the two of them, not in this world, not in any other too.
He watched the rain for a little while. It was a little while that quickly grew stupidly out of control. He sat and watched the rain for what felt like forever. In all honesty, if he could have, he really might have sat there for the rest of his life. Getting up meant pulling himself together and getting ready to face the world; he'd very much decided that just wasn't something he could see himself doing. Not anymore at least.
The only thing that came to stop him was the sudden sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. Sirius had almost come to forget that this was the common room, a space that all of Gryffindor house could access, and that it was now very much past five in the morning, and he was still there, expecting the same kind of peace and lack of company. He couldn't stop himself turning to look, ready to snap at a far too eager group of second years or something of the like, instead however, he found himself, as luck would have it, faced with a far too familiar face.
Remus Lupin made his way across the common room without a word. He seemed to have sensed that something was wrong before he'd even made it out of the dormitory. Sirius wished he could have had it within him to thank him for that. Instead, he sat wordlessly by the window, forever watching the rain, even as Remus filled the space beside him.
"How long have you been out of bed?" Remus didn't take at all long to break the silence. It almost caught Sirius by surprise; he had almost wanted to count on the still comfort of the room for a little while longer. "I panicked, you know?" He told him, continuing to fill the silence once again. "When I woke up and saw you weren't there."
Sirius found it within himself simply to nod in response. "I got up at five." He continued to tell him, after a minute had passed. "My mother... finally responded." He held his hand out towards Remus, holding the letter shakily, as if it might combust in his fingertips.
Remus took it from him carefully, taking one look at Sirius, and coming to conclude that this was something he very much feared to read. Still, he read it nonetheless. He read the blatant denial, he read the hurt, he read the lies, he read the anger, and he read the escalation of this all into something else entirely. He read at the bottom of the parchment, written in thick black ink, the words that cursed Sirius, words like 'traitor' and 'disgust', words that soon came to conclude with 'outcast' and 'disowned'.
For a very long moment there, Remus really did struggle to breathe. He passed the letter back to Sirius wide eyed, with nothing short of tears brewing in his tear ducts. They were a mess sat there, the two of them. Sirius knew it. Remus did too. For a short moment, Sirius turned away to watch the rain, to watch a single droplet roll slowly down the glass windowpane, as he turned back to Remus, he came to watch a single tear fall down his cheek.
That was when Sirius broke. Properly. That was when nothing mattered. That was the moment that he sat there, no longer human, but alive, alive with emotions and rage. Alive with a feeling of purpose, no longer dulled out and disdained, but alive, alive with meaning, alive with purpose and alive with passion. He had to fix this. They had to fix this. He knew it like he'd known nothing before. But the anger he felt for this injustice, seemed almost dwarfed by an inner sorrow as he watched a second tear make its way down Remus' cheek.
"Stop crying." He croaked out, his voice much shakier than he could have accounted for. "Stop crying." He repeated, reaching out and wiping Remus' cheeks. "Please stop crying." He uttered, suddenly desperate now.
"It's fucked up." Remus told him, doing all he could to calm his tears, to calm himself, to pull himself together, to end the numbness inside his chest and begin to properly feel again. "This is fucked, Sirius, this is fucked, this is-"
Sirius cut him off, struggling to breathe as he slumped back against the window, his eyes directed to the floor as he felt the sudden weight of tears dwelling under closed eyelids. "It's... helpless." His voice came out as little more than a whisper. "That's how they're always going to be. Family." He spat the word like it was poison, like it meant nothing other than to harm him. "That's the kind of family I don't want anything to do with." His words had weighed heavy in his throat, but seemed to be heavier still as they reached the air, crushing everything around them to pieces. To the extent that Remus could feel it too.
It was then that Sirius began to cry. He turned away, turned to the window, to the rain, and let himself cry. Let himself cry like he hadn't just begged for Remus to stop. He let himself cry like he had a choice and this was what he wanted to do. He let himself cry like the world didn't just seem so fucking hopeless. He let himself cry on the off chance that it might just mean something.
Remus watched him for a moment: still, silent, scared, almost. Admittedly, he didn't know what to do at all. Sirius was suddenly so fragile. Suddenly they both were. And Remus was terrified, absolutely terrified that whatever words came from his lips would only break things further. So he thought for a moment, he wondered who he'd be without words, he tried to remember how to speak without them, how to be gentle, how to fix this, the best they could.
The moment Remus finally did reach a conclusion was the very moment that he put it into place, choosing to think later, choosing to think when they both had the time. Instead in that very moment, he closed the gap between them, opening his mouth as if to speak, instead he just grew a quick gasp of breath and leaned in. Gently, silently, to the sound of the rain, Remus kissed him.
The two kissed. They kissed until their lips grew numb. They kissed like it was the only thing they could remember how to do. They kissed until they both stopped crying. They kissed for what felt like forever. They kissed until they heard footsteps in the hallway, and then footsteps descending down the stairs. They kissed until it was all too late.
"I fucking knew it!" The unmistakable voice of James Potter came out in the form of a horrible screech, that then proceed to echo around the common room for what felt like an unnecessarily painful amount of time.
Both Sirius and Remus froze, entirely unsure what they were to do in the situation, already far too close together, as James quickly approached across the room, far too oblivious, far too oblivious to it all.
"I knew you were fucking-" James began, perhaps even louder than he had been before, which really did seem to contradict to the fact that he'd gotten closer to the two of them.
"James, just shut the fuck up for the first time in your fucking life." Remus got to his feet, meeting James with an odd kind of violent, almost protective look. It was apparently what happened when he was left solely to his instincts, as Remus didn't even give himself a second to think before he'd reacted. In hindsight, that really might have been a terrible idea, but he found that in that moment, he really hadn't had much of a better idea otherwise.
"I..." James was rendered rather speechless by all of that, and resorted to simply glancing blankly between Sirius and Remus, instead waiting for an explanation to present itself.
"You're being a bit insensitive." Remus gave a sigh, taking a moment to compose himself, as he glanced back towards Sirius. "Really quite insensitive." He corrected himself, as he took the letter from Sirius' gesturing fingers. "Really not a good time." He continued, meeting James' gaze with a pleading look as he placed the letter into his hands.
The two watched James read the letter, watched his eyes grow wider as he got further towards the end, they watched the mess unravel right before them yet again. Remus found himself preoccupied with thinking of just what to say after all of this, just what might serve as an adequate explanation. Sirius, however, found himself much more preoccupied with trying not to cry. Not again. He wasn't sure he could handle that in all honesty.
"Fuck." James let out a sigh, shaking his head in disbelief. "Fuck. Sirius. Fuck. We can't just- we have to talk to someone about this? This can't just happen. You can't just let it. Not anymore, promise me that?"
"I promise." The words escaped Sirius' lips even before he'd had much of a chance to think about them, as after all, that promise had been the only thing on his mind. And maybe, for the first time, James Potter really was right.
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