Chapter Text
Sirius Black comes to their school when Remus is fifteen years old and scared of being alone and scared of being with people. He turns up in the maths class he shares with James Potter in the school’s ugly grey blazer with his tie hanging loosely around his neck. He saunters in and drops himself into his seat and Remus whispers wanker under his breath. He’s got dark hair and high cheekbones and the type of face Remus could only describe as pretty
He sits behind Remus and James and drums his fingers on the hard wood of the desk for most of the class until he leans forward and whispers ‘either one of you got a pen I could borrow?’
Remus knows James barley ever brings the right books to class, let alone spare pens. He almost tells the guy he doesn’t, just to spite him, but he hands him one anyway.
Sirius and James get along right away, in a way Remus could never get along with anybody. It makes him feel out of place, more than he usually does with James.
He’s not good at talking, but James and Sirius and Peter make up for that. They never stop talking. He sits with them at lunchtime and meets up with them before school and listens to James and Sirius make fun of teachers and Peter hurriedly try and imitate their humour.
Sirius gets suspended two weeks into term.
It’s right after James tells him about Lucius Malfoy and how he makes the younger students do what he wants because they’re all terrified of him.
He tries to get Sirius to steal from the school canteen for him. Sirius tells him to fuck off and sets his locker on fire 3 days later.
He tells James and his mouth hangs open and his eyes are wide and he blinks three times before saying ‘you can’t stand up to the sixth years.’
The news spreads around the school before lunchtime, and Sirius gets called into Professor McGonagall’s office halfway through fifth period and Remus doesn’t see him for another week.
‘I have a theory,’ Sirius says as he seats himself to Remus in History. ‘That if you didn’t stop him, James would talk about Lily Evans until he died of exhaustion.’
Remus snorts a breath of laughter without meaning to, which gets a smile from Sirius in return.
“Please have your prep open on the desk in front of you.” Professor Binns says tiredly from the front of the classroom. Remus doesn’t understand why the guy isn’t in a retirement home yet.
“Quick, Remus I need to copy yours. My tutor says I’m going to have to start going to catch-up on Fridays if I don’t start handing in prep.” Sirius whispers across to him.
“What? Sirius, no, you can’t rewrite the entire fucking essay in the time it takes Professor Binns to check everyone-” but Sirius is taking the notebook from his hand and flipping through it. Remus sighs and lets his head fall into his hands.
Sirius returns the book before Professor Binns reaches them. He pushes his dark hair behind his ears and smiles smugly at Remus at the teacher nods in approval at the messily written page. He does the same when he moves onto Remus neater page.
“How?” Remus asks incredulously when the professor has moved out of earshot
“He never even reads past the introduction. I don’t think he can even see” Sirius pushes his notebook over to Remus, who realises there’s only ripped out notes from earlier classes past the first paragraph.
‘Fucking fourthies’ Remus hears one of the older kids scream and runs alongside James and Sirius. He feels out of place. He stays out of this, usually. Sirius and James’ are known by everyone as the kids who fuck around and mess things up and who you don’t want to be on the bad side of.
‘They’ll suspect us,’ James had said in convincing Remus to help. ‘They won’t suspect you.’
They convince him to throw a firecracker under the table where the sixth formers are eating lunch. He lights it with hands shaking with nerves and a brain saying don’t do it don’t do it don’t- but he does it and it goes off so loud he jumps even though he was prepared and he’s running before he knows what he’s doing. He runs to where James and Sirius are waiting and he keeps running. They catch up to him and they’re laughing and laughing and they get to the edge of the school and they’re still laughing and they can’t stop.
Remus feels good. He feels at home, even with shaking hands and a racing heart, like he was born to be forced out of his comfort zone by James Potter and Sirius Black. He thinks that maybe he can get along with people the way he sees everyone else do.
‘What do you have next period?’ James asks when they stop to catch their breaths.
‘Religion.’ Remus replies. He knows where this is going.
‘That’s not a real class.’ James says. ‘Come with us into town.’
Remus heart is still racing and his hands are still shaking slightly. He knows he should turn around and go to class, but Sirius tugs on his sleeve and says ‘Come on, Remus.’ and Sirius Black is the type of person you don’t really know how to say no to, and in that moment with adrenaline still running through his veins he doesn’t think he could stand an hour of Professor Slughorn and his anti-Semitic teaching of the Bible.
They sneak through to the back of the school and over the low fence that divides the campus from the woods behind, lest a teacher notice them leave through the front.
Remus plays with the already fraying cuff of his Blazer and looks behind them with every sound until Sirius says ‘we’re not going to be killed if we get found out, you know.’
Going into town turns out to mean following James and Sirius along a dirt path through the woods and sitting down against a log in the first clearing they come to.
Sirius pulls a joint out of his school blazer pocket and Remus thinks of course and wonders whether he should have just gone to religion.
He watches as Sirius holds it to his lips and breathes in as he lights it. He breathes out and Remus thinks it looks kind of magical, with Sirius and his too long hair and high cheekbones framed by the tendrils of smoke escaping from his mouth, surrounded by all the trees in the late autumn light.
He only realises he’s been staring when Sirius holds out the joint to him. ‘You want a drag?’
His mind is saying no but he reaches out and takes it between long fingers.
The smoke burns as it hits the back of his throat. He tries not to cough but fails, and his eyes water.
James laughs and takes the joint from his hand.
‘You’re allowed to cough, you know.’ Sirius says. Remus does.
He looks down at the ground and his brown hair falls in his eyes and he coughs again when he feels Sirius’ fingers brush it away.
By the time they stand up to head back to school Remus’ hands are no longer shanking and he’s laughing too hard at something James said about their headmaster to worry about getting caught sneaking back in.
The first time Sirius comes to his window in the middle of the night he’s sixteen and trying to get enough sleep before his history test the next day, but only managing to stare at the ceiling above his bed.
He hears three stones hit his window before he realises someone must be throwing them.
He’s expecting his mum to have locked herself out. He’s not expecting Sirius with his long hair and a handful of stones standing below his window grinning up at him.
‘Sirius, what-‘
‘Get dressed. We’re going exploring.’ Remus looks at him in surprise and thinks there is no way he is getting me out there but he puts on his jeans and laces up his shoes carefully. He closes his window and draws the curtains and makes his way down the stairs past his mum’s room to the front. He figures she’s asleep and he’s not melodramatic like he knows Sirius is and he’s not going to climb through a window for no reason even though he knows Sirius would love it.
He’s waiting in front of the door when Remus opens it. He’s swaying slightly and in the dim light Remus can tell his eyes are red rimmed and watery.
‘Sirius,’ Remus grabs his shoulder to make him pay attention ‘are you drunk?’
The only reply he gets is Sirius laughing and grabbing his wrist ‘Let’s go’
Remus rolls his eyes and lets himself be dragged through his tiny front garden, past all the different coloured flowers and plants his mum has managed to plant in the small amount of ground, and then down the steep road leading away from his house. He knows better than to ask where they’re going.
Sirius Black is a force unto himself, Remus thinks.
From the hill that Remus lives on they can almost see the whole town, where he has spent his entire life. It’s small enough to be boring and filled with boring people, but big enough to be able to avoid most of them. They can see the school over the far-end of town, and if he squints, Remus can just make out the outline of Sirius’ family estate.
They walk too long to actually be going anywhere and Remus suspects Sirius just wants to get away from his house and family. He’s only been to Sirius’ house once, but the austere halls reeked of old money and the high ceilings made everything colder than it needed to be.
He watches the way the moonlight reflects off Sirius’ dark hair. He looks at him in the way he knows he shouldn’t look at boys, the way he thinks James looks at Lily and Peter looks at anyone who takes an interest. He looks at him the way he thinks he should look at girls, but Sirius is smiling in that way that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle and right then Remus could care less about what he should do.
Sirius turns to face him and Remus thinks maybe he could kiss him. He imagines how his lips would feel against his own chapped ones.
Then he imagines how Sirius would look at him. How he would probably pull away quickly and make some excuse for needing to leave.
Embarrassment burns deep in his stomach and flushes through his cheeks and he wonders how could he even consider that?
They walk around for hours until Remus can’t stop yawning and he’s sure both of their feet are aching and Sirius walks with him back to his house. He climbs up his mother’s trellis and in through his window because he didn’t bring a key, and he knows Sirius is laughing at him from the street.
He turns around once he’s in his room and says ‘go get some sleep Sirius.’
‘Of course.’ He says with his long hair and high cheekbones and Remus doesn’t sigh like a thirteen year old girl, he doesn’t.
Remus manages three hours of sleep before he has to get to school. He’s tired and can’t stop yawning but Sirius turns up halfway through maths and he knows from the purple bags under his eyes and the mud on the cuff of his trousers that he hasn’t been home since he left him on the street underneath his bedroom window.
Sirius turns up regularly in the night after that. There’s rarely a month that passes when Remus doesn’t wake up to the clink of stones against his windowpane and Sirius looking up at him from the road.
The second time Sirius gets suspended, they’re sixteen and he won’t tell anyone why. In the week he’s off campus, Remus asks him what happened a total of three times and if he’s okay a total of 34. James asks him what happened 72 times. 78 if they include the times he asked Sirius while he was sleeping. They don’t though.
As much as Remus wants to know what’s going on, he spends most of the week making sure James knows that Sirius doesn’t have to share what he’s not comfortable with, and just because he’s sleeping on his floor doesn’t mean he has to tell him everything. He gets through to him eventually.
And as much as Remus respects Sirius’ privacy, it doesn’t really count as invasive if he spends lunch with James and Peter trying to figure out what happened, does it?
He tries not to think the moral implications of investigating your friend.
By the third day of Sirius’ suspension, James has a list of dot-points at the back of his Latin notes of Things we know about why Sirius was suspended and why he isn’t telling us by James, Peter and not Remus because he wouldn’t let me put his name on here. Sometimes Remus wonders why he’s still friends with them.
They give up on the list by the fourth day, not being able to figure anything out past That fifth year who doesn’t shower has a black eye but that’s okay because he’s a dick and Frank Longbottom says he saw the whole thing after school on Friday and that Sirius just punched him out of nowhere, which seems pretty unlike Sirius and also Frank says a lot of shit.
Sirius returns on the Tuesday of the following week and doesn’t mention anything about the suspension past how boring it was waiting in James’ bedroom for him to get back from school every day.
Remus’ phone goes off in the middle of chemistry.
(From: Sirius 11:49am) James says we can’t go to his house tonight anymore. His mum figured out what happened to her vase.
Remus smiles and rolls his eyes and shoves his phone back in his pocket. It buzzes again but he ignores it to try and focus on the different types of hydrocarbons written up on the board.
His phone keeps buzzing and he gives up on memorising the different types of acid-base reactions.
(From: Sirius 11:49am) Apparently she said ‘the next time one of your friends so much as sets foot in this house, I swear to god James, you’ll be out on the street. Remus imagines if Sirius were saying that instead of texting he would be putting on an unnaturally high voice and have his hand on his waist and his hips cocked in that way he does whenever he tries to appear feminine.
(From: Sirius 11:50m) She’ll be over it by tomorrow though, I bet. Remus agrees. She’s the nicest woman he’s ever met even if she is incredibly quick to anger.
(To: Sirius 11:53) I don’t think Mrs Potter is physically capable of holding a grudge
(From: Sirius 11:54) Anyway
(From: Sirius 11:54) We need somewhere to go tonight and we can’t go to Peters because of his grandparents and we can’t go to mine. Remus doesn’t need to ask why they can’t go to Sirius’ house.
(From: Sirius 11:54) Can we go to yours?
Remus thinks he should say no. The shit they get up to in James house is nothing he wants brought near his mother.
(To: Sirius 11:54) Sure.
They turn up at Remus’ front door that night. James is laughing and stumbles when he walks in and Remus thinks he should have told them they need to behave in front of his mum.
They sit on his bedroom floor and pass around the bottle James brought and Remus is terrified his mum is going to walk in even though he knows she rarely comes up to his room.
He takes the bottle when it’s passed to him. It’s some sort of strong spirit that tastes awful and burns at the back of his throat.
They pass the bottle and they drink and they drink until the world goes out of focus. Peter passes out on the floor and James falls over trying to help Sirius haul him into Remus’ bed.
James falls asleep on the floor and any sense of responsibility Remus had has left him. Neither he nor Sirius make an effort to move him to the bed, but they care enough to cover him with a blanket.
Sirius talks too much, and Remus can’t really keep up, but then suddenly he’s asking “you wanna know why I punched Severus?” and Remus is momentarily taken aback, but he nods and wonders whether he knew everyone knew it was him that gave Snape the black eye, or was just too drunk to notice the slip.
“He was talking about you. He said- he called you a fag.” Sirius says in a rush. “He fucking came up to me and, I don’t know, is that how he thinks he’s going to make friends? By talking shit about my actual friends? By putting you down?
“He said ‘you know, you should watch out for Remus. I heard he was a fag. You wouldn’t want him to-’ and then my fist was in his face before I knew what was going on and, and- fucking hell.” Sirius lifts the nearly empty bottle they had been sharing to his lips. Remus watches him in stunned silence.
“I mean,” he continues “not that there’s anything wrong with that. It was just the way he fucking said it, you know?”
Remus nods and Sirius looks at the floor. They sit in silence until Sirius starts talking about the girls from the school down the road and how about Marlene Mackinnon’s legs in that skirt of hers, Remus? and Remus just stares at the posters on his bedroom walls and he thinks he kisses Sirius to make him shut up, but he’s not sure.
He’s sick at some point after that. Maybe right after that. He stands on legs that aren’t sure how to keep him up before emptying his stomach into the upstairs bathroom toilet. There’s nothing much in his system but the alcohol and it burns at the back of his throat and nose as it comes up. He regrets ever having picked up the bottle, but then Sirius is kneeling behind him. He holds his hair away from his face and strokes his back and asks if he’s alright, and he thinks maybe it was worth it.
Remus wonders how he can seem so pulled together after having so much of what he thinks might have been whisky.
He wakes up the next morning pressed up to Peter’s side in the bed. His head hurts and his mouth is dry and the world still isn’t entirely in focus. He gets up to find water and realises there’s vomit on his shirt and James and Sirius are curled up on his floor.