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I.
The Black family was not one for affection. Sirius got anything he asked for — money was no object, of course, because they were Blacks — but he never asked for affection and he never received it. He hugged his brother occasionally, but somewhere around age ten Regulus had decided he was too old for that. He'd seen James hug his parents when they met him on the platform — he wasn't even embarrassed about it, even let his mum kiss him on the cheek — and it was like watching a completely different species. The closest Sirius had ever got to a hug from his parents was a hand on the shoulder, and that was more for emphasis than anything like comfort.
Blacks did not do something so common as say "I love you". He supposed his parents would have at some point — but then again, their marriage had been arranged, so perhaps neither of them had ever said it.
"No respectable Black would ever be seen with filthy blood traitors and halfbloods," his mother had spat at him when he tried to tell her a story involving James and Remus and Peter. "Regulus and your cousins are keeping the Black name respectable, no matter how much you're determined to drag it through the mud."
Sirius Black sat in his room, his mother's words echoing in his head, and traced the words on his wrist.
I love you.
If nothing else, he knew two things: that one day, someone would love him, and that day would be the end of it.
II.
Moony, why do you think it's looping like that?
Remus's words had never made sense to him. At first he didn't understand any of it — why was he called Moony? What could be looping? It didn't sound dangerous, so how would such an innocuous question be the last thing his soulmate said to him?
(Sometimes last words were vicious, violent, poisonous things and all parties involved survived them, but never spoke again. At first, Remus had thought those people were lucky — but after Greyback, after his mother's death, the thought terrified him. He hoped with all his might that however it happened, he died first. He didn't want to be left alone.)
He was bitten and his confusion shifted: who would nickname him Moony? Did they know? How would they find out? Surely he wouldn't tell them. And why did they still want anything to do with him once they knew? Why would they make it an affectionate nickname? After his first transformation, he had been afraid that the words had disappeared: werewolves didn’t get soulmates, surely. He lasted a whole two hours before he looked under his wrist guard.
When James proclaimed they should have nicknames, and that first names were off-limits because Sirius was up shit creek in that scenario (“first person to call me ‘Siri’ gets a tragic and untimely obit in the Prophet”) and he had never felt like a "Jim" kind of bloke, Remus knew just before he said it. When Sirius seconded it, his lips curling into a slow grin as he addressed Remus by the name on his wrist for the first time, Remus found he wasn't even surprised. He was going to love one of these losers more than anyone.
He looked at his three best friends and grinned. They weren't going to leave him.
III.
The first time Remus tried to say the words, Sirius had one hand down his pants. He got as far as "I love—" before Sirius flinched and pushed him away.
"Don't," he said, looking far more serious than he should have been able to with his hair sticking up in every direction. Sirius saw Remus's expression travel through confusion and anger and land on hurt. He couldn't even move as Remus got up and left, refusing to even look at him for the rest of the day.
If he let Remus say it, it would be over. They'd never speak again. Sometimes, in the stories, soulmates lived years after they exchanged their last words — one of them had to go into hiding, or they were kept apart. Sirius knew that the words on his wrist meant death. One of them would die and he couldn't let it be Remus.
It was three days before he managed to pull Remus into a secret passage on the fourth floor. James was at practice and Peter had been held back by O'Donahue for poor wandwork. O'Donahue always seemed suspicious of the Marauders, so they'd thought it prudent not to hang around.
"Fuck off," Remus said, shaking off Sirius's grip of his robes and turning towards the entrance. He still hadn't looked him in the face — it had been three days.
"No, wait — I'm sorry." Maybe it was the desperation in Sirius's voice that made Remus pause. Maybe it was the way Sirius didn't make a grab for him. "I'm sorry about the other day, I—"
"It's fine," Remus interrupted, his voice wooden. "You can understand that I don't want to — we can still be friends, just give me a few days to get over it."
"No, Moony, it's — I do, but I can't — it's the words. You can't say the words. I love you, I loved you three days ago and I loved you a hell of a lot longer before that but you can't say them."
Remus turned around and Sirius saw his eyes flicker to Sirius's wrist. It was unspeakably rude to ask, and all but unheard of to show someone, but Sirius found himself fumbling with his wristguard, desperate to prove it. Some tiny voice in the back of his head reasoned that it wouldn't make a difference, that he hadn't said it so no matter what, this couldn't be an ending: if Remus was his soulmate, they would have to speak at least once more, and if he wasn't, this would never matter anyway. A much, much louder voice was terrified that this was his one and only chance at being loved and he was fucking it up.
Remus stopped him before he could get it off, putting his hand over the guard right where the words were etched into Sirius's skin. "Don't," he said, but then he leant in to kiss him, and Sirius almost cried with relief.
IV.
He had been in Azkaban for a month before he realised Remus wasn't his soulmate. Remus had said the words, had whispered, "I love you," into his skin and written it down and spoken it against his lips. Sirius had learnt not to flinch. Sometimes, he had been able to go several hours without worrying that it was the last time he would hear it.
The last time Remus had said it had been — what, six months ago? It felt impossible that he could forget the last time he said the words, but he had. The last words Remus had said to him were, "Your washing's done." They had been living in an odd limbo for a few months by that point and every exchange was stilted and formal.
How do you live with someone you can't stop loving even when they betray everyone? Or, as it turns out, how do you live with yourself when it turns out you were wrong?
Trying to search for anyone who had said, "I love you," as the last thing they said to Sirius only occupied him for a week, and even then it was because the Dementors kept forcing him to relive his arrival at Godric's Hollow over and over again. No one else had said it.
And so, for those twelve long years, Sirius clung to two truths: one day he would be loved, and on that day it would all end.
V.
It was a week and a half before Remus saw his tattoo and realised that everyone who called him 'Moony' was dead or in Azkaban. Who the hell was going to say his last words now?
VI.
Remus spent four days staring at the scrap of paper with a pawprint on it that had arrived by owl before he found the right spell. The words were exceptionally messy, as if the writer had not had the opportunity to make those kinds of fine-motor movements in, say, twelve years. Once they appeared, they moved around constantly, making it impossible to read until Remus said a second spell and they rearranged themselves in the correct order before becoming still. Thinking of becoming an ideal.
He should never have introduced Sirius to Muggle philosophy.
By the time Remus found Sirius in a cave near Ardgay, he had ruined his only pair of shoes and the incantation he had to use on the scrap of paper every time he wanted to check which direction he had to go in no longer felt like a real series of sounds. It was dusk, it had been a week since the full moon and the wind was against him, so he was taken by surprise when a large black dog almost bowled him over, tail wagging.
"Padfoot," Remus said, surprised that his voice was so scratchy and his throat burned. He hadn't been this emotional when they had been preparing to murder their school friend, so why now? He'd just look like an idiot.
The dog jumped up as if it were going to hug him like a person and licked his face before turning around and looking to make sure Remus was following him. The cave wasn't far away, but it was hidden by vegetation, so Remus doubted he would have found it on his own. Once they were safely inside, lit by magical flames contained in glass bottles and jars Sirius must have scavenged, Sirius transformed back into a human. He looked better already than he had the night of the full moon — it had only been a few days, so there wasn't much of a physical difference, but the gaunt, haunted look he had near the Dementors had receded somewhat.
"Moony," Sirius said, grinning at him. "Welcome to my temporary accomodations. I was thinking of going south — somewhere with real beaches and sunlight and warm weather, you know? I don't know the last time I felt warm." Remus imagined it was the same as the last time he himself had last felt warm: their last night in the common room in 1978. "I wanted to see you first, though. I—"
Remus looked past him at Buckbeak, who was preening in the back of the cave, to give him the illusion of privacy as his voice broke and he fell silent.
"It — I'm so sorry, Moony." His voice was thick and he was still clearly struggling with tears, but Remus looked him in the face anyway.
"You couldn't have known, none of us could — both of us were much more attractive candidates for the spy. You with your pedigree and me with my...pedigree. I don't even know how he got in contact with him."
Sirius nodded miserably and then seemed to make up his mind about something, closing the distance between them in a rush and hugging him as if he were drowning. Remus's arms came up to wrap around him more like a trained response than anything — James had despaired that Remus and Sirius both had had to be taught how to hug. Sirius had taken to it more naturally than Remus, constantly wanting to be touching someone, but even Remus had mastered the basics.
"Do you — do you still have a job?" Sirius asked, pulling back at last. If his eyes were slightly red, it was really none of Remus's business.
"No, Snape told everyone I was a werewolf over breakfast. I thought it best that I...take my leave before the owls started coming in."
Sirius swore and Remus was sure he was thinking of exactly what he would like to do to Snape if they ever met in a dark alley.
"What are you going to do now?"
Remus shrugged. "Go back to Yorkshire, I guess. I've got a cottage there."
"On a scale from derelict shack to impeccably maintained summer house in Cornwall with a housekeeper, how many cockroaches live there with you?"
Remus was silent. He didn't need to answer and both of them knew it.
"You could—"
"No," Remus said, cutting him off before he even suggested it. "It would be far too dangerous. I'd put you at risk."
"Putting me at risk? You're not the wanted criminal on the lam," Sirius said, scoffing.
"No, I'm worse."
Sirius made some aborted half-movement towards him before rubbing a hand over his face and sitting on the single chair in the cave. Remus could tell he had transfigured it because it looked exactly like the Potters' dining chairs: dark wood and a navy-blue cushion embroidered with a floral pattern. Sirius put his head in his hands, but when he realised Remus hadn't moved, he looked around and transfigured one of the empty jars into an identical copy. Remus wondered if he could recreate Mr and Mrs Potters' entire dining room set.
"I asked Harry to live with me, you know," Sirius said, looking at his hands once he'd sat down again. "I thought — I thought my name would be cleared, and I'd — I don't know, I could buy a place somewhere in the middle of nowhere so we could play Quidditch, and — you could live there too, if you wanted. He looked so excited, Moony."
"Your name will be cleared one day," Remus said, trying to sound more certain than he felt. "Perhaps Dumbledore is working on it as we speak." He tried not to think about Sirius wanting them to live together again and what that meant, the implicit offer underneath it. It couldn't happen, it wasn't happening, so he couldn't let himself imagine it.
Sirius's look spoke volumes about his trust in Dumbledore.
"I guess you'll want to get back to your cockroach hell for dinner," Sirius said after a long, but not entirely uncomfortable silence. "I'll — I'll send you letters if I can." He ran his fingers through his hair, and it was almost like Remus remembered from school, when Sirius would mock James for doing it on purpose.
Remus didn't want to leave, but he didn't know what else to do: he couldn't help Sirius, and as long as Sirius was alone, he could live in relative safety as a dog. With a known werewolf as a companion, he would be done for. When Remus stood up, Sirius did too, the instinct for politeness too deeply instilled in him not to. Remus wasn't sure what to do with his arms. Or his — his anything, really. Should he hug him goodbye? The embrace in the Shrieking Shack had felt so right, but it had also been...out of time. The context hadn't mattered because Peter Pettigrew was alive and Sirius wasn't a murderer and everything he'd known was wrong. History had been suspended for that moment, but now it was back, weighing all the heavier for its absence.
He was standing entirely too close to Sirius. Really, he should move back — there was no sensible reason to be standing so close to him. If he took a step forward, he could —
"Goodbye, Padfoot. I l—"
Sirius's head shot up, and it was the most terrified Remus had seen him in thirteen years. "Don't."
This time, Remus wasn't game enough to kiss him, so left his oldest friend in a cave near Ardgay and waited until he was back in Yorkshire to cry.
VII.
When they were young the words came easily, almost without thought. Now, they were old (thirty-four, older than Sirius had ever expected to become), and his hands wouldn't stop shaking.
He didn't write Remus any letters, just in case the words counted in writing.
VIII.
"And he told you to — the Order." Remus's face was pale (had Sirius ever seen it otherwise?) and he sat down heavily as he realised what Dumbledore was planning to do. It was more of a shock than Voldemort’s return — that, at least, had felt like the other shoe dropping after fifteen years. There would always be a Voldemort, but Remus had clearly been hoping he wouldn’t be around to see it.
"That's what I thought too. I can find those hideous orange trousers and it'll be 1979 again — Voldemort's alive, the Order is meeting, I'm a criminal, everything's going to shit. At least in 1979 I knew where the alcohol was." They still had to contact Figg and Mundungus and make a list of who else should be notified, but Sirius felt simultaneously like he would vibrate out of his skin and like his limbs were made of lead. Good alcohol was difficult to get hold of when you were a dog, so he hadn't drunk much since 1981, but he had to try something.
"Top cupboard in the corner near the sink," Remus said, attempting to laugh but only managing something that sounded more like a sigh. "Get me a glass too? Cupboard in the other corner."
As he passed, Sirius looked in the pantry — as he expected, there was almost nothing there: a packet of pasta, some tinned beans, crisps and for no apparent reason, a tin of pineapple. He made a note to duck out later and get Remus enough food to eat.
The bottle of gin (as cheap and nasty as the rest of the shabby kitchen) was mostly full, but Sirius couldn't tell how old it was, so that didn't tell him anything. He looked half-heartedly in the fridge for something to mix it with, but there was nothing. Trust Remus Lupin to drink hideously cheap gin neat. He shrugged and levitated two glasses to the table, bringing the gin himself.
"To really complete the seventy-nine vibe, I need to be smashed and you need to be convincing yourself you can shag girls, right?" Sirius's hand was not as steady as he intended as he poured the gin, but there was no point in putting it back. They'd be sozzled by the end of the night anyway.
"Never quite did convince myself of that one," Remus said, wincing a little as he swallowed. Even Sirius coughed at his first taste — the bottle of methylated spirits under the sink might have been more pleasant to drink.
"I'm sure I wouldn't have said it back then, but God, I'd take that over this. Back then I had three whole friends."
Remus's laugh sounded more like a sob, this time.
"Remember James's twentieth? Lily was so sick of being pregnant and James—"
"With the cat?"
"Yes! I had forgotten the cat!"
If you drank enough of it quickly, you could almost ignore that it tasted more like turpentine than gin, Sirius discovered. It was terrifyingly easy to slip back into 1979: they were all going to die tomorrow, so what was the point of anything?
The absolutely foul taste didn't stop Sirius or Remus getting pretty well plastered in short order.
"This gin is awful. It's like you picked it to make drinking as unenjoyable as possible." Sirius found his words were slurring but also that he didn't care.
"Obviously." Remus's reply was deadly serious, and Sirius began to giggle before the laughter just overtook his body completely and he ended up with tears running down his face. Moony comparative shopping at an off-licence, frowning as he tried to decide which bottle of gin would be more like drinking surgical spirits, was impossibly funny to him.
They would contact the rest of the Order tomorrow. They had earned tonight.
IX.
The radio was on in the background while they were cooking dinner — "cooking" was probably a generous word for "boiling pasta and then emptying a jar of tomato sauce on top", but it involved a stove, so that counted as cooking, right? Dumbledore had suggested the old Black house as Order headquarters at the last meeting, as if he could just offer up Sirius's property, and Sirius knew he would have to move back to his childhood home in the next week or two. The thought created a sour pit in his stomach, and through unspoken agreement, he and Remus hadn't talked about that inevitability. Outside of Order meetings, they had both been hesitant to discuss anything of consequence.
The radio made Sirius feel like he wasn't totally adrift, cut off from the wizarding world. It wasn't much, but the pips on the hour and the news bulletins gave him something to cling to. He had no idea what radio programme was playing the weirdly eclectic selection of music, but when the opening strains of Karkarov's Schwarzwald Waltz came on, he pulled Remus away from the stove to demonstrate the dance he'd been forced to learn so he could "conduct himself respectfully and with dignity at proper functions while maintaining the Black family name", something he had never done.
It began with exaggerated, comical movements but at some point Sirius forgot to continue the dance and they were just standing flush against each other, Sirius's arm around Remus's waist and Remus's chin hooked over Sirius's shoulder. They were still absent-mindedly shuffling around the room, rotating slowly, when there was a hiss as the pasta boiled over. Remus broke away to attempt a salvage operation and Sirius shivered, suddenly feeling cold despite the warm July evening.
Remus's face was flushed as he cleaned up the mess and stirred in the sauce, carefully not looking at Sirius. Sirius knew he had crossed a line that had descended like a guillotine after the Shrieking Shack, but as he opened the bottle of wine and Remus brought over the pasta, he couldn't remember whose line it was. Whose heart were they trying to save?
They ate in tense silence interrupted only by the radio playing the opening strains of The Ollertons, an impressively dull soap opera that was probably older than Gringott's, in Sirius's estimation. From what Sirius could gather, Luvenia was having a terrible doxy infestation in the spare room while Alberich was having trouble securing permits from the Ministry for their plans to begin breeding Kneazles. He didn't understand how the programme was still running after so many years, but there were probably whole groups dedicated to discussing whether or not Kennard had recovered from dragonpox and what that meant for his relationship with Bernadette.
Sirius hated that he had managed to pick up so many details over such a short time. He really, really wanted to be able to leave the house.
Perhaps in an attempt to drown out the continuity announcer on the radio asking hypothetical questions about Dodie and Chester's collection of rare Diricawl etchings, Remus began recounting the research he had been doing into blood magic, staring determinedly at his pasta. Sirius took it as the peace offering it was meant as, and didn't comment on how Remus flinched when their hands brushed as Sirius handed him a quill so he could make note of Sirius's suggestions for further research.
Food eaten and plates in the sink, they retreated to the sofa as the radio played a documentary on the history of cauldron decoration trends in the British Isles. Neither of them had any interest in it, but it was a convenient excuse for their silence. Sirius stared at the empty grate and wished they had a fire lit, just for something to look at.
Remus brought the bottle of wine over and refilled their glasses. Sirius made a small noise of thanks, glad that he had convinced Remus to buy something half decent instead of the plonk Remus probably thought of as acceptable, given his taste in gin. (It helped that Sirius had paid for it, insisting it wasn't charity because he would be drinking half the bottle and they were both too old for Buckfast.)
He was content to sit and drink wine, closing his eyes as the crushing exhaustion of knowing Voldemort was back and he couldn't do anything about it weighed on him. Dancing with Remus had been nice — he had been warm and soft and he still smelled familiar, the same as he had for as long as Sirius had known him. He wished he could touch Remus more often, but it had got weird when the pasta boiled over — and Sirius was sensible enough, even through the soft haze of wine, to prefer the preservation of his friendship with Remus to satisfying his desire for physical contact.
There was a soft clink and Sirius opened his eyes to see Remus pouring the last of the bottle into his glass before putting his own glass down on the coffee table and reaching over the back of the sofa to put the empty bottle somewhere they wouldn't knock it with their feet. As he settled back after picking up his glass of wine, Remus left his arm resting on the back of the sofa, just barely touching Sirius's shoulders.
The radio, which had seconds before been droning on about the influence of French fashion on British cauldrons of the late eighteenth century, seemed to fade out as Sirius's world reduced to the sensation of Remus's body heat leaching through his shirt. Surely he was doing this on purpose — but Sirius didn't dare look at him; if he did, the spell would be broken and Remus would move away.
He tried to focus instead on counting the flowers on the hideous wallpaper that covered Remus's cottage. There were no damp stains in the main room, at least, and it was only peeling at one corner. Remus said something — Sirius caught the words 'pre-Norman' and 'brass', and instinctively turned to look at him.
He had forgotten that he was very deliberately Not Looking At Remus, but remembered extremely suddenly because now he was looking at Remus, who was looking right back at him. Remus looked happy and peaceful, and tired in a way that he knew went deeper than the wine. Sirius hadn't yet allowed himself to look closely at Remus's face, but this close he could see all the lines that fourteen years of poverty and illness had etched into his skin.
It would have been so easy to look away, to focus on the wallpaper again, on the wineglass in his hands, on the radio, on anything except the arm over his shoulders and the man looking at him with a feeling that threatened to overwhelm.
Sirius didn’t look away, and when Remus kissed him he used his wineglass-free hand to cup his face. He felt, for the first time in fourteen years, that he had come home.
X.
"This wasn't my fault, I swear," Sirius said as Remus admired the Bundimun infestation in the dining room at Grimmauld Place.
"I know," Remus said, crouching to get a better look under the table. "An infestation of this size means they got started before your mother died."
Remus concentrated on scouring charms so he wouldn't have to see Sirius hunched in on himself, his face held carefully blank. He had watched as Sirius shrank in on himself the longer he was at Grimmauld Place — he had never been the same as before Azkaban, of course, but in Yorkshire he had been something a little bit like it. A combination of the horrid old house and the fact that Remus was away more often than not these days, trying to re-establish contact with werewolf groups, meant that Remus fancied he could see Sirius becoming more wooden — more like the boy he'd been all those years ago when James had sent him an urgent owl saying he had to come to his place immediately, and Remus had found a shell of Sirius Black with only the possessions he'd managed to grab before he was thrown out.
It hadn't lasted all that long, back then, but Remus was under no illusion that he could be half as good as the Potters — even if he meant as much to Sirius as James had, it was really James's parents who had coaxed him back into laughing and taking up space.
He could kiss Sirius, shag Sirius, reminisce with Sirius about things they were the only surviving people to remember — but he was powerless to help him as the walls of Grimmauld Place pressed in on him.
In the months since they'd kissed in Yorkshire, neither of them had said I love you. Remus thought the phrase crossed Sirius's mind sometimes, but he never voiced it — just kissed him harder. There were many ways Sirius told Remus he loved him, anyway: every time he made tea just as Remus liked it, or gave him a book he thought Remus would like, or insisted they drink decent wine instead of "that nail polish remover you buy". The wicked grin he wore when he scraped his teeth over the pulse point on Remus’s neck; the way he interrupted Molly every time she got it in her head that Remus should go on a date with a nice girl she knew; the gentleness with which he applied ointment to Remus’s gashes in the aftermath of the full moon, murmuring his apologies for how much it stung all the while.
Remus knew that Sirius wasn't saying it because if he said it, it would implicitly be giving Remus permission to say it. And with their deaths hurtling towards them at an alarming pace — far more alarming now than it had been even six months ago — Sirius couldn't allow that.
Remus also knew that sometimes, Sirius didn't love him. Having never said it meant those moments of absence were less noticeable, perhaps, but in those moments Sirius would refuse to touch him or look at him and Remus knew. It was when he volunteered to be useful in Order meetings, doing what Sirius couldn't (namely, leave the house). It was when Kreacher reminded him that he was the Black heir. It was when he had been left alone with Walburga's portrait for too long.
Remus had always known how to read the absence of things, the figure-ground reversal that spoke in silences.
XI.
“One of these days, Molly is going to murder you,” Remus said as he sat on the bed to take off his shoes. “I assume I was not the only one to notice she was staring daggers at you all through that meeting.”
“I didn’t even say anything! I mean, barely anything. Besides, I’m doing her a favour.” Sirius was trying to look innocent, but he couldn’t keep the grin off his face long enough for it to work. Remus hadn’t seen him this happy in — in fifteen years, not since baby Harry had given him a sticky kiss on the cheek when James asked him to. Baby Harry, like School Boy Harry, had liked Sirius more than Remus — Sirius had a way with Harry that had him giggling instantly, often involving throwing him in the air. Remus couldn’t even relax while holding Harry, he was so terrified of hurting him.
Remus didn’t mind, of course. Sirius was Harry’s godfather; it was good and right that he played second fiddle.
As Remus laid his shirt on the back of the chair, Sirius came up behind him to kiss his neck and wrapped his arms around his waist as he said, “Aren’t you proud? We’ve raised him well.”
“Raised him? He met us both properly for the first time when he was thirteen.”
Sirius stilled for a moment and then pulled away. Remus closed his eyes. Why couldn’t he just...let Sirius have nice things? Let Sirius have the joke? Let Sirius have the godson he always wanted?
“I am proud of him,” Remus said, opening his eyes and turning to face Sirius. “He could learn Defence with Ron and Hermione, but he’s choosing to put himself at risk to help other students. He needs to learn to take refuge in audacity, though. The Hog’s Head, honestly.”
“Prongs wouldn’t have been caught dead doing something shady in the Hog’s Head,” Sirius said, shaking his head, and Remus smiled as he took off his trousers.
“He doesn’t have the flair for trouble-making, that sense of ambition. Which is for the best, honestly — can you imagine how many more disasters he’d get himself into if he did?” Remus paused for a moment. “Although, he does have the map. So really he has no excuses.”
“See? Ambition. Imagine if one of his best friends had been a werewolf, he might do something stupid like become an unregistered Animagus.”
Remus chose not to dignify that with a response, and instead got into bed.
Sirius got into bed next to him and just as Remus was about to fall asleep, curled up next to the man he loved, Sirius said, “Prongs would be so proud of him for this secret society, though. I’m so glad he’s someone Prongs would be proud of, even though — even though I didn’t get to raise him.”
“He would,” Remus said, whispering as if there were anyone else on this floor to hear them. “Harry’s a good man and so are you. A good godfather. I—” He caught himself this time, swallowed the words before he could see Sirius’s face. “You’re a good man, Sirius Black.”
XII.
Sirius had been alone at Grimmauld Place for eight days. In that time, he had consumed nine bottles of wine and the lion’s share of a bottle of whiskey, which he was currently holding. He was, once again, utterly useless, a dog sitting forlornly by the door while its master was off to war.
Remus was off doing something with a pack of werewolves over in Wales, everyone else was at their respectable Ministry or Hogwarts jobs and somehow still no one had figured out how to negate the curse that banned Sirius from the Black family library since that incident with the entire bottle of Bulbadox juice when he was fifteen, so no researching for him. Not even turning into a dog helped — for some reason, the curse also banned animals, though the Black family had never owned a pet. Perhaps it was a standard feature of library protection spells?
Kreacher had been completely unobtrusive for days — Sirius hadn’t even seen him — and that made Sirius even angrier than seeing him pretend to toady to him did. Who knew what he was up to — making a shrine to his dear old mother, probably.
The worst part, Sirius thought as he took another swig of whiskey from the bottle, was that the drinking didn’t even help. He still felt restless, and worse, reckless. Intrusive thoughts kept nagging him like, “But you can’t possibly die, your words haven’t been said yet,” even though he knew that wasn’t how it worked.
In the stories, it always worked out like a Greek tragedy: someone who tried to run away from their words only ran towards them. They’d be said by a perfect stranger a moment before their death, or their soulmate would unexpectedly be in contact, or it would turn out the person hadn’t even heard the words, but they’d been said within earshot and with intention, so that counted enough for the universe’s liking.
There was no cheating death, but Sirius itched to try it anyway.
XIII.
Snape arrived just as everyone was sitting down to a late dinner.
"Potter thinks you are being held by the Dark Lord at the Department of Mysteries and has gone to rescue you," he said, and Sirius completely forgot about the perfectly-proportioned forkful of bangers, mash and beans he had carefully curated that was halfway to his mouth. This was the second time he'd had to see Snape today, and once was too many.
"He — what?"
"The Dark Lord has evidently given him a vision that you are being held at the Department of Mysteries. He disappeared into the Forbidden Forest with Granger and Umbridge but he hasn't returned. I suspect he has managed to escape Umbridge's clutches and has somehow gone off to play the hero."
Shacklebolt and Moody were already engaged in a heated discussion about — about something Ministry-related, Sirius couldn't concentrate on anything but the dawning horror before him. "Wait, so three hours ago when you wanted to know that I was safe here, that was you...checking that I wasn't at the Department of Mysteries? And you didn't think you should tell me that Harry apparently thought I was there?"
"It wasn't relevant at the time." Sirius's hand was halfway to his wand when Remus put a hand on his arm. He'd have time to hex Snivellus into next week later. Raising an eyebrow as he saw the gesture, Snape continued, "He was being held by Umbridge, so I thought he would be forced to remain on the grounds. As I said, he has not returned from the Forbidden Forest, and given..." He paused, pursing his lips. "...previous incidents, I think he may be in London."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Sirius bristled as everyone in the room looked at him as if he had two heads.
"Someone needs to remain behind to inform Dumbledore of the situation," Snape said. Dumbledore was meant to arrive in twenty-five minutes. Anything could happen in twenty-five minutes. Harry could be dead in twenty-five minutes. Harry could be dead now! "I think, given the fact that you are very much a wanted man, it would be best if you filled that role, Black."
"I know you think of me as about as useful as a house elf, Snape, but I actually have one of them, so you can't make me stay behind just so you can mock me later. Kreacher!"
Sirius felt like he had won some small victory as he gave Kreacher instructions that he was confident the House Elf couldn't weasel his way out of. Remus was looking at him, worried, but he ignored it. He couldn't just wait around like some bloody war widow, he needed to do something.
"How certain are you that Potter is at the Ministry, Severus?" Shacklebolt asked. This was wasting time, Harry could be in trouble!
"I think I should search the Forbidden Forest, as that was where he was last seen, but I imagine he will have gone to London if he can. Of course, if I do find him in the Forest I'll send you a message to let you know."
Snivellus wasn't even going with them. Sirius couldn't believe it. He had given him so much shit for staying safely at home and then had the gall to bow out. No matter how many rumours were true about the Forbidden Forest — and Sirius knew at least three of them were — nothing that lived there could be as dangerous as a trap set by Voldemort. Snape was a coward and when this was all over, he would — he would do something. He'd finally get one up on the slimy git.
"So, if Potter thinks you're being held at the Department of Mysteries, presumably Voldemort will have lured him to the Hall of Prophecy?" Moody asked Sirius. "The Department of Mysteries is not a place you want to get lost. It's unspeakable for a reason."
"I don't know! He hasn't told me anything, I've barely — if he just used the bloody mirror, but he never has."
"Right, well I don't think there's any value in splitting up. Best to stick together."
XIV.
The Ministry atrium was silent and the lift that took them down a floor to Level Nine felt agonisingly slow. Once they were in the Entrance Chamber they could hear crashes and shouts — clearly something was happening, though it wasn't clear where, because the doors kept spinning. Several of them had glowing red crosses on them, and they opened doors to see which room the noises were coming from, but the sound seemed like it was coming from all of them, although they couldn't see anyone. The Department of Mysteries was not big on the laws of physics.
Sirius had just opened the door to a room that seemed to feature a cabinet full of — were they timeturners smashing and then repairing themselves in an endless loop? He was mesmerised for a moment, calling, "Moony, why do you think it's looping like that?" before Kingsley opened another door and called out, "They're in here!"
"They're time turners," Remus said in a strange tone of voice. When Sirius turned around, Remus was looking at him, stricken and his face drained of blood. There was nothing in the room worth that reaction, Sirius thought, unless Remus knew more about that shattering cabinet than he did. When Kingsley shouted a spell, Remus seemed to remember that time was of the essence and grabbed his shoulder. "I love you."
The bottom dropped out of Sirius's stomach.
Remus had said those words before — he had said them before and nothing bad had happened, no one had died. As there was a scream from the next room, Sirius followed Remus and ran, unable to shake the way Remus had been white as a sheet.
Well, if one of them had to die, Sirius would just have to make sure it wasn't Remus. Only one of them had to die, after all — so Sirius would go out swinging.
Ron, Ginny, Luna and — was Hermione dead? Surely not — she was such a bright thing, surely she would be fine. Kingsley had just managed to get a strange tentacled brain-like thing off Ron as Sirius and Remus came in, leaving angry welts on his arms. Despite what looked like enormously painful injuries, Ron grinned at them, eyes unfocused.
"They're in there — Harry and Neville, they've got the prophecy," Ginny said, pointing at the door opposite the one they had entered.
Sirius was running for the door before he had even looked around. He had his first hex off — was that Dolohov? — before Remus made it through the door behind him. He felt detached from the situation somehow, as if he were looking down on someone else living it, knowing that by the end of this, someone would be dead. Blood rushed in his ears.
Harry, at least, was safe from what he could see. The Order seemed to be winning — some of the Death Eaters were apparently already injured, though from what Sirius couldn't tell. They were winning! He laughed as he dueled Bellatrix, doing something useful and good for the first time that year. "Come on, you can do better than that!"
It wasn't that he wanted to die. He certainly would have preferred to take Bellatrix with him. But as the spell struck him in the chest and he fell backwards, he felt again that dissociation, the feeling that it wasn’t him who slipped through the veil and into darkness. At least Remus was alive. At least Harry was safe.
And Sirius Black died, knowing two things: he was loved, and it was over.