Work Text:
People didn’t peg Remus as the sort of man to be interested in thrills. They saw the worn-in leather of his shoes and his heavy-knit sweaters and concluded that they would be impractical for anything more strenuous than a walk around town, which was true. Remus wasn’t interested in banal adrenaline. He’d never been in a fist fight, or even a shouting match. Motorbikes were impractical and dangerous. Horror movies too brutish or unbelievable. But something called to him in the wet yellow glow of street lamps leading off down a silent road, or the closed off rooms of old manor houses during estate sales.
Since he was a child, the idea of hidden worlds had pulled at him, and while he’d given up on finding his own Phantom Tollbooth or wardrobe to Narnia long ago, he’d focused his efforts instead on enjoying what pockets of mystery and obscure pleasures he could. Owning a bookstore wasn’t the most lucrative profession, but when he could, Remus devoted spare funds to his delves into the unappreciated. He’d hiked through woods across three continents to find defunct amusement parks left to rust, forlorn in the rain; towns reclaimed by the wild, their crumbling walls covered in graffiti, then covered again in lush plant growth, smelling of rotting wood and over-fertile soil; memorials crafted in stone to honor forgotten royalty, or venerate old gods. On a layover in Paris one year, he’d taken a tour of the catacombs, and snuck a touch of one of the millions of stacked skulls, laid together in the dark. Wet and oddly soft under his finger, as though it had been slicked with some invisible, growing thing. He could still remember the feeling, and the stillness of the air. The way the sounds of the other tourists were dampened by the dozens of feet of dirt and stone overhead, shielding them from the city above.
But business hadn’t been good enough to allow Remus a vacation, lately. He’d already been forced to layoff his only part-time worker, who had been helping him with the shop’s more tedious chores. That night, it was nearly eight by the time Remus had finished closing the shop for the day, putting away misplaced books, sweeping the floors and dusting the shelves. His back and feet ached from a long day, but the leftover takeaway waiting for him upstairs wasn’t very inviting now, and the quieting thrum of London’s streets was, so Remus put on his coat and stepped outside, locking the store behind him.
The rush hour traffic had died down a while ago, but the usual anonymous crowd trickled past to underground stations or bus stops, all bundled up in winter clothes. Most of the shops he passed were closed, though many of the restaurants were full of life. Barely paying attention to his feet, Remus wound his way through his corner of the concrete labyrinth, looking up at the milky grey of the light-bleached sky as he eased into his usual walking rhythm, hoping he’d find something to catch his interest, but not expecting to. Taking a turn down a road he’d never explored before, he found himself in an unruly press of brick buildings with a residential look to them, most with darkened windows, all uninviting except for one. It was a semi-basement with an illuminated open sign, and a placard above the window: The Curiosium. Remus didn’t hesitate in following the thread of his interest down the half-dozen stairs.
The shop was cluttered but bristling with cleanliness. The worn wood floor needed a new coat of varnish, and the bare lightbulbs overhead immediately began wearing on his eyes, but what the atmosphere lacked was made up for by the contents of the shelves. One wall was filled with incense, intricately carved candles, and bags and bundles of carefully labeled herbs. Under glass at the front counter was an array of jewelry, a weird assortment of rings and bangles, necklaces and earrings that seemed too unplanned and too unfashionable to be new. There was a rack full of tarot cards, a few displays of crystals, and then, stretching into the back of the store, were shelves and shelves of poorly organized things. From where he stood, Remus could see porcelain dolls, small pieces of furniture, weathered books, and a few pegs with coats, scarves and hats occupying at least part of the back wall. Improbably tippy stacks of tea cups. A collection of statuettes. A taxidermied hybrid of a rabbit and a duck. Preoccupied with the store’s inventory, he failed to notice the young woman with long, dirty blonde hair who had just popped her head up from under the front desk.
“Hello,” She said in a distant voice, not blinking when Remus started at the unexpected sound, “Welcome to The Curiosium. Can I help you find anything?”
“Oh, no,” He said, smiling, “I’m just browsing right now.”
“Take your time,” The woman said, “Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. Thank you,” Remus said, before drifting down one of the aisles. His fingers brushed the handle of a letter opener inlaid with mother-of-pearl. ‘Once owned by Madam Chalfont’ the handwritten label proclaimed, ‘£20.’ Remus moved on. There was a tiny chair on the lowest shelf, only big enough for a toddler, with a faded upholstered seat and a solid wood back. In the weird shadows thrown by the bare lightbulbs, Remus had trouble making out the details of its carvings. He had a sudden, strong urge not to touch it at all, a sense that he didn’t really want to see what they were, but his own innate revulsion pushed him forward. He drew it into the light. Dozens of little figures, half-animal, half-human, were depicted frolicking in bushes and trees across the back of the chair. Nothing so horrible at all; silly little imps or goblins, but delicate as the artistry was, he still didn’t like the look of it. His fingers hovered over the dark wood before he replaced it deep in its nook. There was a glass oil lamp with a partially burned wick, full of pinkish oil that gave off a floral scent. ‘Lucky lamp’ read the label, ‘Burn to use. Do NOT replace or dilute oil! £35’. A very reasonable price if it was so very lucky, Remus thought, but he drifted on. His eyes danced over some of the gaudy old hats at the back of the store—felt, wool and fur, decorated with feathers or lace or fake jewels—before he moved up the next aisle.
He might have missed it. It wasn’t so large: propped against the side of a cubby and sharing space with a leather case of antique fountain pens. It was only because he looked back over his shoulder at the sound of a hat shifting that Remus saw it at all. Even with the oblong brass frame, it stood no more than a foot tall. Behind a window of convex glass was an oil portrait of a young man, no older than twenty-five. The style of the frame, the young man’s manner of dress, and the yellowing of the varnish beneath the glass all made it look Victorian, but it had to be a forgery. It had to be. Remus was an expert in books, not an art historian, but every Victorian portrait he’d seen portrayed nobles in a certain way: dreamily beautiful, with a soft blur over their faces and a look of placid calm, or perhaps a gentle smile in their eyes and on their lips. This subject was beautiful too, but not in the right way.
The man’s face was thrown into stark relief by some strong light source to one side, with only a faint backlight on the other. His nose was long, with a narrow, arched bridge. His eyebrows were sleek and thick, below a smooth brow. Black waves of hair tumbled riotously down to his shoulders, real enough that Remus was sure he could run his fingers through it. His jaw and cheekbones looked distinctly aristocratic, but they were too sharp, somehow, the shadows that defined them too dark. His clothes were right, but he was carelessly holding a stick of wood in his long fingers that looked nothing like a paintbrush or pen, but for all the world like a wand. His pose was all wrong, too. He was facing head-on, chin defiantly out. No Victorian portrait artist worth their salt would have painted him smirking like that, would they have? Plush lips tugged up into a sly, closed smile, long lashes half-shading his eyes, like he had a secret to keep all to himself. And those eyes! No matter what avant-garde painter had been employed to paint the man’s portrait, people simply didn’t have eyes like that. Stark silver, sharp and bright as surgical steel. Inhuman eyes. The textures were rendered with such accuracy, though. The silk of the man’s cravat gleamed richly. His velvet lapels dense and soft. Remus found himself peering closer at the painting, imagining vividly how those clever hands must have moved, the way those mercury eyes would catch the light if they were only real, was almost sure he saw one corner of the man’s mouth tug up a fraction further—
“You like him?” The airy voice by his shoulder made Remus nearly jump out of his skin, and he clutched a hand to his suddenly racing heart, “So do I. He’s funny, isn’t he?” Remus caught his breath, turning to look at the shopkeeper who had joined him so stealthily, and was paying no mind to the fact that she had nearly given him a heart attack.
“Who is he?” Remus asked when he had finally regained his breath.
“It’s either Sirius or Regulus Black,” The woman answered, tilting her head to study the portrait’s face, “I don’t know. I like to think it’s Sirius, though.”
“Who were they?”
“You’ve never heard of them?” The woman looked up at him, widening her eyes, and Remus realized with a fresh jolt that she had the same sort of eyes as the man in the portrait. Too pale, too bright. Silver as mist. Contacts, he told himself. Had to be contacts. “They were the last members of the Black Family. And some of the only ones who turned out good, at least in the end. Sirius was the older brother, and Regulus was the younger one. They both died in the last great war against dark magic in the 1890s.”
“Dark magic,” Remus echoed, brow furrowing. He didn’t mind a brief suspension of disbelief, but this exceeded his ability to entertain as reality. The shopkeeper either missed his skepticism entirely or chose to ignore it.
“I know,” The woman said, looking pensive, “It’s horrible, isn’t it? But they won the war, of course. And they were heroes. It’s sad, though, actually. People thought they were both evil when they died. The truth only got sorted out ages later.”
“What was the truth?” Remus asked, feeling certain that the woman was assuming he knew points he did not. Sure enough, those luminous eyes were back on him in a flash, eyebrows drawn together.
“Well, Regulus betrayed his master, of course. And Sirius was on the light side all along. He was only framed, you know. He wouldn’t have really done any of those horrible things they said he did.” She looked away, going back to examining the man in the portrait again, “I really think it’s Sirius. I don’t think Regulus would smile like that at someone painting his portrait, do you? And his wand is ebony,” She said, pointing to the slender length of wood the man held in his hand, “I think that suits Sirius much better than Regulus.”
“Does it?” Remus asked, staring bemused at the bit of the painting that the shopkeeper had just declared to be a wand. It’s what he had thought it looked like as well, but still…
“Ebony wands are best for transfiguration. And everyone knows that Sirius was an expert. And he was a revolutionary. Ebony wands don’t like conformity. I think Regulus probably would have something like hawthorn or cypress, maybe. Not ebony.”
“Oh.” It seemed far too late in the conversation for Remus to admit he didn’t have even a faint idea of what she was talking about and wasn’t sure he would have believed it anyway. At least, not logically. Then again—wasn’t the man in the painting holding that piece of wood as though he had carried it in his hand for years? There was an easy certainty to the curl of his fingers around it. And his expression, his eyes, with that sure, satisfied light in them. Hair tossed back, shoulders strong and back straight. Remus found himself standing closer than he had been a few moments earlier when the shopkeeper roused him by tapping him on the shoulder.
“You’re going to bump your head,” She said. Sure enough, the crown of his head was only an inch from the wood of the shelf. Taking a breath, Remus stepped back.
“Sorry, I’m… tired.”
“It’s him, isn’t it?” She said, nodding to the painting, “It’s not cursed, I promise. He’s quite gentle. I think he just likes the attention. He’s lonely. I’d put him at the front of the shop, so people would admire him more, but he’d get damaged by the light from the window.” She talked about the painting as though it had agency. As though it were a person itself. Probably just a marketing ploy, like the contacts and the intricate story, all designed to give an air of mystery to a playful modern stab at a Victorian portrait. And maybe the frame and the glass were antiques, sure. And maybe a yellowed glaze had been added to mimic varnish… But still, Remus felt himself being drawn into the story, if only because the painting itself had such a strange appeal to it.
“You keep saying he,” He said, tearing his eyes away, “Is he trapped in there?”
“Not all of him, not really,” The shopkeeper said, “He’s not a proper ghost. I’m sure most of him moved on. It’s only a little bit more than an ordinary portrait--” Remus was surprised by the admission, but the woman continued, “—but you can’t paint a proper portrait without putting a little of the person in there too.”
“How much is the painting?” Remus asked without meaning to.
“Three hundred pounds.”
Remus should have guessed as much. He really didn’t have that much money to spare, especially not on a knock-off Victorian oil portrait. “Oh, a little too rich for my blood,” Remus said, turning on his heel, “Well. It’s getting late. I should be getting back home.”
“Have a good evening,” The voice of the shopkeeper came floating after him.
Remus walked home, noticing men and women with thick shocks of glossy black hair. He ate dinner, ignoring his sudden awareness of the textures of fabrics, of how different linen, cotton and wool were from silk and velvet. He went to sleep, and dreamed of long, elegant fingers, and startling silver eyes. He woke with a sudden, horrible realization that someone, anyone, might buy the portrait of the strange, beautiful man, and he might never see it again.
Remus chased his gut instinct back to The Curiosium with a cardboard cup of coffee in one hand and his wallet in the other. The shopkeeper didn’t look surprised to see him, and only gave him a far-away smile as she rang up his purchase, wrapped the portrait carefully in old newspapers, and handed it to Remus in a heavy paper bag. So, this was his new experience, then. His new, unique pleasure to enjoy: the company of a lightly haunted portrait.
There was not a single place in the house where the painting looked right. The lower level, where the book shop was, wouldn’t work at all. Sunlight poured in from the broad glass windows, and Remus winced at the thought of explaining his impulse purchase to customers. Anyway, some jealous part of him felt that would cheapen the experience of viewing the portrait, somehow. As though no one else would properly appreciate the young man with his bright eyes. They might suggest it was a forgery, and as much as Remus agreed with them, he didn’t like the thought. His kitchen was too sunny. The bathroom was too humid, and a bad place to put a portrait, anyway. Which left only his bedroom. It wasn’t too great a sacrifice to close the curtains. Given that he was the only person minding the shop, it wasn’t as though Remus spent enough daylight hours in his room to miss the scant sunshine that came through his back window. He hung it on the wall above his Chinese Evergreen, where it looked too lush and too dark in a room which otherwise had a ‘minimalist bachelor’ aesthetic. Still, it was the only place for it, and it was a position which Remus could admire from his bed, which he did without incident after waking and before falling asleep for two weeks. The dreams of bright eyes vanished.
It was a Sunday morning when Remus woke up to the smell of tobacco smoke. Not cigarette smoke. There was no processed, chemical twang, no dark undertone of tar. It was a smoky, green smell that Remus only managed to identify because it reminded him of a note in one of his favorite scented candles. Thinking that he’d somehow gotten up in the middle of the night and lit it without waking up, Remus searched his flat for the candle, and finding it unlit in the main room, searched for the true source of the scent. It permeated the whole flat but was strongest in his bedroom. Remus pushed back the curtains to check the bedroom window, and, finding it closed and locked, opened it to breathe in the air of the London alley beyond. Asphalt and car exhaust, a bare hint of garbage and urine. He shut the window and locked it again. The vent was pumping in warm air from the furnace, but it had no scent. Remus sat down on the edge of his bed and took another breath of the scent of a sweet, expensive cigarillo. He looked across at the portrait. The portrait smiled back.
Two days later, he found his bottle of whiskey—nothing good, one step up from bottom shelf—sitting on the windowsill in the kitchen. Remus, midway through making eggs and toast, paused to stare at it. He hadn’t drunk in weeks. Was it possible it had been there all this time, and just escaped his notice? Yes, he decided, as he stashed it back in its cabinet again.
The following Saturday, Remus woke up, rumple-haired and aching after a long week of work, and lay in bed for fifteen long minutes, staring at the faint light of day visible through the curtains. He would have liked to stay in bed all day, leaving only to get a new book to read and make himself food and some tea, but there wasn’t much in terms of food in the house, and he had to open the book shop at noon. He’d have to go shopping before then. Since he’d skipped his shower on Friday, that meant he’d have to shower today. With a groan, he pushed himself up off the mattress and walked into the bathroom. He flicked on the light, then approached the tub to start the water running. His foot met the cold dampness of the bathmat, and he winced with disgust before freezing. There was no reason the bathmat should be damp. Especially not in the nosebleed dryness of winter, with the furnace running at full blast. Remus stooped to examine the sink and toilet, then probe along the tile floor with his hands and eyes, searching for a leak. The ceiling was intact. The walls showed no signs of water damage. The floor was perfectly dry. Remus sat on his heels for a long moment, glanced back towards his bedroom door, then surrendered to taking a shower, anyway.
Had Sirius always been tilting his head like that? Remus stood studying the portrait with a mug of strong black tea. He’d had the portrait for more than a month, now, and was familiar with its intricacies. He felt down to the marrow of his bones, even, that the shopkeeper was right: that this was Sirius. Remus wasn’t quite sure when he’d developed that certainty, or why he felt it so fiercely, but he was sure it was true. The subject of this painting would have never, even for a moment, dipped his toe in the dark arts. It was loath to his very being. Remus knew the lay of his hair, the twist of his lips, the throw of light and shadow across his cheeks and nose. He knew too those singular, piercing eyes. But the head—had it always been tilted like that? At once cocky and coy? Remus just wasn’t sure. Sirius smiled.
Remus was too young for the cold to go for his joints, but it did regardless. On a Sunday, his one free day, hoping to ease the ache away, he set up the radio in the bathroom, poured himself a bath, added a few heaping scoops of lavender-scented bath salts, and eased himself into the murky water. The air blooming with the soothing, powdery scent, radio on the BBC with the volume turned down so the voices only made a sort of white noise, Remus tilted his head back against the edge of the tub and basked in the glow of the fluorescent light. Business had been picking up, lately. People coming in to buy Christmas presents for friends and relatives, or books to read on the train or plane as they traveled over the holiday, or else just to cozy up with on a sofa, by a radiator or fireplace. The radio skipped and spluttered. Interference. Static. Then a voice like velvet and gravel, speaking almost inaudibly, rising in and out of focus, “You should… buy better…whiskey,” it said, or sounded like it said, broken up by static. Remus lay in a luxurious daze, half a smile on his lips. He should buy better whiskey, the radio said. Sure.
The voice lingered in his head for days after his bath. Seductive without trying to be, with a posh accent but no stilted wording, low and warm as mulled wine. Only five words, just a taste of that delicious voice, but the more he thought about it, especially as he lay in bed, with the portrait of Sirius Black watching him on the wall, Remus couldn’t help but realize how perfectly the voice matched him. Wasn’t that exactly the tone that would come sliding out of those soft lips? Wasn’t that the exact sort of playful demand a man with those eyes might make? Hadn’t someone moved his whiskey? Remus was no longer so certain it had been himself. Every hair follicle was tingling as he wrote ‘better whiskey’ on his grocery list.
It was January, London was frozen solid by a freak blizzard, and Remus had chosen that exact week to catch the flu. Trapped in a fever haze, he shivered and sweated under two quilts. Empty water bottles littered the floor around his bed, and one opened, two untouched, still sat waiting on his bedside table. He didn’t have the will or energy to read. He had tried, but his eyes skittered over the words on the page, or he got stuck in a loop, reading the same paragraph over and over, absorbing nothing. Instead, he fell in and out of fitful sleep, aching and dizzy, feeling like a corpse reheated in the microwave. Dreams and reality blurred, leaving him waking up from a doze still speaking to the air, or talking to customers with impossible demands while trapped in bed. It was a nightmare without an escape.
“Shh…” There were soft lips against the back of his neck, a soft, long-fingered hand pressed cool against his brow. The mattress shifted under him, as though a human-sized weight had climbed up behind him. He wasn’t afraid. He was dreaming, probably. A body, solid and sure, pressed against his back, an arm wrapped around his stomach, another cool hand splayed against his bare chest. “Really did a number on yourself, hm?” A voice like sugar in coffee said. Breath against the nape of his neck, ruffling his hair. “Shh… You’re alright. You’re not alone. I’ve got you.” With a great force of will, Remus peeled open his sticky eyes. There was something cool against his brow, against his chest… He fumbled blindly at himself, but his fingers found nothing beyond his own clammy skin. He touched his neck. Only blankets. But the voice still echoed in his mind, a sharp shadow of his fever dream. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you. Two more dreams like that followed the first. On the third, Remus kept his eyes closed even when he was sure he was awake, heart drumming against his sternum as he felt vividly soft, full lips brushing the back of his neck, and a cool hand on his brow. When the fever broke a day later, Remus couldn’t be sure if he had imagined the whole thing. Just to be safe, he left a tumbler a third full of good Irish whiskey on his dresser. How quickly did whiskey evaporate? The air was dry and smelled of tobacco. Bright-eyed, Sirius smiled.
The realization dawned slowly, with misplaced books, rumpled bedsheets and vanishing whiskey, chocolates he couldn’t remember buying and warm whispers in dreams. Whether or not Sirius had ever been a wizard, Remus couldn’t really be sure. He still couldn’t tell beyond a shadow of a doubt that the portrait was Victorian. Truth be told, he didn’t want to know. The fact of the matter was, Sirius, or some part of Sirius, was haunting his flat, filling it with the scent of fine cigarillos, and the sound of soft, well-timed laughter from the bedroom. Maybe it should’ve been frightening. It was strange. Sometimes, when he was standing in front of the fogged-up bathroom mirror, he’d feel something go chasing down his spine, and see a vague shape move behind him, but would turn to find nothing but the shower curtain, hanging still. Sometimes, something silver and black would catch in a glass of water, and Remus would look; try and fail to find the source of the image that was so reminiscent of the portrait’s startling eyes.
And sometimes, when he was half asleep, he’d feel the mattress move beneath him, or a delicate brush, like a kiss on his brow or his collar bone, or fingertips finding places to perch on his neck. Those became his secret thrills. Private little pleasures that he could tell no one about, both because they wouldn’t believe him, and because in putting them to words he’d sully the magic, somehow. Remus was living with the ghost, or the shadow of the ghost, of Sirius Black, and there was not a chance in the world that he was ever going to give him up.