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Chapter Text

March 1978: Seventh Year

At 8:30 am on March 30th, 1978, James H. Potter realized, for the first time—roughly two and a half months before he would leave the corridors of Hogwarts, meet his destiny, and continue onward into the halls of infinity and glory—that he could not fucking wait to live alone.

He realized this, of course, because the first sensation he experienced while regaining consciousness was the taste of Sirius O. Black's dirty sock.

He spat it out and yelled at Padfoot, who bounded out of Remus's bed and pounced on him, barking. Then Remus woke up and snarled at them both, which shut them up until Peter woke up with a sock over his own nose and threw it into the fray, and that started the whole thing over again, and they were late for breakfast.

At the time, James didn't think much of Padfoot being in Remus's bed. It wasn't the first or the last time it happened; Sirius and Remus both had insomnia trouble, and sometimes the only way for Sirius to go to sleep was to turn into Padfoot. Being an animal relaxed the mind in some ways, especially if you were safe and warm. Plus, sometimes the only way for Remus to go to sleep was for 70 pounds of dog to flop across his legs and refuse to move.

This was all well and good, but Padfoot whined in his sleep sometimes, Peter was small but his snore was mighty, and Remus would toss and turn constantly with or without a dog in his bed (Padfoot slept like the dead, occasional whines and huffs of breath aside, and never seemed to mind or notice).

So really, this realization had been a long time coming. And over the next few months, it was all James could think about.

He wasn't moving out of the house right away. The plan was to enjoy his summer a bit while maybe serving an ice cream cone or two at Fortescue's (his parents were insistent that he Get A Job, and had been for the last three summers), and while definitely begging Dumbledore to let him do more for the Order. Then he'd find a flat, and a proper job, and try to work up the nerve to ask Lily to move in with him.

Which meant he wouldn't live alone for very long, exactly, but Lily Evans would be an entirely different roommate from the dirty underwear and faint dog smell of one Sirius Black.

James was thinking about this in a Transfiguration class that McGongall swore was vital for their NEWT's, but that James had mastered ages ago, so he allowed himself to daydream just a bit about waking up to red hair and softness instead of dirty socks.

That was about when he got slapped in the face with a fish.

This was not turning out to be a good day for his face.

When he turned to look at who had inflicted this injustice upon him, he was met with Lily Evan's devilish grin.

“Back to work, Potter,” she said to him, and turned away. James sighed, wondering why he only loved people who were cruel to him.

She really was the best.

Her radiant beauty and wicked smile did nothing to combat the smell of fish, but while he had been daydreaming the lesson hadn’t gotten any more interesting. So with a bit of a sigh, he went back to fantasizing about walking around entirely in the nude without anyone complaining loudly about it or cracking jokes about it.

Not to mention peeing with the door to the loo wide open.

Graduation couldn’t come soon enough.

Sirius was distracted, but not in the normal ways of drifting off during class thinking about Quidditch or flying or the latest book he was reading or turning into a dog and running along the ground with his tongue hanging out. He wasn’t even spending way too long staring at Remus Lupin’s eyelashes, or tracking micro facial expressions to see if Moony really was focusing on his note-taking or if he could and should be derailed from all homework-related toils.

He wasn’t thinking about any of those things because, in fact, he was laughing into Remus’s neck and Remus was nudging him into another kiss that turned his knees to jelly. Which didn’t turn out to be a problem, because Remus was already falling backwards on the bed and taking Sirius with him and Sirius was so, so happy. When Remus’s gaze traveled over him, considering and thoughtful, the heat that bloomed in his stomach was all his. When Remus took a little long and Sirius whined in impatience, Remus’s laugh was all his, too.

The only problem was that all this could only happen in a room they shared with two other people, that either of them could walk into at any time.

And so the part of Sirius that was always on alert, the part that turned into a dog and ran through the woods at midnight, that was always listening for intruder intruder intruder, was at its highest setting. At all times. Because Merlin forbid he kiss his boyfriend senseless without thinking of everything that could go wrong.

A thump from the hallway made them both freeze, then relax only slightly when no one entered the room.

Sirius looked back down at Remus, and smiled apologetically. “Hard not to be paranoid, yeah?”

Remus snorted. He had a lazy, amused look on his face that Sirius loved even more than leather jackets and flying. “That’s an understatement.”

Sirius knew his expression had to be disgustingly smitten, but he didn’t care. He touched the laugh lines around Remus’s eyes, just once, fondly.

Remus squinted at him, and so, to make sure he knew Sirius meant it, Sirius leaned in again, slowly this time.

When they broke apart, Sirius meant to keep going, but Remus stopped him. “Sorry, I thought I heard—ah, never mind.”

“Stupid werewolf senses,” said Sirius. “Can’t be relied on at all.”

“Mm,” said Remus. “If only I didn’t have to use them so much.”

“Graduation’s coming,” said Sirius. “We’ll be free of it then. No more shared rooms, no more Potter dirty underwear...”

“You think he’ll stop leaving it everywhere?”

“Who cares?” said Sirius. “I won’t be there to trip on it, what does it matter?”

There was a long, confused pause. “What?” said Remus.

“What?” said Sirius.

Remus pulled back a bit, which Sirius did not like at all. “You’re...not planning to stay with James after graduation?”

“I mean, yeah, a bit, right when we leave, but after that I’m not sharing a flat with him or anything. You know he complains a blue streak about Peter’s snoring but snores twice as loud, why would I want that in my life forever?”

The look in Remus’s eye shifted from confusion to mischief. “Are you telling me you two aren’t physically fused at the hip after all? Praise the heavens, I thought I’d eventually have to drag you into St. Mungo’s for detachment.”

“Please,” Sirius snorted. “Just think of all the things I do without him around. You know,” he added, smiling in a slow way that made Remus’s smile widen into a grin.

They leaned into each other in the same instant, Remus by sliding his hands around the aforementioned hips and pulling Sirius closer, and Sirius by claiming his waiting mouth.

It was a few minutes before Remus said anything else, before Sirius’s mouth started to travel elsewhere and he could speak.

“I just—before you—fuck, Sirius—”

Sirius paused for what he intended to be a fraction of a section, to grin suggestively at Remus and put whatever ridiculous thing he wanted to say out of his head at least until they were done here, but apparently Moony had iron self-control, because that was enough time.

“Does James know you don’t want to live with him?”

Sirius stopped, but only briefly. “Not sure,” he said finally. There wasn’t much that was more important than the way Remus was looking at him, even though he was a dastardly mood-killer. “Worry about it later?”

And thank Merlin Remus wasn’t as unflappable as he pretended to be, because he said “Yes” immediately, and that was the end of conversation for a while.

It was Lily’s fault that James realized he hadn’t actually shared his post-graduation plans with Sirius.

They hadn’t even really been discussing Sirius. In fact, the conversation had started at breakfast, which they both came down to early for a few minutes alone before their respective groups of rowdy friends got there.

(When James left the dormitory that morning, Peter was snoring like an avalanche, Sirius wasn’t in his bed, and Remus had his curtains spelled shut. He didn’t know why—it wasn’t like he didn’t know the faint whuffling sound wasn’t from dog-Sirius—but he was also relieved to have an excuse to leave without waking them up handy.)

They hadn’t spoken at first. They’d settled into a ritual; no words were necessary until after Lily, bleary-eyed, had finished her tea, and James had finished his usual morning ritual of dejectedly picking through all the food on the table before settling on toast and eggs again, and wishing he hadn’t failed multiple times to convince the House Elves to at least make chutney to make the damn things edible. He understood that something like idli was right out—he really did. Even his mum only made it on weekends. But seven years of Hogwarts later and it still didn’t feel right to not eat his dad’s freshly-made poori for every other meal.

The jam was always good, though. It made toast worth putting up with. He sighed, once again accepting that white people rubbish could be tolerated for another day.

Lily smiled at him over her mug. “One day you’ll have to tell me what that expression means,” she said. “It mostly comes out around food, but not always.”

James grinned back, slowly, a bit surprised that his face muscles could even make that shape this early in the morning. “You’ve been studying me,” he said.

Her blush was light, just a flush of pink on the tops of her cheeks, but it was still better than the sunrise. “Well, yes,” she said. “I spend quite a lot of time with you, you know. And you’re not truly horrible to be around.”

James fought to keep from gloating at this admission, but the look on his face must have given him away, because Lily swatted him with the newspaper that had been sitting nearby, before laughing. “You like me,” he said.

“Obviously,” said Lily, smiling back. She sat the newspaper down, and they both glanced briefly at the headline—another scary editorial about Muggles and Muggleborns—before looking up, meeting each other’s eyes, and silently deciding not to even look at it today.

They needed a break.

“How embarrassing for you,” James said, and if it wasn’t as lighthearted as before, Lily pretended not to notice.

“Not really,” she said, nudging his foot with hers. It was his turn to blush.

Before he could grin and put his chin on his hands and ask her to tell him everything she liked about him, she added, “But don’t change the subject, Potter. What’s that look about? Hogwarts breakfast not good enough for you?”

James sighed. “No,” he said. “Or, well. It’s fine, but don’t you ever get bored? Eating English food every day?”

“As opposed to—oh. Right. Your parents cook?”

“Well, yes, but not just that, there’s restaurants and—” He stopped, realizing that in his almost subconscious effort to make the sentiment more white-people palatable, he’d skimmed over the worst cultural difference he’d ever even considered. “Wait, really? You eat British every day at home? I thought that was just boring dry families like Sirius’s! Muggles never try anything new either?”

Lily’s eyebrows went up. “I imagine it’s different for different Muggles,” she said, too-calmly.

James flinched. “Sorry,” he said. “But, really—don’t you get bored?”

“It depends on what you’re used to, I suppose,” said Lily. “My mum is a rubbish cook. Coming here was a lot of finding out what roast chicken and potatoes are supposed to taste like.”

James laughed. “Did you ever learn how to cook? Or are you doomed to burn water forever?”

“I guess I always thought I’d figure it out,” said Lily. She looked a bit startled, for some reason. “Wow, I—never really thought about it. I’m going to have to in a few months, aren’t I?”

“I’ll teach you,” James said immediately. “You’ll get world’s finest second-hand education in my dad’s baking and the ridiculous things my mum can do to lentils.”

“Really? They taught you how to cook?”

James shrugged. He hadn’t been interested, growing up, but after a year in Hogwarts with only Nagaraj Patil, a 5th year Ravenclaw, with a face that looked anything like his—yeah, he’d learned to cook. It had been important, all of a sudden, in a way it never had been before. He’d grown up knowing every other Indian in a 50-kilometer radius, it seemed, but they were all younger or older or being sent to school elsewhere and not at Hogwarts.

But it wasn’t a conversation for this early in the morning. “They did. Sirius can tell you about my first few attempts—it’ll be a pain, cooking for myself, but at least I won’t have his ungrateful arse lounging around complaining about the smell getting in his hair.”

Lily tilted her head, bird-like. “You won’t?”

“What?” said James.

“What?” said Lily.

They stared at each other for a minute, before Lily shook her head as if to clear it. “I mean,” she said. “You and Sirius aren’t going to move in together?”

This was much, much sooner than he would have preferred to have this conversation.

On the other hand...

James shrugged, trying his damnedest to look nonchalant. “Maybe at first,” he said. “You know, when he comes home with me. But after that...no, I think I’d rather leave an empty space in whatever apartment I move into. For. Someone else. Maybe.”

Lily, not seeming to notice that James had just laid his heart on the table so she could eat it raw and then smash it into a million pieces if that was her whim, frowned thoughtfully. “Right, right—but.”

“But...?” James was going to suffocate and die from anticipation, it was going to kill him, this was the end. He always knew Lily Evans would be the death of him.

“Does he know that?”

“What? What do you mean, of course he—we—” James stopped. “Um. It should be obvious?”

“Right, but he’s never lived alone, you know,” said Lily. “It’s worth at least checking to make sure he’s okay with—wait. Wait. James.”

“What?” said James. Oh god, was he in trouble?”

“Have you talked to him about it at all?”

“Er—no?”

“Oh my god,” said Lily, for some reason. “Have conversations with your best friend before you ask me to move in with you, how is this so difficult?” She trailed off, muttering angrily about boys and impossible, before her friends finally showed up for breakfast and Alice Prewett sat down across from him, eyeballing him and asking “What did you do this time, James” while James frantically tried to work out exactly what he had done, whether that was a yes or a no, and wait shit Lily was probably right, Sirius probably didn’t know—

At which point he frantically excused himself from the table to go have a mental breakdown in the loo, because really this was too much for one man to process all at once, and also, it was quiet there, plus, he needed to pee. With the door closed. Like some kind of animal.

Multi-tasking. A Potter specialty. He could panic about five things at once and take care of important business!

Oh god, what was he going to do?

They spent an entire day giving each other awkward looks in class, too-loudly asking to pass the butter, and accidentally bumping into each other, before James realized that weeks of awkwardness and dancing around the topic was actually a bullshit way to spend the last few weeks of their last term at Hogwarts. Anyway, that wasn’t really the Padfoot and Prongs way, especially when Remus wasn’t involved.

James realized this, of course, just before Sirius did, but didn’t have a chance to act on it. Obviously. Which was why Sirius cornered him first, in the Common Room, at the dead of night (what they were both doing there on a weeknight was best left to the annals of history), moonlight from the half-moon streaming in a single silvery shaft through a gap in the curtains, and growled “Potter. We need to talk.”

James had taken a solid five and a half minutes to jump entirely out of his skin (and the Invisibility Cloak), steady his breathing, and light the damn fireplace so at least the lighting would be less needlessly dramatic—or more appropriate for midnight scheming, anyway. And definitely less appropriate for midnight murders most foul.

“What is this about?” He said, voice low. Not a whisper—whispers carried. They were Marauders, and knew better.

“Your mission,” said Sirius, “is to talk loudly and in the hearing of anybody listening about how much you cannot bloody wait to graduate this school and live alone. No matter how much it pains you. Understand?”

“No,” said James. “And anyway, I’ve decided that’s not a good strategy, if I want Lily to move in with me I’d better just ask outright and see what she says.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “James, come on, I know it’s hard but—wait. Wait, what?”

“What? Which part? Me wanting to move in with Lily? I thought that was obvious. Oh, actually, can you talk really loudly about how you want to live alone? That’ll convince her that you’re not broken up about it, even if you are, which would be fine, except, you know, we both have to grow up—”

“I can’t do that, that’ll make Remus think that I don’t—” Sirius stopped abruptly. “Um.”

“You want to move in with Remus?” said James. “That’s good, except you know he’ll never accept, he doesn’t like anyone trying to take care of hiiiiiiiii—wait a minute.” Something about Sirius’s guilty expression and inability to meet James’s eyes finally sunk in. “Wait. Wait. Wait wait wait. You want to move in with Remus the way I want to move in with Lily!”

“What!” said Sirius. “James, I don’t—” he stopped. “Don’t say that so loudly,” he finished, at a mumble.

James gaped in complete dignity and not at all like a fish, for a few seconds, before recovering as best he could. “Padfoot,” he said very seriously, putting a hand on his best friend’s shoulder. “Do not worry, my dearest and most cherished friend—”

“I’m now more worried than I’ve ever been in my life,” said Sirius.

“—because I am here for you. Do you need to talk? Do you need a mentor? Because it’s 90% because of me that Marlene and Dorcas are finally going out, you can ask anyone—well, 70%. Well, 50%. If you ask Lily, anyway. But the point is, I can ask one of them to—”

“No,” said Sirius. “I don’t need any of that, I need to convince Remus you’re not going to collapse with loneliness if you and I aren’t living in each other’s pockets next year.”

James brightened. “Do you think we could use a Shrinking Spell to get ourselves a Pocket Slytherin?”

“Doesn’t work on humans,” said Sirius promptly. “A Potion, maybe. And—”

“There’s no time for that,” they said together.

“Damn,” said James. “We really need another year here, don’t we?”

“Merlin, no,” said Sirius. “Seven years of not being able to hex Slytherins because they’re Prefects and are allowed to take points away from First Years in their own House for ‘having Muggle teeth’ is seven years too many. I need to get out.”

“Someone did that?” said James.

“Bellatrix,” said Sirius grimly.

“Guess they got off easy, then.”

“Yeah, especially since they don’t go here anymore.”

“What?”

“They dropped out,” said Sirius. “The First Year in question and her three Muggle-born friends. Transferred to Beauxbatons.”

“They’d rather be with the French than at Hogwarts?” said James, scandalized.

“And one of the girls is Muslim,” said Sirius.

“Didn’t Beauxbatons try to ban headscarves last year?”

“They’re still trying.”

They were both silent. James didn’t know what Sirius was thinking about, but he—he was thinking about a sea of pale faces, staring at an eleven-year-old girl with a dark face and covered hair who transferred to their school in the middle of their year, who struggled to keep up with a brand new language let alone a new curriculum, who didn’t even belong in the place that was made for her.

What food would she desperately miss from home? What would she accidentally eat because the names of the food dishes were all different and in French? James could avoid beef at Hogwarts if he put his mind to it, not that he was ever that careful unless he was rubbing it in the nose of a particularly aristocratic Slytherin, because honestly, but at least he knew how, and—

Would anyone be around to guide her, show her the way around? Would her new Prefect succeed where her Hogwarts Head Boy had failed?

“Fuck this,” James said, finally. “You’re right, Pads, I can’t take this anymore. I want to fight.”

“Yeah,” said Sirius.

There was another pause, in which they both stared into the fire. On any other night, it would have been mesmerizing, soothing, enough to put him slowly to sleep.

Tonight, the cliff of the future was dropping sharply at his feet; he had no choice but to step over it, and the warmth did nothing to cut the chill in his bones. He did not see peace in the flames.

“Does anyone know besides me?” James said into the silence. It was a subject change, but he had never been great at staying on topic—and he’d never bothered to learn, because Sirius had always been good at following his train of thought.

“Well,” said Sirius. “Remus does.” When James shot him a look, he shrugged. “Andromeda. Maggie Carter. Er. One or two blokes in this school know about me specifically, but will deny to their dying breath how they found out.”

James squinted at him a bit. “Andromeda? She had a girlfriend before Ted, yeah? And is Maggie still dating Abbie Martin? They were a blast together, when they weren’t terrorizing innocent future Head Boys.”

“She is,” said Sirius. “Last I heard they were in New York, doing...something for Dumbledore. I think they’re, you know. Keeping an eye on the government there. You know what Maggie is like.”

James did. They didn’t need to say the word spy out loud to picture Maggie running rings around the whole of New York City’s magical community.

“But how’d you find out about all that?” Sirius’s expression was more troubled than James would like, and he wasn’t sure why. “I thought they kept those secrets pretty well.”

“Andromeda and Hestia, or Maggie and Abbie?”

“Both, actually,” said Sirius.

“Hestia and Andromeda had me distract Peeves once, so they could duck into that secret room on the third floor,” said James. “They didn’t really hide what they wanted to do in there.”

Sirius apparently couldn’t help a smirk. “Why do all the girls in this school except Lily trust you with all their secrets?”

“Andromeda just knows she can bully me,” James said, without heat. He didn’t exactly mind. Competent, terrifying women were kind of his whole thing, and not only in a dating sense; they were just delightful to be around. He maybe wanted to grow up to be just like them someday, and he was now man enough to admit that to himself. “And hey! Lily likes me now! For real!”

“I’ve noticed,” said Sirius.

“And not all of them like me. I thought Maggie was going to murder me and hide the body—you remember the prank we played that year, with the Filch’s Cat Menagerie?”

It was a rhetorical question. Of course Sirius remembered. No one at Hogwarts that year would ever forget Lady Norris being turned into a variety of animals, up to and including a moose and a hippopotamus (they did not learn from the moose incident). All the Marauders had gotten top marks in Transfiguration, and Remus would deny for the rest of his life that the menagerie had anything to do with it.

James knew better. McGonagall knew good work when she saw it.

Sirius snickered. “Obviously.”

“Well, the reason I was covered in green spots for a week after the platypus was that while we were split up looking for Lady Norris, I, uh. Walked in on them in the Transfiguration classroom.”

“Transfiguration, really? Seems risky.” Sirius’s shoulders had relaxed a bit.

James tilted his head a bit. Did Sirius think the tall, dark-haired woman McGonagall was sometimes seen with on campus was really her cousin? Silly, really. But he wasn’t about to spill that secret, too. “Couldn’t have been that bad, if no one found them. Maggie always was good at risk calculation.”

“Still, you shouldn’t have told me.”

“Figured you must’ve known, if you told them about—well.”

“Right. ...Right. Just don’t tell anyone else.”

“I haven’t.” Because the conversation had gotten too serious (and wasn’t nearly Sirius enough), he grinned wickedly. “Yours aren’t the only secrets I keep, Padfoot. Just the only ones I’d sell to the highest bidder.”

Sirius kicked him. “Remember the words ‘mutually assured destruction,’” he advised. “What are we going to do about this?”

James didn’t need a reminder about what they were talking about. “Just ask him to move in with you? That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Bo-ring,” said Sirius. “It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

“Lily doesn’t respond to elaborate, ridiculous plans. She likes it better when you just ask her,” said James, wisely.

That was when his and Sirius’s eyes met, and they had a beautiful, perfect, crystallizing realization.

“But Remus does,” they breathed, at the same time.

Because Remus pretended not to be receptive to ridiculous plans (a useless farce, but what could you do), and because Sirius was really, really trying not to go over his head unnecessarily, especially after—certain things that had happened—Sirius cornered him during a free period one day, and said—

“James wants to live alone, you know.”

“What?”

“He told me, earlier.”

“James hasn’t even had his own room since he was eleven,” said Remus. “I doubt he even knows what he’s getting into.”

Sirius had never been properly alone, ever, and privately thought that James probably had more experience at it than any of them. Even Remus, who pretended to thrive on being alone (another farce), had had parents hovering over him his whole life—unlike the Potters, who could be fairly lax in terms of supervision.

Peter hated being alone. But Sirius didn’t spend much time dwelling on the mind of Peter Pettigrew, especially not recently. He wasn’t going to start now, with more important things at hand.

“He’ll ask Lily to move in, if it comes to that,” said Sirius. “He told me so.”

“Well he won’t be leaving you high and dry,” said Remus. “You have enough money from your uncle to get a place, no?”

Sirius resisted the urge to let out a frustrated huff. “I will,” he conceded.

“There you are, then,” said Remus. “You’ll get some time to yourself.” And then he slid away, out of the Common Room and off to the kitchens or the library or—whatever it was Remus did when he wanted to be left alone, really alone, a concept Sirius still didn’t quite understand.

“But what if I don’t want it,” Sirius said, to the empty air.

He’d tried the direct approach, at least. Now to find a way to get Remus to really hear him.

Well, he didn’t yet have a full plan, but he did know that it would involve a lot of reminders of very specific things that he wouldn’t hear if Sirius said them in words.

Starting with the annals of history.

October 1971: First Year

Sirius Black had been at Hogwarts for two months, and already he had it all figured out. This was an achievement sure to go down in the annals of history, whatever an “annal” was. It sounded boring and dusty and probably something you had to read, but maybe his adventures would make even the annals interesting.

Annals. It was a strange word, wasn’t it? Annals. Sirius turned it over in his mind, grinning. Aaaaannnals.

Weird. Boring, but weird. Actually, being weird made it less boring.

Just like the person he’d learned it from.

His name was Remus Lupin, he was Sirius’s roommate, and Sirius had only learned yesterday that he didn’t have a book attached to his nose via Permanent Sticking Charm. He’d found this out when James had been pontificating (another word he’d learned from Remus) on his own brilliance, and the brown-haired boy who’d taken the corner bed in their room had looked up, said, “yes, surely this will go down in the annals of history,” then looked back down and continued reading.

Sirius didn’t mind reading, at least if it was a fun book, but he and James were so close to finding and thoroughly raiding the kitchens! There were more interesting things to be doing right now! He couldn’t believe Remus Lupin was ignoring them! What could possibly be more interesting?

He’d decided to find out.

Sirius had flopped down on Remus Lupin’s bed next to him and poked his nose into his book, just to see what was so great about it. “What’re you reading? Is it good? Can I have a go?”

Remus had shoved him on the floor. And gone back to his book.

This could have ended badly, if James hadn’t started laughing hysterically at the look on his face.

“Right,” Sirius had said. “Show us where the kitchens are.”

That got Remus Lupin to look up. “I’m sorry?”

“I know you know. Everyone knows bookworms who lurk in corners know all the good secrets,” Sirius said. He didn’t know this at all, but it sounded good and seemed right, so he went with it. This was how all his best ideas were formed. “C’mon, show us, show us show us show us show us—”

“Merlin,” Remus had muttered. “How about this: I give you a hint, but if—and only if—you leave me alone for five entire minutes. And bring me back an eclair.”

“Deal,” said Sirius. “Wait, they have eclairs?”

“Oh, yes,” said Remus. “And here’s your hint: tickle the pear.”

James and Sirius had looked at each other.

“Under the Great Hall,” James said.

“The bowl of fruit,” Sirius said.

“To the kitchens! Away!” James had said, and barreled out of the room.

Sirius, however, had stopped at the door. “You don’t want to come? And get your own eclair? Also how did you know that? Did you find it in our second week, while we were putting fireworks in the Herbicide Potions?”

Remus only answered one of these questions, and the answer didn’t really explain anything. “Madame Pomfrey showed me.”

Sirius stared. Then stalked over to Remus’s bed again, and plopped down, knocking his shoulder against Remus’s.

He’d have another chance at the kitchens.

Remus Lupin was watching him warily, which was fair, because Sirius’s thoughts were a mess and he had no idea where to even begin.

“Teach me your ways,” he said, finally.

“What?”

“Your ways! Your wiles! Your secrets! Remus Lupin, you’ve been here as long as I have and you’ve already enchanted half the Professors, and Snivellus hates you more than me somehow. You are a mysterious and noble being, and I must know! How do you do it!”

Remus Lupin had laughed.

And that was that.

So there it was. Sirius had it all figured out. James Potter was his best friend, and Remus Lupin was his other best friend (could you have more than one?) (this was new territory to Sirius, but he decided emphatically that he could, and who was going to tell him otherwise?) and he was going to find out everything about him until he could make him laugh as much as and as often as he could.

Sirius stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled to himself, striking up a jaunty tune that started out quiet until he figured out how to get the sound to echo in the stone hallways, at which point it became loud and shrill.

He even saw Narcissa coming in time, and was able to duck behind a tapestry until she went past him, at which point he Petrified her, and sprinted off in the other direction before anyone could see him.

Hogwarts was going to be amazing.

April 1978: Seventh Year

Remus squinted at the eclair when Sirius handed it to him. “Are you buttering me up for something?”

“Always,” Sirius said, grinning and settling next to him on the roof. “But it’s a long con. Don’t worry about it.”

Remus couldn’t hide a smile. “All right, then.” And then he did the next part all on his own. “Remember the first time you brought me one of these?”

Sirius had to duck his head to keep his triumphant smile from showing. “As I recall, James beat me to it.”

“What?”

“He went to the kitchens without us. Remember?”

“That’s right,” said Remus. “He left without you, and you badgered me with questions until James came back. And he didn’t bring you anything, because you’d ‘abandoned him to the wolves and/or house elves.’”

Sirius shrugged. “Forgot that bit,” he said. “Just remember talking to you.” He also vaguely remembered Peter showing up later in the night and James offering him pastries and that being the beginning of their legendary annals-of-history group. But mostly he remembered Remus laughing.

Remus turned his head to meet his eyes, at that. “That so?”

Sirius didn’t break his gaze. “It is. Always liked talking to you, really. Even—especially—when Potter’s not around to run his big mouth.”

Remus smiled, and looked away. But he also broke the eclair in half and handed the second half to Sirius.

He did remember this part. “You’re too nice, Remus Lupin,” he said now, through a mouthful as he finished it in one bite, just as he had then.

“Are you complaining?” That was the same line, too.

“Never,” said Sirius. Only this time he also leaned over and licked a bit of chocolate frosting off the side of Remus’s mouth. At which point Remus’s eyes, which were smiling in a way that always made Sirius’s stomach swoop, met his, and then he tilted his head and pulled Sirius back in, so that was the end of talking.

A lot of things had changed since they were eleven, really. But he still liked spending time with just Remus. Always had.

“I knew it,” said James. “I knew you were flirting with him from the beginning.”

“You literally didn’t,” Sirius retorted, unfairly, James thought. “You found out a week ago that I want to shack up with him, and it shook you to your core.”

“Excuse you, I was slightly thrown off-guard. I was not shaken. I did not shake.“

“Yes, but your core was vibrating wildly, I could tell.”

James leered, out of habit, but Sirius swatted him before he could come up with a suitable joke.

“There’s no time, Potter! I need a part two to this plan, stat!”

“Stat?”

“Stat!”

It didn’t occur to James to question why he had to help with this.

“Well, you started with first year, didn’t you?”

“Yes?”

“I mean...haven’t you got something from second year to prove that you’re a co-dependent mess without him?”

“What?” said Sirius.

“What?” said James.

They looked at each other.

“Co-dependent?” Sirius said, finally.

“You heard me.”

“Dependant, maybe,” Sirius said. “You know, a little. We can depend on each other! That’s all! We don’t fall to pieces without each other!”

“Sure you don’t,” said James.

“Anyway, you’re one to talk.”

“Lily Evans can function perfectly fine without my help,” James pointed out. He did not waste breath arguing the other way.

“Yes, but she gets by better with it, and so do you—wait a minute. Wait. A minute.”

“What? Wait for what?”

“I’ve got it!” said Sirius, and took off.

James stared after him, then sighed. It was probably best if he went after him.

To teach him a lesson, though, and because he had reached the wise old age of nearly-18 and in his later years was becoming more responsible, he took some time to finish off the conclusion of his Transfiguration essay, first.

After all, Dumbledore had said just the other day that he’d need to really understand this bit of the curriculum if he was actually going to help with the war. James didn’t know what that meant, just yet.

He glanced over his essay, and then, in a move that would have surprised everyone in the school who didn’t know how on earth he kept getting top marks, read it start to finish. He only had a few edits, but when he was done, he was sure it was near-perfect, even if he still didn’t fully understand what Dumbledore was on about.

Well. He’d find out soon enough.

Now.

Time for some more mischief.

January 1973: Second Year

It started on the way down from the dormitories to the Great Hall for breakfast, the day after they told him they knew, and the morning of him not being too scared to meet their eyes.

They’d spent most of the morning awake at an ungodly hour, pestering Remus with questions.

“How old were you?”

“Who did it?”

“Wait, do you give yourself those scars?”

“Holy fuck, Remus, really? Those are fucking nasty!” (James, twelve years old and free of his parents, had only just started learning how to curse.)

“It really hurts that bad?”

“I have to rearrange my bones once a month, of course it fucking hurts,” Remus retorted to that one. (He was doing a lot better at cursing than James.)

“Merlin, Remus, no wonder you’re so tired all the time,” Sirius said. He’d leaned into Remus’s side, though, where he’d joined Remus on his bed so as to pester him more directly, and saw Remus blink slowly in response, as if surprised, long eyelashes sweeping over his cheeks before he could come up with a response.

“Yes,” he said finally. “There’s nothing really to be done about it.”

“So that’s why you wouldn’t fucking help with the Slytherin Scottish Accent prank,” said James. “You went to bed fucking early because it was a bloody full moon!”

“That is not why,” Remus retorted, but so quietly that only Sirius heard. He made a face at Remus, who grinned back, and felt the satisfied flip in his stomach that always came from having a secret Remus-only joke.

The question-and-reluctant-answer game continued in the halls, though at a lower volume at Remus’s repeated insistence.

They were standing outside of the Great Hall, delaying going in because Sirius had a burning question about fur texture (“But is it like—really soft? Are you pettable? Remus, can I pet the wolf why won’t you let me pet the—”) that needed answering, when an extremely unwelcome voice interrupted them.

“Move out of my way,” it said. “You don’t own the hallways, you know.”

James’s face darkened as he turned to face Snape, but more importantly, Remus went pale.

That was all Sirius needed. “Hullo, Snivellus,” he said. “Actually, I bought this corridor myself two weeks ago, so it does belong to me.”

“Yeah, and you owe us rent for getting your slime all over it,” said Peter, and started sniggering helplessly until James thumped him.

“You’re looking good today,” James said. “Oh wait. Never mind. Your nose was in the way of your face and I couldn’t see it.”

Snape sneered. It was an impressive sneer.

It was directed at Remus, who hadn’t said a word.

Then he swept past them.

“What did he do to you,” Sirius growled, as soon as Snape was out of earshot. He didn’t quite understand the dark, protective instinct that had seized his limbs and nearly hexed Snape into the next century, but he did know it was his right and duty to murder anyone who made Remus look like that. By hand, if necessary. He didn’t need a wand to wring Snape’s neck.

Remus must have been tired, from waking up early, being emotionally wrung out, the interrogation, or all of the above—because he actually answered. “Found out I’m a half-blood. To use what wizards consider a polite term for it,” he said.

Sirius’s and James’s eyes met over his head.

“He’s going down,” James said.

“Please don’t,” said Remus. “I know it’s—but I can handle it. I can.”

“Sure,” said Sirius. “We’ll just hex him because his wig—I mean hair—is ugly. Nothing to do with you.”

“Please,” said Remus, who didn’t actually plead unless he really meant it, so Sirius and James exchanged another glance, and pretended to let it go.

Remus looked relieved, at first, then miserable every time Snape glanced his way, and then in Charms they started working on advanced color-changing charms. And that was really the end of it.

“So what color should we turn Snape’s hair for the rest of the week?” said Sirius at dinner.

“Pink,” said Peter immediately.

“Done,” Sirius and James said together.

“Make it super fucking sparkly, he’ll bleeding well love that,” James added.

“Oh, he’ll be the prettiest girl at the ball.” Sirius looked at Remus to see if he’d heard this brilliant cutting comment, but Remus was staring into empty space, not touching his food.

Shit.

Well. They’d discovered ages ago (last year) that Remus secretly had all the best ideas.

“Or we could hold off,” Sirius said, and when James gave him a confused look, jerked his head subtly in Remus’s direction. “You know. Until we find the least flattering shade possible. Maybe do all of the Slytherins.”

“We have done hair before,” said James, catching on. “Maybe all their clothes?”

“Don’t forget the sparkles,” said Peter.

They sat for a minute, thinking.

“Start with hair,” said Remus, finally. “Throw him off his guard, make him think it’s just a repeat and nothing unusual. And not just pink. Hot pink, with sparkles. Then do his big, greasy, stupid nose.”

He punctuated this with a maliciously-stabbed bite of roast chicken.

The Marauders exchanged glances.

“We’ll do a different body part every day, ending with his nose and then his entire body and hair,” Sirius said, with finality.

“He’ll be a walking sunburn,” said James.

“A glittery, glittery sunburn,” said Peter.

And that was that.

“Do you remember being bitten?” Sirius asked, two days later when Snape’s right arm was pink and they were hiding from his wrath in a broom closet.

Remus looked at him. It was dark, and Sirius couldn’t quite see his eyes.

“Yes,” he said.

Sirius blinked. “Oh. Okay.”

He didn’t ask again.

“I know it was you, Potter!”

Evans. That voice was enough to send Sirius scrambling to the dormitory stairs—though only far enough to where he could hide in the shadows and eavesdrop. She was scary, but James might need backup. Or at least a witness.

“Fuck off, what’re you damn well talking about?” James still thought he sounded cool. Sirius hadn’t found the courage to tell him otherwise.

“Pink, James! Pink and glittery! This has your name written all over it—really, you are so childish.”

James shrugged. “Bullshit, you fucking can’t prove anything.”

“Oh will you stop that, you sound like an idiot.” Evans whirled on Remus, who was minding his own dusty, homework-related business. “And you! You just let them! Why don’t you ever say anything?”

Remus looked at her with his most mild expression, the one Sirius was starting to recognize as secretly his most dangerous. “What should I say, Lily? Wait, I’ve got it—how about ‘mudblood?’ You know, the word he hisses at me every time he walks past me?”

Evans looked stunned for a moment, then scowled. “Why would he do that? You’re not—you’re not Muggleborn?”

“His mum is a Muggle,” said James, apparently giving up on his profanity quest for the moment. “That’s enough, apparently.”

“You removed all of his hair,” said Evans, after a minute. “Then dyed his bald head pink! Even if you’re telling the truth—which I’m not even sure I believe! That’s just—it’s cruel!”

Remus shrugged, and looked back down at his assignment. “Believe what you want,” he said.

That ended the conversation. Evans took off in a huff.

Snape hissed more than a slur at them the next day. It was a hex, meant to give Remus nasty, throbbing boils. Remus dodged just in time, and Sirius fired back, a hex of his own that he’d unfortunately learned from Bellatrix. Snape slumped to the floor, clutching his nose (that was now oozing pus and blood all over the corridor), before McGonagall showed up and gave them both detention.

Later, on his way up to the dormitory, exhausted from polishing trophies all night, Sirius heard James ask: “But I mean—do you remember—you know. Getting bit?”

“No,” said Remus’s voice.

“That’s something, at least,” said James. “I guess.”

“Mm.”

Sirius blinked, but after a moment, he continued upstairs, and carried on as if he hadn’t heard anything.

They achieved the walking glittery sunburn at long last (after two weeks of relentless dedication that culminated in re-growing Snape’s hair a foot longer, and pinker), and it gave all of them such a boost of joy to see him sparkling his way around campus, that even Peter was quite proud of himself. After all, Snape had tried to hex him this time, and he’d countered it so quickly that no one was even sure how he’d done it.

“Ought to shut him up,” Sirius heard Peter saying, on his way into the Common Room. Again, he stopped. He’d been learning the most interesting things this way lately. “And hey, at least he doesn’t know about—you know.”

“Yet,” said Remus darkly. “He’s started insisting to everyone in earshot that I have a communicable disease.”

“Yeah, but you’d never—you know—communic it.”

“Right.”

Sirius could practically hear Peter shift nervously in his seat. Then he blurted: “Say, Remus, do you even remember—”

“No,” said Remus.

“Right,” said Peter.

Sirius chose this moment to enter the room. It was getting painful, and he owed it to everyone to put an end to it.

“Hullo lads, who wants to see the pictures of Snape James finally developed from his camera? He’s thinking we should wallpaper his room with them, come look.”

April 1978: Seventh Year

“No no no no,” Sirius said. “The point is that he needs me. Not that I’ll fight all his battles for him! Just that I’m his backup! You get it, right?”

“So we have to turn Snape pink again?” James said. “Yeah, I’m still not following, mate.”

“It’ll prove my love! Again!”

“Right, but you wouldn’t believe the lecture I got from Lily over that prank. She could’ve roasted me slowly over the fire and it would’ve been less painful. Or given me an actual all-over sunburn. Or flayed me alive and scattered my bones to the crows. Or—”

“We get it, James.” Who “we” was, James didn’t quite know. It was only the two of them. “I mean, I was there.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“Well, I was hiding in the staircase, but—”

“Not the first time. She gave me a second lecture.”

“Wait, what? I thought she realized you weren’t lying about him being a bigot!”

“I mean. She said we still went too far. But mostly it wasn’t about that, this time it was her objecting to our color choice. She had a whole thing about feminism and masculinity and colors not having gender. And not taking out your own insecurities on bystanders. She made me take notes.”

“Oh, is that it?” said Sirius. “Well, that’s easy. I’ll just turn myself pink.”

“Oh, good ide......wait. What?”

“You dyed yourself pink,” said Lily. “To prove your love to me?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” said James.

“James...”

“Colors don’t have gender! It’s not emasculating to be a walking pink glittery sunburn! It’s actually fucking fun! Down with the man! Hear me roar!”

“James.”

“What? Did I do something wrong? Is my nose not sparkly enough? I can add more sparkles—”

Lily burst out laughing.

James grinned. Mission accomplished. He could only hope it went as well for Sirius.

“So you convinced James to dye himself pink,” said Remus. “To prove your love for me?”

“Well, he doesn’t know yet that I’m not actually doing it myself, but yeah.”

“How dare you,” said Remus. “You’re not worthy after all.”

“Well, I thought about it long and hard, and concluded that I don’t feel like picking glitter out of my ass for the last three months of school, but that’s not the point!”

“Isn’t it? I think I can forgive that reasoning, if I try really hard.”

“The point is, I would turn a thousand Slytherins pink for you, Remus Lupin. Or not, when you tell me not to. And if I don’t feel like it. And if they haven’t said anything racist recently. And if Snivellus isn’t casting Sectumsempra on James. I’ll let you pick the color, anyway. It doesn’t have to be pink.”

“Right,” said Remus. “What was that about ass glitter?”

“Why, though?” said Lily. “I mean, I know why you said, but—”

James shrugged. “Well. It was really mean.”

“Doing it to yourself, having it be a choice, doesn’t exactly make up for that.”

“I know,” said James. He really did. “But it’s more—well. You know I can’t wait to get out of this stupid school, right? And start doing some actual good in the world, if I can?”

“You’re telling me,” said Lily.

“On the other hand...we don’t know what’s going to happen out there, right? I mean, you don’t even know how to cook.”

“Careful now.”

“Yeah, yeah. The point is. Well. No matter what happens...let’s have some fun before we die, yeah?”

Lily was quiet for a moment.

“Um. Lils? You okay in there? I hope that wasn’t too depressing, I just—”

“No, no,” said Lily. “I’m just having an existential crisis.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine, Dumbledore knows what he’s doing, I didn’t mean to be apocalyptic—”

“It’s not that,” Lily said. “It’s more like...I really want to make out with a hot pink glittery Indian man right now, and I’m not sure how to process that.”

It was James’s turn to laugh. “Well, let’s undo it for a bit then, yeah?”

“That would be better, yes.”

“To save your eyesight,” James said as he (temporarily) reversed the spell. “And, ironically enough, preserve your blinding attraction to me.”

“Don’t push it,” said Lily, but she leaned in.

“You told me in second year that you remembered,” said Sirius, later. They were alone again, not even fooling around but still glancing at the door every five seconds. Sirius really, really wanted space just for themselves. And soon.

Remus looked up from his book. “You know. When you—” he finished the sentence by miming what he thought was a brilliant impression of wolf teeth. Remus still didn’t like when they talked about his lycanthropy too loudly, even in private. Sirius had learned to actually respect that the hard way.

Remus looked back at his book. “Did I?”

“But you told James and Peter both, separately, that you didn’t remember. I overheard.”

“Is that right.”

“So?”

“So what?”

Sirius stared at Remus until he looked up, and sighed. But didn’t say anything.

“I mean, they can’t both be true,” said Sirius, to fill the silence. “And you never told me anything else.”

“Did your father ever hit you?”

He wasn’t expecting that one. His throat threatened to close up, but. It was Remus. “Not often,” he said, tightly.

Good old dad had always been more...subtle. Than that.

“Now pretend I’m Peter, asking the same question.”

Sirius shrugged, carelessly. “It’s none of his busine—oh.”

Remus looked down again.

“Really? In second year?”

The tips of Remus’s ears turned pink, but he didn’t look up. Sirius smirked.

“And here I thought I was throwing myself at you for six years.”

“You didn’t, though,” said Remus. “You held back. When I really wanted you to.”

Sirius’s smirk turned into a real smile. So he had gotten through after all.

“Oh, if only you knew,” he said, trying to keep it light. “The suffering I endured, all to get Remus Lupin to smile at me. The pain! The hardship!”

“Sounds terrible,” said Remus, but this time his tone wasn’t so much noncommittal as it was an invitation. Sirius happened to be an expert on the difference.

He leaned forward, grinning over the top of Remus’s book, too big and bright to be ignored. “My outstanding and award-winning self control aside—the real problem was, I wasn’t fluent in Remus Lupin yet.”

Remus put his bookmark in place, but didn’t close or lower the book yet. “I don’t think that’s a real language.”

“Oh, but it is. I have a dictionary and everything.”

“Oh, do tell.” The book was lowering further and further.

“‘That’s a terrible idea’ means: it’s an okay idea, but I’ve got a better one.”

Remus smiled, faintly. “So you’ve never listened to me from the beginning, I see.”

“Oh but I do,” said Sirius. “That’s the whole point. ‘I’m so tired of getting caught’ means: let’s make a highly complicated magical map to ensure that we will never get caught again.”

“James unlocked the final piece of that one, to be fair.”

“Don’t you dare give him credit for that, it was all you and you know it,” Sirius countered, and didn’t let him retort, but continued. “‘Sirius, leave me alone, I need to finish this essay and/or book’ means: Sirius, I am bored out of my mind, please make out with me immediately.”

“Now that one definitely isn’t true,” said Remus, but while blushing so hard that Sirius was inclined to disagree.

“And a one word answer about a deep dark secret, means: Sirius I trust you with my life and my heart and soul forever and ever.”

Remus rolled his eyes, but also tilted his head, studying Sirius critically, while Sirius tried not to squirm. That gaze always did things to him that weren’t suitable for polite company. “Sirius,” he said finally. Deliberately. “Leave me alone, I need to finish this book.”

Well, he couldn’t say no to that. Sirius snatched the book out of his hands, and obliged.

“Third year next,” Sirius said.

“I still can’t believe you betrayed me,” James said.

“You’ll get over it.”

“There I was, pink and glittery and glorious, waiting for my best friend in the world, my brother, to join me—”

“What should I do for third year? The only thing I remember from that whole year is The Football Incident.”

James grinned. Hogwarts just hadn’t been ready for exploding football. “We were ahead of our time, mate.”

“I know. I think about it every single day of my life,” said Sirius. “But seriously—don’t say it—what do I do?”

“Oh, I thought you were kidding,” said James, because wasn’t it obvious? When Sirius gave him a blank look, he shook his head. “Sirius...that was the year we started calling him Moony.”

“Oh.” Sirius blinked. “Oh!”

“Yeah,” said James.

“Yeah,” said Sirius, master of wit and wordplay, feared by his peers for his biting tongue and quick thinking.

“You know what to do,” said James.

November 1973: Third Year

Sirius flinched as soon as the portrait opened into the Common Room—he and Remus both had been silently hoping, on their silent walk back from dinner, that James and Peter were elsewhere tonight.

No such luck.

“Remus! In for a game of Exploding Snap? Let’s see how long it takes to singe Peter’s eyebrows off this time!”

Remus didn’t even look at him, just kept his head down and stomped upstairs.

“Well, he’s in a bad mood,” said James.

At that, Sirius stopped following him, and gave James his most withering look. “My goodness, I wonder why.”

“You’re stumped too?” said Peter.

Sirius stared at them. “Look at the brain trust here,” he said. He wasn’t really in a good mood either. He also didn’t care. “Geniuses, the lot of you.”

“Don’t tell us, then,” said James, smacking his hand down on the cards. They exploded.

In the aftermath, they discovered that Peter’s eyebrows were completely gone, as always when they played Exploding Snap. It wasn’t unusual, but it did cheer Sirius up a bit.

“Merlin, you look like shit. Can’t you ever learn to duck?”

“I try, but it’s like the blast heads right for me!”

“Explosions don’t aim,” Sirius said scathingly.

“Oh, who cares,” said James, dealing another hand. “Sirius, are you going to share with the class or what?”

“Did you both forget the Defense lesson we had this morning?”

“...Yes,” said Peter.

“Oh,” said James.

“Yeah, oh. He didn’t talk to me at all at dinner, and he’s probably holed up there right now, brooding,” Sirius said. “Brooding and hating himself.”

“Let’s do something about it, then,” said James. “C’mon, Mad Scientist.” He got up, leaving the cards unattended to probably explode on their own yet somehow take off Peter’s arm hair.

“Me?” said Peter, looking around.

“Yes you, do you see anyone else with face burns around here?” James said over his shoulder as he led the way to the dormitory stairs.

“Aren’t all scientists mad?” said Sirius, climbing up after him. “They use ekeltricity to try to make Inferi, but they fail miserably because they’re Muggle buffoons who don’t know their arse from their spleen—you know, now that I say it out loud, I think my dad didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“I think you should chuck everything your dad ever told you in the bin and start over, mate,” said James, not unkindly, as he opened the door to their room. “Hey, Remus, did Muggles ever try to make Inferi out of electricity?”

Never let it be said that James Potter didn’t know how to enter a room and immediately dominate the conversation.

Remus stared at them, clearly trying to process what was happening. “Oh,” he said. “You’re talking about Frankenstein.”

“Wait, it’s real?” said Sirius. “I thought my dad was full of shit!”

“He was,” said Remus. “It’s a book. A fictional one, about a mad scientist.”

“Oh,” said Sirius, briefly disappointed. Then he brightened up. “Can I read it?” He’d thought for two whole years that Remus’s books were boring, until he actually read one of them. Since then he’d been devouring Muggle fiction as though it was going extinct.

“Of course,” said Remus. “I’ll write my mum for a copy.”

“And before you do that, you can tell us everything they got wrong in the lesson today, “ said James.

Remus paused in his shuffle to look for quill and parchment. “What lesson?”

“The one about werewolves!” said Peter, as the light finally dawned. “Oh, I get it. No wonder you’re in a bad mood.”

“I’m not in a bad mood,” said Remus.

“Oh, stuff it, you were up here brooding in the dark,” said James, lighting the lamps to prove his point.

“It’s still light outside.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” said Sirius. He sat down next to Remus on his bed. “Sooooo...”

“So?”

“Let’s play Werewolf Twenty Questions!” said Sirius, who had taken a one-time sarcastic comment from Remus to its natural end, and invented a game.

“Or, here’s a better idea, let’s never talk about it,” said Remus, getting up to leave.

Sirius pulled him down. “Don’t do this,” he said. He did not let go of Remus’s hand. He didn’t want to.

“Do what?”

“Hide from us. We can help.”

“You really can’t.”

“Sure we can,” said James, pulling out a piece of parchment. “Scienta potentia est!“

They all stared at him.

“Was that a spell?” said Peter.

“Did you just quote Hobbes?” said Remus.

“I thought it was Bacon,” said James.

“Wait, there’s bacon?” said Peter.

“It means ‘knowledge is power,’” Remus told him. “And Francis Bacon is a person.”

“It’s Latin, Peter,” said James.

“I thought your family was Indian, how do you know Latin?”

Even Sirius, bigoted family and all, knew how stupid that question was. “For fuck’s sake, Peter—”

But James was more patient than him. “My dad’s family has been in Britain for generations, Peter,” he said. “Getting British educations. And it helps with British spells, to know Latin. So yes, I learned some Hindi and some Latin and some French, all at the same time.”

“Ugh, French,” said Sirius.

“Just because your French teacher was an asshole and mine was hot—”

“Va te faire enculer, Potter.”

“Your teacher couldn’t be much of an asshole if he taught you that one,” said Remus.

“He didn’t, I learned it off dear old Bellatrix.”

“What does this have to do with bacon?” said Peter.

“Francis Bacon,” said Remus, not seeming to mind that he was repeating himself. “It’s a name, of a very famous medieval writer. And they say it was Bacon, James, but Hobbes was the first one to actually write that specific sentence.”

“Dammit, now I want bacon,” said Sirius.

“Kitchen raid?” said Peter.

“Sure,” said Remus.

“No,” said James and Sirius together.

“We’ve gotten off track,” said Sirius. “Again.”

“Right, so what we were saying is, we don’t know how we can help, but how can we know unless we know?” said James. “You know? Right, Sirius?”

“James, what the fuck,” said Sirius.

“You’re the worst,” said James.

“I get it,” said Remus. “But better, older wizards than you have tried, and—”

“No they haven’t,” said Sirius.

“What?”

“I was listening today,” he said. “They haven’t tried shit. They’ve gotten as far as identifying werewolves, closing the bite wounds, and figuring out that they age a bit faster than other people. That’s it. That’s our werewolf research.”

“Also that they’re vicious killers with no souls who eat human babies,” said James. “Don’t forget that part.”

“Remus Lupin, eater of babies,” said Sirius. “Can you imagine?”

“Yes,” said Remus.

They looked at him.

Remus sighed. “I don’t remember everything, after.”

“Okay, so that’s different, they said you do,” said James, writing on his parchment. They looked at him. “What? Go on, don’t let me stop you.”

“Right...well, they did get that wrong. It’s not a perfect memory, it’s more. Muddled. The wolf doesn’t think the way I do—sights, sounds, smells—it processes them differently.”

“And wants to eat babies?” said Peter.

“Not exactly. But it’s angry. At being cooped up, usually. It wants to destroy—everything. And the smell of people drives it crazy.”

They were silent, except for the sound of James scratching away.

“James...” said Remus after a minute. “Why are you writing this down? This isn’t something you can leave lying around, there really shouldn’t be a record at all—”

“What? Oh, it’s fine,” said James.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Sirius at the same time.

They exchanged a glance, and when Remus opened his mouth to protest, James held up his parchment to show him. It was, predictably, covered in James’s spidery, all-caps (for some reason), completely illegible handwriting.

Remus actually cracked a grin. “I see,” he said. “Do you write all your essays like that?”

“McGonagall says I’m teaching her to be a codebreaker,” James said proudly.

“He’s lying,” said Sirius. “He has perfect penmanship for essays. He just doesn’t bother when he’s the only one reading his notes.”

“Or when they’re top secret,” said Peter, sounding just a little too excited that they were taking top secret notes.

“Sirius, you do the exact same thing,” said Remus. “You taught yourself to have bad handwriting, and you only submit legible essays to the professors you like.”

Sirius grinned at him, and felt a little lightheaded when Remus smirked back. He was fully aware that there was an ongoing argument in the staff room about whether he was a good student or not. Andromeda had told him, before she graduated. “Your point?”

“Maybe we should learn some stuff about regular wolves,” said James, oblivious to the strange churning in Sirius’s stomach when Remus gave him that particular look. “Then compare and contrast.”

Remus sighed, and finally released Sirius’s hand (damn) to gently take James’s parchment away from him. Then started writing a list of books.

They watched him for a moment.

“So...you’ve done this research yourself, then?” said Sirius.

“My dad did.”

“And he couldn’t find a cure?” said Peter.

“No. There isn’t one.”

James wrinkled his forehead. “Who said anything about a cure?”

“Well, my dad, for eight years,” said Remus. “He tried everything, James. Everything.”

James looked at his list. “These are wizard books. About werewolves.”

Remus shrugged. “They’re the most accurate ones out there.”

Sirius held out his hand, and James, reading the look on his face, handed him the parchment.

Sirius ripped off the list, and set it on fire with his wand.

Remus and Peter both stared at him, but James looked grim and determined and entirely on the same page.

“Fuck that,” said Sirius. “We’ve established there’s no cure, and that your dad would’ve found one if there was. And we’ve established that even the experts don’t know shit.”

“We’re starting over,” James agreed. “I want books about wolves, not werewolves. Muggle books. Science books. With no wizard bullshit about evil baby-eaters who need to be killed or cured in them.”

“I don’t think you really need to go that far with your essay—”

“This isn’t for class,” James said.

“James—”

“In all those books,” said Sirius, “where they talk about how bad it is, or how evil werewolves are, or how we can’t cure them. Did anyone ever say anything about just...helping the wolf?”

“Well...no one can really get near them...”

“So they feel angry when they’re near humans, but do they feel angry all the time? James write this dow—oh good you are,” said Sirius. “Do they enjoy feeling anger? What would happen if the wolf stopped being angry?”

“Got it,” said James, scribbling furiously. “I still want to research wolves. I’m no mad Muggle scientist, but I’m willing to bet that regular wolves don’t feel all-encompassing rage from the smell of humans. Maybe the smell of rabbits. Are werewolves enraged by rabbits?”

“Wouldn’t know. I don’t exactly hang out in a field and play with bunnies when I’m in that state,” said Remus.

“So that’s something else to research,” said James, writing it down.

“Are there any books written by werewolves?” said Peter.

Everyone looked at him.

“Probably not,” said Remus.

“We’ll start looking,” said James. He wrote this down too. “Maybe there’s one who can tell us about this whole rage issues thing.”

“Your dad really tried for eight years to cure you?” said Sirius.

“He wasn’t exactly big on werewolves before I got bit,” said Remus. “And he was a little desperate.”

“Yeah? What happened? You told us it was Greyback and that it was revenge, but—”

“Revenge for what my dad said about him. It was all over the papers. Famous dark creatures expert lashes out against werewolves, says they deserve death in trial against Muggle tramp accused of lycanthropy—Greyback got off but my dad turned out to be right. Even though no one believed him. And I was the revenge.”

“You know, I remember hearing about that trial,” said Sirius. “I was little, but. My parents were pretty emphatic in their...agreement. With what he said about werewolves.”

Remus shrugged. “To be fair, he wasn’t wrong about Greyback specifically deserving to die.”

“But if it was in the papers—didn’t anyone hear about you getting bit?” said Peter.

“There were rumors,” said Remus. “Because my dad disappeared after it happened. Took himself, me, and my mum completely off the map. But no one ever knew why.”

“I don’t remember the name Lupin at all though,” Sirius said. “And I would. My parents would have invited him to dinner or something, so long as they didn’t know about your mum.”

For some reason, that made Remus slide his eyes away, shiftily. “Uh. He was probably across the country by the time they thought of it. They probably couldn’t find him.”

Sirius looked at James. Something wasn’t right.

“Doesn’t lupin mean ‘wolf?’” said James.

“I thought it was a flower,” said Peter.

“It is a flower,” said Remus. “My mum likes to grow them around the house. Whatever house we’re in at the moment. They’re tall, and purple—”

“Yeah, and they’re named after the Latin word for wolf,” said James, refusing to be deterred.

“Wait, and Remus is a wolf name too,” said Sirius. “From Remus and Romulus. They were abandoned and raised by wolves.”

“How’d you know that one?” said Peter.

“Remus left a book of mythology on his bed, what was I supposed to do? Not read it? Please, Peter.”

“So wait, what are you saying? That Remus’s parents named him Wolf Wolf?” said James.

“Yeah, what’s your middle name? Is it just the Latin word for Moon?”

“It’s John,” said Remus, who was sounding a little desperate now, and who had definitely been refusing for the last two years to tell them what the J stood for¹ so, something was up. “The Latin word for moon is luna. You know, like “lunar.’”

“Remus Luna Lupin,” said James. “Yeah, it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Shame—you could’ve been Wolf Moon Wolf. Really wave it under everyone’s noses.”

“Please no,” said Remus.

“Remus...” said Sirius. “What aren’t you telling us? Why did your parents name you Wolf John Wolf?”

“Um,” said Remus. “They...didn’t?”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Your dad went into hiding—are you saying it’s an assumed name?” said Sirius.

“Your dad gave himself the last name Wolf when he went into hiding?” James said.

“That doesn’t seem...smart,” said Peter, ever insightful.

“No, he kept using different names whenever we moved. But when I came to Hogwarts I needed just one, so. Um. Dumbledore kind of. Let me pick my own name.”

More silence.

Then James, seeing the look on Sirius’s face, quickly cast a Silencing Charm, which Sirius took a brief second to be thankful for because there was no way he could keep his voice down for this one—

“YOU NAMED YOURSELF WOLF WOLF?”

“This is the best day of my life,” said James.

“YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

“Why?” said Peter.

“Isn’t it obvious?” said James. “He’s hiding in plain sight! It’s amazing!”

“WOLF WOLF!” was all Sirius could manage, between hysterical laughter.

Remus started to smile. Just a little. It was a smug smile, too. Sirius had never been happier.

“Why John, then?” said Peter, who was not only insightful but clearly focused on the most important detail of this story, for fuck’s sake. “Is that your real name?”

“HE PICKED HIS OWN REAL NAME AND IT’S WOLF WOLF.”

“I don’t—remember ever using my real name?” said Remus. “It got a little confusing, moving everywhere and changing names all the time, my parents always called me the fake name even in private to keep themselves from messing up in public...”

“Your life is an Elizabethan tragedy,” said Sirius, calming down for thirty seconds so he could acknowledge this tear-jerker of a casual anecdote. “Except for when you named yourself Wolf Wolf.“

“You should have picked Moon as a middle name,” said James. “Why the fuck didn’t you think of that?”

Remus shrugged. “‘Remus J. Lupin’ sounded good, so I picked a J name I liked.”

“This is the best day of my life,” said Sirius.

“I just said that,” said James.

“You were right,” said Sirius. “And I’m claiming it as mine too.”

“We should start calling you Moon,” said James. “Just to double down.”

“That sounds weird,” Peter pointed out. “Like, ‘hey Moon, hand me that quill.’ Weird.”

“Moony,” said Sirius, with the kind of finality that comes with a sudden sense of destiny. “He’s Moony. From now on.”

Remus’s face did a strange thing at that—a brief moment caught between protest, a grin, and another emotion that Sirius didn’t yet recognize.

He settled on laughter, and burying his face in his hands. “This is the worst idea.”

“You did it to yourself,” said Sirius. “Literally. Moony. Wolf Wolf. Wolfy McWolferson.”

“Fucking hell,” said Remus.

“It also makes it sound like he likes to moon people,” said Peter thoughtfully, which settled it for good.

“So, Moony. Can you write to your mum for books about wolves?” said James.

“And for the mad Frankenstein book,” Sirius reminded him.

Remus threw up his hands. “Sure,” he said. “Why the fuck not.”

April 1978: Seventh Year

“Morning, Moon Moon,” Sirius said around a yawn followed by a too-big bite of eggs. He loved Waning-Gibbous-Saturdays. There was never anyone in the Great Hall until noon, except a few fifth years chugging energy potions and looking near death. While James—who was usually an early riser, but not after a moon—and Peter slept like logs (loud, snoring logs), Sirius was always too hungry from running to sleep, and Remus, who was usually also starving though for different reasons, left the Hospital Wing early when he could (which was more and more, in the last two years).

“That’s a new one,” Remus said. He was bleary-eyed and pale, but Sirius noted with satisfaction, as he did every morning after a Transformation since the first time in fifth year, that he was not injured or even bruised.

“Well, Wolf Wolf and Moony were getting less funny. I had to find a new way to point out the absurdity of your existence.”

“You really don’t have room to talk,” Remus pointed out, as he down across from him and then did not move when Sirius immediately entangled their feet. “You’re literally named Black Dog Star.”

They exchanged a brief, private smile, that only two other people in the world would have understood the joke of. “Yes, but mine didn’t become funny until later,” Sirius said anyway. “You did yours on purpose.”

Remus shrugged, hiding a smirk, and started helping himself to sausages.

Sirius may have watched him with his hand on his chin as though Moony eating was they best telly-vision program in the world. Maybe. He’d deny it later.

“I do remember my name,” said Remus, out of nowhere. His hair was wild and curly in a way he never allowed it to be on normal days. Sirius wanted to wreck it further. Maybe he’d get a chance later.

“Your name?”

“You know. The original one.”

Remus didn’t say, the real one, like Peter would’ve, but Sirius understood without asking why. He wasn’t unfamiliar with the idea that the names you gave yourself and the names your friends gave you were more important than the ones you were born with.

“Yeah?” said Sirius.

“You want to know it?” said Remus.

Sirius thought about it; really thought about it. He liked when Remus trusted him with things, but—

“D’you want me to use it?” he said, finally.

Remus shrugged. “Not...really. It doesn’t feel like mine anymore.”

“Are you ever going to have a reason to dig it out?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Then keep it,” said Sirius. “Unless you want to tell me.”

Remus smiled. “No,” he said. “No, I think...I think that kid is someone else. Someone who’s not me.”

“Because you are Moony Wolf Wolf,” said Sirius.

“Exactly.”

“You know,” said Sirius, “I’ve secretly always liked the sound of it.”

Remus’s smile turned into a full grin, spreading slowly across his face like a sunrise. “I know,” he said.

It was not long afterward that they looked up from smiling stupidly at each other and not saying much, to see that Dumbledore had descended from—wherever he’d been—to loom majestically over their table.

“Mr. Lupin, Mr. Black,” he said, then paused. “You’re looking well, Mr. Lupin.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Remus, with his most bland poker face. It never failed to astonish Sirius that professors thought Remus was the good one, at least until he saw that particular brand of acting in action.

“Do you both have a moment?” Dumbledore said. “Assuming, of course, that you are finished.”

Between the two of them, the table was cluttered with empty dishes and glasses—it looked like four people had just had a feast.

“I think we just might be,” said Sirius. “If you’d come in another hour, though, we’d probably be back at it again.”

He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t being flippant in order to gauge Dumbledore’s mood—they didn’t seem to be in trouble, but you never knew. Luckily, Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled briefly at him, and both his and Remus’s shoulders relaxed a bit.

“Then let us go to my office.”

“And then he asked us to join the Order,” Sirius finished, and James and Lily both nodded.

“I thought that might be it,” James said. “Surprised it took him this long.”

“Apparently he wanted to talk to us both,” Sirius said, now pacing back and forth on the Common Room rug. The conversation had been stressful, to say the least. “He was waiting for a good moment.”

“I’m assuming you said yes without thinking about it,” said Lily. James thought approvingly that Sirius and Lily had come a long way in their relationship—the words were wry, but they carried no judgment.

“Of course,” said Sirius. “If he hadn’t said anything I would have marched up there and demanded to know if there was a way I could help. But Remus...”

“He can’t have said no,” said James.

“He said he had to think about it,” said Sirius. “Because he doesn’t know if he’ll even have a steady source of income after the war, and even housing is going to be difficult.” He flung himself into a comfortable armchair that had been the source of his angst more than once over the last seven years. James had to admit this was a bit more serious—though not as Sirius—as the tea incident. “James, I don’t know what to do.”

“This is about the—” Lily mimed an excellent impression of wolf teeth with her hands “—thing, right?”

They looked at her.

“What? I didn’t believe Severus when he wouldn’t shut up about it, but I’m not entirely incapable of putting things together myself.”

“Oh good, the whole school knows,” said Sirius. “Great.”

“That’s provably not true,” said James, a bit more somber than he meant to be. “But—what about The Plan? Is it not going well?”

“What plan?” said Lily.

“You might as well fill her in,” said Sirius, flapping a wrist, when James looked at him.

“What, all of it?” said James, trying not to look sidelong at Lily and failing.

“You mean that you two are dating?” said Lily, both catching on to his failed attempts at subtlety and further proving that she was brilliant and clever and perfect and also absolutely terrifying. “Since last year, right? October?”

“September,” said Sirius. He looked a little sheepish, a rare look on him that really only came out when Remus was involved.

“What, did you both spend the entire summer pining after each other?” said James. “And then wait two entire weeks before mauling each other?”

“Not important,” said Sirius. His face was a fascinating shade of red, and James would’ve pursued the issue further if it wasn’t for Lily.

“So your plan is to talk Remus into moving in with you even though he’s convinced it’s his destiny to starve alone on the streets,” said Lily.

James narrowed his eyes at Sirius, just as a warning—he was letting this go for now, so as not to argue in front of Lily, but he would not forget.

“That’s right,” said Sirius, deliberately ignoring him. “And yes, I did try just asking. He can’t be convinced he won’t be a burden.”

“Not in words,” James pointed out.

“Merlin,” Lily muttered. “What, does he think the two of you will have visiting hours? Check in once a month to snog and then go about your separate business of getting killed by Death Eaters and starving to death?”

Neither of them pointed out how dark that was. There didn’t seem to be a point anymore in pretending it wasn’t just the way things were.

“Knowing Remus,” James said slowly, “Is there any chance he thinks this whole thing is just temporary? That after school you’ll just—move on, or whatever?”

Sirius stared at him. “If he does, he’s the most blockheaded, unobservant, self-pitying—oh, hell, you’re probably right.”

“Well, at least he’s got friends,” Lily said, smiling faintly.

“For all the good it does, when he gets in one of these moods and tries to push us away,” said James.

“It’s his pride,” said Sirius. “He’ll go to his death refusing to accept help from anyone.”

“It sounds like he thinks he doesn’t have anything to offer in return,” said Lily. It was kind of her to not mention Sirius’s own pride, James thought.

Sirius nodded. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him. That he does. It’s not about money, or about—anything else that he thinks makes him hard to be with—it’s about him.”

“Gross,” said James, because he had to, but he still shrugged his agreement when they looked at him. They’d spent seven years trying to get that through Remus’s head.

“And you said just telling him doesn’t work,” Lily said. “So you have to...what? Make a convoluted plan?”

“Well, obviously,” said Sirius, just as James said:

“Wait, Sirius, that’s it. You’ve got fourth year covered, now.”

“The twelve years of detention,” Sirius breathed. “You’re right, that’s it!”

“And Peter’s Prank Debut,” said James.

“We can even do it again, but Moony’s way,” Sirius said.

“Yes! And include everyone, not just them!”

“Wait,” said Lily. “What?”

Chapter Text

February 1975: Fourth Year

Two things happened that morning:

One, a certain faction of Slytherins realized that picking on Remus was the source of their constant stream of woes. Snapped bag straps, dropped books, mis-measured Potions ingredients but only the ones that led to violent explosions—understated, subtle pranks, the kind of thing most of the other Gryffindors wouldn’t bother with, but that were also impossible to prove. All of them stopped if they left Remus alone. It took them four years, but they finally two and two together, realized they couldn’t get him in trouble, and decided it wasn’t worth it anymore.

So, they decided to bully Peter instead. They started by tripping him on his way into the Great Hall, then spiking his drink so that he burst into song in front of the whole school, and then he turned green with silver stripes.

Subtle, Sirius thought. Who on earth could be behind this one.

Two, a large owl that had always creeped Sirius out (why did barn owls have to look into your soul like that?) swooped over the students, and dropped a letter right into his lap.

“Give it,” said James before Sirius could open it.

Sirius obliged, without much reluctance.

James opened it, scanned it, then crumpled it up and tossed it back to him. “Nothing important,” he said. “Lot of tosh about being more like Regulus.”

Sirius glanced down. At the top, where a piece was sticking out, he could see a fragment of a sentence reading something about in associating with half-breeds and mudbloods, you have betrayed—

He should’ve taken a deep breath, tossed it in the next fireplace he passed, and moved on with his day.

Instead, he looked over to the Slytherin table, where Regulus was carefully reading a piece of parchment start to finish, before he put it down, looking thoughtful.

Sirius’s fist closed around the parchment, balling it even tighter.

Across from him, Peter still had his head on the table, refusing to raise it, while Remus, who was as usual looking pale and exhausted this close to the full moon, awkwardly patted his back. “It’s over,” he was saying. “Really, Peter, no one’s staring at you anymore. Here, have some bacon.”

“Is Doris Underwood looking?”

Doris Underwood was leaning over the table, deep in conversation with Kirk Clearwater. “Er, no,” said Remus.

Peter read the subtext of this, and groaned.

“What?” said Sirius. “Since when do you care about what Doris Underwood thinks?”

“Since she came back from summer vacation with—” Peter started, but Sirius didn’t care to hear the end of that sentence.

“My point is, you should be caring what the Slytherins think. Right, James?”

James was staring down the table—Sirius followed his eyeline right to Lily Evans.

Rolling his eyes, Sirius looked at the last bastion of sanity: Remus.

Remus looked right back at him, and shrugged.

Right. Their friends had gone mad, the people that raised him were assholes, he was losing his brother more and more every day, and now the dicksticks of the school had taken it upon themselves to pick on his friend who was bad at fighting back.

Time to declare war.

“James!” he said, and kicked him hard in the shin.

“Ow! Damn, what was that for?”

“Pay attention!”

James took a longer look at Sirius’s face than he would’ve liked, but whatever he saw there must have meant something, because he straightened up. “Right,” he said. “Pete, they think they can do whatever they want to you. You need to come up with revenge.”

“Scorched earth,” said Sirius. “Make sure they never even think to try anything like that with you ever again.”

Remus’s eyes widened. “I’m not sure what they did warrants—”

“It does,” snapped Sirius. “It starts simple, but it escalates.” His hand tightened around his parent’s letter. “It always escalates.”

“I don’t even know who did it,” said Peter.

“So what? We burn them all,” Sirius said.

“Peter should be the one to plan it,” said Remus, sounding a little desperate. “Since it’s him they came after.”

“Fine,” said Sirius. “But think of something good, Pete. Really make them pay.”

Peter’s eyes darted nervously between them. “Uh—”

“Take a day or two to think about it,” James advised. “Let them get comfortable. Then we strike.”

Remus had told them all about balloons, last year. It was Peter’s idea to fill the Slytherin Common Room with loud, singing ones. Which was good, but—

“No, it needs to be more embarrassing,” said Sirius.

“We should put something in the balloons,” said James.

“Fireworks,” said Peter.

“Slytherin belongings,” said Sirius. “And put them in the Great Hall.”

“Both?” said James.

“Both is good,” said Sirius.

Remus wasn’t around for this conversation. He was in the Hospital Wing, sleeping off a particularly nasty case of Werewolf. He may have stopped them, if he had been there.

“That won’t keep them up all night, though,” said Peter.

“Well then we’ll just have to fill their Common Room and dormitories as well, won’t we?”

“Singing ones in the dorms, exploding ones in the Great Hall,” said James.

“Perfect,” said Sirius.

Peter went along with it, as usual.

It went badly. Very, very badly.

Not the prank itself, which went off without a hitch. The reaction, however, when various personal belongings started raining from red and gold balloons in the sky...

Sirius felt very vindicated at first, when Snape’s pants fell right on his head. In fact, he howled with laughter. There were even giggles from the rest of the Gryffindor table. Peter told him later that Doris Underwood even laughed, not that he’d noticed at the time, because who cared?

Lily Evans didn’t laugh. She slapped James across the face, just because he did laugh.

There had been a few stuffed animals among the first year’s belongings. And a few rather embarrassing objects among the seventh year’s.

The first real inkling that they might have gone too far was when Sirius went to see Remus in the Hospital Wing, and got reamed out when Remus found out what happened.

Well. Remus didn’t scream. Instead, he said, very quietly, “How do you think the rest of their House is going to treat those first years?”

Around the beginnings of a prickling of guilt, Sirius said, “The little baby snakes in training? Who cares what happens to them?”

“You should,” said Remus. “You could have been one of them.”

Sirius left the Infirmary feeling low, and trying desperately to cover it with anger. They did deserve it. They did. They’d come for his friend.

It was easier to be angry when the whole of Slytherin lashed out at the whole of Gryffindor.

Sirius hadn’t even realized that there’d been a kind of gentleman’s agreement between them. Oh, the Slytherins picked on Muggleborns, and the Gryffindors righteously fought back or defended them, but otherwise it had always been limited to only pranking the people who pranked you. It could get nasty, and did, but it was never...this.

It was never everyone.

Gryffindors who had never even spoken to a Slytherin beyond “can you pass the crocodile hearts” suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of rapidly growing teeth and fingernails, bats flying out of noses, legs turned to jelly. In the corridors, on the stairs, at meals...and yet no Professor ever saw who did it to them.

Only Snape got in trouble, for a nasty curse that gave the person on the receiving end bloody slashes across their face. James said, later, that he’d actually heard Evans yelling at him for it—but as soon as she saw him, stopped and stalked past the both of them, a disapproving look on her face.

(Sirius was slightly alarmed that James was starting to track Evans’s every move. He and Peter were becoming just as bad as each other.)

The hexing was worse for the Muggleborns. All four of them came across more than one first year crying, or running to the loo to cry.

One of them had been hexed by Regulus.

Sirius punched a wall that day, and refused to go to Madame Pomfrey for his bloody knuckles.

The Marauders were used to defending themselves, and Gryffindors didn’t take any of it lying down, but for once the whole House wasn’t really angry at the Slytherins. They were more angry at whoever had done the prank (suspicion, of course, lay heavily on the four of them), and caused all of this to begin with.

“You were right, Peter,” James finally admitted, tiredly. “We should’ve stuck to fireworks. And singing.”

They were in their dormitory, hiding from the rest of their very dejected and angry House. From his bed, where he was pretending to work on homework but was really staring at it blankly, Remus looked up. “That was the original idea?”

He and Peter exchanged a long-suffering look that Sirius didn’t like at all.

“And only in their Common Room,” said Peter. “Just to keep them awake a night or two.”

“Hmm,” said Remus. “I think the Great Hall was better, have you noticed how on edge they’ve been from running on less sleep?”

“Yes,” said Peter glumly.

Remus gave him a small smile. Why did Peter get sympathy? “It’s all right, you were in the right area, to begin with. But you should’ve just hovered the balloons over their table and had them sing insulting songs, then explode. Fireworks only.”

“Well, where were you a week ago,” said Sirius, flopping back on his own bed.

“Turning into a wolf,” Remus snapped. “I can’t babysit you all the time.”

Sirius looked over at him, stung, but Remus was looking at his homework again. He realized with sudden clarity that he didn’t much like not having Remus’s eyes on him, even if they weren’t secretly laughing the way they normally were.

“What do we do now?” said James, before something—a fight?—could break out.

There was silence. They all turned their heads towards Remus.

It took a moment for him to notice. “What?” he said when he finally looked up. “Oh, no. Don’t make me solve this for you.”

“But,” said Sirius, sitting up now. “We’re—really, really sorry. Aren’t we, James? Peter?”

James nodded earnestly, in a way that would have looked fake if you didn’t really know him. “Very, very, sorry,” he said.

Remus eyeballed him skeptically, but James, flippancy aside, really did mean it. Sirius knew, because he did too. He sighed.

“Remus,” said Sirius quietly. “Help us make it right.”

Remus swallowed.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re going to have to do the unthinkable, though.”

“What?”

“Stop telling me how sorry you are—and go tell McGonagall.”

And so, on the condition of Slytherin House leaving the rest of Gryffindor alone, James and Sirius confessed. They agreed mutually to leave Peter out of it, and tell her that it had been just them (to be fair, they had done most of the work).

McGonagall, who took both the reputation and safety of her house very seriously, gave them three full months of detention. They had to serve it separately, and it was the nastiest detention McGonagall could think of: preparing whatever Potions ingredients Slughorn needed, which meant hours in the dungeons with foul smells in Slughorn’s company.

The hexing stopped almost immediately (rumor was that Slughorn had a talk with his house), even for James and Sirius (who went back to their normal amount of enmity), and all of Hogwarts was a little subdued for a few days. Most of Gryffindor wasn’t speaking to any of them.

In public, James and Sirius were admirably stoic about all of this, but in the privacy of their dorm (which had become a bit of a sanctuary)—

“Twelve weeks,” said Sirius. “Twelve weeks of detention! I can’t get the pickled frog skin out of my fingernails, and I have to do this for twelve years, Moony.”

“Weeks, not years,” said Remus, unfeelingly.

“It might as well be years,” said Sirius darkly. “That’s how long it will take to get the smell out of my hair. My hair! I washed it three times!”

“Doris Underwood walked right past Peter in the hall today,” said James conversationally.

“Who?” said Sirius.

“So did Karen Anderson,” said Peter. “Everyone hates me now.”

“By everyone do you mean two people?” said Sirius, confused.

“How d’you do it, Sirius? They all like you. Even now.”

“What?” said Sirius, tearing his eyes away from Remus, who wasn’t avoiding his gaze anymore. “Who likes me?”

“Half the girls in this school, that’s who,” Peter grumbled. “Leave some for the rest of us, yeah?”

“Hadn’t noticed,” Sirius said dismissively. Weren’t they still too young for that sort of thing? Although his mother would blow a gasket if he started dating a Muggleborn, and the aforementioned Karen Anderson really wasn’t half bad... “Anyway, after my twelve years of exile in detention, who will even look upon my gaunt, pale, decrepit face, carved by years of torment, hair stringy and—” he shuddered theatrically “—smelling of toad guts, I will be alone, all alone, not even Moony will comfort me as I suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

“You’re fine,” said Moony. The secret laugh was back. “Wait, you’ve read Hamlet? When?”

“Ah, the things I’ve suffered in the name of justice,” Sirius continued, now really hitting his stride. “And no pity, no remorse, can I find, in this cold world—”

James hit him in the face with a pillow.

After they’d cleaned up the feathers (read: picked them out of their hair and left them on the floor) and James and Peter were snoring away, Sirius crawled up onto the roof, where, as he thought he might, he found Remus, lying on his back, looking for all the world like he was relaxing by the Lake on a sunny day, not hanging out on the roof in the middle of the night. All he needed was a cigarette to complete the picture.

Remus almost never looked like he was completely at ease.

“We did miss you,” said Sirius, once he was settled and had been appropriately quiet for a few moments. (The rules of his and Moony’s roof were unspoken and unwritten, but still sacred. When the roof required silence, he was silent.)

Remus shot him a sidelong look that he couldn’t quite read in the dark. “But look at all the fun you got into without me.”

Sirius snorted. “And for what? Lizard guts. In my hair.”

Remus didn’t point out that last time it had been toad guts, which was how Sirius knew his statement hadn’t entirely been a joke.

“Right,” Remus said instead. “Look, I really am sorry that you’re spending all that time in the dungeons, I know it has to be miserable and I don’t really blame you for being upset.”

“What?” said Sirius. “Don’t tell me you’ve decided this is somehow your fault!”

“No, but I know I can be a buzzkill—”

“A buzzkill?“ Sirius almost fell off the roof in outrage. “Who’s been calling you a buzzkill??”

“Well, no one, but...I thought it was implied?”

Sirius gaped at him.

“It was your idea to reenact Frankenstein with a suit of armor!” He managed finally.

“Well, yes, but—”

“You were the one who said you’d never liked football but it might be better if the ball exploded!”

“I know, but—”

“You have all the best books! And hoard all the best chocolate!”

“You never stop teasing me for always reading,” Remus pointed out when he managed to get a word in edgewise. “Also, as I recall, you made fun of me for a week straight for wearing plaid and argyle together.”

Sirius flapped a hand wildly, struggling for words in the face of this utter absurdity. “That’s the best part!! You wear plaid and argyle and exclusively sweaters and sweater vests, sometimes together, and yet you named yourself Wolf Wolf!“

“Still not over that, are you?”

“Never!” Sirius insisted. “Moony, honestly, if it were anyone else I’d say you were fishing for compliments, because the idea that everything’s not better when you’re around is the most absurd pile of nonsense I’ve ever laid ears on, and I’ve heard some of my father’s rants! And if James were here, he’d back me up!”

“Please don’t wake him up,” said Remus. If he turned his head just right, Sirius could see even in the darkness that his ears were red. Good. “If I have to hear another tale of Lily Evans glaring at him...”

“Merlin’s beard, tell me about it,” said Sirius, taking this for the diversion it was. He figured he’d gotten his point across. “When did all our friends go insane, Moony?”

Remus shrugged. “It makes sense that it would start right about now,” he said. “I’m surprised you aren’t right behind them, actually. The girls in this school really do stare at you a lot.”

Sirius shrugged uncomfortably. He couldn’t say Peter was wrong, once he thought about it, and he also couldn’t pretend it was unpleasant. He thought he even recalled staring back at a few of them, and had been pleased to see them blush.

What really threw him off was that he knew for certain that he’d also caught Will Davies staring.

He’d heard his father go on about things like that, but in the rest of the (big, wide) world, it didn’t seem to be as...sordid, as good old dad had made it sound.

He didn’t say any of this. But he thought the record should show that he wasn’t lying when he said, “Oh, I don’t know. Peter’s not wrong about Karen Anderson. And what’s that Hufflepuff fifth year—?”

“No idea who you’re talking about.”

“Well, she’s got brown hair, curly, big eyes...but I dunno, Moony, can you see yourself getting as stupid as James and Peter over anyone?” Male or female? He added mentally.

Remus shrugged. “Dunno,” he said. “Does it matter?”

It was only a little bitter.

“Waste of time anyway,” Sirius said, not sure what else he could possibly say to that.

“If you say so,” said Remus.

That tone invoked the rules of the roof, so Sirius fell silent.

It would be a year or two before he really understood the door that that conversation opened.

April 1978: Seventh Year

This time, there were only four balloons, and they floated in one by one, just after dinner before everyone left the Great Hall.

The whole school tensed up, except for four very conspicuous Gryffindors, who carried on with their conversation as usual.

The green balloon stopped to hover over the Slytherin table first. Then the blue one over Ravenclaw, the yellow over Hufflepuff, and finally, a scarlet red balloon right over Gryffindor.

You could’ve heard a pin drop in the Great Hall.

All at the same time, they burst into the school song—traditionally, with each balloon singing it to a different tune. A few of the younger students (who hadn’t been around for the first balloon incident and were a bit less nervous) even joined in, with tunes of their own.

When they were done, the balloons all exploded at once, sending brilliant fireworks in each House’s colors across the enchanted sky.

Even the Slytherin colors were up there, and they went on just as long as the others.

When they finally finished, the school burst into applause. James saw a few of the younger Slytherins clapping along, and couldn’t help himself—he stood up and took a bow, to scattered laughter and a few cheerful “oh, give it up, Potter!” jeers.

Afterwards, he marched up to the front of the room, with his friends right beside him. Even Peter, who had argued about this part before he gave in, came along.

“It was us, Professor,” Sirius said dramatically, holding out his arms as if asking to be shackled. “Do with us what you will!”

McGonagall’s lips did not twitch. James was watching carefully. The lack of twitch was even more telling.

“Very well,” she said. “Come back to my office and we’ll discuss your detention.”

She gave them twelve days, which they all thought was a bit excessive, until she looked over the top of her glasses at them and said, “You’ll be doing it with Professor Dumbledore. I believe he had some...material...to review with the three of you, anyway.”

“The three of us?” James had said.

“Ah, yes. Pettigrew, three days of detention will be enough for you. You can do them with me—I’m sure I can give you lines to write.”

No one in the history of Hogwarts had ever had a detention as easy as writing lines. James heard Peter breathe a sigh of relief, but—

“Peter? You didn’t join the Order?”

“The invitation has been extended, but I have been informed Mr. Pettigrew is taking some time to think about it,” said McGonagall firmly, before he could respond. “You will do him the courtesy of not badgering him to decide more quickly. Such a decision is not lightly made.”

James frowned, but didn’t argue. Not here.

Sirius, however, was staring at Remus. “But you said yes.”

Remus glanced at McGonagall, whose face betrayed nothing. “Yes,” he said. “I had to think it over, but—well. With everything going on. Since I was asked; how could I say no?”

At this, McGonagall nodded approvingly. “Well said, Mr. Lupin.” It was high praise, but they knew better than to let on at being stunned. “Now—I believe that is all we have to discuss?”

James didn’t miss the furtive glance Sirius stole at him before slinging his arm around Remus’s shoulders as they left McGonagall’s office. “Better this time, yeah?”

“Just a bit,” said Remus, ducking his head to hide a smile.

James looked hurriedly away, and landed on Peter, who was staring at the ground as he walked—shuffled, really—with them back to the Common Room.

“Well?” he said.

Peter looked at him, and read the disappointment in his face. “I know, Prongs, and I want to, but I just...it’s just.”

“Just what?” James said, sharper than he meant to. Peter’s eyes slid away from his.

“It’s...dangerous,” he finally mumbled.

“So what?” said James. “We do dangerous things every day!”

“Rightly so,” said Sirius. His arm was still around Remus. No one in the corridor except James seemed to notice.

“Not like this,” Peter said, still mumbling.

They had reached the Common Room entrance. “Fizzlepuff,” said Sirius.

The portrait swung open, and once they were all inside, James turned to them. “Peter,” he said. “I know it’s not—easy. But. We’re going to need our friends around us, now more than ever. We’ll never survive without each other. And we can help you—but you have to let us. You have to be there with us.”

That last was directed at Remus, which he thought Remus might pick up on from the way Sirius was staring at him.

“We need you around,” James said, to drive it in a little deeper. “The whole Wizarding World needs you.”

“No pressure,” said Sirius. Tension broken a little, they all laughed.

“Just think about it,” said James, clapping Peter on the shoulder. “There’s still time to do your detention with us.”

“Right,” said Peter.

“You know, you did say Karen Anderson was a good kisser,” James said, after “detention” on day two, when it was just the two of them in the dorm. Remus had elected to stay after to ask Dumbledore a few questions, and Peter was still writing lines with McGonagall.

“Well, she was,” said Sirius vaguely. He was going through his trunk, looking for something that he hadn’t asked James about yet, which was unusual.

“Right, but...”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Sirius, throwing all his belongings back into a heap in his trunk. “How did I lose the—” he trailed off, muttering to himself and throwing open every dresser drawer in the room.

“Er. Pads? D’you need help?”

“No,” said Sirius. “I’m looking for—aha!” He held up a plaid shirt and an argyle sweater vest. “The perfect outfit,” he finished, putting it on Remus’s bed. “Now. What were you on about? Not understanding the concept of bisexuality?”

“The concept of what?”

“Both, James. It means I like both. Only, I like Remus the best.”

“You never had a steady date before him,” James said. “Are you sure?”

Sirius gave him a withering look. “Neither did you before Lily,” he said. “Are you?“

“I don’t mean that,” said James. “I meant, just. Are you sure there isn’t just a Remus exception clause? I mean, everyone gets at least one, right?”

“Yes,” said Sirius. “I’m sure. Can we please not talk about this.”

“Wait, really?” said James. “Wait, who? Oh my god, was it one of the Prewetts? Was it me?”

“What? No!”

Well, he’d never heard anything more hurtful in all his years. “Really?! Never? Padfoot, I can’t believe—we’ve practically showered together, after Quidditch! And you never—I can’t believe this!”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sirius said, this time with his whole face in his hands. “Can we please not have this conversation? Please?“

“I have been betrayed,” James said. “It’s not even just Remus, and you—why not me! Is it because I’m brown?”

“What? James—what?!”

“I see how it is,” said James. “I’m just too much man for you, Padfoot. Or should I say Judas.”

“That’s not my middle name either,” said Remus, entering the room. “What’s going on?”

“Remus, please rescue me,” Sirius pleaded. “He’s finally cracked.”

“Excuse you, all I did was ask him if he really did like snogging Karen Anderson, along with—”

“All the others?” Remus said.

“Exactly,” said James. “And then I found out that he did, and that you aren’t an exception clause in the heterosexuality contract, he’s liked other blokes besides you—”

“He’s what,” said Remus.

“Oh, right,” said Sirius, before James could panic that he’d accidentally revealed something sensitive. “Moony, Prongs knows. I didn’t tell him, he worked it out himself.”

“What,” said Remus. Good, that was settled.

“But none of them were me,” James finished. “Tell me this isn’t the betrayal of the century!”

Remus gave him an odd look. “Uh. James. Is he...your exception clause?”

“I’m in hell,” said Sirius.

“No, that’s Freddy Mercury,” said James promptly.

The two of them both looked thoughtful, and nodded. What a pair they were.

“You’re in luck,” said Sirius. “He also likes both.”

“Which Muggle bar did you hear that in?” said Remus.

“You’ve been going to Muggle bars?” James said, and was about to start in again, but—

“Not the kind he’d go to with you,” Remus said, with a meaningful look.

“Ah,” said James. “Merlin’s balls, this really has been going on a while without you telling me a damn thing. And not even staring at my ass!”

“Moony, save me,” said Sirius. “Tell him it’s weird to want your best friend to perv on you.”

“Er,” said Remus. “I’m not sure I’m the best...person to do that.”

“God alive,” said James, suddenly the most uncomfortable person in the room. “And how long were you not staring at my ass?”

Remus was looking intently at the ceiling. “Do we have to do this,” he said to it.

“I’ll tell him, if you want,” Sirius said. Remus gave him an “oh, go on” gesture, so he did. “Moony trusts four people—”

“Who’s the fourth? It better be Lily,” said James.

“Obviously,” said Sirius. “Four people, and he never likes anyone he doesn’t trust, and he insists it’s not Stockholm’s that he happens to like me.”

“Stockholm’s Syndrome isn't a real thing anyway,” Remus said.

“Yeah, you need to believe that, don’t you,” Sirius retorted, giving him a look James immediately wished he hadn’t seen.

So instead of thinking about that, he looked very much away to process this for a minute. “So...anyone that you trust? Girls too?”

“Not you,” said Remus.

“Betrayal,” James said automatically.

“But I don’t know. Just that it’s never happened.”

James thought some more. It didn’t make a lot of sense to him, but who cared? Especially if neither of these two fake friends were going to stare at his ass?

“Well, all right then,” he said.

“Glad that’s settled,” said Sirius. “Now get out, Prongs, me n’ Moony have some stuff to talk about.”

“Gross,” said James, but, assuming this was part of The Plan, he still got up to go.

Sirius just grinned at him. “Anyway, your ass is flat,” he said, just before James shut the door. “Flat like a board is flat. Moony’s is better.”

“GROSS,” James said again, and started down the stairs.

“What on earth started this,” said Remus as soon as the door was shut.

“James was asking stupid questions,” said Sirius. “Brought up by the balloon incident.”

“Ah, yes, the start of your sexual awakening,” Remus said with a wry smirk.

Sirius barked a laugh. “That’s the one,” he said. He sighed. “Karen Anderson really was a good kisser.”

“Yeah? You want to Floo her up and see how she’s doing?”

“Not bloody likely,” Sirius said, grinning back at Remus. “I’ve had better since.”

“Jake Thompson was that good?” Remus teased.

Sirius shuddered. “God no,” he said. At least Jake had looked at him afterward, and he had braved the Hogwarts gossip farm to come out in his seventh year, so he wasn’t all bad, but— “Clammy hands. Clammy everything. But forget that, Moony, let’s go to the roof.”

“You kicked James out just so we could go to the roof?”

“Sure did,” Sirius said cheerfully. “Got you an outfit and everything. Like a date.”

“Oh goody,” said Remus blandly, then laughed when he saw the outfit. “Sirius, what have you been getting at?” he said, even as he pulled off his shirt and pulled the new one on, seemingly unaware of Sirius’s mouth going dry.

“What?” said Sirius, proud of himself for being able to say one whole word.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed your walks down memory lane,” said Remus. His hair was rumpled, just the way Sirius loved it best, and he looked as soft and touchable as Sirius had ever seen him. “C’mon. What’s it been about?”

“You’ll see,” Sirius managed. He grabbed Remus’s hand. “But first, we have a roof date. Come on.”

“Didn’t learn our lesson entirely,” James said the next day. “You know. Marauder style.”

“It takes us seven years to get there but we do get there,” said Sirius solemnly.

“What are you thinking for fifth year?” said James, trying to sound non-judgmental.

“Dunno,” said Sirius. “How about the time I almost fed Snape to him?”

“Maybe not that,” James said.

“I did hold a mandrake leaf under my tongue for a month for that bastard,” Sirius said, sounding thoughtful.

“He thinks we were just looking for an excuse to do that,” said James.

“No he doesn’t,” said Sirius, with some finality that made James wonder what exactly he knew that James didn’t. “He wouldn’t even if he didn’t know we had to wait two months for a damn lightning storm while trying to preserve and hide a spit-soaked mandrake leaf. Trust me.”

“Fifth year is just you reading the Animagus instructions out of a book to him,” said James. “And making him hide in the loo every day, chanting the spell to himself.”

“Something like that,” said Sirius.

Well, there was definitely something Sirius Black wasn’t telling him. And from the faraway look on his face, James wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

October 1975: Fifth Year

“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Peter said, for the thousandth time since they’d started working on the Animagus transformation.

“This is the best idea,” Sirius told him, for the thousandth time since Peter had started asking. “We’re one blasted lightning storm away, we can’t back out now.”

“Peter, it was your idea²,” James said. That was the most baffling part to Sirius, too; neither one of them had ever doubted that every idea that popped into their brains was a brilliant one.

“Right, but...” Peter stopped, as though he expected to be cut off. When no one did, and all he got was expectant looks, he trailed off. “It’s so...dangerous,” he said finally.

“We told you, once we manage it, one of us will test your theory first, before we all go,” James said.

“Me,” said Sirius. “I’m testing it.”

“I still think you can’t call dibs,” said James.

“My parents will miss me the least,” Sirius said flippantly.

“You haven’t even seen where he goes to transform!” Peter said, letting that one slide. Only Remus would have acknowledged the darkness in that remark, and only a little, just to let Sirius know he’d heard it. Peter thought it was the joke Sirius made it out to be, and James dealt with the Sirius’s family thing by making his mum double up her care packages (especially after he’d gotten a taste for laddu), and not making a big deal out of it. He probably thought Sirius hadn’t noticed, but he absolutely had, and didn’t like to think about how it made his heart ache every time.

Anyway.

“It must be safe,” James said. “Or something horrible would’ve happened by now. “

“Right, but like...all we know is that it’s the Shack,” said Peter. “We don’t even know how big it is. Or how much space Moony has. What if it’s tiny and the first time you find that out is when you’re trapped in there with an enraged werewolf?”

“Size matters,” said Sirius, snickering.

James grinned, but he still looked thoughtful. “That is a point,” he said.

“Well, one of us will have to convince him to show it to us,” said Sirius.

Peter snickered this time. Sirius kicked him. Only he was allowed to make dick jokes.

“Get Mary Taylor,” said James. “She can’t stop batting her eyelashes at him.”

Sirius scowled. He’d noticed that too, and no amount of knowing Moony had no interest was enough to make him not feel weird about it.

“Moony would piss his pants,” said Peter, now sniggering outright. “Can you imagine? He barely even sees girls, he’s like...like a rock. No interest in us humans.”

“That’s not true,” Sirius protested. “He’s just...picky. I think.”

“Before we throw any girls to the literal wolf,” James said. “Why can’t we all go?”

“What?” said Sirius.

“What?” said Peter, sounding significantly more alarmed.

“Why does it have to be just one of us? Can’t we all just...take a trip down, check it out?”

“You’ll never talk him into that,” Sirius said. “And it would make him even more suspicious of our motives.”

Peter breathed a sigh of relief. Sirius had a feeling he hadn’t completely let go of the idea that the Shack was haunted. Or maybe he thought it was covered in werewolf germs—who knew.

“But,” said James. “Whoever does go will be the first student besides Remus to set foot in the Shrieking Shack.”

There was a beat.

Sirius’s hand flew to his nose. “Dibs!” (It was usually “not it!”, of course, but Sirius was adaptable.)

He’d got that one off Maggie Carter, who was Muggleborn, and quite funny when they weren’t otherwise occupied. The Howler he’d gotten had been quite spectacular, after Regulus walked in on them and went running to mummy and daddy.

“Dammit!” said James, who was a big fan of the nose trick when he actually remembered to do it. “Fine, Sirius, it’s all you.”

“You’ll get your own chance,” said Sirius, aiming at consoling and landing at smug.

“Rub it in,” said James, but he didn’t argue.

“And I’ll convince him to do it over Hogsmeade weekend,” said Sirius.

“Oh, I couldn’t do it then anyway,” said Peter proudly. “I have a date.”

“We know, Pete,” said James. “Why over Hogsmeade?”

“With Doris,” said Peter.

“Because Remus won’t be able to go, and someone should stay with him,” Sirius said. “This will give him something to worry about instead.”

“He won’t?” said Peter.

“Full moon,” James and Sirius said together. The duh was implied. “On Monday,” James added. “So he’ll be tired, and refusing to admit it.”

“I thought you had a date too, Sirius,” James said. “Maybe I should do it after all.”

Sirius flapped a hand. “It’s just Maggie. She’s only snogging me to get back at Danny Scott anyway.”

“You know, last year you hadn’t even noticed her,” James said conversationally.

“I was busy,” said Sirius. Figuring out new ways to make Remus laugh, he didn’t say. He was only just starting to realize how much energy he spent on that, and wasn’t ready to examine what that might mean.

Also, he’d planned to cancel anyway, to stay with Moony. He’d only agreed in the first place because Danny had been in earshot.

“D’you need help asking him?” said James.

Sirius froze. “Asking him...what?” he said.

“To see the Shrieking Shack? What else? Are you okay?”

Sirius unfroze. “Oh,” he said. “No, I’ve got it. He’ll listen to me faster than he’ll listen to you lot.”

Since this was demonstrably true, that was the end of the conversation.

Sirius only realized later—much later—how relieved Peter probably was that they’d turned away from Animagus talk for a little while. That he’d probably done it on purpose.

Sirius did not tell James and Peter that his tried and true negotiation tactics mainly consisted of “Remuuuuuuuuuuuus. Remusremusremus. Please? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease? Pretty please? Please? Please? Please?”

If asked, he’d even have said that he barely had to beg.

He would not have mentioned falling to the floor at the edge of Remus’s bed, laying his head on it, and looking up at Remus with his biggest, most pleading eyes. “Moony please. Moony. Mooooooooonyyyyyyyy. Please show me. Pleeeeeeeeeeease?”

“All right!” said Remus, after half an hour of this. Shorter than Sirius thought—he must be improving. “But only if you shut up for the next hou—no, two hours.”

“Yessir!” said Sirius, and mimed zipping his lips. He could find other ways to be annoying.

“And leave this room so you can go be quiet at somebody else,” said Remus.

Damn.

But he knew that voice; there was no arguing. He marched silently—very silently—out of the room, and left Remus to his book.

The chat with Maggie Carter went well, in its way. Sirius was nice enough to do it in the privacy of an abandoned classroom, so she didn’t have to worry about anyone gossiping about it until she was good and ready for them to do so. And she didn’t get upset at all when Sirius said he should stay behind, Remus wasn’t feeling well again and shouldn’t be alone.

“Of course you should,” she said, eyes twinkling in a way Sirius didn’t really understand. She leaned back with her hands on the teacher’s desk, legs swinging under her knee-length skirt, and looking entirely at ease. Sirius couldn’t help an appreciative glance. She was a firecracker, and had never needed him one bit. It was refreshing, if not ultimately very interesting.

“Er—you’re not mad? I know this was all just to get back at Danny, but—”

“Well,” said Maggie, laying a hand on his arm, “Not just.”

Sirius grinned at her. It had been fun.

“But this will work out well,” she continued, removing her hand. “I’ll play dejected, he’ll be furious at you and try to console me, and I’ll get to turn him down now that the ball’s in my court. And have a lovely time with my friends instead.”

He laughed. “Is it exhausting, always being one step ahead of everyone else?”

“Of course not, dear,” she said, secret laughter building in her eyes. “It’s fun.”

“Well, it was a pleasure being used as your pawn,” Sirius said.

“And maybe I can get Abbie Martin to stop flirting and make a move,” she said thoughtfully.

Maggie never said anything that wasn’t carefully calculated. It was one of the things Sirius liked best about her, that she chose to be in Gryffindor (she’d admitted to being a hatstall) even though she could scheme like a Slytherin. If she was bringing up a potential date with another girl to Sirius, there was a reason for it.

“Yeah?” said Sirius, trying to sound as neutral as possible. He was more used to uncharted Grimmauld-Place-would-have-a-fit-if-they-knew territory than he used to be, but he still had to work at stopping and listening before jumping in with opinions. Remus had put him in his place about that more than once. “You...fancy her?”

Maggie smirked at him, reading his discomfort and clearly loving it. “Who wouldn’t, yeah? She’s so generous, but so practical, and those eyes...” whatever she was getting at had to be pointed, but she still sighed a bit. Ha. She was very smitten.

“Do you have to...hide a thing like that? And what if you’ve read her wrong and she’s not—also—er.”

“Interested?” Maggie said. “It’s a risk, to be sure.” Her eyes were serious now. “You have to decide if it’s worth it.”

Sirius smiled. “Merlin forbid a Gryffindor step away from something that might get you killed.” He sounded like Remus, and he knew it, but this was...this was different. Than all the things he casually threw himself into without thinking about first.

“Perhaps we’d rather just die doing what we love or what’s right than miserable and alone,” she said. Sirius found he couldn’t argue. “But people do send you signals, and you learn how to read them eventually. And how to send them back. So even if it’s a bit dangerous every time, you get better. Better at knowing when to hide, too.”

“So you do have to hide?”

“A bit. But my friends know—and any friend who would abandon me for that isn’t worth having in the first place.”

This, of course, was the kind of thing that people with kind families and many friends, who wouldn’t lose everything if they lost one person, said all the time. Sirius allowed the root of a deep knot of fear—James abandoning him—to rise to the top a bit, and shuddered as it stuck in his throat. “I’m not sure,” he said, surprised at his own raw honesty. “There’s no one I can afford to lose.”

To her credit, Maggie nodded, and Sirius swallowed his bitterness, just a little. “I know,” she said. “It’s hard. Every time. You never know if it will get better once it’s done getting worse.”

There was heaviness in her voice. Sirius found himself wrapping an arm around her, pulling her close, as much for his own comfort as hers.

She leaned into him in return. “And at a certain point...you also just have to trust your friends.”

Sirius’s eyes prickled with tears, and he didn’t quite know why. “Thank you,” he said, hoping she didn’t notice his choked voice. “For telling me. For...trusting me.”

Maggie tilted her head to look at him, smiling. “I have reason to believe you might understand, just a bit.”

He let out a deep breath, stomach suddenly full of butterflies. “I suppose I might,” he admitted.

She smiled. “Take good care of Remus,” she said, hopping down from the table. The eye twinkles were back.

“Always,” Sirius said. It was as close to an admission as he was ready for right now.

She kissed him one more time, on the cheek, and left the classroom without a backwards glance.

Remus found him in the room not long after Maggie left. Sirius was now lying fully on the desk, staring at the ceiling, but he looked over when Moony came in.

“What was that about?” said Remus. “The two of you break up?”

Sirius shrugged, and sat up, patting the now-vacant spot next to him. “Break up is a strong word. Fine, phrase. Don’t give me that look. Anyway, it wasn’t really dating to begin with.”

Remus shook his head even as he hopped up to sit next to him. “Sirius,” he said, “Will you ever be serious?”

“What’s the rush?” Sirius said, ignoring the pun. “We have so much time. Declarations of love at fifteen and sixteen are meaningless anyway.”

“Don’t let James hear you say that,” said Remus.

This was deflecting. “Why, what do you think?”

Remus sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know about any of this. Everyone seems to do it differently.”

“Tell me about it,” Sirius said. “Maggie wasn’t upset about being ditched this weekend so I could hang out with you—she already had a three-step plan to get back at her old boyfriend, lose him for good, and get her new crush to ask her out.”

“Sounds like her,” said Remus, smiling. “But why would you give up a date for me? I know you want to see the Shack, but we can do that some other time. You don’t have to go dateless and trap yourself in the Shrieking Shack this weekend.”

Sirius swore internally. He hadn’t meant for Remus to find out about this part at all. But the honesty of the last few minutes was still lingering around him, and he suddenly found that his reasons to lie or brush him off were gone. “I’d rather spend time with you,” he admitted. “The dates are fun, but you’re...more fun.”

Remus stared at him. Sirius’s heart hammered so loud he could hear it pounding in his head.

Then he slid his eyes away. Now Sirius’s heart dropped low into his gut. That wasn’t a good sign.

“All right,” said Remus. “I’ll never understand you, but all right.”

Sirius couldn’t help it. He leaned his head on Remus’s shoulder.

“Bad day?” said Remus, sounding surprised.

“Not bad,” said Sirius. “But you know how every conversation with Maggie Carter leaves you questioning your whole existence.”

“Ah,” said Remus. He put his head on top of Sirius’s. “Then I guess we’d better sit here and let you recover from your sudden burst of introspection.”

“You’re a true friend, Moony.”

“So are you,” Remus said, so quietly that Sirius almost didn’t hear him. And he didn’t let on that there was a warm feeling in his chest and pooling in his stomach.

They borrowed the Invisibility Cloak to get there. It was a rare warm day and the castle had mostly emptied out, everyone eager to get out in the sun.

Of course, that meant the first and second years were all over the grounds. It was a small piece of mercy that even the most foolhardy first year Gryffindors had gotten over the initial novelty of the Whomping Willow, and now everyone avoided it completely.

Of course, Sirius himself was never too chicken to participate in the occasional game of Willow Dodgeball, a game wherein you threw a magically-reinforced Quaffle into the branches and tried to dodge it when the Willow lobbed it back at you. It was always great fun even on the days when no one got seriously injured.

He was a little nervous, stepping up to the flailing tree, but Remus had clearly done this too many times to count. He even had a preferred type of stick to use.

“Quick,” Remus said. “Before someone realizes it’s stopped moving.”

Sirius had a million questions about that, but he waited until they were in the passage to ask them.

“Do the branches start up again once we’re in?” he said, as Moony lit his wand.

“Yes,” Remus said. He looked pale, and it wasn’t just the low light.

“Hey,” said Sirius. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” said Remus, then sighed at Sirius’s look. “It’s this place,” he admitted. “It’s hard to come down here, even knowing....”

“Well, let’s make it different this time,” said Sirius, not waiting for him to finish. The train ride from Hogwarts to London would be terrible even if he was just going to the Leaky Cauldron for a drink. He didn’t need further explanation. “Let’s start with a little light, shall we?”

He flung out his wand, conjuring lanterns all the way down the tunnel, until it was filled with golden light.

“Oh,” breathed Remus.

“Better, yeah? Any idea for decorations?”

“Oh, yes,” said Remus dryly. “Let’s get some balloons in here. Maybe a few streamers. Have a birthday party.”

“I was thinking more....” Sirius waved his wand again, turning the dirt floor into smooth, paved stone. Another wave and the curved ceiling and walls were smooth white stone, open and airy and almost pleasant to be under.

“I dunno,” said Remus. His lips were twitching. “It needs something. Maybe a plant?”

“Let’s dig deeper, put in an underground lake, and go full Gollum,” said Sirius, only half kidding.

Remus sighed. “You joke, but I’d almost rather stay here doing tunnel renovations than continue on to the Shack. It’s going to be even more unpleasant after this.”

“Well, this won’t last, but maybe we can fiddle with the Shack, too. In a way that will. C’mon, Moony, neither of us were meant to hide out in a cave.” He succumbed to temptation and took Remus’s hand, pulling him down the tunnel.

“If you say so,” said Remus, but he followed along readily enough. He did not drop Sirius’s hand, even when they were walking side by side. Sirius told himself firmly that it was for comfort, and comfort only.

He’d always been bad at listening to himself.

They eventually came to the Shrieking Shack entrance, which was as ramshackled as advertised. Remus quickly cast Silencing Charms as soon as they entered, because— “There’s a horde of Hogwarts students out there, and if they heard voices I don’t think the fear of ghosts would override their curiosity.”

“It wouldn’t mine,” Sirius agreed. “But I thought there were wards?”

“Sure, let’s hang out in here while a bunch of determined teenagers try to get through the wards on the house that shelters a werewolf.”

“If they’re good enough to hold you—I mean the wolf—it won’t matter,” Sirius said, but without much heat. He was too busy looking around with interest. “Moony, why’s there so much furniture in here? D’you have other werewolves over for tea?”

“Tea and biscuits, with a side of dead babies, “ Remus said, lips twisting wryly. “No, we discovered it’s good for the wolf to have something to destroy.”

Sirius tilted his head. “Why furniture, then? Why not like...I dunno, dog toys? For really big strong dogs...maybe magically enhanced...”

“I dunno,” said Remus, looking surprised. “I guess they thought furniture fits in with the milieu.” At Sirius’s look, he added, “The setting, you know? It’s the last line of defense if someone did break in—all they’d find is an old decaying house.”

“You could Glamour it to look like furniture, though,” said Sirius. “That way there’s not splinters everywhere.” He waved his wand again, and was surprised to find he was much better at cleaning spells when he actually cared about the result. “Does the wolf see through Glamours?”

“I think it would,” said Remus. “It can see and sense magic. Sort of.” He got his wand out to help with the cleanup.

“Then let’s get rid of all of this,” said Sirius decisively. “I’ll ask Hagrid what he gets for that great big dog of his, I bet we can find better things to rip to shreds. And we can Reparo them once a month.”

“Works for me,” said Remus, smiling faintly.

They made quick work of Vanishing the furniture. It was an OWL level spell that they wouldn’t need much practice for, come exam time; they’d both worked to be good at it well before it was taught in class, finding it useful for any number of pranks. As they did, Sirius noted that the house was a decent size, actually, although maybe it would be a bit tight with four animals...and come to think of it, wasn’t this room also tight with one giant wolf?

“And what’s with all these walls?” Sirius said when they were through. “Don’t you get claustrophobic?” He looked at one of the holes in one of them. “And throw yourself at them?”

The long and short of it was that they ended up completely renovating the Shrieking Shack. Sirius made Remus sit down (he conjured a non-haunted chair) for most of it, but he didn’t do a single thing unless it was Moony-approved with at least an “it can’t hurt” endorsement.

They were very nearly done when they heard voices outside the Shack. Sirius poked a tentative eyeball through a tattered curtain and saw four Third Year Ravenclaws he didn’t recognize, but he could hear one of the girl’s voices clearly.

“Of course, they say it’s haunted,” she said. “But we don’t really know, do we? After all, no one’s ever actually seen any ghosts.”

Remus and Sirius exchanged glances, and Sirius was surprised to see that Remus didn’t even look afraid—in fact, he was slightly amused.

“You’re not thinking of going in there, are you?” said one of the girl’s friends, a weedy boy with glasses who, from the look of it, hadn’t quite figured out that you needed to bathe, and often, if you wanted people to get close to you.

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” said a third girl. She had tried for a bowl haircut and it was not working for her. Sirius was suddenly and intensely glad that he wasn’t thirteen anymore. Merlin, had he ever been that titchy? “Even if it’s not ghosts, there could be anything in there.”

Now the look Sirius exchanged with Remus needed no translation. Sirius lowered the Silencing Charms without being prompted, whispering “Finite Incantatem,” even as the fourth student, a more stocky boy, said:

“I just think we need more data. I mean, we haven’t even been around when the alleged noises were—”

Remus chose that moment to let out an unearthly shriek that made Sirius jump, then struggle mightily not to burst into laughter. He covered by thumping hard on the walls, which were too reinforced to rattle but did make an ominous sound.

Two of the Third Years screamed. The first girl actually fell down in shock, and had to scramble to stand back up.

Remus flicked his wand, and immediately the sound of scratching surrounded them. Sirius fought the urge to howl, and instead screamed. Remus joined in after a few seconds.

That did it. All four students took the hint and ran away as fast as they could. Weedy Boy even tripped over his shoelaces. Sirius had to put up the Silencing Charms again in a hurry, because he couldn’t help it anymore. He collapsed onto the (newly refurbished) floor, howling with laughter.

Remus was laughing too, bright and clear.

When they had (mostly) caught their breath, Remus wiped his eyes and said, “Oh, we should come here every Hogsmeade weekend and do that.”

“Yes,” said Sirius. “We’ll just set up camp. See if we can get some Hufflepuffs next time.”

“You’d do it?” said Remus. “Just to protect the secret?”

“I’d do more than that,” said Sirius, sitting up to lean against Remus’s chair. From this angle, Remus was lit from behind by the sun coming in through the window. It made him all kinds of breathless. “I’d give you a whole secret Werewolf Sanctuary forest to run in if I could.”

“Yes, well,” said Remus, suddenly more somber. He didn’t seem to have anything to add.

“D’you think that would help?” said Sirius. He hated that the smile had been chased away so quickly. “If you had space to run? Instead of flinging yourself against the walls, now made squishy and more comfortable but still definitely walls?”

“I don’t know,” said Remus. He sounded tired. “I’ve never done it any other way.”

Sirius sneaked a look at his face. It was so defeated that he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Don’t get mad,” he said.

Remus just looked at him.

“We were going to wait until we actually did it to tell you. To show you. But. Maybe you should know.”

Remus didn’t say anything, seeming to realize that Sirius needed a moment.

He stammered through it a bit (“Okay, so Peter said this thing about a smart non-werewolf wolf—and James said, what if we were the wolf, except not a wolf, some other animal—”), but he told him.

Remus still didn’t say anything.

“Moony,” Sirius said finally. “Tell us if we’re way out of line, we’ll skip the lightning storm and just...not do it.”

“No,” said Remus, emphatically, and then looked startled at his own resolve. He blinked. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m still—processing. It’s just. So dangerous, Sirius.”

“I had more dangerous ideas,” Sirius said. He was not joking.

“But you don’t even know if it’ll work,” said Remus. “You could—you could—”

“I know,” said Sirius. “But we have to. If you’ll let us. We can’t—I can’t—sit up in that tower knowing you’re destroying yourself. Please don’t ask me to if there’s something I can do to help, Moony.”

Remus blinked again a few times, rapidly. He didn’t speak. A cloud had moved over the sun, dimming the light in the Shack and making Remus look less like he was glowing, but his eyes were wide and scared and Sirius still couldn’t look away.

“We promised Peter we’d do a test first,” Sirius said, now babbling, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “Just one of us. I insisted it be me. It has to be me.”

At this, Remus stared at him. “I can’t lose you,” he said hoarsely.

“You won’t,” said Sirius. He’d examine exactly what that meant later, turning it over in his mind until he went mad, but now— “We’ll be careful about it. I promise you we will.”

Remus nodded slowly. “Extra fortifying spells on the door,” he said. “I’ll come down here the day before and do them, so they’re ready and fresh. You wait outside the door, in animal form—don’t you dare stay human—and if the wolf goes into a rage, you’ll hear it slamming against the door trying to get at you, and I promise you it will—and you run. Have the Invisibility Cloak in—whatever animal’s mouth, or something. But stay the animal for as long as you can; it can probably run faster.”

“And if it does work?”

“You still get out of there,” said Remus.

“But—”

“No,” said Remus. “It’s a test. That’s the whole point. I’m not risking you transforming to open a door; you can be there the next time. But just you at first, understand? If you have to do this—we’re putting as few lives on the line as possible.”

Sirius grabbed Remus’s hand and held it tightly. He couldn’t seem to help it. “Okay,” he said.

Remus nodded, and took a deep, shuddering breath. “God, you’re insane,” he said.

Sirius barked a laugh, that didn’t quite break the tension. “Runs in the family.”

Remus squeezed his hand once, then released it. “No,” he said. “You run circles around them. All the time.”

“Damn straight,” said Sirius. He stood up, dusting off his trousers (he wore ripped trousers on the weekend, to thoroughly anger every Slytherin he saw). “I think the sun’s going down. Shall we cast a few Glamours and get out of here?”

“Absolutely,” said Remus, standing up as well.

A few moments later, they disappeared back through the tunnel and up to Gryffindor Tower.

April 1978: Seventh Year

“A dog toy,” said Remus, voice dry as a desert in a drought. “Oh, hooray. Is it for you or for me?”

Sirius pointed proudly to the side, where it was stamped “RUFF N’TUFF” even though, as Remus would say, that made no grammatical sense. Which was really why Sirius loved this brand so much. Nothing to do with it being the only one that consistently stood up to werewolf teeth.

“For BIG DOGS,” Remus read under the logo. “Why thank you, Sirius. You know me so well.”

Sirius threw himself onto the bed next to him—he was nervous about this one. His leg started jiggling wildly as soon as he was sitting down.

Rightly so, too. “That year really started out differently than it ended, didn’t it,” Remus said.

Sirius knew now that it wasn’t out of line to pull Moony close when he talked about it. He’d never not feel guilt and self-loathing, and Remus would never not feel betrayal and pain, but it was better not to do it alone and not speaking to each other.

Remus rested his head on Sirius’s shoulder. Right move, then.

“No apology this time?” he said.

“I’m always sorry for that,” Sirius said honestly, looking down at him.

“I know,” said Remus.

“And I’m not going anywhere.”

Remus didn’t say anything to that.

“I love you,” Sirius said. The words just—fell out. Just like that.

There was a beat.

“I thought declarations of love at fifteen and sixteen were pointless,” Remus said finally. He hadn’t moved from Sirius’s shoulder.

“We’re seventeen and eighteen,” said Sirius. “Two whole years.”

Remus smiled at him, raising his head to look up at him through those absolutely obscene lashes. “Padfoot,” he said. “You did say it at sixteen. In the middle of a lightning storm, if I remember correctly.”

“Uh,” said Sirius. “All I remember from that night is turning into a dog and licking your face a lot.”

He had been the first one to transform, so ready and so eager. The lightning had set every nerve of his body on fire, every hair standing on end, so ready to run and jump and, and, and—and then the second flash of the storm had barely ended before he was running across the open field, tongue hanging out, making one single lap before bouncing right into Moony’s arms.

Remus had fallen down, laughing, soaking wet. Padfoot (as he would soon be called) went right down with him. Sirius had suddenly regretted not being human-shaped for that, so he’d changed back, letting himself enjoy it just for a moment before getting to his feet and laughing wildly, hugging Remus like his life depended on it.

Sirius had no memory of how it went for James and Peter. He’d been hanging onto Moony’s shoulders and not paying much attention to anything else.

“You didn’t need to say it out loud,” Remus said, in the here and now.

That slow smile meant it was time to kiss him.

“You know,” said Sirius, a bit breathlessly, and already regretting pulling back. “It wouldn’t kill you to say it out loud.”

Remus widened his eyes in the way that meant a lorry’s worth of nonsense was about to come out of his mouth. “But won’t it be more insincere, if I only say it because you did?”

Sirius widened his eyes right back. The great tragedy of their relationship was that they were both equally deadly with puppy-dog eyes; neither of them could ever win an argument with that alone. “Only if you’re comfortable, Mr. Moony. But it’s quite cruel to leave the person who loves you with all his heart and soul alone in the dark, wondering if his affections are returned, hoping that someday he’ll hear a kind word—”

The redeeming factor of said relationship was that he would always be better at drama, and Remus found it hilarious. He was laughing now.

“Oh, fine,” Remus said, when he caught his breath. “Fine. I find I rather love you too, Padfoot.”

“Good enough,” said Sirius, and kissed him again.

Sirius was waiting to ask again. He really was.

It was just that it seemed so simple to him. Especially when they were together, just the two of them—they slotted right into place.

So why wouldn’t Moony want that all the time? What was he so afraid of?

He thought briefly about not going to James about it, remembered his years of torment listening to James talk about Lily, and promptly decided it was a good idea to ask him after all. In the Common Room. Late in the evening, when there would be less people around and they could talk quietly, but escape would mean making a scene.

Perfect.

“Merlin’s beard, I don’t need to know the details,” James yelped. The idea of Sirius kissing anyone had always left him feeling kind of ill. He’d been there when Sirius was counting chin hairs and popping zits at thirteen.

Sirius’s eyes widened in a way that only meant danger. “What, really, James? You’re supposed to be my best friend! My brother! Are you uncomfortable? Is it because we’re two men?”

Well, there was his revenge for the “is it because I’m brown” remark. He’d wondered when it was coming.

“Of course not,” said James, because unlike his quip, this one needed an answer. (They’d been flushing out race-based misunderstandings for years and while it would always be a process, those jokes were just jokes, made purely because there were almost no joys in life greater than making your white friends uncomfortable.) “But how you and Moony can be attracted to someone you knew at thirteen and seen first thing in the morning every day for seven years as teenagers, I’ll never understand.”

“You threw a fit that it wasn’t you!”

“Because I could never, but if you could, why not ME! Am I that vile! I know you are, but—” he ducked a punch.

“That better be what all the ‘gross’ comments are about,” Sirius said.

“You’re my best friends,” said James. “It’s like thinking about your parents snogging.”

Sirius shuddered violently. “Point taken,” he said. “But Remus was never like a sibling to me. If you must know, it was like if you’d never had dessert in your life and now you were sharing a room with the most delicious-looking one in the world, and it was strictly off-limits.”

James briefly pictured Lily Evans being their roommate at eleven, and felt his eyes widen abruptly. Seeing her in the early mornings hadn’t dampened anything, for him. Hmmm. That did put everything into perspective, rather. “So, out and out torture,” he said.

“By fifth year, yes,” Sirius said. “In this metaphor you don’t really know what a dessert craving feels like right away.”

“Still,” said James. “Really, how long did it take you to finally jump each other?!”

Sirius’s face went through a complicated set of emotions. “....Are you sure you want an answer to that,” he said finally. It wasn’t quite a question.

“Why, was I in the room when it happened or something?” James paused, took a good look at Sirius’s face, and felt his jaw drop. “Oh my god.”

Sirius buried his face in his hands. “It was Moony’s fault,” he said, voice muffled by both hands and shame.

“Was I awake? Or in the shower? Or—wait, was this in the middle of the night? Is this the real reason you both never sleep?!” James was well aware that his voice was reaching hysterical pitches, and couldn’t stop himself. “Or just the reason you sleep in the same bed—holy fuck, you both sleep in the same bed practically all the time! You have done for ages!”

“Don’t be stupid, our insomnia started way before—anything else. The fact that we sleep better like that isn’t new, either,” said Sirius. He was bright red, a phenomenon James had almost never seen, and he couldn’t even enjoy it now that it was happening, let alone twice in the last week.

“God alive,” said James fervently. “Why on earth won’t he move in with you? You idiots can’t function without each other!”

“Tell him that,” said Sirius, now sounding more than a little miserable. “He thinks he can get by alone. He probably can, too.”

“That’s bullshit,” said James. “You’ve been quite literally attached at the hip since you were eleven and sharing eclairs. Has Remus ever shared anything with chocolate in it with anyone who’s not you?”

Sirius blinked, and looked like he was thinking about it. “Uh. Now that I think about it...no?”

“No,” James confirmed. “Told anyone else his deep dark secrets that you still refuse to let me in on?”

“No, but sometimes I’m just really good at weaseling things out of him—”

“And has anyone else slept even platonically in his literal bed?”

Sirius was now trying very hard to look embarrassed, but was actually looking more...dreamy-eyed and smitten. Like he couldn’t believe his luck.

Hell, James knew how that felt. The two of them really were cut from the same cloth.

“No,” said Sirius. “And he knows turning into a dog is an excuse half the time. Plausible deniability, and whatnot.”

“He likes you so much,” said James, half in awe. Remus was hard to read, and delightful once you did get a read on him—all his friends felt lucky to know him, and he refused to believe it was so. No wonder Sirius tailed after him the way he did.

“He said I’d already told him how I feel, when I turned into a dog in a rainstorm for him,” Sirius admitted.

James resisted the urge to fall on the floor and groan from how beautiful and annoying that was.

“Yeah, and he’s told you how he felt, when, oh, he let you be around him at the full moon as a dog. I know I was there too, shut up, but not like you. I wasn’t first. Also that time you nearly turned him into a murderer and he forgave you. And—”

“Okay,” said Sirius. “I know. I do. But—”

“But you don’t believe him,” James finished. “Merlin, the two of you are just as bad as each other.”

“That sounds like something Evans would say,” Sirius muttered.

“Good, that means I’m right,” James said. “Come on, Sirius. You know he likes you. What’s really going on?”

“Not enough to stay with me, apparently,” Sirius said. “Without me talking him into it.”

“Sounds like you know what to do for sixth year,” James said.

“What?”

“Let him do the convincing, for once.”

“Oh. Oh.”

September 1976: Sixth Year

Sirius was never telling anyone this story. Ever. Not even James. Especially not James.

James, who was asleep not ten feet away, while every brain cell he had was entirely on fire, all because of Remus Lupin.

He’d intended to pine his life away forever and never say a single word about it. He really had. He could suffer; it was fine; he’d still have Remus, after all.

And then Moony had gone and fucked it all up. Him and his map.

It all started when Sirius, James, and Remus poked their heads out of the Common Room to see if the coast was clear, and saw Peter running down the hallway, chased by Filch, Filch’s cat, three Prefects, Peeves, and Professor Slughorn (who was actually just ambling down the hallway after everyone else, yelling “stop him!” but not attempting to do anything to make that happen).

Sirius had watched James’s self-control dissolve completely in a split second. He’d hopped through the Portrait Hole, stuck his foot out, tripped Peter, and caused a pileup in the hallway that had all three of them in tears from laughing. Even Remus, who had tried to put on an air of somber responsibility this year even now that he’d given up the Prefect badge, couldn’t stop laughing every five minutes or so. God, he loved it when Moony got the giggles.

Thoughts like that were getting harder and harder to suppress.

Peter had gotten detention, the three of them had gotten a stern lecture, and Slughorn got his crocodile hearts back, which was the only real shame out of the whole incident. They’d needed those.

“If you’d loaned me the Cloak, this wouldn’t have happened,” Peter huffed, later.

“You’re just put out that you had to scrub bedpans,” Sirius said.

“We needed it for stage two of The Plan,” James added. “What on earth happened? You’re practically an expert at stealing from Slughorn at this point, especially now that Wormtail can just do it.”

“I have to be a person to hold things,” Peter protested. “And my hearing’s not as good, you know how it seems even worse just after you transform. I didn’t hear him coming.”

They all nodded, even Remus, who didn’t look up from where he was doodling idly on a piece of parchment.

“And then I got lost,” Peter added. The reaction to this was less sympathetic.

“Six years,” said Sirius. “And you still haven’t figured out that the stairs move?” The words were scathing, but really, he was looking at Remus. Why wasn’t Remus looking at him? Had he done something wrong? Remus had had trouble meeting his eyes properly ever since they’d come back to school, and the dog part of Sirius deeply wanted to lie on the floor and whine about it until he got some attention.

Peter shrugged. “I’ve tried,” he said pleadingly. “But I get so turned around.”

Sirius opened his mouth to berate Peter further, but Remus spoke up first (still without looking up, why why why—). “Slughorn’s going to double the security on his office after this,” he said. “I think this one’s a wash.”

They all nodded gloomily. It hadn’t been the best idea anyway, but they’d been in a rut since last year had ended—the way it did—and it had only gotten worse. It was the hottest September any of them had ever experienced, after a long, dry summer, and there was no end in sight.

To make things worse, last week’s awful Daily Prophet headlines (“Muggle Deaths Blamed on Shadowy Wizarding Conspiracy”) hadn’t even elicited much of a reaction from the school. It had been the four of them, every Muggleborn in the Great Hall, and...the Slytherin table. That last reaction had been very different.

They’d hoped to take their minds off it. It wasn’t working.

Sirius shifted uncomfortably. He’d come back to school this year, took one look at Remus, and realized his skin now felt like it was permanently on fire every time their eyes met, and Remus would at least glance at him now, an improvement from the end of last year, but there was something odd about it. Like he couldn’t look for very long. He was looking down at his parchment again now, and apparently he wasn’t even using homework as an excuse now.

Sirius, on the other hand, was having more and more difficulty looking away.

“Let’s do something that doesn’t involve a potion, then,” said Sirius, but this was met with shrugs.

“I dunno,” said Remus. “The professors are catching on, and I’m starting to get tired of getting caught.”

“There’s nothing for it,” said James. “If Peter had had advance warning, maybe—but you remember the disaster with the Tripwire Spells.”

It had been an unmitigated one. They’d gone off fine, but they hadn’t been able to work out a way to only warn the person who set it, and had ended up with loud alarms and flashing lights coming from nowhere, and Peter had been in detention for two weeks.

“Are there spells to enhance the senses?” said Sirius. “Maybe if Peter had rat hearing in human form...”

“There are, but they end up dulling your other senses,” Remus said. He was still doodling. Sirius was still staring. He still wanted—something. “And sight always goes the most bad, for whatever reason.”

“When did you research that?” said Sirius. Any time Remus dropped a piece of information like that, the room, for him, narrowed down to just the two of them, and right now he was desperate to the point of begging, just to get Remus’s eyes on him.

Remus did look up this time. Had Sirius ever truly appreciated until this moment what a nice shade of hazel those eyes were? Or how endearing his half-smile was? Merlin’s toenails, could no one else tell that he was slowly collapsing from the inside out?

“When else? After a moon,” he said. “You know how the world smells, in that form. I wanted to see if I could find another way to have that.”

Was it Sirius’s imagination, or was Remus staring back a bit now? Was it hard to look away now that he’d started?

“And you went blind?” said James. Sirius had to fight not to jump—he’d forgotten James was there.

Spell broken, Remus looked away from Sirius, and shrugged. “Temporarily. It was worth it.”

“But no use to us,” said Sirius.

“Not unless you want Peter to get even more lost on his way back to the Common Room, because he can’t see the stairs shifting,” Remus said.

“Six bloody years,” said Sirius derisively.

Peter made a noise of protest, but didn’t really argue. More importantly, Sirius didn’t even get a reproving look from Remus. He was frowning at his parchment again.

“You have an idea,” Sirius said.

“Not really,” said Remus, but he slid the parchment over. “I was just thinking about all the secret passages we’ve found, and how it might help Peter to remember where they are, then he can bypass the stairs...”

“A map?” said James. “You can’t map Hogwarts, didn’t we already learn that from the Ravenclaws in First Year?”

They’d ended up on the fifth floor in a room full of bats, then fallen down a deep sliding pit to the dungeons, to another room filled with frogs. No one knew how it happened, though everything from Peeves to Hogwarts just being Hogwarts was suspected.

“Yes,” said Remus. “That’s why it’s just the passages. I dunno. I’ll probably give up on it in a week.”

A week later, late in the evening on a Thursday when it wasn’t quite curfew but most of the students were in their Common Rooms, Remus cornered Sirius with more bits of parchment.

“Help me test this,” he said, shoving them into Sirius’s hands. “Fifth floor, you know those staircases move the minute anyone steps foot on them. “Let’s see if this actually shows when they do.”

Sirius followed without thinking. “I thought you were going to give this up,” he said, even as they reached the fifth floor.

“Apparently not,” said Remus, sounding distracted. “All right, go up, and take this with you—let’s see if both pieces do the same thing.”

Remus’s fingers brushed his when he handed Sirius the parchment. Sirius found himself going up the staircase in a daze.

Merlin’s ballsack, he had it bad. He wondered vaguely if he should do something about it, then pictured Moony’s face if it went badly, and shuddered.

Nope. Better to ignore this forever, then. This could only end well!

The staircase shifted. “It’s showing on my map!” he yelled over the railing, and heard Remus actually whoop. Sirius couldn’t help the grin that spread over his face.

“Mine too!” Remus shouted back.

“I’ll come find you,” Sirius said as the staircase stopped.

The worst part of all, he thought, as he found his way back down, was that he now knew it absolutely for sure. After a few mishaps snogging one or two of the boys in school who always seemed vaguely ashamed and never made eye contact with him afterward, he’d snuck out of James’s house a few times that summer, to find some Muggle bars where he could test a theory or two.

In the process, he had discovered that it wasn’t just Moony (there were several blokes out there who wore sweater vests and argyle and were excellent kissers who still laughed with him later), but no one else (sweater vests or not) measured up.

He also knew that there was nothing to be done about it. Remus was having trouble even looking at him properly, and every look, every fragment of a conversation, every long midnight roof talk, left him breathless and dizzy from wanting things he couldn’t have.

He made it back to the fifth floor to be greeted by a grinning Moony, who pulled him into an empty classroom, not seeming to realize how fast Sirius’s heart was beating.

“I guess I figured out how to do it,” he said, face flushed with success.

“So all those books were good for something after all,” Sirius said, grinning foolishly at him. He was well aware he was flirting, and couldn’t find it in himself to stop. Remus was looking at him again. God help him, those eyelashes were long.

“Didn’t find it in a book,” Remus said, now flipping the parchment over to make notes on the back. “Came up with it myself.” He grinned at Sirius’s stunned face. “Don’t look so surprised,” he teased. “Some of us have to actually study for our exams, but we’re not all idiots.”

“Show me,” Sirius managed, in time to stop himself from doing something stupid.

Remus did show him, and it was so intricate and beautiful that Sirius had a thousand questions and suggestions to make it work better. They got wholly lost in planning, so much so that his stomach almost stopped doing flipflops ever time Remus leaned in close.

Almost.

By the time they started to make their way back to Gryffindor Tower, it was ten minutes from curfew, they were nowhere near the Portrait Hole, and they definitely weren’t going to get there in time.

Sirius wished, briefly, that Remus hadn’t surrendered his Prefect badge at the end of last year—but then squashed the notion. Remus had hated every minute of it, he’d told Sirius, and the incident with Snape was just a convenient excuse. Anyway, Frank Longbottom had the badge now, and his cheerful, good-natured Prefecting style was a vast improvement on Remus’s eternally guilty conscience.

As if summoned by the thoughts of Prefects, they turned a corner to see Abbie Martin, the Hufflepuff Prefect, coming towards them.

Except it wasn’t just her. She was holding hands with Maggie Carter.

Who winked at them. “C’mon,” she said to Abbie, without dropping her hand. “They’ve got a few minutes, I’m sure they’ll make it if they run.”

“The Muggle Studies classroom on the fifth floor is empty,” Sirius offered, taking his cues from them. If they weren’t going to hide from Remus, he wasn’t going to bother to do it for them. “No Peeves or Filch to be seen. And you have ten whole minutes before you have actual rounds to do. You know. If that’s worth anything to you.”

“Oh, it is,” said Maggie, tugging Abbie away. Abbie was grinning.

“Five points from Gryffindor for breaking curfew,” she said over her shoulder. At all three of their shocked looks, she added, “And five points to Gryffindor for giving a Prefect valuable information.”

Maggie laughed, and tugged her down the hall.

Sirius grinned after them, then turned to Remus, who was staring at him. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, not sure what to say, but Remus got there first.

“Sirius,” he said slowly. “Are they—”

“Yes,” said Sirius. “But keep it under wraps, yeah? I don’t think they want the whole school knowing.”

“Of course,” Remus said instantly, to Sirius’s relief. “But didn’t she—did you know? When you were...”

“Not exactly, but she told me after,” Sirius admitted. “But it wasn’t as though she doesn’t like men too. I mean, with me it was casual, but she did like Danny well enough until he went and cocked it all up. Muggles call it being bisexual.”

He was babbling. He couldn’t seem to stop.

“And you know this because...”

Sirius tried not to flinch. “She told me,” he lied. Well, he was lying about how he knew that word, but the rest was true, and anyway, if he started going on about Muggle clubs, he wasn’t sure how long he could keep certain secrets. Best not to mention it.

“Right,” said Remus, after a long moment.

“She thought I might get it,” Sirius added, and did flinch this time. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut?

“Okay,” said Remus.

“I think she was right,” Sirius said.

“Are you okay?” said Remus.

“What?” said Sirius. He realized abruptly that he had goosebumps, and was shivering a little. Was it cold? Why was it so cold in this hallway?

“Your teeth are chattering,” said Remus.

“Oh,” sad Sirius. “I guess I’m cold. Aren’t you cold?”

“It’s boiling hot,” said Remus. “Hottest September on record, remember?” And then: “Wait. Are you...afraid?”

“I...didn’t exactly plan on saying that,” Sirius admitted.

“Let’s go to the roof,” said Remus, who apparently always knew exactly what Sirius needed.

Remus was even quieter than usual on the roof, but he loaned Sirius a sweater and let him lean his head on his shoulder. He was just starting to feel warm again, if still a bit shaky, when Remus said,

“You know, you’ve come a long way.”

“What?” said Sirius.

“From when I met you. You used to think a lot of strange things.”

Sirius snorted. “You try being brainwashed by a bunch of Pureblood maniacs.”

“Exactly,” said Remus. “It’s impressive.”

“Is that a compliment? A genuine Moony compliment? Careful, it’ll go to my head.” But he said it softly, because it was the roof, and it sounded kinder and more honest than it would’ve anywhere else.

“No it won’t,” said Remus. “Not to say you’re not a mess. But you’re the best person I’ve ever met.”

Sirius raised his head to look at him properly, to try and figure out how on earth to respond to that.

“I dunno,” he said. “I’ve heard good things about Lily Evans.”

Remus huffed a laugh. “And when exactly did she become an illegal Animagus for me?”

Sirius tried to look away. He couldn’t. Their faces were so, so close, and Remus wasn’t moving, except for when those long eyelashes fluttered—did he just glance at Sirius’s lips?

“Moony,” he managed finally. It sounded like a confession, which it was. And Remus understood it perfectly—he closed a gap that was barely there, and kissed him.

It was short, or at least it felt short and not even close to how long he wanted to kiss Remus for, but Sirius followed up before he could think better of it, kissing Moony properly until they were both breathless.

“You don’t think this is a bad idea?” he said, after a minute, kicking himself a bit for even saying so.

“Obviously not,” said Remus, smiling at him. But he also took Sirius’s hand, holding it between them. “Still afraid?”

“I can’t lose you,” Sirius said. “If it goes wrong, I can’t—I can’t, Moony.”

“I know,” said Remus, and Sirius knew he did. He really, really did.

“It’s not just going to go away, Padfoot,” Remus added. “Won’t things only get worse, if we’re on opposite sides of the dormitory every night, slowly going insane?”

“Pete and James will start getting suspicious if we do that,” Sirius conceded. “And sleeping in the same bed was getting—difficult.”

“You’re telling me,” Remus said, so dryly that Sirius had to kiss him again, even as he was attempting to talk Remus out of ever kissing him again (what was wrong with him?). Remus let go of his hand, but only to pull Sirius in closer.

“We are Gryffindors,” said Sirius when they pulled apart, even more breathless than before. “We are risk-takers! We are not scared by potential catastrophic fallout! Danger is our middle name!”

“Are you trying to convince you or me?” said Remus.

“Me,” said Sirius.

“It’s good to know you can feel fear,” Remus told him. He hadn’t moved his hand from where it had ended up in Sirius’s hair.

“You’re not scared?”

“I’m scared all the time,” said Remus, so honest and raw that Sirius had to catch his breath a little. “It was you who taught me not to let that stop me.”

This time, neither of them leaned into the other. They met in the middle, a bit desperately, and stayed like that for a long time, until Remus finally managed—

“Sirius—Sirius. Listen. I mean it. We’re going to fall off the roof if we keep this up, and there’s a perfectly good bed inside the dorm.”

Sirius’s brain shorted out.

But he followed Moony inside the room, where, five minutes later, he swore with his one remaining brain cell that no one, especially not James Potter, would ever hear about this.

“It’s only a prototype,” Remus said three days later at lunch, secure in the knowledge that the rest of their House always sat at least four chairs away from them to avoid getting in the crossfire of any food-flinging kerfuffles that might and usually did arise. Sirius was sitting next to him, being supportive, and not tangling his feet with Remus’s under the table, or at least, not enough that James or Peter could see. “But I think we could do something with it.”

“Why do your ideas for pranks always end up being full-scale magical research projects?” said James, but he examined the the parchment with some interest. “I dunno, Remus, this seems really difficult and time-consuming, and it’s going to take way too much much rule-breaking.”

They all stared at him, at which point James burst out laughing. “I’m fucking with you! Obviously!”

“Merlin’s beard, Potter,” said Sirius, with feeling. “I thought you’d been Polyjuice’d. Or possessed. You can’t play with my heart like that!”

“Hm, sounds to me like I just did,” said James. He took a bite of stew, making a face that they all recognized as his “white people food is so bland and I’m slowly dying in this hellhole for god’s sake would it kill them to make some curry for once” face. Peter patted him consolingly on the arm, as he always did, and handed him the hot sauce they’d finally convinced the House Elves to start providing.

“Thanks, Pete,” said James absentmindedly, mouth full of food. Remus and Sirius leaned in opposite directions, on instinct, to avoid the spray, before leaning back. Sirius took the opportunity given by the slight change in position to gently slide his arm into touching Moony’s just a little more.

“How is this going to help me know when people are coming, though?” said Peter. “That was the real problem, Slughorn sneaking up on me.”

“Well, it would be a magical map of Hogwarts that shows secret passages, the ways to get into them, and shifting staircases,” said Remus. “Would it be so hard to show the location of everyone in the castle, too?”

Sirius and James both gaped. Peter just looked confused.

“Yes,” said James finally. “Holy hell, the magic that would require, there are hundreds of people in this castle—”

“And it would have to be completely accurate, to be of any use—” said Sirius.

“Right, it would need to see through Polyjuice Potion and Invisibility Cloaks—”

“Not to mention it would get crowded any time you had a lot of people in one room, like, say, every single classroom—”

“What if you made it smart, so that it showed you the person you were looking for—”

He and James went on like this for a while, until they finally trailed off, staring at each other.

“It would be almost impossible,” said James, still sounding a little stricken.

“Well,” said Remus, sliding the parchment away from James and rolling it up, “If you think it’s too hard for us—”

“We didn’t say that,” said James and Sirius together.

Remus bit back a smirk, like he’d known they would say that.

Sneaky werewolf. Fuck. Sirius wanted to snog that look right off his face, and it was almost worse knowing he was allowed to do it now, but couldn’t right this moment.

Remus shot him a sly look. Okay, never mind, this was amazing and perfect and he couldn’t believe his luck. Sirius looked away quickly to try and keep a fond smile from spreading over his face.

“It’s settled, then,” he said, in the worst attempt ever to distract himself. “Our next project is a Magical Map for Mischief-Makers.”

“Give me that parchment back,” said James. Remus handed it over without protest. It wasn’t even very tightly rolled. “And start telling me about these spells.”

“In a moment,” said Remus, untangling his foot from Sirius’s and standing up, for some reason. “I really need to use the loo, sorry.”

“Oh, you know what, me too,” said Sirius, catching on abruptly. “I’ll go with you.”

“What are we, a bunch of girls now?” said James, but they were halfway out of the Great Hall before he finished the sentence, not that this fact stopped Sirius from giving him a two-fingered salute.

They didn’t even make it to the loo. Remus dragged him into the nearest broom cupboard before they could get there.

This is the best idea ever, was Sirius’s last thought before he stopped really thinking about anything.

April 1978: Seventh Year

“I hate you so much,” said James. “I meant he convinced us to make the map, you over-sharing lunatic.”

“I didn’t tell you all of it,” said Sirius. “Trust me.”

James didn’t like the way he said that. It boded badly. He decided, for perhaps the first time in his increasingly more mature life, not to ask.

“The point is,” said Sirius, sounding more like Remus than he ever had, and wasn’t that a terrifying prospect, “I need your help with this one. More than before. If I try to be underhanded he’ll just get suspicious.”

“Plus you’re absolute pants at being sneaky,” James said thoughtfully.

“Excuse you, I hid the most serious—don’t say it—relationship I’ve ever been in from you for more than a year.”

“That had to be Remus’s doing,” said James. When Sirius rolled his eyes but didn’t argue, he knew he was right.

“Anyway,” said Sirius. “We’re back to Plan A. Except instead of talking loudly about how much you want to live alone, it’s going to be about how great it’s going to be living with Lily.”

James opened his mouth to agree, then abruptly shut it. He’d had a thought. A brilliant thought.

“Oh no,” said Sirius. “Wha—”

“Actually,” James said. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“Prongs—”

But whatever Sirius said, James didn’t hear it. He had a brilliant plan to concoct.

Sirius knew bringing James into this was a mistake.

“And,” said James The Worst Traitor of All Time Potter, “I am going to walk around naked all the time. I will never wear clothes in the house again, you mark my words.”

Sirius contemplated shoving the Snitch he was playing with again down his throat. Why a Chaser needed to show off catching a Snitch, he’d never understand.

“Is that right,” said Remus. For once, he wasn’t absorbed in a book he was refusing to look up from. He was lying on his back, staring at the sky—and Sirius might have been going slightly crazy from not being able to lie next to him and tangle their fingers together, or plop his head on his thigh and see what was so interesting about the clouds, or—

“You won’t really pee with the door open, will you?” said Peter, who was enthralled as usual.

“Who’s going to see?” said James. “Doors will be meaningless to me, Peter.”

“And boundaries, apparently,” said Remus, without moving a muscle. His eyes were closed.

Eyelashes, thought Sirius, not for the first time. He knew he was obsessed, and did not care.

“Yeah, Lily’s going to have a real problem once she moves in,” he said, pointedly, though it may have fallen a bit flat, because he did say it while failing to drag his gaze away from Remus.

“Just think of all the sleep I’ll get, without you lot in the room,” said James, ignoring this.

“I don’t snore that loud,” said Peter.

“Yes you do,” said Sirius, James, and Remus together.

“It’s not just you, Wormtail,” said James. “Sometimes I get the sound of dog whining and Remus tossing and turning all night, all from the same bed.”

Sirius did a fantastic job not turning beet red at that, and he was sure the record would support him later. “It’s not Moony’s fault he can’t sleep,” he said.

“Did I tell you to stop? No I did not,” said James. “I said I’d like to be in a different room when Padfoot has to chase the nightmares away, thank you very much.

Sirius blinked. Stealth innuendo aside, he was starting to see the shape of James’s plan, just a bit. “To be fair, sometimes we both wake up screaming.”

“Ah, yes. My favorite nights of all,” said James.

Sirius shot a glance at Remus, whose eyes were open now. He looked thoughtful.

“I’m personally looking forward to not waking up with Sirius’s socks in my mouth,” said Peter.

Helpful. Very helpful. As revenge, Sirius leered. “There are worse things of mine to have in your mouth,” he said, and Peter sputtered on cue.

Remus, on the other hand, shook with laughter, and Sirius had the rare delight of watching James think of a brilliant cutting comment, and have to repress it due to the ignorance of present company on certain topics.

“It’ll be nice to visit you once Lily moves in and civilizes you,” said Remus.

There was probably a clever retort to that, too, but James just sighed, looking wistful. “I suppose it will be a bit lonely without her,” he said. “Just a bit. I’ve gotten used to her, you know.”

“We noticed,” said Peter, but Sirius was watching Remus, who apparently had nothing to say to that.

Maybe letting James have free reign wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened after all.

“Why so blue, Moonycakes?” said Sirius, sauntering into the Common Room and plopping himself down on the couch next to Remus. It was late in the evening, and it was just them tonight—James was off doing Head Boy things, and Peter was off...Peter-ing. Sirius didn’t really know.

“Call me that again and I’ll rip your arms off,” said Remus.

Ah, their love was so beautiful and pure. “That bad? Did Snivellus poison your tea or something?”

Remus snorted. “He knows better than to try that with me.”

“He does now,” said Sirius, fondly. “Really, what’s wrong?”

“The future,” said Remus. “Our impending doom. Genocide. Having to make money while people are dying. All of our friends growing up and old. Or dying young.”

“So, the usual,” said Sirius.

“I’m so tired, Padfoot,” said Remus, and this time no one was around, so Sirius could pull Remus’s head into his lap and start rubbing his scalp, gently. “Aren’t you tired?”

“No,” said Sirius honestly. When Remus looked up at him (eyelashes), he shrugged. “It’s more like...” Like his skin was constantly itchy, like he was going to crawl right out of it and scratch at the walls and scream, like he needed to run and run and run, like a fire he couldn’t put out, all the time. “I’m restless, I guess. I want to go, Moony. I want to fight. I’m tired of waiting. Me and James both are, you know. We talked about it.”

Remus smiled faintly. Sirius couldn’t help it—he touched the corner of Remus’s eyes, right on the laugh lines, briefly. “The hell you two are going to raise, once you’re out,” he said, not seeming to notice the touch. Sirius supposed he’d been used to it long before they became official.

“You’ll raise it with us, won’t you?” said Sirius. “You’re twice as deadly, you know. And you point us in the right direction.”

He couldn’t read Remus’s face, just for a moment, but then it softened. “Yeah, Pads,” he said finally, quietly.

They weren’t on the roof this time, but Sirius still felt himself settle a bit.

James probably had more up his sleeve, and they might have slowly come to an understanding, and been as blissfully happy about the future as James and Lily.

Maybe. Maybe they’d have circled around each other, too afraid to broach the issue again, and then created a stupid, stupid wedge and drifted apart for stupid reasons.

Either way, it all went out the window the next day, when the paper was splashed luridly with headlines of werewolf attacks. Remus went pale, left the Great Hall, and wasn’t seen for the rest of the day.

James and Peter didn’t say much all day. Sirius was too distracted even to hex some Slytherins to get his anger out. He was so preoccupied that when Snape bumped into him in the hallway on purpose, then sneered and started to make some snide comment about Remus’s absence, Sirius just gave him a blank look and walked away.

Which left Snivellus angrier than ever, so maybe he should’ve tried that strategy much sooner. Oh well.

But none of that was important. He was just trying to get through classes before finding Remus. (He knew exactly where he was, of course.)

He even convinced James and Peter not to follow him, though nothing he could say could talk them into going back to the dormitory to wait there.

They were worried too, Sirius supposed. But he wasn’t about to let them see the particular spot on the Lake where he knew he’d find Remus.

“Did you spend the whole day here?” he said, coming up behind Remus, but not sitting down just yet.

Remus didn’t look at him. “No,” he said.

That was all, but he did slide over an inch or two to let Sirius settle down next to him.

Sirius wasn’t stupid enough to offer up any words of comfort or consolation.

“I hate it,” he said instead. “I really do. Sitting in a classroom all day, while we’re at war.”

“If we were out there fighting right now, it would be for the right of people like us—like me—to be in school,” Remus said, in the quiet way that always turned Sirius’s world on its head.

“Graduating school as an act of rebellion,” said Sirius. “That does sound like you.”

Remus smiled at him, at that, even though there wasn’t much joy in it. “Why do you think I care about grades so much?”

Sirius’s face must have said it all. Remus finally, finally leaned into him.

“And the pranking?” he said, voice cracking wildly. “You’re not as respectable as you let people believe, you know.”

“Some rules are good,” Remus said. “Others only exist to protect the powerful.”

Sirius put an arm around him. “Like the ones that tell you not to turn Slytherin’s hair pink?”

“Exactly,” said Remus. He wasn’t smiling.

Sirius waited.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Remus said. “The Ministry isn’t going to sit on this. They’ll lash out at werewolves harder than they ever have before.”

“You’re not alone,” Sirius said, biting back a flood of the other things he wanted to say. “I know that doesn’t...that doesn’t help. But it’s true.”

Remus looked stricken, for some reason. “Of course it helps,” he said. “I mean, no, not the—not the worst parts of it, but for me, for me it’s—it’s everything, Sirius.”

“Is it?” said Sirius. “It’s just, you always want to do everything alone, Moony, we always have to fight to get you to let us help you.”

“No,” said Remus, shaking his head. “No, I let you help far more than—than I should. I’ve always been weak that way. Since the day you traded a hint on getting into the kitchens in exchange for leaving me alone, which, I should note, I didn’t even get.”

“Why do you want to be left alone?” said Sirius.

This was the moment for Remus to make a joke, but he didn’t. “I don’t,” he said. “But it’s going to happen anyway. It always does. I should...I should be ready.”

He didn’t sound very convinced.

Sirius had always known this about Remus, but he’d never heard him admit it.

He thought for a minute about the best thing to say, the best way to tell Moony, yet again, that he wasn’t leaving.

“That’s bollocks.”

Remus’s smile was small and sarcastic this time. “Oh, do tell.”

“No one wants to be alone,” said Sirius. “Don’t make me go get James to come here and give you a speech about friendship. Anyway, your brain goes bad when you’re alone for too long—everyone’s does. You get all broody and self-loathing, and you don’t deserve to feel that way, Moony, you don’t.”

“Self-loathing isn’t an adjective,” said Remus, sounding as if he couldn’t help himself.

“Mine is the only loathing you’re allowed to feel, when you say shit like that to me while also getting on my case for missing the point,” said Sirius, grinning to show he didn’t mean it.

“Yes, I’m fully aware how much you loathe me,” Remus said. His heart wasn’t in it, though. He sounded thoughtful.

“I’m here to loathe you all night long, Moony, if you’ll let me,” Sirius said with a leer.

But Remus was still too preoccupied to get pulled in. “You really hate being alone that much?”

Sirius swallowed, throat suddenly tight. “Everyone does,” he said, trying to sound cavalier about it. “That’s what I was saying.”

“You get all broody too, you know,” Remus said. “I suppose we both have thoughts we’d rather not be alone with.”

“You mean the ones that make us wake up screaming and go to the roof to calm down and not wake up our roommates who hear all of it anyway?”

“Yeah,” said Remus. “Those.”

That was, after all, how they’d discovered that they could easily scramble from their tower window to its roof. They’d been the only ones in the room who suddenly and desperately needed to be outside without waking anyone up, so they’d found out together.

“We’re going to war,” said Sirius. “There are going to be more and more.”

Remus took his hand and held it tightly. “James would say we’re going to need each other. More than ever.”

“It’s annoying how smart he’s gotten.”

“Yes,” said Remus. “Sirius...maybe we should move in together after all.”

This time, Sirius swallowed in order to push down a wave of joy and relief. “Yeah?” he said, trying to sound neutral.

He failed.

“All right, fine,” said Remus. “I’ll say you were right. But you will let me pay half the rent.”

“Okay,” said Sirius, privately vowing to keep the true cost of whatever flat they ended up in from Remus, and vastly reduce the amount “half” really was.

“No lying to me about how much it is, either.”

Sirius smiled. He’d have to be stealthy about it, then. “Never,” he lied. “Remus...”

“Why are we still talking?” Remus demanded, and Sirius, never one to argue a well-made point, shut up, cupped his face gently, and kissed him like he was sealing a promise, and not just one about splitting rent.

April 1978: Seventh Year

They had started going down to breakfast early, as a group, to get ahead of the headlines a little bit. James did miss eating with Lily first thing every morning—well, every morning not after a full moon or Quidditch—sleepy homesickness and all. But as the school became gradually more attentive to the outside world, he found it made Head Boy duties a little easier if his friends were with him to strategize as soon as the bad news broke.

Because it was all bad news.

Even Peter could be included in the discussions, now. It had taken a while for him to agree to join the Order, but he’d finally come around. That or weeks of people pausing conversations as soon as he entered the room had finally worn him down—which was what Remus said, but James didn’t think so. James thought he’d bucked up and found some Gryffindor courage.

He still looked a little pale around the edges as they flipped through the paper, clinically deconstructing the articles.

Above the fold was an article about Quidditch, but below it, still on the front page—

“Ministry Official Makes Bold Anti-Voldemort Statement,” Remus read aloud. “Hmm. Barty Crouch, it says. He’s urging broad crackdowns on the Dark Arts.”

Lily’s forehead furrowed as she read over the same article. “Arrested twenty suspected followers, held indefinitely without trial. Shit. Shit.”

Peter looked confused. “But if they’re following...You-Know-Who...isn’t it better that they’re locked up?”

“With what evidence?” said Remus. “It doesn’t say. We have no idea how thin it is, or how damning. And if suspicion is all it takes to hold someone without a trial, what else will they do using that excuse?”

“Do they even list their names?” said Sirius. He leaned over Remus’s shoulder instead of looking at his own paper, and Remus didn’t comment, just showed him the list. James didn’t doubt that under the table they had tangled their feet together again.

“We’ve got an article arguing for further protection for Muggles and Muggleborns,” James said. When they all looked at him, he was forced to admit— “Way in the back, under editorials. It’s short.”

“Of course it is,” said Lily grimly, but she turned the pages to read it.

“They’re going after the Giants again,” Remus said, also turning pages. “Ministry Promises to Stamp Out Giant Scourge.”

“Great,” said James. “Just great.”

“So?” said Peter. “They’re all out in the mountains, aren’t they? There’s none at Hogwarts or anything.”

It was a mark of how serious things were that no one gave him any scathing looks or remarks in return for the ignorance. “More people for this Voldemort person to lure over to his side,” said Sirius, without looking up from where he was reading another article over Remus’s shoulder, his own paper abandoned. “Anyone wizards have treated badly is an opportunity for him.”

“But wouldn’t the Ministry know that?” said Peter. “Maybe they really are just prone to Dark Magic, and the Ministry knows more than us about it.”

He was met with four incredulous stares from the Indian man, Muggleborn woman, bisexual man, and werewolf sitting with him.

“I don’t even know where to begin with that,” Lily said after a minute, which was probably the most kind thing any of them were thinking.

“What the fuck about the past seven years has given you the impression any of them know what they’re doing?” said Sirius, less politely.

“I just—”

“You just,” Sirius snorted. “Do us all a favor and just shut it for once, Pete.”

So much for not being scathing.

Peter turned red, and James opened his mouth to make a reluctant attempt at diffusing the tension, but Remus got there first.

“Peter’s not going to be the only one thinking that,” he said. “When people are scared, they’ll look to anyone who seems to be taking charge, no matter how dangerous their methods are.”

“And the Ministry needs to look like it’s doing something,” said Lily. “Peter, that’s one way to tell that they’re scrambling and not going off of anything: with so much public pressure, they’d be very loud and open about it if they knew for sure that they’d caught someone.”

“They need a win,” said Remus. “And they’re not getting one honestly. So they’re resorting to these tactics.”

“The kind you see under a fascist government,” Sirius said. His mouth was pressed in a grim line. “Like what Grindelwald was trying for.”

James looked at his watch. It had been twenty-five minutes exactly. There was nothing in the paper that was going to upset the majority of the student body, he had no ideas on how to sway public opinion on the Ministry of Magic, and given five more minutes, they were going to start arguing policy. Said argument could go on all day.

“I’m calling it,” he said. They had instituted a thirty-minute limit on the news briefing, barring a really big story. This was for their own sanity, and so that they could focus on school and the Order long enough to graduate. Still, he had to add: “Unless anyone has any ideas on getting those twenty people released.”

“Let’s talk to Dumbledore,” said Lily, folding up her paper. “See what he’s doing, and if we can help. They won’t get away with this unless people let it happen.”

“I saw some last names I recognize,” said Sirius. “Thompson. Cattermole. And a couple others.”

“You think Reggie and Jake might be related to them?” said James.

“If they are, maybe they can tell us what their families need right now,” said Remus.

“We should go to their Heads of House first,” said Lily. “James and I can do that. We can split up the list and talk to them directly if that doesn’t work out.”

“Time,” said James. “It’s been thirty minutes, and we have a plan.” He took a deep breath. “Now, what did that first article say about the Cannons?”

He and Peter fell into a conversation about Quidditch, while Remus and Lily did the crossword, and Sirius managed to be in both conversations at once (but mostly, James noticed, he was helping with the crossword).

James, who could argue Quidditch in his sleep and didn’t need his whole brain for it, kept an eye on the Head Table. The expressions there were as grim as their group’s had been moments ago.

May 1978: Seventh Year

The full moon of June would come just after they left Hogwarts, and so their last run together through the Forbidden Forest was in May. It was a chilly night, and on those sometimes all Moony wanted to do was run and run, but this time what he wanted to do was chase mice.

This, of course, meant that Wormtail spent the whole night clinging to Prongs’s back in fear, and Padfoot had the absolute time of his life.

Even in deer form, James had gotten used to being in proximity an actual real-life werewolf very quickly. That had been the whole point of learning to transform, after all. It set prey-nerves on end, to be this close to a big predator known for killing deer, but Moony had always treated him like his pack and it didn’t take long for the smell of Moony to mean friend instead of run.

Sirius, of course, had had no such trouble. Moony had never not smelled like a friend to Padfoot. The wolf was just a big friend with big teeth who could run and run and run with him.

He’d never understood Peter’s problem at all. James did, a little bit, but after all this time, what was Peter still afraid of?

Moony never even killed any of the mice. It was a game, not a hunt—if one of them got close, the other would nip at his tail and they’d chase each other around and around in circles for a while instead.

And didn’t he know that Wormtail was pack, too? That Moony would never hurt his pack?

None of them would.

And if your friends were there with you, what was there to be afraid of?

Full moons when Moony was like this gave James a lot of time to stand still, watching his friends and keeping an eye out for danger.

Tonight, he was also thinking about what would become of them. How to be a better friend. How to protect Moony. How to keep Peter from being so afraid.

How to live without Hogwarts to shelter them and keep them together.

He gave a long, heavy, stag-dusty sigh.

The moon overhead had no answers.

June 1978: Seventh Year

“We need a final prank,” Sirius had said. “Something big.” And so they’d planned one. It had been gloriously chaotic, with all the explosions and fireworks and absolute mayhem the school had come to expect and (James thought) hope for from them. Remus had made mutterings about how on earth they expected to pass NEWT’s and pull this off, but in the end, his work on both was as subtle and brilliant as ever.

No one got hurt or was targeted, either. Even Lily didn’t muster up the energy to disapprove—she said it was like a farewell to Hogwarts, a gift and a thank you to the student body and even to the professors.

James was proud of that element. At dinner, they’d enchanted the professor’s goblets so that, when they each took a drink, an illusion tied to each of their respective subjects was triggered. Professor Sprout had been wreathed for a few moments in vines and budding flowers; in front of McGonagall, an image of a lion turned into a teapot, a hedgehog, a large pudding, and finally, back into a roaring lion; and so on.

When the images vanished, the professors, as one, had lifted their goblets and toasted the student body. Sirius had the presence of mind to shoot up a spell that made an image of the Hogwarts Crest behind them as they did. There were more than a few cheers as the students applauded.

James thought McGonagall caught his eye and nodded at him—in approval or respect, he wasn’t sure.

Dumbledore hadn’t been there. He was gone from the school more and more, these days.

Usually, at the end of a large and successful prank, the Marauders gathered in the Common Room to either hide from professors and Filch, or continue making more of a ruckus.

This time, they grabbed a magically-modified record player and played Muggle music late into the night, as students from various years and seventh years from various houses (let in by their Gryffindor friends) drifted in and out of their Common Room. Some people danced, some people brought drinks, and some just ate the food they’d pilfered from the kitchens while talking to their friends.

It was tame, for a Gryffindor party. Sirius swung Remus by his arms around and around the room while singing along to “You’re My Best Friend” loudly and tunelessly and Remus gave up and laughed, but no one even danced on any tables or wore a lampshade on their head.

(James. James didn’t dance on a table. He wasn’t really in the mood. He sat in the corner with Lily, cracking jokes to make her laugh and throwing things at anyone who tried to make a sentimental speech.)

At the end, when everyone had left or gone to bed, it was just the four of them and Lily left, gathered around the fire (it was cold, for June, and they’d needed it even with the horde of people in the Tower).

They didn’t have much to say. Peter was half asleep, drooping in his armchair. Remus had his head on Sirius’s shoulder, and Sirius’s arm was around him. The record player was playing Simon and Garfunkel, “Homeward Bound”, which he knew had to be Lily’s doing.

Home, where my love lies waiting...

“Maybe we shouldn’t wait to get a flat together after Hogwarts,” James said to her suddenly.

Sirius shot him an amused look: Really, Potter? It took you this long?

He glared back: Never forget that you have no room to talk.

“You sure you don’t want to spend a few weeks walking around in the buff and peeing with the door open?” said Lily.

“As long as I don’t wake up with your socks in my mouth, I think I’m okay,” said James.

“It’s a deal,” said Lily.

James’s look at Sirius was smug this time: See? Easy peasy.

“He snores,” said Sirius. “Just so you know, Evans. He says he doesn’t and that Peter is louder, but he lies.”

“Well, I’m told I do too,” Lily said. “Maybe we’ll learn to harmonize.”

James groaned. “I take it back,” he said. “I need a month of silence. At least a month. Maybe three. Maybe a year.”

“No backsies,” said Lily. “You’re stuck with me, Potter.”

“Well, when you put it it like that,” James said, trying to sound reluctant and knowing that he was failing, “I suppose I can live it.”

“Gross,” said Remus, who hadn’t moved a muscle during this entire exchange. Sirius snickered, and James didn’t miss the look that passed between them.

The sentimental feelings he’d been fighting off all day overwhelmed him at last. He was filled, suddenly, with deep affection, and dare he say, love, for his friends, this little family here at Hogwarts.

At 1:30 am on June 16th, 1978, James H. Potter realized—roughly one day before he would leave the corridors of Hogwarts, meet his destiny, and continue onward into whatever the world held for him and his friends—that there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t trade for their happiness, to keep them together no matter what happened next.

He cleared his throat, and raised the glass he’d been neglecting for the last hour or two but that still had a drop or two left in it. The others saw this, and reached for their glasses as well—Remus even nudged Peter awake.

“To us,” James said. “To family.”

“To family,” they said quietly, together, and drank deep.