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‘I told him,’ Remus’s voice was tinged with disappointment. ‘And he didn’t even listen-'
Sirius had known what was coming, but even that hadn't stopped him from hoping.
He should have known better, really.
All he had wanted to do was keep his loved one safe - he could remember when he was a child, too scrawny for his age, always trying to protect Regulus from his parents anger, trying, trying to live up to their expectations. Then, sorted into Gryffindor, realizing oh. This is what a family felt like.
It had all gone away too soon, their once permanent friendship a husk of what it once were, one torn aside in place of war and loss and lack of hope.
He remembered when he had first met Remus; this vulnerable and precious boy who had kept catching Sirius’s eyes like no one else. He had never felt the need to be someone’s someone - his parents’ influence, mainly - but he had felt it with such intensity at that moment; to be his friend, to be his best friend, to be his so much more, to be his everything.
He brought his friend closer and wrapped him around in a hug, hoping to delay the inevitable, hoping to comfort him as best as he could.
Sirius tried to ignore how much it hurt to notice that they were an awkward tangle of limbs when they fit together perfectly before, but that was what time does, isn't it?
But they still met each other like they used to, Remus putting his head on the crook of Sirius's shoulder like he did more than a decade, somehow fitting together, somehow two jagged halves that made a whole.
Sirius hadn’t realised just how much he had missed this and wanted this until he was in Remus’s arms, the familiar yet unfamiliar embrace dragging him down and making him never want to let go.
Remus had gotten thinner, more haggard and he seemed as if he bore the entire world on his shoulders; his hugs, which had seemed calm and comforting then seemed to be filled with an added sense of awkwardness, almost as if he had never been hugged in the last ten years.
And he probably hasn't been, Sirius thought, his throat closed up with guilt even though he couldn't have done anything to help Remus. It hurt seeing his best friend like this - and something more, Moony, we'll always be something more in my eyes - too broken and jagged at the ends, to a world that made him grow up much too much much too fast.
Made them both.
Remus was the one who finally pulled away from the hug, his face unusually flushed.
‘Harry?’
‘Dumbledore doesn’t want to,’ he said tiredly, and even though Sirius had expected it, had known it, he couldn’t help but feel a hatred so intense that it left him breathless for a long moment. ‘I told him about the Dursleys; about how they kept him locked up in a fucking cupboard, and you know what he said, Sirius? He told me knew. That bastard didn’t even have the decency to say that he didn’t know what was happening, he just said that there were ‘important’ blood wards that were going to keep him safe but who the fuck cares about that? Lily and James -'
‘I can’t take this Moony,’ Sirius said, scrubbing his hand over his eyes, because it still hurt , two of the best people he knew, two of the people he'd considered family - ‘I’m going to go over there to the Dursleys and taking him with me, fuck Dumbledore-’
‘You know you can’t, Sirius,’ Moony, in fact, appeared sadder than before, and all Sirius wanted to was rage, rage against how this world had taken everything away from them, that didn't let anyone have a childhood. ‘You know Dumbledore has all your houses under the Fidelius, right? And what are you going to do? Run away with him?’
‘Maybe your house -’
‘This is the first place they are going to search, and you know it, Sirius,' Remus's voice contained a hint of reproach, and also a terrible resignation that was much, much, worse.
‘I hate feeling helpless,’ Sirius said in a small voice.
‘Me too, Padfoot. Me too.’
Sirius, despite everything, looked up in wonder. 'That's the first time you've called me that,' since that day, was left unsaid. Remus glanced up and for a minute, and suddenly, they were both 19 again, in love and invincible as ever.
'So it is,' Remus smiled, and that illusion disappeared, only to be replaced with a sense of uncertainty and loss that both felt acutely for a moment.
‘Another thing,’ Remus’s tone had a formality that he wasn’t used to; Remus certainly hadn’t been the most emotional or dramatic one out of the four of them - that title belonged to Sirius, no matter how hard he protested against it - but Sirius had always been adept at distinguishing what Remus was feeling.
(maybe azkaban had taken something else, too - his ability to smile freely, his ability to remember his days at hogwarts without the melancholy - and now, this, too.)
(somehow, that hurt a little bit more than the others.)
‘Dumbledore asked me to tell you that the ministry's planning on searching my house tomorrow. He says it's a 'miracle' they didn't think of it before.
You’ll have to leave today.’ Again, that tone of formality that Sirius realized only hid his true feelings.
(he had expected to spend so much more time with Remus, his Moony, who wouldn't compare to anyone else, at least for two more days - at most for a lifetime - but things never worked out for him now, did they?)
He staggered out of the room, hoping his tears weren’t visible.
'We shouldn’t,’ he whispered against Sirius’s mouth. ‘It’s too soon-’
Sirius cut him off with a harsh kiss and Remus moaned against it, both knowing it was a bad idea, knowing it -
But.
The look in Remus’s eyes was all the confirmation Sirius needed.
If you, being a curious onlooker, peeped through the window of the cottage that was one lonely landmark with fields for miles around, you could see directly into the owner’s bedroom.
There were two people lying on it that morning. Two men.
You would see them holding onto each other tightly as if their life depended on it, feeling a pang in your heart for whatever they have lying before them, hoping that they had each other through that, at least. Hoping that they never part, but keep each other safe and sound, hoping that they’ll never let go of each other, never imagining that they’ll let go of each other, literally and figuratively.
Yet.
The black haired man breaks from the embrace, and it’s painful to watch; him slowly and reluctantly edging out of the embrace and the brown haired man making a small sound of protest, arms raised as of trying to hold onto him -
You stagger back, realising how intruding you are being. You walk away with a new pang in your heart towards the people in that room; two strangers that you don't know hide or hare about, but with the weight of the world between them.
You don’t see how the black haired man wipes his eyes, drops the man a kiss, whispering four quiet little words - I love you, Moony - before grabbing his suitcase and disappearing.
(neither you nor the brown haired man sees the note he leaves behind on the bedside table, after cradling it lovingly almost like a small child. at that moment, a strong gust of wind causes the note to be buried under the bed, only to be found, years later, by a different black haired teenager.)
(the teenager, crying, can only mourn for the lives and love that had been lost, too far, too soon.)