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Sirius’ body knows what’s coming before his mind has a chance to catch up.
It’s in the way the tip of his nose is cold when he wakes up in the mornings.
It’s in the way the sunlight looks in the mornings when it streams in the windows, thin and cool and breathy.
It’s in the way Remus smells when he comes in at the end of the day, that peculiar scent of sweat that builds in cool weather under the collar of a coat.
The familiar hollow feeling rises in his stomach one afternoon around four o’clock. The sun is still high, but it’s far closer to the horizon than it would have been at this time two weeks ago. He checks the calendar — something he never used to do — and that’s when his brain recalls what his body has known for days.
When they were in school, the year had a familiar rhythm — the end of the summer, the first breathless weeks of classes and quidditch, Hallowe’en, and then a steady slide to Christmas. Then, there was the war, and it didn’t matter what time of year it was anyway because nothing mattered save for the terrifying, tenuous present.
But now they’ve seen themselves through to the other side, more or less, and some days it feels like more and some days like less. Harry’s just turned five and Lily is pregnant again, and it’s so different this time, her face growing round and her hair thick and shining. They’d all been stretched far too thin in those days for her to gain weight, even in the face of a pregnancy.
“I am getting so fat,” she complains when they all meet for dinner. And it’s true, she is plump and happy and rosy and Sirius doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so beautiful.
“You’re perfect,” James tells her, watching her with moon-eyes and an awestruck smile on his face. And maybe this is even more beautiful — the love between them, and the way it gets to stretch longer and larger with each passing day.
Remus squeezes his knee under the table and Sirius cuts his eyes over to him, and they exchange a look and Sirius knows that as much as they have lost, they have gained even more.
It’s when they take over Harry-duty one morning, dropping him at his Infants school so that Lily can rest and James can make it to work on time for once, that Sirius finally brings it up. They’ve just waved goodbye and turned towards the kissing gate out of the school yard when Sirius, catching sight of two little boys running by in matching coats, says, “You know, it’s almost October.”
Remus hums and takes Sirius by the hand. He squeezes gently and says, still looking straight ahead, “Yeah, I was thinking about that.”
Sirius opens the gate and lets Remus pass through first, twisting around awkwardly so that they can maneuver the narrow passage without parting their hands.
They walk down the lane towards the apparition point quietly for a few moments, when Sirius clears his throat and speaks again.
“I just — I never know what to do.” It’s a hard thing for him to admit. He’s used to taking charge, to stepping confidently forwards and damning all the consequences. “Six years in and I still don’t bloody know.”
~
The first year he only remembered what day it was at night as they climbed into bed. It had been a ruthlessly exhausting week, staking out a derelict old cottage where Dumbledore was certain the last horcrux was hidden. It was only on the fifth day, when they had broken through a majority of the curses protecting the place, that they realised the ring had been moved. They’d returned to headquarters in low spirits, eaten a hasty meal of brown stew, and crawled into bed. Sirius’ eyes were drifting shut when they caught sight of the photograph tacked on the opposite wall, next to the window. It was the Slytherin quidditch team for the year 1976 — the last year that Regulus had played, before joining the death eaters and leaving behind such childish things. The significance of the day had fallen into place then, and he had sworn loudly enough to wake Remus, already slumbering beside him.
Despite their exhaustion, there had been no sleep that night.
~
“You don’t have to know,” Remus says now. “There’s no right answer.”
Sirius glances sideways at him then, his lips twisting in a rueful smile. “That’s ever so helpful.”
Remus chuckles and rolls his eyes. “Fuck, but what else is there to say?”
Sirius chuckles too, and pulls Remus closer so that he can tuck him under his arm and feel the warmth of his body all the way down his side. “There’s nothing to say, I guess. That’s what’s so ruddy awful about it.”
~
The second year, with the war finally over, Voldemort dead and the memorials petering out, they had gone together to the gravesite.
That had been the wrong idea.
Regulus, per their grieving mother’s wishes, was buried in the Black family plot in London’s ancient wizards-only graveyard. Standing there amongst the tombs of his ancestors, his parents’ headstones still fresh and unweathered, Sirius was overcome with fury. He’d kicked his mother’s stone. “It’s your damn fault he’s gone!” he’d shouted, his words nearly incomprehensible amidst the flood of tears. Remus had let him rage and cry until he was exhausted, and then he had apparated both of them home.
That night, Sirius had vowed to never again let the spectre of their parents mar the memory of his brave baby brother.
~
They apparate home and sit together on the couch. Remus, already deeply immersed in his third and final year of advanced studies, keeps a strange schedule and doesn’t have to be back at the university until three. Sirius, who hasn’t yet quite figured out what his life is for without a war, is between experiments and doesn’t have to be anywhere anytime soon.
“Do you want tea?” Remus asks.
“Yes,” Sirius replies, but then, when Remus makes to get up to put on the kettle, “no.”
“No?”
“You can’t get up right now,” Sirius explains. “We can have tea later.”
Remus refrains from saying what he is thinking, which is that it would only take a second. He knows what it is to need a grounding force beside you.
“Lie down,” he murmurs.
He helps Sirius shift positions and eases the dark head into his lap. Sirius sighs when he feels Remus’ long fingers brushing against his scalp.
“You do that very well.”
Remus just smiles down at him. “Close your eyes, Padfoot.” When Sirius complies, Remus runs his thumbs gently over the tired, bluish eyelids.
~
The fourth year, it had been a full moon. Sirius didn’t mention Regulus once all day and glared every time anyone got anywhere close to the topic.
When the night drew close and the moon rose, Padfoot’s play was unrelenting and wild. The wolf matched him swipe for swipe, and Prongs cantered around them both, bowing his noble head and disrupting the tussle with his antlers each time it threatened to leave the realm of the playful.
Remus had stayed in bed all of the next day, but he could hear Sirius in the next room, whistling jaunty tunes and reorganising the bookshelves. Whenever Sirius poked his head into the bedroom, to ask if Remus wanted food or potions or company, his voice was aggressively casual and lighthearted. Remus turned him away each time, unable to face the charade of nothing-at-all-is-wrong that Sirius seemed to insist upon.
Things between them had gone back to normal within a week, but neither of them would soon forget the strangeness of those few days.
~
It seems at first that Sirius will fall asleep, but then his eyes flutter back open and the silver irises bore into the underside of Remus’ chin.
“Rem?” he asks, his voice croaky.
Remus startles and looks down at Sirius.
“I think we should go to the ocean,” Sirius says.
“What, now?” Remus asks, confused. He’s lost in his own daydreams, his fingers still absentmindedly twisting through Sirius’ hair.
“No!” Sirius says. He sits up abruptly, and Remus moves his own arms quickly out of the way. “I mean — I think we ought to go to the seaside. Er, on the day.”
“On the anniversary,” Remus supplies.
Sirius’ eyes dart up to meet Remus’, and they hold there. “Yes.”
“Alright,” Remus agrees easily. “Let’s do that, then.”
“Don’t you want to know why?” Sirius asks.
Remus shrugs. “I suppose, but I don’t mind if you don’t want to tell me.”
Sirius watches him closely for another moment, and finds the truth of these words. “Well, I want to tell you.”
“Then I want to hear it.”
“When we were children,” Sirius begins, “we would visit Alphard on the seaside once a year. At the end of the summer.”
Remus nods but says nothing. Sirius is suddenly struck with an enormous pang of love for the man beside him. The way he listens with his whole body, and always seems to know when to push and when to hold back.
“Mother and father would stay home. It was the one time of year we were allowed to be free of them, allowed to run around and do whatever we pleased and pretend we weren’t the heir and the spare for the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.
“We stopped going the summer after I started at Hogwarts. After I was sorted in Gryffindor and became friends with you lot. Mother and father were worried about letting us spend too much time together, at least not without their influence and supervision.”
“I’m sorry, Pads,” Remus says. His voice is low and hoarse, the tone he always adopts when Sirius shares details of his childhood.
Sirius shakes off the sympathy. “It is what it is, y’know? That’s just — that’s how things were.”
Remus looks as if he is about to interrupt, perhaps to remind Sirius that just because he thinks he ought to be over something doesn’t actually mean it’s not still allowed to hurt.
Sirius plows on ahead before Remus has the chance. “What I mean is — yes, it’s awful. But when I remember good times with Reg, it’s always at the beach. And maybe,” — he clears his throat, halfway between uncomfortable with the sentiment and confident in its weight — “maybe that would be the best place to remember him.”
Remus is watching him with bright eyes and a half-sad, half-proud smile. “I think that sounds like a brilliant idea,” he whispers.
~
On October 2nd, 1985, Remus and Sirius and James and Lily and Harry and his brand-new baby sister arrive together in Cornwall. They’ve rented a car for the occasion, which Remus has volunteered to drive — only he and Lily know how, and she needs her arms free for nursing duty.
The sea is grey, the sky blue, the cliffs windswept and greeny-gold. The muggle holiday-makers have been gone from the beaches for weeks, and the locals are all at work or school, so they have the vast, sandy expanse all to themselves.
James and Remus set up the blankets and folding chairs while Sirius entertains Harry and Lily minds the baby. James has packed a picnic: egg and cress sandwiches, crisps, oranges, supermarket biscuits, and an enormous thermos of tea.
Lily hands the baby off to Remus and lies down to read her book. James chases Harry around the beach, bending the rules of the statute of secrecy in order to charm the sand into the shape of dragons and sailboats and hippogriffs.
It’s not as if there are any muggles around to see them at it.
Remus and Sirius sit side by side, chatting about the new baby — “seems like she already sleeps better than Harry did” — and watching the spectacle that James is making.
“Do you think this is the right idea?” Sirius asks Remus. He wants to believe it is. But he’s never trusted himself in this arena. He never had a very good model to follow.
Remus, his eyes following the roving path of their best friend and his son, takes a moment to reply. Finally, however, he says, “Absolutely.”
“Yeah?” Sirius prods, his voice betraying more vulnerability than he’ll ever admit to feeling.
Remus doesn’t look away from the laughing man and the squealing child. “Think about it, Pads. Think about why any of this is possible at all.”
Sirius watches them, and he thinks, and he remembers running around this very same beach with his baby brother, so many years ago. And he feels the tremendous weight that is his continued existence, and the existence of his friends and his godson and, above all, the miraculous man beside him.
And he knows, finally, what today is meant to be about.