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Later, when the moon and the stars have all set, and the sun is just starting to push weakly up along the edges of the world, and Sirius has been passed out on the couch now for at least an hour, and Remus is sitting in the window of the sitting room of the Potters’ cottage, unable to sleep, he will wish he had paid more attention to it all. He will remember, he knows, the way it looked, forever. The chubby little lanterns tethered to the poles of the tent, bobbing like placid sparrows; the bluebell fires warming their hands and the backs of their necks as the air got chillier; the sweet curve of James and Lily’s heads bent together; the way her hair lit up with lanternlight; the sparkling of glasses; the way Sirius Black, even now, refused to tie his tie properly and kept tugging at the ends of it desperately, unconsciously, to keep from – crying, maybe? – he’s not sure, during the speech.
Of course, he will remember how it looked, how it sounded. He wishes now he had paid more attention to the way it felt.
He will look down at the palm of his hand and see the smudges of glitter still clinging to his damp skin, from where Peter’s appropriately and festively modified dungbombs showered the tables, clustered under the tent in the back garden, and he remembers, from weeks ago:
You can’t have dungbombs at a wedding, you numptie!
Oi, says who?
Says everyone, Pete, sorry. He’s right.
That’s boring. Anyway, Jim’ll want for me to make something explode at least once, come on.
He has to smile. He is happy, after all. And still a little drunk on everything, including wine and champagne, and then the firewhiskey, and then on dancing (which despite being very pants at, he did quite a lot of), and on the stupid, contagious grin plastered on Sirius’s face, and of course on the radiant simplicity of it all, on the way it seemed, finally, to have made sense for a while. Despite everything and with all of it, the way the shadows kept creeping into the corners of everyone’s eyes nowadays, the way he kept feeling like his world was getting smaller, like something was breathing hotly, smelling like sulphur, down the back of his neck but he was too damn simple to turn around and figure out what it was and he just can’t sleep, some days, thinking about how close they might be to losing everything —
He takes a sharp inhale, and then lets it out, shakily. He presses his hand, palm-down, to his thigh, and looks across the room at Sirius, still lumped and snoring on the couch. Maybe I should have asked him, he thinks, dizzily, to help me remember.
Maybe I won’t be able to on my own, he thinks, and scrubs his hand against his trousers again, after this.
“Sirius,” he whispers, across the room, and stares at the smudge of damp glitter on his thigh.
Sirius snuffles.
“Sirius,” he hisses, and looks up.
“Wha’ssit,” says Sirius, not opening his eyes.
He can’t think of what to say. He wanted to say, he thinks, something like: I was so happy, wasn’t that brilliant? How – how do you hold onto that, how do you, can we, do you think we can hold onto that?
But his tongue is thick, and his head is swimming, and there is glitter everywhere, he realizes, numbly.
“C’mere,” Sirius mutters, shifting on the couch. “Y’stupid.”
He hauls himself up, across the room, bumping his knee against an ottoman, and manages to sit (however ungracefully) again on the floor at foot of the couch, knees drawn up to his chest.
“Oof,” says Sirius, and shoves a blanket at him, which mostly manages to cover the top of his head and nothing else. “Stop thinking, Moony. Can hear y’from here.”
He tugs the blanket down over his knees and holds the edges between his fingers, and tries to focus on the blurry brightness still sparking in his chest, sputtering beneath his ribs.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
“Shh,” Sirius insists, and manages a sleepy palm pressed somewhere in the vicinity of Remus’s head. “Not sorry. Fun, sleep, hangover: that’s th’order.”
He has to smile. Of course, he wants to laugh, that’s the order. It’s always so simple, so stupid, so glaringly obvious. He feels the little ball of lightness in his chest like a lantern, like firelight in red hair, like a helpless look of pure happiness passed across the length of a table, or thrown like laughter into the early autumn air, or even whispered, gently, into someone else’s neck when you are dancing, however badly. He presses his face into his hands, and smiles again, against all odds, against everything.