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“It’s a bad idea,” Remus says.
“It’s a brilliant idea,” Sirius says.
**
“It was a bad idea,” James says two days later. It’s the New Year’s Eve and James is standing in Remus’ living room. Remus hasn’t even had time to finish his breakfast. Mum and Dad are watching them from the kitchen, which is probably why James lowers his voice as he goes on: “It was a really bad idea. Probably the worst we’ve had the whole year.” James pauses. “Well, not the worst but… it was bad.”
“Yeah,” Remus says, “I know.”
“Anyway,” James says, “I’m going to bring him here.”
Remus blinks. “You want to bring Sirius here?”
“Yes,” James says.
“You thought that it’d be a good idea that you buy illegal love potion, and you thought it’d be a good idea that Sirius tries it, and now that Sirius has drunk half a bottle of love potion you want to bring him here? With me?”
“Yeah, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time,” James says and takes a deep breath. “But really, you must take him.”
“Why?”
“Well, we managed to lock him in the bathroom, so he’s safe for now. But you know my Mum always throws a big party in New Year’s Eve, so this evening, there’s going to be at least fifty people in my house. We can’t keep Sirius locked in the bathroom the whole night. And we can’t set him free, because -”
“Because he just had love potion.”
“Yeah.”
“Why can’t Peter take him?”
“He’s coming to the party,” James says and frowns. “You know you’re invited too, but you’ve told me many times that you don’t like that kind of parties, so I suppose you aren’t coming.”
“No, I’m not,” Remus says. He’s been to one of James’ mum’s New Year parties, and it was a long evening of trying to disappear from James’ strangely nice relatives, all of whom wanted to get to know him. “You can’t bring him over, James.”
James grimaces. “I kind of already asked your mum. She said yes.”
Remus glances at Mum. At least it seems that Mum can’t hear them from the kitchen, because she seems confused.
“It’s just for today,” James says. “The effect should wear off in twenty-four hours.”
“I can’t do this,” Remus says. He doesn’t have much hope that James would listen, but at least James looks at him.
“You can’t? But your mum said –“
“I just can’t.”
“Why?”
Remus opens his mouth and then closes it again. He should make up something, anything, so that James doesn’t bring Sirius to his house for twenty-four hours. It would be a catastrophe even without love potion involved.
Oh, fuck. The love potion.
“Are you still so angry at him?” James asks in a quiet voice. “Because I understand, I really do, it was a shitty thing to do, it was… well, you know. And I’m still angry at him, too. So, if that’s why you don’t want him here –“
“No,” Remus says, “no, it’s not that. I just…” But he can’t figure out anything to say. For someone who lies constantly, he’s surprisingly bad at it sometimes. “It’s okay. He can come here.”
James starts smiling as if Remus just rescued him from a dragon on drugs. “Great. Thanks, Moony, that’s brilliant. Okay, we’ve got to get him out of the bathroom. Come with me.”
Remus doesn’t want to go anywhere. He wants to take his cup of tea into his own room, lock the door, get in the bed and hide there under the blanket. He wants to forget this whole stupid year, he wants to forget the Prank and he wants to forget Sirius -
Only he doesn’t, not really, and certainly that makes everything worse.
“Okay,” he says.
**
“He’s in the bathroom?”
“Yeah,” James whispers, as they get closer to the bathroom. Peter is there at the door, looking a little upset. “I told you.”
“You locked Sirius in the bathroom.”
“I’m not proud of it,” James says in a voice that suggest he’s definitely proud of it. “I had to tackle him and then lock the door really quickly.”
“So,” Remus says, trying to sound like he doesn’t care, “is he in love with you or Peter?”
James shrugs. “We don’t know. After he drank the potion, he got this odd glint in his eyes. That was when we realised it had been a bad idea. And then he told me my cardigan really brings out the colour of my eyes.”
Remus swallows.
“And then he said my hair is a mess and sometimes he thinks it might be alive,” James says. “Maybe that’s how he expresses love. But we don’t really know anything about this love potion. Maybe he’s going to fall in love with everyone.” James pauses. “Tell your mum to be careful. And maybe your dad –“
“James?”
They all freeze. “Hi, Sirius,” James says through the bathroom door.
“Hi,” Sirius says. He sounds like himself, only a little sad. But then again, he’s been locked in the bathroom for some time now. “Are you going to let me out?”
“Moony is here,” James says through the door. “You’re going to spend this day with him. At his house. Alright? We’re going to take you there now.”
“Is that necessary?” Sirius asks.
“Yes,” James says. “I’ll open the door now. Can you just… not kiss any of us?”
“I’m not sure,” Sirius says.
Remus holds his breath. It’s probably the wrong thing to do, but he’s always been bad under pressure.
“I’m going to let you out now,” James says, staring at Remus and Peter with wide eyes as he places his hand on the doorknob. “One, two, three –“
James opens the door. Sirius is sitting on the closed toilet seat. He looks a little lost, and mostly like himself, but there definitely is a strange glint in his eyes. He looks straight at Remus.
“Remus,” he says, “I think I’m in love with you.”
“Alright,” James says and grabs Sirius’ arm. “Let’s get you to Remus’ place. And then you can spend the whole day telling him about it.”
Remus tries to smile. He feels like someone’s thrown a bucket full of icy water on him. Or like someone’s thrown him into a lake. Sirius did that to him once, when they were fourteen.
He follows James and Sirius to the fireplace. He’s probably not going to live through the day.
**
“Sorry,” Sirius says looking at his cup of tea. They’re in Remus’ room, which is probably the safest place in the house right now, with no one new for Sirius to fall in love with. Remus just wishes he could be somewhere else.
“It’s not your fault,” Remus says. It kind of is, though. He told them that buying a bottle of love potion is a bad idea and trying it is worse. He doesn’t even know what they thought they were going to do with it in the end. He asked James if James was planning to use it on Lily, and James looked him in the eyes and said ‘of course not’.
“I know,” Sirius says in a miserable voice. “I know things like these happen sometimes.”
Remus wants to say that no, they don’t. Things like that don’t happen to other people. Things like that only happen to James, Sirius, and Peter, because they’re idiots who never listen to him. But he’s tired and he hasn’t had a proper breakfast, and it’s a bit too much that Sirius thinks he’s in love with Remus. It’s just too much.
At least Sirius hasn’t tried to kiss him, because then he would certainly die.
“Moony,” Sirius says, “you look angry.”
“I’m not angry.” He’s angry, but he doesn’t want to talk about it.
“I’m sorry that I love you,” Sirius says, the goddamn idiot. Remus wants to hit him in the face. He wants to take the cup of tea away from Sirius and push Sirius onto the floor, and he wants to climb onto Sirius and lean down and -
He closes his eyes.
“I know it’s bad,” Sirius says, “I know I can’t be in love with you. I know you don’t want me to. You’re still angry about… about the thing with Snape.”
“I’m not angry about that.”
“I don’t believe you,” Sirius says. “You say you aren’t angry, and I’ve been trying to figure out if you’re lying or not, and it’s weird, because I thought you didn’t lie. I thought you didn’t lie to me. But you don’t want to spend time alone with me anymore. Every time I want to go somewhere with just you, you make something up, I don’t know, you say that you have homework or that you have to go take a piss or just pretty much anything so that you don’t have to be alone with me.” Sirius pauses. “I’m talking too much.”
“No,” Remus says, “it’s alright.”
“No, it’s not,” Sirius says, “it’s not alright. You’re angry at me and I’m in love with you and I don’t know how to fix any of this. I don’t know how to fix things.”
Well, that’s true, only Sirius never admits it. Remus bites his lip and opens his eyes. Sirius looks quickly away from him.
“And of course there’s that another thing –“
“What?” Remus asks. He shouldn’t. He’s a fucking idiot and he’s going to pay for it. If he’s not careful, he’s going to end up saying something he absolutely shouldn’t, and then he’s going to ruin everything beyond repair. And all he wants is for things to go back to how they were.
Well, of course that’s not all. But he can never have what he really wants of Sirius, so what he should hope is that things will get back to how they were, before Sirius almost had him kill Snape. They were friends then, really friends, not like now, with the secrets getting stuck in Remus’ mouth every time he tries to talk to Sirius. He wants their friendship back, and it has to be enough.
“The boy thing,” Sirius says now, staring at his cup of tea. He’s looking terribly sad for someone who’s just had love potion. Maybe it was rotten.
Remus swallows. “What do you mean, the boy thing?”
“I’m gay,” Sirius says.
Remus stares at him. “You aren’t gay. You just drank love potion. That’s why you think you’re…” In love with me. But he can’t make himself say it out loud.
“Yeah, I know,” Sirius says, “I know I drank love potion. But I don’t think it’s working, because I’m only in love with you.”
“It’s working,” Remus says. “That’s exactly why we know it’s working.”
“I’m gay,” Sirius says, turning to look at him. “I should’ve told you.”
“No, you aren’t,” Remus says, “and no, you shouldn’t.”
“I think I realised it when we were at James’ place in the summer after the fourth grade,” Sirius says. “We were always swimming in the river, do you remember? And you had those ridiculous swimming shorts, they reached your knees. You had them because –“
“I wanted to hide the scar.”
“Yeah,” Sirius says. “I was watching you. And it was driving me mad, because it felt like something I shouldn’t have been doing, but I couldn’t stop it, and you were right there, every day. I thought it was about the scars. And then I thought that I just want to protect you. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be you. It must be so scary and so sad. And I thought that maybe I just want to keep you safe. Maybe that’s it. But then one night I couldn’t sleep and I went to the bathroom and wanked –“
“Sirius,” Remus says, but his voice comes out thin, and it doesn’t seem to have any kind of an effect on Sirius anyway.
“And I thought about you,” Sirius says. “I imagined us kissing and your hand in my pants. After that I started thinking that maybe I’m gay.” Sirius blinks. “Also, I did it again. And again. And –“
“Stop,” Remus says. He wants to cover Sirius’ mouth with his palm but can’t make himself touch Sirius. “Stop talking.”
“I usually think about you when I wank,” Sirius says. “Sometimes Gideon Prewett. But usually you. I’m sorry.”
Remus stands up. His legs are shaking and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, only that he can’t take this for a second longer. He can’t look Sirius in the eyes and tell Sirius that it’s just the potion, Sirius isn’t love with him, Sirius is imagining it all. He can’t tell Sirius all that and at the same time keep his own heart from breaking.
“We’re going for a walk,” he says. “And if you can, please stay quiet. Please.”
**
They go for a walk. The moors are covered with a thin veil of snow. Sirius is mostly quiet, only sometimes he says things that don’t make sense at all, like that at the third grade, he stole James’ Christmas socks and hid them under his bed, and that he never really liked snow. And sometimes he looks at Remus as if he’s really scared about something. Maybe it’s the potion wearing off. Maybe he realises the things he’s told Remus and is worried that Remus believed him. But Remus is not an idiot. He knows Sirius could never love him.
He walks faster, but Sirius catches him.
After the walk, they try to play the card game Remus’ grandmother taught him years ago, but Sirius keeps saying odd things and Remus gets distracted. They have lunch alone in Remus’ room, and then when Mum and Dad go for a walk, Remus makes Sirius sit on the living room sofa so that they can watch television and not talk. At least television distracts Sirius a bit, but once in a while he still glances at Remus and says absurd things. He tells Remus he likes Remus’ nose, he says that Remus’ lips look soft, and he says he’s been staring at Remus’ wrists. The potion certainly is detailed.
They watch television until it’s obvious that Sirius can’t sit still anymore. They go to the yard again and walk circles. It’s snowing a little. Remus glances at his watch, but it turns out it’s been only five minutes since he last checked the time.
“I’m trying not to talk about it,” Sirius says. He has his hands pushed into the pockets of Remus’ dad’s old coat. He looks like he doesn’t know what to do. “I’m trying not to say anything, because you don’t like it.”
Remus swallows. He knows he should find something else to talk about, but still… “Like what?”
“That I talk about it.”
He bites his lip. “About what?”
“That I’m in love with you,” Sirius says and then takes a deep breath, as if not talking about it has been a burden and now for a second he feels better. Remus looks away. “And I get that. You want to be just friends. You don’t want to hear about how I want other things.”
Shit shit shit shit shit shit. “Sirius –“
“And of course I want to be friends with you,” Sirius says. He looks like he couldn’t stop talking even if he wanted. “If you can’t love me back, I want to be friends. And these last months, when I haven’t had even that… and don’t look at me like that, I haven’t, not since I screwed up. It’s been terrible. I just want you to trust me again. I need that. I can’t live if you don’t trust me.”
“I trust you.”
“Bullshit,” Sirius says. “You don’t trust me. Maybe you hope you would, but you don’t.”
Remus looks away. Sirius isn’t being himself, it’s the potion. He shouldn’t talk to Sirius now. But Sirius never talks like this. Whenever they stumble onto something that might actually matters, Sirius slips away from him, changes a topic to something light or turns everything into a joke. And Remus lets him do that, because he doesn’t want to talk about these things either. He doesn’t want to talk about what Sirius did, because then it becomes more real again, and he wants it not to be real. He needs it not to be real, because he doesn’t know how he could live if he can’t trust Sirius.
“I don’t understand why you did it,” he says. “I thought you cared about me.”
“Of course I care about you,” Sirius says immediately. “I care about you so much I don’t know how to cope with it. And I don’t understand why I did it either.”
Remus shakes his head.
“I’m sorry,” Sirius says, “I’m so sorry, Remus. I just want to fix things with you.”
“I want that too.”
“And we can be just friends,” Sirius says. “I mean it. I don’t think I’m going to stop loving you but I’ll just handle it somehow.”
Remus opens his mouth and then closes it again. Oh, shit. For a second he forgot that this isn’t a real conversation. “Stop that. You aren’t in love with me.”
“Of course I am,” Sirius says, following him as he turns around and starts walking back to the house again. “I’ve been wondering how the hell you haven’t noticed it. You’re so clever, Remus. How can you not realise that I’m in love with you?”
“Because you are not.”
“Well, of course I’m trying to hide it,” Sirius says. “I’m trying to hide it all the time, because if you find out, something’s going to change in between us, and I don’t want anything to change. Unless you love me. Because if you loved me, then I’d want everything.”
Remus bites his lip too hard. “Everything?”
“Yeah,” Sirius says from behind his back. He stops. The light is going out. From somewhere far away, he can hear firework going off. It’s just, what, six or seven hours until they can go to sleep, and when they wake up in the morning, the potion has worn off.
He turns to face Sirius.
“I want everything,” Sirius says, walking to him and grabbing him by the shoulders. Sirius’ grip is tight but not too tight, just like he always thought it would be. “I want us to be together. I want to do stupid things, like, walk hand in hand in Hogsmeade. I want to write you poems. Oh, shit, I want you to write me poems, because you’d be brilliant at it. And I want to sleep in the same bed. And I want to try sex. I don’t know what exactly, but something.” Sirius pauses to breathe in. “And I want to kiss you.”
“What?” Remus asks. His voice comes out small and hopeful. He kind of hates himself for that, but he already hates himself for many things, and he doesn’t have more than six or seven hours left. In the morning, Sirius won’t love him any longer.
“I want to kiss you,” Sirius says and takes his head in between his hands. Sirius’ fingers are cold. Remus feels too warm, and like he shouldn’t be held responsible for anything right now.
“You really don’t,” he says.
“But I do,” Sirius says and strokes Remus’ cheek with his thumb. “Can I?”
“Can you what?”
“Can I kiss you?”
No, you can’t, Remus thinks as firmly as he can. This isn’t real. But he’s wanted to kiss Sirius for years and it’s never going to happen. “Okay,” he says.
**
He lets Sirius kiss him for as long as Sirius wants. It doesn’t matter anyway, not now that he has already let it happen. After the first few kisses he remembers they’re in the yard and his parents could see them through the window, so he drags Sirius behind the shed and is terrified for a second that Sirius isn’t going to kiss him again. But Sirius kisses him again, with hands on his face and then on his neck and running down his arms, settling on the small of his back, pulling him closer until he’s losing himself in Sirius’ arms. He’s the letter and Sirius is the envelope.
Or maybe Sirius is the knife and he’s the reckless idiot who’s going to cut himself with it. He doesn’t want to think about that now but can’t stop thinking, so he pushes his hands under Sirius’ shirt, where the skin is warm and soft and the best thing he’s ever touched. He doesn’t remember how to breathe. He runs his fingers along Sirius’ ribs, up and down, and breathes for a moment, his head buried against Sirius’ neck, where Sirius smells of himself. He wants to never stop. He wants everything, has wanted for so long that he’s forgotten when it started. He probably wouldn’t recognise himself without it.
“Hey,” Sirius says at some point, pushing hair from Remus’ face. His fingers are gentle. “You’re kissing me back.”
Remus swallows down the words.
“But you don’t like me like that,” Sirius says slowly.
Remus leans closer and kisses Sirius. One last time. Then he pulls his hands away from under Sirius’ shirt and steps back. He’s cold, and lonely, and sadder than he thought was possible. “I just wanted to try it.”
“You just wanted to try it?” Sirius asks in a confused voice, as if he doesn’t quite believe it. Well, it doesn’t make sense, because it isn’t true.
“Yeah,” Remus says, looking away. “I’ve never done it before, as you know. And I’m sixteen. Everyone else has kissed someone by now.”
“Oh,” Sirius says. “Alright.”
“I want to be friends with you, too,” Remus says, straightening his back. He can still feel the ghost of Sirius’ kisses on his mouth, but now he needs to save whatever he can. If he doesn’t, Sirius is going to hate him tomorrow. “Like we used to be. Before you… you know. I’m trying not to be angry anymore.”
“It’s alright,” Sirius says, but he sounds like he’s somewhere else now.
“No, it’s not,” Remus says. “I don’t want to be angry at you. We should go back inside, I’m freezing.”
**
They drink more tea in Remus’ bedroom and look at the fireworks colouring the sky over the moors. Downstairs, the radio is playing old swing and Christmas carols. Sirius is mostly quiet and avoiding Remus’ gaze, and for a moment Remus thinks he could get used to this: no jokes, no constant threat that any minute now, Sirius is going to come up with something very stupid and possibly dangerous with James and Peter. Just he and Sirius drinking tea. Then he remembers the love potion, and the kiss.
“You look unhappy,” Sirius says.
“I’m not,” Remus says. He’s not unhappy, he’s just thinking about how he let Sirius kiss him even though he knew Sirius didn’t really want to. He’s pretty sure Sirius won’t be angry at him tomorrow, when the potion wears off and Sirius realises what Remus did. At least if Sirius believed him when he said he just wanted to know what kissing is like. Sirius might actually think it’s fun that Remus took advantage and tried kissing while Sirius was magically compromised, and that only makes it worse. It’s not fun. It’s bad, it’s really bad and Remus never wanted to be the kind of a person who does that.
“You’re lying,” Sirius says. “I can tell. I know you.”
Remus takes a deep breath. “I’m just tired.”
Sirius is quiet for a while. Remus tries to think about something to do, something that would help pass time. But it’s difficult to concentrate when Sirius is right there, sitting on his bed, and when just a few hours ago Sirius kissed him.
Of course, that’s the last thing he should be thinking about now.
He kind of knows what Sirius is going to say when Sirius opens his mouth again. “Is it because I kissed you?”
“No,” he says. “What is?”
“I kissed you and now you look like someone stole all your books.”
“I don’t –“ He swallows. “I shouldn’t have let you do it. You won’t love me tomorrow and then you’ll regret that you kissed me.”
“I’m never going to regret kissing you.”
Remus snorts.
“I mean it.”
“No, you don’t.” He looks at the clock on the wall. Three hours until midnight. “Are you tired?”
“No,” Sirius says. “It’s New Year’s Eve, you idiot. We aren’t going to go to sleep before midnight.”
Remus looks through the window. The fireworks are painting a dragon on the sky. It shimmers for a moment and then fades.
“Can you stop looking so sad?”
He glances at Sirius. “I can try.”
“Do you remember that one time when we got stuck in the broom closet?” Sirius asks. “I had told you it’s a good idea and you had said no, but you followed me anyway. I don’t know why you always follow me everywhere.”
Remus tries not to laugh. He also kind of wants to cry. Why, indeed.
“But I love it,” Sirius says. “I love it that I feel you’d follow me anywhere. But anyway, we were stuck, and you were sad because you had wanted to spend the evening in the library writing an essay about the first goblin war. I tried to make you laugh but you looked like you were going to cry.” Sirius pauses for a moment. “You look like that now.”
“I’m not going to cry,” Remus says, biting his lip. It’s just incredibly unfair that when Sirius finally says the things he’s been waiting for Sirius to say for ages, all he can do is to try not to believe Sirius.
“Can I do something?” Sirius asks. “Just tell me. I don’t want you to cry.”
Remus isn’t going to ask for anything. He can’t. It’s not fair. But… “Can you hug me?”
“Of course,” Sirius says and shifts closer to Remus on the bed. “Like this?”
**
They stay awake until midnight. The sky is full of colours, and Sirius is sitting so close to Remus on the bed that Remus feels it against his shoulder when Sirius breathes in and out. Everything is perfect, and also a lie.
**
In the morning, Remus wakes up on the mattress on the floor. Sirius is looking at him from the bed. He opens his mouth to say anything, to apologise, but the words get stuck in his throat, and then he hears his mum’s voice coming from downstair.
“Remus! James Potter is here.”
**
“So,” James says, standing in Remus’ living room, “it wasn’t love potion.”
Remus glances at Sirius. Sirius glances at him.
“What?” he asks.
“The etiquette was in ancient Norwegian,” James says and shrugs. “An honest mistake. Could’ve happened to anyone. Anyway, you look perfectly normal, Sirius. Do you feel normal?”
“Not exactly,” Sirius says.
“Great,” James says. “Remus, do you think your mum could make me breakfast? I couldn’t eat in my house, because it’s a mess and there’s still at least twenty relatives in the living room.”
“James,” Remus begins. It’s a little surprising how steady his voice is. “What do you mean, it wasn’t love potion?”
“It wasn’t love potion,” James says. “Dad saw the bottle this morning by accident and for some reason he knows ancient Norwegian. He was pretty angry. Do you have tea?”
Remus clears his throat. “What was it, then?”
“What was what?” James asks, picks up a box of chocolate and takes one. It bites James in the finger, which is the only sensible thing anyone has done since yesterday.
“The potion,” Remus says. He doesn’t sound patient anymore. “What was it?”
“Ah,” James says, still fighting with the chocolate. “It was truth potion.”
Remus swallows. “Truth –“
“Yeah,” James says, turning to Sirius. “I was meaning to ask, what did you mean when you said that my hair is always a mess?”
“Nothing,” Sirius says and takes a step towards the kitchen. “Does anyone else want tea?”
“My hair looks cool,” James says, following Sirius. “We agreed on that! My hair is a bit messy but that’s cool, because I look like I don’t care about what my hair looks like.”
“Of course it’s cool,” Sirius says.
“Boys,” Remus’ mum says from the kitchen, “would you like to have some tea?”
Sirius and James go to the kitchen. Remus stays in the living room. He should probably go to the kitchen, too. If he doesn’t, it’s going to look like he’s freaking out. Like, totally freaking out, because it was truth potion, not love potion, and Sirius said to him that -
He takes his coat and his shoes and walks out of the door.
**
Sirius finds him something like two minutes later. He’s standing behind the shed. It’s drizzling and the snow from yesterday is almost gone. His fingers are getting cold and he feels like he can’t remember how to breathe properly, and when he turns to look at Sirius, Sirius looks back with wide eyes and a tight smile.
“So,” Sirius says and kicks the ground with his heel.
“Yeah,” Remus says. “It wasn’t…”
“Yeah,” Sirius say, “no, it wasn’t. I should’ve realised. But I… felt kind of hazy.”
Remus looks at his shoes.
“Sorry that I kissed you. And sorry about –“
“I’m in love with you.”
He can feel Sirius staring at him even when he looks away. “What?” Sirius asks.
“Have been for at least… I don’t know, three years.”
Sirius clears his throat and then clears it again. “And you didn’t think to tell me.”
“You didn’t tell me either,” Remus says and then bites his lip a bit too hard. “I mean, if you… if what you said yesterday… if you meant it.”
“Remus,” Sirius says, “I was under fucking truth potion. Yes, I meant it. I didn’t mean to say any of it, but I meant all of it, you fucking git.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“So, you think about me when you…”
“Yes, I think about you when I wank,” Sirius says. “Sometimes Gideon Prewett, but mostly you.”
“Thank god,” Remus says and breathes in. “Thank god. I was so…”
“Worried that I was thinking about someone else? When I wank.”
“Stop talking about wanking.”
“You stop talking about wanking,” Sirius says, steps closer to Remus and grabs Remus’ shoulders. “Why did you kiss me?”
“Because I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time and I thought I’d never get to,” Remus says. “Sorry.”
“If you say you’re sorry you kissed me, I’m going to wait until we get back to Hogwarts, and then I’m going to turn you into a frog.” Sirius pauses. “Or a pumpkin. What if I kiss you now?”
“What do you mean,” Remus says, “what if you kiss me now?”
“Would you kiss me back, you idiot?”
He realises he’s smiling. Sirius is staring at him in the best possible way, he doesn’t remember how to breathe but who cares about breathing anyway, and his fingers are freezing but otherwise he’s feeling very warm. “Yes,” he says. “I would kiss you back.”