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Remus was sitting on the floor in their living room wondering what he was doing there. There were cups and plates and bits of food and paper scattered around the living room and he was supposed to be cleaning them up, but he couldn't seem to bring his arms to move to do so. It should be easy. It shouldn’t take him more than a couple minutes, but he just couldn’t.
Last night, everyone had come over. Sirius had figured that having people over would be easier for Remus than going out. He didn’t like to leave the house much anymore, especially at night. It was meant to be calm and lowkey and familiar and it was, but it also felt so far away for some reason, like Remus was both sitting in the same room but also watching everything from above. Even when the Longbottoms had announced they were expecting, it hadn’t quite felt real. He had felt a sudden burst of happiness and hugged them along with everyone else but it seemed to burn out so quickly, like it had been how he was programmed to react.
“Remus?”
Remus turned around slowly to see Sirius stumbling out of their bedroom rubbing his eyes sleepily. Sirius wasn’t usually the first one to get up. This was wrong. He’d done it all in the wrong order. He felt his chest tighten as he thought about getting to start today over, of all the things he’d have to do to be a real person – to get it right.
“What are you doing babe?” Sirius said as he sat down beside him. He wanted to reach over and touch Remus. The small casual signs of care and intimacy that he hadn’t appreciated enough at the time. Now, even half asleep, Sirius knew he needed to make sure Remus was okay with being touched first and that any touch was initiated so that Remus could clearly see the intent and had enough time to stop it.
Remus turned to look at him with a face that looked gaunt and exhausted. Had he been up through the night again? Sirius couldn’t remember.
Remus looked back at the dredges of last night’s party again. “I wanted to clean up, but I can’t. Everything feels so heavy.” Remus continued to stare at the items littered around their living room as if trying to find a sign of a spell cast on them. That someone had charmed or cursed this into being so difficult.
“Did you get any sleep last night love?”
He couldn’t remember. It was hard remembering things now. Well, except all the things he wanted to forget. He tried to lift his arm and saw the word half-blood marked there and realized he forgot to put his sweater on this morning.
“It hasn’t gone away yet.”
Sirius followed Remus’ gaze down to his arm and felt that bottoming out feeling that was becoming too familiar. “I’ve been talking to other healers at St. Mungo’s and we’re hoping we can come up with a new potion to try soon. I promise we’ll figure something out.”
He reached out slowly for Remus’ hand and took it when he didn’t pull away. Still, he wasn’t sure if Remus really wanted it there. He wasn’t sure he was even aware that it was. But it helped Sirius feel like he wasn’t so far away.
“I’ve got to get ready for work,” Sirius said and Remus’ grip suddenly tightened on his hand. “It’s okay. Lily’s coming to spend the day with you.”
“She’ll bring her wand?”
“She’ll bring her wand and I’ll redo all the wards the second I leave, okay?”
Remus nodded slowly. He hadn’t touched his wand since everything happened. Sirius had set it on Remus’ nightstand so he’d have it close. A few days later he realized Remus had tucked it into the drawer and it had stayed there ever since. Still, he found it impossible to be in the house without someone who could use magic. Someone who could protect him if they came back.
“Is it okay if I go shower?” Sirius asked and noticed a flicker of anxiety spark in Remus’ eyes. “I’ll be quick I promise.”
Remus nodded and let his hand go and when Sirius came out a few minutes later he was still sitting in the same spot on the floor.
Sirius made breakfast and managed to get Remus up and to the table, but he barely touched his food. Lily came in a few minutes later and he got her up to speed on Remus’ mood for the day.
“I just don’t know what to do anymore,” he told her, guilt sparking in his chest. He hated talking about Remus like this, in hushed whispers in the next room like he was a child, but it was better than not talking about it at all.
“You’re doing everything you can. He just needs time,” Lily told him as she squeezed his arm gently.
Sirius nodded and gave Remus a quick peck on the head before heading out for the day.
Lily knew that today was a quiet day. So that was just fine. She cleaned up everything in the living room and felt Remus staring at her as she did so, as if he couldn’t believe that it was all so easy for her. They spent most of the day in the living room where she played with his hair and painted his nails and he sat prim and stiff through most of it all, but there was something there, deep in the recesses of his memory that was fighting to be heard.
“Peter,” Remus said quietly, and Lily looked up from the paint by number she’d been working on. Remus had one in front of him too, but it was still blank. “He was there last night.”
“Yes, he’s been away on missions for the Order a lot recently, but he tries to come to our get togethers whenever he can.”
Remus frowned moving through the sludge of his mind. “What does he do?”
Lily paused thinking for a moment. “I can’t quite remember actually. He doesn’t talk about his job much some kind of herbology or magical botany I think.”
The potions. The salves. The ones that burned and burned and burned even after being wiped off his skin.
“But what does he do?”
Lily had set down her paintbrush now and was looking at him intently and he wished he knew what that meant. He wished he could feel in his chest some sort of response that this person sitting in front of him was a living, breathing human and he could respond to them as a living, breathing human, but he felt nothing. Nothing but feeling lost.
He tried again. “The Order. He’s on our side.”
“Of course he’s on our side. Peter’s been one of our closest friends since Hogwarts.” Lily was starting to look concerned now. “Remus, what’s going on?”
Remus closed his eyes and tried to remember. Last night. Wine glasses brushing together. A soft hand marked on the back. The smell of mould and damp. A key. Cold and metal clasped in a shaking hand. A small mark on its back.
“Exploding Snap,” Remus said quietly.
“What?”
“Exploding Snap in second year.” And then everything was much too loud.
Ever since he was captured Remus had found himself feeling everything or nothing at all, wandering through days feeling empty and listless only to find himself overwhelmed a moment later like all the emotion he’d missed came rushing back to him at once.
“Remus,” Lily was saying but it was miles away and everything was too loud.
He pressed his hands to his ears, but it doesn’t make it stop. All the memories. All the noise at once. The laughter and the screams blurring together into an awful symphony. And it’s too much, too much, too much. He bolts from the living room and back into the bedroom shutting the closet door behind him before Lily can follow and pushing aside clothes and boxes of books until he can get into the back corner, until he can make the world small again. These four walls, it’s all he can manage right now. And then, he lets himself drown.
Lily spent the rest of the day split between pacing around the apartment and sitting outside of the closet just so she could make sure that Remus was still breathing. She wanted to go in, to try to talk to him, but she felt that whatever this was, it was a box she shouldn’t open without Sirius here.
When Sirius came home, Lily was back in the living room and he knew immediately from the look on her face that something was wrong. He worked quickly to put the wards back up again before hurrying over to her.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. He just started talking about Peter and then he just shut down. I would have called you, but it was almost the end of the day and I figured he’d need time to cool down anyways.”
Sirius nodded, running his hands through his hair. He had to admit there was a part of him that wished she had called, but he had to admit that there was nothing else he could have done that Lily hadn’t. “Where is he?”
“The closet.”
“Okay,” Sirius said, sitting down on the couch. “Walk me through everything that happened.”
“We were sitting here painting, or I was at least. I mean, you saw him this morning, he wasn’t really here today. I don’t think he’d talked for hours and then out of nowhere he just said Peter, said he was here last night. Then he started asking me about what Peter did. I told him he was involved in some sort of herbology thing, at least I think that’s what he does?”
Sirius shrugged. Peter had started to drift from them at the end of their time at Hogwarts and that divide only seemed to be growing recently. Last night was the first time he’d seen him in months. Although, he did say Dumbledore always had him away on Order business.
“He asked again and I felt like he was asking a different question I couldn’t understand, but then he brought up the Order.”
“The Order?” Sirius said surprised, Remus hadn’t talked about the Order at all since getting home. He’d made no mention of the mission that had gotten him kidnapped in the first place and Sirius was dead set against having him attend any meetings for the foreseeable future. He hadn’t brought it up with him though, worried it might trigger more memories from the time he was missing.
“He asked me if Peter was on our side. I assured him he was, that he has been one of our best friends since Hogwarts and then he just said, ‘Exploding Snap.’”
“Exploding Snap?”
“Exploding Snap in second year. I tried calling James to ask about it, but he’s tied up in some sort of Ministry thing today. Does that mean anything to you?
Sirius nodded slowly. He didn’t like the picture the dots were making in his mind. “Peter has a scar on the back on his hand. In second year, James and him had a marathon game of Exploding Snap, came right down to the wire. James got a little overzealous and zapped his hand instead of tapping the cards.”
They both sat in silence for a moment trying to reconcile what they thought was happening with the Peter they knew.
Lily spoke first. “He is on our side, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a month ago I would have said yes, but a month ago Remus was…”
“Remus was still Remus?” she said finishing his thought.
“Sorry,” Sirius said flinching. “I know he’s still Remus now, it’s just…”
“I know,” Lily said placing a hand over his.
“I don’t think this war really became real to me until he was gone and then when he came home…” he trails off, blinking tears out of his eyes. “I need to go talk to him.”
“Okay.”
“Do you need to stay?” Sirius asked and Lily smiled softly despite everything. She appreciated this most about her friends, that all of them understood that their romantic relationships weren’t any stronger or better than the friendships they forged. That she was as much a part of this as Sirius was.
“It’s okay. I want to check in with James anyways. It’s not like him to not call all day and I think two of us might be too much for Remus right now. Just call me after you talk to him?”
Sirius nodded. “And call me if you can’t get a hold of James, okay?”
Lily smiled and got up to start gathering her things. She was just about to leave when Sirius stopped her.
“You didn’t say anything wrong. It’s just… he has bad days sometimes and it’s hard to know what to do.”
“Thanks Sirius,” Lily said, leaning down to give him a peck on the cheek before stepping into the fireplace and flooing herself home.
Sirius sighed and steeled himself before walking into the bedroom. He crouched down next to the closet and knocked softly before opening the door.
“Can I come in?” he asked, peering at Remus’ form crouched in the back corner who nodded his head lightly.
Sirius turned back and shut the door but not before catching the glow of tear tracks on Remus’ face in the sliver of light. Sirius gave himself a moment to adjust to the dark before pulling himself towards the back of the closet to sit next to Remus.
“Bad day?” Sirius asked and Remus nodded slowly in response, his bottom lip quivering against the too much of everything he was feeling. Sirius paused, trying to figure out where to go from here. “Lily said you mentioned Peter?”
Remus immediately pulled his knees in tighter and shrunk away from Sirius. “Don’t be mad.”
“Mad? Why would I – “ He stopped himself, breathing in deeply and reminding himself of everything Remus had gone through, everything he was still going through. “Exploding Snap in second year.” Remus looked up at him at that and Sirius took it as a sign to keep going. “James zapped the back of Peter’s hand. He’s had a scar ever since.”
“You remember,” Remus said quietly.
“I’m sure James will too if we ask him.”
“When I was in there, with the death eaters, one of them was kinder than the others. He’d slip me extra bits of food if he could or water, sometimes a bit of healing salve. I thought it was part of a whole good cop/bad cop routine but then he gave me the key, distracted the guard so I could get out. I never saw any of them without their masks, but when he gave me the key there was a scar on the back of his hand.”
In the dark, Sirius could make out the look of concentration on Remus’ face as he worked to try and straighten out everything in his brain that was so muddled.
“Do you… do you think Peter’s working undercover as a death eater?” The second he said it aloud Sirius knew how feeble it sounded. It was a last desperate grasp at normalcy, at holding onto the golden days when everything was perfect, and safe, and friends could be trusted, and boyfriends didn’t disappear into the night and come back aching in ways he couldn’t heal.
Remus shook his head slowly. “Um… sometimes when they’d… when they’d torture me, they’d leave him in charge, and he’d use all these different plants and salves and they’d burn and then he’d heal it so he could do it all over again. The others always watched and they’d congratulate him and he… he seemed proud.”
“Fuck,” Sirius whispered softly and somehow that of all things caused Remus’ head to snap towards him.
“Sirius I-I can’t see him. I-I-“ his voice was choked off as he started to hyperventilate again. Visions of that scar and memories of blistering boils crawling over skin, of pain so sharp it has teeth. No bark. All bite.
Sirius pulled Remus in next to him and Remus clutched onto him desperately shaking and crying into Sirius’ chest.
“I just – I just wanted to clean up after the party and I couldn’t and I can’t and nothing works right anymore and I can’t make it all stop. Why won’t it stop?”
And Sirius just holds him and holds him and holds him because he doesn’t have the answer to any of those questions and he knows that the second they leave this closet, everything is going to change.