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All the memories and the talking had burnt Remus out and Sirius barely managed to drag him out of the closet and carry him into bed before he was snoring soundly. He laid with him for a bit, just running his hands gently through his hair and trying to understand how anyone could want to hurt such a kind, beautiful soul. He wished he knew how to make this better. He wished he didn’t believe it was likely going to get worse first.
Once he was sure that Remus was asleep, Sirius made his way into the living room, leaving the bedroom door open a crack so he could hear if Remus was having nightmares again. Then he kneeled in front of the fireplace and called Lily. Her face appeared in the flame moments later.
“Did you find James?” Sirius asked.
“Was waiting at home when I got here. The prat had me all worried over nothing.”
“I’m sorry that my preoccupation with protecting the Wizarding World worried you my darling,” James’s voice said as he appeared in the flames next to Lily, leaning down to give her a kiss.
“Have you told him anything?” Sirius asked.
“Just that Remus was having a bad day.”
James’s brow furrowed and he looked between the two of them. “Told me what? I don’t like when you two start scheming without me.”
“James, do you remember that game of Exploding Snaps in second year?”
James groaned loudly. “Not this again! I told Pete I was sorry, if anything you all should be impressed I was able to pull off a hex bad enough to scar at that age.”
Sirius and Lily exchanged a nervous look.
James glanced between them. “Neither of you is teasing me about it, what’s going on?”
Lily looked to Sirius who shook his head softly to let her know he wasn’t strong enough to start this conversation. She took a deep breath and turned to James. “We think Peter was one of the death eaters who kidnapped Remus.”
James burst out laughing and only stopped when he realized the others weren’t joining in. “You weren’t teasing me and now you aren’t laughing. You two are scaring me. What’s really going on here?”
Lily looked to Sirius for guidance. He sighed. “I guess you two better come over here.”
Sirius stepped back from the fireplace and a moment later James and Lily were dusting themselves off from the floo and standing in the living room with him.
“Okay, one of you two better start talking. You don’t just get to bring up a game of Exploding Snap and then call one of our best friends a death eater,” James said as he paced around the living room.
Sirius rubbed his temples as he sat down on one of the sofas. “Quieter please. Remus is sleeping for once.”
All the fight went out of James at the sight of his brother’s worn out and disheveled face. He turned to his wife who was biting her nails nervously and decided that whatever this was, trying to argue his way out of it wasn’t going to be helpful to anyone. This war had caused enough pain on its own without them tearing each other apart.
James sat down on a couch opposite Sirius and Lily eventually took the place beside him. Sirius wasn’t sure if James was even aware he was doing it but he held Lily’s hands fast in his own so she couldn’t keep ruining her nails.
“Okay,” James said. “Walk me through it.”
Walk me through it. That same phrase that James had uttered at the start of the planning phase of so many famous Marauders pranks, now being used to prove that one of them was not the person they’d believed him to be. This wasn’t harmless anymore. Remus was living proof that there were fates far worse than detention or being caught by Filch.
Sirius looked to Lily, and she took that as her queue to start. “I told you Remus was having a bad day today. He wasn’t really verbal all day but then he brought up Peter, mentioning that he’d been here last night. Then he started asking me what Peter did and I told him herbology but that didn’t seem like the answer he wanted. Then he brought up the Order.”
“The Order?” James said perking up. “He hasn’t talked about that since…” He trailed off but looked to Sirius who nodded in confirmation.
Lily shifted their hands so it was now her holding onto James and gave him a reassuring squeeze, like it would somehow lighten the blow of what she was about to say. “He asked if Peter was on our side. I assured him he was but then he brought up Exploding Snap in second year and next thing I knew he was running out of the room. I didn’t know what he was talking about but when Sirius came home, he told me that Peter had a scar on the back of his hand from when you played him in second year.”
“No,” James said, shaking his head sharply, “he wouldn’t. Remus has been having a hard time since he came back. Maybe, maybe he just saw the scar on Peter’s hand at the party and got mixed up with something that happened. Like a, what do Muggles call it? Like a Mandela effect.”
Sirius was shaking his head slowly in an attempt to cut James off and wishing that he wasn’t going to have to tell his best friends what Remus told him. More than anything, he wished that the things that Remus told him had never happened.
“After Lily went home, I went to talk to him. He told me one of the death eaters was nicer to him when the others weren’t around. He was the one who helped Remus escape. Remus saw the scar on the back of his hand when he gave him the key.”
“It could be…” James started, and Sirius recognized the same desperate tone his own voice had carried earlier. “It could be a fluke. Someone else could have had the same scar.”
Sirius gave James a look that he hoped conveyed to him how much he wished it was a fluke, that he wouldn’t be telling him this if he didn’t have to, if he didn’t believe it was true. “Peter works in herbology or magical botany or something right?”
James and Lily half nodded half shrugged. It seemed that none of them really knew what their friend got up too.
“Either way,” Sirius said, “he works with plants. Remus told me that…” he took a deep breath so he wouldn’t start crying and kept his eyes trained on the floor. He couldn’t bear to see the looks on their faces when he said what he needed to say next. “He told me that the same death eater who gave him the key used to torture him with salves and plants. He’d – he’d put them on his skin and they’d cause burns or boils or melt right through his flesh and then… then he’d spell him better and do it all over again. Remus said it seemed like he was always happiest when he got validation from the other death eaters who’d watch.”
James swore under his breath. Sirius looked up to see Lily’s eyes trained on him with worry, trying to figure out how he was handling the new information about what Remus had endured.
“Remus?” James asked. “Is he – is he okay?”
“I haven’t found any surface evidence of unhealed burns on Remus’ skin,” Sirius said, choosing to focus on the physical implication of James’s question. If he was honest, he didn’t think he had it in him to fully consider how far from okay Remus was. “But having a death eater with such a knowledge of magical plants might give me a better idea why the cuts on his arms aren’t healing.”
James looked up at them from where his head was buried in his hands. “What are we going to do?”
The three of them exchanged looks with one another in the silence. Hoping that somehow in the absence of conversation the logical answer would present itself. Either that, or neither one of them wanted to be the one to make the call that would doom their former friend. Before any of them had the chance to speak, the heavy silence was broken by a blood curdling scream.
Sirius was on his feet first sprinting into Remus’s room with James and Lily on his heels. Remus was flailing desperately, caught somewhere between sleep and waking, between nightmare and memory. He was hitting himself with his fists and clawing at his skin as he wailed. He was hurting himself and if he didn’t stop, he was going to fall off the bed or crash into something else. Sirius realized he’d stupidly left his wand in the living room and so did the only thing he could think of. He leaped on top of Remus's body, straddling his thighs to hold his legs still as he used his arms to pin each of Remus’s arms to the mattress.
“No!” Remus wailed. “It hurts! Please stop it burns!”
He started screaming again as he fought back against Sirius who held him steady.
“I’m sorry Remus,” Sirius choked out between his own sobs. “I’m so sorry, but it’s me, okay? We’re home. I just need you to come back to me. Please… you have to come back to me,” trembling Sirius turned back to his friends who were frozen in the doorway. “There’s a sleeping draught in the bathroom. Purple vial, top shelf.”
Lily nodded and sprinted out of the room to grab it. She brought it back to Sirius and helped him hold Remus’s mouth open long enough so that they could pour it in. Slowly, Remus stilled in Sirius’s grasp and drifted back off to sleep.
Sirius got off him feeling defeated and made his way past his friends back into the living room. He realized after a moment that they were both standing in the doorway staring at him.
“I promise I don’t do that often,” he said, voice shaking. “He-he hates sleeping potions, says it-it reminds him too much of being drugged but when he gets like that and he starts hurting himself… it’s just… I don’t know what to do.” Sirius buried his head in his hands and continued to sob until he felt James’ grip tugging his hands away from his face.
“Sirius,” James said, his voice gentle. “How long has it been this bad?”
“I-it was bad when he came back, but once he got some sleep and food and fluids into him he was doing better.” He turned to look at Lily too, eyes wild as if begging his friends to believe he’d been doing all he could. “I promise he was doing better but then… he can’t eat, he’s too scared to leave the house, he doesn’t sleep and when he does he has awful nightmares. They aren’t usually as bad as they were tonight, but they’ve been getting worse. Some days he won’t even talk to me or he’ll just look at me like I’m not even there. It’s like – it’s like every day he’s getting further and further away from me and I don’t know how to bring him back.” Sirius's chest clenched painfully as the words tumbled out of him. Finally admitting it all aloud made him realize how scared he was, how he couldn't even fathom the notion that he might lose Remus, and how small and powerless he felt to do anything about it.
“Sirius,” James said again as he tucked a strand of Sirius’ hair behind his ear and kissed him on the forehead. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“How could he?" Sirius asked, looking desperately at the two of them. "How could Peter do that to our Remus?”
James and Lily only had the same questions, so they just tugged Sirius off the couch and into their arms and there, on the worn carpet floor, they let each other fall apart.