Chapter Text
Under the low light of the waning moon, the group trudged towards the castle. Lupin refused to remove his wand from Pettigrew’s shoulder blades, despite the fact that his wrists were bound with magic that would prevent him from transforming. As Harry watched from behind, helping Hermione support Ron and his injured leg, he wondered how his professor must be feeling, reunited in the same night with two of his best friends after twelve years— one whom he’d believed to be dead, and the other whom he thought had been the murderer.
They were through the castle doors before Snape caught up to them. Before the kids could even process what was happening, he had Sirius by the throat and Lupin at wand point. Pettigrew had been discarded to the ground.
“Severus,” Lupin said, his hands in the air, eyes darting wildly between the escaped prisoner and the professor— his best friend and their old school bully. “You must understand—”
“Oh, I understand perfectly,” Snape spit. “I told Dumbledore it would happen. The second you saw him you’d go crawling back to him. Just like you always did. And Potter is too simple, just like his father—”
“Oi!” Harry and Sirius roared together. Lupin let out an exasperated breath.
From the other end of the corridor came the sound of several fast-paced pairs of feet, and then Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, and Madame Pomfrey were there, surveying the scene with varying degrees of concern, confusion, and fear.
Professor Dumbledore was the first to notice Pettigrew on the floor, futile in his attempts to crawl away. He seemed rather content to just watch him, until McGonagall followed his line of sight and gasped. “Is that—?”
“I’m surprised you recognize him, Minny,” Sirius said, somehow managing to smirk with Snape’s wand digging into his throat.
McGonagall looked askance. Her old student, whom she still believes to be a traitor and a murderer, casually making jokes and speaking to her like a friend while being held at wandpoint. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, though no noise came out.
“Professor Lupin,” Dumbledore said, miraculously calm, “perhaps you could explain what we’ve walked into?”
The everything of it all appeared to hit Lupin in that moment. He, too, could form no words. How was he supposed to explain this?
In the impending silence, Hermione stepped forward. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Harry found himself thanking whatever powers that be for her. “I can, Professor,” she said, and Dumbledore turned to her expectantly, apparently not at all bothered to hear from a third year about what is clearly a very serious and complicated situation.
“Sirius Black is innocent,” she began, and then pointed to Pettigrew. “Peter Pettigrew is alive. He was the secret keeper for Harry’s parents. They switched and didn’t tell anybody. But he told You-Know-Who. Sirius went after him, but he cut off his finger and blew up the block to get away. See?” She gestured more specifically to his four-fingered hand.
“He was a rat!” Ron said, rather pale and sweaty at this point. Harry was beginning to buckle under his weight, especially now without Hermione.
Hermione sighed. “Yes…” She turned back to their professors. “Literally. He’s an animagus. So is Sirius. That’s how he was able to escape Azkaban.”
With eyes back on him, Sirius pasted a smile back on his face. “Not a rat, mind you,” he said, and then narrowed his eyes at Hermione. “My, you are rather clever aren’t you?” He smirked at Lupin. “Doesn’t she remind you of Lily?”
At that, Snape tightened his hold on Sirius’s throat. “Don’t say her name—”
“You don’t get to mourn her!” Sirius shouted over him, that wild look back in his eyes. “You were the one who betrayed her! She believed in you when no one else did and look at where that got her!” Having taken him off guard, Sirius was able to push Snape away from him.
Lupin immediately got in between the two, raising his wand a second before Snape could.
“Remus,” McGonagall said, though Remus refused to take his eyes off of Snape, his left arm out to the side to keep Sirius behind him. “Is this true? Are you sure?”
“I’m certain,” he said, with enough conviction (and grief) in his voice that the only one willing to question him by this point would have been Snape. “So one of you should get that thing off the floor. Take him to the dementors.” He ignored Pettigrew’s pathetic whimpers. “Give him veritaserum first, if you must.”
“Not that they bothered with me,” Sirius mumbled.
“Professor Snape,” Dumbledore said, “Since you seem so eager to see justice served, would you please see that Pettigrew is taken into custody?”
Snape glared at the headmaster, but even he wasn’t dim enough to argue with Dumbledore. He finally lowered his wand from Lupin and Sirius, turning it instead on Pettigrew. He grabbed that rat by the arm, yanking him to his feet and pushing him down the corridor.
With him gone, Madame Pomfrey pushed past McGonagall to get to Ron. “Oh dear, come on,” she said, taking him from Harry. She briefly examined the makeshift splint. “Did you make this, Sirius?” she asked.
“I’m a bit out of practice,” Sirius answered sheepishly. “Not much for healing in Azkaban.”
“I always said…” She trailed off. Harry realized with a start that the matron had tears in her eyes.
Sirius nodded mutley. His eyes were shining as well.
“Professor Lupin, if you and Mr. Black would accompany me to my office,” Dumbledore said, and it wasn’t a question. The two men followed him out, sending final glances over their shoulders towards Harry before disappearing around the corner.
McGonagall went to Harry and Hermione as Madame Pomfrey led Ron into the hospital. “Are you two all right?” she asked.
“I’m not sure how anyone could be all right after that,” Harry answered honestly, still staring at the place where Sirius and Lupin had been. “Can I go to Dumbledore’s office too?”
McGonagall sighed. “I’m sure Professor Dumbledore will want to speak to you soon. For now, you should let Madame Pomfrey look at you.”
“I’m fine,” Harry insisted at once. He’d forgotten that it was pointless to argue with her.
“You’re in shock,” she corrected sternly, directing them both towards the hospital doors before leaving too, no doubt to go to Dumbledore’s office herself.
Nearly half of the Ministry ended up being summoned to Hogwarts that night. Veritaserum was administered and a makeshift trial was held in the Great Hall— all while Hermione muttered about grossly inept legal systems and Harry tried not to vomit from being so near dementors. Even with no less than three patronuses around, the cold emanating off the dark beings was seeping into Harry’s bones.
McGonagall made them leave when the kiss was being administered. She asked Sirius and Remus if they were staying, and they both nodded. She looked like she wanted to drag them out as well, but she didn’t have time to wrestle with them and get the kids out.
Hermione and Ron went up to bed, but Harry sat down on one of the stone benches in the arcade. The cold of it was nothing compared to the dementors. He tried to imagine how much worse it could get— what having your soul sucked out of your body would feel like. Who you would even be afterwards— if you would be anything at all.
He doesn’t know how long he sat there before someone else was sitting beside him. He looked up to see Sirius, and over his shoulder Professor Lupin was hovering at the end of the arcade, clearly attempting to give them privacy while also not taking his eyes off them.
“You look just like him,” Sirius said. “Except for your eyes, you have—”
“My mother’s eyes,” Harry cut him off. “Yeah, I know.”
“She knew it, too,” Sirius went on. “The moment you were born, she said, ‘All that and he comes out looking like his dad.’ James was insistent, though, that you had her eyes— even before they were green. But Lily wouldn’t admit he was right until you were three months old.”
Harry had never heard anyone talk about his parents like this— using their names so freely. It was obvious that Sirius was their best friend. It was obvious how much he loved them, how well he knew them. They were family, like real, actual, proper family.
“I told Dumbledore I’m not letting you go back to the Dursleys’,” Sirius said suddenly. “Lily would hate knowing you’re with them. She used to dread holidays because she’d have to see her sister and that great lump of a husband she had—”
“They’re horrible,” Harry said.
Sirius nodded, and Harry saw the barely controlled rage behind his eyes. “McGonagall told me.”
“She knows?”
“She keeps an eye on you,” Sirius informed him, and Harry had no idea how to process that information. It was too much for one night. He let it slide for now. “You can live with me and Remus. We’ll—”
“Sirius.” Suddenly, Remus was there, putting a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should discuss this later. It’s been a long night.”
“It’s day,” said Siris, gesturing to the sky which was now a pale blue as the morning sun attempted to break through the clouds.
“When is the last time you slept?” Remus insisted.
Sirius let out a dry laugh. “The 30th of October, 1981.”
The hold he had on his shoulder tightened. “Long overdue then.” He looked at Harry. “You too. We’ll talk more this afternoon, I promise.”
Harry nodded. As much as he wanted answers, he also wanted sleep. And perhaps after that, answers will make more sense.
___________________________________________
Remus couldn’t stop staring at him. Millions of times he’s imagined this. Every single possible scenario, from finally proving his innocence to begging him for an explanation, but yet somehow he didn’t know what to do now that it was just the two of them, alone in his chambers.
He still looked like himself. His hair was longer and he needed a bath and a few months of decent meals, but all of the important stuff was still there. He’s even smiled— several times since reuniting, in fact, and that was something that had only happened in Remus’s wildest fantasies. Twelve years of unjust torture, and yet he could still smile? It was hollower than it had been when they were in school, of course, but then, that light had died long before James and Lily did.
“You’re staring,” Sirius said. He was sitting on Remus’s bed. Remus couldn’t quite reconcile the image with reality.
“I know,” he answered, not finding it within himself to be embarrassed.
Sirius finally met his gaze. “You must hate me.”
Of all things, Remus had been least expecting that. He blinked in confusion. “It’s you who should hate me.” He sat down beside him, though he looked at the wall now instead. “I should have been there that night. I should have fought harder after you were arrested—”
“You fought?” Sirius interrupted him.
Remus looked back up. Sirius appeared more fragile than he had all night. This is what finally cut through his rough exterior. Not watching their former best friend get his soul sucked out. No, after everything they went through, Sirius still thought Remus could have ever lost faith in him.
“Of course,” he said fiercely. “But no one would listen. I was just the mad queer werewolf. They put me on trial as well, you know. Dumbledore was the only reason I wasn’t thrown into Azkaban with you.”
That old righteous anger was back on his face, same as it always was. “Is that damn registry still in existence?”
Remus chuckled and nodded. “Still can’t hold down a job— on the odd chance that I manage to get one. Not much has changed.”
“What are you talking about? You’re a professor! Your dream!” He seemed sort of sad and happy at the same time.
“It’s my first year,” Remus informed him blithely. “And likely my last if Severus has anything to say about it.”
His features darkened again. “Why did Dumbledore hire that sniveling—”
“Apparently he was a spy for us at the end of the war. He’s why we knew James and Lily were a target.”
“So his creepy obsession with Lily is the only reason he turned back?”
“Essentially.”
Sirius shook his head. “If you haven’t been here, what have you been doing? Did they let you keep the house, at least?”
Remus’s chest ached. There was a small cottage on the edge of Hogsmeade that they’d moved into together once London became too much on top of everything else. It had felt like a place the war couldn’t touch.
“They raided it after you disappeared. I wasn’t there, of course, I didn’t even find out they had died until a week after. The pack I was with was too far removed to get news from the frontlines, and Dumbledore didn’t bother to send for me. I presume he thought I’d absconded with you. By the time I got back, the house had been turned inside out. And it was too hard to be there.”
“Did you sell it?”
“No. It’s still there. I haven’t been.” That fact has plagued him— knowing that there was a time capsule of their life together out here in the Scottish highlands this whole time. Likely being used now by animals and vagrants.
Sirius should have been exhausted, but he had twelve years of questions to get answered, and apparently a few more hours wouldn’t do. “What about the money?” he continued. “They couldn’t have kept that from you.”
Remus was the sole inherent in Sirius’s will. It had seemed ridiculous at the time, an eighteen year old with a will, but they were right on the edge of war, and his Uncle Alphard had just left him a large chunk of the Black fortune, newly freed from purity laws. Sirius had hired the best lawyer he could find to make sure the Ministry couldn’t screw Remus over in the event of his death.
However, “You didn’t die, Sirius.”
“I as good as!”
“Don’t say that.” Remus closed his eyes and clenched his fists. He hated reliving all these lost battles, but he understood that Sirius needed to know. “And the Black fortune is still tied up because of it. Andromeda and Narcissa are fighting over it. I was cut out of that before it was even properly on the table.”
Sirius’s face had gone a rather frightening shade of red, made doubly worse by how pale he was. “So, what, you got nothing? And my cousins just left you to dry?”
“Andy has helped,” Remus assured him. “Her and Ted don’t have a lot, though, so I try not to bother them much. I think I’m the only reason they’re still battling the Malfoys.”
“So where have you been staying, then, if not at home?”
Remus’s heart broke hearing him call it home. He hadn’t thought of the cottage as home in so long. It felt more like a dream at this point. “Around,” he managed to get out around the lump in his throat. “London, mostly. I was at the Ministry a lot fighting for custody over Harry. I didn’t give up until he came to Hogwarts and Minerva finally convinced me he was all right.”
“You were in their will,” Sirius said.
Remus sighed. It was like they were twenty years old again. “You know that doesn’t matter. I don’t count as a competent and capable adult in the Ministry’s eyes— much less a parent.”
“Did they let you visit, at least?”
“I was finally granted visitation a few years back, and presumably they notified the Dursleys.” He shook his head in barely contained anger. “I tried writing to them, muggle post and everything, but I never heard back.”
“So you haven’t seen him at all?” His eyes were wide and sad.
How could a man who’d been unjustly imprisoned for twelve years still manage to have empathy for the such comparatively smaller woes of another? Remus wondered if he’d ever not find Sirius miraculous.
“Not until the train in this year,” he told him. “Fate put him in my carriage, actually, while I was sleeping. When I woke up, for a moment I thought he was James. I thought this had all been some horribly long nightmare. Then I realized he was Harry, of course. And that hurt worse.”
“He’s so big.”
“I know.”
“He doesn’t remember us.”
“I know.” It had been killing him all year. Every time he looked at Harry, he saw that little baby who’d stared up at him with those big green eyes and called him “Unca Moony” and had given him a reason to keep fighting.
“What about—?”
“Sirius,” Remus cut him off. “Can the rest wait, please? Can we go to sleep?”
Sirius pressed his lips together, clearly wanting to argue (probably knowing he’d win if he did as well), but he eventually nodded. Then a slight smirk pulled at the corner of his lips. “You want to sleep with me?” he asked, and he was clearly going for casual teasing, but it was also laced with fear and vulnerability.
Remus felt the heat rush to his face. “What? That’s not what I— I mean, not that— but I don’t— I mean, I—”
“Sorry.” Sirius held his hand up. “That wasn’t fair.”
Remus remembered to breathe. “No, it wasn’t.”
“I can go somewhere else—” He stood, but Remus grabbed his hand.
“That wouldn’t be fair either,” he said.
“To whom?”
“Me.” Remus pulled him back to sitting. “I’ll answer one more question tonight: No, I haven’t moved on.”
Sirius broke into an all out grin and it was as beautiful as it was heartbreaking. There were wrinkles there that shouldn’t have been new to him. He should have gotten to watch them form. Then again, neither one of them should look as old as they do at only thirty-four.
“No one else could compare?” he teased.
“I didn’t bother looking,” Remus replied blandly. “Not to put too fine a point on it or anything, but when the only man you’ve ever loved may have killed your best friends, it sort of spoils the whole idea of relationships.”
Sirius’s face fell and Remus winced.
“Shit, sorry—”
“No, don’t apologize. I don’t want you to pretend that you haven’t been through it.”
“I wasn’t as bad off as you,” Remus argued.
Sirius shook his head. “At least I knew the truth.” His eyes got sort of distant, and Remus instinctively tightened his grip on his hand so that he couldn’t drift too far away. “That’s what kept me sane, I think. Mostly. That and Padfoot. Dementors don’t affect dogs.”
Relief swept through Remus at that, but he knew it would still be inappropriate to say “that’s good.”
“I’m glad you’re out of there now,” he said instead. If he were honest with himself, he had been glad Sirius was out even before he was sure he was innocent. Even on the days when someone could convince him of Sirius’s guilt, he came up with excuses for him. He was never convinced that Sirius could be so bad as to deserve Azkaban. And he could never reconcile the man he loved with the things people swore he did.
“Come on,” he said, standing and leading Sirius into the bathroom. “You are not sleeping in my bed like that.”
Sirius turned to the mirror and gasped in horror. “Merlin, is that what I look like?” He stepped forward. “Bloody hell, I got old. And my teeth!” He stared at Remus with wide eyes. “How can you even look at me?”
It was only now that Remus was even beginning to process the toll prison had taken on Sirius’s appearance. Sirius had stopped being just a pretty face to him when they were still in school. It hadn’t mattered what he looked like, so long as he was there.
He stepped forward and took his hand. “To be honest, I’m more concerned about the fleas.”
Sirius yanked his hand away. “I’ve been sleeping in the woods, what do you expect?”
“Please, you had fleas when we were sixteen.”
Sirius turned back to the mirror. “Definitely not sixteen anymore.”
Remus followed his gaze. It was startling seeing them standing right next to each other after so long. It wasn’t just Sirius who had gotten old. They had so much time to make up for.
“Let me take care of you, please,” he said softly, and Sirius swallowed and nodded.
He led him to the bath and turned on the tap, then stripped Sirius of the horrible scratching gray prison clothes. They laid on his body in stained shreds, and Remus threw them into the corner, making a mental note to burn them later.
When Sirius got into the warm bath he groaned and sunk as far into the water as possible. Remus didn’t know much about Azkaban—he’d avoided learning about the subject entirely, in fact— but he could presume that baths were not a regular occurrence. It was more likely a warden who came by once a month to cast a cleansing spell. Which should by no means be used in place of proper hygiene.
He was so thin that Remus could count his ribs, which he did as he washed them. Years worth of dirt came off, and Remus magicked the water clean before moving onto his hair.
“Is that Fleamont’s Dog Shampoo?” Sirius asked, snatching the bottle from him as Remus began running the potion through his hair.
“James left us a locker full of the stuff in his will. Because he’s an arse, even in death.”
Sirius snorted. “Cheeky bugger.”
Remus washed his hair three times before declaring the job done and helping Sirius stand up. He wrapped a towel around his waist and led him over to the sink. He held his wand up. “Now open wide, and for the love of god, Sirius, stay still. Lest I bleach your nose hairs.”
Cavities were repaired. Decay was reversed. And his smile faded from gray to white. When Remus was finished, he held up a toothbrush. “You still have to brush.”
Sirius took it as if he were being handed a million galleons. “Gladly.”
“I’ll get you some clothes.”
He gave Sirius a pair of pajamas and they hung off him as if he were a child in his father’s clothes. But Sirius looked absolutely ecstatic to have proper material on him again.
Remus left him to get comfortable while he cleaned up himself, and he came back out to find Sirius curled up in bed, eyes wide open.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” Remus said as he laid down next to him.
“I’m not used to sleeping as myself,” Sirius admitted. “It was always easier as Padfoot.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you—”
“I don’t want to. I want to be with you. Properly.”
“Okay.” Remus scooted closer and wrapped his arm around him. “I’m right here.”
Sirius buried his head in his chest. It took a while, but he eventually fell asleep.