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“Who was Sirius Black to you?” Alastor Moody asked, mechanical eye fixed on Remus inquisitively.
“No one.” He sighed, the sound that of heartache.
.
The leaves scattered over Hogwarts’s grounds in endless pools of brown, red and orange. Remus walked with his hands on the pockets of his robe, staring intently at the cloudless sky, while Sirius walked happily kicking dry leaves.
It was fall again, and Remus couldn’t remember the last time things had been so okay.
He breathed in the cold air contently, and looked over at Sirius.
The cold steel of his eyes had started to melt into something warmer, sweeter, lately. They reminded him less of hard, dark metal, and more of a storm. Dark silver sky, the smell of rain, the comfort of watching the world fall down while he was at home, in front of a fireplace, enjoying the visual and auditory experience.
Lately, Sirius had stopped tensing his shoulders every time he was around other people. He made jokes often now, brash and for anyone to hear. When this would happen, Remus wouldn’t know if he should roll his eyes, due to the terrible quality of most of the jokes Sirius made, or to weep. After all, Sirius had been so quiet for so long.
The grounds were quiet, and Remus briefly wondered if it was just Sirius and him.
These moments were not something to be taken for granted. It wasn’t often that he had time alone with the other boy, or that things were so tranquil and easy that Remus felt that he could stay in that moment forever, and no one would notice. No big repercussion would bite his ass, no bucket of cold water to wake him up.
Remus did not think that nothing could rip him from this state of peace, that the moment would linger forever like a taste left in his mouth or the cold after an absence. Forever in his mind as just this. Him and Sirius. Fall. Quiet.
That was when Sirius spoke.
“I think I might be in love with you.”
.
If asked about love, Remus´ first thought would be of his mother. Golden hair, broken nails and tentative smiles. She loved quietly. She loved in gentle hugs in the dark, and cups chocolate milk with one teaspoon of sugar. She loved when she was not supposed to love.
Hope Lupin loved a man who did not know how to love back, whose harsh words and hands would hurt her more than she let on, and whose sense of morality was strong, but wrong.
Hope Lupin loved a son who did nothing but take from her. The dream life, the white mansion, the broad smiles. She had given everything up for him. The money she should have been spending on books and trips to Wales to visit her family, she spent on witches to patch him up, the time she would have wasted talking to friends, getting a degree on politics, she wasted writing letter after letter begging for her child´s education.
She loved quietly because her husband did not love at all.
She loved with care and with sacrifice.
That was what love meant for Remus. Not big displays of affection, loquacious speeches filled with metaphors and similes. Love couldn’t be found in gold or words or firm hands pressed against the other.
Love was not James´ loud declarations and charmed teddy bears, it was the way his whole face lit up when Lily walked into a room. It was how he cared so deeply that he thought of her when he saw something that he knew made her happy.
Love was in that, the unconscious things you just can´t help to do, Remus would say.
It was simple for them.
James loved Lily.
Lily loved James.
Lily and James Lily and JamesLilyandJamesLilyand-
.
Remus looked up from the plastic cup of coffee he had been staring intently at, the light brown foam with specks of white and dark brown, with a circle of white around it, with a hollow, shiny, almost steely grey underneath it. If he squinted, it could remind him of something.
“It says here,” Moody read of a sheet of paper that was black on Remus´ side “That you and Mr. Black share a flat together, in London.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.
“What I do with my personal life is none of your business.” The steel grey table seemed to be getting larger and larger. Now there were steel grey chairs, steel grey walls, steel grey lies.
“Ah. You know Lupin, I couldn’t give less of a shit about what you do with your personal life. Sharing apartments is not something you do with someone who is nobody to you.”
Moody dropped the document and pressed his hands on the table hard, so hard that they became white. So hard that Remus almost felt bad for the steely silver. “I know the four of you were close. I like you Lupin, I really do, and I wouldn’t do this if I had any other option, but I don’t. You are the only one who truly knows.”
Moody´s voice had dropped its apathy, letting a ray of desperation out. He was begging, he needed him, Remus could hear the fastness of his heartbeat, he could almost touch the want that he had to know the truth.
Still, Remus kept staring at the shiny steel.
Old habits die hard, and all that.
.
They were insane. Absolutely insane.
Remus smiled up from the comfort of his bed at Sirius and James, at the matching blue strikes on their hair. They were beaming down at him, like two over-excited puppies that know they did something that is probably wrong.
“So, how do we look?” James made a wide ta-da gesture with his hands. Remus snorted.
“If you want to be a part of the club you just have to ask. We must have left some of that potion laying around my suitcase.”
“I´ll pass mate, but thanks for asking.” He said, and then winced along with Sirius at his choice of words.
Mate.
Sirius and James had spent the summer together at James´. Sirius had nowhere else to go, and Remus had spent the break in Wales, visiting his mother. Their last conversation
had been about how Remus did not want to start anything Serious. Not when they would spend the entire summer away, not when they were still figuring things out. He´d been so scared to tell him, but Sirius had just smiled. It was often than the thought of Sirius was more complicated than the actual person.
“We´ll just put it on hold” Sirius had shrugged “It will be here when we come back.”
They had still kept touch with one another. Probably more than Remus, who had wanted to put a little space between them, expected. They wrote long letters describing the monotony of the afternoon sun and the laughs they had because of the stupidest shit.
One of those letters in particular, had described their trip to a muggle store, and their acquisition of blue hair-dye.
Of course, Sirius had never said that they had gone through with it.
But alas, here they stood, matching stupidity, matching streaks of greenish-blue hair.
“What do you think? Don´t we look dashing?” James said.
“It´s very punk rock.” Sirius supplied, charming smile that would win anyone over.
Cloudy eyes lingered on him more than they should have. Remus knew that it was a way a letting him know something, a secretive, silver promise. It held all the words and none of them at all. It held urgency, and patience, and warmth and love.
Sirius Black was beautiful. Not beautiful in a “pretty person I turn my head to keep looking at” way. It was more of a “I can´t look at you because I know that if I start I´ll never be able to stop” kind of way. He was beautiful in the way the night sky was beautiful, the moon, a hurricane.
The worst of it all was, he knew that he was beautiful. And he knew that everyone else did too.
“Probably going to set a school fashion and all that.” Remus mumbled and kept reading his neglected book, starting at the words without actually understanding them with Sirius´ looming presence so close. It wasn’t beyond them. A week from then everyone would probably be wearing blue streaks on their hair.
Once he got into his book, he didn’t realize that James had left the room until Sirius cleared his throat.
Remus´ felt dizzy in anticipation as the hurricane grew stronger and stronger, clouds closing in on him. Sirius was smirking. A ray of sunlight divided the room in two. Remus was in the shadows, while Sirius was golden all over, looking softer and kinder, the usual Black family features (The sharp nose, the cutting jaw, the hard eyes) all melted with the heat
of the last days of summer. Now, it was just Sirius.
“Hey.” He said, voice just as honeyed.
“Hey.” Remus smiled.
He wondered how he looked, hidden in the shadow. He wondered if his features looked harder, if his scars were meaner, more striking. It wasn’t like Sirius had ever cared about how he looked like, anyways.
“You know what I said three months ago?” Sirius nodded slowly. “Well, I don’t think I mean it anymore.”
Shyly, Remus looked up from the hem of his sweater he´d been staring at, to find a beaming Sirius.
“You don’t?” Remus shook his head. “Thank Merlin.” Sirius sighed and suddenly, his lips were on Remus´.
Silver and Golden, shadows and sunlight, they were all the same. For a moment, they were one.
.
“I don’t remember much about that Summer. I don’t remember much about a lot of things. I can see me and James, at his house. I can see his parents, smiling at me. I can smell home-cooked food and feel the warm sun on my skins. I can remember thinking that my parents would kill me if they knew that I was sun-bathing in the midday sun. That´s about it. Then there are the things that I´ve been told. James said that I woke up screaming in the middle of the night, every night. That I told him about nightmares, about memories from my old house. Constellations and expensive silverware and designer robes. Honestly I can´t remember much of it. I don’t remember the letters. I was never that close to Remus, really. It was always James and I. I didn’t- I couldn’t have.”
.
There were dark circles under Sirius´ eyes. There were dark circles drawn on his notes with raven-black ink.
Remus looked at him from the corner of his eye, unsure of how to deal with those kinds of situations. Sirius was angry at him. It had been a stupid fight about the future, which looming closer and closer by the day, a silent clock ticking increasingly louder. A time-bomb. Remus did not want to think about it, Sirius kept pressing, pressing and open wound, pressing his hand on Remus´, pressing the red button the said do not touch.
´I´m sorry, ´ He wanted to say, but the words were stuck on his throat, putting a weight on his stomach. Was he sorry? What was he sorry about?
The thoughts raced inside of his mind, and the circles started to get bigger and bigger.
It was always this, always that.
It was always black, then silver, then black again.
There was no getting out of it. He thought he could, he was proven that he would always be a monster, he knew he wouldn’t. He thought he could, he was proven that he would always be a-
“I´m sorry.” Sirius´ voice was so low that Reus blinked twice before his brain made the connection between what Sirius was saying and what those words meant.
“What are you sorry for?” Remus asked, genuine puzzlement clouding his features. He was in the circles. He was the monster. What was Sirius apologizing for?
“Sometimes I get over excited. I- I don’t want to be alone, Moony. Whatever happens after school, I just want to make sure that you- that I.” He hung his head low, probably to hide the rose blush spreading over his features.
Remus felt warm all over.
“I get it.” A soft smile graced his lips.
“I don’t want to be alone again.” He repeated, like it was a mantra. “I´ve just found you, Remus, I´m not ready to let you go in eight months. Not just yet.”
Remus thought of Sirius, of silver storms and grey clouds. He thought of aristocratic features and pureblood ballrooms and how Sirius had grown up alone in his own family. He thought of James Potter, never seen without his right-hand man, his sidekick. He thought of all the girls before him, how impossible it was to get him alone.
He thought of autumn leaves, the midday sun. He thought of packed posters, forgotten clothes and blue hair-dye.
Mostly, he thought of circles, and about how, maybe, he wasn’t the only one who drew them in every surface he could find, on the darkest ink.
He thought about Sirius´ childhood, nightmares, and purple-ish bags under his eyes.
Maybe, Remus was not the only one stuck in a circle.
“Don’t worry Black, it´s not that easy to get rid of me.”
.
There was a certain time of the day in which the light took an even softer look. A time where the wind seemed less striking, more kind, like a caress. The sun did not burn, it
painted everything with a golden gleam, made the silver look expensive and the water soft.
There was a time of the day so pure, so golden and good that it was easy to wish that it would last forever. That things would be forever honeyed and sweet, that life would still in that interlude of peace.
A time of the day where one could lie on the floor, warm wood and hurting head. A time to close your eyes, to breathe in warm breeze.
A time of the day so beautiful, that it never lasted.
After the sunny moments of bliss, the storm clouds start arriving.
.
“Tell me, Lupin.”
It was the following day. They had asked Remus to go back home, think things through, get a shower and go back to the Ministry.
He had not gone back to the flat. He couldn’t. He didn’t think that he would ever be able to go back.
.
The door was green. A dark, old green, the paint peeling off. It had a small golden number “11”
Third floor, apartment eleven.
The building was an old one, not one of those modern, newer apartment complexes. There was no elevator, only one set of thin stairs with no railing. It was always cold. No matter what time of the year, the apartments would never be warm.
The hallways were dimly lit, and so were the stairs. Some said it was to create an ambiance, most agreed that it was to lower the light bills.
The apartment itself was not bad.
It had a living room, a small little room with a broad window. An old cream-colored couch that was in that grey area right after perfectly comfortable, but before no longer usable. There was a table with six chairs, two of which did not match the set. There was an old looking red telephone with a cord like it had been nervously chewed on more than once, there was a coffee table with a growing pile of papers, countless books stacked in the corners of the room and one photographed framed on the wall.
It had a kitchen that always smelled like breakfasts and takeout food. Pancakes, cigarette butts, maple syrup and endless supplies of coffee. There was a small window right above the counter that made for the perfect nook to smoke. There was a small table, with only two chairs. There were more mugs than it is humanly possible to use, and only two teaspoons. There was a cabinet filled with chocolate, and another one with bandages and potions. There was a fridge with To Do lists, notes from friends and magnets from takeout places, and a magnet in the shape of a big black dog.
It had a small bedroom, with two bedside tables and one bed, and books and an old electric guitar with stickers from underground places that were already partially scratched off. There was a broom that was never used to clean and a leather jacket on the hanger by the door.
It was a world, it was everything.
.
“Are you ready to try again, Lupin?” Moody´s voice sounded exasperated. He´d probably asked that question before. The quality of it was rough and weak, like he had been yelling. He probably had.
“I want to talk to the order.”
They were the only ones who would help him, the only ones who could understand him. They knew Sirius. They knew him. They knew that they were not guilty of anything, they couldn’t be. If the order of the Phoenix said so, Sirius would not be considered guilty.
“Remus…- “Moody hesitated, his eyes darting desperately across the room. “The order of the Phoenix does not exist anymore.”
.
Dumbledore called for order, but the sound was lost under the loud laughter and chirpy conversation.
Whoever thought that it was a good idea to put them all in a room together, after three months of estrangement, was deranged.
There were many familiar faces. Dorcas, Marlene, Mary. Kingsley, Fabian, the Longbottoms. It was surreal seeing them all in one room, almost like he was sixteen again.
“Long time no see.” Whispered Mary in his hear, hugging his lower back. “I hear you and Black are still going strong. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
Sirius was talking with Fabian on the other side of the room, James was with Lily and the Longbottoms, Pete seemed to be having an important conversation with Caradoc Dearborn.
There were so many faces, so many names. So many people Remus used to know, but didn’t anymore. So many stories all tangled together to return to this one moment. This one society. Remus could not believe that it was war what managed to bring them all back together. One good thing.
A tea cup, forgotten on Remus´ hand, was stolen by one Sirius Black, and placed on a table.
“You were going to end up dropping it.” He shrugged. Which was true, of course. He had a habit of forgetting things were on his hands, and dropping them when he tried to make wide gestures while speaking. Of course Sirius knew this. Lately, it felt like Sirius knew everything about him.
Mary was looking at them, smugness written all over her features.
“I called it, you know.” She drawled. “All the way back in fifth year. I fucking call it.” She kept muttering as she walked away, which made Remus share a look of amusement with Sirius.
The meeting was not supposed to be fun, but it was.
They did end up talking about the war, they began drafting plans and looking for hideouts. They made up a secret code to send messages, so that if any owl was intercepted, they would not be found out. They worked, and they worried.
But they also had fun.
“Isn´t it what surviving the war is about?” James had said on Remus and Sirius´ apartment after the four of them had returned from the meeting and gotten incredibly pissed. “It´s not about who takes the last breath and who keeps breathing for a couple more years. It can´t be. It´s about moments like this. We have to stay humans, mates. In a war that tries to turn us into machines, in a world that makes us hide. We have to feed from these moments of happiness. That is what surviving is about. It´s not about staying alive. Fuck that. It´s about staying human.”
.
Killed,
Tortured,
Imprisoned,
Disappeared.
Remus read all the names from the list that Moody had slipped. There was no more order. No more laughs, no more breaks. They were all gone.
It had not quite downed on him until that moment, the gravity of it all.
It had not downed on him that he was now completely alone. The circles would keep spinning around him and storing under his eyes, and the sun would never make the world look honeyed again.
Moody was in a merciless mood. After that, what followed were the pictures of Peter Pettigrew, or rather, what had been left of him.
A finger. Nothing more.
Remus was going to be sick.
.
“Hey, Remus.” Peter was staring at the ceiling. “I have a question.”
Remus sighed. He loved Peter. Of course he did, he was one of them. He´d been there for every prank, every-most- full moon, he was as much of a part of the Marauders as any of them. Still, Remus had begun to wonder if he even liked Peter.
“Yes, Wormtail?”
“How do you know if you are in love?” He asked directly, sending Remus into a coughing fit. Grey storms flashed instantly into his eyes. Peter didn’t know about him and Sirius. No one did.
Remus raised one eyebrow and Peter squirmed under the glare of it.
“It`s just… You seem like a very knowledgeable person. You always ace every test and all that, and well I- “
Remus softened. This was one of his best mates speaking. The most decent thing he could do was to hear him out.
Lately, every problem had started to feel larger-than-life. Keeping his love for Sirius quiet, the war, his eternal role of misunderstood outcast. Silver and red and gashes with pouring blood had been haunting his dreams for quite some time now. It was all very dreadful and dramatic. It was easy to neglect the other things. It was easy to become a person he did not like when there were so many blues to martyrize him.
“You know you can tell me anything, don’t you Pete?” The answer were wide brown eyes, insecure and frightened staring up at him.
Then, the sun rose on his whole face.
“Well, I´ve sort of been going out with this girl…”
.
They made him watch, to confirm his words.
Remus didn’t think there was anything crueler than that.
One month after Halloween, once Remus had declared that he would never delight himself in storms if he wanted to survive, he was called back into the Ministry, to be a witness to Sirius´ last testimony before he was locked away in Azkaban, forever.
Remus did not want to see him ever again.
Remus did not want to see him for the last time.
He was fine with his last memory of Sirius. He did not need this.
.
“I´m sorry.” Watery silver. Dark pink. Deep purple.
“Whatever do you have to be sorry for?” Remus asked, his voice hoarse from the full moon from which he was just now waking up. Warm in his bed, with Sirius, content.
Things were not going okay. The Potter´s had been sent to a safe house too long ago, and things were not getting better. Marlene was gone, Dorcas was gone, and the moments of warm sunshine were fewer and fewer as their youth slipped further and further away with each scratch of war.
Still, there were moments like these. Not moments of sunlight, entirely, but not terrible ones, no. He´d gotten to like quite a lot the quiet afternoons. Not everything had to be grandiose and extreme. If he had to love in the silences, and in the small touches, he would do that. If he had to miss the long conversations and heart-felt embraces, he would.
He´d come to terms with the certainty that he would do everything for Sirius.
Remus caressed his cheek softly while they lay in bed looking at each other, knees and arms touching.
“A lot of things Remus.” Sirius closed his eyes under his touch. “I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”
Remus winced.
It was true.
They barely even spoke.
There was no talking until their eyes tired, and drinking way too much early-morning coffee just because they would rather not sleep than stop talking to each other. There was no more asking about the other´s day. There were no more fights.
War had taken everything from them, and left them as empty vessels, to try and figure out what to do with themselves.
Remus spent long afternoons at home. The rising attacks from werewolves- who ever quickly becoming a major threat- kept him tied to his living room chair, going over papers to help Dumbledore, reading and smoking. He gazed for hours out the little kitchen window no thoughts at all plaguing his mind, just emptiness. He sat by the door to metaphorically wait for Sirius (who always came through the fireplace)
Sirius was always on some mission or the other. Returning to the apartment after days of being away, only to fall asleep on the couch and go back to work twelve hours later. The circles under his eyes became more prominent. He had lost not one but two brothers. The Potters were secluded on some unknown house, with no signs of coming back, Regulus was dead.
Remus tried to be there for Sirius, get him to talk, but it was to no end. He had not cried. He was barely even Sirius anymore.
He paced the room to burn off his energy, instead of talking or joking. His bike had been parked three months ago on the garage around the block to never be used again. The silver storm had quieted and dimmed so much that it wasn’t even its old steel. It was just empty.
Sirius only paced, walked in circles.
The last three moons, Remus had been alone.
They had him caged in the dungeons below the Ministry, new measures and all that. He was now a grade A threat, thank you very much. It had been a rather dreary experience. Silver shackles on his ankles, silver shackles on his wrists and a silver thing around his neck.
Silver seemed to always be his weakness.
“It´s okay.” He whispered, his face now buried deep in Sirius´ neck. “We can meet each other again.” He did not want Sirius to know that he was crying, but his tears wet the other man´s skin. “We´ll meet each other again however many times it´s necessary.”
Sirius´ body was shaking under him, the pale moon made his skin look almost transparent.
“God, I don’t think I´ve ever loved anything more than I love you.” He laughed between sobs “You, Remus Lupin, seem to be made just for me.”
Remus grinned, and looked at Sirius in the eyes.
Silver and amber, and sunlight and moonlight, and autumn and long letters.
“Well, Sirius, I think that is a quite forward thing to say to someone you´ve just met.”
.
“Sirius Black.”
It wasn’t Moody speaking, it was some other Auror Remus had never met.
He wasn’t ready to look at Sirius. He didn’t think that anything could have prepared him for the sight of him.
“Why, yes.” The voice was taunting and vicious, and so unlike Sirius that Remus thought that there must have been a mistake.
But no, that man on the other side of the window had to be Sirius.
His hair had been shaven almost entirely. Sirius had been black leather jackets, long hair and motorbikes. Now, all that had been washed out, pushed out of him.
They had cut his hair.
Sirius had always been thin, but know he was barely skin and bones. His collarbones looked like they hurt, his face was barely nothing more than sharp edges and round eyes. He wore a manic smile, and he sat on his plastic chair like it was the most comfortable thing in the world. Even as he had one step already in Azkaban, Sirius was brimming with confidence.
He looked entirely like what they believed him to be.
A crazy death-eater, through and through.
Yet.
A word so dangerous, so capable of making Remus quit it all and run to Sirius.
Yet.
He looked the part, but Sirius had always been incredibly good at pretending.
Yet.
He had killed his brother and his best friends when he had been the most loyal person Remus had ever known.
Yet.
His eyes were still a silver hurricane, the grey storm clouds that drew Remus in and never let him go.
Nothing made sense anymore.
“Where were you,” The mean looking wizard asked “On the night of Halloween?”
Sirius smiled. “I was at home, watching muggle television.”
Lie, Remus thought.
“Lie.” The Auror said. “According to Remus Lupin you had not been home for six days, when Halloween arrived.”
Something flashed in Sirius´ eyes, but Remus couldn’t quite discern what it was.
“I was at Gordic Hollow.” Remus felt a shiver travel his spine, like cold water running softly.
“How did he who must not be named know where the Potters were hiding?”
Sirius laughed, a laugh that Remus had never heard before.
He laughed and laughed, and never stopped laughed.
He laughed until he started coughing.
He laughed until they hit him to stop.
And then, He kept laughing.
“Enough.” Said the mean Auror, and two burly guys entered the room.
Remus watched with rapt attention, for he knew that it was the last time that he would get to do so.
“Goodbye, Moony” Sirius said between wheezes as he was being pushed out of the room.
Remus stilled as he felt his fluttering heart stop to a halt.
Later on, they would tell him that a guard had tipped Sirius off that Remus would be there, to try to put him off, some vague attempt of making him look even worse.
Later on, they would tell him that Sirius had arrived to Azkaban, and that he would never come back.
.
It was summer, and they were laying in the grass in the back of James´ house.
Remus fiddled with the grass blades, every so often looking at Sirius.
It was their last summer. Hogwarts was already over.
The sun seemed to be made for Sirius and Sirius only, for its effect would never look at godly as it did when it was on Sirius. His pale skin turned golden, his storm became a clear sky, and his cheeks were dusted with pink.
If he could, he would stare at him forever. It didn’t matter if forever lasted too long. He could never tire. He could never get rid of the racing of his heart every time that Sirius so much as looked at him. He would never not be amazed that he was his.
“I love you.” He said, and this time, the words were easy.
There were no barriers, no sacrifice, no pressure.
He loved Sirius Black.
There were not many certainties in his life, but Sirius would always be one of them. This moment, would always be one of them.
Sirius´ lips stretched into a small, sweet smile.
“You have no idea how much I love you.” Grey eyes answered, sincere and forward.
He smiled back, happy with the certainty that silver would always be his greatest weakness.
.
When Remus got back to his flat, drenched from the rain, shoes squeaking under him and rain clattering outside his window.
There was no one waiting there for him. There never would be.
Remus made himself some coffee, knowing that he alone wouldn´t be able to finish all the coffee in the pot, and he smoked knowing that no mischievous smile would come take his cigarette from his hand.
He changed out of his wet clothes.
It would always be like this; he was sure of it.
There was no one. They were all gone, Sirius had killed them all.
And Remus broke his mug and stubbed the cigarette on the couch and broke the picture hanging in the wall.
He should be mad. He should be furious at Sirius; he should hate him.
Because of him he couldn’t leave the house anymore. He couldn’t talk to anyone, he couldn’t meet other people, not when there was always the chance that they would do this to him. That they would take everything in him and leave him like this, an empty ghost, a shadow, the footprints of who he used to be.
Remus would never be able to look at the sun again, would never bask on its light. The moon would always remind him of what he´d lost, and Bowie and T-rex would only put him in a bad mood.
But the worst of all were storms.
The dark grey clouds closed in on him and reminded him that there was no warm fireplace for him, no false sense of content.
He cursed himself, more aware now than ever, that Silver would always be his greatest weakness
.