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It’s curiously quiet, Sirius thinks. Even for Grimmauld Place. Yule is a quiet affair for the Blacks, somber and serious and filled with old family magic, but there’s time yet until then, and hols had only properly started that morning. Tonight, though, Orion hasn’t spoken from his place at the head of the table, and Walburga has been glaring daggers into her dinner plate.
Even Reg notices something is wrong, opting not to regale his parents with tales of whatever happened in the ruddy Slytherin dungeons. Instead, he shot furtive glances at Sirius as he picked at his peas, as though Sirius had done something. Which, perhaps, isn’t outside the realm of possibility. Sirius winds his memory back, back, back through pranks and classes, Quidditch practice and detentions. He’d blown apart a suit of armor by accident in September, but he’d gotten a howler for that the next morning and detention for a week.
There was The Incident, of course, but Dumbledore in all of his ferocity and anger hadn’t told the Blacks and Snape had kept his mouth shut about it through some miracle or magic.
Or the Animagery, he supposes, but that was Secret, and besides—his parents didn’t have much pride in him, couldn’t find an ounce of love in their ugly Black hearts for him, but dear Mum wouldn’t have been mad her eldest son was a transfigs prodigy. He’d even beaten James to his first transformation.
“Sirius,” Orion finally says. His hand is a claw around his fork, not a trace of his usual grace.
“Father?” Sirius answers.
“I’ve heard the most curious stories about you from Narcissa,” he says. Sirius’ blood runs cold, he hears the rough-edged danger lacing through Orion’s words.
“Oh?” Sirius asks. His voice cracks and he hates himself. Don’t show weakness, that’s rule number one. “What tales has Cousin Cissy been spinning?”
Walburga slams her hands down on the table, palms down, and Sirius slips his wand down his sleeve toward his hand, fingertips brushing reassuringly against the cool wood. His whole body is screaming danger and he suddenly thinks he knows precisely what Orion is going to say.
“We’ve given you the freedom to associate with those… friends of yours,” Orion says, spitting the word friends out like it was rotten in his mouth. “Despite our reservations, we gave you the freedom to—”
He’ll never know what freedom Orion thought he gave Sirius, because in that moment the wine glasses on the table explode and Walburga shrieks. Not words, just noise—animalistic, and scarier than Moony on any full-moon night.
“You—” she grits out. “Disgrace to our name.”
“I haven’t done anything!” Sirius objects, despite himself.
“Oh, haven't you?” she taunts, still feral and angry, Sirius’ own water glass explodes and he wishes Orion would take her away, put her upstairs where she could explode every sconce in the guest quarters and leave them to fight without dodging glass shards.
“I’ve—”
“Cavorting with half-bloods!” she shouts over him, and this time it’s Regulus’ dinner plate that cracks into heavy shards.
“Mother—”
“Fucking them,” she spits viciously, and the voice in Sirius’ head that shouts at him when he’s in danger is screaming now, begging him to run upstairs and lock himself in his room, but that’s a coward’s game, and Sirius Black is not a coward. Especially, he thinks, about this.
He meets Orion’s eyes across the table but says nothing. Narcissa, he decides, is going to pay.
“Nothing to say for yourself, blood-traitor?” Walburga asks him. “You drag the Name down into the mud with the Mudbloods—”
“Shut up,” Sirius says, soft and quiet against Walburga’s shriek. He doesn’t break his eyes away from Orion, doesn’t look at Walburga or Regulus. He pushes his chair away from the table and stands, eyes still trained on Orion. Neither of them has blinked, but it’s a matter of time.
“Shamed us once with your cursed Sorting,” she spits, “shamed us again and again with your little friends.”
“Shut up,” he says again, louder this time.
The rest of the dinner plates shatter with Walburga’s scream. “In my own house!” she howls. “How dare you raise your voice to me?”
“You’ll not tell me who to love,” he says. His knuckles are white around his wand.
“Love?” she snarls mockingly. “Oh, you love him? Does he say it back to you while he violates you?”
The chandelier above the table shatters suddenly, a million shards of glass spraying down on them. This is spiraling faster than Sirius hoped it would.
“You could’ve had a match with any of the fine houses,” Orion says. He repairs the chandelier with a wave, Walburga’s outburst undone and forgotten, like always. “Instead you choose a Mudblood boy and expect that we’ll allow it?”
“I wasn’t,” Sirius says, drawing himself up to his full height and letting his wand fall fully into his hand, “asking for permission.”
A nasty look crosses Orion’s face. “I know of Lyall Lupin,” he says. “It’s unfortunate, sometimes, how the Ministry downsizes departments.”
There was the other shoe dropping, Sirius supposes. He thinks about Remus’ secondhand robes and suddenly hates himself.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he says.
“I wasn’t asking for permission,” Orion mocks him.
Something deep inside Sirius snaps.
“Right,” he says. “I’m leaving.”
Orion stands, then, too. “You’re staying right here,” he says.
“No,” Sirius says, turning away from the table.
Walburga grabs his arm, fingernails digging in like talons, and Sirius pushes down the wince that threatens to bloom across his face. She draws blood, little crescent moons in the skin of his forearm. He rips himself away from her.
“If you leave this house,” Orion says, his voice the same even, deadly calm he’s kept for the whole fight. “If you leave, you will not be welcome here again.”
“Good,” Sirius says as he passes behind a shaking Regulus and makes for the door. “Hang the house and hang the whole damn Black family tree!”
He pulls the front door open to the sound of shattering wood and glass and Walburga’s shrieking screams. It slams shut behind him. He hears it lock.
He stands, freezing on the curbside of Grimmauld Place for only a moment, letting the urge to scream as madly as Mother or perhaps break down and cry pass, and then Sirius sticks out his wand arm, resolute, as the Knight Bus arrives with a bang.
Sirius is going to James, because James will know what to do.
***
It’s quarter to seven when the Knight Bus bangs to a halt in front of the Potters’ house. The stone cold panic set in sometime after Sirius paid with his only galleon. He stumbles onto the curb thinking about how he’s got eight sickles, his wand, and the clothes on his back.
He stands there for a while, chilly winter air biting at his hands, considering what exactly he’s going to say to Euphemia and Fleamont. Hullo, I’m crashing your Yule, and by the way, I’m homeless was too presumptuous and audacious even for Sirius Black.
He knocks, because if he doesn’t he’s going to freeze to death in Mrs. Potter’s Flutterby bushes.
And then he waits. And waits.
Sirius wonders if he’s made an even bigger mistake than he thought he did. James hadn’t said the Potters were going on holiday and he did tend to boast, loudly and usually whenever Lily Evans was around, about any sort of extravagant holiday.
The Knight Bus cost him nine sickles. He shoves a hand in his pocket, touches the coins there, and curses under his breath. Running away before he got his next term’s spending money was, maybe, a slight miscalculation.
Peter and the Pettigrews would’ve been close enough for Padfoot to run it in a night, but they’re on off in Germany for hols, at some stuffy academic conference where Mr. Pettigrew is speaking. Remus is in Wales, and out of the question, besides. Sirius is already frightened of what Orion will do to Lyall simply because Sirius loves his son. Sheltering him, well—that’s asking too much.
Sirius’ fingers are starting to go numb at the tips. He stuffs both hands into his trouser pockets and knocks his forehead against the door.
“Prongs!” he shouts, as much at himself as the door.
He’ll have to go furry and sneak into the garden shed, he thinks. Padfoot sleeps alright in the cold. He's done it before, in October, in that fraught two weeks after Snape’s appearing act in the Shrieking Shack. There was a cozy spot between two rocks, under the jutting edge of a third that Sirius had spent twelve nights under because he couldn’t bear to go up to the dorm and show his stupid face.
The shed might even have warming charms on, which rates higher than a Scottish lakeside in the dying autumn.
He steps off the front step as a man and comes down as a dog, sniffing his way around the property line, dodging a gnome by the garden gate. Padfoot’s fur is thick and warm and his thoughts are smoothed and simple. Padfoot thinks with a singular purpose that Sirius, all racing thoughts and huge feelings, could never have.
He’s trotting across the path between the dittany bushes and the shriveling remains of a long-dead patch of aconite when he smells it, the leather-fire-pine smell that makes up James Potter and he sniffs at the air, finding it, following it across the back garden, winding through Euphemia’s rose bushes and pear trees until he sees the garden shed, door wide open, candles lit, Prongs inside with his Comet in his lap.
Padfoot crosses the distance at a dead run, Changing mid-stride and stumbling to a stop in the open doorway.
“Prongs,” he says, gasping for air.
James jumps from where he’s trimming his broom bristles, broom crashing to the packed-dirt floor of the shed. “Merlin’s fucking beard, Padfoot!” he shouts, waving his trimming shears and turning. “Could’ve taken my fingers off!”
“I’m crashing your Yule,” he says, “They found out about Moony. I ran away.”
***
Two hours later, Sirius is under a blanket in the Potters’ living room, cocoa mug cupped in his shaking hands. There’s a heavy pour of firewhiskey in it. He looks ridiculous, he thinks, cocooned in the patchwork quilt from the back of the sofa and his hair wild and his eyes bloodshot from the crying he definitely didn’t do.
Fleamont is hunched next to the fireplace, negotiating with Kreacher to get Orion, and Sirius doesn’t want to see his face or hear his voice or, Merlin forbid, be sent back, not right now. Maybe not ever.
“Sirius is here,” Fleamont says when Orion appears. “He’s safe. He can stay here for a while.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Orion says.
“He says you had a row.” Fleamont glances toward the sofa, and Sirius, and James piled protectively next to him.
Orion is silent. It fills the room, makes the air heavy, makes it hard for Sirius to breathe. Orion uses silence as a weapon.
“Keep him or don’t, Cousin, it hardly matters to me,” Orion says. “He knew the conditions of his departure. Walburga is furious.”
Fleamont stills at the hearth. “You don’t mean it,” he says.
“I did, and I do,” Orion says. “He’s no longer a son of the House of Black.”
Sirius starts to cry again, silent behind a curtain of hair.
“His things?” Fleamont’s voice is iron-banded and Sirius knows without looking that he’s furious. It doesn’t scare him. It’s for him.
“Have been disposed of,” Orion says. He sounds bored, as if destroying Sirius’ entire life meant nothing at all.
“Goodbye, Orion,” Fleamont says, nearly vicious, and Sirius hears the flames roar and then die down. Orion is gone.
Sirius breaks, sobbing loudly. His eyes are burning. He can't catch his breath. He doesn’t know why—he fucking hates them and every day he doesn’t see them is a better day.
His cocoa is plucked from his hands and he’s scooped into arms—Euphemia, down from making up a guest room for him. He hears James say something, then the fire flares again.
“You’ll stay here,” Euphemia says into his ear, softly, like a lullaby. Like Sirius imagines a lullaby.
“M-my—“ he can’t stop himself crying, but he’s thinking of his books, of his records, his clothes and his broomstick. He thinks of Moony’s yellow jumper hidden under his pillow and he cries harder, great wrenching sobs that make his stomach muscles ache. He thinks he might throw up.
The fire roars again.
“James, what the—Sirius?”
“I said it was an emergency,” James says, but Sirius barely registers it because Remus is beside him before he can take in a breath.
“I,” Sirius tries to choke words out around sobs. “Ran.”
Remus shushes him and reaches up, gently tucking Sirius’ curls behind his ears. He wipes the tears away from Sirius’ cheeks. The callouses on Moony’s fingers from too many hours holding a quill are rough against Sirius’ skin but they ground him, bring him back into himself, let him feel safe, and Moony is tender, he’s always tender.
“Did they hurt you?” Remus asks.
Sirius shakes his head, bites back another sob, and tugs Remus forward, into him, so Sirius can hide his face in the crook of Moony’s neck and cry privately.
“Ah,” Fleamont says.
“Ah,” James agrees, but there’s something hard in his voice, a challenge.
“In love with a halfblood, indeed,” Fleamont says, but he squeezes Remus’ free shoulder as he sweeps out of the room.
***
In the morning, it’s Euphemia hunched at the hearth, talking in low tones to Lyall when Sirius stumbles downstairs in borrowed pajamas. He’s still bone-tired and his head aches like he drank himself stupid and was clobbered by the Willow all in one night.
Remus is still asleep in the blankets upstairs, curled protectively around the spot Sirius had wiggled out of. He’s going to bring Remus tea. That’s something he can do, as a thank you and an I’m sorry all rolled into one because Remus’ Stones shirt was wet with tears last night when Sirius finally gave into exhaustion and fell asleep against Moony’s chest.
Sirius pads into the kitchen. Fleamont and James are both at the breakfast table; Fleamont is pretending to read the paper, James isn’t even bothering to hide his open stare.
“Alright there, Sirius?” James asks as Sirius prods the kettle to start it.
No, Sirius thinks, I’m in a different galaxy from alright.
“Fine,” he lies. He sounds like shit even to his own ears, stuffed up and gravelly.
James yanks at a tuft of hair by his ear. He’s worrying his lip between his teeth now, all narrowed eyes and furrowed brows, and Sirius has never been more grateful to James Potter in his fucking life. It floods him, he’s dizzy with it. He fumbles with the tea tin because he’s shaking again.
“Sirius,” James says.
“I’m fine,” he insists.
“If you’re fine, you’re crazier than Walburga.” James stalks over and wrenches the tin out of Sirius’ hands. “Sit down,” he says. “You don’t have to be fine, Sirius.”
Sirius drops into a chair at the table, folds his arms on the tabletop, and lets his head fall into the cradle of his arms. “They tossed my Cleansweep,” he says.
“Rotten of ‘em,” James agrees as the kettle shrieks.
“My records,” Sirius whines. “My sodding textbooks!”
“Your clothes,” James adds, “which is really more pressing, mate, because we are not the same size and those trousers look ridiculous on you.”
Fleamont clears his throat. Sirius peaks up through his curls at him.
“Euphemia and I are taking you to Diagon as soon as you feel up to it, Sirius,” he says.
“I haven’t.” Sirius’ cheeks go hot, embarrassed flush rising on his skin. “I’ve only got eight sickles,” he says.
“Don’t worry about any of that,” Fleamont says, waving a hand dismissively.
James thumps a teacup in front of him. “One sugar,” he says.
Sirius turns his head towards him. “Who says the tea’s for Moony?”
James nudges the cup closer to Sirius' hand and levels an incredulous look at him. “Go back upstairs, give Moony his tea, and I’ll have Dad hem up some trousers for you.”
Sirius considers drinking it to be contrary, because this feels good and familiar and right. He wishes everything could just be normal again, to not feel as though the entire world spun out from under his feet.
He wants to go curl back up into the warmth of the Potters’ guest bed and press himself into the safe cage of Remus’ arms, where it’s okay if he’s got to shout or cry or make an absolute fool of himself. Remus will push Sirius’ curls out of his face and kiss his cheeks dry. Moony’s a steady, calming thing, even now, when the whole world is fucked.
He takes the teacup upstairs. Euphemia is still talking to Lyall in the parlor hearth, and she spares him a smile when he passes by.
Remus wakes when Sirius climbs back into bed, the teacup safely on the bedside table.
“Morning,” Sirius says. “Brought you some tea.”
“Daft thing,” Remus murmurs, reaching out tired-clumsy, pawing at Sirius’ ribs until he gets enough leverage to pull him close.
Remus is sleep-warm and soft in the mornings, all fuzzy thoughts and mumbled words. Sirius soaks Remus’ warmth up like a sponge on the best of days, hoards it to fill the cold, drafty places in his head. He’s greedy with it now. He burrows closer, tucks his head under Moony’s chin, and drifts.
“I love you,” Remus says against his hair.
The words are still a new, scary thing between them. Sirius wielded them like a sword against Walburga and Orion but here they’re heavy on his tongue, like a strange language he’s only just learning to speak.
“I love you, too,” he says into the worn cotton of Remus’ shirt.
“I could’ve made my own tea, you know.”
“James made it. I—couldn’t.”
Remus squeezes him gently. “It’s okay, Padfoot.”
“It’s not,” he says. “I’ve got eight sickles and a wand, Remus.”
“We’ll sort it out,” Remus says.
“What if we can't?” It’s a whisper against Remus’ chest, a boggart behind Sirius’ eyelids.
“We will,” Remus says.