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He never meant for it to go this far.
Sitting here now, though, he isn’t sure how he ever expected it not to.
They’re both different people now; as much is obvious. His hair is always tangled, he no longer spends each morning carefully picking out rings to go with the daily stud of choice in his pierced left ear.
The piercing has grown over after thirteen years, anyways.
Remus, on the other hand, is resemblant of who he once was. The only issue is that it isn’t the Remus that Sirius remembers during the war, when they’d finally done some growing up.
Except they never did grow up, did they? They were still kids.
There’s an illusion of dust in the creases of Remus’ face, and he’s always pulling the cuffs of his sweater over his hands, eerily reminiscent of the boy that sat in their compartment during that first train ride to Hogwarts. Before the laughter, before the crying, before the war; he was small, and far too timid for the likes of eleven year-old Sirius Black.
This is far from what Sirius hoped to come back to, at times when he found the will to hope for anything at all.
It hadn’t been closed-mindedness, it had been self-preservation. That’s what he told himself.
“Maybe this was a mistake.” Remus states.
They’re in a newly-renovated Grimmauld Place. It’s still got a long way to go, but most of the cobwebs on the main floor have been cleaned up, and whatever cursed items have been laying around while the house was abandoned were mostly whisked away by Dumbledore as soon as Sirius had offered the place up for Headquarters.
Now, barely three days later, they’re both lost.
It’ll be another week before any meetings actually take place here– it takes time, after all, to round up enough busy wizards to create a functioning Order.
Sirius takes a breath. His ribs haven’t been hurting as much recently.
“It was fine when we were at the cotta–”
“The cottage was different,” Says Remus quickly. Let me finish , thinks Sirius. “That was a week, barely two. I was always in town, we barely spent any time together. I don’t know if I can do this, Sirius.”
Sirius snorts. “You’re a grown-up, Lupin, act like it. We’re about to fight a war, you’ve done this before. Stop over-exaggerating.”
“Yeah, but I felt more grown-up the first time around.”
And that’s the irony of it all. If it were anyone else in any other situation Sirius would laugh. How is it that you felt like more of a grown up nearly two decades ago as a teenager than you do as an adult well into his thirties?
But Sirius will not laugh, because he feels it too.
“We know more now.”
Remus shakes his head. “We know more than what we knew then. We still don’t know enough , clearly.”
There’s a pounding upstairs; Kreacher hates Sirius and loves annoying him, but he knows that he can’t free the dreaded thing. He knows too much now.
The room is dark, and Sirius glances over to the bare fireplace as he fleetingly considers lighting a fire. The more they talk, the colder he feels, but Dumbledore had insisted that he shouldn’t be alone here and who better to send along than Remus? The old fool is just that, but Sirius knows he is not stupid. Of course he would have driven himself to death or insanity here without anyone around, but this just might be worse.
At least with death or insanity, Sirius wouldn’t have to be so worried about all of these things.
“We can learn.”
Three words, and even if it’s not the three words that Sirius wishes he could say, they seem to be good enough. Remus’ shoulders drop, not noticeable to anyone but the one person in the world who knows every inch of him.
Sirius will deprive himself of many things, but not of the fact that he continues to know Remus Lupin better than anyone else.
A feat, after thirteen years. Keeping that fact with him might have been his only victory through the first war.
“What if Dumbledore did make a mistake, though?”
Sirius shrugs lightly.
His hair looks horrible, and the piercing that he loves is gone, but it all leads up to this. “Then let it be a mistake, but make it a brilliant mistake.”