Chapter Text
Remus was introduced to alcohol the summer after fifth year when his muggle cousin took him to a party. He ended up getting into a drinking contest with one of the older kids, who passed out after several shots while Remus only maintained an entirely pleasant buzz. It turned out his werewolf metabolism was good for at least one thing other than keeping his body tall and wiry.
When he returned to Hogwarts, he decided to introduce the other Marauders to the joy that was drinking.
There had been a rift torn down the middle of the Marauders the year before when Sirius sent Snape to the Willow on a full moon. After the fact, Sirius, who always had trouble saying sorry, had been intensely apologetic for almost turning Remus into a murderer. James—who had always been an idiot, a jokester, and a bit of a bully—matured overnight. The day after the ‘prank,’ he was suddenly a peacemaker, someone who looked at a situation from all sides, someone who could soothe with his cool head and wise words. Peter, who had always been content to follow James and Sirius blindly, became wary of them both. Rather than deal with the fallout, he spent more and more time with his Hufflepuff friends. And Remus… Well, he shut down completely.
He had been ripping himself apart every month since he was five years old, but this was the worst pain that he had ever felt. Not only had he been betrayed by one of the only people in the world that he trusted, which is bad enough, the person who had betrayed him was Sirius, which was even worse. Of course Remus was close to James and Peter, closer than brothers, but Sirius was different. He understood Remus on a level that no one else even came close to. The breach of that kind of trust was almost too much for Remus.
After that moon, Remus didn’t speak again for the rest of term, other than to answer the professor's questions. It took a good portion of the summer for him to finally let go of his pain. He realised that, while Sirius’ betrayal hurt, the thought of never speaking to him again was even worse.
When Remus found alcohol, he decided that he had found the perfect bonding experience to mend the Marauder rift.
-
The first week back at school was awkward. None of them knew how to interact with one another. Remus tried to be his normal self, but his normal self would have never initiated the confrontation, so he was a bit at a loss for what to do.
He decided that his best bet was to pull James aside and ask him to do something.
“What can I do?” His glasses had been crooked and his hair was sticking up straight from running his hands through it constantly.
Remus threw his hands up in frustration, “How should I know? Call a Marauder Meeting or something.”
Marauder Meetings hadn’t been a staple in their friendship since fourth year when James started calling them every other day in order to force the others to listen to him pine over Lily. Sirius called a Marauder Meeting to ban Marauder Meetings after a couple of weeks of this. But before that, the obligatory meetings had been how they had made all of their important decisions, settled any disputes, and planned every prank. (After, it became a more casual, less mandatory affair.)
---
The four boys stared at each other in awkward silence for a while as they passed the liquor bottle around.
“You guys ever think about how we live in a magic fucking castle?” Wormtail finally asked. The other three swivelled their heads towards him, eyebrows raised at the obvious observation. “Hear me out!” He held up his hands.
“Okay,” James chuckled a little.
“You know how, if you imbue an object with enough magic, it starts to take a life of its own? Like Padfoot’s chew toy?”
They all nodded. Sirius had charmed a biscuit indestructible so that his animagus form would have something to chew on. Every now and then, he would come up with a new addition to make it better. Over the month he had it, he changed the shape, sound, colour, flavour, and texture so many times that it eventually developed its own personality and started trying to chew Padfoot back.
“Well, think of the castle! It’s been here for hundreds of years… just absorbing all of that magic… so, we’re basically living in a living thing. What if it starts trying to chew us?”
“I don’t think that would happen, Wormy.” Sirius still looked sober, but Remus noticed that his sips were larger than everyone else’s.
“What if it’s listening in on us, right now?” James asked, eyes widening. “What if it doesn’t like that we’re onto it?”
Wormtail flapped his hands in agreement.
“I’m pretty sure that the castle would have bigger things to be upset at you about than just you gossiping about it, Prongs, like the time you flooded the astronomy tower.” Remus looked at James pointedly. The other teen was still cagey about the incident and refused to tell anyone how it had happened. Remus was absolutely baffled by it. How does someone flood an open-air tower!?
“Or when you charmed all of the staircases to wave about,” Sirius chipped in, grinning over at Remus. That had been one of Remus’ more brilliant pieces of magic. He had had to dismantle about thirty different charms in order for Prongs to even be able to cast anything on the Grand Staircase. It was incredible to look up from the bottom of the atrium and see all of the staircases pivoting back and forth like the windscreen wipers on his mum’s car. They hadn’t quite matched that level of chaos in one swoop ever since.
Remus didn’t realise that he and Sirius had just been smiling at each other until James broke the silence with a giant sniffle.
“I’m s-so sorry, Hogwarts,” he whimpered.
They all looked at the sobbing boy, aghast. James never cried. In fact, Remus was pretty sure that he had never even seen him sad at all. His emotions mostly just included: happiness in general, determination over Quidditch or a prank, soppy love-sickness for Lily, or a spot of righteous anger over Snape. Those were James’ emotions. That’s what the rest of the Marauders knew how to deal with. No one knew what to do about a weepy James Potter.
“I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” He had laid down on the floor and spread his arms like he was trying to hug the castle.
“Perhaps he’s had enough to drink,” Remus said, passing the bottle to Peter instead.
“I think it’s nice. We should all be more appreciative of the castle.” Peter took a giant swallow of liquor. “Hey, d’you think it likes that we made the map to try to get to know it better or d’you think it feels like we took a naked photograph of it.”
James wailed.
“What the fuck, Wormtail?”
“Y’know, like we all got to know it intimately and then drew a picture of it.” He hiccuped. “Kind of sexy, if you ask me. My rat has been in each and every crevice of this castle.”
Remus was doubled over in laughter. Wormtail would never speak like that sober. “Never knew you had such a hard-on for Hogwarts, Pete.”
Peter laughed along, wiggling his eyebrows. “I don’t know if I would go that far, but she is beautiful.”
“She really is!” James agreed through his sniffles. He was still hugging the floor, but at least the wails had stopped.
That was when Remus realised that Sirius hadn’t been speaking. It was surprising that he hadn’t had anything to say about Wormtail’s castle crush.
When he looked over, he was startled that Sirius was already staring at him.
“Moony,” he breathed. His cheeks were flushed from the alcohol. Remus became a bit transfixed at the pink stain flowing over the porcelain skin.
“This blows!” Wormtail exclaimed out of nowhere. He had been chatting mindlessly to James about the beauty of the castle’s architecture while the other two were trapped in their staring contest. “We need more people.”
“You know whose beauty could compete with Hogwarts’?” James finally sat up. His eyes were puffy and an occasional tear slipped down his cheek. “Lily Evans.”
Wormtail rolled his eyes. “If you say so, I guess. Want me to go get her?”
“No,” Remus interrupted. “Don’t bother Lily.”
“She wouldn’t want to see me anyway. She hates me.” That started a whole new round of tears
Sirius absentmindedly patted his shoulder, still staring at Remus. “Moony hates me, too.”
“I don’t hate you, Padfoot.”
“Of course, you do. And, you have a good reason to.”
Remus looked away from the icy eyes boring into him. “It’s not hate. It’s hurt.”
“I never meant to hurt you, Moony.”
“Are you two really doing this now?” Peter chimed in. “We should have a party instead!”
Sirius ignored him. “It wasn’t a conscious thought I had. Snivellus pushed me and I overreacted. Please believe that.”
“Ugh. I’m going downstairs. Wanna come, Prongs?”
“That was a beautiful apology.” James sniffled again.
“It wasn’t even an apology.”
Sirius threw his hands up. “I’ve apologised a million times, Moons. If I had a time turner, I would go back in a heartbeat.”
“I know you would. I’m trying to move past it, okay?”
“Okay.” They stared at each other again for a moment before Sirius took another big swallow of alcohol and looked around. “Wormtail in the loo?”
---
There were far too many people for a dorm room. Someone had had the brilliant idea to work an expansion charm into the space, which helped. But now, one side of the stretched room felt more unstable than the other because of the drunkenly cast magic. The beds had also been transfigured into sofas to clear up an area for a dance floor. Wormtail, of all people, was right in the middle of the action, leading a group through the dance he made up for “Money, Money, Money” by ABBA.
Remus craned his neck over the crowd, finally spotting James across the room. Well, he spotted James’ hair, which was sticking straight up on the shoulder of Lily Evans. He made his way over to her, tugging his arm behind him.
“Alright, Lily?”
Her eyes were wide when she looked up at him. “What the fuck is going on?”
James moaned into her shoulder. Remus was surprised that James had any tears left. Lily’s white blouse was soaked through underneath where his head rested.
“What’s he crying about now?”
“He’s never been in an aeroplane. I almost want to take him on one?”
“You should have heard the story of the first time he used the Floo.” Remus frowned. “It was a bit gut-wrenching, honestly. I even shed a couple of tears.”
“Oh, the Floo…” James tilted his face to Lily, tears still streaming. “I’m so sorry, Evans.”
“There, there,” she said confusedly, patting him in a consoling manner. “Just let it out?”
Remus snorted, earning a glare from the redhead.
“And what about yours, then?”
“My what?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t act like I’m the only one with a hanger-on.”
Remus glanced to his right. At some point, Sirius had latched onto his arm like a koala. If Remus ignored him, everything seemed almost normal. But as soon as he gave him attention…
“The amber-est eyes,” Sirius murmured in awe. He lifted a thumb to swipe across Remus’ brow.
“Erm.” He shook the hand off of his face and tried to ignore Sirius again, turning back to Lily. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her eyes were filled with mirth, which evolved into full blown laughter when Remus took a seat beside her and Sirius—rather than finally letting go or even sitting down on the arm rest like Remus expected—plopped himself down right into his lap.
It was even worse when Sirius buried his nose in Remus’ neck and sniffed him. “Mmm. You always smell so good.” Remus shivered at the hot breath across his skin.
The thing was, Remus had been in love with Sirius pretty much as long as he knew him. He had always felt differently about him even when he was too young to understand why. In third year, he realised that it wasn’t normal to want to run your fingers through your mate’s hair or to crave their attention constantly or to be so content with just gazing at them. He definitely didn’t want to touch James’ or Peter’s hair or look at them longer than necessary.
Obviously, he knew that nothing would come of it. Sirius was straight, and even if he wasn’t, he was way out of Remus’ league. Then, after the whole business with Snape, just the fact that Sirius was able to betray him like that, made him sure that there would never be anything between the two of them. He still felt like he needed Sirius in his life, but he avoided even fantasising about more after that.
Still, having Sirius in his lap and whispering words into his neck was a bit much.
“Hey, Sirius,” a pretty Ravenclaw girl that Remus vaguely recognised was suddenly in front of them. How did the Ravenclaws even hear about their dorm party?
Sirius barely turned his head to her. “Oh, hey.”
“That blond kid is playing some really good music.” She pointed at Peter, who looked like he was having the time of his life. “I was wondering if you’d like to dance.”
“No, Remus doesn’t like dancing.”
“I was asking you, Sirius. I’m not really interested in him.” She smiled condescendingly at Remus.
“I don’t want to dance without Moony.”
The girl huffed and marched away from them.
Lily patted Remus on the shoulder, drawing his wide eyes from Sirius. He couldn’t fathom why the other teen would have turned down a girl like that. Lily gave him a significant look that he couldn’t quite decipher, before shaking James off of her shoulder.
“She was right, Peter is playing a lot of good songs. Do you want to go dance, Potter?”
“Y-you want to dance with me?!” He dragged his sleeve across his face to collect the snot hanging from his nose.
Lily cast a subtle Scourgify at him. “Yes, Potter, let’s go.” She pulled the still-teary boy out onto the dance floor, giving Remus another look on her way.
The silence wasn’t easy. Remus knew that there were things that he wanted to ask Sirius, that he needed to know the answers to, but at the same time, he wasn’t sure if it was fair to talk now, when Sirius was so drunk that he was doing nothing but nuzzling Remus’ ear.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sirius whispered, “We can sneak up to the dorm.”
“Sirius, we’re in our dorm already.”
“Fuck, Moony. How did you get so smart?” He ran his fingers across Remus’ chin. “Your intelligence is the sexiest thing about you, y’know?”
“Sexy?” Remus felt a chill run through the room.
At that point, Sirius hummed, manoeuvring himself the slightest bit. Remus jumped up, and Sirius fell into the floor.
“Sorry, erm, I just gotta-” He desperately pointed at the stairwell before dashing for it.