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Fleur and Bill’s wedding day was bright and warm and Sirius actually seemed to be enjoying himself. The jealousy he’d felt at them having the wedding they couldn’t had long worn off, and with it he smiled and danced and took up all the space in the marquee. He was gorgeous with the rush of remembered youth, making something inside of Remus ache for this man that he’d loved his whole life. This was where he was supposed to be. All Remus had been able to give him was himself, in their garden, with no one around to see it.
It wasn’t long before Sirius’ grin was pressed up on his own, his arms snaked around his neck as he pressed them together and turned them around and around until they were the centrepiece of the dancing couples around them. He was used to being thrust into the spotlight by now, by this man who was born to be there, who shone as brightly and as recklessly as his namesake. He didn’t even mind it anymore. Never really had. He wrapped his long arms around Sirius’ waist and held him close and tight.
“When this is all over, we should do this,” the words were warm against his neck.
Remus looked down and into those grey eyes. He’d do anything to keep them so bright. “Okay.”
The light in his eyes settled into something deeper, softer. Not the blinding light of hope and uncertainty, but the warm glow of something better - peace and promise.
Remus looked up and around them at the love that filled the tent; Harry, with his arms looped awkwardly around Ginny’s waist whilst she unabashedly led the dance; Ron and Hermione, caught up in the atmosphere and each other; Bill and Fleur, joined at the hip.
He looked away. It was still painful to look at Bill. Every time he did, all he saw was Greyback hunched over Bill’s body, so really all he saw was the wolf hunched over his. That memory was forever seared into his mind, hiding in plain sight, ready to be called to order at a moment’s notice. Bill was lucky. Greyback was human that night, or as close to human as he got, and the scars that littered his face and body would never delve bone deep. He wouldn’t have to feel the leaden knowledge of having a preternatural beast inside him. It shouldn’t hurt so much to look at him, he shouldn’t be so jealous. Remus wasn’t as good a man as he hoped to be.
Something made Sirius laugh and Remus let it tether him to reality. That sound meant family, it was buried in his soul, god help him but he’d always follow it. And here it led him - dancing in his husband’s arms at a wedding that wasn’t theirs, with friends and well-wishers abound, their skinny, brown skinned, black haired boy a few feet away, his green eyes full of the same hope his mother’s had been, once upon a time.
It was beautiful, until it wasn’t.
It was peaceful, until the war arrived.
It was safe, until he looked around and saw Ginny Weasley with her arms around nothing but thin air.
“We need to go,” Sirius pulled at him. His eyes were cloudy now. “Do you hear me? Remus if they see you, you’ll be taken.”
He didn’t respond. They’d known the risks when they accepted the invitation. He didn’t see how the presence of Death Eaters made any difference when the disappearance of Harry was all he could focus on.
His insides squirmed, alive with anxiety once again, and then they were turned inside out and squeezed through a tunnel.
“Sirius,” Remus gasped as their apparition landed them amidst their beautiful garden. There were lilies everywhere, a bygone token of teenage love. “Did you see - Harry, gone. Sirius, he’s gone. Ron and Hermione too. Sirius, they’re just kids.”
“I know,” the beautiful lines of Sirius’ face scrunched up into a smile, so fleeting it may never have happened. “We need to find them before it’s too late.”
“Okay,” breath pulled into his lungs. They’d planned for this. They knew their son, they knew this would happen just like they knew they had to find him and bring him back. “The plan. I’ll check Grimmauld.”
“I’ll check Godric’s Hollow,” Sirius clasped a warm hand to the back of Remus’ neck. With one tug they were forehead to forehead, inches apart. It was all Remus could do not to cry. He tipped them forward into a blistering kiss instead. “Be safe.”
Remus nodded and found the strength to move away. “Bring him home.”
*
The dark halls of Grimmauld Place had always held their secrets close, but Remus had learnt long ago to ignore the hateful push of their magic. The rickety stairs, the cold marble floors, the still dusty chandeliers that had been home, once. Even before he lived there it had called him, the piece of his heart that was Sirius’ made it so.
The walls seethed, they shouted ‘intruder’ into Remus’ mind but they welcomed the piece of his Black heart. They didn’t tell him all their secrets and that was okay. They told him the one that mattered: Harry was here.
Poring over the dining table, mismatched belongings scattered across the table in front of him. Ron and Hermione by his side. They were so like Remus had been. He ached for them and all they still had to lose.
“Harry.”
“Moony! How did you -? Where’s Sirius?”
“We know you,” Remus took a step closer and was sure his desperation was thick in the air between them. “You have a plan.”
He did know Harry, so he knew before the words hung between them that they wouldn’t work. His eyes were determined and his shoulders were sure and strong. Gone was the boy who fell into his arms and let him shield him from the nightmares of his youth.
“I can’t tell you what it is. I’m sorry.”
“I thought you might say that. But I can still help. If you won’t come home then let me come with you. You know the protection I can offer.”
“No.”
The word was a physical blow. Remus flinched and tried with all his might not to let it show. “We are facing magic many of us have never encountered, never imagined. Think about it.”
“No.”
“Harry,” Hermione lay a hand on his wrist, still too thin even years after he’d come home to them. Harry shook her off.
“No. You can’t come.”
“Harry, please.” Every fear he had cracked in those two words. “Think of what you’re asking of me, of Sirius. Let us help you.”
“Think of what you’re asking me!” Harry shouted, “I’ve already lost one set of parents to him, I won’t lose another.”
It was terrible, the pain that those words inspired in them both. They stood, facing each other as two broken men, two boys who learnt pain too young; father and son.
“What are you asking me to do?”
“Stay alive. Write, help people that way. But you can’t come with us.”
“I won’t let you try and do this, whatever it is, alone.”
“I’m not alone,” Harry’s words were different now, no longer pleading nor angry, but sorrowful. “I’m sorry, Moony.”
“Harry, I -” the world went black before he could finish the thought.
He woke to Sirius’ countercurse with tears already spilling from his eyes.
“I couldn’t stop him.”
*
Life was expected to carry on. Every vain banality of their lives ushered them onwards day by day until it had been a week, and weeks passed until it had been months.
The letter had come days after the wedding in sharp talons and white feathers that would refuse to fly ever after. Remus had grieved at the sight of the first slanted ‘g’, the future opening itself to his eyes in a way that seemed so certain, so predestined as to replace every misplaced shred of hope with despair. His son would suffer the same fate as his mother had before him and all he could do was fulfil his own destiny and watch.
While he’d looked away, his weakness had thrown a spear through his lover’s heart. A vial had fallen out with those beloved letters, those cursed ‘g’s’ that held a thousand sorrows. Sirius had gazed into the pensieve that night like a man facing a firing squad. It seemed they could never outrun their nightmares. Perhaps it was time to embrace them, to turn around and welcome their pursuit and the turmoil they’d bring for at least it was a momentary release from the worries of Harry. It didn’t seem like something Remus was strong enough to do. The revelation of Regulus Black’s last act had splintered Sirius’ heart so severely he’d felt it too. Another piece of his heart ached for another lost soul.
*
He wrote. The Seeker became weekly, then twice weekly with the passing of time. People said it helped change the tide of public opinion, in years to come they’d say it provided the backbone of the resistance. People said a lot of things.
Sirius taught. He came back from Hogwarts later and later, with cloudy eyes and magic depleted from healing charms, and they didn’t talk about it outside of their four walls. Sirius tried to help as much as he could, but the best he could do was, for the first time, not enough.
Remus tended the lilies in the garden obsessively. As summer turned to autumn and they began to wilt, he nurtured them back to false life. On the days Sirius came home with an albino snake looped around his neck or curled in a pocket, Remus would feign peace.
He made them hot chocolate as the days got cooler, and he watched twin pairs of grey eyes soak in the only warmth he could give them, and he felt his love for his family strengthen. Those days he let the lilies live naturally, let his quill rest easy for the day. Those days didn’t happen often.
Through it all, he loved Sirius and Sirius loved him, and in his dark moments when all Remus thought bonded them was shared grief, Sirius held him and told him stories of the good times. It was enough, though it was hardly any life at all, living with runaway hearts as they were. It helped, knowing that Harry’s heart was as full as it could be, wherever he may be.
*
Rumblings in the Ministry were all they had to go on for months. Remus didn’t want to believe in the story, the recklessness was too much to bear, the thought that Harry valued his safety so little he’d put himself at risk so blatantly played on his mind constantly. He tried to block it out.
Sirius’ nerves were raised to a fever pitch. He ran every night, four paws beating a path into their land, circling around the false youth of the lilies, the stars of his ancestors no help in guiding him to a more fruitful search. He ran until exhaustion then collapsed in bed still restless and chased peace in the body next to his. Remus was happy to oblige, to pull Sirius’ body into his to feel their shared magic humming close and familiar between them.
Students became desperate, and who could blame them? The children of thirteen that Remus knew were long gone, their shadows lengthening into the silhouettes of adults, their minds stuck in the confines of the castle. Snape’s rule scared them, the Carrows’ tyranny defined them, and the solace they found in Sirius and Minerva couldn’t stretch to heal every wound.
Fred and George Weasley joined the Order. They invented products to help not only the cause but those suffering at Voldemort’s hand. Bill and Fleur moved to the seaside. Mad-Eye Moody disappeared without a trace.
All too soon, five months had passed and the Christmas holidays were on their doorstep. Remus waited up on the last day of term, three hot chocolates waiting on the dining table, but no grey eyed snake was there to pass judgement on the state of his robes or his unruly hair or the lack of handmade biscuits.
All too soon, those grey eyes were instead screaming at them from the other side of a mirror, their message chilling them to the bones. Luna, taken. Kept safe by Draco, the healing charms Sirius had learnt to tend to Remus’ wounds every month passed onto a new generation. The Carrows were fighting an army of young healers, and Draco was the best of them all.
It was Christmas Eve when their hearts lit up with the hope of seeing Harry again. Godric’s Hollow kept no secrets from them, not since their joy was born there and their family died in the little cottage with its wooden fence and its perfect red door. The clock chimed on their second anniversary as they stood outside, staring into the new found destruction. Sirius shook by his side and Remus wasn’t faring much better. He’d run from this place for so long, his pilgrimage leading him to the gate only on Halloween. To see it covered in white snow was new. Footprints revealed themselves to Sirius and Remus’ eyes. Two pairs, not three. They didn’t dwell on it. The footprints led them down the path to the small church that Lily and James had once bickered over, but they ignored the charm of the carollers for the peace of the graveyard.
There were patches of wiped away snow on nearly every headstone but Remus didn’t need to look at the names and dates to know where to go. He stood in front of the white marble of Lily and James’ resting place and held Sirius’ hand tight. A fresh wreath was laid at its base. They both cried. For the family they lost and for the family they couldn’t find. They were always a step behind, a beat too late, to help the Potters.
“I always hated that stupid quote,” Sirius sniffed as he lay a palm against the smooth marble. Remus held his other, heat feeding into heat, feeding into life. The hand on the stone was cold.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
*
Molly came around and they sat together. She was unusually quiet these days, though she still liked to tut over the house elves doing any work, still demanded to fix her own tea and cake. They didn’t hear from the Grangers no matter how hard they tried. Hedwig refused to deliver their attempts at communication. She sat forlornly on her perch and only moved for her favourite Eyelops treats that Draco often bought for her.
*
The day it happened was just like any other. Winter was slowly fading into spring and they’d become accustomed to the change like they’d become accustomed to everything else. They hadn’t heard hide nor hair from Harry since Christmas Eve, since staring down the battered red door, since seeing that fresh wreath balanced against the white marble headstone. The two pairs of footprints, the third set unaccounted for.
Every night now the albino snake came home with Sirius, every night it apparated away into the arms of its enemy. Draco’s healing charms got stronger. Slughorn died many months before but Luna was still alive. That was life for his family: one on the run, two fighting day and night to keep people safe. Remus himself did all he could. He wrote, he taught every reader all he knew about surviving, he kept the hearts and spirits of his family light, even the one on the run.
Happiness was fleeting and Remus’ bruised and battered heart knew it, felt the strains of it leaving him acutely, knew when something was wrong.
And on that Saturday afternoon in March his heart was screaming.
“Sirius,” Remus gasped out, but it was futile - Sirius already knew, could feel the same terror rip him apart. “Something’s wrong.”
Hours passed with no relief. They contacted the Order but there was no news. Molly sat with them. Her heart was just as raw, her son’s hand pointing directly to ‘mortal danger’ on that clock she carried everywhere. They still couldn’t contact the Grangers.
The wait was agonising, the pain a comfort. Neither of them wanted to know what would happen if that pain released them, if their son’s heart was snuffed out like a flame.
“Cousin,” the clipped voice of a boy rang out in the room, “Cousin.”
Grey eyes stared at them from the other side of the mirror, squeezed shut in relief as they came into view.
“They were here,” Draco gasped, “they escaped.”
“All three of them Draco, all three?”
“All five,” his smile shone through his treasured face. He looked young again; seventeen and full of the hopefulness of youth, “Potter, Weasley, Granger, Ollivander, and Luna.” Draco’s smile echoed on each of their faces, “she’s free.”
“Free,” Sirius repeated.
“Did they go there on purpose?” Remus couldn’t celebrate, not yet, not when his heart was still pounding, “to rescue Luna?”
“No. Snatchers brought them in,” Draco’s smile dimmed, “I told them I didn’t recognise them, that they weren’t who they thought they were.”
“Draco…” the reason his heart still hurt was obvious now. Draco would be punished for this act of salvation, there was no doubt.
“Bless you child,” Molly said, her heart back to normal, or as normal as it could be, split into seven as it was.
“Draco,” Sirius said, and gripped Remus’ hand tight. They both knew what this meant.
“Don’t,” Draco flashed them a forced smile, “they apparated out with an elf, I don’t know where to. Harry took my wand. Bellatrix got Granger, I couldn’t stop it,” he breathed shakily, eyes heavy with the knowledge of cruelty, “they didn’t hurt Harry, they didn’t hurt Ron. They got Luna out...they got her out.”
“Will you be okay, Draco?”
“They got her out.”
The conversation played on a loop in Remus’ head for the rest of the day, the myriad of fears and hopes they all held dear painted clear as day across Draco’s pale face, the joy that Remus wouldn’t let himself feel at their escape obvious to see.
They didn’t sleep that night, tension and fear and base relief all bleeding into running minds and restless bodies. They knew Harry was okay, Ron, Hermione, and Luna too, but this was their confirmation of the danger they’d been in for months and months. After that, it felt like every day could be the day one of two things happened - one, Harry would come home, safe and tired and a little battleworn; or two - Harry would be caught. They should have known it would be the latter.
In the weeks leading up to it things carried on as they always had, the way they had to lest the reality of the situation kick in and send them reeling. Sirius still taught, Draco still visited, Remus still wrote. There was one difference - Remus could no longer work from his comfortable office, could no longer calm his racing heart with the stories that surrounded him in their library, so he went to the only place he could - he went to visit a ghost.
Aberforth, with his hair like silver and his eyes as sharp as his brother’s had been, spoke their language. He understood war and pain and loss. The portrait of his lost sister stood testament to that. Remus felt in him a kindred spirit, and he worked in the dingy rooms above his dingy pub for weeks, safe in the knowledge that his husband was only a tunnel away.
There were students who knew about the tunnel, of course. It went without saying that where there was trouble to be had, a Gryffindor would find it. And there was no truer Gryffindor than Neville Longbottom, with his big heart and bruised face. He’d been getting himself in trouble, that much Remus knew.
Trouble he’d learnt from the whole lot of them, their mismatched blend of Black-Lupin-Potter which had danger coded into their very souls.
Barely two months passed, months where the days grew brighter, the sun warmer, and the daily burden heavier, before that trouble rose to its fever pitch, delirium gripping the whole wizarding world as a dragon soared over Diagon Alley, over the impenetrable fortress of Gringotts, over Muggle London to heaven knew where. Harry, Ron, and Hermione on its back, treasure unknown in their grip.
Remus, despite himself, despite the panic and the fear and the overwhelming urge to find his son and wrap him in blankets until he could no longer move - despite it all, Remus was proud. That part of him which would forever be a Marauder rejoiced at the sheer audacity of it, of this boy, James and Lily’s son, doing the impossible and doing it with style. Sirius laughed, said he was showing off, flaunting his daring, issuing a challenge: look at me, I have no qualms about breaking into the most secure bank in Britain. Look at me, I won’t even hide that I did it and you still won’t catch me. This was Harry Potter, the Marauder's son. This was Harry Potter, the perfect blend of James’ daring, Lily’s tenacity, Sirius’ style, and Remus’ wit. This was the Saviour of the Wizarding World.
Remus just wished he could come home to them soon.