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Remus can’t breathe. How could this have happened? How can this be real? Sirius, his Sirius, would never do this to him, never make such a horrible, awful mistake. Sirius has ruined Remus’ life. It’s all falling apart and the person responsible is the one boy who swore to never cause him pain.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sirius is crying, curled up on his four poster bed in their dormitory. Remus has just returned from the Hospital Wing, he’s barely in the door and already he’s faced with the one sight he wishes to never be cursed with again. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’
The words are chanted over and over in a choked, haggard tone, muffled by the knees that Sirius has drawn up to cover his face. He doesn’t even know that Remus is here. Hasn’t even noticed him and Remus doesn’t find himself surprised in the slightest. Why would he notice? He’s a selfish prick.
Remus isn’t entirely sure on the protocol for sharing a room with someone he hates more than anything in this universe. They’ve always known where they stood with each other, in fact, Remus can count on one hand the number of times being around Sirius has been awkward. This has left ‘awkward’ cowering in the rearview mirror. This is so far beyond it, Remus begins to wonder if he should warn McGonagall that their dormitory is at risk of spontaneous combustion caused by the sheer, unbridled tension Remus feels as he trudges across the room.
For once, the dormitory is clean. Normally, there are clothes everywhere, strewn across the floor after a long day of classes or a victorious quidditch match. Books often end up on the floor too, tossed off of beds when the boys get fed up with studying and turn instead to planning their latest prank. Is that all this was to Sirius? A prank.
The room is perfectly tidy now, each book neatly stacked, clothes folded and placed in wardrobes and the dragon’s tears James had spilled a few weeks ago has finally been cleaned up. If it weren’t for Sirius crying on his bed, Remus would think he’d walked into the wrong dormitory.
But he hasn’t, and he’s kicking his shoes off and stuffing them under his bed which has been neatly made and something tells him it wasn’t the house elves who did this. Does Sirius honestly think that giving their room a deep-clean will erase what he’s done?
Remus scoffs loudly, having finally toed his shoes off and he reaches under his bed, withdrawing his battered trunk and flinging it up onto his bed, rumpling the sheets. His movements seem to at last alert Sirius to his presence because as Remus starts tossing his clothes into the case, Sirius shuts up and in the corner of his eye, Remus can see the boy staring at him. He sniffles pitifully and Remus could wring his neck.
‘Why are you packing?’
Sirius’ voice is hoarse, broken and thick like he’s been crying all night. Good. The bastard deserves it.
‘Because I’m going to be expelled, dipshit, you’ve seen to that,’ Remus responds in a clipped tone, rifling through his wardrobe and tossing the jumper which is actually Peter’s over his shoulder. It’s not really fair, he doesn’t think this was Peter’s fault, but right now he couldn’t care less. The world could burn and Remus would smile.
Behind his back, Sirius shuffles, springs creaking under his weight and it sets Remus' teeth on edge. His fingers curl around a T-shirt now. The T-shirt Sirius gave to him last summer, saying he didn’t dare bring it to his own place lest his mother find the Muggle band’s logo inked across the front of it. In the end, Walburga didn’t need a Beatles T-shirt to send her oldest son packing.
‘What? No, no, no, McGonagall spoke to Sniv- Snape, he’s not going to say anything, I swear! It’s going to be okay, Moony,’ Sirius insists.
Everything has a breaking point. No metal exists that cannot be bent, every brick can be cracked and every person reaches a point where that one little tether, the only thing anchoring them to some semblance of sanity, snaps. For Remus, Sirius is his breaking point.
‘Okay? Are you shitting me? You know what, Black, you can gargle on my bloody cock, you fuck-knuckled prick. What the hell is wrong with you?’ Remus demands, whipping around to stare Sirius down, a fury like no other burning in his veins. Remus has never been one for conflict or violence, wanting to separate himself from the monster society insists he must be. Right now, he doesn’t reckon he’ll need any claws or fangs to tear Sirius to shreds.
Sirius has never been one to back down, in fact Remus doesn’t think he can think of a single time he’s seen Sirius afraid. Not even the night he listened to him recount every shrieking curse his mother had thrown at him. It’s a well known fact that Sirius Black does not fear.
But right now, he’s curled up in a ball, shaking on his bed with his finger between his teeth, little drops of blood appearing where he gnaws the skin off. And Remus likes it. He likes to watch Sirius’ lip quiver and tremble, revels in the fear in his voice, thrives off of the terrified look in his eye. Remus can’t get enough of it.
‘No, I just mean… I’m sorry, Moony—’
‘You’re sorry?’ Remus scoffs again, slamming down Sirius’ T-shirt on top of his trunk and slamming the lid shut, ‘Oh, well that’s alright then, one of the few people I’ve always known I could trust with my life could have literally gotten me killed, or expelled, but it’s fine because he’s sorry! Show’s over, people, he’s sorry,’
‘I don’t know what to say, I am sorry, I know I betrayed you and I know how you feel—’ Sirius is only digging himself a deeper grave, there’s mud under his fingernails and Remus is hauling the coffin.
‘You know how I feel? How the fuck could you know how I feel, huh?’ Remus snarls. ‘Tell you what, you want to know? How would you feel if I told everyone what happened the night you ran away? When you left your baby brother behind, when you knocked him out because he asked you to stay? How would you feel if I told everyone all the secrets you’ve told me? Oh wait, you don’t have to think about that, because I never would! I never would, Black. But you did,’
Sirius flinches. Remus wants to smile. It should feel good, to see the boy looking so small and so defeated, it should fill Remus with joy to have put this egotistical, pig-brained toerag in his place. And yet Remus feels oddly sick.
This isn’t how it was meant to go. Remus should be the one holding Sirius while he cries, not the person ripping each tear from his eyes and relishing in the flavour. This isn’t them. Everyone at school has always agreed; they’re Sirius And Remus, one being, a single entity bound to each other. They just work.
But this isn’t working.
And all of a sudden, James is standing in the doorway, looking awfully concerned, reaching out his hands like a man trying to talk down a suicide bomber. What is Remus doing?
‘Pads, why don’t you head downstairs, mate,’ James says softly, breaking the fragile silence Remus had thrown across the room. ‘Pete’s down there, go sit with him,’
‘James—’
‘Now, Sirius,’ James insists. Gone is the softly spoken James Potter, the calm and kind boy Remus knows so well. The one Sirius has always clung to. James is staring Sirius down, stepping to the side and pointing to the door in a clear gesture that Sirius should get out. And he does.
Cheeks red and stained with tears, Sirius trudges across the room, mouth opening and closing in a strange impression of a fish. He obviously wants to say something, perhaps another meaningless apology, but James reaches forward and grabs his shoulder, man-handling him through the door and whispering something Remus can’t hear. Then the door shuts and Sirius is gone.
Sirius is gone.
And Remus is collapsing onto his bed, the anger in his bones so painful he’s sure he’s being torn apart, ripped to shreds from the inside out. There’s something gnawing at his heart, gnashing and tearing and it won’t stop until his heart is a shrivelled mess hidden behind his ribs, Remus is sure of it.
There are tears in his own eyes now, tears born of sheer agony that won’t leave and Remus doesn’t know what to do about it, has no idea how to fix it. How can someone fix this? Remus trusted Sirius with the deepest, most vulnerable parts of himself and this is what he did with them. And he got off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist?
There’s a knife wedged in Remus’ back, blood trickling from the wound and Sirius is fine. The boy who did this to him got nothing more than a week’s detention. That’s the same punishment they had for changing the colours of everybody’s tie. A prank.
To Sirius, this was a prank. To Remus, this was the deepest betrayal.
‘I hate him,’ Remus sobs when the bed dips next to him. James lies down by his side and the two stare up at the ceiling. ‘I hate him so much,’
‘I know, mate,’ James agrees. ‘He’s a dick,’
Remus drags in a painful, hitching breath and turns his head to the side, wishing James weren’t here to see him like this, yet endlessly grateful for his friend.
‘I love him, though. I really do,’ Remus whispers with a pitiful sniffle.
‘I know, mate,’ James is still looking at Remus, he can tell. ‘It’s hard not to,’
Remus isn’t sure what he’s going to do now. How can he go on sleeping in the same room as a boy he thought would always be there for him? He was so sure that Sirius understood him, understood the importance of his secrets and why that is what they are. And in the end, it was all a lie. Betrayal.
They’ve known each other for four years, three months, two weeks and three days. Remus had trusted him for at least three and a half of those years. Remus has loved him since they met. This isn’t how they were meant to end.