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The dormitory was mostly dark. A silence hung in the air, so profound that even the softest breath felt like an intrusion.
Remus stood before the old mirror by his bed, shirtsleeves pushed to his elbows. Pale skin stretched over the lean muscle of his forearms, marked by silver scars – fine, half-faded lines that curled like moonlight unwilling to fully dissipate. He wasn’t looking at his reflection.
The door creaked open, the sound amplified in the stillness.
Sirius stepped inside without a word, his movements slow and deliberate. He paused behind Remus, a careful distance maintained between them – close enough for their shadows to almost merge, yet far enough for the unspoken to thicken the air.
A muttered Muffliato created a faint, buzzing hush. Not peace, but merely the absence of witnesses.
In the mirror, their eyes met, or perhaps they didn’t truly meet, their gazes simply finding a shared point of focus.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Sirius finally broke the silence, his voice low.
Remus’s gaze in the mirror remained steady, betraying nothing. “I thought you’d already said enough,” he replied, his tone level.
Sirius’s jaw tightened. He glanced down, then back up, his expression conflicted. “I was angry,” he admitted, “and stupid. And I thought—”
“Don’t,” Remus interrupted, his voice quiet but firm, enough to halt Sirius’s words.
A flicker crossed Sirius’s face – shame, perhaps, or the fleeting echo of a door he regretted closing. He nodded once, swallowing the rest of his apology.
A long pause stretched between them, thinning the very air they breathed.
“You told him what I am,” Remus said eventually, his voice not loud, not bitter, just laced with a profound weariness. “You handed it to him – as if it were yours to give.”
Sirius closed his eyes, a grimace tightening his features. “I didn’t think—”
“I know.” Remus’s reply was soft but held a sharp edge of understanding.
Another silence descended.
“And that’s what makes it worse.”
Sirius looked at Remus in the mirror, or at the pale shape of him. His own face was drawn, his hands held still at his sides. “I didn’t think he’d actually go. I thought it would scare him, make him back off. That—”
“You didn’t think he’d actually go,” Remus echoed, his words gentle but devoid of softness. “But if he had – if he hadn’t stopped – if I’d hurt him – you wouldn’t have been the one they blamed.”
Sirius remained silent, his gaze fixed on the floor.
“They’d have looked at me,” Remus continued, his voice low and steady. “And seen what they’d always suspected. Not a boy, just something dangerous in a school uniform – teeth hidden behind a prefect’s badge.” He let the weight of his words settle in the silence. “I’ve spent years hiding. You knew that.”
Sirius’s voice cracked when he finally spoke. “I… I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” The weariness in Remus’s voice was palpable.
He exhaled slowly. “But you meant something. You meant to scare him. You meant to use something that wasn’t yours.”
Moonlight, pale and cold, spilled across the surface of the mirror.
For a fleeting moment, Sirius’s reflection seemed to waver, not from any movement, but as if the glass itself had flinched. His face blurred at the edges, as if the light was reluctant to hold his image. Then, stillness returned.
“I thought I was safe with you,” Remus said, his gaze unwavering in the mirror. “I thought you saw me.”
“I do.” Sirius’s reply was immediate, yet felt inadequate.
A pause hung between them.
“Now,” Remus said, his eyes still fixed on the mirror. “But not when it mattered.”
A chasm of silence opened between them, and it remained unbridged.
Sirius’s breath hitched, a sharp, sudden intake of air that seemed to find no purchase.
Remus didn’t blink, his gaze unwavering.
The mirror held their reflections, two figures locked in a silent tableau.
And then – a sharp, whispering sound.
Crack.
A thin fracture spider-webbed across the glass, unbidden by wand or impact. Just the weight of unspoken words in that small space, creating a visible line between them.
They both stared at the nascent fissure.
Sirius’s reflection split cleanly down the middle. One half wavered, distorted by the crack. The other remained still.
“I’m sorry,” he said eventually, the words heavy with regret.
Remus offered no response.
“I’ll go.” Sirius turned, his hand hovering near the doorframe for a moment, as if held back by an invisible force. A muscle twitched in his jaw. He didn’t meet Remus’s gaze in the fractured mirror, his reflection already receding.
And Sirius left.
No footsteps echoed his departure, no sound to mark his exit. Just the slow retreat of someone who had stayed as long as he could, leaving behind something precious and broken, without a clue how to mend it.
The mirror didn’t shatter.
It simply held the crack.
Still.
Still.
Still.
Remus remained where he was, unmoving.
After a long while, he lifted a hand, a slight, almost hesitant gesture, and traced the air just above the surface of the glass. His fingertips hovered near the cold line of the fracture, as if he could feel its jagged edge through the empty space.
He couldn’t.
His hand fell back to his side.
There was one boy less in the frame.