Chapter Text
There were moments from their youth that Remus had locked away like delicate glass vials — too precious to break open, too dangerous to leave lying about.
He remembered Sirius Black at eleven — a boy with hair as dark as soot and eyes like the storm over the Black Lake. A rebel with a grin so sharp it could carve holes in tradition, and a laugh that could drown out the howling wind of the Forbidden Forest. Sirius had turned their first year at Hogwarts into something louder, brighter, more.
Remus had loved him even then. He never said it aloud.
Instead, he memorized the way Sirius looked when his eyes softened during star-gazing nights. He carried the weight of that gaze when Sirius had placed a hand on his shoulder after a transformation, wordlessly saying, you're not a monster, Moony. He laughed too hard at his jokes. He got too angry when Sirius was reckless. And he forgave too easily.
But there was a war, and then a betrayal, and then silence.
Twelve years of it.
And still, Remus had defended him. Not because he knew, but because somewhere in that worn, quiet place in his chest, he believed.
When they found each other again in that wreck of a Shrieking Shack, their eyes had met — older, haunted— but for a fleeting second, it was like they were sixteen again, running through the corridors with pockets full of stolen sweets and hands inked with secrets.
Even then, Remus said nothing. He had spent too long caging that part of himself.
So he moved on. Found something tender in Nymphadora's clumsy joy and bold heart. It was different — safer. And when she laughed, something inside him healed, even if it wasn’t the part that once belonged to Sirius.
But there were nights — rare, quiet ones — when Remus would see Sirius sitting alone at Grimmauld Place, his shoulders bent under the weight of a past that never let go, and Remus would wonder:
What if I had told him?