Archive of Our Own

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One question. It would flounder around Sirius’s mind, scrape the sides of it, beat against his skull, whenever he was with Remus, staring at this person he loved, who despite saying that he loved him too, still made Sirius’s heart clench in his chest. A fist in his throat, counting down until the end of time, until it strangled him. The question, Would you tell anyone about us?

And the reason he’d ask it, questions he’d never say out loud, ones he’d try to squash into pulp, pretend they didn’t exist, but, Am I just a secret? Is no one supposed to know about your love for me? Because if our love is a secret, then is it still real?

It probably was. They didn’t need to tell anyone for it to be real. Their love was between them, after all.

But he wanted to, he wanted to scream it from the rooftops, light the world in flames, all for Remus, and he’d go crazy if he kept it inside. Maybe he would, in fact, resort to arson. He had enough common sense to know that wasn’t good. Though it may sometimes seem like he didn’t.

Because there was this part of him that rebelled against authority; he’d forgo all common sense if it meant disobeying some pedantic adult, but at the same time, he wanted to tell an adult, some person who could give him approval, parental figures. He’d tell them, I’m dating the love of my life. They’d smile at him, fondly reminisce about their own teenage years, claiming that Remus and Sirius reminded them of their past. Their love. Timeless, time and time again, and it would be sweet. What about suggesting tips to one another, making fun of each other’s partners, laughing and… loving? Helping out in the kitchen, the garden, learning how to grow a relationship?

Even if their love was for them, why couldn’t it involve other people, too? People who knew, and loved them for loving each other.

If he and Remus ever married, then Remus’s parents would be his mother-in-law and father-in-law. And wouldn’t that be sweet?

“Sirius?” Remus walked out of the bathroom. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Sirius grinned, tearing himself out of a vacant stare and scrambling upright, no longer huddled into their bed. “I’m fine.”

“Oh?” Remus sat down on the mattress, swivelling to face him as he crossed his legs.

“I am.”

“Never said you weren’t, sweetheart.”

Sirius shot him a look, mouth twisted wryly in both amusement and annoyance, “You’re so…”

“Awful?”

“Exactly,” Sirius clicked his tongue. “You’re easy to talk to. You always say the most infuriatingly calm things and you barely have a reaction to anything but you also do, and you’re so… You’re awful. You’re so… You’re just… I wanna… I wanna tell everyone I love you.”

Remus paused, then, “You could try that, if you wanted. But it’s hugely unfeasible, seeing as the majority of the population don’t live in our vicinity—”

“Shut up!” Sirius laughed, lunging towards him to grab his face between his hands. “Shut up, you awful arsehat.”

Dutifully, Remus sealed his lips, but his eyes still laughed loudly, and Sirius could punch him for it, because how could someone be so? How could someone just… be everything? Everywhere? “Would you,” he swallowed, and if Remus was everything, then he might as well try to give this his all, “Would you… tell anyone about us?”

“I… already have?” Remus offered, nonplussed. “I… I’ve told my parents…?”

Sirius dropped his hands, “You have?”

“Yeah… They’ve known that I love you since… fourth year. That’s when I figured I…” he looked down, “When I realised I… liked you, in a way that was… you know… and I told them… so when we started dating, I also kept them up-to-date…”

Sirius was gaping. “Really?!” he finally beamed. “So we’re not like… a secret at all? And since you first realised, too? But that means… your parents must be so cool! You just get to tell them everything?”

“Yeah… I didn’t want to… make you feel like you were missing out, I guess, because I have cool parents and…”

Sirius waved a dismissive hand, “I wasn’t made for parents, I was born to shine under the guidance of Minnie McGonagall. But honestly, how many things do you just… keep to yourself until someone asks you specifically?”

“Well, why would I say things no one’s asked for?”

Sirius swatted his head fondly, grabbed it again, “You are so stupid. An idiot. Terrible. Of course I want to hear everything about you. It should be obvious. I, Sirius, am completely invested in the entire life of Remus John Lupin, because he means everything to me and I need him to tell me everything.”

“Even if it’s stupid?”

Sirius kissed his nose, “You know what I mean when I say stupid,” and she kissed his cheek, his forehead, his lips, “You’re… everything good.” She sat up, smirking, “So give it to me.”

“Okay…” Remus chuckled. “My… My parents are really accepting. Or, they don’t need to be accepting when everything about me is already natural, that’s how they describe it. You get that, right?”

Sirius nodded, insistently gesturing for Remus to carry on.

He shook his head fondly, grinning, “Yeah, so, ever since I was a kid, I never thought being attracted to girls or boys or anyone, as a boy myself, wasn’t normal. It just was, and I could tell my parents everything. And I didn’t think… Well, I hope I wasn’t crossing a line by telling them about us?”

“No, that’s fine,” Sirius reassured. “They’re your parents. You trust them and I trust them. I mean, they did need updates, because they were probably sick of seeing you pine over me since fourth year, desperately wishing for the day we’d finally date, since there was never any hope of you getting over me…”

Remus flicked him, but his canines exposed the smile he was trying to hold back. “Accurate.”

Sirius grinned. “What else about them? Can I meet them?”

“Yeah! They’ve wanted to meet you since forever, I was just a bit… worried about bringing up the whole, by the way, my parents know everything about you in a way that’s really not creepy because I don’t talk about you all the time—”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll just add you to the mailing list of Sirius’s Many Fans.”

Remus bit his lip, eyelashes fluttering as he tried looking down to conceal the blush on his cheeks, but couldn’t, because it ran down his neck, and Sirius pressed her palms against it, feeling the warmth seep into her skin, the pulse leaping errands beneath her fingertips. And since she was always one to push, she asked the question that would hound her if she didn’t, “I thought… Well, I was under the impression that your dad wasn’t… particularly accepting… At least, in the newspapers about werewolves, and since you’re Moony…”

“The newspapers?” Remus looked up, suddenly alert. “You remember those? They were published in… 1965, Sirius. I… Wait, so you’ve known about the anti-werewolf statements and the fact that my family… prodded Greyback, and you just… didn’t mention that either? And how do you even remember?”

“Well, you see. I was taught to read from a young age — three, I could read novels in old English when I was three — and the Blacks love deliberating over the Daily Prophet, gossiping about everyone lower than them — which is, everyone not directly related to them — so I caught a few crazy things here and there,” Sirius regaled as if he were fabricating a fairy tale.

“They speculated that ‘cause of Lyall— Sorry, Mr. Lupin’s comments, Greyback would… attack him? They also said that Mr. Lupin had a… young son who could also be a victim, and that was a bit too far, actually, because as an older sibling, young children are just. Not allowed to get hurt, so. I searched around, but could never find anything. I think I must remember because I was searching for ages, but then I met you in first year and everything clicked. So, James and I vowed to be your friends, and then your Animagi, which means it’s all good because you are loved as a werewolf,” he beamed, nodding rapidly after speaking without pause for probably a minute.

“Sirius,” Remus voiced slowly, “You’ve known I’m a werewolf… since you met me? I thought… I thought you found out in second year?”

“That’s when Jamie and Pete found out, so they decided to ‘confess’ or whatever.”

“And you… didn’t feel the need to bring it up?”

Shrugging, Sirius echoed Remus smugly, “Why would I say things no one’s asked for?”

“Shut up,” Remus echoed in return, kissing her full on the mouth. He let go, caught her bottom lip between his teeth and pulled, let go again, “You’re the awful one.”

“Why, thank you, darling.”

“No, really, you’re such a hypocrite. The worst.”

“If I’m the worst hypocrite, that means I suck at being a hypocrite. Therefore, your accusations are compliments.”

Remus kissed him again, before breaking off and suddenly blurting, “I don’t have a dad.”

“...What? But then who’s… Lyall Lupin?”

“My… mamá?” Remus suggested. “And Hope Lupin’s my mam…”

“You… have two mothers?”

“Yeah…”

“But… why did the news call Lyall a man? And how… How were you born with two women?”

“Children are born when their parents hold hands,” Remus replied sincerely.

Sirius’s eyebrows flew up. “You’re… You’re joking, right?”

Remus swatted his head, “I know how babies are born, idiot. I was born before my mamá transitioned.”

“...Huh?”

“She was assigned male at birth,” he explained. “But she wasn’t actually male. She just had a body deemed masculine by society. She grew up conforming, and when she was older, she married my mam, who helped her realise that she… is also a woman. ‘Cause mam showed mamá this whole new world, where the definition of your gender is… up to you to decide, really.”

With one hand on the edge of the mattress beside her hip, Sirius curled her legs into her chest and placed her chin on her kneecap, watching Remus fall backwards onto the bed, gangly limbs extended, gesticulating at the canopy, “Because, well… how can an individual not question the gender assigned to them before they could even speak, by someone who doesn’t even know them? A complete stranger dictates, ‘You’re a boy,’ when you’ve not even spent five minutes alive, and that’s it? Gender,” Remus waved into open space, “is so much more than that. It renders me speechless. It gives me a voice, too.”

He sat up, constantly moving, limbs bending to mirror Sirius’s, hands reaching for her chin and eyes glistening as he grinned, and Sirius was smiling too, because the centre of the world was here, where Remus was whispering into the small space between her nose and lips, “Gender is the magic that everyone shares.”

And Sirius wanted to kiss him, but she let him speak, pressing her cheek into the palm of her hand and feeling the glow of a blush flushing the sun into her crescent smile as Remus thrummed with unbridled giddiness, “It’s magic that everyone is born with, and it’s personalised magic that can never be repeated for anyone except you. Because only you can decide what your gender is. And you can’t be defined by anyone’s standards except your own. The world that mam introduced to mamá, it showed her that the definition of a woman can never be one specific thing. Because to act as if that were the case, to reduce a woman to her sex organs, or to a personality trait, that’s what causes discrimination, you get people claiming, ‘Women are all like this,’ or ‘Women must all have this.’”

Leaning back on his hands, he declared, “My mums know that to be a woman is whatever she defines it as to herself, for herself. And the only way you can know for certain that a woman is a woman is when she says she is, because other than actually listening to her word, you can’t make your own definitions for a woman. And I want everyone to see this world, you know, where clothes are more than robes, where anyone wears anything and gender gives you liberation, not regulations. Where people are a community, and everyone’s welcome to just be, ‘cause we’re supposed to be different. We’re supposed to question, that’s human curiosity at its peak, my mamá’s a woman because she is, and that’s the incomprehensible magic of it all. Her brain is hers alone, and however she feels? That’s hers. Only hers. And we’re blessed to see it. She’s happiest when she’s free; when people perceive her as a woman. That’s how it works for everyone, this magic. The realisation of gender, something that’s part of you, like the connection we feel to our culture and how we want to display that; why do people wave their flags at Quidditch matches? We’re all human after all, so why does the country we’re from matter so much, why don’t we just abolish that and make everyone the same?”

Shrugging, Remus grinned, “‘Cause we can’t. It just is. You’re born with it, you’re proud of it. It gives you your perspective, gives you a community. People want to display what our genders are too, what our internal feelings are. Gender is cerebral, hormonal, in your mind,” he tapped Sirius’s forehead, fingers lingering, skimming towards the hairline and trailing hands through black locks, “And this world is physical. We touch, we talk; human existence is about tangible connection and communication. We’re put on this world and living in a body in order to move, and share, yet still all our thoughts are intangible. We have to somehow convey what we feel on the inside to others on the outside, because that’s what it means to be part of humanity. So sometimes we use words, ‘woman,’ ‘man,’ and we use pronouns, a range of them, because those reflect what goes on in our consciousness onto the body that carries us.”

It felt like something had dropped: a pin, the heart in Sirius’s ribs, Remus’s breath as his lungs burgeoned in his chest. His hand was still in Sirius’s hair, wrapping strands around his finger and letting go only to catch them again and keep curling. And Sirius kissed him.

It felt like something had burst.

She kissed him and she kissed him, because she loved him, and she loved his voice, loved the lips that breathed the words out, and she wanted to know him inside out, take it out, make out, tangible connection to feel the intangible. What made Remus Remus? Did physical heat arise from internal warmth, from the sparks in his mind that leaped between neurons and spun Sirius in circles, friction and lightning and the blaze of his mouth, a fire that retained moisture, like the red sofa in the Gryffindor common room, sinking into cool plush fabric with flames licking their faces, like sunscreen over sunburn, like a brain freeze in a heat stroke, like a heartache wrapped in a blanket and fed with sweets until the toothache, grinning from the gums, like biting into cold fruit in the middle of summer and licking the juice trickling down sweaty chins, like… everything.

That burst of a berry on the tongue, the burst of colour on an abstract canvas, they burst into each other, a tumultuous typhoon, the dust from dunes, rising and swirling and striking clouds of ice, hailing the Earth and the people and waving at the wind that whispered through the grass that tickled the worms that gnawed at the roots that held strong to the soil that a human pressed their body into and left a footprint.

Fossilised.

Sirius pulled back and laughed on air, swallowed it urgently and laughed again, “You have two mums, Remus, obviously you thought it was normal to have same-sex relationships as you grew up.”

Remus laughed too, the rise of his chest that Sirius placed his hands on and followed through its ups and downs. “Yeah. Yeah. It’s obviously normal.”

He sighed, calming down, kissing Sirius’s nose so gently, “But I didn’t officially have two mums in a same-sex relationship until I was around six. That’s when my mamá transitioned — when she reflected her inner identity onto the way people perceive her, and made sure she felt comfortable with her body.”

“The 1965 newspapers were published before that, so that’s why they still called her a man. The Ministry wouldn’t even accept the fact that she’s a woman, they pressured her to remain perceived as a man, and they halted her transition. Said she couldn’t, and they didn’t even have a reason for trying to control someone’s life, for trying to prevent something that wouldn’t affect them in the slightest. Said it’d be easier if she just didn’t, as if she were making a choice, and the wrong one. And therein lies the problem. They treated her like a freak: name-calling, bullying, you name it. Blocked her from promotions, passed all the menial tasks to her, like going out to hunt for Boggarts in dead end streets and desolate Welsh countrysides — which she worked to her favour, actually… But you know what happens to people when you cage them? When we’re isolated, we get desperate. When we’re not allowed to exist, when people hate us for existing. We get angry, don’t we?” he frowned, pitch rising.

“We lash out. And she was calm at first. She’d been calm for so long. It’s like, everyone wants to take away your rights, and you’ve still got to smile, and how long can that go on for? Every morning, she went to work, and every night, she’d come home, even more depressed than before. And what were her co-workers like? Scared of her, repulsed by her, featuring her in the daily gossip along corridors, around coffee tables, shaking their heads and tutting. They threatened her to act like a man, or else. They ridiculed her for not being enough of a man. When Greyback was brought in, he was someone my mamá recognised as a werewolf, who had killed innocent children, and rather than listening to her concerns, the rest of the committee mocked her, told her to shut up and listen to the real men talking, because Greyback obviously isn’t a werewolf. Still, mamá logically listed out her reasons, and pointed out that the next full moon was only tomorrow, but no, what could she know? They let him go.”

“That… Oh, I would’ve lost it so much sooner, I would’ve threatened them all with death a thousand times over, I would’ve said much worse than her comments,” Sirius fumed. “Greyback had been brought in after being caught with a werewolf pack, after killing Muggle children, and those bigots in the committee were too stubborn to admit your mum was right, so… so she said…”

Grimly, Remus nodded. “Yeah. ‘Soulless, evil, and deserving of nothing but death.’ She regretted it instantly. Who wouldn’t? She was backed into a corner, and she lashed out, responding to misplaced hatred with more misplaced hatred, because throughout history, that’s how humans have instinctively reacted. She degraded the entire community of werewolves, even though she knows better than anyone that people define their own identities, and being a werewolf isn’t a personality trait. She hates generalisations, and she made one. And it spiralled, ‘cause you know how the Ministry and its news is, and that’s… when I was attacked. She was so guilty, Sirius, but not once did she think there was anything ‘bad’ to accept. It’s normal, the way all humans are animals, so her son the werewolf has always been her son. Nothing changed in my human consciousness. What has always been in my brain remained the same.”

“But then… why, Remus… Why do you hate yourself so much for being a werewolf?”

“I… don’t,” he shuffled, sitting on his fidgeting hands. “Uh, anymore, at least… I… You know, I think it’s just… this tendency to only focus on the bad things. She did say all werewolves were soulless,” he shrugged, trying to regain some confidence, or carelessness. But he cared, so Sirius cared, and he listened to the emotion straining in the casual syllables of Remus’s words, “She didn’t mean it, but she said it. She’s the greatest, but she still said it. And… she’d feel so guilty if I told her, but everything people say does… stay with you. So it’s just. Back of the mind insecurity. And my parents don’t see me that way, but the rest of the world? You can’t tell me the rest of the world doesn’t treat werewolves horribly.”

“I know,” Sirius reached out and squeezed his hand, tangling their fingers together. “I know.”

Abruptly, Remus tugged Sirius into his chest, burying his face into her hair and mumbling into her crown, “Thank you.”

“For what?” Sirius grunted, comfortably.

Remus kissed him.

— — —

Some time into the night, his head on Remus’s chest, Sirius muttered sleepily, “I still can’t believe you never mentioned you have two mums. You really just kept that to yourself for seven whole years, yeah?”

“Well, have I ever mentioned that I didn’t have two mums?”

Sirius rolled his eyes, “That’s not the point. But I should’ve noticed, you’ve always said, ‘parents,’ haven’t you?”

“Mhm.”

“But I mean it, Remus, why do you always keep so much to yourself? I know we’ve never asked you directly, but it’s sort of expected that with friendship, you tell us, you know, random, important things.”

“See, you should’ve—”

“No, we did not need to write you a documented definition of what ‘friendship’ means, you prat. It’s in the essence of it. Just…”

Remus’s expression softened, guilty, a vulnerability that matched Sirius’s. “I… It’s nothing against you, you know? I trust you, but I think… trust’s a foreign concept to me. I know love, but to me, love was always meant for safe-keeping. Something to protect, or to conceal. I’m not… I’ve got no practice trying to… trust people with it. I’ve only known that love should be kept to myself. ‘Cause, I guess, society prefers it if I do.”

“What… What do you mean?” Because Sirius would prefer to see Remus’s love everywhere.

“The love I’ve seen… is the type of love that society would throw a fit over. Or throw fists over. Because… Well, I’ve never visited Mexico. Even though I’m supposed to be, you know, half Latino, I just… don’t know what that would actually feel like, and it’s because of how unaccepting society is towards transgender people, in particular trans women,” he shook his head, eyes closed, or scrunched, “There are a lot of… trans women who are homicide victims. Most of them are killed when they’re thirty or younger. There’s that really awful, horrible phrase, something like, ‘The average life expectancy of a trans woman is thirty-five.’” He scoffed, painfully, bitterly, “The average life expectancy of a trans woman is the same as any other human, ‘cause being trans doesn’t change your humanity at all. It’s the fact that they’re murdered solely for being trans, that’s what makes the statistic so low. And Mexico’s one of the most dangerous places for trans people, with one of the highest homicide rates. Trans women often find jobs in prostitution because no one will hire them anywhere else. Their bodies are objectified, treated like dirt, abused. They’re often homeless, out on the streets, developing addictions to drugs, alcohol… and they’re killed.”

Pausing, he shuddered, “Society would try to kill my mamá. Because she’s a woman they won’t bother to understand. Humans are dimorphic, though, and we’re unique, too; the combination of genes in one individual won’t ever happen again. Dimorphism means the sexual presentation of our species varies — so each human can have different sex organs, but still be human, which is why it’s part of our nature for people to be transgender. It’s not biological sex that defines us, after all. I don’t want to be reduced to my privates, and I’m sure no one else wants to be reduced to their genitals either. I want to be defined by my personal happiness, and that applies to everything, and it applies to gender. There’s this thing, gender euphoria, and that’s when you know. The way people perceive your gender, the one that gives you the greatest sense of joy and pride? That’s the one. But sometimes people want to put their own labels on things, so they box gender up, and that’s why trust is hard. I’ve seen people take the love I know and stamp it out. I’ve seen my mamá struggle to be herself and love openly because people think she deserves assault. I’ve seen my mam get sneered at for being a traitor, as if loving a trans woman makes her less queer. Two mums, and when we walk through town, people pity me for not being raised ‘properly,’ or they hide their children away from the sapphic couple, as if being queer is contagious. So we hide, because we’re forced to hide, because we contradict some regimented mindset. But why do I need to specify who they are? They’re just my parents. Why does their gender matter? Their love for me is parental love. Their love for each other is romantic love. It’s not weird. But you’d die for loving in this world, and you’d die for being yourself.”

Did she push? Had Sirius pushed? She didn’t know what to say. Momentarily speechless. She would change the world. For Remus, for his mums. She buried her head in Remus’s chest, inhaling the sound of his heartbeat. Her arms wrapped tighter around his waist, and she said, “I know. I’m sorry.”

Remus patted her back, whispered into her hair, “Thanks. Thank you. For listening.”

“I’ll listen to everything you say. Promise. ‘Cause you’ll be free to love when you’re around me, and you’ll get to be yourself. Here. I’ll start it here, for your parents, too, and I… for all people. Acceptance, or normalising being different so much that we don’t need acceptance, we can just love and trust and be.” He looked up at Remus fiercely, “Around me, okay? Starting here, you can teach me what love really is. And once you start, more people will listen. It might be slow, but they will. That’s how change has to work. So, my love. Thank you for telling me.”

“I love you,” Remus hugged him tighter, and it was sweet and it was deep, in the middle of the night. It was warm and bright and dark, right here, and it was the start. It was the climax. It wasn’t the end. It was the beginning of the middle and the middle of the beginning. Eventually, Sirius would write the story down, tell it to the world, he loved a boy with two mums. The story would never end, he’d leave it open to his audience, trust the process, hold onto that feeling, that trust. He trusted that more people would listen and keep changing the world for the better, people before him, people after him. This was one start of many and the end of none. Change was a constant. Change for the better was an effort.

“I… think it’s also the werewolf thing,” Remus added, like he was making an effort, consciously seeking to open up. “I think I’ve learned to hide so much. But I want…”

“Did you mean it?” Sirius asked abruptly. “Did you mean it when you said I can meet your parents?”

“Well, yeah—”

“Then let’s do it.”

“What?”

“You see, I think that sometimes, people have ideas. Or we have dreams, but we never bring them into fruition. So you say, ‘Sure, let’s meet the parents,’ but it’s almost like a concept. Or a nicety, you ask, ‘How are you?’ but it’s not deep, it’s just tiptoeing on the surface. We say things we never delve into, you know? Like we speculate a little about meeting your parents, but we never go further, we don’t plan it out. It’s a passing comment. But if you don’t want to hide… If you want to let me in, really, then you’ve got to plan it. You’ve got to mean it.”

Remus took him in for a moment, gaze scanning his face, as if rereading the words he’d just said, as if jotting them down, lips twitching at how Sirius had managed to be introspective. But Remus was the type to believe that Sirius was always introspective. “I mean it. We’re gonna meet them. Christmas break. I’ll send a letter to them tomorrow morning.”

“I love it when you’re certain.”

The world, the world, the world: feel it turning.

— — —

“Exactly how many trains does it take to get there?” Sirius huffed, slumping into yet another seat in yet another carriage on the long, twisting journey through Britain.

“It’s a remote Welsh village,” Remus defended. “Very eco-friendly.”

“Right,” Sirius looked out of the window. “Wow. Fields.”

“Crazy.”

“Very,” Sirius nodded. Then, “...Oh, Merlin, another field.”

“What, two fields in a row? Shocking.”

“Nah, it’s more than two in a row, ‘cause I saw multiple fields, and then another one, so it’s more like… ten.”

“Or,” Remus pointed at the monotonous view of snow upon snow, “It’s just one massive field, ‘cause the snow has covered up all the boundaries.”

“True,” Sirius conceded. “But you can’t just take it at face value, you know. ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ and all that.”

“...Where are you going with this?”

“I’m just thinking, I think, well, if I were a book, I’d have a sort of… gothic type cover, maybe. And I think I’d be sat on a shelf collecting dust, and once in a while, some eager child would elbow the books beside me, and we’d all topple to the floor, and the parents would pick me up, take one glance at the cover and look away in horror, chuck me back onto the shelf and place a stack of books in front of me for good measure, because they don’t want anyone else to witness such a ghastly cover, and they’d tell their child, ‘Don’t you read a page of that garbage,’ and so maybe some bookworms would creep between my pages, the only company I have, and I’ll rot away as I age with them. Then the library would dispose of me, and what’s left of me will either be used as compost to grow blackberries, or I’ll be recycled and pulped, scattered across the pages of hundreds of books, and that’ll keep happening, I guess, so my cover for now is only mine, and I’ll help grow so many more novels…”

Remus stared at him, mouth slightly parted and eyebrows raised. “That’s… That’s cool, Sirius… Um… Well, ‘bookworms’ is actually a misnomer, it’s the larvae of insects like beetles or moths that...  that would feed on you in this elaborate metaphor…”

He rested his chin on the palm of his hand, drummed his fingers against his bottom lip, “But I think I get it, or I’ll just summarise you in one sentence ‘cause you’re in your dramatic poet era and it confuses everyone: you’re worried about my parents judging your appearance, which mostly consists of black nails, black eyeliner and black leather.”

“Don’t simplify me,” Sirius cried. “This is a real emergency, it’s not just the black! It’s also the title on my cover, it’s my name, it’s the fact that I’m a little, you know, very eccentric, and weird, and I say weird things, and if I were a book I’d have a warning on the front of me, something like, ‘Contains disturbing topics, read with caution, or better yet, don’t read at all!’ They won’t like how I talk, or behave, and I lack respect, I act out, I go into strops, I spend days grumbling around in misery—”

Holding up a finger to Sirius’s mouth, Remus smiled, “They know. They love you.”

Sirius scowled and bit the finger, then grouched, “And that’s another weird thing you just made me do: biting a finger. I’m not normal! Your parents will take one look at me and question why I’m allowed to wander around without a nurse checking my sanity levels at every two second interval—”

“They won’t.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I know them, and I know you, and I love them, and I love you.”

“But— is there anything I should say? Anything I should do? Should I practise—?”

“Love, all you have to do is exist. That fact is a miracle of particles interacting to form coherent thought and consciousness. It amazes my parents, how only one of you could ever exist and will ever exist in the whole of time, and they get to see it. They get to see you. Because a century later and they’d miss you entirely, and that’s the luck of it, or the magic of it. They know, Sirius, and they love you.”

“Oh… That was, that was deep, Remus, I… Oh, look, it’s another field,” he pointed out of the window. In the faint reflection, he could still see the way his cheeks were burning bright red, and the way Remus was grinning like a moronic smartass who didn’t think before speaking profound scientific philosophy.

And he wanted to kiss him. And he loved him.

— — —

“How many gifts did you buy?” Remus watched in horror as Sirius enlarged the numerous presents he’d shrunk into his bag: wines and chocolates and cuddly toys; one that looked like Moony and it was adorable so Sirius had actually bought two, one for Remus’s parents and for himself… He’d also bought the Celia Cruz, Santana and El Chicano records that Remus kept stealing from his parents to take to Hogwarts, because it’d be far more practical if the family had two copies of each album: one for Remus and his thieving habits, the other for his parents who deserved their discs safe, intact and at home.

Lining the shelves of that store had been the most beautiful scent Sirius had ever smelled, so he simply had to buy the candle set, and then he saw a china tea set with wallpaper patterns on it and that was too good to miss out on. All the bargains, on tea towels and vases and coasters! Who wouldn’t buy it all?

“Sirius, this is too much, put that away—” Remus flapped his hands about, “Please, stop, why didn’t you tell me you’d bought this much, my parents don’t need all this, it’s too expensive and unnecessary— Return it, Sirius!”

“Right,” Sirius stood up, piling all the items into his arms. (He could no longer see in front of him. But that could be due to his height. He had not bought too much.) “Could you please carry my bag, sweetie?”

If Remus was glowering, Sirius couldn’t see it. “Could you please keep those presents for yourself, darling?”

“You said your parents accept anything, maybe it’s you who’s the problem,” Sirius tried to shrug, but quickly balanced himself because it turned out even a little bounce of the shoulders wasn’t a good idea.

“They won’t accept this, we’re not materialistic!”

“Well,” Sirius huffed, “I am. Now come on, don’t keep me waiting. And pick up my bag, that’s how you can repay me for the gifts. Also guide me to where we’re going because I can’t see.”

Remus shuffled, and sighed, before gingerly tapping Sirius’s elbow, “This way. And yes, I’ve got your bag.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Wish I’d gotten it sooner so I could’ve removed all your junk—”

“I can still hear you, ungrateful sod— Ow, why didn’t you tell me there was a doorstep, you’re lucky the presents didn’t fall—”

The ringing of the bell silenced him.

The ringing of the bell started an uproar within him, nerves wracking, heart dropping then rising like an iceberg on water, except birds kept crapping on it, disrupting his internal balance, rocking like he was seasick. Face green. Capsizing, shipwrecked, his anchor was loose and he was floating, sinking, drenched in sweat, he probably smelled, and that was terrible, and not actually true, because it was the illusion of sweating profusely, brought on by the trapped feeling of running a marathon without water. Throat dry and he was still in the sea. But that was the problem with saltwater, because it dried the life out of him and like a fish on land he was a human in the ocean, struggling to breathe.

Then Remus squeezed his elbow and the waves waned to ripples. His heart fluttered. Newborn butterfly. Green wings. Spring seedling. Breathing.

The door opened, and “Sirius!” a voice greeted, then, “Good grief, what’s this?”

“Remus, why are you forcing the poor kid to carry everything?” a second voice raised, followed by the sound of Remus protesting in his throat.

“It’s not me,” he mumbled, leading Sirius in.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Lupins!” Sirius hailed as she almost tripped over the threshold, feet stumbling and boxes slipping and clattering with a muted thud onto carpet. As always, Sirius grinned in the face of setbacks, throwing her thumbs up, “Don’t worry ‘bout those, I’ll pick them up later, wait, lemme just,” she picked up the plush toy wolf and brandished it in Ms. Lupins’ faces, “Here! It’s an honour to be invited to your house, I love it!”

They blinked at him, once, twice, and then Ms. Lupin with short, dirty blond hair bubbled into laughter, and Ms. Lupin with longer, dark brown hair that curled into her collarbones glanced between Sirius and the plushy, shook her head once, twice, and pulled him into a hug.

“Thanks, Sirius,” she chuckled, and it rumbled through his chest like rain pattering over forest leaves, background music on the forefront of his mind.

“Hey, I want in,” the laughing Ms. Lupin said, pulling a bemused Remus into the hug with her.

“I hope all those boxes—”

“—aren’t for us,” they finished each other’s sentences, and Sirius drew back sheepishly.

“Well.”

As always, Remus was no help, giving him a flat look, I told you so.

“It’s the Christmas spirit!” Sirius defended cheerily. “You deserve them, for all the trouble Remus gives you, all the cups his clumsy hands break— Look, here’s a china tea set and I have to drink from this cup at least once, the patterns speak to me, and here are the records Remus keeps stealing from you, ‘cause he returns them more and more battered every year; you deserve your pristine ones, and candles, Christmas is all about candles! I think!”

“Sirius… This is all very generous of you.”

“Very extravagant.”

“Fancy.”

“Over-the-top and pricey,” Remus interrupted his parents.

“Shh, let them speak,” Sirius waved a hand over his mouth.

They both smiled at him fondly, and Sirius could preen. He didn’t, but he could. He wanted to, because this was what he’d wanted, those parental figures who looked at him and his boyfriend and saw love.

“Because we expect you’ll stay around our Remus for a long time—”

“Forever.”

“We’ll let you off the hook—”

“—this time. But next time, and all the times after—”

“—you’ll stick to one, simple gift, if you really want to give us something.”

“But honestly, we don’t expect or want anything from you.”

“Except your company, obviously,” and in his peripheral vision, Sirius saw Remus grinning triumphantly, that I told you so, but all he could do was stare at the two Ms. Lupins in awe.

Speechless at their speech because: the way they spoke.

“Now that’s sorted,” the one with short hair grinned, “Call me Hope. And… we can leave all your things here for now,” she decided.

“And call me Lyall,” the one with dark hair smiled. “Or Luperca, I’m trying that one out. As much as I like the name Lyall, and the fact it’s gender neutral, I was searching for names that make me feel more connected to who I am as a person. I came across Luperca, the name of the wolf mother who nursed Remus in Latin mythology, and well, I thought it was…” she glanced at Remus, a look so full of happiness that Sirius felt both privileged and like some sort of intruder on a sacred moment.

But when she looked at Remus, she knew that she was welcome, because Remus’s blush spread all over his cheeks and he was scuffing his feet on the floor and looking at them all like this was home and this was family and these were his people, and Sirius belonged right here, where she was. She didn’t need gifts to prove herself, material objects to hide behind, because her flesh and bone and brain were what felt and saw and thought about the world around her, telling her, this is enough. This is everything.

“Come along into the living room,” Hope called, and Sirius followed like she was attached by some thread, some magic, that comfort of knowing and trusting a voice so much that she’d fall asleep to it.

She’d never known that adults could give that to her. And she’d never wanted to trust them so fast, but she’d heard everything about Remus’s parents, and maybe she loved them in the way that they’d only needed to hear about her in order to love her, too.

— — —

There was a little dining table tucked into the living room, four chairs around it, a place already there for Sirius.

Already.

Like they thought about him even when he wasn’t there, like he was a part of the family even when he wasn’t there, like this was what family was, looking out for each other and remembering each other and making effort for each other.

Admittedly, Sirius was way too excited over this chair. But buzzing in his seat could be attributed to the absolute buffet of food crammed onto the small circle of wood, and he didn’t know the names of any of it, except it smelled better than even Hogwarts food.

And he must’ve said some of this out loud, because Remus was looking at him like he was the whole world, replying, “Yeah. Yeah, it’s more culturally diverse than Hogwarts food too.”

Hope proudly gestured, “Luperca made pozole; this orange stew with radish garnish is the meat one, with pork and chorizo, and this red stew with lettuce garnish is the vegetarian, with mushrooms instead. They both contain hominy,” she looked at Sirius, caught his expression, and explained as if she was always going to, “which Luperca always has to remind me, ‘cause I keep forgetting, it’s… dried field corn… and that… then gets soaked in an alkaline substance, like lye, because alkalines help soften it. Though lye also gives it a bitter flavour, so then it’s washed, and then you have hominy — soft maize kernels with more nutrients, really.”

Before Sirius could say anything, like how delicious it looked, how colourful and rich and bright, Luperca also gestured, “And Hope made bara brith, a loaf baked with dried fruit soaked in tea, spiced with cinnamon because that’s the Christmas flavour. Feel the heat radiating off that slice, and look at the melting butter, it’s glorious.”

Sirius grinned widely, “It really is. You’ve made loads, I’ve never tried any of these meals before…”

“Then try them all,” Hope grabbed Sirius’s plate and began loading it with massive spoonfuls of everything.

His eyes widened, and Remus’s rolled, “I’ll eat your leftovers if it’s too much, don’t worry. But I’m pretty sure you’ll finish this, it’s so good,” he gushed.

Nudging her son, Luperca began serving both herself and her wife, and Remus followed suit with his own meal. Once a plate, piled so high it reached Sirius’s nose, was placed in front of him, Luperca said, “¡Buen provecho!” and then there was a clatter of cutlery and Remus was shoving a fried donut into his mouth and Hope was wolfing down pozole and Luperca was biting into bara brith and looking like she’d tasted bliss.

Sirius eyed the fried donut that was on his own smaller plate, the dessert plate, probably, but Remus always ate things in the wrong order. (So did his mothers, by the looks of it.) It was sprinkled with caster sugar and looked like it may have a chocolate filling behind its crispy exterior… and so Sirius gave up on his dining morality and tried the dessert first. And he was glad he did because, “Mmm,” his eyes popped, “I never wanna live without this again.”

Luperca beamed at him, “That’s un buñuelo; always sold on the streets at Christmas. When the festivals start in Mexico on the twelfth of December with el Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe, vendors are already selling them by the dozen.”

“El… Día de la…” Sirius trailed off. “What does that entail?”

Slower, Luperca described, “El Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe: it’s a religious festival, and even though I identify as spiritual and not religious, I think it’s a celebration for everyone.”

“Same,” Remus agreed. “Every year, pilgrims from all over Mexico gather in one of the most important Catholic churches, and that feeling of family.”

“Is incomparable,” Hope clarified.

“La Basílica de Guadalupe,” Luperca recited. “That’s the church, in Mexico city. There you’ll find the grand icon of Mary, believed to perform miracles and answer the prayers of the faithful.”

“I think she’d answer anyone’s prayers,” Hope mused. “Anyone who has faith in something, or someone. Anyone who lets themselves trust.”

“That’s a cool sentiment,” Sirius complimented.

Luperca smiled. “For a long time, people worshipped Mary as Mexico’s queen. Her face would be on the flags during the Wars of Independence and the Revolution. She’s the mother, the one who provides life. She’s powerful, standing above us, and she’s benevolent with her open hands, and like every person, she encompasses the complexity of everything. Mother, wife, daughter, human.”

Sirius paused in thought. “What does it mean that you’re spiritual and not religious? Because… you believe in Mary?”

“I believe in people,” Luperca replied simply. “I believe that each person contains incomprehensible multitudes that can never be fully explored or understood. They exist, and that’s the spirit of it, the essence. I don’t believe that anyone can know anything completely, so I don’t take religion word-for-word. Religion is still what a person has written down, trying to articulate their cerebral connection to the universe, except humans are flawed. We can’t control other people’s connections to the magic of the planet because we’re not them. We all have our own ways of understanding, so I don’t think there’ll ever be only one true option to believe, and I don’t like how religion is often enforced with one singular ideology.”

“Mamá likes to think that Mary, and any person we remember or celebrate, relates to us in some way. It shows us… we’re all individuals in a community, together,” Remus summed up.

In awe, Sirius breathed, “The three of you sound so similar when you talk.”

Hope grinned. “It’s me, I’m too influential.”

“What festivals are there after the twelfth?” Sirius asked.

“Oh!” Hope squealed, “Las Posadas. I love them, because they last from the sixteenth till the twenty-fourth. They’re processions that re-enact Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter. And I love the way it involves the youth, because children walk together between the houses singing songs and asking people to let them in, and each night, the processions end at a different house for a community feast.”

“With piñatas,” Remus’s eyes shone.

“Love piñatas,” Sirius affirmed. “And all the celebrations. Do you have a favourite?”

Luperca didn’t miss a beat, “El Día de los Muertos. Although really, it’s multiple days. It honours the dead, but in the best way. Because to be dead, which in Spanish is estar muerto, doesn’t mean loss. I think that’s why we use ‘estar’ to describe the state of death. Because ‘estar’ is called the temporary version of ‘to be,’ and ‘ser’ is the other version, it’s more permanent. ‘Estar’ would be used for being happy, for example, estoy feliz, while ‘ser’ would be used for origin, like soy mexicana. But death, which you’d think to be permanent, isn’t. If I were dead, I’d say, estoy muerta.” 

“But people don’t come back to life after dying?”

Remus shrugged, “You can’t know that for sure, ‘cause do you remember ever experiencing your own death? It’s like… you can’t believe something if you have no proof for it, but you also can’t deny something if you don’t have proof against it. It could happen. It might not. Language gives you that option.”

“So,” Sirius pondered, “with ‘estar muerto,’ to be dead temporarily. Does that reflect the uncertainty of it? Or it could represent how death isn’t a permanent state, because no one starts off dead. They had life before that, where they… existed, in everything. It reminds you that they were alive, they breathed with us and shared this world and had thoughts and dreams… and that honours their life, doesn’t it? You remember someone who’s dead for when they weren’t dead. And they stay with you.” He nodded, “I like it too.”

Hope pointed at him, “Told you I’m influential. Look at you speaking like another poet in the family.”

“Mam, he’s way better than us. He’s not another poet, he’s the poet.”

And Sirius’s face was hot and she sometimes wondered why she spoke but this made her veins thrum like guitar strings, a song in her blood. She felt like a ripple spanning the surface of the universe in discoid smiles.

Luperca said, “Remus, you’re obsessed.” And Remus raised his hands in defence, but she ignored him, “Now, Day of the Dead. Sirius, that’s exactly why I love it. I love how we remember people for how they lived, respect them for that, laugh with their memory, because that’s what they want. That’s what they lived for. Not for a world of gloom, but for one of bursting colour and vibrancy. Tears of joy, telling the people who’ve died that you know they’re still with you, even after all of it. Loss that isn’t loss because their memory lives on, collected by family and friends to decorate their altars and bring them back to life, inside of us. Reignite their connection with the world, the way they saw things, the way they communicated with us. The way they wanted to be perceived. The impact they made on us. Parts of them that can never die.”

“Not even their bodies can die,” Remus reflected, “because when they’re buried, they are the minerals that make plants grow and flowers bloom. Worms’ meat, birds’ meat, we form another part of another animal’s mind, we combine and we change and I’m made out of so many things until I’m me, only once.”

“Minds can’t truly die either,” Hope stated. “I have faith in that. A mind can separate, pieces scattered across the universe all over again, but it can’t die. That goes against the laws of physics, to me. Because energy can’t be created or destroyed, and we are energy. Electric current must always be conserved, and our thoughts are driven by electric signals. That’s gotta go somewhere, you know? Day of the Dead is electric like that. The magic everyone can wield.”

“It’s in the art, las calaveras, edible skulls made from sugar, or decorative ones made from clay. Skull masks, or ones face-painted on. They’re bright, covered in colour, flowers and beads and gems and feathers. The magic everyone can create.” Luperca then laughed, “Look at us, talking about Day of the Dead at Christmastime. We never get the message, do we?”

Sirius shrugged, “I don’t mind. Time is sorta everywhere, with everything. It’s more like a piece of string humans try to stitch with but it’ll keep on going even after we die. It’s just… there, so in reality, anything can happen at any time.”

“You’re just making excuses for singing Christmas songs in the middle of July,” Remus teased. “Ever heard that a reindeer dies each time you do that?”

“Don’t use myths against logic, Remus. It’s not wise. I’m the poet, remember?”

Luperca snorted, “Remus, you really inflate his ego, don’t you?”

“He’s the poet, I’m the lover. It’s a whole thing.”

Sirius nodded appreciatively, “Now you’re speaking facts.” Then she tentatively addressed Luperca, “You know, these celebrations seem really liberal, like you can wear all sorts of capes and gowns during parades. But I remember that Remus told me you… grew up conforming?”

“I did,” Luperca acknowledged. “Conforming is a funny thing though, because it’s enforced until it’s not. I grew up in a wixen household, but we still celebrated the Muggle festivals, like how here, Hogwarts decks the halls in holly and sends you off for Christmas. And yes, Muggle celebrations are liberating, I think that’s why we still appreciate the community spirit of it all. I wore robes all the time, as did everyone, so gender was mostly differentiated through hair length. Mine was short, so I was seen as a boy. But on festival days, we could wear anything, all sorts of makeup and costumes. I’d wear dresses with marigold hems, cloaks, face paint, masks, sometimes even wigs. And then, for some reason, I was seen as a girl. And for some reason, that made me feel seen.”

“But… doesn’t the fact that those things decide gender perception… contribute to gender roles?” Sirius asked.

“That’s what I thought too. Really, people should be able to do anything and still be seen as the gender that they are. It shouldn’t be decided by hair length or clothes. Having short hair doesn’t say anything about Hope’s gender, and your long hair doesn’t say anything about yours. They’re separate facts from how she’s a woman and you’re a man, right?”

And that made Sirius pause. She nodded slowly, picking up a strand of her shoulder-length hair. But it didn’t feel unrelated to her gender, even though it was. It didn’t feel ‘gender non-conforming’ for her to have long hair. It felt… conforming.

Luperca also nodded, “And while they’re separate facts, there is truth in the way gender is reflected onto society. There is a reason that gender is seen through appearance. It’s entwined with the human awareness that we have a gender identity, that we have a sex. We, in connection to that inner identity, want to present it outwardly so that other people also see us as that gender. Hence, gender roles are born. They mean people associate us with a certain sex whenever we conform to them, and when we’re associated with the gender that we are, we feel happy. But again, it’s like the difference between ‘ser’ and ‘estar.’ Gender roles are temporary. You don’t have to follow them to be the gender that you are. But gender itself? That’s permanent. Even for fluid genders, people are born to experience the gender that they do, and we can’t control it. Soy mujer. I’m a woman. And I like being seen that way; I can’t help it.”

“It’s the same for many people, we like being seen as the gender we are,” Hope related. “That’s the importance of pronouns, because they allow others to call us as we are. ‘She’ is a verbal way of communicating how someone feels feminine, and also means that she doesn’t have to conform to any sort of gender roles, because the pronoun says it all. When people hear a pronoun that speaks to them, or makes them feel represented, I think it triggers a release of joy-inducing hormones. If gender roles are scrapped, humans will still experience a gender that we’ll want to communicate, but there are much more liberating ways to do that. It’ll mean healthy exploration for all, while still being connected to inherent masculinity, femininity, or any gender, all genders.”

“The pronoun ‘they’ to describe a singular person is also something new,” Remus added. “That’s what mam means by any gender, because it’s not just a binary when we’re a world of billions of individuals. Can’t just cut that up in two, you know?”

“Oh,” Sirius hummed, twirling her hair. She liked the tangibility of it. She needed to ground herself for a minute. Her heart felt like it was falling out.

She could pick it up if he held on. “Yeah, that makes sense,” he whispered. “Can you feel like… multiple genders?”

“You can feel like anything,” Remus replied.

“And… gender plays a part in attraction too? Because if a bloke’s gay, he can tell which people are boys, thereby which people he could potentially develop attraction towards,” Sirius suggested.

“That’s another reason why gender is something we want to display,” Luperca recognised. “It’s a primal thing, to know who you’re attracted to, if you feel that sort of attraction. And it shows that gender is something intuitive, because sexuality is real; you can’t force yourself to be attracted to a gender, the same way you can’t force yourself to be a gender.”

“It also plays a part in how we develop friendships,” Hope noted, “because you often see people of the same or similar genders wanting to connect. It’s more prominent in younger people, because that’s when the greatest need to figure out your identity is. As we grow though, those lines defining gender become blurrier — it’s no set divide of boys versus girls when gender doesn’t actually have a definition, it’s only what a person feels, and even people of the same gender won’t feel it in the same way. So while we want to display our genders, society needs to do it in a healthier way. We need to make sure people are secure in the genders that they already are, so they don’t feel the need to ‘prove’ themselves by avoiding friendships with the opposite gender and perpetuating gender roles. The best society is an undivided one, where all genders coexist in peace.”

Luperca sighed, “I wish this wasn’t just wishful thinking. I want a world like that so badly.”

Hope smiled encouragingly, “Have faith. That world will exist. After all, it already exists in our little bubble, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Remus promised.

“Yeah,” Sirius echoed.

Yes.

— — —

They finished eating, began clearing up, but Sirius wanted to talk more, until her heart spilled out, until it stopped squeezing, stopped constricting.

She couldn’t put a finger on it, but she could put a finger on her lip and fiddle with it, pull it down, stretch it out. This body was hers, and she’d always felt comfortable with it.

Or if she hadn’t, she’d made it feel comfortable, growing out her hair because she liked the length in the mirror, the way it seemed to soften her cheekbones. The feeling, was it vanity? Because she was genuinely happy, but why? And she liked leather jackets, skin-tight, moulded to her waist. Skinny jeans, defined curves. Anyone had them, and they weren’t definitions in themselves, but she liked the way they defined her. She liked twirling in her robes like they were dresses and when dancing with James in the common room, she played the girl and he played the boy because James was certain that with enough practice, he’d easily sweep the love of his life off their feet within a second and they’d immediately get married.

He was delusional like that.

But now Sirius felt like she was delusional. The role was the role. Separate from the gender but connected because of the need to express. Was this self-expression? Did this say something about her?

What did it mean when she liked how Lily grabbed her wrist and held her hand and smirked, “Wanna get away from the boys?” when Sirius was a boy too, but he was a girl, and that didn’t really align, but it did for him, the way his breath slotted into her lungs. His mind was a jagged puzzle but Sirius had all the pieces to run her hands along them until it flowed so smoothly, until it just… was.

It was just the way her heart pounded when Mary asked, “Sirius, what’s it like to be a boy?” while they were all in the girls’ dormitory.

And Marlene would immediately laugh, “You can’t ask him that, he’s a girl!”

Then as Padfoot, she’d clamber down the stairs and find Peter on an armchair practising chess, and she’d slobber all over him while Peter would absent-mindedly pat her back and mutter, “Good girl,” because Sirius reminded him of his dog back home. And she’d cuddle in further, reduced to a warm bundle of fluff because Peter knew Sirius was a girl.

She was a boy.

Could he be multiple? Simultaneously?

Was she really multiple? Or just because she fit the gender roles, was she deciding to be multiple?

Was it weird to experience joy because of gender? Surely it was just there. Maybe it worked differently for him? Like the way it worked differently for everyone.

So his gender was unique to Sirius, and that was how she wanted to be seen. A gender-neutral name, a gender non-applicable star. A name that contained multitudes.

“Sirius,” Luperca nudged his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Shaking his head, Sirius broke out of his thoughts, “Yeah, I’m good, thanks.”

Luperca raised an eyebrow. “Remus and Hope went to wash up, but you seemed lost in your own world. And you looked a little queasy?”

“Oh?” Sirius asked. “I don’t know, I think I’m fine.”

“Okay. Let me know if you need anything,” Luperca began making her way to the kitchen.

Sirius’s gaze flickered to the dress swaying at her feet, “I—”

Luperca turned around.

“I—” Sirius coughed a little, “I like your dress.”

“Suits your style?” she smiled.

Yes. Sirius stared at her.

Luperca nodded, “I have a whole wardrobe full of them. You can take your pick. It’s the least I can do, after all those gifts you loaded us with.”

And Sirius would feel embarrassed, but he was already flushed in the face out of nerves and adrenaline.

She’d never quite acknowledged how she had a gender identity. She’d… never recognised that something was there. It was too confusing to unravel. And he already felt seen: at school his friends called him ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ interchangeably, but did they realise the depth of their words? The meaning behind it, the way it struck Sirius’s core? Did Remus know he was attracted to someone who was a girl and a boy, or did he think he was only attracted to one? …What would that mean for them?

But Remus knew. He knew there was more to Sirius than his appearance, than her cover. He knew it was a miracle to witness anyone’s existence, so maybe he’d fall in love with this too.

Maybe Remus had given Sirius a message, I know you. And I love you.

“Do you want to try this one?”

“I’m multiple ones,” Sirius blurted, and then she corrected himself, “Sorry, yes, thank you, Ms. Lupin, Luperca—”

“Good choice,” she passed him the dress, soft fabric like banana leaves on his hands.

“Thanks,” she mumbled as Luperca left the room and closed the door.

Only now did he take the time to look around. It was a small bedroom, crammed with a double bed, a neat little closet built into the wall, opened up to reveal a whole range of clothes, almost one for every occasion. Remus had mentioned that his mums loved charity shops.

Then there was the dress in her hands. Pale green and shimmery, relatively simple, but as if it were complicated, she slowly took off her clothes and stepped into it, lifting it over her thighs, which could easily give way and collapse because they were shaking, made out of jelly.

There was a mirror on the closet door.

Sirius saw an old friend made new within it. Her lips parted in both relief and wonder. She was washed in waves of calm that kept tumbling over him, settling in his limbs, making home in her bones. And he was a girl in a dress and she was a boy.

It was socially acceptable to wear this, and it was cross-dressing.

Loose around her calves and tight on his hips, gender roles didn’t apply but the way he saw herself did. A boy in a dress and he was a girl. Not because of the dress, but before the dress and in the dress; he’d always been a girl and this was just something she wanted to wear because she wanted to show people her frock and her face and see them light up the way she did when they called her ‘beautiful boy,’ when they called him ‘handsome girl.’

The fact was, it just was.

“Sirius?” There was a knock on the door.

“You— You can come in,” her voice croaked slightly.

Luperca entered, immediately lighting up, “Do you like it?”

“Yeah, I— have a question, though…”

“Ask away,” she encouraged.

“I’m… What if… Do you think it’s too sudden if I said… I think I’m not… just a boy?”

Luperca appraised him. “It’s never too sudden.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Luperca echoed, smiling at him welcomingly, arms open.

She hugged her, and she hugged her.

— — —

“Lu?” Hope’s voice rang out.

“Sirius?” Remus’s followed.

“Maybe they’re in the bedroom?” Hope suggested, and Sirius froze for a second.

Luperca checked her face. “Do you want them to come in?”

And obviously, Sirius did. But wasn’t this too soon? What if she was being an idiot? What if he was just overwhelmed with all the words he’d heard? But this had been with him for a long time, ever since she’d known how to express herself, she’d always wanted all of it. Wasn’t that greed?

But how was it greed when he was stealing nothing, when it was all inside of him in the first place? He wasn’t creating or destroying anything, because if she could place a hand inside her mind, she’d feel everything.

“I… want them to come in.”

A knock on the door. “Sirius?”

And his voice stretched out to Remus, “I’m here.”

“Can we come in?” Remus asked.

A million times, “Yes.”

“Hey,” Hope laughed, “I want in,” before joining the hug, along with Remus.

Remus buried his face into Sirius’s hair and whispered, “Nice dress. You’re looking like the prettiest girl and the loveliest boy and the greatest person I’ve ever seen.”

“Remus,” Luperca chuckled, “You’re obsessed.”

Sirius tilted her head until her cheek pressed against Remus’s, and she kissed it, murmuring into his ear, “I’m obsessed with you too, lover.”