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Sirius had just finished reading Harry’s letter; the boy had written far more about Ron who was his friend again than about the task itself, though he had included some details about it.
Sirius suspected Hermione had insisted on that.
“Is everything all right?” Remus asked.
After Sirius had gone on the run, much later than Sirius had expected, Remus had contacted him and met up with him.
Remus knew nothing about Harry. He would watch the letters arriving for Sirius with a regret he couldn't hide, yet he never asked to write to Harry. Not even at that moment, when the godson was facing something horrific.
“Ron and Harry have made up,” Sirius said. “And Harry was incredible facing the dragon, according to the letter he wrote.”
Remus nodded, looking proud of Harry, yet still lacking the impulse to write to him to offer congratulations or ask how he was doing.
Harry had said Remus was a good teacher, but Remus should have been so much more.
“Why did you never come looking for me?” Sirius asked, unable to hold back, unable to stop himself in that moment, as his mind drew a parallel between his own experience and Harry’s, neither of them believed.
Ron hadn’t believed Harry, but he had gone looking for him when he didn't see him in bed; Sirius had been there, and he had left just long enough for the two of them to make amends, recalling the absolute loyalty they felt for one another.
It took a special kind of friendship to decide that a friend was worth dying for.
“I thought you were their Secret-Keeper,” Remus said. “Peter was dead; James and Lily were dead. I… I thought I’d lost everything.”
“I know.” Sirius nodded, because logically, he knew all that. He, too, had doubted Remus. But Remus had spent days, weeks, and even months with werewolf packs loyal to Voldemort, without saying a word to anyone.
Sirius wasn’t a spy. His only fault was his last name.
“But did you really believe I would ever kill James and Lily?” Sirius asked. “Did you have doubts before?”
Before the end of their relationship, which had ended in the worst possible way, on October 31st.
“No, I…” Remus swallowed hard. “I had reservations, but it was just the circumstances, Sirius. Even Andromeda was acting strange, withdrawn, and you were always so on edge whenever your family was mentioned…”
“Bellatrix had killed Lily’s parents.” Sirius practically snarled. “Of course I was on edge. I didn’t want to hurt Lily with my appearance—knowing I look so much like my cousin. But do you know what she told me?”
Remus shook his head, but Sirius didn’t need his answer to say what he had never forgotten.
“That I was nothing like the Blacks, because I was a Potter,” Sirius said. “And the only thing I regret is letting James and Lily choose Peter—because I would have died to save them, and they…”
“Sirius, it’s not that, I…” Remus tried to speak, but Sirius stopped him.
“You knew me,” Sirius said, his voice breaking. “How could you believe it? How could you look at me and think I was capable of doing that? To James and Lily, of all people!”
Remus swallowed, but Sirius wouldn’t let him speak. Instead, he asked the question he feared most: “Do you love me?”
“Yes, I do,” Remus answered without hesitation. “I never stopped, not for a single instant.”
Sirius felt empty. Remus loved him, yet he still thought of him as a Black; capable of betrayal, capable of causing James and Lily’s deaths.
“Sirius, please, believe me,” Remus said. “Why else would I be here if not because I love you? You mean everything to me, Sirius!”
“I wasn’t enough before this summer, though,” Sirius replied. “You didn’t even ask me why I’d done it. You… you just assumed I had.”
Had Harry been old enough, or informed enough, he would have run straight to that cell and demanded answers.
He would have done it even without knowing Sirius.
Sirius could see it in his eyes. Harry possessed his parents’ fire and determination, both of theirs.
He wouldn’t have stopped, just as he had saved him later on.
It had taken him only one afternoon to do more than Remus had in the last twelve years.
“Sirius, I love you,” Remus said intensely, staring at him. “I never stopped loving you, believe me.” His amber eyes traced the lines of Sirius’s face before he asked, “Do you love me?”
“I don't know,” Sirius replied, and the words devastated him.
Because he had always known he loved Remus. Before Azkaban, he had never needed to ask himself the question.
The trouble was, Azkaban had taught him that love didn’t necessarily mean being truly known, believed, or chosen.
And now, he didn’t know if he could still call that feeling love.
Remus was no longer his future; instead, he was synonymous with twelve years of solitude in a cell with a man who believed him capable of committing such acts. Of letting James and Lily die without a second thought, of hurting Harry, his godson, the one who had kept him from giving up for twelve long years, and the one Sirius had let down the most.
Sirius might still have loved Remus, in a twisted sort of way, but he was incapable of loving someone when the greater part of him could not forgive him for not believing him.
“I don’t know,” Sirius repeated, feeling empty.