Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Remus

There were, Remus had decided, several unpleasant consequences to being in love with Sirius Black, not least of which was the suspicion that the boy had been put on this earth for the express purpose of making his life difficult, but the most immediately pressing, on this particular Friday evening, was that Sirius had apparently decided to spend it with his tongue down the throat of a girl whose name Remus couldn’t quite remember.

He thought it might be Caroline. Or Catherine. Something beginning with C, anyway, although that was considerably less important than the hand curled around the lapel of Sirius’s leather jacket and the other buried in his hair, where her fingers disappeared whenever she drew him closer.

Sirius, who had never demonstrated much inclination towards doing anything by halves, was kissing her with the enthusiasm Remus generally reserved for discovering an unexpectedly good book or being informed that Professor McGonagall had cancelled an examination. It was a miserable thing to have to witness while attempting to enjoy a perfectly decent cigarette.

The Gryffindor common room had been transformed into something resembling a badly organised Muggle nightclub, courtesy of James Potter, who had decided that the completion of their January examinations warranted a celebration sufficient to alert the entirety of the castle. Somebody had charmed the lamps to flicker in an approximation of stage lighting, the furniture had been shoved towards the walls, and Remus’s record player—his record player, despite what Sirius might have to say on the matter—was making a heroic attempt to compete with forty-odd teenagers who had consumed rather more Firewhisky than was advisable. The room smelled of smoke and spilled drink, its usual draughts defeated by the crush of bodies, and every few minutes somebody opened a window only for somebody else to complain loudly enough that it was shut again.

Bowie’s Rebel Rebel was playing, which was unfortunate in itself, given that Sirius had spent the better part of the previous summer developing an almost religious attachment to the song and appeared to consider its existence a personal endorsement of his lifestyle choices.

Remus took another drag of his cigarette as Sirius lifted his head to laugh at something the girl said, dislodging a few strands of dark hair from behind his ear. The little silver hoop he’d pierced through the lobe himself over Christmas caught the firelight, and Remus experienced the familiar, irritating desire to put his mouth against it.

He turned towards the window instead, where the glass offered him a dim reflection of the party and, with appalling helpfulness, Sirius in miniature. There were limits to how much humiliation a person ought to inflict upon himself voluntarily; Remus was beginning to suspect he’d lost track of his.

“You’re going to burn a hole through her head.”

Lily Evans had appeared beside him carrying two bottles of butterbeer, her mouth already curving in a way that made him regret ever having told her anything about his personal life.

“I’m not looking at her,” he said, shifting his knee to let her settle onto the sofa.

“No,” Lily agreed, passing him a bottle. “You’re looking at the enormous idiot attached to her face.”

Remus accepted the drink and considered denying everything, but Lily had known since the previous autumn, when she’d found him smoking behind Greenhouse Three after an evening involving Sirius, a girl from Hufflepuff, and an unnecessary demonstration of how easily Sirius could fit somebody else into his lap. There was very little dignity left to salvage from the situation, and he wasn’t inclined to spend his Friday evening searching for it.

“He’s allowed to kiss people,” he said, because defending Sirius remained an instinct even when Sirius was the reason he wanted to walk directly into the Black Lake. “And I’m allowed to be annoyed by it.”

“Both perfectly reasonable positions.”

“Good. Then you’re allowed to stop looking at me like that.”

“I’m afraid that’s where we disagree.” Lily tucked her feet beneath her and took a sip of butterbeer, receiving his filthy look with the composure of somebody who’d spent five years dealing with James Potter’s increasingly elaborate attempts at courtship.

Across the room, Sirius finally separated himself from his companion, laughing as she leaned up to say something against his ear. Remus’s fingers tightened around the cold bottle. He could hear nothing of the conversation, had no reason to imagine it was especially interesting, and still found himself wanting to know exactly what she’d said that had made Sirius laugh like that.

It was ridiculous, considering how much of Sirius he already had: afternoons spent listening to records, arguments about books, cigarettes shared beneath the Astronomy Tower, the weight of Sirius’s head in his lap, and the nights when he climbed into Remus’s bed without invitation, bringing cold feet and an arm that invariably found its way across his middle. Remus knew the sounds he made when he was nearly asleep, knew which silences to leave alone, and knew which could be broken by putting on the right record. He had more of Sirius Black than almost anybody else in the world, and somehow that abundance had made him greedier.

He wanted to be able to reach for him without having to pretend he meant something else.

“Oh, thank Merlin,” Lily murmured, drawing his attention back to her.

“What?”

“He’s coming over. You can stop interrogating the label on your bottle.”

Sirius had abandoned the girl beside the fireplace and was making his way through the crowd with the loose-limbed confidence of someone who had never seriously considered that he might not be welcome wherever he chose to go. His hair was escaping the little tie he’d used to keep it back earlier, his jacket hung open over a faded T. Rex shirt, and the two silver rings on his right hand flashed as he pushed James out of his way. James caught his sleeve to complain; Sirius said something that Remus couldn’t hear, ducked beneath the hand James aimed at his head, and came towards the sofa grinning.

“Moony! There you are. Been looking everywhere.”

“Here I am,” Remus said, lifting his bottle in greeting. “You might’ve tried looking somewhere other than inside Caroline’s mouth.”

Lily made a strangled noise beside him, but Sirius only paused long enough to look delighted.

“Charlotte,” he corrected.

“Wonderful. I’ll update my records.”

Sirius laughed and helped himself to Remus’s cigarette before Remus had quite registered the movement, taking a drag as he dropped onto the sofa beside him. The cushions dipped beneath his weight; Remus had just enough time to move his drink out of danger before Sirius arranged himself half across his body, head against his shoulder and one long leg stretched over his thighs, with the casual entitlement of somebody returning to a favourite chair.

Cigarettes, leather, and expensive cologne settled around him. Beneath those was the warmth of Sirius himself, close enough that Remus could feel him breathing through the wool of his jumper, and he concentrated on finding somewhere sensible to put the bottle.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

“Very.” Sirius tilted his face towards him, eyes bright beneath the untidy fall of his fringe. “Why? Are you?”

“Oh, enormously. I was just thinking how much better this evening would be if somebody sat on me.”

“Glad to help.” Sirius returned the cigarette and rubbed his cheek against Remus’s shoulder, apparently satisfied that he’d made a useful contribution. “Your jumper’s soft. You should lend it to me.”

“You’ve already got three of mine.”

“Two,” Sirius said. “The green one’s basically mine now.”

“The green one was a birthday present from my mother.”

“She has excellent taste.”

Remus tried to summon an objection, but Sirius was still looking up at him, pleased with himself and plainly expecting Remus to be pleased with him too. It was difficult to maintain a grievance under those circumstances. Worse, Sirius’s cheek had caught against the seam of his jumper, leaving a faint pink mark that Remus wanted to smooth away with his thumb; he took a drink instead, buying himself a moment in which to remember that Lily was sitting close enough to witness every failure of his judgement.

She watched them over the rim of her bottle before lowering it slowly. “Well,” she said, “this is perfectly normal.”

“Thank you, Evans.” Sirius stretched his leg a little farther across Remus’s lap. “Nice to have some support.”

Lily’s eyes met Remus’s above his head, and Remus gave her a look he hoped conveyed the importance of leaving the matter alone. Judging by the movement at the corner of her mouth, it conveyed something else entirely.

From the other side of the room, James shouted that somebody needed to put Get It On back on, Peter knocked over a bowl of crisps, and Sirius began singing along to the last few bars of Bowie with his eyes closed. His voice was low enough to be mostly lost beneath the record, but Remus could feel it where they touched, a small vibration against his shoulder that made it unusually difficult to pay attention to anything else.

A strand of hair had slipped across Sirius’s face. Remus followed it from his temple to the corner of his mouth, then looked away, setting his bottle on the table with more care than the task required. He had already spent enough of the evening watching that mouth; being granted a closer view did not seem likely to improve matters.

He managed to leave the hair alone until Sirius wrinkled his nose and made an irritated noise at it, whereupon Remus reached down and tucked it behind his ear. His knuckle brushed the silver hoop. Sirius smiled without opening his eyes, and Remus’s hand lingered against the side of his head before his fingers slipped into the loose hair above it.

Across from them, Lily took a long drink. “You’re an idiot,” she told him quietly.

“I know.” Remus kept his voice equally low, though the confession was scarcely worth making when his hand was still moving through Sirius’s hair. Sirius shifted closer with a pleased little sound, and Remus found himself adjusting his shoulder to make the position easier for him.

The opening notes of Queen’s Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy rose from the record player, and somewhere beyond the sofa James stopped speaking halfway through what appeared to be an animated account of a Quidditch-related injustice. Mary Macdonald waited beside him, eyebrows raised, while he looked towards the music with an expression that made Remus wonder whether somebody had scratched one of his favourite albums.

Then James’s gaze moved to the sofa. It rested on Sirius before dropping to Remus’s hand, and the change in his face left Remus feeling briefly as though he’d been caught doing something improper, despite James having seen them sitting like this often enough to complain about the amount of furniture they left unused.

“What?” Remus mouthed.

James closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and turned back to Mary, who followed his glance towards them before saying something that made him throw up one hand.

Remus frowned after him, trying to determine what he could possibly have done to deserve that reaction, but his fingers had stilled while he watched. Sirius caught his wrist with a sleepy noise of complaint and guided his hand back into his hair, settling against him again once Remus resumed the gentle movement.

Whatever James’s problem was, Remus supposed it could wait.

+++

Firewhisky had soaked into the carpet by half past eleven, and Peter had lost a substantial amount of money betting against Mary at Exploding Snap. Sirius, meanwhile, had apparently decided that the most comfortable place in Gryffindor Tower was the narrow strip of sofa occupied by Remus’s person. He had slid down gradually, interrupting his own conversation to complain whenever Remus’s elbow obstructed the descent, until his head rested in Remus’s lap and his boots hung over the opposite arm of the sofa.

The position was familiar; the length of time he’d remained in it was less so. Parties usually brought out Sirius’s inability to sit still, and Remus would have expected to lose him to a table-top performance or some ill-advised competition with James long before now. Instead, he was arguing with Peter about whether Freddie Mercury was a better singer than Robert Plant, gesturing with sufficient conviction that Peter had moved his drink beyond reach, while Remus attempted to follow a conversation with Lily.

“You’re not listening to me.”

Remus looked up from the strands of hair he’d been separating between his fingers. Sirius had stopped directing his hand some time ago, but that hardly constituted a sensible explanation for why he was still doing it.

“I am,” he said. “Something about Potter.”

“I haven’t mentioned James once.”

“That’s unusual for you.”

Lily narrowed her eyes, though her mouth betrayed her, and waved the smoke from his abandoned cigarette away with a pointed flutter of her hand. Her gaze moved from the ashtray to Remus, conveying an opinion of his habits that might have been more convincing if she hadn’t looked so pleased with herself. He hoped this meant the earlier accusation had been abandoned.

“You know,” she said, shifting beyond the drifting smoke with exaggerated dignity, “one of these days you’re going to have to decide whether you’re interested in having a life of your own.”

His fingers caught briefly in Sirius’s hair. He eased them free before Sirius could complain, conscious of the head resting against his thighs and Peter close enough to hear if Lily chose to pursue the subject.

“Bit dramatic, Evans. I’m at a party, which is generally considered having a life.”

“You’re sitting in a corner with Sirius.”

“An excellent corner. And he’s fallen asleep on me, apparently, so leaving would be inconsiderate.”

“I’m awake,” Sirius announced without opening his eyes. “And Moony has an excellent life. Full of interesting people, stimulating conversation, and exceptionally handsome friends.”

“That last one’s debatable,” Remus said, grateful for the interruption even as Lily gave him a look suggesting that Sirius had illustrated her point rather neatly.

Sirius opened one eye, then the other, taking his time over the injury. “Debatable?” He caught Remus’s wrist and drew his hand down towards his chest. “Look at me, Moony. Really look at this face.”

“Unfortunately, I am.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Tragic, actually. All that potential wasted on such an awful personality.”

Sirius laughed, the movement travelling through the back of his head into Remus’s legs, and lifted Remus’s hand to press a kiss against his knuckles. By the time Remus registered the warmth of his mouth, Sirius had released him and turned towards Peter again, resuming his argument at precisely the point where he’d abandoned it.

Remus’s hand remained suspended for a moment before he lowered it to his knee. The skin felt absurdly conspicuous, as though somebody might glance down and see what had happened there, and he curled his fingers into his palm while Peter informed Sirius that sheer volume did not constitute musical range.

Of course, Sirius kissed people. He kissed James on the cheek whenever he wanted to annoy him, and boys when sufficiently dared; he’d once kissed Professor McGonagall’s hand after she awarded Gryffindor twenty points for an impressive piece of Transfiguration, although the detention had spoiled his triumph. Remus had an ample supply of evidence against attaching significance to the gesture. None of it prevented him from remembering the brief pressure of Sirius’s lips, or from wishing he’d been looking at him when he’d done it.

Lily was watching him. He reached for his butterbeer before she could say anything and directed his attention towards James, who had acquired a pair of sunglasses despite the fact that it was nearly midnight and was conducting an increasingly elaborate performance with a rolled-up copy of the Daily Prophet. Mary had bent almost double laughing, one hand braced against Peter’s shoulder, while a seventh-year from the Quidditch team attempted to confiscate James’s imaginary microphone.

The opening guitar of Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back in Town cut through the room, drawing a cheer from somewhere near the record player, and Sirius sat upright so abruptly that Remus’s hand, which had somehow returned to his hair, came with him.

“Oh, brilliant. Come on.”

“Sirius—” Remus had scarcely freed his fingers before Sirius was standing in front of him, catching his wrist again. “What are you doing?”

“Dance with me.”

Remus glanced towards the space in front of the fireplace, where James appeared to be arguing with his imaginary audience.

“Absolutely not. I’m comfortable.”

“You’ve been comfortable all evening.” Sirius tugged once, experimentally, and when Remus remained seated he leaned over him, bracing his free hand against the back of the sofa. “You can be comfortable again afterwards. I’ll even let you have your legs back.”

“How generous. Perhaps you could start now.”

Sirius only smiled, close enough that a loose strand of hair brushed Remus’s forehead. The room had grown hot, and there was a faint flush beneath his cheekbones, a softness around his eyes that made Remus unwillingly attentive to the fact that Sirius was looking at him rather than towards the music. Behind him, somebody shouted the first line badly enough to make James object.

“Please?” Sirius asked, lowering his voice into the coaxing register Remus had learned to distrust through years of being persuaded into things.

“You only do that because you know it works.”

“Does it?”

“No,” Remus said, putting down his butterbeer.

Lily laughed as he stood. Remus declined to acknowledge it, principally because Sirius was already drawing him away from the sofa, slipping between people with Remus’s hand held firmly in his and calling for James to move before they’d quite reached him.

There was very little opportunity to regret the decision. Sirius began dancing with the careless enthusiasm of somebody who believed rhythm was a negotiable requirement, James abandoned his microphone to throw an arm around his shoulders, and Peter arrived with an expression of such determined excitement that Remus suspected his glasses were about to become a casualty. Within moments they were stumbling into one another, shouting along to the record, and laughing whenever an ambitious movement resulted in somebody receiving an elbow in the ribs.

Remus couldn’t have said when he stopped worrying about looking ridiculous. It was difficult to preserve any dignity around three people who’d known him since he was eleven and regarded embarrassment as a legitimate expression of friendship, particularly when James was attempting a harmony so remote from the actual song that Peter kept losing his place to complain about it. Remus slung an arm around Peter’s shoulders, steadied the glasses slipping down his nose, and found himself laughing too hard to sing anything at all.

Sirius caught his free hand and drew him out from beneath Peter’s arm, spinning him with enough force that they nearly collided with Mary. She planted a hand between Sirius’s shoulder blades and shoved them back towards James, laughing as she told him to watch where he was going; Sirius offered an apology that seemed unlikely to persuade anybody, his hair escaping entirely from its tie as he turned towards Remus again.

“What did she say?” Remus shouted.

“Think she said we’re wonderful!”

“Unlikely!”

Sirius leaned closer to hear him, grinning, and Remus took a step backwards to make room just as his heel struck the edge of a footstool. Sirius caught him around the waist before he could fall, pulling him forward with a laugh that Remus felt against his ear.

“Careful, Moony!”

“Somebody’s left furniture in the way!”

“Terrible place for it. Common room.”

Remus tried to answer, but James collided with Sirius’s shoulder and all three of them lurched sideways, Peter grabbing Remus’s sleeve with the solemn determination of somebody attempting a rescue. They recovered in an untidy knot of arms and complaints, Sirius still holding Remus at the waist, his fingers warm through the wool of his jumper.

For a few seconds Remus let himself remain there. His balance had returned; he could have moved away easily enough, but Sirius was laughing beside him, his arm steady against Remus’s back, and there was nowhere else he particularly wanted to stand. When James launched into another attempt at the chorus, Sirius turned towards Remus with an expression of such delighted disbelief that Remus laughed before he’d heard whatever comment followed.

He knew the evening would look different in the quiet of the dormitory. There would be time then to recall where Sirius had touched him and wonder whether he’d held on longer than necessary, to examine something that had happened easily until it became difficult. Here, with Peter singing into James’s abandoned newspaper and the music rattling the windows, Remus could leave those questions alone.

Sirius’s hair had fallen into his face again. Remus pushed it back, his hand briefly cupping the side of his head as Sirius leaned towards him to say something about James’s singing, and found himself laughing with his fingers still caught behind Sirius’s ear.

Lily might have a point about his life. At present, however, it was being held together rather comfortably by Sirius’s arm, and Remus wasn’t ready to move.

+++

Remus woke to the unpleasant discovery that somebody had replaced the inside of his skull with damp cotton wool, which was expanding at an alarming rate, and that the weight pressing against his left side was not, as he’d briefly hoped, a particularly heavy blanket. Even before he opened his eyes, the faint smell of cigarettes, the cool edge of a ring against his stomach, and the knee wedged between his legs identified the culprit; Sirius had arranged himself across him with an ingenuity that made the width of the mattress seem a personal challenge.

His face was tucked beneath Remus’s jaw, each exhalation stirring the collar of his pyjama shirt. One hand had gathered a loose fold of the cotton against his middle, and when Remus moved experimentally, Sirius tightened his grip just enough to discourage further investigation. Remus lay still, considering the demands of his bladder against the possibility of another ten minutes in bed, and decided that the situation was not yet an emergency.

The dormitory was cold beyond the blankets. He could feel it along the exposed edge of his shoulder, a useful reminder that getting up would involve finding his slippers and enduring the stone floor before he reached the bathroom; remaining where he was, meanwhile, required nothing beyond the discretion to leave Sirius undisturbed. It was an argument he had become remarkably good at making. He returned library books on time, generally completed his homework, and possessed a workable understanding of right and wrong, but give him a sleeping Sirius Black and he could find a principled defence for almost any delay.

A scraping noise from the other side of the room interrupted that defence, followed by a curse and the sound of something wooden striking the floor.

“Fuck’s sake,” James muttered.

Remus opened one eye. James was standing beside his trunk in yesterday’s trousers and a Gryffindor Quidditch jumper, examining the broken handle of a hairbrush. His glasses sat crookedly on his nose and his hair had achieved a height Remus would have considered structurally impossible, suggesting that the brush had perished in a noble but ultimately hopeless undertaking.

“Morning,” Remus offered.

James glanced over. His gaze travelled across the pillow, paused somewhere around Sirius’s arm beneath the blankets, and returned to Remus’s face.

“Morning,” he said, with a restraint Remus did not generally associate with him.

“What’s wrong with you? You look dreadful.”

“Thank you. Always lovely to start the day with encouragement.” James set the broken handle on his bedside table and rubbed beneath one lens of his glasses.

“Didn’t you sleep?”

“Not particularly, no. Somebody decided at three o’clock this morning that the entire dormitory needed to hear The Jean Genie for the fourth time.”

Remus glanced down at the dark head tucked against him. He remembered the record beginning, James complaining from behind his curtains, and Sirius insisting that everybody ought to appreciate the bass line, although the order of those events was less certain.

“Ah. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise for him, Moony. It only encourages him.”

Beneath the blankets, Sirius stirred, his fingers tightening in Remus’s shirt before loosening again.

“Didn’t play it four times,” he mumbled.

James stopped rummaging in his trunk. Remus bit the inside of his cheek, which was becoming an important precaution.

“Morning, Pads.”

“Three,” Sirius continued without lifting his head. “Other one was Rebel Rebel.”

James regarded them for a moment, then made a noise that suggested he had decided against attempting conversation before breakfast. He returned to the trunk with enough force to make its lid knock against the bedpost, while Sirius settled closer, apparently content to have corrected the record.

Remus watched the grey light falling across the canopy. He could have moved now that Sirius was awake; instead, he had adjusted his arm to accommodate him, and the small, automatic concession annoyed him more than the interruption had. It was possible to know exactly what one ought to do and still find a perfectly adequate reason to remain beneath the blankets, letting another boy’s breath warm the skin beside one’s collar.

“You’re doing it again,” James said.

Remus turned his head. “Doing what?”

“Thinking too loudly.” James held up a clean shirt, examined something on the sleeve, and appeared to conclude that it was acceptable.

“I’m not thinking anything.”

“Excellent. Keep it up.” He disappeared into the bathroom before Remus could object, shutting the door with a firmness that made Sirius complain into his shoulder.

From the bed opposite came the rustle of curtains, followed by Peter’s sleepy voice. “Is there breakfast?”

“Probably,” Remus said. “I don’t think they’ve cancelled it.”

“Good.” Peter was quiet for long enough that Remus assumed he had gone back to sleep, before adding, “Is Sirius in your bed?”

“No, Peter. I’ve developed a second head.”

There was a thoughtful pause beyond the curtains. “Does it snore?”

Sirius lifted his face from Remus’s neck. “Everybody’s a bloody comedian.”

Remus laughed, and Sirius turned the complaint upon him with a look considerably undermined by the crease from the pillow across his cheek. His hair had flattened on one side and risen on the other, leaving him apparently unaware of the contradiction as he blinked against the morning light.

“Morning, sweetheart,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.

Remus had to wait a moment before answering. Sirius had used the name often enough that it ought to have lost its capacity to catch him unprepared; James was darling whenever Sirius wanted a favour, Peter became my love when there was food to steal, and Madam Pomfrey had once been addressed as angel with disastrous results. None of that helped when the word arrived this softly, with Sirius’s face still resting close to his own and the pillow crease visible beneath his eye.

“Morning,” Remus managed, hoping the thickness of his voice could be attributed to the hour.

Sirius rubbed his eyes and glanced towards the curtains. “Didn’t mean to keep everyone up.”

“You did offer an encore.”

“Nobody had to accept it.” He let his head drop back against Remus’s shoulder, rearranging the pillow beneath them. “Your bed’s better than mine.”

“It’s exactly the same bed.”

“Different mattress, then.”

“Identical.”

“Pillow?”

“You stole my pillow last week.”

“Ah.” Sirius nodded against his neck. “That’ll be it.”

Remus turned towards the window, giving the smile time to leave his face. Snow had fallen during the night, softening the grounds beneath a thin covering of white, and the trees along the edge of the Forest stood against a sky the colour of old pewter. Ordinarily, he would have welcomed such a morning: an excuse to stay indoors, read beside the fire, and drink tea until the windows darkened again. He still wanted those things, but he could already imagine Sirius occupying the other end of the sofa, and that was beginning to feel less like a pleasant addition to the plan than the condition upon which he’d enjoy it.

“Pads,” he said, “I need to get up.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Breakfast. A shower. Possibly the rest of my life.”

“Overrated,” Sirius said, but Remus shifted his knee and gave his shoulder a nudge, at which point Sirius rolled onto his back with an aggrieved sigh.

The movement revealed more of the bedside table: Remus’s battered copy of The Catcher in the Rye, a glass containing an inch of water, and one of Sirius’s rings balanced beside it. His jacket hung from the bedpost, his boots had been abandoned against Remus’s trunk, and the spare pillow that supposedly explained the superior sleeping arrangement was lying on the floor. Sirius’s belongings had spread through the little space so thoroughly that Remus no longer noticed them arriving, only found them when he needed somewhere to put his own things.

He pushed himself upright, slowly enough to avoid making his headache worse, and was looking for his slippers when Sirius caught his wrist.

“Oi. Found this last night.”

He held up a bent cigarette between two fingers. There was a crease through the paper that suggested it had enjoyed the party less than either of them.

“Where?” Remus asked.

“Behind your ear. You were talking to Evans and wouldn’t come upstairs.”

Remus recalled Lily saying something about the library, then Mary attempting to confiscate a drink from James; the connecting minutes were vague, muddled by tiredness and the amount of noise there had been in the room.

“I don’t remember refusing.”

“You said you weren’t tired. Very important conversation, couldn’t possibly be interrupted.” Sirius offered the cigarette and withdrew it when Remus reached for it, plainly enjoying himself. “So I carried you.”

“You did not.”

“Most of the way. You walked the last bit.”

Remus considered the practicalities, the stairs, and the likelihood that Sirius was improving the account for his own entertainment. He remembered an arm around his shoulders, his cheek brushing leather, and James loudly demanding to know why he hadn’t been afforded the same service; whether that supported Sirius’s story or merely confirmed that nobody involved could be trusted was difficult to establish.

“You’re a menace.”

“Your menace,” Sirius said, dropping the cigarette into his palm.

Remus closed his fingers around it and stood, finally putting enough distance between them to find his slippers. Sirius was already burrowing into the space he’d left, pulling the blankets up with a satisfaction that made Remus reluctant to disturb him even though this was, in fact, his bed. He should have told him to move. Instead, he collected a clean shirt from the trunk and listened to the muffled sound of James complaining in the bathroom.

Lily had suggested having a life of his own. Remus was beginning to think she might have meant something more substantial than changing his plans once Sirius had decided what he wanted to do, but wanting that was easier than knowing where to begin.

He tucked the damaged cigarette into the pocket of his pyjamas and went to wait for the bathroom, leaving Sirius warm beneath his blankets.

+++

Getting to the library had taken nearly five hours, enough tea to drown a small animal, and six attempts by Sirius to persuade Remus that studying was a misuse of his remaining youth. There had been a proposed snowball fight, a trip to the kitchens rendered unnecessary by their having just left breakfast, and a spell of lying across Remus’s lap complaining of boredom while Remus tried to read. When threats to hide his textbooks proved ineffective, Sirius had looked at him with enormous grey eyes and asked whether he didn’t love him anymore.

Remus had informed him that he never had. Sirius had laughed, kissed his cheek, and stolen his scarf, leaving Remus to find another one before he could make his escape.

The quiet beyond the library doors felt almost physical after the common room, as though he had stepped beneath the surface of the day’s noise. Pages turned somewhere between the shelves, a chair scraped softly against stone, and the thin winter light caught the dust above the tables without offering much warmth. Lily sat beneath one of the tall windows, her red hair falling over a dark green cardigan as she worked through a formidable stack of parchment; somebody had lit the fire near Madam Pince’s desk, but it had yet to overcome the cold gathered along the outside wall.

Lily looked up as he approached, her attention settling on the scarf wound around his neck. “That’s not the one you were wearing earlier.”

“Sirius,” Remus explained, pulling out the chair opposite her.

“Ah.” She moved a pile of books to make room. “He’s not coming, is he?”

“Merlin, no. He’s trying to persuade James the lake’s frozen enough to walk on.”

Lily lowered her quill. “Please tell me James isn’t listening.”

“James suggested testing it with Pete.”

“Of course he did.”

“Peter’s not enthusiastic.” Remus took Advanced Potion-Making from his bag and set it beside the three colours of ink Lily had arranged at her elbow. “An encouraging sign. Perhaps one of them will survive.”

She laughed quietly and returned to her notes. For a while, they worked without needing to talk, passing reference books across the table and occasionally comparing their interpretations of Slughorn’s instructions. Remus liked that about Lily: she could leave a silence alone, and when he did ask her something, she explained it without suggesting that he ought to apologise for not having understood already. His own notes gradually acquired an order that had been absent when he’d arrived, and he was beginning to think he might finish before dinner when she put down her quill.

“So.”

“No,” Remus said, keeping his eyes on the sentence he was writing.

“I haven’t asked you anything.”

“There’s a tone. I recognise it.” He added three words to his explanation of powdered moonstone and found that he couldn’t think of a fourth while she was watching him. “What?”

Lily rested her forearms on the table. “How long are you planning to keep doing this?”

“Potions? Another twenty minutes, ideally. Then I thought I’d have a nervous breakdown over Transfiguration.”

“Remus.”

He set down his quill, leaving a small blot beneath the last word, and rubbed his face. The scar across his nose was rough beneath his fingertips, a useful little distraction from the fact that he had known perfectly well what she meant before she asked. He’d hoped the party would prove sufficient discussion of the subject, or that Lily might accept his willingness to laugh at himself as a reason not to investigate further.

“I’m not going to lecture you,” she said.

“That’s generally what people say immediately before lecturing someone.”

“I’m serious.”

“Unfortunate choice of words.”

Her look persuaded him to abandon that line of defence. He pulled the parchment farther from his sleeve and waited while she lowered her voice, keeping the conversation within their corner of the library.

“I don’t like seeing you make yourself miserable.”

Beyond the window, snow drifted past in slow, uneven flakes. Remus imagined Sirius emerging from whatever calamity he and James were courting outside, his hair wet with melted snow and his pockets full of things he’d insist upon showing them, and felt a smile begin before he could prevent it.

“I’m not miserable.”

“Not all the time, I know. But you were last night.” Lily glanced towards his hand, where he had begun worrying a loose thread from his cuff. “And you don’t have to convince me he’s done nothing wrong for me to care about that.”

Remus let go of the thread. He had been preparing precisely that argument: Sirius had only been kissing somebody, Sirius was allowed to enjoy himself, and Sirius hadn’t asked Remus to fall in love with him and could scarcely be blamed for the inconvenience. It would have been easier if Lily had accused him of something. Defending Sirius was a familiar occupation, and one at which Remus had considerably more practice than explaining himself.

The difficulty was that Sirius’s affection was real. Remus had never doubted that, even on evenings when it made him wish he’d chosen some quieter, less ruinous person to love. There was no malice in the way Sirius sought him out, no promise hidden beneath the borrowed jumpers or the nights spent sharing a pillow. As far as Remus could tell, Sirius was giving him everything he believed their friendship required, and Remus was taking it home to examine for the one thing he wanted that had never been offered.

“It’s difficult sometimes,” he said, choosing a scratch in the tabletop to look at, “being close to somebody when you want something they don’t. And I know that’s my problem. It’s not as though he’s ever told me he wants to—” He stopped, unwilling to supply the rest of that sentence within even distant earshot of Madam Pince. “He hasn’t suggested anything like that.”

Lily tilted her head. “Hasn’t he?”

“Please don’t do the thing where you tell me he sleeps in my bed and steals my clothes, and therefore must be harbouring some grand romantic passion.”

“I wasn’t going to say grand.”

“Lily.”

“All right.” She settled back, but the movement of her eyebrows suggested that agreement had its limits.

“He does the same sort of thing with James,” Remus added, hearing how quickly he’d said it.

“He doesn’t sleep curled around James.”

“He has done. They’re practically brothers.”

“That’s rather my point.”

Remus leaned against the back of his chair. He could feel the old temptation to collect evidence beginning again, an inventory of every hand on his knee and every affectionate name, and he disliked how readily it took hold when Lily had barely done more than ask a question. He had assembled those gestures before, sometimes with a thoroughness he wished he could apply to his revision, and they never resolved themselves into anything he trusted enough to act upon.

“I know what it looks like,” he admitted. “But you haven’t seen him with girls. Not properly. He’s different.”

“Different how?”

He searched for an answer that wouldn’t expose quite how much time he’d spent observing the matter. “He goes after them. If he likes somebody, he makes sure they know it. Finds excuses to talk to them, asks them to Hogsmeade, disappears behind a tapestry with them. There’s usually very little opportunity for misunderstanding.” He tried to make the last part sound funny and heard the resentment instead. “He’s never done that with me.”

Lily was quiet, her fingers resting beside the quill. When she answered, she had lost the lightly challenging tone. “Perhaps he doesn’t know he could.”

“He’s had five years to work out whether he wants to.” Remus glanced towards the shelves, where two younger students were whispering over a book too large for either to hold comfortably. “And even if he did, I don’t think I could bear being wrong.”

There was the truth of it, plain enough that he regretted saying it before Lily had time to respond. Wanting Sirius was survivable. He’d learned to fit it around lessons, meals, and ordinary conversation; there were days when it remained quiet enough that he could enjoy being his friend without needing to consider what else he wished they were. A confession would give it a different shape. Sirius would have to answer, and if the answer was the one Remus expected, all the touches he currently enjoyed might become things Sirius thought twice about giving him.

He could imagine that carefulness more clearly than any rejection: Sirius pausing beside the bed before deciding to sleep in his own, smiling apologetically when Remus’s hand found his hair, being kind in a way that made kindness unbearable. Remus looked down at his cuff and discovered that he had pulled the thread long enough to leave a small gap in the knitting.

Lily reached across the table and put her hand over his. “Then you don’t have to find out,” she said. “Not now, if you don’t want to. I just think you deserve the chance to be happy with somebody who can tell you what they want.”

He looked up, surprised by the absence of a further argument. He’d expected another reason to be brave, perhaps, another interpretation of Sirius that he would have to refuse because believing it for even a moment would cost him more than Lily could know. Her hand remained warm over his, and the relief of being allowed to leave the question unanswered made him feel briefly, embarrassingly close to tears.

“It’s not as though there’s a queue,” he said.

Lily stared at him. “Do you genuinely not realise how attractive you are?”

The surprise escaped as a laugh, louder than he intended. Madam Pince glanced up from her desk, and Remus lowered his head, pretending a sudden interest in the Potions book until her attention moved elsewhere.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he whispered. “I’m six feet of elbows and bad posture.”

“And lovely eyes, very nice hair, and an unfair collection of freckles.”

“You’re describing a woodland animal.”

“A handsome woodland animal. Who is also clever, funny, and kind, though apparently incapable of accepting a compliment without making me work for it.”

Remus felt the heat climbing past his collar. “You’re biased.”

“Probably,” Lily said. “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

He looked at their hands, unsure how to answer something offered so directly. Compliments about his body in particular had always arrived at an awkward angle; he was accustomed to regarding it as something that might betray him, something to cover or explain away before anybody looked too closely. Being told it could be attractive left him with the uncomfortable urge to point out whatever Lily had overlooked, and he resisted it chiefly because she was still watching him with such patient annoyance.

She gave his hand a squeeze and withdrew hers, allowing him time to settle the feeling somewhere less visible. “Anyway,” she continued, reaching for her quill without quite returning to work, “there must be somebody else you fancy.”

“Must there? Is that a requirement?”

“For the purposes of this conversation, yes. Somebody who isn’t Sirius Black.”

He opened his mouth to object, then found that an answer had occurred to him before he could produce the joke. Benjy Fenwick was attractive. Remus had noticed that early enough in their Tuesday study sessions to become self-conscious whenever Benjy leaned across the table, although he’d generally dealt with it by concentrating very hard on whatever passage they were discussing. He was funny too, in a dry, understated way that could catch Remus unprepared, and the hour they spent sharing reference books had gradually become an afternoon neither appeared particularly eager to finish.

Lily leaned forward a little. “Oh?”

“Don’t.”

“There is somebody.”

“I haven’t said that.”

“You’ve stopped arguing, which is usually a promising sign.” She smiled when he looked towards his parchment. “Who?”

There was no convincing lie available, and Remus suspected that making one up would only prolong the matter. “Benjy Fenwick.”

Her face changed at once. “Seventh-year Ravenclaw Benjy Fenwick? Dark hair, very attractive?”

“That’s generally how people recognise him.”

“Remus, that’s excellent. He’s lovely.”

“Yes,” he said, unable to stop the smile now. “I had noticed.”

Lily glanced towards the nearest occupied table before lowering her voice again. “And he likes boys, doesn’t he?”

“He’s told me he does.” Remus appreciated the way she’d asked, without sending the information any farther than it needed to go. “He’s fairly open about it with people he knows.”

“You already spend time together?”

“We study. Most Tuesdays.”

“And do you like him?”

He considered the question properly this time, giving Benjy more than the brief acknowledgement he usually allowed before his thoughts wandered back towards Sirius. There had been an afternoon when Benjy brought him tea because he’d noticed him shivering beside the window, and a long argument about Bowie that had delayed their leaving until Madam Pince started extinguishing lamps. Remus remembered him mentioning that he liked boys with such unremarkable ease that Remus nearly dropped his quill, then carrying on with the conversation as though he’d said he preferred his tea without sugar. There was something reassuring about that, something Remus had wanted to hear again without knowing how to ask.

Benjy also had very nice hands, a fact that emerged with sufficient clarity to make Remus wonder how often he’d been noticing them.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I think I do.”

“Then why not ask him out?”

Remus raised his head. “Just like that?”

“I’d suggest using words, but otherwise, yes.”

He glanced at the unfinished essay between them. Asking Benjy out would remove the useful protection of a textbook, the assumption that they’d chosen each other’s company because it made their homework easier; there would be no pretending he hadn’t meant anything once he’d said it. He tried to picture them sitting in the Three Broomsticks with no parchment to look at whenever he became nervous, and discovered that the prospect frightened him less than he expected. It was still alarming, but there was pleasure in imagining Benjy smiling across a table because he’d wanted to be there.

“He’s a year older,” Remus said.

“Yes.” Lily waited, apparently unconvinced that this constituted a difficulty.

“And he might not be interested.”

“He might be. You’d be asking, Remus, not binding him to a magical contract.”

Outside, the snow had begun to fall more heavily, obscuring the far edge of the grounds. Somewhere in the castle a clock struck the hour, and Remus realised he had spent most of an afternoon discussing Sirius even after finally succeeding in leaving him behind. Later, Sirius would come back damp and triumphant from whatever he’d done with James, throw himself across Remus’s bed, and demand a full account of the day; Remus would offer him tea, complain about his boots on the blankets, and be pleased to have him there. He could see the evening so clearly that it felt less like anticipation than recollection.

Perhaps he could enjoy that and have something else to look forward to. Benjy’s smile came to mind again, the way he had pushed a book towards Remus with one finger marking a passage he thought he’d find funny, and Remus allowed the memory to remain without asking it to compete with anything.

“All right,” he said. “I might ask him.”

Lily’s smile was immediate enough to make him regret announcing the decision before he’d had time to become accustomed to it.

“Don’t make a fuss.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re making a face.”

“A supportive face,” she said, lowering her eyes to her notes with a conspicuous effort at composure.

“Terrifying. Do put it away.”

She laughed softly and resumed writing, leaving Remus to pick up his quill and determine what the unfinished sentence had been intended to explain. He read it twice without much success, then turned back a page to find the reference. The idea of Saturday kept interrupting him, but for once he didn’t particularly mind being distracted.

+++

Tuesday afternoon found Remus attempting to get dressed. He had convinced himself that asking Benjy Fenwick to Hogsmeade was a reasonable thing to do, reconsidered the matter until it became an appalling threat to their existing friendship, and spent forty minutes in front of his wardrobe trying to decide which jumper made him look least like somebody raised by a collection of second-hand bookshops. Benjy had seen him wearing almost everything he owned, including the mustard-coloured monstrosity his mother had knitted two Christmases earlier, but choosing clothes with the intention of being found attractive made even the familiar ones appear to require an explanation.

Sirius was making himself an obstacle. “Not that one,” he announced from Remus’s bed, where he had been lying for twenty minutes with a copy of NME across his chest and one boot dangling close to the pillow.

Remus paused with his hand on the sleeve of a dark green jumper. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Doesn’t suit you.”

“You wore it yesterday.”

“Exactly. Looks better on me.” Sirius turned a page, apparently satisfied that this explained the matter.

Remus looked at the boot, then at the magazine Sirius had been reading with intermittent attention whenever he became more interested in Remus’s wardrobe. He was still wearing the leather jacket he considered sufficient protection against winter, and the position of his head on the pillow left the silver hoop in his ear clearly visible. Remus had spent enough of the afternoon noticing such things; if he continued, he would never get as far as the library.

“You could try wearing your own clothes occasionally,” he said, removing the green jumper from the hanger anyway.

“Wouldn’t want to frighten anyone.”

He settled on the soft brown one with the narrow cream stripe around the collar, old enough to have lost the stiffness his mother had complained about when she bought it in Cardiff the previous summer. It sat a little loosely through the shoulders, and he liked the way the cuffs fell over his wrists. Sirius had declared it his favourite almost immediately, a preference that had proved irritatingly difficult to exclude from Remus’s decision even when he was choosing what to wear for somebody else.

“That one’s better,” Sirius said.

“Thought you weren’t paying attention.”

“I’m always paying attention to you, Moony.”

Remus pulled the jumper over his head, grateful for a moment in which Sirius couldn’t see his face, and reached for the scarf lying over the back of his chair.

“Well, I’m going to the library.”

“Again? You only came back from there yesterday.”

“Some of us have ambitions beyond getting expelled.”

“Sounds exhausting.” Sirius rolled onto his side, propping his head against his hand. “I’ll come with you.”

Remus stopped with the scarf hanging between his fingers. Usually he would have welcomed the offer, even knowing how little work he would finish with Sirius beside him: there would be drawings in the margins of his notes, suggestions that they abandon everything for the kitchens, and, occasionally, an hour of quiet in which their shoulders rested together while they read. Today he had been relying upon an afternoon without any of those things, and the prospect of trying to ask Benjy out while Sirius sat opposite him seemed sufficiently dreadful to require immediate action.

“Don’t you have detention?”

“Not until six.”

“And that Transfiguration essay?”

“Finished it.” Sirius smiled when Remus turned to look at him. “James did most of it.”

Remus wound the scarf around his neck, giving himself time to assemble an answer that did not sound like a refusal. There was nothing particularly secret about studying with Benjy. He’d mentioned it before, and Sirius had generally shown no interest beyond complaining about the time Remus spent away; perhaps explaining the arrangement again would suffice.

“I’m studying with Benjy.”

The corner of the magazine page stopped moving beneath Sirius’s fingers. “Fenwick?”

“Yes. We’re sharing some books for Charms.”

“What’s he helping you with?”

“Nothing. I just said—” Remus paused, unwilling to sound impatient when Sirius had only asked a question. “We both need the same reference books.”

“You’re better at Charms than he is.”

“You don’t know that. He’s a year ahead of us.”

“Doesn’t make him cleverer.” Sirius returned to the magazine, though Remus couldn’t tell whether he’d begun reading again or simply decided the discussion was finished.

Remus examined him for a moment, uncertain what response had been expected. It was the sort of loyalty Sirius offered without being asked, wholehearted and occasionally inaccurate, and ordinarily he might have enjoyed it. Now it left him wondering whether the prospect of their studying together had somehow become an argument about his abilities.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” he said, collecting his bag.

Sirius made a noncommittal noise. Remus was halfway to the door when he called his name, drawing him back before he had time to pretend he hadn’t heard.

“Don’t forget we’ve got that record to listen to.”

Remus’s hand tightened around the strap. They’d been keeping it unplayed until they had an evening free, an arrangement Sirius had insisted upon after discovering Remus had listened to the last one without him. It would have been easy to stay another few minutes, make a joke about James interfering, and find himself sitting on the edge of the bed before he quite decided to do it.

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Jamie keeps trying to put it on.”

“Tell him I’ll hex him if he does.”

“Already did.” Sirius’s grin returned, quick and unguarded, and Remus found himself smiling back before leaving.

The corridors were busy with students moving between lessons and the library, their footsteps echoing against the stone while wind rattled the narrow windows above the courtyard. Remus passed two Hufflepuffs arguing about Quidditch and narrowly avoided a group of second-years pursuing a bewitched paper aeroplane, which had developed enough initiative to fly directly into the back of a prefect’s head. He kept walking before the resulting interrogation could involve him, practising possible invitations beneath his breath.

Would you like to go to Hogsmeade with me? sounded perfectly manageable, provided he ignored the possibility that Benjy would assume he wanted to buy textbooks. Would you like to go on a date? removed that difficulty but introduced the more substantial one of requiring Remus to say it. By the time he reached the library, he’d tried both versions often enough that neither sounded like something a person might naturally ask, and he decided to begin with his Charms essay, postponing any further effort until he’d remembered how to speak.

Benjy was at their usual table beside the window, wearing a dark blue jumper with the sleeves pushed up his forearms. His thick brown hair curled around his ears, and he had a finger resting on the passage he’d been reading; when he looked up, his smile spread slowly enough that Remus had time to appreciate the change before becoming self-conscious about watching it. There was nothing particularly showy about Benjy’s handsomeness. Remus liked the breadth of his shoulders, the ease with which he occupied the chair, the mouth that often looked as though he’d thought of something amusing and was deciding whether to say it.

“Remus. Thought you might’ve abandoned me.”

“Sorry. Got held up.” He set his bag beside the chair, hoping that would account for an afternoon spent debating knitwear.

Benjy glanced at the jumper. “That’s nice.”

“Thanks. It’s old,” Remus said, as though that constituted useful information or a reason the compliment might be withdrawn.

“Doesn’t make it any less nice.”

Remus sat down, suddenly glad of the choice, and took out his notes while Benjy pushed a book across the table. He’d found the reference Remus had been trying to borrow for a fortnight, with a slip of parchment marking the section they needed, and they spent the next half-hour working through a passage on non-verbal charmwork written by a wizard with a vindictive disregard for punctuation.

The work made conversation easier. Remus could ask a question without considering what it revealed, disagree without wondering whether he sounded attractive, and laugh when Benjy suggested that the author’s chief achievement had been making a simple explanation resemble a legal dispute. Slowly, the nervousness he’d brought from the dormitory loosened enough to let him enjoy himself. Benjy waited while he read, returning to his own notes without attempting to fill the silence, and Remus found that he was no longer counting down to the moment when he’d have to say something brave.

At some point Benjy reached into his bag and produced a little paper packet, sliding it between the textbooks.

“Here.”

“What’s that?”

“Chocolate. Thought you might want some.”

Remus opened the folded top and found the chocolate-covered peppermint creams he’d mentioned liking several weeks earlier. He glanced up, surprised enough that Benjy began to smile before he asked the question.

“You remembered?”

“You gave me quite a detailed explanation of why these ones were better. Seemed a shame to waste it.”

“They are better. The ratio of chocolate to peppermint is important.”

“So I gathered.” Benjy rested his arms on the table, watching Remus select one with an amusement that made him increasingly conscious of his smile.

It was a small present, but he liked the evidence of being remembered somewhere beyond their Tuesday afternoons. Benjy had needed to see the sweets and think of him, perhaps make room for the packet beside his books when he packed his bag, and the modest effort pleased Remus more than its scale appeared to warrant. He offered the open packet across the table and found himself hoping that Benjy would take one, prolonging the little exchange before they went back to work.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.” Benjy chose a sweet and considered him for a moment. “Do you always look that pleased when somebody buys you chocolate?”

The warmth in Remus’s face became difficult to ignore. There were several sensible answers available, most of them requiring no more than a joke about how easily he could be bribed, but he was tired of arriving at the safe version of a conversation before he’d allowed anything else to happen.

“Depends who’s buying it.”

Benjy’s eyebrows rose, and Remus looked down at the packet, suddenly uncertain whether he’d said something bold or merely embarrassing. He could manage sarcasm in almost any circumstances, but waiting to see whether somebody would recognise an invitation beneath it was new enough to leave him acutely aware of the silence.

“Well,” Benjy said, “I might have to bring you chocolate more often.”

Remus raised his head. Benjy was still looking at him, no longer smiling quite so broadly, and the care with which he waited made it easier to answer without retreating into a joke.

“I wouldn’t object.”

“Good to know.”

They returned to their notes, although Remus had acquired a fresh difficulty concentrating whenever Benjy leaned across the table. He caught the scent of his cologne, warm and faintly woody beneath the smell of paper, and found himself wondering what it would be like to stand close enough for it to remain on his own clothes afterwards. The thought surprised him into rereading the same line. He hadn’t needed to persuade himself to find Benjy attractive, or decide that he ought to appreciate this afternoon as practice for some other, impossible one; he wanted him nearer because he liked the way he smelled and the movement of his hands when he explained something.

That was worth discovering. Remus let himself look when Benjy reached for the book again, and when their eyes met he managed to hold the glance for a moment before returning to his essay.

They had reached the final pages of their notes when Benjy closed the book and stretched, rolling his shoulders with a quiet groan. “Merlin, I think my brain’s stopped working.”

“Unfortunate. You’ve got N.E.W.T.s in a few months.”

“Don’t remind me. I was enjoying forgetting.”

“Thought Ravenclaws liked examinations.”

“Vicious stereotype. We also enjoy music, sleeping, and complaining about Gryffindors.”

Remus laughed, laying down his quill. “Understandable. Any Gryffindors in particular?”

“Long hair. Leather jacket. Seems to think the castle belongs to him.”

“What’s Sirius done now?”

“Nearly knocked me down the stairs yesterday. Running after Potter with what looked suspiciously like a live frog.” Benjy watched Remus’s face. “Is that normal?”

“For Sirius? Disturbingly.”

Benjy grinned, folding his arms on the table. “You two are close, aren’t you?”

The question brought a flicker of apprehension Remus hadn’t expected after such an easy afternoon. He pressed his thumb against a small ink stain on the side of his hand, unwilling to make the answer sound any more complicated than it was.

“Yeah. Best friends.”

“Thought so. He talks about you quite a bit.”

“He does?” The question came too quickly; Remus could hear it and had no opportunity to take it back. “What does he say?”

“Mostly that you’re cleverer than the rest of us and somebody ought to stop letting you spend so much time in the library.”

Remus laughed, relieved to be given something familiar. “That sounds about right.”

“He seems very fond of you.”

“He is.” Remus looked at the open book and moved it aside, giving himself something to do while the answer settled. There was no reason for Benjy to know how much that observation could unsettle him, and he didn’t want the conversation to become another attempt to interpret Sirius. He’d been enjoying being here; he could still remember how he’d felt a few minutes earlier, watching Benjy’s hand turn a page, and wanted to return to that.

Benjy glanced towards the window, where the light was fading to the grey of early evening, then back at him. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Are you doing anything on Saturday?”

Remus forgot every version of the invitation he’d rehearsed. “Saturday?”

“Usually the day after Friday, yes.” Benjy’s smile made the teasing easy enough to accept, though Remus was becoming concerned about his ability to answer a straightforward question.

“Right. Yes. I know Saturday.”

“I was thinking we could go to Hogsmeade. There’s a bookshop near the post office I’ve been wanting to look round, and perhaps we could get something to eat afterwards.” He paused, his fingers shifting against the cover of the closed book. “Unless you’ve got plans.”

“No,” Remus said at once. “I haven’t. Or I might have had, but I don’t anymore.”

Benjy laughed, and Remus closed his eyes briefly, trying to retrieve the portion of his mind responsible for ordinary speech.

“Sorry. Yes. I’d like that.”

“Excellent.”

There was a moment in which they might easily have begun putting their books away, allowing the arrangement to remain comfortable and unspecified until Saturday arrived. Remus could imagine himself spending the intervening days wondering what Benjy had meant, rehearsing another question while becoming steadily less capable of asking it, and the prospect was suddenly more tiresome than the risk of a clear answer.

“Benjy?” He waited until the other boy looked up. “Did you mean—” The words caught, and he had to begin again. “Is this a date?”

Benjy’s smile changed, becoming slower and a little less guarded. “I was rather hoping it might be.”

Remus could feel the answering smile before he’d decided what to say, an involuntary widening of his mouth that made him glad there was nobody at the table who might tease him for it. Benjy was still watching him, apparently waiting for confirmation, and Remus realised that he had been allowed to ask something frightening and receive the answer he wanted without anybody making it difficult.

“Then yes,” he said. “Definitely.”

Benjy reached across the table, turning one of Remus’s hands between his own before giving his fingers a warm squeeze.

“Good.”

Remus looked down at the contact. He’d noticed Benjy’s hands often enough to be familiar with their shape, but the weight of his thumb against Remus’s palm was new, as was the faint nervous movement of his fingers before they settled. Remus turned his hand a little to meet the touch, testing what he was allowed to do, and Benjy smiled when he glanced up again.

There was no explanation to make for either of them. Benjy had asked for a date, Remus had agreed, and holding his hand appeared to follow naturally from that, with none of the private qualifications Remus had become accustomed to supplying. He let himself enjoy it until Benjy loosened his fingers, then discovered that he would have been quite happy to remain a little longer.

“Meet you in the entrance hall at eleven?” Benjy asked.

“Perfect.”

They gathered their books, smiling whenever they caught each other looking, and walked out of the library together. Remus’s unfinished essay remained tucked between his notes, but he found he didn’t particularly care about the work he still had to do. The corridor felt different with Benjy beside him, though the draughts were unchanged and a portrait was still complaining about somebody’s muddy shoes; he was aware of the space between their shoulders, wondering whether it would be strange to close it now that they were no longer sitting at the table.

At the staircase towards Gryffindor Tower, Benjy shifted his bag higher on his shoulder and stopped. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. See you.” Remus wished he could think of something else to say, some remark that would make it easier to linger without announcing how reluctant he was to leave.

Benjy hesitated, then reached to straighten the scarf that had twisted beneath his collar. His fingers grazed the wool at Remus’s throat, close enough that Remus could see the tiny fleck of ink near his thumbnail.

“There. Wouldn’t want you freezing before Saturday.”

“Thanks,” Remus said, laughing quietly as Benjy stepped away.

He raised a hand in farewell and turned down the corridor, leaving Remus at the bottom of the stairs with a bag full of textbooks and an invitation he could still hardly believe had happened. For several seconds he remained there, smiling at the stonework, before remembering that Lily would want to hear about it and that telling her might be almost as enjoyable as the conversation itself.

He was halfway up the staircase when he thought of Sirius, probably waiting in the common room with the record they’d promised to listen to. Sirius would ask whether he’d finished the essay, complain that he’d been gone for ages, and take an interest in Saturday as soon as Remus mentioned it. There would be questions, jokes, and perhaps suggestions so inappropriate that Remus would have to threaten him with a cushion before he stopped.

Ordinarily, he would have welcomed the chance to tell Sirius something that mattered. Now he found himself reluctant to give him this quite yet, before he’d enjoyed it long enough to know what he wanted to say. Benjy’s fingers had been warm around his own, and he wanted to keep that memory in the form in which it had happened, without Sirius turning it into a source of entertainment or making some affectionate remark that would send Remus’s attention wandering elsewhere.

He continued upstairs and decided to find Lily first. The record could wait another half-hour, and so, for once, could Sirius Black.

+++

Lily took one look at him outside her classroom and said, “Oh, Merlin, what happened?” which ended Remus’s plan to tell her calmly before he’d had an opportunity to begin.

By the time she pulled him towards an empty windowsill on the fourth floor, he’d described most of the afternoon, admitted that he had a date, and discovered that repeating Benjy’s answer aloud made him smile just as helplessly as hearing it had.

The corridor had emptied as students made their way towards dinner, leaving the portraits to discuss the day’s events without being interrupted by anybody living. Beyond the glass, the mountains had darkened into the sky; inside, the last of the torchlight lay in wavering patches across the flagstones, and the smell of food drifting from below made Remus aware that he hadn’t eaten anything substantial since lunch. Lily tucked one leg beneath herself and turned to face him, apparently considering his romantic life more urgent than either meal.

“What are you going to wear?”

“I haven’t thought about clothes,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t notice that he’d just looked down at his jumper.

“You spent forty minutes choosing one for a study session.”

Remus lifted his head. “How do you know that?”

“Marlene went up to return James’s sunglasses and found Sirius giving what she described as extraordinarily unhelpful advice.” Lily glanced at the brown wool. “I assume this was the eventual winner.”

“Marlene needs a hobby.”

“She has several. You make it very difficult for her to concentrate on the others.”

Remus let his head fall back against the stone, earning a sharp complaint from a portrait whose occupant had been trying to sleep. He apologised to the frame, though the temptation to include everybody else was substantial, and Lily laughed as she shifted closer, her shoulder brushing his.

“Tell me what he said again.”

“I’ve already told you.”

“Yes, but I enjoyed it. He actually said he was hoping it would be a date?”

Remus tried to answer without smiling and failed. “He was rather hoping it might be.”

“Oh, that’s lovely.” Lily’s pleasure softened his embarrassment enough that he let himself laugh, looking down at the hands resting between his knees.

“He’s really nice,” he said. “And funny. We always end up talking longer than we mean to.”

“A good start.”

“And he likes Bowie.”

“Naturally. I’d hate to think you’d neglected the essential questions.”

“It is important.”

She smiled, leaving him space to enjoy the thought without asking another question immediately. He appreciated that more than he’d expected. There would be time to worry about whether the date went well, whether they ran out of conversation halfway through lunch, or discovered that the comfort of their study sessions depended upon having something else to look at. At present, he liked remembering Benjy’s face when he’d agreed, and didn’t want to examine the memory until he found a reason to distrust it.

“I don’t want to make a huge thing out of it,” he said eventually. “Or have everybody know before Saturday.”

“Then they don’t have to.” Lily’s voice had become quite plain, without the teasing that might have made the answer harder to accept. “It’s your date. You can tell whoever you like.”

Remus nodded, relieved by the permission even though he knew he shouldn’t have needed it. Lily had kept everything he’d told her about Sirius to herself; there was no reason to imagine she would be careless with this, but the prospect of their whole group discussing Benjy before he’d so much as met him in the entrance hall made the invitation feel less comfortably his.

“Have you told Sirius?” she asked after a moment.

“No. He’ll find out eventually, though.” Remus drew one knee towards his chest, resting his chin against it. “And be unbearable.”

“Almost certainly.”

He could already hear the questions, the triumphant insistence that they’d finally got him a love life, as though Sirius had been appointed to oversee the matter and deserved credit for its success. There would be kindness beneath it, he knew, which made his reluctance harder to explain. He didn’t want to feel ungrateful while Sirius congratulated him, didn’t want to remember all the occasions when he’d wished Sirius would ask him those questions for a different reason.

Still, delaying it would give him time to make the announcement increasingly difficult, and there was little sense in hoping Sirius would fail to notice him leaving with Benjy on Saturday.

“I’ll tell them at dinner,” he decided. “Better than making an event of it later.”

Lily nodded and began to uncurl her leg. “All right.”

“And please don’t look at me as though you’re about to witness something enormously entertaining.”

She pressed her lips together, apparently attempting an expression he would find reassuring.

“Lily.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder,” he said, taking the hand she offered to pull him from the windowsill.

The Great Hall was crowded when they arrived, its candles reflected in the polished plates and goblets while the enchanted ceiling hung heavy with the winter clouds gathering beyond the castle. Conversation rose beneath it in warm, overlapping waves, punctuated by cutlery and the occasional shout from farther down a table, and Remus found James halfway along the Gryffindor bench with Peter beside him and Sirius opposite. The latter was arguing with a girl from their year, his fork held aloft to emphasise whatever point he was making.

“—not saying Queen are bad, am I? I’m saying Marc Bolan’s a genius, which is a different argument, and if you’d actually listened to Electric Warrior instead of skipping straight to the singles—”

“Fifteen minutes,” James informed Remus as he approached. “He’s been like this for fifteen minutes.”

“Only fifteen? He’s losing his touch.” Remus slipped onto the bench beside Peter, leaving room for Lily on his other side.

Sirius turned at once. “Moony! Tell her Electric Warrior is a masterpiece.”

“It is,” Remus said, reaching for the roast potatoes. “So is A Night at the Opera.”

The girl laughed, and Sirius gave Remus a betrayed look.

“That’s not helping.”

“Didn’t realise I was required to.”

“You usually are.” Sirius lowered his fork and watched Remus serve himself, the argument apparently losing its urgency now that he had somebody else to talk to. “How was the library?”

“Fine. Nearly finished the essay.”

“Fenwick any use?” He reached across to steal a potato from Remus’s plate, ignoring the serving dish close enough to touch with his other hand.

Remus paused. He had known Benjy’s name would come up, but the ordinary way Sirius said it made his prepared announcement feel oddly disproportionate, something that would interrupt a conversation currently concerned with homework and theft. Beside him, Lily was busy pouring herself a drink, though he suspected the sudden care she gave the task was for his benefit.

“Yeah,” he said. “He’s good at Charms.”

“He’s a Ravenclaw. They’re supposed to be.”

Peter looked up from the arrangement of peas around his plate. “Benjy Fenwick? Nice bloke. Helped me find my Transfiguration notes once.”

“Those were my Transfiguration notes,” James said.

Peter considered that, his fork still hovering over the peas. “Explains why they were so good.”

James opened his mouth, looked at Remus as though he might provide a useful response, and returned to his dinner when Remus only laughed. The exchange offered an opportunity to let the subject pass. He could tell them later, perhaps catch James and Peter in the dormitory and allow the news to reach Sirius through somebody whose face would be less revealing when they said it.

He reached for the butter, and Sirius caught the loose cuff of his jumper just before it dragged through the dish. With no interruption to the question he was asking James, he folded the wool back over Remus’s wrist and gave it a small, satisfied pat before letting go.

Remus looked at the cuff. He had spent the afternoon discovering how pleasant it was to know what somebody meant when they reached for him, and already he was settling back into the old habit of accepting Sirius’s attention while trying not to want more of it. There was no need to refuse the gesture, but neither did he need to let it determine what he did next.

He put down his fork. “Actually, I’m going to Hogsmeade with Benjy on Saturday.”

James looked up. “Nice. Didn’t know you two were that friendly.”

“We’ve been studying together for a while.”

“There’s a new display in the bookshop,” Peter added. “Old spellbooks from an estate sale. He mentioned it yesterday.”

“I think that’s where we’re going.” Remus glanced towards Sirius, who had stopped eating but offered no comment.

“Bring me back something interesting,” James said, reaching for the gravy.

The conversation could end there. Remus could keep the useful ambiguity and tell himself he hadn’t concealed anything, simply left them to make an assumption they’d correct on their own later. He felt the appeal of it even as he remembered asking Benjy to be clear with him, and how easily Benjy had answered. It seemed a poor way to begin, treating that small, lovely certainty as something he needed to disguise.

“Well,” he said, “it’s actually a date.”

James set down the gravy boat. Peter’s eyebrows rose, Lily lifted her goblet to her mouth, and Sirius remained motionless with a forkful of mashed potato suspended halfway towards his face.

“A what?”

“A date,” Remus repeated, more quietly than he intended.

“With Fenwick?”

“Yes, Pads.”

Sirius lowered the fork. The surprise was clear enough, but there was a stiffness beneath it that Remus couldn’t place, a tightening around his mouth that seemed at odds with the cheerful interest he usually took in anybody else’s romantic arrangements. Remus waited, becoming increasingly conscious of James looking from one of them to the other.

“Well, fuck me,” Sirius said, with a laugh that arrived a little too late.

James made a small noise into his drink.

“No, I mean—” Sirius pushed a hand through his hair, pulling loose the tie at the back. “That’s brilliant, Moony. Good for you.”

“Right.” Remus picked up his fork again, uncertain whether he was expected to say more. The declaration had sounded genuine enough in its wording, but Sirius was still looking at him with an intensity that made congratulations feel like the beginning of an interrogation.

Sirius made an effort to return to his dinner, managed one mouthful, and put the fork down. “Since when do you fancy Fenwick?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

“How long’s a while?”

Remus glanced at Lily, whose attention remained on her plate. He’d anticipated jokes, perhaps a demand for details about the date itself; he hadn’t thought he would need to justify when he’d begun finding somebody attractive.

“Since we’ve been studying together, I suppose. Why?”

“That’s months.” Sirius frowned. “You never said.”

“Didn’t realise I was required to submit a formal report.”

James’s mouth twitched, but Remus wasn’t quite joking now. The little irritation gave him something steadier to stand on than embarrassment, and he looked directly at Sirius rather than checking who else had heard.

“No, I just mean—” Sirius glanced towards James and back again, his fingers turning the hair tie against the table. “You tell me things.”

“I do tell you things.”

“Everything.”

“Not everything, Sirius.” Remus softened the answer when he saw the frown deepen. “And I’m telling you now.”

For a moment, Sirius seemed ready to reply, but he looked down at the tie instead and left the sentence unbegun. Remus couldn’t decide whether he was offended or merely surprised to discover something he hadn’t known, and disliked the sudden sense that an afternoon he’d enjoyed might require an apology.

Peter leaned forward. “So does that mean you might have a boyfriend?”

“Peter.” Remus’s face warmed again, less comfortably this time as James looked up with renewed interest. “It’s one date.”

“Could turn into more. Fenwick’s handsome.”

A fork clattered against a plate opposite them. Sirius retrieved it almost at once, but James had already looked towards the sound and was now examining him with the patience of somebody who’d been given an additional task after a long day.

“What?” Sirius demanded.

“Nothing.”

“You looked at me.”

“Terrible habit. Must stop doing that.” James reached for the gravy again, leaving Sirius to regard his own dinner with a determination that appeared to involve very little eating.

“Fenwick’s all right, I suppose,” Sirius said. “Bit boring.”

“He’s not boring.”

“Compared to us, I mean.”

“Most people are boring compared to you, Sirius. It’s one of your less endearing qualities.”

James laughed, properly this time, and Remus felt the attention around them loosen. Sirius leaned back with an injured expression, apparently recovering enough of himself to take offence in the usual way.

“That’s hurtful, Moony.”

“You’ll recover.”

Lily laughed beside him, and James began explaining why Ravenclaws made acceptable romantic partners despite their unfortunate inclination to spend Saturdays in bookshops. Peter objected that he liked bookshops too, which required James to clarify that the point was their tendency to bring homework, and the conversation widened enough that Remus could return to his meal without being expected to provide further evidence of his intentions.

He answered Peter’s questions about where they would eat, admitted that he didn’t know yet, and listened while James supplied several suggestions with varying degrees of usefulness. It should have been easy to enjoy the teasing now that the announcement was over. He was relieved to have said it, pleased that the others seemed pleased, and still carrying the memory of Benjy’s hand around his own. Yet whenever he looked across the table, he seemed to find Sirius watching him.

Once, their eyes met long enough that Remus raised his eyebrows. Sirius reached immediately for his goblet and asked James a question about Quidditch, with a casualness so determined that Remus wondered whether he was attempting to conceal some objection he hadn’t yet decided to voice.

Perhaps he was surprised to hear about an actual date with another boy. Remus had made passing comments before, had assumed the others understood without needing an announcement, but it was possible the news made that part of his life more definite than Sirius had expected. Or perhaps he was simply offended at not being told first, which fitted rather more comfortably with the complaint he’d just made.

Remus glanced towards Lily. Mary had arrived beside her and was describing their upcoming Defence practical, apparently unimpressed by whatever instructions they’d been given, and Lily turned to include Remus when he looked over. He joined the conversation, grateful to be asked about something that didn’t require another glance towards Sirius’s plate.

Whatever the peculiar mood meant, there was no reason to assume it would last. Sirius could become indignant about being excluded from something as small as a trip to the kitchens, then forget the grievance as soon as somebody brought him back a biscuit; perhaps the prospect of Remus arranging an entire afternoon without him had simply taken a little more explaining.

Across the table, Sirius reached for another potato from Remus’s plate. Remus slapped his hand, and Sirius withdrew it with an affronted noise before helping himself from the serving dish at last.

James watched them, slowly closed his eyes, and returned to his dinner. Remus considered asking what was wrong with him too, but decided he’d endured enough peculiar conversations for one evening. Saturday was still ahead of him, and when he thought about meeting Benjy in the entrance hall, he found that he was smiling again.