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Chapter Text

The stones underneath his back were uncommonly smooth. So flat that he couldn’t feel the characteristic prick of their sharp edges against his skin from where he lay on the shoreline with his feet in the water, tattered trousers rolled up to the knee. They were nothing like the rocks on the banks he was used to, much further down the river, all jagged edges and broken pieces and sharpened borders.

Absently, he wondered if he could skip one all the way across to the other side. The river was wider here, deeper here, but it flowed more evenly. Ideal for skipping rocks. However, the rocks themselves were apparently ideal for lounging across, basking in the infinite sky, and because they were so ideal for this, he couldn’t quite convince himself to get up to try skipping a stone just yet. He hadn’t felt this peaceful in ages. Not since the last time his cousin had told him a bedtime story. Years ago, now.

Eyes closed, he furrowed his dark brow at the unusual warmth he felt, lying underneath a sun that had lately been so foreign to him. From behind his eyelids, everything was pink, the light from such an astronomical star grasping through the heavens to saturate his skin so thoroughly that even the darkness was no longer dark. And it didn’t just warm him, it warmed everything it reached – the air that he breathed, the smooth rocks that he laid upon, the water he could feel rushing over his bare feet.

Still unwilling to move, he plotted his course of action. Should he bend his wrist inward toward his chest when he flicked the rock across the river? That would give him the most spring. But that might leave him with a distance problem. Potentially, he could get more distance if he stretched his arm all the way out and flicked his wrist only at the end of the throw. Would that be enough rebound to make it?

With a satisfied sigh, he stretched greatly, unsettling the smooth, flat rocks on the shoreline, and it was almost as if the earth herself didn’t want to give him up, because his movement created a perfect little niche, a perfect outline of him in the rocks, a cradle to keep him. Still, his mission could not be swayed, not now, not when he’d already made up in his mind what he wanted to do. He stood.

It took several minutes of hunting to find the most suitable skipping stone. All the rocks had flat edges, but this one was stretched thin, more likely to bounce on the water’s surface. And visually, they all looked smooth, but this was the one smoothest to his touch. It was flawless among the other stones.

Taking in and letting out an equal measure of breath, he decided on the full arm sweep, and he took a step back to facilitate the movement. He kept his elbow tight, his arm level to the shoreline, level to the surface of the water. With his torso facing the water, he twisted his hips, positioning himself like a spring, rearing back to launch his perfect skipping stone across the water. Like an arrow from a bowstring, he released, flicking his wrist at the last moment, the optimum moment. His perfect skipping stone plunked straight into the water without a single hop on the surface tension of the river water.

“That was absolute shite,” he heard from somewhere behind him. Immediately, his hands went up into defensive positions, the rune branded on the inside of his left wrist crackling and sizzling. He stifled the wince of pain it left in his skin with practiced vigor as his eyes met those of the stranger.

But it was a child. Well, not a child – no more a child than he was, at fourteen – but at least it wasn’t someone older, someone stronger. In fact, the longer he looked, the more he considered a preemptive attack. The boy standing in front of him was thin, lanky, possibly malnourished (though he wondered if the boy thought the same thing of him). If he struck first, he would likely win.

Instead, he stayed. And he studied. Unlike his own pale complexion, the skin of this boy was tawny, tanned, covered in the residual appreciation of the celestial sun in the form of splattered freckles across his cheeks, down his absurdly long throat, over shoulders that were bared by open fabric.

If there were runes on his skin, they were covered, hidden by his clothes – clothes that looked far too proper for a romp in the nearest river. His trousers looked pressed, fitted down to where the ankles were tucked into the laces of his shined boots. The neck on his collared shirt was high, as if compensating for the expansive stretch of his throat. While the sleeves were long, covering accessible skin where a Coven would place their most functional runes, they were strategically cut at each shoulder, displaying a continuous spackling of freckles. With a closer look, the freckles weren’t the only mark upon his skin.

In the place of visible runes were scars, too numerous to count even for the minimal amount of exposed skin they decorated, almost making up the entire composition of what copper skin was visible, connecting his freckles like they were intentionally etched into his skin for that purpose. Most seemed superficial, but there were a few that looked deep enough to have been life-threatening, like the gash that seemed to circle all the way around his throat, looking as if it had originally been deep enough to detach his head. With a sharp breath of discomfort, he looked up into the face of this strange child.

And he was smiling. It wasn’t exactly a welcoming smile. In fact, it looked a little pained, the furrow in his brow tightening and relaxing as if he weren’t sure what to do with his face. Eventually, it settled into something that wasn’t quite comfortable, but wasn’t quite dangerous. However, the next thing from his lips was dangerous, flagrantly dangerous, at least to some. “Got a name?”

Of course he had a name. But he had never spoken it aloud. Not once in all his life. The number of people who knew his birth name were those directly related to him. To give out one’s name to a stranger was practically punishable by death. Granted, he wasn’t sure on the actual law, but that was only because it had never occurred in the entire documented history of his Coven. Not in a thousand years.

In the beginning, he had learned as part of his training, names were not as sacred then as they were now. At first, a name was something to be shared, something to cherish, something to brandish like a weapon. However, the worse the infighting between the covens and the clans and the tribes became, the more dangerous it was to have a name, especially names that were traditional, names that were unique to a particular clan, because those were the names that were most often recycled through generations, and they became synonymous with that tribe. A name like Sirius was a clear indicator that he was from the Black Coven. In fact, he was the one-hundred-and-thirteenth Sirius Black in their history.

“Not one that I can give you,” Sirius stated tightly, hands still half-raised in mistrust, the ash-black rune still bubbling, slowly eroding the delicate skin on the interior of his wrist. There was something like recognition in the stranger’s expression, but it was gone in a flash. If it had been there, it had been intentionally washed away. If it was recognition, that meant this boy was from a rival clan.

But which one? It wasn’t any of the covens, that much he knew with certainty. The Blacks had formed alliances with all of the major covens – Malfoy, LeStrange, Greyback, Dolohov. The minor covens had long since been absorbed by their superiors. Rosier and Avery were now part of Malfoy and LeStrange, respectively. And Sirius knew all of them by name. After all, they were family now.

That left the tribes close to the mountains and the clans of the fields. The dominant mountain tribes that he knew by name were the Pettigrews, the Tonks, and the Weasleys. What was left of the Prewitt Tribe, after the death of the two eldest sons (a feat accomplished by Sirius’ cousin, Bellatrix), had been absorbed by the Weasleys. Last Sirius heard, the Weasleys had drawn away from the fight.

And as far as Sirius knew, this boy wasn’t from the primary Pettigrew Tribe – only the eldest Pettigrew child was Sirius’ age, but Sirius knew him well by then, considering Sirius had dealt a near-lethal blow to him the last time they encountered one another. His father had been exceptionally proud of him that day, but Sirius’ only pride in himself then was that he had managed to keep down the contents of his stomach until after regaling the tale of his victory. The memory of the scorching wound he’d burned into the left side of the eldest Pettigrew’s abdomen left him feeling sick for days afterward, even more so when he considered what his father would do to him if he ever found out that it had all been a mistake. An accident. That Sirius had been trying not to hit the Pettigrew boy. Until he had.

It had to be one of the ancient clans. Potter, most likely. It was the largest one, the oldest one. Of the Potters, Sirius had only ever encountered a single Potter boy, briefly at that, as Sirius hadn’t been able to catch him, much less inflict any damage on him. It had been several months since then, much had changed, Sirius had changed, but he was sure this boy wasn’t the same one. He wouldn’t forget those hazel eyes, the only telltale sign of his lineage. They haunted Sirius in his nightmares, the eyes of the boy he couldn’t catch. His father had come down hard on him for that. His mandatory training time requirement had gone from eight hours a day to twelve hours, for the three months that followed.

Ollivander, perhaps. They were such a secretive clan, Sirius had never even met one of their members, in battle or otherwise. The legendary craftsman Garrick was purportedly among their ranks, but many in the Black Coven considered him a fable. Apparently, he created an external device to channel an invocation, not a rune imprinted on the skin to direct force like the covens, not words spoken to summon power like the clans, not manipulating the energy within a material like the tribes, a conduit outside oneself. But Sirius didn’t believe such a tool existed. Power required work. Power required pain.

There were still quite a few clans – the Longbottoms, the Diggorys, the Lovegoods. The Meadowes and the McKinnons had formed an alliance, as had the Shacklebolts and the Vances. But, in all of those clans, he knew the face of everyone that would be close to his age. He’d encountered them all at one point or another. The boy in front of him was too tall to be the Longbottom boy, too lanky to be a Diggory, his skin tone too dark to be a McKinnon but too fair to be a Meadowes, his hair too long to be the eldest Shacklebolt, his facial structure too sharp to be a Vance. Who the hell was this kid?

“Guess I’ll have to call you whatever I like then,” the boy stated with an easy smile. There was a moment, just a moment, when the boy’s eyes darted down to the emerald crest tattooed onto the center of Sirius’ chest, partly hidden by the loosely tied silver collar of his black shirt, and Sirius went stiffly cold.

It was a symbol synonymous with the Black Coven, but one that they meticulously kept concealed, a clandestine method of identification to anyone who would know its meaning. A jade pawprint, an emblem that had always stood for the Black Coven, since the formation of covens and clans and tribes. The legend stated that the Black Coven was founded by a man who could reform himself into the shape of a black jackal, and that he defeated one of the elder beasts for control over darkness.

Finally, Sirius understood why his father consistently scolded him for being so careless with the Black Coven’s most sacred seal. As soon as that boy’s amber gaze moved back up to Sirius’ face, Sirius was certain he was ruined. He was going to have to fight. Alone. And, for the first time in his life, with the directed way that boy was looking at him just then, with irises of gold, Sirius wasn’t sure he could win.

Before Sirius could ignite the rune on his wrist, the boy’s expression molded into a comfortable smile, his eyes no longer a threatening shade of molten gold but a soft shimmer that reminded Sirius of orange blossom honey. Only once, those eyes flicked back up to level with Sirius’ wary, silver stare, and when they did, the cold that had been surging through Sirius’ veins instantly evaporated into steam, warming his skin from the inside until it moved out as a reddening of his otherwise pale complexion.

With Sirius watching through a furrowed gaze of concern and question, the boy knelt to the rocks and closed his eyes, letting his hand hover over the shoreline, as if he could feel, without touch, which rock would be the perfect skipping stone. Before Sirius could even raise an eyebrow, the boy snatched up a rock, immediately reared back, and let it go just as quickly. With six long skips, it landed on the opposite shore, skidding across and unsettling the rocks in its path. Sirius’ furrow fell into open surprise.

“What –” Sirius began to say, wondering how he did it with such ease, but he pulled his inquiry back into his teeth, recognizing that he was not about to strike up a conversation with a stranger.

“Your turn again,” the boy said, and before Sirius could argue, the boy was back to his knees, his eyes falling closed in solemn contemplation, his hand roving over the surface of the shoreline. When he chose a stone, it was sudden and sporadic, but decisive. Looking up, he reached out toward Sirius, expectantly, stone in hand. When Sirius didn’t take it, he expected the boy to pull away. He didn’t.

“I – I’m not –” Sirius began to try to argue his position. He was not going to do this – skip stones with a stranger on a foreign shore. It was bad enough he’d wandered this far from home. In daylight.

“You just need a little practice,” the boy said with a comfortable shrug. “And your form needs a little work, you’re just too stiff.” Again, before Sirius was ready to act, the boy was on his feet, and he effortlessly shifted his weight so that he was standing behind Sirius, before Sirius even registered that he was moving. “Relax your shoulders,” he said softly, sliding both hands up Sirius’ back and kneading softly at Sirius’ shoulders. Maybe it was the shock or maybe it was the confusion or maybe it was the fact that Sirius had never experienced a touch this affectionate in all his life. It felt strange. It felt … nice.

In response, Sirius arched his back a little, an unexpected measure of air moving into his lungs, though he couldn’t quite explain to himself why his once tightly regulated breathing had suddenly changed. The boy spoke again. “Better,” he said with a satisfied hum, and Sirius found himself oddly warmed by it, in some place deep in his chest. “Stand with your feet perpendicular to the shoreline.”

Wordlessly, Sirius adjusted his stance. “Like this?” he asked, finding his voice was a lot quieter than he expected it to be. For a moment, the stranger was silent, and Sirius could feel him analyzing Sirius’ posture from somewhere behind him. Without warning, he placed his hands on Sirius’ hips, and Sirius wasn’t sure he could give a name to the sensation he felt, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

“Turn a little more to the right,” he said, his hands on Sirius’ body directing Sirius’ movements until he was satisfied with Sirius’ position. When he moved his hands, Sirius found himself missing the pressure of that physical guidance. “Widen your stance a little more, so when you lean in to throw it, you’re not off balance.” Keeping his feet pointed correctly, Sirius slid his right foot out a little further, receiving vocal affirmation from his teacher. “Now, when you throw it, bend your knees and lean backward, just a bit.” Finally, in his disbelief, Sirius glanced back, making sure not to change his footing.

“Lean backward?” he asked, a sharp whine of doubt in his throat. But when he turned to meet the amber eyes of his instructor, he found that face much closer to his own than he’d expected. With him this close, Sirius got an uninterrupted view of his features – an intimate survey of the faded silver of his scars against the deep copper of his skin, an introduction to the darkness of his curls contrasted against their softness as they swept around his face with every change in breeze, and Sirius felt a sense of familiar unrest at the casual sincerity of this boy’s smile. Because it just couldn’t be that authentic.

“Don’t worry,” he said, and Sirius felt the boy’s hand move between his shoulder blades, palm flat against Sirius’ back as he spoke a promise. “You won’t fall. I’ll hold you.” With that bolster to his confidence, Sirius turned his face to the shoreline again, letting out the rest of the air in his lungs. “Hold the flat edge of the stone against your forefinger,” the boy continued, as Sirius felt him place the stone he’d picked out into Sirius’ half-curled fingers, helping Sirius to wrap his hand in the right way, positioning Sirius’ first fingertip against a particularly flat cut of the stone. “Keep your arm level to the water.”

“Okay,” Sirius nodded, finding it odd that he felt an unusual sting when the boy’s hand left his own and recognizing that it wasn’t a sensation he could name, wasn’t a sensation he’d ever felt.

“Give your wrist a good flick when your arm is stretched all the way,” he coached, and if there had been a sting in Sirius’ chest when this boy pulled his hand away, it was sharper and more pronounced when he moved it back again. “Like this.” His voice was practically a whisper, but Sirius didn’t think it was that strange, considering how close his mouth was to Sirius’ ear. Carefully, he took control of Sirius’ hand, gliding his wrist back and forth to show the motion Sirius should use. “At the very last moment, catapult the stone with your forefinger against that flat edge.” His hand slipped away, the sting surged.

“Here goes,” Sirius said in an exhale, noticing that the boy had kept his word and kept his hand at the center of Sirius’ back. He kept his feet perpendicular to the shoreline, kept his arm level to the water, he bent his knees, he leaned backward, he stretched his arm as far as it could go and then … he released it, gliding his wrist the way he’d been instructed, propelling the rock off his fingertip at the last possible moment. The smooth, flat stone leapt three times before sinking under the surface of the water.

“That was perfect,” his instructor said with a subtle laugh. His hand was still on Sirius’ back. And Sirius felt strangely euphoric, though he didn’t think it was because of the stone. Before Sirius could turn, before he could thank this strange boy, before he could think of something else to say, the boy removed his hand from Sirius’ back, practically at the edge of the woods as soon as Sirius turned around.

“Wait, I –” Sirius started to call out, unsure of what he was about to say.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Little Padfoot,” the boy said, glancing down once more at the insignia in the center of Sirius’ chest before the amusement of his gaze moved down to Sirius’ bare feet, the ones that he had been soaking in the warm water of the rushing river. The boy gestured to the water, eyebrows raised, drawing Sirius’ attention to the scar that ran through the left one. “Practice.”  

Without another thought in his head, Sirius knelt down to choose another stone as the boy vanished into the thick brush. Ghosting over the stones, he closed his eyes, waiting for the perfect skipping stone to call out to him. He was going to impress this boy tomorrow. He was going to practice until he could make it to ten skips. He was going to find a way to make his skin sting like that again.  

He wasn’t sure how long he had to wait. Not that he minded, of course, for just as the day before, he’d nestled himself a spot in the smooth stones and they curved around him in such a way that their warmth reminded him of the touch of the stranger’s hands on his shoulders, their rigidity reminded him of the calluses he’d felt on the stranger’s fingertips against his wrist. So, he would wait a long time.

The evening before, after a very long walk back home, he was instantly greeted by his cousin Bellatrix, wearing her typical, arrogant sneer and standing directly in front of Sirius’ father, and leader of the Black Coven, Orion. Of course, he wanted to know where Sirius had been all day, why he had been out during the light of day when the only time any member of any Coven is allowed to leave is in the dead of night, when they are least likely to be seen, when they are least likely to be captured. As a result of this rule, all Coven members were nocturnal, sleeping during the day, active only at night.

And maybe that was fine for other members, but Sirius had grown to miss the brightness and warmth of the sun, the delicate blue of the sky, the bright green of tree leaves not masked in shadow. In daylight, everything seemed so much more transparent, so much more distinct. In darkness, everything looked the same, and all of those things that looked the same were all things that were trying to kill him.

He’d closed his eyes, at some point, enticed by that shade of pink behind his eyelids when the sun was directly overhead, lured by the soft warm glow of daylight contrasted to the tender cooling breeze that gently rattled the leaves. At night, it sounded so ominous. In broad daylight, it was like a song.

He wasn’t accustomed to being up at this midday hour, he stopped recognizing that bright pink colour behind his eyelids as he drifted off into some form of sleep where the rustle of tree leaves carried a cadence like mollified percussion, where the hum of the wind was that of a tattered woodwind, where the trickle of the river water mimicked the pluck of a string instrument. Together, they formed a lullaby to hush him into rest. He forgot that he was open here, exposed like an unbound wound.

However, he was sharply reminded of this when he heard, “Are you asleep, Little Padfoot?” whispered right into his ear, and he immediately sat up, twisting to his side, rune instinctively scorching his wrist. The familiar stranger reacted with nothing more than a smile in Sirius’ direction, lying in the rocks next to where Sirius had just been, fingers locked behind the dark curls on his resting head.

“It’s just you,” Sirius breathed out a sigh, letting himself fall carefully back into his stone nest, but in such a way that he could still look over at his … friend? Were they friends? Sirius had never had a friend before, at least not one that he wasn’t related to by blood or by blood pact. It was strange. And nice.

“It’s just me,” this new friend said, and he blinked slowly in Sirius’ direction with his starkly amber gaze. Despite the smile on his face, Sirius couldn’t help but notice the weariness in his eyes, darkened by black circles, and in the sunken pull of the skin on his cheekbones, like they were shaped to be fuller.

“Are you alright?” Sirius asked, and it was strange that this was his automatic response, because he wasn’t sure he’d ever uttered those words in genuine concern for the respondent. In fact, the last time he’d said that phrase, he’d asked it of Evan Rosier just after he’d been struck in the gut by some sort of blunt incantation shouted by a member of the Diggory clan, and he’d only really asked it to make sure Rosier could still move, that Rosier wouldn’t slow him down as they made their frantic retreat.

“Mm,” his companion hummed in a noncommittal response, closing his eyes. There was something in the violet circles underneath his eyes that spoke of an exhaustion that Sirius understood clearly, a heavy swallow in his elegantly elongated throat with which Sirius found himself commiserating against his intent. His hair, a deep brown not quite as dark as the black of Sirius’ own and splashed with a sun-bleached halo around his face, was matted and unkempt, which struck Sirius as rather strange since, only the day before, it had been softly tucked behind his ears, air-dried under a caring breeze.

Yesterday, he’d been in full feather, dressed in a way that reminded Sirius of the mandatory attire for the annual Black Coven conclave. Today’s garments suited him much more befittingly – grey trousers hastily shorn off just below the knee, a white linen shirt that was meant to be tied at the throat but was heedlessly left open to the center of his sternum, covered in a garment that Sirius would’ve otherwise called a dressing gown if not for the wide, quarter-length sleeves and the light, gauzy material.

Just underneath the collar of his shirt was a silver chain, the medallion it carried leaving an imprint in the fabric from where it was pressed against his chest. Absently, Sirius reached out, with every intention of plunging his hand into the open throat of his shirt and pulling the necklace from it, to see the insignia at the base. In fact, his hand was outstretched, hovering over his resting companion before he realized what he’d been about to do. With an odd flush in his cheeks, he pulled back, just in time.

Suddenly, with renewed energy, his new friend sat up, face level to Sirius’ own, and he let a mischievous smile wash over his features. It left an immediate reciprocation on Sirius’ face, though he did his best to smother it as quickly as he could. Before Sirius could ask what this burst of spirit was all about, the boy stood, glancing at Sirius with a curious smirk. Under furrowed brows, Sirius watched him.

“You practiced, right?” he asked. His expression was almost arrogant. “Let’s have a contest, then.” With one quick flourish of his wrist, he rolled one wide sleeve of his short cloak up to his shoulder in an instant, latching it with a buttoned tab before repeating the motion on the other side, the white sleeves of his shirt underneath peeking out from the underside. With the movement, Sirius’ eye caught a white marking on the inside of his right bicep, but before Sirius could get a closer look, he found himself being powerfully pulled to his feet. With the familiar warmth of this boy, a boy who had yesterday been a stranger, so close to him again, Sirius went rather still. It was becoming quite common around him.

There was something tender in the way this boy looked at him, in the way he held onto him, in the way he treated him. With his hand around Sirius’ wrist, even the roughness of the calluses on his fingertips and on the pads of his palms felt soft compared to the pain Sirius usually found there in the scorch of his first offensive rune. Ever since it had been branded onto his skin last fall, that rune had felt raised and angry and invasive to his own touch, but suddenly, it was like it wasn’t even there.

After only a single beat of silence and a quick swipe of the boy’s thumb across the rune on Sirius’ wrist, he spoke with a smile. “Find a stone. Then I’ll count us down.” The boy knelt, immediately closing his eyes and letting his hand hover over the stones, fingers shifting like they were playing a melody.

“Teach me how,” Sirius countered, dropping to his knees in the shifting stones. “How you do it.”

With a gradient pause, the boy peered open with one eye. “Give me your hand,” he said, a soft sort of command, and Sirius obeyed without question, slipping his fingers into the boy’s open palm. With Sirius’ hand underneath, the boy guided their hands over the surface of the stones. “Close your eyes,” he directed. Again, Sirius obeyed. Suddenly, their movement stopped. “Here. Right here. Do you feel that?”

Sirius paused, focusing fervently on … nothing. “No,” he answered honestly, furrowing his brows, but keeping his eyes closed, still trying to find that feeling, but all he could feel was the touch on his hand.

“It’s faint, but it’s …” The voice of his friend paused, in the middle was a softened breath, and then he continued. “It’s hard to describe. Like a tiny thread tugging gently at the center of your palm.”

“I still don’t –” Sirius began, his voice growing frustrated in his apparent lack of perception. His thought was left hanging as the familiar touch moved away from his hand. Before he could open his eyes to find out the reason, he felt the smooth surface of a stone pressed into the curve of his palm.

“Focus on the stone,” Sirius heard just to his right, a puff of warm breath in his ear. “Feel the shape of it in your hand.” Eyes still closed, Sirius did as he was told. And when the boy let the stone naturally fall away from the contact of Sirius’ skin, he felt it. That tug. Like a tiny thread in his palm.

“That’s it,” he said emphatically, his eyes darting open to immediately meet those of his partner, who was wearing a knowing, yet victorious smile. He pocketed the rock and nodded slightly.

“Now choose one for yourself,” he instructed. Sirius closed his eyes again. Holding his open hand level to the surface of the stones, he scanned over them slowly, pausing when his skin felt strange.

“This one,” he stated confidently, taking the stone into his hand with eyes still closed, recognizing how that tugging sensation seemed to feel less intense with the stone directly in the center of his palm.

“Show me what you can do,” the boy said, and as Sirius opened his eyes, he found that the uniquely amber gaze of his new friend had never disconnected from his. In the same way the pull of the perfect stone felt to the tendons of his palm, so did the urge to smile feel within the corners of his lips.

 At once, Sirius stood to his full height, a bit taller than his mysterious new friend. With his feet facing the shoreline, his knees bent and shoulder-width apart, his arm level to the surface of the rippling water, he leaned back and shot the stone from the tip of his forefinger. It was different than it had been yesterday – now, it felt as if there were a physical string keeping the stone tethered to his palm. It was almost as if the stone had a will of its own, more reluctant to be released. At the same time, when Sirius released it, the invisible thread between his skin and the stone acted like the cord of a whip. The stone shot further in the first skip than it had the day before. One, two, three, four, five skips before it sank.

With wonder and pride, Sirius glanced back to the boy, who then looked down at the stones underneath his feet, grinning with a closed smile like he’d just won a silent, personal victory. Sirius felt a rush of something he couldn’t name at the sight of it. “I’d like to see you beat that,” Sirius said, goading his friend with intent, knowing the boy’s first throw the day before had already been more successful.

His dark brow raised, scarred side first, as he looked up at Sirius with a challenge in his glare. He didn’t rear back, barely even steadied his stance. With a simple stretch of his arm and a flick of his wrist, the stone that had once been in his pocket went whizzing along the surface of the water, following the course of the river. Sirius counted twelve skips before he lost sight of the rock completely.

When Sirius turned back to look in amazement, his eyes immediately fell upon the boy’s still outstretched arm, the white mark that Sirius had briefly caught sight of earlier now on full display. On the interior of his right upper arm was a slim crescent moon, his freckles forming the natural outline with the silver of long-healed scars connecting the points. The shape was indented into his flesh, carved out of it, and then refilled with some substance that had bonded to his skin, white and glittering and kinetic, alive and in fluid motion, as if the reflection of moonlight on the river’s edge had been implanted into his skin.

It wasn’t a rune, not the way Sirius knew them. It wasn’t charred at the edges with the remnants of eternally burnt flesh, it didn’t seem to breathe with life like cinders of a wood fire when a light breeze passed over it, it didn’t seem to hurt him at all, in fact. It was nothing like the rune on Sirius’ wrist.

The moment he noticed Sirius’ attention on it, he winced sharply, covering it instantly with his opposite hand. Despite the deepness of his skin tone, a subtle ruby flush raced through his cheeks, like hours of sun exposure condensed into a single moment, and strangely, Sirius found himself thinking that it looked much more captivating on this copper skin than it would have on Sirius’ pale complexion. Before Sirius could apologize, the boy was speaking, voice wavering. “I don’t think I can come back here again.”

“Wait,” Sirius called out on instinct as the boy began to rush past him toward the wooded brush that ran along the river’s edge. “Wait.” Without a thought in his head, he reached out and took hold of the boy’s wrist just as their shoulders collided, the momentum turning the boy in his place and doing the same for Sirius, leaving them face to face. With a purposeful tightening of his arm, Sirius drew him back in, drew him closer. There was something familiar about that mark, some memory triggered by that moonlight on his right arm, something that Sirius felt sure held a meaning he may have only understood in another life, but that wasn’t what kept him. It wasn’t what held his gaze. It wasn’t the reason the strength of his grip increased around the stranger’s wrist. It wasn’t the cause of the softness of his touch.

With a clench of his jaw, the boy spoke. “You and I both knew this was foolish from the start.” His argument didn’t loosen the hold of Sirius’ fingertips. In fact, Sirius added the strength of his free hand, holding carefully onto the boy’s forearm and pretending he didn’t revel in that familiar sting of contact.

“You don’t know me, and I don’t know you,” Sirius stated plainly, enunciating specifically. As the boy started to argue, Sirius raised his brows and cut him off. “I’m just Padfoot. And you’re just … Moony.”

A look of surprise moved into the boy’s expression, followed by something that looked like pleasant realization, complete with a splashing of a slight smile between his freckles. That surprise moved into Sirius’ face as the boy took a sudden step closer. “We’d better keep those names between us alone.”

“I’ll swear it to you,” Sirius answered instantly, sliding his fingers down into the open palm of his secret friend, which was, at first, met with an unsettled breath and a startled jerk. Sirius just looked up and gave a nod of assurance before taking the boy’s hand into his own again. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to make a blood pact,” Sirius laughed softly as he straightened his fingers and coaxed his friend into doing the same, giving him some verbal direction as they moved. “Hold onto my wrist.”

“Like this?” he asked in a quieted voice, sliding his palm down over Sirius’ open hand, his fingers naturally curling slightly around Sirius’ forearm. With a nod, Sirius mirrored his action, loosely wrapping his fingers around the sharp bones of his friend’s wrist as he pulled the silk ribbon from his dark hair, sending it cascading down around his shoulders. There was a measure of silence between them as the amber gaze of this new friend scattered across Sirius’ expression, as if searching for meaning, for truth.

“This is lotus silk,” Sirius explained as he wrapped their joined hands in the emerald ribbon, matched to the now-hidden jackal crest underneath his ivory tunic. For a brief second, as Sirius glanced up at his new friend as he wrapped their forearms together, there was some combination of unsettling things in his expression that Sirius couldn’t quite name. Part surprise, part terror, part epiphany.

“Lotus flowers are extinct,” the boy said with wide-eyed conviction. Sirius just smiled.

“That must be why I was told it’s a priceless family heirloom,” he said as his fingers brushed across the back of the boy’s knuckles. “I don’t usually wear it, so it must’ve been fate that I met you today.” There was a pang of guilt in his chest at admitting out loud that he never wore it, when he once was made to swear he would never leave the manor without it. She said it would save his life one day.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, but the way he asked it made it seem like he already knew.

“Because lotus flowers are a sign of resurrection, of rebirth,” Sirius said, wondering if the boy would follow his meaning. They could start new here, they could be new together. “They also represent transcendence and an unwavering faith in oneself,” he quoted, remembering the words his favourite cousin had said to him the day she’d given him that ribbon, on his birthday. The day before she died. The day she made him promise that he would carry this silk with him everywhere he went. No matter what.

“Transcendence?” the boy clarified, watching Sirius with uncertainty.

“Rising above the circumstances of one’s birth,” Sirius answered. By the expression on his friend’s face, the sharpening of his gaze and the clenching of his jaw, it was clear he understood. They could be more than just their clan or their Coven or their generational name. “For us, faith. In each other,” Sirius finished with a solemn nod, keeping his silver eyes locked tight onto the golden gaze in front of him.

A quiet smirk moved over the boy’s face. “Maybe we should recite a vow or something,” he snickered playfully, and Sirius rolled his eyes, softly kicking him in the shin, eliciting a laugh of, “Ow.”

“Here’s your vow,” Sirius offered, intending to say something sarcastic, but getting drawn into the tenderness of that gilded gaze against the sting of the touch at his wrist. “Your name will die with me.”

Instead of surprise at Sirius’ sudden graveness or reverting back to cynicism for the comfort of it, the boy continued the thought, “Never to be written down, never given to anyone except its bearer.”

“Moony,” Sirius spoke the name aloud, to its bearer alone, writing it down only in his heart.

“Padfoot,” his friend spoke back. Moony spoke back. And he smiled unlike any smile Sirius had ever seen in his life, and Sirius knew then he would never see one like it again if not on this face.

Realizing their vow had long since been taken and they were still standing there holding each other’s hands and staring into one another’s eyes, Sirius grew unusually flushed, quickly unwrapping their contractual bindings. “I won’t be able to come back every day,” he said with a disappointed sigh.

“I know,” Moony nodded. “Can we choose a meeting day? A day of the lunar cycle?” he asked with a sardonic smile, flashing the white, glimmering crescent at the inside of his arm before unlatching the tab on his cloak and letting his sleeves fall down to cover it again. “Anything but the full moon,” he said, shooting a glance of warning toward Sirius to indicate he shouldn’t ask the reasoning behind it. And Sirius wouldn’t have asked, though he noted it was strange that he meant to give the same provision, considering the night of the full moon was when the activity of his Coven was always at its peak.

“What about the new moon?” Sirius offered as the silk ribbon slipped between their hands and they let their touch separate without bothering to place any additional distance between them. Moony watched as Sirius tied his hair back up, looking as if he would offer his help, but apparently noticing that Sirius wouldn’t have needed it anyway. “Midday following the first night of each new moon.”

“The new moon is in a few days, you know,” Moony said, looking at Sirius out of the corner of his eye, a smile tucked into his lips. He stepped toward the forest brush, pausing to pick up a stone. “Think you’ll be up for a rematch by then? You’ve got a lot of improving to do if you want to beat me.”

Sirius smirked. “I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?” he said, kneeling to pick up a stone of his own, realizing he could feel that invisible thread now in every stone and that some had a stronger thread than others, recognizing that he felt that thread in Moony’s touch. Moony flashed both brows upward, the one with the scar etched out of it lingering a little bit longer than the other side.

“You’d better start practicing, Padfoot,” Moony grinned, holding up his hand to wiggle his fingers in a soft wave. All Sirius did was blink, but when he opened his eyes again, Moony was no longer there.

“Until then, Moony,” he said with a deep, sorrowful breath. In his chagrin, he swiftly spun on his heels and flung the stone downriver. It skipped thirteen times before he lost sight of it.

Chapter Text

There was something different about Moony lately. Maybe it was the fact that he’d started showing up with more scars, more wounds than usual. And they were getting progressively worse. Where once it had been a bruise here and there, a cut that ran along his dark hairline, skin split at his knuckles that could’ve feasibly been due to the dry heat wave they’d been having this summer, instead now he showed up at every new moon with a new brutal injury. First, a broken finger, then a slash that ran through his eyebrow and looked like it had nearly gouged out his eye, and lastly, today, a set of what looked like claw marks that began just behind his right shoulder and ran all the way across his throat and both collarbones. The fresh wound crossed over the old scar that encircled Moony’s throat, the one that Sirius was sure should’ve been deep enough and grave enough to claim his life, stirring the worry Sirius carried in his chest. This new one was barely even healed – still red and inflamed and possibly infected.

Luckily, Sirius never went anywhere without carrying a tin of healing balm, one that his cousin had made. Of course, it was still a work in progress, she was only sixteen, after all, just a year younger than Sirius, but she showed unparalleled talent in formulating new elixirs and brews and potions with the medicinal rune she’d been given on her sixteenth birthday, after failing to qualify for a combat rune.

“Moony, get out of the water and let me look at you,” Sirius called out to his best friend, who was floating atop the tranquil water in the middle of the river. For three years, they’d been meeting here where the tempestuous river slowed to a quiet lull, the same place they met at fourteen when Moony had taught Sirius the proper technique for skipping a stone, when Moony had taught him how to feel the strings that connected the universe, when Moony unwittingly taught Sirius how to find the string that connected them together. Maybe that was another thing about Moony that had been different lately.

“I told you, I’m fine,” Moony grumbled from the water, pushing his arms through the current to keep himself afloat. “And it’s hot. Why don’t you stop fussing and come swim with me instead?”

“Only if you let me get a good look at your wound afterward,” Sirius bargained.  

“Fine,” Moony replied in a throaty growl of belligerent submission. With a quick yelp of victory, Sirius leapt to his feet, unsettling the river stones beneath them. He had one hand gripped on the collar of his shirt, ready to tear it over his head, when he paused. It wasn’t as if Moony hadn’t seen Sirius’ many blackened runes or the emerald insignia of the Black family crest on his breastbone – countless times by this point – but it always seemed to unsettle Moony to see them. It was almost as if Moony didn’t like to be reminded of them at all, despite the fact that Sirius had never activated one in his presence.

But it was hot, and the shirt he was wearing was made of such heavy fabric since it was the same one he’d worn on his mission the night before, having only gotten home just long enough to make it look like he was off to bed before he had to sneak out again in order to see Moony without inciting questions from the other members of the Coven. With a defiant shake of his head, he tore the shirt from his body and tossed it carelessly onto the stones of the riverbed before wading into the cool and welcoming water.

As Sirius neared him, Moony sucked in a deep breath of air with a wild expression on his face, and he disappeared under the surface of the water. It was a clear river, but deep, and by the time Sirius swam out to where Moony had been, there was no trace of him left. And Sirius had learned over the last three years that Moony could hold his breath underwater for an uncommon and impressive length of time.

Before Sirius could duck his head underneath the water to try to look for him, he felt a sharp tug at his ankle, strong enough to pull him under completely. As he opened his eyes under the translucid river, he found he was face to face with Moony, his dark roots and sun-bleached curls swelling around his face with the rising current and his amber eyes reflecting the sunlight coming in from the surface.

At first, there was nothing but a mischievous smile on Moony’s face. But since this was the warmest it had been all year, it was the first time they’d been able to tolerate the chill of the river. And it was the first time all year that Moony had seen Sirius without a shirt, which meant it was the first time he had seen at least five new runes on Sirius’ skin. The mischief in his expression slipped away. What was left behind was the reason Sirius didn’t show Moony when he got new runes. There was pain in his face.

Instead of surfacing and spending the afternoon sulking – as Moony often did when he was unwillingly alerted of a new rune on Sirius’ skin – his golden gaze met Sirius’ own, the ripples on the surface of the water catching the sunlight and refracting it across Moony’s copper skin and dark curls. He reached out, his fingers sliding over the most recent rune on Sirius’ shoulder, skin still cracked and angry.

Unable to hold his breath as long as Moony, Sirius’ lungs were starting to beg him for oxygen, but he ignored their insistence, instead letting air trickle from his lips in an effort to keep his body from surfacing without his direction. All to keep Moony’s touch to his skin. His efforts paid off as Moony let his hand slip from Sirius’ shoulder up to the side of his neck, a rune that Moony had seen in passing, but never studied this way, never caressed this directly. One more way Moony was acting differently.

Instead of letting his touch fall away, instead of acting like he resented Sirius for the runes on his skin, the way he usually did, the curve of Moony’s hand moved around the back of Sirius’ neck. As he pulled him in close, with Moony’s fingers threading through the waves of Sirius’ hair, the last reserves of Sirius’ breath moved through his lips and he desperately moved his hand over his mouth to keep it in, to stay in this wave of solitude where Moony felt free to touch him like this. His other hand went to Moony’s shirt, a garment that was never removed, under any circumstances, to keep that crescent moon on the inside of his right arm heavily guarded. With his grip on Moony’s tunic, Sirius tried to keep himself under the surface, to pull Moony closer, but he was losing the fight with his starved lungs. And Moony noticed.

With a careful smile, Moony wrapped his arms around Sirius’ waist and gave a few powerful kicks, propelling them to break through the surface tension of the water, and Sirius gasped hungrily for air as soon as he felt the sunlight on his cheeks. Only after he replenished the air in his chest did he realize that he was still holding onto Moony’s neck rather tightly, his face closer to Moony’s than it had ever been.  

And this – this was the most damning evidence of it all, of how strangely Moony had been acting recently. Instead of recognizing their closeness and retreating, as Moony often did when their sparring sessions got a little too heated or when they woke from an afternoon nap looking a little too comfortable with one another, Moony did the exact opposite. Tightening his hold on Sirius, he buried his face into the curve of Sirius’ throat. And he held him, he breathed him in, he sighed warmly into Sirius’ skin.

Before Sirius could comment on this change, Moony pulled away suddenly, the way Sirius had expected him to do in the beginning, and he swam to shore without another word about it, leaving Sirius to tread water alone, staring after Moony in surprise and feeling a profound sense of loss at his exit.

Once they were both back on dry land, Moony moved to lie down in his usual place in a bed of river stones just off the waterline and Sirius silently took his place next to him. The surprises from Moony continued, however, as he untied the collar of his wet tunic to uncover his new, vicious wound.

“Have your look now, if you still want it,” he offered in a quiet voice, baring his throat and the upper part of his chest for Sirius to examine. Strangely, Sirius felt himself take in a sharp, unsettled breath, though he wasn’t quite sure why – the wound itself was not as bad as he’d thought it was.

“I’ve got an herbal balm for superficial wounds that may help,” Sirius offered, reaching out to get the shirt he’d discarded, fishing around for the secret pocket sewn into the front placket. The balm was technically indicated to help speed the healing of runes, but a rune was ultimately just a wound, so Sirius was sure this would help some. At the very least, he knew it could help with easing the pain.

As he dipped his fingers into the salve, Moony leaned his head further back, turned to one side so Sirius could apply the treatment as he saw fit. At this sight – of Moony, soaking wet with his shirt half-open and his neck turned so sharply that the lines of his throat were more prominent than usual – it was then that Sirius began to realize why it seemed Moony was acting so strangely lately. It wasn’t Moony who was acting strangely, or at least, he wasn’t acting alone. It was that Sirius had been paying more attention to everything Moony did. And all of a sudden, he was starting to figure out the reason why.

Leaning over Moony, Sirius swiped a thick ribbon of the milky balm across the angry, red stripes clawed into Moony’s skin, and Moony took in a quickened breath at the sensation, a reaction that drew Sirius’ attention immediately to Moony’s lips. With Moony’s attention turned away, Sirius let his gaze linger there for just a bit as his hands mindlessly applied the liniment to Moony’s broken skin, watching the way Moony bit down onto his bottom lip to stifle a pained groan. It all became clear rather quickly.

“Is it helping at all?” Sirius asked, only second-handedly paying attention to his own words.

“Yes,” Moony replied in a single outward breath, the weight of it mirrored in Sirius’ throat. “Thank you,” he added, turning his head back toward Sirius as Sirius’ fingers moved to his opposite collarbone.

“I’m happy to do it, Moony,” Sirius replied quite honestly, watching Moony’s expression soften and recognizing the flutter in his own chest at the sight of it. “You’re welcome to take this. I have more.”

And again, Moony surprised him. “What would I do without you?” That weight in Sirius’ throat and the flutter in his chest collided, forging into something that produced heat behind his sternum.

“Succumb to infection, I imagine,” Sirius answered wittily, and Moony smiled in reply. At first, he opened his mouth, as if to say something else, but whatever it was, it died before it saw sunlight.

“Come on,” he redirected with a small groan as he pulled himself up into a sitting position. “You promised me we could spar today, I’ve got a new trick I want to show you.” In confusion, Sirius remained in his place as Moony moved to his feet, holding out his hands for Sirius to take as Sirius looked up at him.

“With that gash across your throat, you want to spar?” he clarified.

Moony rolled his eyes. “It’s not even that bad. And besides, you promised.”

“Alright, alright,” Sirius conceded as he took Moony’s hands and let Moony pull him upright. “But I’m taking it easy on you. Last time you were injured, and we sparred, I nearly broke your arm.”

“That was not your fault, Padfoot, I swung at you with that arm, and you blocked. How were you supposed to know I’d –” Before he could give away too much about why he always turned up injured on the new moon, he stopped, looking at Sirius with an apologetic wince before taking his stance.

“Show me your new trick then,” Sirius prompted, holding his arms out to his sides and specifically not taking a defensive stance. Shoulders slumping, Moony just glared at him with a dour expression.

“I’m not just going to show you, I have to test it on you,” Moony corrected. “Take a stance.”

“You’re forcing me to fight against my will, you know,” Sirius grumbled, bending his knees, widening his feet, and holding his hands out in front of his chest. “If I hurt you again, Moony, I’ll –”

“You couldn’t hurt me if you tried,” Moony said in an obvious taunt, and Sirius pretended to take the bait, but he was actually rather pleased at the softness Moony couldn’t keep from his voice.

“Is that a fact?” Sirius replied in like impertinence, cocking an arrogant brow. “Come at me.” And Moony did as he was told, lunging forward with his fist to Sirius’ chest, and Sirius made absolutely sure to use one of Moony’s own tricks against him, smoothly shifting out of his path and smacking Moony’s attacking arm away with the back of his hand. If anything, Moony looked terribly pleased by it.

“You bastard, I taught you that avoidance gesture,” Moony laughed, narrowing his eyes at Sirius.

“And I’ve perfected it. I’ll be happy to help you improve your technique,” Sirius teased.

“Now you’re insulting me on purpose,” Moony said, and he lunged again, in exactly the same way he had the first time, which gave Sirius the opportunity to perform the same deflection they were just discussing. But instead of moving away as he had the first time, Moony turned and grabbed Sirius’ wrist in the middle of Sirius’ shift to the side, using Sirius’ own momentum in addition to his own in order to swivel around to Sirius’ back, with Sirius’ wrist still in his hands, pinning Sirius’ arm to his back.

“Shit,” Sirius laughed softly under his breath as Moony pressed in closer, Sirius’ arm between the two of them, leaving Sirius with no means of escape, despite his every effort to wriggle free.

“What was that you said about having perfected it?” Moony hummed proudly into Sirius’ ear, his opposite hand moving up to hold Sirius by the shoulder on the same side, though his hold became so delicate, it was practically an embrace, his hand drifting slightly down the front of Sirius’ bare chest. While Sirius tried to convince his breathing to slow, having absolutely nothing to do with the physical exertion of trying to struggle against Moony’s hold and everything to do with the warmth of Moony’s breath against his neck, Moony spoke again, doubling Sirius’ conflict within himself. “Your technique needs work.”

“You’re assuming I didn’t plan for this outcome,” Sirius stated honestly under an unsteady breath.

“Oh, you wanted me to best you?” Moony laughed, only leaning further into Sirius in an effort to make Sirius admit defeat, but the increased tension in his twisted shoulder was nothing compared to the brush of Moony’s lips to the curve of Sirius’ ear. “And what was your goal in this scheme, exactly?”

“To get you close to me, Moony,” he confessed, leaning his head back as far as he could and turning his face in Moony’s direction, which put his lips even with Moony’s throat. To satisfy his own hunger and to win the fight all at once, he pressed his lips to Moony’s skin, just underneath his jaw and just above the scar that created a perfect division with the rest of him. Though his kiss was placed as softly as it could be, he wasn’t deaf to the erratic, startled breath that immediately moved from Moony’s lips. In the next instant, Sirius opened his mouth wide and bit down on the muscle at the side of Moony’s neck, opposite to his newest set of scars, and only just enough to get Moony to pull away.

When he released Sirius and stepped back, he absently brought his hand up to his throat and he held it cautiously, as if Sirius had left a worse wound than the claw marks on the opposite side. With amber eyes wide and a heavy swallow, he watched Sirius closely, chest moving rapidly with breath.

“That was a dirty fucking trick,” Moony finally said with a nervous laugh, hand still to his neck, and at first, Sirius didn’t smile, didn’t laugh in return. Half of him wondered if that look in Moony’s eyes was born of the same thing that had led Sirius to place his lips against Moony’s skin. But even if it was, it didn’t change anything. They would always just be this – two friends who have to keep secrets from each other.

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Sirius plastered on a boastful grin to cover up the fact that his heart was still pounding, stretching his arms above his head to hide the fact that his hands were still shaking.

For a split second, it seemed like there was something dark in Moony’s expression, something that Sirius could tell went unsaid, but he didn’t address it, and neither did Moony. Instead, Moony glanced up into the sky, at the position of the sun as it had begun to sink beneath the tree line. “I should probably get back.” But he lingered, as if he hoped Sirius would argue with him. Sirius didn’t argue.

“Take this,” he said instead, bending to retrieve the little tin of healing balm before stepping over to press it firmly into Moony’s palm. He may have let his touch persist longer than was necessary, but Moony didn’t exactly pull away. Instead, he met Sirius’ gaze the moment he looked back up.

“Padfoot, I –” he began to say, Sirius’ hand still in his, and he let his fingers curl around the back of Sirius’ hand to keep it there. His eyes scattered over Sirius’ face, his chest rising with breath as if he intended to say something, but he let the breath fall. “Thank you. For the – the healing balm.”

“Of course,” Sirius said, trying to hide his disappointment at the fact that Moony stepped away, back toward the clearing in the brush where he usually emerged from on their meeting days.

“Maybe next new moon, you can teach me that dirty trick,” he said with a cautious but hopeful expression, running his hand through his hair. The smile Sirius had been trying to stifle broke through.

“It’s kind of difficult, I might have to demonstrate it a few times,” Sirius provoked, splashing a slightly incendiary expression on his face, smirk in the corner of his lips, dark brow raised. And unless he was mistaken by the shade of the trees and the setting of the sun, Moony returned that same stare.

“Beat my stone skipping record and then we’ll see if you can master another new skill,” Moony shot back with a smug flash of his brows before he spun on his heel and disappeared into the wood.

“Who says I haven’t already mastered it?” Sirius shouted.

“My record is fifteen!” Moony called back, voice getting farther away.

“Get back here and let me prove it!”

“Maybe use a little less teeth next time!” Moony laughed loudly and Sirius flushed red.

“That wasn’t a real – I only did that to – Moony, come back here and let me –” he trailed off as he realized he could no longer hear Moony’s laughter, “– kiss you,” he finished with a quiet sigh. After a moment of self-pity, he knelt into the stones, hovering his hand over their surface to find the perfect skipping stone. But the only thread he could feel was Moony’s, ever tightening with the distance.

“You’re just mad because I beat you. Agaaain,” Sirius called out in a sing-song voice, eyes closed and reclining in the stones at the shoreline, tossing a stone above his head and using the thread he felt connecting it to his skin to catch it without looking, his bare feet in the water, just warming with summer.

“Ooh, you infuriate me, do you know that?” Moony called back from the river’s edge, a note of genuine irritation in his ever-deepening voice at the fact that Sirius had managed to skip his stone across the water a record sixteen times and Moony … hadn’t. However, that irritation in his voice was eclipsed next to the affection and tenderness that was always present in his tone when he spoke to Sirius. Or perhaps it was always in his voice, but Sirius had just never heard him speak to anyone else but him.

Five more years had passed, and he and Moony kept meeting at this river’s edge – at the same place where Moony had taught him to skip a stone – at midday following the first night of every single new moon. Not once in eight years had they missed a meeting. Like following the laws of his Coven, like devotion to a religion, Sirius let nothing stand in his way of seeing Moony. He was Sirius’ new religion.

More often than not, they met more frequently than once a month, working out their schedules, as it were, to find an extra day, just one more day, that they could spend together. This last month had been long, no extra days to look forward to, as Sirius’ younger brother, Regulus, had just been given his first rune, which came with a lengthy celebration period. In other words, a lengthy healing process. The last week alone had Sirius changing the bandages on Regulus’ wrist nearly every hour, around the clock.

They still kept their lives secret, for the most part. Of course, Moony could see the accumulation of the runes on Sirius’ skin, a collection of now thirty markings on his skin, violent and raised and angry, all at the comparatively tender age of twenty-two. The count of runes on his skin, at his age, outnumbered any other member of his Coven, past or present, over the entire thousand-year history of the Coven.

Warring with the clans and tribes had been steadily growing more severe, and as Sirius was the most talented officer in the Black Coven, hopes of a victory were placed with him. And with those hopes came more monstrous weapons, forced upon him by his father. His younger brother would not be far behind, if Sirius’ father had his way. A back-up plan, he would say. In case Sirius turned out to be a failure.

Being given the runes was the only way Sirius could keep up the hoax. Sure, he’d fire off an offensive rune at that Potter boy every time they encountered one another, and he would always choose the flashiest, most devastating skill – like the mark on the back of Sirius’ hand that had been purposefully designed to shatter the bones underneath whatever area of the target’s skin it landed against – but it always ended in the Potter son getting away unscathed and Sirius being rained upon by shards of the trunk of whatever unfortunate redwood had been on the receiving end instead. Of course, the rebound for a rune like that, a non-elemental rune, was not nearly as bad when it didn’t hit a living, breathing target, so it was just one more reason for Sirius to let the Potter boy get away. In every case, Sirius would attribute it to the boy’s speed, which was a perfectly valid excuse, but the truth was, if Sirius wanted to hit him, he would’ve been dead already. Honestly, Sirius was even sort of starting to like him.

As long as he kept receiving the runes and kept utilizing them, despite their ineffectiveness, his father couldn’t chastise him. Battles were always fought one-on-one, after all, so his father would never be a witness to Sirius’ intentional misuse of his weapons. He could keep up the performance. He could keep pretending that he gave a shit about any of this, despite the futility of it. He could keep up the lie.

The lie he was having a harder time with, however, was the one about Moony. Of course, it wasn’t difficult to keep this secret from his father, though it was becoming more difficult to excuse his reasons for leaving at dawn once every month. Still, it was easier than keeping it from his younger brother. Regulus noticed everything, especially when it came to Sirius. Unlike Sirius, however, Regulus’ devotion to the Coven was far more rigorous, his indoctrination deeper, by Orion’s cunning design.

There was another lie, a heavily buried one he’d been telling himself for quite some time, but he was going to keep telling himself that one. It exposed itself every now and then, but he made sure to smother it each time, the same way his father had taught him to smother his emotions right after his cousin Andromeda died. It was weakness, his father had said then. Sirius reminded himself of that every time he felt that familiar sting of contact against Moony’s skin, that secret little thread felt only by him.

It was becoming more difficult to keep this lie, to the point that it was hardly even a lie any longer. It was mostly just a lie that he told to himself alone, because Moony could see the truth of it. It had been obvious since that day Sirius first pressed his lips to Moony’s throat when they were seventeen. The only fabrication of it that was left was in pretending that neither of them could see it, that all of this back and forth was just a bluff instead of a confession, that their touch meant no more than any other.

“You’re just tired, Moony, come lie in the sun for a bit,” Sirius called, tossing that stone into the air once more, just before the pink of sunlight from behind his eyelids disappeared, the rays of the sun suddenly obscured. When he opened his eyes to find Moony leaning over him, dark and golden curls coiling around his dark and golden gaze, Sirius took in a breath of surprise, the thread he felt with Moony outweighing the one he felt with the stone so strikingly that he forgot he’d thrown it into the air. Until Moony moved back just far enough, and with impressively precise timing, to allow the stone to smack Sirius directly in the center of his forehead. With a groan and a wince, Sirius plucked the stone from his now reddened skin and threw it at Moony’s face, though he adjusted fluidly to avoid it, settling down to nest in the stones to Sirius’ left as Sirius complained, “You did that on purpose, you tit.” 

“It is outside the boundary of my responsibility if your reflexes are slower than mine,” Moony hummed, settling his hands across his chest, fingers folded neatly, as he closed his eyes. At the exact moment Sirius reached over to flick Moony in the earlobe as retaliation, Moony caught him by the wrist, eyes still closed, smile still relaxed. And then he didn’t let go, the thread between them growing sharper and more pronounced with this much direct contact. It felt just like that day when Sirius had found himself pulling Moony in close to make that vow, lotus silk around their wrists, or that day when they were seventeen and underwater, just before Sirius put his lips to Moony’s skin. The thread pulled, incessantly and urgently, until Sirius almost began to wonder if Moony was physically tugging on him.

Sirius had never asked Moony about this thread between them, afraid that he was the only one who felt it. After all, there were threads in everything, between everything. And every thread felt slightly different. For example, there was a thread between Sirius and the lone red maple that grew at the edge of the riverbank behind them. It had a different tension than the cypress trees around it, a soft, easy, relaxed tautness that waxed and waned with the afternoon breeze. The threads in the stones varied in size and shape, but they all felt tight and crisp and recognizable. Still, every thread vanished the moment Sirius’ attention to them was unfocused. Every thread except the one he had with Moony. Sirius could feel that thread across miles. He could feel it all the way home. He could feel it in his sleep.

Despite its constancy, at a distance, the presence of that thread was comfortable, gentle, reassuring. A balm for the unease Sirius felt when Moony wasn’t with him. Up close, however, the thread felt exceptionally different. When Moony was close to him, the thread split – it no longer felt like a single thread, but a thousand branches of that thread, each one burrowing under Sirius’ skin, their insistent pull only calming when Sirius closed the distance. With Moony lying next to him now, as he often did, those fragmented threads coalesced again, focused into a singular point, as if an attempt to guide Sirius’ hand.

Only when Sirius’ skin was in contact with Moony’s, as it was right then, did the pressure beneath his skin start to equalize. The serenity surely had to be on his face, the immense relief of the tugging of those threads put to rest. Besides, it wasn’t just the threads that made him long to be close to Moony.

Just as Sirius began to turn to his side, to ask Moony if he felt that same imperative need, the grip of Moony’s hand changed. His fingers on Sirius’ wrist shifted – slowly at first, just a loosening of his hold, and Sirius would’ve thought he was letting go if it weren’t for the languid, deliberate pace of his movements. The first two of Moony’s fingers moved into Sirius’ empty palm, his callused thumb brushing delicately across the rune at the inside of Sirius’ left wrist, tracing the outline of it with strange fondness.

With furrowed brows, Sirius instinctively moved his gaze from their joined hands up to Moony’s face, only to find that Moony was watching him quite attentively, lips parted slightly to accommodate the change in his breathing, evident in the erratic rise of his chest. Before Sirius could speak, Moony drove his fingers forward, slowly pushing them through the empty spaces between Sirius’ own. As his arm rose to level his fingers with Sirius’ hand, still raised into the air, the sleeve of his garment shifted to his shoulder, exposing more of Moony’s skin than Sirius had ever seen. Skin Moony meticulously kept hidden.

As part of their agreement, they wouldn’t exchange their true names, nor would they ask the other any questions about their personal life. In the beginning, Moony had added a specific caveat to this arrangement. No questions about the markings on their skin. For obvious reasons. It meant no questions about the pawprint tattooed at the center of Sirius’ chest, no questions about any of his runes, but also no questions about the crescent moon on Moony’s right arm, a marking Sirius had never seen again.

Instinctively, Sirius’ attention shifted with the movement, and he wasn’t exactly surprised to find another marking on Moony’s skin. After all, he’d seen glimpses of this twin mark, a mark on his left arm, on his upper arm, one that clearly matched the crescent moon that Sirius knew was on his right. After all, it wasn’t like they kept their distance from each other. When they weren’t practicing their stone skipping, they were playfully sparring in the shallow river water or lying far too close to one another on the shores, both of them half asleep. Still, for the most part, Moony was careful to keep his skin covered.

So, the existence of the matched marking was not entirely a surprise to Sirius. What was a surprise was how distracted Moony had to be to let his guarded skin become uncovered so easily, by nothing more than a simple slip of fabric. Even more surprising was the content. This newly discovered marking had the same kinetic quality, the same white reflection of moonlight, but it wasn’t moonlight. It was starlight. A row of three stars, the belt of Orion, melded into the freckled flesh of his best friend.

Just like with the moonlight on his right arm, the starlight on his left was so oddly familiar that it felt strongly like déjà vu, like it was something Sirius knew in a past life or something he remembered from a dream he’d had as a child. If he considered them together, worded specifically, the moonlit right side and the starlit left, it felt like a song he knew as a boy, like a sonnet that was written for a story about magic and myth. Before he could focus on what it was, Moony seemed to come to his senses.

“Fuck,” Moony muttered, looking flustered as he pulled his hand away from Sirius’ fingers, despite Sirius’ attempt to keep it. He covered his left arm quickly. “Pretend you didn’t see that.”

“Moony, I won’t ask you about it,” Sirius reasoned, shifting up to rest on his elbow so that he could partially lean over Moony’s face, mostly to study the very subtle way he knew a blush would blossom underneath Moony’s copper skin. In fact, he spoke a bit more boldly to induce it. “You never said I couldn’t look at you. That would’ve been a deal breaker.” On cue, there was a sudden, slight reddening of his cheeks, a clear rush of blood to the edge of his skin, a soft maroon underneath his chestnut tone.

“Stop flirting to get your way,” Moony attempted to grumble, smile giving him away.

“I’m not –” Sirius began to argue, feeling his own cheeks flush, but he stopped when he recognized the playfulness in Moony’s eyes. “Fine, I’m flirting,” Sirius continued, amping up the pretense to cover the truth, mischief in his gaze to distract Moony from it. “Bare your skin for me, Moony.”

“Oh, gods’ sake,” Moony said, with an obvious roll of his eyes, but Sirius wasn’t ignorant to the unsteady breath Moony took in through slightly pursed lips. As he let out that same breath, teeth now partly clenched in his nervousness, the sound of that breath moving through the narrowed space of his lips was like the hiss of a snake, poised to strike, and Sirius felt his heart rate spike as if he actually were on the receiving end of such a bite. In fact, when Moony rolled his tongue over his canines, in regard and irritation, Sirius braced for it, only afterward recognizing what it was he’d actually been waiting for.

With hesitation in his movement, Moony pulled up the sleeve of his tunic again, brazenly displaying the skin he so religiously kept hidden. Even in full daylight, the brightness of the constellation on Moony’s skin was the same as it was in the night sky, twinkling and full of energy. On instinct, and without thought, Sirius reached out his hand before glancing up to Moony’s trepid expression.

“May I?” he asked softly. Moony’s jaw clenched, the soft maroon underneath his freckles bloomed, and he gave a tentative nod, letting his head fall back into the bed of stones below him.

Leaning across Moony, Sirius let his fingertips contact the border of starlight embedded in Moony’s skin and was surprised to find there wasn’t a discernible border there. He expected it to feel more like one of his runes, a palpable line dividing skin and substance. But it was just Moony’s skin, warm and pliant and yielding to Sirius’ touch. Strangely, when the firmness of Sirius’ caress increased, the glittering white of the starlight seemed to respond to it, as any other pool of liquid confined to a finite area. When Sirius pressed in, the starlight spread thin underneath the pad of Sirius’ thumb, displaced to the points of their outline, the shape of which was defined by the freckles on Moony’s chestnut skin.

Just as Sirius began to express his amazement at this, he felt Moony’s opposite arm snake up his back from where it had slipped through the space between the stones and Sirius’ waist. At first, his touch was light, barely there, but it quickly and suddenly formed a fist in the excess fabric of Sirius’ shirt.

“Padfoot,” Moony spoke aloud, his voice full of breath but lacking in volume. In concern, Sirius immediately lightened his touch, knowing how sensitive the skin underneath his own runes were.

“Am I hurting you?” Sirius asked, the worry in his voice evident even to himself.

“No,” Moony answered, and his response was swift and decisive, but his breathing told a different story, breaths coming up too short to not be in pain. “No, I don’t know what it … I can’t describe what it feels like, I …” His speech was erratic, words shoved into the spaces between quickened breaths, chest rising and falling at a concerning rate. “Nobody has ever … I think it’s because it’s you.”

“Because it’s me?” While the worry in Sirius’ voice amplified threefold, he kept moving his touch over Moony’s skin because there was something about watching Moony writhe underneath him that left him feeling extremely unsettled, and it only unsettled him more to admit he enjoyed the feeling.

“The thread, Padfoot, it’s … I feel it stronger with you than with anything else,” Moony said, practically panting now in his desperation for breath, his fist buried in the back of Sirius’ shirt now fluttering against Sirius’ skin with a light tremble. “I can feel you from miles away. At every moment.”

“I thought I was the only one,” Sirius admitted with a nervous laugh, his own breathing spiking in response to Moony’s unease. As he admired the softness of Moony’s skin underneath his fingertips, as he reveled in the elongated sigh moving from Moony’s lips, as he watched the way Moony arched his back into the bed of stones underneath him, Sirius could no longer ignore the race of his own heart, the shortness of his own breath, the tightening of his own flushed skin. “I feel it in my sleep, Moons.”

“When you touch me, it runs deeper, it …” he paused to accommodate a heavy swallow. “Pads, I think you should stop before I …” Another pause, more heavy breathing. “Before I say something wrong.”

“Like what?” Sirius questioned, desperately hoping he could hear Moony admit it. The longer Sirius’ touch remained, the clearer it became. The sensation it left in Moony’s skin was far from pain.

However, when Sirius’ touch moved slightly down Moony’s arm, far enough to move away from the pattern of Orion, Moony let out a deep sigh, the tension instantly melting from his limbs. At first, it sounded like relief, but it tapered off into a subtle sort of whimper that resembled disappointment.

“Oh, gods, alright, take note, I am never letting you do that again,” Moony breathed out heavily, sparing no time in pulling away from Sirius to sit upright, knees to his chest, before burying his face into his hands, a face that Sirius noticed was rather flushed, which wasn’t at all common in Moony’s rich, almond skin tone. He let his hands drag all the way down his face, over a particularly clenched jaw, before moving back up to press his fingertips into his eye sockets and taking a concerningly deep breath.

“I thought you said it didn’t hurt,” Sirius clarified, the worry roaring back for only a moment.

“It hurt my ego a little,” Moony mumbled, though it sounded like it was mostly to himself.

“Did I do something wrong, Moony?” Sirius asked quietly, throwing a little intentional hurt into his voice. Just like he expected, Moony looked back at him with a wretchedly aching expression.

“No, Padfoot, I …” He must’ve seen the smirk on Sirius’ face, because the ache in his expression quickly turned to contempt. “You would think I would stop falling for that trick, but apparently not.”

“It’s because you’re defenseless against my wicked charm,” Sirius grinned. 

Moony let out a groaning breath before muttering to himself again. “More than you know.”

“You promise it didn’t hurt?” Sirius checked, leaning in to try and get a closer look at Moony’s face, but Moony shifted forward on his knees, closer to the river’s edge to cup his hands into the water.

“I almost wish it did,” he said with another sigh before splashing water onto his face.

“You’re acting like it did.” Or, at least, acting like Sirius had done something wrong, after all.

“Padfoot, I promise you, it didn’t hurt, it was …” he turned to argue, but stopped abruptly, clamping his teeth closed before burying his face in one hand again. “I don’t think I can describe it.”

“Try,” Sirius goaded as he pushed himself down the bank, closer to Moony. He shouldn’t be pressing this, he knew that, because this was the base of that little lie that he had kept telling himself, every day over the last five years. The closer he got to Moony, the harder the lie was to believe. Worse still when Moony made him forget about the lie entirely. And this was the worst it had ever been.

When he looked up, Moony met his gaze with more directness in a single expression than had been in every other that had come before it. In preparation, Sirius took in a breath. He held it. If Moony were to say what Sirius had been wanting him to say every day for the past five years, he could forget about that lie he’d kept telling himself. Instead, Moony let his gaze fall. And Sirius kept up the lie.

Still, his response was not without an element of surprise. As he stood, Moony kept his back to Sirius, standing still for only a moment before walking toward his edge of the woods. “All my life, those markings have been pressed and poked and prodded by countless people and it felt no different than a handshake.” He paused but didn’t turn. “But you? You felt like you lit my whole body on fire.”

Without another word, he disappeared into the brush, leaving Sirius to wonder if Moony knew that the only rune on Sirius’ skin the day they first met, his very first rune, was one that cast a flame. 

Chapter Text

“Sirius.” He bristled at the sound of his own name, recognizing that he shouldn’t immediately become defensive at the sound of his father’s voice, but unable to change his inherent reaction.

“Yes, Father.” It wasn’t a question. It was never a question. It was only ever compliance.

“I heard you were missing during daylight again,” Orion stated plainly, another non-question. It shouldn’t have surprised Sirius that his father knew about his outing, but he’d been successfully sneaking out of the manor to see Moony for the last eight years with very few reports about it to his father.

“I haven’t been sleeping,” Sirius answered quite honestly, but his heart had begun pounding. He was lucky his father had never bothered with runes that weren’t strictly intended for brutal offense or necessary defense. If he’d invested in an interrogative rune, a rectitude rune, like Sirius had, the true purpose of Sirius’ little excursions could’ve been quickly uncovered. “I took a walk.” Another half-truth.

“There are runes for that, you know,” Orion told him, needlessly, as Sirius had spent every day of his life until he turned eighteen learning the purpose of every rune known to the covens, studying the reason behind every mark that made up the character, understanding the centuries worth of knowledge and the decades of research that went into designing a new rune for another warfare tactic.

“I don’t need another rune,” Sirius answered, holding back the bite in his tone. Since receiving his first rune at fourteen, he’d done nothing but qualify for more runes, through trial, through actual combat, through proving himself over and over, and he got rewarded each time with a searing hot branding iron.

“Have Narcissa make you an herbal remedy. Because I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what will happen if I find out you’ve been walking around in the middle of the day again.” He let his words fall away as he slipped past Sirius, down the unlit hall of the aged manor. He didn’t have to finish his thought. Sirius understood it quite clearly. The threat should’ve scared him into obedience. He knew it wouldn’t. Nothing in the world was going to keep him from Moony. He would break every law in the Coven to be with him.

As he walked into the repository at the back of the manor, he found his cousin, Bellatrix, helping his younger brother, Regulus, find a suitable dagger – a backup plan employed by all Coven members, should they be too close to their enemy to use the proper combative rune. There was an immediate wince, practically a growl, in the corner of Sirius’ mouth. If only Regulus hadn’t passed the combat trial, he never would’ve gotten his rune this early. If only Regulus had chosen a more neutral element for his first rune instead of fucking lightning. Of course, their father had been wildly pleased with Regulus’ choice, especially considering lightning was the rune their father had chosen upon his imprinting, even more so because it was the rune that he’d wanted Sirius to choose, and he hadn’t. Looking back, Sirius wished he’d chosen water instead of trying to find some middle ground with his father by choosing fire.

“Leave,” Sirius demanded of his cousin. At first, she sneered, until the rune on his bared shoulder began to crackle, reminding her of the last time that she’d refused his order and ended up unable to utter a single word until Narcissa reversed the skill with an elixir, which took nearly a week to brew successfully.

With a roll of her eyes, she stomped off toward the door, only pausing at the threshold to add under her voice, “Don’t blame me if I accidentally let you die on the mission tonight.” Sirius let her storm out of the room entirely before turning to his younger brother with concern in his silver gaze.

“Reg,” he said, letting out a singular breath.

“I know what you’re going to say, Sirius, but I’m fine,” he said, but the way he was holding his freshly-branded wrist told a different story. His blackened rune hadn’t even started to scab yet. It was still a gaping wound, the lines of the lightning character unclear for all the burned flesh and weeping lesions. 

The first imprinting ceremony carried the most pageantry, the most spectacle, especially when it happened after an initial trial, at fourteen, which was rare. Not a single member of the Coven had passed an initial trial in the eight years since Sirius had done it. And before Sirius, it hadn’t happened since Orion, who went on to become the leader of the Coven. Even Bellatrix, who had been lauded as a prodigy before her trial, had to wait until the remedial trial at sixteen to get her first rune. Many people in their Coven didn’t even make it that far, withdrawing to medicinal or husbandry runes. Those hurt less, anyway.

Regulus’ imprinting ceremony had been a week ago, but Sirius still found himself struggling not to be sick over it. Maybe that was the reason he hadn’t been sleeping. Seeing it happen to Regulus brought back the nightmares he thought he’d outgrown, nightmares where he was once again blindfolded and led into an underground passage lined by members of his Coven who had passed the trials, chanting in a dead language about power and glory while he was stripped naked and held down and ceremoniously stigmatized with a symbol that could recoil and tear off his limb if he ever used it without caution.  

As Sirius had watched in silent horror as this ritual was forced upon his little brother, as he choked down the vomit threatening in his throat at the sight of this child gritting his teeth onto the gag in his mouth that muffled his screams of agony, all he could think about was how much more of this Regulus would have to endure. After all, Sirius was up to thirty runes, all of them exactly this painful.

He made a promise to himself that day. Regulus would never have to get more than one. He would never let Regulus get more than one. Sirius would get every rune in existence if it would mean keeping Regulus from having to get them. He would end this war. By whatever means necessary. Violence hadn’t worked in a century; he was going to have to come up with something much more devious.

His devious plan had a name. And, if he timed it right, it was only going to take him a single night to find out what that name was. This plan came with an immense level of risk. If discovered, it could result in his exile from the Coven, at best. But if it meant Regulus would be safe, he would attempt it.

“Go and see Cissy. She’s made a balm to help speed the healing,” Sirius instructed Regulus, taking his head into one hand so he could pull Regulus’ forehead to his lips. “Don’t needlessly suffer through the pain.” Regulus pulled away to look up at him with a look of disbelief, but Sirius didn’t let him get too far. 

“Father says soothing the pain inhibits the process. Makes the rune weak.”

“Father is wrong,” Sirius argued quickly and sternly. “I’ve used Narcissa’s balm on every one of my runes.” As a testament, he opened his palm and set it alight, a flame springing up instantly, burning blue and white in its intensity, the rune on his wrist crackling in time with the flare in his palm. He was so practiced in stifling the wince of pain, he forgot the burning of his rune even left pain anymore. “And my runes are still twice as strong.” With a sigh of relief, Regulus nodded in agreement as Sirius extinguished the fire in his palm, rapidly closing his hand into a fist one finger at a time. It always made Regulus smile.

“Are you really stuck with Bella again tonight?” Regulus asked in disdain, and Sirius laughed.

“I always ditch her anyway, it’ll be fine,” he winked, pulling Regulus’ face in close for another forceful kiss to the forehead before wrapping his arm around Regulus’ neck and pulling him toward the wideset double doors at the back of the repository. As it was the only way into the Black manor from the outer border of Coven territory, it was consistently guarded by no less than four Coven members at all times, and it served as the rendezvous point for all incoming and outgoing factions.

“Be careful, Sirius,” Regulus said, still holding the underside of his wrist, careful to keep his touch away from the violent wound that Sirius was only letting him keep uncovered until the balm was set.

“I promise,” Sirius said, though it was half a lie. Truthfully, he intended to do something very, very careless. But, if his intuition was correct, it could lead to the end of all of this needless fighting. A sigh passed through Regulus’ lips as he looked up into the night sky as they emerged from Black manor, and it was almost as if Regulus knew Sirius didn’t intend to keep that promise. He knew Sirius better than most.

“You can see your namesake tonight,” Regulus said with fond sentimentalism in his tone, and Sirius smiled as he looked up. But it wasn’t his namesake that his eyes fell upon first.

“And Orion,” he stated softly, blinking slowly at the three stars aligned above his head, the same pattern as the one reproduced on Moony’s copper skin. Last week, seeing his father’s namesake in the sky left him looking away with disdain, but now, now it was the constellation that graced Moony’s skin, and that made Sirius forget about his father entirely. As he looked up, he got carried away by the thought of Moony, recalling the way the ethereal liquid underneath the barrier of Moony’s skin had responded to him, remembering the plushness of Moony’s muscle and sinew underneath his fingertips, recognizing the familiarity in the way Moony breathed out his name. Padfoot, he’d sighed, aching under Sirius’ touch.

Just as Sirius took a breath to remind himself of where he was, of who he was with, of who he was not with, Regulus spoke again. “It reminds me of that story Andie used to tell us as children.”

“Which one?” Sirius asked with a sharp swallow, scarcely able to recall details from when she was alive. Their beloved cousin, Andromeda, had been killed two years before Sirius’ combat trial. He was barely twelve. What should’ve been an easily treatable wound from a laceration to her ribs that she’d received in battle turned into an infection that lingered for weeks before she succumbed to it. It was part of the reason her sister Narcissa devoted herself so fully to salves and elixirs and tonics. Runes alone hadn’t been enough to save Andie. Worse still, a botched healing rune may have been to blame.

Sirius had not been allowed to mourn her. After all, he was the primary heir of the purest Coven bloodline and he was being immersed in education and training, his combat trial an ever present, looming threat in his near future. A show of strength was required long before combat. At least that’s what his father had told him. In public, Sirius had been cold and apathetic. In private, he’d cried himself to sleep.

There were a lot of memories about Andromeda that Sirius intentionally kept blocked behind his unexpressed grief. Sometimes, Regulus would mention something vague about one of the stories she had always told them, and Sirius would nod and smile, but the truth was, it was hidden deep, somewhere not easily accessible, for fear the sorrow he buried it underneath would come tumbling out with it.

Sometimes, however, Regulus would say just the right turn of phrase to send Sirius back to that time, and a flood of memories would rush in to leave Sirius dizzy and reeling, sick with the remembered loss and disordered with the temporal displacement it carried. In those times, he was eleven all over again, sitting at the foot of Andromeda’s bed as she animatedly waved her hands, her excitement inadvertently sparking the fire rune on her wrist, the same one Sirius went on to choose for his own.

Before Sirius could interrupt Regulus, before he could prevent him from saying one of those things that made Sirius’ stomach drop with the abruptness of imagined motion, Regulus did just that. And what he chose to say at that moment sucked the air from Sirius’ lungs all at once, as if he’d been on the wrong side of an atmospheric rune. “I still think about it all the time. Starlit left, moonlit right.”

The lack of oxygen left behind frightening vertigo. No, maybe the oxygen in his lungs was still there, maybe he was just confused. Had he just turned eleven or was he nearly twenty-three? Hadn’t Regulus just been standing next to him? With a sharp inhale, he closed his eyes and got his bearings.

“What did you say?” he asked, though he couldn’t remember who had been speaking to him.

“The poem from the story Andie used to tell us,” Sirius heard, and it certainly did sound like Regulus’ voice. “You remember. Starlit left, moonlit right …” he leaded, trailing off to let Sirius finish.

The words were on his lips before they were in his head, speaking from the muscle memory of forming them years ago. “Rings of golden amber light,” he said on an empty voice, staring blankly ahead. Regulus joined in with him again as they recited the rest. “An empty circle for an empty sky, the last remaining soul of its kind.” As the panic of confusion subsided, the panic of realization set it. “How could I have forgotten it?” Sirius spoke on a hollow breath, glancing over to Regulus, eyes wide.

“The Last Leichan,” they said in synchrony, though their tones were wildly different – Regulus’ voice filled with the fondness of memory and Sirius’ filled with dread of the future. It was the title of Andromeda’s favourite folktale, one she had told them over and over throughout their childhood.

It was an archaic tale, one that Sirius had often heard, almost always from Andromeda. On more than a few occasions, Andie had told him the story of the original leader of the Black Coven, the one who became a jackal to steal darkness from the oldest of the elder beasts. The story itself, she’d always told him, had been repeated for eons, the narrative becoming muddier with every passing generation.

The first time Sirius heard it, even as young as he had been then, he’d waved it off as a silly fable, a tale told to children to make them behave, to make them fear the darkness, or at least give them respect for it. Nothing more than a ghost story to make the legacy of their leader sound more impressive than it really was, allowing him to be known for defeating an entity so ancient and so powerful. In reality, there was likely no such thing as an elder beast in the first place. After all, there were no official records about them, only this legend, passed down by word of mouth, details getting added and lost with time.

As Sirius grew, he’d heard the story countless other times, from Coven leaders, even from his father a time or two. The general concept was basically the same as it was in Andie’s story – the Founder of the Black Coven had defeated the last and most ancient elder beast to overthrow the beast’s rule of darkness. Ultimately, the victory over that darkness would be the same price that the Black Coven would have to pay for their power, the runes of their skin turning to ash with every successful use.

However, in Andie’s version, there were specific details that Sirius never heard in any other iteration of the story. She’d spoken of this elder beast as not a beast, but a human with transformative powers, powers that the Founder of the Black Coven had unrightfully stolen from him that allowed him to become the black jackal. Every time Andie told that story, she used a word that Sirius had never heard before to name this human with terrible power, the most ancient of ancient beasts. A Leichan.

There was one more defining feature of this story, unique to Andie’s version. It was consistent throughout every retelling, never forgotten even when other elements of the story were lost to time and repetition. Because the Leichan was, at its core, a human being, it would be impossible to discern one from any other human being unless you were lucky (or unlucky) enough to be present at the exact time of transformation. But there was one other way, Andromeda had said to Sirius at the age of seven upon hearing this story for the very first time, while he leaned in, listening intently with eyes wide and focused.

Starlit left, moonlit right

Rings of golden amber light

An empty circle for an empty sky

The last remaining soul of its kind

But that unfailing method of uncovering the true identity of the Last Leichan was ultimately nothing but poetry. Cryptic symbolism, the metaphor of which had long since been lost. It was nothing more than a clever detail woven into a folktale that Andie had embellished for the sole purpose of entertaining Sirius and Regulus. And that was it. After all, there was no record in any of the Black Coven archives of a creature called a Leichan. He certainly would know. He’d spent every free moment studying it, researching it, looking for any documentation of it. That is, until his twelfth birthday.

When Andromeda died, it felt like she took every trace of her existence with her. Or maybe it was because Sirius’ father had scrubbed the Coven clean of her memory, just the same way he had done with Sirius and Regulus’ mother after she died during Regulus’ birth. Sirius couldn’t even remember her face.

He didn’t want that to happen with Andromeda, he didn’t want to forget her, like he’d forgotten his mother, but her name was all but banished in the Coven after her death. Soon, Sirius forced himself to forget, for the sake of his own survival, and the lyric of her favourite fable quickly faded with her until there was no such being as the Last Leichan. It was nothing more than a children’s story. Wasn’t it?

“Sirius?” he heard Regulus call him from the fog. He blinked to clear his head.

“Go get that balm from Cissy, Reg,” Sirius covered, pretending like his head wasn’t swimming, pretending like everything he knew hadn’t just been shaken to its core by a simple memory and the rhyme from a bedtime story. “And remember – don’t use your rune at all until it’s completely healed.”

“I know,” Regulus promised with a nod of agreement. “Good luck tonight,” he smiled as Sirius looked over to find Bellatrix waiting at the threshold of the double doors, tapping her foot impatiently, the electric crackle of the lightning rune on the back of her hand surging as an idle, unspoken threat.

“Thanks.” With a swallow, he added under his breath, “I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”

Whatever mission he had planned for the night before had gone unfulfilled. There was nothing in his mind but an unending loop of ‘Starlit left, moonlit right; starlit left, moonlit right’ over and over until he thought he would go mad under the ceaselessness of it. He barely slept an hour after returning home.

They hadn’t planned to meet the next day, but Sirius went to the riverbank anyway. Hoping. It was a fruitless hope, just like he was hoping this was all a strange coincidence, but he held onto it. He settled into the place he always did, a nestled-out space of rocks that cradled his head. It usually felt serene, the rocks smooth and cool upon his back, the water crisp and soothing to his aching feet, the sun warm and pleasant as the rays of light passed through clouds drifting by on a welcoming breeze. But not today. Today, the pit in his stomach made the rocks feel sharp and uninviting, the water dangerous and wild, the sun’s rays merciless and sweltering. He had to be wrong about this. Please let him be wrong.

But it was there. It was clear. All his life, Sirius thought that story had been make-believe. Until he met Moony. Until he saw the markings upon Moony’s arms. Until Regulus helped him recall that lost memory. It couldn’t be coincidence. The crescent moon on his right arm, the belt of Orion on his left. Starlit left, moonlit right. The most vibrant, golden eyes Sirius had ever seen. Rings of golden amber light.

When he’d first seen the crescent moon on Moony’s arm that day, it had only been a nagging thought in his mind, an idea that there was something familiar about it. The day before, upon seeing the belt of Orion on the opposite side, Sirius felt a surge of that same familiarity, like hearing the notes to a melody he couldn’t quite place. After all, his memory of that knowledge was buried deep under mountains of repressed grief and anger and terror, tucked away when Andromeda died.

Ultimately, who Moony really was didn’t matter to Sirius at all. Nothing would change Sirius’ opinion of him. Nothing would change Sirius’ feelings for him. What it did change, however, was Sirius’ level of devotion. On some level, Sirius had known it instantly, the first day they met. It only became clearer when Sirius laid his eyes on those three brightly aligned stars in Moony’s enriched skin.

The eternal companion to the hunter Orion was Canis Major, a constellation that housed the star for which Sirius was named. And Sirius could blame it on destiny, he could blame it on the thread that tied them together, but in truth, he would protect Moony with his whole life, regardless of destiny.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he heard a familiar voice say, the characteristic sound of stones unsettling as a body nestled into the space next to his. Sirius let out a long-held breath.

“But you came anyway,” Sirius said, unable to help the smile on his face, the relief he felt at having Moony next to him, the thread between them loose and comfortable with lack of tension.

“Well, I was hoping,” Moony answered, quietly and honestly, sending a customary jolt to Sirius’ heart rate, the same one that he’d left there when he’d said Sirius touch felt like fire to his skin. Suddenly, the precipitous reason for Sirius’ early return became less important than it had been only a moment ago.

“Yesterday, when you said it felt like I lit your whole body on fire,” Sirius began, purposefully not looking over at Moony, because he wasn’t sure what it was he would want to see, “did you mean –”

Moony interrupted. “Fire doesn’t only represent pain and destruction, you know,” Moony said, clearing his throat, but Sirius noticed he hadn’t looked over, either. “It can also indicate warmth and life and energy and passion.” The last word was spoken with a purposeful discreetness, like telling a secret.

“Which one did you feel?” Sirius asked abruptly, bravely. He held his breath for the answer. But Moony was silent for so long, he eventually had to let it out, and it burrowed bluntly through his teeth like an angry sigh before he spoke again, finally turning to look at Moony, who was staring decidedly ahead, into a cloudless sky. “You promised me I wasn’t hurting you, Moony, but I’m not sure I –”

Again, Moony interrupted him. This time with a laugh. “Alright, fine, since you’re so adamant about making me admit it plainly, and since I know you well enough to know you won’t let this die until you get what you want –” There was still a laugh in his throat, but it wavered slightly as he spoke, and he let out a short breath to try to even it out. “Yes, I was …” With Sirius hanging on his every word, Moony paused, shaking his head so strongly, it unsettled the stones. “You know what? No. Fight me for it.”

“What?” Sirius balked, thrown off balance by this sudden change of heart, scrambling to his feet to keep up with Moony, who was already taking a defensive stance. “I’m not going to fight you.”

“Call it sparring if it makes you feel better,” Moony shrugged, using the movement to roll his shoulders back so that he was more evenly faced to his self-appointed opponent. “We spar all the time.”

“No, not like …” Sirius started to argue, fumbling over himself as he realized that Moony wasn’t kidding. In fact, he was taking off his jacket, the short, flowing one with the rosette pattern that reminded Sirius of one of Andromeda’s kimonos that he’d hidden away after she passed. “Not like this. Not in the middle of a conversation. Moony. Moony.” He repeated himself with more insistence, with more dissent.

“Try to keep up,” Moony said, a short exhale pressed from his lungs just a split second before he lunged forward, fist to Sirius’ chest. Without thinking, Sirius shifted fluidly, using the back of his hand to deflect the trajectory of Moony’s punch – a tactic that Moony himself had taught him in one of their early sparring sessions after they first got to know one another. “Good,” Moony breathed out, grinning.

“I learned from the best,” Sirius replied quickly, widening his feet as he prepared himself for the next attack. He couldn’t remember when they’d started this tradition – fighting for fun, teaching one another the basics of what they knew. And that was all it was, just the basics, just what they could do with only their fists and their frames, because Moony knew not to ask Sirius what his runes could do, and Sirius knew not to tell him. It didn’t mean Sirius wasn’t ever curious about Moony’s skill. Did he have a skill? Did he belong to a clan where he could speak a command that Sirius would have no choice but to follow? Or was he a member of a tribe that could pull up the earth with just the movement of his feet?

Now that Sirius had a vague theory of the truth of Moony’s identity, his curiosity about Moony’s abilities only worsened. What kind of a skill would he have? One unique to only him? Was his skill tied to those unusual markings on his arms? Did his skill grant him power over darkness like the legend stated?

“You’re distracted,” Moony huffed, quickly taking hold of Sirius’ hand from where it had briefly brushed against Moony’s wrist in his attempt to divert the trajectory of Moony’s punch. Giving Sirius no time to react, he pivoted, shifting his weight to just behind Sirius’ shoulder, using his momentum to lift Sirius’ wrist behind his back while pressing down on Sirius’ shoulder to get him to yield. “Pay attention.”

But Sirius had been sparring with Moony for years, he’d long since grown accustomed to Moony’s favored strategies and strengths. With a sudden twist of his wrist, a displacement of his weight, and an effortless rotation of his shoulder, he wriggled free of Moony’s hold, as he had done a thousand times from that position, and he took a wide step back, placing both hands in front of him, defensively.  

“If anyone is distracted, it’s you,” he smirked, adjusting the position of both shoulders, hands still raised. “How many times have I gotten out of that? You should know better than to use it on me.”

A subdued smile flashed over Moony’s face, but only for an instant. “You know me too well.”

“Not well enough, I think,” Sirius insinuated, adding a purposeful glance to Moony’s left arm.

“Is that what this is about?” Moony asked, brows furrowed, but the playful expression still present on his face. “Are you angry that I didn’t show it to you sooner?” he wondered, his left eyebrow rising sharply. The scar in the center made it look like the two halves moved independently.

“You know every one of my runes,” Sirius argued, the words moving through his lips before he’d even had time to realize he meant them. “You’ve seen the tattoo on my chest.” His words punctuated with a clench of his jaw. “Why keep this from me?” he asked, the last syllable moving out as a growl from his throat as he launched a punch at Moony’s face. As anticipated, Moony waited a breath longer than normal before leaning just out of the way, leaving Sirius to stumble past him from the force of his throw.

“Oh, you want to talk about your runes?” Moony asked, sarcasm evident in his tone and in his expression as he turned slowly, despite knowing Sirius was already lunging at him with a follow-up, Sirius’ fist circling around to the left side of Moony’s jaw. The moment Moony leaned backward to avoid it, Sirius pressed his opposite palm flat to Moony’s chest, pulsing the pressure of his hand just enough to throw Moony off balance. Before Moony could tumble down into the stones, Sirius grabbed a fistful of the collar of his shirt to keep him on his feet. As Moony glared up from where he was suspended by Sirius’ hands, he let out an irritated grunt. “Remind me again, what does this one do?” he asked, slipping his hand over the rune on the side of Sirius’ neck. Sirius let out a breath. “That’s right, I’m not allowed to know, am I?”

With a growl of bared teeth, Moony gripped Sirius by both hands and let his weight drop out from underneath him, dragging Sirius down, and in a flash, they tumbled down to the stones of the riverbed. Quickly, Sirius shoved his knee into the smooth stones next to Moony’s waist as they fell, finding himself half-kneeling and half-straddled over Moony’s waist. At first, Moony did nothing but watch him.

“At least I don’t make you feel like you’ve done something terrible just by looking at me, just by touching me,” Sirius countered with a heavy swallow, his eyes scattering over Moony’s face. Naturally, when they fell, the sleeves of Moony’s shirt fell as well, leaving both his markings on full display. And Sirius wasn’t sure what prompted him to make the same mistake twice, but his fingers immediately went to Moony’s skin, to his right arm this time. As distracted as he was, he almost didn’t notice that the moonlit marking that he expected to be there suddenly … wasn’t. It was just a circle. Empty and bleak.

“It wasn’t what you did that was terrible,” Moony seemed to admit, his breathing almost instantly changed with the reinstated pressure of Sirius’ touch against his skin. He craned his head backward, nestling the stones around his darkened curls, flaunting the expansive space of his elegant throat and the fearsome scar that encircled it. But before Sirius could ask him to elaborate, he grabbed Sirius’ hand and held it away from his skin with a very careful twitch. “And I make it a very deliberate point not to touch you like this.” He spoke through clenched teeth, chest still heaving with shortened breaths, knuckles white from where his fingers gripped Sirius’ hand. His amber eyes were glowing as they held Sirius’ gaze.

“It wouldn’t matter if you did,” Sirius said with an exasperated huff. “My runes don’t make me feel like this.” In defiance, he pushed forward through Moony’s laxed hold to let his fingertips delicately trace the empty circle on Moony’s bicep one last time. There was an immediate and afflictive breath that moved through Moony’s open mouth, and while Sirius thought it looked like pain in the expression of Moony’s face, it certainly didn’t sound like pain. In fact, Sirius thought it was quite the opposite. “But then again, I wouldn’t know if they did because you make it a deliberate point not to touch me, right?”

When Moony recovered enough to respond, he did so by hooking his ankle around the back of Sirius’ knee. With a quick shove to Sirius’ shoulder and a twist of his waist, Moony had him pinned to the shore, gripping Sirius’ left wrist above his head. The change knocked the air from Sirius’ lungs.

“Let’s find out, once and for all,” Moony said, and it sounded like a taunt in his voice. “Bare your skin for me, Padfoot,” he repeated the phrase Sirius had used yesterday, irony in his tone. To show his obedience, Sirius turned his head to the side, displaying the rune on his neck. To Sirius’ surprise, Moony took him by the chin, unusually softly for how violent their conversation had been up to that point, and corrected his gaze forward, shaking his head as he did so. In reply, he pushed up the sleeve of Sirius’ shirt.

A skeptical laugh moved through Sirius’ throat. “This isn’t going to work like you think it is,” he insisted, noticing that Moony still had his wrist pinned slightly above his head. “The only thing I feel in those runes are pain.” For a moment, Moony seemed to pause, and when Sirius glanced up to meet his gaze, there was nothing there but distress. “If it hurts, I’ll tell you,” he promised. Moony let out a breath.

With the hand that had been against Sirius’ wrist, Moony let his finger drag down the length of Sirius’ arm. When Moony’s fingers met the sensitive skin at the inside of Sirius’ upper arm, it was pain. At first. He could remember the branding of this rune just like he could remember all the rest of them. This had been his twenty-first rune, given to him by his father right after he turned nineteen. Strange that Moony would choose this one. Because this rune, as similar as it seemed to the others, was a blood rune.

Because of their propensity for recoil and because of the price it cost to use one, no Coven member was allowed to have more than a single blood rune imprinted on their skin. There were hundreds of pages of restrictions in Coven law about blood runes, scores of requirements that had to be met before one could be granted permission to receive it, including a second combat trial, more rigorous and more deadly than the first, which Sirius had passed, but not without difficulty, not without injury.

Blood runes served a single purpose. Instantaneous death. And the price for such a power was astronomical, almost worse than the death itself. For this reason, the only Coven members given the right to wear a blood rune were those that knew the Coven’s most closely guarded secrets. The blood rune was a last resort, only used if captured with no hope of escape or rescue. If the rune didn’t kill its caster, it would at least leave them incapable of relaying information, usually through madness or suicide.

There were only three blood runes in existence. The first evaporated a target’s blood into a fine, red mist that seeped out through their pores. From what Sirius had been told, the effects of this rune were so barbarically painful that those who were present to hear the screams and survived would hear them for the rest of their lives, though suicide was common among those unfortunate witnesses.

The second blood rune thinned a target’s blood until it could no longer stay within their veins, pooling underneath their skin as an endless bruise. According to textbooks, the blood that moved from the capillaries into the lungs led to suffocation before direct cardiac arrest. Drowned on dry land.

The third blood rune, Sirius’ chosen blood rune, was silent and, for the most part, potentially painless. It was a rune initially developed for espionage but, as was the case in the first two, there was a hefty price requirement that didn’t bode well for making it out of an enemy encampment alive. This skill could coagulate a particular area of blood in the target’s body. This meant that, with enough dexterity, the caster could start a clot in the leg that would work its way back to the heart over time, giving the caster the means for escape before death had ever occurred. However, the price to be paid was not reserved for time of death but was to be paid at the time of casting. Because the results were not quite as detrimental as the first two blood runes, the price, theoretically, was milder. But a life still required a life.

There were a few cases of survival from casters of the third blood rune. In no way was Sirius so devoted to the Coven that he would give his life to protect their secrets. But for Regulus? He would do anything to protect Regulus, if it ever came down to it. If there was a chance he could protect Regulus and still make it out alive, he would take that chance. So, he chose the rune with the lowest gamble.

His father hadn’t been happy about his choice. In the history of the Coven, it was considered the coward’s rune. With a roll of his eyes, Sirius had argued that, realistically, they were all cowards’ runes. If he were to be taken against his will, he’d said in front of his father and his peers, he would go down fighting. He wouldn’t have to rely on such a pitiful measure. His father hadn’t been that impressed by his answer, but still practically forced Sirius to go through with the imprinting anyway. For appearances. After all, Sirius was the youngest Coven member to be imprinted with a blood rune in over a century.

Pain was what Sirius expected when Moony first set his fingertips upon the intricate design emblazoned onto Sirius’ bicep. Most of his runes had a constant, low-level pain most of the time anyway, it was just the nature of the mark. It was a brand, after all – a deep, permanent damage to his skin. But what pain he felt when Moony traced his skin was the pain of anticipation. And it quickly dissipated.

When it was gone, when Sirius could really focus on the roughness of the calluses on Moony’s hands, on the pattern Moony’s fingertip followed as he outlined the pattern of Sirius’ rune, on the hesitancy in Moony’s touch, that was when he felt it. It was just like the day Moony taught him to feel the thread that connected him to the perfect skipping stone. He could feel it then, between Moony’s fingertip and the scorched skin of his rune. Just like Moony said the day before – when he touched him like this, it felt deeper than usual. It felt like the thread had been strung through every fiber of his muscles, like it was coiled in every chamber of his heart and every lobe of his lungs. When Moony moved, the thread moved.

In the pit of his stomach, there was a collection of excess threading, a knot of it. The heavier Moony’s touch became, the lower that knot sank. And it wasn’t unpleasant, it didn’t hurt, at least he knew Moony was telling the truth about that. But it was … well, uncomfortable wasn’t exactly the right word either. For the first time, he understood the trouble Moony had with defining this feeling.

“Does it hurt?” Moony asked, and the softness of his voice settled the knot further into Sirius’ gut, leaving a shudder in Sirius’ shoulders as he adapted to the change in its pressure and position.

“No,” Sirius replied, closing his eyes and realizing the rate of his breathing had changed, the rate of his heart had increased from the work of the thread. “You were right, I don’t … this is … I’m not really sure what to …” Shortened breaths interrupted his thoughts, a desperate exchange for air. He could feel the thread moving through the outline of his rune, tugging at the sinew underneath his skin, pulling at places deep in Sirius’ belly, places deep in Sirius’ hips. And Moony straddling him in the dirt and stones was only muddling his perception of what to name this feeling. Just then, it felt like some undefined midpoint between an aching starvation and absolute satisfaction. A hunger for something he couldn’t name, something frustratingly close, something he was on the precipice of but couldn’t pin down. 

“Describe it to me, as best you can.” Moony’s voice was close now, closer than it had been before, so close that Sirius could feel Moony’s anxious breath against his cheek. Sirius smirked.

“Why should I?” He let his eyes remain closed, focusing on the insistent movement of Moony’s fingers against his once-blistered flesh. “You refused the same. You made me fight you for it.”

“And considering I have you pinned beneath me, I’d say I won,” Moony remarked with hubris woven through his voice. “And my prize is getting to keep my secret while liberating you of yours.”

“Liberating?” Sirius laughed before letting out an elongated breath, and it moved from his lips like he’d been holding it for ages, like he was wildly relieved to be rid of it. “You’re torturing me for it.”

“Is this torture?” Moony asked with vain emphasis. “Is this pain?”

“Yes,” Sirius sighed heavily. Every breath was a struggle in both directions. “And since you’ve resorted to violence to get the truth, I’ll tell it, though I expect I’ll be the only one to do so,” he taunted, daring to pry one eye open to look at Moony and finding him nearly as breathless as Sirius himself, his chest rising sharply and falling deeply. With a quick glance in Sirius’ direction, Moony let a curious smile wash over his expression and without thought, it seemed, Moony naturally steadied himself with his opposite hand against Sirius’ chest, his fingers settling around the curve of Sirius’ ribcage. There wasn’t a rune underneath where his hand came to rest, but Sirius felt a spike of the threading within him almost the same as if there was, and an unintended gasp moved through his throat, alongside a sharp whine.

Quickly, Moony tore back his hand. “So, you weren’t exaggerating when you said this was torture,” he said with a concerned grumble in his voice and his weight shifted as he started to rise. But Sirius’ hand moved to stop him, even before Sirius himself had instructed it to, and with a fistful of Moony’s shirt, he pulled him back down. The force of his grip had been a bit too strong, however, and both of Moony’s knees unsettled the stones beneath them as his hips came to rest flush against Sirius’ own, his hand again moving to Sirius’ chest for balance. Another aching breath moved from Sirius’ lips.

“It is torture,” Sirius admitted as his eyes fell closed and his mouth open. He didn’t dare look up at him as he prepared his confession. His fist was still buried in Moony’s shirt. “Because the only feeling I can equate to this, the closest sensation …” he paused to let out a nervous breath, terrified of the truth he was about to relent, “… is the pleasure at the edge of orgasm with the torment of being denied one.”

The movement of Moony’s fingers on his skin halted immediately, and Sirius didn’t dare open his eyes for fear of what he might find in Moony’s. Everything was silent and still. Behind Sirius’ closed eyes, he could see the pink of sunlight and he could hear the rush of the river and he could feel Moony straddling his hips, over skin that he was struggling to keep from responding to the many new sensations.

The bright pink colour behind his closed eyelids faded, the warmth of the sun subtracted from his face, and he nearly opened his eyes to find out what led to this change until he felt both of Moony’s hands move up each arm. He felt Moony’s fingers encircle both wrists, nestling them softly into the stones above his head. He felt a shift in Moony’s hips, and he felt a brush of skin against his lips.

“Moons,” he exhaled in a whisper, feeling the echo of his own breath move through the cavern of Moony’s open mouth and back out again. “Please,” he let himself beg, arching his back against the weight at his wrists to try to earn the kiss of Moony’s lips for himself. What reward was given him for this effort was nothing more than a ghosting of Moony’s lips against his, a specter that dissipated too suddenly.

In that moment, Sirius made the decision to open his eyes, but in the time it took to convince himself to do it, in the time it took for his body to obey his command, the weight of Moony was removed from him, from his hips, from his wrists, from his lips. With his eyes now opened, Sirius blinked against the blinding sunlight to find Moony gone, the only clue to his presence was a rustling of leaves in the distance and the ethereal taste of him on Sirius’ lips. This, he thought to himself. This is torture.

As he stood to leave, he afforded himself a moment to collect his breath, to grieve for a moment that never should’ve happened in the first place. He knew this would be the outcome. There had been several other near moments in their five year history – Moony’s touch on Sirius’ waist lingering a little too long as he corrected Sirius’ stances, sparring sessions that resulted in a tangling of feet and ended with them lying chest to chest in the dirt (or, notably, the only time Moony had been unguarded enough to let Sirius place his lips to Moony’s skin), waking up from afternoon slumber in the shade of the red maple to find Moony’s arm slung over his chest. Each time with a blush, an excuse, and a kiss that could’ve been.

It would be another month before he saw Moony again, if that. Every time they pushed the boundaries of their friendship a little bit too far, Sirius wondered if Moony would miss the next new moon. He never did, but there was always a sludge of awkward tension to push through first. The closer they got one day always resulted in them being further away than ever the next. Without fail.

With a sigh, Sirius turned to walk down the river’s edge, back toward the Coven. This wasn’t the way this was supposed to go in the first place. He hadn’t risked coming to see Moony for another day in a row just to create a larger chasm between them, but that was exactly how it had gone. In fact, as he thought about it, he couldn’t even recall the reason he’d chanced coming back in the first place.

Still, it had been worth it to see Moony again, to see that much more of Moony’s skin. It was beautiful, those three illuminated points on his left arm, the belt of Orion, and the crescent moon on his right. Only, wait. There hadn’t been a crescent moon on his right arm today. The marking was missing.

Sirius stopped in his place, a breath of realization falling from his lips. The marking hadn’t been missing. It was there. Sirius had traced the outline of it, made up of the freckles on Moony’s skin and connected by the scars that hollowed it out. It wasn’t a crescent moon today. It was a circle. An empty circle. Because today was the first day after the new moon. An empty circle for an empty sky.

The marking on Moony’s right arm followed the lunar cycle. Sirius had never put it together before because Moony had been fastidious in keeping it hidden from Sirius. There were occasional glances when Moony fell asleep next to him, but never the full view, like it had been today.

All along, Sirius had known it wasn’t a traditional rune, at least not like any rune he’d ever seen, not even in diagrams of ancient runes deemed too dangerous to use. When he’d first met Moony at fourteen, he’d secretly pored over classified records of the Black Coven, accessible to him only through his father’s personal archives, and there had been no mention of a rune shaped like the crescent moon, or a rune that was formed in any other way except ritual burning. Now that he was older, he also knew there was no rune to resemble the belt of Orion, nor any rune that changed shape according to the lunar cycle. Because it wasn’t a rune on Moony’s skin. It was an inherited sigil. It was a birthmark.

There was absolutely no doubt in Sirius’ mind of Moony’s identity now. All three of the signs in the fabled poem pointed to him. Starlit left, moonlit right. Rings of golden amber light. An empty circle for an empty sky. It meant only one thing. Moony was the last remaining soul of his kind. The Last Leichan.

Chapter Text

The luck Regulus had wished him the night before paid off in unexpected ways. When Sirius returned to the manor, just as dusk was settling in, he managed to climb the trellis back up to his room on the second floor, having just enough time to change from clothes dirtied by his sparring match with Moony before a knock came to his bedroom door. With his shirt half over his head, he called out.

“Reg, if that’s you, come on in,” he said, wriggling into his linen tunic. Just as he expected, Regulus peered in through the crack he created in the slightly opened door. Sirius smiled, waving him in.

“Are you feeling alright? You’ve been in bed all evening,” Regulus asked, cradling his left wrist in his opposite hand. With a shake of his head, Sirius sat on his canopy bed, patting the spot next to him.

“Sometimes it takes me a long time to get to sleep in the morning, so I stay in bed as long as I can,” he said, and it was only half a lie. “How’s your rune?” he asked, delicately taking Regulus’ wrist.

“I got the salve from Cissy,” he said, somewhat sheepishly. “I haven’t told Father.”

“Good. Don’t,” Sirius instructed sternly, inspecting Regulus’ wound and tracing the skin around it with his pinky finger. “It looks much better. The edges are not so uneven, the ash doesn’t leach out as far as it did yesterday. See here?” Sirius asked, gesturing with his little finger to the pointed tip of the character. “It’s peeling here, that’s a good sign. You want the dead skin to fall away so the new skin underneath can move up to take its place. Keep using the balm. Use it on every rune from now on,” he said, wincing at the idea that this wouldn’t be the last of Regulus’ runes. If he could help it, it would be.

For a moment, Regulus was quiet, looking intently at his wrist, as if to prevent looking up, an apparent effort to avoid Sirius’ gaze. When he did speak, he spoke under his breath, his voice abashed and flustered. “When does it … I mean, does it ever stop hurting?” Sirius’ heart felt like it shattered.

He had no choice but to lie a little. “It does,” he said slowly, chewing nervously on the inside of his bottom lip. “But you’ll always be aware of it. You’ll always feel it. Sometimes it will hurt again, but never this badly. Once the skin heals, this pain, this acute pain that you’re feeling now will never return.”

“Even when I use it?” Regulus asked, finally glancing up at him. Sirius could see the terror in his cinder-grey eyes and the pain it left in Sirius’ chest was worse than any rune, worse than any wound.

“I won’t lie to you, Reg,” Sirius said with a soft exhale. “When you use your rune, every time you use it, it will blister. Because it is powerful. And power req–” Sirius began. Regulus interrupted quickly.

“Power requires pain, I know,” he recited the mantra of the Black Coven with a resigned sigh.

“This is why I wanted you to choose the water rune instead,” Sirius said, slipping his hand around to the side of Regulus’ head so that he could coax it down onto Sirius’ shoulder. “The price for a water rune is significantly less than the price for a lightning rune. Even fire isn’t as steep a price as lightning.”

“Father told me a water rune makes a boil, higher risk for infection,” Regulus quoted, and Sirius couldn’t help but roll his eyes again, grateful that Regulus’ head was on his shoulder, eyes unseeing.

“Blisters can become infected just as easily, so make sure you keep Cissy’s balm on hand at all times.” How often did Sirius have to undo the conditioning that his father subjected upon Regulus?

Again, Regulus was quiet. “Will it hurt every time I use it?” Sirius let out a silent, angry breath, but his anger was not directed at Regulus. His anger was reserved for the father who subjected them to this.

“You’ll get used to it,” he replied honestly, eliciting a sigh of concern from Regulus. “Eventually, you won’t even notice the pain,” he tried to console him, patting Regulus on the knee as he knelt in front of him in an effort to see the look in Regulus’ face, though it only made the pain in his chest worse. “But that’s when it becomes the most important to take care of your runes, because the damage they can do to your skin is still present, even when the pain isn’t.” As Sirius stood, he took hold of Regulus’ arm and pulled him to his feet, careful to hold him by the elbow and forearm with his wounded wrist facing up.

“What would I do without you, Sirius?” Regulus asked, a smile finally cracking through.

“Listen to Father and make terrible decisions, I’d wager,” he grinned devilishly in reply.

This time, Regulus rolled his eyes. “Are you going on a mission tonight?” At first, Sirius opened his mouth to answer, but he stopped himself. No, he didn’t have a mission tonight. At least, not one that came down from the Black Coven leadership. Instead, he would carry out the mission he neglected the night before, one that only he himself knew of. One that his father would kill him for, if discovered.

“No, not strictly. But I think I’ll see if Cissy needs any medicinal herbs.”

“I could help with that,” Regulus offered, but Sirius shook his head.

“Stay. Heal,” he said, escorting Regulus to the hall, guiding him to his bedroom just around the corner. “I just need to get out of the house for a while,” he lied, having only been in it for ten minutes. As Regulus opened the door to his bedroom, he leaned on the frame, watching Sirius walk down the hall.

“Come find me when you get back,” he called just before Sirius stopped at the stairs. “You can help me remember some of the details from … that story Andie used to tell us.” He spoke with purpose, eyebrows raised on his face. The name of the tale stayed between them, an agreement prescribed to them by Andromeda herself, when she’d still been alive. Safer not to throw around that term, she’d told them on more than one occasion – the Leichan was once a great enemy of the Black Coven, according to the legend. It was the reason the Founder of the Coven had defeated the beast – to protect the Coven.

While Sirius was never sure how much of that was true, how much of it was embellished for story, he and Regulus had always listened to Andromeda. As far as they were concerned, the Leichan was their own little secret. Just the three of them. And now he was Sirius’ personal little secret. His alone.

“About that,” Sirius began, lingering as he waited until the footsteps moving down the hall had fully receded. “How much of that story was true, do you think? I’ve always wondered.” Andromeda had always been so steadfast, so resolute in the truth of the tale, but Sirius always thought it was just to make them believe in something magical and powerful. With a sad smile pursed to one side, Regulus shrugged.

“I always wanted it to be true,” he said, that smile shifting. “I think part of me still does.”

“Yeah,” Sirius said, swallowing heavily, not accustomed to being on the other side of secrets with his younger brother. “Yeah, so did I.” Now that he knew it was true, he wished it could be anything but true. Especially since finding out that the Black Coven’s greatest enemy was the boy he was in love with.

“Good luck, Sirius,” Regulus smiled, always wishing him luck in everything he did.

“I’ll be back before dawn,” he promised, hoping he hadn’t told his brother another lie.

Just like the night before, Sirius was counting on Regulus’ luck. It had been several hours since he’d left the manor, racing rather far off toward a place that was typically considered an armistice zone, a place where direct combat was traditionally off-limits. Once, not long after Sirius received his first rune and his first assignment, he’d accidentally wandered into this area only to be met with whispered words that burst his eardrums, spoken phrases that froze him in place. It had taken his father quite a bit of negotiating to convince the Potter Clan that Sirius was just a child, that he hadn’t intentionally breached the treaty. If Orion had shown up a moment later, Sirius likely would’ve been taken as a hostage.

That had been the first time he’d seen the Potter boy. In fact, he’d been chasing him rather intently, at first knowing that he was skirting the perimeter of the neutral zone and then forgetting it entirely in an effort to keep up with the boy with the piercing hazel eyes. Not once had the Potter boy shouted an attack in Sirius’ direction, despite Sirius’ consistent attempts to set him on fire (since the only rune he possessed at that point was the fire element on his wrist). If Sirius had been honest with himself then, as he was now, he would’ve realized he’d never really been aiming at the boy in the first place.

Once Sirius had been captured by the spoken spells of the rival clan, the Potter boy had halted his frenzied pace, looking back at Sirius with what looked like surprise and apology in his hazel eyes, a colour so vivid and bright that Sirius could even see it in the dark, even from a distance. Since then, Sirius had never fired off another direct attack at him. A feint, often, so as not to arouse suspicion from his Coven, but never anything that was meant to connect. But he had never stopped trying to catch him.

That was never more true than tonight. It had originally been his own secret mission the night before, when he abandoned Bella to the actual mission, one that Sirius had never even wanted to be a part of in the first place considering it involved an attempt to lure over one of the lesser tribes to their side. It was an attempt in vain, and if Sirius was aware of that fact, then surely so was his father. The Pettigrews were too closely aligned to the clans, especially the Potters, to win them over. It made Sirius wonder if there was some ulterior motive to that assignment, but at the time, he hadn’t had the faculties to consider what that motive might be. After all, his mind had been rather preoccupied. Hell, it still was.

For an hour, he had been perched in one of the only low-hanging branches of a redwood tree that bordered on the boundary of the armistice zone where Sirius had first encountered the eldest Potter son. Just when he was starting to think he may as well give up, a gleam in the dark caught his attention, like the shine of a wild animal’s gaze. Without thinking, he leapt after it, igniting the rune on the side of his neck meant for restriction. Predictably, the measure was dodged, seemingly without effort.

“Wait!” Sirius called out, recognizing that he’d never spoken a single word to this boy before, wondering how it was going to be received. “Wait, please, I need your help!” Sirius shouted.

“Be still!” the call echoed back, and Sirius immediately stopped in his place. Even though Sirius obeyed the order very much against his will, he noticed that it was strikingly different than the last time a freezing incantation had been used against him. It didn’t feel binding. It didn’t even feel uncomfortable. It felt like a welcome calmness had washed over Sirius. It felt like he’d been granted peace and rest.

The last time Sirius had been caught under a stillness incantation, even his vocal cords had frozen, so Sirius cleared his throat to find out if he still had that faculty and was pleasantly surprised to know he could still speak. “Come down and talk to me,” he requested, watching that hazel shine move through the upper branches of the nearest trees. “That’s all I want to do, I swear on my life. Just talk.”

“It was stupid of you to come back here after what happened to you the last time,” Sirius heard an unfamiliar voice answer his petition, followed by an audible clearing of his throat, a rough, grating sound. At the same time, a figure moved cautiously toward him in the dark, moving down from the trees, his features obscured by the lack of light from the new moon. “Cast a light and show me your face.”

The rune on Sirius’ wrist sizzled as a flame sprang up from his suddenly outstretched palm, and the face of the Potter boy came into view from the firelight. For a moment, Sirius almost smiled, realizing that this boy remembered which elemental rune he possessed. “I’ll give you my name too, if you want it,” Sirius offered, and there was immediate and sharp surprise in the expression of the boy in front of him.

“Why?” he asked, suddenly on edge. “Why would you do that? Why would you risk that?” the boy asked, suspicion in his gaze, a defensive incantation clearly held on the tip of his tongue.

“You already know my Coven, that’s all my birth name would reveal anyway,” Sirius shrugged, finding it strange that he could move his upper body as he wished as long as his feet remained in place. As a test, just to determine the limits of this incantation, he attempted to ignite one of the other runes on his forearm, a healing rune. Not even a spark. So even his runes were partly under Potter’s command.

“And I take it you know my clan, as well,” Potter cocked his head, now surveying Sirius with more curiosity than suspicion. “Which means you should know I could do a lot of damage with just your name.”

Ever arrogant, Sirius clicked his tongue. “You know, I’ve heard that about your incantations, that if you speak my name, you can surpass their … restrictions.” He flicked his argumentative gaze up to Potter and, just like Sirius expected, his expression was startled, bothered, borderline enraged.

“What do you know of it?” he scoffed but sweat had begun to bead at his temple.

 “The Black Coven has decades of research about what the clans can and cannot do,” Sirius explained, his honesty a twofold purpose. He needed this boy to trust him, so he would prove his credibility by sharing secrets known only to his Coven. At the same time, however, there needed to be a healthy level of respect between them, so he wanted to make sure Potter was aware that he only maintained the upper hand because Sirius had allowed him to do so. “We’re well aware that your incantations cannot make a target do anything that would cause themselves physical harm.”

Potter just smiled. If it wasn’t so sincere, it would look sinister. “Unless I have your name.”

“Right,” Sirius said with a calm breath. “You could speak my name, order me to turn this flame upon myself, and watch me go up in smoke.” He paused, flashing his own smile. “But at what price?”

Potter’s smile faltered. Just a bit. “To eliminate the heir of the Black Coven,” he threatened, leaning in closer to Sirius’ face, close to the flame to prove his confidence, “I’d be happy to pay it.”

“Certainly.” Sirius nodded amiably. “I’m sure you would be lauded upon your return. If you return. Because, well, I don’t know the specifics about your verbal skills,” he spoke in a deliberately even tone, “but with runes, the more powerful the skill, the more powerful the kickback on its user.” For quite some time, Potter was silent, still leaning in close enough for Sirius to singe the fray of his wildly mussed hair if only he stoked the fire a bit more, but he found the rune still not totally within his own control.

By his reaction, it was clear that Sirius was right about the price of surpassing the limitations of his skill. Sirius didn’t know the specifics, but he knew by the look in Potter’s eyes that it was a price he wasn’t willing to pay. Absently, Sirius wondered just how detrimental a price it was. If incantations were anything like runes, they could easily rebound if used improperly, become untamed if used too heavily.

“They say the same about your runes, you know,” he admitted, much to Sirius’ surprise. “That if you convert a forename into a rune, you can bypass the laws of restriction. Kill without consequence.”

“Which I can tell you right now is absolute bullshit,” Sirius said with an indifferent shrug.

“How would you know whether it works or not?” Potter countered, trying to catch Sirius in a lie.

“You know my Coven. Do you really think they would hesitate to test an ultimate weapon like that?” he asked quietly, swallowing the acrid taste in his mouth. “We have the records of such tests.”

Finally, Potter took in a breath, let it out in the same measure, and moved back to lean against the trunk of the nearest tree. For a moment, he just surveyed Sirius with mistrust. “Your muffling rune isn’t activated,” he said suddenly, his distinctly hazel gaze narrowed in Sirius’ direction. “Why?”

“I imagine it would be pretty hard to have a conversation if I couldn’t hear your half of it, wouldn’t it?” Sirius said with an easy smile, turning his head so that Potter could see the unlit rune just behind Sirius’ left ear, a deafening rune that the Black Coven had developed solely for the purpose of dealing with the verbal skills of the clans. “Besides, it’s very hard to navigate in the dark on sight alone.”

“Don’t you have a class on that or something?” Potter asked, with a smile that was more sincere than sinister, with a tone that was so unusually playful, Sirius found his eyebrows rising in their surprise.

“I think you thought that was a joke, but we genuinely do have a course on how to heighten our other senses when the silencing rune is activated,” Sirius said with a natural laugh. Potter lowered his head and cleared his throat in a futile attempt to cover the reciprocal laugh that moved through his lips.

With a sigh that sounded strangely like it was relieved, Potter spoke again. “You said you needed my help, didn’t you?” he asked, and while the suspicion in his gaze had been watered down, it still wasn’t trust. “You’re welcome to give me your name as proof of your fealty, but my name stays with me.”

“How about a nickname, then?” Sirius said with a softened smile, thinking of Moony. “I have another friend who likes to call me Padfoot. I don’t think he would mind me sharing it with you.” Potter went strangely still for a moment before leaning in closer, an apparent effort to read Sirius’ expression.

“A … friend?” he asked, thick brows furrowed. “You mean from your Coven?”

Sirius’ grin grew wide, he couldn’t help it. “No. Not from my Coven.”

“Is that what you want from me?” Potter scoffed. “To be my friend?”

“If I say yes, will you believe me?” Sirius asked plainly, trying to maintain a smile. There was another beat of silence as Potter seemed to measure Sirius’ reliability. Finally, Potter spoke with intent.

 “Tell me the truth,” he ordered, the weight of his words landing so differently when he was using a skill. They felt heavy, like they physically collided with Sirius’ skin, and it seemed like the weight they carried echoed in their caster, because his hand instinctively went to his throat, jaw clenched tightly.

While Sirius had heard of this incantation, he certainly didn’t expect someone his own age to be able to master it to such an extent. From what he’d heard, it was an extremely complicated skill to master, only the leaders of clans could use it. Of course, Sirius knew the counter to this skill – implant a purposeful, truthful thought into his mind. But he hadn’t prepared one because he hadn’t expected it.

“I want to be your friend,” Sirius blurted out mindlessly, though he blinked a bit in surprise that this confession was the first to move from his lips. He hadn’t even been consciously aware of that truth, not really. Grateful that nothing incriminating had slipped from his lips, he spoke again, fully intending to continue the thought, to tell Potter that he intended to end this war through peace instead of more violence. That was not what the truth-seeker incantation found in him. Instead, because of the one person that was a constant in his thoughts, the very next thing to burst from his mouth, completely unprompted, was, “And I want to ask if you’ve ever heard about the Last Leichan.” Immediately, Sirius drew in a sharp, unstable breath before clenching his teeth and closing his lips over them, a pathetic attempt at not letting anything else move through them, though the damage had already been done.

In front of him, Potter had gone very still. “What did you say?” he asked in a small voice. Blinding panic pulsated in Sirius’ head, he couldn’t come up with a lie quickly enough. “How do you know about the Last Leichan?” Potter asked sharply, accusation in his tone, as if he was certain that Sirius had to have gathered what little information he had through unscrupulous methods. Another member of the Black Coven would have, perhaps. Before Sirius could think of a mundane thought to act as his placebo for what he knew was coming, Potter yelled, “Answer me!” His incantation seemed almost accidental.

“I know him,” Sirius stated bluntly, baring his teeth in an angry wince. Shit. Again, Potter was still.

“You … what?” he hissed, eyes blank, staring through Sirius entirely.

By then, Sirius’ breathing was racing, his heart pounding. “Forget I said that, please forget I said that,” he begged, anxious and wild, suddenly aware that the stillness incantation was becoming stronger, and he struggled against it to place his trembling hands together in an outward expression of his plea, the flame that had been kindling within his palm sizzling as it was extinguished between his hands.

“Tell me –” Potter began, another truth-seeker, but it seemed to catch in his throat, and Sirius wasn’t sure if it was the kickback of his skill or if he could see the outright fear in Sirius’ eyes, the tremble in hands held together in wordless prayer. “Tell me,” he repeated softly, a request rather than command.

“Please don’t make me tell you,” Sirius seethed through clenched teeth, angry at himself for how little he had actually thought this through. “I just want to protect him. I have to protect him.”

“You can’t know him,” Potter said, obviously trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince Sirius. He shook his head heavily. “You can’t.” His resolve sharpened as he redirected his gaze back to Sirius, somehow brighter in the dark. “The Last Leichan is just a children’s story. It’s just a fable.”

“Prongs!” a sudden, unfamiliar voice shouted in the dark, at a range far too close for Sirius’ comfort. He had started to make some sort of progress with this Potter boy, or he thought he had, but that would likely all be shattered by the presence of a third. Sirius flicked his anxious gaze to Potter.

With an angry wince, Potter let out a breath, and in the same instant, Sirius felt the bindings that had held him in place dissolve around him. “Go,” Potter said through clenched teeth. “Go.” He didn’t have to use an incantation. Just before the third party arrived, Sirius vanished into the brush. He didn’t go far.

“Careful with that nickname, Wormtail,” Potter, the boy called Prongs stated, just as the other boy moved through the break in the trees. A boy that Sirius recognized as the eldest of the Pettigrew tribe, the boy that Sirius once nearly killed. Seeing him again just then left Sirius a little dizzy with guilt. “I may as well have the clan crest tattooed on my forehead whenever you call me that in public.”

“Well, I have to call you something out here, don’t I? Can’t very well use your name,” he argued, but the expression on his face looked apologetic. “Are you alright? I lost you for quite a while.” As Sirius awaited the reply, he held his breath. Would Potter inculpate him? Would his whole plan backfire?

“I thought I heard something,” he answered vaguely, glancing off into the forest, in the direction Sirius had run before ducking into the darkness to spy on them. “It must’ve been my imagination.”

With a subdued smile, Sirius noiselessly crept away, as the two clan members started off back in the direction they had come, likely toward the Potter encampment. Whatever this meant, Sirius now knew two things. Potter knew about the Last Leichan. And he had just protected Sirius.

Despite knowing the outcome, Sirius had gone to the river the next day. And the following one. And then the one after that, just for good measure. Moony hadn’t returned. After the third day, Sirius had given up. They hadn’t made plans to meet anyway. It didn’t mean anything. No cause for concern.

Except Moony didn’t show up after the next new moon, either. Every day for over a week after that new moon, Sirius had gone to the river and Moony was never there. It was the first new moon he had ever missed in eight years. Sirius had no way of contacting him, no way of tugging on that thread to make Moony remember what day it was. On the last day he came, Sirius left a note tucked into the knotted hole in the trunk of the red maple. It was an apology for how things had gone the last time. He knew he never should’ve said what he said, never should’ve described that feeling as explicitly as he had.

After another week, the paper was still there, tucked into the tree. By that point, the full moon had already come and gone again. It had only been a couple days since. Not once in their history had Moony ever agreed to meet on the week of a full moon, but Sirius had gone to the river anyway. Hoping. 

If Moony had read his letter, he wanted to make it seem like he hadn’t. And Sirius wasn’t sure which scenario was worse – Moony reading the note and deliberately ignoring it, including any danger that it might’ve presented by leaving it in place, or Moony having never seen the note because he had never come back to the river. No, it wasn’t quite right to say he didn’t know which was worse. He knew which was worse, and that scenario was the one in which he found himself. Because it didn’t matter what had happened between them. Moony would have never abandoned him without explanation. Moony hadn’t come back to the river. Something was wrong. The dread of that recognition was suffocating.

Sirius had never been gone from the manor this often during the daylight, he knew it was going to spark suspicion at some point. But at that moment, he didn’t care. All that mattered was Moony. If he had to search the surrounding woods to find his clan’s encampment, then he would do it. In fact, he was planning just that, gathering all the memories he had of watching Moony walk away at the end of every new moon day, and it was always through a specific break in the trees. No better place to start.

With a short breath of resolve, he turned on his heel, the movement unsettling the river stones underneath his feet. And right in front of him, in that specific break in the trees, was Moony. At first, Sirius startled at the sight of him because the person in front of him was not his Moony, not the way Sirius knew him. The golden amber light in his eyes was muddied to a colour so dark, it was nearly black, the heavy circles under his eyes looking like his nose had been broken for the two black eyes it left. In fact, as Sirius looked closer, it was possible his nose was broken, an open wound sliced right across the bridge.

Every available space of his skin was covered in fresh wounds, new scars, and he moved forward with a limp, supported by a rickety crutch with well-worn padding underneath the crook of his arm. In Sirius’ shock, he stood still, staring, his widened eyes roving over all the damage on Moony’s skin.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Moony said with half a laugh, but it looked like it took all his energy to produce. With a snap, Sirius realized his place, and he surged forward, forgetting entirely about any of the awkward tension from the last time. Without a thought in his head, he raced toward Moony, slipping over the smooth river stones in his impatience to be near him. At first, Moony braced, like he was willing to let Sirius barrel right into him and deal with the pain afterward, but Sirius slowed just before he reached him, sliding both arms as delicately as he was able underneath both of Moony’s arms and up his back, careful to avoid the bandages surrounding his bare chest, visible through the open front of his loose jacket.

“Moony,” he breathed densely into his broken skin, a choked sob nuzzling into the curve of Moony’s throat with the rest of Sirius’ face. “I would’ve worried to my death. For good reason, I see.” He pulled back only to take Moony’s face into his hands, gently, gently, fingers tracing around new scars.

There was a flush in Moony’s cheeks, but Sirius attributed it to pain and exertion. “I’m sorry you had to worry.” When he spoke, it was stunted and choppy, like it took a considerable effort to do so.

“What in the name of the gods happened to you?” Sirius hissed, coaxing Moony over to the base of the red maple so that he could help Moony settle in the soft grass. As he moved to sit, with Sirius’ hand at his back and the other against his ribs, a terrible groan moved from his lips. It died with a great sigh.

“This is one of those things you have to not ask me about.” He panted from the amount of breath and effort it took just to sit. And he expected Sirius to abide by his request and not ask him about it.  

“Like hell I’m not going to ask you about it, Moony, you’re half fucking dead,” he swore through clenched teeth. It had to be the war, it had to be the result of a skirmish that got out of hand. Did that mean a member of Sirius’ Coven had done this to him? “Tell me who did this to you and I swear to every fucking god, I will –” he started on a rant, furiously inspecting the bandages around Moony’s ribcage.

Moony interrupted hesitantly. “I … I did this to myself, Padfoot.” Though Sirius went still, fingers still tucked softly into the individual wrappings of Moony’s bandages, his mouth moved ahead.

“Don’t lie to me, Moony,” he said, staring ahead blankly at the ceased movement of his hands, which he quickly convinced to keep working, despite the shock and anger moving through his limbs.

“This is one thing that I absolutely cannot explain, but you have to believe when I say,” Moony paused, taking hold of where Sirius’ hands were trembling against his wounded waist, “I would never lie to you.” When he blinked, a bit of the amber light returned to his eyes. “I couldn’t if I tried.”

A firm clench moved into Sirius’ jaw. “How am I supposed to believe that you did this?” he asked with a pitiful whine in the back of his throat. “Why? Why would you purposefully hurt yourself?”

“It …” he paused, rolling his tongue in his mouth, blinking rapidly. “It wasn’t … purposeful.”

“Is that all you’re going to tell me?” Sirius barked, trying to rationalize his anger. Because he should be angry about this, but if Moony had done it to himself, how could he be angry at Moony?

With a solemn nod and an apologetic wince, Moony replied, “It’s all I can tell you.” Sirius’ couldn’t help the instinctive baring of his teeth, unsure of what to do with all his helplessness and bitterness.

“Can you at least tell me you’re alright?” Sirius bargained, helping Moony recline slightly with his back to the trunk of the maple. Moony grimaced all the way. “Is this why you missed the new moon?”

“I’m sorry, I came as soon as I could,” he reasoned with a tired sigh. Sirius echoed it loudly.

“That’s not what I … you shouldn’t have come at all,” he emphasized, brushing Moony’s long, dark curls from his forehead so he could get a better look at his injured face. “Not that I’m not relieved that you’re here, I was literally about to storm the thicket to find you, but you’re … you’re hurt, Moons.”

“You were really going to come into my woods to find me?” Moony asked, smile evident on his expression, the gold in his eyes burning a little brighter as he looked up to find Sirius’ gaze.

“Seconds away from it, in fact,” Sirius assured him with an equivalent grin. He held up his finger in front of Moony’s face and moved it in a straight line so he could watch Moony’s pupils follow it.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t, because I’m fine. Well, as fine as I can be right now. Better now that I’m with you,” he confessed, sheepishly keeping his gaze from Sirius all of the sudden, as if flustered.

“Now who’s flirting to get his way?” Sirius asked, pretending he wasn’t pleased to hear that his relationship with Moony hadn’t been totally ruined after the advances he’d tried to make the last time they were together. “I’ve got a great healing ointment that works pretty quickly. Though I’m not sure it’ll help the gash on your ribs that’s bleeding through your dressings.” He rose his brow, unlatching a hidden pocket in the thigh of his trousers and pulled out the small round tin that held Cissy’s healing balm.

“Healing ointment or an excuse for you to touch me again?” Moony asked, sarcasm dripping from his lips, and Sirius scarcely even acknowledged the jab for all the relief he felt at how normal it was.

“Tell yourself whatever you have to, I’m applying this damn ointment,” Sirius laughed, though admittedly, he was going to have to see more of Moony’s skin than he’d ever seen. “Bare your skin for me, Moony.” There was an immediate belligerent grin on Moony’s face as he raised his brow.

“How dare you,” he said with a soft laugh, that much movement through his midsection inducing another wince of pain. The wince only grew worse as he worked himself out of his haori, a term that Sirius only recently learned for the light, open jackets that Moony loved to wear, most often over a linen tunic. Through their eight years of new moons, Sirius had seen Moony in a hundred different patterns – the rosettes that reminded him of Andie’s silk kimono, the one with the ivy pattern that made the yellow of Moony’s eyes look a little bit green, the red one with black crowned cranes painted along the bottom.

It was a shame this one would be ruined by the blood soaking through his bandages, Sirius rather liked the dark blue against the chestnut of Moony’s skin, the white spider lilies along the cuffs of his sleeves matching the glittering white of the markings on both arms. As he moved with a groan from the shirt, both markings were on display, sparkling brightly against the deep colour of his skin. And the deep red stain across his abdomen, growing at an alarming rate. Sirius found himself hurrying his hands.

“You should’ve come to me earlier,” Sirius admonished him, untying the end of the bandage before carefully easing it from around Moony’s chest, the wet squelch of fresh blood with every peeled layer only deepening his concerns. “Is this wound still open?” he asked in slight panic, chewing so hard on his bottom lip that he would’ve worried about splitting it if his focus was not so heavily on Moony.

“I’m afraid I may have torn the stitches getting here,” Moony said with a soft grunt, a held breath that was exhaled all at once, before glancing over at Sirius with a playful sort of wariness over how Sirius would respond. And Sirius couldn’t say how Moony thought he would respond, but Moony knew him better than anyone else, so it was unlikely he responded in any way except exactly as Moony predicted.

“Oh, by the gods,” Sirius sighed heavily in his concern, but even that died in his throat as he reached the end of the bandage, absolutely drenched in Moony’s blood, dripping through Sirius’ fingers as he removed it. Underneath it, Sirius could barely see the wound for all the blood moving from it, pooling at the crease of Moony’s waist where he was half-reclined against the tree. “Shit. Moony.”

“That bad?” Moony asked, a slight laugh in his tone that Sirius couldn’t comprehend for how severe the pain must’ve been. When Moony glanced down at the excess of blood on his own skin, Sirius expected him to blanch, expected him to look terrified. Neither of those things happened. Instead, Moony turned the corners of his mouth down and nodded with an unbothered, “Oh, yeah, I guess so.”

For a split second, Sirius was caught gaping at him, in awe over how little this seemed to be worrying Moony when Sirius felt like he was going to burst into tears at any moment. “Moony, what the fuck goes on in your everyday life that this gaping hole in your stomach makes you react like … that?”

“I mean,” Moony said, blinking a bit more deliberately now. “I am feeling a bit light-headed, so it must be pretty bad, right?” With a weary sigh, he closed his eyes, but only for a moment, as if he’d been trained not to let himself fall asleep under these conditions. “Good thing I found you when I did.”

“When did this happen?” Sirius hissed, the panic swelling in his throat. In an effort to save the haori with the spider lilies, one that Sirius had seen Moony wear on enough occasions to piece together that it was one of his favourites, Sirius tore his own black tunic over his head and pressed it tightly to Moony’s skin to try to slow the bleeding. But it was only a stopgap. Moony had already lost a lot of blood to begin with, evidenced by his labored breathing and the washed out colour of a usual vibrant skin tone.

“During the full moon,” Moony seemed to answer mechanically, as if he spoke without thinking, which was unusual, considering Moony didn’t say a single word that he hadn’t overanalyzed first.

“This happened two days ago and I’m just now finding out?” Sirius whined sharply, lifting his shirt to find that the blood still poured from the gash the moment the soaked fabric was removed.

“Well,” Moony stretched the word out with a wince that appeared to be less about the pain he was surely in and more about the truth he was about to divulge. “Technically, it was last full moon.” With shock and panic in his expression, Sirius glanced up for a moment, and Moony bared his teeth.

“A month ago? And your wound still hasn’t closed?” Sirius voice cracked in his terror.

“No, it was healing, for the most part,” Moony began, but Sirius could feel a big caveat coming to the end of that sentence. “Until I opened it up again a few days ago.” Sirius held a very long blink.

“I could’ve helped you, Moony, I could’ve done something,” Sirius seethed through a tight jaw.

“To be fair to myself, today was the first day I could stand on my own, so,” Moony rationalized, but it only made the alarm in Sirius’ head blare that much more deafeningly. If Sirius didn’t do something, Moony was going to die right here underneath this maple. Healing ointment wasn’t enough for this.

“Fuck,” Sirius whispered in a trembling voice, tossing aside the blood-soaked tunic and placing his open palm over the laceration in Moony’s skin. “Hold still, this might sting a bit,” he warned as he lit the healing sigil on his forearm, transferring some of his own energy into the bloodied rift in Moony’s skin.  

“Padfoot, you shouldn’t do this,” Moony weakly began to argue, but Sirius interrupted.

 “Shut up and let me save your fucking life,” Sirius growled through clenched teeth, closing his eyes so he could focus on the flow of his vitality into Moony. He would give every bit of life he had if it meant he could keep Moony alive. He had to protect Moony. He was the only one who could.

“Stop, Padfoot, that’s enough,” Moony called out suddenly, holding Sirius by the wrist in an attempt to pull Sirius’ hand from his skin. “Open your eyes now, I’m alright.” But Sirius wasn’t ready to give up yet, he could still feel the opening against his palm, he could still feel the tear in Moony’s skin, he could still feel Moony’s skin greedily accepting the life he was giving. “Padfoot, look at me,” Moony insisted, and Sirius suddenly felt Moony’s fingers slip over his face, blood and all, calluses underneath. Reluctantly, Sirius opened his eyes, though they scattered chaotically at first light before settling onto Moony’s worried face. “You’re as pale as a ghost, you have to stop. Please.” Carefully, Moony moved Sirius’ hand from atop his wound, winding their fingers together as he held them against his chest.

“You need it more than I do,” Sirius argued, but when his eyes drifted down Moony’s torso, he was relieved to see the wound had closed, for the most part, remnants of the shreds of stitching stuck to the dried blood on his skin. With the immediate danger passed, Sirius felt the adrenaline surge that had been keeping him upright suddenly drop and he fell forward, forehead against Moony’s shoulder.

“I’m alright, Padfoot, I’m alright,” Moony assured him, tightening his hold on Sirius’ fingers with one hand and letting the other drift up to hold Sirius by the jaw, his face still covered in blood.

With defiance, Sirius straightened his back and looked Moony right in the eye as he stated bluntly and without remorse, “My name,” he paused to suck in a nervous, trembling breath, “is Sirius.” Much to Sirius’ surprise, there wasn’t anger or regret on Moony’s face. Instead, a flash of something in his golden eyes that Sirius couldn’t name, followed by a smile that was tired but still contented and equally glorious.

“Sirius,” he repeated with wonder in his depleted voice, his fingers flexing softly on Sirius’ face, but his smile seemed to falter for a moment, eyes widening only slightly. “Named for the stars.” Before Sirius could ask what had led to this sudden change, his smile returned. “The Dog Star.” The ring of gold in his eyes burned bright around ever-widening pupils, a depth of recognition and understanding blazing through his expression that perhaps only Sirius himself would have been able to identify.

“The companion to Orion the Hunter,” Sirius reminded him with a somber nod. If Moony was who Sirius knew he was, he would come to the same realization. They were destined for each other.

With a quiet smile, one that looked like it held a secret, Moony pulled Sirius’ face close to his, close enough that they could rest their foreheads together. For only a split second, he closed his eyes, as if to revel in the contact and the closeness before strengthening his gaze to Sirius’ own. “Can I still call you Padfoot? I’ve grown kind of fond of the sound of it,” he laughed softly, and Sirius’ cheeks grew warm.

“Of course,” he said, smile burning through his face. “I’ll still call you Moony, after all.”

“Or you can call me Remus. If you like,” Moony said suddenly, fingers moving down Sirius’ neck, thumb ghosting over the rune underneath it. A breath of awe moved into Sirius’ lips without his direct instruction, and he couldn’t help but notice the way Moony’s – Remus’ gaze moved down to watch it.

“Remus,” Sirius stated back to him, speaking it with affection and reverence. In response, the smile on Remus’ face deepened, but evolved into something that looked a lot like relief.

“I have never heard my name spoken so profoundly,” he sighed contentedly, the breath from his lips drifting across Sirius’ like the thought of a kiss, undelivered. “I could get used to this. Say it again.”

The warmth on Sirius’ cheeks moved down his throat. “Remus,” he spoke under a wild grin, and this time, Remus took in a breath that unsettled Sirius in the same way Remus’ touch had a month ago.

“Maybe you shouldn’t say it quite so softly,” Remus said with a bashful grin, biting down on his bottom lip – enough to attract Sirius’ attention to it. “At least not while you’re this close to me.” Despite the sudden jolt to Sirius’ already racing heart, he replied with a cautious laugh, an arrogant smirk.

“Are you flirting with me to get your way again or just flirting outright this time?” he asked with a sharply raised brow, noticing the way Remus’ grip on his neck had begun to tighten slightly.

“Sirius, I –” he said suddenly, practically calling it out, and he followed it with an exhale of air so distinct that Sirius nearly surged forward to claim his lips. Until he spoke. “I think I tore open my wound.”

“Shit,” Sirius hissed, immediately glancing back to the blood once again trickling down Remus’ stomach, noticing that Remus’ chest was already heaving again with the pain he’d been trying to hide. At least it was a minor rupture this time, not a lot of blood loss. “Let me –” he started to say, flattening his palm against the open seam of Remus’ skin again, but Remus pulled his hand away and held it there.

“No,” he said strongly, looking at Sirius with determination. “No more runes. Just … help me lie back so I can keep pressure on it.” Grabbing his blood-soaked tunic from the grass, he gently compressed it to Remus’ skin, instructing Remus’ hand where to hold it as he helped Remus recline against the trunk of the maple tree. The healing rune had helped, but it wasn’t enough to keep his skin together.

“I hope you have a high threshold for pain,” Sirius said, pulling at the two-pronged silver chignon pin he used to tie up his long hair. The rounded head of the pin was detachable with a tiny hidden compartment that Sirius used to hold a curved stitching needle, wrapped in just enough suture thread to take care of a single wound, maybe two if he were stingy with the stitches. More than once, he’d had to use it on himself in the middle of a mission when he didn’t have the strength to cast his healing rune.

“You know,” Remus said on lungs that were nearly empty, audibly panting as he held Sirius’ shirt to his unclosed wound. “I don’t think I’ve seen your hair down in quite a while. It’s gotten so long.”

“You’re not getting delirious on me, are you?” Sirius said with an anxious laugh that he hoped would ease his own tension, but only deepened it when Remus’ own laugh was followed by a groan.

“I’m just stating a fact,” Remus assured him. “It’s nearly down to your waist.”

“How long was it the last time I had it down?” Sirius asked, just to keep him talking.

“Just past your shoulders, I think.” His words were abbreviated by quick breaths, but at least he was still breathing, still talking. “It was the last time we went for a swim in the river, do you remember?”

“It was last summer. When we had that heat wave,” Sirius answered with a nod as he moved the shirt from over Remus’ wound for a moment to estimate the length of thread he would need.

“We haven’t been in the river at all this summer,” Remus sighed heavily. “Why is that?”

“Because you didn’t want to see all the new runes I’ve gotten since last year,” Sirius said flatly, glancing at Remus out of the corner of his eye. At first, Remus opened his mouth to argue, but he shut it rather quickly, and he remained quiet. “I’m going to need you to lie flat,” Sirius requested. With a sharp nod of resolve, and Sirius’ hands against his waist to bolster his movements, Remus obeyed.

“This one is new,” Remus said, reaching out without a shred of hesitation to ghost his fingers over the cooling rune just underneath Sirius’ collarbone. It took Sirius by surprise so considerably that he couldn’t keep to himself the sharp breath that moved through his lips. “And this one,” he added, his hand slipping down to Sirius’ ribcage, fingertip tracing over the still-peeling lines of his newest rune, one he’d gotten in secret. Secret from his father and his younger brother. A rune for tracking Regulus. Just in case.

“I haven’t gotten an offensive rune in years, just so you know,” Sirius explained, defensively.

“It’s not the runes I don’t like, Sirius,” Remus cautioned, and it would’ve been nice to hear him use Sirius’ given name so casually if they weren’t in the middle of an argument. Was this an argument?

“It’s just what they do, is that it?” Sirius asked, sparking the rune on his wrist so that he could generate a miniature flame from his fingertip to sterilize the tip of the suture needle. As he glanced over at Remus, there was blatant surprise in his expression at Sirius’ casual use of his most practiced rune, one that had been on his wrist for as long as they’d known each other. In eight years, Remus had never seen the skill of even a single one of Sirius’ runes and then, in a single day, he’d already seen two.

Remus’ expression was tight. “Before today, I didn’t even know what any of them did.”

“By design, right?” Sirius let out a steadying breath before leaning in close to Remus’ bare and bleeding skin. “Do you need to bite down on something?” Sirius asked, glancing up through his lashes to find Remus was looking down, watching him. There was a flash in Remus’ gaze, but he shook his head.

“No, I … I go through a lot of suturing.” He sort of shrugged as a way to show his numerous scars.

“Take a breath,” Sirius instructed, trying to appear brave, but clenching his teeth in preparation for puncturing Remus’ skin. As the needle went through, Remus stayed still, measuring his breaths to make sure his skin didn’t waver too much underneath them, aiding Sirius’ steadiness immensely.

Between lances, Remus continued quietly. “It’s not that I didn’t want to know about them.”

“We can finish this conversation later, Moony.” In his focus, Sirius reverted back to his nickname.

“I … like them, Sirius,” he admitted, causing Sirius to pause ever so slightly in the middle of the needle rolling through the two ends of Remus’ wounded skin. “And I know that I shouldn’t, I know it should matter to me what they do, because I know you use them to fight, and I know some of them are dangerous, but the way they look against your skin and the way they feel against mine, I –” His thought was interrupted by a sharp gasp of pain as Sirius moved the needle through his skin another time, and Sirius desperately wished he’d held his hand just long enough to hear the end of that sentence. Instead, when Remus continued speaking, he’d moved on to another thought entirely. “What I don’t like about them …” he stalled for only a moment, “… is how you get them,” Remus stated plainly, and in his shock, Sirius stopped tightening the suture. With a sudden straightening of his back, he looked into Remus’ face.

“I’ve never told you how I get them,” Sirius replied warily, watching Remus carefully.

“You didn’t have to tell me,” Remus insisted, leaning closer into Sirius’ face, his voice bordering on anger as he spoke. “I can look at your skin and see the scorch marks.” A wince formed in Sirius’ teeth, a blush formed in his cheeks, giving Remus the barest glimpse of his frustration and shame before he lowered his head and resumed his stitching in silence, only Remus’ pained breathing to fill it.

As Sirius pulled the last stitch through, tightening as much as he could before Remus began to squirm under the pain, he doubled over, nearly placing his lips to the bloodied skin of Remus’ waist in order to cut the thread with his teeth. When he righted himself again, he realized what he’d just done and pretended not to notice the surprised breath Remus took in. Or the flush of his own cheeks.

“Are you angry with me now?” Remus asked, swallowing heavily. Sirius just sighed.

“Considering you admitted that you liked the way my runes feel against your skin, how could I be angry about that?” As Sirius stood, he cast a bold glance in Remus’ direction to see if his eyes would widen. But Remus swiftly and smoothly avoided the innuendo, an exercise he practiced so often that he was very nearly a professional at the operation. With every avoidance, Sirius grew more despairing.

“Does it hurt?” Remus asked suddenly, pretending to examine his stitches. “Getting a rune?”

“No more than whatever it was you went through during the full moon, I imagine,” Sirius answered bluntly, narrowing his gaze, acknowledging the unspoken rule of keeping everything unspoken.

Maybe Sirius’ growing irritation was stemming from the fact that, the last time he had seen Moony – gods, he was having a hard time referring to him by his given name after so many years of using his nickname – Remus, he’d left him waiting and wanting. Maybe it was his exasperation at all the secrets they both kept from one another for no real reason. Maybe it was everything, all at once, all the time.

“Whatever I keep from you is to protect you.”

Sirius nearly rolled his eyes. “Right, and I suppose if it kills you next time, I’ll just spend the rest of my life wondering if you were dead or just tired of me.” He looked over just in time to watch Remus sigh softly, but it wasn’t in anger. If anything, he looked sort of defeated. As if he agreed with Sirius.

“I would have to be dead, because I won’t ever tire of you.” It was a clear attempt at flirting, at distracting Sirius with an overly saccharine comment, and Sirius usually loved to be on the receiving end of this side of Moony, a side he saw relatively infrequently. But just then, it felt patronizing and fake.

“Oh, no?” Sirius scoffed. “Certainly felt like you grew tired of me the last time we were together.”

Sirius’ argument was met with an immediate huff from Remus’ lips, though Sirius couldn’t determine if it was born of annoyance or of pain. “Is that what you think?” Remus asked, and from his softened tone of voice, Sirius wondered if he’d made a mistake. In the very next instant, a furrow moved through Remus’ brow and Sirius reevaluated again. “Do you really believe that I had you pinned down, with no other motive but to touch you, and that all of this occurred because I was … tired of you?”

“I begged you to kiss me, Moony, and you left me there.”

“Because I am terrified of you!” Remus shouted, disrupted by a cry of pain as he doubled over to clutch at his battered ribs. Shocked and still, Sirius didn’t know whether to move forward or stay away.

In a quiet, troubled voice, Sirius repeated the damaging statement. “You’re … terrified of me?”

“No,” Remus instantly adjusted his answer, looking at Sirius expressly. “Not … not in the way I know you’re thinking.” But Sirius was already backing away from him with very wide, intentional steps.

“Was there another way I should’ve taken that?” Sirius asked, not sure if he should be devastated or angry about this confession. Remus was terrified of him. Whether it was true or not, whether he was terrified of Sirius because of the nature of his runes, it didn’t matter. Sirius still felt like his heart had been untethered from his ribcage and went plummeting down into his stomach. It left him feeling ill.

“Wait, please, come back.” Remus had to call out to Sirius for all the distance that Sirius quickly put between them. “Padfoot, come back to me.” The despair in Sirius’ chest swelled into his throat.

“Stop,” Sirius growled under his breath, refusing to meet Remus’ ever-alluring gaze. “I’m sick with the vertigo of you pushing me away and then pulling me back in again.” From his periphery, Sirius watched Remus lower his head with a slow nod. It took so long for him to speak, Sirius wondered if he was going to leave again, like he had the last time, without even bothering to give an explanation.  

Several times, Sirius heard Remus take a deliberate breath, as if preparing the words on his tongue, but it was always followed by a heavy sigh as he rid himself of the unspent breath, since it ultimately served no purpose. Finally, just as Sirius looked up for one last glance before convincing himself to leave, Remus answered. “I realize it’s arrogant of me to say this, but I thought you understood why.”

“I don’t,” Sirius replied, without pause, under a heated glare.

“No, you do,” Remus argued. “You’re just pretending it doesn’t matter.”

“Can we not pretend? For one day? Just one day?” A whine slipped into his voice by mistake.

“Pretend what, Padfoot?” Remus barked out an angry laugh. “Pretend that your Coven wouldn’t kill me on the spot if they found us together? Pretend that we can remain friends once the war comes?”

“The war is already here, Moony!” Sirius shouted, frightening a flock of nearby birds from their perches. “Just because you’re not fighting it doesn’t mean the rest of us haven’t been dying over it.”

“I’m the one who’s going to have to –” He stopped suddenly, baring his teeth in a flash before biting down onto his bottom lip so strongly that it blanched the colour of his skin. With a sharply labored breath, he placed one hand over the haphazard stitches Sirius had sewn into his skin moments ago.

Without regard to their argument, Sirius hurried to Remus’ side, throwing himself to his knees next to Remus’ hip and holding his hand to Remus’ chest, their fingers brushing. “Be careful, you reckless prat,” he whispered, shooting Remus a resentfully affectionate gaze from underneath his dark lashes.

“Now I’m a prat, am I?” Remus said with a grin that he tucked away into his lips.

“An adorable, reckless, stupid prat.” Sirius embellished his insult with a roll of his eyes, struggling to subdue the smile that resulted from the soft laugh that moved through Remus’ lips. Instead, he busied himself with inspecting the stitches on Remus’ abdomen to find they were still miraculously intact.

“At least I’m an adorable prat, I’ll take it,” Remus smirked, pinching Sirius by the waist.

“See, you’re doing it again, flirting with me to get your way.” He rose a single brow, leaving Remus no time to respond before he followed with, “I need to put the healing ointment on, it’ll help with the pain. But I’d like to clean this layer of blood off, first. Think you can make it to the water?”

Coy smile still in place, Remus replied. “If you’ll let me lean on you, I think I probably can.”

“Oh, of course. I think I understand now,” Sirius said with a sage nod, kneeling down so that Remus could wrap his arm around Sirius’ neck. The conversation stalled as Sirius gingerly stood, taking on the majority of Remus’ weight, but once Remus was primarily on his feet (leaning quite heavily on Sirius’ left side), Sirius continued. “You just pretend to be attracted to me when you need something.”

“Is that what you think this is?” Remus laughed as they hobbled their way over to the river’s edge. Once Remus’ feet were in the shallows, Sirius helped him back down, settling into the stones.

“Well, I’d like to hear your explanation for it,” Sirius shrugged, wading a bit further into the deeper water so he could rinse the blood out of Remus’ haori, leaving it to dry in the sun. At the same time, he took a moment to clean Remus’ blood off of his own skin, mostly the blood caked on his face.

“Explanation for what, exactly?” Remus asked with a tone so cheeky, Sirius had to glance back to make sure the smile was still on his face. When he saw that it was, he continued his playful tirade.

“For why you dangle me over an emotional cliff, so to speak,” Sirius stated calmly, quietly concerned over how much of Remus’ blood was washing out of his tunic that had been used as a makeshift tourniquet. Red effused out into the water all around him until the current washed it out.

“And what is it that I do to dangle you over said emotional cliff?” Remus asked, leaning back on his hands so he could look at Sirius as they spoke. If it weren’t for the blood on his skin and the stitches in his side and the weariness in his eyes, Sirius would’ve thought he looked completely relaxed there.

“You’re joking,” Sirius huffed, maintaining his playful tone. “You have to ask?” For dramatic effect, he tossed his long hair over his shoulder as he doubled over to rinse the last of the blood out of his tunic, the ends of his hair dipping into the river. “I think you just want to hear me admit it out loud.”

“That’s precisely what I’m doing,” Remus said and Sirius looked back to see the grin he knew would be on Remus’ face. As the sun moved out from the clouds, it obscured Remus’ view of Sirius, and he squinted at him with one eye closed, the same corner of his mouth turned up to accommodate it.

For a moment, Sirius lost himself in admiring Remus looking at him. The unguarded expression on his face as he blinked through the blinding sunlight, the darkened freckles on his shoulders from how often they’d been in the sun over the summer, the gleaming white of the twin markings on both of his lanky arms, the gauntness of his hip bones from his reclined position and his dwindling frame. To someone else, he would look like nothing more than a boy, barely twenty if that, with wildly curly hair that was perpetually unkempt. A boy who needed a few more good meals and a few less wounds.

But to Sirius? Just then, Sirius had never felt such a broad surge of affection as he did looking at Remus comfortably reclined in those riverbed stones, bruises and cuts and all. Maybe the bruises reminded him of his overwhelming urge to protect Remus, but that urge had only followed after the towering adoration he’d had for Remus long before he knew the truth of who he was.

“The last time I admitted something incriminating about you, you disappeared,” Sirius reminded him, clearing his throat to clear his head of burdensome sentimentalism, and he took his tunic, saturated with river water, over to where Remus was reclining on the shore. “Lie back a bit more,” he instructed and, with a noticeable twitch in his brow, Remus adjusted down to his elbows. “I’ll try not to hurt you.”

“Seems I’ve been the one hurting you,” Remus replied with a muted sigh, clearly keeping his gaze on Sirius’ face, but Sirius was keeping his eyes focused on the work of his hands. Carefully, he wrung the fabric high on Remus’ chest so that the force of the water was not directly over the wound but would run gently over it down the slope of Remus’ waist. When Remus took in a short, clipped breath, as it whistled through his stiffly clenched teeth, Sirius instinctively glanced up to gauge the pain in his expression.

“Does it hurt?” Sirius asked, easing the tension of his fingers around the wet shirt.

“Just cold,” Remus assured him. Sirius gave him a doubtful look, but continued anyway, wringing out the water over Remus’ broken skin and using a gentle touch to clean away the remnants of blood.

The stitches were holding up just fine with all the crusted blood having been washed away, so as Sirius dipped his first two fingers into the tin of Narcissa’s healing balm, he looked up again with warning in his silver gaze. “This is definitely going to hurt at first until the numbing serum takes effect. You may want to grip onto my shoulder, unless you think you can bear a searing pain,” Sirius said, watching Remus through a wary gaze. Though Remus did as he was told, his hand on Sirius’ shoulder, he looked relaxed.

“I’ve probably been through worse,” he said with a tentatively apologetic expression, directed at Sirius, who certainly didn’t want to imagine if he had been through worse than whatever this had been.

“Blow all the air out of your lungs,” Sirius directed, watching Remus purse his lips and empty his chest of breath. Just before he got to the point of needing to breathe back in, Sirius swiped a thick ribbon of salve across the angry wound. If there had been breath in Remus’ lungs, he likely would’ve screamed.

Instead, he sucked in a hollow sounding gasp, mouth open wide to facilitate the movement of a large volume of air. “Fuck,” he followed with a loud groan, through unmercifully clenched teeth, screwing his eyes closed tightly and gripping onto Sirius’ shoulder with an impressive level of pressure.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius repented quickly as the grasp of Remus’ hand on his shoulder began to wane.

“Gods, that hurt worse than the wound itself.” He laughed through a panting, weary breath.

“The numbing serum should be kicking in about now,” Sirius breathed a sigh of relief.

“This is pretty good stuff, I barely feel a thing,” Remus said, looking rather impressed as he started to sit up, despite Sirius’ warnings. A wince flashed over his lips. “Alright, it still hurts a little.”

“A little,” Sirius muttered under his breath. “You were practically gored and it hurts a little.”

The laugh returned to Remus’ throat and Sirius’ tension eased a bit. For a while more, Sirius worked in silence, applying a thin layer of the healing balm to more of Remus’ superficial cuts and scrapes, as the initial pain wasn’t nearly so strong on lesser, more shallow wounds. Barely a sting.

As he continued, he began to realize all the other countless places Remus’ skin was battered. The blood matted in his hair, the four parallel cuts along the blade of his shoulder, the infinite number of bruises (including what looked like a perfect handprint around his throat, almost purposefully fixated just atop that circular scar that spanned the whole circumference of Remus’ slender neck). Sirius had seen Remus in bad shape before but never like this. It was always just a few additional scrapes, a welt on his forehead, a couple fingers that were black and blue. This was … it was like he’d almost been killed.

“I can feel you starting to panic, Padfoot. I’m alright,” Remus stated preemptively, a complacent lull in his tone, and Sirius would’ve rolled his eyes at how proud he was if he weren’t absolutely correct.

“It is so much worse than you make it seem,” Sirius argued, voice cracking as he painstakingly pushed his fingers through Remus’ hair to find the split in his skull from where all the dried blood had originated. “Lean your head back.” He coaxed Remus, moving his fingers to the base of his neck, and like always, Remus obeyed as Sirius used the last of the water to run some of it through Remus’ curls.

“It’s never been this bad before. It won’t happen again,” Remus promised, but Sirius replied with an angry press of air from his lungs, pushing Remus’ hair out of the way to mop the blood from his scalp.

“And you somehow expect me to believe you did this much damage to yourself. Accidentally, in fact,” Sirius jeered, a vicious snarl in his lip that bared his grimacing teeth. Remus took in a breath.

“Which is one of the reasons I keep dangling you over an emotional cliff, as you so tactfully phrased it,” Remus answered with his own subdued form of annoyance. “I can’t let you close to me.”

“Has anyone else outside of your Coven seen your marks? Has anyone else bathed the blood off of your skin? I’m already close to you, Moony. And it is so obvious, anyone would be able to see it.”

“I don’t belong to a Coven, I belong to a Kingdom,” Remus corrected. Sirius immediately went still, his furrowed gaze on Remus’ face in an instant. It was the most Remus had ever divulged about his family, his clan, his Kingdom. Even more surprising, it wasn’t a clan or a tribe. It was a type of grouping Sirius had never heard of, one he had never encountered, one he’d never read about in any textbook.  

“I don’t know any kingdoms,” Sirius said honestly. Remus clenched his jaw.

“You still don’t,” he said emphatically, watching Sirius under a purposeful gaze. “And I’m only telling you the designation now so you will believe me when I tell you this.” He took the shirt from Sirius’ still-clenched fist, blood and water running down to his elbow, and set it aside so that he could take Sirius’ hands into his own. “If I were anyone else in the world, I would have kissed you that day I had you pinned beneath me on this very shore. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted anything more in all my life.”

“Moony, I –” Sirius started, cheeks flushed. But Remus continued. 

“I have been fighting with this since the day I met you, when you were still shite at skipping stones across the river.” A troubled smiled moved over his face, but he smothered it quickly. “There is nothing for us but death if we stay together. You and I have known this from the start.”

“I don’t care,” Sirius insisted, breaking free from Remus’ hands so that he could take Remus’ face between his fingers, so he could feel the stubble along the edge of his jaw. “I will fight to keep you.”

“I know you will,” Remus said, taking in a trembling breath and holding his hands over Sirius’ own, only so he could pull them away. “Which is why I have to say goodbye. Even though it’s not what I want.”  

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Remus, please, stop,” Sirius argued. Begged.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Sirius –”

“None of that matters to me.”

Remus started again. “I’m putting you in danger just by being close to you.”

“No, I can protect you. I’m meant to protect you,” Sirius emphasized through bared teeth.

“You can’t protect me from myself, Sirius, I –” Remus began, and Sirius hadn’t intended to tell Remus he knew his secret, but in his desperation to change his mind, it came tumbling out all at once.

“If this is about you being the Last Leichan, then you have to know that I’m the only one –” Before he could even register what revelation had just moved through his lips, the sudden and deadening stillness of Remus’ frame caught his attention. As he glanced over, he was immediately concerned by the sickly, ashen complexion of Remus’ once glowing cheeks. As his eyes met Sirius’ gaze, he spoke.

“Where did you hear that?” he asked in an empty tone. Sirius lowered his head, looking away.

“It was a story my cousin used to tell me before she died,” he replied honestly. “I didn’t know it was you until I saw the marking on your left arm. Starlit left, moonlit right.” The trembling breath of surprise that moved from Remus’ lips had Sirius looking up again. There was nothing but terror in Remus’ expression, the golden amber light in his eyes now completely extinguished, opaque and turbid.

“I knew better than to befriend you, but I …” he trailed off, the twitch of a sad smile moving one corner of his mouth. He stared straight ahead for a moment, eyes blank. “By the time I realized, it was already too late.” Just as Sirius began to ask what he meant, Remus buried a fist into the stones, using the leverage to push himself to his knees, despite Sirius’ loud and combative argument. 

“You’re going to open your wound up again, Moony,” he growled, but Remus was already on his feet, wet haori hanging from his fingertips, limping toward the red maple. “Fine, leave if you must, I don’t care,” he tried giving in, tried conceding a bit. “But rest first. You’ll kill yourself getting home.”

“If I stay another moment,” Remus groaned as he tried leaning over to get his crutch, still in the grass at the base of the tree, but Sirius got it before Remus could hurt himself further, “I won’t go.”

“Then don’t,” Sirius urged, slipping his hands onto Remus’ face before Remus could refuse. At first, Remus seemed to lose himself in looking into Sirius’ eyes, gaze scattering about Sirius’ face like he was desperately trying to memorize every line, every wrinkle, every sunspot. Finally, when Remus’ golden gaze returned to stare deeply into Sirius’ eyes, focus darting back and forth, Sirius thought he’d won.

Until Remus said, “How can you still look at me like that, knowing what I am?” And it left enough surprise in Sirius’ body that Remus was able to wrench from his hold, hobbling toward the trees.

“I’ll follow you back, Moony, you know I will,” Sirius called, still reeling from the devastation of what Remus had just said to him. Could he not see how much Sirius adored him? Even now?

“No,” Remus said, eyes held tightly to the ground as Sirius watched a thick swallow roll down his long throat. “You won’t.” When Remus looked back up, with determination in his gaze and a sharp exhale, he held his open palm to his face, fingers spread wide before closing them into a delicate point. He formed a loose fist with both hands, fingers flat, thumbs deliberately projecting from either side, and turned one hand on top of the other, the thumb of his left hand pointing down his right wrist. Then, he formed a circle with the fingers of both hands and drew them apart before his left pointer finger moved to his forehead. For a moment, he paused, eyelids closed tightly, brows furrowed and fluttering.

Finally, when he opened his eyes, he moved his finger forward, away from his face, curling it at the same time until it came to stop at a distinct point in front of his jaw, now clenched under his trembling lip. Every movement was so rapid and so precise and so foreign that Sirius didn’t realize until it was too late that this was Remus’ skill. And he only realized it when an intense sedation took control of his body, dulling his senses. “Moony,” he called out, going to one knee, hand to his temple.

As Sirius looked up in his sudden exhaustion, Remus leaned down as far as he could to place a delicate kiss to Sirius’ forehead. “Sleep, love. And forget me.” When Sirius felt himself fall forward, he fell into Remus’ chest, and just before Remus reclined him onto the grass under the red maple, just before he lost consciousness entirely, he heard Remus speak again, a thought that perhaps Sirius hadn’t been meant to hear. “No matter what side of this war we end up on, know this,” he said, his voice wavering under the strain and heartbreak. Just before Sirius collapsed, Remus sighed, “I will love you always.”

Chapter Text

As Sirius crept carefully across the border of the armistice zone, he hovered his first two fingers over the deafening rune on the back of his ear, poised to activate it, should he hear the start of an offensive incantation. He couldn’t risk triggering it ahead of time, he needed to be able to listen carefully.

On cue, in the very next instant, Sirius heard a burst of sharp, short whistles toward his right that could have been misheard as the alarm call of a blackbird if it had been heard by anyone else, but it was exactly the signal for which Sirius had been listening. As quietly as ever, Sirius moved toward the noise.

At the expected break in the trees, Sirius paused. Waiting, watching, breathing, measuring. Just to be sure. He’d misinterpreted the call before and had very nearly stumbled into the camp of a clan’s hunting party. So, he waited. That is, until he saw a familiar gleam in the dark, beyond the darkness formed by the line of pine trees. The gleam materialized as a flash of hazel in the eyes of the eldest Potter son as he cautiously moved into the clearing, those eyes warily darting back and forth under moonlight.

Immediately, Sirius broke through the cloak provided by the canopy of the surrounding trees, charging toward Potter. And Potter didn’t stiffen in defense as he heard the sound of movement. Instead, he boldly turned toward the commotion and braced, both feet steady underneath him. In the next instant, Sirius was upon him, and the two collided, chest to chest, in a flurry of breath and bone.

“Prongs,” Sirius breathed into Potter’s hair as he held the broad-shouldered boy against him.

“Gods, it’s so good to see you, Pads,” Prongs sighed in return, tightening his reach around Sirius, one arm slung over Sirius’ shoulder, the other underneath the opposite side. “Are you okay?” he asked, pulling Sirius back so that he could survey his face to find a new scar that ran underneath Sirius’ left eye.

“I’m fine, I’m alright,” Sirius assured him of the new wound, long since healed.

“Longbottom didn’t mean to hit you with that incantation, it was meant for the Rosier kid.”

“I know, Prongs, I know.”

“When I saw you go down, when I saw you hit the edge of that root, I thought you were dead, Padfoot, I thought you –” With a trembling breath, he stopped talking, pulling Sirius closer so that he could place their foreheads together. “I told you that you should keep your muffling rune activated.”

“It’s easier to deflect the runes that the Coven directs at your clan if I don’t,” Sirius said with a pointed look, and Prongs hung his head in resignation, still thumbing at the scar under Sirius’ eye.

“You have this so much harder than I do,” Prongs said with another sigh. “I just have to tell everyone not to attack you and they listen, but you …” he paused, pulling Sirius back to begin his study of Sirius’ face again, touching every insignificant scar that he could see. “You have to protect me against your Coven without letting them realizing you’re doing it. And if they do find out? They’ll –”

Sirius interrupted. “They won’t find out,” he insisted, holding his fingers over Prongs’ ears so that he could pull him in close and press a delicate kiss to his cheek, the tenderness of which Prongs seemed to revel in. “Besides, I’m the heir to the Black Coven. Who is my father going to believe? Them or me?”

Prongs pulled a face. “You don’t think your father has his suspicions?” His hands slipped down from Sirius’ face as he let himself fall away, settling with his back against the nearest redwood trunk. “You spent years sneaking away from Coven grounds to spend time with M, and now you’re doing the same thing with me. Why do you think he’s spent all this time and effort on recruiting the Pettigrews?”

“Speaking of which,” Sirius said, glancing around. “Where is Wormtail?”

“At your Coven,” Prongs said with a whine of worry in his throat. “Providing them with a bunch of bullshit about you that isn’t true to cover your arse.” With a wince, Sirius let his head fall forward before the rest of him followed and he kneeled in the soft dirt next to Prongs before settling against the trunk of the same tree. “As far as we can tell, your father hasn’t discovered that their alliances are still with us.”

“Wormtail shouldn’t have to do this,” Sirius said, feeling that same worry in his own throat. To distract himself from it, he began to snap his fingers, sending short bursts of swirling flame spinning off from his fingertips, sparked by the rune on his wrist. “It’s not like espionage is going to end the war.”

For a beat too long, Prongs was silent. “You’re right. There’s only one way to end it.”

“Oh, of course,” Sirius sarcastically barked back. “Let’s revisit that subject again.”

“You can’t ignore a literal prophesy, Padfoot.”

“The prophesy doesn’t matter if we don’t know what it means.”

“It’s talking about you! About you and M!” Prongs said in a voice that was probably louder than it should’ve been, considering the clandestine nature of their rendezvous. They’d been meeting like this on the first night of every waning crescent moon since they’d met four years earlier. Just before Sirius went to the river to find Remus half-dead from a self-inflicted wound. Just before Sirius would find out that it would be the last time he would ever see Remus. Just before Remus stopped coming to the river entirely.

Ever since Prongs had unwillingly gotten the truth from Sirius with his verity incantation, Prongs had never used his verbal skill on Sirius since. But that one, terrible truth was already out. They both knew that Sirius knew who the Last Leichan was. Still, Sirius kept his promise to Remus. His name would die with Sirius, even his nickname. Sirius had only ever called him by an initial. They referred to Remus as M.

Beyond that initial encounter, Sirius hadn’t told Prongs much about his relationship with Remus, only that he’d been best friends with him for many years, and that they used to sneak away from their respective … families (as Sirius hadn’t mentioned the existence of Remus’ Kingdom to Prongs either) to meet at a particular place along the river after every new moon. In fact, that was how Prongs got the idea for him and Sirius to have a designated meeting time based on the lunar calendar. So, on the first night of the waning crescent moon, every month, Sirius and Prongs would meet at the edge of the armistice zone.

More often than not, Wormtail, the eldest of the Pettigrew tribe, came along, too. It took a lot of explanation and apology and difficult conversations before Pettigrew and Sirius became comfortable with one another – before Pettigrew could stop watching Sirius with suspicion, before Sirius could look Pettigrew in the face without remembering the night he’d nearly killed him by mistake. In spite of their violent history, the more time they spent together, the more they grew to trust one another and over the span of four years, the three of them had all grown very close. So close, that Sirius soon found out that the Coven had been trying to win over the Pettigrews for longer than Sirius realized, closer to a decade, maybe more. Sirius discovered this because Wormtail had been chosen as the next liaison between his tribe and the Black Coven. Of course, the Pettigrew tribe was never interested in joining sides with the Coven, they had only ever been interested in exploiting the Black Coven, using members of their tribe as double agents. When the Coven asked Wormtail to monitor Sirius, he was happy to provide fiction.  

When all of them were together, most of what they talked about had to do with the war between their families – the history of the fighting, how it had gotten so bad, strategies to avoid conflict (when their families were thirsty for blood), the hope to end the war. Of course, theories about how to end the war always circled back to the same thing – there was a prophesy about the coming of a saviour who would end the war, a story that Sirius had never heard. Because he only had one piece of the riddle.

The poem that Sirius had memorized since childhood, the one about the Last Leichan – it was only the first stanza. As it turned out, Prongs had another stanza. And then, they found out together, Wormtail also had one. Just like with Sirius, they all thought it was just a bedtime story, passed down through their families. While Sirius had grown up with the story of the Last Leichan, Prongs grew up with a story called The Last Celestial, about a star who fell to the Earth and stayed there for love, and Wormtail heard a story called The Last Conjurer, about a sorcerer who used the lunar cycle to change his destiny.

In every story, they all held some sort of background to their respective tribe or clan. In Prongs’ story of the Last Celestial, the star that fell to Earth was the originator of the skills that they all used, whether it was a verbal incantation for the clans, a written rune for the covens, or a physical touch for the tribes. According to his story, the Last Celestial had fallen in love with the Last Leichan, and when the founder of the Potter clan used his skill to imprison the creature, the Last Celestial stole the voice of the founder in order to free the beast. They cursed all descendants of Potter to suffer that same fate, should they ever use their skill to harm others. The rebound on their incantation was their generational curse.

In Wormtail’s version, the Last Conjurer was the one who created the Last Leichan, sculpted out of the dirt of the forest, the water of the river, the light of the full moon, and the outline of the divine constellations – created to be the guardian deity of darkness and the creatures who live within it. While the clay of the earth was still wet, the founder of the Pettigrew tribe laid his hands upon the mold and imbued the creature with his desire to conquer his enemy. As a result, the Last Leichan was corrupted, and the beast that was meant to bring balance left only havoc and destruction in its wake, always on the same night as the one in which it was created – the night of the full moon. The Last Conjurer damned the Pettigrews and all the tribes of the mountains to feel the consequence of the touch of their selfish hands as the sum of the terrible destruction that their founder’s actions had wrought. With every use of their skill, their toll would be the weight of exhaustion of the innocent beast who could never rest. 

The Last Leichan was in every version. The only commonality between them. And with every part of the story that was filled in, a verse of the poem accompanied it.  As Prongs had recited his version to Sirius the first time, Sirius couldn’t help but feel that same swooping, sinking feeling in his gut as he had when Regulus had reminded him of Andromeda’s refrain, that night under the stars, many years before.

Vision of silver, named for the stars

Infantry skin made of gunpowder scars

A stone on the water foretelling a war

Ended only by love worth dying for

Named for the stars. It was something Remus had said upon finding out Sirius’ first name, his real name. He’d uttered it so quietly then that Sirius hadn’t thought much of it, something said under his breath in passing, something innocuous enough that Sirius didn’t think it held any meaning.

But it seemed rather clear, despite the way it left Sirius reeling in the recognition of it. If the first stanza that Sirius had grown up listening to had been about Remus, then the second verse was undoubtedly about Sirius. Vision of silver, named for the stars – the eyes he’d inherited from his father, the names he’d inherited from his Coven. Infantry skin made of gunpowder scars – the combat runes branded into his skin, one of which specifically produced a flame. A stone on the water – the first day he’d met Remus, they were skipping stones. A love worth dying for – well, that one seemed unmistakable.

Under the following crescent moon, Wormtail had provided Sirius with his details of the story, not the same story, but perhaps from the same book. He, too, said he thought of it as nothing more than a fable, until Prongs had asked him about it, some time after meeting Sirius. When he quoted his piece, Sirius held his hand over his heart, his bitten fingernails digging sharply into the crest etched onto his skin.

Speaker of schisms, sculptor of walls

Trading of life for the conqueror’s fall

The last of the tetrad heralds the saviour’s call

Triumph together or no triumph at all

This verse was a little less clear. Prongs was convinced that Remus (or M, as he knew him) was the saviour that this line was referencing. The one who would end the war between their clans. After all, every one of their stories revolved around him, around the Last Leichan. And every passage of that poem pointed to the end of the war. The only question in Prongs’ mind was how Remus would do it.

Sirius hadn’t told Prongs of the skill that Remus had used on him the last time they were together, because it was powerful. Remus didn’t have to touch him, he didn’t have to speak, he didn’t have to ignite his own skin. He moved his hands, and the universe followed his command. And as far as Sirius could see, there was no cost for this power. No rebound. A limitless power. Power without pain.

The other thing that Sirius hadn’t told them, despite how Prongs had asked many times, is how Sirius knew, doubtlessly, that Remus was the Last Leichan. Of course, he mentioned that the ballad had told him what to look for, and they were relatively satisfied with that answer, but Sirius would keep the markings on Remus’ skin to himself. They felt sacred. A secret shared only between the two of them. Like the thread of the universe that held them together – a thread that was still present but just barely.

“Parts of it are about me,” Sirius countered. “I mean, they might be.”

“Might be,” Prongs said with a dissatisfied snort. “Said the boy with a vision of silver and literal gunpowder scars.” Sirius rolled his eyes, but the effort to show his exasperation was wasted, as Prongs was practically reclined against his back, only the trunk of the tree separating their outer shoulders.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” Sirius said, growing solemn. “For four years, I’ve gone to that river after every new moon, and every month for four years, I’ve been left waiting for him.” 

“It doesn’t change anything, Padfoot,” Prongs argued. They had this argument every so often, and it always went the same way. “Whether you’re together or not, he is still the Last Leichan.”

“And I’m the Last Celestial,” Sirius sighed under his breath, just to himself, because this was another one of the things he hadn’t exactly been truthful with Prongs about – neither Prongs nor Wormtail knew the extent of Sirius’ relationship to Remus. They didn’t know he was in love with Remus.

“Wait, what?” Prongs suddenly exclaimed, sitting up and turning in one sharp movement so that he was hovering over Sirius’ face, his hands pressed into the soft dirt at the base of the redwood tree.

With eyes wide in panic, Sirius went still. “What?” he repeated.

“Did you just say what I think you just said?” Prongs asked, hazel eyes burning.

“No,” Sirius replied instantly. “Whatever you think I said, I did not say that.”

“Are you in love with him?” Prongs pressed insistently. Was he smiling about this?

And, well, Sirius couldn’t lie. But he was very good at avoiding. “That’s not what I said.”

“You know, I know the naming trends of the Black Coven,” Prongs said with insinuation in his risen brow. “Your birth name must be related to a constellation. Named for the stars, right?”

“Well done, investigator,” Sirius said with another roll of his eyes.

“The thought had occurred to me, but I didn’t think that part of the story was literal.”

“It’s not, it’s not literal,” Sirius stammered, trying to find a way out of this.

“Obviously I know you’re not literally the Last Celestial,” Prongs said with a shrug of his shoulders, but the gleam in his eye told a different story. “Otherwise, you’d be a thousand years old.”

“Maybe I am a thousand years old, you don’t know me.”

“Right,” Prongs said with a slightly sardonic chuckle. “Pads, I know everything about you except your first name, and I’m pretty sure you would’ve told me that the day we met, if I’d let you.”

Sirius rolled his eyes, unable to argue that fact. “Shut up.”

“Wait, if the prophesy is true …” Prongs began, trailing off as he got lost in thought. “Would that make me and Worm the Last Conjurers?” he theorized. “Speakers, sculptors … that must mean us.”

“Let’s not think about the prophesy being true,” Sirius said with a sigh as he tried not to think about the finite meaning of the poem, in full. If the Last Leichan was the saviour that the poem was referencing, as Prongs believed, then it was clear. The saviour’s call, a life traded. Sirius shuddered.

“Listen,” Prongs said as he turned to take Sirius by one shoulder, noticing the unease that had enveloped them. “If M really is the Last Leichan … we’ll protect him. Triumph together or no triumph at all, right?” he assured Sirius with a confident grin, and Sirius couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

“Right. We triumph together,” he said with a deep breath, holding his hand over Prongs’ hand.

“I mean, we wouldn’t let anything happen to the love of your life, would we?” Prongs said with an overwhelming grin that took up the entire bottom half of his face, hazel eyes dancing with silent laughter.

“Oh gods, shut up,” Sirius groaned, letting himself fall backward and away from Prongs.

“You should’ve told me,” Prongs said as he followed after, kneeling over Sirius and poking him in a completely random pattern so that Sirius couldn’t predict his movements and force him still.

“It’s not like it matters, anyway!” Sirius argued, his voice rising as he tried to stifle laughter. “I haven’t seen him in four years, Prongs. He doesn’t want to see me. I might not ever see him again.”

“Not according to the prophesy.” With a shrug, Prongs finally settled on his knees in the grass.

“The prophesy says nothing about us ending up together.”

“Well, how can we triumph together without him?”

“You’re just assuming the prophesy is about us. Maybe it’s about … anyone else.”

Prongs let out a sharp bark of a laugh before very deliberately rolling his eyes. “Sure, I bet he knows hundreds of Coven members who have a celestial name with silver eyes and gunpowder skin.” 

“Shut up,” Sirius said again, which he apparently said whenever he lost an argument.

“The next new moon is in less than a week,” Prongs said, watching Sirius carefully while Sirius steadily ignored his expression of concern. “Are you going to go to the river and wait for him again?”

“You know I am,” Sirius answered quietly, trying to stave off the sigh building in his throat.

“Well, good luck,” Prongs said, standing and holding out his hand to help Sirius up as he glanced up to the sky, the crescent moon a little further to the west than they liked it to be when they parted ways. When Sirius took Prongs hand, and Prongs pulled him to his feet, he pulled Sirius into a hug. “And when you see him, tell him I said I can’t wait to meet him.” With a small laugh, Sirius pulled Prongs closer.

“He’ll be very confused because he has no idea who you are, but I’ll tell him.”

“And don’t die,” Prongs added, strengthening his hug for a moment. “I need you.”

A soft smile washed over Sirius’ face. “Same to you.”

“Triumph together, remember?” Prongs said as he pulled back, letting his hand linger on Sirius’ shoulder for a moment while he stepped hesitantly into the direction of his clan’s territory.

“Triumph together,” Sirius repeated with a solemn nod as Prongs vanished into the darkness.

It was routine at that point, going to the river to wait for Remus on the new moon. It wasn’t as if Sirius expected him to show up after four years, but there was always a strange hope that this time would be different. And always a tiny, spiking pang of disappointment when he inevitably didn’t show up.

The first several times, Sirius tried looking in the general direction of the wood where Remus always appeared from and disappeared into, but it was always fruitless. There was not a well-trodden trail through the thick brush, not a path worn into the detritus underfoot, not even a series of small, broken branches in any particular direction. It was as if Remus had never come through those woods at all. It was as if Remus knew that eventually, Sirius would try to follow him or find him, and took deliberate measures to prevent it. It was as if Remus had predicted everything that had happened, and everything that would.

It made Sirius wonder how much more of this prophesy there was. Thinking back over the history of their relationship, Sirius could recall so many little instances when Remus acted in ways that Sirius didn’t understand at the time. The mixture of surprise and dread in his expression when they made their childish vow under cover of lotus silk, the way he always kept his markings as secret as he could, even from Sirius, how he always made sure to cut himself off before he said too much. It was the prophesy.

Now, every time Sirius came to the river and found himself alone on its shoreline, he spent the first hour skipping rocks. His record was now up to seventeen. Remus would’ve been proud. When it was warm, he would swim, bathing his ashen runes in the cool of the water. In spring, he would often doze off under the red maple and dream about Remus; in autumn, he would admire the colour changes of the leaves and see the gold of Remus’ eyes; in winter, he would perch in the branches of the trees to stay out of the snow and imagine Remus keeping him warm. Not once in four years did he stop thinking of Remus.

This new moon was no different. By the first light of day, Sirius was at the bank of the river and, as he had been every month for the last four years, he was alone. For some reason, the emptiness of this space felt wider than it usually did, the hole in Sirius’ chest felt deeper. There were many months where Sirius came to the river only to cry. Didn’t skip a single rock, didn’t fall asleep beneath the red maple, didn’t venture into the deep to float weightlessly in the water. Just cry. He felt that void expand and pronounce, but he stifled it. He was getting better at shoving it down. Instead, he knelt into the stones.

Wordlessly, he closed his eyes, let his fingers ghost over the smooth curves of the river stones underneath them, searching for one with a strong thread, something that would remind him of the thread he shared with Remus. Sometimes he could still feel it, but it was nowhere near as heavy as it had once been, back when he could feel it at the Coven, back when he could feel it in his sleep.

In the past, there were times when it sharpened to a very well-defined point – more than once, it had woken Sirius from sleep in a panic – and Sirius always wondered what was happening to Remus when he felt the thread that strongly, that suddenly. The first time it happened, Sirius was in a fit for several hours, pacing in his room in absolute terror because he was sure the thread had snapped. It felt like a lifetime, but only a few hours passed before Sirius felt a gentle, almost reassuring tug on the thread. And Sirius had immediately crumpled into a sobbing heap of relief and gratitude and frustration and dread.

Since that initial episode, there had been a few more instances of sudden tightening from Remus’ end of the string, once most recently on a full red moon, a lunar eclipse, but there had been no further intentional movement. Over time, Sirius had learned to calm his fears on his own – at first, he took to meditating, focusing resolutely on his connection to Remus, so that he could feel every twitch, every bow, every spark between them, trying to strengthen the signal. He even tried guessing what the movements might mean – a sharp spike could mean pain, a sudden lax surely meant relief. It was only speculation.

He didn’t have to meditate now, but that was mostly because there was no strengthening the signal. It was no more than an inconsistent flicker – the last dying ember in a beacon that hadn’t been lit in a very long time. He could still feel it, but it never grew. It only ever faded. More and more every day.

With a dispirited sigh, he arbitrarily chose a skipping stone. There was barely a thread in it, but then again, that’s what Remus’ thread felt like. Like nothing. There was very little strength in his throw, very little of the technique that Remus had first taught him. The stone splashed without a single skip.

So, when he heard the words “That was absolute shite,” from somewhere behind him, his hands immediately went up into defensive positions, the rune branded on the inside of his left wrist crackling and sizzling, because it couldn’t be. Because the thread was still barely an ember. Because he didn’t feel the thread tighten and sharpen and pronounce with Remus’ approach, so it couldn’t be Moony.

But when he turned, it was Remus standing there. Or at least that was what it looked like. “It can’t be you,” Sirius said, feeling as though he was talking to himself, but stepping closer all the same.

There was something in Remus’ face that looked like relief. “It is me.”

“No,” Sirius argued as he shook his head, his eyes greedily roving over the image of the man he loved, looking four years older and yet completely unchanged. “You can’t be.” His eyes were still golden amber, still just as kind, but the wrinkles at each corner had deepened with age. His hair was longer than it had been, a bit darker without his characteristic sun-bleached halo that surrounded his face, but it looked as soft as the day Sirius had met him, curling sweetly around each ear. The lips that Sirius had nearly claimed for his own so many times were a bit thinner, a bit paler in their pink hue, but curved up into the tender smile that Sirius remembered. When Sirius was within reach, he held his hands out, and Remus didn’t blanch, didn’t recoil. He leaned forward and let Sirius close the distance. And Sirius was the one who winced when his fingertips met Remus’ freckled skin, because he expected him to be incorporeal, he expected Remus to be a phantom, expected him to turn to dust. “I can’t feel you.”

“Sirius, your hands are literally on my face,” Remus reminded him with a laugh. Sirius would’ve smiled if he hadn’t been so focused on recognizing the changes to Remus’ appearance. Where once his skin had a sun-kissed glow, freckles covering nearly every inch of his copper skin, now had dulled to a much fairer shade. His scars hadn’t followed the trend, however. They looked sharper, newer, harsher.

“No, I can’t …” He pulled one hand back to slowly close his fist around the tied collar of his tunic, right over the insignia on his chest. “I can’t feel you here,” he emphasized with tightly clenched teeth.

From the trepid swallow that moved down Remus’ throat, Sirius knew his answer. “I severed it.”

“You …” He reeled a bit in the aftermath of the devastation. “How could you,” he said, but it wasn’t a question. Even Remus knew it wasn’t a question. With a bewildered shake of his head, he shoved blindly at Remus’ chest to push him away. “How could you?” he repeated, shouting, loud to his own ears. 

“Padfoot, listen to me,” Remus said, grasping for Sirius’ hand, but Sirius was quick to pull away.

“Do you know how many moons I waited at this river?” Sirius asked, and his voice sounded like he was begging Remus to answer him, growing ever more desperate with every sound. With a trembling lip, he looked up at Remus as the tears he’d been holding back poured down his face. “Every fucking one.”

“I know,” Remus nodded, blinking rapidly as he looked away, as if unable to bear the sight.

“You know?” Sirius snapped, preceding a bitter laugh that shot from his chest. “No, you don’t know. You have no fucking idea how many hours I spent at this river, wondering what the fuck I did wrong. How many times I cried myself to sleep knowing I would never see you again. How many days straight I stayed awake trying to talk to you through a connection that you severed on a fucking whim.”

“It wasn’t on a whim, Sirius,” Remus whispered, but he lowered his head, as if he knew he shouldn’t argue, as if he knew he was wrong. “I knew it was only hurting you to keep it open.”

“It hurt a lot fucking more when I realized it was dead,” Sirius growled.

“It’s not …” he said, interrupted by a sigh. “I know you could feel it when ...” He changed the course of his argument, suddenly looking up. “I could feel your panic through the thread, Padfoot.”

“You knew I felt what?” Sirius said with a bite of irritation. “I’m tired of not speaking plainly.” With defiance in his gaze and a clench in his jaw, Remus obliged him by speaking strikingly plainly.

“You could feel my transformations.” Mouth open, ready to continue the argument, Sirius felt his shoulders fall, suddenly lacking tension. Those times when the connection suddenly sharpened to a well-defined point, when it woke Sirius from a dead sleep, when Sirius thought the wrong end of the line had been cut. It happened because Remus was in pain. It happened because Remus was the Last Leichan.

It was something that Sirius had only recently put together. The power that the Founder had stolen from the Last Leichan was the power to become a black jackal. Andie had told Sirius that the Last Leichan was a human with transformative powers. And from what he’d learned from Wormtail, the Last Leichan, meant to be a protector and guardian of the darkness, instead wreaked havoc and chaos on it.

That was Remus’ only caveat for their meeting time, that it be on any other day except the ones following the full moon. The last time Remus had shown up to the river, when he was bloodied and bruised and fighting to keep the blood inside his body – he said he had done that damage to himself. On the night of the full moon. In Wormtail’s story, the Last Leichan had been sculpted with the light of the full moon and was cursed to bring devastation on that same night, under that same moon.

“The full moon,” Sirius said on an outward breath, feeling angry for his selfish outbursts.

Remus nodded solemnly. “It’s not the great and distinguished power that you think it is,” he began, pausing to take a calming breath, appearing as though it was taking all of his will just to say these words out loud. “I’m not myself under a full moon. I hurt … everyone.  Myself, most of all.”

“Moony,” Sirius said gravely, all breath, taking a step back inward, back toward Remus. But Remus stepped away. The hurt in Sirius’ expression must’ve been drastic, because Remus winced sharply.

“I’m not telling you this so that you’ll take pity on me and forgive me for abandoning you for the last four years,” Remus explained, fidgeting with his fingers, as if to keep them occupied and to himself.

“Why are you telling me?” Sirius asked quietly. “After all this time. And all these secrets.”

With another tight swallow, Remus lowered his head. “I’ve been in a conflict with fate.” As he spoke, he chewed on the inside of his lip, keeping his eyes away from Sirius. “My whole life has been laid out for me. Every decision I think I’m making on my own turns out to be preordained. Even you.”

“Me?” Sirius asked mechanically before he realized. “Is this about the prophesy?”

In surprise, Remus looked up, a roguish smile splashing over his face, leaving a glow in the faded freckles on his cheeks. But his glance was short-lived. He looked down. “How much of it do you know?”

“It’s how I know that you’re …” he paused, wincing, trying to word this delicately, “… you.”

There was something unrecognizable in Remus’ face. “It’s more than that, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Sirius said simply with a nod of his head. That unrecognizable emotion in Remus’ expression grew a little clearer, the amber of Remus’ eyes darkening to charcoal, the circles under his eyes like wilted wisteria petals, the clench in his jaw hollowing out his bony cheeks. Not even when Remus had been bleeding out in his arms had Sirius seen this much fear on his tired face. “I only had one piece of the prophesy. Your piece. Only my younger brother and I know it, and we’ve kept it secret.”

“How did you know there was more than that one piece?” Remus asked with a furrow in his brow, and Sirius almost let a smile move over his face as he thought about Prongs and Wormtail.

“Believe it or not, you’re not my only friend on the outside,” he said, subduing his smirk. When Remus let a look of amused disbelief cross his face, Sirius couldn’t help but let his smile consume him.

“Padfoot, do you have friends in a clan? A tribe?” he asked humorously, taking a step in, and Sirius reveled in how nice it was to have Remus within touching distance again, after so long.

“Both,” Sirius said in a whisper, as if he were telling a salacious secret. Truly, it was rather salacious. The covens hadn’t had relationships with either clan or tribe since the war began, and the war had been going on for longer than Sirius had been alive. Longer than the Coven elders had been alive.

“I shouldn’t be surprised that other people would be naturally drawn to you,” Remus said, another step closer, his soft, coy grin making a welcome reappearance. “You’re very charming.”

“Are you jealous, Moony?” Sirius replied, taking a step of his own, and by then, they were standing face to face again, their hands dangling unused at their sides until Sirius took the initiative to let his fingers brush a little beyond their invisible border. “You forced me to make new friends, you know.”

“I am a little jealous.” He made a face to relay it more clearly, a little snarl in his lip, a little wrinkle in his nose. “You’ve replaced me. If you tell me you spar with them, I think I might cry, actually.”

“We don’t spar,” Sirius said with a slight shake of his head. “At least, not like I did with you.”  

A swallow moved down the length of Remus’ throat, his eyes darting across Sirius’ face. “Oh, so you mean you don’t use that dirty little trick to get out of losing anymore? You know the one I mean.”

“I know the one you mean,” Sirius smirked, but it quickly softened into something a bit more honest, a bit more vulnerable. “The only trick was pretending it wasn’t just an excuse to kiss you.”

“I thought we would practice that trick a little more than we did,” Remus grinned coyly.

“You seem to be forgetting about the time you pinned me underneath you. With your hips.”

“Oh, no, definitely haven’t forgotten that,” Remus said with a dreamy smile, blinking slowly in Sirius’ direction as their fingers coiled together on their own. “I think about that far more than I should.”

 As surprised as Sirius was that Remus would admit that right out, Sirius didn’t let the flattery deter him, though he couldn’t stifle the blush it left. “Interesting that you admit that, considering I was literally panting your name and you left me lying there alone.” Sirius expected the guilt-mongering of missed opportunity to throw Remus off balance, the way it used to do, but this Remus was different. He was more confident, more brash, more challenging, more open. Especially about this topic, in particular.

“And do you pant the names of any of your new friends?” Remus asked, the tug of a smirk in the corner of his lips and the spike of his left eyebrow making his expression look practically arrogant.

“Definitely not,” Sirius assured him “But then again, they don’t caress my runes, either.”

“Considering what you said about the way it made you feel, I’m rather glad they don’t,” Remus said, letting his free hand drift up to hold Sirius by the chin, and Sirius went quite still, his eyes falling closed in bliss, having forgotten the way Remus’ hands felt against his skin. It was such a sudden, foreign, stimulating sensation that when Remus’ touch slipped down his neck, and across the rune that was branded there, Sirius inherently sucked in a soft gasp of surprise. When the subsequent exhale moved through his throat, it sounded a lot like a moan of pleasure. In response, Remus let out a rather heavy breath of his own, so close that it warmed Sirius’ cheek. “I should’ve kissed you that day. Right then.” 

“Yeah, maybe you should have,” Sirius began, baring his teeth as he turned his head away, unsure if he was angry at Remus or angry at himself for backsliding in the conversation when they were well on their way to reconciliation. “Or maybe you should’ve said this four years ago.” There was a moment of silence between them as Remus took a step back. But he didn’t take his hand from Sirius’ own.

“I know,” he said, fidgeting again – this time with Sirius’ fingers in between.

“Apparently, you know a lot of things,” Sirius said, trying to speak rationally, but feeling a surge of resentment build in his chest. “You said you knew I came back to the river. Every month for four years.”

“I did, I knew.” Before Sirius could ask how, Remus provided an answer. “I felt you here.”

“Through the thread that you severed.”

“Sirius,” Remus said with a sigh that would’ve sounded exasperated, except for the desperation in his voice and the way his hands had started to tremble. “There’s a lot you don’t understand. There’s a lot I still don’t even understand. But you have to know that everything I did was an attempt to protect you.”

Sirius tried not to roll his eyes and Remus noticed. “From the war that you say is coming? A war that’s been here for generations? A war that I have been actively fighting in since I was fourteen?”

“Yes,” Remus said insistently, much to Sirius’ surprise and confusion. “You’ve heard the prophesy, you know it revolves around us. Both of us.” With haste, he moved his hands to Sirius’ face, spreading his long fingers over Sirius’ ears. “I thought I could change it. I thought that you were only part of the story because I led you into it. I thought I could invalidate the whole damn thing by taking you out of it.” 

“Remus, I already had my first rune by the time I met you,” Sirius said with a huff of a laugh. “I was a part of the war before I met you. Hell, I was probably part of the war before I was born.”

“I know that now. I know that nothing I do will make any difference and war is inevitable and the prophesy may as well have been written in stone, but now I also know …” As he trailed off, he leaned forward again so that he could place his forehead to Sirius’ own. “That you and I are also inevitable.”

With a sigh, Sirius rolled his head back, letting the words roll unevenly out of his craned throat as he said, “Then you only love me because it was prophesied?” while Remus did nothing but laugh at him.

“What I’m saying is,” Remus hummed, inching closer to rest their foreheads together again, moving his hands down to Sirius’ jawline, his pinky finger brushing against the rune on Sirius’ neck again, and Sirius was sure he did it on purpose just to elicit that same breath from Sirius’ throat again, because it did, after all. “There’s no reason for us to be apart anymore. If I can’t protect you by keeping you at a distance, then I’m going to protect you by keeping you as close to me as I possibly can. For as long as I can.” The focus of his golden gaze darted back and forth between Sirius’ silver eyes. “If you’ll let me.”

  There was hesitation in Sirius’ face as he searched Remus’ for truth. “The last four years have been hell for me, Moony,” he said, slowly moving his hands up Remus’ waist, and by the slight widening of Remus’ amber eyes, he hadn’t been expecting it. “Every new moon, I was here, waiting for you, and you let me wait, severing the one thing I had left of you.” Unexpectedly, Remus moved in closer, his fingers tightening on Sirius’ face, and in response, Sirius involuntarily strengthened his own grip.

“It’s not …” Remus began, insistence in his face. “Severed wasn’t the best … description.”

Sirius met his gaze, blinking hopefully. “So, it’s not severed?”

“I thinned it, intentionally, but you still feel it. You know it’s still there,” Remus said, his fingers roving over Sirius’ face, as if reveling in the feel of Sirius’ skin under his touch. “You feel it right now.”

“But it should be stronger than this. It should feel … electric just to stand next to you,” Sirius replied, gripping onto the bottom hem of Remus’ shirt, partly to stop his hands from shaking.

“Electric?” Remus said with a smirk that could only be described as arrogant. “I like that.”

“You know what I mean,” Sirius said, surprised to feel the heat of a blush in his cheeks.

Remus lowered his head a bit, looking up at Sirius from underneath the fringe of his long curls. “It took time to grow in the beginning, don’t you remember?” he asked. “We nurtured it for years.”

“Will it take years to come back?” Sirius sighed hopelessly. “Back to the way it used to be?”

“To full strength, yes,” Remus answered with a subtle nod, strangely lowering his eyes to the point where he was no longer looking at Sirius. “But I think I can help it get started. With a little push.”

“Then do it, Moony, it’s killing me to feel this emptiness,” Sirius whined, the urgency in his voice far beyond desperation. “I know you’re here, I know that, but it’s like I can’t let myself believe it, like I can’t –” His anxiety-ridden ramble was stopped abruptly when Remus quietly but quickly moved forward to delicately press his lips to Sirius’ own for the first time. Though Remus’ eyes were closed, Sirius’ were wide-open, eyebrows risen high in blatant surprise. But the whisper softness of Remus’ lips, the careful hold of Remus’ hands on either side of his face, the formless press of Remus’ body to his own shortly lulled Sirius into contentment, his eyes rolling back as they closed, reveling in the taste of Remus’ kiss.

“Did that do it?” Remus asked, more than moderately breathless, holding his forehead against Sirius’ own, as if waiting for confirmation, as if he would administer another dose if Sirius needed.

“I’m not sure,” Sirius lied flagrantly. “Do it again.” The smile on Remus’ face was so unrestrained, he was barely able to close his mouth over the top of it to feather another tender kiss to Sirius’ lips.

“How about now?” he asked again, not bothering to wait for the answer before kissing Sirius again. And again. And again. Sirius wasn’t in a hurry to interrupt this flurry of kisses to answer.

“Maybe we should keep at it until I’m sure,” Sirius hummed in half-formed words, his hands winding around Remus’ waist, fingertips tracing up the now very pronounced curves of Remus’ spine.  

“I think I remember the test for this,” Remus said with a mischievous breath of laughter that left Sirius eyeing him in concern, though not enough concern to stop kissing him. That is, until Remus shifted his hand from Sirius’ face down to the inside of his upper arm. To Sirius’ blood rune. The moment Remus’ fingertips met that sensitive place on Sirius’ skin, the place where Remus had tested the thread so many years ago, Sirius was helpless to the rapturous moan that was suddenly ripped from his lungs.

“Moony,” Sirius called out in a tight and trembling voice, feeling his whole body tense underneath the abrupt return of the strength of their thread. And Remus was right – it wasn’t the same as it was before, not as potent as it had been that day when Remus had him pinned underneath him, but it was there, wider and studier than it had been a moment ago. Unlike four years ago, however, Sirius didn’t try to stifle his reaction to it, didn’t feel the need to hide the effect Remus’ touch had on the rest of him.

“Sirius,” Remus replied in kind, in the same tight and trembling voice that Sirius had just said his name in, and it sounded so much more appealing in Remus’ dark and heavy tone as it vibrated out through Sirius’ throat. All the while, Remus’ lips continued to find new, unmarked territory of Sirius’ skin.

“Remus, please,” Sirius begged with a whimpering laugh, his lips buried in the wilds of Remus’ hair as Remus kissed his neck. “Don’t do this to me again. I can’t walk all the way home this frustrated.”

“You won’t have to.” Carefully, but with haste, Remus lifted Sirius’ arm, settling it on top of Sirius’ head so that Sirius’ left bicep, where his blood rune was scorched into his skin, would be level with his face. After a chaste kiss to Sirius’ lips, Remus’ mouth went immediately to Sirius’ branded rune.

“Fuck,” Sirius growled, all elongated vowels. Despite the cautious sentiment of his kiss, despite the softness of his lips and the openness of his mouth and the warmth of his breath, it felt just as Remus had described it so many years earlier – it felt like Remus had lit Sirius’ whole body on fire. And now that Remus wasn’t craned over to reach more of Sirius’ skin, he was free to press deeply into Sirius, with one hand to Sirius’ hip to hold him steady, giving Sirius a shameless and explicit display of his want. 

“We’ve waited long enough, haven’t we?” Remus replaced his lips on Sirius’ rune with a single fingertip, somehow tracing the exact pattern of the brand on Sirius’ skin even though he had pulled away to lavish Sirius with more kisses, deeper and fuller. Sirius struggled to try to regain his sense.

“I waited, I did all the waiting,” Sirius argued, despite his current helplessness to the roll of Remus’ tongue within his mouth and the arch of Remus’ hips between his half-parted legs. “Four years, Moony, four years of misery and anguish, and you think I’m just going to let you pick up where we –”

“Yes,” Remus interrupted, brazen and doubtless, trailing his kiss to the curve of Sirius’ jaw and surely not oblivious to the way Sirius craned his neck to let him. “I’ve wasted enough time, Pads.”

“Why now?” Sirius asked, clinging to his sense as it slipped away again, lost to the ever-growing feeling of Remus between his legs. “You knew I was here at every moon, apparently. Why today?”

“It’s a long story,” Remus began, and before Sirius had time to argue, to demand that Remus tell it anyway, Remus wrapped one arm around Sirius’ waist, holding him taut against his own frame before shifting Sirius’ entire weight to one side, suddenly enough that Sirius lost his footing. With Remus still holding him in place, Sirius was lowered gently to the stones underneath him, and Remus helped him sit back against the trunk of the red maple. There was question in his eyes only for a moment before Remus kneeled over him, straddling over Sirius’ hips as he tilted Sirius’ head back to bury him in another kiss. He spread his knees out into the shifting river stones to nestle down further into Sirius’ lap. “Basically, it took me this long to figure out what a fucking prat I’ve been,” he laughed onto Sirius’ lips. Sirius laughed back.

“I tried to tell you that ages ago,” he replied with a smirk in the corner of his mouth, and Remus responded by setting the edge of his thumbnail against the edge of Sirius’ blood rune, now back down at his side. In anticipation, Sirius took a deep breath in, and when Remus added pressure, Sirius let it all out in a single exhale that left a shudder in its wake. “Gods’ sake, Moony.” Sighing, Sirius rolled his head back.

“I thought I could avoid it all if I avoided you, but all I did was make both of us miserable and waste four years of this.” Remus emphasized his point by grinding his hips down a bit more into where Sirius was seated underneath him, leaving Sirius to let out another breath, more vocal and more desperate, as he inched ever closer to a definitive edge. “Forgive me, Padfoot. Please. Please.” His appeal was silenced by the hollows of Sirius’ mouth as Sirius devoured him in another impassioned kiss.

“Promise you’ll never leave me again,” Sirius demanded, turning the tides on Remus and sliding his fingers up the hem of Remus’ sleeve to press his fingers into the moonlight inside Remus’ right arm. 

With a spirited gasp, Remus replied breathlessly, “For as long as I am able, love, I never will,” and Sirius could feel him pulsing between them, approaching the same edge that Sirius was nearing.

“I am at your left hand, Remus,” Sirius whispered, pulling Remus’ sleeve up to his shoulder to fully display the constellation on his left bicep so that he could place a reverent kiss to the center star, which left Remus writhing urgently on top of him. “Let nothing come between us. Let me share in your fate.”

“Sirius,” Remus called out, raising his head to the empty sky. Sirius steadied him with one hand to Remus’ hip, the other holding Remus’ arm to his mouth, consuming the skin underneath it. They moved together, aimless and wretched, frantic for the friction it provided, despite the layers between them.

“I want everything, Moony,” Sirius hummed, driving his hips upward with a little more focus and a little more insistence. “Every pain, every worry, every laugh, every orgasm, I want everything you have.”

“Yes, gods, yes,” Remus panted, steadying himself against the trunk of the maple with his hand next to Sirius’ head, using it as leverage for more momentum. “You can have it all, I swear to the gods.”

“You will never have to go through another moon without me, ever again,” Sirius promised, his frenzied kiss jumping quickly from Remus’ birthmark to his mouth, slipping his tongue beyond Remus’ teeth for several long, earnest seconds before he spoke again, fitting his words in the space between their reignited kisses. “I will be right here, at the end of this thread between us, for all eternity.”

“Tell me you love me, Sirius,” Remus begged, breathless, wavering over the brink of climax.

“I have loved you every day since the day I met you, and I will love you in every day to come,” he exhaled into Remus’ open mouth before curving his hips upward to meet Remus’ that much more closely, which proved to be the catalyst that Remus needed. With a shuddering breath, Remus closed the distance between their lips with a fiery kiss, his tongue moving deep into Sirius’ mouth as he pushed him back against the trunk of the maple, his thighs quivering underneath the touch of Sirius’ hands.

With a heavy swallow, he repeated Sirius’ name again, along with an added, “Fuck,” as he let his head fall forward onto Sirius’ shoulder. And Sirius couldn’t help the amused smirk that appeared in the corner of his lips as he looked over at Remus, rolling his head to the side to look back at Sirius.

“Imagine how much better it’ll be when our clothes actually make it all the way off,” he laughed, but was confused when Remus didn’t return it. Instead, he rose a single, dark brow toward Sirius, reaching into the inner breast pocket of his shirt, retrieving a small, round tin that looked rather familiar.

“What about part of the way off?” Remus said with a mischievous grin. Sirius shook his head.

“Oh, absolutely not,” he said with warning in his voice. “It’s one thing to get off while fully clothed, but we’re in the open, Moony. And from what I could tell, you’re rather satisfied,” he added, glancing down to Remus’ hips, a noticeably damp spot in his trousers. “Unless you’re insatiable.”

“I won’t argue the insatiable part, that’s usually true.”

Sirius was quick to add, “Making note of that for the future,” with a comical grin.

“But not after an orgasm I waited four years to have,” Remus continued with a blissful smile.

“Only four?” Sirius quipped. “I’ve been waiting for it for closer to ten.”

“I’m just saying,” Remus redirected with a slight shrug, the mischief still in his face. “I can’t let you walk all the way home this frustrated,” Remus reasoned as Sirius realized that the tin Remus was holding was the same one Sirius had given him at seventeen – a tin that used to contain Narcissa’s healing balm.

“You’re going to get me off with healing balm?” Sirius clarified with a breathy laugh.

“It’s not the same balm you gave me at seventeen, Sirius.” Remus echoed Sirius’ laugh but added a roll of his eyes to show his playful chagrin. “This one is more of a soothing balm than a healing balm.”

“Did you bring this here knowing you would use it for this?” Sirius asked in wild amusement.

“I may have daydreamed about it a little,” Remus answered honestly, letting his fingers drift underneath the hem of Sirius’ shirt as he adjusted his position from where he was straddling Sirius’ hips to a little lower on his upper thighs so that he would have the room to start untying Sirius’ trousers.

But Sirius held his hand in place. “I can wait, Moony. You don’t have to do this for me.”

“I’d like to,” Remus said quietly, glancing up at Sirius with his golden, amber eyes and practically batting his long, dark lashes in an effort to get Sirius to bend to his whim. It had worked for him before.

“I’m just not used to being this …” he trailed off, unsure of how to phrase it. “Vulnerable,” he finished, looking pointedly at Remus. “I really don’t want to have to defend myself with my cock out.”

Remus stifled a laugh. “First of all, I would love to see that.” Sirius reached out and flicked him in the earlobe. “Second of all, you know my skill now. Do you think I can’t protect you?” By the defiant look in his eyes, Sirius was sure he wasn’t exaggerating. “Third, the more time we spend talking about it, the longer it’s going to take you to get hard again, so just shut up and let me touch you, Padfoot.” 

“Fuck,” Sirius exhaled heavily, letting his head fall back hard against the maple. “Alright, yes.”

“I’ll keep you as covered as I can,” Remus promised in a low voice, and Sirius already knew it was going to take no time at all, because just the movement of Remus’ fingers against him and the sound of Remus’ voice in that deep but reassuring tone had him swallowing rather harshly through clenched teeth.

“This is hardly fair, you know,” Sirius said, already a bit breathless. “I didn’t get to touch you.”

“That’s so you can daydream about it until the next new moon,” Remus said, glancing up with a wicked grin as the strings that held the waist of Sirius’ trousers together went slack. For a moment, Sirius thought he noticed something ominous in the furrow of Remus’ brow as he spoke, but it was so quick to vanish that he wasn’t sure he’d seen it at all. As Remus pulled back to dip into Sirius’ tin that he’d kept from all those years ago, Sirius noticed Remus left the hem of Sirius’ shirt over his hips to keep him unexposed, just as he’d promised. He moved forward again, and Sirius took a preparatory breath.

“Kiss me,” he requested quickly, and with a smile, Remus didn’t hesitate to indulge him. He moved close enough that he could bury his tongue in Sirius’ mouth without stretching over the slight distance, close enough that he could slip his hands underneath the hem of Sirius’ shirt, close enough that when he took Sirius into his hand with a careful but contented sigh, he held Sirius right between his own legs. “Moons,” Sirius breathed out, reaching up to hold Remus by the face, to kiss him more deeply.

“This really wasn’t fair,” Remus finally agreed, breaking Sirius’ bottomless kiss to come up for a greedy lungful of air, not pausing in the brutal shifting of his wrist. “Gods, to touch you like this …” he trailed off with a sharp exhale, his eyes flittering down Sirius’ chest, as if to try to catch a glimpse. “My daydreams were nothing compared to this. To the actual feeling of you in my hand. Fuck, Sirius.”

“For all the gods, Remus,” Sirius groaned, expelling all the air in his chest at once, his hips twitching up with every tug within Remus’ fingers. “Keep talking. It won’t be much longer.”

“We’ve got all the time in the world right now, love,” Remus assured him, his lips to Sirius’ ear, sending another twitch into Sirius’ his hips at the way Remus kept calling him a pet name. Still, that strangely ominous thing that Sirius thought he’d seen in Remus’ gaze returned in the way he qualified that with right now, as if they only had this moment. As if there wouldn’t be another like it ever again.

“Love,” Sirius repeated on empty lungs. “You keep calling me love.” He was only coherent enough to pull back enough to see the pleased smile on Remus’ face, the rare maroon flush of his golden cheeks.

“I think I’ve loved you since the day we made that vow under lotus silk,” Remus admitted, peppering delicate kisses across Sirius’ face, stopping at his lips to bathe him in ones that went deeper.

“Your name will die with me,” Sirius reminded him, arching his back at Remus’ touch as Remus gently increased the grip of his fingers, increased the ardor of his strokes. “Moony, gods, fuck.”

“I think we should adjust that vow,” Remus said, settling his lips just underneath the curve of Sirius’ jaw and nibbling gently at his earlobe, his breaths puffing out audibly against Sirius’ skin. “My name is yours to keep. Yours to whisper sweetly in the morning and yours to call out into the darkness.”

“Then I will keep it forever,” Sirius pledged under an audible measure of air moving through his breath-battered lips. “And I will whisper it to myself each morning until it comes home to you again.”

“Think of a day when you can whisper it to me each morning,” Remus said with a sigh of wonder as he laid his lips to Sirius’ once again. “Think of a day you can sleep next to me each night.” But Sirius wasn’t deaf to the way Remus spoke those words, like it was a dream that would never come to fruition, not blind to the way Remus’ eyes darkened as he spoke, as if he knew they would never make it there.

“Will there be such a day?” Sirius asked, the hopelessness in his voice not reconciled to the moan that followed from the work of Remus’ hand. But for a moment, the rhythm of Remus’ fingers against his skin slowed, the trouble in Remus’ gaze surged as his amber eyes glazed over. In the next instant, that look of distress was gone, and Remus was smiling rakishly again, pressing his lips to Sirius’ again.

“I will make certain of it, love,” he said, a strange cadence of sadness in his tone again before he made deliberate efforts to wash it out. “Until then, I’ll just have to make love to you every chance I have.”

“I like the sound of that,” Sirius grinned, but it too was washed out by a sigh of elation that echoed from Sirius’ throat a little louder than he intended it, a tremble in his tensed thighs sending his hips a little further into Remus’ fist, much to Remus’ apparent delight. “Remus,” he called out again.

“Say it again until you feel it in your bones,” Remus commanded, and Sirius gladly obeyed.

“Remus.” There was too much breath in his lungs and not enough at the same time. His breath and his heartbeat and the pulsing of his skin seemed to fall into tempo with the rush of the wind and the sway of the maple leaves, erratic and unpredictable. When Remus placed his hand over Sirius’ chest, he felt it sync to the pulse of Remus’ veins through the thread that connected them, a link that felt stronger now than it ever had. “Moony,” he howled again, his head raised to the sky once more. With one last, delicate stroke to his responsive skin, the whole of Sirius’ body thrummed under Remus’ touch until every want was expended, until he fell weightless against the body of the tree. Remus moved to keep him close.

“Sirius,” Remus said his name in whispered kisses against Sirius’ skin as he slipped his hand from underneath the hem of Sirius’ shirt, admiring the mess between his fingers. “I think you’re going to have to get used to being a little vulnerable, because I’m only going to want to see more of you the next time.”

“We’ll find a way,” Sirius said, catching up on his breaths, not bothering to fasten his trousers just yet. “Besides, it’s not as if I haven’t fallen asleep next to you a thousand times on these same shores.”

With a grin, Remus countered, “Not quite as incriminating as this, but I see your point.”

“Come with me,” Sirius said, moving to stand on his still-trembling legs, holding his trousers up with one hand and pulling Remus along behind him with the other. “Let’s clean up a bit.”

“Don’t tell me you’re leaving already,” Remus said with a hint of a whine in his throat. “It’s barely midday.” They waded into the cool, shallow water, letting it wash away the evidence of their desires.

“Actually,” Sirius said with a fond smile in Remus’ direction, “I was hoping you might fall asleep on my chest as I run my fingers through your hair and tell you how much I missed you in the last four years.”

There was a soft smile on Remus’ face in an instant. “I think I can make time for that.”

They did just as Sirius said. First, they took their time cleaning their clothes in the clear water of the river, spontaneously deciding to shed most of those clothes and take a deeper swim. For the first time, Remus took off his shirt to swim with Sirius, with his markings in full view, leaving Sirius to stare in awe of his figure, in awe of the solace he took in Sirius’ presence. Until, that is, Remus splashed him.

They swam for an hour, floating in comfortable silence, sharing kisses on the surface of the water and underneath it, trading stories about their time apart. In the safety of the water, Sirius told Remus about Prongs and Wormtail (sparing their names, for the same reason he spared Remus’ name), telling Remus how they shared their pieces of the prophesy, how they shared trust in one another, just the same way Sirius shared trust in Remus. Though speaking about the prophesy made Remus undeniably uneasy, he still seemed rather pleased that Sirius had made friends, pleased that they’d kept Remus’ secret the same way Sirius had all these years. As they got out of the water, Remus spoke of how he couldn’t wait to meet them both, and Sirius could only imagine the relief he would feel with all of them in one place.

They talked about Remus’ time away, too – about how his father, whom Remus had never spoken of before, had been the catalyst to help him see that the concept of fate was inconsequential. His father made him realize that it didn’t matter if fate was ultimately the dictator of the course of his life – Remus was still the maker of those choices, and he should continue to make the ones that make him happy, whether they correlated to the prophesy or contradicted it. All along, Remus had said, through the whole four years, he’d hidden his misery about being a slave to the fates, when all it took was a single conversation with his father to make him see he’d been thinking about it completely wrong.

Half-dressed and drying out on the shoreline in the warmth of the lazy afternoon sun, they dozed against the trunk of the red maple, with Remus on Sirius’ chest and Sirius’ fingers in Remus’ hair. It was the most at ease that Sirius had ever felt, the restored thread between them laxed and free. For several hours, they laid together, trading positions and telling more stories and kissing and kissing and kissing.

When the sun began to sink low, the ever-present weight in Sirius’ chest began to return. But it felt a little lighter than it had at the start of the day, with his Moony returned to him. Even if they were to part now, their adjoining thread would keep them together. Sirius had learned how to manipulate it quite well over the last four years – they would practically be able to communicate through it across the distance. If nothing else, Sirius knew now, with all doubt erased and promise clear, that Remus would be there, at this very same shore, at the next new moon, just as he had been all those years before.

“I don’t want to go,” Remus said with a sigh as he tugged on his shirt.

“I know,” Sirius said with a hard swallow. “But at least we won’t be apart for four years again.”

With a sad smile, Remus stepped in to press a delicate kiss to Sirius’ lips. “Never again.”

“You owe me a lot for that time, you know,” Sirius grumbled, still kissing Remus.

“I’ll make it all up to you. I swear it.” Remus hummed, the vibrations rolling over Sirius’ skin.

“I’m still not sure I buy your excuse,” Sirius said, pulling back to look warily at Remus. “In a conflict with fate that you suddenly decided, after four agonizing years, that you couldn’t win, and also that you wanted to get me off with a soothing balm. Do you see where you’re losing me, Remus?”

There was an immediate, sharp bark of laughter from Remus’ lips, he raised his head to let it out into the air instead of releasing it into Sirius’ face. “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds crazy.”

“It’s fucking batshit, Moony,” Sirius laughed, watching Remus incredulously.

“Listen,” Remus said, settling in with his arms around Sirius’ neck, a strange look suddenly settling onto his face. “I know I wasted all this time worrying about things out of my control. Like a prat.”

“A stupid, reckless prat, if I’m not mistaken,” Sirius corrected him with a smug grin, and Remus playfully rolled his amber eyes, but Sirius hadn’t seen them this bright since they were seventeen.

“Right,” he said with a huff of a laugh, only a second before his expression grew starkly solemn again. “But you surely must know by now. The prophesy predicted this. Predicted you. Predicted us.”

“Vision of silver and gunpowder scars, right?” Sirius quoted. Remus nodded.

“A stone on the water. When we met, you were skipping stones,” Remus reminded him.

“I figured that part out myself, thank you very much.” Remus didn’t laugh as Sirius expected him to. In fact, for a beat too long, it was silent, and Sirius watched Remus’ eyes dart across the stones underneath their feet, as if arguing with himself over something. When he looked up at Sirius with a clear defiance, it was obvious his internal conflict had been solved. He took a deep breath before speaking.

“What does the next line say, Sirius?” Remus prompted, watching him carefully.

Sirius thought for a moment before meeting Remus’ gaze harshly. “Ended by a love worth –” He stopped, already opening his mouth to prepare to argue with Remus about this piece of the prophesy.

“A love worth dying for,” Remus finished for him with a somber nod, holding Sirius’ gaze as it grew more belligerent, more defiant, more angry. Sirius knew that specific wording of the prophesy, recognized the implications, and had been choosing to ignore it completely, even if Prongs had asked him about it directly. Because it simply would not apply to them. Sirius wouldn’t let it. He wouldn’t let Remus be taken from him again. Not now. He’d only just gotten him back. “The prophesy has predicted every facet of my life. From my birthmarks to my love for you, and if that pattern is anything to go by, then I –”

“We can’t be sure about that,” Sirius argued, feeling the resentment swell, verbalizing the excuse he’d been telling himself for the last four years to keep from dwelling on it. “It says worth dying for. I would willingly die for you, Moony, but that doesn’t mean I’d have to do it.” Remus closed his eyes.

“It also says ‘trading of life for the conqueror’s fall’,” Remus added impassively, pulling Sirius closer to his chest. “The prophesy says I’ll end the war. And I think I’ll have to give my life to do it.”

“No. I won’t let you,” Sirius seethed through insistently clenched teeth.

“I’ve come to terms with this, Sirius,” Remus said with a sigh that betrayed the truth. “That was why I stopped seeing you. I thought that if I changed your involvement in my fate, then I could change my fate altogether, but it’s not that simple.” As if to avoid the alarm in Sirius’ eyes, Remus looked away, taking in a deep breath. “My Kingdom has hidden my existence for decades, hidden the prophesy for centuries, but the truth of who I am is bound to get out. It had to. The prophesy hasn’t been wrong.”

“No one knows about you, Moony. I’m the only one who knows you’re you.”  

Remus let out a short breath, a flash of his jaw clenching, and it looked like he was struggling to keep his promise not to keep secrets. “There are whispers that the Coven is … actively hunting me.”

The blood in Sirius’ face drained in an instant. “What, no –” He spoke on breath that was rapidly leaving his panicked lungs. “No, that’s ... I would know. My father would’ve told me that.”

“Sirius, I think they know you’ve been keeping a very important secret,” Remus said carefully, but Sirius still pushed him away, for no other reason than giving himself the space to vomit, should the urge arise, because it already felt like it was boiling up his throat, his body swaying under sudden dizziness.

“No, this is … I can protect you, Moony. We can run from this,” Sirius said, gripping at his chest, clawing at the murderous insignia branded onto the skin underneath his shirt. A sad, defeated smile moved over Remus’ face, and he took in a deep breath, keeping it in his lungs for just a moment.

“I’ve tried running from this, love, it’s …” he trailed off, eyes downcast. “It’s inevitable.”

“You don’t know that,” Sirius tried to argue, struggling to keep his bearings in place. “Just because that stupid prophesy predicted us doesn’t mean that any of the rest of it will be true.”

The look on Remus’ face made Sirius realize how wrong he was. “You told me about your friend’s piece of the prophesy. The last of the tetrads. Do you know what that phrase means?” Afraid that if he opened his mouth, he would lose what little food was left in his stomach, Sirius silently shook his head, swallowing down the acid getting caught on the lump in his throat and threatening to burn a hole through his skin. “A lunar tetrad refers to four lunar eclipses. And since last spring, we’ve already had –”

“Three,” Sirius interrupted, shutting his eyes tightly, pressing out tears that slid rapidly down his flushed cheeks. “We’ve already had three. Fuck.” He brought his hands up to his face, pressing the heels of his palms into each eye socket. “I’ve been tracking the lunar cycles so I knew when you would be …”

“Sirius,” Remus said with a sharp rush of breath, taking Sirius into his arms. “We still have time.”

“Is this why you came back? To tell me you have to die for me?” Sirius snapped.

“I came back to spend as much time with you as I have left,” Remus said, pushing his fingers through Sirius’ sun-dried and matted hair. “And to prepare you for what’s to come as best as I can.”

“How am I supposed to prepare for your death, Moony?” Against his crown, Sirius could feel Remus shake his head in disagreement. “Unless there’s something in that prophesy that can save you.” 

“I don’t think so,” he sighed, but it was short, sort of chopped, like he meant to say more.

“What are you not telling me, Moony?”

Another sigh, this one resigned. “There’s a piece of the prophesy that you’re missing.”

“Another piece?” Sirius asked, pulling back so that he could see Remus’ face.

“I don’t really understand the full meaning of it yet, but –”

Sirius interrupted. “Remus, tell me.” Before he spoke, Remus cleared his throat.

“For silver and gold,” he quoted softly, keeping his voice low and keeping his gaze fixated at a distant point – a point clearly and decidedly away from Sirius’ face. “A river will flood. An unwilling battle in Coventry mud. In violent rain from a sky drenched in blood, victory through silk of a flowering bud.”

“Okay, silver and gold,” Sirius began analyzing, and Remus jumped in quickly.

“It’s obviously you and me, since the first parts of the prophesy mention our eyes.”

“And the river. Our river,” Sirius added, finally drawing Remus’ attention, but it was short-lived, garnering only a nod from Remus. “Coventry mud,” he continued, preceding a deep breath. “My Coven.”

“It must be,” Remus said, gaze still drawn away.

“A sky drenched in blood?” Sirius asked, leaning to try to get Remus to look at him again.

“A lunar eclipse is sometimes called a blood moon,” he said simply. Sirius bared his teeth.

“And the part about the lotus silk – that is what it means, right?”

Remus nodded slightly. “The vow we made with your ribbon. I think it means that you’ll play just as important a role in ending this war as I do. Though I wish I could tell you more specifically what that means. I don’t even truly know what I have to do. I suppose I’ll know when the time comes.”

“But we win,” Sirius insisted. “The last line speaks of victory.”

“It does,” Remus agreed with a short breath. “But victory rarely comes without sacrifice.”

“Gods, do you hear yourself, Moony?” Sirius barked out a bitter laugh, shoving Remus away from him, leaving a look of surprise on Remus’ face. “You sound like my father. No power without pain.”

“He would know all about that, wouldn’t he?” Remus snapped back with a snarl in his whetted canines. “Considering he forced his fourteen-year-old son to be branded with explosive artillery.”

“And what about your father?” Sirius scoffed. “Your birthmarks naturally shimmer, do they?”

Remus rolled his eyes, an irritated breath of a laugh moving through his long throat, changing its angles until it looked frighteningly thin. “You’re absolutely right, there’s a whole fucking ritual for it.”

“Then how is it any different than my runes?” Sirius growled. “In fact, wouldn’t it be worse? Did they not brand you as the Last Leichan? Did they not make you a beacon for the ones who would try to hunt you? And for what? Does it offer you any protection? Does it conceal you from your enemies?”

Immediately, Remus shouted his rebuttal, tearing the sleeve of his shirt upward to reveal the glittering starlight on his left bicep. “This tincture is the only thing that keeps me alive after every full moon.” Without pause, Sirius slumped his shoulders in surrender, his head falling heavily forward.

“Moony, I –”

“Every month, on the day after the new moon, when the serum has been depleted, the elders of my Kingdom strap me down and rip open a pocket of my skin to pour this elixir into it. Every. Fucking. Month,” he growled, teeth bared sharply, glinting dangerously in the orange of the setting sun.

“Remus,” was all Sirius could find in himself to say.

“It was an honour, my father called it. An honour, to be chosen by the spirit of the First Leichan, he said,” Remus said, raising his arm to run his hand angrily through his hair, drawing Sirius’ attention to the raised scars that made up the three stars aligned on his arm. “He stopped calling it an honour after my first transformation. I don’t think he knew that I would become a monster when I turned fourteen.”  

“Fourteen,” Sirius repeated in a broken voice, taking a careful step closer. It was the same as his combat trial, the same as Regulus’ combat trial, the same as the honour of carrying their combat runes.

“The day I met you was the first time I went through the preparation ritual,” Remus said with a sardonic grin that looked frightening in the dimming light of day. “Do you remember? I was wearing that shirt with the high collar and the cutouts at the shoulders that made it easy to carve into my skin.”

Sirius nodded gravely. “I remember.” He was close enough to reach out, but he didn’t.

“It was well after my first transformation.” Remus continued telling the story, hands shaking and lip trembling with the memory. “The records said the first time wouldn’t be that bad, that the preparation ritual should come after my sixteenth birthday. Historically, every other Leichan who came before me went through the same thing, an acclimation period where the transformations got more traumatic with age. Instead, on my first, I nearly ripped my head from my own shoulders.” As he spoke, he craned his head and drew his thumb along the scar that circled the base of his throat. All the way around.

“Fuck,” Sirius muttered, swallowing heavily.

With a snarl, Remus continued. “Base level skills don’t work against the Leichan, they had to physically restrain me, my father says. It took twenty of them. The elders started adding a sedative to the medicinal fluid mixture after that.” He gestured to the glittering liquid underneath his birthmarks. “Which is great, because it stays with me for a few days afterward, so I don’t realize how close to death I am each time,” he added under his breath, angrily swiping at the tears that had begun to sneak down his face.

“Gods, Moony, come here,” Sirius finally broke down and delicately slipped his hand over that scar on Remus’ throat, curving to the back of his neck so that he could pull him in close. “I am so, so sorry.” And Remus let Sirius hold him, tears slipping from his cheeks onto the back of Sirius’ linen shirt.

“This isn’t your fault,” Remus cried. “You shouldn’t even have to be involved.”

“I am involved. Because I am in love with you,” Sirius reminded him gently.

“I should’ve told you the truth in the beginning, so you would never have had to fall in love with someone weighed down by so much trial and misery.” Instantly, Sirius took Remus’ face into his hands.

“I would have fallen in love with you anyway, Leichan or not,” Sirius said, holding Remus’ shifting gaze so that Remus knew he spoke the truth. “I would choose you all over again, even now.”

A broken sob moved through Remus’ lips, but he argued the point all the same. “No, someone like you would have never fallen in love with someone like me if not for the prophesy.”

“Fuck the prophesy!” Sirius barked with a look of arrogance on his expression. “I don’t love you because some fucking ancient arsehole said I would. I love you because you are as kind as you are shrewd, because you make me laugh when everything else around me is tragic. I love you because of the gold in your hair and the scars on your face and the way your hands feel on my skin.” He pulled Remus closer, ever closer, and spoke onto his lips. “I love you because you are you, my Moon. Not because some outdated acolyte shoved some glittering shit under your skin and turned you into a primordial beast.”

There was a glow in Remus’ smiling cheeks, visible even against the pink of the sunset. “That is absolutely not how that works, like at all, but I love you, too.” At the sight of that smile returned to Remus’ face, Sirius couldn’t help but keep trying to make it grow, at least for a little while longer. He took Remus’ hand and pressed his lips to the inside of his wrist, working his way up Remus’ arm as Remus’ fingers curled into Sirius’ hair. “The shapes are birthmarks, that part you were right about. That’s what marks me as a Leichan. Freckles that transpose in time with the night sky.” As Sirius’ feathering kisses settled over the three connected stars on Remus’ left arm, Remus took in an unsettled breath. “From the day I was born, everyone in my Kingdom knew I would have to give my life to end a frivolous war.”

Sirius shook his head, argument on his tongue. “But you said there were others like you. Records of other transformations. How were they sure you were the Last Leichan? The one to end the war?”

“The prophesy,” Remus emphasized with a defeated sigh and a bitter smirk, before adding with spite in the back of his throat and a snarl on his lip, “It’s always the fucking prophesy, isn’t it?”

“But how? It can’t have named you specifically,” Sirius tried to fight.

“What’s the first line of your piece of the prophesy?” Remus asked knowingly.

“Starlit left, moonlit right,” Sirius quoted easily. By then, it was seared into his memory.

“Because I am the only Leichan in the history of my Kingdom to have two birthmarks – one that follows the light of the moon and one that reflects the stars,” Remus explained, running an irritated fist through his already mussed hair. “Until me, the Leichan was only marked by the light of a full moon.”

“Well, does that necessarily –” Sirius began to fruitlessly argue, but Remus stopped him.

“It’s okay, Sirius,” he insisted with a laugh that softened the angry edges of his voice. “It’s not just my birthmarks that prove it. It’s you and your runes and the lotus silk and –” The venom had started to creep back into his voice when he paused to take a breath, moving one hand to Sirius’ cheek. “If it meant having you, in whatever little way I was allowed, then it was worth it. It’ll still be worth it in the end.”

Anxiously, Sirius reached up to place his hand over Remus’. “Please don’t say the end.”

“We’ve still got time,” Remus assured him, but the darkness in his eyes gave him away. “Let’s just spend as much of it as we can together. Do you think you can sneak away again tomorrow?”

A smile crept into the corner of Sirius’ mouth. “I think I could work that out.”

“First light tomorrow,” Remus promised, leaning in to place a delicate kiss to Sirius’ smile. And before Remus could let go, before he stepped back to walk into that familiar patch of forest, Sirius leapt forward and claimed Remus’ lips in another kiss, a fitful and fervent display of his open affection.

“Don’t you dare run off again,” he spoke onto Remus’ lips, forehead to forehead.

“Not a chance,” Remus grinned serenely as they reluctantly parted, the red sun setting between them as the distance grew further and further with every step. The last time Sirius glanced back, he felt a stab of pain in his chest at losing the sight of Remus, but a gentle tug on the thread that coupled them reminded Sirius that Remus was never as far away as he had been yesterday. Sirius exhaled his relief.

Until the moment he took a step into the woods that led back to the Coven grounds and ended up face to face with his father, as silent as he was menacing, standing next to his cousin Bellatrix, who was looking smug at Sirius’ expected and warranted downfall. Having no warning, Sirius forgot to wash the surprise and terror from his expression as his father’s cold, grey eyes stared unwaveringly into Sirius’ own. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say, and no chance that his father hadn’t seen him with Remus, hadn’t seen him kiss Remus. They both may have even seen Remus’ birthmarks.

In his irritation, Orion adjusted his face as he prepared to speak – a slight snarl in his upper lip, a strong clench of his jaw, a deliberate narrowing of his gaze in Sirius’ direction. “Your treachery runs deeper than I suspected, Sirius,” he stated, his voice deceptively calm and even, but for the underlying darkness consistently threaded through it. “Not just a companion of the Leichan, but its whore, too.”

“Father, I –” Sirius began, thinking quickly to come up with a lie while simultaneously trying to hide his blatant surprise that Orion had already pieced together who Remus was, in truth.

“Did you think I do not know the legends? The prophesy?” The way Orion briskly cocked his head to the side in his displeasure left Sirius flinching, wincing, preparing for the back of Orion’s hand, as it had so many times before this moment. “What I did not know,” he continued, his eyes scattering across Sirius’ visible skin, surely seeing the marks left behind by Remus’ amorous kisses, “was your part in it.”

Foolishly, Sirius let his gaze dart over to Bellatrix, who was grinning foully. As Sirius let his eyes shoot back toward his father, meeting his gaze to show his defiance, Sirius spoke. “I have no part in it.”

“Is that so?” Orion asked, but by his inflection, Sirius could tell it wasn’t a question. “Vision of silver, named for the stars,” his father quoted, all while Sirius tried to hide the panic in his expression.

“If you truly knew the prophesy, then you knew that citation already,” Sirius stated plainly, grasping for an escape. “And as far as I recall, every member of our Coven is named after a star.”

For an agonizing moment, Orion was silent, leaving Sirius to metaphorically squirm, because Sirius wouldn’t dare let his father know he was as nervous as he was. “Yet, you are the only one of my Coven who is actively consorting with the one being who can bring the ruin of that same Coven.”

“The Leichan is a myth, Father,” Sirius said, finally resorting to outright denial, hoping beyond hope and praying to any celestial deity that Orion hadn’t seen either of Remus’ birthmarks.

A scoff of a laugh ricocheted from the back of Orion’s throat, but his expression remained unchanged as he stared Sirius down into the earth. “Yesterday, you might’ve convinced me of that,” he said with a sickening smile as he suddenly took hold of Sirius’ left arm, twisting until Sirius had no choice but to contort to prevent his bone from snapping. “Today, however, you were careless enough to show me incontestable proof of the prophesy – the unnatural starlight in the lefthand side of the monster’s skin.” Trying to subdue the clench of his teeth, Sirius pulled his lips over them, remembering the way he’d recklessly kissed the markings on Remus’ skin only moments before, as if they were the only two people in the world. All those years Remus had spent trying to keep them hidden, and Sirius had unwittingly displayed it directly to the one person who would use it to bring about the extinction of Remus’ Kingdom.

At once, Sirius felt a tug on the thread that tied him to Remus. No doubt, Remus could feel the alarm and dread exuding through Sirius’ end of the line. Without time to make any decisions, Sirius sent back a lie – a reassuring pull. He couldn’t risk Remus coming back, couldn’t risk Orion finding him now.

His father continued. “Because you are my son, I will give you this one choice,” he said under a narrow and threatening gaze. “Your Coven or this … beast.” Without thought, Sirius knew his choice – he would always choose Remus, even if it meant standing against his own Coven in the war. Or that was what he thought, until his father asked again. He leaned in, his fingers still digging into Sirius’ bicep. “Let me phrase it so that my meaning is absolutely clear.” He spoke directly into Sirius’ ear, his voice low and sinister. “Choose to stand with the Leichan and your beloved brother will stand in for your sins.”

Immediately, Sirius’ frightened gaze darted back to his father’s face, where he found no sign of untruth – only a callous indifference. “No,” Sirius hissed through tightly clenched teeth. “No, you wouldn’t. He is your son. Without me, he is the heir to your Coven. Regulus is … he’s …” Sirius stammered as he tried to rationalize the fact that this had to be a bluff. His father wouldn’t harm Regulus. Would he?

Orion finished Sirius’ broken thought. “Regulus is utterly useless to me,” Orion said flatly, without so much as a waver in his voice, leaving Sirius to balk in glaring shock at the barbarity of his father’s heartless statement. “Perhaps if I hadn’t wasted my seed on a failure like you, Regulus would’ve been born stronger. In truth, you are the reason that Regulus is as weak as he is. You coddled him.”

Sirius interrupted brashly. “Showed him the love and kindness we never got from you?” His insolent comment earned him a deepening of the grip his father still had on his upper arm. Sirius could feel it bruising under the strength of his father’s grasp. Bellatrix looked positively vindicated.

“If I neglected Regulus,” Orion growled, canines bared. “It was because you had me convinced that I could sculpt you into the perfect Coven leader. You were the youngest victor of the combat trials in decades, the youngest recipient of a blood rune in a century. With you, I no longer had need for Regulus. I only bred him as the backup plan if my firstborn were to fail. And you have failed. Quite spectacularly.”

The weight in Sirius’ stomach felt like it might come up his throat. “Bred him?” Sirius felt his voice thundering from his chest, carried with the pain that projected it. Birds flittered out of the trees around where they stood, startled by the sudden rise in his angry tone. For the moment, he sidestepped his father’s merciless choice of words. After all, it wasn’t as if it were a phrase that hadn’t already been used to describe Sirius himself, on more than one occasion, but to hear it said of Regulus stung quite a bit deeper. Still, the point of the argument wasn’t in semantics, it was in protecting Regulus. “More of a reason to keep your backup plan alive, isn’t it?” Sirius seethed, spitting out the words as he unsuccessfully tried to wrench away. “Now that I’ve so spectacularly failed. You need Regulus now more than ever.” 

Orion’s response was, at first, nothing more than a click of his tongue. “That would be true,” he said, and for a moment, Sirius felt his heart move out of his throat and back down into his chest. But the next words out of his father’s mouth sent him swallowing it down again. “If he hadn’t failed me, as well.”

“How?” Sirius said, his voice bordering on a shout. “How has Regulus failed you? He has only ever followed your orders. He has done nothing but try to make you proud of him at every turn. He passed the combat trail at fourteen, just as I did.” As he spoke, Sirius tried not to think about the combat trials, tried not to imagine Regulus in the midst of his, tried not to remember the terrified look on his brother’s face just before it started, knowing that it could very easily be his little brother’s death, as it had been for countless Coven members before them. Even then, as he’d coached Regulus on ruthlessness and survival, Sirius had shuddered to remember his own trial with all the horror and bloodshed it had left behind.

“Do you think Regulus passed the combat trial of his own merit?” Orion barked in return, sending Sirius’ once open and argumentative mouth to a close in an instant. “Regulus is far too delicate, far too timid in battle. I knew before he ever even entered the trial that he would never be able to survive it.”

“You fixed his trial?” Sirius said in a hollow whisper. It meant that everything Regulus went through in that arena was for nothing. His fellow Coven members fought and bled and died at the age of fourteen for nothing. Still, even with all the terrible realization and revulsion in his head, a nagging thought struck Sirius quite suddenly. “Then how can you stand there and say he’s useless to you when you went through all that trouble to make sure he survived?” Sirius said, silver eyes blazing.

“It was not his survival that concerned me, but his victory,” Orion clarified insipidly, not a mar of emotion on his face at all. The breath in Sirius’ chest left in an instant. He looked over to Bellatrix, not expecting sympathy, but perhaps at least surprise, perhaps at least outrage. There was nothing in her expression but arrant approval of Orion’s vile motivations. “His loss would’ve disgraced our name.”

“You rotten fucking cunt,” Sirius growled, a mutinous snarl baring his teeth. “He’s your son.”

“What he is,” Orion said very clearly, using his size to bear down into Sirius’ face, “is the bastard son of a whore, just the same as you.” Sirius felt the sharpened fury in his cheeks blanch and pale.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he asked, hearing the smallness in his own voice, angry that he couldn’t change it, but feeling as though everything was being pulled out from under him.

Bellatrix spoke up for Orion. “Did you really believe those fairytales about your noble mother sacrificing herself to give birth to someone as weak as Regulus?” she said in a mocking tone, rolling her eyes. While Orion simply sighed in vague annoyance at Bellatrix’s outburst, Sirius felt as if all the blood in his body had pooled in his ankles, his heart pounding in an effort to try to distribute it all back in place.

“You never had a mother. You had a volunteer whore, chosen for specific qualities, willing to be fucked by the Coven leader for the honour of producing his heir,” Orion said, vapid and detached.

“Specific qualities,” Sirius repeated, swallowing heavily as his head began to swim. Of course, he always knew his father was cruel, he always knew he was a soldier and a strategist above all else, but Sirius had always mistakenly thought he and Regulus were at least born from love. But this was always the truth. They had only ever been conceived for war. Bred like an animal to be slaughtered for its meat.

“Oh, I think he’s going to be sick,” Bellatrix jeered as Sirius struggled to breathe. The only reason he was still on his feet was because his father made it so, still bruising Sirius’ forearm with his grip.

“Why tell me this now?” Sirius hissed, struggling to get away, but finding himself completely devoid of all the energy he’d had only an hour before. “Don’t you want me to fight for you?”

Orion shrugged, unbothered by the whole conversation. “You don’t have a choice. It doesn’t matter if you know the truth. You fight for me now or condemn your brother to death. Your choice.”

Helpless, Sirius looked up with a belligerent tremble in his lip. “What would you have me do?”

“I heard you say that you would return at first light,” Orion said calmly, his voice oozing with arrogance and perceived victory. “You will keep that meeting and help your Coven capture the beast.”

“Capture?” Sirius asked with furrowed brows, his panic waning and spiking. He could feel the worry on Remus’ end of the thread, but Sirius didn’t bother masking the dread he was feeling. If anything, now that he’d been informed of their plans, he intensified his fright as a warning signal to Remus.

There was a ghastly smile on Orion’s face as he said, “Just like the Founder of our great Coven, I will steal the power of this Leichan and make it my own. By whatever means necessary.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Sirius said, breathing stunted as he recalled the way Remus described his transformative power. Terrible and dangerous, not just to himself, but to everyone.

“Can’t I just kill it?” Bellatrix groaned, and Sirius’ jaw tightened, teeth cracking.

“I need it alive for the transfer of power to be successful,” Orion replied, sounding exasperated with his niece, but the smile on his face remained. “And then you can kill it, if you like. I don’t care.”

“I won’t let you take him from me,” Sirius roared, struggling against his father’s hold.

“You will,” Orion reminded him, increasing the curve of his fingers, digging into Sirius’ skin. “Or I will take Regulus from you instead.” All at once, Orion released Sirius from his control, so abruptly that Sirius stumbled down into the dirt at his feet. “As I’ve said, the choice is yours. Son,” he emphasized.

Bellatrix jumped in with a depraved grin, “And just in case you get any brilliant ideas of escape, Regulus is already in our … protective custody. You’re welcome to run, if your life is more important.”

“Can I see him?” Sirius asked, closing his eyes. “Can I see Regulus?”

“Yes,” Orion said, followed by, “Once you’ve completed your task tomorrow.” For only a moment, Sirius let himself sit in the cold dirt, the sun having long since set. There were a little over twelve hours before he had to be back here, before he had to lie to Remus’ face and risk his capture, before he had to choose Regulus’ life over Remus’ safety. He thought of ways out, but it only made him feel more hopeless. Until he thought of the only person over the last four years who had given him hope.

“Fine,” Sirius finally agreed, formulating a plan. “We return at first light.”

Chapter Text

Anxiously, Sirius stood on the shore, on their shore, as he waited for Remus, knowing that his father, Bellatrix, and the most ruthless soldiers of the Coven were waiting in the brush to capture the love of Sirius’ life. Knowing this, Sirius stood on the opposite shoreline, across the river from where they usually met, across the river from where he knew Remus would emerge from his side of the wood.

While he waited, he used the threads that connected him to the river stones underneath his feet to choose the perfect one, the one that would skip the farthest. Once the best stone was chosen, he took the silver chignon pin from his hair, furtively removing the suture needle in the secret compartment within the head of the pin. With his back to the forest, he set to carving into the soft, flat stone.

“Sorry I’m late,” he heard from across the river, and he jerked his head up to see Remus, eyeing him rather curiously, which was exactly what Sirius wanted. He knew that if he stood on this side of the river, it would spark Remus’ suspicion, just as it had done. Sirius met his gaze with fevered intent.

“Others may have minded the wait, but not me,” Sirius said, speaking cryptically in order to get Remus’ attention to the fact that Sirius was not alone. He blinked slowly and deliberately in Remus’ direction. Just barely visible from across the distance, he watched Remus’ gaze narrow in apprehension

“I’m lucky it’s just you then,” he answered, and Sirius watched the way his golden gaze darted to the wooded area behind where Sirius stood. “You look tired,” he added, his eyes refocusing on Sirius, and Sirius felt the intensity of his glare from across the water. “Did you have trouble getting to bed?”

Sirius almost smiled at Remus’ quick wit. How cleverly he’d phrased that. “The walk home took me a little longer than usual,” Sirius nodded, raising his brows slightly. “I got held up along the way.”

Instantly, there was something in Remus’ face that looked like worry, and he stuffed it down, but Sirius could see the darkness it left in Remus’ gaze. “Were you able to get any sleep afterward?”

“Hardly,” Sirius said, his lips forming a thin line. “The stress kept me awake.”

“Of course,” Remus said, his voice sounding strangely calm for the situation, but Sirius knew he could tell something was wrong, even if he didn’t know exactly what is was. “I’m sure I only worsened your stress with what I said yesterday,” he added, and for a split second, Sirius prayed that he knew what was happening here, prayed that he wouldn’t say anything about their conversation yesterday – about Remus’ identity, about the prophesy, about any of it. “I meant it, you know. We can’t do this anymore.”

Sirius breathed out a sigh. So, he understood. “I know. It is far too dangerous for us to be together,” Sirius said carefully and clearly. “Even just standing here right now is treacherous.” It was a warning. There was a slight nod of Remus’ head, so subtle that Sirius wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been paying very close attention to every movement that Remus made. The message got through.

“Then we agree,” he nodded, not breaking his eye contact with Sirius as he added, with heaviness and design in every word. “We should part before the risk becomes too great,” as if he knew he would have to run for his life the moment their conversation was over. Sirius wasn’t ready for it.

But before Sirius could say anything more, he could hear the near-silent approach of the Coven members just behind him in the brush. Quickly, he added, “Before you go – how about I skip a rock over to you, for old times’ sake? You can catch it, like you always do.” He emphasized the last part, knowing he and Remus had never skipped rocks to each other at all, but always side by side. “And you can keep it, if you want. It’ll be like my last love letter to you,” he said, raising both brows. Another shrewd nod.

“I’ll memorize every nick on its surface,” he acknowledged in return. With a short breath, Sirius took his form, the one that Remus had taught him on the first day they met, and he shot the smooth stone across the surface of the water. It skated along the river, using the thread between them as a contour line, and much to Sirius’ relief, the rock slipped right into the palm of Remus’ hand.

After a quick glance downward, Remus took in a deeply unsteady breath, locking eyes with Sirius one last time before he turned on his heel and bolted back into his woods, directed by the word RUN Sirius had etched into the stone. At once, the covert Coven members shot out from their hidden places in the brush, scrambling through the river after him, but they were all stopped by a booming command.

“Be still!” came the familiar call, in that familiar voice, though the volume was wildly different than what Sirius was used to hearing. Every Coven member, Sirius included, went completely motionless, giving Remus enough time to make it much further into the thicket than Sirius would’ve been able to give him alone. As he looked across the shore, he saw Prongs standing at the edge of the forest, with Wormtail at his back, a hand on Prongs’ shoulder. It was a technique that Sirius had witnessed them do a few times, Wormtail manipulating the energy in Prongs’ voice to amplify it, but it took a lot of concentration, a lot of power, and they couldn’t hold the incantation for long, especially when it was affecting this many people at once. In fact, as Sirius watched, he saw Prongs clutch painfully at his throat.

However, the moment the Coven members began to get their faculties back, Wormtail lunged forward and shoved his hand into the wet edge of the riverbed. In an instant, an enormous torrent of water surged up from the shore, expanding down the entire visible length of the river until it was an impenetrable wall of whitewater before them. The effects of the tribes’ skill were much longer lasting than those of the clans, so Sirius knew it would be a while before the river returned to its natural state. The Coven members, Orion especially, were left cursing, frantically trying to find ways around the upward flowing waterfall, over it, under it, through it, but the water pressure flung them instantly backward.

“You did this!” Orion bellowed, grabbing Sirius by the collar of his shirt.

“How could I have?” Sirius snapped back. “You had my room guarded all night long, you know I never left it.” With an infuriated snarl, Orion violently released his grip, and Sirius stumbled forward a bit.

“Restrain him,” Orion thundered, snapping at Bellatrix, who used one of the runes on her forearms, the same restriction rune that Sirius had on his neck, to instantly pin Sirius’ arms behind his back with invisible binds, another unseen shackle clamped tightly around his throat. Once Sirius was clearly his hostage again, Orion stepped back in close, bearing down into Sirius’ face. “I don’t know how you did it, but I know this is your fault, and you will pay for it,” he spat. Sirius held his defiant chin high.

He said nothing as they pushed him back to Coven grounds, trudging through mud as rain began to fall. There was nothing in his chest but relief, silently thanking the gods that the cryptic message he’d sent to Prongs had been successful. It was thanks to the rune on his shoulder, the same rune he’d once used on his cousin to render her speechless for a week. The true power of that rune was a bidding rune, though he’d never attempted its use in the way he had the night before. It was similar to the incantations of the clans, but it couldn’t quite bend a person’s will, so the Coven relegated its use to inanimate objects in domestic applications – stirring a tincture that had to steep overnight, turning a page when taking notes. Those who were very adept with the runes, as Sirius was, found that it did work on individuals, but only worked in small doses for small behaviors – for example, keeping his annoying cousin silent for a while. What he found, though it took him quite a long time and quite a lot of practice, was that it worked completely on small animals, birds, insects. Last night, with his bedroom window unguarded but for the ground at the bottom, Sirius commanded a bird to fly into his window, just as the Coven guards’ attention was interrupted. He tied a short, coded message to the leg of the bird and had it fly to the armistice zone. Until that morning, he’d only hoped that Prongs had received, and interpreted, his message.

They didn’t transport Sirius back to his room at the manor. They put him in the dungeons. For what felt like hours, he stayed there, his hands still restrained behind his back from the rune that Bellatrix had confined him with, his throat still tightened from the invisible collar that same rune gave to him.

Of course, he tried to use his own runes as some effort to free himself, but the advantage of that binding rune was that it limited the skill of its captive. And Sirius knew that – he’d used that same rune, the one on his neck, many times on many members of many tribes and clans. For him, it was always a far superior option to using one of his many offensive runes against people he didn’t really want to harm.

He didn’t know if his stunt to protect Remus put Regulus in danger. His father promised that he could see Regulus when his task was completed, but that task didn’t go to Orion’s plan. Sirius knew that was a possibility when he orchestrated it. All he could do was hope that Regulus was alright.

His thread with Remus was so weak, he could barely be sure it was even still there. Perhaps it was exhaustion, perhaps it was his own desire to protect Remus from this that had subconsciously loosened it, perhaps it was the binding rune that left his skills diminished. Whatever it was, he could only hope that Remus wasn’t feeling the weariness and anxiety that Sirius felt every minute he spent in this dungeon.

Hours turned into days, or maybe it only felt like days because he couldn’t see the light of the sun passing by overhead or the twinkling of stars to signal the end of day. He couldn’t tell if it was still raining outside, couldn’t track the cycles of the moon to worry about Remus. A few times, he found himself passing into sleep with his head against the stone wall of the dungeon or his face planted in the dirt floor with his hands still tightly locked behind his back. Every now and then, he felt Bellatrix renew the rune.

Finally, after a length of time that Sirius could not measure, Orion descended into the bowels of the dungeon, with Bellatrix on his heels. With no ceremony, she released him from her binding rune, and it seemed to be almost as much of a relief to her as it was to Sirius. A heavy breath fell from his lungs, puffing out into the dirt underneath his lips as his arms fell limp at his sides, and he replaced that breath with a starved gasp, breathing more freely now that the restriction around his throat had vanished.

“Regulus,” he choked out at once. “Let me see my brother.” Bellatrix laughed, but the exhaustion in her voice was clear. It had drained all of her energy to keep Sirius bound for the last few days.

“Considering your betrayal at the river, that is unlikely,” Orion stated simply, and before Sirius could find out if Regulus was even still alive, Orion continued. “Until you compensate for your defiance.”

“So, he’s alive then,” Sirius said in a breath of relief. His actions hadn’t led to Regulus’ death.

“For now,” Orion said, with obvious distaste in his mouth. “Only because I still have use of him.”

“Use, how?” Sirius asked through the dryness of his throat, having been without food or water for what felt like days. As he stretched out his stiffened arms, he managed to sit up against the stone wall.

“Insurance,” Orion stated cryptically, eyeing Sirius with contempt. “Since it’s clear you cannot follow simple instruction, you’re going to be my new test subject.” Sirius swallowed, but it was all dust.

“How so?” he asked, trying to hide the fear in his voice, but Orion didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted his hand and flicked his fingers forward, instructing five elder members of the Coven to enter the cell.

“Do it,” Orion commanded. At first, there was an exchange of glances between the men, even a whisper of ‘But that’s Sirius,’ which only induced wrath from Orion. “I said, DO IT!” he shouted.

All at once, the men raised their hands, a freshly branded rune on each of their palms. It was the same rune as the one on Sirius’ shoulder, the same one he’d used to render Bellatrix speechless, the same rune he’d used to have a sparrow carry his coded message. It was a bidding rune. Five of them.

When the runes glowed in their activation, Sirius felt his entire body brace against his will, his hands moving on their own as they pressed into the dirt underneath him. He could still feel the soft chill of the earth at his fingertips, could still feel the grit of the dirt under his fingernails as his hand formed a fist. He moved to one knee as he pushed himself up, standing straight and still against every intention.

“What the fuck have you done to me?” Sirius asked in a trembling voice, surprised that he still had power over his vocal faculties. He tried to lift his hand to his face. His body wouldn’t obey him. 

“Your friends’ trick gave me a little idea,” Orion said, looking smug. “If they can amplify their power with separate skills, what’s to stop us from amplifying the power of our runes by compounding their effect?” He stepped over to Sirius without a shred of worry, activating his lightning rune in only his thumb and pressing it to Sirius’ chest, sending a bolt of electricity through Sirius’ skin. As small as it was, it still left Sirius gritting his teeth fiercely, a grunt of pain slipping through his lips. “Of course, it doesn’t exactly have practical battlefield applications – as you see, it takes five very skilled men just to keep you in place, but –” He dug his fingernail into Sirius’ skin, sharpening the electrical current, “Well, it works.”

“I can still speak,” Sirius managed to say through the pain coursing through his body.

“And that’s where Regulus comes in,” Orion said with a sadistic grin.

“Insurance,” Sirius repeated, his words dissolving into a near-scream as Orion increased the current, pressed his thumb further into the sensitive space just underneath Sirius’ collarbone.

“Rosier!” he called, craning his neck to shout into the open doorway. Almost instantly, another man appeared. In his hand was a rune brand. Red hot. Orion glanced to Sirius. “Make him kneel.”

With a thud of his knees slamming into the dirt, Sirius knelt. “Don’t do this,” he pleaded, but it fell upon deaf ears. Orion gripped him by the hair and shoved his face down, level to the dirt he knelt upon.

“The rune works at some distance, you see,” Orion explained calmly, as if he couldn’t see Sirius’ chest heaving in panic. “We can’t control your speech, but we can monitor what you say. And if you say the wrong thing –” he paused just as the searing iron was pressed to the base of Sirius’ skull. The scream tore through Sirius’ throat with deafening force and clawing agony, but the rest of his body steadily complied, willful and immovable. “Then Regulus will be the one to repent for that indiscretion.”

“Fuck you,” Sirius managed to spit out through the blinding pain in his scalp.

Orion ignored him singularly. “Well?” he asked the first of the five men who still had Sirius under their control. “Has the connection worked? Are you able to see?” Suddenly, and again without his own consent, Sirius raised his head, his eyes falling upon that same man, his eyelids closed and fluttering.

“Yes,” the man agreed, leaving Sirius to swallow in terror. This was the new rune they’d just branded him with – a way to see through his eyes and hear through his ears as they controlled him.  

Orion added, “Make sure you can utilize his runes,” to the men who imprisoned him. With a bit more concentration, based on the shaking of their hands and the grit of their teeth, Sirius stood to his feet once again, raising his left arm and producing a fairly sizeable flame in his palm of his hand.

“It’s … difficult to maintain, sir, but it can be done,” the first man said. Orion just nodded.

“Just use the simple ones, then. Fire, binding, freezing … bone-crushing, if you can,” he listed off a handful of Sirius’ runes – ones that he himself had encouraged Sirius to obtain. As he casually rolled the sleeves of his tunic, Sirius noticed a fresh rune branded on the inside of his forearm, just underneath his elbow. When he rolled the opposite sleeve, there was a matching one on the right side. It was no rune Sirius had ever seen before. When he finished, he looked down at Sirius with scorn in his gaze, but there was something else alongside it, and that something looked frighteningly like conquest. With a derisive snort, he added, “Damn shame you can’t force him to use his coward’s blood rune. That certainly would kill two birds with one stone.” With a mocking laugh, he moved toward the door of Sirius’ cell, looking back only to say, “Bella, shackle him with physical restraints. I’ll need you at full strength tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” she said immediately, though it was followed by a cumbersome breath. The five men released Sirius from their control, and Sirius immediately hit the floor from the lack of direction being given to his muscles, leaving a cloud of dust settling around him. Before Sirius could move, Bellatrix hit him with the binding rune. His arms instantly snapped behind his back, his neck clamped and tightened.

“Why tomorrow?” Sirius managed to choke out through the narrowing of his windpipe. While he was immobile, she kept her binding rune activated only to transition him into metal chains, around both feet, connected to each wrist, and an iron collar around his throat, tighter and heavier than her rune.

With a twisted smirk on her way out the door, Bellatrix turned only to say, “The Potter clan says they’re going to try to save you.” And she heaved the heavy, metal door shut behind her, she left Sirius alone in the darkness, with panic and dread in his chest. Tomorrow, the war would begin anew.

For surely a fortnight, Sirius remained in the dungeons, remained shackled, fed plenty to keep him strong for when his body would need to be controlled. But apparently the Coven had no need of him yet, for he could hear the fighting continue without him. It made him wonder if they were winning.

If Prongs and the Potter clan was fighting for him, were the other clans fighting, too? Had Wormtail convinced the Pettigrew tribe to fight alongside the Potters? What of the other tribes? And what of Remus and his Kingdom? Had he been captured? Were Prongs and Wormtail still alive? Regulus?

Sirius knew nothing in the dark of the dungeon. He could hear the battles raging at all times of the day and night, the sounds of artillery runes firing off and exploding in the distance, the feeling of the earth underneath the manor shifting from the skill of the tribes, screams and bellows from the clans that resulted in their target following their verbal commands. Sirius remained trapped, feeling helpless.

And then – silence. For what felt like a day, maybe two, there was no fighting. Not a sound, at least not one that was audible from the depths of the dungeons. Just when Sirius had resigned himself to hopelessness, to the thought that the war had been won and not by his side, Orion appeared in the open door of Sirius’ cell, looking haggard and filthy and defeated, save for the rage in his expression.

“You,” he seethed through a narrowed jaw. “I will send you to break him.” All at once, those same five men with the bidding rune now healed on their palms stood in a line in front of Sirius and activated all five of their runes. Struggle as he might, Sirius couldn’t prevent himself from standing by their wish.

“Where is Regulus?” Sirius asked immediately. Orion sneered, but answered, nonetheless.

“Alive. And he will only stay that way if you do as I dictate.” His grey eyes bore nothing but fury.

“Let me speak to him first,” Sirius said, making demands of his own. As if having expected just this, Orion flicked his wrist and Bellatrix came into Sirius’ cell, tugging Regulus along behind her.

“Sirius, thank the gods,” he said, breathing out what sounded like a sigh of relief and taking Sirius’ face into his hands. But Sirius couldn’t hold him in return. “They say you’re a traitor to the Coven.”

“Regulus, don’t listen to them,” Sirius began to say in his haste, but Orion interrupted.

“That’s proof enough,” he growled, pushing Regulus toward the cell door. “Take him back.”

“Reg, you have to trust me!” Sirius called out, voice cracking. “They’re lying to you!”

“Tonight, you will be on the battlefield,” Orion said shortly. “Remember your helplessness to save your brother in this moment should you consider betraying me again.” He glanced over to the Coven elders who were holding Sirius under the power of their runes. “Take him to the repository.”

“Sir,” they all replied in unison as Sirius clenched his jaw under a heavy swallow.

In the repository, they chose a multitude of weapons to stash on Sirius’ manipulated body. They clinically discussed strategy, consulting a written list of Sirius’ runes at their disposal, as if the man himself was not standing at unwilling attention beside them. Based on what Sirius could extract from their tactics, it seems that they were each given two runes – one to control Sirius and another, newly developed, to siphon power between one another. It took the power of five Coven elders to keep Sirius in line, but only one of them, the most seasoned among them, would actually guide Sirius’ movements in battle. He was the one given a rune to match the one recently branded to the base of Sirius’ skull. That matching rune gave him the power to see through Sirius’ eyes and listen in on every word from Sirius’ mouth.

In his head, Sirius tried to plan his own strategy, but he had no idea what he would be walking into once he left the manor. Would he fight a leader of Prongs’ clan? Would he have to fight Prongs? Or Wormtail? Was there a way to relay to them the situation without the Coven overhearing? How much could he divulge without putting Regulus at risk? How long could the elders’ control over him last?

When the wideset double doors at the back of the repository began to open, the sound of heavy rainfall drowned out the unevenness of his nervous breathing. It looked like it had been raining the entire time Sirius was locked in that dungeon – the ground was saturated with it. Every step underneath Sirius’ involuntary footsteps was unsteady from the slip of the wet grass and the thickness of the mud and clay.

He looked to the sky, trying to discern the lunar cycle to determine whether or not Remus could’ve recently been on this battlefield. If it was close enough to the full moon, surely he would still be home, in his Kingdom, riding out his transformation in solitude. At least, Sirius could hope that was the case – he would rather Remus be anywhere else in the world but here. But the dark storm clouds covered every inch of the night sky. If there was full moonlight above them, Sirius certainly couldn’t see it.

The further he walked away from the manor, the closer he got to the border of the Coven grounds, the more his heart began to pound. Was he walking to his death or was he heading to deliver death to someone else? How far could he go from the manor before the effects of the bidding rune wore off? To test that, Sirius tried to move his muscles on his own, tried to make a run for the edge of the forest. He had no such luck. The runes were still in effect, and his body was still very much not his own.

Suddenly, a flash of lightning in the sky lit up a lone figure at the dark edge of the wood. And Sirius stopped short, but not of his own accord. For a moment, he thought of calling out, identifying himself, but he wasn’t sure in which direction that would go. After all, whether it was true that the Potter clan had come to save him, he couldn’t be certain. And he was still a member of the Black Coven.

Over the deafening, pounding rain and the thunder that rumbled ever closer, a familiar voice called out, “It can’t be this easy, can it?” Another strike of lightning, this one closer than the last, and the whole sky lit up as if it were the middle of the day. For a moment, Sirius could see Remus’ wary gaze.

“Of course it would be you,” Sirius shouted back, wondering if he could physically feel the presence of someone else watching him through this coupling rune or if it was just his own awareness.

“Did the Coven give up?” Remus asked, keeping his voice raised over the driving wind as he slowly and cautiously approached. “Are they sending you freely to me as a sign of surrender?”

“They sent me to kill you, Moony,” Sirius replied, quite honestly, struggling to speak over the noise, struggling to speak at all. “Though I didn’t know you would be the one standing here.”

Remus’ steps came to a halt as he regarded Sirius with suspicion. “Why would they think you would ever comply with that order? Especially once you realized I would be your opponent?” he asked, obviously trying to reason why Sirius would willingly fight for the Coven. Remus knew him so well.

“They have my brother,” Sirius said, the strain evident in his voice, even over the downpour. He watched Remus close his eyes tightly, lowering his head as a wince flashed over his face. “And they’ve ensured that I complete this task by placing me under the influence of a bidding rune.”

The outrage in Remus’ face was clear, even in the utter darkness. The rings of amber in his eyes, thin and delicate in the dimness of the night, were still alight with their fury, the clench in his strong jaw apparent even from the distance at which they stood. Voice wavering, he said, “They’re controlling you?”

“And surveilling this fight,” Sirius added, recognizing that, other than speaking, he had just enough influence to tighten his own jaw, to swallow, to breathe, but hardly more. “The only thing that is mine are my words, and so I’m left with no other option but to beg you, Moony. Please don’t make me fight you. I couldn’t live with myself if you were to die by my hand, even if the blows are not mine.”

As the rainfall slacked, just a bit, Sirius was surprised to see a smile on Remus’ face. “So, let me make sure I’ve got this clear,” he said, taking another step forward, this one much more confident than the last. “Technically, you won’t be in this fight at all. Someone else will be throwing punches for you.”

“Yes,” Sirius said, realizing he also had some minimal control over his expression as he furrowed his brows, as he blinked rapidly in his confusion. “Which means I won’t be able to hold back, I won’t –”

“Do you know why they sent you, specifically?” Remus interrupted, mouth toying with a grin.

“I can only now assume it’s because you’re the one standing here,” Sirius rationalized.

“Exactly,” Remus nodded calmly. “They think that I will hesitate. Because it’s you.”

“Would you not?” Sirius asked, a restless laugh moving from his throat.

“I wouldn’t have to,” Remus clarified with an easy smile. “You are the only person I have ever met who is anywhere close to being my equal in a fight, Padfoot. I’ve never had to pull my punches with you.”

“Typical of you to be arrogant in a moment like this, Moony,” Sirius snickered.

Remus was speaking again almost instantly. “Where do you think I’ve been for the last two weeks, Pads? Hiding in my Kingdom, awaiting the full moon? Why do you think your father is even taking the risk of sending you out now, after all this time?” He watched the realization dawn on Sirius’ face.

“I’m his last resort,” he said on an empty exhale. Remus gave a slight, crooked nod.

“He sent you out here because he is losing, and losing rapidly,” Remus emphasized with a stark clench in his teeth, canines glinting in the darkness. “He sent you out here, hoping that I would be weakened by my love for you. He sent you out here, foolishly not realizing that you are strong not because of the number of runes on your skin but because of your skill in utilizing them, your skill in hand-to-hand combat. A skill that someone else inhabiting your body is not going to possess. Not even close.”

“Moony,” Sirius said, feeling a surge of hope for the first time in weeks.

“He sent you out here because everyone else failed,” Remus said, speaking clearly and assuredly as Sirius felt a smile splash over his rain-soaked face. “And if you are not truly you, he will fail again.”

Sirius’ grin widened. “Come at me, then,” he taunted. “I have a feeling they’re waiting for you to make the first move.” When Remus got close enough, Sirius felt his captors pull him back a bit.

“This is going to be easy, after all,” Remus laughed to himself, and without a shred of hesitation, he lunged forward at full speed, his fist level to Sirius’ chest. It was as if he were testing Sirius’ puppet masters, because Sirius would have seen this coming, after all their sparring sessions. But his captors were slow, and they hadn’t memorized Remus’ battle tactics the way Sirius had. When they pulled Sirius away at the last minute, Remus’ fist still collided with Sirius’ shoulder, sending him reeling backward.

“You could pull your punches a little, Moony, that still hurt!” Sirius laughed, instinctively trying to reach up to rub away the pain in his shoulder, only to remember he wasn’t in control of himself.

“Why do you think I haven’t used my skill yet?” Remus grinned, sheer arrogance in his voice.

“Maybe you should,” Sirius said, suddenly struck with a brilliant plan, and by the glimmer in Remus’ amber eyes, it seemed he’d already considered that plan. “The last skill you subjected me to.”

“We may not have a choice,” Remus said, surging forward with the same move, but the elders were quick to learn – they smoothly shifted Sirius out of Remus’ path, using the back of Sirius’ hand to smack Remus’ attacking arm away. With Sirius only able to observe, he was able to keep his eyes constantly on Remus’ face, and he watched the victorious smile he knew would appear there, because they had responded just as Remus had expected. Under a quick shift in his stance, Remus turned and grabbed Sirius’ wrist just as Sirius’ body stepped to the side, using the momentum to swivel around to Sirius’ back, with Sirius’ wrist still in his hands, pinning Sirius’ arm to his back. “You would’ve seen that coming from a mile away,” he whispered into Sirius’ ear, taking a moment to kiss the back of his neck.

“I would know exactly how to get out of this, as well,” Sirius said, trying to get used to the feeling of his body moving on its own, struggling fruitlessly against the strength of Remus’ insistent grip.

“With that dirty little trick you used when we were seventeen,” Remus said, the warmth of his breath rolling down Sirius’ neck, a welcome contrast to the chill of the rain still coming down. The elders didn’t allow Sirius the revelry of staying in Remus’ arms for long, and they used the same mechanism that Sirius himself would’ve used to wriggle out of Remus’ hold – a twist of his wrist, a sudden displacement of his weight, and a rotation of his shoulder. Though the elders in control performed the maneuver with a lot less consideration of Sirius’ comfort, and he ended up with a dislocated shoulder. “Shit, I’m sorry, Padfoot,” Remus apologized, wincing from across the distance to which the elders had retreated.

“It’s not your fault, Moony,” Sirius called back, letting out a sharp howl of pain as the elders jammed his shoulder back into socket. “But you know, you could really use that skill you mentioned anytime now. They’ve got control over my runes, too.” As if on cue, Sirius’ left arm shot out and a burst of orange flame moved from his fingertips, hissing as it evaporated the falling rain, lighting up the dark.

Just in time, Remus withdrew to a safe distance. “You could’ve warned me about that!”

“I would’ve thought it common sense!” Sirius argued, trying not to laugh.

“Well, how many of your runes do they have control over?” Remus said, a whine in his voice.

“They literally have a reference list of all of them!”

“You say that like I know any of your runes, except the one on your wrist!”

“Okay, listen!” Sirius shouted with a chuckle, feeling far too strangely relaxed for this conversation to be taking place in the middle of a fight. “The flame, you know. The one on my neck is a binding rune.” Another fireball from his wrist went sizzling in Remus’ direction, but he dodged easily.

“All the times I kissed that rune, and I had no idea.”

“There’s also a freezing rune on the opposite wrist, a bone-crushing rune on my right hand –”

“Bone-crushing?” Remus’ voice was nearly a shout, his expression that of shock, but it only lasted a moment before he had to suddenly grab Sirius’ wrist to keep from being punched in the face.

“ – a banishment rune on my chest that would toss you a fair length away –” Sirius continued to list as his body worked without his instruction, the flame rune on his wrist sizzling to force Remus to let him go, which he did with a wince and a shake of his hand to cool the residual heat.

“Gods, I should’ve learned these a long time ago,” Remus groaned.

“ – oh, and a levitation rune that could make me float for about a minute.” At that one, Remus stopped his defense to shoot Sirius a look of bewilderment. It was honestly rather adorable.

“Get much use out of that one?” he asked, scored brow rising.

“Not as much as I’d like. It’s very entertaining,” Sirius replied with an innocent grin, but it lasted only a second before the elders activated the bone-crushing rune on the back of his hand. “Moony!” he shouted in warning, with just enough time for Remus to dive behind a tree that splintered under the force of Sirius’ coerced blow. Carefully, Remus peeked out from behind the half-destroyed cypress.

“I don’t think I like your runes as much as I used to,” he huffed.

“Well, your favourite one is a blood rune that could literally kill you instantly, so –”

“Oh, come on. Not my favourite one,” Remus lamented, loudly and comically, before he stealthily moved to stick himself behind Sirius’ back in a way that made it difficult for Sirius to turn to face him, or as far as Sirius could tell, anyway, having no control over it whatsoever. “The one on your upper arm?”

“The very same,” Sirius said with a solemn expression. “The one you use to drive me insane.”

“Only when I put my mouth upon it,” Remus teased, still tucked up behind Sirius in a way that prevented Sirius’ body from turning, but still allowed Remus to blow gently into Sirius’ ear.

“I’m almost sure they won’t have the power to use it, but we’d better not chance it,” Sirius advised, as the elders twisted and contorted his body to try to get Remus out from behind it.

“No,” Remus agreed with a sigh. “We need to end this quickly before they hurt you.” Still holding himself to Sirius’ back, Remus kicked the back of both of Sirius’ legs, sending him to his knees in the mud and giving Remus the height and opportunity to wrap his forearm rather tightly around Sirius’ throat.

“You could’ve done that by now, Moony,” Sirius managed to croak out, as his arms flailed to reach Remus and tear him away, only resulting in singing Sirius’ hair with the effects of his own rune.

“If I used Dreamless Sleep on you now, what happens to your brother?” Remus asked with a worried sigh. “There are skills I could use to free you, but I need you awake and capable for what comes next.” Finally, one of Sirius’ hands collided with Remus’ face – Sirius could feel his knuckles crack as they surely blackened Remus’ eye. But Remus barely groaned under the pain, his grip certainly didn’t loosen from around Sirius’ neck, even as Sirius’ fists continued to prod, even as his flames continued to burn.

“You have to use your skill, Moony,” Sirius managed to say. “Or I’m going to hurt you.” As if on cue, the elder controlling Sirius pulled the only weapon accessible to Sirius just then, a dagger than had been strapped to the outside of his thigh. But Remus swatted it away before it was even fully drawn.

“Just a little longer,” he argued, the clench in his teeth audible against Sirius’ ear.

“Until what?” Sirius snapped. The panic set in quick as his own right hand gripped up and held onto Remus’ elbow, from where it was wrapped around Sirius’ throat. The elders had apparently been trying to spare Sirius of any collateral damage in this fight, but they had been ordered to win no matter what. And that meant regardless of whether Sirius lived through this. “Moony, do something!” he howled, sensing the activation of his own bone-crushing rune, directed at Remus’ arm, but likely to catch Sirius’ vertebrae in the radius of the blow. Through a string of muttered curses from Remus’ lips in his ear, Remus’ right hand shot down to where Sirius’ left hand was rising to hold Remus in place. In a flash of fiery movement, Remus molded the shape of his fingers at whirlwind speed, manipulating Sirius’ fingers into the opposite half of the correct configuration that Remus needed to produce the desired effect.

In the instant their conjoined fingers created the finished sign, Sirius felt his body go limp, and he would’ve fallen face-first into the mud, if not for Remus’ arm around his throat. As if by design, at the same moment, there was a commotion from within the repository – flashes of light, shouting of words, movement of the earth and of the manor itself. And then, everything went quiet. Until Remus spoke.

“Sirius, are you alright? Can you speak? Can you breathe?” he asked in a hurry, turning Sirius over to his back and kneeling beside him, his eyes scattering across Sirius’ face, opposite hand on his chest.

After a moment of confusion, once the shock wore off, Sirius suddenly realized in terror, he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak, he could only blink at Remus in submissive horror.

“Shit,” Remus hissed, abruptly and brutally releasing Sirius to fall down into the mud underneath him. “Shit, shit, shit,” he repeated endlessly, with panic in his wide, amber eyes, as his hands moved in furious, indecipherable movements over Sirius’ chest. “Please, for gods’ sake, please work,” he begged some unseen entity as Sirius’ vision started to dim, as he felt his chest begin to collapse the more he tried to force his lungs to inflate without success, as he felt involuntary tears begin to roll down his cheeks.

Remus trembling hands hadn’t stopped his hysterical fabrication of characters and symbols, nor had his lips stopped their cursing and praying and pleading. Finally, with a last desperate pound of Remus’ fist to the flat palm of his hand, the end of his last-ditch movement, a gasp erupted from Sirius’ lips.

“Oh, thank the fucking gods,” Remus exhaled heavily, crumpling over onto Sirius’ heaving chest.

“What … happened?” Sirius asked, breathlessly, as he greedily tried to recover his oxygen.

“I paralyzed you,” Remus confessed, knotting his fingers into the fabric of Sirius’ tunic, his forehead still pressed tightly to Sirius’ chest, as if to reassure himself that it was still rising with breath. “I could’ve killed you.” His voice was thick as he continued. “It was only meant to affect your limbs, but I –”

“It just happened too quickly,” Sirius finished, his air finally replenished. “It’s okay, Remus.”

“I should be better than this,” he said, nearly a sob. “I should’ve never used it on you.”

“You didn’t have a choice,” Sirius said, breathing deeply and evenly. “But I’m alright.”

“Remus! Is he okay?” Sirius suddenly heard another familiar voice to his right, along with the heavy splash of approaching footsteps, but Remus didn’t move from his place on Sirius’ chest.

“I nearly killed him,” Remus muttered.

“In an effort to save my life,” Sirius corrected as he looked up, blinking through the rain falling into his eyes. “I’d heard the Potter clan was coming. Didn’t think you’d start a war for me, Prongs.”

“War’s already on,” he said with a wide grin. “And I think it’s only right you call me James.”

“James,” Sirius repeated in fond wonder. “Nice to meet you. I’m Sirius.”

“Did he really nearly kill you or is he just being dramatic, given the circumstances?” James asked.

“Fuck you,” Remus mumbled, but it still elicited a small laugh.

“Oh, it really was quite close,” Sirius nodded coolly, running his fingers through Remus’ hair and appreciating the fact that he had his full faculties back at his own disposal again. “Paralyzed my lungs by accident. But it was that or have my cervical cord obliterated by my own rune, so he chose correctly.”

“By your own rune?” Sirius heard from somewhere behind James, and when James stepped aside, Sirius watched as Wormtail came running into their circle from the direction of the repository.

“Wormtail, this is Sirius,” James introduced with a chuckle. “Sirius, this is Pete.”

“Good to finally meet you, Pete,” Sirius said. As Pete grinned, Remus pulled himself upright. 

“As much as I love this little meet and greet, I really think we have more pressing matters.”

“James and I … incapacitated the five geezers in the weapons cache,” Pete said with a rather nonchalant shrug of his slim shoulders. “I think we might have at least a minute to catch our breath.”

“Literally, in my case,” Sirius said with a wink at Remus, who immediately went rather pale.

“How are you joking about this already,” Remus groaned, but it wasn’t a question.

“Wait, I wanted to hear about Sirius almost getting his throat exploded,” James whined childishly.

“Those five geezers, as you so correctly phrased it,” Sirius began with a deep breath, “had placed me under a bidding rune, and they thought they were going to make me kill Remus against my will.”

“And they were aiming his bone-shattering rune at my arm and his neck,” Remus added.

“By the gods,” Pete said, the humour in his expression washing out quickly.

“But Remus, with his quick wit, paralyzed my body to sever their control over it,” Sirius said.

“And nearly killed you in the process by immobilizing your diaphragm,” Remus growled.

“I begged you to do something, and you did something,” Sirius said, reaching up to place his hand to Remus’ face, who nuzzled deeply into his palm. “It worked, Remus. Don’t think about anything else.”

“Sirius, are you able to fight?” James asked, glancing behind him at the doors to the repository that had blown open in their daring escape. “I have a feeling we have a long night ahead of us.”

“I can fight,” Sirius agreed instantly, but when he tried to stand, he found his legs trembling a bit more than he expected. Of course, Remus was the first to notice, with overwhelming guilt on his face.

“You can barely stand,” he said, contrition clear in his small voice, even over the rain.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sirius argued. “I have to find my brother. I have to find Regulus,” he said, feeling free to use his younger brother’s given name among those he’d long called his friends.

“They’re holding him hostage,” Remus explained further. “Leverage for Sirius’ obedience.”

“Fuck,” James muttered, running a hand over his wet face. His eyebrows furrowed for a moment, eyes darting over to share an uneasy glance with Pete, whose jaw clenched. “There’s not a soul in the manor, save for the men who were controlling you. We scoured it from top to bottom, looking for you.”

Realization struck Sirius like lightning. “The catacombs,” he said solemnly. His companions remained quiet, waiting for him to continue, but they all wore the same tense expression. “A labyrinth of caverns and underground passages used in the imprinting rituals.” At first, he was met with confusion.

Until Remus said the words for him. “Branding,” he said, swallowing harshly. “Of the runes.” In the faces of his three allies, there was an unspoken but clear apology for Sirius’ tortured upbringing. Sirius only nodded in his acknowledgement of it but didn’t address it aloud. There were more important things.

“We’ve never had to evacuate to the catacombs, but that’s the contingency plan,” he said.

“Then we search the catacombs,” James said with a resolute tilt of his head. “But we stay together. No matter what. Sirius, will you be able to light our way?” Without pause, Sirius nodded, but noticed the increased grip of Remus’ hand on his waist from where he was helping him remain standing.

 “We’ll find him,” Remus assured him. Sirius could only reply with a grimace. 

His steps were a little steadier than they had been in the rain outside. More than once on the way to the caverns, the weakness in Sirius’ knees combined with the slippery mud of the Coven grounds sent him stumbling forward. But Remus was ever-present at his side to catch him, to keep him on his feet.

When Sirius said the catacombs were a labyrinth, he meant it in every sense of the word. In the beginning of the Coven’s history, they specifically settled their territory in the lowlands because of the accessibility of the nearby cave systems. It was theorized that they could be used as a fortress, in the event of war. And now, war was upon them. But what they hadn’t predicted was that one of the greatest soldiers in the history of the covens, who had been forced to memorize the complicated map of these catacombs, would be actively trying to bring about the ruin of the most powerful Coven to date. 

“This way,” Sirius said, a flickering flame in the palm of his hand to light the darkness. Maintaining a torch this way didn’t have the same rebound as had the attacks that the elders had forced him to produce, but his wrist was still scalded and blistered from their use. He tried not to let it show on his face that he was in pain, but he was sure Remus could see it. Not to mention, the boiling and bubbling of his skin was practically audible in the strained silence as they made their way through the winding tunnels.

“Sirius,” Remus began to say, as Sirius knew he would, but Sirius had prepared his argument.

“I’ve held a flame for longer than this, Remus,” he stated, immediately and plainly.

“But the fight took a heavy toll on you.” Remus had apparently prepared his arguments, as well.

“The runes have a rebound, I’ve told you this,” Sirius said, keeping his voice even and low. “It would’ve been much worse if I’d hit you, so we can be grateful for your agility in battle.”

“Maybe I could help?” Pete said, catching up to Sirius and placing his hand on Sirius’ shoulder. At once, the flame in Sirius’ palm began to burn brighter, while the searing of his wrist seemed to ebb.  

“Pete, how did you –” Remus began to say, but James interrupted.

“It works just the same as it did that day at the river,” he explained. “Pete’s skill is the manipulation of energy in anything he touches. So, he can manipulate my voice to sound louder, travel farther. In the same way, he can manipulate the energy in Sirius’ runes to work more efficiently.”

“I never did thank you for that, by the way,” Sirius said with a sideward glance.

“The message from the sparrow was a new one,” James chuckled. “How did you manage that?”

“Bidding rune,” he scoffed. “Same one they’d end up using on me today.”

“Is that how you told them our meeting place?” Remus said, looking impressed. “I was wondering about that. If it hadn’t been for the two of you, I never would’ve made it away from the Coven.”

“They never would’ve found you if not for me,” Sirius said with a sigh. “They hadn’t in a century.”

“I think you’re looking at it the wrong way,” Remus said, his voice shifting into that strained measure that he used when talking about things out of their control. “It wasn’t you. It was the prophesy.”

“The prophesy?” Sirius questioned. “How could they have known from the prophesy?”

“What he means is,” James began to explain with a sigh, “the prophesy has come to fruition.”

At first, Sirius furrowed his brows. “What –” But the understanding came all at once, and when it did, he stopped still in his place, Pete running into the back of him. “The river will flood,” he exhaled sharply, recognizing that the rain had started when the Coven had gone to capture Remus at the river.

“An unwilling battle in Coventry mud,” Remus quoted after him. “The fight we just endured.”

“And tomorrow night is the full moon,” James added. “A blood moon. A sky drenched in blood.”

“The last of four lunar eclipses,” Pete said with a weighted sigh. “The last of the tetrads.”

Immediately, Sirius’ heart began to race, pounding with the panic of knowing that this meant he could lose Remus forever. “No, no, no, I’m not ready for this, Remus, I need more time, I can’t let –”

“Sirius,” Remus interrupted, taking him by the face as Sirius’ breathing began to quicken and break apart. “What will be, will be. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’ll make it through this, I can’t truly be sure, but the thing you should be focusing on is the ending of the prophesy.” As he coaxed Sirius into calming down with his thumb along his jaw, coached him into taking deeper breaths, Sirius quoted the ending to himself, triumph together or no triumph at all. But he didn’t care if Remus wouldn’t be there to see it.

“Triumph,” Sirius solemnly said through tightened, recalcitrant teeth.

“And victory,” Remus reminded him with a single, judicious nod. “Our victory.” With a slight tilt of his head, he indicated for Sirius to keep moving forward, to keep leading the way with his flame, and Sirius begrudgingly obeyed, but there was still a nagging worry in his mind. He pulled Remus close.

“Okay, but what about …” he glanced over, lowering his voice, “the full moon tomorrow?”

“It’s okay, Sirius, you can say it,” Remus said, keeping his voice at normal speaking volume, wearing a comfortable smile. “Over the last two weeks, I filled James and Pete in on a lot of things. I thought it was only fair that they know the whole truth if they were going to be fighting on our side.”

James jumped in. “Remus will be pulling out of the fight tomorrow at dusk.”

“Is that safe for you?” Sirius asked with insistence in his tone. “Who will look after you?”

The sharp edges of Remus’ face softened. “You let me worry about that,” he said, looking over at Sirius with fondness in his gaze. “The most important thing right now is finding Regulus,” he said simply.

With a reluctant but agreeable nod, Sirius focused his intent on tracking the passages of the caverns to the innermost chamber, where the non-combative members of the Coven were instructed to go in the event of evacuation. If they were lucky, the infantry would have already gone to the grounds to ambush the members of the clans and tribes that were sure to be hiding out in the surrounding brush.

There were certain offshoots on the way to the great chamber, but those were mostly reserved for military officials and war meetings and interrogation rooms for prisoners. Sirius prayed that Regulus wasn’t yet being treated as a prisoner of war, so he ignored those places for now. The closer they got to their destination, the harder Sirius’ heart began to pound. Especially as he realized they hadn’t run across a single soul so far – there should’ve been guides posted to usher residents to where they needed to go. At the very least, they should’ve seen an elder or two casing the tunnels to make sure their stronghold hadn’t been discovered. Perhaps Orion had changed the plans after Sirius’ betrayal.

A sickening thought suddenly halted Sirius’ steps, dimmed his flame. “Wait,” he said under a slight exhale before going so still that even his breaths were stunted. The three others followed suit, and together, they stood in silence until Sirius finally said. “I’m afraid we might be walking into a trap.”

“Why do you think?” Pete asked, keeping his voice hushed.

“We would’ve seen someone by now,” Sirius whispered, as low as his voice could go. “This corridor leads straight to the great chamber, and these halls should be filled with Coven elders.”

“If they wanted to trap us, they could’ve done it tenfold by now,” James said, glancing around at the numerous tunnels tucked into the walls around them. “We’re easy prey in these caves.”

“Is there anywhere else that you think Regulus might be, outside the manor?” Remus asked, and when Sirius shook his head, Remus added with new resolve, “I say we go for it. We have to find him.”

“We’re the four most powerful members of our organizations,” James said with a determined grit in his teeth and an arrogant snarl in his lip. “If they want a fight, we’ll be happy to give it to them.”

Sirius scoffed. “I am not more powerful than my father.”

“No?” Remus asked with a shimmer in his amber gaze that reflected the orange of the sputtering flame still barely alight in Sirius’ palm. “Then why did it take five men to keep you under his control?”

James made an expression of approval. “Sounds like he couldn’t do it himself, if you ask me.”

“Besides,” Pete added boldly, “Last I checked, we triumph together. Isn’t that right?” An involuntary but enthusiastic smile crept across Sirius’ face, and he did very little to try to hide it.

“You bastards,” he said under his breath, with a deliberately blatant roll of his eyes but his smile still in place. “Alright, ready your skills, we move on my count. Three,” he began, lifting his arms and surging the flame in his palm. “Two,” he said, listening to the quick breath that James let in and out from somewhere behind him. “One.” His breath punched out the single syllable, and the quartet rounded the corner, moving quickly and silently down the long corridor that led into the great chamber, only to find it completely empty. “Fuck. I knew it. They changed the evacuation protocols.” Sirius’ flame trembled as his voice did the same. “He could be anywhere.” All at once, as if on a shared cue, his friends each placed a hand to Sirius’ skin – James and Pete each bolstered him with a hand to his shoulder, Remus to his wrist.

“We’ll find him,” Remus assured him in that quietly confident tone that made Sirius feel brave.

“Wouldn’t count on it,” came a sickening, sing-song voice from across the wide, empty space. 

“Bellatrix,” Sirius called out as he caught eyes with his cousin across the distance. He braced his shout with added bravado, but in truth, just the sound of her voice left his stomach in knots. At the same time, Remus’ fingers gripped tightly onto Sirius’ wrist, Pete and James squeezing his shoulder, and all together, it provided Sirius with a burst of the flame in his palm. “What have you done with Regulus?”

“Fret not, cousin,” she said, her grin unbearably sinister. “He’s locked away for safe keeping.”

“Tell me where he is.” There was a snarl in Sirius’ voice as he spoke, afforded to him by the clench in his jaw. But it apparently only furthered the amusement in his cousin’s foreboding expression.

“Oh, that’s no fun,” she said with a careless tilt of her head that sent her long, dark hair cascading down her side. She twirled it around one finger. “Let’s make a game of it. Pitifully boring, otherwise.”

“I swear to the gods –” Sirius seethed, but Bellatrix was unbothered.

“Your father took Reggie away, told Rosier to tuck him up somewhere in the catacombs,” she said, her voice turning sour as she continued. “Wouldn’t tell me where.” She bared her teeth to show her annoyance as she continued, saying, “He didn’t want you to use your rectitude rune on me to find out.”

“Rectitude?” Pete whispered.

“Forces someone to tell the truth,” James clarified.

“I wouldn’t use that rune on you,” Sirius snapped back. “That would be far too kind.” 

With a scoff, Bellatrix kept talking as if Sirius had never spoken. “Which, frankly, I thought it was rather insulting that he thought you could best me in a fight.” She glanced over at him with derision.

“Because he’s not stupid enough to think I would ever lose,” Sirius called back, straightening his back to make himself look more formidable. “I’ve got twice the runes and triple the experience.”

“Care to lay a wager on that?” she hummed, smirking and twirling her hair.

“Why would I waste my time fighting you when you don’t even know where Reg is?”

“Oh, but that’s the game, cousin!” she cackled, sending a chill down Sirius’ spine. “See, maybe you do have more offensive runes. Maybe you do have more combat experience.” It was practically poison to her tongue to admit this, based on her expression, but she continued, the malevolent smirk on her face growing ever wider. “But what good are they if you can’t use them to save your little brother?”

“Bellatrix –” Sirius began to warn, but she simply flashed her brows and darted into a tunnel.

“What’s the use of all those runes if I get to Regulus first?” Her deranged laugh echoed through the cavern, seeming to move around them as she made her way through the surrounding tunnels.

“Bellatrix, don’t do this!” Sirius shouted, his feet immediately moving, pounding out clouds of dust from the unsettled soil underneath them. Remus, James, and Pete were hot on his heels.

“Will all your precious runes help you find Regulus faster than me?” she taunted, her voice fading as she careened off down one of the other side tunnels. “You should hope so! His life depends on it!”

At once, Sirius came to a halt in the middle of the cavern. Behind him, his three friends were prodding him to move, quickly, but Bellatrix had already unknowingly given him the solution. It was a rune he had never once had to use, a rune that he’d only recently gotten as a safety precaution. In his blind panic to find his little brother, he’d forgotten entirely about the tool he’d painstakingly prepared specifically for this moment. Tearing desperately at the fabric of his shirt that was stuck to his body with half-dried mud, Sirius activated the rune on his ribcage. The rune that nobody in his Coven knew about. Not Bellatrix, not his father, not even Regulus, the person for whom he’d gotten this rune.

The moment it was activated, there was an uncomfortable tug from underneath his skin, as if an insect was trying to burrow through it. He closed his eyes, shifting slightly in his place until he could recognize the direction of the pull. It felt similar to the thread that connected him with Remus, the way he could feel where Remus was, just by focusing on that insistent pull. He followed that feeling.

“You’re tracking him,” Remus said with an exhale of astonishment. Sirius nodded.

“I designed this rune four years ago,” Sirius said with a slight wince of pain at the intense heat this rune left in his skin, even worse than his flame rune. “And branded myself with it in secret.” He knew when he gave himself this rune that it would come with a strong recoil, because of the power that it was imbued with, but it was worth the pain, if it meant saving Regulus. When he let his shirt fall over it, the glowing embers of the rune singed a wide hole in the fabric, even through the rainwater and mud.

“You gave it to yourself?” James asked, his voice spiking in concern. For a moment, Sirius was silent as he followed the subtle twist and turns in the sharp corners of the catacomb labyrinth.

“I couldn’t let my father know it existed,” Sirius explained, cursing softly when he realized he made a wrong turn at the last fork and had to backtrack to go down the other tunnel. “For exactly this.”

“Are we getting close?” Pete asked.

“I don’t know,” Sirius replied in a trembling voice. “I’ve never had to use this rune before.”

“Just concentrate, Sirius,” James said in an even tone. “We’re right behind you.” The next several minutes were agonizingly long as Sirius kept mistaking the tug of the rune for the wrench of his own anxiety, following tunnels only to realize the rune was directing him toward the middle of the wall because he’d turned down the wrong way. With every passing minute, the fear grew stronger, larger.

Eventually, when they made it to a very long corridor with no apparent side tunnels, Sirius began sprinting to keep up with the pace of his heart rate, with his friends following close behind. When they suddenly passed by a recessed door that was hidden from view, the rune burned so hot that it had nearly sent Sirius to his knees with the abrupt onset of pain. It had to mean that they’d finally found him.

Sirius spun back to the door, his feet slipping on the silty cavern floor in his haste, and he opened the metal door so quickly that it landed with a loud clamor against the stone wall behind it. In the room was Regulus, sitting absolutely still in a black chair, eyes fluttering behind closed lids and chin forced high to the ceiling, an electrical charge spitting out from Bellatrix’s fingers, her hand level to Regulus’ throat.

“No!” Sirius could remember screaming with his heart in his throat, a strange heat spreading through his chest from his left arm. As his vision grew dark, funneled into a single, flickering frame, he could feel Pete lurch forward to grab hold of his shoulder, bolstering Sirius with his own power. And then, Sirius could no longer convince his limbs to follow his commands. He watched Bellatrix drop to the floor.

Chapter Text

He awoke with a start – a scream, even. It was mostly in the shape of Regulus’ name, but it sounded very distant to his own ears, very garbled. He wasn’t even sure he was the one shouting, except that he could feel the words claw their way out of his throat. His head was pounding, exactly like it did the morning after his imprinting ceremony at fourteen. His chest was heavy, the same way it had been when he awoke on the riverbed to find that Remus had left him unconscious with the use of his skill for the first time. His left arm felt empty and hot and unfeeling and blistered, all at once, as if it had been barbarically seared from his body and only the memory of the fire that took it remained. And he was still screaming.

“Sirius!” he heard in a vaguely familiar voice. He could feel hands on both his shoulders, so perhaps his left arm was still attached to his body. But he couldn’t open his eyes. “Stay still. Please.”

The voice was so soft and so eager and so safe that Sirius felt comfortable enough to comply, though he couldn’t recall moving enough to be commanded to stay still. Could he move? Had he been moving all this time? Was that how he got here? Where was here? Who was he with? What happened?

“Regulus,” he managed to whimper out, recognizing the push of oxygen from his lips while the name of his younger brother moved out with it. The heaviness in his face subsided a bit as he felt a coolness wash over his skin. He leaned into the feeling, only mildly aware of the direction it came from.

“He’s alright. You saved him, Sirius,” that familiar voice said again, and Sirius could recognize notes of assuredness and warmth, a quiet power hidden in every word. But the voice was rough, scraped raw from what sounded like overuse. No, that wasn’t quite right. Not overuse, but use. Of his skill.

“James,” Sirius breathed out in relief and recognition. “James,” he repeated, reminding himself a little at a time of where he was, who he’d been with, what they’d been doing.

“I’m here, Sirius,” James said, and Sirius could feel him taking hold of his hand. “Pete and I are here. You’re going to be alright. Pete is the best of his tribe at tactile healing.” He could feel that cooling sensation that had been on his face encircle his head like a halo, or maybe it was inside his skull.

“Healing?” he repeated with a strange uneasiness, just before the jarring memory of his cousin with her lightning rune activated and held to her younger brother’s throat came surging into the forefront of his mind. “Is Regulus okay? Where is he?” Sirius panicked, doing his best to sit up. James stopped him.

“He’s right here, he’s okay,” James assured him. “He’s asleep, he’s right next to you.” Much to Sirius’ relief, James placed Regulus’ hand into Sirius’ own, and Sirius couldn’t help but confirm it was really him by tracing over the lightning rune on Regulus’ wrist, following the edges with the pad of his thumb.

“Why does he need healing?” Sirius asked, his voice tight with anxiety. “Did Bellatrix hit him?”

For a beat too long, James was quiet. “Sirius, Pete is healing you.”

“What?” Sirius balked in disbelief. “Bellatrix didn’t hit me with her lightning. She was nowhere close to me, she was standing over Reg. And then she …” he trailed off as he tried to piece together his last few moments of consciousness before he’d blacked out. Why had he blacked out, exactly?

“Sirius,” James said with added emphasis, his hoarse voice filled with caution and concern. All along, Sirius continued to try to open his eyes so that he could look at James, so that he could see what was causing his voice to turn as trepid as it had, but he found he couldn’t. It was like he couldn’t quite feel his face, couldn’t quite feel all his limbs, couldn’t stop feeling like he was in some strange intermediate space between there, with James, and not really anywhere at all. “You used your blood rune.”

A weighted silence followed as Sirius’ hand trembled over where his thumb was still etching over Regulus’ lightning rune. Regulus’ rune was on his left wrist, just as Sirius’ first rune was, so Sirius was using his right hand to trace that rune. Not his left. That empty, blistering feeling had been on his left side – the side that held his blood rune. He hesitated to ask if the cost for using that rune had been his left arm.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Sirius asked of his cousin, a flat affect in his voice. They had never really been friends, but they had never strictly been enemies either. Until she threatened Regulus.  

James paused, but ultimately answered. “Yes.”

“How am I not?”

“I believe it was because Pete merged his skill with yours, just as you activated the rune,” James said with a painful clearing of his throat. “And because he’s been healing you without rest for six hours.”

“Pete,” Sirius said with a sigh of gratitude. “I don’t know where you are but thank you.”

James responded in Pete’s place. “He hasn’t spoken since we got here. I think he’s worried if he breaks concentration, he’ll lose you again.” There was something ugly and harrowing in the way James barely managed to say the word again. But it died in the hacking cough that moved from James’ throat.

“You had to fight, didn’t you?” Sirius asked another needless question. “And I was dead weight.”

Much to Sirius’ surprise, James laughed. “I barely did anything more than speak.”

“Says the person whose power is in his voice.”

“Honestly, I may have called out a few high-level incantations when we were surrounded, but Pete did all the heavy lifting. Literally.” James kept his voice low and smooth to try to rest it as best he could, while still filling Sirius in on what he’d missed while unconscious. “He carried you across his shoulders the whole way so that he could keep both hands on you to maintain his tactile healing.”

“And Remus? Is Remus alright?” He hadn’t heard Remus’ voice yet. Was he asleep?

“Remus is the one who got us out of those catacombs alive,” James said, with a measure of awe in his voice. “His skill is … I think it would be insulting to say it’s frightening, but it’s very close to that.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I don’t even think he has a rebound like we do,” James continued, and Sirius would’ve thought there was something shaken in his voice over watching Remus activate his power. “Not one that I saw.”

“I had the same thought.” For the first time, Sirius felt himself nod – a sign that the healing of Pete’s hands continued. “Wait, speaking of rebound, doesn’t Pete have a rebound for his skill, too?”

Again, James was quiet. “Yes. He does,” was eventually all he said.

“Pete,” Sirius said with urgency in his voice. He had to open his eyes. He had to show Pete that he was alright. He had to get Pete to stop working so that he wouldn’t suffer his rebound any further.

And then Pete surprised him by speaking. “I can feel you struggling, Sirius,” he said with a soft, but very drained laugh in his voice. “Stop worrying about me. My rebound is just fatigue. That’s all.”

“More than six hours of fatigue,” Sirius argued, still struggling, despite Pete’s order.

“Plus the normal, physiological fatigue from literally fighting a war,” James added. “Rest, Pete.”

“I’ll rest when Sirius regains his sight,” Pete argued. “Not a second sooner.”

Sirius hummed in his sudden confusion “How did you know I –” he began, but James interrupted.

“Sirius,” he said, in that same cautious way he had when he’d spoken of Bellatrix earlier. “Your eyes are wide open. They have been since the moment you activated your blood rune.”

“We thought you were –” Pete’s voice was cut off by a sudden catch in his throat. “Anyway, the recoil did some critical damage to some of your nerve endings, but I’ve almost got them all repaired.”

“Is that why I can’t feel my left arm?” Sirius asked, afraid of the answer he’d receive. And when met with that same, burdened silence, Sirius was fairly certain he knew the answer to it already.

“Partly,” James answered for Pete. “It … it doesn’t look good, Padfoot.”

“How bad?” Sirius asked clinically.

“I’ll be honest,” James began carefully.

“I hoped you would.”

“It looks like your arm was mauled by a wild animal and then set on fire.”

“Oh, so it’s still there? That’s good.”

A scoffing sort of laugh of disbelief moved through James’ throat. “You’re reacting to this better than I thought you would.” As Sirius began to reply with a laugh of his own, he realized – he could feel the movement of that laugh in his cheeks, the warmth of his breath, the twitching in his eyelids

“I thought the recoil had torn my arm completely off, James. It’s better than that.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Pete added, “When I get all these nerve endings back on, it’s going to hurt. I can stop once I fix your sight, if you want, but you won’t be able to use your arm at all if I do.”

“No,” Sirius said resolutely. “I’ll need to fight. I’ll deal with the pain when we get there.”

“When we get there is coming sooner than you think. I’ve very nearly got it. ”

“I can tell,” Sirius said with a smile. “I feel like I’m blinking. Am I blinking?”

Pete laughed. “Yes, you’re blinking.” All at once, his vision came flooding in, and despite the fact that they seemed to be in a rather dark place, Sirius still squinted at the daylight he could now see.

“Oh, that did it,” he said with a wince as his eyes adjusted to the new level of light. “You’re a genius, Pete.” From the silence around them and the stillness of the air, Sirius knew they hadn’t been outside, but once he could see, he couldn’t figure out where they were. Certainly not Coven territory.

As if James could see the question in Sirius’ now-seeing eyes, he answered, “We’re safe here,” he said, glancing up at the slatted-wood roof that covered them, but left enough space for plenty of daylight to filter through. “It’s a safe house for members of the Pettigrew tribe. Close enough to Coven grounds if we’re needed, but very well-hidden.” Sirius continued to blink through the grittiness he could now feel in his eyes while surveying the area – there was a shallow pallet of blankets next to him, that was what Regulus was lying on (still asleep, as far as Sirius could tell), and another two in the opposite corner, with what looked like a cupboard on the other remaining wall. But there was something conspicuously absent.

“Where’s Remus?” Sirius asked, having recognized all along that Remus’ voice was missing, but assuming he was asleep, after having used so much of his strength on Sirius the night before. And that same terrible, loaded silence followed. When Sirius’ eyes met James’ uncertain gaze, James took a breath, prepared to speak. But he didn’t get the chance to say a word before Sirius began screaming over him.

“Hang on, hang on, stay with me for a second, Sirius, I’m so sorry,” Pete said in rapid-fire speech from somewhere behind Sirius as he convinced himself to stop screaming and start gritting his teeth instead. It felt like the skin of his left arm was being shorn off to the bone all over again.

“Pete, what are you doing?” James asked over the sound of Sirius groaning into his teeth, but he didn’t answer. Even through the bone-crushing, vein-splitting pain, Sirius could feel Pete’s grip on his shoulder, his fingers digging into the skin that wasn’t damaged, twisting his wrist like he was guiding something underneath Sirius’ skin. The sweat from Pete’s face dripped from his nose onto Sirius’ skin.

Then, all at once, it stopped. Well, it wasn’t quite right to say the pain stopped completely, but it felt like it had been turned all the way down, like a sunset that happened in six seconds. There was still a slight throb, a twitch here and there, a sting of pain that crackled like electricity under his skin, but it was unbelievably bearable compared to what it had been only a moment before. Pete was a genius, after all.

As soon as Sirius let out a breath of relief, he felt Pete go slack behind him, hearing a loud thud. In a panic, Sirius turned to his right side in his place on the shack floor to find that Pete had fallen backward against the wall directly behind him, his face full of exhaustion and expenditure, but a smile on his face.

“I manipulated just the nerves that control pain,” he said on burdened breath, still grinning.

“What did I say?” Sirius said, “Genius.” He reached out to take Pete’s hand with his right hand, only chancing to glance at his left through his periphery. James was right – it didn’t look pretty.

“You’ll have to be more careful on that side until you heal,” Pete warned, still struggling to speak through the lack of air in his lungs. “You won’t be able to gauge how bad your injuries are, and you could end up making everything a lot worse if you overuse it.” He closed his eyes, taking a moment to breathe, though it seemed that his fatigue wasn’t improving much at all. He opened one eye, specifically to glare at Sirius as he added, “So, it should go without saying, but you’re a reckless prat, so I’ll say it anyway. No more fucking blood runes, okay?” With a loud laugh, Sirius let a tired grin wash over his expression.

“I swear it,” he nodded, planting his forehead onto Pete’s knee, stretched out in front of him. In his periphery, he could see that Regulus was still asleep, despite Sirius’ violent outburst of pain. There was  a jolt of terror in his chest at the thought of Regulus being very much not asleep, so he shot his hand out to grip Regulus by the wrist, frantically pressing his two forefingers into his skin to feel for his pulse.

“He’s alright,” James reassured him, at the same moment that Regulus’ pulse beat out steadily and strongly against Sirius’ fingertips. “But he was … he didn’t quite believe that we were on your side when we made our retreat with him in tow. Remus had to use his skill to keep him asleep for now.”

“Dreamless Sleep,” Sirius said with a sigh of strange relief. “That’s the one he used on me four years ago, remember?” From the corner of his eye, he watched James nod. “Reg will be out for a while.”

Mentioning Remus reminded him that he hadn’t seen Remus yet. It reignited the squirm of tension in his gut. It was, after all, the morning of the full blood moon. He shouldn’t be alone now. He would need their help. Just as he was about to raise his head, he felt the muscles of Pete’s thigh tense up from underneath the crown of his head. Before he could move, he felt Pete’s fingers ghost across his surely disheveled hair, moving into the mountain of matted hair still tucked into his favourite ribbon.

“Where did you get this?” Pete’s voice sounded eerie, almost haunted. When Sirius finally looked up, with his chin resting on Pete’s knee, he was met with an ashen expression and a pointed gaze.

“The ribbon?” Sirius clarified, one eyebrow raised. “It’s –”

“Lotus silk,” Pete finished his thought for him. “I know.” He gestured to Sirius’ hair and Sirius replied with a nod of approval to let Pete slip the ribbon from Sirius’ hair and examine it. “They’re extinct, you know,” he said slowly, looking at Sirius with a very specific look in his eye, as if expecting something.

“Remus said the same thing,” he said, returning Pete’s look with one of confusion. “When we met, we made a silly, little vow – that’s how it’s done in the Coven, you clasp one another’s forearm and wrap the shared grasp with a linen of some kind, but the only thing I had that day was this ribbon.”

“Victory through silk of a flowering bud,” James said, his eyes wide with epiphany, just like Remus’ had been that day. “Remus didn’t tell us the whole story. Just said it was about a vow he made.”

“Speaking of Remus, where is he?” Sirius asked again, but Pete interrupted that question again.

“Hang on, you didn’t answer my question – how did you come by it?”

Sirius shrugged, but, as ever, the thought of Andromeda still felt like a weight in his chest. “My cousin gave it to me on my twelfth birthday,” he said, met with wary and almost sorrowful glances, and he realized it was Bellatrix they’d imagined. “My other cousin. She told me it was a family heirloom.”

“It is,” Pete agreed, with that same blanched expression of disbelief. “My family.”

“What?” Sirius scoffed, a laugh nearing his lips before he caught it behind his teeth.

“My tribe, I should say,” Pete corrected slightly, but didn’t take his inquisitive gaze away from Sirius’ face, reading the changes in his countenance. “Have you ever heard the name Ted Tonks?”

Sirius hunted his brain for recollection of that name but came up with nothing. “No, I don’t think so,” he finally answered, after some time of silence. But if it were associated with Andromeda, and the history of this ribbon, Sirius had walled off so much about his late cousin that he wouldn’t know that name, even if Andromeda had said it to him directly. “But it’s been over a decade since she died.”

A sharp breath moved through Pete’s partly clenched teeth. “What was this cousin’s name?”

“Andromeda,” Sirius answered carefully, still feeling the caution of giving a name, even though she herself had long since passed, even though they were all on a first name basis with each other.

For a moment, Pete was silent. “You called her Andie, didn’t you?” Then, it was Sirius’ turn to take in a sharp breath, Sirius’ turn for weighted silence and nervous glances and undue suspicion.

“How could you possibly know that?”

Pete was speaking before Sirius even finished. “Ted Tonks was exiled from the tribes when I was eleven. They banished him due to suspicion of treason because he stole a priceless relic. This relic,” Pete said, holding up the ribbon with both hands, delicately, as if it would crumble apart. The same ribbon that Sirius had been wearing in his hair every day since he turned fourteen, when he met Remus and made that silly vow. The same ribbon that he’d sullied with rainwater and river water and his own blood.

“Pete, I’m –” he began to apologize, though he didn’t quite know why.

“That isn’t the end of the story,” Pete interrupted with a quick glance through his sandy-blonde lashes that had caught the pink rays of the sunrise settling in through the cracks in the walls. “Tonks assured them that he could get the relic back if the tribe would accept a fugitive of war. From the Coven.”

Sirius closed his eyes. “She was trying to escape.”

“The tribe begrudgingly accepted his terms, but only because they could use this woman named Andie for her information on the Coven,” Pete said, now trying not to meet Sirius’ gaze. “You remember how I told you the Pettigrews had been spying on the Coven for longer than you thought?”

“I remember,” he said, recalling when Pete had been assigned as the latest double agent.

“We already had someone inside the Coven by then,” he said, swallowing heavily and then clearing his throat, the fatigue of his rebound still making it difficult for him to speak without stopping to catch his breath in between. “And they told us that Andie had been killed. By the Coven.”

“What, no, she –” Sirius immediately went silent, his jaw snapping closed. For a moment, his silver eyes blanked out to white as he recalled that day – the day after his twelfth birthday. “No, she had a cut on her ribs, a laceration that she got on a mission. She had an infection for weeks. It was a –”

“Healing rune gone wrong?” Pete supplied for him, and Sirius felt his face go sallow. “Have you ever heard of a rune that rebounds on the recipient?” If he was honest with himself, Sirius knew, deeply, that he had never before, never since heard of a healing rune that didn’t heal. A healing rune that made a wound worse. “It wasn’t a healing rune.” Pete paused to catch his breath. “It was a pestilence rune.”

“Fuck,” Sirius hissed, tears stinging the corners of his eyes. His father and Bellatrix both had that rune. Hell, half of the Coven had that rune. It was an easy character to brand, and the rebound was minimal for the damage it caused. But it wasn’t a rune that Sirius could fake, the way he could fire off unsuccessful firebolts at James and blame it on the weather conditions, so he’d made up excuse after excuse for not getting it like everyone else his age had, much to his Father’s loud disappointment.

In terms of success rates, there was no rune more effective than pestilence. Of course, it only had an influence on those who would be susceptible to its impact – soldiers who were already injured or sick or frail. But it was war, after all, and the pestilence rune worked quickly and covered a wide area. It was practically effortless to reduce the enemy’s numbers drastically at very little cost to the Coven.

In a healthy body, the rebound was hardly more than a lingering fever that required a bit of bed rest. As realization struck, Sirius lowered his head, placing his forehead into his waiting hand, tears slipping through his knuckles. “Bellatrix was in bed for a week when Andie died. My father said it was grief. But it was the rebound. Of the rune she used to murder her sister.” The small amount of residual guilt that Sirius felt for accidentally ending his cousin’s life with his blood rune evaporated. Suddenly, he wished he’d done it much more deliberately with a much less merciful rune.

“Sirius, I’m so sorry,” Pete wheezed, his chest still heaving from his overworked skill.

“I’m glad you told me the truth,” he said with a sad smile and an encouraging squeeze to Pete’s knee, still tucked up underneath his chin. “I’m sorry for wearing your treasured relic as a hair ribbon.”

A laugh moved through Pete’s lips, but it was cut short as he replenished his breath. “Keep it,” he said, pressing the ribbon back into Sirius’ hand. “I don’t think it’s important now.” As he leaned his head back onto the safe house wall, he continued with a smile. “The legends used to say it held the key to ending the war, but now I see the key was in the vow you made with Moony all those years ago.”

“Speaking of Moony,” Sirius said again, this time with slight exasperation. “Where is he?”

After sharing a charged glance with Pete, James spoke. “I really thought the healing would take longer than this.” With a turn, he looked at the beams of sunlight streaming in from cracks in the roof.

“We lucked out with the story about the lotus silk, honestly.”

“We told Remus that, eventually, we were going to have no choice.”

“I don’t know why he thought he could get away with this.”

“No choice about what?” Sirius asked, glancing back and forth. “Get away with what?”

Finally, James let out a sigh – it caught on his raw throat, and he coughed. “Remus said he was going to face your father and that he was going to do it alone. He told us not to let you go after him.”

“Well obviously, that’s bullshit, and I’m going anyway,” Sirius said with a belligerent grunt, trying to move to his hands to push himself up from the floor, but the effort apparently ignited the nerve endings in his left arm and the pain returned, quickly and forcefully. Enough to buckle his arms at the elbow and send him crashing back down into Pete’s lap, face first. Pete took it with a muffled groan.

“You’re in no state to change his mind,” James reminded him with a shrug, having been clearly helpless in talking Remus out of leaving, now helpless in trying to convince Sirius not to go after him.

“Your arm looks like shit,” Pete wheezed out, his breathing finally starting to even, but the exhaustion still overwhelmingly present on his face. “The rest of you looks like shit, too.”

“Thank you, Pete, for your staggering confidence in me.”

“Sirius, rest,” James insisted as he helped Sirius to lie back on the pallet next to his brother. “If only just for an hour. Then Pete can rest, and we can all go after Remus together. Right?”

With a frustrated sigh of resignation, Sirius let James coax him into submission. “He’s going to have to fight my father now,” Sirius said with insistence in his tone. “If he waits too long –”

“I know,” James interrupted with a sharp wince. “Unless …” he trailed off, glancing at Sirius with an anxious expression. He swallowed heavily, flinching at the pain in his throat. “Unless that’s his plan.”

“Unless what’s his plan?” Sirius asked, hoping James wasn’t implying what he thought.

“The Leichan is powerful,” Pete added, and it only made the tightness in Sirius’ chest worse.

“No,” Sirius shook his head, matting the dirt and blood in his hair down into the blankets underneath him. “He can’t possibly be considering the idea of facing my father during the full moon.”

“It might give him the element of surprise,” James suggested.

“Don’t be stupid,” Sirius spat his response, trying to lift his head to argue, but finding himself fully incapable of it. “Remus is the one most in danger when the Leichan is unrestricted. It could kill him.”

“Or it could kill Orion instead,” Pete added with a soft, careful argument.

“He doesn’t need it to win!” Sirius raised his voice, since he couldn’t lift his head. “You’ve both seen Remus’ skill. He shifts his wrist and the universe bends to follow. He doesn’t need the Leichan.”

James’ eyes widened a bit, glancing at Pete for a moment before looking back to Sirius. “You should’ve seen him in the catacombs. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said his work was frightening.”

“You were right about walking into a trap,” Pete added, speaking slowly, his voice still sounding labored and spent. “But the greater trap was waiting for us when we were trying to escape.”

“With me acting as dead weight,” Sirius growled, still angry at himself. 

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if we had known where we were going,” James said as he gave Sirius a sympathetic half-smile. “Without you, we were easy prey for them to manipulate.”

Pete picked up his thought. “They funneled us into a narrow corridor that led outside, so we charged forward only to find that there was a hoard of Coven members waiting for us there.”

“And Pete was busy trying to keep you alive, so I shouted my best offensive incantations,” James sighed, “but they barely lasted a few seconds, trying to use them on so many people all at once.”

“But Remus,” Pete said, with an element of reverence in his tone. “He stepped in front of us, calm as could be, and his hands moved so quickly, I could barely follow their movements.” When Pete paused to catch his breath, he motioned for James to continue in his place, and James was quick to jump in.

“The Coven members charged at us at the same time, trying to keep him from completing the movement,” James recounted, shaking his head as if still in disbelief of what he’d seen. “Remus was faster. He made the last sign and every single person in that field – Sirius, I swear to you, it had to be at least a hundred Coven members, maybe more – they all stopped and knelt before him as he passed.”

Sirius blinked at him. “What.”

“Knelt,” James assured him with emphasized reiteration. “Every fucking one of them.”

“You know he did that to be dramatic,” Sirius said with a smirk.

“It fucking worked.”

Pete added in his wheeze of exhaustion, “I’m a little bit terrified of him. In a good way.”

“I mean, he paralyzed my lungs,” Sirius reminded them. “His power is devastating. Which is why he doesn’t need to let the Leichan take over to defeat my father. He could make him kneel just as easily.”

“It will take more than kneeling to stop your father,” Pete said quietly. And Sirius finally began to realize what this was about. It had nothing to do with Remus’ skill. It was because of Remus’ heart.

“Oh,” he said with a soft exhale. “Remus isn’t sure he will be able to take my father’s life.”

Instantly, James looked down at his fingers in his lap, scratching absently. “He needs the Leichan to be ruthless. Because, even with all that he knows of your father, I don’t think Remus can be.”

After a sharp swallow, Sirius answered with a terse nod. “Then we need to find him.”

“And we will,” James said carefully, with a hand on Sirius’ shoulder. For the first time, Sirius looked down at his left arm, the arm that had been all but removed by the use of his blood rune. Where once he could see the bright blue of his veins from underneath his pale skin, now there were track lines, like lightning to wood grain. His skin was ashen – grey and flaking – but after the work of Pete’s healing, becoming more wet and oozing with the renewal of blood flow to the affected area. At his wrist, where once his flame rune was a sharp, dark contrast to the rest of his pale skin, it was now blurred out by the surrounding disintegrated skin, the lines of the brand just visible. So, when James continued with, “But first, we all need to rest. Just a bit,” Sirius nodded with a compliant sigh and let himself lie back.

Hours. They had been searching for Remus for hours. It had already been late morning when Sirius awoke in the Pettigrew safe house. They’d had time to rest then. It drew into early afternoon by the time any of them felt enough energy to move, much less run, much less fight, which they found themselves doing far more than Sirius expected. Not to mention, Pete was still paying the toll for his earlier labours, worsening his exhaustion with every step. It seemed that once Sirius had escaped, once he’d murdered his cousin with a blood rune, once he’d absconded with the heir of the Coven – well, the Coven’s resolve to capture them surged. Of course, the way Remus had humiliated most of the Coven by making them all kneel before him had only made them want to kill this band of marauders even more.

By now, it was nearing sunset. They’d left Regulus in the care of Pete’s tribe, having encountered them shortly after leaving the safe house. It was a lucky thing that Regulus was still heavily under the influence of Remus’ Dreamless Sleep, but Sirius worried about how he would react when he woke. Still, if Sirius knew his brother, and he did, he knew that Regulus had a kind heart. Despite having been in the war since he was fourteen, Sirius could see Regulus making the same decisions that Sirius had once made at his age – like firing a rune with the deliberate intention of missing his unmistakable target. Now that he was in the protection of the tribes, Regulus’ safety was no longer Sirius’ biggest concern. It was Remus.

Even more concerning than not finding Remus was not seeing Orion on the battlefield. If he could find neither of them, did that mean they were already fighting elsewhere? At first, it sent his heart racing, but he began to realize if they were fighting, then they were still in the midst of it, if he hadn’t encountered either one of them. It meant he still had time to find them. He still had time to help.

They’d looked everywhere. They’d searched the grounds, they’d scoured the Manor again, they’d even gone back through the forefront of the catacombs (frightening civilians in the process). With all the fights they kept finding themselves getting caught up in, their fruitless searching had taken all day. The sun was dropping lower and lower with every moment they wasted. And they still hadn’t found them.

There was one place they hadn’t checked. The last place Sirius would’ve thought to look for them, mostly because it was out of the way, hidden, secret. Secret to Remus, anyway. Beyond the catacombs, nestled in a secluded cove where the river opened to the sea were the grounds for the combat trials.

Rows of seating had been painstakingly carved out of the rock of the surrounding cliff walls, unnatural barriers and obstacles shaped with excavating runes, all inside a boundary that stretched just into the precipice of the forest, accounting for all possible war terrain. The arena was small enough to allow for an audience of spectators, but expansive enough to give the competitors room to fight.

With Pete leaning heavily on James, still paying the price of the overuse of his skill to save Sirius’ life, Sirius led them out to the grounds. The acid in his throat boiled so high, he was afraid it would erode his esophagus. It wasn’t just the memory of his own combat trial – of clawing his way to survival over the incapacitated bodies of his Coven brethren, of trying to claim his place as a victor without murdering his kinsmen as so many other combatants had, of struggling to stay on his bloodied feet when the trial stretched into days instead of hours. No, the worse memory was that of Regulus’ combat trial – having to watch his brother struggle the same way, bloody and bruised. And then finding out it was all for nothing because his father had made certain that Regulus would be claimed a victor in the end anyway.

Two intimidating stone doors had been sliced out of the bluff at the edge of the forest – the official gateway into the stadium when the trials were ongoing – but Sirius led them around to a smaller entrance at the side where the competitors entered. With the bile swirling in his gut, he guided them down a long hallway to the chambers where he’d once chosen his weapons. After all, this was before they were given the honour of accepting their first rune. This was to prove they were worthy of a rune. That was what his father had always told him, always reminding him that the ones who died were not worthy.

There were identical rooms dug out of the surrounding cliff walls – one for each of the fifty competitors, of which only five would be crowned victorious. The combat trials were voluntary, but it was the only way to be granted an elemental rune and a place in the militia. There were very few children of the Coven who chose not to undergo a combat trial, though most chose to wait until the remedial trial at sixteen. The older children comprised all of the victors. For decades. Until Sirius.

When Sirius moved from the preparation chamber into the main arena, he immediately went to one knee, dizzy with the vestigial terror he could remember from the day of his trial. At once, James and Pete were at his back, a supportive hand on each of his shoulders. But it wasn’t their voices Sirius heard.

“You look like shit,” came the unexpected reply, rough and weary. Sirius turned immediately, his eyes on Remus, slumped down against the recessed wall of the arena just behind where they stood.

“Moony,” Sirius said. There was relief in his tone, at first, but when he saw the state Remus was in, the feeling of relief quickly left him. “What happened to you? Did my father do this?”

There was a scoff in Remus’ throat that sounded angry. “I haven’t even seen him yet. I spent most of the day looking for him. And now it’s …” he glanced up into the darkening sky, his eyes wavering nervously on the faint outline of the full moon, still partly hidden. “You have to get out of here, Sirius.”

“Don’t be an idiot, I’m not leaving you.” He knelt to take Remus’ hand. Remus pulled away.

“In less than an hour, I will no longer recognize you,” Remus said, voice trembling. In the dim light, Sirius could see the sweat rolling down Remus’ temples, could see the tremor in his hands. “And you will no longer recognize me.” When he swallowed, it looked as though it took his whole body to do so.

“If my father finds you like this,” Sirius said, shaking his head vigorously. “He’ll kill you.”

A breath moved through Remus’ lips. “I just need to hold him off until the eclipse,” he said, his breathing growing more laboured, the stridor more audible. “And then he won’t be able to kill me.”

“The eclipse?” James asked. “Why?”

“The Leichan is the most powerful under a blood moon,” Remus answered, clearly struggling to keep his voice steady so that Sirius couldn’t tell how afflicted he was. He was failing at that, too.

“You don’t need to fight him,” Sirius said, taking Remus’ hand and holding it strongly enough that Remus couldn’t pull it away this time. He held it firmly to his chest. “I will fight him. I will win.”

“We can fight. All of us,” Pete added, placing his hand on Sirius’ shoulder.

“No, it has to be me,” Remus argued, growing restless, a defiant snarl in his lips. And unless Sirius was mistaken, there was something ominous about the way his canines looked sharper, deadlier. “It is my prophesy. I am the one who has to do this. I am the one who has to die.” His voice sounded like a growl.

“It’s not your prophesy, Remus, it is our prophesy,” Sirius reminded him, their entwined hands still pressed to his chest, beating against his tattooed Coven insignia. “And if you die, I will die with you.”

“Nobody has to die,” James argued obstinately.

“You are all going to die if you don’t leave. Now,” Remus barked, sounding more untamed.

“The prophesy says we triumph together.” 

“The prophesy isn’t a guidepost!” By now, Remus was beginning to twitch – his shoulders began jerking backward of their own accord as he clenched his fists to try to maintain control. “It’s twelve lines of vague and senseless bullshit that has given me no instruction on how to win this fucking war!”

Before Sirius could shout his rebuttal, Pete let out a revelatory breath. “It’s not vague, though, is it?” For a moment, he stood still, mouth gaping and brows furrowed, until he reached up and tore the ribbon from Sirius’ hair, sending Sirius’ hair cascading down around his face. “Everything about the prophesy has been literal. Visions of silver, a sky drenched in blood, starlit left, moonlit right. It’s flowery and poetic, but it’s all been literal.” He held out Sirius’ ribbon. “Victory comes through this silk ribbon.” 

“Pete, we’ve been over this,” James said, looking confused. “It was about their vow.”

“I don’t think it was, though,” Pete argued, sucking on the front of his teeth. “The prophesy already mentions them both specifically. Why would a vow they made when they were children matter right now? How would that vow give us victory right now? It’s not the vow. It’s the ribbon.”

“How could a hair ribbon end a war?” Sirius asked with a skeptical huff. As he reached up to take the ribbon from Pete’s hand, Remus reached for the other end at the same time. When Remus pulled, and Sirius held fast, Sirius realized that there was more give in the ribbon than he remembered.

“Shit,” Remus suddenly swore, his breathing still rapid and uneven. Sirius looked over to see that Remus had slightly unraveled his end of the ribbon. The string he was left holding flashed in the sunset.

“Hang on, Moony, don’t move,” Sirius said, staying very still and looking at the golden string between Remus’ fingers. Sirius tugged at his end. The ribbon began to unravel. Revealing a silver string.

“By the gods, Pete,” James said in a hollow exhale. “You were right.”

“Keep going,” Pete insisted. Sirius pulled at his end, Remus did the same. And when their strings met in the middle, much to Sirius’ surprise, the ribbon hadn’t unraveled into a puddle of lotus silk. It had untangled into a wider band of lace with a clear pattern in the middle. A pattern of four symbols. 

Sirius began, “Wait, that’s my –” but his thought was interrupted.

“Have you been hiding from me, Leichan?” came the sickeningly familiar voice from across the arena. The grit in Sirius’ teeth was instant and sharp. He stood, deliberately moving in front of Remus.

“You’ll fight me,” Sirius snarled, baring his teeth. He could hear Remus’ angry but fatigued protests from behind him, but Remus could barely stand in his condition. Maybe Remus did need to fight Orion, but it would have to wait until the eclipse. Sirius could hold him off at least until then.

It wasn’t a smirk on Orion’s face, but a smile. A genuine, joyful smile. As if he knew something that Sirius didn’t know. After the last two weeks, that thought terrified Sirius. There were a lot of things about his father and his Coven that he didn’t know, as it turned out. The thought of what else there could be, what other skills he’d been honing for this very fight, sent a searing pain of dread into Sirius’ gut.

“If you think that’ll save you,” he started, that same foul smile on his lips, narrowing his eyes at Sirius with a strange tilt of his head. “If you think that’ll save him,” he corrected, motioning to Remus, still huddled in pain against the rock wall of the arena, “then I’m afraid you’ll find yourself … disappointed.”

“The five men you had to use to keep me under control says otherwise,” Sirius said, practically quoting Remus’ sentiment from the day before. “Not to mention,” he added, glancing back at Remus, who was doing his best to smile his approval at Sirius, “You sent me to try to kill the Leichan for you.”

Orion huffed, not looking defeated in the slightest. “You weren’t sent to kill him,” he said, calmly glancing down at the fingers of his left hand, curled up into a delicate fist. Even from that distance, Sirius could see the dirt collected underneath his father’s fingernails – a strange sight, considering how far from the actual battles his father typically kept himself. “I told you to break him. And, as always, you failed.”

Before Sirius could speak again, Orion continued, cutting him off. “It would’ve been easier for me if you had done what you were meant to do and held the bastard creature to its knees.” He paused, glancing at Remus with what could only be described as excitement in his gaze. “But then again, I can’t surpass the Founder if I’m unable to kill the beast with my own runes while it’s at full strength.”

“You won’t get near him,” Sirius barked, not letting Orion finish his threat. “I’ll kill you first.”

His arrogant expression propagated over his bloodthirsty smile. “Then try.”

Sirius’ feet were moving before the breath of speech had fallen from his father’s lips, the rune on his wrist activated just as quickly. When he shot off a burst of fire in Orion’s direction, Orion smoothly stepped aside to let it pass, as if it were no more than an aberrant breeze sweeping through the trees.

His nonchalance only fueled Sirius’ anger. When Sirius grew close, he fired with the bone-shattering rune on the back of his hand, but Orion managed to deflect it again. The effect of the rune landed in the branches of the towering cedar trees above them, sending a shower of needles sprinkling down over them as Sirius unsuccessfully fired off another rune. He tried three runes, four, five. None hit.

His father was Coven leader for a reason. It wasn’t family succession that had given him the coveted position. It was ruthlessness and indifference and decades of battle experience and the violent murder of the previous Coven leader that earned him his seat of power. The fact that Sirius was meant to succeed him was not based on his blood relation to Orion, but by the way Orion had groomed him for it.

He shot off the freezing rune on his opposite wrist, the banishment rune on his chest, the entanglement rune on his neck. Despite the fact that Sirius had never seen his father so worn down only the day prior, just now Orion was at peak performance. He was dodging Sirius’ runes like he had the ability to foresee which one Sirius would throw and when. Sirius slowed. Oh. It was because he did.

“The premonition rune,” Sirius said, trying to hide his breathless fatigue, not necessarily from this one fight, but from having spent the whole day in arbitrary Coven scrimmages. “They perfected it.”

Orion nearly rolled his eyes. “Which you would know if you had spent the last year at your Coven instead of conspiring with our enemies.” Up to that point, Orion hadn’t bothered casting a single rune in Sirius’ direction, but he pitched a paltry spiral of wind into Sirius’ direction, just to make Sirius avoid it.

And Sirius began to realize – his father wasn’t fighting back. Not really. Not at full strength. Not at the level at which he knew his father could contend. This fight with Sirius wasn’t his priority. Of course it wasn’t. There was only one reason he was here at all. He was saving his energy. For Remus.

“Stop stalling,” Sirius growled, wishing he could risk a glance back at Remus, but not willing to take his eyes off of Orion for a second. “I told you I wouldn’t let you near him and I fucking meant it.”

Orion laughed, obnoxious and arrogant. “You’re barely standing, son.”

“Don’t call me that, you prick.”

“There was a rumor that Bella had been killed by your blood rune,” he said, flicking his grey gaze up to the snarl still on Sirius’ lips and letting it linger in some attempt at intimidation. “Judging by the pathetic state of your left arm, I suppose that was true. But a coward’s blood rune still takes its toll.”

“But I fucking survived, so I guess I chose the right one after all, didn’t I?” Sirius shot back, shifting his weight so that Orion would miss the snap of his wrist. It worked – the subtle blue flame that slithered covertly from Sirius’ wrist caught on the hem of Orion’s tunic and it spread upward so quickly that Orion had no choice but to feverishly rip the garment in two to ensure he didn’t burn with it. As Orion patted down the singed hair on his chest, the confidence Sirius felt at landing a single blow narrowed sharply at the sight of the Coven crest tattooed on his father’s chest. The same one Sirius had been given at the age of ten. The same one every Coven member was marked by. And Sirius would be marked by it forever.

Grasping at the upper hand, Sirius continued. “Though the same can’t be said of your favourite protégé. Call my choice in blood rune cowardly if you wish, but I’m still here and Bellatrix is dead. Did her assassin’s blood rune save her from me? Will yours?” There was a flicker of annoyance in Orion’s face, but it vanished instantly, replaced by years of practiced indifference that scarcely masked his bloodlust.

“In all the runes you’ve directed at me, only one has had success,” Orion taunted, glancing down at the smolder ash of what used to be his tunic. “I only need to let you wear yourself out.”

Sirius smirked. “Thanks to you, I’ve been sitting in the dungeons and away from the fatigue of the war that you have been fighting all along. Let’s see who outlasts who.” Without hesitation, Sirius lunged toward his father, but he fired off not a single rune. Nor did Orion. Instead, they met with their fists where Orion stood. As Sirius soon discovered, Orion’s new premonition rune worked only for casting a skill, because Sirius’ clenched knuckles collided strongly with Orion’s austere jawline, leaving Orion to reel back from the weight of Sirius’ punch and from the surprise that it had left behind. And Sirius was only just getting started. Giving Orion no time for recovery, he drove another fist into Orion’s stomach, and as Orion doubled over, Sirius moved to take him by the shoulders, preparing to bring Orion’s nose to meet Sirius’ knee. His fingers reached blindly into the air, however, because Orion used his displacement rune to evacuate from Sirius’ vicinity. The rune could only move an individual a short distance, but Sirius knew from experience that the rebound left the user with a moment of intractable dizziness that Sirius hoped would help him close the gap again. Fire in his step, he began to rush in, but quickly stopped in his place.

“Sirius!” he heard to his right. It was James’ voice. And it was saturated with panic. Before Sirius could turn around, a shadow began to pass over him from above. It coloured everything crimson.

“No. Not yet,” Sirius heard himself whisper, screwing his eyes closed for only a moment before he  began to turn, hearing the crunching of bones changing configuration and the muffled groan of Remus trying to suppress a scream. When he set his eyes upon Remus, he wasn’t prepared for it. In fact, he wasn’t sure how he ever could have prepared for it. Because he had never seen so much pain on Remus’ face. Not when he’d shown up that last new moon four years ago, limping from the forest on a crutch and covered in his own blood. Not when Sirius sutured his wounds. Not when he applied an herbal salve directly to Remus’ open skin. Not even when he’d used his skill on Sirius before he left. Nothing like this.

His eyes were closed, his whole face crumpled up to keep them that way. His teeth were clenched so tightly that Sirius wondered if they would shatter under the strain. His fingernails were burrowing so deeply into his trembling fists that blood seeped out from between his knuckles. No, wait. It wasn’t fingernails. Not anymore. They were now claws, breaking through his skin and out the other side from how desperately he was trying to keep them from changing. And when his canines elongated and sharpened, they inevitably did crack the enamel underneath them, piercing through his bottom lip.

Finally, there was a scream from Remus’ throat, but it sounded more like a howl. A wretched, agonizing howl that left a shudder in Sirius’ spine and an echo of it in his gut. Remus’ scarred and freckled skin quickly gave way to wiry grey fur and misshapen limbs that looked too long to have come from Remus’ body, like all his bones were broken and reformed into some monstrous imitation of his skin. 

“Sirius, run!” Sirius heard Pete shouting, though he wasn’t sure how he had the presence of mind to hear anything being said. He was too focused on the brittle crack of Remus’ teeth as his fangs tapered and the snap of his bones being broken to fit into the wrong places and the split of his skin at his knuckles where claws grew into the place of what was once his gentle touch. Sirius found himself paralyzed by Remus again, though no longer by Remus’ intent. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t leave him. 

“Finally!” he heard his father shout victoriously from somewhere behind him. Sirius didn’t turn. He didn’t run. He only stood in front of the devastating power known as the Leichan and wondered how to reconcile this creature, whose howl sounded like a miserable scream, to Remus, who had not so long ago whispered his love into Sirius’ open mouth. But he was there. Remus was still in there somewhere.

The Leichan lumbered over to Sirius, walking on the fractured bones of the one whom Sirius loved, and craned back to let out another devastating wail. Faintly, if he listened closely enough and coloured the sound through the everlasting thread that connected him to Remus, he could still pick out the notes of Remus’ voice. The sadness, just like when Remus had told him to sleep and forget him. The softness, like when Remus promised to see him at first light. The warmth, like when Remus had said their names would live and die together. The laughter, like when Remus said Sirius’ stone-skipping was shite.

When the Leichan leaned down into Sirius’ face, panting and huffing in threat and terror, there was an unmistakable ring of golden light in his eyes, dark though they were. And the thread between them, just as it was when Remus was himself, was still there – tight and thrumming with torture and grief and horror at what the Leichan may do to Sirius while Remus was not in control – but it was there.

With a soft smile, Sirius let out a quiet sigh of strange relief. “Moony,” he whispered. And the Leichan faltered, the violence in his amber gaze quelled for a moment. “I still see you.” As slowly and as gently as he could, Sirius reached out his hand. Though the Leichan flinched at the movement and snarled at the unexpected familiarity, he allowed Sirius to cup his face at the acute cut of his jaw. A gaze from the eyes that he had stolen from Remus darted around in feral trepidation, but the creature remained still as Sirius tenderly stroked his muzzle, the wiry hair so strangely different from the softness of Remus’ sun-bleached curls. Suspended here, the Leichan regarded Sirius with careful clemency. Until Orion spoke.

“What a fucking joke!” he cackled, stomping over to where Sirius and the Leichan stood in silence and comfort. “This cannot be the elder beast of legend,” he huffed, closing the distance between them with every step. “The true Leichan would have killed my useless miscarriage of a son on the spot.”

When the Leichan turned toward Orion, it was so swift that Sirius’ open palm hung emptily in the air where it had once been placed upon the Leichan’s cheek. Absently, Sirius heard a groan from his father’s direction, but compared to the speed of the ancient beast, Sirius felt as if his own movements were plodding and slow. As his gaze caught up with the motion, he realized the Leichan had swept the blunted back of his claws into Orion’s abdomen. And he’d thrown him back a frightening distance.

“Forgive me,” Orion wheezed as he struggled to stand, slipping in the mud from the torrential rains from the day before. “It seems I was mistaken.” With a belligerent smirk on his lips, he drew himself to full height, though it was still barely a fraction of the size that the Leichan held over him, and the distance only made him look that much smaller in comparison. “You are the one for whom I have been searching, after all.” After such a frightful blow, Sirius was surprised his father would even continue to entertain the idea of defeating the Leichan. That was little more than a slap on the wrist to the Leichan, and it had thrown his father half the distance of the combat arena. Surely Orion knew he could not win.

With a low, forbidding growl, the Leichan lurched forward into Orion’s direction, moving much slower than the speed Sirius now knew he could move. For a moment, Sirius thought he may be giving Orion the opportunity to flee. Until he saw the look on Orion’s face – the strong clench of his jaw, the tremble of his bottom lip. The Leichan wasn’t giving him time to run. He was giving him time to fear.

It became clear in the next moment. After a huff of what sounded like satisfaction, the Leichan leapt forward, bridging the divide between them in an instant, his outstretched claws reared back so far that Sirius knew – the moment he swung his arm, his father would be ripped to shreds. The fight was over. The war was over. The Leichan had won. Remus had won. They now only had to survive the moon.

In the same moment, just as those ruthless claws ripped through the air, their target vanished, and Sirius could feel the rush of the wind that the force of that unconnected swing carried. Before Sirius could begin to look for his father, he felt a pair of arms anchor him from behind – one hand gone immediately to close around his throat and the other sharply pointed underneath his chin. Sirius could feel the crackle of Orion’s lightning rune arc threateningly at his windpipe. He swallowed carefully.

“If you love him, you will bow to me!” Orion shouted at the Leichan’s back, still turned, claws still raised. In disbelief, Sirius let out of a scoff, the movement of his throat nearly catching Orion’s rune.

“He doesn’t even know me right now,” Sirius argued through tightly clenched teeth. “He will kill us both together, and I would thank him for it if it meant ending your miserable life with mine.”

“Are you so sure?” Orion heckled into his ear as Sirius watched the Leichan turn slowly. When Sirius let his eyes roll up the scarred and broken skin to find that familiar amber light, he was surprised to see what looked like concern in the eyes of the ancient beast. He took two hesitant steps on his misshapen feet, and in a single blink, that concern was replaced by a rage that rolled up the Leichan’s throat until it escaped as a murderous roar that echoed against the cavern walls of the combat arena.

And Sirius suddenly realized what this meant. It was the prophesy made clear. A love worth dying for. Trading of life for the conqueror’s fall. It wasn’t Remus who was meant to die tonight. It was Sirius.

“Do it, Moony!” Sirius screamed as the Leichan bared his claws once again. “Do it now!” With another howl of anguish and despair, the Leichan charged forward, fangs dripping with blood from Remus’ mouth. Orion, in his panic, shot Sirius full of electricity, and Sirius felt his body go tense with the current, felt himself screaming though his teeth were clenched in pain. It would only last a moment, he reminded himself. Remus would end this for him soon enough. He closed his eyes and waited for it.

His evisceration never came. With shock and fury, his eyes flew open, as he readied himself to frantically antagonize the Leichan until he ended this. Until he ended Orion’s reign. But the sight before him left him reeling. The ancient beast of legend, the Last Leichan, had knelt before him.

“Moony,” Sirius said on a desperate exhale that was full of awe and full of anger and full of affliction. “No,” he whispered mournfully. The Leichan looked up, through Remus’ golden eyes.

“I knew he would surrender for you,” Orion hissed into his ear victoriously before throwing Sirius aside and igniting the binding rune on his neck – the same one Sirius had on his neck. Immediately, Sirius felt the lash tighten around his throat and it pulled him to his knees, hands shoved into wet dirt. “Looks like you were finally of use to me, after all.” With empty lungs, Sirius watched as Orion spread open his palms on either side of where the Leichan knelt before him. The runes that Sirius had seen on his father’s skin for the first time in the dungeon were now glowing red on each of Orion’s forearms, blistering the pale skin that was so similar in shade to Sirius’ own. “Submit your power to me and Sirius will live.”

“Don’t do this, Moony, please,” Sirius choked out, clenching his fists into the mud. He could feel the invisible noose around his throat grow smaller and smaller until there was no more room to speak.

“Consider it an even exchange,” Orion continued, ignoring Sirius’ strangled pleas, ignoring his gasps for oxygen. “Grant my supplication with your power and I will release him.” Sirius’ breaths were coming up short and sudden and stunted, gaze tunneling into a single spot. “Do nothing and he dies.”

In the moment before Sirius lost consciousness, he watched the Leichan close his eyes and let out a slow whine of a breath through his nostrils as he bowed his head before Orion. At once, the noose that had been tightening around Sirius’ throat released and Sirius fell forward with a sharp, starving gasp, his elbows catching him to keep him from burying his face into the dirt. Winded and wheezing, he snapped his head back to find an odious and conquering smile on his father’s face, the twin runes on his forearms blazing brightly, to the point where it looked like his skin was on fire. He didn’t even flinch from the pain.

Quickly, Sirius turned his attention to the Leichan just in time to watch him raise his head to the sky, letting out a grievous howl. It sounded more like Remus screaming from inside. Suddenly, it was Remus screaming, the Leichan’s beastly growl giving way to human vocal chords. Just like it had during the transition, his skin shifted and split, his bones cracked and creaked, his fangs retracted back into his mouth. In mere seconds, the Leichan was no longer the one kneeling before Orion under the full blood moon, but Remus, naked and expended. His now fragile frame trembled underneath the scarlet sky.

Sirius couldn’t help but let his eyes rove over Remus’ exposed skin, looking for new wounds. The iridescent glimmer of the full moon should’ve been visible from his right arm, but it was pale, almost translucent. Different from the full, empty circle of the new moon, but less lustrous than usual. Sharply, Sirius remembered what Remus had said about that tincture being the only thing that kept him alive after the full moon. It was a long-acting healing tincture. His body was siphoning it off to help him recover.

“You senseless bastards!” Orion howled with laughter, his voice shifting down into something that sounded inhuman. “Did you really believe I would spare either of you after the shit that you’ve put me through?” As he spoke, his shoulders popped out of socket, one after the other. He didn’t even seem to notice. “I will slaughter you both. And everyone you love,” he threatened with a bestial growl in his splintered throat, the fiery runes on his forearms extinguished and covered by black fur, claws breaking through his wounded skin, blood dripping from his lips from where fangs were splitting open his gums.

“I will kill you before the change is finished,” Sirius coughed, voice still hoarse from lack of air.

“Sirius,” Remus called in a small voice, still knelt in front of Orion. He glanced over with purpose in his golden gaze. It was as bright as Sirius had ever seen it, contrasted against the red sky. “Wait.”

He didn’t have to wait long. The triumphant growl that had been in Orion’s throat shifted – slowly at first, growing less prideful and more uneasy until Orion was screaming in pain, just as Remus had been at the start of his transformation. Nervously, Sirius stole another glance at Remus. He just held a single finger over his lips and remained stone still, communicating with his gaze, and their thread, for Sirius to do the same. With his fingers still buried in the dirt, Sirius did nothing more than watch Orion writhe.

Watching Remus’ bones break and shift their positions had been unbearable. When it happened to Orion, Sirius watched with silent indifference. This was what Orion wanted, after all. He’d begged Remus for it, used a yet unknown supplication rune to steal it, with Sirius’ life as the collateral.

His screams grew louder and louder, drawing the attention of every Coven member that was nearby. Soon, they formed a small crowd within the stands of the combat arena. At first, they cheered, seeing the traitor Sirius and the enemy knelt on the ground in front of Orion, who was clearly in the midst of transfiguring into the body of the Leichan, the power he’d just stolen. Their cheers died out quickly, however, as the torment in Orion’s screams became more distinct. They, too, soon went still.

The same sudden way Sirius had come to the realization about the healing tincture deposited and conserved in Remus’ skin for the full moon, so did he quickly come to the awareness that Orion did not have that life-saving tincture. As Sirius shot a glance of understanding at Remus, a smirk formed in the corner of Remus’ lips as he returned a very slight, but very meaningful nod. They didn’t have to act. They didn’t have to take down Orion. Orion’s greed and insatiable hunger for power would do it for them.

There had been something different about Remus’ power as a Leichan. Something stronger. Even his first transformation at fourteen, which should’ve been mild because of his young age, nearly took his life. How much worse would it be for Orion – new to this power, at a much more advanced age than intended for initiation, and without the knowledge or skill to control the damage it would do to his body?

Sirius quickly got his answer. Still screaming, his father, now fully reconstituted as the most ancient of ancient beasts, the true Last Leichan, began clawing at his wiry fur, as if in some attempt to tear it from his body. As if his own rune-covered skin would be underneath it somewhere. As Sirius glanced down at Remus, he saw him close his eyes and shudder in unwanted familiarity, and Sirius could remember the way Remus had said ‘I did this to myself, Padfoot,’ when he showed up to the river half-dead and still bleeding. Before long, that same small shudder was running through Sirius’ spine, too.

It was difficult to remain still when the Leichan, now Orion, was thrashing and wailing over their heads, as blood rained down every time he tore his claws out of his afflicted skin. Sirius’ body was telling him to run, but his mind, and Remus’ expression, was telling him he would never be fast enough. One furtive glance to his left told him that James and Pete had taken shelter in the preparation chamber that they had first emerged from, and Sirius breathed a silent sight of relief that they were not in proximity.

Once it became clear to Coven members that their Leichan was out of control, that their leader was trapped within the body of a feral, untamable beast, they began to rush forward to try to fight him, firing off rune after unsuccessful rune. Sirius and Remus did their best to remain still and make themselves as small as possible to avoid them, burrowing further down into the dirt to avoid the flames and ice and binds. Several Coven members found themselves too close and were immediately dispatched in whatever way the Leichan could reach them – skulls crushed, bodies thrown, organs disemboweled.

Eventually, the Coven members stopped trying and the Leichan no longer had the distraction of their massacre to keep him busy. Furiously, he went back to tearing at his own skin, a desperate attempt to be rid of it for good, leaving menacing gashes in his wake. One such set of claw marks fell upon Remus’ naked back, and Sirius would’ve cried out if not for the reserved way that Remus barely even flinched.

The monster only grew more erratic the more blood he shed without finding human skin underneath it. Though Remus had never said anything about battling madness under the full moon, it appeared that Orion was doing just that within the Leichan’s husk, barking and howling and ripping and tearing. His claws moved up to his muzzle, pulling at the fur and punching holes through his skin. As they curled under the curve of his jaw, he yanked up, as if he were attempting to pull off the mask of the Leichan and find himself below. He didn’t. Sirius flinched as his detached head splattered to the ground.

For what felt like a very long time, Sirius and Remus stayed still, wide-eyed and staring at one another to desperately avoid meeting the hollow gaze of the Leichan’s severed skull. Sirius tried not to think about it being his father’s head here when the full moon vanished in the light of dawn.

“Sirius! Remus! Run!” he heard and turned to find James and Pete frantically waving them into the chamber. Before Sirius could make a decision, Remus was at his side, pulling him to his feet. As they raced toward their friends, Sirius glanced back to find a hundred angry Coven members at their backs.

The moment they crossed the threshold, James and Pete slammed the double doors shut, barricading themselves in the room with axe handles and sword blades and chain daggers. Sparing only a moment, Remus turned to Sirius and held him by the face, turning him over in his trembling hands.

“You’re alive, by the gods, you’re alive,” he whispered, a couple rogue tears trickling down his cheeks as he planted kiss after blessed kiss atop every available inch of Sirius’ face. “And so am I.”

“And so are you,” Sirius answered back with a kiss of his own, lingering in awe on Remus’ mouth for as long as he was allowed. “When you knelt before my father, I thought I was going to lose you.”

“As much as I adore this touching and joyful reunion,” Pete grunted, throwing his weight into the inward-facing stone door as the Coven members attempted to break through. “We could still die.”

“And Remus is still stark naked,” James added and, just before Sirius moved to add his own weight to the barricade, he waggled his eyebrows at Remus, letting his gaze flitter playfully down his bare waist. With a smirk of his own and a glow in his cheeks, Remus joyfully pushed Sirius away as he went to rummage through the battle armour in his attempt to find himself some spare clothing among it.

“You know,” Pete said between every charge against the door, “when the prophesy said, ‘trading of life’, I don’t think I ever would’ve predicted that it meant Remus’ life as the Last Leichan.”

Sirius flashed him a smile before bolstering his weight again. “That was a happy mistranslation.”

“I won’t lie,” Remus said, as he found and slipped into some oversized trousers, finally turning to face them as he lashed them tightly to his gaunt hips. “There was a moment of panic when I thought the prophesy meant Sirius.” He found the matching shirt and it hung from his lanky frame like a robe.

“Hey, me too!” Sirius laughed, feeling quite euphoric now that he and Remus had both survived.

“And you didn’t really even have to fight Orion,” James added, giving the door a shove to throw back the Coven members as they tried to push inward. “He did all the heavy lifting for you.”

“Are you alright, Sirius?” Remus asked, adding his weight to the door. “He was your father …”

Sirius pushed out a short, disgusted breath in response. “In blood alone,” he replied. “When he imprisoned me, he admitted that Regulus and I were literally bred to be his pawns. The mother we thought we had lost during Regulus’ birth was just a woman who had desirable characteristics for war.”

There was a beat of silence as they all collectively absorbed this information, until James finally blurted out, “May all the gods in all the heavens mercilessly fuck that guy for the rest of eternity.”

Pete instantly added, “Ah-men and Ah-men.” As they dissolved into their laughter and their relief, Sirius pulled Remus to his lips again, breathing in the scent of him and savoring the laxed thread between them through the still-waging war outside. For every barge against the door, Remus kissed him again.

But his attention was soon drawn back to the matter at hand. Orion was dead, the Leichan was dead. Why was the Coven still fighting? The war should be over. Realization struck Sirius quite sharply.

“The ribbon,” he said in an outward breath. The other three looked back at him as best as they could without sacrificing their position against the door. “The ribbon had my flame rune on it.”

“Oh,” James said with a strangely ethereal whisper. “It had the written character for my clan’s stillness incantation, too.” He glanced around. “Is there a marking for each of our skills?”

Remus nodded slowly, wide-eyed as he considered the implications. “Mine was the symbol for reverence. It’s the same skill that I used outside of the catacombs. The one where I –” Pete interrupted.

“The one where you made everyone kneel before you,” he said on shallow breath, but that exhale was quickly shifted into a sharp gasp. “Reverence, you said?” Under furrowed brows, Remus nodded, so Pete continued. “By the gods. There was another stanza to the prophesy all this time.”

“Wait, what?” James hissed.

“I didn’t know that’s what it was, it was just a story about the ribbon, and I –”

“What is it, Pete?” Sirius asked quickly.

“Out of the stillness, there shall be freedom,” he quoted, screwing his eyes tightly as if trying his best to remember the exact wording. “Out of reverence, the conqueror’s claim. Out of the earth, new life shall succeed him. Out of the darkness, new light through the flame.” For a moment, the only sound was the casting of runes that slammed fruitlessly against the stone door that separated them from the Coven’s attacks. And then Pete spoke again. “The third symbol on that ribbon was a figure that means Earth. It’s the written emblem for the skill that allowed us to manipulate the ground on which we stand.”

“So, we each have to perform our skill?” James asked.

“No,” Remus said, leaving his mouth ajar in surprise. He glanced at Sirius. “Triumph together.”

“But –” Sirius began to argue, recognizing where Remus was going. It meant they would all have to perform each skill together. But Sirius was a Coven member. He could perform no skill but runes.

“Have you ever tried a verbal incantation?” Remus asked, raising his eyebrows high.

“No, of course not, I –”

James interrupted. “Try it now. Try telling me to be still but speak it from the hollows of your gut until you feel it in the back of your throat. Speak it as if you believe you could command me to do it.”

“Be still,” Sirius attempted, but it was just words. They had no physical effect. Shaking his head, Remus reached down and held his open palm flat against Sirius’ abdomen, far below his belly button. 

“Start here,” he instructed, as James nodded along, neither of them noticing the slight flush in Sirius’ cheeks at the placement of Remus’ touch. “And let it rise up into your throat,” he continued, dragging his fingertips along the entire length of Sirius’ stomach, over his chest, settling at the base of his throat. “Think of it like a flame. Ignite it in your belly and use your mouth as its means for escape.”

With a tight nod, Sirius focused, imagining he was igniting the rune on his wrist, but pretending that the flame would spark deep within his gut. Just like there was a tug in the center of his palm when he chose a perfect skipping stone, there was the same tug in the pit of his stomach. And maybe it was the thread he shared with Remus, guiding him on how to begin, but Sirius let the resulting heat build.

When he opened his mouth, he felt that flare roll up his chest, growing in fervor until it reached a fever pitch at the back of his throat. He said the words, “Be still!” and the Coven members on the opposite side of the door nearly burst through, because his three companions all went motionless.

“Sirius, quick, the reverse incantation is ‘at ease’,” James said, and Sirius was relieved that he wasn’t as adept at this as James was, because James had easily stilled Sirius’ vocal chords in their youth.

“At ease!” he called, finding the power in his words much easier than he had the last time, and the incantation was immediately undone. Just in time to reinforce their weight against the doors.

Remus looked around with a mischievous smile. “Lads, we’ve got some work to do.”

“Sirius, hurry it up!” James called from the door where he and Remus were the only ones keeping the Coven members out. Pete had used his skill to bring up the dirt behind the doors, but it had all but crumbled underneath the insistence of the intruders outside. It had been easier to raise a rock wall to cover the smaller door that they had originally come in through, but it wouldn’t hold much longer, either.

“I’m trying!” Sirius shouted back through teeth clenched around the instrument between his lips as he flexed his cramping fingers for a moment before dipping into the healing balm that he had mixed with ash to make ink. “It’s not that easy to tattoo a whole rune with a stitching needle, you know!”

“How are we going to get the doors open to make this happen?” Pete asked, wincing a little as Sirius poked the needle into the skin of Pete’s left wrist in the last line of the flame rune character.

“I can use my banishment rune if we time it right, but it’ll probably only send back the first row of men,” Sirius answered, adding another row of dots to Pete’s skin to reinforce the last line. “Okay, Pete, I think that’s it. Give it a try, the same way I told James and Remus. Gather all the heat in your body and focus it into a single point just beyond your rune, in the palm of your hand.” Luckily, his friends were much more adept at learning new skills than he was, and Pete barely had to concentrate before a tiny flame began to flicker in his palm, growing and growing the more Pete got a handle on its maintenance.

“Well done, Pete,” Remus beamed.

“Okay, Sirius, are you ready?” James asked as he and Pete returned to the door. “The next time they ram the door, we’re going to throw it open, and you hit them with the banishment rune.”

“Right,” Sirius said, tearing the shirt off over his head, knowing that the rune on his chest was going to ignite the linen and he didn’t want to worry about being set on fire. “Let’s do it.”  The next second, the Coven members stormed the door again, but as soon as the Coven backed off to regroup, Sirius’ three friends threw open the doors to clear a path for him. The sigil on his chest lit up and Sirius threw back the front lines, the recoil hitting him as a blunt, heavy pain just below that rune.

As the Coven recovered, the four moved out of the preparation chamber and stood with their hands held together. “Be still!” they commanded, with James’ practiced powerful voice ringing out high above the rest. The Coven members had no choice but to obey. As their enemies struggled fruitlessly against the incantation, the rebels moved their hands in perfect synchronicity, performing the motions of Remus’ Reverence skill. From the corner of his eye, Sirius saw Remus intentionally slow his own movements so that the rest of his friends could keep up, so that their signals were all strictly aligned.

When they made the last sign of the movement, Sirius watched as the sea of Coven members, all in black, knelt before the four of them in flawless rhythm. There were more of them now than there had been when Orion had been defeated, hundreds of them, having come from all the nearby battlefields and scrimmages, just to try and capture the traitor and his insurgents. All of them were now kneeling.

The next skill in the order on the ribbon was Pete’s Earth-shifting skill. Simultaneously, the four friends dropped to one knee, digging the fingers of their left hands into the dry dirt, loose underfoot from having been trampled by the dozens of Coven members still kneeling with them. Only moments before, when they were desperately trying to learn one another’s skills, Pete said they had to envision where they wanted their energy to flow, and Sirius had asked Pete where they were meant to direct this shifting of the sands. After some thought, Pete simply told him to think of their objective. The end to the war.

With his fingers in the soil, Sirius closed his eyes and imagined the destruction of everything he hated – the Coven, the manor, his father, the division between the factions, the rune imprinting ceremonies, the combat trials. He felt the shifting of the ground in front of them and opened his eyes just in time to see the Coven members, still kneeling in Reverence, fall to their faces in their imbalance. All around them, the walls of the combat arena began to crack and crumble under the instability.

The demolition was not without casualties – when the stadium walls collapsed, more than a few Coven members found themselves in the path of ruin. Miraculously, or perhaps by grand design, the piece of the cove just behind the four of them stood firm. Covered them, in fact. Protected them.

The final motion was Sirius’ flame. The same hand that they had buried into the clay, they now raised into the sky and, all at once, ignited the flame rune that Sirius had so quickly, but painstakingly, tattooed onto each of their wrists. Coven members flinched and fled at the magnitude and intensity of their combined firestorm as it rose up into the clear, red sky. A white-hot flare burst out from the center, shooting up into a column of fire that extended directly toward the full moon, half scarlet as the eclipse began to expire. With all eyes to the sky, another burst of light spread the flame out into a thin, blue mantle that shot out over their heads, enrobing the sky, a single line of fire searing through the kindling in the atmosphere. If Sirius looked closely enough, he could swear it was burning something away.

And then it was over. The line of fire passed like the tail of a comet overhead and nothing changed. The Coven members still stood before them, looking as murderous as they had been before, if not more so. With a heavy swallow, Sirius glanced to his left, where Remus stood. He took his hand again.

“No matter what happens,” he said quickly. “I will love you always.” The Coven members rushed forward, rune-covered arms outstretched. James took his hand from the other side. Sirius didn’t dare close his eyes. He wanted the last thing he saw in this life to be Remus’ calming smile and golden gaze.

Chapter Text

“Sir, I’ve come to summon you on behalf of the Craftsman.” Before him stood a young man, one he didn’t recognize, but their ranks were growing all the time. It wasn’t unusual to see an unfamiliar face, considering he wasn’t the one in charge of recruitment. On the face of this young man was clear distress, and it left behind a prickle of something uncomfortable in his gut that had long-since been forgotten.

Recognition of that distress quickly and gratefully rolled in, enough to elicit a laugh. “No need to call me sir, I’m not that old and I’m certainly not that important.” There was patent relief in the boy’s face, confirming Sirius’ impression that the distress that had been in his expression was nothing more than the fear of looking foolish, fear of being reprimanded. Sirius wasn’t sure he’d ever felt a worry so trivial when he’d been in the Coven, but then again, that was the point of ending the war, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t the first time James had told his new recruits a false horror story narrative about the ‘Black Coven General’, as he so affectionately referred to Sirius, and how to be careful what they say around him, lest they invoke his wrath. Because Sirius was one of the few Coven members remaining, because of the legends surrounding the terrifying state of his still-ashen left arm, because of his long, dark hair, and his steely gaze, and his now defunct but still daunting runes, it often worked.

“Shall I tell the Craftsman to expect you?” the boy asked. Sirius gave an indecisive shrug.

“No need,” he said with a subtle shake of his head. “I was just headed in his direction.” With a curt nod, the boy left Sirius’ office – what used to be his father’s office in the Black Manor. Of course, it had gone through quite a restructuring, as had the whole Manor. As had the whole countryside.

A year ago, after they’d performed a set of skills that they believed had failed to end the war, they stood hand-in-hand, waiting for their violent demise. The Coven members charged, arms stretched long and runes at the ready. And their runes had failed. For several long minutes, they’d stood in stalemate, face to face, Coven members trying to force their runes to ignite. At the same time, in defense of his friends, James had tried to cast a verbal incantation, Pete had tried to shake the foundations, Remus attempted to cast Dreamless Sleep on as many people as he was able. And they’d failed, too.

They had ended the war, after all. They had ended the use of all skills entirely. They had severed each individual connection with the forces of the universe that had, up to that moment, allowed them to perform magic. But, of course, wars had been won without magic. They would fall back to the old ways.

When it became clear that their runes were now useless ash on their skin, the Coven members had become angrier than ever. Drawing stashed weapons from every hidden place on their body, they’d ground their teeth and charged again. The four friends had begun their retreat back into the chambers, frantic to find physical weapons to replace their skills, preparing themselves for the impending violence.

The violence never arrived. Instead, what did arrive was Garrick Ollivander. With a cry to war, the entire lost Ollivander clan of surely a thousand members came barreling through the forest, from the direction of the Black Manor. In each of their hands, they held a small instrument. Like the branch of a tree. As they shouted in words that Sirius could not understand, lights and explosions and wind and water and fire burst forth from the end of their conduits. In an instant, the Coven members were overtaken. 

“You wanted to see me, Garrick?” Sirius asked as he entered what used to be the weapon repository of the Black Coven. It still held weapons, but the majority were of a different sort. Ollivander referred to this conduit of magic as a wand. As it turned out, while the synchronous skills of the four friends under the blood moon had severed each individual’s connection with the magic of the universe, it was still there. It just needed to be directed. And Garrick Ollivander had been preparing for just that.

Apparently, the Ollivander clan had a prophesy of their own. Sirius could never quite remember the exact wording, having only heard it all the way through a handful of times since then, but it predicted that the Leichan would end the war, and when he did, the current system of magic would be obsolete. It gave basic instructions on the creation of a way to channel the magic, using a core that possessed natural magical properties surrounded by a housing of ancient wood sturdy enough to withstand that magic.

Over the centuries of the clan’s history, every head of the Ollivander clan preserved and added to the library of mythical items that could be used as wand cores. Leichan fur, mandrake root, phoenix feather, dragon heartstring. Throughout the decades, Garrick Ollivander had tinkered with hundreds of thousands of prototype wands but found that the magic was not as potent as he expected it to be.

However, he never forgot the prophesy. Just as in the prophesy of the Last Leichan, it foretold the lunar tetrad, four lunar eclipses. After the third lunar eclipse, Garrick Ollivander organized his clan for war, a clan that had been kept secret for a thousand years. It took them a season to prepare and another season before they arrived to march onto Coven grounds. A thousand clan members carried a magical tool that could barely conduct magic, only to discover the true power of their instruments once Sirius and his friends cut off the magic for everyone else. The magic was still abundant, but it now existed outside of themselves. It now required an apparatus to be able to utilize it at all. And Garrick’s clan were the only ones who had the instructions for how to assemble them. They were lucky Garrick was on their side.

“Sirius, yes!” Garrick said excitedly as Sirius approached. With a jump in his step, he clapped his hands together, his eyes looking wide behind his magnifying frames before he pushed them up into his wild grey hair. Sirius didn’t even bother trying to stifle a smile at the older man’s eccentricities. “I have something special for you, although –” he paused, giving Sirius a solemn look that Sirius tried to ignore. He was getting a lot of those lately. He got the most from James and Pete, “I wish I was presenting this to you in … better circumstances. I really can’t tell you how sorry I am about –” Sirius held up his hand.

“Please,” he said, following a sharp, acrid swallow. “I’d rather not talk about it just now.” It was hard enough being alone. Having people remind him of it on a daily basis didn’t make it any easier.

“Talk about what?” he heard a familiar voice say from somewhere behind him.

“Reg!” Sirius called out with an overcompensating laugh, turning to greet his younger brother, though he found himself flinching just a bit when Regulus encompassed him in a hug. In truth, it was the closest he’d been to another human being in weeks. Even James knew he was too on edge to be touched, but he hadn’t seen Regulus in several days, since he’d gone on a scouting mission for the Kingdom.

“Are you alright?” Regulus asked under his breath, his words close enough only for Sirius to hear.

“I’m fine,” Sirius answered, but his words were chopped. He quickly tried to disguise it by speaking over the silence that was left in their wake. “Are they organizing? Should we be worried?”

“As far as I can tell, the dredges of the Coven are no more than a single village now,” Regulus reported as he let down his hair, so much longer now than it had been a year ago. The worn lightning rune on his wrist was now fully healed, grey in its age and smoothed in texture. “They lost more than half of their members in the infighting from winter. If they are regrouping, it will not happen quickly.”

“Thank the gods,” Garrick sighed in relief. Sirius looked over at Regulus with a knowing smirk.

Regulus rolled his eyes. “What is that look for?”

“Just fondly remembering how long it took us to undo all your Coven brainwashing.”

A second eye roll. “If you’d started with the fact that our father sanctioned the murder of our favourite cousin, it would’ve gone a lot faster.” This time, Sirius was the one to roll his eyes.

“Right,” he nodded. “The part where we were both bred to fight his war wasn’t enough.”

“Eh, enough fighting!” Garrick said, waving his hands erratically. Sirius could only smile. “I need Sirius to pay attention, so I can tell him about his –” All at once, he stopped, blinking rapidly, mouth ajar.

“Well, what is it that you wanted to tell me?” Sirius said with a subdued laugh. Instead of speaking, Garrick reached forward and held Sirius by the chin. He redirected Sirius’ gaze to the door.

Immediately, Sirius went breathless. It had been weeks since he’d seen that sun-bleached halo of dark curls, that tanned skin slashed out with long-faded scars, that soft but cunning golden gaze.

“Moony,” he said, letting out a breath that he’d been holding since Remus left and moving toward the open double doors of the repository-turned-workshop. The clever smile on Remus’ face had been there since Sirius looked over, but it brightened when Sirius bolted over. Remus planted his feet to let Sirius barrel into him, unrestricted. When Remus took him into his arms, he felt the thread between them relax and loosen. It was the only bit of individual magic left in the world and Sirius relished it.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to get back,” Remus whispered into the wild tendrils of Sirius’ dark hair, tightening his hold on Sirius for only a moment before purposefully pulling him away. After all the years they spent hiding, Sirius almost felt that familiar panic at Remus distancing himself, but that fear quickly dissolved as he realized Remus was only adjusting his position so that he could place a slow and tender kiss to Sirius’ lips. Between kisses, he spoke. “It was quite a lengthy process to go through.”

“I should’ve come with you,” Sirius said, admonishing himself for the hundredth time.

“You had to stay here, Sirius, this Kingdom settlement is yours to govern.”

“But you needed me,” Sirius emphasized, carding his fingers through Remus’ ever-lengthening hair. “It was still a funeral, after all, no matter how many consignment rituals had to be done.”

Perhaps it would’ve been in poor taste for Sirius to attend the funeral of Remus’ father, Lyall Lupin, considering how long their two families had been enemies. But the war had ended in Lyall’s lifetime. The rivalry between them was over. Not to mention, on more than one occasion, Sirius and Remus had traveled to the main Kingdom settlement together. First, to officially meet Remus’ family and then many times for celebrations, including Sirius’ and Remus’ union ceremony (to which, of course, James and Pete had accompanied them) where they wore crowns of red maple leaves and bound their tattooed wrists with the same (now-unraveled) lotus silk ribbon. Nobody had been more supportive of their bond than Lyall had been, made most clear when he appointed Sirius as leader of the Kingdom outpost on the land that used to belong to his father’s Coven. And Sirius had lived up to Lyall’s faith.

When Lyall had grown more ill over the last several months, Remus steeled himself to take over the central Kingdom community, but now that it was finally here, Sirius could see the exhaustion and grief in Remus’ expression. It had been hard enough work uniting the tribes and clans under the Kingdom banner, rebuilding the Coven grounds to become more suitable for peace rather than for war, quelling Coven uprisings from their now scattered members, but then Remus had the death of his father right on its heels. On top of his sadness, Remus had to suddenly lead what was becoming an entire nation.

Luckily, he had plenty of friends to help him. Of course, Sirius handled the old Coven grounds, and Garrick was at his right hand to help with crafting wands for all the new members of their Kingdom. James was the initial liaison between the clans and Kingdom, and with his charisma, it took no time at all to win them over to the idea of unification. The tribes were a little less enthusiastic about joining with prior Coven members and clans that had been lost for a thousand years, but with Pete’s careful and clever encouragement, they eventually came around. Both of them still had their hands full trying to maintain those relationships, acting as intermediaries between their fathers, who had been appointed leaders of their respective Kingdom villages, and Sirius and Remus, who suddenly became Kingdom commanders overnight because of their heroics in the war, because of their experience in politics and administration.

“I have you now,” Remus said, burrowing himself further into Sirius’ arms.

“Gods, am I glad you’re back,” Sirius hummed gratefully into Remus’ hair, still warm from the sun.

“Ahem!” they heard Garrick loudly and brazenly clear his throat to get their attention. With an amused grin, Remus let Sirius pull away a bit, but kept him within his arms as they looked over at their Craftsman, their Wandwright. “Apologies for interrupting a sentimental moment, but the timing is now perfect since the two of you are right here!” he said with excitement, throwing his hands into the air as he turned back to his work bench. “Ah, wait, they’re here somewhere, I set them out just for such a moment and now I can’t seem to –” he mumbled to himself, squatting and rummaging through the wooden boxes that housed new wands. “Yes, here we are!” he shouted triumphantly, popping upright with a wooden box in each hand. One had a gold inscription of Remus’ name, the other a silver engraving of Sirius’ name.

“Garrick,” Remus said in awe as he traced over the flowery script of his name.

“They’re beautiful,” Sirius said with a pleased smile. At first, he didn’t bother opening it. After all, Sirius and Remus were among the first to be gifted with wands, made by Garrick Ollivander himself.

But Garrick hastily prompted, “Open them!” still with the same level of excitement, so the two did as they were told. They weren’t quite the same as other wand boxes – those were two components that fit snugly together, one on top of the other. These, however, were hinge boxes that had a clasp on the other side. Remus got his open first and Sirius heard the soft gasp of surprise at the contents.

The moment Sirius opened the box, finding it lined with black silk to cushion the precious instrument, he knew. The colour of the wood was unmistakable – it was red maple, the same as the tree that Sirius and Remus had dozed off under so many times in their youth, the same tree that Sirius had kissed Remus under for the very first time. When he plucked the wand from the satin, the pattern became clearer. Down the handle of the wand were Sirius’ runes, the same ones that were on his skin.

As he glanced over at Remus’ wand, he found it was made of a matching material – the same red maple. The head of the wand seemed to be carved out into a rounded shape and, upon seeing it, Remus let out a delicate laugh. He glanced up at Garrick with a curious gaze. “The full moon?” he clarified, and Garrick nodded, with a slight, pink blush on both his cheeks that gave away his apprehension.

“I know you haven’t been the Leichan for some time,” he stammered, which was unusual for Garrick. “But, well, your birthmark will always be a sign that you were the saviour who ended the war.”

“We ended the war,” he corrected softly, and Garrick nodded his agreement.

“The runes on Sirius’ wand mean the same. Just as the ones still branded onto his skin.”

A gentle breath moved through Remus’ lips. “Considering my husband still calls me Moony, I suppose I won’t ever be separated from the full moon,” Remus said, winking in Sirius’ direction.

“That’s not all!” Garrick said, his usual enthusiasm returning tenfold. “The core of the wand is the most important part – that’s the component of the wand that channels the magic, you see –” He glanced up to see Sirius and Remus nodding in patient comprehension, “– Ah, you know this, of course, but these wands … well, there are no other two like them in the universe.” He looked over at the wands in what could only be described as reverence before looking between Remus and Sirius. “The cores of these wands are the last remaining threads of lotus silk in the world. Gold for Remus, Silver for Sirius.”

“Garrick,” Sirius said on an exhale of disbelief. “Our lotus silk?”

“The very same,” he said with a smile of accomplishment.

“It’s perfect,” Remus said with a pleasurable sigh, testing the weight of the wand in his hand.

“They will both be extremely potent, as I’m sure you already know, as lotus silk has matchless magical properties, but the rarity of it makes it even more effective,” Garrick added, beaming.

“How can we ever repay you for this?” Remus asked at once.

And Garrick didn’t hesitate to reply. “Build me my own shop, for Kingdom’s sake!” Their laughter echoed throughout the repository, and Sirius clapped Garrick on the shoulder in his delight.

“Anything you want, Garrick, my friend. Anything at all!” Sirius said, his boisterous laughter moving with him as he and Remus exited the workshop.

Remus’ work taking over for his father had only just begun. He had a long way to go until he was ready to become the luminary of the entire Kingdom. His first order of business was centralizing the Kingdom as a whole. Rather than having a settlement here that was led by the Potters, a settlement there that was led by the Pettigrews – he wanted them to be together. Eventually, James and Pete would have to take over for their fathers, too, and Remus didn’t want them to be split up. Not to mention, with Sirius leading the branch that was once on Coven grounds, and Remus having to go to the main Kingdom site to manage the official business that once belonged to his father, they would be separated more regularly.

The solution was to build a capital city. They could designate officials to run the separate villages in their steads, but the ultimate say would come down from their dignitaries in the capital. Remus and Sirius and James and Pete could stay together, rule together, with the help of those who knew their communities best. It wouldn’t be like it had been in the days of the tribes and covens and clans. They would work together, create a community together, where differences could be shared and celebrated.

Of course, now that magic had been changed, now that they had to learn how to use a tool to create and cast it, the next logical step would be to establish a school where individuals could go to learn how to wield their wand. Remus and Sirius had briefly discussed this dream, and Sirius suggested that perhaps building such a large facility within the capital might be too constricting. People, especially children, needed plenty of space to practice magic, space to discover themselves and their skills. Of course, Remus agreed, and they started daydreaming architectural plans of an expansive education grounds. With all the rooms that they wanted to put in place, the end result would practically be a castle.

While they were in this together, Remus sometimes had meetings to attend at which Sirius’ presence wasn’t strictly required, more so since the death of Remus’ father. Granted, Sirius was always welcome to attend, but he wasn’t always in the mood to attend. That was most true now, after Remus had returned from having been away for weeks on end and Sirius had yet to have a single moment alone with him. It was almost too much to be in the same room as Remus and have to maintain a certain level of professionalism, despite the fact that everyone in the Kingdom knew they were married.

Because of this, Sirius sometimes escaped to the place where he and Remus had found themselves alone, for so many years. The river had changed very little since the end of the war. It was a little wider, having overrun a few times in the torrential rains that followed the war’s end, but the water still flowed smoother and calmer here than any other part of the river, their red maple was still standing tall, the stones were still uncommonly smooth, and they still nestled him close, a cradle to keep him.

There was one other difference. When he knelt to pick a skipping stone, he could no longer feel the thread that connected his palm to each one. That thread, he had come to find out, had been the magic that they’d severed that night. The thread that connected him to Remus was made of the same magic, but the strength of their bond had sheathed that magic and protected it. Never again could that thread be severed. Not by choice, not by distance, and not by death. They’d have that thread forever.

With his knees in the scattered stones, Sirius closed his eyes and hovered his palm over their surface, but he felt nothing from them. Arbitrarily, he picked one, and without looking at it or testing the smoothness of its surface or the thinness of the stone, he leaned backward, just a bit, and flung it in the direction of the water. Without that thread to catapult it across, it skipped only once before sinking.

“That was absolute shite,” he heard from somewhere behind him, and he didn’t even turn. Just let the smile run across his face as he waited for Remus to come and wrap his arms around Sirius’ waist.

“It seems I forgot everything you taught me,” Sirius said, snuggling down with his back to Remus’ chest, holding Remus’ forearms. “Maybe you should give me another lesson on the proper technique.”

“I only coached you that day to get close to you,” Remus admitted, his breath a whisper against the shell of Sirius’ ear, leaving Sirius to shudder below it. “Now I can be close to you whenever I like.”

“Not necessarily,” Sirius said with a dramatic sigh. “Since you’re always in meetings.”

“Meetings that you should also be in,” Remus reminded him with a sharp laugh.

For a moment, Sirius paused, growing solemn. “Do you really think we can do this? Build a whole city?” At first, Remus’ response was silent – just a tightening of his arms around Sirius’ waist, a drop of his chin down onto Sirius’ shoulder, a slump of his heavy shoulders, like the weight was too much to bear.

But he quickly adjusted, renewing his height as he said, “We triumph together, remember?” The smile on Sirius’ face was quick and unintentional, but he let it stay as he nodded his agreement. “But I didn’t come down here to find you so we could talk politics and city-planning,” Remus added softly, surprising Sirius by feathering a delicate kiss to the back of Sirius’ neck, just behind where his binding rune sat useless.

“Is that so?” Sirius replied in a breathy voice, tilting his head to let Remus at more skin.

Remus hummed his approval and the vibration echoed out into Sirius’ skin. “I was hoping we could spar. Like we used to.” His fingers pushed fabric out of the way to travel down Sirius’ shoulder.

“Or,” Sirius offered, untying the collar of his tunic to push it off the shoulder that Remus’ lips were kissing across, peppering over old wounds and old runes. “We could skip the sparring and go straight to the thing we really wanted to be doing instead of using sparring as our only means of touching each other.” As Remus’ fingers slipped underneath the bottom hem of Sirius’ tunic, he laughed.

“You know me so well,” Remus mumbled, still laughing, mouth to Sirius’ skin. When he pulled the open-collared shirt from over Sirius’ head, Sirius turned on his heel and assailed Remus with a fierce kiss.

In the glow of twilight, underneath the cover of the red maple, they moved in harmony, skin against skin for the first time in weeks, and Sirius couldn’t help but remember the first time Remus had straddled Sirius’ hips, just like this, underneath this very tree. It was the first time Remus had ever kissed him with intent, the first time Remus had touched him with that much desire, the first time Remus confessed his love for Sirius without leaving him afterward. The first time Remus had told him the truth.

As Remus laid underneath him now, naked and spent and dreamy, Sirius once again traced the birthmarks on Remus’ skin. Despite the fact that he had relinquished the strength of the Leichan to Orion Black to end the war and save Sirius’ life, the freckles that made up his birthmarks still followed the lunar cycle, still changed to match the night sky, and Sirius never tired of watching their endless expedition.

With Sirius on his chest and his hands behind his head, Remus watched as Sirius delicately traced the pattern of the full moon on his right arm. The thread between them had only strengthened, only grown, so when Sirius touched him like this, just like the first time Sirius ever laid his hands on Moony’s markings, Remus couldn’t help but writhe in need underneath him. Until he could no longer resist.

They stayed at the river all night, sleeping on the warm stones underneath the red maple, their desires waxing and waning like the moon overhead. The moon was full tonight, matching the ring of freckles on Remus’ skin, leaving Remus more relaxed than Sirius had ever seen him. Being robbed of the Leichan within him may have left him without the dominion over darkness, but he didn’t need it. He didn’t even need the skill of his Kingdom, the one he’d lost the night the war ended. Remus was more talented with a wand than anyone, even Garrick Ollivander himself. And he could still make Sirius kneel.

With starlight on his left and moonlight on his right, with visions of the silver in Sirius’ eyes and the gold in his own, for their river that had flooded and a blood moon that had nearly torn them apart, Remus kissed Sirius underneath the light of the full moon overhead, and Sirius had never been more grateful that Remus had traded the Leichan’s life for the conqueror’s fall that night. And with Remus’ lips to his own, Remus reminded him, as he did every night, that no matter what, he would love him always.