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Chapter Text

August, 2000

“It still hasn't really hit me,” Sirius said. He pushed James down against the side of the broken sofa so he could lean against him.

“That's because you haven't stopped being stoned since graduation day,” James said. “Sober up and you'll feel better.” James rifled his hair and Sirius practically snuggled backward into him.

“Are you two about to make out again?” Pete asked from the giant recliner with the stuffing sticking out.

“You do know that never happened,” James said.

Sirius stuck out his tongue at Pete. “I would if James would have me. All of you should take a hit.” He gestured to the little box on the table, half open, that held his pot.

“I can't,” Pete said. “I have a job to go to.”

“In a week!” Sirius said.

“What if they drug test?” Pete asked. “You don't know what it's like since you got that stupid money from your uncle, Sirius. Some of us have to make our own futures and… You know what? Fuck this. I told my mom I'd come home for the weekend anyway.” Pete stood up abruptly and walked out.

“Oh my God, what the fuck was that about?” Sirius asked, reaching for the bong. “You may think I'm too stoned, but I'm not stoned enough for Pete's drama.”

“His dad's out of work again. I think things have been strained. He told me the other day that he was hoping to get a job with this investment place right out of college.”

Sirius snorted. “In four years. Try having no parents to go back to.”

“You've got my Mum and Dad, though I think they might go back to England.”

Sirius liked when James called his parents Sirius's family too. His mother had once told him to call her “mum” which was funny and British on his tongue, almost like a better mother, much better than his own. Still, he didn't like mooching. He lit the bong and took a hit, feeling the waves of relaxation run through him, letting everything slide away.

“Wait, what?”

James leaned on the foot of the sofa and tilted his head back. “I think they miss all their old friends. It's like, this tight knit Indian thing they had there. Or, we had, I guess. Anyway, you heard Dad telling us all about the deal for his company being sold.”

“Oh yeah.” Sirius sort of remembered that.

“And you know you're lucky, getting this place from your uncle and that money. Plus, there's college! We won't be far. You'll join the real world yet.”

Sirius groaned. “I'd rather, I don't know, be somewhere outside of time. Outside of whatever bullshit is making Pete act like a dick. Outside of real world, whatever the fuck that means.”

“There's nowhere like that, Sirius,” James said.

Sirius stared at his friend. His glasses were askew and his black hair was a mess. A slightly worn Radiohead T-shirt hung off his skinny frame. He was completely perfect. Sirius knew that James was straight, and his love for him was beyond that anyway. He was like a brother, though thinking about brothers was too painful. He was like something deeper than a brother, whatever that was. Sirius tried to pull his head out of wherever it had gone. Probably to that place outside time. He always got too maudlin about James when he was stoned.

“Yeah, I know. We're all stuck here in the broken, shitty real world where parents fuck you over and death happens and love is for other people.”

“Oh, come on, Sirius. It's not that bad.”

“Time keeps marching on.”

“Did I mention you need to lay off the pot, just, like a little bit?”

“Come to the show with me tomorrow night in Northampton?”

“I'm not going to go see whatever weird band you're seeing.”

“They're a local ska band.”

“Ska? Punk or whatever you call it now isn't my thing, Sirius. Aren't you meeting Fabian and Gideon anyway?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. You could still come.” He knew he sounded a little desperate, but there was something about this summer he was desperate to hold onto. As much as he had hated some things about Hogwarts, it was all ending. Pete had his very important internship. James was in love. School was over. Who knew what came next. Was it any wonder he wanted that place outside time? The future was so uncertain.

“Can't. Lily and I have plans all day. We're supposed to have brunch with her sister and her boyfriend.”

“That's not plans. That's torture by townies. God, you're so whipped.”

“And happy to be.”

“That's only in the morning.”

“I'm sure we'll find a way to amuse ourselves later, especially if you're not here.”

“Hey, this is my bachelor pad!”

“Some bachelor pad.”

Sirius looked around his apartment. The industrial roots of the space were obvious. It had been the offices for the old factory his family had once owned. Minimal work had been done to spruce it up, but Sirius didn't mind. It let him stay in Meade for the summer before college without feeling like he was intruding at James's parents house in Cambridge. And it gave James and Pete somewhere to hang out. “It's retro chic.”

“Ha,” James said.

“Ha yourself.”

“You're too stoned to even have a comeback.”

“Like ha was so witty.”

“Ha ha,” James said slowly, his faded British accent coming out more than usual.

Sirius reached up and grabbed a cushion from the sofa and knocked him with it.

James, taking up the challenge, grabbed the other cushion and slammed him back, hard. James played lacrosse and his muscles were always strong. Soon they were wrestling each other to the ground, laughing, trading insults.

If this wasn't that perfect world outside the real one that Sirius hoped for, he wasn't even sure what was.

Retrial Season Three

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice) I hardly saw his face.

(man's voice) ...and then he says, I can do whatever I want. I'm bigger than Jesus in this county.

(another man's voice) ...have you ever heard of a case where the judge did something like that?

(another woman's voice) ...his brother should be in there with him.

(another man's voice) I swear to God, I'm innocent.

(musical interlude)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, the case of Rodolphus Lestrange, convicted in the kidnapping and rape of Alice Longbottom five years ago in the town of Hog's Neck, North Carolina.

Announcer's Voice: Episode One.

Remus: First, I have to explain how I first learned about Rodolphus's case.

Older woman's voice: (over a crackly connection) So if you could get on down here and do some investigating like you did before, I think if anyone could prove there was something fishy out this here case, it would be you.

Remus: I get a lot of calls and emails about cases, but rarely is anyone as persistent as Augusta Longbottom, the mother-in-law of the victim in the case.

Augusta: Because there ain't no way he done that alone. And he's in there saying he's innocent, but he's protecting his brother. And people are letting him get away with it. They keep saying he's wrongly imprisoned and it ain't right.

Remus: Augusta had a quite a tale to tell and once I'd heard pieces of it through her emails and messages, I became intrigued. Not only did she not think Rodolphus Lestrange was guilty, but she felt that his imprisonment wasn't enough, not if many people in their town believed he was innocent...

Remus looked down at his notes for the various potential season four projects. The truth was that he couldn't seem to get excited about any of them in particular. This was going on five years of just being immersed in criminals and prisons. Maybe it was getting to him. Two years of doing a deep dive on crimes that had turned out to be worse than they originally thought had also done a number. He had started out thinking he was going to be doing the innocence thing.

“Hola, chavo. You look like you've gone all broody again.” Gabby leaned on the wall just outside his office, poking her head in.

Remus shrugged. “You finish up the work for that food podcast?”

“Yes, and now I'm hungry, thanks so much for that.”

That elicited a smile. Gabby was his favorite person at work and the first person he had ever hired. The minute she had come into the interview, round face and curly brown hair and bits of Spanish slipping out, he knew they'd be kindred spirits. She was as much a friend as an employee at this point.

“I think you should do the prep school murder,” Gabby said.

“Huh.”

“I know you want to.”

“Do I?” Remus looked down at his notebook again.

“Don't you?” she countered.

“What I want is to do something that touches on prison overcrowding or private prisons or mental illness or illness in general in prison. Getting adequate HIV treatment in prison is still a problem, for example.”

Gabby came all the way into the office and sat in the chair opposite his desk. “Obviously HIV treatment is close to your heart. But stop treating it like a checklist. I know you want to do this story.”

“I don't want to defend some white, overprivileged prep school bro who thought he was above the law.” Remus scowled. There it was. Gabby was right. He was drawn to the case. But it didn't fit any of the things he felt he should be looking into. The printout from the old newspaper article was sitting on top of the file and he pulled it toward him across the strewn papers. His desk was usually neat, but he'd been worn out lately, trying to produce another podcast, doing new media talks, mentoring a couple of new interns, and coming down to the deadline to really commit himself to a new story for the next season. Sirius Black looked out from his mug shot that headed the story. Something about the young man's pale, shocked face and wild, black hair compelled Remus. He wondered what the man looked like now, after years of prison.

“You don't have to defend him,” Gabby argued. “I know you want to do another actually innocent prisoner, but it'll happen eventually. You can't know if he's innocent or not until we've done the work. And even then, you probably won't know for sure.”

Remus knew she was right. He still felt victimized by Rodolphus having made him question his guilt for even a minute, especially after having found all the evidence later that things were even worse. Something about that experience had him still feeling dirty. It had been their most popular season to date, but uncovering what had turned out to be a brother serial killer team when they had thought they were investigating a single rape, had made the whole world seem darker to Remus. “I know,” he snapped.

“And let me just reframe that whole narrative,” Gabby said. “He was an outcast queer kid who got pegged with a murder by a homophobic small town cop who couldn't understand that his bromance with his straight best friend was platonic.”

“Maybe.” Gabby was good at swaying him.

“And as for prison issues, you're going to find those anywhere. There's not a single prison in America that's going to be devoid of the kind of bullshit that you find in prisons. He's only an hour or so away. Go see him. Get the lowdown. Make the call.”

Remus looked at the mess on his desk. “You're right, of course.”

“Por supuesto, chavo. You know it.”

Remus sighed.

“And in the meantime, come out and dance with me and Jen tomorrow. We'll be your lesbian wingmen and get you laid.”

“I'm reporting you for inappropriate sexual talk in the workplace,” Remus said sternly, then added, “Ask me again next week when I've figured this out and gotten some rest.”

Gabby stood up, smiling. “Glad I could help, boss.”

Remus looked at the photos he had of Sirius Black again. The mug shot was a young man, barely more than a boy, looking like a deer in the headlights. One of the newspaper printouts he had showed him just before his graduation from prep school, his arm around his two best friends, his face lit up with laughter and joy, the other two young men looking on with a sense of loving exasperation.

Remus hadn't had a great adolescence. For a moment, he imagined himself there with them, Sirius's arm around him instead of his murdered best friend. He shook off the feeling. Gabby was right. His gut was telling him to do this story, but his gut was flawed, maybe even twisted. The man was likely a murderer. He would just have to keep his distance if they ended up doing the story.

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode One

Remus: The first thing I want to do is lay out a lot of information about this case very quickly. We're going to come back to a number of aspects of the crime and the trial, as well as things about Sirius Black himself. But for now, I'd just like to get the broad strokes.

(news audio clip): …a shocking breakthrough tonight in the case of those missing young people in Meade. Police say their bodies were found in an abandoned warehouse and they have made an arrest in their murder. It ends two days of searching by police and townspeople, as well as hope that the two recent Hogwarts Prep graduates might be found alive. James Potter, age 19, and Lily Eva… (clip fades)

Remus: By all accounts, James Potter and Sirius Black were best friends at Hogwarts Prep.

(woman's voice): They were immediate friends, from the moment we arrived at Hogwarts, you couldn't separate those two. It was a tradition that you kept your same roommates the whole way through, but I know they thought about breaking them up several times, just because Sirius and James were such trouble together.

Remus: That's Marlene McKinnon, a classmate of Sirius and James's at Hogwarts Prep, a prestigious, old-fashioned style boarding school nestled in the hills of western Massachusetts. I had never heard of Hogwarts before this story, but it's clear that if you move in certain circles in New England, that it's one of a few schools that wealthy families consider for their kids. Think Dead Poets' Society and you'll have the right idea, though Hogwarts went co-ed earlier than many of these other schools, in the 1960's.

Marlene: They never split them up in the end, but the two of them, and to a lesser extent their third roommate, Peter, were a set.

Remus: So, what exactly did that mean?

Marlene: They were just always together. They had other friends, but you hardly ever saw one without the other. They did lacrosse together and chess club. I think they arranged their schedules together. And they were well-known for pranks. And for some crazy underground parties. The three of them once flooded the old gym while construction was paused in the winter. Then they set up an ice rink on it at midnight. I mean, we all got caught, but no one could ever prove it was them. Apparently it caused a lot of headaches later on. Like, cleaning it up did.

Remus: So they were nice pranks? Fun kid stuff?

Marlene: Well, not always. There were a couple of kids who they just didn't get along with. At one point, they tricked this kid into thinking they were throwing one of their parties up in town. So he sneaked out of school and got all the way into town hoping to catch them. They had a sort of rivalry. But instead he found himself at this biker bar and got a decent beating. I don't think that's what they meant to happen, but I know the headmaster was pissed and both of them were nearly expelled. And it was harsh. Sometimes they just plain humiliated some of the other kids. They could be cruel. Plus, there was the thing that happened with Regulus at the start of our junior year, which wasn't a prank, obviously, but some people said it was hazing.

Remus: The thing with Regulus is that Sirius's younger brother, who was a freshman at the time, went out drinking with Sirius in town, something the kids apparently did from time to time. He was hit by a car as they walked on the side of the road and was killed instantly.

Marlene: After that, Sirius's parents disowned him and he went to live with the Potters' that summer.

(Male voice): The Blacks and the Potters were both rich, but that was pretty much all they had in common.

Remus: That's Peter Pettigrew, Sirius and James's other roommate.

Peter: The Blacks were old money. Old New England money. They were the sort of people who talked about having ancestors on the Mayflower. You can imagine how conservative they were politically. And, honestly, a little racist sometimes. The Potters were Indian, though they came to the US from England. James's father had some new technology company, and this was in the early days of the big tech boom. They moved the company to Boston when James was a kid. They were really cool, you know? James always had the latest gadgets. But to the Blacks, they were “new money” and that wasn't so good.

Remus: After that summer, Sirius came out as gay.

Marlene: Now, it's obviously not a big deal, but at the time, well, he was the first gay person I knew and the first person out at Hogwarts. I think at other schools back then maybe, but this was Hogwarts.

Remus: Their senior year, James started dating Lily Evans, a fellow Hogwarts student attending on scholarship. She was from the nearby town of Meade. Many of Sirius and James’s former classmates say that Sirius didn’t get along with Lily, at least at first, but that James began spending more and more time with her. The two were both accepted to Amherst College in the fall.

(News audio clip): Police in Meade tonight are asking that anyone with information about the whereabouts of James Potter and Lily Evans should contact them immediately. The two recent Hogwarts graduates have been missing for three days now. I'll turn it over to our reporter in the Berkshires…

Remus: Four days after they went missing, James and Lily were found in an abandoned warehouse belonging to Black's parents. Sirius was discovered on the scene as well.

(Male voice with a thick Massachusetts accent): It was the most shocking crime I've ever seen on the job. You know, up here, we don't see big city violent crime. Gang activity is low. And this was gruesome. They'd been dead for awhile. Coroner said at least two days. And Black was holding the body of the male. We were all pretty shocked. I never seen anything like it.

Remus: That's Sheriff Scrimgeour, who was on the scene when they discovered the bodies and Sirius Black.

Scrimgeour: There was some who thought he didn't do it, but the evidence was overwhelming. If you had seen him laughing when he was found, you would know he had done it. And he had motive too. We were lucky it was as wrapped up as it was.

Remus: We're going to talk more about the motive and evidence as the show goes on, but the gist is this…

The phone call had been relatively easy to arrange. They'd gotten the story on an anonymous suggestion, so there was no one else to speak with, but Sirius Black's lawyer, a disorganized older man named Diggle, had said he responded to email regularly. Two days after his email, Remus's phone buzzed while he was grabbing a fast food dinner around the corner from his apartment.

“Hello?” He jockeyed the takeout bag and his messenger bag around, nearly dropping the phone and ending up with salsa dripping out of the inadequate plastic container onto his jeans. There was some sort of recorded message playing. He was relatively sure it was a telemarketer. “Yes?” he asked, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

“Hello?” The voice was deep and slightly gravelly, hesitant.

“This is Remus Lupin.” It was only the fact that he used his phone for work and got all kinds of calls that kept him on.

“This is Sirius Black. You emailed me.”

“Oh, yes.” Remus felt oddly caught out, as if Sirius Black could see him with salsa spilled on his cardigan. “Thanks for calling me, Mr. Black. I'd love to talk to you about your case. Like I explained, I host a podcast called Retrial and I'm looking at possible stories for the upcoming season. Yours came across my desk and if you're interested in working with us, it's under consideration.”

“You say it like I've just won a drawing I didn't know I entered,” Sirius Black said.

“Ha, yes, I can see how it could come off that way. Have you heard the podcast?”

“I listened to some of the first season yesterday.” His voice became slightly smoother, warm and interested. Remus took it as a good sign.

“Well, can I explain some of what we do, Mr. Black?”

“Yeah. And call me Sirius.”

“You can call me Remus, of course.” Remus launched into an explanation of how the process usually worked for him. How he would poke himself into every corner of Sirius's case and his past and how everything he found would be revealed on the podcast, which was popular and regularly made the top ten on iTunes. What Sirius could expect in terms of attention to his case. How the fans of the show often went even further than anything Remus was able to do in the several months he would spend on the case.

“So, you're going to prove I'm innocent?” Sirius sounded skeptical and Remus found that his heart strings tugged. He tried to wall himself off and be professional. This was always hard for him.

“Don't think of it that way,” Remus said. “I'm going to explore the case. If the evidence I find suggests you didn't do it, I'm going to present that, yes. The first season subject ended up getting a new trial and being released. The Innocence Project has praised our podcast and we got our season two subject from there. There's a chance she may be released. But I found evidence that our season three subject was actually guilty of other crimes. And some of what we focus on has to do with the trial and the court system. I don't know what the ultimate framing of the story would look like if we chose you. We might mostly talk about your trial and your expensive lawyer who apparently did such a poor job. I understand he was later disbarred?”

“Financial wrongdoing.” Sirius sounded fierce. “How do I sign up?”

“I'll come and meet with you next week, if you're open to it, and start researching. There are a couple of other possible stories. This will really come down to our… well, our chemistry. And how interesting you come across and what I turn up on initial research.”

“So this is all down to my sparkling personality,” Sirius quipped. “Perfect. I can turn on the charm. I always knew Mother forcing me to take etiquette classes and cotillion would pay off. Well, no, I didn't actually. I think I called them a complete waste of time and asked all the boys to dance during the ballroom dance practice just to piss them off. Oh, and because I turned out to be flamingly gay, though at age ten, I really didn't realize it. But hey, eventually, right?”

Remus found himself grinning outside in the early fall chill of a Boston evening. Gabby had been right. This was the story he wanted to do.

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode Two

Remus: We ran through a lot of information about the murder of James Potter and Lily Evans in the last episode. A couple of things were really at the heart of the prosecution's case against James's prep school best friend and former roommate, Sirius Black. First, that his alibi didn't hold up for the time of the crime, and second, that he had a motive.

Sirius: The motive makes no sense! It contradicts itself. I can't have killed them because I was in love with James and have killed them because I was a racist who thought James shouldn't date white people. That's completely inconsistent!

Remus: Sirius and I have had a number of conversations that sound a lot like that. His frustration comes through the clearest when he talks about things people said about his relationship with James. He's not really wrong here. It doesn't take a genius to see that the motive the prosecution presented for the murders is flawed. I wanted to present it at the start to get you thinking about that because we're going to come back to it by the end. But I want to start with that messy alibi and the timeline for the murders.

James and Lily were last seen for sure at the Three Broomsticks Inn in Meade having a tense breakfast with Lily's sister and her then boyfriend. They left there around eleven in the morning. The coroner gave the time of death a pretty wide window, any time from about 4:00 that afternoon until about 9:00 that evening. Sirius was seen in town at a gas station that afternoon and his cell phone records verify that. The phone records and credit card statements verify that he was on the other side of town from where James and Lily were later found, but close to the river where the weapon that bludgeoned them to death may have originated. Still, the prosecution believed the murder must have happened later in the evening, because that's when Sirius's alibi starts to fall apart. He also doesn’t have much of an alibi for the days after the murder, when family and friends were frantically searching for the missing couple. There were multiple times when the prosecution contended that Sirius likely visited the murdered bodies of his former classmates since the warehouse property where they were found was adjacent to his makeshift apartment in an office space he inherited.

But first, let’s focus on that night of the murders.

(sounds of loud, punk music playing in a club)

Remus (speaking loudly): This is the Weird Sisters, a music club in Northampton, Massachusetts, about an hour's drive away from Meade. Sirius had a ticket to see a show here that night, using one of a number of fake ID's that he often relied on, but he got stood up by the friends who were supposed to meet him.

Sirius: Yeah, I had a pile of fake ID's. There was a guy who used to make them in town and sell them to Hogwarts kids. They were decent quality too. Sometimes I'd use them in Meade to get a drink and people always knew. I don't know who I thought I was fooling. But I'd shove some money at them and they'd serve me anyway and look the other way. But if we went out of town, the ID's were mostly to get into clubs and hear good music. James and I got turned out of a place in Boston, but they usually worked, especially in Northampton and if we went to New Haven.

Remus: This was before 9/11, obviously.

Sirius: Yeah. That's weird. I was in the hole when that happened. In solitary I mean. I'd just gone in. Anyway, I guess it's a bigger deal now, having fake ID's. Back then, it seemed like we all had them.

(sounds of ska music)

Remus: This was the band Sirius wanted to hear that night and he planned to meet a pair of brothers who had graduated from Hogwarts a couple of years ahead of him, Fabian and Gideon Prewett, both design students at the University of Massachusetts at the time. This is Fabian.

Fabian: We had a mix up with our sister that night. It happened a bunch over the summers back then. Cell phones weren't really reliable, you know? We…

Every prison was the same and yet different. Remus was keeping count, something that was stupid, because it wasn't like you got a ten percent discount on your hundredth prison visit. Twentieth visit gets a cavity search free.

But he had started as a kid, when he first went to visit his father. Prison number one. Azkaban was prison number thirty-two. Same as his age. Medium security. Decent grounds. White uniforms with not any orange in sight.

Visiting procedure was pretty standard. His equipment got searched and he had to get special permission for it, which he had already called about doing. He stretched out for the pat down. He put on the sticker identifying himself as a visitor. He walked through each room and finally into the large visitors room.

Guards looked harassed in there. At least they still allowed actual visitation. This new wave of video visitations that cost families an arm and a leg was infuriating. Families who had moved across states to be near loved ones were suddenly nickel and dimed into shelling out for each visit, where they couldn't even see their father or husband or wife except through a screen. It was yet another way to make money of prisoners and dehumanize everyone.

For a moment, he didn't see Sirius, but then he came into view. Even though he was seated at one of the long cafeteria style tables, he was obviously tall. He was skinny, with the look of someone who simply doesn't eat enough or take care of himself. His black hair, slightly curly and messy around his face reinforced this impression. Remus knew prison haircuts could be an annoyance. Sirius looked like he hadn't bothered with one recently.

As Remus approached him, he could see that other than his slightly mussed hair, he was tidy, his white prison uniform unwrinkled and his nails meticulously clean. He was also, Remus realized as he stood across the table, indisputably gorgeous. With a proper haircut, he could model or be the pretty boy front person for a band, or simply clean up at any club. He was that attractive.

“Sirius?”

Sirius nodded. “Nice to meet you. I'd get up and shake your hand, but, well.” He gestured to the guards. “I guess those etiquette classes were wasted after all. They didn't cover prison rules.”

Remus smiled and took the seat opposite. Some prisons had prisoners behind glass, but low and medium security prisons often had this set up, where the visiting hours were limited and well-guarded but prisoners could mingle freely in the room. It was more humane this way, Remus thought, but many people didn't want prisoners to have humane treatment.

“Thanks for letting me come,” Remus said.

“It's not like I was going anywhere.” Remus wondered if he made everything into a joke.

“No, but you could say no. This is my recording equipment. Special permission and all. Mind if I start recording?”

Sirius shook his head so Remus put his small set up on the table. “So, tell me about your case,” Remus said. He liked to hear what people had to say about their lives with the most open ended questions first. If they talked, it was a good indication that he'd get interesting footage, if nothing else. Just a minute into talking, Remus had no doubt that Sirius would give him perfect footage with interesting soundbites at every turn. Remus's fingers flew over his notepad, making quick notes for later as Sirius recounted in sardonic tones his version of how he had come to be accused of murder and ended up in prison for the last twelve years.

He peppered things with asides about how useless his parents' teachings about how to be a good son had turned out to be in every possible way. He made casual reference to a sort of American aristocracy that Remus had always thought existed only in the imagination, a world where people asked your last name and who you were related to and if you were the right sort of people with the right sort of club memberships and connections.

He was funny.

“So, why didn't you meet up with the friends you were supposed to see that night?” Remus asked, looking back at his notes.

“I didn't even know I had been stood up until later. I got there and they wouldn't take my fake ID. I thought they were in there already so I hung around outside, walked over to a bar that was full of lesbians from the college and talked to them.”

“Do you think there's any chance we could find any of them? Do you think they'd remember you? Did you ever try?”

“My lawyer told me it was pointless. And I think he wasn't wrong. It's a women's college. They're all lesbians. It could have been anyone. I don't even remember what any of them looked like beyond, you know, short gelled hair and oversized key rings.”

Remus pictured Gabby's girlfriend and tried to bite his tongue.

“I used to obsess about that night and that concert I missed. I'd been hyped up to see them for awhile. I tried to talk James into coming with me, but he was never that into music, especially not my punk and ska stuff. His parents had him on classical from birth and he used to try and act all too cool but we knew what was on his headphones. It'd be like Chopin and shit. What music do you listen to?”

Remus was slightly startled. “I grew up with a lot of Latin rock. I listen to old school hip hop. I don't know a lot about punk, honestly.”

“Back in the day, I would have made you a mix CD. Do people do that anymore? How does that work with mp3 players?”

“People make playlists.” Remus knew that the prisoners could buy special mp3 players, which was how Sirius had listened to the first three seasons of Retrial and emailed him about them with questions.

“I'll make you a playlist.” Sirius's eyes sparkled and Remus felt compelled to look away from their dark intensity.

“You were saying about what ifs,” Remus said.

“Oh, fucking what ifs,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes. “Too many. What if I had met Fab and Gid? What if I had gotten in? What if I had been legal and could have gone right in and had proof of being there? What if the bartender remembered me? What if one of those college girls remembered me? What if I'd used the credit card my parents had never gotten around to canceling instead of cash? I thought about trying to learn to draw so I could do police sketches of the bartender or the Smithie who talked to me about being an international relations major. But it was like, the more I thought about it, the less I could remember. Memory is really fucking weird, you know? Have you read much about how it works?”

“A little,” Remus said.

And then Sirius launched into a long discussion of research into memory, filled with scientific vocabulary like synapses and neurotransmitters. Remus interrupted him now and then but he mostly just took it all in. Sirius was smart.

“We should talk a little about your trial before time's up,” Remus said. “I want to get some avenues to explore over the next couple of weeks.”

“Oh, lord, my trial of the fucking century,” Sirius said. “Every townie in Meade's wet dream to see an entitled Hogwarts kid go down. And they got a bonus on my being a fag.”

“Do you think you experienced bias because you're gay?”

Sirius snorted. “Sure, but how am I supposed to prove that? And I'm sure they all think they're enlightened now because they watch Ellen or whatever.”

“Was there anything that anyone said though?” Remus asked, listening as Sirius recounted how one deputy couldn't stop making jokes about how it wouldn't even be a punishment for someone like him to go to prison.

At the end of visiting hours, Remus walked outside into the falling light. He had a long drive back to Boston and his head was swimming with possibilities for research. With all the things Sirius had said, he felt sure there would be some way to find evidence of his whereabouts during the time of the murder or maybe of an alternative motive for someone else.

It wasn't until Newton that he realized how he had been thinking. He was thinking of Sirius as innocent, thinking that he needed to prove that innocence. It was almost unquestioning. Sirius had convinced him that deeply without ever saying a word. Remus felt drawn to him so much so that he hadn't questioned if the flame he was hurtling toward was about to burn.

He shook his head and tried to realign himself. The man was a convicted murderer. He might be innocent, but Remus had to maintain his impartiality. Still, a little voice inside Remus cried, he was so compelling and wonderful, he was either innocent or a true psychopath.

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode Three

(woman's voice): ...I'm not giving you that option, Mr. Fudge. I've made it clear you can't introduce that line of questioning.

Fudge: I want the record to show that I object to the prosecution's…

Judge: Yes, it's on the record already.

Fudge: Your honor, if I could…

Judge: If you bring it up now, Mr. Fudge, you're skirting a mistrial. Do you have more questions?

Fudge: No, your honor.

Judge: The next witness…

(man's voice): Your honor, the prosecution wasn't provided this expert's name until last night. We ask…

Remus: That's a snippet from Sirius Black's trial. I've listen to all one hundred plus hours of the trial and I can tell you that this was a pretty regular exchange. Sirius's lawyer, a sort of charismatic Boston defense attorney named Cornelius Fudge, keeps sounding annoyed, keeps complaining, Judge May complains back, and then they move on without Fudge ever getting most of his motions accepted. It happens dozens of times.

On today's show, we're going to look at Sirius's trial, his lawyer, what the prosecution had and didn't have, and what happened to Lily Evans's dress, a key piece of evidence that went missing during the proceedings. In order to get some perspective about how well Cornelius Fudge did in the courtroom, I turned to Jayne Grayson, a professor of criminal law and the host of the podcast Justice Matters.

So, Jayne, I have to admit, I've attended several trials and I've listened to or watched several trials and I thought this one seemed like a mess. It was short, for one thing. But mostly Fudge just seemed like he was blundering. Sometimes he would pause and forget things. He just argued relentlessly with Judge May, which can't have been good for the case. I could hardly believe he was this respected, well-known lawyer.

Jayne: Yeah, I know from the outside that it doesn't sound good, but I think I understand what he's doing here, trying to get the jury to hear that there's more to this case.

Remus: But he just seems combative.

Jayne: Yeah, it's a risk. But take that excerpt you played. He wanted to introduce evidence that the police were biased against Sirius Black because of his family. They were never going to get that in, but he spends time on it so the jury hears that there's evidence they're not seeing.

Remus: Okay, but isn't that something that can backfire?

Jayne: Absolutely, and in this case, I think it probably did. For one thing, the venue wasn't Fudge's usual Boston. Meade is a small town and the dynamics…

Remus went through security at Azkaban with a strange mix of emotions. On the one hand, he was excited to see Sirius again. They had talked on the phone a few dozen times since his last visit and he liked the rapport they had. It was going to come through on the podcast perfectly, he was sure. He just liked Sirius. He was bitter and sarcastic and dramatic, but also witty and had a curiosity about the world that somehow had not been killed off by all of his experiences.

But another part of him dreaded going in there. He feared getting too close to his stories again. And he feared being manipulated by Sirius, a risk that seemed so much greater in person, where the man's dark eyes and sideways grin were just a little too handsome and interesting.

But once he sat down across the table from Sirius, his equipment set up, they fell into an easy rapport. Remus asked his follow up questions about the trial and Sirius's disastrous lawyer, as well as going over his whereabouts on the night of the murder yet again. He would have to do this again, and possibly again. Remus knew it was cruel in a way, but he also knew that the more Sirius said, the better. Either he would reveal something new or he would get caught in an inconsistency or he would just be so consistent that it would sway him.

They had well over another hour left of time before visiting hours were up. Other prisoners had gotten up and left or come in to see a loved one again. The small courtyard was open since the weather was nice. It was a concrete slab with bolted down picnic tables and tufts of scrubby bushes surrounding it just outside the fencing. You could see the yard from inside it, as well as the rolling hills and surrounding landscape. But the courtyard itself was small, not much larger than the hall where visitors could be.

“Help me get my vitamin D?” Sirius asked, gesturing.

Remus picked up his recording equipment and followed. It was even emptier outside and the warmth was really only warm to New Englanders. Remus refastened his coat but was interested to see that Sirius didn't bother. He only had on his normal, thin white jumpsuit.

“The cold doesn't bother you?”

Sirius shook his head. “I like the cold. I used to freak everyone out by going in the snow in bare feet. I especially liked to see Peter go ballistic about it. I once walked from the main hall to the dorms in bare feet the day after a snow just to watch Pete have conniptions the whole way. James thought it was funny. He said people would see my hideous giant footprints and think bigfoot had come to Hogwarts.”

“You never got frostbite?” Remus raised his eyebrows.

“Well, I might have been a bit numb after that stunt. Don't tell Peter though.”

Remus nodded, as if something Sirius had just said in front of the recording equipment was secret. It was interesting how he nearly always chose stories from his high school days. He'd spent his entire adult life in prison, but he rarely mentioned it.

“Will you tell me about your time here a little bit?” Remus asked.

He didn't miss the way Sirius stiffened slightly. “Like what? What's that got to do with the case or the trial?”

“Nothing per se,” Remus said. “But the podcast is about everything. I'll want to do something about your life here, even if it's just a few words on an episode. Or maybe more. We've covered prison issues a great deal. You know I like my rabbit trails.”

Sirius harrumphed slightly. “Yeah. Just not much to tell.”

“You work in the kitchen,” Remus prompted, knowing that Sirius liked to talk about food.

“Yeah. Means I don't have to live off that cup of noodles and canned tuna and Spam shit that everyone else eats so much of.”

“Do you like cooking?”

Sirius shrugged. “I guess. I'm trusted. Get to play with the knives and everything.”

There was a sort of dark glimmer in his eye when he mentioned the knives that made Remus pause. He thought about how to ask a follow up.

“Look, the kitchen is boring, okay? I chop some onions, I make some shit stew, I feed myself on whatever I can and try not to let too much smuggling happen on my watch so I don't lose the job. It's only one meal a day anyway.”

“Okay,” Remus said. He decided to try a different tact. “Tell me what a typical day is like for you here.”

“Boring. I get up and do the breakfast shift. Feed myself for the day. Then I stand around. And then I get up and do it all over again.”

“You got a degree while you were here. That must have taken work.”

Sirius shrugged. “For a little while, I studied. It was boring too. Much easier than real school.”

Sirius was so brusque that Remus felt there had to be more there. “Do you have friends?”

“I'm friendly with a lot of people.”

Sirius had so much charm when he wanted to. Remus felt sure that he had to have friends. Nearly all the prisoners he'd interviewed over the years talked about prison friendships as an intense experience where people who often wouldn't ever meet suddenly became compatriots who took care of each other and confided in each other in an intimate way. He knew these friendships could strike up between prisoners and guards as well. Sirius, with his upper class background, seemed like he might be the sort of prisoner who had friendships with guards.

“Have you ever had a lover?”

Sirius's eyeroll was so exaggerated that it looked comical. “Oh, you think we're all in here buggering each other, don't you? Get real.”

The thing was, Remus knew the statistics and anecdotes. Sex happened, mostly consensually, among men in prison and Sirius was openly gay and had been before he went in.

“I don't think that,” Remus said carefully. “And you don't have to answer. But there has to be more to your life here than monotony. People tend to crave ways to break the monotony and forge some connections.”

Sirius literally scoffed. There was such a wall around him suddenly, one that Remus felt an impulse of recognition toward. It was the only way he could explain to himself later on why he switched off the equipment and said, on pure impulse, “Were you assaulted, Sirius?”

Sirius reeled on him. “Oh, I see. Watch your ass. Don't drop the soap, Sirius. What the fuck do you think you know about it?”

Remus said, quietly, “I've never been in prison, but I know about rape.”

The guard who had been wandering around the courtyard had wandered closer. Sirius seemed poised to say something back. The thick, dark strands of his hair whipped around his pale face and his lips parted to say something. But then, instead, he sprang up from the table and stalked back inside.

Remus sat, stunned, both at Sirius's mercurial moods and at his own complete and utter lack of professionalism. This was exactly what he had sworn to himself wouldn't happen again. He wouldn't get too close. And somehow he had gotten beyond too close.

Remus carefully packed up the equipment and returned to the main hall. He waited until visiting hours ended, but Sirius didn't return.

On the drive back to Boston, he tried to catch up on his own podcast queue, but couldn't pay attention. He tried to listen to a music playlist his sister had sent him filled with an eclectic mix of Mexican hip hop and Colombian pop stars, but all the beats seemed to mock him. Finally he pulled up the punk mix Sirius had shared and he had put together as a result. He blasted the annoying rhythms until they didn't seem quite as absurd.

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode Four

Gabby: No, you have to turn up here.

Remus: You said turn there.

Gabby: No, hey, you missed it!

Remus: [bleeped]

Remus: That's my producer Gabby getting us lost on back roads in western Massachusetts. This week on Retrial, Gabby and I set out to follow the timeline of the murders from Sirius Black's point of view. The main issue is whether or not he actually went to the town of Northampton, about an hour's drive away from Meade to attend a concert that he wasn’t allowed into because of his age. A number of things went wrong for him that night, according to Sirius....

Remus roped Gabby in for the trip to Hogwarts. Sirius still wasn't responding to his emails and hadn't called him, though he also hadn't told Remus to go fuck himself, so he figured that was something. They probably had enough footage if Sirius did, though it wasn't exactly optimal. He had planned to get a good deal more. He didn't like the idea of the season falling apart. The fact that he disliked the idea of Sirius hating him even more was increasing his anxiety several times over.

“What is with you?” Gabby asked on the drive.

Remus shrugged and sighed.

“I'm telling you, you need to get out and work less. And find the right guy.”

Remus nodded, as if it were a simple prospect. As if there were a million guys who wanted a slightly nerdy, middle aged before his time, overworked, HIV positive Latino guy. Gabby liked to make it sound as simple as making time to do it, as if getting a boyfriend was like running an errand he was putting off.

He tried to push those thoughts aside and think about the case, but he ended up picturing Sirius instead so he tried to focus on the scenery as they drove.

He had seen photos of the school, of course, but he was unprepared for just how imposing and old-fashioned the Hogwarts campus was. It looked like the setting of a Gothic ghost story. It was like a miniature college campus, with heavy gray stone and ivy laden exteriors. The main building was almost like a castle.

“Our founders were amateur architects,” the headmaster said. He was like a caricature, an elderly white man with a trim, white beard and slightly too large suit and a whimsical tie featuring little airplanes. His office was all wood paneling and ancient maps, with a bowl of candy on the desk. He came off as alternately genial and aloof. Remus couldn't quite get a handle on him, but he didn't entirely trust him.

Remus followed Mr. Dumbledore around as Gabby captured ambient noises and took photos for the web content.

He asked everything he could think of about Sirius and his class year. Longtime teachers still remembered James and Lily fondly. An English teacher teared up talking about Lily. Everyone who remembered Peter seemed mildly exasperated by him. He had apparently had a reputation for laziness.

Over and over, from the dozen or so teachers and staff who were still at Hogwarts, Remus finished his interviews by asking if they thought Sirius was guilty. He hated keeping a vote tally, but that's exactly what he did. A couple of the teachers hedged their bets. “I just can't imagine it,” the school dean, a formidable woman with graying hair, told him. “I know that's not an answer, but I can't.”

Nearly everyone else assured him that Sirius was guilty. But they did so in such uncomfortable terms. A secretary talked about how “people like him” had never really fit in at Hogwarts. A janitor referred to Sirius as a “rich faggot.” Even the ones who didn't say anything homophobic seemed predisposed to hate Sirius based on his money, a sort of irony at a school like this, though Remus understood that the Blacks were rich even by rich white people standards. It made it feel very much like an overwrought teen TV drama.

One young science teacher with long, dark hair that was combed back and seemed to have been greased down had been a student with Sirius and James. He had recently returned to teach and he had clearly hated Sirius back at school.

“I've heard your podcast. God, I would have thought you'd have chosen something more… layered than that piece of trash. It was completely straightforward, you know. And it wasn't even a surprise. He was responsible for his own brother's death. He played nasty, destructive pranks at school. He was probably a psychopath. Thank god he got caught and locked up.”

“His brother's death,” Remus said. “Can you say more about that?”

Half an hour later, Remus emerged from talking to the angry teacher. “I think we have to look more at Regulus,” he told Gabby with a sigh as they began walking to the car.

“Agreed. What he said doesn't quite fit with what I had in the research notes,” Gabby said.

“Can we go see the crime scene?” Remus asked as he opened the door.

The day was almost over. They would be driving back to Boston in the dark, in the annoying Massachusetts Turnpike traffic. Still, Remus wanted to go to the scene. He felt for some reason like it would convince him one way or the other.

The old warehouses had been sold and were being demolished to make room for a new health care complex with dentist and urgent care offices. The building on the far end had been already crushed into rubble. The one in the middle, where Sirius had been found with the bodies, was still standing, though it was ringed with fencing.

“Que mala suerte,” Gabby said, shrugging. “Guess we could ask for permission another time.”

“I'm going to see if there's a way around,” Remus said.

“Bad idea,” Gabby said, but she didn't stop him, she just settled herself on the hood of the car. “I'm waiting here.”

The fence turned out to be rolled up to make a half closed entrance for vehicles a little ways down from the mostly gravel strewn lot. Remus let himself in sideways and waved slightly to Gabby. The central warehouse was nothing but a shell. Remus didn't stay long. He just walked up to the open air windows and peered in, seeing nothing but a vast space of litter and broken beams. It was a good place to hide a body, he supposed.

Remus didn't know what he had hoped for there. He kept picturing the sadistic grin Sirius had flashed him briefly when he mentioned that he could use the knives in the kitchen. It didn't make sense, but maybe it didn't have to. Whoever had murdered James and Lily was sadistic and disturbed.

As Remus edged his way out and walked back along the fence, there was a sudden flash of police lights. He stopped in his tracks. Gabby quickly jumped down from the car.

Remus immediately recognized the local police chief at the wheel and he breathed a small breath of relief. He had not met Scrimgeour yet, but he recognized him and had spoken briefly with him on the phone, doing the preliminary work to set up an interview. They didn't have a date and time yet, but the man had been receptive, at least, and it meant he knew who Remus was and that he was a journalist, not a random brown guy prowling around a construction site off hours.

“Hello there,” an older white man with thick, white hair said, stepping out of the vehicle. “Care to identify yourselves?”

He had the sort of calm, almost lazy confidence that came from being a big fish in a small pond carrying a powerful gun at his side. He expected to be obeyed. That was okay. Remus intended to obey. He kept his hands clearly visible.

“Remus Lupin,” he said, standing very still, but holding up his hands. “Sheriff Scrimegeour? I believe we spoke briefly on the phone.”

Rather than relaxing, the sheriff narrowed his gaze. “Oh yes. The young Boston journalist poking into that old crime. This is a closed site.”

“Yes, of course,” Remus said. “We just stopped by briefly after interviewing some people at Hogwarts. I wasn't sure what the state of the property was. We haven't done any recording or anything.”

The sheriff nodded, but not in a way that made Remus think he believed him.

“Why don't you two come with me,” Scrimgeour said.

“Excuse me?” Gabby said.

“Just hop in your car and follow me over to the office,” Scrimgeour said. “We can have a little chat.”

Gabby and Remus exchanged a look.

“Fuck, Remus,” Gabby said when they got in the car. “Fuck. I'm recording every second of this. You hear me?”

Remus started the car and turned off the gravel lot and onto the road, following the brown sheriff car. “I don't think he's going to do anything to us,” he said, though Scrimgeour was more intimidating than he had anticipated. The man exuded a sense of power.

Gabby held the equipment, but the sheriff wanted to speak to Remus alone. After a tense moment exchanging more looks with Gabby, he followed the older man into a small office. For a moment, he sat there, waiting, as Scrimgeour pulled open an ancient metal filing cabinet and poked around inside. Finally, he withdrew a manilla folder that was worn all along the edges.

“Have a seat.” It wasn't an invitation, but a command. Remus sat. After all, he wanted the sheriff to open up and tell him whatever he was going to tell him.

“Sir, I'd love to record whatever you're going...”

“Some other time,” Scrimgeour said, taking a seat behind his desk. “This is just a little friendly chat first.”

He opened up the folder. Remus could see that a series of full color images were inside.

“I keep these to remember,” Scrimgeour said. He flicked the images out of the folder, facing each one toward Remus in a grid.

It was obviously images from the night of Sirius's arrest. These had been entered into evidence as part of the court case, but there had only been tiny, black and white thumbnails of them in the main file. Getting hold of them had been on Remus's long to do list and he had not gotten around to even trying yet.

The thumbnails had not done them justice. The first image showed Sirius, younger, his hair loose and wild, a band T-shirt covered in dirt and grime, a wild look on his face as an officer placed handcuffs on him. There was image after image of James and Lily, both dead, their bodies at unnatural angles, dried blood congealed on them. And then there were more images of Sirius, who had obviously struggled against the police. His mouth was open in one of the shots and his head flung back.

Scrimgeour seemed to notice Remus's interest in the photo. He tapped it with his long, weathered finger. “You know what he's doing there?”

“What?” Remus asked.

“Laughing.”

Remus looked up in surprise.

“That's right. He laughed. Downright cackled. I've never heard or seen anything like it. Utterly depraved. He was proud of what he'd done. Kept saying that we'd found them as he had hysterics.”

Remus evaluated the photo again. It was hard to avoid the fact that Sirius did look deranged. With the imagined soundtrack of his laughter playing, the image was even more disturbing.

“They were in there almost three days. You know what happens to a body after that long?”

“I have some idea,” Remus said carefully.

“He’d been visiting them. One witness saw him going in there. We had an anonymous tip, which was why we checked it out. And when we arrived, he was holding him, James Potter’s body. Holding it.”

Scrimgeour abruptly gathered the photos up into a neat stack and shoved them back in the manilla folder. However, he pulled out the first one of Sirius laughing and pushed it toward Remus. “I keep these to remember how wicked man can be. You keep that one so you can remember too.”

Remus nodded. He lifted the photograph into his hands, holding it carefully.

Scrimgeour stood. “Call my secretary. I think I'll have some time in my schedule for that interview in a week or so.”

Remus stood and nodded. “Thank you, sheriff,” he said quickly.

Back in the waiting area, Gabby had the equipment out and was talking to a young police woman on duty at the front desk.

“Let's go,” Remus said, interrupting her. “Now.”

He threw her the car keys. The sun was down as they drove back through the town and eventually made it to the turnpike.

“So he's guilty,” Gabby said. “Won't be the first time we've done someone guilty.”

Remus nodded. He just hated that it hurt so much and he couldn't even entirely figure out why. Maybe he was just in the wrong business. There was a podcast about scientific breakthroughs that Hestia produced. Why didn't he do something like that? And Gabby had worked on a podcast about modern art before she'd come to work for him. That sounded so happy. Art and artists and the creative process. What had possessed him to get into prisons and crimes of all things? He knew, but at the moment it just seemed unhealthy. Maybe this would be his last season. He didn't think he could take this shit anymore.

“Stop being all emo,” Gabby said. “And for Christ sakes, would you get on Tinder or go to a club or something and get laid and forget about work?”

Remus sighed. “Yeah, yeah.”

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode Five

Sirius: People underestimate how boredom and loneliness can eat away at you, but they do. It eats away at me from the inside, being here. And the only way I can fucking deal with it is to pretend it's not happening. So I make a shell around myself and I don't think about it.

Remus: I think most listeners understand that to make this podcast, I end up talking to some of our interviewees for hours at a time. I really get to know them. However, getting to understand Sirius's time in prison was difficult. It wasn't something he wanted to discuss at first. I thought that was odd. Most of us want to talk about the daily ins and outs of our lives, even if we dislike our circumstances. But as I got to know Sirius better, I began to understand why he avoids facing his own.

Remus: Today on Retrial, we're going to take a brief look at that life of being trapped on the inside. And we're going to hear from one of the few people who still regularly visits Sirius.

Andromeda: I think it's just as well that I didn't get that money. I know you'll laugh, but I think maybe it was cursed.

Remus: That's one of Sirius's last close relatives, his cousin, Andromeda Tonks. She visits him at least once a year and manages his money and some of the issues with his lawyers. Andromeda was living with her husband and newborn daughter in Pennsylvania when the murders took place, but they've since moved back to Massachusetts and she currently resides with her family outside Boston.

Andromeda: It's the curse. Every one of this family had something bad happen. When my sisters and I were kids, we used to laugh a little at the whole “we came over on the Mayflower” sort of thing that our parents used to push on us. But my two sisters who followed what our parents wanted and married the right sort of men, well, my oldest sister was killed after getting mixed up in some dark stuff and my other sister's husband went to prison for basically being a slumlord and causing a fire in one of his properties that led to several deaths. She ended up losing everything. And then there's what happened to Regulus, and Sirius, and the plane crash that killed Sirius's father, and his mother's cancer. We have another cousin who died in a mysterious boating accident. I could go on.

Remus: Cursed? Oh, you're serious?

Andromeda: I know it's silly. My husband makes light of it sometimes, but a few years ago, after he lost that appeal, Sirius suggested that we take the money he inherited from his parents and Ted said no way. So I know he's a little superstitious about it as well.

Remus: Let's talk about that money…

There was no reason for it, but when the phone rang, Remus just had a hunch it was Sirius. They hadn't spoken since Sirius had stormed off during visitor's day. That had been well over a week ago. It was call hours, but there was no reason that he should suddenly call. Still, when Remus heard the phone, he clicked the recording app because he was so sure it would be Sirius.

It was. He accepted the charges from the collect prison call system.

“Hello, Sirius,” he said.

“Hey,” Sirius said, his voice still defensive.

Remus had a lot of time to think about how to deal with Sirius in the wake of everything that had happened, the uncomfortable conversation about life in prison, the hunch he had that Sirius might have been raped in prison, the experience he'd had at Hogwarts, the research he was doing into the death of Sirius's bother, and meeting Rufus Scrimegeour. Remus had the disturbing photograph of Sirius in his desk drawer and he was afraid to look at it yet seemed unable to help himself. He felt he understood why Scrimegeour might keep such photos for himself. They were hard to see and yet hard to look away from.

Still, he didn't know exactly what he was going to say to Sirius. He had to ask about the photo and the laughter. He had to get something more about Sirius's time in prison, though exactly what he didn't know. He had done more interviews with Sirius's old classmates that week, going up to New York and meeting with Peter and Dorcas and a few others. Stories about the death of Sirius's brother had come to the forefront and Remus knew it was something else he had to explore, though he knew that Sirius would never want to talk about it. There were no easy avenues of conversation in the road ahead.

As he groped for the right words to get Sirius talking, Sirius dove in headfirst without his help.

“I shouldn't have stormed off like that,” he said.

“You were upset,” Remus said.

“Yeah, but you're just doing your job. The truth is that I don't like to talk about prison because it is really boring. People underestimate how boredom and loneliness can eat away at you, but they do. It eats away at me from the inside, being here. And the only way I can fucking deal with it is to pretend it's not happening. So I make a shell around myself and I don't think about it.”

Remus settled into his sofa. He had his notepad in front of him out of habit, but mostly he was fixed on Sirius's voice.

“When I was a kid,” Sirius continued. “Well, before I came in, you know. After… after my brother died and everything seemed like shit, I thought if I could just escape and go away forever, maybe with James, you know? Then I'd be set. We… I…”

Through the phone connection, Remus heard Sirius's voice break. He was always so composed, so sarcastic. The sincerity in his voice now made him sound almost like a different person. “The day before James… the last time I saw him, I said to him I wished we could make a world outside of time, away from anyone else, away from the real world. And now, in a terrible way, that came true. And I am trapped inside my head all the time and the world got smaller and frozen, like I am outside time. And this place is… I'm not saying it's not real, but it's not the real world that I was freaking out about having to grow up and join. And maybe you won't understand this, but in a way James is with me, haunting me, because whoever killed him is still out there and it fucks me with me, you know? And I'm never getting out of here.” The despair was etched into Sirius's low voice.

Remus didn't know what to say to this. He nodded, as if Sirius could see. Then he made himself speak. “So tell me what it's like.”

There was a pause. “When I first came in, I was a kid. I'm probably still a kid. This place stunts your growth. You learn all these pointless fucking skills like how to boil water with a makeshift battery and how to take apart everything and hide things inside your mattress and inside books and up your own ass. But you don't learn real things.

“The first week I got here, there was another guy just coming in. Latin kid, from Springfield. His name was Hector. He'd been doing the money for a gang there, selling drugs. He was also nineteen and smart, just wicked smart. He knew math better than anyone I ever met. He'd been doing the books for this one kingpin for years, since he was in middle school, and he'd done two stints in juvenile corrections, but this was his first trip to real prison, though he said it wasn't that different. I spoke to him in Spanish, because I was a complete idiot and thought practicing my prep school language skills would be a good use of my time.

“Luckily he thought that was cute. So my first two weeks in, I didn't even pay any fucking attention to anything around me. I just followed him around like a puppy. It's probably good I wasn't thinking much. If I had, I might've tried to snuff myself.”

Sirius said it so offhandedly, but Remus knew he meant it. To be nineteen and see your whole life ahead of you in prison was not pretty for anyone, guilty or innocent.

“Did I mention I was an idiot?” Sirius continued. “Virgin idiot with a crush. It didn't even get very far. Two weeks later, we got caught by the guards making out in the laundry. I didn't know what to expect but Hector looked scared and told me to keep away from him even after the guards basically just told us to keep in in our pants. I thought we were off the hook. So I kept following him around. The next day, three skinhead guys cornered me in the yard, told me they had thought I was one of them, and beat the shit out of me while a couple of others did something – I never found out what – to distract the guards. I needed stitches and I probably had a concussion, though prison health care. You get what you pay for so it's not like I ever found out for sure. I've seen guys get wounds in here that… well, that's an aside. It was a concussion probably. I spent two days in the infirmary. First day out, again, like an idiot, I walked right up to the guys who did it and slammed the main guy with my tray. He didn't even bother to do much to me. Just put me to the floor and waited for the guards to drag me off. That was my first stint in solitary. They like to really come down hard on you at first. Break you, you know. I spent a month. When I came out, Hector had transferred somewhere and I knew better than to try that again. Stay in your own lane.”

“You haven't any relationships since then?” Remus asked, astounded. “Not friendships even?” He closed his eyes and imagined Sirius in his prison cell, in the yard, in the hall on movie night, always sitting alone.

“Stay in your own lane, right? I don't have a fucking lane here. The guys who come in who are wealthy and white all had lives first, you know? There's a guy here, rich guy. His kids come see him. He killed his mistress during a fight. Says she went for a gun so he grabbed and it blew her brains out before she could kill him. There are people like me who came in when they were babies, but they're all black or Mexican or Puerto Rican and there are politics. Some people make it work, but I haven't wanted to, not since the start.”

“People still make friends though,” Remus objected. He felt like he shouldn't argue, but somehow he couldn't help himself.

“Yeah. I'm friendly with everyone. Nice to the new kids in the kitchen. I taught a class in basic writing for awhile. Basically, a how to pass English 101 for the guys trying for a degree. They let us teach classes to each other, you know. You get credits and can buy stupid crap from the store with them. I did math for the GED for awhile too and people liked that. I don't cause drama. I don't object to anyone's racist bullshit or complete lies. I don't rat anyone out for rewiring their hot pots or keeping drugs in their ceilings. You wouldn't believe how many people manage to get drugs in here. Like, serious shit too, like all kinds of prescription painkillers. It's insane. They usually catch them eventually but not through me. So people like me. They're all my friends.

“Except, none of them are my friends. I don't have a crew. I don't play those games. And they know it. There's a guard, his name was Mike. He's gone now, thank god. He was a big guy, white. He used to corner me sometimes and he was just creepy as fuck, Remus. He was always on about how pretty I was, how good I was, how I wasn't like the rest of the guys in here. I always felt like I had to watch my ass when he was around. Well, not long before he got transferred, he said to me something like, you try to hide it but you think you're better than the rest of us. Us, like he was one of the prisoners. Some of the guards, they think like that. Like, we're all in this together. Others are just waiting to show you how they're the ones with the upper hand. He was like, you'd better watch yourself. All kinds of perfect cliché shit. I was pretty sure he was going to corner me and rape me at some point. He knew enough not to target someone with friends, I guess and he was smart enough to realize that was me.”

There was an uncomfortable pause as Remus took all this in.

“So, that's my life in here. Keep your head down, stay in your own lane, all that bullshit. I cook some food, I teach some classes, I retreat into my head and read everything I can get my hands on. I've been lucky, I guess,” Sirius said with a dark laugh. The laugh echoed through the phone connection and Remus thought about the photograph he had sitting in his desk drawer at work. Sirius laughed. “And you can be lucky inside or out.”

It was an opening. Sirius was acknowledging what Remus had nearly admitted to him. And Remus found that despite Sirius's flood of information, he couldn't reciprocate. He didn't even know what to say. Back in the prison courtyard, he would have opened up. He would have said, yeah, I was raped as a kid. I know about it. Now, the gulf between them felt bigger than ever. Sirius's experiences felt more and less horrifying to Remus. And he still had the mental image of that photo of his arrest stuck in his head.

“Lucky is an unexpected way to look at it,” he managed. He looked down at his blank page of notes.

Sirius gave another dark chuckle. “Yes, it is, isn't it? Luck. I had some kind of luck.”

They talked for another few minutes about prison and things Sirius had seen there, like mental illness and corrupt guards, and what sort of food Sirius managed to cook for himself in the kitchens as part of his job, until Sirius's phone time ran out.

Remus set his phone on his lap and stared at the wall of his apartment for a long time. It had gotten darker while he'd been on the phone and the room was now dim except for the lamp next to his sofa. It was a nice apartment, with exposed brick walls and brand new fixtures and a view that was mostly other apartment buildings, but wasn't bad. At the moment, it felt like a cage.

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode Six

Remus: I think we can call this episode something like, “We have to talk about Regulus.”

Dorcas: He was an awkward kid. Some kids just take to boarding school, you know? But some kids wash out. If the Blacks hadn't had such a long relationship with Hogwarts, I think Regulus would have been a wash out. Not that he wasn't smart enough, but, it's a small community and he was someone in our year's younger brother. We all heard he was crying in his room every night.

Remus: When you say “all”…?

Dorcas: Oh yeah, there's a few kids every year who get super homesick. That year, it was Regs.

Remus: And what happens to those kids? Are they bullied? Does the school do anything for them?

Dorcas: Oh yeah, you'd be sent to talk to the nurse, Ms. Pomfrey. She was like the school counselor too, the kind that helps people, anyway. Mostly though, people would tease you until you stopped or left school. I'm not… I mean, I have kids now and it seems brutal, but at the time we all just thought it was okay.

(older female voice): Yes, I was aware of the issues he was facing.

Remus: That's Poppy Pomfrey, who still serves as Hogwarts' nurse, though the school now also has a full time certified counselor on staff.

Poppy: Every year there are a few kids who get homesick. I gathered that he was especially close to his parents. I think a lot of his adjustment issues were anxiety about pleasing them. But by the start of winter, all reports were that he was adjusting just fine. So anything anyone says about him not fitting in at Hogwarts is nonsense.

Remus: To get a sense of what things were like when Regulus started at Hogwarts, I talked to Peter Pettigrew again. I wanted to know did Sirius really have it in for his younger brother or was it all just normal sibling rivalry.

Peter: I'm an only child and I don't have kids now, so it's a little hard for me to say what's normal. When we were back at school, before everything, I thought it was just normal sibling rivalry, I guess. Sirius was always pretty on about himself being really cool, you know, with the shaggy hair and being sure his school tie was askew just right. Regulus was awkward and weird. There was something off about him.

Remus: When you say off…?

Peter: In retrospect, I think he was just shy. At the time we made fun of him and I regret that, of course. He was still in that little kid phase where you believe in everything your parents say. Sirius was a rebel from the moment he arrived at school. Just [bleeped] everything, that was his motto. It wasn't even a well thought out rebellion, he was just angry. So, of course they clashed. Regulus immediately started reporting back to their parents about everything Sirius did at school. They were fighting from the moment he arrived.

Remus: Did they ever get along?

Peter: Maybe before Sirius started Hogwarts. But not that I ever saw.

Remus: When I talked to Sirius about Regulus, he was initially resistant to discussing his brother. However, when he eventually opened up, he had a very different take.

Sirius: I'm not saying it's not true that we fought. We did. But I was trying to help him. Our parents were abusive. I was trying to help him see that. And yeah, I did it the way you do when you're an angry teenager, by yelling and being an asshole myself. But I never hated him. I wasn't torturing him or anything.

Remus: When you say abusive…

Sirius: No, no one ever beat us or burned us with cigarettes or anything like that. They were just constantly emotional manipulative. If you look up passive aggressive in the dictionary, there's a photo of my father and if you look up narcissist in the dictionary, there's a picture of my mother. They were quite the pair.

Remus: Give me an example…

The day before first episode was set to drop, Remus had one of those days with an epic amount of commitments. He started the morning at the public radio studios down the street from Muggle Public Productions, doing two different short interviews about the show. There would be a longer interview after the first episode aired, to be put on one of the afternoon interview shows. He was dreading that one. He'd have to slog through the Lestrange case all over again, as well as his “difficult” childhood. They always wanted to know about his father and his youth and he had to pretend that he was well-adjusted and talk about himself.

By the time he got into the office, Hestia was waiting for him with a pile of notes about the missing evidence, which she had spent the last month trying to track down. The worst part was that it could have very well been an honest mistake on the part of the Meade police. There were hundreds of things missing from that time, most of them things that would have been thrown out or returned to their owners, and they claimed it was a janitorial issue. Remus had talked to the janitors. Because they had poor evidence storage procedures until a few years ago, it could have been.

“I don't have time,” Remus complained, wanting to listen to Hestia's efforts to track down the missing dress or figure out if anyone saw it. “I have to meet with Peter Pettigrew at lunch. I had that first phone interview with him, but he's been in New York since then. I know there's already reaction coming in and we need to do our meeting, but...”

“Go on,” Hestia said. She was a little older, with kids and a husband and slightly graying hair. Remus wished he didn't feel like he was walking all over her hard work.

By the time he got to the upscale diner Peter had suggested, Remus was slightly out of breath from finding parking. Boston, he thought, annoyed, as he dashed to make the meeting on schedule.

Luckily for him, Peter was running even later. The diner was noisy so Remus kept futzing with the equipment, trying to figure out the best tactic to take with this man as Peter sat down across from him and ordered a steak sandwich. He was overweight, with a round face and blond hair that was thinning slightly and combed over.

“I'm glad we were able to meet,” Remus said.

“Yes, yeah,” Peter said. “Sorry about being so busy. We had a massive deal in the works, an acquisition.”

“Tell me more about what you do,” Remus invited, hoping this would be a good in.

“Oh, the usual, investments. We're a big company. We made a lot in the tech boom and we're keeping that going.”

When Remus had first started in radio, he had worked at a business centered evening show for a little while, where everyone spoke stock market fluently. He'd never quite figured out the language himself, but even so, Peter's answer struck him as especially vague.

In fact, all of Peter's answers struck him as vague. James was, “such a great guy.” Lily was, “so, so sweet.” Sirius's conviction was, “such a shock, of course.” Getting him to say more, even about things that Sirius lit up when he talked about, like pranks they had pulled at school, or things that everyone seemed to be very touchy about, like Regulus's death, was like pulling teeth. And then, Peter looked at his watch and declared that he had an important call. He placed far too much cash on the table and it made Remus feel oddly uncomfortable, though he knew Peter was loaded. People who worked in the type of job he did, trading on companies' misfortunes and successes alike, always were.

“Sorry if I didn't have much to say,” he said. “There's a deal in China that's a mess right now and I'm distracted.” His voice was distracted, slightly high pitched for his large size, and distant. “I just don't have any great insights. James and Sirius were always the deep ones. All I ever wanted was to make a bunch of money. They were the ones reading poetry and all that, you know?” He shook his head and Remus had the odd impression that Peter was saying that reading poetry had gotten James killed and landed Sirius in prison.

“Just one more thing,” Remus said. “I don't think you really said. Do you think he did it? I know you visited him at first, but then you stopped.”

“Yes, that's right,” Peter said. “At first, I guess I couldn't accept it. But then, well, something happened in prison.” He paused and looked at his shiny smart watch. “The third time I went to go see him, Sirius said something and it really, well, it upset me. And after that, I knew he'd done it. I just knew.”

“What did he say?” Remus asked, glancing at his recording equipment.

“That now no one would have James.”

“Have, like?”

“Like, to be in love with, yeah, I think that's what he meant. I'm not saying it right. There was more to it but I can't remember the exact words.”

“So, you think he did do it because he was in love with James and was jealous.”

“Well, that part was never in doubt in my mind,” Peter declared. “He was in love with James. I lived in a dorm with them the two of them for four years. He would go crawl in bed with James whenever James let him. He'd kiss him on the cheek in front of anyone. I saw him once grab James's ass. And he hated Lily.”

“Several people have said to me that Sirius was always very physical with everyone,” Remus suggested, but Peter shook his head.

“Sure, but not like with James. Their relationship was always weird. And when Sirius was stoned, which, trust me, he was that whole week before the murder, he'd get all paranoid.”

“They said he had trace marijuana in his system, but it was impossible to say when...”

Peter looked at his watch again. “I'm sorry. I… You have to get that this is all stuff I don't like to think too hard about. And, I've really got a conference call to get back for.”

Remus couldn't decide what to think of Peter. Like Sirius, he came from a world of people Remus didn't think he really understood, and he worshiped at the altar of money over anything else, something else he didn't quite get.

Back at the office, there was a technical issue that Remus didn't entirely understand having to do with the website glitching and all the tech hands were on deck for it and he felt like he had to be there too, even though he knew he wasn't doing much good. Lee Jordan, their intern, was more use than him, fixing some of the graphics content with the ease that people fifteen years his junior often had.

“Okay, okay,” he said, as Gabby teased him and told him to get home and take a breath. The show was ready, the second episode was set. The research was winding down. They were mostly in good shape.

He walked home in the cold, picking up Japanese takeout from a noodle shop and looking forward to the warmth of the broth that was steaming through the packaging, feeling proud.

It wasn't until he tried to get to sleep that he was plagued by thinking about Sirius again. He hated this not knowing. He knew it made for great ratings for the show. Last season hadn't done as well, and part of the reason might have been that he had made up his made early on that Lestrange was guilty. It had become a true crime story instead of an ambiguous tale. The audience liked his indecision, trying to decide if he believed the subject of their story.

He didn't know if he believed Sirius or not. Peter's words kept ringing through his head about how unusual Sirius's relationship with James was. That sort of male friendship wasn't allowed so much of the time. Was that was Peter was reacting to? He seemed like such a dull, unimaginative person. Given that, it didn't surprise Remus that Peter didn't approve of anything outside the norm. Or was there really something deeper wrong? Peter would know.

Remus finally fell asleep and dreamed of Sirius laughing as he said no one could have him.

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode Seven

Scrimegeour: That boy was unhinged and he did this crime. And I don't care if you have some fancy radio show trying to delve into the political correctness of whatever it is you think you're exploring, because I have zero doubts about his guilt.

Remus: Today on Retrial, we're going to explore some of the things that went wrong in the chain of evidence, as well as Sirius's failed attempt at an appeal with a new lawyer. However, first I want to talk more about the chief of police in Meade, who I first introduced back in episode two, Rufus Scrimegeour.

Scrimegeour was relatively new on the job when James and Lily were murdered. It was the chief's first big case and remains the biggest one the mostly quiet town has seen since. I first met the chief when Gabby, my producer, came with me to view the site of the crime for the first time. He's a tall man, and pretty intimidating. He took me to his office and showed me the most gruesome images of the crime, ones that I had not seen yet at that point in my research. He definitely wanted to impress on me the view he has of Sirius, and he definitely made an impact. Any photos of the aftermath of a murder are disturbing, but these were gory. James Potter had his head bashed in. Lily Evans's clothes were torn from her body. But probably the most disturbing images were of Sirius's own arrest.

Scrimegeour: It was right over there.

Remus: That's where you found him?

(sounds of rattling and clanging)

Scrimegeour: That's right. He wasn't even trying to hide himself anymore. And he was covered in dirt. Looked like he'd been here for days.

Remus: Though, we know his whereabouts for the previous day, so…

Scrimegeour: I'm not saying he stayed the whole time after he killed them. But he came back. We found several sets of footprints matching his shoes all around. It looked like he'd been in and out of the warehouse several times. And it was belonging to his parents, after all.

Remus spent most of the day looking at the numbers coming in, taking calls about interviews, and generally basking in the hard work of a new season. The downloads looked good. They might hit number one on the charts, which would be great. Several LGBT publications wanted to follow up on the gay angle, which was good. Gabby teased him that maybe he'd find a boyfriend that way.

“It can't hurt,” she said, to Remus's chagrin.

There was still a lot to do and they had their normal roundtable meeting, but it was even more jokey than usual. Lee, the intern, made lots of jokes and Remus gave him an assignment to keep him busy. Mostly, he just felt good.

He was in his office at midday when the phone rang with an unknown number.

Before he could even get in his hello, Sirius's voice was in his ear yelling.

“What the fuck, Remus?” he shouted. “What the fuck?”

Remus's heart sank and his mind reeled. Sirius must have been calling from an illegal phone. It wasn't phone hours and there was no message from the prison that led the call. “You heard the first episode,” he said calmly.

“Five fucking months of talking and that's what you air? I wasn't even on there hardly at all. What have you been recording for? And you make it sound like I definitely did it. And you hardly brought up the issues at the trial or with the chain of evidence or anything. And you talked to Peter and Marlene, but what about Dorcas? What about the bartender you said you found? What about the timeline stuff? Follow the fucking timeline!”

“You're upset.”

“Fuck yes, I'm upset!”

“Just pause and listen, okay...”

“Listen? I just listened to you for the better part of an hour do just as good a frame up job as whoever did this to me in the first place! I trusted you,” he hissed.

“Sirius...” Remus wasn't sure what he was going to say exactly, but he tried to gather all his professionalism and put it on like a fireproof jacket.

“You didn't even talk about how the motive makes no sense! It contradicts itself. I can't have killed them because I was in love with James and have killed them because I was a racist who thought James shouldn't date white people. That's completely inconsistent!”

“I know, Sirius.”

“If you know, then why didn't you include that? Why didn't you include the stuff about my crappy lawyer? What about the DNA evidence stuff?”

“Sirius! Can you pause and listen to me, please?”

“What?”

“We have announced a ten episode season. All the things you're mentioning are going to be explored in later episodes. Every one of them. I have an entire episode planned just about the issues around the motive.” Remus tried to use reason, hoping Sirius would be able to hear it.

“But why set it up like this? I thought the whole point was to tell a different story than the BS story the local paper told. You're just repeating the same garbage. You let that Scrimegeour ass talk for half the show.”

“To you, all that information is old information. And to the people in Meade or your old friends from school. Yes, they already know all that. But my listeners don't. I have listeners all over the country and all over the world and they have never heard of Hogwarts or Meade or the Potters, much less you or this case.”

Sirius made a harrumphing sound.

“Sirius, I want you to brace yourself though. I'm going to present all the things that you've said to me. Not every minute, but all the important points. And we have all that evidence from the timeline and the DNA testing and the cell phone records and I'm following up on some leads based on some things that Peter said to me about that week that James and Lily disappeared, trying to nail down their whereabouts down to the minute in a way that police never did. But I want to be clear. It is not my job to prove your innocence or only present your side of the story. You trusted me to tell me your story and talk to me and I have really valued that. But I'm going to follow the story where it leads me, and that includes interviews with people who hate you and evidence that suggests that you're guilty or that your trial was fair.”

Sirius made another indistinct harrumph.

“And we talked about exactly this, Sirius. I'm not doing anything that we didn't already talk about. So tell me what you're actually upset about.”

“Where did you get that footage?” Sirius asked, his voice suddenly smaller, more vulnerable.

“What footage?”

“Graduation!”

“Oh. Hogwarts had it on record.” He paused. “Was it hard to hear them?”

“Oh, no, it was a walk in the park,” Sirius sneered.

“That makes sense.” Remus kept his voice calm, but he thought about Lily and James's speeches, so earnest and hopeful and full of youth that was all cut so short a few weeks later.

“And does it make sense because I'm wracked with guilt over my terrible crime? Or because he was my brother, my best friend?” Sirius demanded. “I can't fucking win, no matter what my reaction, right? If I keep a photo of James, it's proof that I haven't owned my actions, that I'm a sick motherfucker, that I'm utterly depraved. If I don't keep one, it's proof he was never my friend, I must have killed him, I can't stand to look at him, I didn't ever really care about him.”

“That's… a difficult situation,” Remus said, his voice measured.

“Oh, is it?” Sirius asked. “Difficult, huh?”

“It is,” Remus said, though he sensed he was losing ground.

“And what do you think?”

“About what?”

“Don't play dumb. You sit there and ask your questions and act like you're just doing your job, but I've seen the way you look at me.”

“I'm not sure what you mean,” Remus said, not wanting to know what Sirius meant. The conversation was recording and suddenly Remus wished it weren't, even though he was the one in charge of the recording.

“What do I mean? I mean, you ask your questions, but you never answer mine. You ask your questions but it doesn't help you understand the truth, does it? I mean, what do you think, radio host? Am I guilty? When you call me and laugh at my jokes and listen to me talk about whatever book I just read do you think you're listening to a murderer or an innocent man? When you flirt back, are you flirting with a murderer? Do you like the danger of it? The idea that I'm evil? That I'm locked away so I'm safe, but you can taunt me or tease me or desire me?”

In his office, Remus felt himself shaking slightly. “Sirius, I think you should stop.”

“Why? Oh, will this not end up on your podcast? Don't want to sell this part of the conversation? You think you're all about the truth, finding the truth, looking for the truth, but you're just selling a story, whatever story you can wring out of me however you can.”

“Sirius, you know that's not true.” Remus forced his voice to stay steady.

“I don't know anything. Fuck you. Fuck you and your journalistic integrity. Fuck you, Remus.”

There was a click and Remus was left holding the phone, his breath heavy and his body shaky with adrenaline pumping through with nowhere to go.

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode Eight

Remus: In a court of law, the only thing that has to be shown is that there's reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime. For the last seven episodes, we've been exploring whether or not Sirius Black is guilty of the murder of James Potter and Lily Evans. One of the things people ask me all the time about any case I'm covering is whether I think the person is guilty. On some level, I don't think it matters. What matters is that legal standard. Is there reasonable doubt? I'm just one man, and yes, I spend about a year thinking about any case I'm covering. However, I'm still just one guy.

From a legal perspective, I think we've opened up a lot of reasonable doubt about the murders in this case over the last several episodes. We've talked about the cell phone records, the tampered evidence, the prosecution's confusing timeline, and the confusing motive. Whether I personally think he did it or not – and there are certainly reasons to believe either way – is sort of beside the point.

But even though it's not part of the legal standard, one thing people are looking for is an alternate theory. If Sirius didn't commit the murder, then who realistically might have, and why? That's the focus of today's episode. And to consider that question, we're going to delve into some of the fan theories floating around.

(call in voice): I just want to know why you aren't exploring whether Mary MacDonald did it. She sounded like she was in love with James and they dated. It makes sense… (voice fades)

Remus: That was one of the many voice mail messages I've gotten with a theory since the show began airing. So first I'm going to rule out a few things. All the former Hogwarts students we've interviewed, including Mary, have alibis for the time of the murders. While we haven't delved into every one of them, most of them are airtight, as in, they were seen by multiple people throughout the period that James and Lily might have been abducted and killed. For example, Mary MacDonald was in New York at her aunt's apartment in Manhattan that weekend. In the absence of other evidence, it seems like a waste of time to try and pin down every little thing about all twenty or so of Sirius, James, and Lily's Hogwarts friends.

Similarly, some people have suggested that the Potters killed their son, perhaps for dating a white, American girl or for some other unknown reason. But they also have an airtight alibi. Both of James's parents were in Boston all day, three hours away. Multiple people confirm that. Not only that, but reports are that they liked Lily a great deal. We can't ask them because, as we talked about previously, the Potters returned to England and have since both passed away.

Okay, so who does that leave us with?

First up, there's the possibility that Lily's sister Petunia and her then boyfriend Vernon Dursley could have been party to the murder. Many listeners have been noting the disdain they held toward James Potter.

Petunia: That school was supposed to be the best thing that could happen to a small town kid in Meade, but you see how it worked out for Lily, getting that scholarship. First, those hoity-toity kids changed her and then she ended up murdered by one of them. Screw them, if you ask me.

Remus: Honestly, to me, it sounds like Petunia is just angry over the loss of her sister. From all accounts, Hogwarts did change Lily Evans from, as Sirius referred to her as a youth, a “townie,” into a young woman of the world. She traveled to England and France with a Hogwarts summer program, she rubbed elbows with a lot of influential, wealthy kids. And far from making her a success story for the town of Meade, it estranged her from her sister and family. And then, as Petunia rightly points out, someone – even if we suppose it was not Sirius Black – someone almost certainly from those circles murdered her. She's right to be angry.

What's harder to wrap one's head around is this statement from her now husband Vernon.

Vernon: Well, well, you didn't see that macaca act all high and mighty around us. Acting like he was better than us. Like, ooh, you snagged you a good white girl. And I'm not… you know… I'm not a racist, I'm just telling it like it was. He thought Petunia's sister was like a (BLEEP) trophy on his arm or something. It was offensive.

Remus: So we know that the Evans and definitely Vernon Dursley, who later married Lily's sister, did not approve of Lily dating James. But is it possible that became murder?

Petunia and Vernon Dursley were among the last to see James and Lily at that reportedly contentious breakfast the morning they disappeared. After that, they really only have each other as an alibi. We do know that they saw friends later that afternoon in town. But after that, they went back to Vernon's apartment above his parents' garage and stayed in for the evening.

Still, this isn't enough for me. There's no other evidence linking them to the crime.

So if we discard that Lily's family was involved in the crime, what about another family. We know that Sirius's family also hated the Potters. And we know that they, like Vernon Dursley, objected to James Potter based at least in part on his background.

Andromeda Tonks: It was difficult growing up in the Black family. As a kid, I just believed everything my parents said, but…

“Okay, chavo,” Gabby said, “you're coming out with me.”

“What? Oh, Gab, no, I...” Remus looked around his desk, which was messier than usual again.

“It's Thursday afternoon. We're going for happy hour at Tom's. You are coming with. Period. End story. There's only three more episodes to go. It's all done. We hit number one on the iTunes charts four times. But you're all melancolico. You're bringing everyone down.”

Remus tried again to get out of it, but half an hour later, he found himself leaving the office before Lee, Hestia, and Kingsley. He and Gabby walked to Tom's, where she ordered half off sliders and wings and they waited for her girlfriend and some of her other friends to arrive after their jobs ended for the day.

“Okay, there's a beer in your hand and greasy food in front of you,” Gabby said. “Spill the beans.”

“Sirius called me last month from an illegal cell phone,” he said finally.

“What? Did you report it? You didn't report it, did you? Not cool.”

“No. Of course not.”

“And this is why you're all mopey because...”

“He was really pissed about the show.”

“Okay, but we don't do it to please him, you know. He agreed to open up his life for this. If he thinks it's making him look guilty, then that's pretty telling.” Gabby grabbed one of the tiny sliders and took a bite.

“He didn't think it made him look guilty. He was more upset that I might think he was guilty.”

“I don't know what you're trying to tell me here,” Gabby said. “He wants to believed. They all do, whether they did it or not.”

Remus twisted a napkin from the bar. “Do you believe him? Do you think he did it? You've heard as much of the interview footage and seen the evidence.”

“I think his trial was fucked up,” Gabby said as she finished off the slider. “His lawyer was a smarmy dirtbag. But I don't know if it's enough for a mistrial legally speaking. I mean, he had a lawyer who had a strategy, even if it was weird and useless.”

“But that doesn't answer the question.”

“Is this what's bothering you? What do you think?”

“Every time I start thinking he didn't do it, something happens,” Remus admitted. “Like Scrimegeour showing me the photos of him laughing or Peter saying how he told him that now no one would be able to have James and how Peter thought he was in love with James. If anyone would know, surely Peter Pettigrew would. And we followed that alibi and we just never turned up anything concrete. Like, that bartender who maybe remembered Sirius, the route was was maybe too far, the gas station receipt…”

“Remus,” Gabby said, putting down the wing she had been about to pick up. She almost never called him Remus. She called him boss and chavo and compadre and tio. “Stop it. You're getting obsessed.”

“He was really… aggressive on the phone to me,” Remus said. “And he accused me of, well, of flirting with him.”

Gabby was still for a moment. “Were you?”

“No,” Remus said quickly. “Of course not. But, Gabby, it was… he really flew off the handle at me. He called me names. He told me to go fuck myself.”

“The man is mercurial,” Gabby said. “I mean, we know this.”

“I guess.”

“But you've talked to him since then?”

“Yeah, but it's like he's only half there. He thinks I don't believe him and he's turned off.”

Gabby slowly went back to the wings and pushed them toward Remus. “Boss, you have got to let it go. You've got the footage you need. The season is great. It's too bad he's closed you out but maybe it's for the best.”

“You do think he did it.”

“Gut feeling? Maybe, yeah.”

Remus thought about how angry Sirius had been with him and how precisely he had targeted his anger over the phone, a phone that showed he didn't care about following the rules. Remus wasn't sure what to think.

“Oh, sliders!” Gabby's girlfriend Jen appeared behind him, a grin on her face. She had a wonderfully contradictory look that Remus appreciated, with a very formal but stylish pants suit set off by her gelled hair and eyebrow ring. “I am so over work right now, I can't even.”

And then Gabby sucked him into socializing and forgetting. It really did help.

It wasn't until he was in an Uber on the way home that he checked his messages and listened as the intern, Lee, asked him to call because he had something about the money thing. Remus's head, slightly clouded by alcohol, took a minute to even remember what he was talking about.

It was only half past eight, so Remus went ahead and called.

“Oh my god, you're not going to believe what I found,” Lee's voice came through the phone. “Someone did make a lot of money off James and Lily's death, at least, if I'm right.”

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode Nine

Remus: I'm going to give you a little peek now into our lives here at Retrial. As most of you probably know, we spend most of the year researching a case. Obviously, I don't work alone here. There are ten people on our staff, though we share our technical staff and office manager with several of the other podcasts here at our parent company, Muggle Public Media. You've heard me refer to my producers, Hestia Jones and Gabby Rodriguez, several times, but we additionally have two other producers, one of whom is our executive producer, Kingsley Shaklebolt, who helps inspire and oversee a number of our podcasts here. And this year, we also have an intern, Lee Jordan, who has been nearly as invaluable as our researcher.

Several times a week, we meet at our conference table and talk about our research, how we're going to tell the story, who's going to look into what. Basically, we're all sitting here spitballing ideas and sometimes goofing off, because we deal with some of the darker aspects of society and that's one of the ways we cope. Well, a few weeks ago, as we were just getting to putting together a lot of this footage and this season had just started streaming, Lee said something really insightful.

Lee Jordan: I wasn't trying to be insightful. I was just kidding around.

Remus: Okay, but, it set you on a new path with this case.

Lee: Yeah, absolutely.

Remus: So? What'd you say?

Lee: Right. I said, referencing the Watergate scandal, “Follow the money.” I just watched that movie, All the Presidents' Men, for the first time a couple of months ago.

Remus: And you said it all ominous.

Lee: Yeah. Because I was being silly. “Follow the money!” But then you turned and said, totally straight faced, something like, yeah, that's a great idea, go get on that, Lee.

Remus: Exactly. And you did. And it took our investigation in a really different direction.

Lee: Yes. One of my other jobs here is to help moderate the comments on the website, so I can say that even though the fans of the show had what seemed like every theory under the sun, they didn't have what I stumbled on, at least, not like this. You and Gabby had already done a lot of work looking at the Black family money and how it was inherited once Sirius's parents died, but I realized no one had looked at the Potters much.

Remus: There didn't seem to be any reason to.

Lee: I think you mentioned already on the show that the Potters' company was acquired just after James and Lily died. It was a deal that had been in the works for months, but it went through just a few weeks later.

Remus: The Potters returned to where they grew up in England just a year after James was killed. They both died fairly young, but of natural causes there. In the absence of of any other children or close family, their money went to charity.

Lee: All that is public record. The money went to several charities, but the majority went to a fund for immigrants here in the US. Fi Potter had been involved with it for several years and had served on their board for awhile. I did speak to that organization. They have a scholarship set up in James's name, which was part of the bequest. But it definitely seemed like a dead end. For one thing, they got the money only a couple of years ago, after her death. For another, they're a highly regarded charity. But the fact that the deal for the acquisition of their company went through so close to the murder seemed suspicious, so I started poking around about that. To do so, the first person I spoke to was Arthur Weasley, a reporter who covers the tech industry here in Boston who was around back then.

Arthur: It was a big deal and the IPO that emerged from it was not insubstantial back then. I know that Riddle Investments especially did well for their clients…

Remus sat across from Sirius, who was unnaturally still from the moment he'd placed the headphones on. He had come with Sirius's new lawyer, Amelia Bones, so that he could bring in the podcast and let Sirius listen to it with some privacy, something that was impossible for a number of reasons in the cafeteria during regular visiting hours.

Remus was hyperaware of everything about Sirius as he listened. He watched the man's face as the episode started. Forty-nine minutes of sound. Remus could see the moment that Sirius put it together. It came early, the minute Arthur mentioned Riddle Investments. Remus watched as Sirius's extremely animated face, the one that lit up when Remus came to visit him, suddenly went blank. Remus thought he would pull the headphones off. He thought Sirius would demand to know before he could finish listening.

Instead, Sirius sat completely impassive for the next half hour, looking at the wall, not making eye contact. Amelia went over paperwork quietly and ushered the guard at the door away, insisting that they had another full hour if they wanted it and they intended to use it.

Remus just watched Sirius. He wasn't sure if he had ever watched someone for so long. He had listened to people for longer, but this was mostly silent and Sirius didn't return his gaze. He memorized each lock of dark hair that hung around the man's pale face, the way Sirius's thin hands clutched the edge of the industrial table, the way his white prison jumpsuit hung on his frame. He watched him and he tried to imagine what he was feeling and tried not to think about his own emotions.

Finally, as Amelia was stretching her legs again and Remus was beginning to feel sore with waiting for the better part of an hour, the podcast ended and Sirius withdrew the headphones. He had to listen to really believe it, Remus realized. He had to hear the whole thing.

“Peter?” His voice emerged scratchy and almost whispered.

Remus nodded, slowly. “We think so.”

“He couldn't have.” And yet, Remus could see in Sirius's eyes that he didn't believe his own words. “He was always such a little coward.”

“I'm so sorry, Sirius.”

Amelia sat down, her severe features clearly trying to show sympathy. As the podcast had begun airing, Sirius had gotten several offers for new lawyers. He had talked it over with Remus on the phone and in emails, trying to weigh the pros and cons of each one and asking Remus to send him information about them since he couldn't easily look them up himself. Remus had complied, but at the time, the process had seemed so hopeless. Now, he was glad Sirius had gone with someone so experienced and serious.

“Mr. Black, I know you're going to want action right away, but we're going to have to be patient. I have to start with that. But this is such strong evidence. I think we absolutely have the ability to ask for a new trial. I'm not sure if it will be strong enough for a release order, but it might be. I'm absolutely going to file for a...”

The moment Remus had been braced for had arrived. Sirius growled and stood up, knocking his chair back. “Peter. That fucking rat. That…” He was beyond words. Remus remembered the hysteria that had led him to believe Sirius was guilty and the image of him laughing that Scrimegeour had shown him. “That fucking piece of shit! For money? He did it for money? Insider fucking trading? James and Lily died for… a business deal?”

Remus nodded. The guards were at the door. “Riddle Investments made a lot of money off that deal and, you heard it. We all but proved Peter tipped them off. Sirius, try to calm down...”

“Calm down?” Sirius said. “That little rat. That… I'm going to fucking kill him!” Sirius kicked the chair he had overturned. Then he kicked over the chair that was still standing. “I'm going to bludgeon him to death with my bare fucking hands just the way he did...”

“Sirius!” Remus exclaimed.

The guard opened the door.

Sirius paid him no attention whatsoever. “I swear to God, Remus, I...” Sirius unexpectedly threw his weight against the wall and pounded it. Remus could only catch the end of his words, the ones that came after his fists had torn through drywall. “…that wormy fucker. He'll pay. He didn't have to see James like I did after...”

Amelia had backed away and the guard was advancing to the other side of the room, calling Sirius “Black” and looking menacing.

“Listen to me, Sirius!” Remus exclaimed, standing up. “I believe you now. I'd like to see you get out of here. That means not losing it by destroying the entire visiting room.”

Sirius went silent. The guard wrapped his arm around him in a tight hold and another guard came running in.

“Do you, Remus?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper compared to the screams of a moment ago. “Do you want me to get out?”

Remus didn't say anything, but he nodded slightly. He didn't know how to convey what was inside him. Professional distance was out the door so far now that he didn't know what to say. He worried that if he said anything all the things he was avoiding would come flooding out in a mad rush.

And then it was too late. The guards dragged Sirius out and closed the door. He heard the lock down sound.

“Damn it,” Amelia said. “Well, there goes my day.”

“I didn't think he'd…” Remus trailed off, looking at the hole Sirius had put in the wall. Most of the walls were concrete block. It was like Sirius had known just where to punch.

“I'm not too surprised from what I know about him,” Amelia said, settling herself down again. “I've now defended more than a dozen innocent men and several of them experienced mental breaks when given clear evidence of their innocence. We're talking about depressive episodes, but I've read Sirius's file. He's been clean for awhile now, but he's obviously one to lash out, not to keep things in.”

Remus was impressed with how quickly she had summed up Sirius, and relieved that she seemed so unflappable in the face of his outburst, not to mention the lengthy day at the prison.

He took a breath and sat down on the other chair. This was going to be enough, he thought. It had to be.

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Remus Lupin: This is Retrial, a podcast about the justice system. Each season on Retrial, we choose a case of someone in prison who proclaims their innocence and explore the crime they were convicted of. This season, we're looking at a small New England town murder and the conviction of Sirius Black.

Announcer: Episode Ten

Remus: Usually on our show, we spend the last episode thinking about some of the bigger themes involved in a crime. This crime is certainly rife with a number of tensions that we have explored in part in the previous episodes and could probably take more consideration, such as the tensions between an old fashioned prep school in an increasingly impoverished New England town, the prejudice that immigrants can face even when they're wealthy, and whether homophobia drove this case.

While this is sometimes my favorite part of a season, if you were listening last week, you'll know that our story took an unexpected turn with some new evidence that our intern helped uncover.

Since last week, the SEC has opened an investigation on Riddle Investments that is ongoing and Peter Pettigrew has fled the country and is currently in Malaysia. Riddle Investments refused to talk to us and the SEC won’t comment about open cases, so we’re going to have to wait to hear what develops with that.

Instead, today, we're going to try and explore an alternative timeline of the crime. I'm going to be driving through the town of Meade again and tracing the crime with this different version of events. A lot of this is pure speculation based on what we now strongly suspect, that Peter Pettigrew committed the murders when James Potter somehow realized that he was illegally using information about his father’s company to make money for his new employer. We’re going to look at what we know about Peter’s alibi for the time of the murders and look at what he was doing during the almost three days before the bodies were found, as well as new evidence about that anonymous tip that sent the police to the warehouse in the first place.

(ambient noises of a cafe)

Remus: We've been here before. It's the Three Broomsticks Inn, where James and Lily had their final meal with Lily's family. This is such a small town place that even though the murder was years ago, the wait staff is mostly the same. This is Rosemerta, who has waited tables there since she was young.

Rosemerta: It's seared in my memory. That Indian boy was paying so the other guy, the chubby one, he ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, which was steak and eggs. They…

It had been more than a month since he'd actually laid eyes on Sirius and he was honestly afraid to go to Azkaban. He made himself anyway. Amelia was busy with filings of all kinds, not to mention that she had other cases, and couldn't drive halfway across the state so he was there alone, back in the massive visiting room.

Sirius looked strangely calm as Remus sat down.

“Where's your equipment?”

“The show wrapped.”

“Oh.” Sirius looked around the room and Remus almost had the impression that he was seeing it for the first time, or maybe that he wasn't seeing it at all, as if he was in that other place, outside time, that he occasionally referenced. “Why are you here then?”

“I told you, in my email.”

“That you wanted to see me?”

“I have to tell you some things,” Remus said. “I should get them out of the way.”

“Oh?”

“First, Amelia said to tell you that your case is progressing. Being the subject of a popular podcast doesn't hurt. She says that she thinks it'll be no more than six months, and probably less. The evidence is very good.”

Remus paused.

“What's the second thing?” Sirius knit his brow, his dark eyebrows pushing together with wrinkles on his pale face.

“Part of the reason that things are looking so good is that Peter fled the country. He looks very guilty right now, not just from the evidence, but from his actions.”

“Fucking rat.”

“Yeah. He left before they could put a warrant out for him. He's currently in Bali. There's no extradition treaty, so it could be difficult to see him brought to justice.” Remus braced himself. He thought Sirius might lash out, but he sat there still instead, looking angry but thoughtful. “Riddle Investments, his company, is under investigation though. It turned out that they were already under investigation for a number of potential fraud issues. This has sped things up.” Remus paused again.

“You're taking all this pretty well, Sirius,” Remus said quietly.

“I had some sort of stomach bug in solitary,” Sirius said, seemingly apropos of nothing.

“Bad?”

“So fucking bad. I've always been that way. If I eat something off, it all comes up, like super fast. Not to gross you out.”

“Too late,” Remus said and Sirius cracked his first smile.

“Yeah. Well, I'm grossed out thinking about it too, so join the club.” He shifted in his seat. “No one would come clean it up all day. Or just give me some extra rags or something so I could. And they sent in that shitty chili instead of the oatmeal. I fucking hate the hole.”

Remus grimaced. It wasn't unexpected, but it still infuriated him, these stories like that about these constant indignities prisoners faced. It didn't even matter that Sirius was innocent. It wasn't right for anyone.

“You're going to get out.” He had never said that to anyone before, not even at the end of the first season when they had the DNA evidence to prove their subject's innocence. As soon as he said it, it was this scary thing hanging between them.

“You said you wanted me to,” Sirius said.

This was it. This was the moment he needed to acknowledge that Sirius had been right. He had to say it for Sirius and for himself. Instead, he said, “You don't really know me, Sirius. I'm not… There are things about me...”

“Like that your father was some gangster and that some rival came after your family because of him? Like that you have HIV? Or that you have weird taste in music? Or that you went to Wesleyan? Or that you live in downtown Boston? Or that you like dogs? I like dogs too.”

Remus's eyebrows went up in surprise.

“Andromeda researched you for me. She does that for me sometimes.”

“Oh.”

“Look, I don't think I was imagining all that before. Do you remember when you said about the show, that you'd do my story if we had chemistry?”

“No,” Remus said, trying to remember.

“First phone call I had with you. It sort of stuck with me. I think we have chemistry.”

“Oh god,” Remus said. He remembered then, first hearing Sirius’s gravelly voice while spilling salsa all over himself. There was something about hearing it from Sirius's mouth that made him shiver.

“I wish I could touch you.”

“You need to go back to prison etiquette class.”

“Six months or less? I probably have time to teach one more class before I leave.” Sirius suddenly took a sharp inhale. “Am I really?'

“Yes. I mean, I… I'm not in charge, but I think so. Amelia said they'd probably transfer you to a minimum security facility really soon, maybe somewhere closer to Boston.”

“You do want me closer.”

Remus couldn't help himself. He gave a slight moan. “God help me, I do.”

Sirius's face went from impassive to full on bright like a light switch turned on. “It's real.”

“It's… yeah. I need some time. I'm not really sure.”

“Hey, my lawyer apparently says that I've got a few months.”

Remus ran his hand over his face. “Yeah. I think I can work with that.”

Chapter Text

(sparse piano music)

(woman's voice): ...always an arrogant jerk in school.

(man's voice): …because he was gay.

(man's voice): ...literally holding the body when police pulled up.

(news audio clip): …trial of the century in this small Massachusetts town.

(Retrial theme music)

Lee Jordan: This is a special bonus episode of Retrial. Retrial Season Six is coming soon. You can listen on our website or with your favorite podcasting app. Remus Lupin will be back with the story of a bus driver who says he was blackmailed into participating in a murder. But in the meantime, we wanted to bring you an update about our fourth season case, the murders of James Potter and Lily Evans.

The first thing you should know is that Sirius Black, who spent more than thirteen years in prison for their murders, was released from prison after his case went back to court. He's now been a free man for two months. We're going to talk about what happened in court and what happened when Peter Pettigrew, the man who committed both murders, fled the country. But first I have to explain why I'm hosting this special episode.

Remus: Thanks for filling in for me.

Lee: It's my honor, obviously. I started as an intern!

Remus: Yeah, well, you helped crack the case two years ago and it seems fitting that you should spearhead this special episode.

Lee: Because it seems like maybe you have lost your journalistic integrity on this case.

Remus: That's right. About three months after the fourth season of Retrial wrapped up, while his lawyers were in the middle of motions go get back into court, Sirius Black and I began a romantic relationship.

Lee: So… anything you want to share…

Remus: Not really. It's a little strange for a journalist to be written about as a news item, like I have been, but I've tried to ignore it and it's mostly gotten quiet since his release. I'm mostly a private person, so that's pretty much all I'm going to say on that front.

Lee: Listeners, I really did push for more before we started taping, but he's not budging.

Remus: It's a good story, but I'm not really a part of it.

Lee: On that note, we're going to start with a scene from Judge Griselda Marchbanks's courtroom the first day that lawyers…

Sirius stood outside in the misty spring, drizzle raining down on his head, soaking it and going through his new black leather jacket. The jacket had seemed too new, and this was probably not the way to break it in, but he didn't move. Across the green, he could see some of the college students who lived in the houses down the road returning home from classes. It might be exam time, he thought. They looked so young.

“You madman!” Sirius turned, hearing Remus's voice rushing at him from across the street. He could see Remus's beat up little car there and Remus rushing out with a newspaper clutched over his head. His sandy hair was getting wet, turning darker and the tiny drops beaded up on his pale, brown skin. “Stop being loco. Come out of the rain.”

“I'm not crazy,” Sirius said. “Just.” He wasn't sure how to explain it. It was like he had to do every single thing he couldn't do for more than a decade, even stupid things like standing in the rain, things that made no sense.

“Yeah, I know,” Remus said. He leaned in and kissed Sirius lightly, the kiss wet and cool with the drizzle. Remus kissed like that, casually, lightly. He also kissed like an inferno, passionately, with his whole body the times they'd been alone together since his release.

Another of the students walked by, but didn't blink at their kiss. The world, Sirius thought. It wasn't the same world he left.

“You have everything?”

He nodded. “Yeah.” Everything he owned that didn't fit in his pocket was in a large duffel bag in the entryway of the halfway house, waiting to travel with him.

“Ready?” Remus looked at him expectantly, as if he was the one who needed to be nervous about Sirius leaving him.

Sirius looked around at the green between the streets again. Sometimes it seemed normal, just walking the streets from place to place. Other times it seemed overwhelming. Right now was one of the overwhelming times.

It wasn't just the outside or the sudden lack of rules, or even the thing that bothered him the most, the sense that he was completely untethered in the world now. It was how much Remus meant to him, how much he loved him, needed him, wanted him. He hadn't felt that way about anyone except maybe James, but that was different. Remus was different. He was more in some ways than James had ever been. James, who was still a hole in his heart that would possibly never heal. But Remus had his own holes and scars, ones that Sirius was only just beginning to understand. He wanted to understand them all.

Sometimes, in moments like these, Sirius played a game with himself. He reached back, to the place outside time that existed in his mind, and pulled his old self forward, the self that wasn't locked in a cage and nearly driven insane. That self never hesitated. He just lived to the fullest.

“Sirius?” Remus's beautiful brown eyes looked at him expectantly, the rain dripping from his lashes.

“Let's go.”