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Chapter Text

March, 1976

On the night of Remus Lupin’s 16th birthday, Sirius Black kisses him. It’s Remus’s first kiss, and it’s the best birthday present he never would have dared to ask for. He thinks his heart might burst.

Instead, it breaks.

Sirius pulls away, looking alarmed and embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he tells Remus. “That was…that was a mistake. I’m sorry, Moony.”

Then Sirius flees, leaving Remus alone in his confusion and hurt.

At that moment, Remus thinks there was nothing Sirius could do that would ever hurt worse than this. Than kissing him and calling it a mistake. Than running away. Than breaking Remus’s foolish heart.

How wrong he is.

“I’m sorry, Remus, I’m so sorry…It was a mistake…”

Four days after that kiss, Sirius is on his knees beside Remus’s hospital bed, begging. Tears stream down his cheeks, and his fingers clutch at the sheets. Sirius keeps his head bowed, too afraid to look any of his friend in the eyes.

Remus can barely stand to look at Sirius at all.

James and Peter stand on the other side of his bed, all arrayed against Sirius.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Sirius says again. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt, I swear it!”

This isn’t a kiss though. This isn’t a mistake any of them can pretend never happened.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius repeats, as though he thinks the words might gain weight with repetition. Like he believes he can wear Remus down if he just keeps apologizing. Maybe he can. Maybe he will. Sirius is charming, and somewhere, deep underneath his hurt and anger and fear, Remus knows Sirius is genuinely sorry.

That inevitable forgiveness is a long ways away though, and today it feels like weakness to Remus, who already feels terribly weak after last night. Jaw clenching, teeth grinding, Remus finally looks away.

Right now he hates Sirius for the apologies that roll so easily off his tongue.

“I think you need to leave, Sirius,” James says, and his voice is so cold it even makes Remus shiver. James is never so frosty, especially with Sirius.

“Get out, Padfoot,” Peter echoes.

Stubborn as always though, Sirius doesn’t budge. Remus can feel his fingers tighten on the fistfuls of bedsheets he’s grabbed.

“Go away, Sirius,” Remus finally says. All the hurt and confusion and the anger are finally breaking out of his chest. “I never want to see you again.”

They couldn’t know that these would be the last words any of them would say to Sirius.

Just like they have no way of knowing that the last time they see him will be when he pauses for a moment in the doorway of the hospital wing. Sirius glances over his shoulder for just a moment, devastation written plainly across his face.

Then he was gone.

Remus falls into a restless, troubled sleep after Madam Pomfrey shooes James and Peter off to classes. His dreams are full of red. In them he kisses Sirius again. They’re pressed close together and Remus can feel his fingernails—no, his claws—tear through Sirius’s clothes and skin as they rake down the other boy’s back. Sirius never stops kissing him. Not until Remus tears his throat out.

“Moony…Moony, wake up,” a voice hisses in his ear.

Remus flinches, startling awake. His thoughts are still lagging behind in his dream even as his eyes blink open.

He’s obviously slept later than he’d thought, because the room is dark except for the dim glow at the end of a wand. He expects to see Sirius, back to beg for forgiveness again. Instead, he finds James and Peter just emerging from beneath James’s invisibility cloak. Both of them look dazed and pale as ghosts.

“Whasgoingon?” Remus asks, groggily slurring the question into a single word.

“He’s gone,” James says in a pained whisper. “Expelled.”

Even Remus’s sleepy mind doesn’t take more than a moment to realize who James is talking about.

Sirius.

Sirius has been expelled.

Sirius is gone.

Everything stops.

Breath, heart, blood, brain. Everything in Remus freezes. All the anger he felt earlier is crushed beneath a wave of stupefied horror.

“We didn’t see him in class all day,” Peter says, taking over for James, who looks like he’s going to be sick. “We just thought he was hiding, or maybe he was in detention, but then he wasn’t at dinner either, and…”

Peter swallows and looks to James, clearly hoping for guidance, but James has his hands buried in his hair, his eyes are squeezed tightly closed. He has nothing to give them right now, so Peter stumbles onward.

“When we went back to the room after dinner…everything, all of Sirius’s things had been taken away. Even his bed is gone…” He trails off, his voice too thick to form any more words.

“Are you sure?” Remus asks. He knows they are though. James and Peter wouldn’t come down here to tell him about it if they weren’t absolutely certain.

James nods, yanking his hands out of his hair so violently it must hurt. “We went to McGonagall after we saw the dorm room. She confirmed it,” James says. “It’s done. Someone from the Ministry snapped his wand and…” James swallows, his eyes are screwed shut and his hands trembling.

Remus’s earlier words echo through the heavy, smothering silence.

“I never want to see you again.”

He hadn’t meant it. Not like that. Not really. He was angry and hurt, and he’d wanted to hurt Sirius in turn. He’d wanted Sirius to suffer, but not like this. Deep down in his heart, Remus knows he was always going to forgive Sirius.

Not right away, but in the end.

This wasn’t what he wanted at all.

“Where—” Remus barely recognizes his own voice. It’s a hoarse, trembling croak. “Where is Sirius now?”

James drops his head into his hands again and Peter flinches. “McGonagall said…she said his parents came to get him…”

Remus catches Peter’s small, frightened eyes. Sirius was always taciturn about his family life, but they all know it isn’t good. What will the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black do with an already rebellious heir who has now been expelled from Hogwarts?

“We didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Peter says mournfully.

Chapter Text

Dumbledore comes down to the hospital wing to personally assure Remus that Snape has been sworn to silence and no one else will find out about Remus’s condition. Remus uses the opportunity to beg Dumbledore to reconsider Sirius’s expulsion. The headmaster looks genuinely pained as he shakes his head.

The rules, in this case, are clear.

Sirius endangered multiple lives for the sake of a prank.

Expulsion was the only possible punishment.

The next few days are bad.

Rumors spread like fiendfyre. Remus overhears a dozen different theories and stories about what really happened. They rang from the utterly absurd (Sirius found and opened the legendary Chamber of Secrets) to almost uncomfortably close to the truth (a prank gone very, very wrong).

It’s a wonder James isn’t expelled as well. He picks fights with anyone who so much as says Sirius’s name in the wrong tone.

He breaks Snape’s nose and his own hand after he hears the Slytherin crowing proudly about being involved in Sirius’s expulsion. Snape gives back as good as he gets though, and they both wind up with detention every weekend for the rest of the year. James also has a new curse scar across his ribs from something nasty and dark Snape used, but Madam Pomfrey didn’t set Snape’s nose quite right before she healed it, so now it’s large and crooked.

In contrast, Remus sinks into himself. He barely speaks, never sleeps, hardly eats, and falls behind on his schoolwork for the first time in his life.

If James is looking for someone to hurt to take away his pain, Remus is hurting himself to keep feeling that pain.

It’s Peter who saves them both.

Arguably, of all the relationships between the four of them, the bond between Peter and Sirius had probably been the weakest. Despite that, they had been brothers. Marauders. He’s distraught too, but he doesn’t want to see the friends he has left destroy themselves as well.

Peter turns everyone’s hair purple.

As far as pranks go, it’s nowhere near their best. It’s the sort of thing they would have done back in second year, third at the latest. However, Peter organizes the whole thing himself, brewing the potion, sneaking into the kitchens, spiking all the drinks (even the teachers’).

The detention he gets for it is all worth it when James and Remus both laugh for the first time since Sirius has been gone.

They try to write to Sirius. Of course they do.

The letters are a chaotic jumble of emotions and thoughts and pleas. Honestly, they’re probably completely incomprehensible.

Remus, James, and Peter send at least one letter a day, usually more.

Not one single owl ever returns with a reply though.

Then, at the end of the month, just a few days after James’s thoroughly morose birthday, Regulus Black tracks down the three of them in the library.

He upends a sack full of letters onto the table where James, Peter, and Remus are studying for their Astronomy O.W.L.

Recognizing his own handwriting, Remus picks one up. It’s addressed to Sirius, and it’s unopened. They all are.

“Stop sending letters,” Regulus snaps. “He’s not there.”

He turns on his heel to leave, but James catches him roughly by the arm.

“What do you mean he’s not there?” James demands. There’s a hysterical edge to his voice. “Where is Sirius if he’s not at home?”

Regulus looks away, and Remus realizes that, despite the stubborn set of his chin and his perfect posture, Regulus is trembling from head to foot. The envelope in Remus’s hands crinkles loudly as his fingers tighten on its edges.

“I don’t know,” Regulus says quietly. “My parents…they said he ran away the night after they took him home.”

“And you believe them?” James asks, incredulous.

Regulus refuses to meet any of their eyes.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

They go straight to McGonagall. Regulus refuses to go along, but “fuck him” as Peter mutters when they race out of the library.

McGonagall listens. Of course, she does.

Minerva McGonagall may blame all of her grey hairs on James Potter and his little band of marauders (there’s no capitalization when she says the word), but she knows they’re good boys, and they’re worried about their friend. To tell the truth, she’s been worried too.

When James finishes speaking and Remus and Peter have no more interjections to make, McGonagall tells them to take a seat. She goes to her fireplace, tosses in a pinch of sooty powder, and when the flames turn green, she contacts someone she trusts at the Ministry.

She doesn’t even bother to inform Dumbledore first. It makes Remus wonder how much their head of house knows, or at least suspects, about Sirius’s home life.

The disappearance of a minor, even one who’s been disgraced and expelled from Hogwarts (and, let’s be honest, from polite wizarding society as well), warrants an official investigation.

Wizards from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement make contact with Sirius’s parents. They also come to Hogwarts to speak with James, Remus, and Peter, and with a very reluctant Regulus. They even go through the house at 12 Grimmauld Place.

Sirius isn’t there.

Orion and Walburga Black are, of course, outraged by it all. They, along with the rest of the family, all steadfastly deny any knowledge of Sirius’s whereabouts. Even Alphard and Andromeda, the only family members Sirius still got along with, say they haven’t seen him (although they at least seem distressed when they say it).

Sirius’s parents claim they brought Sirius home on the day he’d been expelled, and if they’d been upset, well, who wouldn’t be? Then, the next morning, they woke up to find Sirius’s bedroom empty.

“They killed him.” Peter shocks them all by finally saying what they’ve been afraid of for weeks.

He, Remus, and James are in Professor McGonagall’s office when he says it. They’re often in her office these days, always begging for news, for answers. To her credit, McGonagall does her best to keep the three of them informed. Unfortunately, there’s never much to tell.

The ministry officials who aren’t in the Blacks’ pocket all agree that it’s very suspicious that Orion and Walburga never reported Sirius missing. However, searches of their house never turned up any evidence to contradict their version of events.

Now, McGonagall’s face pales. “There’s no reason to believe that,” she tells Peter, tells all of them, but her voice wobbles. “The investigation is still ongoing.”

To Sirius’s friends though, it makes a terrible sort of sense.

“If Sirius had just run away, why wouldn’t he have contacted us?” James snaps. “Where would he have gone if not to Alphard, Andromeda, or us? Something must have happened…something bad.”

Remus can only nod his agreement. His last words to Sirius still hang like a millstone around his neck.

“I never want to see you again.”

Despite some truly prodigious efforts by the House of Black to keep the whole thing quiet, the story leaks to the newspapers. Overnight, a young reporter named Rita Skeeter turns the disappearance of Sirius Black into a scandal, a sensation. Theories are posited, editorials are written, photographs of a smiling, happy Sirius accompany bold headlines and bolder accusations on multiple front pages.

Suddenly, everyone is asking what happened to Sirius Black?

Until they aren’t.

Time passes. Despite Rita Skeeter’s best (or at least most salacious) efforts, no new leads are found. Interest wanes. Rita finds new muck to rake.

After all, Sirius Black is hardly the only person to go missing these days.

Muggles and Muggleborns, Squibs and so-called “blood traitors” are disappearing more and more frequently. That is, when they aren’t being murdered outright. Glowing green serpents and skulls left lingering above houses make for a better story than a single boy vanishing without a trace.

By the end of the school year, it feels like James, Peter, and Remus are the only ones left who care. Like they’re the only ones left still looking for Sirius.

Chapter Text

Summer, 1976

Remus spends the summer losing himself in books.

It’s nothing short of a miracle that he, James, and Peter managed to scrape together any O.W.L.s at all with everything going on at the end of the school year.

Remus can’t let himself fall behind like that again. Life outside of school is going to be hard enough for him even with the best grades possible.

That’s what Remus tells himself at least. Really, he just wants to drown himself in words. In theories or stories or anything that doesn’t come from inside his own mind. Everything inside him hurts too much to linger on.

By the end of August, Remus has read almost all his textbooks cover to cover and then some. When he gets back to Hogwarts he’ll likely be top of the class in most subjects. It feels like a hollow victory.

He feels hollow.

Peter has nightmares all summer.

In them, he’s searching for Sirius. James and Remus are there with him at the start, but then they split up. Now alone, Peter searches for his missing friend, and he always finds him.

Or rather, he always finds Sirius’s body.

By the end of summer, Peter must have found Sirius’s corpse a hundred different ways. Drowned, buried, burnt, cut into pieces, half-eaten, lying in pools of blood, hanging from trees, floating in the lake.

He knows Sirius is dead. How could he not be? His family is a bunch of violent crazies who already hated Sirius long before he was expelled.

Peter wishes there was a funeral or a wake or something he could go to that would feel like saying a proper goodbye to Sirius. A wake. Sirius would like that. He would like his friends to drink and tell happy stories and laugh.

When they all get back to Hogwarts, they should do something like that, Peter thinks as he lies in bed one night. That night, Peter doesn’t remember his dreams. He takes it as a sign.

Over the summer, James’s parents find him a healer. She specializes in mental rather than bodily trauma. Peter and Remus don’t have even that.

At first, James hates talking to his healer. He probably breaks most of the knickknacks and instruments in her office at least once. It’s almost perverse, but when his anger spills out like this he actually feels closer to Sirius. James shouts, he screams, and, finally, he cries. He sobs until his entire body shakes with it, until he thinks he must be a withered husk, as dry as a desert because everything has poured out of him.

Then and only then, does James start to talk.

It gets better. Not entirely, but it gets easier. Sometimes. Other times, not so much.

There’s one thing that plagues him above all the others.

The not knowing.

James is no Auror or Muggle detective or even legally an adult. He’s smart, and he’s determined (obsessed really, though he hides it well enough), but by the end of summer all he’s found are dead ends. He’s grasping at straws now, but he has one last idea. One last plan.

If it doesn’t work out though…James isn’t sure what he’ll do.

Chapter Text

September 1976

James enacts his plan the first night they all return to Hogwarts. He hasn’t cried all day. He hasn’t screamed or thrown things or hit anyone either. On the surface, he probably looks like he’s coping very well. Inside though, he’s a bloody mess.

Remus and Peter are clearly as miserable as he is, but James doesn’t tell them his plan.

When he’s sure his friends are asleep, James grabs his invisibility cloak and sneaks downstairs. He’s surprised to find the common room still has one occupant. Lily Evans is curled in a chair near the fire. There’s a book in her lap, but she isn’t reading it. An air of sadness clings to her, and it strikes a familiar chord somewhere deep in James’s chest.

He pulls off the cloak and intentionally scuffs his foot across the stone floor. Lily startles and whips her head toward him. When she recognizes James in the dim light, she composes her features.

James recognizes that as well.

“Potter, what are you doing down here? It’s after curfew,” Lily chides. There’s none of her usual irritation behind it though.

“I can’t sleep,” James says. “What’s your excuse?”

“The same, I suppose,” she replies with a sigh.

James crosses the common room and sits in the chair across from her. He tries his best to imitate the smile his healer always uses, the one that invites people to share their pain and promises to lighten their load. It probably looks more like a grimace on his face.

“It’s nothing,” Lily says, but her voice quavers and tears make her eyes shimmer in the firelight. “My sister…she’s not…she just said some things to me today, and…It’s not important. It’s not…”

It’s not as bad as what you’re dealing with.

“Misery isn’t a competition, Evans,” James says. “In fact, I hear it loves company.”

“It’s nothing, really,” Lily protests. “I should be used to Petunia by now, only…I used to have someone to talk to about it…”

James’s jaw clenches.

Snape.

She used to talk about her troubles with Snape.

“Well, if you ask me, you’re better off without that particular conversation partner,” James says, trying to keep his anger in check. Lily flinches anyway. “Sorry,” James adds, not because he insulted Snape, but because he doesn’t want Lily to hurt any more than she already is.

“It’s all right,” Lily says. “You’re right anyway. Severus was never the right person to talk to about Petunia. He always told me to forget about her, that she wasn’t important, that she was just jealous because she’s a Muggle. Even if that last bit is true, she’s still my sister. She’s important to me…”

He needs to get going, but he doesn’t want to leave Lily here alone. Whatever is going on with her sister might not be life or death, but she’s clearly hurting. James doesn’t like seeing even a shadow of the feelings that haunt him reflected in Lily’s green eyes.

“I was going to go for a walk, do you want to come?” James asks. He’s risking a lot here. There are good reasons why he kept Peter and Remus out of his plan. He could be getting his hopes up for nothing, or he could be about to have his worst fears confirmed. Hell, he could even be about to walk into a trap.

“It’s after curfew,” Lily reminds him.

“Which means we shouldn’t run into other people,” James replies.

One day back and he already feels cramped and claustrophobic with so many other people around. James has never felt this way about Hogwarts before, but he’s always had Sirius at his side here. Right from the start on their very first train ride.

James thought he would always have that.

“A walk sounds nice,” Lily says quietly, and she actually smiles, “but I don’t really want to start my year with detention.”

James reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the invisibility cloak. It probably isn’t a good idea telling a girl who’s never really liked him about one of his best-kept secrets. James is feeling a bit mad though, a bit reckless. A bit like Sirius.

If he wants to walk through the dark, empty castle with Lily Evans, well then, he’s going to give it a fucking try.

“I have a way to avoid that,” James says. “Provided you can keep a secret.”

When they reach the top of the grand staircase, Lily stops. She steps out from beneath the invisibility cloak and walks to the bannister. After checking for Filch or his demon cat, James pulls off the cloak and goes to stand next to her.

“It’s beautiful like this,” Lily says quietly.

James nods, but he’s not looking at the scenery; he’s looking at Lily. Painted in shadows and moonlight, she looks mysterious and melancholy, unlike the bright, fierce creature she is in daylight.

The old urge to flirt and tease her is gone, James realizes. Lily is beautiful and so much more, but there isn’t room inside him to want. Not right now.

Maybe someday he will look at Lily Evans or some other girl and have the space to love her, but not right now.

Right now, James just takes what small comfort he can from the silent, sleeping castle and the steady presence of the girl beside him who is hurting in her own way. He knows that Lily isn’t just upset because her sister said a few mean things to her. She’s mourning the loss of a friend as well.

James might hate Snape, but he can understand Lily’s pain.

They linger for another minute before James draws the cloak back over their heads and they descend the moonlit stairs.

“We’re not just taking a walk, are we?” Lily whispers as James leads the way toward the dungeons.

“No,” James admits. “Sorry for not telling you earlier. If you want to take the cloak and go back, you can. There’s something I need to do though.”

Lily hesitates, and the cloak rises up, exposing them up to the knees with the distance it put between them.

“What are you planning, Potter?” Lily asks. It isn’t a prefect’s suspicious question. She sounds afraid, for him.

“Nothing like what you’re probably thinking,” James promises her. “I’m not going after Snape or trying to hurt anyone. I just…I need to know what happened to Sirius, or I might never sleep again.”

Lily swallows then steps up next to him. Once again, the invisibility cloak stretches down far enough to hide their feet.

“I don’t think you should go alone,” she says.

James doesn’t thank her for it because he isn’t sure he is thankful. Especially with what Lily says next.

“Severus told me what happened,” Lily whispers as they maneuver down the dungeon stairs. “After you hit him last year…after he said those awful things.”

“I’m sure he took great pleasure in it,” James replies sourly. Suddenly, Lily’s hand is wrapped around his wrist, pulling him to a stop. She’s on the step above him, and it puts them exactly at eye level.

“What Sirius did was terrible,” Lily says firmly. “It could have gotten you, Remus, and Severus killed. He deserved to be punished, maybe even expelled, but anything else…he didn’t deserve that.”

James is shaking, his entire body trembling. He’s certain Lily can feel it. “The last thing I said to Sirius…I told him to go away…”

Lily lets go of his wrist and reaches out, almost like she’s going to hug him. James steps back, almost tumbling the rest of the way down the stairs before he catches himself. If he were to take the comfort she’s offering him right now, it will break him.

“You should stay here,” James suggests. “Stay under the cloak. I—I’m sorry, I don’t know how long this will take.”

“James!” Lily whispers, and it might be the first time she’s ever called him by his first name. James is already out from beneath the cloak and hurrying down the stairs. It isn’t the quietest descent, so James is lucky when he finds the dungeon corridor empty.

Empty except for a thin figure that steps out of a niche beside a suit of armor as James approaches.

“Potter,” Regulus drawls.

Chapter Text

During the chaos at Hogsmeade Station, James knocked into Regulus Black. With Hagrid yelling for the first years and everyone trying to get to the horseless carriages, it was a simple thing to do. A quick brush of his shoulder to bump Regulus just a bit off balance, and it was easy enough for James to slip a note into his pocket.

He’s a little surprised Regulus actually showed up, but here he is.

Here they are.

Regulus looks like shite. James didn’t notice it at the station or at the feast. Regulus has always been on the slender side (it’s a good build for a seeker), but now he looks downright sickly. James’s stomach churns.

Sirius sometimes came back from school holidays looking like that.

“Regulus…are you all right?” James asks.

The younger Black clenches his jaw in the same, stubborn way as Sirius.

“I’m fine,” Regulus says shortly. “What do you want?”

Regulus has to know exactly what James wants, but if he wants to hear James say it, fine. If he wants James to beg on his knees, well, he’ll do that too. “Please, Regulus…do you know what happened to Sirius?” James asks.

“Do you have any idea what my summer was like?” Regulus asks. “Aurors came to our house. They tore apart every room, dug through my family’s possessions, asked wretched, invasive questions. Then there were the stories in the newspapers, the libelous articles accusing my parents of every crime in the law books. Every time we stepped out of the house there were whispers and stares and sneers.”

James isn’t sorry for reporting Sirius’s disappearance. Nor is he sorry for the accusations he leveled against Orion and Walburga. The only thing James is sorry about is that none of the searches or interrogations did any good. He apologizes anyway.

Whatever it takes.

“I’m sorry, I was just trying to find out what happened to my friend,” James says.

“Well I don’t know!” Regulus snaps. His voice echoes down the empty corridor, and both boys stand frozen for a long moment, waiting to see if anyone has heard them.

Silence is the only answer.

For the first time, Regulus seems to realize that they’re truly alone. He sags, as if a great weight is pressing down on his thin shoulders.

“I don’t know,” Regulus repeats. This time the words are a thin, uncertain whisper. This time, James believes them. He closes his eyes and tries to hold back the tears he hasn’t let fall all day. Regulus was his last real hope for answers.

“I asked, you know,” Regulus adds quietly. He looks almost surprised by his own admission, but he can’t seem to stop the words. “I asked my parents if it was true, if Sirius really had run away. I—I tried to make it seem like I didn’t care one way or another, but…” He turns his head to stare down the corridor away from James. “They weren’t happy I’d asked.”

James’s throat tightens, and his hands ball into fists. “Regulus, if they hurt you—”

“Don’t,” Regulus hisses. “I’m not Sirius. I don’t need you to save me.”

But, oh how James wants to save him.

He recognizes that stubborn jaw though. If James goes to McGonagall, or Slughorn, or even Dumbledore, Regulus will deny anything and everything. As much as he wishes otherwise, James can’t help Regulus unless Regulus wants to be helped.

“All right,” James says, conceding the battle if not the war. “If you ever need…well, anything, I’m here.”

Regulus still refuses to look at him, so James decides to forgo proper goodbyes. He turns back toward the stairs.

“Potter,” Regulus calls after him hesitantly. James turns back. Regulus is toying with something on his finger, a ring. A heavy silver ring with a large black stone. Sirius always refused to wear that ring when it had been his, but James recognizes the Black family signet ring all the same.

“If something happened to Sirius, it might not have been our parents who…” Regulus trails off, twisting the ring all the way around his finger.

“There were…plans,” he says, choosing each word with deliberate care. “Things that were planned for Sirius…responsibilities. Only, expelled and without a wand, he…he was of no use to...certain members of our family, and, well, our parents weren’t the only ones who were upset about Sirius’s expulsion.”

James feels sick. He can puzzle through enough of Regulus’s carefully constructed phrasing to guess what some of those family plans might have been. Expelled or not, Sirius never would have gone along with them. He’d have fought tooth and nail…and maybe they would have wound up in this exact spot anyway.

“And…have those plans been passed down to you?” James asks. He dislikes talking in circles like this, but if he asks the question plainly, he’s certain Regulus would bolt, so he follows the other boy’s example and keeps everything vague enough for plausible deniability.

Regulus sneers. “They’ve always had plans for me,” he says. “Sirius just turned sixteen first.”

“Regulus, you don’t have to—”

“We’re done, Potter,” Regulus says firmly. “I don’t have the answers you’re looking for, and we have nothing else to discuss.”

Before James can stop him, Regulus spins on his heel and marches away down the corridor.

*

James is ready to follow right after Regulus, but a gentle, invisible hand on his shoulder stops him.

“Don’t,” Lily says quietly. “I know enough about Slytherin pride to know it won’t do any good. Not right now.” She pulls off the cloak, but she keeps her hand on James’s shoulder, squeezing briefly.

“I suppose you heard all of that?” James asks. He never really believed she would follow his instructions and stay back on the stairs.

“I did,” Lily says, and she says nothing more.

They walk back to the tower in silence, close enough their arms bump with every step, but leagues apart. Before they reach the portrait hole, Lily pulls James to a stop.

“The sort of people Regulus was talking about—”

“We’re not playing Slytherin anymore, Evans,” James interrupts, perhaps a bit sharper than intended. “Just say the words. Death Eaters. Voldemort.”

If he ever felt like giving in to the fear that has so many people refusing to say the bastard’s name, that urge is dead now. Professor Dumbledore is right, fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself, and James refuses to be afraid anymore.

Lily flinches but steadies herself. “Easier for you to say than someone like me, but yes, them,” she says. “Do you think Regulus is telling the truth?

James shrugs. Anger is seeping in around the edges of his grief again. “I don’t know.” He hates saying those words, but it is true. “It’s possible. Sirius’s family is the sort who think their blood makes them better than everyone else. It’s not hard to believe they’d follow someone like Voldemort. I just can’t believe they ever thought Sirius would buy into that shite too.”

To James’s surprise, Lily nods. “Black was a lot of things, but he was never a blood supremacist.”

He shudders at the way she just used the past tense to refer to Sirius.

*
James isn’t at all surprised to find Remus and Peter awake and waiting for him in the common room. They both frown and raise an eyebrow apiece when they see Lily emerge from beneath the cloak as well.

Their map sits open on Peter’s lap, not that it probably did them much good.

There’s a glitch in the spells that display where people are, one they never entirely figured out how to fix. Sometimes it shows people where they actually are, but other times it loops back and shows them in a random place where they were at any given point in the last day.

Sirius was always the best at charms. He was working on a fix for the map before he…well, before. Who knows if they’ll ever fix it now.

“I should go,” Lily says, realizing whatever is going to happen next isn’t for her. “Potter…James…thanks for the walk,” she adds before ducking her head and heading quickly up the stairs to the girls’ dormitories.

They all wait in silence until she’s out of sight.

“I went to see Regulus,” James says as he comes over and stands in front of his friends. He has too much anxious and angry energy bubbling right below the surface to sit yet.

“We kind of guessed that,” Peter says tentatively.

“You should have told us,” Remus says more sternly.

“I’m sorry,” James says.

His energy flares and dips at a moment’s notice these days. With what little momentum James has left, James tells his friends everything. He tells them about his summer full of research, the letters he exchanged with Alphard Black and Andromeda Tonks (who both very gently tried to tell James there wasn’t much hope), and his conversation with Regulus tonight.

Peter is biting his fingernails. He yanks them away from his mouth when they start to bleed.

He’s quieter without Sirius, who always treated Peter a bit like a younger brother, someone to be needled and teased but also to be defended and supported at all costs. Peter played the role well, poking Sirius back, listening to his (often terrible) advice, and taking comfort in the protection Sirius provided.

“So, what do we do now?” Peter asks.

Remus is still and silent as a statue. His knees are drawn up to his chest, his eyes fixed on the smoldering embers in the fireplace. James knows they all feel guilty about their last conversation with Sirius, but he thinks Remus’s guilt eclipses his own.

He looks so lost.

They’re all lost though, all drowning in the silence that follows Peter’s question.

James hasn’t cried all day, but he feels like there’s a stone inside his chest, impossibly heavy and pressing on all his organs, pushing at his bones. It’s not going to go away, but that doesn’t mean James can’t use it.

“We fight,” James says finally. “Voldemort, Death Eaters, the House of Black. Even if they had nothing to do with Sirius’s—with Sirius being gone, it’s what he would have done.”

James thinks he would have stood up and fought anyway. He despises dark magic and blood supremacy alike, but if he ever had any doubts, they’re gone now. That stone inside his chest is heavy, but it’s also strong. It’s armor and a weapon.

He watches the thoughts and emotions flicker across his friends’ faces. It doesn’t take them more than a second to decide though. They both nod.

“We’re in,” Remus says decisively.

Chapter Text

In London, there’s a dog.

Sometimes there’s a boy instead, but mostly a dog.

Being a dog is easier.

No one is looking for a dog.

He’s not sure anyone is looking for the boy either, but better safe than sorry.

Besides, people are usually nicer to a dirty, scruffy-looking dog than they are to a dirty, scruffy-looking teenage boy.

In London, there’s a dog.

A dog who’s sometimes a boy.

A boy who watches and listens and learns.

He can’t go back to the world he was born into. They snapped his wand and there’s more than empty pockets keeping him from getting another one.

Besides, there’s nothing left for him there. No prospects. No family. No future. No friends.

So, he has to find a place for himself in this new world. This world without magic.

Of course, he still has magic.

By the start of September—the day he should be going back to school—neither the dog nor the boy is in London anymore. He’s not in England at all.

There’s a world beyond those shores, one full of strange magics and even stranger Muggle things. He’s decided he’d like to see it. That he’d like to learn those strange magics and stranger Muggle things.

There’s money in his pockets now (not much, but almost enough). Some of it is Muggle paper and some of it is wizarding coins. He’s not proud of the things he did to get it, but he doesn’t dwell on them. He does what it takes to survive now.

That was the decision he made when he escaped his parents’ house. If he had wanted to die, he could have stayed there and let his family take care of it for him. He did leave though. He did live.

And he’s going to keep on doing so.

Just not in London anymore.

Or in England.

He stands on the deck of a large Muggle boat. A ferry. It’s going to France. He’s going to France.

At least for the moment.

He stands on the deck of the ferry. It’s windy and raining and almost everyone else has retreated inside, but he stands at the back of the boat and watches the land of his birth shrink into a thin strip of brownish green between the greys of the water and the sky.

He watches it, and lets himself indulge in all the “What ifs?”

What if he hadn’t lost his temper and sent Snape to the Shrieking Shack?

What if he hadn’t told James what he’d done?

What if he hadn’t been expelled for the prank?

What if he hadn’t run away from home?

What if he had gone to James (or Peter, or Remus, or Alphard, or Andromeda, or someone) for help and shelter?

What if he was getting off the Hogwarts Express right now, laughing with his friends, and looking forward to a feast rather than the half a chocolate bar and packet of crisps that he’s saved for dinner?

Possibilities spin out in twisting spirals and broken lines until he thinks they might drown or strangle him.

He decides he doesn’t like thinking about “What ifs?”

In the distance, the thin line of land vanishes into the grey of sea and sky and rain.

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see that land again. If he does, it won’t be for a long time, he promises himself.

He’s not wrong.

It will be five years before Sirius Black will return to Britain, and in that time, much will have changed without him.

Chapter Text

September, 1981

Somewhere in the night, a dog barks.

Remus is in the process of handing the museum security guard their charmed invitations when he hears the sound and pauses. His hand hovers in the air as his head turns.

The dog barks again. It’s a sharp, yappy noise that’s all wrong. Remus looks anyway, searching the line behind them until he spots a middle-aged woman in a puffy satin gown. She has a small, fluffy white dog cradled in her arms.

“Your invitations, sir?” the guard demands just as Lily elbows Remus in the ribs. His gawking is holding up the line.

“Of course, sorry about that,” Remus mutters as he hands over the invitations. There are three of them, all perfectly spelled to look like the real thing and topped with a mild confusion charm. For a moment, the guard hesitates as he looks the cards over, then he smiles, thanks Remus, and waves them through.

Lily links her arm through Remus’s and pulls him inside the museum, Peter trails close behind. Remus can feel their worried, pitying looks.

It rankles.

He wishes James were here. James would understand. Just like Remus, James still stops and looks every time he hears a dog bark.

James couldn’t come on this mission though because Lily needs to be here. It’s her familiarity with the Muggle world (combined with Remus’s own muddled and slightly out-of-date knowledge) that’s needed tonight.

And James and Lily don’t go on missions together anymore.

They don’t even go out in the field at the same time. Not after what happened to Frank and Alice Longbottom nine months ago. Now, either James or Lily is always home with Harry, ensuring that their son won’t lose both of his parents at the same time like poor little Neville.

“I’ll take the portrait gallery if you two start in the modern art wing, sound good?” Remus suggests as they cross the grand foyer. He doesn’t want to give Lily and Peter time to say anything, to voice their concerns.

He doesn’t even give them time to agree to his plan before slipping out of Lily’s grasp and darting toward the long gallery filled with staring, silent portraits. Thankfully, Lily and Peter don’t follow him. They know better than to interrupt a mission for personal matters.

Two flutes of champagne and four canapés later, Remus finds he’s almost enjoying himself.

Strolling around an art museum (especially during a fancy charity party with free refreshments) isn’t the sort of mission Remus is normally sent on. Most of the time, his assignments involve seedy pubs or dark forests. Those are the nasty sort of places where a werewolf won’t stand out, where he’s most useful to the Order.

Remus definitely stands out here, even in his transfigured tuxedo. He’s too young, too scarred, and he doesn’t have an enormous luxury watch on his wrist. These Muggles are too rigidly well-bred to say anything though, so Remus is pointedly ignored by everyone but a few of the waiters, which suits him just fine.

His eyes skim over the paintings but linger on the guests. He’s looking for anyone who, much like him, doesn’t fit in, for any signs of strange clothing or malice that runs deeper than high-class pettiness.

That, or wizards in hoods and masks shooting curses at innocent bystanders.

Moody has intel that this event will attract an attack from Voldemort or his followers. Lots of important Muggles all gathered in one place with little protection beyond a handful of security guards armed with Tasers and batons. The Ministry doesn’t believe it though, and they won’t send Aurors, so the Order is keeping a weather eye out. Constant vigilance and all that.

It would be a bold attack, for sure. Remus can almost see why the Ministry don’t believe it will happen. An attack on such a distinguished crowd in such a public place would leave the Office of Misinformation and the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee would struggle to cover up. The Death Eaters have been growing bolder and bolder though.

It no longer feels like a question of if Voldemort’s followers will break the Statute of Secrecy but when.

Then who knows what will happen.

For now though, Remus’s attention slides over the guests and back to the portraits for a moment.

They’re beautiful. Remus wishes he was here just to study them. There isn’t much time in his life for beautiful things these days. For happy things. For anything except war.

Well, the paintings are all beautiful…except for one.

A portrait of a scowling man makes Remus pause. His untrained eye can’t fault the painter’s skill, truly. He just questions their purpose painting a subject who exudes such obvious…malice. It’s especially disturbing how the eyes seem to follow Remus as he moves. He could almost swear those vicious eyes just narrowed a fraction.

Then…

Then something happens that makes Remus forget about the strange portrait, about his mission, about Death Eaters, about everything else in the whole world.

Somewhere in the portrait gallery, a man laughs.

Remus freezes, a champagne glass halfway to his lips. His hand hovers in the air as his head turns.

The laugh echoes again. It’s easy to pick out among a small tittering crowd gathered at the far end of the gallery. It’s a deep, barking laugh that rattles Remus to the bone. It’s a laugh that haunts the best and worst of his dreams.

He turns toward the laughter and sees a ghost.

Chapter Text

For a moment, Remus honestly believes he is seeing a ghost. That, he thinks as he stares, would make more sense.

A ghost. A hallucination. A delusion.

Maybe Remus himself is dead.

That might make the most sense.

Because there’s no way he’s really seeing what his treacherous brain thinks it’s seeing right now.

This is the impossible thing Remus sees:

At the far end of the portrait gallery stands a small crowd of people. Perhaps eight or ten. They’re the typical sort who attend things like charity galas and auctions and operas and polo matches. White and older and ludicrously wealthy.

But—

Among them stands another man. He’s dressed like them. He’s laughing at some joke with them.

But he’s obviously not one of them.

He’s young and handsome.

And Remus knows him.

It’s more than just the dark hair and the sharp cheekbones or the grey eyes and the elegant hands.

It’s more than that barking laugh.

Somehow, even if all of those things had changed (and some things have changed), Remus would know him.

He knows Sirius.

And Sirius Black is standing at the far end of the portrait gallery.

Remus drops his champagne glass.

His fingers are suddenly numb. His lungs won’t pull in air. His heart probably isn’t even beating.

Silence echoes in the wake of the shattering glass.

People turn towards Remus. Curious, startled, sharply disapproving.

It takes Sirius a moment longer to turn, to finish a sip of his own drink. He’s a second behind everyone else who has already seen and dismissed Remus. A second behind the waiter who’s already scurrying toward Remus with a towel.

Sirius does turn though. He turns, and his eyes go wide. His mouth falls open.

He sees Remus.

And he knows Remus.

Then it all slides away.

Sirius turns away. He pivots back to his little group, and, doing so, draws their attention back to him as well.

In just a few seconds, it’s like it never happened.

Remus closes his eyes. He hears the waiter making apologies as he cleans up the glass and spilled champagne.

“Are you all right, sir?” The waiter asks. He sounds genuinely concerned, like Remus might be having some sort of medical emergency that made him drop a glass, go pale as milk, and stare across the room like a loon.

That might be another plausible explanation.

Remus opens his eyes.

They meet grey irises the color of stormy skies instantly.

If this is madness it doesn’t seem to be temporary.

Remus recognizes the expression that flits across Sirius’s face. A face that’s half familiar and half strange.

It’s panic. Sirius is panicking.

Whatever is happening here, Sirius didn’t expect it either. He didn’t expect to see Remus.

“Sir? Are you all right?” The waiter asks again.

“Fine,” Remus manages to croak out.

Sirius has looked away again. He’s smiling at a woman in an enormous fur stole who’s old enough to be his grandmother, but it’s forced and his eyes are flicking around the room, avoiding Remus but lingering on exits.

It’s Remus’s turn to panic. He’s still half certain he’s made a mistake or is hallucinating (he still can’t even rule out the whole being dead himself theory entirely), but he knows he can’t let Sirius just walk away.

Those words that have haunted Remus for years pulse through his entire body.

“I never want to see you again.”

But now he is.

Maybe.

Remus needs to know.

He brushes past the concerned waiter and strides the length of the gallery. Portraits stare after him, as do some of the guests. From the corner of his eye, Remus can see more people heading toward the gallery to snoop and gawk.

Sirius sees him too, and from twenty meters Remus can see him tense. If Sirius runs, Remus is pretty damn sure he’ll chase him, because he needs to know. He needs answers to the thousand questions suddenly screaming in his head.

“Please…” Remus whispers. It’s far too quiet for anyone to hear, and Remus isn’t even sure what he’s begging for.

Sirius looks away from him again.

Remus has his name on his lips.

That, of course, is when the explosions start.

Chapter Text

Remus Lupin has been at war from the moment he stepped foot out of Hogwarts. Longer than that, if he’s being honest.

He knows how to act under pressure. He knows how to react. He knows how to fight.

He gets knocked on his arse anyway.

In Remus’s defense, everyone in the gallery is thrown off their feet as a deafening boom followed closely by clouds of dust and flying debris billow out from the foyer. There’s a wave of force that isn’t natural behind it.

Remus doesn’t catch the worst of it, but he’s still close enough to go down and lose a few seconds to screaming senses and violent dizziness.

The first thing that cuts through the haze is a voice. Most of the time when Remus remembers Sirius’s voice, it’s as he was that last time, distraught and begging for forgiveness. In his better moments, Remus can sometimes remember Sirius’s voice full of laughter and joy.

Now it’s yelling at him.

“Come on, Remus, wake up! I can’t hold this for long!”

Remus obeys. He may have been caught off-guard, but he recovers quickly. Rolling off his back, wand sliding out of his sleeve, Remus is already casting a shield charm by the time he gets up to one knee.

He almost falters when he sees that there’s already one in place. A shimmer in the air that’s catching several violent looking spells. The spell is already flowing out of Remus’s wand though, and just in time, because a volley of spells hit the other shield and it shatters.

“Thank god,” Sirius mutters, an outstretched hand dropping back to his side. It takes Remus a moment to realize that even with no wand, because of course he doesn’t have a wand, Sirius must have cast the shield spell.

He’s standing next to Remus now, practically standing over him, protecting him. His hair and fancy Muggle suit are streaked with grey plaster dust. A cut up near Sirius’s hairline is spilling a thin trail of blood down his cheek.

The world is exploding around them. People are screaming. People are dying. And for several precious seconds, Remus does nothing but drink in the sight of his long lost friend.

Sirius is staring back, his expression wild and otherwise unreadable.

However, now is most definitely not the time to dwell on this impossible thing, this miracle. Remus’s shield might be protecting them from most of the spells shooting out of the dusty chaos, but there’s nothing that can stop a jet of green that flies straight through Remus’s spell and hits a Muggle man in the back.

He’s dead before he hits the floor.

All the other Muggles are screaming and trampling over each other as they rush toward emergency exits or cower behind marble pillars.

Figures are moving through the dust-choked air. They’re wearing tall hoods and masks that hide their faces. There are wands in their hands.

Sirius swears and drops to the floor next to Remus, barely avoiding another killing curse. It hits the wall of portraits behind them instead, obliterating two gilt-framed paintings.

Then they’re both moving.

It’s instinctual. It’s like breathing.

It’s like the last five years never happened.

As Remus casts hexes and shields, Sirius picks up an abandoned silver serving tray and smashes it into the face of a battle-drunk Death Eater who tries to close in on them.

A kick to a bloodied and broken mask keeps that one down. Sirius ducks behind a priceless sculpture to avoid three curses shooting his way. Then he flings the silver tray like it’s a discus, catching another Death Eater in the shin and making him stumble.

Remus catches this all because even as he fights, he keeps one eye on Sirius. Even if he’s clearly as brave and reckless and ready for a fight as he was at sixteen, Sirius doesn’t have a wand. Not that he seems to need one.

Sirius dodges and ducks like a whirlwind. He improvises weapons, and—astonishingly—he throws wandless charms and hexes. His long, elegant fingers weave and flex in strange patterns as his mouth speaks familiar words.

Between them they manage to take down or hold off several masked attackers while the Muggles flee.

Then the Death Eaters flee.

There must be some unseen and unspoken signal they all recognize, because they pull back and vanish as one.

The air is still thick with dust and people are still screaming, but it’s over. Gasping and shaking, Remus stands in the middle of the wreckage, his wand clutched in a white-knuckled grip. He looks up, and once again, his eyes lock with Sirius’s.

They’re several meters away from each other, and Sirius looks just as winded and shaken as Remus feels. They don’t speak. Words might be entirely beyond Remus for quite a while yet.

He drinks in the sight of Sirius though. When Remus last saw him, Sirius was a boy, handsome and charming to be sure. Now he’s a man, his features sharpened, his shoulders broader. There’s a maturity to him that’s far more than skin deep.

Peter’s patronus, a small, silvery rat appears, scampering through the air between them. Sirius’s jaw drops when Peter’s voice comes spilling from the rat’s mouth. This an Order trick, a spell he’s obviously never seen before.

“Remus, please be okay! Lily’s sent word to Moody, so the Order and the Aurors should both be here any second. Meet us in the foyer. Please, Merlin, don’t be dead!”

Message delivered, the rat twitches its nose and vanishes.

Sirius is also gone.

Chapter Text

Aurors arrive swiftly, exactly as Peter said they would. Once Moody vouches that Remus isn’t a Death Eater, he’s directed back toward the museum foyer, where Lily and Peter are waiting.

Lily is busy healing a badly burnt guest. A few other Muggles are staring on in shock, but it hardly matters. They’ll all have to be obliviated anyway.

Peter, however, rushes over and drags Remus into a hug. He chatters anxiously, but Remus isn’t paying much attention. His eyes scan the foyer, searching for Sirius.

Members of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes are scurrying about, looking panicky. In one corner, a handful of wizards from the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee are pulling at their hair and gesticulating wildly. They’ve got their work cut out for them this time.

Sirius is nowhere among them.

Assured that Remus isn’t dead or dying, Peter hurries off to send patronus messages to James and Dumbledore. This leaves Remus to stumble around on his own, feeling dazed and incomprehensibly numb.

He’s is beginning to question his sanity again. Perhaps he never saw Sirius at all. Maybe he bumped his head or was drugged or hit by a strange spell. He should probably have Lily check him over.

Before he can start in her direction, Remus’s attention is caught by a wizard wearing a lime green bowler hat. He’s being yelled at by an older Muggle woman wearing a fur stole, the same woman Remus saw talking to Sirius before the attack.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” Remus interrupts, drawing the attention of both the woman and the harangued-looking wizard. “I can take it from here,” he says, trying to sound authoritative. The wizard doesn’t ask for Remus’s credentials or even who he is. He just looks happy for an excuse to flee.

“Are you with the police?” The Muggle woman asks, looking Remus up and down suspiciously. “That other man said he was, but I’m on the board of directors for the London Police Charity Association, and I know that Scotland Yard does not allow their detectives to wear green bowler hats.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Remus says by rote. He’s worked enough lowly customer service jobs to know it’s best to just agree and wait for the right moment to speak. The woman rants for a few more minutes until she’s exhausted enough for Remus to get a word in.

“I have a few questions for you, ma’am, about a man you were speaking with just before the blast,” Remus says hastily. His heart is beating quickly. This is it. “A younger man…about my age, with dark hair and grey eyes.”

The woman blinks and frowns, and Remus knows she’s going to tell him she hasn’t seen any such person. She’s going to tell Remus that he really has gone mad. “Oh, you must mean Mr. Sterling,” she says instead. Her eyes go wide. “Did he have something to do with this?”

“No,” Remus says hastily, though he realizes that no real clue what Sirius was doing at an art museum charity gala on the same night as a Death Eater attack. Not that though. No. Never.

“No,” Remus says again. “I just—you said his name is Sterling?”

The woman frowns again, but she answers. “We only spoke briefly. He was quite knowledgeable about the works of Claudio Chiaroscuro though.”

Remus asks a few more questions, but it’s clear the woman has no more answers for him. She doesn’t know Mr. Sterling’s first name, what he does for a living, why he was here, or anything else useful. Right now, Remus isn’t much of an interrogator anyhow. His mind feels scattered into a thousand little pieces, and all of those pieces are screaming.

He directs the woman toward one of the Obliviators and stumbles away in the opposite direction, nearly colliding with Lily.

“Remus! Are you all right?” She asks. She takes him by the shoulders, but Remus is too numb to feel the touch. Lily’s hair is in disarray, one of her earrings is missing, and there’s blood drying across her skin and her fancy gown.

Remus nods. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

Peter is standing just behind Lily. He looks anxious.

Oh, Merlin, how is Remus supposed to tell Peter and James about what he saw tonight?

He can’t. Not yet. Not until he knows more. They’ve spent years believing Sirius was dead. Remus can’t just upend everything for them the way his own existence has just been completely obliterated. He needs proof. He needs answers.

“Moody!” Remus calls, breaking away from Lily as he sees the Auror stomp across the foyer. Moody glowers at him, but stops so Remus can jog over. Lily and Peter follow more slowly.

“What do you want, Lupin? I’m busy,” Moody snaps.

“Sorry,” Remus says. “I was wondering if you have tonight’s guest list and if I can have a copy?”

Moody regards him suspiciously, but he does everything suspiciously. “Something I should know about?”

Remus shakes his head quickly. “Just a hunch.”

Moody pulls a few sheets of Muggle paper out of his robes. It’s a long list of neatly typed names with checkmarks beside them. He duplicates it with a quick spell and hands the second copy to Remus.

“Let me know if you find anything,” Moody commands.

Remus nods as he tucks the papers away.

“What’s that about, Moony?” Peter asks as they walk away.

“I’ll tell you as soon as I figure it out myself,” Remus promises.

Chapter Text

Here’s the truth.

Sirius Black came back to London for one thing, and one thing only.

He didn’t come back to settle old scores, to reconnect with old friends, to find forgiveness or peace or anything else.

He came to steal a painting.

It’s a long story how he got to this point, but here’s the very short version.

A man with a Belgian accent and a Swiss bank account offered to pay him a five-figure sum to do it, and, after briefly haggling over the exact figures in that sum, Sirius agreed.

It’s that simple.

Or rather, it was supposed to be that simple.

Now everything is suddenly very, very complicated.

So, he retreats. Tactically.

In the middle of an emergency, no one pays much attention to dogs. Not even an enormous, shaggy black one that trots out an emergency exit. They have far more important things to worry about, like fires, panicking Muggles, and escaping terrorists.

One Auror does see the dog as it slinks away from the museum. He fumbles his wand in fright, believing he’s just seen the grim. When he retells the story later, he’ll leave out the bit about dropping his wand and add in details about the beast’s glowing red eyes and the vicious way it snarled at him.

Padfoot doesn’t stop for him or anyone else though.

He stays a dog all the way back to his hotel. There’s a loading area behind the building that’s empty at night. Sirius transforms there and opens a locked side door with a quick alohomora.

Thankfully, it’s late enough that no one’s around to see him stagger into the lift covered in blood, sweat, and ash. As the lift rises, Sirius sags against the wall and closes his eyes. He’s crashing from his adrenaline high and exhausted from too much magic. He’s pretty sure he’s in shock, as well.

This was supposed to be a simple, straightforward job.

Now it’s ten different sorts of fucked up and dangerous.

The lift dings cheerfully and the doors slide open.

The first thing Sirius does when he makes it to his room is grab a several little bottles of vodka from the minibar. He downs them all quickly. Then he empties his pockets. One has his wallet, the other a small fortune in rings and watches, cufflinks, bracelets, and few billfolds.

Picking pockets is a risky thing to do while on a job, but it’s a hard habit to break. Especially when rich idiots are dangling diamonds and Rolexes in front of him. Besides, it might wind up being the only money he makes here in London.

Tonight has been an absolute disaster on every level, and there’s so much Sirius needs to do. He needs to find out if the painting sustained any damage, and what will happen now that the museum is half in ruins. He also needs to make sure the authorities—Muggle and Wizard alike—can’t track him down and ask inconvenient questions.

And then there’s Remus.

Remus Lupin.

His old Friend. The first boy he ever kissed.

Remus, who probably still hates Sirius for all the shit he pulled at school.

Remus, who definitely recognized him tonight.

And if Remus was at the museum, were James and Peter nearby as well?

Too much.

It’s too much right now. Instead of doing any of the things he needs to do, Sirius collapses facedown on the bed.

The next thing he knows, it’s noon.

The maid wakes him when she comes in to clean. She takes one look at Sirius, still dressed in his ruined tuxedo and covered in dust and dried blood, then a second look at the mess he’s made of the bed just by flopping on the duvet.

She politely offers to come back later.

Sirius still feels like shit. He wants more vodka, a long soak in the bathtub, and a pain potion.

Unfortunately, in the light of day it’s beginning to sink in how monumentally terrible last night really was.

He turns on the television and, sure enough, he quickly finds a news report about the museum. It’s on the front page of The Sunday Times as well. Both sources are crediting the explosions to a gas leak. Both call it an accident.

An “accident” that killed fourteen people.

Sirius grimaces.

This is too much. He should walk away—no, he should run away—from this whole thing. Fuck the client. Fuck the painting. Fuck the money. Fuck Voldemort. Fuck Britain. Fuck all of it.

Only, when he tries to think of getting on a plane or a ferry and fleeing back to the continent, he pictures Remus’s face as he stared at Sirius across the portrait gallery last night.

I miss him. I miss them all.

The thoughts spring unbidden into Sirius’s head.

It’s hardly the first time in the past five years he’s has had those exact same thoughts. Almost every time he feels low, or sees something funny, or needs advice he thinks it.

I miss them. I miss my friends.

Only now it’s different. Now they’re close. If he wants, Sirius can find them. He can talk to them. He can say all the things he’s dreamed of saying when he can’t sleep at night.

That might be the scariest thing of all.

Fuck, he needs another drink, and some advice from someone who’s definitely not a friend.

Chapter Text

Sirius doesn’t have friends, not anymore. He knows plenty of people he counts as friendly acquaintances, but no true friends. Not like the Marauders.

He tells himself that after what happened at Hogwarts he prefers it that way. Sometimes he even believes it.

He might not have found new friends after his expulsion, but one thing Sirius hasn’t shied away from finding new teachers. Some he sought out, others found him. From them, Sirius learned things Hogwarts would never teach him. Languages, magical theory, wandless magic, conceptual charms, or dangerous potions.

Then there’s Laverna Foley.

A squib born to a pureblood family in Dublin, Laverna was cast out of her family when she failed to show any signs of magic. With one foot in the wizarding world and another in the muggle world, Laverna was forced to make her own way in a cruel and terrible world. Even if that meant breaking a few laws.

It’s a sad story. It might even be a true story.

Here’s another true story though. Of all of Sirius’s post-Hogwarts teachers, Laverna was the best of them. She taught Sirius the fine points of forgery and art theft and how to run a confidence game against both Muggles and wizards.

“Bonjour!” There’s a familiar Irish lilt behind the French greeting when Laverna answers the phone.

“I fucked up,” Sirius replies.

There’s a pause, then an almost serpentine hiss.

“I told you! Didn’t I warn you? Didn’t I tell you not to go to fucking London? I specifically remember telling you in these exact words that ‘Dark Lords are bad for business.’”

Knowing they won’t get anywhere until he admits he was wrong and she was right, Sirius sighs. “Yes, Laverna, you said exactly that, and I didn’t listen.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t get the Chiaroscuro then, unless that ‘gas-pipe explosion’ I saw on the telly this morning was your doing,” Laverna says. “If so, it was ballsy, but it lacks your usual subtlety.”

“The explosions weren’t me,” Sirius says. He leans against the wall and lets himself slide down it until he’s sitting on the carpet, his hotel telephone cradled in his arms and the receiver pinned between his ear and his shoulder. “It was Voldemort’s followers, idiots in masks and stupid-looking hoods. I guess they’re openly calling themselves Death Eaters these days.”

“Coincidence?” Laverna asks, though Sirius knows she doesn’t believe in coincidences.

“As far as I can tell…but that’s not all. I saw someone I knew last night,” Sirius confesses. He wraps his fingers through the curly phone cord and wishes there was more vodka in the minibar.

“Among the fucksticks in masks?”

“No…an old friend from school,” Sirius says. If he closes his eyes, he knows he’ll see Remus’s shocked expression, his wide amber eyes. He’d looked good in a tuxedo, though Sirius still can’t fathom what Remus was doing at an art museum or fighting Death Eaters.

“Well,” Laverna says, “that certainly explains the phone call I received this morning.”

“What phone call?” Sirius asks, sitting up straighter.

“Your friend from school, would his name be Remus Lupin by chance?” Laverna asks. She pronounces Remus’s name with an audible sneer.

“Shite!” Sirius says, viciously raking a hand through his tangled hair.

“Precisely,” Laverna says acidly. “You gave the museum one of the phone numbers that rings back to me, and somehow your old friend got ahold of that information. Merlin’s poxy cock, Black! I thought you’d had this heroic streak beaten out of you. How many more blows to the head is it going to take to get it through your thick skull that you’re not Robin Hood?”

“It’s not like that,” Sirius protests. He doesn’t dare tell Laverna that when the fighting started, he jumped in and helped.

Laverna sighs, she seems to know anyway. “Do me a favor then. Find a mirror and let me know when you’re standing in front of it.”

Sirius looks up from toying with the telephone cord. There’s a mirror on the wall directly across from where he’s sitting. He stares at his reflection, wondering what he’s supposed to see besides a cut on his forehead in need of a plaster and a suit no dry cleaner is ever going to be able to fix.

What had Remus seen when he’d stared at Sirius last night? Had he noticed the sharpness that had never quite left Sirius’s face after those first few hungry months on the streets of London? What about the lump halfway down his nose from when it had been broken and Sirius couldn’t figure out a wandless episkey to fix it? The suit would have hidden his tattoos and most of his scars at least.

“Are you looking in a mirror yet?” Laverna asks sharply.

“Yes,” Sirius replies.

“All right then, tell me what color your hair is.”

Sirius frowns. “What does that have to do with anything?” He reaches up and tugs on a short strand of black hair.

“And your eyes?” Laverna asks. “What color are they right now? Did you bother to disguise yourself at all last night?”

“I didn’t see the need,” Sirius protests feebly. “I was just getting the layout and security specs, not actually stealing the painting.”

“So, you went back to the one city in the world where you’re most likely to be recognized without so much as changing your hair color?” The sarcasm is rolling off Laverna’s tongue. “I don’t know who you wanted to find you Black, but it sounds like you’ve succeeded. Congratulations.”

“That’s not—I didn’t want this to happen! Sirius snaps.

“If that’s true then go to the airport and get on the first plane leaving London, Laverna says.

“What about the job?” Sirius asks.

“Fuck the job,” Laverna snaps. “Tell the buyer the painting’s too hot to touch right now. Considering there was literally an explosion while you were casing the museum, he should believe you. Even if he doesn’t, fuck him anyway.”

There it is, the advice Sirius wanted. The second opinion to back up his own instinct to run. He closes his eyes and pictures Remus, wand drawn, fighting as elegantly as other people dance.

“I need to finish this,” Sirius says. He’s not sure in that moment if he’s talking about the painting or something else entirely. He just knows he can’t leave London. Not yet.

There’s silence on the line for several long seconds. Sirius counts them with twists of the phone cord around his fingers. Laverna might have a soft spot for him, but she’s not his friend.

“You’re on your own, Black,” she says finally. “Don’t get sentimental.”

With those final words, she hangs up on him, and Sirius feels very much alone as he listens to the dial tone.

He puts the receiver back and sets the phone on the floor next to him. Before he has more than a minute to contemplate the decision he’s just made, the phone rings again.

“Mr. Sterling, this is Helen from the front desk,” a woman replies when Sirius ansers. She has that forced cheerfulness familiar across all service industries, but beneath it she sounds a little confused and guarded herself. “There are guests here asking for you,” Helen continues, “a…Messrs. Moony, er, Wormtail, and Prongs?”

Well, that was fast.

Chapter Text

Up in his hotel room, Sirius sighs and glances over at the full-length mirror. He’s still dressed in his ruined suit and in desperate need of a long, luxurious bath, but he doubts things will wait while he has a soak.

“Give me ten minutes then you can send them up,” Sirius says. At the very least he needs to wash his face and change clothes before he confronts his old friends.

“Of course, Mr. Sterling,” Helen from the front desk replies.

Let’s pause here while Sirius gets ready and step back in time a few hours. Before we can get to this long-awaited reunion, it’s important to know how Sirius’s old friends came to find him, because there’s more happening here than Remus searching a list of names and making a few telephone calls.

That’s certainly part of it though, so let’s start there.

Remus, Lily, and Peter leave quickly. The work the Order does isn’t strictly legal, and it’s best for everyone if they don’t linger around crime scenes.

Peter seems eager to get back to his mother, who worries even if she doesn’t know what Peter does when he stays out late like this. He disapparates quickly after saying his goodbyes and confirming with Remus that their monthly night out at the Hog’s Head is next Wednesday.

Lily lingers, trying to convince Remus to come with her instead of going home alone. She’s obviously worried, and Remus can’t really blame her. He’s obviously anxious and eager to get home and study the guest list Moody gave him.

“I don’t want to trouble you,” Remus replies. “Go home to James and Harry.”

Lily still hesitates, so Remus does his best to force a smile. “Go,” he repeats, “James is probably pacing with worry, and he’s probably keeping Harry up too.”

“Ugh, just what I need, two grumpy babies,” Lily says. “And I’ve still got to finish prep for Monday’s classes, especially the second years. They’re making swelling solutions.”

Grumbling about the job Remus knows she loves, Lily gives Remus a hug and a kiss on the cheek before they go their separate ways.

Home for Remus is a small house in Godric’s Hollow.

It used to be James and Lily’s before Dumbledore hired Lily as Hogwarts’s new potions professor. James begged Remus to move in under the flimsy pretense of needing someone to take care of the place when they moved into Lily’s quarters at Hogwarts. That’s an unusual arrangement in and of itself, but there’s nowhere safer than Hogwarts.

It’s a good little house, and Remus likes it there, even if the thinly veiled act of charity stings.

After making a cup of strong tea with too much sugar, Remus sits himself at the kitchen table and gets to work reading the gala’s guest list.

It’s almost too easy.

There’s only one “Mr. Sterling” listed on the list.

Mr. Cole Sterling.

There’s even a telephone number written next to it. Two telephone numbers actually.

It can’t be this easy.

Remus takes a scalding gulp of too-sweet tea and stares across the kitchen at the telephone mounted on the wall. Lily had insisted on having a way to stay in touch with her Muggle family. Remus never saw a reason to take it down, though he’s never used it either.

It’s the middle of the night. Remus really shouldn’t be calling anyone, but if one of these phone numbers will lead him to Sirius he feels like he can’t waste any time. Sirius already ran from the museum, what if he runs again?

A woman answers when Remus dials the phone number. A woman speaking French. Very angry French.

“I—sorry but I don’t speak—” Remus stumbles over his own tongue. Maybe the number was fake or maybe he’s just woken up Sirius’s girlfriend or wife or—

“It’s fuck o’clock in the morning!” The woman shouts, switching easily to fluent English tinged with an Irish accent. “Who the fuck is this and what do you want?”

“I, er, my name is Remus Lupin, and I was looking for, er…Cole Sterling?”

The woman on the line goes quiet long enough for Remus to realize he’s holding his breath.

“Mr. Sterling is away on business. May I ask what this is regarding?” When the woman speaks again it’s far more polite, but even through their poor connection Remus would swear he can hear a new tension in her voice. Caution.

“I just want to speak to him,” Remus says. “I’m…I’m an old friend.”

“No, I don’t think you are,” the woman replies.

“I am,” Remus says quickly, before she can hang up the phone. “I’m an old friend of Sirius Black!”

“I’m afraid you have the wrong number,” the woman says icily.

“No, please I really need—”

“Listen here,” the woman hisses. “If you really are who you say you are, it’s in everyone’s best interest if you forget you ever heard the name Sirius Black.”

The dial tone makes Remus flinch when she hangs up.

That was…not what he expected.

Remus hangs the receiver up and takes a step back. He wants to call right back and demand answers from this woman who clearly knows Sirius, but he doubts it will do any good.

There are so many questions swirling through Remus’s head that he has to sit down before he collapses.

What now?

His first lead was aggressively unhelpful and warned him away from pursuing Sirius. What if she’s right? What if there’s a good reason why Sirius ran tonight? Maybe there’s even a good reason why they haven’t heard from Sirius for five years.

Maybe he should leave it be, forget the whole thing. But he can’t.

Knees wobbling, Remus stands back up, walks back to the telephone, and dials the second phone number.

A woman answers this one as well. A different woman. A woman who speaks English with a faint Liverpudlian accent. She sounds a bit tired, but cheerful and professional all the same.

“Boreas Hotel, how may I help you?” this woman asks.

Remus is so startled he hangs up.

A hotel. Is this where Sirius is staying? Is this where Sirius is right now?

He can call back and ask. He can ask to be put through to Cole Sterling’s room. If he does will Sirius pick up the phone? Will he hang up the moment he hears Remus’s voice, or will he listen?

It’s too much.

Remus retreats to the chair again and drinks his still too hot and too sweet tea. He’s debating a hundred things in his head, trying to fathom a hundred different possible outcomes, trying to compose a hundred different conversations.

It’s all too much.

He’s almost relieved when someone starts banging on the front door.

Remus remembers his wand, but completely forgets all of the other safety measures this war has drilled into his head when he opens the door and finds James Potter standing on the front step, pale and shaking and utterly furious.

“James? What’s going on? What’s wrong?” Remus asks.

There’s something clenched in James’s hand, but it’s not his wand.

It’s a mirror. An enchanted mirror.

Once upon a time, Sirius had that mirror’s twin.

He’d left it on James’s bed when he’d been expelled.

Remus hadn’t seen it since then. Honestly, he’d thought James might have smashed both mirrors during one of his early fits of anger.

It begs the question, who has the other mirror now?

Remus doesn’t get a chance to ask though, because James levels him with a stare that could make a dragon turn tail and run. Somehow, before he even says the words, Remus knows that James already knows.

“Is there something you want to tell me about your mission at the museum, Moony?” James asks.

Chapter Text

While Remus is in the middle of his investigations and Sirius is passed out in his hotel room, others are having an equally trying night.

At this moment it’s 3:28 in the morning, which makes it either very early, or very late. Either way, Regulus Black pours himself a very generous dram of obscenely expensive firewhisky and drinks it far too quickly to appreciate anything but the way it burns down his throat.

He’s sprawled inelegantly in the wingback chair that used to belong to his father. The hand that isn’t holding his snifter is toying with a small, antique pocket mirror.

He’s considering using it. He’s also considering hurling it at the wall.

How, Regulus wonders silently, did he get himself into this mess?

There are two answers to that question. The long answer truly is long and complicated. The short answer is that his cousin Bellatrix woke him up an hour-and-a-half ago, shoving her wand in his face and demanding to know where he’d been earlier that night.

Regulus had spent most of the evening at the Pendragon Club, making dull small talk with the old codgers and the ambitious ministry toadies. It isn’t fun, but it’s an easy way to act like he’s doing the Dark Lord’s work, recruiting and sowing the seeds of discord. Or something like that.

If nothing else it’s a good excuse that keeps him away from the fighting, from the bloodshed and death.

Most of the time.

He was certainly away from it tonight when Bella and half a dozen others stormed some Muggle art museum. Regulus never understood their reasoning for this particular target, but he was drinking when the plan had been formed. Whatever they’d intended, it hadn’t really worked. A few Muggles had died, but two of their own had been captured when there turned out to be armed and dangerous wizards hiding among the Muggles.

Regulus bears some of the responsibility for their frustrated attempt at mass slaughter.

Just not in the way his cousin feared when she’d stormed into Grimmauld Place in the middle of the night.

Evan Rosier and Rabastan Lestrange had reported seeing a man who bore a resemblance to Regulus fighting alongside an Order member at the museum.

A man with black hair and fair skin and grey eyes.

A man who bore a resemblance to Regulus.

He pours himself another drink and stares across the room at the enormous tapestry. The Black family tree. Despite the enormity of the tapestry, the tree itself has dwindled. Regulus himself is the only hope that the Black family name will survive past this generation. Or so he’d thought.

The branches displaying the latest generations on the tree are studded with more and more burnt holes where some relative disgraced the family and was disowned. Their names are burnt away. Their legacies forgotten.

Regulus can remember when his mother burned Sirius’s name from the tapestry.

He stares at the hole where his brother’s name used to be stitched.

For years, Regulus has wondered what happened to his brother. Even when he tried to stop, tried to obey his parents when they told him to burn Sirius from his mind as thoroughly as they’d burned his name off the family tree, the question always remained in the back of Regulus’s head.

What happened to Sirius?

His parents never wavered in their story that Sirius had simply run away from home after his expulsion. They said it with such finality though, that Regulus has always known there was more to the story. None of his snooping or sly questions had never turned up any concrete answers though.

Now he has more questions than ever.

A man who bore a resemblance to him was alive and had fought at the museum beside an Order member who, based on descriptions, could only be Remus Lupin.

Raising the mirror, Regulus takes a second to stare at his haggard, hollow-eyed face.

In his memories and the one photo he has hidden away, any resemblance between himself and Sirius is superficial. Sirius was always the handsome one, his face alight with whatever emotion he was feeling at the moment. Even when he was angry or miserable, Sirius had always been so…so alive.

Regulus, on the other hand, feels like he’s lived most of his life half-asleep.

“Potter,” Regulus says, speaking into the mirror. “James Potter, wake up.”

His own reflection goes a little foggy, a little darker, but no other face appears. It is the middle of the night, and from what Bellatrix said, Potter’s wife was at the museum, so they’re probably cuddled up in bed all thankful to be alive.

Regulus takes another drink.

“Answer the fucking mirror, Potter,” Regulus snaps. He’s once again considering smashing the damn mirror again.

For all he’s done, Potter owes him this.

Regulus isn’t a blood traitor. He will never join Dumbledore’s little militia.

He’s not Sirius.

But he’s not Bellatrix either.

Regulus is not a killer. He will never worship at the Dark Lord’s feet, even if he bears his mark.

Regulus is…somewhere in the middle.

Some days, he does the Dark Lord’s work. Other days, he gives Potter information.

It’s a delicate balance, and one day—probably quite soon—it’s going to destroy Regulus.

This isn’t that day though, and before it comes, Regulus is going to get some fucking answers.

“Potter!” Regulus shouts into the mirror.

This time, Regulus hears a child cry a moment before his own reflection is replaced by a bleary-eyed, messy-haired man in crooked glasses.

“Regulus?” James asks. He sounds groggy but worried. Despite all the times Potter has tried to cross the
line from reluctant allies to friends, Regulus doesn’t make social calls. He knows something must be wrong.

“Potter,” Regulus replies through gritted teeth. “We need to talk about my brother.”

Chapter Text

They don’t make it to the hotel until just after noon. That’s how long it takes for James and Remus to have the first real fight in the history of their friendship. Oh, they’ve snapped and shouted and vehemently disagreed with each other in the past, but they’ve never really fought. Not like this.

Neither of them come out of it blameless. Remus arguably kept the greater secret, but he only kept it for a few hours. James, on the other hand, has been hiding his strange, clandestine alliance with Regulus Black for almost three years.

Remus is still angry. So is James. He’s not sure either of them are entirely sure who they’re really angry with though.

In contrast, Peter is unusually quiet and possibly in shock.

Calling him in and bringing him up to speed took them another two hours, but it was only fair.

It’s always been the four of them.

Remus calls the hotel again. This time he gets their address before he hangs up.

Then they go, apparating in a swirl of fury and confusion and anticipation. It’s damn lucky no one gets splinched as they arrive in London.

Remus has made sure they’re all wearing Muggle clothes, though Peter had to borrow one of Remus’s jumpers, which is too long in the sleeves and too narrow around the middle. The doorman at the very fancy hotel still gives them a suspicious eye as James storms past him, Remus and Peter following in his wake.

“Wow,” Peter says in a hushed whisper as they cross the lobby with its marble and gilt and crystal chandeliers. Wow indeed.

Somehow, this is Sirius’s life now. Silk suits and museum galas and expensive hotels, all in the Muggle world. It’s a strange place to find the former scion of a pure-blood wizarding family, and Remus has to wonder how Sirius got to this point, this place in life.

Just before they reach the front desk, James seems to realize he’s out of his rather shallow depths when it comes to Muggle things. He pauses, still scowling and simmering with anger, and steps aside to let Remus take over.

“Hello, we’re here to see a guest…Mr. Cole Sterling,” Remus says as he approaches the desk. He tries his best to return the receptionist’s smile even though he feels like he’s going to throw up any second now.

“Of course, sir. I can phone up to his room,” the woman says. “Who may I say is calling?”

Before Remus can answer, James pushes forward and snaps, “Tell him Moony, Wormtail, and Prongs are here to see their old friend.”

*

Sirius has to admire Helen at the front desk, because she somehow manages to get him his entire ten minutes. In that time, he’s able to hide his pickpocketed loot, wash his face, finger comb his hair, and mostly change clothes before someone starts banging on the door of his hotel room. His shirt is still unbuttoned, but he’s genuinely afraid one of his old friends might break the Statute of Secrecy and blast the door open if he doesn’t answer it immediately.

He takes a deep breath, because it’s too late to do anything else. Maybe Laverna is right. Maybe Sirius does want to be found. Now that he’s one thin hotel door away from his old friends though, all Sirius wants to do is run.

Again.

Yet, once upon a time, a musty old hat told Sirius that he was almost stupidly brave and sent him off to Gryffindor House. Now, he has to muster every ounce of that courage—so much of which he’s buried for years—to turn the doorknob and open the door.

And there they are.

Remus, Peter, and James.

Moony, Wormtail, and Prongs.

They’re all there, standing on his doorstep. Staring at him with wide eyes. Sirius stares right back, marveling at how much of a heart he has left to break.

He saw Remus last night, but Sirius is still in awe of the man before him. This quiet, threadbare man who’s already showing a few streaks of grey in his brown hair. There’s a pull, a gravity to Remus Lupin that somehow tugs at Sirius. Exactly like it did when they were teenagers.

And next to Remus is Peter. He’s lost some of that lingering baby fat and has grown a few inches. He’s still a bit short and chubby, but it suits him. He looks like everyone’s friend, the affable bloke no decent person can dislike. Sirius feels the urge to smile at him, even as Peter gawks like a fish at the sight of him.

Then there’s James.

Of them all, James seems to have changed the least, physically speaking. His hair’s still wild, his glasses are still crooked.

It feels like something bursts inside of Sirius’s chest, and for a split-second he honestly worries he’s having a heart attack at twenty-one. Only this feels good. It hurts—oh Merlin, it hurts—but he wouldn’t trade this feeling for anything in the world.

Breathless and suddenly lightheaded, the only word Sirius can manage to get out is a quiet, completely inadequate “Hi.”

*

Despite everything Remus and Regulus said, all their evidence, James didn’t believe them.

Until the moment that door swung open, he didn’t believe Sirius was alive.

He’s hoped for too long to actually believe.

But here’s the proof.

Here’s the truth.

Sirius is standing right in front of him. Alive.

And James is angry.

He hates being angry.

It reminds him of being a teenager, of being that cocky arsehole who pushed a petty feud so far it resulted in disaster. For him, for Snape, and especially for Sirius.

Only Sirius seems just fine.

Actually, judging by the hotel they’re standing in, Sirius is doing quite well for himself.

For five years, James thought he was dead.

For five fucking years, James has been mourning his best friend.

Merlin, he’s angry.

If you’d asked James just yesterday how he would feel if he found out Sirius was alive, he’d have said happy. Joyful. Ecstatic.

Instead he’s just…just so fucking angry.

“It really is you,” James whispers.

Then he lets that anger loose and punches his old friend in the face.

Sirius staggers back several steps, a hand flying up to his nose and coming away bloody. Remus and Peter both grab at James before he can follow Sirius into the room and hit him again.

“What the hell?” Remus snaps. Peter is yelling his name. Sirius is swearing.

James wrenches one arm free of Peter.

“Five years, Sirius!” James shouts. “We thought you were dead!”

“Shit! James will you keep it down or put up some damn silencing spells,” Sirius snaps back, his voice slightly muffled by the hand pressed against his bloody nose. “This is a hotel! There are people all over the place—muggle people.”

James shakes off Remus as well and steps into the hotel room. He can hear Remus and Peter close behind him, one of them closing the door, the other casting a strong set of silencing spells. James isn’t looking at them though, he’s watching every move Sirius makes, ready to use a body-bind curse if Sirius tries to make a break for it.

He’s still angry, but James is also beginning to realize just how hurt he is. Five years and Sirius never contacted him. Never sent a letter or anything to let James know he was safe, that he was alive. Their friendship had meant everything to James. Had it really meant so little to Sirius?

“You owe us an explanation,” James says, no longer shouting, but twice as forceful as before.

Sirius nods as he reaches into the bathroom, grabbing a fluffy white hand towel for his nose. “Yeah,” he admits, “I suppose I do.”

Chapter Text

Sirius Black is a good liar. He always has been.

Growing up, it was a survival strategy, but these days it’s a business plan.

Still dabbing at his nose with a hand towel, Sirius sits on the edge of the bed and takes a moment to read the room.

James is angry and distressed. Peter is nervous and overwhelmed. Remus is…difficult to read, but if Sirius had to guess, he’d say Remus is feeling guilty.

He can work with this.

Thanks to Laverna’s tutelage, Sirius knows he can turn this situation to his advantage. He knows how to tug the strings and gain his marks’ confidence.

To what end though?

Sirius isn’t here to con his old friends. He doesn’t want money or their secrets.

So, what does he want? Forgiveness? His old friendships restored? His old life back?

Sirius is disturbed to find that he doesn’t honestly know.

James is right though, he does owe them answers. Just not all of them.

It’s for their own good, Sirius tells himself. These are good people, people who used to love him. They don’t need to know how far Sirius has fallen. It would only hurt them.

It’s not like this is the first time he’s lied to his old friends. He used to do it all the time, lying about his family, his nightmares, the girls he said he snogged.

Still, it leaves a bitter taste in Sirius’ mouth, or maybe that’s just the blood.

“Start from the beginning,” James demands. He’s pacing the length of the hotel room, eyes fixed on the floor as he tries to burn through a stockpile of angry energy. “What happened after—after you left Hogwarts.”

Sirius has to bite back a half-hysterical laugh. When he left Hogwarts? Like he’d had a choice in the matter. Sometimes he can still hear the SNAP of his wand breaking in his nightmares.

Nevertheless, he’s actually relieved. This part of the story he can tell without lying. Or rather, without lying much.

“My parents came to take me home,” Sirius says, careful to keep his tone neutral.

Looks are exchanged. James even stops pacing for a moment. Sirius’s jaw clenches. He’d always done his best hide his problems at home, but it seems he wasn’t as successful as he’d thought.

“We thought…we thought they’d killed you,” Remus whispers. He’s hung back more than the others, leaning against the wall near the door.

Sirius grimaces. Flashes of those terrible hours after he’d returned to Grimmauld Place cut through his mind. His mother screaming abuses, his father’s fists, both of their curses.

“If I’d stuck around, they probably would have,” Sirius says. His fingers are itching for a cigarette. Pulling the towel away, he checks to make sure his nose has stopped bleeding before he reaches toward the drawer in the bedside cabinet.

His old friends all stiffen, and Sirius sees hands shoot to where their wands are likely hidden.

Right. They’re fighting a war and have about a hundred reasons not to trust him.

Moving slowly, his gestures obvious, Sirius slides the drawer open and pulls out a half-empty pack of cigarettes. He keeps talking as he moves.

“My parents were beyond furious. I don’t doubt they were planning some tragic accident or staged suicide, but I didn’t stick around long enough for them to plan it out properly.”

“So, they weren’t lying when they said you’d just run away?” Peter asks.

Guilt hits Sirius like a backhanded slap. Sirius can’t look at any of them, so he focuses on the cigarettes instead. “They had the house locked down pretty tightly, and…well, I wasn’t in the best shape at the time, but it’s amazing the sort of places a dog can squeeze through, even one as big as Padfoot. I managed to get out through an old coal chute.”

“And then what? Where the hell did you go Sirius?” James asks. He’s stopped pacing again. Raising a hand to his face, James pushes his glasses up so he can squeeze the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. It’s a gesture Sirius hasn’t seen in five years, but it’s so quintessential James that Sirius wants to laugh or sob or possibly both.

He really has missed these people.

“At first, I didn’t go very far,” Sirius admits. “London is a big city. I stuck to the Muggle parts, and…well, no one was looking for a dog, were they? I did have to avoid the Muggle dog catchers a few times though.”

He delivers that last line with a smile and a chuckle, but no one laughs along with him. Peter and Remus look horrified. James only looks half horrified; the other half is clearly still angry.

“So, you were just living on the streets as Padfoot?” Peter asks. He’s looking at Sirius with so much pity Sirius has to bite his tongue. He doesn’t like to think of those months, scared and hungry and lost in every sense of the word.

Sirius shrugs, smiles, and this is where he really begins to lie. For now they’re just lies of omission, but they’re lies all the same. “I changed back sometimes,” Sirius assures them. “I learned a lot about the Muggle world, scrounged together a bit of money, and by fall I had enough to get a boat out of England.” He shrugs again, trying to convince them it’s not a big deal. “I moved around a lot after that.”

“Why?” James asks. All the anger seems to have drained out of him. Now he just looks hurt, betrayed. Only years of practice keep Sirius from reaching out to try and comfort him. He lost that right five years ago. “We thought you were dead, Sirius.”

“That was never my intent,” Sirius says. It isn’t an apology, just an explanation. Something in his chest is tightening. He’s losing control of the narrative here. He’s losing control of himself.

That can’t happen. He can’t let that happen.

“How could we think anything else?” James asks. “Your parents claimed you ran away, but I thought…I thought if that were true you’d come to me, to us. At the very least, I thought if you were safe, if you were alive, you would send a bloody postcard!”

The anger is coming back in force now, and Sirius feels helpless before it. He’s kept his calm in front of criminals and murderers, men a hundred times more intimidating than James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew, but he’s losing it now.

This can’t happen. He can’t let this happen.

“Why didn’t you come to me, Sirius?” James crosses the room until he’s right in front of Sirius, looming over him where he’s sitting slumped and almost cringing on the bed, fingers nervously tearing at the pack of cigarettes. “I spent that entire summer hoping,” James says.

Sirius’s chest tightens with every word. He’s drowning. He’s drowning in a room filled with oxygen.

“I need some air,” Sirius mutters. He stands and tries to push past James, but James grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. There’s something wild and wounded in his eyes that catches Sirius like a knife to the guts.

“Why didn’t you come to me for help, Sirius?” James asks, practically begging.

With the last shreds of his common sense, Sirius does something desperate and cruel. Just like he always does.

Sirius shoves James’s hands away and meets his old friend’s pleading eyes. “Why would I have come to you? To any of you?” Sirius asks. “You all told me to leave. You told me you never wanted to see me again. I took you at your word.”

It works instantly. Peter ducks his head, staring at the floor. Remus sucks in a breath and turns fully away.

Sirius feels like throwing up, but it had to be done. He can’t lose control of this situation. Even if that means hurting his old friends a bit.

It’s for their own good.

“You’re so full of shit,” James says with an angry scoff.

Chapter Text

Here’s a secret James Potter has never told anyone ever. The Sorting Hat briefly considered putting him in Hufflepuff.

The consideration was very brief, but the Hat wasn’t wrong.

What almost got James placed among the badgers though was his loyalty. When it comes to his friends and family, no one in the world is more loyal than James Potter.

Sirius knows that, and that’s how James knows Sirius is lying.

Sirius was his best friend, and James would have forgiven him for anything.

Yes, he’d been mad at Sirius after that stupid stunt he’d pulled with Snape, and, yes, he’d said some harsh things. He was always going to forgive Sirius though. Always.

And Sirius knows that. He’s always known that.

“James…” Peter says his name like a warning, all caution and gentle soothing. He remembers the fights James and Sirius used to have. They flared hot and bright with shouting and cursing and the occasional tackle, but they’d always burned out quickly, and then things would go back to normal.

Only, this time there isn’t a normal for them to go back to.

“You’re so full of shit,” James repeats.

Sirius bristles, but he lets out a short, breathy laugh and glances around the room like he expects someone else to start laughing with him. Remus is paralyzed by guilt though, and Peter’s attention is focused on James, ready to yank his friend back if he tries to hit Sirius again.

“I’m sorry, James, but—” Sirius says, and James knows he’s about to change tracks, to tug the conversation away from a topic he doesn’t want to discuss. James used to let him get away with that back when Sirius’s home life was the topic he was trying to avoid. Not now though.

“No,” James interrupts. “No, Sirius. I was mad at you, but if you’d come to me for help, for a place to live, you know my family would have taken you in. You know it now and you knew it then.”

Sirius looks down, his throat works for a moment before he speaks. “Your parents were always good to me James, but I’d just put your life in danger. I didn’t think—”

Five years gone, and the man standing in front of him is half a stranger, but he’s also half familiar. A part of this Sirius who wears flashy Muggle clothes and sports strange tattoos is still the boy James met on that first trip to Hogwarts.

Sirius Black is a good liar. He always has been.

But James Potter knows his tells.

“No.” James interrupts him again. “No, you knew. You knew how much you meant to me. You were my best friend, my brother! You know you could have had a home with me, and you chose not to. You owe it to me to tell me why!”

Something in Sirius snaps. He’s been collected and amiable until now, but his eyes flash and his lip curls into a vicious sneer. Like so much about Sirius, it’s both frighteningly familiar and terribly strange.

“And then what, James? What would I have done when the rest of you went back to Hogwarts—learn to knit? What would I be doing now? Living off your charity? Working some shit job too degrading for proper wizards? Of course I left—there was nothing for me here!”

Somewhere behind him, Remus makes a strangled choking sort of noise. It draws Sirius’s attention away from James for a moment.

James is grateful for the distraction, because he needs that moment.

Sirius’s absence has been an open wound all these years, a cut straight to his heart. Now it feels like Sirius just reached into that gash and yanked his heart straight out. And it its place he’s left—

“Nothing…” James says quietly, repeating Sirius’s word. “There was nothing here for you?”

The tinny, strained tone of James’s voice pulls Sirius’s attention back. “James, that’s not what I meant—”

“No, I think it’s exactly what you meant,” James says. “Me, us—” He sweeps a hand around the room to indicate Remus and Peter. “—our friendship, the people who loved you, meant nothing to you, not compared to your fucking pride. Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? Your fucking arrogant pride!”

“Fuck this, and fuck you, James.” Sirius has always been volatile; it’s almost comforting to see he can still pivot emotionally on a Knut. “I need a fucking cigarette.”

This time when Sirius tries to push past him, James lets him storm out onto the small balcony. Shaking with adrenaline and anger and anguish, James turns his back on Sirius and paces toward the far end of the hotel room.

Reaching the end of the room, James briefly debates the merits of turning around and pacing some more or just walking out the door.

“James,” Remus says his name in that flat prefect-ish way. Even at his teenaged worst that voice could make James feel guilty for whatever cruel, stupid thing he was in the middle of doing. He whirls about and finds he and Remus are alone in the hotel room. Peter has joined Sirius out on the balcony.

“You can shout if you’d like,” Remus says, tucking his wand away. “They can’t hear us.”

So, James does.

He spends a solid five minutes shouting expletives and screaming out the hurt. Remus stands there, face carefully blank and listens to it all. When he’s done, his throat sore, his breath coming in gasps, and his head semi-clear, Remus comes over and wraps him in a hug. It’s rare for Remus to initiate such close physical contact.

“I’m sorry, Moony,” James says. His voice pathetically hoarse.

“It’s all right,” Remus says. He lets James squeeze him tight before disentangling himself.

“No, it’s not!” James says, and this time he’s not just angry for himself. He caught what Sirius said about working crap jobs and living off James’s charity, and he knows that has to have stung Remus’s own battered pride.

Remus shrugs, still hiding behind that stoic mask of his. “He couldn’t have known.”

“Right, of course not, because he’s been off galivanting for the past five years.” Clearly screaming hasn’t release all his anger.

“It can’t have been easy for him either,” Remus says. James knows he’s right. Even if nothing else bad happened to him, Sirius still spent months on the streets living as a dog. James takes a deep, semi-calming breath.

“You’re right…I just, I don’t understand it, Remus!” James reaches up and tugs painfully at his hair with both hands.

Remus smiles at him in a way that’s both fond and sad. “I know you don’t, but in some ways I do, and I think the best thing we can do right now is to listen and talk. Think you can manage that without hitting Sirius again?”

James manages a laugh but shakes his head. “I’m not making any promises,” he says, even though he wants to.

Sirius was his best friend, and James is still pretty sure he’ll still forgive him for anything.

That frightens him more than a little.

Chapter Text

As much as he hates her, Sirius inherited many things from his mother. He has Walburga’s eyes and her chin, her sharp wit, her allergy to walnuts, and her preference for full-bodied red wines. He also inherited his mother’s temper.

Sirius hates that.

He hates how all his intentions and plans and desires can be swallowed by a sudden rush of anger. Sometimes he barely even remembers the things he says when red rage sweeps over him. That was how it was when he told Snape about the Willow. That was how he felt just now, when he snapped at James.

One moment he was in control, of himself if not the whole situation. Then he was spewing out far too much truth.

His anger getting the best of him once again.

The fresh air on the balcony is doing little to ease the tightness in his chest. His fingers are shaking as he opens the pack of cigarettes and pulls one out. Behind him, the door opens and closes again.

Sirius doesn’t look, but he feels his shoulders tense.

“Er…hi…” Peter says. He steps up to the railing beside Sirius but doesn’t look at him. His eyes sweep over the view of London. It’s not the best, but it’s better than most people can ever afford. Peter whistles in appreciation.

Honestly, Sirius wasn’t expecting Peter. He was sure James would be the one to follow him and continue their argument. Maybe he was even expecting Remus, though he can’t say why. He hadn’t missed the flash of hurt and indrawn breath. Something he’d said had hurt or offended Remus.

But what else is new?

It’s actually a relief that it’s Peter who followed him out onto the balcony. It was always easy to be around Peter, maybe not as stimulating as sitting around with James or Remus, but Peter has this way about him.

Sirius tucks a cigarette between his lips and holds the pack out to Peter.

“Er, no thanks,” Peter says. “Oh! But let me—” He reaches a hand up the sleeve of his ill-fitting jumper, scrabbling around for his wand and casting a spell. He holds the wand out, a tiny flame hovering above the tip like a match.

Sirius’s cigarette is already lit though.

Peter lets out that same low whistle. “Moony said you could do wandless magic, but that’s…wow, that’s awesome.”

It both is and isn’t worthy of awe.

On one hand, conjuring a small amount of fire is a first year spell, something any twelve-year-old witch or wizard can do.

On the other hand, learning to do it without a wand took a sixteen-year-old Sirius three months.

Sirius chooses to be proud of this accomplishment and smiles as he exhales a puff of smoke. “Thanks, Pete,” he says.

This is one of Peter Pettigrew’s gifts: he can make anyone feel important and extraordinary. It’s astonishing how endearing a quality that can be.

They manage to stand there in semi-companionable silence for almost thirty seconds, which is impressive for Peter, who hates silence.

“No one’s said it yet with all the yelling, but we really are glad you’re not dead, Padfoot,” Peter says, meaning every word of it.

Cigarette halfway to his lips, Sirius freezes.

No one has called him Padfoot in five years.

Is it possible for something to be both heartwarming and heartbreaking at once?

Sirius ducks his head and takes a long drag from his cigarette to hide the all too naked emotions playing across his face. He needs to get a fucking grip.

Merlin, he’s supposed to have more control of himself. Laverna taught him better than this.

Only there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to bury these emotions.

“Thanks…Wormtail,” Sirius replies. His voice feels thick and liquid. Peter grins when Sirius uses his old nickname, and Sirius feels himself smile in return.

That seems to open the floodgates. “Do you know a lot of that?” Peter asks, nodding toward Sirius’s cigarette and the wandless spell Sirius performed to light it. “How did you learn? It’s supposed to be really difficult. I mean, they don’t even teach it at Hogwarts and I’ve only ever seen Dumbledore use it before, and he’s…well, Dumbledore.”

Sirius is struck by the memory of sitting at the base of a tree in a quiet corner of a London park, shivering and holding his hands in front of him whispering “Incendio, incendio, incendio” through chattering teeth and pouring all of his hopes and fears into a pathetic attempt to conjure even the tiniest flame.

“It took a while,” Sirius says with a nonchalant shrug. “Lots of practice.”

He doesn’t want to talk about it, but Peter’s open, happily curious face seems to draw the words out against his will. All Sirius can do is sanitize the story.

“Remember all the meditation we had to do during the Animagus process?” Sirius asks. Peter nods enthusiastically. “That actually helped a lot.”

Sirius’s Animagus form has saved his life countless times, as have the skills he learned during the transformation process.

It may have initially been driven by desperation, but since his expulsion magical theory has become one of Sirius’s passions. He rarely gets an opportunity to talk about it, and with an audience as receptive as Peter, Sirius quickly finds himself smiling again as five years of stories and knowledge begin to tumble out of him.

He censors the hard parts, the depressing parts, and the illegal parts, but otherwise he enthusiastically falls into telling Peter all about wandless magic in theory and practice.

“You see,” Sirius says, jabbing the air with his second cigarette, “there’s more to it than just relearning the spells. If you spend your formative magical years learning to only channel magic through a wand it changes everything about how your magic works. You have to retrain your brain and teach your body how to channel magic on its own, and it’s bloody hard.”

Peter nods with every point Sirius makes, even if he doesn’t understand it. He likes seeing this Sirius, it’s familiar, reassuring, like a steady stone in the middle of a rushing river. For a moment, Peter can almost forget about the crack, the hole that Sirius’s absence has been for the past five years.

“There’s a lot of debate in other parts of the world about if teaching children to use a wand actually stunts the ability to control magic without a wand later in life,” Sirius says. “I spent six months learning from a warlock in Rabat who never touched a wand in his life, and it was bloody painful. He was of the opinion that—”

Sirius freezes mid-monologue. He hadn’t heard the door open, but James and Remus are both standing there, watching and listening to him.

“Rabat. Is that…is that where you went after leaving London?” James asks. He sounds tightly wound, but he’s not shouting, and even if his hands are clenched into fists, they stay down by his sides.

“Not right away,” Sirius says.

James glances back at Remus, who nods and gives him a flicker of a nervous smile. It dies when he glances back at Sirius.

“Go on then,” James says. “Tell us what you’ve been up to, and what brought you back.”

Chapter Text

A familiar patronus surprises Professor Lily Evans-Potter in her office. Lily swears as she hastily cleans up blotches of ink she just splattered across a third year Hufflepuff’s essay on the uses of doxy eggs. She glares at the silvery stag and hopes her son, who is playing with blocks and a stuffed dragon on the rug beside her, doesn’t pick up any on the words she just said.

“I’m back,” James’s voice says from the stag’s mouth. “Or, well, I’m at the shop…think I’m going to putter around here for a while. Be back by dinner though…I love you.”

Lily sighs and pushes away her stack of ungraded essays. Harry is giggling and swiping a hand through the patronus’s silvery legs calling “Da!” When the stag vanishes, Harry’s cries wobble and threaten to turn into a tantrum. Before they can, Lily swoops around and picks him up off the floor, cuddling her son close and pressing kisses to his little cheeks until he’s laughing again.

If only Lily herself could be so easily soothed.

She’s been anxious and restless all day, worried that James was off either walking into a trap or about to get his heart broken, or both.

Despite James’s strange, mirror-based quasi-alliance with him, Lily isn’t sure she trusts Regulus Black. He has a dark mark on his arm and still uses the word “Mudblood” even as he feeds James information about Death Eater plots.

Whatever happened today, James is alive and uninjured, but something’s clearly wrong. She could read the anguish in his message and the way his patronus’s head had hung low.

After muttering another curse, Lily summons one of Hogwarts’ many house elves.

Lily’s situation is highly unusual. There are other professors at Hogwarts who are married or who have families, but she’s the only one whose husband and child live with her in the castle. Given Harry’s age (and James and Lily’s involvement with the Order) Dumbledore made an exception for them when he hired Lily last year.

On one hand, Lily hates having exceptions made for her. On the other hand, she’s incredibly thankful for this one.

After all, there’s a war going on, and everyone knows there’s no safer place in Britain than Hogwarts. And there’s nothing Lily wouldn’t do to protect her family.

Right now, that means she needs to find out what happened with James today.

Leaving Harry in the expert care of an overeager house elf, Lily makes her way through the castle to the statue of the one-eyed witch by the stairs to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. Thankfully, no students are lingering nearby a Sunday afternoon, and the new Defence professor has probably been passed out drunk in his quarters since lunch.

James shared this secret passageway and all the others he knows of with Lily when she’d become a professor, just in case. At her insistence, he’d also shared them with the Headmaster, who had been endearingly amused to learn something new about the castle.

Now there are additional security measures beyond the simple password that opens the witch’s hump, both to keep intrepid, clever students from discovering a way out of the castle, and, more importantly, to keep adults from finding their way in.

It’s a long walk down the tunnel, which gives Lily far too much time to think and worry.

James had left early this morning in a storm of emotions—mostly anger and suspicion, but Lily had seen the flicker of hope in his hazel eyes. He said he didn’t believe it had been Sirius fighting alongside Remus at the museum, but Lily knew he secretly hoped it was.

Whether it’s a dog barking in the night or a handsome man with dark hair crossing the street, James always hopes it’s Sirius.

That eternal optimism is one of the things Lily loves about her husband.

Lily has never known what to think about Sirius Black though.

Before he was expelled Lily had only ever thought of him as James’s fellow bully. A cruel, arrogant brat who too many girls swooned and wept over when he inevitably and callously ignored them.

Of course, she’d thought the same about James for a long time, and she’d been wrong there.

After she started dating James toward the end of their sixth year, Lily was shown another side of Sirius through the stories his friends told. That boy had been fiercely loyal, supportive, and brave as well as funny, brilliant, and quietly sad.

Even though she’d never known Sirius well, Lily mourned him, because when he disappeared he’d taken a piece of James with him. For his friends, Sirius Black was a wound that would never fully heal.

Now, that wound has been ripped open all over again.

Lily knows she’s close when she smells burnt sugar. It lingers even now, close to a year after the fire that nearly burnt Honeydukes to the ground.

It was another Death Eater attack, timed right before Christmas holidays, when the village was packed with shoppers. Ambrosius Flume had died trying to save his shop and his customers, and his widow had chosen not to rebuild in the place where her husband had burned alive. She has a new sweet shop now, down in Edinburgh. Hogsmeade is poorer for it, but it did present a unique opportunity.

James had snatched up the property quickly, paying double what the ruined building was worth. Mostly they did it to secure the other end of the one-eyed witch passageway, but since then the wreckage has come to mean something more for James.

Her ever hopeful husband could look at the blackened husk of a building and imagine a bright future beyond war and fear. When the war is over, he’s going to open a shop of his own. Not sweets or even pranks, but wonderful, wild things only a mind like his could imagine and bring to life.

Lily finds her husband carefully transfiguring rubble into a long, polished countertop. He’s tense, almost shaking with emotion, and he doesn’t relax when Lily wraps her arms around him from behind.

“You shouldn’t be here,” James says as he casts a particularly ineffective transmutation spell that makes the counter wobble like an enormous oak jelly.

He’s right. Lily is violating the promise they made to each other.

One of them always stays at Hogwarts. One of them always stays with Harry. They’re both warriors, but they’re parents as well, and they refuse to leave Harry an orphan.

The shop is well-protected though, and Harry comes first, but James comes a very close second.

“Tell me what happened,” Lily says. She rests her head in the space between James’s sharp shoulder blades and wraps her arms around his waist.

James lowers his wand and takes one of Lily’s hands in his. Then he’s crying. Great sobs shake his entire body. Lily holds him tighter, blinking back empathetic tears of her own.

She waits.

She waits until James goes quiet and still in her arms. She holds him, grounds him, loves him, until he can talk to her.

“It was him,” James finally says.

Lily sucks in a breath. Of all the things she’d imagined, she’d never imagined Sirius Black might be alive, that he might actually wander back into James’s life after five absent years of silence and pain.

“You’re sure?” Lily asks. This is war, after all. She wouldn’t put it past their enemies to pull such a despicable trick as impersonating James’s missing friend. There are ways of doing it—potions or complicated transfigurations backed by legilimency.

“I’m sure,” James says though, and Lily believes him. “It was really Sirius. He’s alive…and he was never going to tell me. He was never going to come back.”

Chapter Text

James Potter grew up lonely.

It wasn’t his parents’ fault. No, James Potter had the best parents in the world, but they were older than most other parents. None of their friends had children James’s age. Very few of them even had grandchildren James’s age. On top of that, they lived in the country, far from any neighbors or village children.

Then, on his first train ride to Hogwarts, James met Sirius.

As they sat in a compartment together, laughing, James realized, “Oh, this is what I’ve been missing.”

With Sirius, and then later Remus and Peter, by his side, he’d felt whole.

Now, James is standing in the middle of the burnt-out husk of a building, and it feels like the perfect allegory for how he feels right now.

“I’m sorry, love,” Lily whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

She’s holding him tight, her cheek pressed against his spine, and for the first time in hours James finally feels like he can breathe. He’s safe with her. He can fall apart with her.

So he does.

He shudders and shakes and sobs within her arms as he tells her everything that happened.

He tells her about his fight with Remus, about how hard it was to convince Peter that they weren’t going mad, about how angry he felt that Sirius had chosen his pride over their friendship. He tells her how he was tentatively beginning to come around again, how forgiveness had begun to worm its way into his heart as Sirius told them about his years abroad.

He tells her how Sirius had leaned against the balcony railing, recounting years of traveling, of learning about the Muggle world, and studying magic under eccentric sorceresses and old warlocks.

It was a pretty story. Sirius smiled as he told it, and James believed everything he said. But he’d also known that it wasn’t the whole story.

As Sirius spoke, James had taken in the new crook in Sirius’s nose, the scars across his knuckles, and the steel deep in his grey eyes.

The story Sirius told them was the abridged version. It was the cheery, quirky highlights. He’d thrown in just enough struggles and mishaps to make it believable, but James could tell there were things Sirius was too afraid to tell them.

It reminded James of the old days, the train rides back to Hogwarts after holidays. Sirius would tell them long stories about tricks he’d played on family members, or something ridiculous Regulus had done, but he wouldn’t acknowledge a bruise on his arm or the way his mother had snapped at him on the train platform.

They worked their way back to the present, and James had felt himself softening. He still couldn’t agree with Sirius’s reasons for leaving and breaking off all contact, but he was already beginning to forgive him for it.

“I got a job working for a wizarding art dealer in Paris,” Sirius had said. “The lines are more blurred on the continent when it comes to fine art and antiquities. Muggle and magical—” Sirius had made a gesture that seemed to imply juggling or shifting scales. “—Muggle impressionist paintings are particularly in vogue among wealthy French and Scandinavian wizards right now. Between my pure-blood upbringing and living half in the Muggle world for several years, it turns out I’ve got the right skill set to find and negotiate for works our clients want. That’s why I was at the museum last night.”

He'd chuckled and taken a drag on his cigarette. “Pure coincidence,” he said.

And something about those two words pierced through James’s budding sympathy. He wasn’t able to identify why though.

James had raised his left hand to his jaw then, just an idle, unthinking movement to scratch an itch.

Sirius’s eyes went wide and he choked on a lungful of cigarette smoke.

“Fuck!” He said through coughs. “Bloody fuck—James! Is that a wedding ring? Are you married?”

James lowered his hand, the fingers on his right hand moving to touch the gold wedding band. He wasn’t sure whether he should smile or not.

Sirius didn’t know he was married.

Of course Sirius didn’t know he was married.

He hadn’t been there.

He’d been so focused on what he didn’t know about Sirius that he hadn’t thought about all the things Sirius didn’t know about him and the last five years of his life.

“Er, yeah,” James said. “I’m married.”

“To Evans—Lily Evans!” Peter said, breaking in with a grin. “I’m pretty sure you owe me five galleons, Padfoot, plus interest!”

Sirius’s jaw had dropped and he swore again. “No fucking way? Did you two make sure he hasn’t been slipping her love potions all this time?”

He was laughing and Remus and Peter were both smiling, but James felt suddenly unsettled. Not exactly angry, but not right.

“Sirius,” he said, interrupting a joke about Lily losing a bet. Still grinning, Sirius met James’s eye. The grin faltered.

“You knew you were coming to London for work,” James said. He saw half a stranger staring at him from familiar grey eyes. He saw the flash of fear there. “Were you planning on reaching out to any of us? Were you ever planning on letting us know you were alive?”

“James…” Sirius said, and it sounded like a plea.

“Answer the question, Sirius,” James demanded. Remus and Peter were looking between the two of them, uncomfortable once again.

Sirius held his gaze for a second longer, then looked away, half turning so he didn’t have to look at any of them directly.

“No.”

James had left quickly after that, Peter and Remus trailing in his wake. He wasn’t sure if they’d wanted to leave, or if they were just following his lead. Whatever the case, they’d all separated with barely a word after they’d left the hotel.

“Oh, James,” Lily says. “I’m so sorry.”

James squeezes her hand then raises it to her lips and kisses her wedding ring.

He can’t help but wonder if they would ever have started dating if Sirius hadn’t vanished. James changed so much because of that. Without that perspective, that pain, that forced him to grow up and get over himself, would Lily have ever looked his way? Would he have just kept on being an arrogant toerag? Would they be married or have Harry now?

It hurts to think that he might only have his family because he lost his best friend.

What sort of fucked up world is that?

Was there ever a chance he could have had both?

Is that a possibility now?

James isn’t sure it is. That’s why he had to leave Sirius’s hotel room. It was self-preservation.

Meeting Sirius made James feel whole, and losing Sirius nearly destroyed him.

Maybe there is a future where James can let Sirius back into his life, where they can be friends again and James can have it all.

Not right now though.

Whether it was because he lost Sirius or not, James had to do a lot of growing up five years ago.

He’s a father now, a husband. He has responsibilities. He wanted answers, and now he has them, but he can’t let Sirius Black tear him apart again.

Sirius chose to leave. He’s going to have to choose to come back.

All James can do at this point is wait…and hope.

Chapter Text

Remus Lupin has always wanted to be liked.

It’s one of his many secrets.

Compared to the rest of his secrets this one seems small, almost silly. It’s not though.

This desire to be liked by others is rooted deep inside of Remus. So much of his past and his personality have been filtered through it. There are so many things he’s done—or hasn’t done—because he wanted to be included. To be wanted. To be loved—in every definition of the word.

Most people who know him, even those who know him well, would probably classify Remus as an introvert, someone who prefers solitude or the company of a few chosen friends over large groups or parties.

They’re wrong.

At his core, Remus is secretly an extrovert. He loves other people. Talking with them, being with them, laughing with them; it energizes him.

It also terrifies him.

That inner extrovert is wrapped in layers upon layers of anxiety and self-esteem issues, all tied together with a bow and a tag reading “Lycanthropy.”

For all that he wants to be liked, to be loved, Remus has always been terrified of letting people get close enough to know him well enough to love him.

Still, it peeks through, in the deep attachments Remus has to the few friends who know all his other secrets, and in the soft, scholarly persona he’s cultivated. That persona is carefully crafted to tell everyone he meets “I’m not scary, I’m safe and friendly and would never think of ripping your throat out.”

It’s a mixture of this lifelong desire to be liked and five years of internalized guilt that bring Remus back to Sirius’s hotel the next day. He doesn’t want to leave things the way he did yesterday, following meekly after James when he’d stormed out.

He doesn’t tell James or Peter what he’s planning to do. In part because James probably wouldn’t approve, but mostly because he’s not actually sure what he’s planning to do.

He makes it to the hotel—well, across the street from the hotel—then he stops. He doesn’t want to walk into that beautiful lobby again and ask someone to call up to Sirius’s room using that fake name of his.

He also doesn’t want to leave.

So, he compromises in a rather daring way—he was a Gryffindor, after all.

Remus walks into an empty alley and apparates directly up to the balcony of Sirius’s hotel room.

The balcony door is all glass, and through it he can see Sirius, his back turned to Remus as he fusses with a cufflink. He wonders if he should knock or say something. Which will startle Sirius less when he turns to find someone standing unexpectedly on his sixth floor balcony?

In the end, he knocks.

Remus startles just as much though, because when Sirius whirls around he’s holding an enormous knife in front of him.

Instinctively, he takes a step back, knocking against the railing, which is thankfully tall enough that he doesn’t go tumbling over backward. He also grabs for his wand, but doesn’t pull it out, because just as quickly, Sirius lowers the knife.

“Remus?” Sirius asks. “What are you doing?”

Remus steadies himself and grimaces. “Er, hi…just…er…”

Sirius sets his ridiculously large knife aside and hurries to unlock the balcony door. He still looks alarmed…and apprehensive. Unlike everyone living in Wizarding Britain though, he doesn’t ask Remus a security question, which is good considering how old all of their shared memories are.

“Hi,” Remus winds up saying awkwardly as he steps inside.

“Hi,” Sirius replies, just as awkwardly. “I, um, didn’t expect to see you again…any of you…”

“Yeah, sorry about that…about James,” Remus says, “and about leaving like that with him.”

They hadn’t even said goodbye, not really. Not in a nice way.

Sirius shrugs. “It’s fine. I don’t blame him for being angry. I don’t blame any of you.” He turns away though and busies himself with a briefcase lying open on the unmade bed, gathering papers into an open file and stashing it away before shutting the briefcase with a click.

“Still, I’m sorry,” Remus says.

What he doesn’t say is that on some level he understands what Sirius did. If he’d been the one expelled from school, Remus would have run away too. Not for the same reasons as Sirius, but he wouldn’t have been able to stay, to be a burden on his already overburdened parents or an embarrassment to his friends.

Things probably would have been terrible for Sirius if he’d stayed, just like he’d said yesterday. Wizarding Britain hadn’t been kind to Remus, and it probably would have been even crueler to Sirius, the fallen, broken scion of a dark and powerful family. There would have been no escape in anonymity for him like there has been for Remus.

That probably hadn’t occurred to James though. For all that he and Sirius had once been metaphorically joined at the hip, they had also been very different in many ways.

Remus—who has always wanted to be liked, to be loved, and who has always been so afraid that no one would ever like him, let alone love him—is far more willing to forgive Sirius, even if a part of him agrees with some of what James said.

“That’s a…very large knife,” Remus says, because he’s still struggling to put together what he really wants to say.

Sirius chuckles and leaves his briefcase to go pick the knife back up. “Goblin-made,” he says and offers it hilt first to Remus, who takes it gingerly. “I won it from some old Polish warlock in a card game last year.”

It’s not adorned with gold or jewels, but the quality seems remarkable, based on the next to nothing Remus knows about knives, goblin-made or otherwise. “It’s lovely,” he says anyway. “Do you often…carry a large knife around?”

Sirius’s lips twitch into a smile. “Sometimes, mostly when I think I might have to deal with hostile wizards. It’s amazing how few wizards ever expect someone to be armed with anything other than a wand.”

Remus sets the knife down hastily.

“Don’t worry, I haven’t actually stabbed anyone,” Sirius says. Then, with a cheeky grin that drags Remus straight back to Hogwarts, Sirius adds, “Not with that knife anyway.”

Remus lets himself get caught in that grin of Sirius’s and smiles.

“It’s not that I’m not happy you decided to come back, Remus, but I have a meeting to get to,” Sirius says. He tucks the knife somewhere up his sleeve, which seems like it should be impossible, but, well, they are magical.

“Right, you have something to do with art and the museum?” Remus says, trying to recall what Sirius said about his work yesterday.

Sirius smiles and nods, but Remus thinks he sees a flicker of something he might once have recognized pass through those grey eyes. “Yeah,” Sirius says. “There’s a painting I’m supposed to acquire, and first I have to find out if it was damaged in the attack. Then there’ll be a lot of paperwork, I imagine.”

“Right,” Remus says again. It’s not all right though. There’s still so much he needs to say to Sirius. “Can we…meet up again though? Maybe talk some more?”

For a moment, Sirius looks conflicted, almost frightened, but he nods and forces a smile.

“Yeah, sure, that would be great,” Sirius says. He turns away, looking for something, which turns out to be a pen and a little pad of hotel branded paper. He scribbles down something and hands it to Remus. It turns out to be an address. “Dinner?” Sirius asks. “Tonight?”

Dinner. Tonight. With Sirius.

“Yeah, sounds great.”

Chapter Text

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Peter asks.

Remus glances up from the shoe he’s tying.

“What do you mean, Pete?” he asks. In the end, he’d had to tell someone about his dinner plans with Sirius. Peter seemed like a safer option than James.

Peter sighs. He’s sitting on the edge of Remus’s sofa, which is really still James and Lily’s sofa. With the exception of two bookshelves and a saggy old club chair, all the furniture in the cottage belongs to James and Lily, just like the cottage itself.

“I don’t know…” Peter says. He’s fidgety, nervous, probably because Remus told him about this dinner with Sirius and asked him not to tell James, at least until tomorrow. Peter has never liked keeping secrets from his friends, especially James.

Peter reaches for something to toy with, to give his hands something to do before his fingers start tapping or his leg starts bouncing. The closest thing within reach is an empty teacup Remus abandoned on the coffee table yesterday…or maybe earlier. It’s a little gross, but Peter can turn it over in his hands and let his mind sort through its thoughts more easily.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Peter says. “I’m happy Sirius isn’t dead and that he seems to be doing well and all, but James had some good points yesterday. It was pretty awful just running off and letting us all think he was dead.”

“I’m not disagreeing,” Remus says. He’s finished tying his shoelaces but remains bent forward, frowning at the scuffed old oxfords. They used to belong to his father, and they’re the only “Muggle” shoes Remus has. He just hopes they—and the rest of his clothes—are nice enough for whatever restaurant Sirius has chosen for dinner tonight, because everything Remus owns is threadbare and out of fashion.

He tries to put it out of his mind and straightens up to look at his friend. “Sirius has never been the best at thinking things through, or stopping to consider how his actions, his choices, might affect others, but he rarely did it to be purposefully cruel.”

Peter considers this for a moment as he spins Remus’s teacup around a finger stuck through the handle. He nods.

“I suppose you’re right,” Peter admits. “We’ve still got a right to be pissed though. Ignoring your best friends for five years, especially after disappearing without a trace is a shit thing to do, on purpose or not.”

Remus nods. It was a shit thing to do, but he understands why Sirius did it in a way James and Peter can’t.

They never outright talked about it at Hogwarts, but Remus and Sirius had shared an unspoken understanding that they were both damaged goods in their own ways. They were both disappointments or disgraces to their families and potential liabilities to their friends.

Sirius probably believed he really was doing the best thing for everyone by disappearing without a word. Pride, as James had pointed out, was certainly a part of it, but Remus knows there was more to it than that. He’ll never tell James and Peter and Lily this, but there are times he thinks he should disappear too. There are days when he genuinely believes they’ll all be better without him.

“You’re not wrong,” Remus tells Peter, because he’s not. He knows abandoning his friends would be a terrible, cruel thing to do, even if his mind sometimes tells him it would be for the best. “What are we supposed to do though? Pretend yesterday didn’t happen? Pretend like we don’t know Sirius is out there?”

Peter grimaces and sets the teacup back down. “Yeah, don’t suppose any of us can really do that. It’s just…he’s different, isn’t he?”

Remus stands and glances at his reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall. “Are any of us the same people we were five years ago?” He asks.

Over his reflection’s shoulder, Remus can see Peter give him a one-shouldered shrug, conceding the point to Remus.

They aren’t naïve little teenagers anymore, playing pranks and worried about exams and pimples. Remus, Peter, James, and Lily have become fighters, warriors. Now they worry about saving the world and staying alive.

“What are you going to tell Sirius about that?” Peter asks. Lowering his voice he adds “about the Order?” as though it weren’t already perfectly clear what he meant.

Remus frowns at his reflection, pausing as he finger combs his brown curls. That’s a very good question.

Barring their brief conversation about James and Lily’s marriage, they spent most of their time yesterday interrogating Sirius about what he’s been up to for the last five years. What’s he going to say when Sirius inevitably asks what Remus and the others have been up to?

Telling him about the Order isn’t an option. Even if he wanted to, Remus swore an oath of secrecy. It’s not quite an unbreakable vow, but it’s still not something he can easily betray. Sirius is clever though, and he knows enough about Remus—about all of them, bar Lily—to probably figure out more than he should know. After all, he saw what happened at the museum. He has to have questions about that, if nothing else.

Would it really be such a bad thing if Sirius knew about the Order? Remus wonders. If he hadn’t left he probably would have joined right alongside the rest of them. Sirius was always spoiling for a fight, especially one that involved blood supremacist twats like his family.

The thought of Sirius joining the Order now sends a shiver down Remus’s spine though. Sirius had handled himself admirably at the museum, thinking quickly, improvising, and using absurd amounts of wandless magic. However, Remus knows enough about wandless magic to know that in a straight duel, Sirius would probably lose to most competent wizards. Wandless magic takes a lot of energy and it’s harder to direct.

Sirius would be vulnerable, an easy target.

Remus feels sick just thinking about it.

“I’ll figure something out,” Remus assures Peter. “It’s not like I’m going to tell him the truth.”

*

Remus isn’t sure what surprises him more when he apparates into London: the restaurant Sirius chose, or Sirius himself.

After seeing Sirius in nothing but expensive Muggle suits, Remus had been expecting more of the same and a restaurant to match. Instead, he walks out of the alley where he apparated to find himself standing in front of a grubby-looking little chippy. Moreover, Sirius is leaning against the wall, smoking as he waits, dressed in jeans, a t-shirt advertising some Muggle rock band, and a battered leather jacket.

He grins and drops his cigarette when he catches Remus staring, crushing the butt under his boot heel.

Suddenly, Remus feels overdressed in his slacks and tatty sport coat. Sirius doesn’t say anything about it though as Remus crosses the street to join him.

The only thing he says is “Hello, Remus, are you ready to have the best fish and chips in the world?”

Chapter Text

Despite Sirius’s claims, Remus would not say these are the best fish and chips he’s ever had, let alone in the world. They’re not bad, just a little too heavily battered and under salted. You would never guess that based on the almost obscene noises Sirius makes when he takes his first bite.

“Sorry,” Sirius says, mouth still half full as he wipes grease from his chin with the back of his hand. “It’s been years since I’ve been here and…” He trails off, smiling fondly at the shop, the sticky tables, the wobbly chairs, the dusty photos of fishermen hanging on the walls.

They’re some of the only people in the shop, which seems like it must get most of its customers late at night when they stumble out of the nearby pubs and nightclubs in search of something greasy to smother the alcohol.

“You’ve been here before?” Remus asks, sprinkling extra salt over his chips.

Sirius nods around another bite of fish but doesn’t elaborate. When he swallows, he takes a swig from a bottle of Muggle beer and sighs happily. Then that grey gaze, still so confusingly familiar and strange, fixes on Remus.

“Right then,” Sirius says. “You know what I’ve been doing these past few years, what about you, Remus? What are you doing? What are all three of you up to—besides James marrying Evans, which I also want to hear more about.”

Remus shoves several chips into his mouth to buy himself a few seconds. It’s not like he wasn’t expecting this line of questioning, it’s just he still doesn’t know how to answer. The truth isn’t really an option, in part because most of what he does these days is for the Order of the Phoenix, which he can’t tell Sirius about, and the parts of his life that aren’t bound up in the Order are…kind of pitiful.

Instead, he offers up info on James and Peter. He tells Sirius about Peter’s respectable but lackluster job at a cauldron shop in Wimbourne, and how James and Lily are living at Hogwarts because Lily’s the potions professor these days.

Sirius jokes about how surprised he is that Slughorn finally retired and approves of Lily as a professor. “Not that we were close, but she’s probably good at the job,” Sirius says with a nod. “I remember her helping younger students, and she was Slughorn’s favorite. What’s James doing while she’s teaching though?”

“Mostly looking after Harry,” Remus says. The words are out of his mouth before he realizes they never got around to talking about Harry yesterday.

“Harry?” Sirius asks, frowning before his eyes go wide and he chokes on the sip of beer he just took. “James has a kid? James Potter not only married Lily Evans, but he shagged her and made a child?”

He’s loud enough to draw the attention of everyone in the chippy, but Sirius doesn’t seem to notice.

“Er, yeah, Harry,” Remus says, wondering if he shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe James doesn’t want Sirius to know he has a son. Maybe it’s something James should have gotten to tell Sirius himself. Well, the kneazle’s out of the box now.

“He’s a little over a year old. I don’t have any pictures, but he already looks exactly like James, only with Lily’s eyes,” Remus says with a smile. He can’t help but brag a little. After all, Harry is his godson. “He’s smart, and already a natural on this little broom Pete and I bought him for his birthday.”

“Wow,” Sirius says, utterly in awe at the very idea of this child he’s never met, never even knew existed until just now.

If he’d stayed, Sirius would have been Harry’s godfather. Remus is sure of it. James had flipped a coin to decide if it would be Remus and Peter, saying he couldn’t choose between the two of them, but he would always have chosen Sirius over both of them.

If he’d stayed, Sirius would also have been the best man at James’s wedding, not Remus and Peter splitting the duties because—once again—James couldn’t choose between the two of them. Remus wouldn’t have even been jealous. They were all four the closest of friends, but there had always been something extra between James and Sirius.

“Wow,” Sirius says again, grinning stupidly as he shakes his head in disbelief.

Remus finds himself smiling as he stares at Sirius. Merlin, he’s even handsomer than he was at sixteen. Remus grimaces at that traitorous thought and tries to cover it up with a quick swallow of beer.

His feelings about Sirius have been such a tangled, painful mess for the past five years he’d almost forgotten about those old feelings. He learned that lesson the hard way though, Remus reminds himself. Sirius had run from their one, silly little kiss like a dragon was snapping at his heels.

“What about you?” Sirius asks, startling Remus out of his useless recollections of their kiss. Remus flushes and takes another swig of beer.

“What about me?” Remus repeats back. Sirius nods, watching him with that smile still lingering on his lips.

“What are you doing these days, Remus?”

“Getting fired from a new job every other month, living off James’s charity, and fighting dark wizards,” Remus’s brain answers. Thankfully, the words don’t come spilling out of his mouth.

“I, er, not much,” Remus says instead.

Sirius’s brow furrows a bit in confusion. “What about your job?” he asks. “That must be interesting?”

Now it’s Remus’s turn to frown in confusion. He’s currently between jobs, having been fired from the owl post office in Hogsmeade after a bad full moon kept him in bed for almost a week.

“I’m…er…not really working right now,” Remus admits, hoping the smoky air and grease-covered lightbulbs are enough to hide the embarrassed flush rising in his cheeks.

Sirius’s brow furrows deepen. “You’re not working for the Ministry?”

Remus is so startled he laughs. Him? Working for the Ministry of Magic? They’d rather put him in chains than give him a paycheck, especially these days.

Now Sirius is frowning in earnest, and Remus realizes he’s made a mistake. He should have lied, should have gone along with whatever conclusions Sirius had already jumped to about his life.

“You’re not an Auror or something then?” Sirius asks. His words are spoken slowly, considering, but Remus knows his mind is already working far ahead of them.

“No,” he admits, because there’s no backtracking his way out of this.

“Then what were you doing at the museum?”

Remus groaned and scrubbed a hand down the side of his face. “Look, it’s complicated, and I can’t exactly talk about it…”

Sirius sets down his beer and pushes his near empty basket of fish and chips aside as he levels a calculating, concerned look at Remus.

“Fuck, Remus,” Sirius says in a voice just above a whisper, like he’s afraid they might suddenly be overheard. Like he’s afraid they might suddenly be in trouble. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

Chapter Text

There’s another world out there, Remus is sure of it, where, somehow, Sirius stayed. Maybe he was never expelled from Hogwarts. Maybe he never told Snape about the Willow. Maybe both of those things still happened but he decided to stay in Britain anyway.

Maybe there are many worlds where all of those things happened.

If there are, Remus knows Sirius would have been the first of them to join the Order. He’d been Gryffindor incarnate as a teenager—both the good and the bad. He’d been brave and reckless and self-righteous and angry. So, so very angry.

The man sitting across the table from Remus isn’t that boy though. Not really. Not anymore.

This Sirius left Britain. He never joined the Order of the Phoenix. He’s never fought in their war. And right now he doesn’t look brave or reckless or self-righteous or angry.

He looks concerned. He looks so fucking concerned it’s almost condescending.

The Sirius Black of this world, the reality Remus lives in, ran away and finally came back, and now he has the nerve to look at Remus like he’s worried for him, like he understands the hell the rest of them have been through these past five years.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Remus says, sharp and bitter. “You left. You left, and the world went to shit.”

“And you’re going to set it to rights?” Sirius asks. Remus isn’t sure how to interpret his tone. Is that derision he hears? Mockery? Empathy? Genuine curiosity? Whatever it is, it sets Remus on edge. He grinds his teeth, but doesn’t answer.

Sirius sighs. He pinches the bridge of his nose and grimaces like he’s got a sudden headache. “Fuck, Remus are you playing vigilante against this Voldemort bastard?” He says the name with a French pronunciation and completely without fear. Even James and Remus, who insist on saying his name always hesitate for just a moment, the safer “You-Know-Who” on the tip of their tongues.

Remus pushes back his chair. He’s done here. Maybe James was right. Even if he wasn’t, Remus can’t have this conversation, not with a man who’s half a stranger. An old friend who just happened to fall back into their lives just as the war is taking a turn for the worse.

That’s just a coincidence, right?

“I need to go,” Remus says hastily, standing and turning away from the table.

“No—Remus, wait! I didn’t mean to—”

Sirius reaches for him, tries to catch his hand, but Remus yanks it away and storms out of the restaurant. He hears Sirius scrambling to follow him, but he’s already out the door.

Night fell while they were eating. The streetlamps are on and it’s begun to drizzle. Remus turns up his collar and heads toward the alley he used to apparate here earlier.

There’s a scrabbling, scratching sound coming up quickly from behind him. Remus’s war-trained instincts tell him to draw his wand and turn around, that he should never turn his back on a potential enemy. He refuses to give Sirius the satisfaction though, or perhaps he just refuses to see Sirius as an enemy.

An enormous black dog darts around Remus, plunks itself down directly in his path, tail tucked between its legs, and whines pitifully.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Remus snaps. He glances around quickly. The street looks empty, but still. “Are you trying to break the Statute of Secrecy, you idiot?”

Padfoot whines again and lowers himself to the damp cobblestones, staring up at Remus with a canine expression of absolute sorrow and penance. Puppy dog eyes on full blast.

Remus glares down at him. “I’m not going to stand here and have an argument with a dog.” He could just disapparate away. If anyone is around they’ve probably already seen a man turn into a dog, what was a man vanishing into thin air?

When Remus turns on his heel though, it isn’t to disappear. He stomps off toward the alley, Padfoot follows on his heels, his tail wagging tentatively. As soon as they’re safely in the shadows of the alley, Sirius changes back into human form.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius says hastily.

Remus’s teeth are still clenched. He stares at Sirius, who stands before him, damp hair falling into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius says again.

Remus swallows around a lump in his throat.

He isn’t just apologizing for their clash in the restaurant.

Remus remembers the morning after that full moon, the morning Sirius was expelled. He remembers Sirius on his knees, tears in his eyes as he apologized and begged for forgiveness.

He isn’t begging now.

Sirius is sorry, genuinely sorry, Remus can see that, but he’s not desperate anymore. He isn’t that boy anymore. His life, his happiness, they don’t depend on Remus’s forgiveness.

If Remus turns away from him again, if he, once again, tells Sirius that he never wants to see him, Sirius will oblige him. He’ll leave, and Remus will never see him again. None of them will.

“Fuck,” Remus snarls. The drizzle is coating his hair and skin and working its way through his clothes and shoes. “I forgave you years ago, Sirius. I was always going to forgive you, you obnoxious troll.”

Sirius laughs, pushing his hair out of his eyes. His smile is small and frightened but genuinely happy. “Maybe we should get out of the rain and talk some more…if you want. I promise I’ll back off anything you don’t want to talk about.”

Remus shakes his head, more frustration than refusal. Forgiveness hasn’t solved all their problems. It’s not magic. Not the real sort or the fairytale sort.

“I don’t know what to say to you anymore, Sirius,” Remus confesses. “I don’t know where we’re supposed to go from here.”

“Neither do I,” Sirius says, “but I’m willing to fumble around trying to figure it out if you are.”

He holds out a hand toward Remus. Rain is running down Sirius’s face, though some of it may be tears. Remus is pretty sure they’re both crying.

In this moment, Remus knows it’s probably a mistake to take Sirius’s hand. His life is already complicated enough. Inviting Sirius back into it, especially when he know it’s only temporary, is begging for trouble, for pain.

It’s the sort of mistake he just can’t help but make though.

Remus Lupin was always going to forgive Sirius Black, and he was always going to take his hand.

Chapter Text

Before they do anything else, Sirius insists on briefly going back to the Fish and Chips shop. Remus waits near the doorway while Sirius walks up to the woman behind the counter. It’s the sort of shop where he and Remus paid for their food when they ordered it, so their business should be complete. She smiles kindly at Sirius anyway.

“Thank you for the excellent meal,” Sirius says. Flashing his most charming grin, he extends a hand to her. The woman seems confused, but politely shakes his hand. Her confusion deepens as Sirius withdraws his hand and turns to go, leaving a large roll of pound notes in her hand with a slick bit of Muggle sleight of hand.

Sirius doesn’t look back as he walks away, but he hears the woman—the same sweet, middle-aged woman who probably would have adopted him, or at least his furry self, five years ago if he’d allowed it—gasp as she realizes that Sirius has given her more than a thousand pounds.

Remus is frowning thoughtfully at him, but he doesn’t say anything until they’re out of the shop. He’s transfigured something into an umbrella, and they both huddle under it as they hurry down the street.

“What was that about?” Remus finally asks.

Sirius smiles ruefully. Having just done his best to repay an old debt, he’s feeling a bit nostalgic, a bit giddy even. He even thinks he’s ready to open the doors to this piece of the past. “When I was living in London those first few months after I ran away…it wasn’t easy…I was too afraid to linger around Wizarding places, even as Padfoot, but I barely knew anything about the Muggle world. I didn’t know how to do even the simplest things, how to use the money, where I could go for food or shelter or clothing or showers. I spent most of my time as Padfoot because it’s easier to drink out of fountains, sleep under bushes, and eat out of bins as a dog than it is as a human.”

He does his best to ignore the look of shocked horror he can see on Remus’s face from the corner of his eye. He doesn’t want Remus’s pity. Sirius might not look back at his time on the streets of London fondly, but it served as his testing grounds in a way. He emerged from those months smarter, stronger, tougher, and more determined than he’d ever been in his life.

He doesn’t want anyone’s pity for that.

Remus means well though, he always does, so Sirius continues the story. “The woman behind the register, she and her husband own that chippy. She caught me—as Padfoot—eating old potato skins out of her bins one day. When that happened, most people yelled or grabbed a broom and tried to chase me away.”

Padfoot is a big dog. It’s easy for him to look intimidating without even trying, especially with matted, dirty fur and a very unfortunate case of fleas. Most people wisely keep their distance from him.

“She just shut the door and came back a minute later with a plate piled high with food straight from the kitchen.” Sirius smiles at the memory. That plate of soggy fish and burnt chips had been the best meal Sirius had ever eaten. “Every time I showed up after that, they would always feed me.”

Everything had been so fragile in those days. Knowing where he could get at least one meal had quite possibly saved Sirius’s life. He hopes the money will help them. He hopes it pays back at least part of the debt he owes them.

Remus’s expression has shifted again. Maybe it’s the rain or the darkness or the streetlights or maybe it’s just Remus, but Sirius can’t read his face. He doesn’t like that, being unable to deduce what someone is thinking or feeling. Part of it’s a survival instinct, and part of it’s a business strategy, and part of it feels like something more personal.

They were friends once, after all.

And…maybe they will be again.

The first step is getting out of the rain.

“I know a coffee shop—Muggle, not wizarding—that’s open late,” Remus says. Sirius nods. Something warm to drink sounds good, and Remus seems to have noticed that he’s avoiding the Wizarding parts of London.

“Which way?” He asks. Hopefully they can catch the Tube and get out of the rain for a little while.

“It’s in Soho, so it’ll be easier if we just apparate,” Remus says. He turns back toward the alley again, but Sirius stops.

There’s a twist in his stomach. It’s old and familiar.

It takes Remus a few steps to realize Sirius isn’t following him anymore. There’s this innocent sort of confusion on his face that reminds Sirius of the boy he once was.

That makes the feeling in his gut worse.

“Sirius? Is everything all right?” Remus asks.

“I, er…I can’t apparate,” Sirius says.

This feeling is the same one that convinced him he couldn’t go to his friends for help after he ran away from home. It’s acidic. Toxic. And it’s strong.

This feeling is shame.

He’s ashamed of what he can’t do. What he’ll never be able to do. What was taken away from him.

He’s lesser than he should be. Less capable, less talented, less powerful.

Sirius knows the level of magic he’s regained since his wand was snapped is remarkable. It’s more than most witches or wizards from wand-reliant cultures will ever achieve. It’s never going to be the same though.

Sirius clears his throat and forces himself to keep talking despite the burning feeling in his throat, his cheeks. “I tried to learn, but without a wand to help with the control it’s difficult…dangerous…more so than normal, and…”

He shrugs and tries to make it seem nonchalant rather than defeatist.

There’s a scar across his back from where he nearly splinched half his entrails out the last time he tried apparating. After that, he figured he could just buy himself a Muggle motorbike instead. It seemed the less dangerous option.

“Oh,” Remus says. “I’m sorry—I, er, I mean…I should have thought about that. I can…” Instead of finishing his sentence, Remus holds out his hand as an offer to side-along apparition.

There’s a part of him that wants to say no. He can make an excuse, save some face, some small amount of pride perhaps.

There’s that word though.

That word James threw in his face yesterday. That word Sirius swears he heard in his dreams last night.
Pride.

“Me, us, our friendship, the people who loved you, meant nothing to you, not compared to your fucking pride.”

Sirius does his best to swallow down the acid in his throat.

This time he makes a different choice.

This time he takes Remus’s hand.

Chapter Text

Let’s pause here for a moment and talk about what exactly happens when a young witch or wizard is expelled from Hogwarts.

Say you’re a student at that storied and illustrious school, and you’ve somehow fucked up royally enough to get yourself expelled. What happens after that sentence is handed down depends on a few things.
1. The severity of your crime.
2. Your age.

If you, our young delinquent, are old enough to have taken and passed your O.W.L. exams before your expulsion you’re removed from school immediately with no chance of coming back. However, as long as you didn’t intentionally murder someone you’re most likely going to be allowed to keep your wand. Unbroken and everything.

Make no mistake, expulsion from the only real wizarding school in the British Isles is still a mark of disgrace that will likely haunt you for the rest of your life. It will make it more difficult for you to get a good job or learn things like apparition or advanced spells. Yet, you can still function within wizarding society for the most part. After all, you still have your wand.

You can still do magic. You can still pick up a spellbook and learn on your own or study under someone outside of Hogwarts.

Though it shouldn’t be underestimated, especially in such a small and—let’s be honest—gossipy community as Wizarding Britain, a black mark on your background check will be the only thing holding you back.

Things go differently though if you’re expelled before sitting your O.W.L.s.

To be that young and to have done something terrible enough to merit expulsion; you must be a monster, right? People—children—like that simply can’t be trusted, can they?

Or so the winning argument goes.

There are no do-overs. No second chances. No forgiveness or opportunities for redemption.

Many people over many centuries have argued that the law is harsh, that it’s cruel, that it does more harm than good. But it’s still the law.

So, here’s what happens.

As soon as the headmaster or headmistress makes their decision to expel you, they’ll inform the Ministry of Magic. More specifically, the Improper Use of Magic Office. They dispatch a representative to Hogwarts immediately. It doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is, someone will come, and they’ll get there fast.

Then they break your wand.

Right in two.

Snap.

If the ministry representative is feeling kind (or cruel, it depends on your perspective) they might give you the broken pieces back. After that, the school and the government are officially done with you. Your parents or guardians are called and asked to come collect their wayward child.

That all sounds rather terrible, doesn’t it?

It also sounds like a system rife with loopholes though, and, in the beginning, it was.

After all, wands get broken all the time. It’s easy enough to replace them.

Selling a wand to someone who’s had theirs officially broken though, that’s against the law. The illegality of it stops the more respectable wandmakers from selling new wands to expelled former students.

However, a student expelled before the end of their fifth year has to be all but a criminal already, right? Of course they won’t hesitate to break the law to get a new wand. Besides, there are always the less respectable wandmakers, ones who will happily charge double for wands sold under the table.

So, breaking a wand isn’t much of a solution, is it? Not in the long term. Not in a way that’s going to guarantee Wizarding society’s safety from such terrible juvenile offenders.

That’s where the runes come in.

This is the part no one really talks about. It’s scandalous and cruel. Even those who take a hard line on crime usually admit as much, if only to themselves.

There’s a spell, one that’s kept very secret by the Ministry. Anyone whose job requires them to learn it has to take about six different Unbreakable Vows before they’re taught so much as the theory behind the spell. This is not something the Ministry wants getting out. It’s not something they want anyone replicating without their strict moral authority behind it.

It hurts.

That’s another thing no one talks about. It’s over quickly, just a muttered word and rune traced across your palms with the tip someone else's wand, but it will hurt. Badly.

When it’s done, there will be faint red lines across your palms that will eventually fade into thin scars that almost no one will ever notice. Those runes though, they will keep you from ever holding a wand again.

Don’t try it.

You’ll probably be tempted to, most are. It won’t work though.

You’ll brace yourself, reach out, and the moment your fingers touch any wand, you’ll feel like those same fingers are melting.

That’s usually enough. Most people accept at this point. They pull their hand back. You should too. The pain will only get worse if you try actually picking that wand up.

I don’t even want to tell you what it’ll feel like if you try and cast a spell. Chances are you’ll be too busy screaming and fainting to make it that long anyway.

Magically speaking, you’ve just been crippled.

You might as well be a Squib at this point.

Good luck getting a job, any job. Good luck functioning in wizard society at all.

This world is no longer made for you. It no longer wants you.

There are, as we’ve seen, other pathways still open to you, of course. If you have the determination and the fortitude to try them. Wandless magic isn’t easy, especially if you’re coming to it after years of learning with a wand.

Chances are, you’ll never achieve as much as you could have with a wand. If you get anywhere at all. Many don’t. Honestly, most don’t even try.

Most slink off into the Muggle world. Some scrape by in the Wizarding world, but it’s not easy.

Others don’t make it at all…

Aren’t you glad this is all hypothetical?

For you, at least.

Chapter Text

In a bohemian coffeehouse in Soho, Sirius sits across a rickety little table from Remus. They regard each other with renewed apprehension.

New pieces of the puzzles they’ve both become over the years have been slotted into place, connecting inward from the familiar edges.

Remus now knows that Sirius’s magic is more stunted than he’d obviously assumed, and Sirius knows that Remus is secretly fighting Death Eaters in some rogue capacity.

They may have the rough shape of each other down now, but the puzzles themselves are far from complete.

There are questions, so, so many questions dancing on the tip of Sirius’s tongue. He takes a long sip of bitter, scalding hot coffee to keep from asking them. He did promise that he wouldn’t press any conversation Remus didn’t want to have.

Where does that leave them though?

Remus can’t trust Sirius enough to tell him what he’s doing, and Sirius isn’t about to tell Remus about his life of crime. Nor does he want to talk about the limits of his magic, which he’s sure Remus is curious about as well.

What’s left of them to share?

Desperate for something to break the silence and the strain, Sirius delves deep into his memories for something to talk about. Looking back is something that he usually avoids, and he quickly remembers why.

His memories are jagged things, most of them sharp enough to make him bleed. Many of them are happy memories that he treasures, but that doesn’t mean they can’t hurt him.

This time, Sirius snags himself on a moment just before everything fell apart.

It both is and isn’t a happy memory, but this, unlike so much else, it’s something Sirius is willing to confront.

This is a part of himself that he’s no longer ashamed of.

“I owe you another apology,” Sirius says.

Remus blinks, startled. He fumbles with his tea, almost spilling it before catching the mug and steadying it.

“Sorry, what? Why?” Remus asks.

Sirius smiles at him, hoping it’s reassuring.

There’s a chance this confession will go down like a wingless horse. Just because Sirius isn’t ashamed anymore is no guarantee that Remus wants to be reminded of this particular moment.

“Your sixteenth birthday. I kissed you—” Remus goes perfectly still. Someone might honestly have petrified him. He doesn’t even look like he’s breathing.

Yes, this was probably not a good idea, but Sirius has already stuck his foot in his mouth. He might as well swallow.

“I kissed you,” he says again. “Then I told you it was a mistake and ran off.”

He remembers every second of it perfectly, from the first brush of his lips against Remus’s to the way his chest clenched and his stomach heaved as he sprinted for the bathroom, nauseous at the thought of what he’d just done.

“That was a wretched thing to do,” Sirius continues. Remus still hasn’t moved. He still hasn’t breathed.

Another minute like this, and Sirius might find his lips on Remus’s again, this time trying to perform rescue breathing.

Definitely not the circumstances he’d prefer.

“I was still pretty deeply in denial back then,” Sirius explains. “I wasn’t ready to admit what I wanted—how I felt—not even to myself.”

Finally, Remus blinks. He breathes. He frowns.

“I—I don’t think I follow,” he says, voice tinny.

Sirius picks up his mug and sighs into his coffee. Confusion isn’t the response he’d expected. That leaves him wondering exactly what outcome he was expecting.

Did he think Remus was going throw hot tea in his face?

No, of course not. Remus would never.

Did he think Remus was going to lunge across the table and pull him into a passionate snog?

Sirius quirks an eyebrow and sweeps another quick gaze over Remus, confirming what he’s already known.

He wouldn’t be opposed to that outcome.

Remus just looks genuinely confused though.

Sirius sighs and sets down his coffee and leans just a little closer, making his expression just a little more pointed, hoping Remus, clever, intelligent Remus can fill in the gaps in what Sirius has said.

He seems to have broken Remus just by bringing up their kiss though, because Remus just keeps staring blankly at him.

Straight to the point then.

“Remus,” Sirius says, lowering his voice just a little more. “I’m trying to tell you I’m gay.”

Remus’s confused frown deepens, making furrows across his brow for a moment. Then his eyes go wide and his mouth falls open and he says “oh!”

His mouth closes. He seems to think for a moment, then says “oh!” again.

Sirius watches him process everything, not sure if he should be worried or amused.

“So…” Remus finally says, “when you kissed me…”

“It was because I fancied you back then,” Sirius answers with a nod. This is potentially dangerous territory, but he doesn’t believe Remus would ever hurt him, or even reject him. At worst he’s likely to be coolly polite and change the subject.

And that will be fine, Sirius tells himself.

“I don’t…I didn’t know that…” Remus says.

Sirius gives him a reassuring smile. “I was still struggling to figure it out myself at the time. Hindsight’s pretty clear though.”

“So…are you apologizing for kissing me or for calling it a mistake and running away?” Remus asks.

Sirius hesitates before answering. Is it just his imagination or did something in Remus’s voice shift with that question?

“Both,” Sirius says. “I shouldn’t have kissed you without even asking if you wanted to kiss me, and I sure as hell shouldn’t have run off and abandoned you like that afterward.”

Remus nods, but he doesn’t look at Sirius. He’s staring down into his mug.

“I wouldn’t have said no,” Remus finally admits. “…If you’d asked to kiss me…”

Something inside Sirius’s stomach squirms. “You wouldn’t have?” He asks.

Perhaps he’s better at reading between the lines, or maybe he’s imagining it, but this feels like Remus’s way of coming out to him.

“Back then,” Remus adds hastily.

Sirius bites his tongue as he reluctantly nods in agreement. “Back then.”

Chapter Text

Despite the world ostensibly going to hell in a handbasket around her, things are going incredibly well for Lily.

At twenty-one, Lily Evans-Potter is the youngest Hogwarts professor in over a century. She’s incredibly proud of that, even though she suspects Dumbledore offered her the job because of her and James’s involvement with the Order rather than her superb qualifications.

Her qualifications are superb though. No one her age (or several years older) can hold a candle to her potioneering skills. No one except Severus, she supposes, but the thought of her former friend as a teacher makes Lily want to laugh and cringe at the same time. No matter his skills, he would make an absolutely terrible teacher.

Lily shakes her head. She doesn’t like thinking about Severus these days. She doesn’t like thinking that the last time they were in the same place at the same time she probably didn’t recognize him under a Death Eater’s mask and hood.

Yes, things are going incredibly well for Lily. That’s not to say things are going according to plan though.

No plan survives contact with the enemy though, or with James Potter.

Lily never expected to be a professor, a wife, or a mother at such a young age. She’s all those things though. She’s also a warrior, a freedom fighter, and, when needs must, a bit of a spy.

While she would never actively interrogate or spy on her students, Lily isn’t above listening in if students happen to be careless enough to talk in front of her.

At the moment, Lily is lingering over the work bench of a pair of fourth year Hufflepuffs, ostensibly helping them with the proper way to stake and slice a vampire pumpkin. Mostly though, she’s listening as one of the students at the table behind her shamelessly tells the other all about how her father, an editor at the Daily Prophet, does his best to keep articles about Muggle killings off the front page.

They’re Gryffindors, which makes the whole things sting just a little more. It’s good information though. Lily will have to write it all down after class and make sure to pass it on to Moody.

“Potter!” Lily startles as a voice calls, not from any of her students, but from inside the pocket of her own robes. Damn, she’d completely forgotten about the bloody mirror.

James is off doing surveillance for the Order, which means Lily has his mirror. Usually it isn’t a problem because Regulus rarely initiates contact. She definitely wasn’t expecting it today, not when James told her that Regulus has been brooding since learning that his brother really is alive and in London.

That was the cauldron calling the kettle black though.

Biting back a curse, Lily reminds her class to add their holly berries precisely a minute after their potions begin to boil, and ducks into the cauldron cupboard for privacy.

Glaring, she pulls the mirror out of her pocket. The face that greets her isn’t her own though, though his expression is the same. Regulus looks haggard, and quite possibly drunk. Before Lily can feel any sympathy for him, his lip curls in a sneer.

“Regulus,” Lily says flatly.

“Where’s your husband?” Regulus asks, forsaking even the pretense of politeness.

“Not immediately available,” Lily replies. She can be just as terse and rude if that’s the way he wants to behave.

Regulus rolls his eyes.

“I’m here,” Lily says. “Whatever you want to say to James, you can say to me.”

Regulus doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like her.

Fair enough.

Enemy of my enemy and all that, but Lily doesn’t like him either.

He takes a moment to reply, weighing whether he’s willing to lower himself to actually talk to someone of her blood status, Lily’s sure.

“Fine,” Regulus finally snaps. “Tell Potter I had tea at Malfoy Manor today. Bellatrix and Rodolphus were there.”

He hesitates. Lily wants to snap at him. She’s got a class full of teenagers who need her attention more than he does.

Regulus sighs and raises a hand to rub at his eyes. Merlin, he does look tired though.

It can’t be easy, she knows, living between the two sides of this war. Severus suffered through that same conflict for years. Only he chose the other side in the end.

Perhaps she should cut Regulus a little slack. It has to weigh on him, subverting and lying to his entire family.

Still, he’s a bit of an arse.

“Dedalus Diggle was one of yours, right?” Regulus says uncertainly.

Lily’s stomach drops.

It’s not unexpected. Diggle vanished almost three weeks ago. That’s almost a guarantee that someone is dead these days. Especially when Regulus mentioned his cousin Bellatrix right before asking about Diggle.

That woman is a monster.

Swallowing, Lily forces herself to nod. “He’s dead then?”

Regulus returns her nod. She hates how cold, how indifferent he seems. He didn’t know Diggle though. He never sat next to him and listened to his hackneyed but earnest jokes.

“You won’t find a body,” Regulus says. “Rodolphus kept his pocket watch though.”

Lily bites her lip to keep from thinking about all the other deaths the Order has suffered through—Frank and Alice, Fabian Prewett, Elphias Doge, Marlene and her family, Benjy Fenwick. So many dead, and so many of those deaths are recent. It’s been a very bad year in that respect.

“That’s not all,” Regulus says. “Potter told me…about Sirius.”

Lily nods again. She wonders how Regulus really feels knowing his brother is alive. She can’t read his expression like she can with James. Regulus is a blank wall of Pureblood haughtiness, the proverbial “stiff upper lip” personified. Yes, he’s brooding, but there has to be more to it than that.

“Is he…Is Potter in contact with him?”

“He can be.” James hasn’t talked to Sirius since their confrontation on Sunday, but she knows Remus gave him a copy of the hotel’s address and phone number. She also knows Remus has been to see Sirius again on his own.

Regulus raises a hand and bites at his thumbnail for a moment before realizing Lily can still see him and dropping his hand back down. The wall settling back into place. Lily has seen behind it though, if only for a moment.

He’s nervous.

“What is it, Regulus?” Lily asks. Her tone softens like it does with her shier, more anxious students, or with Harry.

Regulus shakes his head. “Nothing…not yet…just…just tell Potter to tell Sirius to watch his back. Bellatrix asked me questions about him and said she wants to talk to Walburga. None of that’s good.” Regulus’s thumb comes up to his mouth again, but he hides it beneath his other fingers, balling his hand into a fist. “She’s very zealous about keeping our family tree…properly pruned…”

He doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t have to. A shiver runs down Lily’s spine. She never met them, and they weren’t part of the Order, but Lily supposes she should add Andromeda and Ted Tonks to the tally of war deaths she keeps in her head.

Chapter Text

Remus goes to meet Sirius two more times that week.

The first time isn’t so pleasant. They meet in the bar at Sirius’s hotel. They’re both busy and tired. Remus is coming off a surveillance mission for the Order, and Sirius has had a “day full of boring meetings” he says with a roll of his eyes.

It’s supposed to be just a quick drink, but it drags into several after Remus relays the message Lily received from Regulus.

Sirius downs his vodka tonic in a few large gulps as Remus explains James’s odd alliance with Regulus.

“And James is sure he can trust him?” Sirius asks. He’s careful to avoid saying Regulus’s name as he frowns into his empty highball glass.

“James thinks so,” Remus says. He doesn’t tell Sirius about the long, vicious argument he and James had on that exact subject.

Sirius’s lips thin as he flags down a waitress to get another drink. He doesn’t say anything else though, perhaps thinking the conversation would swing too close to the war, a topic they’ve studiously avoided since Remus stormed out of the chippy. He’s not wrong either.

“So,” Sirius says when he has another drink in hand. “My brother finally came to his senses then? Did the shock kill our parents?” He says it with a scoff, but Remus cringes.

“Er…actually…” Remus says.

Then they have to talk about the dead.

It’s a long conversation.

Sirius doesn’t give a shit that his father is dead. If anything, he seems relieved, almost happy. It’s a vicious reaction, but one Remus is certain Orion Black earned in full.

He’s sad to learn about his Uncle Alphard though. “He was one of the few good ones,” Sirius says with a sigh. Remus didn’t know Alphard, but he nods somberly anyway, for moral support.

News of Fleamont and Euphemia’s deaths hit Sirius even harder. He whispers James’s name in a strangled voice and swallows down another drink.

The Potters were always kind to Sirius, Remus remembers. More than that really. They were better parents to him in the limited time Sirius spent with them than his own parents ever were.

Remus hates being the bearer of so much bad news.

Especially when he has to tell Sirius about his cousin Andromeda and her husband.

She was Sirius’s favorite cousin, another one of those “few good ones” in the Black family. It’s especially distressing given how Andromeda and her husband died.

It was no heart attack like Sirius’s father, no potions accident like Alphard, not even dragon pox like the Potters. Andromeda and Ted Tonks had been murdered and their house burnt to the ground while the Dark Mark of Voldemort leered down at it all.

The Order got there before the Ministry. Remus hadn’t been part of that team, but Lily and Peter had been. They’d told him things Remus still wishes he didn’t know.

Remus tries to be vague when he relays the story to Sirius, but it’s hard to avoid all of the horror associated with the Tonks’s murders. Especially when the Order’s prime suspect is Bellatrix Lestrange.

“What about—they had a kid, right? A daughter? Is she—?”

“She’s alive,” Remus assures him. “She was spending the night with a friend when it happened—thank Morgana. Dorcas Meadowes is her godmother, she’s taking care of the girl now.”

“Fuck,” Sirius says, leaning back in his chair and knocking back another drink. “My fucking family…”

*

The second time is better. Much better.

The second time they meet, Remus brings Peter. The three of them eat dinner in a Muggle pub and drink beer, talking and laughing all the way to last call.

By the end of the night, Remus feels strange. It’s a mix of exhilaration, joy, and something else.

He always liked Sirius. They were good friends since early in first year, great friends, really, but…Well, when Remus thinks back to their time at Hogwarts, he isn’t sure he could name one thing Sirius was genuinely passionate about. There were certainly things he enjoyed, and he was always good at school, even when he didn’t put in much effort. He always seemed like he was more along for the ride than directing the broom though.

Now, however…

Now Sirius is magnetic. Enthralling.

Remus could sit and listen to him talk all day as he rambles through topics ranging from art history to magical theory to Muggle sciences.

Somewhere out in the wider world, Sirius found things to love. He found a life that challenges him and drives him.

Honestly, Remus is more than a little jealous.

He remembers having dreams.

Back at Hogwarts, Remus wanted to be the Newt Scamander of dark creatures. He wanted to travel the world, investigating and researching. He wanted to publish books that would dispel myths and propaganda and better arm people against real threats.

He wanted to change the world.

Then school ended and the real world swallowed him whole. Remus sacrificed his dreams and his passions to war and his service in the Order.

He’s not the only one either.

Lily loves her job at Hogwarts, but it’s not the cutting-edge potions research position she always wanted. Meanwhile, Peter seems to have resigned himself to living with his mother and working at a cauldron shop rather than pursuing a job at the Department of Magical Games and Sports like he dreamed of at school. James rejected several offers from professional Quidditch teams to join the Order, and even though he seems passionate about the workshop he wants to open in Hogsmeade, he’s still pushing all those plans out “until they win this war.”

It’s not that Remus regrets joining the Order. If Voldemort and his Pureblood supremacy agenda win, he (and Lily, and so many others) will lose a lot more than their career aspirations. They need to fight, and they need to win. That comes first.

Still, he can’t help but listen to Sirius and feel a prickle of envy. He can’t help but wish he could run away and find himself as well.

He imagines himself in the places Sirius describes. Strange cities, remote villages, and far-flung wilds.

Sirius is there when he imagines it all. He takes Remus by the hand like he did in the alley across from the chippy, laughing and smiling as he tugs Remus forward.

“You were right,” Peter says later when he and Remus are stumbling off to find a floo open this late. “That was nice. It’s good to have Sirius back.”

“Yeah, it is,” Remus replies. It really is.

“Too bad he’s not back to stay,” Peter says with a rueful smile.

Remus’s heart sinks at the reminder. He might be here in London right now, but as soon as his job is done, Sirius be off again. Back to France, or America, or Egypt, or wherever. He’ll be off on another adventure.

And Remus will still be here.

Stuck in a warzone.

Stuck in place.

Without him.

Chapter Text

The Pendragon Social Club sits behind a door cleverly disguised as a brick wall near the north end of Diagon Alley. Unlike the similarly disguised entrance to the alley itself behind the Leaky Cauldron, this gate won’t open for everyone who taps the right brick with their wand.

The bricks here are stained with rusty splotches because they require blood.

Pure blood.

James hates this place.

His father was a member, back in the days when things weren’t so bad, or at least so openly bad. Back when blood supremacy could quietly hide under the cloak of “just a joke” and “tradition.” James likes to think that Fleamont Potter would have cancelled his membership if he were still alive. Certainly, he’d stopped attending regularly the decade before his death, but he never actually stopped being a member.

Technically, neither has James, who’d inherited his father’s membership.

Hating himself for it, James uses a small spell to prick the tip of his finger and flicks a droplet of blood at the brick wall.

Dumbledore asked him to stay a member of the club, even if it’s only in name, in case they need someone else on the inside. Thankfully, Edgar Bones has been doing most of the schmoozing for the Order. He’s more subtle than James and not as well-known for his egalitarian politics.

James isn’t here for Dumbledore or the Order though, and he certainly isn’t here to get a drink and gossip with Ministry bigots.

No, he’s here because Regulus Black is just as much of a pain in the arse as his brother, and James is beginning to worry about him.

They’d talked a week ago, James confirming that Sirius was undeniably alive. Two days later Regulus had reached out and given Lily that ominous warning about Bellatrix.

Then nothing.

For five days.

Regulus hasn’t answered his mirror in five fucking days.

James can’t exactly send him an owl or pop by Grimmauld Place to check on him. The Pendragon Club is the only chance he has to cross paths with Regulus without automatically putting them both in extreme danger.

That’s not to say this isn’t dangerous though.

James can feel eyes on him as the bricks reform themselves into an archway leading directly into a well-appointed parlor. He grinds his teeth and raises his chin, daring anyone to question his presence here.

They don’t.

They just watch and whisper in his wake.

James prowls through the sitting rooms, the smoking rooms, the billiards rooms, and even the bathrooms before he finally finds Regulus in the small library, asleep with a glass of wine still held precariously in one hand.

There’s a second before James hears him snoring when he thinks Regulus might be dead.

It makes him livid.

Selfish, self-destructive Blacks, he thinks as he casts spells to lock the doors and keep them from being overheard.

Delicately, he takes the half empty glass from Regulus’s hand and sets it on a nearby reading table.
Then he roughly seizes Regulus by the front of his robes, hauls him to his feet, and shakes him until his eyes fly open.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” James shouts. “Five days, Regulus! I’ve been trying to contact you for five fucking days!”

He releases Regulus just as suddenly as he grabbed him, and Regulus stumbles back into a bookshelf, knocking loose a well-worn copy of Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. James kicks the book rather than punch Regulus in the face.

“Potter?” Regulus slurs. He blinks, looks around, and seems to remember where he is. “What in Salazar’s name are you doing here?”

James ignores him. “Five days, Regulus! And after leaving that message about Bellatrix pruning the family tree—Merlin! I thought you were dead.”

Regulus scrubs a hand down his cheek and mutters something James thinks might be “not for lack of trying.” He’s being sarcastic, but it’s the wrong thing to say.

James glowers at him. Regulus does his best to match it, but he must be worse off than James thought. His surly expression crumples, and Regulus just looks exhausted.

“I didn’t want to talk to you,” Regulus says. Even he must know it sounds petulant, childish, because he frowns.

“This is about Sirius, isn’t it?” It’s a sensitive subject for both of them. James doesn’t have the time to coddle Regulus though, even if the younger man deserves it.

Regulus scoffs. “It’s always about Sirius…always has been. Doesn’t matter if he’s being brilliant or fucking up or if he’s been gone for years, everything’s always about Sirius.”

He shoves at James’s chest. It’s weak though, and James stands his ground.

“Regulus—”

“Don’t!” Regulus hisses. His complexion has gone the color of dirty milk. “Don’t make up some white lie for me, Potter. The only reason you and I have ever exchanged more than two words is because of Sirius. Don’t pretend like I was ever anything more than a piss-poor substitute for my brother—a Black you still had a chance of saving.”

He shoves James again, harder this time. It’s enough for him to get away.

“Sirius is alive, go rescue him…” Regulus takes three staggering steps, doubles over, and vomits on his own shoes.

“Merlin,” James mutters. He grabs Regulus by the shoulder to steady him as he vanishes the vomit. “It’s not even noon. How drunk are you?” And how long have you been drunk? James wants to add.

Regulus shakes his head, still hunched over. “I’m fine,” he mutters. “I’m—fuck you. Just go, Potter, it’s not safe for you to be here.”

He’s right, of course.

About everything.

James is a good enough person to feel ashamed about it, but it’s true. In those early days, he had seen Regulus as a proxy for Sirius. He’d failed to protect his best friend, so saving Regulus seemed like the next best thing.

The relationship they have now certainly isn’t friendship, but it’s more than it was at the start. James knows Regulus is more than a shadow of Sirius. He’s…complicated.

But he’s worth helping. For reasons beyond the information he gives James. For reasons beyond just being Sirius’s brother.

Regulus manages to collapse back in his armchair. He eyes his half-empty wineglass but doesn’t reach for it. He’ll wait until James leaves for that.

Even drunk and angry and hurt, Regulus is good at hiding his feelings. That stony stillness settles back over his features. For the first time, James wishes he could do the same.

“You shouldn’t be here, Potter,” Regulus says. “It’s going to make people suspicious. There are going to be questions.”

Regulus is shutting him out. He’s shutting down again.

“We should talk about this—”

“Why,” Regulus snaps, “does Sirius want to sit down with me for tea?”

He sneers at James’s silence. “No, I thought not. I don’t have any more information for you, so what else is there to discuss?”

If they were on the mirrors, Regulus could have cut off the call, but they aren’t. James considers pressing the point, but it won’t do any good. He and Regulus aren’t friends.

“Then answer the damned mirror next time,” James says.

He unlocks the library and storms out. No one is in the hall, thankfully, but people still watch him on the way out. There’s sure to be gossip.

There’s only one set of eyes that truly worries James though.

In one of the smoking rooms, Edgar Bones is watching him leave.

Before the day is over, Dumbledore is going to hear about this, and he’s going to have far too many questions.

Chapter Text

James manages to avoid Albus Dumbledore for two days, which is practically a miracle given they both live in the same castle. Granted, at one point he did have to turn into a stag and spend fifteen minutes eating grass while Dumbledore chatted with Professor Sprout near the greenhouses.

The map helps, but they never did get it working perfectly. There’s still a glitch in the spells that sometimes makes it show people in places they were three hours ago rather than where they are presently.

That’s how Dumbledore finally finds him.

The map tells James the headmaster is up in his office, but James rounds a corner of the broom shed and Dumbledore is right there, smiling serenely.

“Hello, James,” he says, like they’re old friends.

“Hello, Professor Dumbledore,” James says in return, because they’re not old friends.

These days Lily calls the headmaster Albus when they’re not in front of students, but James just can’t bring himself to think of the man with that level of familiarity.

“It’s a lovely day,” Dumbledore says casually. “Would you join me on a short stroll?”

James bites his tongue. He can say no. He can make excuses. He can’t avoid Dumbledore forever though. The headmaster has a way of getting what he wants.

He shrugs, and Dumbledore’s smile widens.

It’s not that James dislikes or even distrusts Dumbledore. He wouldn’t have joined the Order if that was the case.

James trusts Dumbledore…but he’s never quite forgiven the headmaster for expelling Sirius.

It seems an almost silly grudge to bear now that he knows Sirius is alive, but James’s feelings haven’t changed, revelation or no.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say James trusts Dumbledore to handle big picture issues, like the Order and the war and Hogwarts as a whole. He’s not sure he trusts Dumbledore with people though. Not as individuals with different wants and needs and problems. Certainly, he doesn’t trust Dumbledore with the lives of his friends and family. Not completely. Not without question.

After all, it’s only been seven months since James had to intervene with the missions Dumbledore was sending Remus on. Secret, solo missions to the werewolf packs.

He still wonders what Dumbledore was thinking there. No werewolves, not even Fenrir Greyback himself, were trusted with enough information to make spying on them worth the toll it was taking on Remus’s physical and mental health.

“Hagrid’s pumpkins look exceptionally robust this year,” Dumbledore says as they begin their walk in the direction of said pumpkins.

James just nods. He’s the direct sort. Never been one to beat around the bush himself, and he doesn’t appreciate it from others. Dumbledore has to know that by now, but he still holds a mostly one-sided conversation about pumpkins and the approaching Halloween festivities for another five minutes.

The headmaster does manage a very slick segue though, sliding the topic from food at the upcoming feast to asking if James had a chance to partake of the food during his visit to the Pendragon Club. “I’m told their elves make an excellent tarte au citron,” Dumbledore says.

James bites his tongue to keep from sighing in relief. They’ve finally reached the point. He also feels the flutter of nerves in his stomach. Even if he isn’t blindly obedient to Dumbledore, he’s still reluctant to lie to the headmaster’s face.

That’s part of his deal with Regulus though. James had to fight tooth and nail for permission to tell Lily who he was whispering with through the mirrors. Telling Remus just sort of happened in the middle of their argument, and he still hasn’t actually told Peter.

Telling Dumbledore is absolutely out of the question. James’s small reservations about Dumbledore are nothing compared to Regulus’s. He’d toss his mirror in the fire before he’d knowingly work directly for or with Albus Dumbledore, and James refuses to lose Regulus completely to the other side. Both for the information he provides, and for Regulus’s own sake.

“I wasn’t there long enough to eat,” James says dryly. “I just needed to check something in the library.”

Dumbledore raises a mildly inquisitive eyebrow. “Something the Hogwarts library doesn’t carry?”

James shrugs. “It was nothing, a dead end.”

Dumbledore nods, like he understands perfectly. James doesn’t trust it.

They stop at the edge of Hagrid’s vegetable garden so Dumbledore can personally check on a few of the enormous pumpkins. James waits anxiously for the other shoe to drop.

It doesn’t come until they’ve turned back toward the castle.

“Are you aware that Alastor Moody thinks we have a mole within the Order?”

James stops in his tracks, nearly stumbling over his own feet. Hurt and anger and fear all flash through him like firecrackers.

“Are you implying I might be a traitor?” James asks. Frankly, he’s fucking offended. “Should I roll up my left sleeve for you, Headmaster?”

Dumledore just smiles patiently, like James is still a student throwing a tantrum over losing a Quidditch match.

“I’m implying no such thing,” Dumbledore assures him. “I trust you, James, but you can see how going to a place like the Pendragon Club while not on Order business might raise some suspicions, can’t you?”

This is where James is supposed to fall over himself to clear his name. He’s supposed to tell Dumbledore everything, like a good, loyal soldier would.

He grinds his teeth together.

“I’m glad you have such unshakeable faith in me, sir,” James says instead. “If there’s anything I can do to help you look for our supposed mole, please let me know.”

Dumbledore seems almost amused by his response.

“Of course, and please let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist with your…research,” Dumbledore replies. “Thus far it has given us many valuable insights.”

He may not know about Regulus specifically, but Dumbledore isn’t stupid. James comes to him far too often with good, actionable intel not to have a secret source.

For now though, he seems content not to press. He seems to trust James.

Which is still almost obnoxiously gratifying.

And that’s it. Or so James believes.

They walk in semi-companionable silence all the way to the front doors of the castle. James is about to make his excuses and leave, but Dumbledore stops and glances up at something above the doors. James looks up too.

Only there’s nothing to see. There’s nothing there but stones and a bit of moss.

Unless you know exactly where to look.

Before they left school, all believing they weren’t likely to ever return, James, Peter, and Remus had carved their mark into the stones directly above Hogwarts’ front doors. “Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot & Prongs Were Here” it reads.

Both a small boost to their egos and an intended memorial to Sirius.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever told you how sorry I am about what happened with Mr. Black,” Dumbledore says.

He looks back down at James, genuine sorrow on his features, but his eyes are as bright and keen as ever.

James looks away.

He’s an open book. He always has been. He wears his heart on his sleeve and if Dumbledore sees his face now, he’s going to know. He’s going to know everything.

That’s not something Sirius wants. He didn’t want anyone to know he was here. Not even his friends. Seems like a very safe bet he wouldn’t want the man who kicked him out of school knowing either.

James might be angry with his old friend, but he’s not going to betray Sirius’s trust.

He clears his throat, coughs. It’s awkward.

He thinks of Sirius in that hotel room, charming and glib, hiding his scars behind smiles.

So different and so similar to the boy he remembers. The boy he loved like a brother.

He feels something tug and give a little in his chest.

“Thank you, sir,” James says. “I’m sorry about it too."

Chapter Text

Something has changed.

Peter takes an intentionally noisy slurp of his coffee and narrows his eyes at the scene playing out on the other side of the table.

Remus is laughing as his fingers run up the skin of Sirius’s forearm. He’s tracing the tattoos there, clusters of runes and strange, mystical symbols. He’s doing more than that though. Peter notes the pink tinge to the tips of Remus’s ears.

Sirius rolls his eyes, but his fingers flex and curl like the want to reach out with them.

Peter knows he was never the best student. It rarely mattered how much he studied, because he had a tendency to panic and freeze during exams. Even practicing spells in class, in full view of all his classmates, made him anxious and prone to mistakes.

This doesn’t mean Peter is stupid though.

To the contrary, Peter doesn’t deal well with pressure, but when he’s calm and relaxed among people he knows and trusts…Peter shines. He’s witty, innovative, hilarious, and very observant.

Not that it takes much skill to see what’s going on here.

“They’re stunning!” Remus says, running a fingertip up a line of runes that cover the inside of Sirius’s arm. Sirius’s shoulders give a small shudder.

“They’re useless,” Sirius replies with a huff. “I based them off some wandlore theories about runes directing and focusing spells, but the effects don’t translate to skin, so they’re useless.”

Remus looks up, the pad of his thumb skims over the inside of Sirius’s wrist. There isn’t even a tattoo there.

“They’re still beautiful,” Remus says. “They suit you.”

Peter chokes on his coffee.

Remus and Sirius both turn to stare at him. Two sets of eyes blink in surprise, like they’d forgotten he was even there.

“All right, Pete?” Remus asks, thumping Peter good-naturedly on the back. He’s dropped Sirius’s arm, and Sirius is hastily pulling the sleeve of his shirt back down and fastening it with a fancy silver cufflink.

This, Peter realizes, is just like the months leading up to Sirius’s expulsion.

Remus didn’t come out as bisexual until after they were out of school, and Sirius still hasn’t said anything, but the two of them used to stare at each other like this. Lingering glances, subtle flushes, reaching hands.

This isn’t good.

Peter is glad Sirius is alive and doing well. He really, genuinely is.

He also wishes Sirius would go away. Go far, far away.

Things are too complicated here for him to stay. Too delicate. Too volatile.

Even at his best, Sirius is unpredictable.

There’s no room for that. Not now. Not here.

Maybe after the war is over. Maybe then there’ll be room for Sirius in their lives. In Remus’s life.

Peter wants his friends to be happy, but he also wants them safe and alive.

“You’re joking!” The sharp bark of Sirius’s laughter almost makes Peter jump. “Five bloody years and he’s still got his knickers in a twist!”

Remus is hiding both the hint of a smile and embarrassment behind his cup of tea. Sirius is deliciously amused, and there’s a familiar glint in his eyes. His sense of humor has always been sharp, sometimes sharp enough to wound.

“Huh?” Peter asks. He’s missed something, some joke or amusing anecdote. He hates when that happens. He hates being out of the loop.

Sirius shoots him a grin even as he shakes his head. “Lost in your own head, Wormtail?”

Peter shrugs. “Guess so, what did I miss?”

Remus cringes, but he’s still smiling around the rim of his mug. “I was telling Sirius about our monthly trips to the Hog’s Head in his honor.”

“Cheers for that,” Sirius says, trying for cheerful, but there’s a hesitance to his words, a discomfiture. After all, they went to the Hog’s Head once a month to toast him, to mourn the friend they thought was dead. It’s a bit awkward for everyone involved now that they know he’s not dead.

Peter feels a bit of secondhand embarrassment. It was his idea after all, his way of honoring Sirius.

“He also mentioned a run in you had there with Snape,” Sirius adds.

Remus and Peter both grimace.

“Not our finest hour,” Remus says, and Peter nods. It had been just a few weeks before Harry was born, so James had already been a bit on edge. He’d been reluctant to leave Lily’s side at all, even for a quick drink. Lily had threatened to hex him if he didn’t give her a few hours to herself though, so they’d dragged an anxious, sleep-deprived and sulking James to the Hog’s Head on their usual Saturday afternoon.

Only this time, Snape had been there, skulking in a corner near the stairs.

Remus muttered something about ignoring him, and Peter had agreed. They hadn’t had any real contact with Snape after leaving Hogwarts. Not that they knew of at least; there was no way of telling who was under some of those Death Eater hoods.

Peter, Remus, and even James had all moved on from their school rivalry with Snape. They had bigger things to worry about. Snape, however, as Sirius just put it, still had his knickers in a twist.

As soon as he noticed them, he’d abandoned his corner by the stairs and approached their table with an eager sneer on his face. And, well, James had been an easy target right then.

“He’s really still not over all that schoolyard shit?” Sirius asked with a dismissive shake of his head.

It was almost startling to realize that Sirius was over it. After all, Snape had played a starring role in his expulsion. Peter expected him to hold at least a bit of a grudge.

He’s laughing like it’s nothing though.

Peter cocks his head a bit, considering.

There’s more there, beneath the surface. Sirius is hiding things, probably even lying to them. His job sounds too perfect, his life seems to elegant and put together, and his past five years sound too clean.

It can’t all be true.

Peter just can’t quite put his finger on the lie…

“The worst part was Dumbledore showing up,” Remus says with a groan.

“Nothing like being caught in the middle of a bar fight by your old school headmaster,” Peter agrees.

“He looked so shocked! I thought he was going to try and take points away from us all,” Remus says, chuckling self-consciously.

Peter remembers that moment slightly differently. He remembers Dumbledore coming down the stairs and interrupting them just as James fired a minor curse at Snape. However, in Peter’s recollection, Dumbledore looked like he’d just seen a boggart even before he spotted them.

Not that it matters.

Sirius laughs, loud enough to draw attention from nearby tables for a moment. Muggles again. Sirius refuses to properly step foot in any wizarding establishment, so they’re eating breakfast at another Muggle café.

Not that Peter minds. Especially since Sirius always insists on picking up the tab.

He finishes off his coffee, listening with half an ear as Remus and Sirius clumsily flirt. He wonders if they even realize that’s what they’re doing.

Not that it matters.

Either way, Peter is going to have to do something about it. He doesn’t want to, but it’s not an option. Sirius is a distraction and a liability no one can afford right now.

Peter really does wants his friends to be happy, but he also wants them safe and alive.

Sadly, sometimes what makes someone happy and what keeps them safe are directly opposed. Maybe it makes him a bad Gryffindor, but, when push comes to shove, Peter would prefer safety over happiness.

For all of them.

Chapter Text

Sirius has gotten sloppy.

Distracted.

That’s dangerous in his line of work.

It can get him in all sorts of trouble.

It can get him killed.

This is all Remus’s fault.

That’s not fair, but it’s true.

Even as Sirius hides in a bathroom stall, waiting for his Polyjuice potion to finish wearing off, his mind is crowded with thoughts of Remus at breakfast this morning.

Even wearing someone else’s skin, Sirius can feel the phantom touch of Remus’s fingers on his forearms, tracing his tattoos.

Groaning, Sirius smacks his head back against the tiled wall with deliberate force, as though he can literally knock some sense into himself.

The touch of those phantom fingers snake down Sirius’s arm again. He scratches it like an itch, but there’s no relief.

He hadn’t thought…

Five years was a long time.

There had been other boys. Other men.

Sirius had never loved them though.

Not like he’d loved Remus Lupin, once upon a time.

This isn’t good.

This is, in fact, very, very bad.

Laverna was right. He never should have come back to England.

Sirius sucks in a deep breath and closes his eyes. He can feel his hair regrowing, filling in the bald spot on this stranger’s head.

In his mind’s eye, Sirius can see Remus’s smile. He can remember precisely the way sunlight caught in Remus’s hair as he sipped his tea.

At sixteen, Sirius hadn’t understood his feelings for Remus. He hadn’t understood why his eyes would drift to Remus across classrooms, why he wanted to be closer and closer to Remus, physically and otherwise.

In the back of his mind he’d known for years that he was gay, even if he hadn’t had that word in his vocabulary. He knew he didn’t think about girls like other boys did, and that he thought about boys the way boys weren’t supposed to. Even still, he hadn’t understood his feelings for Remus at that time.

Now he understands what’s happening all too well. He also understands that he can’t allow it.

It’s not fair to Remus.

He doesn’t know who Sirius is, not anymore. If he did, Remus would run for the hills. He would hate Sirius. Remus is a good person. They all are, these old friends of his. They’re all good people, and Sirius—if he ever was—is not a good person.

“Fuck,” Sirius hisses, smacking his head against the wall again. The shock of pain does nothing to dislodge the feelings crawling through his chest. Feelings that have nothing to do with the last of the Polyjuice fading.

How did everything get so complicated so quickly?

It’s not just Remus and his other friends either. The attack on the museum wrecked all of his plans.

This was supposed to be a simple job. He was supposed to scout the museum at the gala, break in and steal the painting a few nights later, and be on a flight back to the continent the next morning.

Instead, it’s taken him almost two weeks just to find where his painting was moved to after the attack on the museum. He’s expended more resources than expected, paying more bribes and digging deep into his store of potions and charms.

He looks down at his hands, which are definitely his own once again.

This was the last of his Polyjuice.

That in and of itself screws things up. Sirius doesn’t like to pull off heists looking like himself. He’s cautious, but he’d prefer his real face and fingerprints are never found at a crime scene.

Stepping out of the stall, Sirius pauses in front of the mirror, assuring himself that everything is back in its proper place. Just to be safe, he does a quick charm to change the color of his jacket and tie. He’s fairly certain the museum conservator he met with is already suspicious of him, despite the confundus charm he put on her. Best not to give her anything else to think about.

Thankfully, no one gives him a second glance as he leaves the building, Polyjuice and Remus stuck in his mind as he walks in the direction of his hotel.

Waiting the month it takes to brew more of the potion himself isn’t a viable option. If he wants more, he’s going to have to buy it.

Which means he’s going to have to find some less than reputable potioneer willing to sell him a restricted, semi-illegal potion.

For that he’s going to have to spend a lot of gold.

Even worse, he’s going to have to go to Knockturn Alley.

This was exactly what Sirius wanted to avoid.

Laverna really was right about this job.

It was too much of a risk. Too many people know him here. He should have stayed away, should have let Sirius Black stay missing and presumed dead.

Even as he thinks it, Sirius feels a tug in his chest, as though his actual heart is protesting the thought.

If he hadn’t come back, if things hadn’t gone so spectacularly off course, he wouldn’t have seen his friends again. He wouldn’t know James is married with a son. He wouldn’t have been able to talk and laugh with Peter. He would never have seen Remus.

Sirius grimaces and walks faster.

He feels exposed wearing his own face out here in the open, which is ridiculous. He’s been walking around Muggle London for two weeks now. He’s just being paranoid.

Only, he has reason to be paranoid.

Sirius hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about his brother or the warning Regulus passed on to him. He’s been actively avoiding thinking about it.

Now he can’t escape it.

Sirius has two choices.

He can risk his life and all his secrets by staying in London.

Every day presents a new danger. Death Eaters might find him. His friends might learn the truth. He might try kissing Remus again.

Or he can run away.

Again.

It won’t be like before though. Sirius won’t be able to disappear, not completely. Not now that his old friends know he’s alive. Not now that his murderous, half-mad cousin suspects as much.

The ghost of fingers slide down his forearm again, caressing across the pounding pulse at his wrist.

This isn’t good.

This is, in fact, very, very bad.

Sirius sucks in a deep breath. This isn’t a good time to fall back on rash decision-making. He’ll think over his options, do his best to divorce his plans from the creeping sentimentality that wants to hold him here. He’ll give the rest of today and tonight.

In the morning he’ll decide if he’ll stay or go.

Chapter Text

As Hogwarts’ newest hire, Lily gets more than her fair share of short straws. She definitely gets more than her fair share of nighttime patrols.

That’s all right though. Even though it cuts into her already limited time with her family, Lily accepts it for what it is. Seniority and its privileges must be earned.

Besides, sometimes it’s nice to get out for a walk before bed. It’s a good way to unwind after her noisy, chaotic days. At night, the castle is dark, quiet, and strangely comforting.

Sometimes, James comes with her. Then it almost feels like a date, walking hand in hand through the moonlit corridors.

Tonight though, Lily can tell there’s more on her husband’s mind than catching students out of bed or even dodging down a secret passageway to snog for a bit. He’s holding her hand, but his head is somewhere far, far away.

They come to the top of a staircase and James pauses, staring out the window. It reminds of the night she accompanied James on his trip to see Regulus.

That was the night Lily started to fall in love with James. She’d watched him, moonlight and shadows playing across his mournful face, all the arrogance and anger stripped away, revealing the good man he’d always been deep down inside.

Lily has to wonder if she would ever have seen that side of James if things had happened differently with Sirius. They wouldn’t have had that first moonlit night, but would they still be having this one?

Lily is a practical woman though. She knows better than to dwell on questions about a past she can’t change. This is the life they’ve built, together, and she doesn’t regret it. She hopes James feels the same.

“Sickle for your thoughts?” Lily offers.

James gives a dismissive snort in reply. “They’re not worth that much, maybe a few Knuts at most.”

“That just means I can buy more of them.”

She lays her head on his shoulder and stares out at the grounds. It’s dark out, the moon still a thin waxing crescent in the sky, but they can see the stars. Lily knows James is looking for one in particular. He always has been. She’s never held that against James, or against Sirius, but it feels a little different now.

“Peter thinks I should sit down and talk to him again,” James says. Lily presses her cheek closer and squeezes his hand to show she’s listening. She lets him take his time piecing his thoughts and words together. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea though. I’m still angry…and it still hurts.”

“Do you think avoiding Sirius is going to make those feelings go away?” Lily asks. She hopes she doesn’t sound too much like a teacher.

James huffs and bristles. She definitely sounded like a teacher.

It’s solid advice though.

“What does Remus say?” Lily asks.

“He doesn’t. We haven’t really talked about it. He obviously knows I know he’s spending time with Sirius, but he doesn’t bring it up. He acts all awkward and embarrassed if Peter or I so much as say Sirius’s name.”

Lily frowns, not quite sure what to make of that. Before she can ponder it though, she hears someone heading down the corridor just around the corner. “Someone’s out of bed,” Lily says, “shall we make them regret it?”

If nothing else, it’s a good distraction. For that, she’ll only take a few points. No detention or anything.

James groans quietly. “Teenaged me would hate myself for this,” he says, but he still lets Lily tug him toward a tapestry. There’s a small niche behind it that they know well.

This was one of their favorite spots when they were Head Boy and Girl. They were even less effective at enforcing the rules back then than they are now. It brings a smile to Lily’s lips though, and just before she lets the tapestry fall closed behind them, she sees James smiling too.

They wait in the dark, peering through a crack between the tapestry and the wall, watching for whatever student is sneaking out of bed late at night. Only it’s not a student.

“Oh, hell!” Lily mutters, yanking James back into the niche. She recognizes that wispy murmur and clamps a hand over James’s mouth before he draws attention to their hiding place. The muttering voice and shuffling footsteps stop just outside, and after a moment, Lily risks another peek.

Sybill Trelawney is standing the window where James and Lily were just a minute before, staring at the stars just like they were. She’s definitely not seeing them in the same way though. Lily can hear her muttering, though she can only make out about half the words. “Moon is in Gemini…Jupiter in Libra…open to new relationships…”

James snickers and Lily smacks him lightly in the shoulder, though she’s biting her lip to keep from laughing herself. Sometimes, Lily feels like she should feel some kinship with Trelawney, she was hired only a month before Lily herself, and they’re the closest in age on the staff, but Merlin, the woman is a killjoy.

There are rumors that Trelawney made an actual prophecy during her job interview with Dumbledore, but no one else was there, and Dumbledore won’t confirm or deny it. Either way, Lily hasn’t seen any evidence of Trelawney’s “gift” in the time since then. Most of her predictions fall into three categories: vague, inane, and untimely death.

Trelawney spends another minute staring at the sky before wandering off down the hall.

James and Lily manage to hold it in until she’s out of sight. Then they both burst into titters of laughter. James wraps his arms around Lily, his forehead bumping against hers as he steps them backward until she’s pressed against the wall.

“We’re terrible authority figures,” Lily mutters.

“Maybe you are, I’m not Head Boy anymore, and I’m definitely not a professor,” James replied. “So I’m not any sort of authority figure.”

They’re both giggling like students again as James moves in for a kiss.

Silver light floods their little niche.

Blinded, Lily yelps and James jumps back.

They have to squint before they can make out the shape of the patronus that’s appeared before them. Lily recognizes it as a phoenix a moment before Dumbledore’s voice fills their small space. “There’s been an attack at Edgar Bones’ house. The Dark Mark was seen.”

A chill runs through Lily that goes deeper than blood or bone.

She knows.

In the dazzling silver light, Lily can see the hard, sharply shadowed planes of James’s face.

He knows too.

They can’t both go. They can’t both leave Harry.

This time it’s James’s turn.

“I have to go,” James says.

Lily doesn’t reply.

There’s nothing she can say.

James has to go.

He kisses her.

They don’t say goodbye.

Lily closes her eyes as James leaves. The patronus vanishes a moment later, like it knows James is on his way.

Lily is left alone in the dark and the quiet, and it’s no longer comforting.

Edgar Bones has a family. Two children. Their names are Penelope and Stephen. They’re only six and two years old respectively.

No more.

Lily’s done for the night. She’s going back to her quarters to hold her son close and pray for her husband.

Chapter Text

Remus is the first Order member on the scene.

He’s the first one to see the Dark Mark hanging in the sky.

It turns the bodies a ghastly green and makes the blood look black.

Sarah Bones died just inside the front door. She died fast, painlessly. Remus knows what a killing curse looks like based purely on the absence of any other marks.

Edgar wasn’t so lucky.

Neither were the children.

Remus is vomiting in the grass beside the front steps when the others begin to show up. Gideon Prewett comes first, followed closely by Caradoc Dearborn, wands out, ready for a fight. Only there’s no fight to be had now. They’ve already lost this battle.

Caradoc helps Remus straighten back up. “That bad?” He asks, voice grim. He already knows the answer.

Remus nods as he wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

Then James arrives.

Everything inside Remus shudders, right down to his soul. He grabs Caradoc by the arm, hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to make Caradoc look at him with surprise, and something that might be suspicion.

“Don’t let James in there,” Remus hisses. “No matter what, don’t let him step foot inside that house.”

Caradoc nods and Remus releases him to cut James off before he can make it to the front door.

He grabs his friend by the shoulders and pulls him off to the side. James’s eyes flick between the house and Remus, who must look terrible because he chooses to give Remus his attention rather than the crime scene.

“Merlin, Remus are you all right?” James asks. It’s a stupid question, but what else is there to ask in a situation like this?

“Go home, James,” Remus says. He can still feel the acid burn of vomit in his throat. The taste lingers on his tongue. “There’s nothing you can do here. Go home.”

“No, Remus—I’m already here, I can—”

“Go. Home. James.” Remus’s words come out harsh and hard as iron. He knows his fingers are digging into James’s shoulders even harder than they had with Caradoc. He doesn’t care. He’ll pull out his wand and stun his friend if he has to.

No matter what, James will not enter that house.

He will not see what was done to Edgar and Sarah’s children, to the little boy who was less than a year older than Harry. Little Stephen Bones would have been in Harry’s year at Hogwarts.

There must be something in Remus’s eyes, some wild desperation, because James finally puts the pieces together. His shoulders slump. His eyes dart back up to the house where Gideon is standing just inside the door, conjuring a sheet to cover Sarah Bones’s body.

“Oh, Moony…I…” James whispers, swallowing. “The kids?”

Remus shakes his head, but it’s not in denial, it’s his refusal to say another word on the subject. “Go home, James.”

He’ll hear about it later. There’s no way he won’t. Not tonight though, and not from Remus.

“Please, James. Go back to Lily…to Harry…”

He still hesitates. James is brave, and chivalrous, and determined. He’s a good man who just wants to do the right thing. He wants to help.

Tonight, Remus won’t let him though. He’ll protect his friend as best he can.

Finally, James nods.

Remus releases a breath and lets his hands fall away from James’s shoulders. Only James doesn’t let him go. “Come see us, after…come to the castle, don’t spend the night alone, Moony, please.”

He won’t come. Remus knows he won’t. He can’t, not tonight. Tonight, he can’t even think of James’s little family and not picture what he’s seen in that house. He nods anyway.

Remus isn’t morally opposed to lying when it’s to protect his friends, or himself.

James will forgive him. He always does.

When James is gone, apparating back to the shop or the Hogwarts gates, Remus turns back to the house. He doesn’t want to, but there’s still work to be done.

Moody arrives a few minutes later and takes over the investigative side of things. Remus is grateful to be shooed away from the sheet-covered bodies, as are Caradoc and Gideon. They’ve all seen death before, Gideon even watched his brother die, but it’s different when it’s children. It’s worse.

They dispel the Dark Mark overhead and do a sweep of the house, making sure there are none of the Order’s secrets left behind. If Edgar had secrets though, Remus is sure he gave them up before his death. Remus can’t even blame him for it.

A parent should do anything for their children, even if they die trying.

All in all, it takes another hour. At the end of it, Remus feels exhausted, yet at the same time there’s an anxious energy running through him. He feels like a spring wound too tight, ready to break or explode or fall to pieces.

“Go home, Lupin,” someone tells him, clapping him on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock him off his already unsteady feet. They’re gone before Remus’s brain can process the voice or its instructions.

“Go home.”

“Come see us.”

“Don’t spend the night alone.”

Remus is not going to sneak into Hogwarts to see James and Lily and Harry.

He doesn’t want to go home either. Back to the lovely but oh so empty cottage in Godric’s Hollow.

He doesn’t want to be alone tonight.

He wants…

He wants.

Death is hanging like an ax over Remus’s neck, and he just wants to feel something other than fear.

He wants to feel alive.

For a night.

For an hour.

For a single goddamn moment.

Remus disapparates, and it’s a miracle he doesn’t splinch himself doing it, because he’s distinctly lacking both deliberation and determination. He doesn’t even consciously concede his destination until he’s already standing on the balcony of Sirius’s hotel room.

Chapter Text

Sleep isn’t coming easily to Sirius tonight. He’s been tossing and turning, making a mess of the sheets and duvet, and staring at the little red numbers on the digital alarm clock as they slowly count down toward morning.

He’s just about made up his mind regarding his dilemma. He promised himself he’ll wait until morning to decide, but he knows.

He knows he’s going to leave.

It’s the smart thing to do. The sensible thing.

Sirius can tell it’s the sensible thing to do, because it isn’t his first instinct.

He wants to stay. It’s a wild, reckless impulse, the sort he used to specialize in.

Sirius isn’t a child though, not anymore. He understands the consequences of his decisions now. Well, most of the time. No one’s perfect or perfectly reasonable all the time.

Sirius’s reaction to the knocking at his balcony door certainly isn’t reasonable.

There are dangerous people out there who know or at least suspect he’s in London. They aren’t usually the sort to knock politely though. So, Sirius leaves the knife under his pillow when he climbs out of bed.

The heavy drapes are closed, but Sirius thinks he knows who’s out there on his balcony late at night. He thinks he knows, but he doesn’t know. He hopes. And that’s a different thing entirely.

Sirius draws back the drapes, and there he is.

Remus is mottled in shadow and the frail light of street lamps and neon signs. His eyes are closed, his palm pressed flat against the glass, like he’s hoping too.

The breath catches in Sirius’s throat and his heart speeds up. It feels more like fear than anything else. He opens the door anyway.

“Remus?” Sirius asks.

The night air is cold and Remus is shivering. He opens his eyes and his lips part, but he doesn’t say anything.

A shudder goes down Sirius’s spine, and this time it really is because of the cold.

“Fuck, come in, get out of the wind,” Sirius says, taking Remus’s chilly hands and tugging him into the hotel room. Remus comes willingly, but he seems…not entirely present. It makes Sirius nervous.

“Here, sit down—let me turn on a light—” He narrates everything he’s doing as he leads Remus to the end of the bed and sits him down before flipping on a light with a wave of his hand. His other hand stays on Remus’s arm.

“I’m sorry…” Remus whispers. “I didn’t…I didn’t want to go home…I wanted…”

Before Sirius can assure him it’s all right, Remus is back on his feet, a fistful of Sirius’s pajamas wrapped in his fist. Then his lips are on Sirius’s.

The kiss is near bruising in its intensity, and cruelly brief. Only a moment later, Remus pulls back, shaking his head. “I just wanted…” he says again.

“Me too,” Sirius says, even though he’s not sure they’re even talking about the same thing here.

He wants too, has for a long time. Ever since he was sixteen and kissed Remus for the first time. He might have been afraid of it for a time, and his head may have forgotten in their years apart, but Sirius's heart has never stopped wanting Remus.

Sirius closes the distance between them again. A brush of lips against lips, the scrape of Remus’s stubble against his chin. It’s not quite a kiss. Until it is.

Remus kisses with more passion than Sirius would have expected. Merlin! It almost feels like he’s kissing the wolf rather than the man. One of Remus’s hands remains knotted in his pajama top, but the other slides around Sirius’s back, fingers splayed wide over his spine, nails pressing into skin.

It’s everything Sirius wants.

And it’s all wrong.

Something is wrong with Remus, something Sirius is all too familiar with.

Sirius knows all about having sex for the wrong reasons. He knows how to lose himself in another person, how to make everything wrong in the world fade away for a little while, drowning his troubles under a wave of passion and pleasure.

He could write a book on how to use sex to forget your problems. That book would not have a happy ending though.

Sirius pulls away as much as he can. Remus is still clutching him close, and his lips chase after Sirius, pressing kisses along his throat now.

Sirius is weak.

He wants this. Remus clearly wants this too.

They’ll both regret it in the morning though. They’ll wake up tangled together in Sirius’s bed, and Remus will forever associate his night with Sirius with whatever terrible thing it is he’s running from.

“Remus…Remus, wait,” Sirius says, voice already breathy and tight. He’s hard, but he pulls Remus’s hands off him, interlacing their fingers even as he separates their bodies. “Remus, stop for a minute…”

There’s a second’s lag between when Remus hears his words and when he understands them. His eyes widen and reality crashes down on his shoulders.

“Oh, Merlin, Sirius! I—I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean—I’ll go. I’ll go—” He says, pulling away.

This time it’s Sirius’s turn to hold him fast. If Remus does something stupid like apparate out of the hotel room, he’s going to have to take Sirius with him (and likely splinch them both in the process given how scattered he is right now).

“No, Remus, I don’t want you to go,” Sirius says, squeezing Remus’s hands tight. “You didn’t do anything wrong—I just…are you all right? Did something happen? Here, sit back down.”

He guides Remus back to the bed and sits on the edge, tugging Remus down beside him. Remus is tensed, ready to spring away, flee at a moment’s notice. Sirius hopes he hasn’t made things worse. He’s not sure he can bear it if Remus thinks Sirius doesn’t want him, that he did something wrong by coming here, by kissing Sirius.

“I should go,” Remus repeats. Sirius’s grip on his hands is the only thing keeping him here. “I’m sorry, I just…I really should go.”

“If you want to leave, Remus, I won’t stop you,” Sirius promises him. “You can’t apparate like this though, so just give it a minute, take a deep breath.”

He demonstrates, inhaling a deep breath. He holds it until Remus copies him, shakily sucking in a breath. He follows Sirius’s lead through several deep breaths, and some of the panic seems to leach out of him.

“All right?” Sirius asks, though he doesn’t believe Remus when he nods. “Good,” Sirius says. He leans forward and kisses Remus gently, releasing one of his hands to reach up and stroke his cheek. It lacks the passion of their previous kisses, and that’s the point.

“You didn’t do anything I didn’t very much want, Remus,” Sirius says emphatically, still stroking his thumb across Remus’s cheek. “I want you to kiss me because you want to though, not because you’re trying to forget something else.”

Remus lets out a long breath and seems to deflate in front of Sirius’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says again.

“It’s all right,” Sirius assures him. He doesn’t think it would be comforting to tell Remus he understands perfectly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I…I can’t,” Remus whispers.

So, it’s something to do with his secret Death Eater fighting then. Sirius bites his tongue and nods. “That’s all right, you don’t have to.”

Remus raises the hand Sirius isn’t holding and drags it through his hair, shoving the mussed curls away from his face. He closes his eyes, and Sirius can see how deep the dark circles beneath them are.

“I don’t want to go home,” Remus admits, and it takes just about everything out of him to say the words.

“You don’t have to,” Sirius tells him. “You can stay here as long as you’d like.”

Remus looks back at the bed and Sirius can feel his hesitation. Sleeping together, even if they really are just sleeping, isn’t going to help simplify the knot of feelings between them.

Luckily, Sirius knows exactly how to simplify things.

He lets go of Remus’s hand, and a moment later, there’s an enormous black dog sitting on the bed next to Remus. Padfoot whines before he leans in and licks Remus’s cheek.

Remus lets out a feeble laugh. His fingers sink into Padfoot’s fur, and Sirius’s tail thumps against the bed.

Using his nose and his not inconsiderable bulk, Padfoot gently bullies Remus into climbing onto the bed, kicking his shoes off before wrapping himself in the duvet. Padfoot settles next to him, and Remus falls asleep stroking his fur.

Even as a dog, Sirius can’t sleep easily. Padfoot can smell hints of smoke, old blood, and fear clinging to Remus’s skin and he feels an instinctual need to guard this human curled up next to him.

The human parts of his mind know it’s not that simple, but both halves of him agree on one thing: come morning, Sirius isn’t going anywhere.

Chapter Text

Remus sleeps deeply, but it’s troubled by dreams that nip at the edges of his mind. They nearly drive him awake once, but when he starts to thrash and mutter in his sleep, Padfoot lifts his head to give a low rumbling growl. It shouldn’t be able to chase away nightmares, but Remus quiets anyway.

The dog lays his head down on Remus’s chest, and the two fall asleep again.

It’s light that finally wakes them both for good.

Not sunlight, the heavy curtains are drawn against that. This light is sliver, blindingly bright, and shaped like a very irritated stag.

Remus is still squinting, a hand shielding his eyes when the fur beneath his other hand suddenly becomes skin. Warm, smooth skin (except for the ridge of a scar beneath his middle and index fingers). Remus doesn’t have time to think about Sirius, his skin, or his apparent scars though, because the patronus gives an irritated snort and speaks.

“You’re a lying prick, Moony,” James says. “I stayed up half the night waiting for you, then I stayed up the rest of the night worrying about you.” He sighs again. “Just…let me know you’re all right, please. For your godson’s sake if not mine, yeah?”

Guilt stabs and Remus winces. It’s a low blow leveraging Harry against him, but James has a point. He should have at least sent a patronus last night. Clearly, he wasn’t in his right mind though. If he had been, he wouldn’t be here now, in Sirius’s bed, his hand still resting on Sirius’s back.

The stag lowers its head, glowering at Remus in an all too human way. Then it vanishes, throwing them back into darkness.

Memories flood back into Remus’s aching head. Blood and death, Sirius’s lips against his, desire and pain and terror and need.

“Oh fuck,” Remus mutters, finally remembering to pull his hand away from Sirius’s warm skin.

Sirius doesn’t move away though. Remus can feel his legs through the tangled blankets and the dip of his weight in the mattress. He’s still so close.

“I know I left Hogwarts before we learned to cast them, but I didn’t think patronuses could talk,” Sirius says. Remus can’t tell if he’s ignoring their awkward situation, or if Sirius is genuinely more unsettled by a talking patronus than he is by waking up in bed with one of his former best friends.

“I—fuck,” Remus mutters again. He can’t think of a way to address either situation. He leans forward, burying his face in his hands, even though Sirius can’t possibly see his face or how his cheeks are burning red right now.

One moment of weakness and he’s made a mess of everything.

“Hold on, I’m going to give us a little light, all right?” Sirius says. Remus wishes he wouldn’t. Everything will be real if they can see each other.

It’s too late though. Sirius has reached out and switched on an electric lamp.

The light is sudden but it doesn’t blind them like James’s patronus did, which means they’re stuck staring at the reality of their situation.

Sirius looks adorably rumpled, his pajamas askew, his hair a mess of cowlicks and flat spots. There’s a small, half-embarrassed smile on his face. Remus recognizes it, even though it was always one of Sirius’s rarest smiles. Very few people were ever allowed to see Sirius look uncertain or embarrassed.

“Hi,” Sirius says quietly.

“Er…hi,” Remus says back.

“You look like you’re ready to bolt.” Sirius sounds sad but resigned, like he won’t stop Remus if he tries to run away, which is what Remus very much wants to do.

“Sirius,” he says quietly, but Sirius holds up a hand to stop him.

“I think I know what you’re going to say next,” Sirius says, a sad, almost bitter edge tugging at his smile. “I’m sorry. That was a mistake. I’m sorry...”

Remus remembers those words perfectly.

They’re the exact words Sirius said to him the first time they kissed all those years ago.

He winces. Point taken.

Sirius reaches out and takes his hand. There are calluses on Sirius’s fingers that Remus can’t place, but he likes how they scrape against his palm.

“I’m not going to ask what happened to bring you here last night,” Sirius says. “You clearly weren’t in a great place, and if it was a mistake, if you do regret kissing me…that’s all right. You can tell me, and it’ll be all right. Just…can I ask a favor, Remus? Can I ask you to be braver and more honest than I was at sixteen and tell me the truth?”

Remus stares at this man who grew from a boy he once cared for so very much.

The smart thing to do would be to tell Sirius it was a mistake, that he wasn’t in his right mind last night. That wouldn’t be a lie. Throwing himself at Sirius last night had been a wretched thing to do.

The lie would be claiming he doesn’t want to kiss Sirius senseless here in the light of day.

“You’re going to leave,” Remus says, because it’s true.

Sirius hesitates, looking down at their hands, then away to the leather briefcase laying on the chest of drawers across the room, then finally back to Remus.

“Not today,” Sirius replies.

Is this it then? He can have Sirius, but can’t keep him, not forever.

Maybe it’s the best Remus can hope for.

And maybe that’s for the best all around. Remus has never believed that he would find someone to share a lifetime with.

Is having whatever time he can steal with Sirius better than nothing at all?

Remus isn’t sure, but either way, he’s going to hurt in the end.

It’s just a matter of when that end comes.

He doesn’t say a word.

Instead, he lifts their intertwined hands and kisses the inside of Sirius’s wrist, just below one of his beautiful tattoos.

He hears Sirius’s breath hitch, feels the shiver that runs through his body.

Using their joined hands, Remus tugs until Sirius falls forward, his body covering Remus’s.

“This is most definitely a mistake,” Remus says. He presses his lips to Sirius’s collarbone, his free arm wrapping around Sirius’s waist, pulling them together.

“Yes, it is,” Sirius agrees breathlessly, his hand slipping under Remus’s shirt.

In Remus’s teenaged fantasies, he imagined kissing Sirius would be something like a wildfire, scorching and all-consuming. It was something that would warm him to the core and burn him to ash, and he would love every blazing second of it.

He was wrong though.

Sirius doesn’t kiss like a wildfire. He’s like the wind, like air itself. Kissing him steals the very breath from Remus’s lungs. He’s gasping and lightheaded in seconds as they tangle together.

This is a terrible idea.

He still barely knows this version of Sirius.

This Sirius who isn’t here to stay.

It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter at all.

Only this matters.

Only this…

Chapter Text

Sirius puts the “Do Not Disturb” hanger on the door. Remus sends one of those talking patronuses to James so he doesn’t worry. Then they fall into bed, hands tugging clothing, lips against skin, bodies seeking friction.

They don’t leave the hotel room all day.

It’s not all sex. When they get hungry, Sirius orders room service. When they need time to recover, Remus turns on the television and they cuddle and doze through soap operas, children’s programmes, and bits of a rugby match.

They talk, just not about anything of consequence.

This day is a bubble, safe and separate from the world at large. Troubles and the future are not welcome here. Not today.

The day ends though, as all days do.

Sleep claims both of them, exhausted and content, for a little while at least.

*

Sirius wakes early the next morning. That’s normal.

Everything else about this situation is far from normal.

On the rare occasions he’s trusted another person enough to let them fall asleep in his bed, Sirius usually wakes irritable and uncomfortable, typically crowded to the far edge of the mattress because he doesn’t enjoy being touched in his sleep.

Today, he wakes at dawn feeling languid and restored, tangled in a knot of bedsheets and Remus.

He stays as still as possible, barely daring to breath.

Remus is snoring lightly, but Sirius is afraid he’ll wake him if he moves. Besides, he doesn’t really want to move anyway. He’s warm and happy, and he doesn’t want to ruin this moment for anything. He wants to savor it.

Soon enough, another morning habit arises and refuses to be ignored. If he doesn’t get up soon, Sirius is going to wet the bed, which is incredibly unromantic.

As Sirius climbs out of bed, Remus blinks awake for a moment, mumbles something incoherent, and rolls over onto his stomach before falling back asleep.

He’s always slept like the dead.

Necessity taken care of a minute later, Sirius begins to panic.

The bubble that encased yesterday has popped.

He doesn’t know what to do next.

Sirius has never lingered in bed with any of his previous lovers.

This is different though.

This is Remus.

Not that it matters. While Sirius was in the bathroom, Remus rolled to sprawl across the entire mattress. It’s adorable, but it doesn’t help Sirius figure out what to do next.

He stands naked and indecisive in the middle of the room for minutes before he decides to just follow his usual morning routine.

Squinting in the wan light, Sirius goes to the briefcase sitting on the table and clicks the little dial lock until the numbers read 2-1-1. When he opens it, folding trays spring up and out, too many to fit in the shallow confines of the leather briefcase.

All of the trays are partitioned into small sections, each holding a single small object. Almost all of them are visibly mundane, but that’s the point. Sirius is pragmatic and frugal about his magic, even when practicing.

Today, he selects just two things: a padlock and a glass marble.

Remus sleeps on, even as Sirius pulls on a pair of pajama bottoms and opens the drapes to let in a bit more light.

He sits cross-legged on the floor, facing the windows and the balcony, the objects in front of him. Then he closes his eyes and breathes deep.

It’s more difficult than usual to relax and center himself. Even with his eyes closed, Sirius’s other senses pick up the irregularities. The room smells of sweat and sex. He can hear Remus breathing and snoring, and there are light, pleasant aches in muscles that aren’t used to being exercised like they were yesterday.

Still, after a few minutes of focusing on his breath and his body and his magic, Sirius feels himself fall into that familiar headspace. The world narrows, his mind fills with a mantra of spells.

He reaches out, eyes still closed, and picks up the lock. His hand movements are nothing like the motions he would make with a wand. They’re smaller, subtler. Intimate.

This is one of the places people go wrong when shifting from wand magic to the wandless variety. Hands are not wands. Fingers are not wands. Skin is not wood, and if bone is a magical core it’s not one stolen from some other creature.

Sirius drags a finger across the surface of the lock, tracing the shape of it, letting the warmth of his skin warm the cold metal. He could overpower it, force his magic into the lock until it bends and breaks to his will. That’s how most wizards who come to wandless magic later in life do it. They’re used to channeling their power into the singular point of their wand.

It’s an effective method, when one has a wand. Without a wand, it’s crude and wasteful.

When Sirius whispers a quiet “Alohomora” and strokes a finger across the padlock’s dial, it pops open almost eagerly for him.

He does that a few more times, reinforcing muscle memory. This is the most useful spell in his thief’s arsenal. When he’s satisfied, Sirius sets the lock aside and picks up the marble.

This time he runs through a wider array of spells, changing its color, shape, size, and composition.

A spring groans as the bed shifts. It’s never done that before, and Sirius wonders if he and Remus actually succeeded in breaking the bed yesterday. When Sirius opens his eyes, he finds Remus sitting up in bed, watching him.

“That’s impressive.” Remus says it like he means it, which means he’s probably been watching for a while. Sirius smiles and sets the marble aside.

“It’s all in the hands,” he says. He climbs onto the bed, running a hand up Remus’s leg. Remus shivers under his touch—another lock undone by Sirius’s gentle, prying fingers.

“I can’t stay, Sirius, not today. I have…” Remus trails off, failing to come up with a convincing excuse as Sirius’s hand reaches his thigh. Sirius stops anyway.

The bubble truly has popped.

Sirius hasn’t asked any questions about what brought Remus to his hotel the night before last. He knows. Not the details, but the general shape of things.

He keeps his promise. He bites his tongue.

He doesn’t ask the questions that flood his mind.

Instead, Sirius closes his eyes and takes a deep breathe, seeing an alternate life stretch out before him.

The path not taken. Or, perhaps more accurately, the path taken away from him.

In that life, Sirius stayed at Hogwarts. He even managed to keep his friends. He still would have fallen out with his family, only maybe this time he really would have gone to James and his parents for help. Yes, that sounds right. After graduating, Sirius would have jumped right into battle alongside his friends.

In that other life, Sirius is a soldier right now.

No, not a soldier. Soldiers fight for governments and get things like uniforms and pensions. Whatever Remus is involved in, it’s more along the lines of guerillas or vigilantes—maybe freedom fighters, if you’re being charitable. That’s beside the point though.

In another life, Sirius is fighting alongside his friends. He’s fighting for what he believes in. He’s fighting for his life and the lives of those he loves.

Fuck, that’s hard to picture.

He’d have done it in an instant at sixteen, but he’s a different person now.

Now, Sirius opens his eyes and looks up at Remus, feeling a hollow ache, a secondhand sense of fear for Remus, and for James and Peter as well.

The silence has stretched out for too long now, far past the point where a conversation can easily recover. Sirius stares up at Remus, who is avoiding his gaze, staring out that crack in the curtains instead.

Sirius wonders if this is how it truly ends. He looks away, back down at the lock sitting on the floor next to the marble. Maybe it’s for the best.

Five years, a war, and their respective secrets are just too much for two nights and a day of passion to overcome.

He reaches out and kisses Remus again anyway.

“Can I see you again?” He asks.

Remus kisses him back, and Sirius takes it for the yes it so clearly is.

The rest they can work out another day.

Chapter Text

His contact is late.

Sirius tries not to assume the worst. That he’s been betrayed, either by Laverna, who set this meeting up, or by the fence she sent him to see.

He’s already on edge though, so it’s hard not to jump at every strange sound and every shadowy figure who crosses his path.

This is Knockturn Alley, after all. Strange sounds and shadowy figures abound here. Hell, wrapped tightly in a hooded cloak and lurking in the mouth of a narrow side street, Sirius is one of those shadowy figures.

He doesn’t like any of this. He never wanted to wander this far back into Wizarding Britain. He needs Polyjuice though, and this is the only way he’s going to get it.

Swearing under his breath, Sirius gives into the adrenaline rushing through his veins and lets himself pace. Just a few steps, up and back.

Something moves. Sirius sees it in the corner of his eye. He whirls, hand outstretched, a spell on his tongue.

The stunning spell he casts hits the cloaked man in the chest, splintering him into pieces.

That’s when Sirius realizes he’s just attacked a broken mirror poking out of an overstuffed rubbish bin.

While he may be out of Polyjuice potion, Sirius hadn’t left the hotel without taking a few other precautions. A swallow of aging potion with dinner has added twenty years to his face.

An anxious, hysterical laugh slips past Sirius’s lips as he stares at his fractured reflection. It’s like looking into his future.

He can’t imagine it. He can’t imagine looking like this every day, wrinkles at the edges of his eyes, grey hair at his temples.

What will his life be like when he’s forty-one going on forty-two?

Sirius can’t see himself still doing this. No one’s luck lasts forever, not even his. If he keeps breaking the law, someone will eventually catch on and come after him.

The plan, according to Laverna, is to make enough to set them both up for life. Sirius already has a house in Marseille, and there’s about a million pounds scattered across his various bank accounts.

When will it be enough to stop?

And what will he do when it’s over?

Sirius isn’t the sort to retire on a beach and drink himself to death on daiquiris. He doesn’t enjoy stillness, and he doesn’t relax well.

Perhaps he’ll return to traveling, to magical research. He enjoyed that. He enjoyed learning and experimenting. He only ever started stealing to support himself while studying.

That doesn’t feel like enough though.

Sirius can’t see himself traveling the world, not alone.

Can he see himself here though? Settled in one place, living a normal life surrounded by his old friends?

Maybe, maybe not.

It’s all…complicated.

Too complicated to dwell on right now.

“Monsieur Moreau?” A voice asks, stumbling over the French pronunciation.

Sirius whirls about again. This time the man standing before him is flesh and blood rather than a reflection.

He’s short with a potbelly and straggly ginger hair and stinks of stale tobacco and cheap gin—matching the description Laverna gave Sirius to a T.

He stares at the hand Sirius has extended toward him. It doesn’t register as a threat like it would if Sirius had a wand, so it just confuses the man.

Sucking in a breath, Sirius collects himself. He drops his hand, squares his shoulders, and nods. “Oui,” he says, just to reinforce the French name and backstory Laverna fed her contact.

The ginger fence grins, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. This time he holds out a hand toward Sirius. “Always pleased to meet a friend of an old friend. I’m Mundungus Fletcher.”

*

Despite Sirius’s concerns, the meeting goes surprisingly well.

Fletcher doesn’t have the potion on him. He needs a week to get it. It’s not ideal, but Sirius can work with that. There’s a part of him that’s even secretly glad. It means he has a week where he has no obligations beyond trying to spend as much time as possible with Remus.

He’s satisfied enough to give Fletcher the thirty percent of the (massively inflated) price that he asks for. Fletcher has a sensible fear of Laverna that Sirius believes will ensure the man doesn’t just take the money and run.

When everything is settled for now, they go their separate ways. Sirius is eager to get out of Knockturn Alley and back to the relative safety of Muggle London.

He makes it all the way back to the wall separating Diagon Alley from the Leaky Cauldron and is just reaching out to tap the bricks when the entryway begins to open from the other side. Sirius hastily steps back, making sure the hood of his cloak is pulled down low over his face.

A man staggers through the archway reeking of drink almost as strongly as Fletcher. Sirius pays him no mind until the man stumbles and staggers right in front of him. Though he stops quickly enough to avoid a collision, it brings them face to face.

It brings Sirius face to face with his brother.

Regulus is drunk, but not entirely insensible. Maybe being drunk even helps him make the ridiculous connection, because he blinks, frowns, and slurs “Sirius?” before slumping forward straight into his long-lost brother’s arms.

Chapter Text

Regulus Black is not having a good day.

It starts with a toddler on his lap at breakfast.

Regulus stares down at the child and tries not to scowl. It looks up at Regulus with a similarly skeptical expression.

“Aren’t you two adorable,” Narcissa coos. She’s the one who plopped her son in Regulus’s lap, though he suspects it’s a conspiracy between her, Aunt Druella, and his mother.

Neither Regulus or little Draco respond, though the child can speak now. Narcissa coaxed it—him, Regulus supposes—into saying several words throughout breakfast.

“Lovely,” Walburga says, though her tone is more appropriate for someone who’s just found a fingernail in their porridge. She claims she wants to see Regulus married and giving her grandchildren, but Regulus thinks she wants it more in theory than practice. She wants the family legacy assured, but she doesn’t actually want a daughter-in-law or babies invading the dour quietude of Grimmauld Place.

Marriage and babies.

To be honest, Regulus isn’t sure what he thinks of those things either.

He doesn’t know what to do with the child he’s currently holding. Where are his hands supposed to be? What is he supposed to do if it starts crying? What is he supposed to do if—Merlin forbid—it starts to leak? He’s already trying to avoid Draco’s tiny hands, which are constantly grasping at things and are somehow perpetually sticky. How are they always so sticky?

“I’m sure you’ll have one of your own soon, Regulus darling,” Aunt Druella adds.

Regulus can’t imagine having a child of his own.

He can’t imagine loving it, caring for it.

Draco is the most important thing in Narcissa’s world. She would burn down all of London for him; Regulus can see it in her eyes.

That sort of love terrifies him.

The only thing more frightening would be having a child and not feeling that love.

Carefully avoiding Draco’s grasping, sticky fingers, Regulus picks up his teacup and drains it, taking comfort from the burn of liquid that most certainly isn’t tea.

Things only get worse from there.

*

There are responsibilities that come with being a member of a proper pureblood wizarding family like Regulus’s, especially when you’re the last one carrying that family’s name. When the entire future of your house rests on your shoulders.

Not that this burden was ever supposed to be Regulus’s. It was supposed to be Sirius. The heir and the spare. That’s how it was supposed to go.

Regulus spent years wishing it was otherwise though. He spent years wanting the honors and glories and even the responsibilities that came with being the firstborn son of the House of Black. He hated how Sirius dismissed them with his self-righteous sneers.

Regulus used to wish they’d been born in reverse. Sometimes, he even wished Sirius had never been born at all, or that he would just disappear altogether.

Regulus has never heard the Muggle adage “be careful what you wish for,” but he’s living the truth of it.

They’re all watching him.

His family, his fellow Death Eaters, everyone.

They’re all watching him, and they find him lacking. Regulus can see it in their eyes.

He hasn’t quite fallen to a “Sirius” level of familial disgrace yet, but even his mother is beginning to look toward the next generation to redeem the House of Black.

Hence the child on his lap at breakfast.

*

Distressingly, Bellatrix seems to be the only one who hasn’t given up on Regulus.

She invites him to spend the afternoon “Muggle-baiting” with her and a few friends.

It’s not really a request.

Just like it’s not really Muggle-baiting when it involves torture and death.

Regulus brings a flask with him. He holds out some hope that if he slurs the spells they won’t work properly.

As he has so many times before, Regulus fails, even at failing.

*

It’s evening by the time they’re done.

Everyone else goes home to dinner as though they aren’t leaving three bodies in the middle of a wooded park.

Regulus doesn’t want to go home.

He’s too sober for that.

Thankfully, that at least is easy to solve.

*

The Leaky Cauldron isn’t Regulus’s pub of choice. It’s too normal. Always full of ordinary witches and wizards looking to unwind from ordinary lives where they’ve never had to watch as people were tortured and murdered. Ordinary lives where they’ve never had to participate in the torturing and murdering.

However, the Leaky Cauldron does have one thing Regulus values: immediacy. It’s the gateway into Diagon Alley, literally the first place he can get a drink.

He gets more than one.

In fact, he stays until toothless old Tom hesitates to serve him another firewhisky. Thankfully, there are pubs where the barmen don’t give a fig about their customer’s health and safety. Regulus stumbles through the barrier in search of just such a pub.

Somehow, his day manages to get even more fucked up from there.

*

Regulus finishes puking into a toilet and squints up at the little bathroom.

He doesn’t remember how he got here. He’s not entirely sure where here even is. The lights are too bright though, and they don’t look like any candles or torches or spelled lanterns he’s seen before.

When he lets go of the toilet bowl, Regulus tumbles gracelessly back onto his arse.

A cup is pressed into his hands. It’s full of water.

Scowling, Regulus looks up at the man who handed it to him. “You look like father,” he says. It’s disturbing actually, especially since Orion Black has been dead for a year now. Although, Sirius was supposed to have been dead for five.

“Aging potion,” Sirius says flatly. “It’ll wear off in a few hours. Drink your water.”

Regulus drinks his water. He was supposed to be the obedient son, after all. He was the obedient son. He was obedient and happy and proud to be his parents’ son, a son of the House of Black. It’s all Sirius’s fault that he’s not any of those things anymore.

When he finishes the water, Regulus sets the glass aside and glares up at his brother.

“I thought you were dead,” Regulus says. He makes it sound like an accusation.

I thought you were dead, and I thought our parents or someone in our family had done it. I thought you were dead and it made me doubt everything. I thought you were dead and it broke my heart—it broke me.

All of those things tumble through Regulus’s head. He’s not sure if he says them out loud or not.

Sirius, who really does look frighteningly like their father right now, watches him stonily, his face offering no clues as to how much of his soul Regulus has just drunkenly poured out.

“Well, I’m not dead,” Sirius says simply. He stretches out an unnaturally wrinkle hand toward Regulus. “Come on, let’s get you into bed before you pass out here.”

Regulus lets his supposed-to-be-dead brother help him to his feet and out of the too-bright bathroom into an equally strange but more dimly lit bedroom. Regulus still doesn’t know where he is, but there’s a bed and Sirius deposits him onto it.

He wraps himself in the blankets and curls up on his side. Back in the bathroom Regulus hadn’t felt tired at all, but now that he’s lying in a bed that must be Sirius’s, the weight of the day all seems to press down on him. Sleep is the only escape, and Regulus sinks gratefully into it.

I’m glad you’re not dead.

Once again, Regulus isn’t sure if he says it out loud or not.

Chapter Text

After spending a sleepless night in an uncomfortable hotel armchair and making sure Regulus doesn’t puke in his sleep and drown in his own vomit, Sirius orders breakfast.

It’s not until he’s on the phone with the concierge that Sirius realizes he doesn’t remember what Regulus likes to eat. He doesn’t remember if his brother prefers tea or coffee or if he takes either with milk or sugar.

He orders both.

He also orders enough food to feed six people, hoping that between the oatmeal, three types of pastry, two omelets, sausages, and toast Regulus will find something to eat.

Of course, once he’s off the phone, Sirius chastises himself for worrying over it at all. It’s not like he invited his brother to breakfast. He didn’t want Regulus to spend the night passed out in his bed. He didn’t want to have to bring his brother back to his hotel before Regulus drunkenly revealed Sirius’s identity to all of Diagon Alley.

He didn’t want to see Regulus at all.

But here they are. Sirius is worrying over coffee and marmalade, and Regulus is snoring in bed.

Regulus wakes when the food arrives, revived by either the smell or the brief pleasantries Sirius exchanges with the bellhop. He sits up while Sirius pours himself a cup of strong coffee. He looks around the room, confused, before his eyes settle on Sirius, still confused.

“Please tell me you remember at least some of last night,” Sirius says.

Regulus’s brows furrow. Sirius knows he gets that same expression when he’s frustrated. He’d forgotten they shared that. Just like he forgot they have the same nose and the same habit of running their fingers through their hair when stressed.

Sirius is realizing he’s forgotten a lot of things about Regulus.

He held onto every memory of James and Remus and Peter, replaying them over and over even when it hurt to do so, but he never gave the memories of his brother that same care. More often than not, he did his best to lock them away.

And why not? He and Regulus weren’t even on speaking terms with Sirius was expelled. Politics and friendships and very different ideals had divided the brothers thoroughly by then.

“I remember,” Regulus mumbles. He presses the heels of his palms against his eyes. “Can I get a hangover potion?”

“Don’t have any,” Sirius says. They’re expensive to buy and too complex for him to bother brewing himself. He usually suffers through his hangovers and lyingly tells himself he’ll never drink that much again, just like a Muggle.

Regulus pulls his hands away from his face with a look of entitled offense that Sirius does remember. “Why not?” Regulus demands. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s demanding it. The spoiled little shit is probably used to Kreacher clucking over him and soothing every hangover. Nothing’s changed there.

Sirius shrugs, deciding he doesn’t owe Regulus an explanation. He doesn’t owe his brother anything.

“Next best thing in my experience is a greasy breakfast and black coffee,” Sirius says, gesturing to the cart laden with dishes and trays behind him. Regulus goes green around the edges at the mere mention of food.

In the end Regulus takes lightly sweetened tea and nibbles on a bit of dry toast. Sirius takes bites of all the other dishes. It helps him feel a bit less foolish for ordering a feast.

They eat in silence, the tension thick. Sirius tries to read a Muggle newspaper the bellhop delivered, and Regulus glances around the hotel room, puzzling over the many strange objects.

“Is this a Muggle inn?” Regulus finally asks when he finishes his tea.

Sirius looks up from his paper, gaging Regulus’s reaction when he says, “Yes.”

He brother tenses automatically. His brows furrow familiarly again—not in disgust but confusion.

“I can hardly book a room at the Three Broomsticks, can I?” Sirius adds, more than a bit condescendingly.

Regulus falters.

Everything unsaid between them rises up, lurking just below the surface of this stilted conversation.

Here there be monsters, and, even worse, feelings.

“Right,” Regulus says, speaking carefully, “Potter mentioned that you’d been…er…living in the Muggle world.”

Because James and Regulus have some sort of odd friendship or something now. Sirius dislikes that, though he would falter if asked why.

“More of one foot in each,” Sirius says tersely.

“Right,” Regulus says again.

He reaches out and picks up a pastry from one of the trays. He doesn’t eat it, just shreds it between his fingers, getting crumbs all over the table and floor. There’s no malice to it, no thought to it at all. Not for the maid who’ll have to vacuum the carpet or anything else. Regulus is used to making messes and not having to worry about how they’re cleaned up.

It irritates Sirius, in part because this is another thing he remembers, both about Regulus and himself.

“You should go,” Sirius tells his brother.

Really, it’s for the best, for both of them.

They weren’t close before, and Sirius isn’t staying in England for long. He doesn’t need another painful goodbye lurking in his near future.

Regulus freezes, pastry bits dangle from his still fingers. “I was hoping we could talk,” he says.

Sirius ruffles his newspaper, tempted to raise it like a shield between them. “What is there to talk about.” It’s not a question. It’s not even a demand. It’s a dismissal.

“Last night you looked like father, now you sound like him,” Regulus retorts, diving down into an icy drawl that Sirius definitely remembers.

“Pot. Cauldron. Black,” Sirius replies, trying to keep his genuine irritation out of his voice as he raises his paper and pretends to read.

“We could start by talking about how you’re lying to all your old friends about what you’re doing here,” Regulus says.

Chapter Text

There’s a stabbing sensation in Regulus’s head.

He’s not used to hangovers. There are potions for this sort of thing. Honestly, he doesn’t know Muggles—and apparently his brother—survive like this. It’s primitive. Barbaric. And really painful.

Almost as painful as being in Sirius’s presence.

Regulus thought he’d processed this. Between Potter and Bellatrix, the evidence for Sirius’s survival had been nigh undeniable. Regulus accepted that his brother was alive. He understood it on an intellectual level, and he thought that’s all there was to it.

But now he’s here, sitting in this bizarre Muggle Inn, and he can’t stop feeling. He can’t stop hurting.

Sirius, on the other hand, seems entirely unaffected. He sits across from Regulus, dressed in Muggle clothes, reading a Muggle newspaper, barely deigning to acknowledge Regulus’s presence.

It leaves a sour taste in Regulus’s mouth to see how much their roles seem to have changed over the years. Regulus can barely sit still or keep himself from shouting and screaming and doing something (hexing Sirius is the current impulses but it changes by the moment). Meanwhile, Sirius is poised and aloof, the opposite of his wildly emotional and energetic teenaged self.

Idly, Regulus wonders what the Sorting Hat would have to say about them now. Would this changed version of Sirius finally be sent to Slytherin? Merlin forbid, would Regulus, now so uncontrollably mawkish, be sent off to languish in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor?

Maybe that’s why he says it.

Everything in Regulus’s life has felt out of control for a long time now. Maybe he wants to regain even a small semblance of control. Or maybe he wants to poke Sirius and see if there’s still some part of the brother he loved and loathed in equal measures within this stranger sitting across from him.

“We could start by talking about how you’re lying to all your old friends about what you’re doing here,” Regulus says.

Sirius’s fingers crinkle the edges of his newspaper as his grip suddenly tightens. That’s the only sign that Regulus has struck a nerve. It’s still enough to make Regulus smile triumphantly into his teacup.

Lowering the paper back to his lap, Sirius carefully folds his hands at the edge of the table. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t make the first move, doesn’t give in to the spark Regulus sees flaring in his eyes.

It’s impressive; it’s also more than a little unnerving.

Regulus takes a swallow of tea and elaborates. “When Potter told me you were alive he said you were working as some sort of art buyer, brokering deals between Muggles and wizards on the continent. You’re lucky your old friends are uncultured clods or they never would have believed something so ridiculous.”

Regulus is cultured though. He knows his arts and antiquities. Grimmauld Place is full of them, all dark and priceless and ill-gotten in one way or another.

Most of the older Wizarding families are packrats like that. The dusty corners of their Gringotts vaults are stuffed with the sorts of historical curios Muggles will pay a fortune for. Most of it’s magical in some way or other, so selling it to Muggles breaks the International Statute of Secrecy and usually a few national laws to boot, but some families have been known to do it.

Regulus has sat through many dinner parties and high teas where the gossip centered around so-and-so selling their great-great-great-great-grandmother’s cursed Ming Dynasty vase to Muggle collectors just to cover their Quidditch bets. It’s scandalous and shameful far beyond the illegality.

Then there’s the fraud and the outright theft. Ancient Roman statuary that’s really just transfigured flower pots. Paintings stolen right out from Muggle noses by magical means their dimwitted authorities would never even think to expect. Those sorts of things.

All in all, any aspect of the art and antiquities trade between the muggle and wizarding worlds is, if not entirely illegal in theory, almost always illegal in practice.

Regulus knows all of this. It’s enough to make assumptions about his brother’s business.

Sirius cocks his head ever so slightly to the side as he regards his Regulus across the table.

Regulus struggles not to squirm.

“I can’t tell if you’re threatening me, trying to blackmail me, or just gloating,” Sirius says finally.

Regulus’s stomach roils and it has nothing to do with his hangover. “I…no…” Those are the only words that make it out of his mouth. In that moment, Regulus finally realizes he doesn’t want to hurt his brother.

Sirius sighs. “What do you want, Regulus?” he asks. He sounds annoyed. He sounds like their father again.

Regulus flinches. Sirius sees. His expression softens.

What Regulus wants, what he really, really wants, is for things to stop hurting.

Everything hurts. It has for a long time. The pain started long before Sirius disappeared, but somehow his absence magnified it all. Aches turned to agony.

Everything hurts.

Everything is too much.

He wants it to stop.

He wants a drink.

That always helps, at least for a little while.

“Reg?”

No one has called him that in such a long time. No one but Sirius has ever called him that.

Sirius leans forward. He could reach out and touch his brother. He’s not sure they’re ready for that, but the proximity, the possibility is a comfort in its own way.

“You left,” Regulus whispers.

“I had to,” Sirius whispers back.

This is not a conversation either of them is brave enough to have at a normal volume.

“I fucked up. I fucked everything up and I had to leave. I had to.” Sirius doesn’t say there was nothing left for him here. He can’t bear to repeat that lie.

“I thought they’d killed you,” Regulus says.

“They would have if I’d stayed,” Sirius replies.

“I fucked everything up too,” Regulus says.

Sirius laughs, which makes Regulus smile.

Neither knows what to say next.

Regulus and Sirius only know the rough outline of each other anymore, like the edges of a jigsaw puzzle. The insides are still a daunting jumble.

A rough outline is all Regulus has known of his brother for a long time. He lost sight of those inside pieces long before Sirius ran away.

In slightly less poetic terms, Sirius is thinking the same thing at the same time.

Both brothers are also realizing what a loss this is, how much it has hurt them. Scarred them. After all, when they were very young they were each other’s best friends. They were each other’s family.

Then Sirius left (for the first time). He went off to Hogwarts and found new best friends. New brothers.

Hangover stabbing behind his eyebrows, Regulus finally admits to himself how much that hurt. He’s not yet brave enough or drunk enough to admit it out loud though.

“I should go,” Regulus says instead. “If I don’t get home soon Mother will probably send Kreacher after me.”

He doesn’t miss Sirius’s grimace. He doesn’t miss the way his brother’s eyes slide off to the side and lose focus. He doesn’t want to know what Sirius is remembering.

“Yeah,” is all Sirius says in reply.

Regulus stands, then he pauses.

At that very same moment both brothers realize that this is probably it for them. This small bit of closure, this drop of reconciliation, is all they’re likely to get. The world has torn them too far asunder for more, even if they deserve it.

Even if they both need it.

“Be careful,” Sirius says. It’s not a warning so much as it is a wish.

“You too,” Regulus says. It’s both a warning and a wish.

Chapter Text

Early that same morning, before Regulus wakes up, before the Black brothers are having their stilted breakfast, James, Peter, and Remus apparate into the kitchen of an Order safe house.

They’re unharmed, physically at least. They’re giddy and nauseous with adrenaline and another brush with death. Their breathing comes fast, they’re trembling head to toe, but it passes quickly.

They’re getting used to these feelings. They’re getting used to death.

Remus laughs. He leans against the kitchen counter and laughs at nothing and everything and sucks in deep shaky breaths that feel like they bring no oxygen to his lungs. He feels lightheaded. Did you see? He wants to ask. Did you see how close that curse came to my head? Did you see how I almost died?

Thankfully, he doesn’t have the breath to say the words out loud.

James goes to the sink and washes his hands. He feels dirty. He feels filthy. He can’t go back to his wife and child with hands this dirty. There’s blood on them, even if it’s metaphorical today. Did you see? He wants to ask. Did you see if the spell hit that man? Did you see if he died? Did you see if I killed him?

He doesn’t dare ask these questions out loud.

Peter stands in the middle of the kitchen, frozen. He feels empty, hollow. So many questions echo around in this void within him. He doesn’t ask those questions out loud, but unlike his friends, he does speak.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Peter says. His voice sounds hollow too. It bounces and reverberates through all the nooks and cavities within him. “This wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, there wasn’t supposed to be anyone there.”

James splashes water on his face.

“Yeah,” he agrees. This was supposed to be just a quick reconnaissance mission. No danger. No Death Eaters. Home before breakfast.

Remus lets out another laugh. “Just our luck, eh?”

James slurps a mouthful of water directly from the tap then spits it out into the sink.

There’s a thumping, clunking sound coming down the hallway toward them.

All three of them wince.

Alastor Moody wrenches open the door and looks in on them, wand first. There are procedures. They follow them. Questions and answers. With Moody on safehouse duty they’re lucky to get away without any invasive poking with a probity probe. Eventually, he leaves them with a gruff “harumph” and a reminder that someone needs to write up a report on what happened.

“I’ll do it,” Peter volunteers. The other two murmur their thanks. They pat him on the back as he heads out of the kitchen and down the hall, leaving Remus and James alone.

“Fuck, I’m starving,” James says. He slurps up another handful of water, swallowing this time.

“I’m not,” Remus replies. He’s shaky and his skin itches, but he’s alive and it feels like lightning in his veins.

James looks over his shoulder at his friend. He frowns, not quite sure what he’s seeing when he looks at Remus. Something is different these days. James isn’t sure if it’s good different or bad different.

The only thing he knows for sure is that it’s because of Sirius.

“You should eat,” James says. “You need to eat more.”

It’s preachy, a little condescending, but James worries. He always worries about his friends.

“I eat enough,” Remus replies. “I’m just not hungry right now.” He’s alive and he wants to feel it. He wants to feel everything. He’s supposed to meet Sirius for lunch today. Maybe he’ll go early. Maybe he’ll sate all these other hungers before they get food.

James watches him with a frown like he can read Remus’s mind, which, Remus really hopes isn’t true. Now would be a terrible time for James to practice his legilimency.

“Remus, are you…are you, okay?”

Remus laughs again. Are any of them actually okay?

James grimaces and bites his lip. He tries another track. “Are you happy?” He asks instead.

Once again, Remus laughs. He can’t seem to stop. This time there’s actual joy in it though, and isn’t that a change?

“Yes,” Remus replies, a bit stunned to find that it’s true. In the midst of all this danger and awfulness, Remus Lupin, perpetually anxious and self-loathing werewolf, is happy.

James’s frown deepens. His eyes shift away from Remus; his worry drawing within.

Remus knows he’s thinking about Sirius too, albeit in a very different way.

“You should go see him, talk to him,” Remus says.

James clenches his jaw. After a moment it unclenches.

“He won’t stay here forever,” Remus reminds James, “and you’ll be sorry if you don’t mend fences before he leaves.”

“And you’re all right with that?” James asks. “Knowing that he’s just going to leave again?”

He’s very different from James. Remus realizes this for the first time in a long time. War has a way of equalizing people in strange ways, so much so that Remus has actually forgotten some of the things that have otherwise divided him from his friends for a lifetime.

He smiles at James, not with condescension, but with a fond sort of tolerance.

“I was never the marriage and kids sort,” Remus says. He’s never believed that life was an option. He still doesn’t. Remus is still shocked by this brief burst of personal happiness; he never even considers the possibility of it lasting, of it being forever.

Remus still, on occasion, doubts that his friendships with James, Peter, and Lily will survive all the trials and tribulations the world has to throw at them. How could he possibly imagine this affair with Sirius could ever be more than an interlude in a life of loneliness?

James frowns, and Remus isn’t sure if the thoughtfulness behind it is for him or for James’s own situation.

“It’s not easy,” James admits.

“No,” Remus admits. “But I think you’ll regret it if you don’t try.”

“You’re probably right.” James hates admitting that to anyone other than Lily. He hates being wrong, almost as much as he hates being angry. “You’re going to see him today?”

“We’re getting lunch, because, yes, I do eat,” Remus says.

“Can you arrange something?” James asks tentatively. “Maybe a drink, this evening or something if he’s free…I don’t want to just barge in, and I doubt he’d appreciate an owl at his Muggle hotel.”

Remus smiles as he nods. He feels happy. He feels content. He feels electric.

Despite the terrible start, this feels like it’s going to be a good day, for all of them.