Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"Don't ask him if he needs help," Sirius instructs James and Lily as they watch Remus drag a damp, disintegrating cardboard box out of the boot of Lyall's old car. “He’ll get touchy.”

It’s the day of the move, and Moony’s managing alright. He’s already brought in a few boxes of belongings, but Sirius knows—from the horrid angle of his bad leg, from the trapped-swallow-flutter of Remus' lashes and the fisted clench of his hands tight enough that the tendons leap from his wrists—that Remus is in pain.

Lily and James, the designated move-in crew, agree. It's a beautiful summer's day, hot and windy with a sky of peacock blue, the surrounding mountains flourished by picturesque crowns of cottontail clouds. Magpies swoop their black-white bodies overhead; some farmer's sheep bleat beyond the hedgerows, and Sirius is thinking that it all reminds him of Hogwarts: this savage Cotswolds scenery, his friends all around.

It's possible that he wanted a house in the mountains to extend his experience of Hogwarts ad infinitum. To never leave the castle, that cherished joyful place where his real life started. Or maybe he's chosen such lonely mountains because he'd like to exist in the opposite of the environment in which he was raised. No more squealing tires, constant tourist chatter, factory towers.

Fuck London. Fuck everybody in that overcrowded city swarming with family. Ugly, metal, grey place…like a prison.

Now, he's far from any city. He's leaning in the open doorway of his own house and smelling the houses' breath—that of past fires—watching his boyfriend bring in boxes of their belongings, and all these facts seem both endlessly exciting and in some sense surreal. He half expects Walburga or Orion or Regulus to appear just beyond the gate and remind him that he does not belong here, that he's a city bloke, that there's a war on, and that and that even now emissaries of the family are on their way to drag him back: to stab him up and burn what’s left for daring, smugly and recklessly, to slip clean off the family tapestry and live out a romantic life with a man.

It is, after all, a disgrace to the Black family. He will be made to pay for it.

But all that worry is reduced like boiling jam when Remus brushes by him and asks, flush with sweat, if Sirius would like his box of things in the big bedroom or the spare one. Sirius, who has nearly no belongings on account of having been veritably homeless up till today, tells Remus not to be stupid. His things will go in their bedroom, where Remus' things already are.

How odd it is, to say this. They have never had a bedroom in a place to themselves. A permanent one, at that.

Scarlet floods along Remus' cheeks like a sun flare and Sirius follows him inside. The entrance is low and whitewashed: the floorboards are worn with the dull polish of long-gone guests, the limpid library of light—a dozen different shades—spilling in from the door in a glow, catching on mismatched lamps, on the pattern of the paint on the walls.

Sirius hefts up one of the many boxes of Remus' books that sit at the foot of their wooden staircase. "D'you need help?" he can't help but ask quietly as he watches Remus make his labored, cautious-stepping way up the steep stairs. “Give me that—”

"No, I'm fine," is Remus' short reply. He looks over Sirius towards where the others stand.

And of course he says it like that. Ever stubborn, chronically trying to prove that he can keep pace with everyone else. Love and exasperation, this is what Sirius feels as he climbs the stairs behind Remus.

Their landing is an antique hall: a million small windows, shades of white and brown, one door for the loo, another for a closet, one for a spare bedroom, and a the end of the hall, the big bedroom.

This is where they go.

It's a square space with a whiny floor. Two long, leaded casement windows look out over the back garden: the knotgrass, the low maple with its corky twigs, the ambling river bordered by the druidical, drooping heads of wild white garlic flowers. Within the room itself, the last owners have left to them a writing desk, a wardrobe, large dignified bed that Lyall has sterilized with a nifty cleaning spell. At the foot of it, an old romantic chest full of odd sea-tossed treasures: tarnished goblets and dried inkwells and dim shells or stones that are bright when moulted from their wrappings of dust.

Sirius drops the box of books onto the chest and watches Remus tuck his box in beside the wardrobe.

They turn to each other and grin a little nervously, momentarily left alone in their new life. The whole house is a disaster, boxes all around, food wrappings spilling across every surface, they can hear Lyall scolding James for pulling Lily's pigtails downstairs, and Sirius knows he should suggest that they start unpacking, but he's too tired to. So they simply stand there with matching smiles, feeling very grown up because they have a place that is theirs; it's theirs for life; it's a beautiful house because Sirius' money has allowed them to buy a beautiful house and it'll be a cozy house because Remus' books and knitting and talent for tea making and baking and general calm aura will make it a cozy house and nobody can take this place away from them. Or rather, nobody can take them away from it.

"This is strange," Remus says lightly, rubbing his hip. "I never thought I'd…werewolf and all…Pa's relieved I'm out of the house. He won't say so, but it's obvious. He's relieved I'm out of the house with you. This is the nicest thing anybody has ever given me."

Which is saying a lot, Sirius figures, considering how highly Remus values the life his parents gave him and the spot at school Dumbledore gave him, and the gift of animal companionship the Marauders have given him during the moons.

Sirius blinks against a sudden, stupid burn in his eyes. It must be the altitude. "I—"

"Don't say you're not giving it to me. You are." Remus starts towards Sirius. "You know I'd never be able to have this place on my own. Let me say thank you so I feel less kept—don't tell me not to feel kept, you know that won't work."

"I wouldn’t want to do any of this without you. This house is too big. I'd be in a flat or some depressing place on my own." Sirius grips him fondly by the shoulders. "You know perfectly well I’m no good on my own. It's like being at home, locked in my room. And this is the opposite of that. It's like freedom for me. Don't pout and ruin it."

"Freedom." Remus bites his lip. "Do you think we can get away with it?"

That old adage, voiced at last. Freedom—what's its price?

He means: Will the neighbors notice we're gay and break in to hurt us?

He means: Will your family come after us, Black?

He means: Will somebody notice there's a werewolf living in these parts all of a sudden and link it up to the time of our arrival?

He means: This is illegal. Being gay in the real adult world is illegal.

Through the window, the sunlight shifts and splints of light cross into the room, illuminating Remus. His face is covered in little summer freckles just starting to darken. Random beautiful buds. Give it one more week and they'll be flowering.

Sirius strikes a crooked grin. “We've—look at me, Loony—we have to try."

Remus doesn't say anything.

"And if we want to fight about it in a few months, fine." Sirius squeezes Remus. "But when we have it out, don’t disappear. Or leave a note at least. If we’re calling this home base now, I need to know where you wander off to when you’re not here—”

"Some people would call that controlling."

"It probably is." Sirius lays a hand to Remus' throat, thumb hinging on his lower lip, the soft bow of it. "But half the country is swarmed with Death Eaters and the other half is Ministry people who want to shove you into the back of their cars, and I really—I can't—so you need to—"

"Sirius," Remus interrupts faintly, but not weakly. "I know. We'll work out a system because, for the record, I'd also happen to be upset if you disappeared."

"I'd hope so."

They stay there, standing close as if about to dance, and the window is open and the door is yawned wide and people are moving through the rooms downstairs—Sirius can't tell whose steps are whose—and the bed is a foot away and it's their bed and later they'll put their sheets on it and go to sleep. They could sleep nude with the bedroom door open if they'd like.

"This is so strange," Sirius mumbles.

Remus' laugh bounces out of his mouth and in the clean sunlight, his teeth look magazine model pearly.

The rest of the move is without melodrama—Lily drops a box on her toe, and James keeps bashing his head on the hanging lampshade in the kitchen. Mr and Mrs Potter stop by, bringing the last of Sirius' things, and Remus keeps puffing fags like a stressed divorcee.

Neither Walburga nor Orion nor Regulus show face. A relief. A semi-sour sting, too.

That night, after supper—beetroot tarte tatin that Mr and Mrs Potter had brought from home and heated in the oven—the sky is a constellation-broth and the nightbirds twitter. Sirius makes a fire and lights it almost spitefully against the July heat while Remus writes a paper and ink list of all the things they'll need to purchase. Having no sofa, they lounge on the floor in the sitting room, which feels like a rather idiotic oversight on both of their parts, considering the pitiful state of Remus' leg after the day's exertions.

Sirius pulls Remus' leg into his lap, pops open a butterbeer. He doesn’t know what to do with the cap. "Sake. Add a bin to that list."

"I'm way ahead of you." Remus doesn't stop scribbling, but he does purr a moan when Sirius begins to massage the ticking muscle of his ankle.

They both go silent to peek at each other, then dart their eyes away. The silence is theirs, just as the moan was because they're completely alone. Everyone has gone to their homes for the night, which is the only reason Remus is comfortable enough to finally moan and groan and admit—without words—how much today taxed him.

We're alone. In our own place. We can do whatever we want.

The realization uncoils warmly in Sirius' gut.

"Jesus Christ." Remus turns to him, seemingly coming to the same epiphany. "Kiss me.”

Yes, please.

Sirius reaches out, feeling Lupin's chest beneath his shirt, tracing the altar's edge of his collarbones, his bone-spur shoulders. When Sirius kisses him, Remus tastes as he always does, and it's this that makes Sirius steady, steadier than any safe and quiet place has ever made him. Remus' mouth is the mooring post, his tongue Sirius' mother tongue, his body Sirius' bread and butter. He pulls off Remus' shirt in the dim light to see the scars he'd like to touch, grasp, possess. He asks without asking—asks with only his eyes—and Remus grasps Sirius by the wrists, slapping Sirius' hands to his chest in an irrefutable yes-yes-yes. The kiss is a struggling thing—there is so much Sirius cannot get enough of, no matter how he tries. So much wildfire convulsing down the gravelled paths of his veins.

Mine. This is mine. He is mine. 

They laugh when Sirius can't manage to wrangle Remus' trousers off, and Remus laughs again, airless-dizzily, when Sirius spits down the length of Remus' cock, summoning the thaw, summoning the liquid-snowmelt drip from the tip. Sirius licks wetly along the shaft, and Remus utters words he cannot hear. He closes his eyes, bobs his head. Sees different shades of black—darker black on lighter black, two shadows overlapping on the floor—and there's a needy, broad feeling weighted inside him.

The house is quiet around them, so quiet, like a priest listening in on this first confession.

Here it is. See what you're getting yourself into, house. Take a good look. There are laws against what we'll be doing inside you, house. Get used to it.

"Carry me upstairs," Remus warbles, hands frantically strumming through Sirius' hair. "Please take me to bed."

Sirius carries Remus up the stairs and thinks of all the boxes Remus had insisted on hauling up earlier, all the help he'd refused in front of everyone.

Oh, if only they knew.

Under the watercolor-thin brushstroke bedsheets, naked, they move quickly as if possessed. Scurrying mischief-eyed mammals: Remus onto his back with pupils wide and round like clocks or drains or compasses. Sirius crouching low, devoutly, between his open thighs.

He looks over Remus' body—how well he knows it. All the familiar hair and dimples and divots and scrapes and bones. A body of knowledge. And still he goes too fast. Tongue and stubble and lips and Remus cringes and panics and shoves him off and then drags him back in again by the jaw. They collide into a kiss that Sirius draws down Remus' neck, his hard nipples, his belly, lower. Sirius cannot confess even to himself the very confused, very inchoate, very incoherent set of ideas and truths and fantasies that come to him when he lets his tongue lurk gently to the dark deep cleft of Remus' hole.

Remus hisses and jolts backwards, bashing his head against the headboard. "Oh hell—"

Sirius slaps down a smug, not-ungentle hand onto Remus' belly. “Easy. You're going to give yourself a concussion, carrying on like this—"

Remus puts a palm atop Sirius' head and gives him a reserved little nudge to continue. "Please stop talking—"

Sirius stops talking. He licks and licks and loves it; he does not know why he loves it; he loves the primitive mystery of loving something without knowing why. He loves watching the puckered muscle soften and relax and open up. He loves the wet sounds, like sliding his tongue through the densely layered petals of a thick, rain-drenched rose. He loves working Remus open, he loves that it's work—something not easily achieved, something like a labor of patience, coddling time, coaxing time, his tongue painting circles round and round like the long hand on a clock.

"Fingers," Remus pants, his stomach and chest sweat-shining. Equatorial heat. "You can—but first—" Remus mutters some spell, the rangy cables of his throat working with the whisper.  

Sirius looks up through lashes. Remus' little face, clenched with candor, turned to him, his hands knotted in the sheets that are theirs, and Sirius can't remember having ever felt such a concentration on one thing at one time. "What was that?”

“’S a spell. For—er—moisture. And—clean—”

Sirius' face gets hotter; he’s so stupid. Of course. "Where'd you learn that?"

Several different things cross over Remus' expression. Mostly bashfulness.

"My god," Sirius hums, mouth arching in a smirk. "You researched—"

“If you don’t put your finger in me in the next three seconds, I’m…I’ll…leave the room.”

A prickling sensation loops Sirius' longest finger as he slides it inside slow. Watching Remus’ neck roll back into the pillows—for a moment, deferential. Then, the brittle tissue of Remus' moan.

"Clench for me, nice and tight," Sirius hears himself say, the words sloshing out like muse-struck nonsense. "That's it. That's it."

It's watching Remus’ face clinch first as if he must concentrate to command his muscles. The small, nervous bite to his lip. The lift of his eyes to Sirius, then a cluttering of lashes as he closes them. He's so shy.

When Remus tightens himself, it's not too tight, the same way it's hard to make a fist during a state of zen. Sirius can still feel the suctioning pull. Those dragging muscles within Remus seem to have their own tidal undertow, riptide contractions. "Oh, fuck. Loons, now relax again. Let me feel it."

"Sod off, Sirius." But Remus is blushing and smiling and hiding his face with an arm thrown cheekily over his eyes.

So Sirius fits a second finger inside. "That's so good. I'm—fuck—feel it. You need to feel this. Let me show you." With his free hand, Sirius takes Remus by the palm. Remus, who shivers and toe-curls when Sirius guides his hand to where he, Remus, is wet and open, trailing fingertips across it sap-slow. Sirius presses Remus' finger inside himself. Remus' hips jolt into it, the sheet yanks off the corner of the bed, and Sirius is talking rot again: "Feel how good you are, Moons? So soft—"

"God—ah—aren't you going to shut up?"

"Would you like me to?"

"What else could you possibly have to say?"

"Please, Remus Lupin, please let me fuck you. How's that?" This quicksilver tease, this sarcasm that isn't sarcastic enough makes both of them blush. Makes Sirius rise over Remus and nudge his nose against Remus' nose. "Or what about this—you can come in my mouth if you'd like, but then you'll be too limp to fuck me."

Remus takes a short breath. "Fuck you."

"Aw, Moons, don't be rude. I've just made you the offer of a lifetime, haven't I? I may never be so generous again. "

Remus laughs toward Sirius' hair, into it, shaking his exasperated head.

Sirius grins. Then he's curling into Remus' lap in an instant to kiss and kiss.

Sometime in the middle of it, Remus is running his palms slick up backs of Sirius' thighs, squeezing his arse and Sirius is shifting his weight down, letting Remus' cock roll against him—exhale, exhale, gasp.

"Can you—" Remus' eyes bound across Sirius' body as if to anatomize it. "I want to watch."

It takes a second to understand. "You want me to touch myself?"

"You're really good at it."

Blood-warm feelings stir and split and if he were ever to let anybody watch it'd be Remus. "Alright. Watch and learn."

(A boast. He knows nothing. It's all guesswork.)

Sirius scoots to the end of the bed, back reclined against the baseboard. Legs open, hips slightly lifted, he holds Remus' eye. His fingers are already wet with spit and more—they sink into the tight mote of him so easily. His heart taps like a pebble against a window and Remus' cock is leaking untouched and Sirius is smirking like a sphinx because he hasn't owned a bed since he ran away from London, but now he does own a big bed, and he's going to get fucked on it.

Remus swears. He says Sirius looks so good. Says he loves him—says he doesn't know why his voice cracked when he said that. Sorry. Embarrassing. With lowered eyelids, he looks away and starts to stroke himself—

The praise, Sirius likes. He does not like the looking away. "Moons. You want this?"

"Yes."

"Then look at me. Stop being so shy."

Remus makes labored eye contact. His mouth is open and square and wet—unbearably sexy.

"If you look away, I'll stop." Another finger. Sirius slides it in very slowly to show Remus. "And then you'll have to take over."

Remus pumps himself faster. Makes a noise like a broken cello string, all rueful. "Maybe I ought to look away, then."

"Hm. Maybe you ought to."

Remus does. He does look away, gaze dopamine-drifting down to Sirius' hole, and it's there his gaze stays when Sirius pulls his shaking hands back as promised. A slippery sensation leeches through Sirius' entire body, like he's drunk. Like he's out of control and uncertain, but giddy about it because Remus is here—right here. Remus is not thinking about anybody else, anything else, past, present, or future. He's thinking of Sirius. It's there on his face and there in the slack of his jaw and there in the naked yearning cutting a crease between his brows and Sirius thinks that if Remus doesn't touch him right now he really will die. Death by desire—

The sheets hiss and bunch as Remus crawls to Sirius, crawls like a creature, crawls like he never would in front of anybody, crawls close enough to sit up and sift Sirius back into his lap, the way they were before.

Sirius shoves both hands into the soft swill of Remus' hair and grips hard at the root. "Do that spell."

Remus does, wandless, and an oversaturated sensation draws a route down the center of Sirius. Condom, he thinks stupidly, though they've never once used one and he's just realizing now that he probably shouldn't tell anybody that because he'd likely be lectured, but that too is irrelevant because he'd never tell anybody anything about this anyway.

"'M gonna fuck you now," Remus says against Sirius’ throat.

This is probably the dirtiest thing Remus has ever said.

It breaks him out in goosebumps. And just as he did the last time it happened, Sirius feels very fragile and abstractly self-conscious and amoeba-transparent when Remus pushes inside him. He feels it—the burn, the stretch, legs spread wide. Remus is big, truth be told.

He bites gently on the lobe of Remus' ear, making a noise so tiny he wonders if Remus can even hear it. He feels himself filling, opening at an alarming rate. It starts to make him angry—how easily he's breached, how wanton he can't help but be, the way Mother always said—but then Remus says Sirius' name and catches his eye and presses his forehead against Sirius' and Moony is shaking and begging: "Don't move yet. I'm going to—"

"Merlin, already?"

Remus' hand dips between them, finds the smooth, stretched rim of Sirius—this place where they're joined, where Remus is sheathed completely. "You feel so good—you feel…"

It's just the way of the world: Sirius could go for ages; Remus could come in his pants at the sight of an ankle.

Which of course is why Sirius does move to tease him. Then moves again, their bodies and their breathing shifting with it, pleasure knocking moans loose from mouths, muscles tightening, leaning on each other until Sirius reclines on one hand, creating space between them so that he can watch the hard line of Remus' cock slide in and out and in and out.

“God, Sirius, I'm going to come.” Remus holds Sirius by the hips, rocking into him further, deeper. He's watching too, watching the wet glide, watching Sirius' prick bounce against his own belly. The leak and twitch.

Sirius tries to breathe evenly. Tries not to fixate on one thing; he wants it all: the way Remus' balls are pulling tight, the clustered pink patches on Remus' cheeks, the sweat smattering his brow, the sounds, the spiced scent, the itch of Remus' pubic hair, the movement of Remus' shoulders, his bite-scar.

"No, you're not." Sirius sits up, slamming himself down full and flat. Impaled. Grinding into it, pain in a full-out frenzy for a moment. And he thinks: this is supposed to feel good. And it does—it does—but it's not without pain either. This big tender thing, this fuckin' good-bad-pain-pleasure vortex called being queer. "Not yet. Fuck. I just started—"

"I am."

"Let me at least—"

"I'm—can't—"

"Yes, you can, Loons. You will."

Remus mouths over Sirius’ throat, fingers fluttering like a manic pianist. "It's happening—I can't stop—"

"Remus, you impatient twat. Jesus fucking chri—"

And then their hands are on each other's faces, mouth to mouth, kissing badly and avidly and breathily while Sirius fucks himself hard and fast onto Remus' cock. Hard enough to make it himself sore. When Remus comes, Sirius is popping kisses across his face—peck, peck, peck—and Loony makes no sound or strange expression at all. Sirius only feels it—a hot slickening, orgasm-ichor dripping out of him uncontrollably like a bloody nose.

I did that, Sirius thinks smugly, watching Remus' pulse fly off the handle.

After Remus stops apologizing and panting and swearing, he takes Sirius' prick in his furtive fist. Sirius' whole body—every fucking fiber—is like a wet towel being twisted to gush the liquid out. He comes like catharsis all over Remus' hand and belly, louder than he's ever dared to be before because this is their house and they're completely alone.

It's hilarious, he decides afterwards, Remus in the shower and Sirius insensate in the sheets, laughing intermittently and sipping the butterbeer he'd previously abandoned with a liberating hedonism that seems cosmically poetic given the fact that Remus had once called this life they're currently living unrealistic. Hilarious: he can take it up the arse without worrying about seeming girly or weak, and Remus didn't even walk out halfway through (he may be scrubbing himself raw in the shower but Sirius is trying his best not to take it personally), and a spell exists for arse-shagging, which is fucking hilarious too. Sirius can only imagine the moronic book Remus found that trick in: The Gentleman's Guide to Butthole Magic or maybe Practical Charms For The Reduction of Awkward Messes?

“D'you want to buy a sofa tomorrow?” Sirius suggests when Remus returns, a gauzy towel around his hips for modesty.

Cute bastard.

Remus sits beside him and tucks a bit of hair behind Sirius' ear. He says sure, they can buy one at the charity shop and Sirius gets in a haughty huff about second-hand stuff for fun and they stay up arguing merrily until the sun cuts butter-yellow through the curtains.

~

It's the summer of '77, heated by passionate whims of the weather and the radio a constant ringing in Sirius' ear: deaths and disappearances and bodies turning up without their heads because the Death Eaters need masks and the show host says: the Ministry's Blood Status Registration office has been detaining unverified magical persons for identification checks. Any individual without proper documentation will be transferred to a secure, controlled facility for intake processing and classification, pending further determination of status.

(And they're never heard from again).

Remus doesn't know that Sirius has paid their property agent a fuck off wad of hush money to keep them and this house officially off all records and Remus doesn't know that Sirius has asked Mr and Mrs Potter to ward this house with the most serious of protection spells. Remus doesn't know that Sirius patrols the perimeter as a dog sometimes when he can't sleep—because he can't fucking sleep ever. Remus doesn't know that Sirius wrote to Alphard about where he last saw Reg (leaving out the more incriminating details); Remus doesn't know that Alphard wrote back, telling Sirius not to go looking for Reg again. Remus doesn’t know that Sirius heard him talking to Peter on the phone in the kitchen and sat on the staircase and cried for a while, listening in secret. Sirius hadn't even known what the tears were for, just that he's had a shit life for so long and now it's going to be permanently good. He's no longer a house guest. And no longer at risk of being hit by a drunk or called a faggot. He's house-trained now. 

But Remus does know that, over the first few nights together, they've been sleeping naked above the sheets because neither of them can manage a spell to cool the room down, staying up late listening to music;

‘Childhood living

Is easy to do

The things you wanted

I bought them for you’

They unpack their boxes bit by bit, tangling their belongings together until it's one meshed mess belonging to them both. Certain details of the cottage bring its long vanished prior owners to life as they tidy and decorate the place; he and Remus talk at length about who might have come before. There's jewelry aplenty; they find ancient diaries in script, old flying brooms, and baby toys. They make it their enclave, venturing into the shady forest behind their river, finding raspberry bushes and rodent skeletons and clearings for lying down and kissing in, letting the grass flatten beneath their bodies. The river cleans their green-stained elbows after, and when Sirius swims he feels that same borderless, avian weightlessness he'd felt after fleeing Grimmauld Place. At night, Remus gets into bed with his latest book. Sirius makes him read it aloud and Remus smiles so keenly; Sirius often isn't certain if the smile is for George Orwell or Ursula K. Le Guin or for himself and he never asks. They find their own rules of gravity: Remus sleeps in so that Sirius can enjoy his overlong morning showers. Sirius’ owl, Swoops, starts building himself a nest atop the coat-stand; Sirius cleans up the kitchen while Remus takes out the bin. Remus cooks them dinner one night in only boxers; Sirius considers starting a wine collection before realizing with horror that that's far too Walburag-ish. They don't have sex, but they do relearn how to navigate each other's foul moods and quick tempers—Remus gets angry when Sirius leaves candles burning unattended; Sirius gets annoyed when Remus forgets he's left the windows open in the rain. Like spinster ants toiling home and back again, they go to the nearest village—about thirty minutes away—to purchase unsliced bread and Muggle beer and salted butter and apples that spill juice down the wrist when bitten into, walking in hazy shoulder-bumping happiness with the sun still summer-high in the sky. On intrepid days they travel to brick-clad Carlisle—their nearest city—where they quarrel over sandwiches about money and appliances neither of them wants to buy and whether a Death Eater is tailing them and Remus loses a bet about if the waitress is trying to seduce Sirius (she absolutely is), and as penalty submits himself—good sport, pushover—to getting his ear pierced. A tight golden hoop, which Remus glumly calls 'slaggy' and Sirius labels 'gauche'. It is mutually agreed that Lupin will only wear it when he loses bets, for he looks, according to both of them, like a fucking numpty.

Remus buys a used bicycle with a bell. At night, some weeks later, drunk on their firefly-floated front lawn, he teaches Sirius how to ride it since Sirius' parents are unavailing turds who never taught Sirius how to cycle. Sirius likes it: Remus’ hand steadying the handlebars, letting him go, catching him again. He likes zooming down the steep lane and crashing headlong into a low stone wall. Likes how Remus sighs at the resulting bloody knee. As they walk home up the dirt road between the shadowed fields—nothingness leaned back on all sides—Sirius feels a malignant crowding in his chest and wonders if he's imagining things or if someone is watching them. Wonders if the watcher's eyes belong to a cow or a fox or Regulus Black…who knows that Sirius is an Animagus now. Will he have told anybody? Sirius thinks not. Even though they are on opposite sides, a certain loyalty still exists between them. Reg would have killed him otherwise, or disapparated with him when he had the chance. Sirius believes this.

Itching the prickling at the base of his neck, Sirius squints over his shoulder and hopes Remus doesn't think he's scared of the dark. But maybe he is a little. He's lived for so long in the House of Black and knows nothing good makes itself comfortable in the dark. And there are no human lights here as far as the eye can see.

The bikes' spokes stop clicking. Remus asks: "Are you alright?"

Sirius croaks: "Don't take this the wrong way, but do you think Voldemort’s got Regulus playing messenger boy to werewolves as some sort of punishment? Or to humble the family? Reg would want a grand position. He's ambitious and competitive. Stomping around the wilderness with boxed body parts isn’t exactly glamorous. He'd hate it."

Remus gazes around the hills and starts walking again. At his side, the bike he's guiding click, click, clicks. "Do you think Regulus is walking around, waiting to swoop down and recruit me to get to you…"

"Well, you did—er—out yourself to him as a werewolf by being with that pack. I'm sure he's put two and two together."

The clicks screech to a halt. "Would he tell anybody what I am? Would he tell Voldemort?"

Sirius hopes not. He hopes that Reg won't tell anybody that Remus is a werewolf and as close to Dumbledore as any pupil can be. That information would be valuable, probably. Sirius doesn't say this though; it'd worry Loony. He says he doesn't know, and it doesn't matter anyway because they're far away from any Blacks here. (He does not count himself. Forgets to.)

Sirius locks all the doors and lights all the candles in the cottage when they make it inside. He says to Remus that they should buy a sneakoscope the next time they're in Diagon Alley, too. He's a few months shy of eighteen and he's more cautious now in these wastrel years than he's ever been in his life.

He showers and changes and curls up in their bed (their own pillows and their own quilts) and thinks he has so much to lose.

Around him, Remus' dream-limp arms flinch. He speaks Sirius' full name in his sleep, then wakes.

Remus offers half-words whispered low: “I was just dreaming about you.” 

Sirius knows how this conversation goes. They have it every time something is about to change. “Moons, you sap. Was it a good dream?” 

“I don’t remember.”

This is spoken in a prayer-circle voice; Sirius is here now. Everything else seems pale and unimportant to Remus Lupin.

~

3 eggs
1 teaspoon milk
A knob of butter for the pan

Instructions: Crack the eggs into a medium bowl and add the milk. Give them a brisk whisk with your wand until the mixture is perfectly smooth.

Sirius thinks he's read enough to get the gist of it and cracks five eggs directly into the pan he's been pre-heating on the hob. Their gooey innards sizzle and spit and fuse right to the skillet like rapidly cooling tar.

He mumbles a swear around the ashy cigarette hanging from his mouth. Ash that snows right down onto the charred white-yellow wreck of what had once been eggs.

Sirius has been doing a lot of cooking lately. Like, multiple times a day every day (it's incredible, actually, how much people eat. It's possible that he never gave Kreacher enough credit for his constant cooking. Not that he'd ever tell Kreacher. Whatever.)

Sirius scrapes the pan into the bin and frowns at the recipe book Remus uses to cook from. He makes it seem seamless.

Sirius, to his credit, has gotten very good at jacket potatoes and buttered pasta and beans on toast. He'll become a decent cook, so help him Merlin, because he hates having to rely on Remus to cook for him. Reminds him too much of waiting on Kreacher to make his meals. Maybe he should have paid more attention when Mr and Mrs Potter were cooking, but he hadn't because James hadn’t.

Bit daft that Hogwarts doesn’t offer practical magic classes. I can tell a redcap from a hinkypunk. Grand. But I can’t flick my wand and make a plate of eggs. Manky arse education system—

CLACK—CLACK—CLACK!

The hammer-against-wood sound is coming from the front of the house. Happy for an excuse to abandon breakfast efforts, Sirius wipes his hands on his monk-like bathrobe and stalks towards the front door. Rooms pass him by as he goes—Remus' clashing knitted blankets and their new burgundy sofa and the tin bucket for collecting fireplace ashes and the little photo Remus had insisted they hang of Hope Lupin with her hair in pink rollers. (When Remus talks to her Sirius pretends not to notice. Though he does wish he had a mum he liked enough to want to talk to.)

It's sunny outside; the morning light is floating with fluffy seeds. Sirius stands on the stoop looking out over the lawn and sees the source of all the clanging. "Oi! Cut it out! You woke me up."

"No, I didn't." Remus doesn't look up. He's hammering something onto the front of the gate, a brown paper bag full of shopping on the grass beside him. "I can smell breakfast. Burnt eggs again?"

Sirius grumbles something about educational reform.

"I see." Remus swings the gate inward to display his work to Sirius and crooks a dry, proud-of-himself grin. "Luckily, they were selling scones at the village."

Onto the gate, he has hammered a red and white Beware Of Dog sign.

Sirius would have chuckled, had a decidedly wizardish-looking group of men not chosen that precise moment to come round the bend in the lane, strolling towards the house. Though they're at a distance still, Sirius can see that they're dressed in the inexpert way of wizards trying to appear Muggle-ish. One is even wearing a rain poncho and nothing else.

His stomach flips.

"Lupin," he says, the gravitas in his tone alarming to even himself. "Pick up the groceries and come here."

Remus pales, knowing the use of his last name is reserved for serious situations. But he does as he's told, shutting the gate behind him without looking.

On the stoop, they stand together, motionless, watching the men draw near. The voices the blokes carry with them seem strange and unnatural in this humanless place.

"Do you smell that?" asks one man to another.

His shorter companion sniffs the air and moves to stand level with the closed gate. "Burnt eggs."

Sirius' stomach won't stop flipping. Beside him, Lupin is hardly daring to breathe.

“Focus, boys. Where is he?” growls the poncho-clad wizard, who happens to be gripping his wand like a knife. "Thought he came along this way. Can't have gone far—"

"Keep walking," snaps the short man, waving the other two along. "We'll catch him up."

They walk on, loose tufts of thistledown swirling in their wake.

Remus exhales like an Olympiad and sags against the doorway. "They couldn't see the house—Sirius, why couldn't they—"

"A better question," Sirius condescends, "is why didn't you notice you were being followed? Get inside."

It's a slam and a lock twist, and it's Remus setting the groceries down, and it's the silence that settles as they glare at each other. Sirius doesn't know if he's angry with Lupin. Probably not. No. He isn't. He's just furious that Remus was followed, furious that they were almost found out.

They speak at the same time.

"I thought you'd just gone to the village," spouts Sirius.

"Who were they?" Remus asks, as if Sirius is some all-knowing lord god entity who knows what the Ministry is up to these days.

They glare and posture and Sirius surrenders first (with an egregiously posh flick of his hand, upon reflection). "Bounty hunters, I'd wager. Death Eater wannabes who'd grab anyone who looks the slightest bit undesirable to trade for a handful of Knuts. Muggle-borns, or blood traitors or whatever."

Remus' bad leg gives a twitch. "That short one was a werewolf—"

"What?"

"I think so. I could tell by the smell…it reminded me of something I'd smelled with the pack—"

"Oh, lovely."

"But why are they here? There's a pub and a shop and a church and a rugby pitch in the village…which was where I was. That's all. So why are they here?"

Because we're here, comes the answer. Because the letting agent didn't honor our bargain, or because Regulus told the Death Eaters what you are and they've been tracking you, or because the Death Eaters really do want to recruit and or murder me.

Sirius makes a harsh noise and settles for saying: "They didn't see the house because it’s Unplottable. Mrs and Mr Potter did the charm for us. I asked them to.”

This takes Remus a moment to recover from. He reaches for his cane, resting in what’s becoming its usual spot beside the door. ”You could have told me."

"I'm telling you now."

"Yes." Remus rubs the heel of his hand into one eye. "I suppose you are. But next time, would you tell me at the idea stage?"

"I have an idea about those scones you bought. Will we stand here and starve or—"

"You recover from stressful situations very quickly."

"One of us has to."

~

The weeks go fast.

Late August, at midnight, he wakes gasping. The bed beside him is cool and moonlit. In his mind's eye: a bone mask, his Greyback eyes staring out from the cracked sockets.

(He can move far away from everything—he still has to take himself with him. This, he’s learning. It’s a disappointing lesson to learn.)

Sirius says Remus' name into the dark, and finds him suddenly there, standing at the bedside. Remus sets a cool hand on his cheek. Sirius lifts it to his lips. He kisses his knuckles, the scars.

"Just a dream," Remus shushes, without asking what it was.

"I know. Don't worry about me."

~

Remus looks soft brown, at ease. He’s pretty and scruffy in this kitchen light, slouched at their square table, sipping his last mug of evening tea for the summer.

Sirius has been watching the slow utterance of the steam.

It's the final day of August. Cooler winds have been coming down from their mountains and there’s a smell of drying leaves in the air and the sink is full of dishes; Sirius made them a hearty leek and potato soup with fatty cuts of ham and springy shavings of parmesan. (Even Remus said it tasted good. Sirius is getting better at cooking. Only took two months!)

Their school trunks are packed and waiting by the fireplace. It'll be back to Hogwarts tomorrow. Seventh year.

Sirius—perched on the kitchen counter—has no desire to leave the house unattended. Mr and Mrs Potter have agreed to check on it sporadically, but still. He wants to live here in this summer forever, case it up snow-globe style, and never lose a moment of it. He doesn't want to go back to Hogwarts—to that Wesley werewolf and exams and uniform-wearing.

(If he leaves, he will lose this place. If he leaves, he will never be allowed back. Homes are like that.)

Remus stands, sighs, and walks between Sirius' legs where he settles. He pushes Sirius' hair back from his face with both hands, cups his chin and kisses him between the eyes. "You're brooding."

"Am I?" (Said in tones of angst and petulance.)

"We'll come back for Christmas. We'll invite everyone here to celebrate.”

Sirius rests his head on Remus' chest—listens to his lungs. "I know, Loony." (Said in tones of apologetic gratitude.)

~

Remus wrote to McGonagall and has special permission to Floo to Hogwarts via her office on account of his condition and the Ministry's persecution of it.

Sirius Floos along too, because fuck it.

Sooty and both a bit un-jolly to be back, they slump to the crimson-smoldering common room, where James is being broken up with. It's raining and the tower smells like damp robes and people are all watching with cringing lips, and James' glasses are covered with condensation that he keeps rubbing away, only to have them re-fog; such is the heat of the redness coming from his face.

“People can have jobs and be in relationships at the same time," James half-shouts, rubbing his glasses as punctuation to the conversation.

Mary is standing at the bottom of the girls' staircase, shoulders rolled to her ears like a diploma. She's wearing lipstick and a face of pull-the-plaster-off resolution. “I’m not that person, James. I’m really not. I’ve thought about it—I need to keep going in the direction I’m going. It’s going to take time, and focus, and I want to spend all my time thinking about healing work and internships and the grades I need to get this year and—and I’m scared that one day you’ll start to feel second to this career I want.” She starts wringing out her fingers. “You’ll ask me t-to step back from St Mungo’s, and I won’t. And then we’ll start resenting each other. I don’t want us to get messy like that because you're a good guy. But I want to—I think we have to—end it."

Remus shuts the portrait hole subtly and murmurs in Sirius' ear: "Oh, dear."

James throws his hands up and spins in a hysterical circle, looking for backup. Nobody comes to his rescue. He doesn't spot Remus and Sirius in the shadowed corner. "I'd stop you from getting a career? No, I wouldn't! Mary—"

"I could be really good, James. I worked under Healer Linus this summer. He's one of the greats. He says I could be too, if I commit—“

"I'd stop you from being really good?"

Mary's eyes dart to Lily, who's standing nearby and hanging her head. Sirius suspects that Evans played an editorial role in Mary's speech.

James doesn't miss this. He sags. "Right. Fine. That's fine, Mary. I get it. Merlin. Don't worry about it."

Lily looks up—a note of surprise at how mature Potter is being.

Sirius, in fairness, is surprised too.

Mary opens her painted lips, closes her eyes as if about to deliver the final emotional blow—

Sirius tosses his satchel down onto the floor with an almighty clatter that effectively cuts through the tension in the air. Everyone swivels, even Prongs.

Remus is standing a touch too close to Sirius, but he doesn't shrink back.

"Hello." Sirius' grin is big and annoying and selfish because Remus didn't shrink back! "Sorry to interrupt. Prongs, c'mere, would you? Let's go to the kitchens. I'm starving."

~

A mutual split is how they choose to label it. Because even though it takes a few weeks, neither Prongs nor Sirius really discussing it, James finally admits he saw the breakup coming on the afternoon of a full moon night, all the Marauders congregated around Moony's sick bed in the hospital.

Sirius takes a swig of Remus' Painkiller Potion, just for the laugh. “Yeah, you predicted she'd drop you last year."

James makes a crêpey, unhappy noise and holds a hand out for the bottle.

"Boys." Remus' voice is smudgy and helpless; he's looking green beneath the powdery sheets. "Please don't drink that, I need it—"

James swishes the potion around his mouth and glugs pointedly. "I didn't think she'd do it in front of everybody. I'd only asked her if she wanted to find a closet to shag in, and then I was being dumped!"

"She binned you in front of Evans," Peter pipes up, then blushes when everyone scowls at him. "Evans knows you are single now, I mean."

"Wicked." James takes another depressed potion-glug. "I don't fancy Evans anymore."

(Remus and Sirius make fussily aborted eye contact; Remus' cough is a badly disguised giggle.)

"Yeah, yeah," James gives them the finger. "Laugh it up, loverboys. When one of you dumps the other, don't come crying to me."

This puts a damper on Sirius' mood, which persists throughout the evening and into the cavernous purple twilight hours as he, Prongs, and Wormtail sneak across the grounds to the Whomping Willow.

How many full moons do we have left at Hogwarts again?

"You know I didn't mean it," James chirps flippantly, bumping a shoulder against Sirius'. "You can cry to me when he dumps you."

“You're funny,” Sirius drawls, and it might have come out cold if he believed he and Remus would break up. But he doesn’t. "You're also a horrible liar. I know you're not entirely over Evans."

James is momentarily silent as he watches Peter shrink down into a rat and poke the knot at the base of the tree. The branches flail and float and sweep to a stop. They're reflected in James' eyes. He mumbles, finally, "I really did fancy Mary."

"I know."

"Lily's the one that got away. That's all she is. So I'm not getting my hopes up again. It's been six years. I'm a lost cause."

Sirius thinks back to everything James said last year—how he's being left behind, how everyone else has their post-Hogwarts plans and their relationships and their ambitions and how he, James, doesn't know what he wants. Sirius decides to speak carefully. "You're not a lost cause. You just keep asking her out all wrong. You pull her pigtails and shout at her or throw wads of parchment at her, and you're a cunt to Snape—"

"You're a cunt to Snape!"

"I am. But I'm not trying to woo Evans, am I? Snape’s Lily’s childhood best mate. She doesn’t much appreciate people taking the mickey out of him—"

"Point taken. What do I do, then?"

Sirius ducks towards the hole in the roots, brushing itchy willow fronds aside. "You've got to be—romantic."

"Piss off," James gives him a laddish shove. "Romantic? Is that how you got into Loony's pants?"

Sirius shoves James back, wrestling him into the stony hole, laughing.

"Romantic." James tries the word once more and makes a lemon-licking face. "Candlelit supper and roses—"

"Nah," Sirius hums disagreeably and truthfully. "Start by not being a tosser. Just be decent to her. It works wonders. Trust me."

"The you from first year is rolling in his grave right now, Padfoot."

Good, thinks Sirius. He was a tosser too.

~

If a wolf goes off on its own, it's searching for a new pack. Sirius read this somewhere—lone wolves scavenge and scrape until they find someplace to start anew.

He thinks about this as he, Prongs, Wormtail, and wolf-Remus weave perilously through the Forbidden Forest, as they smash soapy ferns, trailing tossed mud and dislodged pebbles in their wake. The thought flashes fiercely in his harried dog-mind when a howl echoes stealthily through the forest—coming from the never-melted mountains—and Remus darts away into the darkness, following the call.

(Remus promised me he wouldn't do this—he swore.)

Wolf-Remus is fast. He is formidable and velociraptor-clawed. Not easily corralled.

Sirius snaps at James to stay behind and gives chase. He's not naive. He expected this. Expected that Remus would bolt for the mountains where the pack once was, where Sirius had hexed Wesley (of which he's never told Remus). With default incredulity, he'd hoped that the pack would have taken Regulus' box of warded body parts and moved on—done as Reg asked—gone to find lands where they could roam within Voldemort's yolk. Left these parts and carried whatever temptation Remus felt away with them too.

(An ugly and guilty hope to have: wanting to swell the numbers of Voldemort's ranks.)

There is another howl suddenly: eerie, loon-like.

Remus.

Sirius speeds his pace, leaving his prints amidst the fallen leaves. He carves a path toward the werewolf's encampment: the high stones, the trampled ground.

The altitude rises. His hot breath fogs before him.

Where the pack once assembled: nothing. No cook-fire, now young girls squabbling over scraps, no deer-hide cloaks. Nothing but Remus and a silver-backed werewolf with puss-bulbous sores growing out of his muzzle. They circle each other, moonlight reflecting off their wet eyes and bared teeth.

Sirius stands back between the trees, watching the wolves sniffing and gambolling. At last, the scab-dotted wolf Sirius knows as Wesley sinks to the dirt, folding himself down, making his body small. He arches up to Remus and licks insistently at Moony's mouth in the nonverbal grammar of animal submission.

Even as a canine, Sirius feels as though he's been flung into a vat of ice. But Remus said he needed Wesley's werewolf companionship. And Sirius agreed to let Remus have Wesley as one might allow a child to play with an inappropriately dangerous toy. No matter how much he wants to, he'd be breaking his half of the bargain to charge at them and snap and break Wesley's other wrist—

With twin yowls, Remus and Wesley suddenly charge North, withers brushing.

(They sound happy. Remus sounds so happy.)

Sirius follows. He is a dog; it is innate to follow.

The slope grows steeper, the trees thicken. The wolves are fast—faster than Sirius.

He tries, ears flat, but he’ struggling to keep up—

Their paws fling up grit in his face and he can't keep up—

He's losing them—

He can't take a big enough breath—

A thorn rips through the pad of his paw, deep—

It's getting harder to see their humped backs between the trees—

(He's going to take Remus apart limb from limb for this.)

He barks—he can't keep up, can't put pressure on the paw—but they can't hear him over their harmonized howling—

Wesley and Remus wink out like stars: there then vanished into the cannonball black of the night, too far from Sirius to see. He skids to a stop amidst the bramble thicket, choking through his cranking cramps.

Man and beast and man again. He flickers back and forth between forms: pulling out the thorn, swabbing the blood, cursing and putting weight on the foot only to flinch and fuck Remus fucking Lupin. I know you're not yourself right now, but come on. It's my responsibility to mind you. Maybe I'll lock you back into the shack—

Remus is harder to control when around other werewolves. This is proof. Sirius does not yet know what that means, but it doesn't bode well. Not for him, not for Remus' ambition to become some jumped-up wolf-spy, not for the pair of them together. But there is no use in thinking of all that now, so with his snout back to the ground, Sirius resumes his chase, following the scent.

~

He is exhausted by the time he finds them again—bloody-pawed and fur matted.

Wesley has led Remus to a pack.

Chestnut and bay werewolves are gathered in an aspen-hemmed clearing beneath the saucer moon. They're not playing, not snarling, nor fighting. Simply lounging, lazy limbs laid out like lions enjoying Africa's heat.

Sirius stalks the perimeter—soft on his paws—and thinks he understands why.

In their human form, their bodies hurt. Transformed is the only time when they feel no pain.

Wesley and Remus are off to the side, crouching beneath an elegant aspen. It's shocking, really, how much healthier Remus looks compared to the others—how smooth his coat, how much more meat he has on his bones. His eyes are fixed on something in the dark on the other side of the aspen. Sirius cannot see it. But shadows waltz as the thing Remus is watching moves, as it steps half into the moonlight.

Rigid arms, one human hand gripping a long wand—that a casually winking lance of a thing—beneath a cloak of peat-dark damask, velvet. Under the hood, somebody's skull hangs crucified on the Death Eater's face, masking it.

Hackles trip up like a flicked switch on Sirius' spine. He goes still.

The Death Eater is not Regulus. Perhaps there should be comfort in this, but there is not. If the Death Eater were Regulus, Sirius would be less afraid. Worse, the man is not alone. He has another masked companion, their heads inclined towards each other, whispering.

Sirius' shaggy ears quirk, but he is too far away to decipher the words.

Remus, though—Remus—is right there. The crook of his head, the curve of his silhouette. Remus is listening.

The first Death Eater: a moody flare of his lip, irritated. He makes a slicing, sweeping motion with his hand that brings to Sirius' imagination images of razed fields as far as the eye can see.

The man steps carelessly through the werewolves' resting, heaving bodies and makes the movement again.

Remus creeps along, drifting within the Death Eater's wake. Still listening in.

Attack him, Sirius thinks at Remus. Why aren't you doing anything? How much self-control do you have right now? What about the other wolves?

A sudden crack splits the scene. In a whirl of dark cloth, the Death Eaters are gone. Disapparated. The wolves jolt awake at once, yipping, scrabbling to their feet, snarls sawing from their throats, eyes swinging like searchlights for the source of the sound.

Remus turns and bolts without ceremony, branches snapping at his shoulders. It is obvious now that he is not part of the pack, just an unknown appendage trailing after Wesley’s authority, which appears to be none at all.

Sirius is after Moony at once—sprinting, barking, nipping at his heels—herding him through the black-green trees and back toward the Shrieking Shack.

~

He wasn't going to bring it up, not with all the Marauders back in the shack and sunlight coming through the cracks illuminating Remus naked in the fetal position on the dust-soft floor, but when James tosses a moth-eaten blanket over Remus—who wakes and starts making all sorts of shifty, evasive statements about how he'd like the boys to all leave now if that's alright, he needs some space—Sirius decides there's no time like the present to raise the fact that Remus ran out on them to go roll around with a bunch of other wolves and their Death Eater overlords, who are camping out just over the hill; Dumbledore needs to be informed.

(Can Dumbledore fix it? When had he ever fixed anything? But Sirius can't think of anything better to do.)

At the news, James sinks his head into his hands and begins to pace.

Peter squeaks with fear.

Remus wraps the blanket closer around him and sneezes at the dust that puffs from it, which would be adorable if Sirius weren't so hacked off.

"Sirius," Remus husks. "Are you prepared to do that? It'd mean admitting that you're an Animagus—that you all are. And admitting that I've betrayed Dumbledore's trust by leaving the shack." His eyes dart miserably around, the way they do when he's being self-hating. "We'd all be expelled. Dumbledore only permitted me to act as a spy after graduation. Please."

And there it is. Please. Precisely why Sirius hadn’t wanted to bloody well mention it in the first place. The sensible plan (sensible being a relative term) had been to march straight up to Dumbledore’s office and lay everything out: Regulus in the mask, their Animagus forms, werewolves, the lot. Let Dumbledore sort it: capture the Death Eaters and get the pack removed, and find Regulus Black.

Moony will try to stop him, of course.

Knew it. Coward. Self-preserving coward.

Sirius could shout this in Remus' face like the old days, but they've changed since then; he knows it's more complex than that.

(And isn't that the trick to loving someone—all of someone. Despising their flaws, but loving them despite. Is that not everybody's dream, to be loved long-term despite what you are when you're at your worst?)

Sirius decides, firm and fierce, that nobody is going to leave this shack until they've sorted out what to do. Until it’s agreed.

He sags against the piano in the corner of the room and slaps it—something to vent his anger at. It pings derisively. "But there are Death Eaters, Lupin. Death Eaters are a few miles away from Hogwarts! What if they're finding a foothold here to launch an attack? You want that on your conscience? You want—"

"That's not what they're planning to do," Remus interrupts heavily.

James' pacing footfalls stop. His shoes squeak as he turns towards Remus. "You heard something? What are they planning?"

Remus seems only able to nod for a moment. Then, he draws himself up to his feet, puppeteered verticle by his own pride, only to sway drunkenly, looking briefly astonished by the fact of his human body.

All the boys shoot forward to help him except Sirius.

"Thank you." Lupin's voice is polite and chilly. He lifts a hand to stop them. “I’m fine."

It's clear he is not fine. He sinks onto the edge of the bed and begins, painstakingly, to put his clothes on. "I was more myself tonight than wolfish. It's been going that way for a while. My body was transformed, of course, but my thoughts felt human. More human. It's thanks to you all. I've spent so many moons with company now. I hate transforming less than I used to. These have been the best nights of my life, and it’s becoming easier to think straight—“

"Hurry up, Remus," Sirius rasps. This confession can wait.

Remus' face hardens. He pulls on his shirt and looks at nobody. "There were two Death Eaters near the pack. I overheard them talking. My thoughts felt more human, so I was able to listen. They spoke about how they'd been watching Hogwarts for months. They’ve compiled a list of names based on those blood checks and their observations. They’re planning attacks on the parents of Muggle-born students, taking the Muggles hostage to draw their children out from under Dumbledore’s protection. Some students will panic. They'll try to contact their families or go to the Ministry to get their parents back. They'll be delivering themselves right to Voldemort."

A heavy silence follows.

Sirius stands straight up. "When?"

"Today, I think. I don't know what time—"

“What do the werewolves have to do with it?” Peter squeaks.

Remus’ lips tighten. “Students can’t Apparate from the school grounds. If they try to leave through Hogsmeade—or try to contact their Muggle parents from the telephone box there—the werewolves will be waiting to catch them." He turns to Sirius. "It's like the bounty-hunters we saw over the summer. The werewolves are being paid. They're already no strangers to hiding in the woods and doing dirty work few wizards would stoop to—"

James swears. "And it explains the wards they were given! With those marked arms! They'll be able to stride into Voldemort's camps—wherever those are—and deliver the bounties."

"But those arms will have gone rotten by now," Sirius says swiftly, thinking of the box Reg had delivered to the wolf camp. His heart feels punched clean from his chest. 

"If they're loyal, they'll be given fresh ones, Black." James shines his glasses. "Oh, this is bad. Really bloody bad. I have to tell Mary! And Lily! Their parents—"

"No!" Sirius draws his wand. With a spell, the door James was about to yank wide slams shut. "They will want to warn them. They'll only spring the trap—"

"They both have a right to know!"

"Stop tugging on the doorknob. Nobody's leaving until we agree on what to do, Prongs."

Pete raises a shaking hand like he's in class. "Tell Dumbledore."

"That," Sirius gestures to him, "is the smartest thing you've ever said."

But this time it's Remus who retorts with a resounding no. Remus, who admits—full of self-disgust—that he can't do it. He knows what it's like to lose a parent to the Death Eaters, yes, but he can't bear to admit to Dumbledore that they've been running wild across the grounds. He is sorry, he wishes he could, but he can't. He hates himself, but he cannot. He will lose everything if he does. Please, boys, please don't—

Sirius feels his ears pop. Guilt. He's incendiary with it. This is all his fault. He didn't stop Remus from fraternizing with Wesley. He failed to stop Regulus from disappearing too. He should have hauled him to Dumbledore and explained enough to get that werewolf pack banished, along with the Death Eaters that cling to it like fleas. He has to make this right.

James erupts with a string of: but-we-need-to-warn-them and people-will-die and it's-the-right-thing-to-do, all of which Sirius agrees with.

Remus squints at them all in the milky sunlight before bending to tie on his shoes. "Of course we're going to do something."

Sirius tries to make sense of it in his head. "Are you suggesting we announce it on that secret radio station of ours?"

"That's exactly what I'm suggesting." Remus holds a hand out; he wants help standing.

Sirius exchanges a glance with James as he takes Remus' hand.

Padfoot and Prongs are in silent agreement. It's not enough. They need to do more—they will do more. Whether Remus likes it or not.