back to when it all falls apart. by Kihin Ranno

His back had curved a niche into the Weasleys’ ancient sofa, and Remus couldn’t think of another moment in his long life when he’d been more comfortable. He knew this was an exaggeration – that in reality he only thought this because of how life among beasts compared to the warmth and scattered homeliness of the Burrow, but the alcohol made it so that he didn’t care. He was completely prepared to swing his feet up onto the cushions, let out a long sigh, and say “fuck it all,” to quote an old friend.

His ears detected the creak on the stairs no one else would have heard. His head turned too quickly, and a smile came a moment too late. “Harry. I thought you’d gone to bed.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Harry said with a shrug and loped down the rest of the stairs. With his hair askew and his glasses slipping down to the edge of his nose, he looked too much like James. As an exercise to distract himself from the dull throb of loss, Remus ticked through the son’s similarities to his parents, looking for the differences. All he could find was the scar.

“Didn’t expect you’d be up,” Harry remarked, folding himself into an armchair near the dying fire.

Remus stretched out his left leg. Harry winced at the crack. “You’ll find most werewolves tend to be night owls. Moonlight puts us on edge.”

Harry’s eyebrows drew together, his mouth slanting left. Remus remembered the look from exams he administered and from their Patronus lessons. He also recognized it from a much more recent memory – just before Harry asked him about the prince, mere hours before.

“I wondered if you’d mind telling me something,” Harry began carefully.

“I’m afraid it’s a bit dependant on what you’d like to ask,” Remus answered just as carefully.

“I wanted to know about Sirius.”

For a moment, Remus considered pretending to misunderstand. The temptation to put it off for even a few minutes pulled at him like the moon and the tide. He almost did, but he made the mistake of looking at Harry. Small, sad, impossibly overburdened Harry, who in that moment looked nothing like either of his parents.

“I must admit, this is a bit sooner than I expected,” Remus remarked, hushed and solemn.

Harry just shrugged again.

“There is quite a bit to tell about Sirius,” Remus said, realizing too late that it sounded like a warning. “And it’s… difficult to talk about him without bringing up your mother and father.”

“I’m not asking you to leave them out,” Harry clarified. “I… I’d like to know more about them as well. I really only ever hear about how great they were.” Harry mussed with his glasses roughly, the message clear. He trusted Remus to tell him the truth, as a former professor, a mentor, and maybe a friend. And Remus Lupin always did his best to live up to expectations.

Still, he was wise enough to admit that he had many shortcomings, and old enough to know that he no longer had the strength to battle through them all. “Harry, I don’t know if I have the heart to tell it all.”

Harry’s words stumbled over each other in his haste to correct an error he did not commit. “Oh, I—You obviously don’t have to—I mean, just whatever you feel—" He paused. “Well, I know a… a bit about you and… Or at least I assumed.”

Remus tried to work up some surprise, but he fell short. “You assumed or Hermione told you?”

The right corner of Harry’s mouth slid up. “I did think about it. With the joint Christmas present last year and… well, you did spend an awful lot of time there.”

“Here I thought my being destitute would be a sufficient cover.”

Harry chuckled, the sound resonating in his chest. “Told myself that. And then after Sirius…” Shadows too deep for a boy his age crossed his face, and Remus had to fight the urge to apologize for burdening him with an adult war. It would have been pointless, however. Despite all their ludicrous conjecture, the Prophet was correct. Harry had been chosen, and Harry had no choice.

“Well, Hermione told me I was an idiot for not guessing earlier,” Harry concluded.

“I suspect Hermione thinks quite a lot of people are idiots for not understanding everything she knows,” Remus murmured. “In which case, she is surrounded by idiots.”

Harry laughed again, and then hesitated, about to return to the start of the conversation.

Knowing that the time for stalling had passed, Remus exhaled. His breath smelled like years of regret and memory, of things he'd locked away for this occasion: a night part of him had hoped would never come. “What I meant, Harry, when I said I might not have the heart, is that there are some things I can’t bring myself to think about, much less talk about.”

Harry’s eyes studied the floor with an idle intensity exclusive to the guilty. “I just… I feel like I met him too late.”

“In many ways, you did,” Remus agreed.

They deliberately slid into silence for a moment, allowing the fire and the sounds of sleeping Weasleys to fill the corners of the room. Remus smoothed the corduroy patch on his trousers and pulled out his wand. With a flick of his wrist, the flames spit and writhed, casting colors like dawn erupting.

“Your godfather,” Remus began, “was the kind of man who not only insisted on getting a tattoo, but who insisted on bringing his completely disinterested and slightly nattering friend with him to a parlor that looked several steps below unsanitary.”

Harry smiled and settled in, expectant.

Remus only wished he had a better kind of story for a boy who had probably never believed in happy endings.

-----

“I cannot believe you are doing this,” Remus says, more aware than ever of the fact that he is secretly a forty-year old trapped in a teenager’s body. At least, this is what James, Peter, and Sirius all assume and feel the need to mention every time Remus even skirts the boundaries of rationality. “It’s such a cliché. And also filthy. You could get diseases.”

Sirius looks as though he wants to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t. Peter has recently pointed out how often Sirius does it, and now the former Black heir refuses the gesture, calling it plebian, common, and beneath him. Moments like that make Remus wonder if Sirius sometimes forget he’s not a rich boy anymore. “What did I tell you, Moony? No Prefect with me.”

“But you’re so in need of it,” Remus insists without vigor, knowing it’s hopeless.

“You know,” Sirius says, “I think that it’s been burned into your soul now. I think McGonagall puts a spell on those badges so that even when you take it off, those high-minded, proper, and very unsavory ideals rage within you. It’s like she’s violated your mind.” Sirius strokes his chin, feeling for stubble that isn’t there. “Or more likely, you’ve stuck yourself with it, and the rust has… has actually poisoned your blood. Poisoned. Poisoned you with goodness.” Sirius shakes his head tragically.

“There are worse things.”

“Blasphemy.”

Remus turns and looks up at where the sign would be if this were the sort of establishment that had a sign. He does not look at the neighborhood because it depresses him too much. “A tattoo?” Remus asks for what must be the sixth time. “And a Muggle tattoo?”

“Muggle tattoos are better,” Sirius informs him. “They’re permanent. Can’t just magic them away when you grow up and turn boring.”

Remus laughs. “Boring. Right.”

“They’re manlier,” Sirius continues, puffing out his decidedly unmanly chest. “Needles. Blood. Very manly, that.”

Remus wants to ask who Sirius is trying to impress, but there’s no sense in asking a question he already knows the answer to.

“This just really isn’t my thing,” Remus admits lamely.

“So, what? You’re saying I should have come on my own? Mother Moony, who’s always reminding us to go around in pairs in case He-Who-Has-Minions-with-Really-Stupid-Tattoos should show up to devour my soul?”

Remus tries very hard not to think of the mark they were shown in defense – the photo of a Death Eater who’d left Hogwarts two years before. The photo may as well have been non-magical for all that boy was moving now.

“Could have brought someone else,” Remus suggests quietly.

The look on Sirius’s face after he says this reveals just how dangerous he’s being. His pupils dilate and the veins at his left temple and neck bulge and pulse. His Adam’s apple bobs with the effort it takes for him to swallow. Exactly ten seconds passes before Sirius actually responds.

“No. I couldn’t.”

Then Sirius turns and moves away, walking from the motorcycle to the tattoo shop in a way that crackles. Rage is an artful inflection in Sirius’s walk, each step meant to cut like a cruel knife or crueler word.

Remus is used to it by now, so it only bruises.

-----

“I don’t remember him having a tattoo.”

Remus’s eyes quickly slide from Harry over to the hearth. He inhaled, expecting to find smoke, cedar, stale cookies. He did find this, along with uncertainty, fear, and a distant echo of flesh aflame.

“No,” Remus said finally. “You wouldn’t.”

-----

Remus keeps his distance while Sirius gets his tattoo. He tries not to think of the mark; tries not to think of tattoos as colored scars. He succeeds, though only slightly.

He moves the chair back three feet from where it originally stood and sits in it backwards even though it’s less comfortable. He studies Grint, the tattooist, a man with more piercings than appendages. His accent peppers his words with an odd grace, too posh for the setting. Not that Remus is able to say this or anything else of importance; not with the scent of blood in the air.

(“You don’t look much like the type to get a tattoo.” “Oh, I’m not. See, the tie. Properly tied, and there’s no one around who... No. No, definitely not.”)

He doesn’t ask Sirius what he’s getting. He doesn’t ask Sirius anything for that matter. There’s lightning in that boy’s blood, and Remus has been struck more than once, though not for awhile. Even so, he remains wary. He doesn’t much feel like getting burned.

So he watches.

The buzzing of the needle whines loudly and Remus’s teeth ache, but other than that, there’s something almost eloquent about the whole affair. Grint’s fingers hold the needle with the same deftness Remus has come to associate with wizards and wands, forgetting that there are painters and musicians with graceful hands and no supernatural abilities. The tool moves over Sirius’s left shoulder with practiced skill, spinning and striking.

He imagines the stained flesh, the pale absorbing black ink. He thinks of how it will look when it’s over – beautiful or grotesque or clownish or whatever Sirius desires. But also red and raw, a wound that’s called art only because it was chosen.

His fingertips find the four marks across his face, and he wonders if he’ll forever be torn, forever jealous of a scarless boy who could take his own mark and wear it with pride.

“Finished.”

Sirius pays what Remus feels is an exorbitant amount (which, Remus understands, is anything exceeding four knuts), and they bid farewell to Grint. When they step out into the open air, Remus smells the night before he sees it. He glances up at the waxing moon out of habit, and then at Sirius out of necessity.

Sirius has exerted enough control so that his indignation has dulled into simple frustration. He shoves his hands into his pockets and rolls his shoulder, wincing. His shirt collar is askew, revealing the mole on his collar bone Sirius has stopped trying to pretend is a beauty mark.

Emboldened by nothing in particular, Remus makes the first move. “Is this how it’s going to be now? I bring him up, and you try not to punch me?”

“I don’t see why you had to bring him up to begin with,” Sirius snaps, his frown intensifying. With his extreme facial tics, Remus can’t help but think he’s going to have impossibly deep wrinkles in his old age. It’s going to be quite a blow to his vanity.

“Because he notices, Sirius,” Remus sighs, fighting back the fatigue that always saturates him when they have these moments.

Sirius’s eyes flash and turn a darker blue, as if they are part of an ocean that has suddenly changed its depths. And, Remus knows, the depths are where the dangers lurk.

“He asked you about me?”

“Not in so few words,” Remus says, being as placating as he can manage. He briefly remembers James cornering him in the Prefects’ bathroom about Sirius. It was an awkward conversation made all the more awkward by James’s disinclination to hand over Remus’s towel until straight answers were given to entirely vague and misleading questions.

Sirius’s cheeks begin to redden, the frustration shifting. “Who does he think he is?”

“Apparently he’s under the misguided notion that he’s your best mate.”

“Moony—"

“Honestly, Sirius, this can’t go on.”

Sirius begins to stalk closer to the bike. “Maybe I like it better.”

Remus follows because he has little choice in the matter. If Sirius leaves without him, he’s stranded. “Don’t, Sirius. When there’s not some great prank to be had, you’re rubbish at lying.”

Sirius spins and the world seems to shift on its axis. “He’s the one who did this! Not me.”

For whatever reason, Remus decides it is better to cling to reason. “What in the name of Merlin has he done other than try to be happy?”

Sirius struggles with his answer for the briefest of moments. In the end, he growls. “Do you think I enjoy this, Remus? Because, honestly, I’d love to say bollocks to it, but it’s not that simple.”

“Because you won’t make it that simple.”

“Not everyone can shoulder life with your stoicism, Remus,” he counters, voice low.

Remus winces, momentarily stung by Sirius’s tactics, subtly vicious as usual. “Don’t do that,” Remus warns. “It’s not fair, and it has absolutely nothing to do with this.”

“You can’t just leave it on the side of the road,” Sirius says, as if either of them needed reminding. “It’s part of you; it’s in everything you do. Don’t tell me to forget it.”

Now Remus buries his own snarl, but he can’t hold back the rest. “How convenient. When it’s time for you to play the noble hero, I’m perfectly normal. ‘Nothing wrong with you, Moony. Just a furry little problem. Hardly noticeable really. I didn’t even like that jumper much.’ But when it suits you, my problem isn’t even mine. It’s just another excuse for Sirius Bloody Black to hate the world and everything in it because isn’t everything so cosmically unfair to him?”

Sirius’s fury threatens to spill over, slip through the cracks, and overwhelm them both. It crawls beneath his flesh and fuels his bloodstream. There’s no telling what hatreds can seep out in these moments, and whether they will become topics for laughter later or just a tightly held resentment, never acknowledged, but clinging to them like shadows. Sirius opens his mouth, and Remus waits to tally the damages.

Suddenly, sparks light up the sky to Remus’s right. Their fingers find their wands before they can even jump. Curses and jinxes zoom through Remus’s head, and he turns quickly, checking every hidden corner and storefront for the offender. Then he sees a black snake hanging from the sky. Despite knowing the enemy’s propaganda backwards and forwards, he relaxes.

“It’s all right,” Remus murmurs, his limbs sinking towards his sides as if weighed by stones. “Power line. It’s all right.”

Sirius slumps against his bike, sturdy in this unsteady moment. “I almost hexed a bloody lamppost. Looked human in the dark.”

Remus comes to stand beside him, slipping his wand back into his hiding place. It takes him a minute to realize he’s cold and even shaking. Fear has gripped him, a metal trap on an animal, and he didn’t even notice when its cold jaws gripped him. Remus wonders if that’s what really is: an adrenaline high so strong that you don’t notice you’re about to fall to pieces.

“You have to talk to him,” Remus insists, turning to an infinitely easier subject.

Drained, Sirius simply shuts his eyes. “We don’t do that.”

“I’m not saying you hold hands and cry,” Remus reassures. “But you can’t push him away. Not now. Not… not with things…”

He doesn’t know how to say that there are more important battles. That a squabble between mates is nothing compared to the coming war. That one day he might wake up and find James dead after choosing to take someone else to a tattoo parlor when it would have given his real best friend an unparalleled thrill. He doesn’t know how to say this because he’s not supposed to be old enough.

“Yeah,” Sirius says, understanding what Remus fails to articulate. “I just… want to knock his head against things sometimes. You know?”

“Some idea,” Remus says, leaning away so that the cuff Sirius delivers only musses his hair.

-----

The look on Harry’s face was terrible. Lost, confused, and more than a little betrayed.

“Sirius and my dad…” Harry muttered, his voice sounding dry. With a subtle flick of the wrist, Remus started a pot of tea in the kitchen. “They were fighting?”

“I’m afraid so,” Remus confessed, keeping his eyes trained on the domestic spell so that he didn’t have to look into eyes and a face that echoed the dead. “You must have wondered why people were so quick to assume that Sirius had turned on your father.”

“I thought it was just because he was a Black.”

“Oh, that was part of it,” Remus assured him. “But anyone who knew Sirius undoubtedly knew of his history with his family.”

Remus closed his eyes and thought of how easy it was for him to recall Sirius in his youth; he hadn’t been that much different than Sirius in middle age. It required no effort to see the tumult in his eyes and how he used to think there was a constant storm raging within his lanky frame, aching to burst out through his words and his actions. He remembered how hard Sirius had fought to keep it back in his effort to grow up. Then he remembered why, and he turned his thoughts away.

Sirius had been the very definition of trouble, and no one who met him ever deluded themselves with thinking there was any real peace there.

“Everyone knew he hated them,” Remus recounted sadly. “Everyone knew he’d run away. It brought shame to the Blacks, but some amount of praise on Sirius’s shoulders for turning away from old, frankly racist ideas.” The kettle whistled in the other room, high and urgent. “And your godfather did love praise.”

Harry seemed to mull over this for awhile before speaking again. “What did he do?”

Remus did not bother to ask to whom Harry referred; it made no difference. “I see you’re still young enough to assume that anyone really had to do anything.” The tea leaves distributed, Remus carefully poured the piping hot water into the mugs, careful not to spill. “In actuality, I don’t think either of them really did anything. It was just growing up.”

He turned, now levitating a tray into the living room. “Your father had always loved your mother. He didn’t realize it until fourth or fifth year, but looking back, I realize just how much attention he paid Lily. Far more than any of the other girls at school.” He leaned forward and plucked his own mug up from the table between them, gesturing for Harry to do the same. “But you see, we had all assumed that James would never get her. Lily had no patience for your father’s arrogance – and yes, Harry, he was more than a little cocky in his youth. As for his sense of humor… well, it was something she had to acquire.”

Remus took a long sip of his tea, felt warmth spread from his mouth into his middle and then continue outward. Muscles relaxed and throbbing bruises faded. Still, for all the good it did, it proved only a small comfort.

“Imagine everyone’s surprise when Lily stopped glaring at him so much and started looking at him quite differently. It took all of us completely off-guard, and while we were happy… I admit that Sirius didn’t take the separation well.”

Harry looked at him incredulously from the rim of the chipped tea cup. “You’re talking about it as if they never saw each other anymore.”

“No, but they did see quite less of each other,” Remus clarified, raising an eyebrow. “I believe I’ve heard Ron has taken up with one of the girls in your class, hasn’t he?”

Harry seemed torn between embarrassment and disgust. “Lavender Brown.”

Remus suppressed the wince, marveling at what raging teenage hormones could cause a boy to endure. “I imagine you’ve been seeing less of him.”

“Or when I do see him, he’s got a giggling attachment hanging on,” Harry muttered tiredly.

Remus chuckled. “Yes, and that’s how it felt to Sirius. Granted, your mother was no Lavender Brown—"

“Thank God.”

“--but just because she liked James did not mean she liked Sirius very much. She warmed to him later, much like Sirius warmed to her. But while they were in school, the two were known to get into spats Sirius tried – miserably, I might add – to pass off as a joke. Things were strained between James and Sirius… it was all a mess.”

Harry took a moment to take this information in, his teeth working at his lower lip so much Remus thought it might bleed.

“There’s still something I don’t get,” Harry confessed quietly. “Why was Sirius so upset about… about my mom?”

“Ah,” Remus murmured, deflating a little. “I forget sometimes. What I mean is, people don’t quite remember how we were correctly. Their memories have become skewed in hopes of remembering your parents in a better light. Make no mistake, they were great people, but I feel that their deaths placed them on a pedestal they both would have found ridiculous.”

Remus closed his eyes. He wondered if he could place appropriate blame on the late hour for this rambling. “People remember that your father was the leader; this was not the case. We weren’t a gang, much as I’m sure Minerva would disagree. But if I really had to think of someone as being in charge, I’d sooner say it was Sirius.

“I’m sure you remember the… outbursts he was prone to when he was in Grimmauld Place.” Remus waited for the affirmative nod before continuing. “That was typical of him. Perfectly understandable all things considered, but still typical. Your godfather, he couldn’t… he couldn’t simply react; he always had to overreact.

“He craved attention. I doubt it was because he didn’t receive enough of it at home; he was actually the apple of his mother’s eye until he started going around with werewolves.” His lips twitched, almost into a smirk. “He was simply used to the attention, so he continued to demand it throughout his life. When he was at school, we were a family, so we were assigned that role. And no one was more important to him than James, the only one who would take him in.”

Harry’s face lit with curiosity at the use of ‘would,’ but he didn’t ask about it. Remus wondered if he could discern for himself the one instance where forgiveness would have been withheld. If Harry wondered at all at Peter, he didn’t say.

“Sirius felt neglected. He didn’t take well to it.”

“So he got a tattoo,” Harry concluded.

“Yes,” Remus said, his knuckles flushing pale as his grip on the cup tightened. “Yes, your godfather found many distractions.”

-----

These are the things he keeps to himself.

The adrenaline lingers. Fingers twitching, bodies fidgeting in close proximity, and two boys trying to forget about events too significant for their lives, and friendships they hadn’t thought to work so hard to maintain. Later, Remus won’t remember who reached for whom, but he’ll assume, and maybe it’s the assumption that’s the problem.

The slant of Sirius’s mouth has become wickedly familiar over the past few months. The taste of stale cigarettes lingers even when he hasn’t smoked in days, so that each kiss feels like a rebellion. Remus knows each curve and hollow, each noise he can draw out with every twist of the tongue. He knows these things and he doesn’t get tired of the knowledge. He hopes Sirius doesn’t either.

He can’t get drunk, at least not as quickly as the others, because of ‘the werewolf thing.’ He wonders if kissing Sirius resembles it at all. The way his throat seems to ignite when Sirius has his tongue in his mouth. The way his head seems to lighten and float away from his body, spinning upwards, clouding his judgments and eradicating his few hesitations. The way his arms seem too heavy for his body until he rests them on Sirius’s shoulders, somewhere between bony and broad, or until his hands curve around Sirius’s face, his fingers finding hair like night spun into fine silk.

Remus presses Sirius more firmly against the motorbike, but Sirius neither shrinks nor melts. His hands keep them some distance apart, fingers probing beneath his wrinkled shirt. He seems to leave prints against Remus’s ribcage, tiny pockets of energy that sing even after he’s moved on. His knee pushes forward, between Remus’s legs. Sharp teeth sink into his flesh at the place where neck morphs into a shoulder, and they’re both grateful that lycanthropy only transfers through a bite during a transformation.

They’re on a street, and although mostly abandoned and poorly lit, they’re still in danger of being seen. This is probably why Sirius pushes more, until Remus hardens and can’t bear to do anything by grind against the limb. Remus is not above seeing the similarities between sex and transformations. He always feels like something outside himself takes control in those moments, so things he knows he shouldn’t do, things his inner Prefect will later shudder at, become standard fare. This is why he does not protest when Sirius undoes his fly, shifts his trousers down his hips, and grasps the erection with his right hand.

Remus groans, his teeth raking Sirius’s throat like a vampire seeking a vein. Sirius has expert hands, suited to spells and pianos and perhaps even tattooing if he tried. Slow movements at first, tantalizing, coaxing Remus’s hips forward, accompanied by embarrassingly inhuman noises. Sirius laughs at Remus’s wordless insistence, complying for the same reasons he thought this was a good idea in the first place.

Then his hand moves faster, sliding against the skin like a younger boy desperate to get in a quick wank before his roommates catch him. Remus thinks of how much better it would be if Sirius would take him into his mouth, if that tongue doing obscene things above the neck would simply move below the belt. But it’s not the right place or the right time, and Remus crests before he can think to even suggest this. It leaves him spent, but unsatisfied. Still, he slumps against Sirius, who rights his clothes and wipes away the evidence with a greasy handkerchief.

They stay there for longer than they should, lips and arms entwined. But it’s Remus who holds them there; Remus who refuses to let go. Remus who will not stop because when he does, he has a tendency to think of when all this started.

He’ll swallow it, he’ll shove it away, and he’ll even manage to quiet it the next time they meet like this. But he never really forgets the timing.

It eats him alive.

-----

They arrive back at Gryffindor tower well after dark, but curfew’s always been more of an easily ignored guideline than anything else, even to Remus, who’s always felt more alert with the moon up. A few of the more high-minded Gryffindors give them a sour look when they step through the portrait, but most of them don’t care. Even in these times, Gryffindors implicitly allow themselves to blur the lines between bravery and adolescent stupidity.

Neither James nor Peter is in the Common Room, but Lily has holed herself in a corner, surrounded by books Remus wonders whether or not she really needs to read. She senses him watching her and lifts her hand to wave without looking up.

“Guess he found the note,” Sirius remarks.

The fatigue hits him again. “You left him a note?”

“Couldn’t let Petey fret. You know how sweaty he gets, and he won’t wash until morning.”

Remus simply glares. This earns him nothing more than a shrug, and then Sirius turns to climb the stairs.

“Right,” Remus mutters too softly to be heard.

When they get up to the room, James is laughing too loudly at whatever Peter just said. Judging by the look on Peter’s face, he hadn’t been telling a joke. “Oh, Pete. Such wit. Such mirth. Such joy you bring into my life.” He spins wildly, as if he’s only just noticed the intrusion. “Moony! And Paddy-Padfoot. Whenever did you get back?”

Remus rolls his eyes in Peter’s direction, who returns with an equally put-upon look. This isn’t their moment, but like so many others, they must bear witness.

“Just now,” Sirius answers, grasping the nearest bedposts and leaning forward. “I’m sure you missed me terribly.”

“What? How could I with Peter here?” James actually reaches forward and gives Peter a one-armed hug. Peter stares at the arm like it’s connected with some strange beast, not frightened of being mauled but bewildered by a monster acting so wildly out of character. “Peter, who stayed faithfully by my side while the two canines went off and got… oh, dear. What was it again? Matching nipple rings?”

Remus’s brain processes the implication before the joke, and his hand convulsively covers a bruise on his neck, only to find it concealed by his shirt collar. He glares and pretends to scratch an itch. Neither James nor Peter seem to notice, but Sirius takes a moment to waggle his eyebrows, stifling laughter. “He’s the only one with the decorations. I’m merely a bystander in all this.”

“And it was a tattoo,” Sirius corrects, as if this was actually the point. “Nipple rings? Honestly, Prongs. At least give me credit for getting a cock ring if there’s going to be any more holes drilled into me.”

Remus makes a face that he hopes Sirius realizes is real and total disapproval of this idea.

“So what was it?” Peter asks amiably, peeling James’s arm from his neck. “It better be inappropriate. No sense getting a tattoo if it’s not got swearing or somethin’ obscene.”

It takes Remus a moment to realize Peter’s actually directed this question at Remus, rightfully assuming that Sirius won’t give him a straight answer in this climate. “I don’t know what he got. Mostly used black ink though.”

“Naked Dementor?” Peter ventures, and then shudders when he realizes what he’s just suggested. “God, I hope not. Who’d want that shriveled prick on your bum until you work up the potion to get rid of it?”

Sirius snorts.

James narrows his eyes. “You all right, Moony? You’ve gone all splotchy.”

“Just fine. Thank you.”

“Can’t be gotten rid of,” Sirius proclaims, blessedly turning everyone’s attentions back to him. “’S Muggle.”

Peter and Remus’s eyes instantly land on James.

James’s bushy eyebrows draw inward as if pulled by a string, his brown eyes glowing with interest. On the one hand, he’s entranced by this admission. Sirius knew James would be more impressed with a Muggle tattoo, so obviously it’s part of the reason why he got it in the first place. It dazzles James in the way all of Sirius’s outrageous actions do. On the other hand, this is precisely the sort of thing James would have salivated over, would have joined in on once Sirius announced his intentions. They might have even gotten the same tattoo – or else James would have simply enshrined his right buttock to Lily. Either way, this was a JamesandSirius moment, where neither Remus nor Peter had a place.

A familiar situation rendered uncomfortable by Sirius’s deliberate and differing choice.

“A Muggle tattoo,” James says, his voice surprisingly soft.

“Yeah,” Sirius answers, raising his chin. A challenge has been issued, unspoken.

James considers the option for a moment, his teeth grating against his bottom lip. Remus remembers their earlier conversation, how tempting it was for James to simply leap on Sirius and pummel him until they forgave each other. James was even beginning to consider talking about it, an inexplicable option for friends who could tell silent jokes across the room when McGonagall separated them in Transfiguration. James has numerous options, and none of them can predict which one he’ll take.

In the end, he picks the path well-trodden. He mutters something about Lily, and he leaves.

Sirius’s fingers make the wood of the bedpost strain. Remus wants to snap at him. He chose someone else for company; James is certainly allowed to.

Peter lingers only for a few moments. He’s more perceptive than people give him credit for, so he knows Remus will need some time to deal with this aftermath on his own. Remus, on the other hand, has no idea what Peter knows and hopes it isn’t much. But from the way Peter looks – like someone struggling not to scratch an itch in an embarrassing place – he’s on the cusp of understanding.

“Later,” Peter says, pausing briefly at Sirius’s side, but he says nothing. This comes as no surprise to Remus, who’s only been able to tell Sirius how hard he can shove it for a little while.

How quickly and dramatically things change when Sirius deems his universe unsatisfactory.

Sirius seems to sag, standing between the beds. For a moment, Remus thinks of Sampson, the man who tried to hold up a crumbling building by straining against the pillars. Sirius is a bit like Sampson, but the only thing he’s trying to hold up is himself.

Remus moves, positioning himself so that Sirius can lean on him without being obvious about it. His nose finds Sirius’s collarbone, and he inhales. He smells regret and vexation and betrayal, all in quantities too large for the situation.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Sirius says.

“Yeah.” Remus hooks a thumb through Sirius’s beltloop. “Maybe.”

These are the lies they tell themselves to feel righteous.

-----

“Sirius was being a prat,” Harry interrupted with some menace.

Remus chuckled, staring down at the drying dregs in his teacup. “He probably would agree with you now. Back then, before we knew what the war was and didn’t simply think of it as this thing that loomed on the horizon, our idiotic trivialities ruled our lives more than I care to admit.”

Harry hesitated, his finger racing along the brim of his own cup. “But they were happy together… and not just when they beat up on Snape.”

“I sometimes wondered if that was the chief source of Sirius’s enjoyment,” Remus deadpanned. “But yes. Your father and your godfather really were like brothers, just like everyone’s said. But all brothers inevitably betray one another, even in tiny ways that don’t really matter. Every sibling is just a reincarnation of Cain and Abel,” Remus claimed, surprised at the second religious reference in as many minutes.

“Wish I could have seen that in the Pensieve,” Harry muttered.

The association was obvious although Harry tried to mask it. “I am sorry, Harry.”

In an instant, Harry tried to erase his mistake. “No, I didn’t—"

“You did,” Remus interrupted smoothly, without offense. “I’m afraid I’m not a very good story-teller,” Remus said, tipping his head back against the chair. The fraying edges tickled the back of his neck, and the alcohol let him pretend it was night spun into silk. “I feel as though I’ve cheated you beginning in medias res – in the middle of things – but it’s the only way I know how to tell it. You see, I can’t bear to begin at the beginning. We were all so happy then.”

In the span of a few seconds, Remus thought of those moments, brief flashes in his tired brain. The way they’d all tumbled together in a massive, messy non-hug after they’d successfully pulled off their first prank. The light in James and Sirius’s eyes when Remus came up with the two-way mirror. Lily’s frown softening around the edges sooner than she’d ever admitted. Peter regaling them with tales from the girl’s bathroom, the only one of them sneaky enough and small enough to venture within. Sirius's moods, mercurial and ever-changing, providing a source of entertainment when they hadn’t been at the brunt of his fury. James’s persistent happiness and the constant pleasure he felt with being himself – popular, intelligent, well-adjusted. He remembered worrying about nothing – an exam he was bound to pass, the way Severus Snape sneered at him in ignorance as he rounded the corner, whether or not the Sealing Charm would hold on the ink well so that he didn’t end up with black running down the side of his leg.

All of these moments that came before a certain night in March of their Sixth Year. Something had happened that night, though Remus could never actually get the exact story on who had said what to whom. Suffice it to say, James had become a hero, Snape had almost died, and Sirius had been crucified, ostracized from the little group he had called his own. Dynamics shifted, stories spread, and suddenly Lily Evans didn’t seem to hate James Potter all that much.

Sirius’s prank had shifted everything. It had left a tiny crack in all their lives that spread over the next few years, until it shattered into pieces. Glass turned into so much dust. A broken mirror that brought them almost twenty years of bad luck.

Sirius had always felt he had power and influence. He’d just never quite managed to apply it in any way that didn’t somehow result in destruction.

“Remus?”

“Hm?” he murmured, unaware that Harry’d said anything.

“I said it’s all right,” Harry repeated. “I know this is hard. Just tell me what you can.”

Remus nodded, but before he could continue with Harry’s narrative, he found himself too wrapped up in his own private memory.

-----

Remus likes being in control. He revels in holding wrists down, towering above Sirius’s_squirming frame, running his hands against taught flesh. He likes being the top – the Alpha, to put it another, canine way. There’s so much he has no say in and so many ways that his life is directed by others. He likes having this.

He tries not to think that Sirius is allowing this to happen, but those are usually the terms he uses. He doesn’t have the lexicon to find another way to think.

Remus does not shelve his preferences to accommodate Sirius’s frustrations. He’s still unsettled from their previous encounter, and now, he will demand and dictate his own satisfaction. He pushes ever so slightly, and with Sirius’s displaced weight, they both tumble back easily, sprawling onto the nearest bed. Sirius preparedness for the kiss remains harsh as ever, and their teeth click before their lips have finished melding. It’s as if they drink from one another, distractions slipping when an angle changes, when their weight shifts, when someone pulls at a bottom lip. Each movement seems to drain tension from Sirius, and Remus can feel his resentment ebbing away each time his stubble scratches Sirius’s smoother cheek.

Left alone for what they both know will be longer than usual, Remus sees no reason to rush things. They can take a proper moment on a bed for once. No rushed fucks in the boy’s toilets with their pants around their ankles. Remus even takes the extra moment to remove his socks; Sirius always complains when those are forgotten.

His fingers trace maps of undiscovered realms on Sirius’s chest, circling around the nipples until they’re taut, tiny dark mountains on a white landscape. His teeth make the roads, raised and pink with rawness, sometimes turning red and liquid when a canine goes too deep. These are the rivers. And all the while, Sirius creates a symphony in sighs and moans, peppered with the timpani of curses when Remus ministrations take the unexpectedly vicious turn.

Sirius shines beneath a sheen of sweat, a star waiting to explode. They rock into each other, pressing and pushing, intensity steadily climbing. Remus arches and curves his back with progressive force, hissing and grasping at flesh, leaving white fingerprints that may darken before the night ends. Just before the climax, Remus stretches his mouth against Sirius’s pale neck, forming words he doesn’t dare speak aloud.

Sirius is a star. Remus is a wolf. But RemusandSirius is a broken mirror, barely glued back together. Remus finds that he’s waiting for another rock to be thrown or for the nail to give out. Because then they’ll fall apart in such a way that he doubts even three not-so-magic words could save them.

With a brutal twist of his hips, Remus swears.

Then: boom.

-----

“What kind of tattoo did you get anyway?”

“Pete was close. ‘S Dementor doing the hula.”

“No, honestly.”

Sirius reaches around to peel off the bandage and then turns so that Remus can see. When he makes out the black shape permanently etched into skin, Remus feels himself crashing, a wave against the jagged rocks.

It’s a black dog, which, if nothing else, illustrates just how much Sirius Black does not understand the concept of subtlety. Teeth bared in a manner appropriately intimidating, the dog’s eyes flash so brightly Remus half-expects the flesh-ink masterpiece to snarl. His (or its?) muscles are coiled, ready to spring. It’s so realistic Remus almost forgets it’s not a Wizard tattoo. But all of this pales in comparison to the collar worn by the dog, and the symbol dangling from the lava red ring.

One rat’s foot, two paws, and a hoof. The symbol they jokingly adopted one evening after too many sweets, soon after the transformations manifested.

Remus gapes without shame. He doesn’t know what to say facing this monument to themselves.

“I haven’t forgot him,” Sirius whispers.

It breaks them both a little to hear this.

“I know.” Remus’s fingers itch to touch this tattoo – stunning in spite of his apprehension – but he restrains himself when he sees how irritated the skin of the shoulder is. He settles for lying down so that his head rests on Sirius’s sweat-damp stomach. “But it’s not forgetting that’s the problem, Sirius. It’s leaving him behind.”

The body tenses and flexes uncomfortably, and Remus almost expects a real eruption, but once again, it’s swallowed. The repression is smothering, but Remus doesn’t dare tell him to let it out. People get uncomfortably close to dying when Sirius unleashes his fury.

In the end, Sirius says nothing, and for once, Remus refuses to think about how this makes him feel.

-----

Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Remus remained vague about his and Sirius’s rather compromising position during that particular moment, but Harry deduced it on his own. The sixteen-year-old cleared his throat.

“That’s… that’s great. The tattoo he had.” His green eyes sought out the floor, coal-dark lashes fanned against the lavender circles beneath. “Wish I could have seen it.”

“Yes,” Remus agreed, his heart suddenly heavy. “I wish the same.”

Harry got up from his seat awkwardly, joints locked painfully. His legs guided him unsteadily to the fire, which was dying again. He prodded it sharply, building it up the Muggle way for something to do. “When my dad saw it, was he still mad at Sirius?”

“They had a very manly tussle and things improved.”

Remus couldn’t see him, but Harry’s voice was full of smiles. “Good.”

“As you can imagine, your mother wasn’t quite as moved,” Remus said, remembering just how hard Lily had put her foot down when James proclaimed that he wanted one just like it. “But she appreciated the gesture at any rate. Things got a bit easier after that, but it was really when we were out of school and out of each other’s hair that things improved.”

Harry sighed, frustrated. Remus doubted it was directed towards the hearth. “I just… I just don’t understand. He must have gone on about the tattoo at Hogwarts. Right?”

“I seem to recall a fireworks display was involved.”

Harry’s ministrations at the fireplace began to turn violent. “Then how…”

Remus felt the tense muscles in his face begin to soften. “Harry, I know it’s hard for you to understand how we all got to the point we ended up at. Sometimes, I don’t even understand it. Most of what I say is conjecture… I’d argue Peter’s the only one who knows for certain.”

Harry’s shoulders wrenched at the sound of his name.

“Let me put it to you this way,” Remus said. “Everyone in Hogwarts knew everyone else’s business. So, to some degree, just about everyone who knew our names also knew most of what I’ve just told you.”

“But you said you got better!” Harry nearly shouted, vaulting to his feet.

“Yes, but no one saw that,” Remus said, gesturing for quiet with his hands. The last thing he needed was Molly waking up and rushing them off to bed before Remus could give this story with no proper beginning some semblance of an ending. “Unless you happen to keep in touch with Lavender Brown after you leave Hogwarts, which I hope for Ron’s sake you don’t, you’re always going to think of her as you do now. Hogwarts is like a photograph, and everyone’s memories of their classmates are preserved, replaying and unalterable in their minds.

“Yes, once we left Hogwarts, things improved, but no one was around to see that. We were no longer insulated, no longer in constant contact. The very thing that improved relations between us is the very thing that prevented anyone else from realizing it. And so I’m afraid that Sirius was ready-made for his fate.”

The weight of this revelation gave Harry pause, allowing Remus time to recuperate. Reminiscing for him was an act of almost physical agony. With distance, he could pinpoint where things had gone awry, and he could pretend that he had checked himself during that argument or he could finally arrive at the precisely correct thing to say to diffuse a situation. But in the heat of the moment, he had been at a loss. And he had lost so much as a result.

“Is that why…” Harry started, licking his lips. “Is that why Pettigrew… I mean, does that have anything—"

“Yes,” Remus muttered, hanging his head. “Peter benefited the most while we were in Hogwarts. Our constant involvement in his life made up for the fact that he was simply average. You may not believe it, Harry, but he was a great friend. Ironically, it was the one thing he seemed to excel at.

“But then we went our separate ways. James started his life with Lily. Lily kept in touch with me because women are better at those things and we were friends from Prefect days. Sirius and I… Well.”

“Right.”

“We all forgot about Peter,” Remus continued. “We got together when we could, and then of course there were the Order meetings… but it wasn’t the same. Peter needed attention in a different way from Sirius – he never asked for it, so he didn’t receive it. Perhaps if he’d told us, or if one of us had paid more attention.…”

How often he had gone down that fruitless road.

“No sense dwelling on that,” Remus concluded, so quietly he doubted Harry had heard.

“And what about you?”

“I’m sorry?” Remus asked, although the cold fire at the back of his neck suggested that he already knew what this was about.

Harry rotated to face him, the hard look in his eyes making him seem older than just moments before. Even in his discontent at the oncoming query, he felt a sense of pride and hope. There was a man waiting to be unleashed in this boy, and that man might just be able to save them all in the end.

“You loved him, didn’t you? So why did you think he did it?”

Remus looked away, stung by that word he so scarcely said, even now when Sirius was gone. “Love.”

Something in his face or posture made Harry back away. “I didn’t… I mean, I didn’t—"

“It’s fine,” Remus murmured. “Things between Sirius and I were… complicated. Always. And sometimes I…”

A voice from the past, a voice from the dead screamed into his head. ‘For God’s sake, Remus, spit it out already.’

“I know what I felt about your godfather when I knew he was innocent,” Remus concluded. “Everything before that was… something like a hurricane.”

-----

There’s blood in Sirius’s mouth. Remus knows because he tastes it.

They reach for each other when their eyes meet, the first and the last time. They hold each other perfectly steady, lips locked together as if no key could pry them apart. Remus feels as though Sirius will be crushed between his arms, and his head aches from the handful of hair Sirius grips. Remus smells salt and then he feels wetness on his cheek. He has no idea who it belongs to.

They push apart like cars in a collision.

“How could you?” Remus whispers.

“How dare you,” Sirius snarls.

They start to kill each other.

Remus doesn’t know what hexes he’s throwing. He doesn’t know what he’s saying or what Sirius is saying to him. But the storm that they bottled in Sirius back in Sixth Year has finally erupted. Remus swears lightning pours out of his wand, a spell he’s never seen before.

He wonders if it came from Lucius, Bellatrix, or the Dark Lord himself.

But Sirius isn’t the only one with secret spells. He’s been reading lately, learning the worst kinds of magic that’s legal in Britain only because of red tape and bureaucracy. When Remus punches Sirius in the jaw, sending the darker man sprawling to the floor, he remembers one. Remus aims for the back of the left shoulder. He butchers the accent; not the curse.

Fire doesn’t come pouring out of his wand, but it may as well have. The worst smell fills Remus’s nostrils, made that much worse by the lycanthropy. Smoke as dark as ebony rises from Sirius’s flesh, and the traitor begins to writhe, screaming something horrible but not horrible enough. He claws at his robes and rips them away so Remus can see.

The skin is shriveling, dying and turning dark. Blisters form and burst, and the wound moves through the various degrees of burns, maybe past what science has documented. And then it reverses, and from the sounds of it, the healing is worse than the actual wound. The book had said as much, but Remus hadn’t believed it. The black skin lightens and heals; in a few moments, the skin shines with smoothness and vitality. All that’s left is of the curse is Sirius's gasping, smoke, and the smell of burning, rotting flesh.

The tattoo is gone.

“Bastard,” Sirius whispers and leaps up swinging, and the duel continues.

They’re bleeding. They’re swearing. They’re cursing. Every spell in their arsenal flies through the air, impacting a body or a memory of what they were building. Picture frames and jumpers and a couch all up in smoke. A life all up in smoke.

They both use Unforgivables. The crucios hit. The killing curses miss.

Finally, Remus goes flying backward from one spell or another. His back hits the wall, and he bounces off, feeling like a ragdoll discarded by a violent older brother. Sirius crosses the room in a flash, and his hands seek out Remus’s throat. He squeezes the neck he kissed a thousand times. Remus starts to die.

“I ought to tear you up,” Sirius growls. “After everything he did! After everything we’ve been through together, how dare you! How dare you… Stop looking at me like that. Stop. Stop it! Stop crying! Stop crying!”

Remus’s eyes are dry. His hand stretches out for his wand, but it’s fallen too far from his grasp. He clutches at Sirius’s arm, trying to push back the robes, looking for the mark he knows is there.

Suddenly, Sirius lets go. Remus doesn’t hear what he says, but he sees his lips move.

“Traitor,” Remus murmurs before the darkness takes hold. Sirius’s face, pale and frightened, is the last thing he sees. He thinks it’ll be the last thing he’ll ever see, but he’s wrong.

He doesn’t wake up until the next day, until November, until Minerva McGonagall shakes him awake, holds him, and tells him everyone he’s ever loved has left him behind, just like he always feared.

These are the things he will take to his grave.

-----

Remus stands outside the black, frozen walls of Azkaban, wondering how the hell he – and everyone else – got to this point.

James and Lily have been dead for two weeks now. It’s still hard for him to admit. He’s been by Godric’s Hollow no less than four times to see the wreckage. His knees are bruised from buckling and a blood vessel in his left eye has been burst for two days. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to cry again.

Peter’s dead too, although this loss seems somehow separate. Not less important because Peter is… was another brother lost to an unjust war, but at least Peter had gone out in battle. At least he’d confronted an evil Remus hadn’t been able to overcome. Peter died a hero’s death; James and Lily were slaughtered.

He also thinks of Harry, but not for long. Harry isn’t even old enough for Remus to hold, according to Wizarding Law (not that either James or Lily had bothered with this), and now Remus doubts he’s being held at all. He’s met Lily’s sister and brother-in-law, after all.

Sometimes, staring into the bottle of firewhiskey that simply will not make him drunk enough to stand this, he thinks that, when Harry’s old enough, he might see about taking him some weeks. It couldn’t be a permanent arrangement for reasons that leave him more embittered than usual, but even some time away from the Dursleys would be like heaven for the boy.

But Remus suspects it might be like hell to see James and Lily’s child, orphaned and cheated. He doubts he’s strong enough, and he doesn’t need a diviner to tell him that these noble thoughts will be selfishly drowned by his fears and uncertainties.

Then of course there is Sirius. Sirius, who is still alive but more deserving of death than anyone, who Remus used to think of as so loyal, so steadfast, so willing to do anything to protect his friends. Only now does Remus see that Sirius’s protective nature was all too like the toddler who wouldn't share his toys. They’d been his to keep and his to cast aside.

Sirius had gone to Azkaban laughing like a madman, and according to reports, he hadn’t stopped for three days. It had taken him the better part of a week to adjust to his surroundings, to absorb what had happened to him, and to start screaming. And then, less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d asked for Remus.

At least, this is what Dumbledore has told him. Remus has no idea how the old man procured this information, but Remus’s curiosity has been considerably dampened as of late.

(‘He wants to see you,’ Dumbledore had said. ‘There’s something he wants to say.’ A hand had fallen on his shoulder, the first time the Headmaster ever touched him. ‘Don’t go if you’re not prepared.’)

Remus thinks he needs to know what Sirius has to say. He wants a reason, an explanation. He wants an apology. He wants justification for this, somehow. He wants to know what it's like to pretend to grieve, like after giving Hagrid his bike at the Hollow. He wants to know of the look in Peter’s eyes before he met his end. He wants to know what James and Lily did to deserve this. He wants to know how he could hate a little boy so much as to steal his parents away.

And a very, very tiny part of him that would not die wants to hear three non-magic words that could put them back together.

He remembers the mirror and the rock. He thinks of how precarious their lives were, of how he waited for Sirius to explode and ruin it all again. If he’d known, if he’d suspected that taking a few punches and never getting what he wanted might have saved Peter and James and Lily and Harry, he would have done it. He would have let RemusandSirius be ruined; the price hadn’t been worth it.

And the glass is dust now anyway.

(‘Don’t go if you’re not prepared,’ he’d said. ‘He’s not himself. Not anymore.’)

Remus wonders when his lover had changed and how he could have missed it for so long.

He stands there for the better part of an hour, staring up at a random window and imagining it as belonging to Sirius. Then he spins on his heel, shoving trembling hands into his pockets. He doesn’t stop until he reaches the ferry that will take him back. And even then he keeps going, quickly moving towards the toilets. Destination reached, his knees buckle and bruise again. He’s violently sick, but he hasn’t eaten in days. He empties himself of emptiness and then lies down on the floor, drawing his knees inward. He hugs himself because there’s no one left.

“Padfoot,” he whispers for the first time since he was seventeen. He cries for at least one last time.

-----

Hours later, Remus leaves a shop in a neighborhood a more sensible man would fear. It has a name now, but it doesn’t register. Graffiti covers the surrounding brick, and the cracks in the pavement seem more like fault lines. A lamppost is flickering. The power lines swing precariously in the wind. His shoulder throbs with pain.

Later that night, he’ll peel off the bandage and look at this mark. Less of a masterpiece than its predecessor due to its simplicity, but still steeped in meaning. One rat’s foot, one hoof, and two paws, although he’d struggled over that number for hours. It’s a symbol of the past, a reminder of what he’s lost, and a monument to themselves. To what they used to be.

(“You don’t look much like the type to get a tattoo.” “No. No, definitely not.”)

-----

The first shades of dawn peeked through the grimy windows of the Burrow, cold sunlight lighting the dark room as if a much longer night had passed. Remus stretched his legs again, and this time, Harry anticipated the crack.

Harry looked at Remus as though struggling for the words to follow, but Remus knew they didn’t exist. Harry searched for something profound to pull from his vocabulary, a turn of phrase to commemorate his enlightenment. Remus couldn’t be sure if the occasion was momentous enough to warrant it. But he did know that the harder Harry looked, the more the words would elude him. Maybe in ten years, he would know what he should have said. And maybe twenty years later, he would remember having said it.

“I suggest you get to bed, Harry,” Remus said. “We have a few hours yet before the others will be up. I think maybe I can sleep now, after all that. Reminiscing can be exhausting.”

Harry nodded as if he had some idea. Perhaps he did after all that. “I… Pro—I mean, Remus, I—“

“You’re very welcome, Harry.”

He smiled and moved towards the stairs. He paused before ascending but did not turn to see Remus’s face. “Do you think… Maybe when all this is over, you could fill in the blanks?”

“Yes, Harry,” Remus agreed. “Yes, I think I can do that.”

Harry beamed. “Happy Christmas, Remus.”

“Happy Christmas.”

That last goodbye uttered, Harry raced up the stairs in silence, his speed and agility remarkable even for a Seeker destined to save the world. When he was sure Harry would not come back, Remus swung his legs up on to the couch. He pulled a blanket off from the back. He leaned back, settling in, slowly pushing the ghosts out of his head. And then, when all was quiet, he shut his eyes, with only his own persistent thought whispering between his ears.

You’ll be gone by then.

He sighed before drifting off to sleep.

“I know.”

-----

Listening to the tired, somber words of the vicar at the sixth funeral this week, Harry was reminded of that Christmas night not so very long ago. The stories of the glorified dead, all jumbling together so that he can scarcely distinguish between heroic deeds and tragic failings, have brought on the memory he ought to have expected. That night, Remus Lupin told him stories of the dead, although he did not cast them in some silver light that washed away their sins. He told Harry the story of their sins and their mistakes. Harry’s gratitude remained, but with little Teddy squirming in his arms, heedless of the dark atmosphere, he knew he wouldn’t be able to repeat the favor.

Harry bounced the baby for a moment, and Teddy laughed too loudly at an especially inappropriate moment. Hermione briefly gave him a look, as if she could scold a child just a few months old. Ron’s arm tightened around her, and Hermione seemed to remember herself. She flushed and turned her face away, breathing deeply. They’d been going to plenty of funerals as well, though not as many as Harry. He didn’t know how Hermione wasn’t bawling; Lupin had always been one of her favorite professors. She’d never tell him them, but to date, he was the only professor Hermione ever compromised herself for. Possibly, it was the highest compliment she could have paid him.

Ron smiled sadly, though his eyes remained glued to the slightly shorter redhead at Harry’s side. For just a moment, Harry’s eyes drifted down to the girl he still couldn’t quite call his own. But the look on her face when he saw her that morning, the way the tears seemed to constantly leak out of her eyes, the way she leaned on his shoulder so that it seemed she might topple if he refused… he didn’t have the heart to do anything but stand by her.

Harry wished he knew why Ginny was so affected by Lupin’s death. He hadn’t known they were close. Then again, there was quite a bit he didn’t know about Ginny. He looked forward to a time when he could rest, look into her soft brown eyes, and ask her to tell him the story.

Teddy strained and his golden hair suddenly became streaked with red. Harry felt some dim Gryffindor pride swell in his chest, but it faded before it reached it’s height. It was hard to think of Hogwarts without thinking of its fallen walls, and he didn’t have the heart for that. Not today.

“It’s all right, Teddy,” Harry soothed, although the child was easily the most content person within a ten kilometer radius. “It’ll all be over soon.”

But it wouldn’t. Harry knew that. The loss of parents didn’t end with the funeral, not for the child. It resonated, a constant ripple throughout the remainder of a lifetime, peppering and coloring every experience with the knowledge of loneliness. It was a kinship Harry could feel with Teddy, and he knew he would do everything in his power to buffer the pain. He’ll be involved in Teddy’s life to the point of being a bother, and he knew Ginny would do the same, once they were married. This was an inevitability Harry had discovered just after the Battle of Hogwarts, when he realized that although he had done his best to shield her from the battle, he would have been too disappointed to love her if she hadn’t at least tried. They’ll be together forever, and they’ll have their own children. But in a way, Teddy will be their first, or at least his.

Not that Harry’s going to let him forget. Remus’s funeral will be without eulogy at Harry’s request. Those who knew him best have been dead and gone for some time. But over the years, Harry will soak up what stories he can about Teddy’s parents. And he’ll tell Teddy all about how Tonks’s mother turned her back on her family to love the grandfather he never met. He’ll say how much Andromeda loved Sirius, how alike they were, and how much Sirius would have gotten a kick out of Remus’s kid being able to change his hair color from birth. He’ll recount the bravery of his mother, who flew into battle somehow knowing her husband was close to slipping away. He could only hope Teddy wouldn’t feel bitter and abandoned, that he would understand she would have stayed if she’d been able.

But Harry suspects most of his stories will be about his father, a man who carried chocolate in his pockets and devoured books like water. He’ll know his father made mistakes when he was younger and that he spent the rest of his life making up for them. He’ll know that Remus never stopped growing up, up until the day he died. He’ll know his father had some flaws, that he acknowledged them, and that he didn’t let them cripple him. He’ll know his father was a werewolf, but not a monster. He’ll know his father couldn’t get drunk, that his father didn’t like dirt, that his father was cheap, and that his father had many loves and many friends, all of them well deserved. There’s only one thing Harry won’t tell Teddy, and even Hermione will agree with him. There were some things no child should ever know about a parent, and Harry knew it was no disservice to Remus, or the Christmas they shared to withhold it.

In the end, he would tell Teddy about a man with a tattoo.

Harry could only hope he would do them all justice.