The massive gates of Circumstance
Are turned upon the smallest hinge,
And thus some seeming pettiest chance,
Oft gives our life its after-tinge.

The trifles of our daily lives,
The common things scarce worth recall,
Whereof no visible trace survives,
These are the mainstrings, after all

Trifles, Author unknown.

*

And Still

They never had a "honeymoon phase," more because Remus didn't believe in them and he and Sirius had bigger problems to worry about than the lack of an incessant desire to make like rabbits. And as pleasant as lounging in one another's arms was in the waking hours of a gray morning, it was far more pleasant to find open arms at the end of the day, of the week, of the month--to cling and hold and kiss and smell, to breathe in life.

Remus never bothered with too many words, though his day-to-day work made a trade of them. It was almost as if he'd exhausted himself of speaking by evening, and when he'd tumble home from a day of teaching or from secrets he couldn't tell anyone, not even Sirius, he'd simply gather himself on the couch, and drift.

And Sirius would never ask too much, he'd just crawl next to Remus on the faded upholstery and thank some unnamed entity for another day. He'd never put much weight on the Muggle concept of a benevolent God, but it was hard to debate the topic when he came home from the Ministry to find Remus there, too.

It wasn't always like that.

Because when Dumbledore had paused before the cluster of four boys--and they were still boys, Sirius knew now--on their last day at Hogwarts, and told them that they were bound for extraordinary things, he'd been right.

Sirius paused in the doorway, watching the orange lamplight frame the angles of Remus' face. Even as he slept, Remus looked fitful, hands tight along the tattered afghan he'd drawn over himself, eyes screwed shut, as if he were afraid to look and see the world falling apart around him. Only Sirius knew it had to be false--Moony was afraid of nothing. Where the wolf in him backed away from silver and wolfsbane, Remus never let himself surrender to anything.

He took off his coat and crawled onto the couch.

Remus' eyes opened wide enough to recognize him, and then strong, thin arms drew him close, and Remus pressed more tightly against the back of the couch to make room. Dry, warm lips traced the shape of Sirius' brow and he drifted like that, reassured by the blunt, imperfect way that they fit together, all hard angles and familiarity.

"You have classes," Sirius murmured, glad for truancy.

Remus made a round, soft sound that Sirius committed to memory. "Hate students. Bastards," he murmured.

Sirius sighed and closed his eyes to sleep, and prayed he wouldn't dream.

*

Sirius realized that Remus was beautiful on a totally ordinary morning during their sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Remus was--as had been his habit for four months already--ignoring Sirius' existence and reading his Defence Against the Dark Arts book with great intent. James was attempting to negotiate some sort of conversation between himself and Peter as well as watch Remus' profile, while his eyes inevitably darted back to Sirius.

Padfoot, who hadn't been Padfoot for those four months, had been sitting at the end of the table, surrounded by less-important friends and people who didn't know that he was actually a waste of oxygen, useless, and deserved to die painfully. Sirius had been smiling and flirting and as popular as ever, and he wanted to close his eyes and just stop. Remus hadn't spoken to him since that horrible morning, and James hadn't tried to smooth anything over.

But Sirius watched, and he saw how the gray light seemed stroke the curve of Remus' cheek like the hand of a lover, tender and indulgent. Remus' mouth moved as he repeated something quietly to himself, and Sirius realized that Remus was beautiful--like one of those half-flawed creations of nature, utterly asymmetrical and perfect in its singularity. It took a true art critic to stop before a canvas of meshed gray and silver, to narrow learned eyes and really see past a simple wash of paint. Sirius was not an art critic, but he knew Remus, read him like a well-thumbed novel.

Remus was beautiful and bladed, like a katana.

"It's incredible," Remus had commented once, standing in the British museum, watching light glint sharp along a silver blade. "It's utterly deadly and a piece of art." He'd run long, artful fingers along the glass casing, eyes on the display, transfixed. "Mesmerizing, isn't it?"

Sirius remembered that he'd agreed, and that he hadn't been looking at the katana at all.

*

Remus was so predictable, except when he wasn't.

The Daily Prophet said that the carnage was worse than ever, with violence erupting in small bursts in the Balkans. The Ministry said that it was unfortunate but unavoidable; the reserves of Aurors, assigned to protect the central government and the largest Wizarding settlements, would be deployed.

Sirius told Remus he'd be leaving sometime after Wednesday and that when he was measured for his uniform, he'd gained two inches in the waist. He blamed them on Remus and then declared they should probably have sex.

Remus said, "Let's go to the museum."

Sirius looked at him. "Yeah. Okay."

So they went to the museum and looked at Greek and Roman carvings, sacked and stolen from their motherlands, displaced and utterly beautiful all the same. Sirius was starting to draw uncomfortable parallels about the spoils of war, occupation, and beauty in the face of everything, so he looked at Remus instead.

Remus had long, tapered fingers, a physical suggestion of his nearly inhuman grace. Remus was, in all the years that Sirius had known him, always balanced, even as the wolf over rocky forest ground. He had equilibrium, or he forced it. It was a skill Sirius envied but loved the most when observing it in Remus, framed in light or against a background of blinding snow. Or, and he cherished the memory most dearly, that one night in London, Remus' face red from liquor or blushing or some combination therein, falling prey to gravity and Sirius' clumsiness with words, a dazzle of streetlights behind him, lighting up his eyes. It was rare and perfect, the beginning of something important and essential.

All of a sudden, Sirius was angry, enraged. He wanted to break every piece of glass in the museum, to press Remus to the broken shards and watch him bleed, eyes terrified and surprised and off-center--for once. To have Remus on his back and unprepared and ask him, "Why, Remus? Why haven't you noticed? You notice everything."

Sirius didn't know if he was angrier that Remus gave him reason to doubt, or that Sirius doubted, or that Remus hadn't realized yet, and didn't bother to contradict.

"Sirius, look," Remus said, voice low like a prayer.

Sirius pretended that it was. The museum was practically their church, after all. A gathering of things old and fairly new, Muggle and magical (but unexplained), locked behind glass that reflected light and color and the excited or bored expressions of those who wandered through, seeking quiet or enlightenment, or just for the sheer love of it.

They were standing in front of the katana again, and Remus said, "It's astounding."

"Yeah," Sirius said, aching for a drink. "It is."

They went home two hours later and Remus fucked Sirius senseless against the front door. They fell asleep half-dressed, curled around one another in bed. Nobody said "I love you." It didn't seem appropriate.

*

The Ministry was in an unspeakable rush, and when activity did not shroud the tension, it settled in pools that overflowed and drifted into conversations.

The Aurors were gathered in the Central Command room, a magically built chamber with doors that opened to every square inch of the Ministry and several of the larger settlements in the London area. There was also one odd curtain that opened up to the second-largest meat freezer in Harrods, but no one had ever bothered to explain why or how it had gotten mixed into the ports. Sirius had an involved theory about lazy Aurors, curiosity, and a recipe for London Broil, but he'd always saved funny, strange stories like that for Remus, and Remus rarely had the energy to hear them anymore.

Now, they found one another by accident, drifting home at the same time to be surprised that the other was there. They brushed their lips like old lovers and embraced like old men--they didn't cry or make love, but they touched, like telling one another all those secrets they were not allowed through tactile whispers, and hoping it was enough.

When Sirius pressed a chaste kiss to Remus' left temple, what he meant was the Ministry was monitoring werewolf activity, and Remus would be magically followed everywhere he went and have his every move recorded. What Sirius said when he breathed heavily on Remus' shoulder was that so many Aurors were dying every day but the Ministry was keeping the details locked tight. What he was trying to say when he stroked the palm of Remus' hand was there were so many secrets that were killing Sirius to keep.

And when Sirius breathed, he meant, "I love you," to make up for all the times he didn't say it out loud.

The system, to some extent, worked. Sirius knew of the Order of the Phoenix, though only because he worked in Ministry Intelligence. He'd watched, despairing, as the familiar, well-loved line of Remus' back disappeared from the werewolf tracking map, and alarms had screamed. The inevitable connections were drawn and all the enemies that Sirius couldn't fathom Dumbledore having came out of the woodwork, condemning whatever little militant group that the wizard had put together as foolhardy and daft--wasteful and thoughtless, diverting much-needed talent and skill to unorganized pursuits instead of focusing on Ministry war strategy.

No one ever commented when a certain group of werewolves or vampires appeared out of the woodwork during battles to join the Light side. Sirius knew why.

He went home and held Remus tight if he was there. Or if he wasn't, Sirius waited, and prepared gauze and bandages and felt himself tense as he reread old healing spells from a book he'd bought years ago, while he was still in Hogwarts. Remus would come home, oftentimes bloody and bruised, and neither of them would say a word as Sirius patched him up.

But Sirius knew that Remus knew it, understood the slide of Sirius' palm against Remus' thigh as he secured another bandage or pressed a gauze pad to a new gash really meant that Sirius was so proud. That Sirius loved him. That Sirius would never, ever let the Ministry hurt him. Sod them, anyway. Sirius would quit and join the Order. He'd stand by Remus' side and neither of them would be hurt--they worked better together.

None of the sentimental sop ever came out, because when Sirius opened his mouth to speak, Remus always kissed him, or hushed him with a look, and their unspoken agreement would remain just that--silent.

Sirius spent his lunch hour sitting with Peter in the Ministry communications office, helping him write owls to families telling them that their husband or wife or child had died. Peter told stupid jokes and Sirius laughed at all of them, even though he'd heard most before at school, and had certainly informed Peter of how terrible they were.

We regret to inform you, Sirius wrote, that Dylan Prewett passed in the line of duty. He'd written the words around the names so many times they were automatic, and he no longer had any idea what they meant.

He wondered morbidly what Remus would do if he got one of those owls. Or, if Remus would receive the owl at all. Two men shacking up was hardly considered a legitimate relationship, and Sirius had seen the Ministry rulebooks on what degree of romantic attachment had to be established in order for a person to warrant an owl. Being related by blood or marriage was the only guarantee. Sometimes, in his darkest moments or between briefings, Sirius would panic that if he died, the owl would go straight to his godforsaken mother, and Remus would be left to wonder and worry while Kreacher celebrated and his mother nodded in approval.

Worse, maybe Remus wouldn't worry. Maybe all those Ministry briefings about "privileged knowledge" were correct, and the werewolves had been drafted ages ago.

Sirius knew they were wrong. They had to be. He'd served three days suspension after punching one of his colleagues and breaking the man's nose for suggesting otherwise.

The Ministry offers their deepest condolences.

Peter had told him, very early on during the war, how the Ministry of Magic had actually researched the best way to inform a person their loved one had died. "They settled on firm but kind," Peter said in a white-faced hush.

Sirius hated the Ministry.

"I--I hear Remus keeps disappearing off the map," Peter said, quiet. He grabbed another sheet of rich, cream-colored vellum and dipped his quill daintily, a flick of the wrist. Sirius never thought Peter was graceful--he was too clumsy for that, but there was a practiced smoothness in his actions, and Sirius' stomach turned at the realization that it was the names of hundreds and thousands of people who had given Peter such fluidity of motion.

Sirius narrowed his eyes and tore a sheet of the vellum into pieces.

Peter looked away. "Sirius I know that--"

"Don't," Sirius warned, a dangerous growl in his voice. "Don't start that shit with me."

"I didn't--"

"Then shut the fuck up," Sirius barked. "Just shut the fuck up."

Peter sighed and wrote another notice. Sirius destroyed more vellum.

*

Sirius pulled his scarf from his shoulders and threw it on the coat rack Lily had given them as a shagging gift. Remus had scoffed and Sirius had grinned. "Only you," Remus had said, a vague, affectionate smile on his face, and leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. And Sirius, despite knowing better, had pulled the man back toward himself, fingers tightly twined with Remus' and told Lily to stop poaching--she'd had her chance and she'd chosen James, of all the stupid decisions.

He smiled, bitter and tired. They all had their stupid decisions.

He wondered why Remus decided to tempt fate. He wondered why Remus couldn't be content, or even just suffer to stay within the confines of London, why he couldn't do something for Sirius and not make his own life difficult.

At the end of their seventh year at Hogwarts, with Remus off to immerse himself in the Muggle world, Sirius had allowed himself to breathe evenly for the boy for the first time. It was stupid and ignorant, but in Muggle London there was the idle hope that Remus would be normal, be well-loved, be happy and find that center he needed so desperately. Remus seemed to enjoy his job, and Sirius enjoyed watching him enjoy things.

And he hadn't known it then, but that was love, the deepest, most meaningful part of love. It had established itself and taken root as early as their seventh year at Hogwarts; fondness tempered with a good-natured concern, a tightening in his chest at Remus' discomfort or joyfulness, that slight palpitation, the dry mouth, when Remus grinned, wild and careless and so young--as he'd always deserved.

Instantly, the frustration welled up in his throat again.

Sirius was supposed to be the stupid one; he'd predominantly masterminded or spearheaded the stupid things done en masse in the past, and done enormously stupid things on his own. Remus was the wise, patient, and crafty one. He was supposed to make good decisions, or at least fake it well.

It was hard not to attack Remus as he came through the door, to not lock his fingers around Remus' neck and yell at him to just stop it. The Order could go fuck itself; Sirius needed Remus to be safe, to not be under suspicion. Sirius knew what the "trials" for werewolves were like now; he knew that they were not trials and that he'd be forced to write James an inconvenient note telling them to find a new secret keeper; Sirius was about to die along with his lover.

Instead, as Remus' familiar shadow fell across the worn plank floor, Sirius managed a near smile. He said, "Back early today."

Remus looked tired, drawn, and brittle. He looked as if Dumbledore had instructed him to do something in that brilliant, soothingly manipulative way of his and Remus had done it at his own expense. Sirius entertained vivid thoughts of firebombing Dumbledore's office, of tying Remus to their bed, of running away to America and of buying Remus Izod sweaters and going to see musicals. There was so much more to their lives than half-truths and the space in between two separate, screaming lies.

Sirius wanted more. He'd had it, so briefly.

"Canceled my afternoon class," Remus said, his voice hoarse. Warm, amber eyes grew warmer, and as Remus' hands--long, artful fingers Sirius had loved long before he'd admitted to loving Remus entirely--unbuttoned his coat, Remus said, "I wanted to spend some time with you."

It seemed significant and so darkly hopeful.

For a moment, he was bathed in the orange light from the sinking sun, and they were back in this apartment for the first time, surrounded in boxes and covered in dust, exhausted and half-drunk on cheap lager Remus had bought at the corner store. Sirius had still been (technically) heterosexual and Remus was having it off with Leslie, though at the time Sirius assumed it was a woman.

He remembered thinking he was in love with Remus, just the way he was, draped like a mess on the couch, a tangle of wild, mussed hair, and a dark flush on his too-thin face. They were fabulous, Sirius had decided, just like that.

And now, not much older but considerably wiser, Remus cocked his head to the side with a nervous frown on his lips. "You--you don't seem happy."

Sirius smiled, honest for the first time in months and reached out his hand. Remus caught his fingers, automatic, rehearsed, familiar and warm, the frown fading.

"Happy is more than words, Remus," Sirius chastised, and pulled Remus closer.

The fact that Remus allowed himself to be led to the couch and petted like a child told Sirius exactly how tired Remus was. Sirius stroked Remus' hair, fingers carding through fine strands, brown and sun bleached, thumb tracing the curve of Remus' brow. Remus, too tired to act like an adult or insulted, buried his face in Sirius' stomach and made snuffling noises, breathing shallowly, drifting into and out of sleep, his fingers wound tightly in the fabric of Sirius shirt.

It seemed important, and Sirius was glad for it.

He looked down at Remus, half-sleeping in his lap, and prayed to a God he'd never much petitioned that Remus would continue to hold on--if to nothing else, Sirius thought with a feverish desperation, then let Remus hold him.

*

Sirius woke up at seven thirty in the morning and Remus wasn't there. His side of the bed was cool to the touch and there were clothes scattered about the floor. It meant one of two things; that Remus had a morning class or that he had Order--Dark Order? Don't be stupid, Sirius thought in horror--business.

Remus had never had a morning class. Remus dressed in his shabbiest clothes and watched soap operas until noon but wouldn't admit to it.

Sirius put on some pants and grabbed his robes. He stuck his wand in his back pocket and he didn't care if he hexed his own arse off.

He went to work before eight o'clock and snarled at six people.

At noon, he went to visit Peter, and they talked around the subject.

Peter said, "Is Remus still doing it?"

Sirius said, "Fuck you." Then he paused and whispered, "Remus isn't like that."

Peter, so earnest it hurt, wide-eyed and new and just as tremulous as Sirius felt at that moment, only nodded and addressed another sheet of vellum. He picked up his quill and nodded again, as if to reassure himself. "No. You're right. This is stupid."

Sirius agreed.

When he Apparated home six minutes later and tore through all of Remus' things in a blind, stupid panic, he agreed, too.

*

All the Aurors had the afternoon off, and Sirius didn't bother going back to work after his minor fit of insanity during lunch. He stared at the ocean of clothes and personal affects he'd spilled onto the floor of their bedroom and thought about the important part of that sentiment: their.

Sirius knew self-loathing like an old lover, understood its curves and moods, remembered its taste flooding his mind and dulling sensation into a gray-blue blur. Self-loathing introduced itself in primary school, milling about in hideous shorts and a gray v-neck sweater, barely a child, dressed as a tiny adult, being berated by his mother for associating with the Muggle children. A larger awareness arose at Hogwarts, screaming and sharp and fringed with dark brown lashes: Remus' amber eyes burning with a fierceness Sirius had never known with any depth before. Sirius would never forget; he was too frightened to do so; what if he did it again?

He never wanted to hurt Remus--Moony. Either. Both.

Sirius wanted different, softer, very embarrassing things. Sirius wanted a nice brownstone in Camden, with front steps so he could put his failed attempts at combining Herbology and Potions in terra cotta pots on the landing and frighten the neighborhood mothers. He wanted Remus to glare at him and say that putting man-eating foliage out on a Muggle street was both rude, stupid, and a serious sign of declining mental health. Sirius wanted Remus to have a library so that he'd stop stacking his books on sofas and atop the newly-folded laundry. Sirius wanted James and Lily to stop changing owls every few days and talking about their safety in vague terms; he wanted instead to clap Harry (grown a bit, of course) on his back and give him his first broom. James would cry and Remus and Lily would roll their eyes and act suspiciously like a couple.

Sirius wanted to ask Remus, "If I bought a ring, would you wear it?" even though it'd mean nothing (and everything).

Sirius wanted to love Remus, as well as he'd promised to do when Remus had promised to take a chance on him.

He lay on the floor, stared at their ceiling, and hated himself deeply.

Remus was out, saving the world from what the Ministry refused to acknowledge, and Sirius was tearing through Remus' things, throwing his life, their life into disorder.

Sirius wanted more than a modicum of happiness--though he'd settle for even that now.

All the Aurors had the afternoon off.

To relax, the Ministry told them, before heading off.

To say goodbye, was what everyone heard.

Sirius hated "goodbye." He refused to say it. He would clean up his mess and he would love Remus as well as he could, say that he was sorry with no words and grieve for all the other things that had to remain silent, too.

*

Sirius made dinner and Remus came home with three broken fingers. Sirius waved his wand over Remus' hand while a pot bubbled cheerfully behind them in the kitchen; he realized then his deepest fear was that this half-life of theirs would become mundane.

"Slammed in a door," Sirius repeated dully. He stared at Remus and didn't bother to pretend to believe him. "That sounds hideous, Moony. You ought to fail that student."

Remus nodded, moving his newly-healed hand. His voice was quiet. "Yes. Certainly an ugly shock, but I hardly think an--" and Remus paused, unnaturally "--accident warrants a failure." Remus glanced up and smiled at Sirius, warm and real and very there, unfamiliar after so long apart, Sirius supposed, but it shocked a grin out of him. "I saw Harry today," Remus said.

"How is he?" Sirius asked, getting up from the table and turning to the stove.

He'd spent five hours putting their bedroom back in order after he'd cast a Seek spell on it, as if Remus was a common criminal or an uncommon Death Eater, as if Remus was a dark creature. The man he'd loved for longer than he was entirely certain had come home with three broken fingers and a type of exhaustion that seeped into all the empty spaces in the room. His best friend was in hiding with his newborn and his wife; they were terrified. He was going off to fight a dark war in the morning and the soup wasn't cooking quickly enough.

"He's wonderful," Remus said, genuinely pleased. "He's fat and curious and he slobbered on my wand."

Sirius cast Remus an amused stare. "I hope that's not as illegal and horrible as it sounds."

Remus narrowed his eyes. "You're a sick, sick man, Padfoot."

Sirius supposed he was; he'd said any number of utterly inappropriate things regarding Harry and wands and the Freudian interpretation of baby bottles and pacifiers. It had taken the combined efforts of Remus and Lily to shut him up; James had only looked mildly startled, as if suddenly aware of how terribly obscene he'd been all those years, finally enlightened when the victim was his son. And then James had hexed Sirius' hair orange and that had been the end of that.

"You've been saying that for years," Sirius croaked.

The exchange was so familiar that it grew into a physical ache.

Sirius looked at Remus and Remus looked back.

They were a secret not because they were ashamed, but because Sirius had always suspected it was fragile. Sun would bleach it and wind would tear it and prying eyes and ears would only put them off-center. If Sirius had his way, he'd shout it from the rooftops; Remus would be properly tattooed "Property of Sirius Black." (And if Sirius was realistic, he'd let himself imagine the arched line of Remus' brow, and he'd admit that he'd be the one marked.)

He was so tired. He wanted to break down, to drink the Veritaserum he knew Remus was holding for Dumbledore, hidden between the cut-away leaves of an old book of Muggle fairytales. He wanted an excuse, any excuse, to cling to Remus and tell him everything.

"I love you," Sirius said, three words he meant all the time.

Remus regarded him in surprise. "I know, Padfoot."

It was enough to make Sirius want to scream.

But then Remus' hand crept to his underneath the table as they ate dinner, and their fingers wound together.

It was, Sirius thought with dull finality, as close as they could manage.

*

Remus taught Sirius new things every day, whether it was the true nature of a Muggle telephone, or that the silence wasn't always awkward or sleepy: sometimes, it was reverent.

Remus played with Sirius' fingers.

"You remind me of my family," Sirius said finally.

He felt the curve of Remus' thigh against his own legs and it was good. He could feel the rise of Remus' hip, almost haughty, against his belly and he liked how they were curled together, like sleepy puppies, canines at rest. Moony and Padfoot had always howled together: it only made sense that Remus and Sirius would finally do so, as well.

And stupidly so, it had been a surprise to Sirius.

That drunken night after Sirius' impromptu confession and Remus' spectacularly bad reaction, Sirius had simply taken Remus' warning words at face value: there was hope, a sliver of possibility. And Sirius would change for him, change desperately and feverishly; he'd throw everyone who he'd ever been mean or cruel to a parade if necessary. But Remus had only wanted little things, and a frown or a sigh was enough to let Sirius know that he'd gone too far, or was about to toe the line.

Sirius had never hoped...

Remus had always been too good for him, anyway; it was a fact reinforced daily.

Remus made a disgusted noise. "Christ, Sirius."

"Not like that," Sirius argued, voice still soft. He looked at Remus, memorizing the soft, tawny color of him. Remus was more than a collection of memories for Sirius, he'd always been an exact shade of the morning. That dusty, orange, brown, and faint gold trace of light that outlined windows and doorways and seeped into deeper brown shadows. Remus was a warm sensation that filled Sirius and melted to the tips of his fingers.

He ran his knuckles over Remus' mouth and said, "You're...overwhelming."

Sirius frowned at himself. It was moments like these that he debated whether a Muggle education would be more useful; certainly, Sirius could turn into a large black dog at will but he was having trouble stringing together sentences. No wonder Muggles had more progeny. (Though, by all accounts, Arthur and Molly Weasley were desperately trying to make up the difference.)

Sirius grinned and Remus raised his eyebrows. "Overwhelming and quiet," Sirius started again. "Like a wave--or, no, like sunrise." He kissed the line of Remus' jaw and felt the sheets slide against his skin. They were real; this was real; Sirius needed reminding of that sometimes. "All orangey light filling the room and you never even notice it until it's already there," Sirius murmured.

It was inelegant, but it was truth. Sirius loved truth, craved it like a drug.

Remus looked at him a long time before he shoved Sirius down on the mattress, a feral, distressed expression on his face. Hazel eyes were wild and Remus' familiar, wonderful hands were stroking circles onto Sirius' shoulders, possessive, marking him with each soft, repetitive motion. And hands drew down and bodies slid against one another in a familiar, achingly slow crawl of skin and the softened curve of familiar bone, worn and warm to the touch.

This was their world, small and dark and dusty around the edges, but contained and all that they needed. Sirius wanted to mark off the street from the north side right behind Vincent's Pub and end the universe just past Hyde Park. The Ministry was unnecessary and so were wands and wars and Wizarding families; he and Remus would make their own magic.

Afterward, breathing deeply and barely awake, all Sirius knew was the feel of Remus' chest against his back and the sound of Remus' breathing. It should have felt claustrophobic, small, stifling to be so totally immersed in a person; Sirius knew it had felt that way before. But right then, at that exact moment, Sirius had no where else to go, no where else he'd rather be--no one could take him away.

Sirius thought it felt like drowning, like watching the lights shimmer and swim above him as the dark, deep blue closed around him like living fingers of water. Night wrapped around their flat and enclosed London in a mist of rain; Remus was wrapped around Sirius and held him in the rush of water and waves, of dreams and the next best thing to sleep: drifting.

"You'll come back," Remus said, half-question, half-command.

Sirius nodded. "Yeah. And you--you be here," he whispered.

And they slept until dawn broke like a golden flood over the city.

*

None of Sirius' friends were in his battalion. He worked with people he had professional "friendships" with, and no one he would have trusted in a trench or a Muggle foxhole.

It was the only good thing that had happened since he'd left home. He heard horror stories about Aurors returning only to have endless night terrors about their friends dying in combat, flayed to pieces, bodies desecrated by the Death Eaters.

It didn't change the fact that every time Sirius closed his eyes, he saw oceans of hateful green light, arcing this way and that, death in a glorious, Technicolor rainbow.

The forces of Light took one or two tricks from the American Magical Army, which had dispatched forces to the shaky borders in the Balkans and Poland. The officers patrolling the latter location thought it was hilariously funny, for some reason, and when Sirius had asked them one time, Private David Garrison had only waved him off, smirking, and said that maybe American institutions had the right idea to keep teaching Muggle history even in Wizarding schools.

Remus would know. Remus would tell Sirius a complicated story about the political and social infrastructure of the Balkan region, and say, "Sirius, why do you want to know about Albania anyway? It's not really even a Balkan country."

Sirius would ask Remus--later.

What Sirius knew already, with a deep resentment, was that his good marks under Moody's tutelage had earned him this spot on an elite team. They had been sent to the worst place in the world--no questions asked, a last stand against Voldemort's encroaching territories and vast armies, in some vague, half-assed attempt to keep the Death Eaters out of Western Europe, at least. The ports in Albania were some of the last to remain in the hands of Light forces in Eastern Europe, and should Shëngjin, Vlorë, or Durrës fall, then the wounded and disjointed forces that treated those three harbors as their last hope would simply perish; whether from ugly reality or war, Sirius didn't know and almost didn't care.

There were mass influx of refugees from Greece and Yugoslavia, Serbian women and children, terrified and crowded into holding areas in France and Germany and England alike: asked first to surrender their wands, and then checked for the Dark Mark before the possibility of help was offered. Peter told Sirius stories, and Sirius pretended they were lies, just as he pretended what he and Remus told one another was truth.

The world was a negative exposure, he thought bitterly.

It was two twenty-six in the morning, and he had thirty-four minutes before he was sure another round of vicious battles would begin. He had ten minutes before he needed to circle the compound and right the wards again, stroke the spellstones and awaken them, until he'd feel his own magic draining and faltering, exhausted as carnage went about him just the same. It was those wards that kept the injured safe, protected their supplies, made an artificial eye in the storm.

His superiors and subordinates respected him and they hated him in equal measure; they thought he was haughty and they knew his family name. It was hard to ignore the low, murmured whispers over meals, about how he was related to the Malfoys or "related to the Malfoys my arse, he's related to the whole bloody lot of them."

Everyone called Sirius "Black," always with a bark, as if they knew his Animagus form.

*

Sirius, on a leave weekend two months ago, had run into Frank Longbottom, who was what everyone called "conspicuously married."

It wasn't until afterward that Sirius realized he was conspicuously married, too. The barmaids always seemed to know that he was mostly off-limits, and those who didn't usually got a pleasant reminder from Sirius' friends and fellow soldiers at arms. "Watch it," they'd say, grinning and winking, "that one's having it off already--what about giving us a bit of attention?"

No one knew Remus. No one knew about a lovely, hassled werewolf English professor, who only hated some of his students and wanted to wring Shakespeare's neck after four and a half years of grading the same literary analysis. No one knew about his tendency to use his wand as a bookmark and talk about Labor and Torries (whatever those were) to Sirius over dinner.

They just knew Sirius and Sirius' stories. They knew about a comfortable, untidy flat in East End, about afternoon matinees and about the Bengali sweetshop Sirius went to all the time and how he'd put on two inches because he ate like a mad thing. They knew that Sirius was hideously and disgustingly in love and that there was a genuine danger of Sirius Black not shutting up if they allowed him to start talking about his life in London at all. They also knew that Sirius switched his pronouns a lot, by accident or design or just the rumored Black family madness, and they'd long since stopped asking. But "Moony" was a nickname and Moony was a perfect and great and constant presence, like screams on the battlefield.

The "conspicuously married" members of the brigade were mostly seen writing long letters in their free time, ink soaking permanent black marks on their fingers, and looking jealously at Sirius' pristine collection of ballpoint pens. Sirius had nicked them out of Remus' desk the morning he left, tucked them along with about a dozen packs of chewing gum into the pockets of his fatigues and boarded the magical carpet (more like a barge, really) to God knew where.

Fucking Albania.

Sirius hated Albania.

Portal to the Eastern Theatre, his commanding officer (a portly wizard named Troust) had described. One of the most important areas of battle. They were protecting free movement of troops and supplies. "You," Troust had said importantly, "are vital."

Sirius felt someone poke him in the ribs. Hissing a curse under his breath, he turned to glare at whoever had done it, only to see Ralph Archer grinning at him.

"What?" he asked. Ralph wasn't a day over eighteen and Sirius wanted to know just what the fuck the Ministry thought it was doing, throwing a child into the fray.

Archer fell back lengthwise across Sirius' bunk, which aside from being a gross violation of personal space was annoying on principle because Sirius was trying to brood. Not that eighteen year olds had any concept of personal space or cared at all. Archer peered around to see if anyone was watching, rolled over on his side, and whispered loudly, eyes bright and excited, "They're not checking the mail anymore!"

Sirius' eyes narrowed. "What?"

Ralph grinned. "They're not checking the mail! Today, Gerald went to mail a letter to his mum and no one came out with the Wizarding pens," he said happily. "I thought you'd want to know," Ralph added, smirking. "Perfect chance to write something absolutely scandalous to your lady Moony."

Sirius scowled and threw a sock at Ralph Archer's head.

*

Sirius wrote four pages about how he missed the way they drank tea together, and decided maybe there was some sort of magical age where private letters to one's lover stopped being gleefully dirty romps and turned into reminders about taking out the trash.

He'd tried to be wicked and write nasty, wonderful things, but he got so far as describing how he wanted to take off Remus' pants before he realized exactly what Remus would be doing if he read the letter. Laughter, no matter whether or not it was to Sirius' face, was nothing good for his libido, and Sirius scrapped his earlier attempts and settled down to write what he'd been intending to all along: something intimate and wistful.

He didn't talk about the war or talk about how much he hated Albania.

Sirius was clever and funny and preternaturally bright. He talked about his army fatigues making him look gorgeous and how he'd spent the three and a half months away from home looking for somewhere private to have a nice wank. He told Remus how everyone thought he was a woman, and that maybe that should be an indication that Remus' little obsession with Jane Austen was a tad on the girly side.

But the nagging question lingered in the back of his mind; things weren't as uncomplicated in his world as they were in Ralph's. There had to be a reason why the mail wasn't being censored any longer. It couldn't be that they were in safe territory; they were at the very forefront of danger. They were losing dozens of men per day and letting mail come and go freely was stupid and nearly impossible. Nor did Sirius think that revealing their specific locations was no longer an issue, as the front in Albania was one of the most important in the Eastern Theatre. Even the Ministry wasn't stupid enough to risk the ports there.

So Sirius started off toward the temporary Owlery for the second time that day, a large black dog bounding out into the night.

*

The Albanian national flag was red with a black, two-headed eagle in the center, and it fluttered disconsolately against the night sky. Over the mountains, the heavens were fringed with a melting band of paler blue, like watercolor bleeding out against the edges of the paper in a wash of water. The stars were there, high and thick and sparkling above the camp.

Padfoot disliked the new, unfamiliar smell of Albania, the stench of poverty, and the aching, unsettling lack of Moony. There wasn't any Moony or Padfoot or Wormtail to be found there at all--his pack was missing and it seemed very far away.

And his human counterpart wouldn't allow it, but Padfoot would: he ached, a physical pain somewhere in the neighborhood of his chest, a lingering hollowness that desired to defect and go back. Sirius and Padfoot wanted to simply flee, run and swim and Floo back to London, back to familiar arms and James and Peter and Remus. Padfoot missed Moony, missed Bengali sweets that were always that much more wonderful on the tongue of a dog and the rich, complicated smell of East End. Padfoot wanted to turn up his nose at the Thames and hear Remus laugh.

The war was a slow grind, a constant pressure on his brain and in his ears that manifested like a high-pitched wail. It gave him a headache and Sirius--Padfoot couldn't quite think clearly, not with the drone. He was always short of breath and he felt as if he was just balancing on the edge of wakefulness, that careful line between morning and night that yielded a dreamlike state, something close to catatonia. He hurt all the time; it was easier if he thought it would pass when he slept, or leave when he woke.

Padfoot tossed his head, too proud to be bogged down.

Beneath his paws the ground was reassuring, not the cool or too-hot cement and asphalt that Moony seemed to prefer but the cool, earthy dust, real ground. There was the lush smell of blood and death and life, crowded all together on a backdrop of damp night air; new and hitherto unknown vegetation seemed amazingly interesting, and Padfoot was almost tempted to mark new territory; less that he wanted it than he wanted to say that he owned land in Albania--Moony would be impressed.

No matter what Padfoot did, though, the smell of blood and grief still permeated.

Even in London, where there was the sickly-sweet stench of rotting garbage, the oily, dizzying haze of gasoline in cars and the ever-present heaviness of ozone pressing down on his head, Padfoot could turn this way or that, and catch a faint memory on the air. Either a whiff of James turning the corner, arms heavy with strawberries and natto, a half-wild look in his eyes as he ranted about Lily threatening to kill him if he did not return successfully from his shopping trip, or Peter waving one hand, fingers smelling oddly of ink and blood.

He padded along the damp grass until he reached the rocky, scraggly hill, where little vegetation grew. He remembered seeing owls, dozens of them, sometimes soaring over it, across and down, dipping and fluttering, wings over the Adriatic sea and toward England and further. They were free to leave and come and that was their duty to the war; for a moment, Padfoot hated his shaggy fur, his large, blue eyes, and the tough paws he walked on: he wanted to be an owl, and he wanted to go home--or at the very least, he didn't want to be bound to the earth, trapped in a hole.

Padfoot made an irritated chuffing noise, and clearing his head, started toward the top of the hill. He saw three owls swoop overhead, and hurried his pace. It was stupid, and impossible, but he thought he saw his own letter, in a yellowing envelope, fly above him in the claws of a large, brown barn owl.

It was the scent that hit him first, something frightening and all-too-familiar, a vague outline of events in his head that tasted a bit too much like carnage --

And then Padfoot was running, frightened, worried, and as he reached the top of the hill he saw it, blue eyes widening.

Birds, owls, dozens of them, fell from the sky in a silent spray of feathers and blood.

Letters, envelopes, heavy packages and tiny trifles, fell from their claws and fluttered to the ground amidst the ruins, and Padfoot watched, mute and terrified and so utterly alone, as Death Eaters, camped just over the hill, set fire to the corpses.

*

Two months later, Sirius made a decision.

"Give me news, Peter," Sirius said desperately. "Any news."

Peter's voice was a bit distorted over the line, but the disgusted amusement was there and clear as bells. "Sirius, you are news. All I have here for your amusement is the fact that Remus finds WHAM radio enormously funny and he refuses to explain why."

Sirius laid his cheek flat against the battered table and listened to the crackle of static over the line. He was alone in the communications tent and he was in no mood to do his job. Distant, far enough so that he could pretend it wasn't happening, he heard shouting as groups of Aurors continued to secure the lines of wards and protection spells guarding Light's last stand in Eastern Europe. Technically, Sirius was supposed to be giving incredibly important information from the front to Peter, but there were moments in between utter disasters, time enough to ask a few mundane questions about home.

"It's a sound effect, Pete," Sirius said.

There was shuffling--was that shuffling?--in the background before Peter muttered, "He says something about Muggle bands and really horrible coincidences." There was a brief, irritated pause before Peter added, "I think he should be grateful that the Wizarding Ham Radio network is still working."

Sirius laughed. "I'm sure. Since, you know. It's helping him lots."

He was going insane.

James had posited that the blessed event would occur before the end of their seventh year at Hogwarts, and had been proven wrong--depending on whose view. Remus only rolled his eyes and said he'd never put much weight on Sirius' sanity, period, past, present, or future. Peter was gentler about it, at least, and liked to tell Sirius that being sane was a matter of opinion, really.

But it was different, shockingly so, when it wasn't a laughing admission or accusation or a sly glare from someone who loved you.

It was different, horribly so, when Sirius found himself standing in the far corner of a battlefield, propped up against a tree, feeling every break in his ribs and every year of his age, bark digging into the deep gouge in his shoulder, and watching Ralph Archer, all eighteen years of him, stumbling, kneeling, and falling into the dust. And Sirius had disliked that frightening, teetering knowledge as he'd backed away, closer to safety and toward the line of spellstones that marked out the far limits of the Aurors' camp. Sirius was a bastard but he was a heroic one, and he had just left a child dead in the bland nothingness of Albania, the air electric with the smell of blood and fear.

Ralph was dead before he'd hit the ground, Sirius knew, and told himself over and again as Troust exercised his not-inconsiderable medical skills over Sirius' newly garnered wounds. There wasn't anything Sirius could have done for the boy, and no one was stupid enough to try Accio, not since the Death Eaters had figured out how turn Avada Kadavra into a chained spell, one that would continue to affect whoever touched the bodies it claimed.

And Sirius, seeing it for the first time, had run off to throw up in the bushes behind the mess tent and didn't mention how he'd seen a spell-chain for the first time at a Black family Christmas many years back. One of his much-older Malfoy cousins was showing younger versions of the same evil how to extend a Jelly-legs curse to its full potential. Sirius remembered laughing and he remembered trying to recall how to create a spell-chain while at Hogwarts, since one Slytherin with pink robes just simply didn't stand in the face of a possible hundred.

It wasn't funny anymore. Nothing was.

It didn't mean Sirius didn't feel crazy, it meant he reassessed things.

He'd liked the color green, once very long ago, and had even owned a robe in a dark, luxurious shade of it. His mother had stroked his hair--before she'd realized what a miserable shame he was upon the Black family name--and complimented how handsome he was, how regal.

Now all he could see was the killing curse, floating out like green butterflies and everything rotting where it touched. Sirius was having trouble breathing and no one could figure out what was wrong with him. Everyone said, "Jesus, Black," with the same bark, but a new pity in their eyes, as if they knew he was good now, only too late because the poor bastard was completely nuts.

Totally fucking insane was a lot less fun than he'd anticipated.

The long silence over the line was a waste of time, Sirius berated himself. Any moment, someone would rush into the tent and shriek about some communiqué that had to be passed on immediately and the gloriousness of an open line and free conversation would be gone. There were dozens of things Sirius wanted to know and wanted to ask but what lingered in his mind most clearly was the horrible, claustrophobic sensation of being locked into a box, and seeing the slivers of light disappear slowly. So slowly he could nearly convince himself he was only seeing things, until night fell permanently. No personal communications of any kind had passed in eight and a half weeks, and Sirius felt like he was drowning in distance.

"Aren't you going to ask about Moony?" Peter asked.

Sirius made a gruff noise. Asking about Moony was a visceral reaction, one he had to fight tooth and nail; asking about Moony frequently meant finding out things he didn't want to know. Visits that weren't necessarily Order related, little brushes with darkness, tiny hints toward an obvious answer that wasn't obvious at all--Remus wasn't like that.

Only, in distance, the idle thread of possibility had flourished. It had taken root in his mind even when Remus was still there--but distant--and it blossomed into ugly flowers that crowded out knowing better. At the edge of Albania, watching Aurors die and Death Eaters remain strong and grow stronger, it was harder to remember that Remus was the heart and conscience of the Marauders. And when Sirius reminded himself of the time Remus had slammed him against a hallway, hand fisted into Sirius' shirt and a dangerous glint in his eyes telling him to grow up, to stop being cruel, that Remus knew he was better than that, all Sirius could remember was thinking about the wolf underneath the scholar.

He still was.

The evidence and inference circled him like ravenous birds. Anything, interpreted one way or the other, could be viewed as damning proof that Remus was working for the Voldemort, working inside the Light for the Voldemort, or that Remus had been a lie all along. Werewolves, Sirius had been taught by both Professor Medlin and even Remus himself, were inclined toward darkness.

Sirius remembered breaking an entire tea set during that argument, swiping it off the kitchen table and shouting until Remus said maybe it was because of the way that Wizards treated werewolves, and nothing to do with biological tendencies at all.

Remus had a way of doing that, saying something in a low, controlled voice that stopped Sirius in his tracks and made him reassess the way that he viewed any question at all. As if Remus could wave his hand and change the axis of the Earth, slide it this way and that until Sirius was forced to refocus, to seek a different frame of reference, and realize that from his new vantage point the entire universe looked a different shade of ambiguous.

"Remus can take care of himself," Sirius forced himself to say.

*

Everyone went to the bar in Durrës.

Saying they liked it was a bit much, but there was beer and wizards and the smell of blood and gunmetal, and it was far enough from the camps and battlefields so that they could imagine, if only for a second, that they were home.

Sirius had never place much stock on "home" before he'd met his fellow Marauders. Home had always been a rotting heap of rules and house elves, an embittered, wrathful mother and a father he saw once every few weeks who had little to say to his disappointment of a son. Home was located in an opulent, lovely area of London, but Sirius had never really even walked about West End until he'd graduated from Hogwarts. Home was almost a cage.

Then Hogwarts had been home, and afterward, a small, cluttered apartment in East End, over a noisy street filled with vendors and just a few blocks away from Bengali sweets. More privately, home was the cloak of night and the elegant line of someone's back, corded muscle and the feel of cotton sheets beneath the naked line of his thigh.

Home was all the soliders talked of, now.

Garrison, with his ranting about his mother's rooftop menagerie of vicious beasts, only ever wavered and fell silent when he was too drunk to move. Roland, smiling faintly talked of paisley curtains, and liked to say, "Paisley, can you believe it? And she says I have no taste." They all had their memories and they were kind enough to share them with one another, like creating clearings in the ruins, memories making space to breathe.

Sirius said very little at all.

Home, or his first version thereof, had taught him a valuable lesson about tunnel vision and ignoring things. Most days, when he wasn't in the magicked silence of the communication tent, he didn't bother to open his ears to anything but direct requests to realign the spellstones, to cast a new security charm, to do something. Sirius tried not to think about home, never let his mind wander into forbidden territory, toward that unwaveringly warm embrace of London and the overwhelmingly soft feeling of going home.

Sirius thought of nothing but magic.

He remade spells in his head, tangled charms in his mouth, and worked with healing potions all day. He became a better and better wizard, and mountains of Death Eaters fell at his feet, but he didn't much see the Death Eaters anymore, either.

Sirius saw Norman Barr, who'd been in his History of Magic class and lent him a quill, very early first year, before he'd understood exactly that he hated Slytherin. Sirius saw long, dirty-blond hair and pulled back a dark hood to see a lovely, unlined face, closed eyes, and curving bow lips. He saw a wedding ring and he forced himself not to see beyond that, for there were children and homes, mothers and fathers and even the Dark Lord could never destroy all of that. Sirius would always be that man who killed somebody's wife and someone else' mother, killed many fathers, many families.

And stupidly, dimly, distantly, he wondered what Death Eaters' children did when they got their owls, if Voldemort wrote those words, too: We regret to inform you.

"God, he's doing it again."

Sirius blinked and swiveled about until he saw the object of the low wave of whispers.

In a far corner, Private Jerome Kent, fresh from the American farmlands, was wearing a leering grin, eyes trained on a slim, disinterested face, Kent's brown hand tight around a boy's thin wrist. Kent said, "You're cute, you know," as if the boy could understand.

Sirius smirked, took another sip of his beer, and saw the solider wince when the boy dug blunt nails dug into the skin of Kent's offending hand. Something low and soft was said in Albanian, accompanied with the boy's narrowed eyes.

Behind him, Sirius heard someone say, "That man is utterly shameless. Boy's no older than sixteen."

Sixteen, Sirius thought. Damn, hellish year.

Sixteen was figuring stuff out in detail (or trying to), and sixteen was feeling standoffish, as if the entire world was purposely trying to ruin your life. Sixteen was awkward first relationships and even more awkward first times. Sirius had never felt deeply attached to sixteen, and with a flick of his eyes, he realized neither was the boy in question.

Oh but his body had figured itself out long ago, Sirius noticed with a vague, detached appreciation.

Sirius saw light brown hair, some bastard shade of blond mixed in, and the same white skin along the line of a neck, and wide, boyish shoulders, the shape of a man just on the cusp of himself, in that awkward tumble between childhood and the rest. But gangly limbs were softened by wiry muscle beneath the boy's clothes and the haughty tilt of the boy's chin was telling. Gray-green eyes even more so. In that light, Sirius thought distantly, they were nearly hazel.

Sirius blinked, frowned, and reconsidered. There was something familiar.

Suddenly, there were hands.

Hands--the same long--elegant hands, leafing through an enormous book with a dark brown cover. There was afternoon sun shining leaf-edged patterns onto the desks of the library and glinting off the gilded words along the spine of the tome--but Sirius wasn't looking at that. Sirius was scowling at the smiling expression of the boy reading, the boy with the tapered fingers, who levitated a ballpoint pen in his direction and said, "Sirius, stop whining, it isn't going to change anything."

No, it wasn't. Nothing would change anything ever again.

Sirius drank his beer.

*

It was surprisingly easy to take him, and that's exactly what he did.

Sirius had finished his drink and excused himself. He walked the long way round the ramshackle bar and found the boy laying out back on the straggly grass, staring out over the waters, watching the moon shimmer down on waves. And it was that exact moment, Sirius decided, with silver light raining down on weary brown hair and knowing eyes, that familiar line and curve of a slender back--he'd sealed his own fate.

There was a language barrier, there always was, but Sirius had done little more than sit down and smirk, offered the boy a cigarette (which he refused, blushing). He'd allowed himself a few crooked smiles, and traced his own mouth with his tongue before running his hands down the boy's pale, thin cheeks, watching them flush deep and red.

It was easy, and it was wrong, and the boy probably didn't know what he wanted at all.

But Sirius remembered being easy, being wrong, and not knowing what he wanted. He remembered not knowing and then wanting everything. Sirius could help with that.

He grabbed the boy by the nape of his neck and kissed him.

Under Sirius' hands, beneath his calluses, his skin and bones remembered illicit kisses stolen after hours in the common room, in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, and near Slytherin commons. There were a great many gothic statues, shadows, and no people stupid enough to wander about. Sirius tasted nicotine from himself and the souring flavor of milk (milk--oh, Sirius was going to hell for this) and youth, not wholly innocent but new, less-tarnished, with possibilities wide like a sky underneath his palms.

The boy whimpered into his mouth, a high, fragile gasp that sent a spike of arousal through Sirius. It sounded like submission.

Pressing the boy back into the grass, Sirius couldn't help but hear Remus' voice, in full professor mode, rising and falling in excited and ominous tones about Alec, about the Chase, and about boundaries that weren't quite so clearly drawn those days--so was it truly a rape? Sirius had never thought so, but he'd known better than to tell Remus that.

But the boy kissed back, awkwardly and inexperienced but he kissed back. Clumsy lips and the graze of teeth, hungry for more but not quite sure how to attain it yet, and those young hands grasping the back of his clothes, sliding down his shoulder blades and ghosting across his hips, as if the boy was afraid to go any lower, as if moments like these required permission.

Sirius abandoned the boy's mouth to kiss down the line of his neck, and heard the boy gasping below him, heaving for breath, narrow chest rising and falling desperately.

Sirius smelled grass and death and desperation, twisted lust and the earthy, brown scent of the ground they were laying on as he reached one hand between the two of them and hastily undid the boy's pants. The blush was back, full-force, and he grinned at the teenager beneath him, and wondered if he'd looked like that, the first time Remus --

And then he didn't think, just felt the rough edges of cotton and khaki against his flesh and the sticky, dense slide of skin on skin. He had one hand braced above the boy's head, and the other between them, holding their cocks together and he fucked against him. Slim, pale hips, half-disrobed, moved against him, fast and desperate and off-beat. Sirius' hands were slicked with precome and he wasn't thinking.

He finally wasn't thinking. He was out of his mind and he was drowning.

He lowered his head and bit down on the curve of a white shoulder beneath him and it happened, the boy gasped, tight and hot and wet, bucked once, twice, and spilled all over Sirius' fist.

Then there was nothing but the sound of short, sobbing breaths.

Sirius pulled up, off, and looked at the boy beside him. His eyes were glassy and damp, focused at the bruised sky overhead. His shirt was rucked up over his flat, thin stomach and ribs and his nipples were dark and pebbled. His pants were down around his thighs and he had streaks of his own come on his stomach. Those same white, elegant hands that had gotten him there in the first place were fisted and pressed against the dirt.

Beautiful, was all Sirius could think. Utterly debauched and beautiful.

Sirius wiped his hands off on the grass and didn't come.

He went back to camp, realigned all of the spellstones, and curled up as Padfoot to sleep in a corner of the communications tent. He buried his nose in the ballpoint pens he'd stolen so long ago, and thought about home--

He could think of nothing else.

*

"There's a spy."

Sirius moved Illumitus to the left and Descendo up three inches. Spellstones were a complicated combination of Arithmancy and Charms, and it required focus and a steady hand. A few mistakes and he could bomb the camp to oblivion.

"I've tried talking to him, Sirius."

They worked on the idea of grids, Muggle mathematics, Cartesian planes and polar coordinates, symbols that had never meant anything before turning words and enchantments into spirals, circling, golden, frivolous, or deadly. Logarithmic, exponential, linear, and polynomial equations of charms that grew and ebbed and fluctuated. Sirius had always liked puzzles: math was a puzzle.

"But he won't listen, and there are people looking into it."

Remus was a puzzle, and he liked them, too.

"Arithmancy is one of the most powerful branches of magic," Remus had lectured him, long ago in third year. Sirius remembered the bandages on Remus' thin, white wrist then, peeking out just beneath the long, fraying sleeve of his school robes. It was two days after the moon, and Sirius was worried about Remus catching cold so soon after a night in the Shack. So they were huddled together next to the Quidditch pitch, where Frank Longbottom, seventh-year captain, was red in the face and reaming out each and every single player on the Gryffindor team, but paying special attention to James. With the sound of Frank's voice filling out the silent spaces in between, Sirius had listened, and begun to understand.

Arithmancy, unlike other branches of magic, was not self-contained. For it to be most powerful it needed to be paired with a more tangible discipline, the most frequent and popular being Charms and Transfiguration, more rare uses being Potions and Divination. "Arithmancy," Remus had said, voice strong and clear, "is...almost like a way to manipulate magic." He had sounded extremely proud for having found the words that fit. Arithmancy amplified a charm, or led it to amplify itself over time; it could manipulate a Transfiguration to happen at a certain pace, or time things with frightening precision. "Arithmancy," Remus had explained, "is control of magical factors. Making a Charm or a Transfiguration do what you want, when you want, how you want it to work. You never think regular magic is imprecise until after you've worked with Arithmancy."

The chaining of spells that Sirius first remembered from so long ago was rooted in Arithmancy, a sequence of numbers and letters and variables that seemed harmless, but that perpetuated itself like a repeating fraction. Numbers were powerful vehicles for a powerful art, and few in their year would ever love Arithmancy as Moony did.

Moony liked anything that gave him control.

"I just," Peter struggled, "I just wish you could talk to him. It would help."

Sirius wondered if anything would help anymore.

And what would he say to Remus, anyhow? I saw a boy who looked like you and shagged him near a dumpster. Sorry about horribly betraying you and making a mockery of what I feel for you but don't become a Death Eater. Tattoos are so gauche and it will clash with your Registry mark.

Sirius thought of the string of faded blue letters that were magically burned onto Remus' shoulder, six digits in neat, concise ink that would never fade and could never be removed.

"I always have," Remus had said with a wry grin, "had an affinity for numbers."

Sirius thought that it wasn't a very funny joke, and felt nauseous.

And Remus had always said those things, horrible things, that teetered just between utter morbidity and his own brand of twisted humor. Things that Sirius didn't understand and didn't want to hear, and that Remus wouldn't stop saying. It was part of him, a bit of darkness that Sirius couldn't laugh away.

Sirius was out of his head and out of his mind most days, and he worked automatically, as if programmed by the same numbers he ruled at the camp, Sirius simply worked day and night with increasingly complex spells, words in Latin root and Asian origin that were too complicated for anyone else there continued to lock, keep, and barricade the camp from harm--any Death Eaters that wandered within a one hundred yard radius would be burned until they were nothing but ashes, courtesy of vindictive Chinese wizards, two thousand three hundred years ago.

"What else?" Sirius croaked.

There was a long pause over the crackling line, and he asked again, "What else?"

Peter said, "Nothing, Sirius. I don't--please don't jump to any conclusions." His voice was nervous. Peter was never good with lies or soothing worries. "Remus isn't like that," he said reassuringly. "You know that better than anybody, Sirius."

Sirius didn't know anything anymore.

The numbers that had ordered his life since he'd learned Arithmancy that late October day were out of sequence, misaligned, in meaningless patterns had had begun to shift in unsettling waves. Complex equations were breaking their own asymptotic behaviors, destroying their own boundaries, and curves soared and flattened and rounded out with alarming speed. Sirius though about Muggle science, about inertia and increasing entropy, and the world remade itself into lines and columns of numbers, thousands of figures and digits that added inevitably up to the most unexpected answer of all: zero sum.

It didn't mean anything, Sirius knew distantly, the same way he knew that he was losing his mind, that he'd made a decision to lose his mind that night at the bar, and that he was following through gloriously. Sirius did everything with flair.

And what of secrets? Of important promises made between lifelong friends, of small, newborn faces and Lily's red hair? What of that?

Sirius learned, many years ago, that his version of reality pivoted based on what he believed. Sirius believed in Arithmancy and the creaking floorboards of a bar in Durrës and little else. Sirius believed in Remus.

What then? What if, beautiful and silver-lit, Remus came to him one day and asked for his help? If he said, "Sirius, I need you." He'd never said "no" before, it seemed unlikely he would now.

And what did that possibility matter, anyway? Remus wasn't like that. Remus taught Sirius about compassion and biting his own tongue, and when Sirius forgot, Remus reminded him, with a glance or a glare or a kick under the table. Remus was his conscience and Remus was his heart. Remus was home.

Remus was cardinal north, and Sirius was always looking for him.

Sirius said, "Peter."

"You'll be fine," Peter murmured. "It'll be over soon. You'll see."

"I can't do this," Sirius whispered.

He said four simple words and broke the connection.

He curled up, once again, as Padfoot in the corner of the tent, and breathed in the smell of his own paws, still reeking of blood and somebody else' come.

"We'll switch," he'd said. "Sedo Sereno."

*

The bar in Durrës was a hole. Sirius liked the bottom. He didn't bother to look up.

The boy did, and he looked up at Sirius with a young sort of desperation, like he thought he was in love, or some sick permutation therein. Sirius was glad they couldn't speak to one another--he'd only say, "You don't mean anything."

But Sirius remembered sixteen, and how he saw eyes like that in the mirror, a raw, tangible sort of need, like clawed hands stroking down his back. Sirius remembered not being able to resist then, and not knowing how to resist now. At sixteen, it wasn't Remus, Sirius mused, but it should have been--it should have been. If it was Remus at sixteen, and Sirius hadn't been too stupid to hold on to a good thing--the best thing--then he would have had five more years than he did. One thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five more days and nights before this moment, and then maybe Sirius would know.

And maybe Sirius wouldn't doubt.

But it mattered very little, there, with young flesh beneath his fingertips and the sound of a muffled moan in his ear. Sirius could pretend, or at least forget.

He'd arrived at the bar, scruffy and lost, feeling oddly free, lighter, like lunacy gave him a passport to all regions of the world and mind that he hadn't before dared to tread. At his second beer, the hand that passed the tine lingered on his fingers a moment too long, and Sirius had looked up in surprise to see gray-hazel eyes, close but not exact, that shined with hope and matched blushing red cheeks.

So he'd met the boy around the back of the bar and fallen upon him, savage kisses and searching hands. They were against a wall, trousers opened within moments, and Sirius grinned to himself, wryly amused as he fisted the boy's sex; sixteen indeed, he thought, it took little more than a warm body.

What was different this time was the boy's gaze. His eyes were open, wide and dilated, dark like the sky. But similarity didn't matter quite so much any longer, Sirius decided, and dropped to his knees, since he was insane, and freed, and he didn't have to answer to anybody about anything at all. He jerked down the boy's pants until they fell with a little metallic clink to the ground, around his ankles. There was a hot, tight gasp above him and Sirius pressed a lingering, open-mouthed kiss to inside of the boy's opened thighs. He didn't bother to look up before he closed his lips around the boy's cock.

He remembered, as he moved out of habit now, what it had been like the first time he'd ever done this. That awe-inspiring power he held, the utter control. He'd watched through dewy eyelashes Remus' face, his dark, hooded eyes, and how his lips fell half-open and shut, silent and without will against Sirius. He remembered how strange it felt to have another man in his mouth, the bitter and salty taste of smooth flesh and the nest of hair at the end, how hot it was, how scary and wonderful and new.

Sirius pulled off for a moment to slip two fingers into his mouth. It was crude and Remus claimed an "utter and total last resort," but it seemed to be a poster year for last resorts, anyhow. And as he stroked his tongue down the boy's length again, his other hand snaked around and two fingers, wet with precum and Sirius' lips, traced the tight opening there, and slipped in.

Sirius heard the high-pitched whimper, and found it utterly hot. It was stupid to wish that someday Remus would make that noise; Remus was far too controlled, and he made better noises, deeper ones, growling, possessive, baritone murmurs for Sirius to turn around, suck harder, move that way, and to lay there and wait, Remus would be back in just a moment.

Fingers well-versed in moments just like these crooked just so and Sirius heard a second, more desperate whimper above him. The hand at the base of the boy's cock and jerked hard once, twice, and a third as he felt muscles contracting around his fingers, and skin vibrating in his mouth. Sirius pulled away just in time and the boy came with a loud wail, bucking back hard against Sirius' hand, opening to his touch, stretching and swallowing Sirius' fingers to the knuckles.

It wasn't ready, not really, not like Sirius' first time, when he was just as terrified and twice as turned-on, laid out totally nude on his bed, bites along his thighs and marking the concave of flesh just underneath his collarbone, Remus' hands tight on his hips and his voice low. "Relax," he'd been told then. "Just breathe."

It wasn't ready. And Sirius had always been a bit of a bastard.

He shot up, fingers slipping out to the boy's moan, a bit too harshly. Sirius only hissed, turned the boy about to face the wall, and fumbled with his zipper before he pressed into yielding flesh, and tried not to hear the whimper of pain. He was still for a moment, ready at the slightest unloosening of muscle to move. He felt the boy trembling beneath him, tight to near pain around him, and tried desperately to remember what it had been like for him the very first time, how Remus made it okay then.

Sirius pressed a wet, warm kiss to the back of the boy's neck, and murmured something soft and low, encouraging, he hoped, and let his hand slide down until it brushed against the boy's cock, still half-hard and sticky. He circled around it, fingers delicate across sensitized skin; and when Sirius bit down gently on a thin shoulder, he stroked the boy as he stroked in. There was a whimper, a half-choked sound, and an almost grudging arousal building, Sirius could tell--he remembered. So Sirius angled his hips a bit and struck the point he knew weakened his knees, and the boy's wilting erection was back.

He braced himself against the wall with one arm, bent at the elbow, his mouth still sucking dark, pink bruises onto the boy's neck, and fucked him in earnest.

He came with a hiss and pushed himself hard against the boy, feeling his knuckles dig into the wall, skin pricked with stone.

Sirius would remember this, too.

He couldn't help but remember everything.

It rushed him like a surge, all the things he'd simply released, let fly out from his hands into the great nothingness. It was easier if he lived as if he were one-dimensional, less was expected, more was offered, and he was free to do what he wished when he pleased and how he wanted to do it. The consequences of which wouldn't sting or linger or even emerge until far afterward, until he was removed from his location, replaced where he belonged, allowed to go home.

But it all came barreling back, starting from his letter from Hogwarts--green ink on fine, cream parchment--to his last morning in London, the kiss he'd pressed to the smooth, pale curve of Remus' back, where his neck met his shoulder. So many monsters he'd hidden away inside his head until now they were utterly unavoidable, irresistible, overwhelming. They came in a rush and Sirius could only feel the brick under his hand, the skin and flesh and too-claustrophobic sensation of the boy in front of him, around him, containing him and barely shielding Sirius from his reality--but Sirius could remember everything.

Sex had never been this bad before.

And the world crept back in slowly, shamefully, as Sirius came back to himself. Hips fitted against the boy, hand cool with drying come, and his entire body protesting. He wasn't too old for vertical sex in a back alley, far from it, but he wasn't supposed to be here, and that was the other thing he didn't want to think about. Sirius Black was claimed, marked, and belonged to somebody and something larger than his own inability to be selfishly indulgent, childish and evasive, mind-numbingly stupid.

There was more than his own desperation.

Sirius was still dazed, half-stupid in the alleyway, propped up against the wall, face buried in the boy's neck when he heard it--the high-pitched, electric shriek of the Alert Charm he'd woven into the defensive ward around the Auror camp.

It was supposed to sound like a loud, electronic beep, but from a distance, at length, it sounded like a woman screaming.

*

"Fuck!"

He was stumbling almost every step of the way, but his pants were on and the boy was too terrified by what the siren could mean to protest much as Sirius had pulled none-to-gently away and started shouting imprecations as he had tried to run and pull on his trousers at the same time.

The camp was just over a small hill, and the tops of the tents cut angular shadows across the sky, still deep and drowsy with midnight. The grass cracked beneath his feet and Sirius shouted, irate, and shifted into Padfoot, who loped gracefully where Sirius could only struggle, the smell of frenetic energy in the air fostering increasing dread and Padfoot couldn't let himself think about that--couldn't.

Still so far away, Padfoot thought, mourning and worried and fast, faster than he'd ever run before, fur flying and teeth bared and reminding himself over and again that there was no Prongs here, no Wormtail, and no Moony to be had or smelled or comforted by. They were far away, Padfoot knew, and were safe for it. His pack was safe.

But there was still that crying in the air, frightful and every kind of grieved, and Padfoot knew it was bad, his human thought so, but at least his pack wasn't there, at least his brothers were far.

He had never been so grateful to be alone.

And it wasn't until he skidded just as gracelessly as Sirius had been walking to the front of the Auror camp that he felt his eyes widen and his bones realign themselves.

Sirius found himself grasping a support beam, heaving for breath, dusty and damaged and terrified, wide-eyed staring at soldiers, his comrades, grown-up men weeping and shouting and fireworks being set off. Troust was sitting perfectly still and looked as if he were about to burst into tears, and some of his bunkmates were merely frozen where they stood, wordless and pale, as if the world had ended.

"What happened?" Sirius finally shouted. "What happened?"

No one could hear him, and Sirius shoved his way through the crowd to hear snatches, pieces of conversation that made no sense disjointed until it all blurred into a major key jumble of hollers and yells, a blur of sound like an insistent white noise.

"What the fuck happened?" he tried once more before he heard it --

"The Boy Who Lived!"

*

News spread fast in the Wizarding world--change did not.

For a culture as ancient as that of the first humans, they still fostered their very special forms of racism, genocide, and segregation--government subsidized, at that--their own slanders and riffs. Wizarding culture and Wizarding bureaucracy moved slowly, like the hands of a broken clock, forever stuck and only right two times out of the day.

Twenty-eight minutes after the news came out, of the Boy Who Lived, the parents who didn't, and that Voldemort had been defeated, Sirius Black was over the WHAM shouting at anybody who would listen about lifting the ban on Apparition right the fuck now so that he could get his arse back to London.

Sirius would not be waiting for the barge to arrive and carry him back to England in a week. Nor would he agree to stay on for two more months in order to keep the local peace and quash any minor threats that might arise. There would be no waiting at all.

Waiting, he shrieked, decried, insisted and threatened, was for goddamn pansy fuckers who didn't value their bollocks because they wanted to keep certain Aurors away from certain countries were certain Aurors wanted to go i-fucking-mmediatly.

He was grateful that he was slow, that it always took that much longer for him to understand the consequences of anything because that delayed reaction gave him enough time to brace.

It didn't, however, seemed to be working.

It was utterly ridiculous news, Sirius decided, distracted, now on to threatening the radio-operator's immediate family. James wasn't dead; Lily would never die. She simply wouldn't stand for it, all that unfashionable rotting and then who would start reading Harry ridiculously complicated books before he even knew how to hold the weight of his own head? Impossible, Sirius thought, stupid and foolish people were, thinking that James and Lily Potter would simply allow themselves to be offed when there was Sirius and Remus' annual anniversary to be mocked, shagging presents to be purchased, heinously inappropriate comments to be made and boys to be taught Quidditch.

"Your fucking dog, Raftson, I'll get your fucking dog!" Sirius yelled. "Put me on the line with Transportation fucking now! I rank above you, put me on the line!"

Sirius panicked. What would he do? He'd played Beater, yes; Harry was small, "delicately boned," as Lily said with an adoring cuddle, he'd be a Chaser, or even a Seeker. Sirius couldn't teach him that--Sirius had never been nimble. James wouldn't be so stupid as to allow his son to make a berk out of himself in front of a stadium full of schoolchildren--that was cruel, and James wasn't cruel. James was stupid, and brave, and foolhardy but he was not cruel.

"Raftson, I swear I'll--"

And the connection snapped.

"Fuck!"

He looked around.

He panicked.

Sirius fretted, and then he remembered Remus' voice, gentle and shaking from the cold, saying, "Arithmancy is...almost like a way to manipulate magic."

*

Sirius reached London with a thump and a roll, hard cement underneath his shoulder and the smell of city and people a shock to his senses after so long drowning in Albanian nothingness. All the lights were on and Muggles on the street cast him strange, concerned looks, like he was just another drunk in the gutter.

He was dizzy and chaining the spell had taken longer than expected. He was weak in the knees from speed and lightheaded from the altitude but the Commoveo charm was more complicated than he'd anticipated and just as violent as the Latin suggested.

Sirius didn't let himself think, but he let himself act, and he shoved himself up onto his legs and felt a bit of glass digging into the palm of his hand. The smell of blood assaulted his senses and wildly, he fell about into another fit of panic.

All he could see was arching green light and owls, dying in a spray of scarlet and sky.

Sirius ran, ran toward the nearest place he knew.

Found his motorbike locked away in the garage space he'd rented and went off and flying into the night again, half-insane with tears blurring his eyes which was fucking stupid because there wasn't any reason to cry.

But England was bright on the ground beneath him and he didn't seek cloud cover. Careful was for people who could afford it and Sirius had always been an impoverished bastard since he'd figured himself out enough to realize that his family was an optional exercise in self-loathing.

And night blurred around him in a terrifying wheel of possibilities, spiraling out of control.

*

Mungo's smelled like the cleaning potion that was applied liberally to every surface. A cloying, flowery odor overpowering in its effort to be cheerful.

Godric's Hollow had smelled of a messy kill and Harry's baby oil, Lily's Muggle soap--"Ninety nine and forty-nine parts of a hundred pure," Sirius remembered. The door was shattered, and the two arching, graceful trees that branched out across the lawn were splintered to pieces. Sirius had found burning wreckage and the Order's distress sign, a Celtic pattern of three pinched circles he'd come to know well in the past year. And there he'd met Hagrid, still and shocked and he'd asked to take Harry--to protect him. But Hagrid had hesitated, said he was taking Harry to Dumbledore, and that was fine by Sirius. Harry would be safe there, and Sirius didn't know what to do.

Mungo's smelled like the cleaning potion that was applied liberally to every surface. It was thick and claustrophobic and nearly sanitary even in presence, as if oxygen was scrubbed thoroughly upon entry.

And at Godric's Hollow, Sirius had found the bodies. They were solemn and cold and still very young, at least one third like Sirius had left James and Lily not very long ago. Sirius had seen the cherry wood clock he'd charmed for them on their first anniversary, decorated with a carving the shape of a Celtic knot, binding into forever, looping until infinity.

Mungo's smelled like the cleaning potion that was applied liberally to every surface. Constant, heavy, and like a bleached fog of sensation that made Sirius' eyes water and his hands tighten around the scarf he clasped.

Toward the back of the house, near the unintentional trellis of climbing roses, there'd been nothing but the smell of blood. Nothing like the clean kills and still bodies he'd found inside. Blood like a painting, or an artist flaunting, joyful in his own destruction and Sirius saw elegant sprays against the bricks of the house, great fanning circles of it, and handprints in drying scarlet, stubborn and strong against the wooden lattice at the base of the house.

Mungo's smelled like the cleaning potion that was applied liberally to every surface. It was making Sirius blind and nauseated and James and Lily were dead.

But Harry was safe, he told himself. Harry was with Dumbledore, and it was better that way. He was a sodding awful godfather, anyway--hadn't he threatened to buy Harry his first dirty magazine?

The apartment in East End had smelled of faded Remus, and then Sirius had found the letter, discarded at the kitchen table and the signs of panic: a broken teacup and Remus' scarf, still draped carelessly across the coat rack by the door. It wasn't like Remus to forget things, not his comfort objects, and Sirius knew somewhere in his head that Remus would want his scarf, as it was still October and Remus loathed the cold and Sirius couldn't feel his hands, couldn't feel his legs--

It was probably just the trip, he thought blandly.

Mungo's smelled like the cleaning potion that was applied liberally to every surface.

This was stupid, Sirius knew, it was just stupid.

Padfoot had reached Mungo's on four paws, tongue dragging out of his mouth and nearly rabid and the scent had hit him at the gates of the hospital so hard he'd spent a good quarter of an hour throwing up and then gagging into faraway bushes.

The smells had assaulted Padfoot in terrifying succession: first the overpowering stench of cleaner and hospital and death. Of bleached-white linens and gore, in such awful contrast upon one another and still so natural for Mungo's, so natural for that night. Of the strong, metallic tang of Remus' blood, so familiar and terrible and dear after all of those moons they'd shared, all the times they'd licked one another's wounds.

Oh but there'd been so much of it and Padfoot had cried and then pawed and he'd shaken his head, desperate to get the smell out of his nostrils, out of his mind, to drag him away from burned flesh and torn homes and the memories of the last six months and a boy in Albania and Jesus fucking Christ Remus was he all right? What had those bastards at the Order done to him? What the fuck had happened? Remus wasn't delicate, wasn't weak, and it'd take hell before he'd fall and oh Christ the handprint--had that been his?

And how? Sirius asked himself.

The scarf was tight in his hands, not so tight that he'd tear the material; Remus lacked nice things as it was, and the scarf was very nice, a wonderful, soft camel color, warm and light and Remus looked wonderful in it. Sirius unwound it from his neck and looped it in his hand, a light, still-warm reminder of Remus. Remus who smiled and rolled his eyes and bought used paperbacks from the corner market and told Sirius to shut up already, it was cold and James and Lily were waiting.

Only James and Lily weren't waiting and they never would be again.

And how? How had it happened? How had Voldemort found Godric's Hollow?

The hallways were disappearing beneath his feet and he asked one of the passing nurses where Remus Lupin was.

"Who, dear?" she asked, tired and half dazed.

Who? Sirius wanted to shout it at the top of his lungs. Remus Jericho Lupin--Order member? Brilliant man? Werewolf? Whose blood fucking draped the hospital grounds?

"Remus. Remus Lupin. I--I can't think of anywhere else he could...he could be and..." Sirius said instead, trailing off as he saw the expression on the nurse's face change. "He's here then," Sirius said dully.

Sirius had never wanted to be more wrong than when he'd started off toward Mungo's. He just hadn't been able to think of anywhere else...and then he'd smelled it.

She gave him a long, considering look, and Sirius felt exposed, rubbed raw, and all the conflicting information in his head was--was making him confused. He needed orientation, for someone to simply take his hand, and lead him to wherever Remus was, since the rest of the world had gone mad and Sirius was frightened.

And that was what overpowered everything: sheer, mindless fear.

Fear that rose like bile in the back of his throat, fear that twisted his stomach and that made him weak and nauseated. Sirius was shaking so hard he could feel his hands trembling, even fisted, and his knees were weakening because James and Lily were dead and Harry was safe but James and Lily and Remus--and so much blood, so much blood--scarlet rivers of the stuff and hadn't he seen it at Godric's Hollow? How had he not recognized it then? How could he have wasted so much time going back to East End when Remus needed him here but Moony would want his scarf and it was cold, and Sirius so hated to be scolded by Remus' hazel eyes and--

Mungo's smelled of Remus' blood.

The nurse pressed one cold, sterilized hand to Sirius' wrist, and said very gently, "Come with me, then, Mr. Black." Sirius stared at her, until she frowned, very slightly. "The Order is waiting."

*

Sirius was always surprised how far Dumbledore's influence reached.

The nurse had murmured a few words about the Order being put into a special area, and then she'd nodded at somebody at the front desk, who'd looked grim and pressed a small, silver button on the desk.

He looked at the pale walls of Mungo's and watched them fade into a softer yellow; only briefly, Sirius felt it, a magical barrier, thin and dangerous, with an edge to it that reminded Sirius of battlegrounds, of the sharpened glint of knives. He'd never seen this part of the hospital before and Sirius knew the rumors, that Mungo's had a secret wing. There were no signs in this part of the hospital, only the sound of thin, mechanical beeping.

The nurse still had one hand on Sirius' wrist, and she was taking left and right turns, tugging him gently along, as she talked quietly.

"This wing is new," she explained. "Not everything's a magical malady."

Maybe, Sirius thought crazily, Remus had twisted his ankle, and all the women were in back babying him like women always tended to do.

Another left turn and then a dark, mahogany door, beautiful and heavy and expensive. The nurse's free hand rested on the muted brass knob and she turned back to Sirius to say, "Mr. Black, I want you to wait out here for just a moment; is that all right?"

Part of Sirius knew he was supposed to be screaming to get in. Just shove her out of the way and break down the door, get through any barrier to see Remus.

He nodded dumbly, and said, "Okay. Yes. That's fine."

She smiled shakily at him and disappeared into the room, opening the door just enough for Sirius to see the foot of a neat bed and the profile of Alastor Moody, bewitched eyeball freakishly still for once, and an overwhelming silence that was a physical presence--interrupted only by the steady beep he'd heard at the beginning of the corridor.

Sirius breathed, in and out, too careful to be real and too still to be Sirius.

Five minutes later, the door opened again, the nurse and Moody stepping out into the hallway. Moody's magical eye paused on Sirius and the nurse just looked at her feet. Sirius felt as if he was being pushed to the edge of some enormous, sweeping chasm, dread welling up so fast and thick in his head he could barely breathe, barely think, barely regulate the beat of his heart.

"What--what happened?" he managed.

Moody's eye remained perfectly still, and Sirius hadn't known before that it could do that. "Potter and Evans are dead," he said gruffly, in as gentle a voice as he could manage.

Sirius nodded. "Okay," he said. It wasn't, but that was all he could say.

Here, Moody looked away, past Sirius, over his left shoulder, to the wall and maybe through it, Sirius never could tell. "Remus was on watch," he added, voice cracking with age, splintering bass and well-worn from years of barking orders at first year Aurors. "He was there when Voldemort got to 'em."

Sirius' hands tightened on the scarf again, knuckles white. "Why--"

"He was on watch, boy," Moody, interrupted. "On watch."

And then it all tumbled into a claustrophobic understanding, a shocking breath of knowledge that flooded him and sucked all of his breath in one quick, merciless swish of water and light and then nothing at all. Remus would never let anybody hurt Lily and James--Remus would never let anybody hurt Lily and James. So the handprint, the blood, the streaks and trails and splatters and--so fucking much blood--that had painted the Potter family wreckage and soaked into the ground like a scrolling mark of pride--that had a definite origin, and Sirius hadn't just been driving himself mad--

He was shaking hard enough that he took three steps forward to lean against the wall. Two more to the left and he'd fall through the slightly-opened door.

Because Lily and James were dead now, at the hands of Voldemort and he wasn't processing that, couldn't really understand that--how had Voldemort known?--and he and Remus and Harry, they'd have to start over, they'd make do, they had to. Sirius would learn to be a good godfather (Remus would help; Remus always helped him; Remus was so good and so kind and Remus would help) and Sirius would just walk through that door, take those two steps to the left and see --

Sirius couldn't breathe. "Is he--is it bad?"

Moody coughed, and said, "Aye, lad." There was a softened edge to his voice, and Sirius knew this was most distressing of all, that things were so bad that Moody had to--had to be kind to him. "Fights like man possessed, that'n," Moody added, almost affectionate. "Though, suppose you'd know that better th'n anyone."

It was the end of the world: Moody was trying to be funny.

"You can go in now, Mr. Black," the nurse said. "But only for a little while, the doctor will be here in ten minutes."

There, now. Nothing to do but walk, to step over the threshold of that doorway and to simply open his eyes and take it all in, Sirius told himself.

One step.

It wasn't difficult at all, he knew, and it wasn't as bad as they were making it sound, either.

Remus was tough as nails and probably already up and cranky.

Maybe, Remus had heard this nonsense about Lily and James being dead, too, and that'd make him sad. Sirius didn't want that; it was utterly wrong for Remus to be any sadder than he was already, and they'd have to right that, make sure that bloody awful rumor got blown out of the water. Sirius didn't believe it, not anymore. The more he thought about it, the more stupid it sounded--James and Lily, dead?

Posh and rubbish, Remus would said, and roll his eyes before asking if they could leave yet; Moody was having such an utter snit about nothing at all. Who was sent to the private wing of Mungo's for a splinter, anyhow?

Two steps.

And Sirius could feel Moody's eye on his back, between his shoulder blades.

This was impossible, Sirius coached himself. It didn't happen like this. And it couldn't, anyhow. The Fidelus wasn't any first year charm, it had taken one of the most powerful wizards in history to scrape it together and then it was contained within a circle of friends, between brothers, intertwined in seven years of love and loyalty and how had Voldemort known? No, Sirius thought desperately, impossible. Voldemort couldn't know, and James and Lily couldn't be dead and Remus--Remus was fine.

Remus. Remus would never let anybody hurt James or Lily or Harry. He'd die for them. He'd said as much when he'd told Sirius about the little group he was joining. "For us," he'd said, pleading, "for all of us." No details, oh no, never any details, the barrier of secrets and obligations and separate draws pulling them toward opposite ends of two of the same goals, and Sirius remembered that look on Remus' face, a promise like no other he'd made before. Remus would die for Lily, for James, for Harry, for what he believed in but he didn't need to. Because Voldemort couldn't know and --

And then Sirius was through the door, in the room.

It was small, and warm, and painted the same yellow as the corridor. There were paintings hanging up, soft, comforting ones of oceans and deep, beautiful forests, fields of flowers and two soft, welcoming chairs and a bed with Remus in it.

For a moment, all he could see was an arcing green flash, like curved lightning shooting from every edge of the universe and the profile of Ralph Archer's body falling gracelessly to the ground and the night sky in Albania; the way light crept into the heavens at dawn over their East End flat and how Remus pressed kisses to the base of his neck and murmured, "Morning, Padfoot," and then nothing at all.

Sirius' world bottomed out.

*

Not all maladies were magical, Sirius knew the nurse told him. And she'd repeated it, quite a few times, while she explained what all the different machines and gadgets were. The steady beeping was a heart rate monitor, and all those tubes and things that were hanging or attached to Remus, they weren't hurting him, they were keeping him alive. Muggle technology, all of it, years of brilliant medicine that the Wizarding community ignored in favor of quill and parchment and living in sodding castles and fighting dark wizards and slighting werewolves who were half dead for their sakes.

Remus was alive--barely.

He had three different IVs, tubes, running into his thin, elegant hands, taped to his too-pale skin. A tube in his throat and a black balloon beside that, expanding and deflating ominously that the nurse told Sirius was there to help Remus breathe. To help Remus breathe. Sirius wanted to tell the nurse and the whole goddamn hospital that Remus could bloody well breathe on his fucking own but he was afraid to breathe himself, so Sirius said nothing at all.

Remus bore an ugly bruise on the side of his mouth that faded into a split lip with a butterfly bandage on the corner, just exposed from the side of the tube between his lips. It made a tight, hot feeling fist up in Sirius' chest at that, to see the purple blossom on Remus' pale pink lips. Remus would kill him (and there'd be time for that later, they had so much time, they were all so young) for thinking it and Sirius would berate himself later for being such a hopeless sop but Remus' mouth was too beautiful to be broken like that. Too pretty and perfectly soft and wonderful caught between friendly teeth or wet against the flat planes of Sirius' belly, or forming around words or whispers or hoarse, insistent murmurs--too pretty, too precious, to be hurt.

His brown hair and was clean and fanned out against the very white pillows, almost as pale as Remus' skin, which looked nearly translucent; it gave him the brief appearance of glass. Just as breakable, and for a terrible moment Sirius wondered what he'd looked like before, before, with red pouring from his wounds and broken upon the ground, fading into and out of that night and so close to death that whoever had done this had thought the worse and walked away, walked in, walked forward and left him there to die and left to kill and left--just left?

A breath of impossible gratefulness seized at his chest and Sirius felt his knees weaken, felt himself lowering into a chair, stumbling, graceless like a newborn foal. What if this had gone, too? What if it had taken a moment longer or if Mungo's was like the rest of the Wizarding world and what if, what if Remus was with Lily and James?

It didn't matter, Sirius told himself, Remus wasn't, and Lily and James probably weren't and even if they were Remus wasn't and Sirius was just being stupid and how had Voldemort known? It was a secret between friends and there'd been a secret-keeper and a fucking charm for Christ's sake and Remus, Remus protecting them and that's how he'd ended up there, in Mungo's swathed in white because all the red blood, wonderful and metallic and horrible, was all gone and dripping into pools behind Godric's Hollow and stop it, Sirius--it'd all sort itself out and this didn't happen, not even during dark wars and maybe this was a punishment.

Some sort of horrible sick, shifting of blame for what Sirius had done in Albania. Maybe, somewhere in between being a bastard and turning peoples' robes pink and watching Ralph Archer die and not going to get his body and fucking the Albanian boy in the alley someone had decided that somebody needed to own up for all the stupid shit Sirius had done. And Sirius was busy with Spellstones.

The rest of Remus was covered up, and Sirius was afraid to ask--there'd been so much blood--and didn't ask, didn't say a word, just stood there not breathing and not crying and not thinking--just watching Remus and the world fall apart.

Until it all fell apart and fell together, and it made sense now, the worst kind.

*

It seemed so obvious, now, Sirius thought to himself, it couldn't be clearer.

Who'd always dropped the appropriate hints at the appropriate moments?

Sirius smoothed one hand gently, so carefully, over Remus' forehead, brushing away a few stray, brown bangs. He said, "I'll be back. Soon."

Who'd been the only one there to hear Sirius complain and be terrified and hope for the best?

And for a moment, he didn't want to go, just wanted to linger there in that moment, in that space and watch Remus breathe, to rest and take pause and be exhausted before he was vengeful. It'd be so easy, so easy, to shift, to shorten, to bend his limbs into new form and curl up, a bundle of warm, black fur, at the foot of Remus' bed, and wait for morning. Wait for Moony.

He said, "It'll be fine."

Who'd been his only source of information, the fountainhead of all untruths?

Sirius had already been wrong, terribly wrong and utterly stupid and a bastard, a lying, cheating bastard and he'd make it up. He'd do this, and he'd make it up to Moony, and do what he could for Lily and James and show Harry that his godfather wasn't a total sack of shit, that he knew a thing or two. That he might have been an awful teenager and a worse friend and a terrible role-model but he was a good man, at heart. Sirius could do that.

And who knew the secret, which had been wiped so clean from Sirius' mind after he'd transferred the spell?

It was a vague smile, a slow one, that drew across Sirius' face as he trailed his fingers over Remus' still arms, bruised and wrapped in bandages. No skin to be caressed there, only sterilized cloth, and it seemed fitting that Sirius wouldn't be allowed to touch Remus, not really, until he'd done the right thing, finished business, made up for his mistakes.

And it was his mistake. He'd--he'd killed Lily and James and destroyed Remus and ruined Harry's life, all because he hadn't had faith. Because he'd let some horrible rat slowly grind him down with half-insinuations, let Peter ride Sirius' own doubt until it spun utterly out of control, until the world fell in on itself.

Sirius bent his knees, hearing the footsteps in the hall draw closer, and pressed a close-mouthed kiss to Remus' forehead: warm skin to warm skin. Reverence, love, desperation, everything he could bear to feel and could afford to feel pouring into the moment and he drew himself away, just enough to break contact, and said, "You'd stop me, right, Remus?" His voice was scratchy, unfamiliar, harder than he remembered.

There was no answer, but Sirius was sure Remus had heard.

It made sense, naturally. Everything made sense, just a shift in the variables, a reconfiguration of data, a second derivative and the details were fuzzier but the big picture was clear and Sirius knew what he had to do.

He walked out into the hallway and didn't look back, passed Moody and the nurse and the yellow walls until he crossed the barrier again and disappeared into the city, hands deep in his pockets, his left clutching his wand.

"You've always known," Sirius murmured to himself, and felt the air heavy with storms, pressing down on him, as if telling him to stay.

Around him, wizards celebrated and summoned firecrackers and sang and danced, for He Who Must Not Be Named had fallen and London roared, angry and multicolored and cold in autumn, the sound of crowds and undergrounds and cars crowded together in a cacophony of horrible white noise. Where just an hour away there was the steaming remains of Godric's Hollow and a modest little house and a modest life that had been two-thirds parted, and in East End, where there was still a broken teacup and an open window, and books to be read and papers to be graded. There was an entire lifetime to be finished out, Sirius thought determinedly, crazily, distantly--

But there wasn't, anymore. Very suddenly, there wasn't.

It made sense.

Mathematical sense, all the figures aligning and reducing into perfect formulas and an obvious answer, something Sirius should have known, but hadn't, and had taken the long way around to finding. It was all Arithmancy and fate, some convergence of which Sirius had simply failed to notice, but that was fine.

He'd draped the scarf over the headboard of the bed, left it hanging for when Moony woke up. The hospital room was a few degrees too cool and he didn't want Remus to be cold if he woke up--of course he'd wake up--when he woke up, and needed to stop Sirius.

And Remus would stop him, Sirius was sure, if he was doing anything wrong.

Illumitus to the left and Descendo up three inches, Sirius remembered. A few mistakes and he could bomb the camp to oblivion.

But that was fine, Sirius decided. That made sense, too. There was very little left to destroy, and after all--

Remus would stop him if he was doing anything wrong.

Sirius crossed the street.

The End

*

Author's Notes: Many thanks to go to Vic P for putting up with me and enormous thanks to Lyra for an incredible beta job, as well as for coming in at the eleventh hour and thinking of a fantastic summary for the story when I was wringing my hands and trying not to scream. You are both goddesses. Also, much gratefulness to anyone who managed to finish this story. I always claimed that this was the Azkaban story that I never wanted to read, but I ended up writing it, because it was a story that I think had to be told. Thanks for staying for the ride. P.

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