Remus meets Sirius on the Hogwarts Express
when Sirius' piano falls on his foot.
It is two inches wide and perfectly detailed, with black, lacquer paint on
its tiny, curving legs. When Remus picks it up, his thumb smooth over the
ivory keys and a tinny, high-pitched tinkling noise filled the air. It fits
in one hand, heavy and cool against his skin.
And as soon as Remus stands up, cradling it in his palm, he sees a boy with
mussed black hair barreling toward him. The boy has blue-gray eyes and a
smooth face, like one of the angels that is painted on the inside of an old
snuffbox Remus' mother got from Remus' grandmother.
"Er," Remus says awkwardly. "I think this is yours." He holds out the piano,
sad to see it go.
The boy snatches it out of his hand, clutching it jealously and flushing
dark red before he storms down the corridor and stomps into one of the
compartments on the left.
Four hours later, after the Sorting and the great feast, when they are all
sitting about in a nervous group in the first year Gryffindor boys' dorms,
Sirius comes up to him. His hair is even more messy and he looks a bit
hollow around the eyes. He holds out his hand, which is calloused when Remus
takes it, and they shake formally; Remus feels strange, as if he needs to
straighten his back in Sirius' presence.
"Sirius Black of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black," he introduces
himself.
Remus stares. He can feel the curious eyes of the other boys in the room,
none of whom Sirius has chosen so far to entertain with introductions.
"Are you slow?" Sirius demands, flushed and irritated.
Remus' eyes widen, and he rushes to say, "Remus Lupin. I--ah--live in
Camden."
In the background, James Potter is showing off his extensive collection of
Wizard cards, and Peter Pettigrew is staring at them in undisguised awe.
Dylan Prewett is hanging a map of China on the wall. Suitcases and trunks
and ties are haphazard around the room, and Remus' small, black leather case
is tucked underneath his bed, pressed along his night table and nearly out
of sight.
There is a long pause before Sirius says, "Camden. That's in London."
Sirius sounds long-suffering, like all of this is beneath him; Remus knows
people like this, but mostly they're sixty-five and work in the Literature
department at King's College. Remus had never met an eleven year old that
sounds so much like he should be an angry, old faculty member. He decides
that there may be something deeply wrong with Sirius, but supposes that he's
nobody to point fingers when it comes to fatal flaws.
"Yes, last I checked," Remus replies lightly. He tries to smile at Sirius;
Sirius rolls his eyes. Maybe it's some sort of medical problem, Remus
decides. They look at one another and have nothing to say. Remus points at
the stack of cards he left on his night stand. "Do you play Exploding Snap?"
Sirius grins, and his whole face transforms; he looks eleven now, young and
funny and like somebody that Remus might want to be friends with. He says,
"Yeah!" and really means it. As he climbs up onto Remus' bed, he digs into
his pocket and pulls out his piano, setting it carefully on the nightstand
next to Remus' textbooks before he reaches for the deck.
Hours later, as Remus drifts off, he realizes Sirius' piano is still on his
night table.
It takes about a week and a half before Sirius will condescend to speak with the other three people in the room, by which point Remus has learned that Sirius is not just Sirius, he really is Sirius Black of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black.
"What exactly does that mean?" he asks James, who has a hopeless mop instead of hair and is always tipping his glasses higher on his nose. James is a little wild, brilliant and aces in all of their classes so far, but never bothers with the details. It's a strange idea to Remus, who lives his life by time and days and exact calculations.
"It means he's the biggest git of them all," James says, shoving food in his mouth as if he's been starved on an island for the last decade.
This is a huge claim for James to make, Remus feels, who is arguably as large or a larger git than Sirius, if much more charming about it on the whole.
"The whole Black line is a load of pompous gits--inbred to the core! He's supposed to be in Slytherin, you know," James confides with a sneer. "I hear he's the first in a dozen generations to get sorted into a different house."
Remus frowns. "Inbred," he says uncertainly.
Sirius does--upon reflection, Remus admits--have a certain, sleek, purebred dog appearance, with his shining, dark hair and imperious eyes. But Remus has seen Sirius play Exploding Snap, and when James and Peter and Gideon aren't watching, Remus has also seen Sirius make stupid faces behind teachers' back and then wink at Remus. It's hard for Remus to think of Sirius and remember the title.
"Yeah," James says enthusiastically, "kissing cousins, you might say." He cackles a bit, and leans forward to Remus, whispering, "Either way, if you want my best advice, I'd steer clear. You seem to be able to stomach him but God knows how long he'll bother to stomach you. I hear Blacks learn curses before they learn to walk."
Sirius, who is eating at the end of the long, Gryffindor table where everybody has chosen to give him a wide berth, is reading a tattered copy of some book, and doesn't exactly look dangerous, bleary-eyed and still dewy from sleep. In the morning light, Remus thinks that Sirius looks harmless.
"But we don't really know if it's true, do we?" Remus asks nervously.
James narrows his eyes at Remus for a moment, but then shrugs, turning back to his breakfast.
For a moment, Remus feels a little ill, and wishes that he'd eaten with Sirius like he'd promised himself he'd do this morning. But it's hard to step away from James and Gideon and Peter and Lily and Thomas, who are raucous and funny and talkative to sit at the far end; Remus has always been alone, and this is the first time he's had the option otherwise.
The first full moon of the year, Remus receives a note from their Potions master to go to Madam Pomfrey, and he feels Sirius watching him as he leaves the dungeon.
It makes him a little bit nauseated to think that this is when it will begin, all of the secrets and paranoia and pain. But there's nothing to be done, and he's already so much more fortunate than the others. He may have numbers burned into his shoulder--and he still remembers the smell of burning flesh the day they did it, how his mother cried and said weren't there other ways --but he's at Hogwarts, and Dumbledore has smiled and vouched for him, said, "You will do great things, my boy. I have high hopes for you." Remus shakes off the self-pity.
By the time the sky is faded blue and orange, Remus is already stripped to his bare skin, thick strips of cambric knotted four-thick around his wrists and hands so he has cloth stumps instead of hands. "Just a precaution," Madam Pomfrey had said gently. "I don't know how much good they'll do, but it may keep the scratches down to a minimum."
When Remus feels the first tug of the moon, he lets his eyes close, and hopes for morning.
He wakes and is bandaged and is escorted to Gryffindor tower in a haze. The moment his head hits his pillow he's asleep again and when he opens his eyes, it's to Sirius' gray ones, frightened and huge, luminous in the darkness surrounding his bed.
"What happened to you?" Sirius demands. He sounds angry.
Remus winces and tries to think of something to say. He's too tired to use the good excuse he came up with the night before, and he settles for looking helplessly at Sirius. It's a long time before Sirius' expression falters and he mutters, "Go back to sleep."
But Sirius' bedside manner is just atrocious enough that he doesn't stop staring at Remus, and Remus, fully awake now and beginning to feel his wounds, is not in the mood to be treated like a zoo exhibit.
"Do you mind?" Remus croaks.
"No," Sirius says, and continues to stare.
Remus groans and turns to rub his face into his pillow. "Sirius, I can't sleep if you do that."
"And you won't sleep if you keep talking, either!" Sirius snaps, jerks away, and slaps his hand down on Remus' nightstand, palm covering the piano.
Remus vaguely aware that this might be a fight, but it's a late, drowsy afternoon in October, and he has lost a lot of blood, so all he can be bothered to do is to let his eyes slide finally shut when Sirius disappears from his side.
He can feel the shift and slide of his body, the slowing of his heart, how the world darkens at its edges, and Remus thinks, finally, and waits for sleep to roll over him like a wave.
Remus hears, in a distant, foggy sense of the word, the lacy edges of a few isolated notes that stop and start in the air, through the thick curtains around his bed. And then silence for a moment, like a breath, before music exhales around him in one long, unbreaking sigh and he sleeps, floating and light.
The next morning, Remus wakes to a terrible quandary: he is ravenous, and the very thought of moving makes him nauseated and sends an ache through his body. He groans and turns his face into his pillow, which is warm and sympathetic, though inedible.
It's his first moon away from home, away from his mother's comforting hands and lovely scones, his father's low, smooth voice reading Remus stories and asking him if he'd like another shot of Irish in his Irish tea. The thick drapery cloaking Remus' bed is suddenly stifling, and all he'd like is to sink back into sleep, to will his stomach into submission, to ask for his mother.
Against his better judgment he forces himself to move, props himself up on his elbows and feels a sharp, breathtaking shout of pain along his side, and huffs when he collapses back into the bed.
It's been a while since it's been this bad, and Remus only has enough time to let the resentment and grief built up to a crescendo in his chest before a sudden shaft of light cuts across his coverlet and he turns his head in surprise to see Sirius leaning over him again.
"Oh," Remus murmurs.
"You weren't at breakfast," Sirius says shortly. "I wondered if you'd died."
This, in spite of everything, makes Remus laugh, and a smile seems to tug at the corners of Sirius' scowling mouth as well.
"No, not as such," Remus says, finally. "I'm not hungry," he lies.
The grumble of his stomach betrays him, and Remus blushes furiously at Sirius' raised eyebrow.
"I could," Sirius starts, and then frowns, as if struggling with the words. He makes an expressive motion with his long-fingered hands, large and intricate, which could mean "find my wand and help you, maybe." For some reason, Remus sees the "maybe" more clearly than anything else, written into the calluses from holding a wand along the inside of Sirius' middle finger.
"Um," Remus replies hesitantly, because he's not exactly sure how Sirius would help. He still remembers James' braying laugh, the way he said "kissing cousins" with a relish. "If it's not very much trouble, that'd--um."
Sirius turns up his nose, slipping his hand into the pocket of his uniform trousers.
"This kind of amateur magic doesn't even count," he informs Remus imperiously, drawing out a beautiful wand. It's dark, rosy-colored wood, and Remus wonders what's in its heart, and feels that it should be phoenix feather--smoldering like Sirius' gray eyes.
Sirius does something with a cultured flick of his wrist that seems to wash Remus in cool water, and by the time Remus' eyes open again Sirius is watching him with something that is very similar to concern.
"All right?" he asks.
"Yes," Remus says, amazed. "Oh, very."
Concern melts into triumph, and Remus likes that better, he thinks.
"Of course you are," Sirius says, haughty.
They go down to breakfast together, and Remus sits on Sirius' right hand side. He likes it there, and the next morning at breakfast, he sits there as well, and the day after, too.
Sirius separates all the food on his plate, so that nothing is touching anything else and squeezes lemons into his tea. His fingers and hands dance over the silver wear and dishes like they are choreographed, and Remus wonders what breakfast at the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black must be like, so that Sirius can be half-asleep with hair sticking in every direction, and still have manners as if he is taking high tea with the queen.
One day, a week later, James is forced to copy Remus' notes for Charms, and moves to sit across from Remus at the end of the table in order to do so. Peter follows. And somehow, afterward, in between James and Sirius sniping at one another about their respective families, personal hygiene, and relative attractiveness, this becomes habit, and maybe they are friends, too.
At least, in private, Remus thinks that Sirius is his friend. Though really, it's anybody's guess.
Sirius seems to be disinterested in being friends with anybody, though he's stopped gazing longingly at the Slytherin table, even if Bellatrix Lestrange still gazes longingly at him. (Remus holds his tongue about this, partially because Bellatrix Lestrange is Sirius' cousin and partially because the thought gives Remus a hot flare of jealousy he tries not to examine.)
After the next moon, Remus wakes up again to Sirius' looming face, though the snide curiosity is softening. He sleeps again, steadied by music like his mother's hands.
He and Sirius never discuss it, but talk about other things. Remus will say something about Muggle London, and Sirius will go on for ten minutes about how pants it must be in comparison to this one Wizarding town near Moscow, about his many trips abroad, about how his blood is superior to that of simple Mudbloods--and then Sirius will grow bored and ask Remus how ballpoint pens work.
So Remus and Sirius eat breakfast together, and despite his accusations that Remus is cursed, Sirius continues to pair with Remus for Potions, which is largely the reason that Remus does not fail. James and Sirius--somehow--manage to set one of the couches in the common room on fire with a jar of strawberry preserves and four toothbrushes and serve three weeks detention together. At the end of this, they seem to like one another, or at least hate one another less actively. During Herbology, Remus lets Sirius tell him things about dusty Wizarding history, far deeper and filthier than the texts they read for their classes, and Sirius plays for Remus, once a month, every month and doesn't ask any questions.
Sirius, for all his loudness, is always silent about his piano, and he lets it stay on Remus' night table. Remus never really asks why it is still there, but has taken to watching it as he falls asleep, thinking about the small, dissonant noises it made when he'd touched it.
By second year, Sirius and James have gone from enemies to prank-mates to friends to best friends to brothers, which is a fascinating combination of all of these. If Remus was to label Sirius and James' relationship based on their conversation, he'd have to say "mutual idiocy."
Still, their lunacy is a welcome change from his summer, which was long and quiet. Remus purchased twenty-three books and read most of them at least twice. He finished his summer homework within three weeks and experimented with baking, which was both disastrous and entertaining to his parents as well as next-door neighbors.
Back at Hogwarts, it feels like Remus is waking up again, becoming comfortable in his new skin, and he watches, a little amazed, when he realizes that despite Sirius' best efforts that he now has friends, and that Remus is counted among them. It's a daring and strange thing, to wake up in the morning and be familiar with the people around you, for them to save you a seat and ask for your opinion or help you think of synonyms for the word "explode."
James is brilliant and messy and manipulative and Sirius is like the open sky, clear and honest and unbearably beautiful, and Peter tags along after all three of them--and Remus is awed by that, all three--and hesitates before asking questions. But this imperfect machine is the most perfect thing Remus has ever known, so by the time he serves his first detention toward the middle of second year, he doesn't mind that it's for helping Sirius to plant dungbombs in the Slytherin commons; this is Remus' brand new life, and on mornings after the moon, Sirius still plays.
Nothing really special or out of the ordinary precipitates the Tuesday morning Sirius skivs off History of Magic to play Sleeper's Awake for Remus and ask if he's a werewolf.
Remus chokes on his scone, which is still warm, slightly crumbled from its journey in Sirius' left pocket but perfectly capable of going down the wrong tube in Remus' throat.
"Pardon?" he asks, gasping.
Sirius stares at him with gray, gray eyes. "You needn't pretend," he says archly. "After all, I'm a genius, and it isn't as if you're very good at lying, anyhow." Sirius frowns, knits his fine, dark brows together. "You look rather pale."
Remus drops his scone and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. He can't breathe. The dorm room is empty except for him and Sirius but it suddenly feels claustrophobic.
"I--was it that obvious?" Remus croaks. Perhaps, Remus thinks, Dumbledore has some sort of sliding scale for the number of people who can know about Remus' affliction before he is sent away from school.
"You're gone on full moon nights and you come back like you picked a fight with the Fat Lady," Sirius says easily. "You're all moony in Astronomy when we study the moon and you always look at pictures of it for far too long in class."
Remus nods and swallows hard. He says, "Okay," and rolls out of bed to limp to his dresser to start packing his things.
Sirius' eyes grow enormous.
There's a lot of panicking and shouting and Sirius apologizing when he shoves Remus and realizes that he's done it on a new cut, and then a lot of haggling and promises to keep things silent. (At some point during all of this ruckus, Sirius offers to make a blood pact, which seems a bit desperate and terrifying, and Remus convinces him that it's not necessary before Sirius takes out his Black family ceremonial dagger. Remus tries not to think about why there is such a thing as the Black family ceremonial dagger, and mostly fails.) When brief, caustic negotiations do little to persuade Remus that this is not all going to blow up, Sirius screws up his face and orders Remus not to even think of leaving the school, as Sirius does not entertain deserters and boring people, the former of which Remus would be and the latter of which Sirius would be hopelessly trapped with should Remus go.
"You can't order me to stay," Remus scoffs, tugging out his carpetbag. "And anyway, I'm not allowed to let anybody know of--of my condition." He still trips over the words. It's been five years and he still thinks about it with a pause.
"Well, you're terrible at hiding it," Sirius storms. "And don't bloody blame me for taking the fourteen seconds to draw a conclusion!"
Remus narrows his eyes. Sirius crosses his arms.
At lunchtime, when Peter and James return to the room to check up on their patient in residence, they find Sirius sitting on the foot of Remus' bed, scowling and sanding down one of Remus' bedposts, grinding away what looks suspiciously like a knife-mark, and Remus curled up in his comforters, happily gorging himself on a truly ridiculous amount of chocolate. The dorm room is otherwise a disaster, with books and papers and clothes strewn about the place; Remus' worn carpet bag is trapped in one of the hanging candelabra's in the ceiling.
"What on earth happened?" James demands.
"Oh, it's fine," Remus says around the chocolate. "Sirius said he'd clean it up."
James raises his brow at Sirius, and before he can make a snotty remark, Sirius yells, "And I do so know how to clean on my bloody own, Potter, so shut it!"
There is no more talk of leaving Hogwarts.
Eventually James stops orbiting himself and Peter is drawn out of James' gravitational pull long enough for them to notice that Remus is a werewolf. Gideon does his best to ignore his roommates, and James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter don't bother to induce him into behavior otherwise--it leaves them to their own devices, their own world.
But the piano is still Remus and Sirius' secret.
It's black and shining and beautiful, and when Sirius charms it back to full size, it fills up the empty space in the middle of the circle of beds in the tower. The light from the windows winks off of the lacquered lid, and Sirius's dark head bobs behind it. Remus likes to watch Sirius' hands dance across the keys, and will lay on his stomach on the bed and stare when he is not falling asleep. There are still good moons and bad moons and moons where Remus does not make it out of the Shrieking Shack until several days afterward, but whenever he comes back to the dormitory, in whatever shape, Sirius is always there, and so is his piano.
Remus realizes one day that no matter what Sirius is playing for him, Remus always hears a love song. It makes his chest tighten and tremble and his throat close up. And when he wakes up from the dreams to which Sirius' notes usher him, Remus is always flushed and pleased, complacent and happy to let Sirius tease and ask foolish questions, to press his cold nose against Remus' neck, to nick off his dinner plate and sneak peeks at his Astronomy homework.
It is after Christmas hols, when the winter is deep and drowsy and gray, that it happens.
Remus goes to the Shack as always but sometime during the night--Madam Pomfrey tells him this later, much later, because Remus does not remember and thinks that he doesn't really want to--the wolf went into a frenzy, and in the change just before sunrise, managed to tear his own--Remus' own throat. He very nearly dies before Madam Pomfrey finds him, or so he is told.
There will be bloodstains on the ancient, creaking floors for years to come, Remus thinks distantly, laying in the cobwebbed bed. He stays awake for a few minutes at a time, and when he can string together enough words to form more than two sentences, he wants to cry, because the Shack is cold and empty and very alone. He tries to hear it, the elegant voice of Sirius' fingers on the ivory keys of his piano, but the Shack is very far away, and so is Remus.
After a while, Remus develops a fever, which leaves him shaking and crying despite Madam Pomfrey's healing poultices and soothing words. He does not improve and there is nothing to be done but wait as some things are beyond even the strength of magic.
He asks to go back to his room, where his bed is softer and cooler and the curtains now magicked with Sirius' not-inconsiderable skill to trap the heat or cold, however Remus is running that particular week. He wants the arching window with its scattered orange light at sunset and he wants Sirius and Sirius' piano, throwing off white light from its black lid. He wants music and notes and rising and falling arpeggios. He wants to be swept away from his sickness, and he wants above all other things to take a deep breath--not to ache and heal and suffer.
When he can move his hands, he stretches out his fingers, empty and numb and hurting, reaching for something that is as elusive as Sirius' disappearing melodies.
Remus loses time. Sometimes, when he wakes up, it is morning, others, it is gray. Mostly, he can't be bothered to tell. But he wakes up one day to find his whole body sluggish and singing with pain, but better--nearly complete. He doesn't touch his throat.
Later, as he is dropping off to sleep again, he swears he can hear swearing and the drag of feet on the steps of the Shack, but is gone into darkness before he can consider the possibility at length.
But every night afterward, he hears music, close to him and thick in the air he's breathing. There are notes falling out of the dusty oxygen in the shack, and they align themselves like Remus remembers Sirius aligned his long fingers on the keys of his piano. He only hears snatches, here and there, and they come and go, interrupted by long and lonely silences.
The next time that he reaches out, stretches his fingers and opens his palm his hand catches something warm and calloused and living. His fingers tighten around it and he hears Sirius' voice--or maybe, Remus just hears Sirius' music.
He lives.
When Remus wakes up in the infirmary in Hogwarts, it has been two weeks, and the moon is waxing again, impatient and unkind. But James and Peter and Lily are wreathed about him, chattering and concerned; Lily is watery-eyed and James is stuttering. It's strange to see everybody so frightened--for him, not of him--but it results in companionship and chocolate, so Remus is content to let them fuss.
He is moved back to the dormitory the following morning, where he finds the space on his night table formerly occupied by Sirius' piano glaringly empty, and cannot be bothered to wonder where it is or where Sirius has faffed off to before he sleeps.
He wakes to silence and spends the day sluggishly in bed. Sirius visits him during lunch and brings him pumpkin pasties, but doesn't talk about the piano, nor where he was this morning.
"You look terrible and white, Moony," Sirius murmurs.
"That's an awful nickname," Remus croaks. The gauze bandage on his throat itches.
Sirius stares at him for a long time before he reaches over, presses tentative fingertips to Remus' throat, and the look in his eyes tells Remus that Sirius is maybe a little heartsick.
"This is awful, too," Sirius whispers.
"I lived," Remus replies. He picks at his comforter, takes a breath, tries to form his mouth around the word 'piano,' but Sirius cuts him off, saying:
"I moved it to the--to the Shrieking Shack." Sirius is red and discomfited and Remus stares. "I--I cast a Seek spell on you, on one of the maps of Hogwarts from the Restricted Section. I stole James' Invisibility Cloak and I got the map and I cast the spell." Sirius looks up at Remus in irritation, "Do you know, that whichever bastard originally wrote the spell did it in some bastardized form of English so that the first three tries it brought up Reggies instead of--"
"Sirius," Remus say firmly--as firmly as can be said in a hoarse voice.
"Remuses," Sirius finishes stubbornly. "I found the Shack. I punched a hole in one of the second story windows." He shows Remus his split knuckles. "You looked like shit."
Sirius is jittering and upset and Remus can see all of this now, decode Sirius' behavior. Remus has learned cryptography, reads the way that Sirius' eyes flash or mouth folds and how his fingers move in the air, all like a language, like the many books that Remus knows by heart.
"Where's your piano, Sirius?" Remus asks, finally and softly.
"I left it there, by your bed," Sirius says, jutting out his chin, unwilling to be embarrassed. "I got tired of the legs jabbing me in my privates when I climbed up into the Shack."
That flush of unaccountable happiness rises up in Remus' chest, bubbles outward, and Remus asks, jokingly, how will Sirius play him to sleep now? But Sirius only looks at him, solemn and still and honestly, and says, "I'll play to waking. I'll make you open your eyes."
It means more than he lets on, Remus thinks, but that has always been Sirius, excessive on the surface and even more so underneath. So Remus bites back his protests and allows Sirius to nag at him until Remus is tucked underneath a mountain of blankets and quilts and provided a bar of chocolate, tucked beside his pillow for when he wakes.