The Most Important: I Sit at Your Side, Your Hand in Mine
The first time Sirius Black knows he loves Remus Lupin he does not recognize it as love. Or anything more than friendship anyway.
He is, after all, a bit preoccupied by the fact that he is sitting in his first Transfiguration lesson of his third year and Professor McGonagall is telling them about Animagi, wizards who can transform into an animal by just thinking it. She pauses during her lesson and without warning, turns into a cat.
Sirius stops paying attention abruptly. He is staring blindly at Professor McGonagall who has resumed her natural shape along with the broom against her spine–with the added bonus of now being the coolest human being he knows. He is also thinking that he would do this for Remus. There is no hesitation in the thought. It would help Remus, it is cool and it is illegal. He would do this for him. There is no question in his mind. It doesn’t matter that it takes years, and that most wizards attempting to become Animagi are only allowed to do it under Ministry supervision. It doesn’t even matter that he is only thirteen years old and underage and will get thrown out of school if he gets caught. (It doesn’t even enter his mind that his mother would kill him; his mother has wanted to kill him since he was Sorted into Gryffindor.) He is going to do this for Remus J. Lupin if it kills him.
It is that simple.
Of course, it is a few weeks before he dares suggest this to James and Peter, but when he does, they are just as excited as he is and all three of them pour themselves into the research. They are consumed by their hunt for information and it is a hard thing to hide this from Remus who, for all the cauldrons he blows up during Potions, is the most bookish of all of them and always around. They are forced to find out everything that they can on the days surrounding the full moon, days when he is weak and ill or simply not there, taking advantage of him so that they can use what they will learn to help him one day.
They get their hands on every book Madam Pince, the school Librarian, will let them. Not a single one of the three of them has ever put this much effort into schoolwork before, and knowing how many hours the trio is spending in the Library, many of the teachers wonder how in the world the lot of them can be doing so badly. It is clear that the standard they have held until this point in their schoolwork is failing and no one except for them knows why. But they don’t care.
They have a Purpose.
It is amazing how their Purpose overwhelms them, swallows them whole. How can they possibly concentrate on anything else but becoming Animagi? If any of the teachers knew that this is what they are doing, they would, of course, understand completely...before making sure they were expelled and their wands broken, the pieces scattered in the wind or thrown into the lake or something else as dramatic. This is clearly the reason none of them tell any of their teachers–even though they are sure that Professor McGonagall must be a wealth of information.
They hide their Purpose with the respect and secrecy due it. And if they serve a few more detentions than they ought to because they haven’t been sleeping a lot the last few months and their nerves are a bit frayed and so they curse Bertram Aubrey in the hallway, swelling his head, or Transfigure the ever-useless Slytherin Severus Snape into a pincushion because he won’t stop trying to find out what they’re up to, or because Ravenclaws are clearly not as smart as everyone makes them out to be...well, it’s worth it, isn’t it?
Anything is worth the price of helping Remus. Anything.
When fourth year comes, they are only marginally more informed of the process, but have come to school prepared. All came home from school with a list of books to buy and the ones the shopkeepers wouldn’t give them on their own, they asked their parents to get. James and Peter’s parents either are not smart enough to put the pieces together, or are simply too absent-minded to. Sirius finds a few interesting books in his family’s library and spends the rest of the summer lowering himself to be nice enough to his cousin Bella–who has already reached her majority–so that she will buy the rest for him. He is pretty sure that she does it because she, like his mother, wants to see him die, but it doesn’t matter. He’s gotten the books, hasn’t he?
It is halfway through fourth year and they are now quite a bit more knowledgeable on the process when Sirius notices something strange: he spends an awful lot of time noticing Remus.
He has absolutely no idea how long he’s been doing this, but one day while staring at the back of Remus’s neck in History of Magic, he realizes that he is actually staring at Remus’s neck and not into space. It amazes him that he has not noticed this until now. He is usually, after all, quite bright and quick to pick up on things. From then on, he pays careful attention to how much attention he pays Remus.
By the end of the week, he is utterly terrified.
What he should have done was mark how much time he doesn’t spend looking at, talking to, or thinking of Remus. He would have had a far smaller number, then. Because it seems as though that’s all he does. He wakes up, and Remus is there. When he eats, the same. And all through classes and in between classes and torturing Snape and throwing snowballs and skating on the lake. Remus is always there. He’s there at Halloween and Christmas and Valentine’s day, the last of which is particularly embarrassing because even older girls have asked him to Madam Puddifoot’s, rather good-looking girls at that, and he tells each of them ‘no’ and he doesn’t know why. He is horrified that it might have something to do with the way Remus is just always there.
At the start of last term, Sirius decides that if he simply ignores Remus, the problem might go away. This only makes it worse. He tries, he really does, not to talk to him. But that only makes Sirius think about him more. And every time he sneers at Remus, or ignores him, or makes fun of something he’s said, Remus only gives him a very hurt look, like a whipped puppy almost, and shuts up. Or goes away. Or talks to James or Peter instead. And he looks so sad doing it that Sirius wants to hug him. And he almost does. Until he realizes that the whole reason he said or did something to Remus to make him look that way to begin with is because he’s trying not to want to hug him in the first place.
Of course that’s not the worst of it.
The worst of it is that hugging is not all Sirius would like to do to Remus.
He realizes the truth of this on the last day of term, after they have finished their last exam and are lazing by the lake when they should be packing to go home the next day. They are all lounging about, sleeves rolled up, shoes and socks off as they push their toes through the grass. James and Remus have just gotten up to run into the lake. Sirius, too occupied with thinking about the next two horrible months he’s going to have to spend with his parents, is caught horribly unawares when, while watching as James and Remus dash in and out of the shallows of the lake, shirts half untucked and faces shining with laughter, he realizes that there is nothing more he would like to do at this moment than kiss Remus J. Lupin.
Being far more mature now than he was at Halloween, which is when he thinks this whole thing started, Sirius wisely does not run screaming from the lake to hide under his pillow. Instead, he watches Remus playing with James, realizing that he wants Remus to play with him instead. He watches a few strands of hair fall from where they are tucked behind Remus’s ear and wants to push them back. He watches as James splashes Remus and when Remus splashes him back, both laughing, Sirius wishes that he was the one now soaking wet and laughing instead. He watches as they come out from the lake, collapsing beside him near the tree after making sure to drip on Peter. When Remus gives him a nervous smile, Sirius smiles back and is both thrilled and devastated when Remus’s own smile tuns into a broad grin,
knowing that he’s been a right idiot these last few months.
Sirius watches Remus as they head back to the dormitory. He watches as Remus neatly removes all of his belongings from their place and packs his trunk. He watches Remus at the feast: the way he eats, the way he drinks, the way he talks. He watches as Remus warns a younger student who is carrying something illegal in the corridors, reminding the nameless girl that she can still get into trouble if a teacher catches her. He watches Remus in the Common Room and he watches him climb the stairs up to their room. He starts to watch as Remus gets into pajamas, and then turns away, embarrassed. He watches as Remus gets under his blanket and doesn’t stop watching even after Remus falls asleep.
He watches and watches and watches.
By the time he walks through the Barrier at King’s Cross Station, back into the Muggle world and his mother’s hateful glare, Sirius knows it without a doubt: he is hopelessly in love with Remus Lupin.