It wasn't that Remus Lupin didn't care. It was simply easier that he forgot those happy, warm times so long ago. It had been that way for twelve years. Twelve lonely years of letting himself grieve only at Halloween or Christmas. Twelve hard years of letting himself concentrate only on the current phase of the Moon. Twelve impoverished years of letting himself worry only about how he was going to pay his bills. Twelve lonely, painful, impoverished years of heartache. It was easier to forget.
Tonight, however, he was finding that he kept revisiting those small, unimportant half memories of years long gone. Memories, which were not milestones, but fleeting moments of a laugh too loud in the library, a run up a staircase after breakfast, a late-night round of Exploding Snap, a close call with Mrs. Norris near the Hospital Wing, or a sunbeam pouring into a train compartment. They could have taken place over any of the seven years at Hogwarts. They were moments that seemed inconsequential when they were happening. But now, years later, they were the most important. They proved that they existed, that they lived. They were the most painful to remember.
Remus was confused on why they kept coming up tonight. Then again, it was hard not to think back to those inconsequential moments and compare his companion to his counterpart from those times.
It was awkward, he thought, to watch those long, too-slender fingers wrap themselves around the teacup. In fact, it was if the fingers themselves were confused, after so many years, on precisely what to do. First, he noted, they all tried to squeeze into the handle. They wiggled and fought to see which would go where. Finally, both hands wrapped themselves around the cup, cradling it as if sheltering a butterfly from a hard wind.
Remus's eyes remained on the man grasping the teacup. In the distant past, in the memories that Remus rarely visited, he remembered a man of the same stature drinking tea with a more aristocratic air about him. The werewolf's head tilted and his eyes squinted as he sized the man up. Once, back in those ignored half memories, the man before him had been handsome. They had teased him about it in their boyhood.
"Witch Weekly's most eligible bachelor."
"Hey, your fan club is gawking again, Padfoot."
He had smirked then. Hell, he had reacted to anything then.
Not that Sirius Black didn't react anymore; the reactions were simply more jumpy, more fear filled, more like a caged animal than his old friend. The Sirius Black from those ignored half memories had a flawless, easy grace when he moved. That Sirius Black moved and reacted like poetry, not like a broken puppet.
To be expected, he supposed. Azkaban had to have some kind of lingering effects beyond table manners on even the most innocent of souls. Still, the treatment of the teacup was disconcerting.
Sirius seemed to have given up on it. He returned the cup to its saucer as gingerly as he could and then stared at Remus morosely. Remus brought his cup to his lips and sipped, all the while studying Sirius's intent gaze. It took a moment before Sirius attempted to mirror Remus's actions. Remus became self-conscious as Sirius copied his finger placement on the cup handle. Sirius would glare at his cup and his uncooperative fingers, then stare at Remus's tea-drinking-precision, and then return his sights to his own piece of crockery. Sirius's cup's journey from its saucer to its master's mouth was jerky and clumsy. Remus found himself holding his breath until Sirius finally gulped down the rich, warm liquid. It was some sort of accomplishment, this swallow of tea, although Remus wasn't convinced that Sirius would see it that way.
There had been no words to suggest it, but Remus was doubtful that Sirius was entirely comfortable in human presence again. But maybe that was attributed to the welcome he had given his old friend, he mused. After all, when Remus had opened the front door of his flat to find a mostly-starved Marauder and hippogriff dripping on his stoop, he had not been very hospitable.
"What are you doing here?!" he had stage whispered as he pulled the convicts into the door. Buckbeak was incensed at the treatment, but Sirius simply seemed defeated. Remus received no verbal answer, simply a half-hearted shrug, or something remotely like it. This was the first half memory: Sirius, as a third year, appearing on the Lupin family's doorstep over holiday with a black eye and only a shrug to explain it. But this moment of remembering was pushed aside. The hippogriff had to be bowed to, then transfigured into something more size-appropriate for the small space (which resulted in a huffy "barn-owl" for the rest of the night). Remus had made several faux pas in the first ten minutes of their reintroductions.
The first was a direct result of trying to fall into old habits. In an attempt to keep rainwater from thoroughly saturating his rug, Remus had exited to the bathroom to retrieve a pair of bath towels. The old Sirius of half memories would have not only expected the flying towel, but caught it with a grin. However, the emaciated fugitive standing in the entryway was not the old Sirius. As Remus threw the towel, Sirius's body had shrunk away from the flung object as if it were his dead mother's striking blow. The harmless piece of terrycloth fell innocently onto the man's boots. Remus had frozen in mid-step to stare. Sirius looked apologetically before bending to retrieve the object and rub it over his absurdly long hair.
The second mistake had come after hearing Sirius's stomach grumble. Perhaps he didn't want to seem imposing. Or perhaps he had become so accustomed to hearing this over the years that he failed to notice it. Whatever the reason, when Remus suggested toast Sirius seemed pleasantly surprised. Remus quickly remembered a row with his then-flat mate, a twenty-year-old Sirius, in a growth spurt, about eating an entire loaf of bread. The memory was ignored. After a few annoying minutes of Sirius moving his weight from one foot to the other, Remus remembered him doing that while waiting for the Moon to rise on Marauding nights, he convinced his guest to sit down. Shortly there after, Remus had set a plate with three pieces of toasted bread in front of him, accompanied with a mostly empty jar of currant jam. The kettle whistled simultaneously, and Remus had turned to hob in order to silence it. When he returned his vision to the table and the hunched, haggard man, he was shocked.
Gone was the haughty boy who never sat a chair on all four of its legs, who never ate his toast plain, who never quite gave up his instilled etiquette (as much as he tried to pretend he had), and in his place stooped a disheveled man who was gobbling the naked bread with an animalistic greed.
Remus had stared.
Sirius had noticed.
So there they sat, the werewolf mothering out tea and the escaped convict attempting to remember how to drink from a cup properly. Remus had been at a complete loss at what to talk about. Thus, he hadn't even attempted conversation. Much, he thought, in the same way he had ignored communication in the silent days after his Hogwarts roommates discovered his "furry little problem." Sirius took a deep, noisy breath and Remus attempted to read the expression the Animagus was projecting.
"Nasty weather."
"Yes."
Silence.
Like the silence that had saturated their dorm room when they came back, exhausted, from a late night of manual labor in detention.
"Cold."
"Indeed."
Silence.
There is a half memory floating in Remus's brain of a pitiful conversation, much like this one, on a rooftop while Sirius had a smoke, shortly after the incident with Snape and the Whomping Willow.
Sirius's cup clattered with the saucer loudly and he seemed at a loss at what to do with the spilled tea. He groped for the edge of his ragged robes and dabbed at the table. Remus found that his brow wrinkled. He saw these same rags in the Shrieking Shack last spring. But now, it's nearly December. He recognized Sirius's motorcycle boots as those the Marauders had given him as a graduation present nearly seventeen years before. There is the joyful laugh of appreciation in his memory. Those beloved boots looked bruised and as though they would soon be completed separated at the heel. Remus was relatively sure he had seen a toe peeking through the old leather. The sad robes were tattered and thread barren. Surely those were not the same ones Sirius had been wearing since 1981? That would certainly explain the smell. Remus stood.
"You need a shower." Sirius stared up, making eye contact for the first time that night. Remus remembered how those grey eyes used to hold passion, humor, and joy. What was there now? Remus was reminded of an empty steel pot his grandmother used to keep for heating water when the hot water heater would go out. Sirius stood also. He was still nearly a head taller. Remus chuckled. Sirius squinted.
"Remember how you used to lean..." The words were lost to the oppressive silence of the flat. Remus found that his mouth was suddenly dry. Sirius had yet to drop eye contact, or, for that matter, blink. Then, with a painfully slow movement, a gaunt arm folded into a sharp elbow and rested on top of a prematurely grey head. The skin around Sirius's eyes wrinkled. Remus returned his feeble attempt at a smile. Then, much in the same way that a dog's eyes gleam with the joy of being praised by his master, the grey hallows filled with laughter years overdue.
Then, for the first time in twelve years, Remus found himself forgetting the phase of the Moon, the "payment due" date on the bills, and the ache in his heart. Instead, his mind was considering where he had left his hair shears. He laughed at the entire situation and guided his best friend toward a belated bathing.
Half Memories by rev02a
Chapter Notes: The Marauders belong to Jo Rowling; I just borrowed them for a cuppa.
This is my first go at this... be gentle.