Chapter 2: Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine and will never be! ☹
Mist swirled in through the Owlery windows, hazing Remus’s vision as he selected a barn owl. He had come prepared with quill and ink for a week, sending a couplet to Sirius once a day. About anything – classes, how nice Sirius’s hair looked, how bad the weather was... As much as he was expecting it to, the letter writing hadn’t seemed ridiculous just yet. So he kept at it.
I’m not as far off as you think,
Buy me Butterbeer and let’s drink.
Progressively cheesier, yet not too revealing. Remus knew what he was doing. Maybe Sirius didn’t exactly need a healthy dose of cheering up for any good reason, but it felt good to do it. It felt good to seal each owl with his feelings.
*~*
“Still can’t figure out who it is?” James asked over breakfast a few days later, piling raspberry jam onto his toast – Gryffindor was facing Slytherin that evening in their second game of the season, and he needed his strength.
“Not for the life of me,” Sirius doled tomato soup into his mouth with a twinkle in his eye. “It just doesn’t make sense. Who could want me at this school?”
Remus was thankful for his turkey sandwich concealing a stupid grin.
“No idea,” James rolled his eyes. “Maybe the letters are misdirected. Maybe they’re actually from Lily to me…” he stared dreamily at the starry sky above.
“Oh, shut up. They’re addressed to me, you twat.”
“Yeah, Lily wouldn’t do that. She has too much class,” Greta said matter-of-factly from down the table, smacking her lips. Such an eavesdropper, Remus thought.
“Poems are classy!” Sirius threw his spoon down indignantly, causing tomato soup to splash into his hair and onto his and James’s robes.
“Watch it!” James couldn’t hold back laughter as he swiped tomato soup off his robes.
After a quick cleaning spell courtesy of Remus, Sirius was dry and soup-free.
“Well, whoever it is,” Sirius continued, eager to dismiss the accident, “they desperately want to be my Valentine. I mean, if it doesn’t stop by the time the fourteenth rolls around, this is just a complete stalker.”
James looked as if he’d had the epiphany of a lifetime. “It might be Snivellus trying to trick you!”
“It is not,” Remus snapped. Peter eyed him suspiciously.
“It could be her,” Sirius’s voice adopted a dreamy quality, eyeing a curvy blonde Ravenclaw who flounced past.
“Gross. That’s Tracy Youngblood, you do not want to touch her,” James shook his head vehemently. Remus nodded in agreement although he usually wasn’t one for insults.
“Or it could be her…” Sirius ignored him, focusing now on a redheaded Hufflepuff daintily sipping pumpkin juice. A slimy Slytherin called Saunders snapped him out of his reverie.
“Prepared for tonight, Potter?” Saunders approached the Gryffindors with a false swagger.
“Well, Saunders,” James balled up a napkin in his fist, “Even if we somehow lose to you snakes tonight, at least I can say I was more prepared than your parents were when they thought of conceiving your slimy arse.”
Sirius exploded with laughter as Remus shook his head. Saunders lunged at James. Peter cowered. A Gryffindor on her way to lunch barely managed to hold Saunders back in time.
“Keep your hands off him,” she rolled her eyes. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence, and by the time Saunders stopped flailing he was already in the direction of his safe haven, the dungeons.
“I’ll get you, Potter!” he spat angrily backward.
“I bet you will.”
“He’s just looking for attention,” Peter patted James’s arm awkwardly.
Sirius coughed. “Remus, you’re smart. Care to help a bloke with Transfiguration?” his eyebrows lifted. Cute.
~*~
“Arghhhhh!”
Sirius, cross-eyed with a headache, slammed his forehead into his open hand. The fireside couch’s aura pervaded the air with a warm, comfortable feeling, as if nothing could go wrong – but things were horribly so inside his head.
“I don’t think hitting your head will help anything. Come on,” Remus gently shook his friend’s shoulder.
“This doesn’t make any sense, and it’s never going to,” Sirius thrust his arms into the air, falling back against the couch and releasing a fake sob.
“In that case,” Remus snapped the book shut, “If you didn’t want help, why did you ask for it?”
Sirius yawned and stretched cat-like over the couch, head on Remus’s lap, looking starrily up at him.
“To spend some time with you, dear,” he sang, flashing a lopsided smile.
“Come off it,” Remus gave him a nudge, face suddenly in flames. Greta and her friend were watching across the common room, it wasn’t a place for this – nor was anywhere –
“Seriously!” Sirius said. “Ha… I said –”
“Serious. How do you not get sick of that?” Remus shook his head. His friend could be such an idiot –but such a cute fake kitten. “Come on, let’s get back to this.”
“I can’t do it,” Sirius huffed, sitting back up against the deep red cushions.
“Too bad. I’ve just decided that you can.”
Across the room, Greta’s eyes did not stray away from them.
*~*
Rain sloshed against the windowpanes of the Owlery as Remus scribbled hurriedly. He only had a couple minutes to head to the Quidditch pitch and watch James air-pulverize the Slytherins.
You’ve helped me just by being there,
I won’t go anywhere, I swear.
Attaching the letter to a new owl, Remus hurried out toward the upset sky. He wasn’t sure if he was doing this poem-a-day thing to piss Sirius off, to inflate his ego, to get his feelings out there, or to play a trick on him. Perhaps all of them. Whichever one it was, it was greatly amusing to see Sirius lust after the possibilities.
He’d be freezing out there, totally unprepared for the rain. He’d have to rely on a nice warming spell – or perhaps a friend.
Or perhaps a more-than-a-friend.
No. That wasn’t right. The thought was immoral, but so were Sirius’s family’s elitist beliefs, Remus’s lycanthropy, James’s fits of asshattery, and Peter’s stupidity. All of them were slightly flawed, so why couldn’t he – no, he had to go.
~*~
“Hurry, we’ve just managed to save you a spot!” Peter shouted through the hail. His cloak was dripping wet, spit spraying, rat resembling.
Raindrops splashed from Sirius’s eyelashes onto his cheeks, swimming down to a pool above his lip and cascading off his chin. He was shivering like a small child in a monsoon – oh, wait.
“Honestly, don’t either of you know warming or drying spells?” Remus half-chuckled half-disgustedly.
“You’re the smart one!” Sirius pouted.
“Bullocks,” Remus shook his head, casting a drying spell over the three of them. He squished himself between Peter and Sirius and watched Saunders tackle James in midair.
“PENALTY!”
The Gryffindors waved their scarves. The Slytherins booed.
“You’re a wanker, Saunders!” Sirius bellowed.
“Shut up!” Peter yelled. “I’m missing the match!”
Sirius and Remus exchanged eye-rolling glances.
James scored a goal, resulting in more screaming Gryffindors. The team met for a time out and Remus had to admit his magical warmth wasn’t so effective with the hail coming down this strong.
“It’s f-f-freezing. I’m tempted to visit Rosmerta for some –”
“-Butterbeer?” Sirius leaned down and pulled bottles from his bag, straightening up with a grin.
“You just happened to have some, eh?” Remus raised an eyebrow. Oh God. He knows I’m writing those letters. It’s only the 10th. I should stop right now. Or confess. He knows…
“Well I knew it’d be cold, y’know, and victors might as well celebrate early!” Sirius shrugged, tossing back a swig, winking, and turning back to the game at hand.
Add ‘nonchalant’ to the list of Sirius’s… well, the list of Sirius.
*~*
Crimson and gold streamers decked the Gryffindor common room. Party horns were ablow, sweaty hands clutched Butterbeers, and Remus managed to huddle and hide away with his best friends. There weren’t any problems when it was the four of them, bunched together playing Exploding Snap with a smuggled bottle of Firewhiskey. There wasn’t anything wrong when Slytherins, Snape, and scary letters were pushed out of their minds.
Remus always felt like Hogwarts was home, but there were certain moments when it was more than that. On nights like tonight, when the pressure of Sirius’s knee pressed against his each time he reached forward to stack a card, he could die and be perfectly happy doing so.
“My turn!” Remus called out, placing a card precariously on the top of the stack. In one gust of wind, the cards exploded in all directions. Grabbing a handful off of Sirius’s lap and the floor, he started at table level once more.
~*~
“Victory is sweet, now let the victors sleep,” James mumbled, throwing himself onto his mattress.
“That was the lamest rhyme I’ve ever heard,” Remus muttered, rolling over and caressing his pillow. It didn’t matter; James was instantaneously passed out as well as Peter.
Remus’s dreams were… extraordinary, to say the least. Sirius waltzed him around a large ballroom floor under an ornate golden ceiling, both of them sporting dapper dress robes and wedding rings. The friction between their palms was electrifying; their eye contacted sewn with a thin ribbon of lust.
Flash forward, and Sirius was singing to him in Transfiguration class, somehow making an obnoxious Celestina Warbeck song sound good. He kissed Remus’s hand, gazed longingly into his eyes, and made smoochy noises that enraged Professor McGonagall.
Flash forward, and they both had to fill in for James on the Quidditch team… They were falling, falling so deep from the sky… where was the pitch?
Flash forward, and Sirius was actually standing outside of Remus’s bed, swaying dangerously.
“Moony.”
It was still a dream, it wasn’t happening, he’d be out of it soon – on to more appropriate -
“Moony.”
Maybe if Remus just kept acting like nothing was wrong, he could pretend they weren’t married –
“Oh, fuck it.”
Warmth. It slid around Remus, accompanying him in its grasp, nuzzling his back. Comfort, drunkenly snaking around his waist. Morning, when the warmth would leech itself to the blanket and Sirius would be gone.
*~*
“He slept with you?” Lily asked incredulously. “Wait, what?”
Back of the library – treacle tart, Remus, Lily, and a row of memory books. Nothing new.
“I don’t know! I mean…” Remus trailed off, pulling at his hair. What is happening to me? First I can’t keep my eyes off of my best friend, now I don’t even know what’s real and what’s not…
“Oh come on. You have to know. A bloke doesn’t just sleep in your bed and not mean something by it,” Lily rationalized through a mouthful of chocolate.
“What does that mean?”
“He likes you, you idiot!”
“He does not.”
“He does!”
“He was just tipsy, he didn’t know which bed was his –”
Lily let out shrill laughter much unlike her own. “Please. That’s your excuse? The boy’s been sleeping in the same bed for six years. He knows which one is his.”
Remus shrugged. “It was probably a dream. He would’ve apologized or something by now if not.”
“Have you seen him today?”
“Well, he’s not in Arithmancy, so –”
“So?”
“No,” Remus said, “I haven’t seen him. He wasn’t in the dorm, and I think he’s avoiding me. I might’ve said something in my sleep that was embarrassing. I don’t think he’d be my friend anymore if he knew –”
“Remus, calm down. Shh, shush,” Lily grabbed his hands from his face and held them in her warm, chocolate palms. “It’s okay. He loves you, he’s not going anywhere.”
Remus breathed in deep, inhaled the books and the treacle tart and Lily’s peppermint shampoo. “I know.”
A fat silence fell on them as they broke apart, sitting upright against the bookshelf once more. It was never comfortable, but it never bothered them.
“And it’s not like he minds that you want him…” Lily muttered under her breath, crunching into a new piece of tart with a mischievous smile.
“I do not! That’s appalling!” Remus shoved Lily off.
“Hey!” she said, mock offended. Madam Pince approached them, hawk-like, from a distance. Now was the time to get serious.
“Remus, I’ve watched you pine after him for months, if not years. If he means enough that you didn’t mind when he snuck in your bed with no warning – if he means that much – then go for it. Everyone’s waiting.”
Lily swiftly wrapped up her chocolate, got steady on her feet, and stalked out the library doors.
Everyone?
~*~
The next day, Remus lay in bed an extra hour. He didn’t have Transfiguration until noon, and he wasn’t hungry enough to go to lunch. He simply laid there, soaking in the down pillow and the faint scent of his friend who hadn’t talked to him in a day.
Well, Sirius had spoken to him – just not about anything that mattered. Which, Remus realized, was the status of their relationship – no, friendship. It just wasn’t like them. Either of them. They got along great, they laughed together, worked together, played together – they grew up together. They shared a home, shared a room, shared a school, and shared best friends.
He’d try to talk to him after Transfiguration, surely. He knew Sirius wouldn’t try anything stupid like flat out ignoring him, because then James and Peter would notice. And then – who knows what would happen?
But he wasn’t done with the letter game.
Grudgingly, Remus rolled out of bed. He ignored his face – ghastly – in the mirror, stepped into the shower – cold – and reached for the soap – gingerly – ridding himself of Remus Lupin and trying to start again.
It couldn’t be that hard. Everyone had to do it – they got sick of being the same, predictable person, so they changed something about themselves. Got rid of feelings and memories. It couldn’t hurt. Sirius was just his friend, and it wouldn’t hurt for him to be just that –
“Where is he?” James’s voice floated into the shower stall. “He was here when I left for lunch.”
“I dunno, mate,” Sirius answered. “Maybe he’s in the shower.”
“Moony, you in there?” Peter called.
Remus rolled his eyes. Starting again meant definitely not answering people while he was naked. He needed some alone time, and it might as well start now.