DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The song “1917,” excerpts from which appear at the beginning and end of this fic, belongs to David Olney and Emmylou Harris.
Posted by: Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon).
Evil smirk. This is the happy chapter, y’all. The angst will return anon.
(three weeks after the preceding events)
Hold me 'neath the London skies
Let's not talk of how or why
Tomorrow's soon enough to die
But right now the war is over.
The
night air was unseasonably chilly for May, and Remus shivered as he stood on
the flat’s cramped balcony, wishing now that he hadn’t decided to leave that
muggle-style pullover inside.
“Sirius,”
he asked, knowing that he probably sounded as if he were whining, but not
particularly caring at the moment, “how much longer is this going to take?”
“I’ve
almost found it, really,” Sirius replied absently, most of his attention
focused on the giant and unwieldy telescope with which he was currently
attempting to locate Jupiter. “Remind
me never to go months without usin’ this ever again,” he added. “The damn thing’s out of alignment. I’m gonna have to take the entire bleedin’
telescope apart later to fix it.”
“Couldn’t
you just use some sort of charm on it?” Remus suggested. “Like the one you put up to prevent weather
damage?” He was beginning to recall
exactly why he’d never signed up for Astronomy class at Hogwarts—all of the
labs seemed to take place in the middle of the night, and usually consisted,
according to those who’d suffered through them, of spending hours locating
whatever the students were supposed to observe only to be driven inside by rain
before anyone had gotten more than a few moments’ glimpse.
“Moony,
you’re a genius,” Sirius said.
“Ah! Found it!” He looked up from the telescope’s eyepiece,
grinning triumphantly. “Quick, go and
look before it moves.”
Remus
bent obediently to peer into the tiny eyepiece where, amazingly, the bright
star on the horizon, half obliterated by city light pollution, became a rust
and cream-striped globe. “Wow,” he
exclaimed, excited despite himself.
“It’s got stripes. And a big red
splotch. And hey, what are those little
bright things around it?”
“Moons,”
Sirius informed him, leaning against the balcony rail and lighting a
cigarette. “Probably Io and Ganymede.”
“You can
tell which Moon is which just with this?”
Remus was highly impressed.
“Actually,
no,” Sirius admitted. “Those were just
the first two of Jupiter’s moons I could think of. Io’s really interestin’; it’s got volcanoes.” His eyes shone with enthusiasm as he
gestured with one hand towards the small speck of brightness that was Jupiter,
despite the fact that he’d only gotten off his shift at auror headquarters a
few hours ago. Three weeks ago, there
would have been a drink of some kind in that hand by this time of night. Tonight, there was none. Of course, the fact that Remus had thrown
out every alcoholic beverage in the flat, down to and including butterbeer, may
have helped. “What else do you want to
see?”
“How
about Venus?” Remus asked, stepping back from the telescope to allow Sirius
access to the eyepiece again. “It’s
supposed to be the planet of love, after all.”
He felt a smile beginning to spread across his lips. He’d originally agreed to the late night
stargazing session mainly to make Sirius happy, but it was turning out to be
far more interesting than he’d anticipated, though the light of the nearly full
moon that bathed the balcony was making his skin itch.
Sirius
wrinkled his nose at the suggestion and shook his head decisively. “You don’t wanna see Venus. Trust me on this. It’s real borin’; just a big yellow disk. And it’s a nasty planet anyway. The surface temperature’s somethin’ like 400
degrees. I was thinkin’…” he
paused, and looked over at Remus with something almost like shyness. “I was thinkin’ that we could maybe
look at the moon. That’s why I brought
you out here tonight. It’s only a night
away from full, so this is the most complete view we’re gonna get.”
Look at the moon? Remus’s first impulse was to outright refuse
the suggestion. The very thought of
getting any closer to that malevolent white sphere than he absolutely had to
filled him with something almost like revulsion. I don’t want to see it close up; it’s ugly enough from a
distance.
Sirius
obviously saw his distaste at the notion, because he slid a few steps sideways
on the narrow balcony to lean an arm around Remus’s shoulders. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he
offered diffidently. “But you really
ought to see it. It’s the most beautiful
thing in the sky, even better than Jupiter. ”
“If you
want to look at it, I’ll look at it.”
Sirius
immediately began fiddling with the telescope again, swinging the thing around
to point it in the direction of the rising moon. In the sudden silence, traffic noises drifted up from the street
below, slightly muffled by the building’s wards. The balcony, with its piece of tripod-mounted muggle technology,
was the flat’s greatest security risk, but it was a feature Sirius had insisted
on when picking the place out. “Some
things,” he’d said at the time, “are worth a bit of extra risk.”
“I’ve
got it lined up,” Sirius announced after a few moments, looking up from the
telescope to grin encouragingly at Remus.
“With this much magnification, you can see practically every crater.”
“Brilliant,”
Remus replied, with as much enthusiasm as he could summon—which wasn’t
much. He obediently bent to look
through the eyepiece, fiddling with the focusing knob until the grey and white
surface came clear. Bright highlands and
dark, crater-pocked plains gleamed empty and lifeless, cold, sterile rock
reflecting the sun’s light back into space.
It looks like a barren
desert. He said as much, but
instead of immediately yielding the telescope to Sirius, he continued to stare,
compelled by a sort of sick fascination.
“It
doesn’t,” Sirius protested. “It’s clean
and perfect. All white and silver and
pure, and out of reach. Reminds you of
all the things you can’t have, but want anyway.” A hand descended to Remus’s shoulder, warmth seeping in through
the fabric of his shirt. “It’s been my
favorite thing in the sky since I was twelve.
Well, more like nine. I spent
about two solid years mad for space after the Yanks landed astronauts on
it. Wanted to be an astronaut myself up
until I got my Hogwarts letter.”
Sirius
liked the moon? Well, it only made
sense. His lover—what a beautiful,
beautiful word, so much fun to think—his lover liked everything about the sky,
from clouds to comets. But it was odd
to realize that Sirius’s perception of the moon was so different from his. Almost as odd as the mental image of Sirius
wearing one of those funny-looking muggle spacesuits. “Sirius Black: Space Cowboy.
Now that would have been interesting.” Maybe too interesting.
Remus didn’t even want to think about the sort of stunts Sirius
could have pulled with a rocket. The
Black Bitch was trouble enough. “Too
bad Britain doesn’t have a space program.”
“Yeah,
the ‘movin’ to America’ part of the plan was somethin’ of a drawback.” Sirius laughed a little. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone about
that before. Wantin’ to be an astronaut
sounds so, so muggle. I got enough flack
at school for talkin’ with a stupid accent and never havin’ any money. I didn’t need the sort of shit Lily had to
go through.”
“You
picked on her too.” Remus straightened
up, pulling away from the telescope and leaning an elbow on the balcony’s rusty
iron railing. He had a much better view
that way. Sirius presented a far better
picture than the moon did; the bluish sheen of moonlight on his black hair was
ten times more entrancing than the harsh whiteness of solar light reflecting
off rock. He ignored the little voice
in the back of his head that whispered that the railing was sure to break and
send him tumbling down to the pavement below at any moment. It’s perfectly sturdy. Sirius leans on it all the time. Of course, Sirius, lacking the
self-preservation skills most people were born with, didn’t have any problems
with heights.
“Hey,”
Sirius protested, “I teased her because she was funny looking and had big ears
and collected coins, not because she was muggleborn.” He made a face. “She
deserves all the sympathy she can get in the relative department. I mean, I thought my sister was bad,
but hers…” He let his voice trail off,
leaving the condemnation of Petunia Evans unspoken.
“We’re
going to have to tell them, you know,” Remus said. “James and Lily. And
Peter, too.”
“Yeah.” Sirius didn’t sound very enthusiastic at the
idea. He was no longer smiling, but
instead staring down at the cigarette cupped in his hands, not meeting Remus’s
eyes. Strands of hair were starting to
creep out of his ponytale the way they always did, brushing against his cheeks
and forehead. “I really, really hope
they don’t freak out on us. Especially
Lily. I mean, you know how the
wizarding world feels about two guys getting’ together? Muggles are ten times worse about it.”
“She
didn’t have any problems with my being a werewolf,” Remus reminded him.
Sirius
shook his head. “I know that, but I’ve
still got this naggin’ image of her standin’ with the finger of doom pointed at
me, announcin’ that I’m a weirdo who’s unfit to be godfather to her kid.”
“Sirius,
she tells you that about once a week anyway.”
“Well,
yeah, but she never means it. Not
really.” Sirius slipped his arm around
Remus’s shoulders again and leaned the side of his face against the top of
Remus’s hair. “You’re just the right
height, you know that? I was never able
to find girls tall enough for me.”
“You’re
changing the subject,” Remus said.
“Yes,”
Sirius said. “I am.” He sighed.
“Well, whatever happens when everyone finds out, at least they can’t
kick me out of the aurors. We need
people too much. Anyway, I don’t think
Captain Moody cares if you sleep with men, women, livestock, or inanimate
objects, so long as you stay alert, do your job well, and perform regular
sweeps of the squad room to search for surveillance spells. I can just imagine the rest of the squad’s
reactions, though. The men’s locker room will be so much fun. McKinnon will refuse to change in front of
me, and Frank Longbottom will start doing stripteases in an attempt to make me
blush.”
Remus
started laughing uncontrollably at the mental image of Frank Longbottom,
commonly agreed to have the largest sideburns and hairiest chest in the
wizarding world, performing a striptease.
It was strangely compelling.
Like a train wreck. “Denise
would hear about it and kill you,” he gasped, when the laughing fit had
subsided. “And him. And then sue your family for the money she’d
need to bring up her now half-orphaned son.
That woman is the most hard-nosed Hufflepuff I’ve ever met. And you’re still changing the subject, only
this time in a more subtle fashion.”
Sirius
sighed, his breath stirring Remus’s hair.
“Yeah, Moony, I know we’re gonna have to tell them. I just can’t decide whether we ought to
break it to them gently, or just start snoggin’ in front of them. I mean, I didn’t even tell you that I
was in love with you for ages because I was afraid you’d freak out and never
want to be friends with me again. And
we did share a room with Peter and James for seven years. And I used to change in front of Prongs
after quidditch practice. He’s going to
hit the roof.”
“You
don’t mean that you were checking him out back then?” Remus asked. He felt a momentary flare of jealousy. He’d have given just about anything for the
opportunity to ogle Sirius after quidditch practice.
“Eeew! James?” Sirius’s voice was filled
with deep disgust. “We’re practically
related. It’d be like lustin’ after one
of my sisters!”
“Good. I don’t have to track him down tomorrow
night and have venison dinner.”
“He’d be
stringy anyway, skinny as he is,” Sirius said.
He sighed again. “We can tell
them this weekend, when we go over to James and Lily’s and cage dinner off of
them. Hopefully, it won’t be the last
dinner we eat there.” He started to
raise the cigarette in his free hand toward his lips, then realized that his
mouth was about three inches away from Remus’s hair and halted the motion,
resting his hand on the balcony rail beside the other man’s.
“Well,”
Remus ventured, “it won’t be the first surprise we’ve sprung on them. If they could handle my being a werewolf,
and your, well… what you did sixth year,” Remus and the others never mentioned
the Shrieking Shack incident among themselves, or to anyone else—there was
still too much unresolved guilt and hurt floating around the topic, “they ought
to be able to handle this.” I hope.
“Sixth
year.” The fingers of Sirius’s right
hand tightened on Remus’s shoulder. “I
don’t know why you put up with me. I’m
half Cockney and half Scottish, half muggle and half wizard, half dog and half
human, half straight and half gay, half an alcoholic… for once, I’d just like
to be something whole.”
“I’m a
whole werewolf. I win.” Remus fiddled with a piece of black paint
that was peeling off the iron railing, picking it off to reveal the rust
underneath. “Anyway, you’re wholly
mine.” Oh God, that sounds sappy. “And wholly an auror,” he added pulling away
from Sirius slightly to lean against the balcony rail, where he could look up
at the other wizard. From this close,
he could see the dark stubble on Sirius’s cheeks, and every detail of those
long, dark lashes. “And wholly an idiot,
sometimes.” He could feel himself
smiling, remembering some of those times.
“This telescope is pretty muggle, though. I don’t think wizards have used mirrors for this sort of thing
for years.”
“My Dad
gave it to me when I got a NEWT in astronomy.” Sirius grinned, patting the thing with almost the same sort of
fondness he displayed towards the Black Bitch.
His fingers brushed along the long, black tube with surprising gentleness. “I think he had secret hopes that I’d become
an astronomer after I got out of school, instead of an auror.”
“You
couldn’t stay still long enough to have a nice, desk-job sort of academic
career,” Remus said. It was true. Sirius had been one of the most endearingly
twitchy students he’d ever had to sit next to.
“I’m surprised you like astronomy so much, considering the amount of
waiting and standing still that goes into it.”
“I like
the stars,” Sirius answered simply.
“Stars are distant, clean, remote.
There’s no emotion there, no pain.
Even Venus, nasty little Hell-world that it is, looks calm through a
telescope.” He tilted his head to the
side slightly, blue eyes gazing past Remus, up at the sky above them with its
faintly glittering lights. “I bet
that’s what the Earth looks like from space.
All blue and green and swirlin’ clouds, and no sign that underneath
those clouds people are hurtin’ and killin’ each other. You can forget, lookin’ at the stars.” He grinned suddenly, half-ruefully. “Escapism is what I do best, after all.”
Sirius
was not going to go all self pitying and depressed tonight. Remus wasn’t going to let him. The moonlight tingling in his blood was
suggesting various ways to distract him, many of them involving teeth and
fur. Usually, Remus tried to ignore any
and all “canine” instincts, but this time his furry side was starting to sound
pretty persuasive.
“Hey, if
you’re done with the telescope, I want to take a look at it again,” Sirius
announced suddenly. “I didn’t bring you
out here to listen me babble, I brought you out to show off my incredible
knowledge of astronomy and giant, phallic-lookin’ telescope. The moon’s prob’ly moved too far to still be
in the field of view, so I’m gonna have to re-adjust it. You want to check out Canis Major
instead? Or the Orion Nebula?”
Remus
turned around, tipped his face upward, and kissed Sirius on the side of the
jaw, lips sliding along his face toward his mouth.
“Or we
could not look at them,” Sirius muttered, hand coming up to wrap around the
back of Remus’s neck. The cigarette
went spinning over the balcony rail, falling into the street below like a
miniature comet. “Not lookin’ is good
too.”
“Looking
at Canis Major sounds good to me. In
fact, I don’t want to look at anything else for the rest of the night.” Remus wrapped his arms around Sirius, sliding
one hand up under his shirt, against the skin of his back. It was warm under his hands, a welcome
antidote to the chill of the night air.
Sirius
took a step backward, away from the railing, his mouth sealing against
Remus’s. Teeth bit down on Remus’s
lower lip, and fingers began lacing themselves into his hair, pulling with a
grip that was almost painful. Remus
leaned forward, closing his eyes, losing himself in the taste and scent of his
mate.
Sirius
leaned back and nearly fell into something that scraped across the cement of
the balcony’s floor. The telescope
tripod.
“The
telescope, Remus,” he moaned, disentangling one hand and reaching behind him to
support himself against the brick of the flat’s outside wall. “Remember the telescope. It cost a bloody fortune.”
There
was a pause.
“Oh
God! Forget the telescope, do that
again!”
^_~
(the morning
after the following night)
Remus
groaned. He hurt. He hurt all over: muscles, bones, head. Everything ached, as if someone had been
stretching him on the rack, and the memory of the previous night was hazy in
his mind. I hate full moons.
Something
cold was pressing into his face. It
took him a moment to realize that that something was Padfoot’s nose. One black paw was firmly planted across Remus’s
chest, and his head was resting against a furry ribcage. A moment or so later, a warm tongue began
licking him.
“Stop
it,” he moaned. “M’not a wounded
puppy.”
The
licking turned into a pair of lips against his forehead, and a pair of arms
were suddenly around him. “Oh good,
you’re awake.”
“I hate
full moons,” Remus moaned, while he tried to summon up the energy needed to
move. “I really hate them. You have no idea.” No, scratch moving. Staying put was fast beginning to seem like
a very good idea, especially since one of Sirius’s hands had begun stroking his
hair.
“No, I
have absolutely no idea what it’s like to wake up sick, with a splitting
headache and a hazy memory of the previous night.” Sirius’s voice was gentle and amused, but with an underlying note
of concern. “But I made a wild guess
and got the aspirin ready. And I put
tea on. It’ll be ready in a few
minutes.”
“I love
you.” Remus reached up and cupped a
hand against Sirius’s face, staring up into tired-looking eyes smudged with
dark circles. Neither of them got much
sleep on these nights. Sirius leaned
into the touch, eyes drifting half closed.
He was always unusually fond of physical contact the night after full
moons, as if bits of Padfoot’s personality carried over into his human form.
“Yeah,”
Sirius’s lips curved into a smile. “I
know. Me too.” He shifted his weight, arms wrapping around
Remus more tightly. “Do you think you
can stand up? The floor’s not real
comfortable.”
“I’m
fine, really.” Remus began struggling
to his feet, though whether his eventually success was do to his own efforts or
to Sirius’s aid, even he wasn’t totally sure.
“I’m just tired.” Sirius, he
noticed, as the pair of them moved the few steps toward the bed—Sirius’s bed,
actually, as they seemed to have somehow ended up in his room—was still mostly
clothed. It struck Remus as distinctly
unfair that animagi could transform without disrobing. The practice of removing all of one’s
clothing before a transforming into a werewolf, though necessary if one ever
wanted to wear said clothing again, had caused him a considerable amount of
embarrassment back in their school days.
The first time Sirius had seen him naked, he’d announced out in shock
that Remus’s right arm looked if something had been chewing on it—at which
point Peter had elbowed him in the ribs and hissed viciously that something
probably had and he should keep his clever comments to himself.
“At
least we don’t need the first aid kit this time,” Sirius said, as he
half-lowered Remus onto the bed. “We
were too busy trashin’ the flat to bite each other much.”
Remus
realized then that the mess in the room far exceeded it’s usually untidiness.
Clothes, usually gathered in a single pile in the corner, were strewn
everywhere, and one flannel shirt looked distinctly chewed on, as if it had
been used in a vigorous game of tug-of-war.
The bedside table was knocked over—the lamp miraculously unbroken—and
the assortment of motorcycle magazines and auror training manuals usually
stacked on it had spilled out across the floor. He let out a low whistle.
“Yeah,”
Sirius agreed. “Good thing we’ve got
decent silencin’ spells built into the walls and floor, or God alone knows what
the neighbors would be thinkin’.”
“What
did we do?” Remus wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or
amused, though Sirius definitely seemed to have come down in favour of
amusment.
“Well,
first I chased you, and then you chased me, and then we got into a fight over
my flannel shirt, which you decided to chew on, and then I chased you some
more, and you let me catch you and I pretended like I was gonna bite your
throat out…” Sirius let his voice trail off.
“It was fun. Really. I’d say we should do this more often, but it
sort of makes me feel evil. I mean,
since my transformations don’t hurt like yours do.” He knelt down beside the bed, picking up the bedside table and
righting it. He replaced the lamp, but
left the magazines where they were.
“I’ll pick it up, don’t worry.
Well, the worst of it, at least.”
He looked up at Remus, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, gaze
slanting up through his eyelashes. “You
want me to go get that tea now?”
“Yes, please,” Remus said
fervently. He could smell the
tantalizing scent of Earl Grey drifting in from the kitchen, a siren song
promising hot, caffeinated comfort.
“And clothes, too.”
Sirius,
halfway to the door, bent and scooped the flannel shirt up off the floor,
tossing it underhand at him.
“Here. You seemed to like this
one last night.”
“Oh,
thank you, generous one,” Remus muttered, but he put the shirt on anyway,
hiding his scars from view and enveloping himself in the scent of Sirius, which
permeated the soft, worn flannel.
Moments
later, Sirius returned, a steaming mug in one hand and a pair of white tablets
in the other. The scene was a near
duplicate of the one three weeks ago, Remus mused to himself as he accepted the
mug of tea. One of them in bed, and the
other bearing aspirin and a hot drink.
It was an old routine by now, perfected through months worth of bad
shifts and drinking bouts and full moons.
Still, there was something nagging at the back of his mind.
“Don’t
you have to go to work soon?” he asked, before swallowing the first of the
painkillers.
“Nope.” Sirius grinned, his eyes sparkling like
moonlight on water, gleaming that way that they always had back at Hogwarts
when knew he’d gotten away with something.
“I called in and told Frank Longbottom that I was sick. He thinks I’m in bed nursing a
hangover. Nobody expects me in until
noon. I’m yours to wait on you hand,
foot, and paw. Want me to go fetch the
paper?”
Let us run beneath the moon
Forget the times are out
of tune
The morning always comes
too soon
But right now the war is over
^_~