He liked to
crook himself in the rare winter sunlight, listening to music; endless streams
of music, until the sentiment of each song was thin and used up. Sirius had
spent the better part of November fiddling with his newly acquired turntable,
attempting to create a power source that didn’t rely on electricity. Sometimes
it was easier to do things the Muggle way. There was comfort in the very
-tangibility- of the Muggle world; a qualiiity never found in his own sphere,
where science was routinely cheated by a thought. He was almost ashamed to admit
he loved it, to wash a dish or sweep floors, labors that let the days run by
quickly, like water off his fingers. He’d bought the turntable because it
talked to you, sang to you; an undemanding companion.
He only left
his flat to shop, drink with James or visit the market around the corner owned
by Mrs. Prakash’s brother. They had the most wonderful spices there, tiny
bottles of saffron and cardamom and turmeric, all standing in rows topped with
white caps. They sold tea there also, and glutinous amber bottles of oil and
liquor. Packages of dusty sweets whose flavor he couldn’t define. Shades were
kept drawn, and in the darkened aisles he thought he could see the varying
scents coloring the air: layers of incense and soap, chicken and rot.
Mrs.
Prakash’s niece worked the counter and always had a smile for him, the
handsome Black boy who lived in her aunt’s building. The girl would watch him,
eager for his conversation, wistful expression fleeting across her gazelle eyes.
She had once offered to read his tealeaves, leaning close and touching a coy,
brown finger to his hand. It had taken all of his composure not to laugh and
inform her he’d forgotten more of that art than she’d ever know. Sirius
thought about kissing her, asking her home with him at night to remove the skin
of loneliness. He imagined how beautiful her pink sash would be draped upon the
floor of his flat, sheer in the light of the following morning. But when he
pulled away from this phantom intimate in his dreams, hers was never the long,
firm form Sirius saw beneath him.
Mrs. Prakash
was concerned. Her new tenant received no letters or magazines nor any post for
that matter. He did not even own a telephone and would often come knocking and
shamelessly ask if he could borrow hers. Lacking electricity, she worried that
he must be using candles to light his flat and could possibly bring the whole
building down. He slunk around her brother’s shop like a hoodlum, prying her
niece smudged, sexual glances, while only buying the occasional pack of
biscuits. Mrs. Prakash had also taken to spying out her peephole to observe his
late night guests. They were funny-looking people, men and women both, coming at
all hours, though she never saw them enter or exit through the front door. She
and her sister-in-law gossiped over this excitedly, and wondered if perhaps the
lad was a gigolo.
Upon leaving
Hogwarts, Sirius had burned the last bits of homework parchments with James and
Peter; a spectacular bonfire that sent crackling blue sparks up into the
atmosphere. They stayed that July night in the backyard of the Potter home,
smoking Peter’s mum’s cigarettes and talking as boys do at that age, tough
and disinterested as though nothing could wound them. It was a pale claim, to be
such good friends and no longer know one another.
“Danny Kirk
says Remus is a poof.” This was Peter, fumbling with the contraband pack of
smokes.
Sirius snatched
the unlit cigarette from Peter’s mouth. After lighting it, he muttered,
“Danny Kirk -is- a poof. ‘Sides,” he added after taking a pull off the
fag. “That’s none of your business anyway.” They had seen Remus off in
June, collecting from him a reluctant promise to reunite come Christmas. He had
hugged Sirius first when Sirius had wanted to be embraced last.
“Yeah, I
guess. Still,” James answered. “Be kind of odd, what with sharing a room
together all these years. Him seeing us starkers and such. Don’t you think?”
Sirius took
great care with his growing record collection. Often he would spend half the day
organizing them by artist or title or by the color of the cover. After James
left a large, greasy thumbprint on one album Sirius proclaimed him banned from
the turntable, and jinxed it so only he could change records. Lily had laughed.
Lily understood. Lily was raised by Muggles and had always owned a record
player. She admitted to him that she didn’t let James near her albums either.
Music
was one of the few things common between Sirius and Lily, beside their love for
James. She rebuked Sirius for his smoking, his drinking, and the lazy luxury in
which he spent his money. After carousing with James into the early hours one
morning, she’d come rushing into his flat, emptying every liquor bottle he had
down the drain. His sink hadn’t stopped hiccupping for weeks afterwards. He
could appreciate what James saw in her, though he would rather be at the
blasting end of a curse than deal with such a temper. With precise, earnest
features and a clipped way of speaking, Lily had known exactly the way in which
to woo James, fashioning from Sirius’s boyhood chum an upstanding,
responsible, boring wizard.
Sirius
feared that Lily read him plainer than parchment. That
she thought him weak; a collection of nerves and energy and potential that was
never to find structure, and cling uselessly to the lives around him. He had
seen those men before, skulking around public toilets, worn and unloved.
Sometimes
Lily would call on Sirius’s flat, bringing him scratched albums rescued from
charity shop bins. He’d ask her stay and take a listen, both of them hoping
that some forgotten treasure had been unearthed. It was her concession to him,
and he to her. She had visited him yesterday, coming to his door with a crisp
stack to share.
“You seem to
have a touch of a cold and I thought I’d come by and make sure you’re well.
James can’t do with a sick Sirius, and I do so want him out of the house
tomorrow night,” she removed her sopping cloak and cap, leaving them to drip
on the floor. Sirius gave her sour look and proceeded to dry them with his wand.
Lily continued, “He’s moping about the Magpies, something to do with their
Chaser. If you ask me the Magpies are better off keeping McFarlan. Her dad was
captain. It’s a dynasty.”
“Rubbish. You
don’t keep a weak player because her father was on the team. Ipswich’s taken
Clancy McGee off the reserve list. He averaged forty points a game last season.
Now that’s someone you want in the match.”
Lily turned
away from the teakettle and pointed her wand at him, like a martinet.
“You’re just saying that because McFarlan is a woman, and some people think
women make poor Chasers in the British League. But I don’t. As for McGee, I
ask you what exactly did he do to that ref’s bullocks to get him on reserve in
the first place, hmm? You’d never see McFarlan pull that. Where are your
teacups? Sirius, look at this, you’ve nothing to eat here.” He heard
cupboards being opened and then shut just as quickly. “You can drop forty
Galleons on a Lunascope, but can’t have a can of noodle soup lying about? Have
you no cups at all?” Sirius waved her off and began to browse through the
records. He placed the needle delicately upon his selection.
Sirius
stretched out on the floor. Lily took the chair to his left, quietly drinking
tea out of a transformed cooking pot. He ran his finger along the grain lines of
the wooden boards. They were not unlike the grooves on a 45, those grooves that
had so fascinated him. How did they get the sounds between those tiny lines? He
turned to Lily suddenly.
“I’m
glad you don’t slurp your tea. Remus does and it’s like fingernails down a
blackboard.” She glanced at him but didn’t answer. After a moment’s
hesitation, he continued. “He’s messy too. Worse than James ever was. One
year when we came back from holiday he was empting his trunk on his bed.
Everything he’d collected over the summer, he’d kept for study. Lord, you
should’ve seen it. All spread out like some sort of half-arsed jumble sale,”
Sirius smiled in remembrance.
He reached
across to the bookshelf, emptying an old tin into his palm. He showed its
contents to her. “Here, see this is part of a Sneakoscope, the twirlywheel
that makes it whistle. And that’s a flashcube. You use it for a Muggle camera.
And this,” he held a small trinket proudly between his fingers, “this is a
guitar pick. Remus found it for me when I told him I wanted to learn to play the
guitar. He- he was always finding things, old wizard junk or Muggle scraps that
no one wanted. And he’d just stand there and tell you about it, even if you
didn’t care."
*****
Erumpent
& Castle. The very name tasted of aristocracy and colonial menageries; the
debris of half-dreamt circuses left over from childhood. He’d seen the
building once years before, splitting from Diagon Alley by a purple cobblestone
walkway. Sloppy red paint lashed onto the brick, wizards littered about the
stairs discussing politics and magical theory. He’d circled the location on
his Diagon Alley tourist map at home, and dreamed of it often. But he had been a
boy then, and the inexperience of youth had charmed the memory, given it glamour
beyond its due. The boarding house was now long past its days of infamy, and
stood detached from its neighbors like a rotted tooth.
Horace Skump,
crouched and smiling, had settled into his usual seat on the crumbling stoop,
ready to address any passerby who gave him notice. Though he wore the battered
robes of a beggar, clotted with brown stains, Skump’s feet were shod in a pair
of careworn, well-loved shoes, the wrinkles as tender as the skin circling his
watery mouth.
“Here! See
this lad,” Skump tapped the parchment with his finger. “All the pureblood
families who’ve contributed to the Ministry’s so-called defense fund: Black,
Malfoy, McNair, all with members in His inner circle.” Skump rose to address
the jeering crowd, spittle pooling on his chin. “You can’t deny this for
much longer, good people! His day will come.” Remus passed him, taking
the steps two at a time.
His
was a small room, made even smaller by the intruding noises and smells of his
neighbors. Papered upon the western wall was a world map, flaked by the sun.
Four pins were placed into it, representing all of his travels: Hogwarts,
Fishguard, London and West Germany. Members of the Order had given lectures at
Hammerschmidt Castle that summer, delivering reports of Dark activities from
around the globe. They spoke of places like the Ivory Coast, which brought to
mind a scythe of moon in the African sky, of Greenland and Morocco. Remus had
listened from his corner seat, marveling at their detachment. Occasionally they
would lapse into dry particulars, the style of dress native to the wizards they
met or the state of their accommodations; but these accounts were genial and
static.
No
one could describe to him Morocco as he imagined it, a twilight bazaar of pale
tangerines, propagating juicy, buzzing flies. A land of wild cries and songs,
made not by birds, but by human voices. There was beauty in discovery; he did
not want to experience these things selfishly and alone. Outside of the random
outing with Iphigenia Kurtz, his bunkmate in West Germany, Remus’s summer had
been a solitary sojourn, reflecting passively upon seven years of hard-won
friendships and sodden wool. Even now, there was such an immediacy to life in
the city, his first city, that all energy was wasted on mundane tasks and
errands. Only in the dark did he think about the day when he’d look in the
mirror and realize his age. What would he have to show for it but a life fitted
into a room. Determined to not let this fear break him, Remus fought the vision
fiercely, and focused on the future.
The
future was not a lake, contained like an unplanted seed, but a brook that cut
the earth and veined in many directions; a brook where he stood at the mouth and
wondered where the currents went.
Terrible
dreams he had as well, clashing visions of his friends and former professors. He
would be on the wizard quiz show, Which Witch? about to claim his winnings. And
there they were, the lot of them, screaming and gesticulating wildly for him to
choose the prize behind the curtain. Always they were screaming, at what a fool
he’d been and how Sirius would never wait.
It was
Dumbledore who had found Remus a position as an archivist in London. The wizard
had magnanimously appealed to his innate love of investigation and analysis,
professing to Remus the Order’s need for a skilled researcher. Only of late
did Remus realize the truth of the matter: no one else would take such a bloody
boring assignment. When coming across yet another tedious diary, Remus would now
exhibit the rueful smile of the cynical and wise. Dumbledore had played him and
played him well.
He had first
seen Sirius two weeks prior. Remus had watched Sirius, himself unseen, peer into
the storefronts along Diagon Alley. Sirius still walked with the same suppleness
of movement, an easy roll of muscle unraveling across his shoulders. He only ate
pastries from Earley’s Bakery, and picked at them with a mind-numbing
slowness, absently licking the treacle from his fingers. Remus observed a twitch
in the hollow of Sirius’s cheek. He wondered how it would feel, the white
taste of it under his tongue.
Remus’s
restraint was all of his strength, the absolute steadfast dream in his eyes. It
kept him from making worthwhile mistakes, spending himself instead on anonymous,
imagined trysts. Sirius had been the first person he’d ever struck in anger,
the first person to nearly take his life away in a breathless rush of stupidity.
Yet still Remus would wake from an indistinct sleep, rutting furtively against
the bed pillows like a schoolboy.
Remus
understood the ache of attraction as experienced in his first sticky fumble with
Neil, a Muggle boy he’d met the summer he turned 16. They had chased each
other to the edge of the beach, panting, waterlogged. Dappled sun caught on the
water in Neil’s hair, ran thick off the leaves of the tree where they had
stopped. He had watched anxiously over Neil’s shoulder, afraid that his
friend’s sisters would come clamoring over the hill at any moment. But once
Neil had cupped his fist, insistent and rough with sand, against his cock, Remus
had closed his eyes in relief. The late afternoon heat stuck to his lips, swam
under his legs; he came all too quickly. “That’s why I like this,” Neil
had said afterwards. “With a guy, you can never pretend. It’s all right
here.” He’d brought his wet hand to Remus’s face and they had both
laughed.
He climbed
to the deserted top of Erumpent & Castle, green dusk hanging like a gallows.
Once a community garden, the roof had since been abandoned by residents and
staff alike after the notorious Hags Convention of 1972. Remus liked it here
best, the city sounds below drunken and dim.
There was
another thing he had discovered in West Germany.
Behind the
castle that served as the Order’s barracks was a thicket of trees that tangled
into a larger forest. The grass was high and mellow, and often Remus would lie
there, letting the sweat from the day’s exertion dry on his skin. Mundungus
Fletcher, a guest of the Order, would sometimes join him after supper. He met
Remus there one evening, offering the young man a crinkled brown package.
“I’m doing
this with Dumbledore’s approval, Lupin. He agrees with me that it’ll help.
Just don’t go run off and tell your mother, ‘cause she wouldn’t like it
too much if she knew I was corrupting her boy.”
Inside the
paper were half a dozen hand-wrapped cigarettes, each pointed at the ends and
fatter round the middle.
“Just hold
in the smoke when you inhale, count to ten, and blow it out. Should help with
the pain and give you a bit more appetite.” The old man cuffed Remus hard on
the shoulder. “If you should need any assistance,” Mundungus grinned,
displaying tiny baby teeth, “you know where I’m at.”
It
was now November, three nights until the moon, and on the evening after next he
would have to Apparate from work to his safe house.
Remus chose a dry seat against the brick turrets of the rooftop and
watched lights pool in the puddles. He took the joint from his shirt pocket and
lit it, the bitter flavor heavy and
green in his mouth. Sirius was all wrong, all chaos and unfiltered hurt; it
roused his compassion, made him hard. To master such a force of nature, feel it
submit gracefully and lovingly under his hand.
His longings dashed silver and warm over the rocks, ran cold and white in the
undertow.
“Bugger
pride,” he murmured.
*****
“I know you
like these,” A white sleeve of paper was flung into his lap. “The sweet ones
with walnuts.”
Sirius turned
to Remus, open-mouthed, smiling. The face beside him was still narrow but not
nearly as thin, a sallow taint lingering under the brow. He broke the roll in
two, passing the larger piece to his friend. “You’ve been watching me,
haven’t you?”
Remus shrugged,
contemplating the pastry in his hand. “And you’ve posted yourself every day
for the last two weeks outside my workplace. It’s hard not to notice such a
ridiculous getup,” Remus fingered the sleeve of Sirius’s jacket. “Trying
to piss off the establishment, going about the Alley sans robe?”
“I’ll have
you know I purchased this getup from that shop next door to your workplace. They
wouldn’t sell it if they didn’t want wizards to buy it.”
“Debatable.
So while the rest of us have been working for a living, you’ve been idling
about in unwholesome leisure?”
“Unwholesome
leisure? I rather like that. Though,” He rested his hand on the recessed
hollow of Remus’s stomach. “I don’t seem to be the only one indulging.
Sugar Quills?”
“Beer,
actually. Lots of German beer. We discovered this brew house in Wittenberg, wait
staff dressed in dragons hide lederhosen. Tankers the size of your head.
Temporary heaven.”
“But you’re
back now.” The grip curled about Remus’s waist. Remus allowed it to hold him
a moment longer before pulling away.
“Eat your
roll. That was my last Sickle.”
*****
Maha Lakshmi
Temple held court on North St., the long, wide avenue where Sirius lived. It
rose from the pavement, as polished and smooth as a favorite stone. Narrow
evening sun played on the stucco filigree of the temple’s roof. It seemed both
handcrafted and organic, a testament to the ancient model from which it was
replicated, and to the current congregation, which maintained its gleaming
facade. Whether it resembled a sugar-dusted cake or a marble urinal, Sirius
could never decide.
“It’s a
funny place. You have to walk around it before you can enter, and there’s this
odd blue fellow, Vishnu, with too many arms guarding the corridor,” He looked
to Remus walking beside him. Sirius had kept up a ready and indulgent stream of
conversation for nearly twenty blocks. “So how do you find London?”
“Different.
Exhausting. Wonderful. I don’t know,” laughed Remus.
Mrs. Prakash
stood upon the walk, sweeping away the crusty slush. Sirius put his finger to
his lips.
“They like
to spy on me,” he whispered, opening the door.
He felt an arm gather him close and the expression deepened. Sirius
noticed a busted nail on Remus’s finger, purple like a violet. He took
Remus’s hand in his own and tucked it down into his jacket pocket. A
nest of skinned robes and jumpers littered the floor, along with bedclothes
leftover from that afternoon’s pre-Alley lethargy. Off the walls came the
scents of the Prakashs’ kitchen above them, the ceiling groaning under the
oily weight. The record he chose was quiet and tragic. Sirius thought it
haunting. Lily thought it ghastly.
“What are you
smiling over?” Remus stood behind him, tossing his shirt onto the pile.
“Lily. She
hates this record. Says it’s only fit for funeral dirges. Woman has no
appreciation for romance."
Remus moved to
the floor. “Well, look who she married. Peter tells me James had wanted a
Wasps-themed wedding.”
“Yeah, he had
it all planned. He was even going to hire Ludo Bagman to attend the
reception.” Sirius stripped off his t-shirt. “Charges seventy-five Galleons
for personal appearances during the off-season.”
“Did he get
his way?”
“Not even
close,” He laid his head on Remus’s chest, wrapping a heavy arm across the
waist. The slitted twin windows above them were dark with encroaching night.
Remus stroked his hair. “You would’ve liked it anyways Moony. Lots of cake
and wine. Lily- Lily’s sister, Christ she’s a riot. Face straight out of the
stables. Big bony arse. I dared
Peter to drop his drink down the front of her gown. Owe him five Sickles for it
too.” He felt the slight laughter tighten Remus’s stomach. Sirius brought
his hand up to rest upon this slip of skin. He could just reach the nipple with
his tip of his thumb, flushed and hard like a cherry stone.
“I’m sorry
I wasn’t there.”
“Me too. But
you just have to keep going from one decrepit castle to another,” Sirius said,
raising his head. “Did you learn much?”
“Plenty.”
“Good boy.
Care to share?”
“Met a
girl.”
“Trying to
make me jealous?”
Remus laughed
again. “God, no. Remember Enid Whitchurch? Well she’s got nothing on
Iphigenia. Tried to set me up me up with her brother though.”
“I hate her
already.”
Remus
gripped Sirius’s chin, running the rough patch of his finger across Sirius’s
lips. It was the same finger Sirius had noticed earlier. He resisted the urge to
draw the bruise from the skin, to suck it clean. Remus continued. “You’ve
nothing to be bothered over. I, however, did not like the looks of that landlady
of yours.”
“Mrs. Prakash?” Sirius whispered with a small smile. “Yeah, she’s a bit sweet on me. Thinks I’m a hustler.”
“Are you?”
He chuckled. “Not tonight.”
White rime cracked the panes, and the wizened knuckles of Mrs. Prakash’s ash tree rapped against the window. Sirius had wandered about his tiny kitchen garden that morning, seeing only thinning grass and a flabby black plum. Strong contrasts to wet, blooming mouth near him, something sweet and alive. He tasted it now, against his tongue, a shade softer than blood but warm and ready. When he rose, a thread of spit clung between their lips.
“Sorry,” Sirius laughed, wiping back the wetness with the mound of his palm.
“No, s’all right.” Remus kept his hand on Sirius’s jaw. “I want to. I do, but-”
Sirius groaned. “You’re a terrible tease; do you know that? Vishnu’s got blue skin, and I’ve got blue balls, thanks to you,” He then plucked the small silvery Lunascope from the sill. “You think I don’t remember this stuff? After six years?”
“Oh, well I had nothing to do with Vishnu. Hmm, clever toy. How much did something like that set you back?” Remus rose and stood at the window, returning the device to the ledge. In the distance was the siren of an ambulance. “Do you ever wonder what it must be like to be on the other end of that? How alone? Knowing that after all the doctors and nurses, after all the wires and shots, you’re the last person of importance?”
Sirius shook his head. “No,” he answered. “Never.”
"I see. It’s not -your- family. Not yet.”
Remus returned to the floor. He patted Sirius’s arm with a sluggish stroke, saying nothing, but studying Sirius curiously for a moment. The heaviness of fatigue seemed to have been swept clean from Remus’s brow, and once again his eyes were alert and mercurial, if not a little melancholy. Mercurial and melancholy, Sirius thought, what beautiful words; one evocative of motion, the other of rest- why had it never come to him before? They suited his friend beyond measure. Sirius withdrew the now still hand from his shoulder and turned his back to Remus, letting him sleep.
Above Sirius sounded footsteps, the same rhythmic thumps and groans he listened to every evening. He knew when Mrs. Prakash would rise from her desk and rinse her plate and cup. He knew when the young niece would sneak from her bedroom, the high, nervous laughter of her companions seemingly unnoticed by everyone but him. Tonight, Sirius placed his vigil in the person before him, rather than the occupants above, determined to catch the flirted light in Remus’s eyes after he awoke. A portrait hung in the Black family home, some forgotten aunt who watched Sirius smiling, and whispered to him in strange, half-strangled coos before bedtime. Aunt Wathsaia, that had been her name, a great crest of white skin, her ebon hair the sash of dusk. As a boy he’d thought her guardian to sleep. Tonight he would wait her out, become her confidante and apprentice. Her garbled nightingale songs would finally be understood.
There is no cure for instinct. Crusades may rage against it fierce and white, but always they are broken by nature, waves useless against the crags. Inside his subterranean tomb, under flailing candlelight, Sirius gave in to the right and sincere feelings that were welling in his mouth and hand. He traced the indentation line of Remus’s spine with his fingertip, all the way to the waist of the trousers, the white size label peeking out above the small of Remus’s back. He slid his fingers down to see if he could touch the tag. He could. The skin was tender there, tender and thin and mindlessly hot. His own erection was curling hard against the metal track of his fly; he ignored it. Again and again, he touched that hidden skin, that curve like a bowl to lick from. Fine, downy hairs lit along his hand. Remus huffed gently in his sleep and Sirius withdrew, cupping his hand to his chest. He slipped to the bathroom, trousers already half undone about his hips.