starfishstar

WHAT I HAVE TAKEN LONG BEFORE

Summary: Twelve years is a great deal left unsaid. "Lie low at Lupin's" is only the very beginning.

Characters: Remus, Sirius

Chapters: 3 / Words: ~6,400

Notes: You know how “lie low at Lupin’s” (rapprochement and reconnection between Remus and Sirius, following that fateful line of Dumbledore’s at the end of GoF) became basically an entire sub-genre of Remus/Sirius fic? Well, I’ve read many such stories – and don’t get me wrong, loved lots of them, too – but I don’t think I’ve ever read one about Remus and Sirius during that period that had them as friends rather than lovers.

And since I’ve developed quite an interest in writing about the friendship between Remus and Sirius anyway, I thought I’d give it a try!

In a sense, this could be considered a sequel to “Skellig, Azkaban, Albion, Éire” and “Cast Your Soul to the Sea” (in fact, I'm now grouping them as a series) but only in terms of the characters and themes. You don’t need to have read those stories first.

Oh, and I know the cottage where Remus is living is a tumbledown old place, but I like to think that at least his view from it is something like this.

Thank you to

stereolightning for a thoughtful, helpful beta read!

Story:

I will write you letters that
Explain the way I'm thinking now
I will return to you
What I have taken long before
I will return again
When it gets dark and day is done
And lay me down
In the hollowed ground
Down by your side I will stay

–The Frames

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

CHAPTER ONE

Sirius still looked like hell, Remus thought. He’d been out of Azkaban for two years now, but he’d spent most of that on the run – first trying to get into Hogwarts, then trying to get far away as possible from Great Britain and the Ministry’s jurisdiction, then back again to hide on the outskirts of Hogsmeade so he could be there for Harry, because Sirius had always had more loyalty than sense.

“Hey,” Sirius said, leaning wearily against the doorjamb.

These past couple weeks, Remus knew, Sirius had been rounding up the old Order – what was left of it – on Dumbledore’s behalf. It was all starting up again: the war, the danger, the need for secrecy. Only this time it was not their own generation that stood to lose most, but the generation of their friends’ children.

“Come in,” Remus said, stepping back to make room in the narrow entryway. Sirius stepped inside and glanced around.

The place wasn’t much, but it was more than Remus had been able to call home at many points in his life. After the disastrous end to his Hogwarts teaching year he’d come back here to Yorkshire, which was where he’d been scraping by when Dumbledore first tracked him down about the Defence post.

“I figured you would turn up here one of these days. Dumbledore sent an owl saying you would be needing a place to stay,” Remus said.

“Only if you don’t mind,” Sirius said. “D’you mind, Moony?”

Remus’ heart contracted a little at the sound of that old nickname. Of course he didn’t mind. How often had he, Remus, been the one with a home to offer, the one in a position to be able to take in a friend?

“Of course not,” he said, his voice coming out a little gruff. “It’s not much, what I’ve got here, but it’s a roof over your head, at least.”

He stepped around Sirius to close the front door, as always having to shove hard to get it to close that last bit over the warped wood of the threshold.

Sirius, Remus noted, didn’t have luggage or even a cloak. He had a wand, though, still gripped in his right hand even now that he was inside. It wasn’t his old wand, from before Azkaban. Perhaps Dumbledore had arranged to have a new one made discreetly.

“Food or shower? Or tea?” Remus asked, because he knew what his own priorities were, when he found himself finally back in a proper house for the first time in a long time.

Sirius gave him a ghost of a crooked smile. “Can I have all three?”

“Well, yes, obviously. But which first?”

“Oh, something to eat would be fantastic. Only if you’ve got something to hand already, I mean, if it’s no trouble.”

Who was this new Sirius, who was polite and concerned about inconveniencing his host?

“No trouble. I made a big pot of stew, knowing you might be coming. It’s nothing fancy, though, I warn you. I didn’t have much in the house.”

“I’m not worried,” Sirius said. “I know you – you’ve always been good at making do with almost nothing.”

Remus wasn’t entirely sure he took that as a compliment, though Sirius seemed to mean it as one. If Remus had grown skilled over the years at making do with little, it certainly wasn’t by choice.

“Dinner first, then?” was all he said.

Sirius seemed to struggle with the decision. “Shower,” he said at last. “I’m really not fit to be a dinner guest otherwise.”

“All right,” Remus said. “Bath’s this way.”

He showed Sirius down the hall to the cottage’s grotty bathroom, with its mildewed walls and rusted old showerhead.

“Not exactly luxury,” Remus said. “But there’s hot water, at least.”

He turned to see that Sirius’ eyes had positively lit up at the sight. “A shower is luxury, Moony, you have no idea,” he breathed, and Remus couldn’t help the wry thought that the last years truly must have been bad if Sirius got this excited over British plumbing.

“There are towels in the cupboard over there,” he said. “And I’ll leave some clean clothes outside the door. Take your time. I’ll go heat up the stew.”

“Sounds heavenly, honestly,” Sirius said, and Remus regretted his previous uncharitable thought. Sirius, too, had clearly got good at making do with almost nothing.

By the time Sirius emerged from the shower in a baggy borrowed jumper of Remus’, his long, black hair wet and dripping and a contented smile across his face, Remus had set out bowls on the table and a loaf of the hearty, wholemeal bread he bought fresh from a baker in the village, one of his few little luxuries.

They sat down at the table together, and for a moment Sirius simply leaned his face over his stew, closed his eyes and inhaled. “Marvellous,” he murmured. “Try living on rats for a while, you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Remus pushed aside that unpleasant image – he himself was hardly a one to talk, anyway, given the sorts of things he’d eaten over the years while in his transformed state – and picked up his spoon.

Sirius attacked his own food, then seemed to notice his atrocious table manners and forced himself to slow down.

“So what is it you’ve been doing up here, anyway?” Sirius asked, once he was on his second bowl of stew and no longer seemed to need to inhale his food all at once.

Remus shrugged, as always a little discomfited at having to describe the itinerant, hand-to-mouth existence he led.

“I tutor some of the children in the village in various school subjects. It’s a Muggle village, so all they know is that I’m a bit of a recluse and often take ill. They’ve no reason to think to connect the flare-ups of my illness to the cycles of the moon. This is where I was before I went to teach at Hogwarts, and rather astonishingly it seems I hadn’t burned all my bridges here, so it was as reasonable a place as any to come back to. It’s not much of a living, but I get by.”

And anywhere in the wizarding world wasn’t really an option anymore, he didn’t add. Not after my secret went public at Hogwarts.

Sirius gave him another crooked smile. “Always knew you’d end up as a teacher, one way or another.” He gave a laugh like a bark, a familiar sound Remus hadn’t forgotten all these years. “Merlin! Remus grows up to be a professor at Hogwarts. James and I called that one, we really did.”

Hearing Sirius speak James’ name out loud was startling.

Over the years, Remus had sometimes found himself accompanied by the voices of the friends he had lost, by words they might have said. Their imagined voices wove in with his own thoughts in a comfortable way he’d grown used to.

It was Lily’s voice that sounded in his head when he was feeling lost or alone, telling him that things would be all right and that maybe he didn’t need to take himself so seriously, either. It was James’ laughing voice that came to him when he needed cheering up.

But he’d never in all these years let himself imagine Sirius’ voice. Why would he? He’d believed the lie, that Sirius had been the traitor.

And now, to be sitting around a table chatting with Sirius, James’ name coming up so casually… Of all the things he could never have dreamt he would experience again, that surely ranked high.

Remus shook himself out of his thoughts, and found Sirius watching him closely.

“Sorry,” Sirius muttered. “Didn’t mean to be flippant.”

“Oh – no, of course not,” Remus said awkwardly. “Er, tea?”

Sirius perked up. “Tea, yes! What’ve you got?”

Remus went to the cupboard and looked. He’d hoped against hope that he might still have a tiny bit left of that nice loose-leaf Darjeeling – another small luxury, but one he couldn’t always afford – but found it was indeed all gone. He pulled a face and said, “Just the cheap stuff, I’m afraid.”

“That’ll do me,” Sirius said, sounding practically cheerful about it.

Seriously, who was this new Sirius Black who wasn’t a snob about tea?

But even with a cup of strong black tea in his hands, Sirius was soon yawning. Remus didn’t even ask how many times he’d crossed the country in the last few days, how many times he’d had to Apparate. He could read it in Sirius’ face.

“There’s a spare bedroom,” Remus said, showing Sirius down the hallway. “The roof’s falling in and the heat cuts out half the time in the winter, but it’s the first place I’ve had in years that actually has enough space for guests.”

He pushed open the door to the spare bedroom and pointed Sirius inside. He’d done the best he could, airing the room and laying out bedding that was freshly laundered, though threadbare.

“Brilliant,” Sirius said, turning to Remus with an honest smile on his face. “This is brilliant, Remus. I really appreciate it.”

There was a small pause in which both of them were unsure – did they hug, now? Were they that sort of friends? Or did they slap each other on the back? How had it been before, when all of them were so effortlessly comfortable around one another that they didn’t even have to think about it?

Finally, Sirius clapped a hand on Remus’ shoulder, and Remus nodded and said, “Well, sleep well, then. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Won’t need anything,” Sirius said with a decisive shake of his head. “This is already more than I could’ve hoped for.”

“All right, good, well,” Remus said, before Sirius could start thanking him again. “Sleep well. Good night.”

“Good night, Moony. Sleep well.”

(continue to CHAPTER TWO)