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

Story:

CHAPTER TWO

When Remus woke the next morning and went to check on Sirius, the guest room door was open and the bed empty. Nor was Sirius in the small kitchen, though telltale signs suggested he’d been through there and made himself a cup of tea.

Remus did the same, then went to look outside.

The cottage was for the most part surrounded by a stand of trees, which in turn bordered on the neighbour’s sheep field, but directly in front of the house there was a small patch of open grass, where the morning sun slanted in through the trees.

And in the middle of that clearing, in a patch of sunlight and fast asleep, lay Sirius in his Animagus form. Sirius as Padfoot.

Remus knew Sirius sometimes preferred shifting into his dog form during difficult times. His thoughts were simpler there, he’d once said.

For weeks after the terrible prank Sirius had played at school that had nearly killed Snape, and nearly burdened Remus with a guilt for which he would never have forgiven himself, Sirius had spent every moment he could get away with in his Animagus form. Between that and the way he’d been avoiding Remus generally, Remus had hardly seen him in human shape, except in classes. When he thought now of Sirius during that time, what Remus pictured was not a teenage boy, but a big black dog, cowering and hanging its head as if expecting to be kicked.

And Remus, who never desired to hurt anybody, Remus had sometimes wanted to kick that dog.

Once again, Remus shook himself out of his memories, pushed that thought away. Sirius’ cruelly thoughtless schoolboy prank was not even the worst betrayal between the two of them anymore.

I’m sorry I believed it, Remus thought at Sirius’ sleeping form. The lie Peter created when he escaped, that you had been the spy. I, of all people, should have known that was impossible. Sirius would never have betrayed James. In fact, James was probably the only person about whom that could be said without a shadow of a doubt.

Remus set his teacup down on the stone front step of the cottage, went over and gazed down at Padfoot in his patch of sun. As Remus watched, the dog twitched in his sleep, flicking his ears.

I know you’ll never get those years back, Remus thought, and standing there in the sunlight, now he was picturing the cold, dank cells of Azkaban, though he’d been trying hard all the past year not to think of exactly that.

Remus crouched down, his knees protesting, and scratched Padfoot behind the ears. The dog sighed in his sleep.

The past is the past, said Lily’s voice, rising suddenly inside him. Neither of you will get those years back, but does it matter, really? You’re both here now.

Knowing what to expect now, Remus sat still and waited to see what the James inside his head might have to add.

Still, though, you could flick him on the nose, just to see if he still wakes up barking when you do that, suggested James’ voice.

Remus stifled his own startled laugh against the back of his hand and stood. He didn’t flick Padfoot on the nose, but the fact that the temptation was there at all made him smile.

An hour or so later – his patch of sun must have shifted away, waking him when it left him in the cold shade – Sirius ambled back into the house in human form, looking sleepy and disorientated.

Remus, at the kitchen table writing lesson plans just to have something to do, looked up. Sirius already looked a little more relaxed and well fed than he had even the day before. That was good to see.

“Enjoy your dog-nap?” Remus asked, amused.

“‘Dog-nap’ sounds like I’m kidnapping dogs,” Sirius complained. “I can’t kidnap dogs. I am a dog.”

Remus smiled. “Did you have any breakfast?”

“Nah, wasn’t sure what you kept where, and didn’t want to make a mess here.”

“I’ll make you something,” Remus said, starting to rise from his seat.

“No,” Sirius said, his voice surprisingly firm. “I’ll make you something. You sit down.”

Feeling baffled, Remus sat. “Cold cupboard’s over there,” he offered.

Sirius followed his pointing arm to the cupboard where a cooling charm did the work of keeping perishables fresh – the cottage did come with a Muggle refrigerator, but frankly, why waste electricity when magic could do the same job better? – and poked his head inside. “What d’you want? Eggs?”

“Sure,” Remus said, still trying to remember any time he had seen Sirius cook, ever. And wondering if he should worry the results would be poisonous.

In the end, Sirius came through with a fairly passable plate of scrambled eggs, Remus made them more tea, and they sat and ate together.

“Harry had to watch one of his classmates get killed by Voldemort,” Sirius said out of the blue.

Remus nodded. He’d heard the news. Cedric Diggory, a pleasant, clever, kind-hearted Hufflepuff boy, who had been a joy to teach. This new war’s first casualty.

“I want to be there,” Sirius said. “At least when I was in Hogsmeade I could keep an eye on him. Now he’s back with his horrible aunt and uncle and we’re supposed to just trust Dumbledore that he’ll be all right there.”

“To be fair, so far he has been all right there,” Remus said. “Well, more or less.”

“Damn it,” Sirius swore. “Damn Dumbledore! Those sorry excuses for human beings are the last people who should have got care of him for even a day, let alone ten years.”

Remus had nothing to say to counter that.

“Did Dumbledore tell you anything more about his plans?” he asked instead. “How soon we’re all to meet, and where?”

Sirius shook his head. “Just to go and let everyone know, and to be ready.” Then he frowned at the table and said, not looking at Remus, “I’ve offered him the use of the Grimmauld Place house.”

Remus was startled. “Sorry – what?”

“My parents’ house,” Sirius growled. “Goddamn mausoleum, that place, but it’s just sitting there empty, and it’s got about every kind of protection you could throw at a building, Unplottable and all that. It could serve pretty well as a kind of headquarters for the Order, if Dumbledore wants it.”

Yes, but how would you feel being back there? Remus wanted to ask, but didn’t. Sirius had been increasingly unhappy in his parents’ house over his years at Hogwarts, until he’d finally had one last screaming match with them and left for good to live with James’ family. His childhood home wasn’t exactly a place that held a lot of happy memories. In fact, the very idea that Sirius was now the place’s owner was discordant and strange. But then again, who else would be? Sirius’ brother was dead.

“That’s generous of you to offer it for the Order,” Remus said, trying to keep his voice neutral.

Sirius only grunted in response.

“And until then?” Remus asked. “Until Dumbledore calls us together, I mean? What are we meant to do for the time being?”

“Enforced holiday!” said Sirius, putting on a halfway successful smile. “Which is not all bad, right? I could sure do with a while of just lying around and letting you fatten me up.”

To give Sirius credit, Remus would have had to say that for about a day and a half – the rest of that day and most of the next – Sirius did a credible job of playing the part of a man on holiday.

He did lie in the sun, when there was sun, and wandered the hills and fields around the cottage even when there wasn’t. He went into the village and bought them some groceries, which he insisted on paying for. Apparently, he still had something of a supply of gold. He did the washing up and straightened up around the cottage, unasked, and even teased Remus a bit about his work. (“Seriously, Moony, you’re not even their real teacher, and you’re sitting there preparing entire lessons for them?”)

By late evening of that next day, though, Sirius was pacing the cottage.

“Why hasn’t Dumbledore sent word?” he demanded. “I stopped at a post office on my way here and sent him an owl about Grimmauld Place, surely he’s got the letter by now.”

“I imagine he’s a tad busy just at the moment,” Remus suggested, up to his elbows in soapsuds at the kitchen sink.

“Too busy to be gathering the Order?” Sirius demanded. “What could possibly be more important? There’s a war starting, Remus!”

Remus turned and looked at Sirius, stomping back in forth in a kitchen far too small to be paced in. “Sirius, would you sit down?”

Sirius stopped, but only to lean against the worktop opposite Remus, cross his arms and glower.

“Look,” Remus said. “I know you don’t like having to wait. But everything is under control for the moment. Dumbledore is clearly working on a plan, Harry’s safely with his aunt and uncle for now, and–”

Sirius interrupted, “And now I suppose you’re going to tell me–”

“–I’m sure everything’s all right.”

“–that everything will be all right,” Sirius finished at almost the same time.

They looked at each other.

“My apologies for being predictable,” Remus said. The piercing way Sirius was staring at him was making him uncomfortable.

“Aren’t you the least bit concerned what’s going to happen?” Sirius demanded. “Voldemort’s back, and he’s after Harry. It’s all starting again! How can you just stand there and – and do the washing up?”

Remus shook soapy water from his forearms and cast Sirius a sardonic look. “Would not doing the washing up help us to stop Voldemort, then?”

“This!” Sirius burst out. “This… thing that you do, ugh. You never get properly upset. You just get more sarcastic.”

“Well, excuse me for not performing up to the Sirius Black standard of temper tantrums. Tell me, do you think it would be help our cause if I did?”

Sirius pointed a finger at him. “See, this? This is why people in the Order suspected you. You never react to things like you’d expect a normal person to react!”

Oh, so they were having that conversation after all, were they?

Remus dried his hands on a dishtowel, slowly and deliberately, then leaned back against the edge of the sink and crossed his arms as well. “Is that so? And I suppose it had nothing to do with the fact that I happened to be the Dark creature in the group?”

“What? Of course not,” Sirius said, but his eyes slid away from Remus’.

An old anger welled up in Remus, long buried, but with embers, it seemed, that still burned.

But he kept his voice level. “Oh? You can honestly stand there and tell me the reason I was suspected of being the spy in the Order wasn’t because of what I am?”

“I didn’t think that way, I swear to you! Some of the others might have, but I never thought that.”

“I imagine you had some quite logical reason instead. Was it really that my temper wasn’t dramatic enough for you? Or perhaps you thought, Huh, that Remus, he’s so good at keeping secrets, maybe he’s decided to keep a few more just for fun.”

Sirius paced two steps, then made himself stop, his body still vibrating with pent-up energy. “No, Remus, look. That some of the others thought that about you – that’s because they’re stupid. Prejudiced and blind. That I thought it too, even though I knew you… that was unforgivable. But you have to understand, it was such a confused time, such a mess. There was clearly somebody spying on us, and James and Lily and Harry were in danger, and I was desperate to find some answer that made sense.”

“How convenient for you, then, that I was right there to point a finger at. I didn’t have the luxury of such an easy scapegoat.”

Sirius hung his head. “I’m sorry. I’m – I can’t tell you how sorry. I was panicking. I didn’t know what to think. You were always going off on mission alone, and yes, some of the others suspected you, and the more I heard that, the more I thought, well, maybe that makes sense, because for sure nothing else does…”

Sirius trailed off, looking up at Remus with beseeching eyes. The look of a puppy who knows it’s done wrong, but still hopes to be forgiven.

But Remus wasn’t feeling particularly merciful. Perhaps that was unfair of him. Sirius, after all, was indeed not the only one who had wrongly suspected him, not by far. But Sirius had been one of his closest friends, his only friends. Sirius should have known.

“That’s your excuse?” Remus said. “‘Everybody else was doing it’?”

Very quietly, his restless motion now completely stilled, Sirius said, “Believe me when I say I will never forgive myself.”

Remus thought of Sirius, in a cold prison cell in Azkaban for twelve years, blaming himself every single day for James and Lily’s deaths. Blaming himself for having switched Secret Keepers. Blaming himself for having trusted the wrong person. For not having trusted the right one.

Remus couldn’t envy him those years. Not even in exchange for his own long years of grief he’d struggled through alone.

Voice jagged with emotion, Sirius said again, “I’m so sorry, Remus.”

Remus bowed his head. With his gaze fixed on the grey fibres of his threadbare pullover, he said, “And I forgive you. I imagine you’ve carried around enough guilt all these years. Don’t carry any more on my account.”

“Remus–” Sirius started, then stopped again.

“It’s all right,” Remus said. “Really. It’s all right.” He lifted his eyes to meet Sirius’, to show that he meant it.

“I wish there were some way I could make up for my mistakes,” Sirius said, his voice still very quiet.

Neither of them said anything to that. They both knew the one mistake that really mattered was the one that could never be undone – trusting Peter, unwittingly exposing James and Lily to Voldemort.

Suddenly, Remus couldn’t stand to be inside those four walls a minute longer. Or maybe it was being inside his own head that was making him crazy.

“I’m going out for a bit,” he said. “I just need to – walk for a bit. Try not to burn down the house while I’m out, okay?”

Sirius gave him a quizzical look. Are you all right?

Remus shrugged at him. Yes. No. I don’t know.

“Go ahead and go to sleep,” he said. “I’ll be back in a while. Don’t worry.”

Then he left Sirius standing in the kitchen, and went outside.

(continue to CHAPTER 3)