A Constellation’s Just a Picture in the Sky (7/7)

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A CONSTELLATION'S JUST A PICTURE IN THE SKY

Summary: There’s a war on and all is not easy for the young members of the Order of the Phoenix, but Remus – nineteen, in love and sharing a flat with Sirius – is happier than he ever thought it possible to be. …Until one morning a knock at their door heralds an unexpected visitor from Sirius’ past, begging help with a desperate mission.


CHAPTER SEVEN

Sirius’ eyelids fluttering open was the most welcome sight Remus had seen in a long, long time. He waited, holding Sirius’ hand but not speaking, letting him come fully awake. It had been a long, waiting night at St Mungo’s, but Remus hadn’t wanted to leave Sirius alone for a moment.

Sirius levered his head up from the pillow and cracked a grin at Remus. “Look at that,” he croaked from between dry lips. “I’m not dead.”

“No, you wanker, you’re not dead,” Remus said, rolling his eyes. Not how he’d meant to greet Sirius when he finally returned to the land of the wakeful, but all the worry and frustration and affection came rolling out as soon as he opened his mouth. “Not for lack of trying, though.”

“Hey,” Sirius muttered, flopping his head back down but still grinning like a loon. “I was saving the world.”

Remus shivered to think how true that might be. What if Regulus had never found out about the Horcrux and they’d all gone on and on fighting, never understanding why they could never seem to defeat Voldemort for good? Or what if Regulus had found the Horcrux but hadn’t come to them? What if he’d tried to tackle the impossible task of retrieving the locket alone, what might have happened then?

“Do you want some water?” Remus asked, instead of giving voice to any of that. It was all over now, and thankfully it had come out all right.

“Water, oh, Merlin, yes,” Sirius rasped. “I think I might never drink anything but water ever again.”

Remus doubted that, but he smiled. It was good to see Sirius making jokes. The Healers had assured Remus he would recover fully, once the countercharms had taken effect and the worst of the potion was out of his system, but it had been hard to believe that as Remus sat by Sirius’ inert form, clutching his hand, all through the long night.

He reached for the water glass and held it to Sirius’ lips. It was one of the special St Mungo’s kind, charmed not to spill even when sipped from a reclining position. Sirius drank gratefully, and sighed in relief as Remus set the glass back down on the table beside the bed.

“Better,” Sirius said, in a more normal voice. Then his expression turned sober. “Where’s Reg?”

Remus gripped Sirius’ hand a little more tightly. “He’s gone. I think he’s fine – he was fine the last I saw him – but he disappeared with the Horcrux. He means to destroy it, and I think he wants to be sure there’s no chance of it harming anyone else, so he’s determined to do it alone. Also…I think he’s still afraid, Sirius. Even after the brave and dangerous thing he did, I think he still believes the Order would torture or kill him for having once followed Voldemort.”

He’s an idiot,” Sirius growled.

“Yes,” Remus said gently. “Maybe so. But he’s an idiot who’s been inculcated with that way of thinking from a very young age. You can’t expect him to lose that fear all at once. I think he’ll come back with time. And meanwhile, he’s going to destroy the Horcrux, so Voldemort will be one step closer to being mortal, and we’ll be able to defeat him someday.”

Sirius met Remus’ eyes with a very precise sort of look. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

Slowly, Remus nodded.

“That there are more of them, out there somewhere,” Sirius went on. “That someone like Voldemort would never have made just one Horcrux.”

Remus nodded again. “It’s an extraordinarily good thing that Regulus was able to find out about that one, and it’s going to make a huge difference that we know about them at all. But no, I don’t think it’s the only one. I think there are more, probably many more.”

“We’ll find them,” Sirius said, with such conviction that Remus couldn’t help but believe him. “With all of the Order working on it? Of course we can do it. Prongs’ll want to help us search, and Lily, and Pete.”

“Er,” Remus said, with a jolt of renewed horror. He’d managed to forget about this part for a few moments, in the joy of seeing Sirius wake up.

He hadn’t wanted to read the note Regulus had handed him. He knew very well it was intended for Sirius, not him, and he’d felt guilty looking at it. But for all Remus knew it might have contained crucial information about the potion Sirius had drunk or its cure, and in the frantic rush to St Mungo’s and then the excruciating wait for the Healers to tell Remus whether or not Sirius would be all right, he hadn’t been able to keep himself from opening Regulus’ note, just in case.

What he found inside was not what he had expected. Even after a night of turning it over and over in his mind, Remus still didn’t know what to believe.

Now, he withdrew the note from his pocket, and handed it wordlessly to Sirius. As Sirius read, his face took on first a frown of disbelief, then a storm of rage and betrayal.

“Peter,” he breathed. “Peter is a spy? No, I don’t believe it.” He looked up at Remus in a panic. “Is it true? James – Lily – do they know?” His eyes pleaded with Remus, begging for it to be some cruel joke of his brother’s, not real.

Remus wanted so much to set Sirius’ mind at ease, but he couldn’t lie. “I – I don’t know. I really don’t know, Pads. I can’t see that Regulus would have any reason to make something like that up. But…it’s Peter. I can’t believe that of him.”

He didn’t want to believe it. Peter the underdog. Peter, who’d laughed at their jokes, helped them pull pranks, always been so eager to please. Peter who was their friend. What Regulus wrote couldn’t be true. It must be a mistake.

But Remus had had a long time to think, during the slow, still hours of the night he’d spent at Sirius’ side. And when he’d sent a Patronus to James and Lily early this morning to tell them about Regulus and the cave and the Horcrux, he hadn’t done the same for Peter. Just in case.

“Fuck!” Sirius exclaimed. “Fuck that bastard. That rat.”

“We don’t know if it’s true,” Remus cautioned, even as anger stabbed inside him. This was one betrayal that, if true, he didn’t know how he would ever forgive. “James and Lily are coming soon, as soon as official visiting hours start,” he said. “We’ll figure it out together, okay? We’ll figure it out.”

Sirius was breathing hard. “We can’t let him know about the Horcrux. Peter can’t know.”

“I know.”

Because if what Regulus told them was true, if Voldemort had a spy he believed was feeding him the choicest bits of information from the heart of the Order of the Phoenix, then the Order could make good use of that fact. And if Voldemort believed his Horcruxes to be his own great secret, and the Order could conceal from him that they now knew… It would give them an advantage in the war, at last.

Sirius’ eyes were wide and anxious. Remus reached out to cup one hand against his jaw. Sirius still looked terribly pale, but he was alive.

“Please don’t worry,” Remus whispered. “We will figure this out. I promise you.”

Sirius stared back at him for a long time, then finally relaxed and leaned his cheek into Remus’ hand. “Yeah,” he said, his voice still a little rough. “Okay, Moony. I believe you.”

Remus slid his hand higher, into Sirius’ hair, wildly unkempt after the night’s dramatic adventures, and Sirius butted his head against Remus’ palm until Remus smiled.

“This has all been a very strange night,” Remus murmured.

Sirius flashed him a crooked grin. “My deranged family, huh? If your lot showed up at the door, we’d probably sit down for tea. My relatives, before you can blink you’re in a cave full of Inferi trying to abscond with a Dark Lord’s evil magical artefact.”

“Sirius…” Remus said. He hated to add even more gravity to this conversation, when Sirius was here in front of him whole and alive and happy again. But this was something too important to let it slip by. “Pads…” he began again. “What you said…I don’t know if you remember everything you said, during.”

A shadow crossed Sirius’ face and he nodded once, curtly.

“I forgive you,” Remus said softly. “I don’t know if I ever quite said it, but I do.”

Sirius’ face crumpled in pain, and Remus hated himself for causing it.

“I forgive you,” he repeated. “Completely. So let’s – let’s close that chapter, okay? You don’t ever have to apologise again for things that happened when we were still in school. We’re past that. Okay?”

Sirius swallowed thickly, and nodded.

“And you haven’t failed anyone,” Remus pushed on, daring to say it, although he had always hesitated to bring up Sirius’ fraught family past. “Your family failed you, not the other way around. And you saved Regulus last night, there’s no question about that.”

“I only did for him what I should have done years ago,” Sirius said, sounding angry at himself.

“No,” Remus said firmly, because this part he was sure about. “What you did back then was to get yourself free. That had to come first. But last night, you gave Regulus the chance to get away too, and choose a different path for himself if he wants to.”

Sirius sighed, like his heart was breaking all over again.

“Speaking of which,” Remus hurried on, trying for anything that might take that sadness and guilt from Sirius’ eyes. “How in Merlin’s name did you manage to convince Regulus to let you drink the potion instead of him?”

Sirius rolled his eyes sideways, embarrassed. “I invoked my status as the true heir of the House of Black.”

“You what?” As long as Remus had known him, Sirius had hated the mere mention of being heir of anything.

“I invoked my status as the true heir. Which I am, even if I don’t want to be and my family don’t want me to be. You can burn people off tapestries as much as you like, but under the most ancient magic of the family, I am heir and Regulus is bound to do as I say.”

Remus boggled at him. This, Sirius had definitely never mentioned before. “How did you do it? I didn’t hear you say a word.”

Now Sirius really looked discomfited. “I didn’t have to say anything. I just looked at him the way Father used to do to me, and he knew what I meant. He didn’t have any choice after that. I’m not proud of it,” Sirius hastened to add. “I swore to myself I would never use power the way Father used his power over us. But I couldn’t let him drink the potion, Remus. He’s my brother. My little brother.”

“I know,” Remus said softly. “And you saved him. Truly, Sirius. He has a chance now at a different life.”

There weren’t words enough to make him see what a good thing he had done. Instead, Remus leaned in and kissed Sirius, gently at first, mindful that he was still recovering. But Sirius kissed back, hard, and Remus lost himself in it, the feeling of Sirius warm and alive beneath him.

“Anyway,” Sirius said, when they broke apart, both out of breath. His hand caught the back of Remus’ neck, and held him close. “I think now I’ve earned the right to go bother Prongs and Lily while they’re trying to unpack from their honeymoon, don’t you?”

Remus laughed so hard he nearly choked. Sirius was still Sirius, his own maddening, lovable, wonderful Sirius, and he wouldn’t have him any other way.


THE END