Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The silence that stretches over Dumbledore’s office is thick and heavy, almost like molasses, and Sirius can almost scent the grief that hangs in the air. He remembers a loaded silence just like this, a few months prior, as Remus held his hand, rubbing soothing circles against his skin, and broke the news of Regulus’s death. The black hood of death looms over this room, too, and he paces nervously as he tries to still the slamming of his heart in his chest. 

Not Remus, he thinks. Anyone but Remus. 

James is slumped into an armchair, a twitching muscle in his jaw betraying his nervousness, with Lily perched by his side, running her fingers through his hair in a painfully intimate gesture. They’d been the first to arrive after Sirius, stepping out of the fireplace with a weariness in their gait that has now become a permanent feature in their lives, and Sirius had almost sobbed with relief to see that they were fine. 

Peter sits still in a chair, his eyes glued to the tips of his shoes, and the flames cast violent hues across his sandy hair. As always, he’s picking at his fingers, the cuticles raw and bloody, and Sirius knows him well enough to recognize that he’s itching to transform into Wormtail and curl into a nook with his tail between his legs. 

Sirius shares the sentiment, almost desperate to shift into a dog, to howl away the pent-up panic and frustration. The clock on the mantelpiece indicates that Dumbledore is late, but apparently so is everyone else, if this is to be a full Order meeting. 

As Sirius completes another futile lap of the oval office, he feels the weight of Lily’s worry on his back. It can’t be Remus. Sure, he’s been gone for a week now, on one of his top secret missions he can’t ever breathe a word about, but he’s been gone for longer than that before, and he’s always come back. He’ll always come back to Sirius, he vowed so.

Loss is not unfamiliar to them, not anymore. Almost half a year ago now they lost the Prewetts, the twins going down in a fiendfyre explosion that took down several of Voldemort’s loyal lieutenants and a Death Eater hideout; and just weeks ago they found Edgar Bones’s body in an abandoned warehouse. Benjy Fenwick has been missing for a month, presumed dead. They’re not quite desensitized to burying their friends yet, but they’re getting there. 

His heaviest loss he can’t quite stomach, can’t bring himself to think of, the wound inflicted on him by Regulus’s death still raw and aching. His eyes find James, trace the scowl on his forehead, his knuckles that have gone white from gripping the armrest, and he knows the younger Black brother is on his mind too. He forgets sometimes, in his selfish self-flagellation, that a part of James’s heart was ripped out too the day they learned about Regulus. That James hasn’t healed yet either. That he probably never will.

None of them are ready for another loss like that. 

Not Remus, he thinks. Please don’t let it be Remus.    

Mary appears next, stray snowflakes coating her hair and her robes, and she pulls Lily into her arms, pressing a soft kiss into her temple as her shoulders visibly sag with relief. She makes a snide remark about his anxious pacing, then crumples into a chair and glares at the clock, counting down the minutes. The tension in the air is so thick, Sirius thinks he could cut it with a knife. 

The flames turn a luminous green, licking viciously out of the fireplace, and then Dorcas is stepping out, fierce as ever, with her split lip and bandaged arm, a keepsake from a recent duel with Mulciber. Her eyes dart across the room, landing on each of them calculatingly, and her throat bobs dangerously close to tears. Then Marlene follows her out of the fire, hair still wet and in disarray, and Dorcas blinks the traitorous tears away as she tangles their fingers together. 

None of the senior Order members, then, Sirius notes. No Aurors. Just them. A pit gapes wide in his stomach and he tries to tame the wild roar of panic inside him. He’s done the math. Not Remus, he pleads to any deity or power-that-be that will listen, don’t let it be Remus.  

He sorely feels Remus’s absence, somehow bare and vulnerable without him at his side. Even though he’s stopped his pacing, he keeps his back to his friends because he knows what he’ll find if he turns around. They, too, must have reached the same conclusion he has and he cannot bear the pity he knows will be etched onto their faces. 

Sirius refuses to grieve prematurely. Remus isn’t dead. He believes, down to his very core, that he would know if Remus were dead. That something would have shifted in the universe, that the Moon would be shining duller tonight, that the stars would blink out of existence. Yes, if Remus were truly gone, he would have felt it, because part of Sirius would have died too, just like he had felt like water was filling his lungs the night Regulus had died. Remus is still alive; he has to be, or else Sirius doesn’t think he’ll make it. 

I want more time with him, he thinks. We deserve more time.  

They must have been summoned for a mission. Yes, they’ve come to expect the heavy blow of another death announcement—an ever-present sword hanging above their heads—but that doesn’t mean this is the reason Dumbledore has asked them all to be here. 

“Sirius—” Lily starts, and there’s a gentle wobble in her voice that is drenched in sorrow and sympathy. 

“Don’t,” he snaps, refusing to face them. 

There’s a weight on his chest, a crushing presence, and his pulse is a wild, rabid thing, his throat dry. His heart beats to the rhythm of Not him, not him, not him, nails leaving bloody half-moons into the flesh of his palms.  

They feel Dumbledore’s commanding presence as he enters the room before they see or hear him. His footsteps are light, but there’s a dark look on his face, the blue of his eyes behind his thin-framed glasses somehow dimmer. 

“Good evening,” he says, then swallows, turning to examine the pale moon peering back at him from behind a cloud. “Thank you for getting here so quickly.” 

Sirius barely contains the sudden overbearing desire to punch him. Dumbledore’s kept them waiting long enough, and Sirius’s nerves are so fraught he can feel his control slipping. 

“I’m afraid the news I have to share with you is not pleasant,” the old man isn’t looking at them as he speaks, contemplatively stroking the feathers of his Phoenix, perched by the side of his desk. The bird chirps, gently nudging its head into the old man's palm.

In the corner of his eye, Sirius spots Marlene pressing closer to Dorcas; James taking Lily’s hand in both of his, and Remus’s absence by his side stings all the worse. All of a sudden he’s almost choking on his anger. Where is he? Why isn’t he here when Sirius needs him? Why is he always gone—why has he been gone for so long? 

“I’ve gathered you here tonight because our cause has suffered a tremendous loss,” Dumbledore says, and his piercing gaze locks on James, who has inadvertently been propped up as something of a leader in the Order, even with its loose hierarchical structures, especially after Fleamont and Euphemia were killed. 

James stands up straighter, still holding on to Lily, and braces himself for the blow. Sirius can’t feel the solid ground beneath his feet; it’s like he’s floating far above his body, completely detached from it. This isn’t happening to him, he can’t feel it.

“Where’s the rest of the Order, then?” Dorcas asks, unforgiving and unflinching, and Sirius realizes she’s the only one of them right now who can speak up without her voice cracking.

The rise of Dumbledore’s brows is so slight as to almost go unnoticed. 

“This is information revealed on a need-to-know basis,” he says coolly and lets them sit with the words for a while before he proceeds. 

“I’m sure you’re all aware Mr. Lupin was assigned a special role within our ranks—” 

No, Sirius thinks. Not him. Not Remus. Please, not Remus. 

It’s not until he sees the pity in Dumbledore’s eyes that he realizes he’s spoken his thoughts aloud. He needs to grab hold of something, anything, but there’s nothing solid around him, he’s weightless—

“Mr. Lupin was asked to infiltrate Voldemort’s werewolf cadre,” Dumbledore says, and his words sound distant and muffled, as Sirius struggles to come up for air from where he’s been dragged underwater. He can swear his lungs are on fire. 

“He was successfully accepted within their ranks and was making great progress and providing us with invaluable information—” 

We were supposed to grow old together, Sirius thinks. He can’t remember if he said I love you before Remus left. He can’t remember their last kiss, because he didn’t know it would be the last, because it was not supposed to be—

“...werewolf sanctuary…” the words come in bits and pieces as he struggles to make sense of them, “...blown to smithereens… bodies recovered under the rubble…unrecognizable…” 

A hand is on his back, rubbing gentle circles, and he turns around to see James, tears silently streaming down his face, something completely shattered in his eyes—

“...was an invaluable asset—” 

“Shut up,” he hears himself saying, and then his body is not his to control as he forgets he has magic stirring within him, the only need he can recognize that to feel Dumbledore’s bones crunching beneath his knuckles. 

Someone—something—is howling, the noise so devoid of anything human that it brings him pause, and he realizes it’s him, the sound so broken, so hopeless that he feels his chest cave in on itself. He realizes James is holding him—holding him back, rather, as he’s thrashing against the confines of his arms, and he crumples, ruined. 

“He was not an asset,” he says, surprised to find out his voice is raw, throat ripped to shreds, and he’s on his knees on the thick, plush carpet, snot and tears mingling on his face, his pathetic existence reduced to the chasm that gapes open where his heart once was. “He was not an asset,” he repeats, feeling small—so small that he’s seven years old again, bleeding in his mother’s feet, salt on his tongue as the tears stream into his open mouth—

He could never protect them, the people he loved. He could never protect Regulus, gone and taken by water, and he could never protect Remus, gone and taken by fire, and all he is, and all he’s ever been is useless. 

Dead—they’re dead and so is he. 

“Moony,” he whispers, “he was my Moony—”

It’s this—the look of cold calculation and quiet detachment on Dumbledore’s face that finally wrecks him beyond repair. Then all there is is quiet. 

He doesn’t think Sirius will ever forgive him for this, but he has never felt deserving of Sirius’s love anyway. Perhaps he’ll grow to hate Remus for it, as he always should have, and it will make the grief and loss an easier burden to carry. He’s doing all of this for him, to make sure he’s safe. To make sure there is a world worth living in, a world he can help James and Lily raise their son in. 

Remus doesn’t expect that he will ever meet their child, or that he will ever live long enough to see this brave new world he’s sacrificing himself for. But his life has never been worth much anyway. Maybe his death will be his redemption for a life as a monster. 

Knowing that he’ll never meet Lily’s son fills him with regret. The two of them lay on her bedroom floor and he held her hand in his, squeezing softly, as they waited for the test results. I can’t trust anyone else with this, she’d said. You’re the only one who knows. He’d held her then, as she’d cried, and promised her there would be a future for this child. 

The only thing he regrets more is Sirius, but they were always living on borrowed time anyway. He should be grateful for what little time they had, for all the love he was unworthy of, even as his heart is breaking for the home they’ll never have, for the family they’ll never get to build together, for the life they could have had. 

There have been plenty of times in his life when Remus has wished he were dead. He supposes you should be careful what you wish for; he’s dead now, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. His Ma, he knows, will mourn him, sobbing voicelessly into her pillow at night. Lyall will probably be relieved. The knowledge of this fact should crush him, but he feels nothing instead.

Lily, and James, and Peter, too, will lament his demise, but Sirius—Sirius will never forgive him, and that is not something Remus can live with. 

There’s a chance he comes out of this alive; not unscathed, but alive nonetheless. And this, more than his actual death, will destroy Sirius in earnest. So Remus has no plans of surviving. He will do Dumbledore’s bidding. He will unite the werewolves into his own personal army. He will bring down Voldemort.

And he will go down swinging. 

His hand sinks into his pocket, fingers wrapping around the cold metal of a ring he’ll never give.  

Chapter Text

“So,” the Mind Healer says, voice surprisingly saccharine, “how are you doing today?” 

Sirius stares dully at a spot on the wall above her head. He has to be here but nobody said anything about actually participating. The silence stretches out, so thick and heavy that it’s almost palpable, and the Mind Healer scribbles something at the corner of her parchment, her lips pursed tightly. With a sigh, she leans back into her seat, resting the parchment in her lap. A clock ticks away in the distance. 

“We could just sit here for an hour in perfect silence,” she says at last and gives him a stern look over her glasses that oddly reminds him of Professor McGonagall leaning over her desk about to give him detention. 

Sirius glances at her long enough to indicate that he'll be perfectly fine with that. Then he can go back to his cold, empty apartment, transform into Padfoot and curl under a blanket on the floor where he can soak in his grief in peace. Every second spent in human form chips away at his sanity. At least when he’s a dog he doesn’t have to feel this giant gaping hole in the center of his being that—he used to take up. He struggles to even think his name. 

“You have to give me something , Sirius,” another exasperated sigh escapes her after a while, and she puts her quill and parchment away with a wave of her wand, leaning forward conspiratorially with her elbows on her knees, “or else I can't clear you to go back to fighting.” 

All he spares is another glare in her direction. 

“Why don't you tell me what happened?” she pushes.

What happened is that Remus died, and Sirius did not get out of bed for so long that James and Lily decided to make it their business and force him to sit on this shoddy couch with this insufferable faux-blonde Mediwitch and be forced to talk when all he wants is to be left alone. What is talking going to do anyways? 

“Sirius,” she says, and he hates the way his name sounds on her tongue, “Your family is worried about you.”

“My family is dead.” 

He doesn't mean to say it, but the words slip out almost subconsciously. He regrets it as soon as he sees the shift in the Mediwitch’s face, an almost triumphant shadow flashing across her eyes. For a moment he wonders how much trouble he would get into if he punched the smugness off her face. Maybe the physical violence, the pure Muggle bruteness of it, fist connecting with bone, the crunch of it, would fill some of the emptiness inside him, screw the consequences. He swallows dryly.  

“Do you think that's fair to James?” 

There's a heaviness in Sirius’s chest. He doesn’t care about what is or isn’t fair to James. He doesn’t care about anything, really. He doesn't want to talk to this woman he doesn't know, with her pristine lime green robes and stupid little hat perched on her stupid little head. He doesn't want to talk to James, who has been showing up to his apartment with takeout boxes of food and sitting at the edge of his bed, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth and repeatedly taking sudden breaths as if he’s about to say something, then thinking better of it and leaving. He doesn't want to talk to Lily, who will sometimes crawl into bed with him and scratch him softly behind his ears while she weeps soundlessly into the pillow, tears streaming into her ears. He doesn’t want to talk to Marlene, who shows up on the nights when Dorcas is out on a mission, carrying a bottle of firewhisky to get him through the night (luckily, she doesn’t want to talk is content with lying on the floor with him and silently passing the bottle until she doesn’t want it anymore so Sirius finishes the rest of it and feels numb). He wants to talk to Remus. All he wants is to talk to Remus.

Except Remus is gone and he'll never talk to him again. He's spent endless hours trying to recall the last thing he said to him, wondering if it was “I love you” or if it was something trivial and inconsequential, and it's ripping him apart from the inside that he doesn't know. He wonders if Remus remembered, in his last moments, whatever it was that Sirius last said to him. He hopes it wasn't something cruel, or mean; he can be both sometimes, when he stops thinking and gets lost in his feelings too much, and takes it all out on Remus because he lets him. 

At night, he stares up at the ceiling, unblinking, imagining every vile thing he could have said in anger. The war has not been kind on any of them, and despite the love they hold for each other— He’s called him a coward before. He’s been vile, and he’s been ruthless, and he can’t live with himself not knowing if he was that night too. Were they fighting? He can’t remember. He didn’t say “I love you,” he’s certain of it the more time passes. Remus died and he didn’t say I love you. He doesn’t remember when he last said I love you. Did he kiss him before he left? Were they fighting? Did he slam the door in anger and walk away from him? Or did he hold him? He doesn’t know, he’ll never know. 

He thinks about Remus’s death, about whether he’d even had time to think about Sirius before he got blown to bits, and then he feels so violently sick he crawls to the bathroom on all fours and hurls up his guts. 

On those nights, he stays on the cool bathroom tiles, unable to move, and finds himself transported to his childhood, to other endless, dreary midnights he spent on a cold bathroom floor, drenched in blood and sweat, and tears, sobbing voicelessly from the pain. His entire life comprises of a string of loss and suffering, the people he loves the most slipping away from him at the tips of his fingers. If he closes his eyes, all he can see are their faces. They don’t look alike, but behind his eyelids, their features merge, his brother’s and his lover’s and they morph into an angry, decaying creature that snarls and glares at Sirius unblinkingly. You let me down , it says, I’m dead because of you . It has both of their voices. I trusted you . You did this to me . Nothing is capable of drowning the voice out.

“We don't have to talk about Remus, then,” the Mind Healer says, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms. A half-formed thought takes root in his brain to curse her, but he suspects that, just the same as punching her, will put an indefinite pin in his ability to return to the frontlines. He wishes she would stop saying his name. It doesn’t belong in her mouth. She has no right to it.

“Why don't we talk about your brother?” 

Sirius gets out of his seat and without sparing a glance at the Mediwitch, he storms out of the room, slamming the door on his way out. 

“Enough.” 

Sirius looks up from the bathroom floor. His T-shirt—an old band shirt that once belonged to Remus—sticks to his skin, soaked with sweat. There’s dried vomit on the tiles next to him, crusting his cheek, and the front of the shirt. His whole body aches, muscles tense, from spending another night on the floor. Slowly, he props himself up on his elbows, trying to ascertain his surroundings. Empty bottles litter the ground, their glass surface reflecting the sharp, fluorescent light of the bare lightbulb hanging overhead.

Lily’s arms are crossed under her breasts and she’s wearing a furious expression on her pale, freckled face. Sirius ignores her as he sits up at last, head resting against the wall, and pulls out a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of the back pocket of his jeans. She watches as he pushes a cigarette between his dry, chapped lips, then flicks his fingers to light it—a trick, he recalls with a pang in his chest, that Remus taught him. 

He’s barely had a chance to take a puff of it, the smoke filling his lungs and the empty, hungry void inside of him, when Lily reaches over and takes the cigarette out of his mouth. Before he’s able to say anything, she throws it into the toilet and flushes it, never once breaking eye contact with him. 

“Merlin, Lily,” he mumbles, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, “You don’t have to be such a—”

“I said ‘enough’,” she cuts him off. 

Hours have merged into days have merged into weeks. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Remus died. Maybe it’s been months. Maybe it’s been years. It’s all the same to him. With an exasperated eye roll, he grabs for his pack but Lily is quicker, and quickly disposes of the rest of the cigarettes, tearing them in half and flushing each of them down the toilet. Briefly, Sirius contemplates just walking out of his apartment to get another pack, but he just can’t muster up the will to get off the floor. 

He watches as Lily, mane of fiery curls spilling down her back, whips the shower curtain open, then starts a shower for him. The tiny, cramped bathroom quickly fills up with steam. Sirius doesn’t move, just stares at her blankly. He’s distantly aware of the fact that he stinks. 

“Get up,” Lily says, and there’s no trace of her usual kindness as she approaches him and makes a half-hearted effort to lift him off the floor by the shoulder. “Come on, up and in the shower.” 

He doesn’t move, letting his limbs flail aimlessly as she tugs at him. 

“You selfish arsehole,” she says, voice strained and teary, “Get off the floor right now.” 

There’s a part of him, buried somewhere deep inside, that cares. It died, he thinks, when Remus did. There is nothing they can do or say to him now that matters. He deserves to rot. He did this. He let them down, it’s all his fault, and so he deserves to wallow in his self-pity—

Her palm leaves an angry, red mark on his face and the slap echoes. Slowly, he lifts his hand up, pressing it gently against the stinging handprint, then he blinks at her in confusion. She’s on her knees in front of him, and there’s a look on her face he doesn’t recognize. In the decade that he’s known her, he’s never seen so much fury and disappointment etched into her features. 

“Just leave me alone, Lily,” he says, tearing his eyes away from her because he cannot bear the accusation in her gaze. 

“I. Said. Enough.” 

“No—” 

“Sirius, enough. Get off the floor, and in the shower right now.” 

Each word is like a knife that stabs at him, and he curls himself into a ball and whimpers. 

“You have got to stop.” 

“He’s gone, Lily—” 

“I LOST HIM TOO!” Her voice trembles, tears streaming down her face, and she pulls Sirius back into a sitting position, her finger stabbing accusatorily at his chest as she yells at him. “He was my best friend, and I lost him too. And do you wanna know who else lost him? James. Your best friend. Who needed you too, but you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself to care about anyone else because you’re a selfish piece of shit—” 

“So what if I am? Just let me be, Lily, just let me die too,” his fingers wrap around her wrist, and he pulls her closer, burying his face in her neck as his entire body is rattled by sobs. Perhaps he expects her pity. Perhaps he expects her to leave, face distorted in disgust, so he can go back to his drunken stupor. 

“We’re not giving up on you, Sirius,” she says but there’s no kindness in her voice, just a sharp, cold edge. “Get in the shower right now.” 

“What for?” He says, and his voice rings hollow. Lily feels warm and solid against his body, and he realizes he doesn’t remember how long it’s been since someone held him. There’s something different to her scent he can’t quite figure out. He clings on to her, tight. He wants to let go, because he’s not worthy of her comfort, but still, instinctually, he holds on. 

“You know,” she says, finally pushing him away from her, “he would hate to see what’s become of you. He would hate it.” 

It’s more of a shock to him than her earlier slap and he physically recoils, looking up at her like a kicked puppy. Once the initial pain wears off, he shakes his head and says, evenly, “Well, it’s not like it matters, because he’s dead, and I have nothing left to live for.” 

An acrid laughter escapes her lips and at last, she pushes herself up on her feet and moves away from him.

“You know, I’m sure James—remember him? Your best mate? I’m sure he would love to hear that,” she shrugs, but there’s pain and something else he can’t decipher in her features, “And Pete, remember him? Yeah, I’m sure he’d love to know that, too. And, you know, the rest of us? All your friends? All of us who have been risking our lives day in and day out fighting this war, fighting for this cause—the cause Remus died for, by the way. Remember that? But I’m glad that you, Sirius Black, have nothing left to live for.” 

Her chest is heaving, cheeks flushed as the onslaught of her words rains on him, and Sirius doesn’t have the decency to keep looking at her. All he wants—more than anything in the world—is to crawl into a hole in the ground and never come out. The weight of his shame is unbearable. He blinks, and just like that, he’s a child again, sobbing in his mother’s feet, and he cannot live with the disappointment in her eyes as she says she’s disgusted with him. Time is a circle and at the center of this circle is Sirius, suffocated by the gravity of everyone he’s let down. The neverending list is a spiral twisting around him.

Lily turns her back to him, reaching for the doorknob, and he knows, in his very soul, that she will walk away and won’t come back. With another shaky breath, he closes his eyes and waits for the slam of the door that will sever his friends from him, this one last sign that they’ve given up on him so he can drown this last remaining part of him that still hopes—

The slam of the door never comes. He glances up and Lily is still there, green eyes brimming with tears, her hand still wrapped around the doorknob. 

“I’m pregnant,” she says, then leaves. 

Sirius gets in the shower.