Chapter Text
March, 1976
On the night of Remus Lupin’s 16th birthday, Sirius Black kisses him. It’s Remus’s first kiss, and it’s the best birthday present he never would have dared to ask for. He thinks his heart might burst.
Instead, it breaks.
Sirius pulls away, looking alarmed and embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he tells Remus. “That was…that was a mistake. I’m sorry, Moony.”
Then Sirius flees, leaving Remus alone in his confusion and hurt.
At that moment, Remus thinks there was nothing Sirius could do that would ever hurt worse than this. Than kissing him and calling it a mistake. Than running away. Than breaking Remus’s foolish heart.
How wrong he is.
*
“I’m sorry, Remus, I’m so sorry…It was a mistake…”
Four days after that kiss, Sirius is on his knees beside Remus’s hospital bed, begging. Tears stream down his cheeks, and his fingers clutch at the sheets. Sirius keeps his head bowed, too afraid to look any of his friend in the eyes.
Remus can barely stand to look at Sirius at all.
James and Peter stand on the other side of his bed, all arrayed against Sirius.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Sirius says again. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt, I swear it!”
This isn’t a kiss though. This isn’t a mistake any of them can pretend never happened.
“I’m sorry,” Sirius repeats, as though he thinks the words might gain weight with repetition. Like he believes he can wear Remus down if he just keeps apologizing. Maybe he can. Maybe he will. Sirius is charming, and somewhere, deep underneath his hurt and anger and fear, Remus knows Sirius is genuinely sorry.
That inevitable forgiveness is a long ways away though, and today it feels like weakness to Remus, who already feels terribly weak after last night. Jaw clenching, teeth grinding, Remus finally looks away.
Right now he hates Sirius for the apologies that roll so easily off his tongue.
“I think you need to leave, Sirius,” James says, and his voice is so cold it even makes Remus shiver. James is never so frosty, especially with Sirius.
“Get out, Padfoot,” Peter echoes.
Stubborn as always though, Sirius doesn’t budge. Remus can feel his fingers tighten on the fistfuls of bedsheets he’s grabbed.
“Go away, Sirius,” Remus finally says. All the hurt and confusion and the anger are finally breaking out of his chest. “I never want to see you again.”
They couldn’t know that these would be the last words any of them would say to Sirius.
Just like they have no way of knowing that the last time they see him will be when he pauses for a moment in the doorway of the hospital wing. Sirius glances over his shoulder for just a moment, devastation written plainly across his face.
Then he was gone.
*
Remus falls into a restless, troubled sleep after Madam Pomfrey shooes James and Peter off to classes. His dreams are full of red. In them he kisses Sirius again. They’re pressed close together and Remus can feel his fingernails—no, his claws—tear through Sirius’s clothes and skin as they rake down the other boy’s back. Sirius never stops kissing him. Not until Remus tears his throat out.
“Moony…Moony, wake up,” a voice hisses in his ear.
Remus flinches, startling awake. His thoughts are still lagging behind in his dream even as his eyes blink open.
He’s obviously slept later than he’d thought, because the room is dark except for the dim glow at the end of a wand. He expects to see Sirius, back to beg for forgiveness again. Instead, he finds James and Peter just emerging from beneath James’s invisibility cloak. Both of them look dazed and pale as ghosts.
“Whasgoingon?” Remus asks, groggily slurring the question into a single word.
“He’s gone,” James says in a pained whisper. “Expelled.”
Even Remus’s sleepy mind doesn’t take more than a moment to realize who James is talking about.
Sirius.
Sirius has been expelled.
Sirius is gone.
Everything stops.
Breath, heart, blood, brain. Everything in Remus freezes. All the anger he felt earlier is crushed beneath a wave of stupefied horror.
“We didn’t see him in class all day,” Peter says, taking over for James, who looks like he’s going to be sick. “We just thought he was hiding, or maybe he was in detention, but then he wasn’t at dinner either, and…”
Peter swallows and looks to James, clearly hoping for guidance, but James has his hands buried in his hair, his eyes are squeezed tightly closed. He has nothing to give them right now, so Peter stumbles onward.
“When we went back to the room after dinner…everything, all of Sirius’s things had been taken away. Even his bed is gone…” He trails off, his voice too thick to form any more words.
“Are you sure?” Remus asks. He knows they are though. James and Peter wouldn’t come down here to tell him about it if they weren’t absolutely certain.
James nods, yanking his hands out of his hair so violently it must hurt. “We went to McGonagall after we saw the dorm room. She confirmed it,” James says. “It’s done. Someone from the Ministry snapped his wand and…” James swallows, his eyes are screwed shut and his hands trembling.
Remus’s earlier words echo through the heavy, smothering silence.
“I never want to see you again.”
He hadn’t meant it. Not like that. Not really. He was angry and hurt, and he’d wanted to hurt Sirius in turn. He’d wanted Sirius to suffer, but not like this. Deep down in his heart, Remus knows he was always going to forgive Sirius.
Not right away, but in the end.
This wasn’t what he wanted at all.
“Where—” Remus barely recognizes his own voice. It’s a hoarse, trembling croak. “Where is Sirius now?”
James drops his head into his hands again and Peter flinches. “McGonagall said…she said his parents came to get him…”
Remus catches Peter’s small, frightened eyes. Sirius was always taciturn about his family life, but they all know it isn’t good. What will the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black do with an already rebellious heir who has now been expelled from Hogwarts?
“We didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Peter says mournfully.