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“If you don’t want to tell me, then so be it. You used to be boisterous, Padfoot, never would shut up. Now, when it matters, when this conversation is the only thing that matters to me, you are muted. “
Sirius gives him nothing in the way of words. His expression, should Remus choose to notice it, betrays it all. A selfish desire to know the truth and to continue hearing Sirius’ voice blinds Remus. He presses deeper into a wound both men know is not healed, the depths of which is only clear to one of them. The other speaks:
“I have dreamed of you, and I have missed you. I have wanted to be in a room with you again for thirteen years. And now you tell me nothing. You don’t want me to know. You don’t want me.”
“Moony…”
“Don’t.”
“Moony, I can’t…”
“Why can’t you? Curse got your tongue? Did someone curse...”
“BECAUSE I’M SCARED, REMUS!”
A shout. A beat. Then many tears. Sirius still sitting in the chair, now crying; Remus- rooted to his spot standing next to the fireplace. It is this, Sirius’ restrained weeping, which makes Remus grasp it. He doesn’t want to know, even if Sirius wanted to tell him, even if Sirius wasn’t horrified like a child of the dark. He had been refusing to participate in any conversations about his time in Azkaban, and Remus had been holding a grudge, feeling like he was owed an explanation. After all, he was the one who had spent over a decade believing his lover had murdered their friends and twelve other muggles, just because they were there. He, Remus, had had to spend countless nights trying to make sense of the reality which he was abruptly thrust in, one which didn’t match up with his private experiences and feelings. Remus was the one stuck having to believe Sirius was guilty. A now shameful notion had been infesting Remus’ mind ever since the Shrieking Shack- Sirius had had it easy in Azkaban, comforted by the absolute thought of his own innocence. The others had had to battle, while the dog remained inside, and his only mission was to remember his inculpability.
Remus feels himself a fool. The horrors of Azkaban had taken a discernible toll on Sirius’ appearance, a toll Remus noticed, and which should have at once made him stop comparing miseries beyond his understanding. The man he had once loved is no more. The malnourished being in front of him is overcome by only one emotion. Fear, something which was not in Sirius’ repertoire, the Sirius who went to Azkaban, has consumed him. One man goes in, another one comes out. An echo of Barty Crouch Jr’s swap with his mother, though the transformation here is much harsher. Remus mustn’t drill anymore. He must apologise, though no words are powerful enough.
“Okay” he says “okay, Sirius, you don’t have to. Here-”
Remus summons a blanket from the couch, and it drapes itself gracefully around Sirius’s body. He continues crying.
“What’s the spell?” Sirius asks.
“Which one?”
“This… the blanket… you made it come to me.”
Remus tells him, confused.
“Do you realize, Moony, that I couldn’t use magic for twelve years?”
Remus hadn’t. The charm lingers in the air inappropriately. The dread unravels, and so does Sirius, in a precipitous manner. Remus kneels next to Sirius, because there is nothing else to do. Really, what could be done? What one sentence disperses 13 years’ worth of guilt, despair, loneliness, and loss?
“They won’t get you again. I will protect you. My word.”
A promise which cannot be kept. Sirius has been back in Remus’ life for mere months, and already Remus is falling back into his old habits of needing to protect Sirius at all cost. He cannot guarantee safety, or anything really, but he wants to, how he craves to…
When Remus takes Sirius’ bony hand, a hand which feels completely foreign in his own, he knows Sirius will not stop crying. He wants to weep himself. How unjust and ugly the scene is now overwhelms him. So much time has passed that hope seems foolish, and any action- inadequate. They have shared desperate moments in a past long forgotten, but torture like this was unknown to Remus.
What needs to happen? In this instant, a hug, a kiss, a declaration. Tomorrow, the same repeated. It is unsustainable. Two outcasts cannot pull through together on love alone. Neither has more to offer to the other, both need so much more. Remus had listened to Dumbledore’s speech when the old man insisted that happiness can be found even in the darkest of times. Foolish words, empty. What action turns on the light? How will they become unstuck? The wave of a hand, a flick of a wand?
More broken than ever, Remus kisses Sirius, presents him this useless gesture. He had expected his heart to unravel, but the feeling never comes. The man he doesn’t know kisses back though coyly, still crying. The old lovers, the strangers become stuck in this moment, but a callous misery is wrenched there as well. Voldemort seems to have destroyed only the things he values least- hope, relationships, and happiness.
It is late. Or it is early. A crippled Sirius and a desperate Remus share this night, and nothing more.