marauders and things :)

“What do you want?” she asked, opening his door. She didn’t seem to register the large bird for a few seconds.

“Did you steal an owl?” Dorcas asked him in disbelief.

“I did not steal an owl,” Remus answered, sounding offended. “I am glad you can see it though.” 

“Is there a reason you have brought an owl into our home?” she asked.

“I didn’t invite him in. He wouldn't stop banging on the window,” Remus responded.

“Maybe let him in?” she said.

“First you’re annoyed at me for letting him in, which I didn’t do. Now you’re annoyed that I haven’t let him in,” he clarified.

“Exactly,” she said, opening the window. The owl flew in and landed right on Remus’ desk chair.

It was then that Remus noticed the letter tied to the poor creature's foot. He slowly approached the owl and untied the envelope. He opened the letter and began to read as Dorcas watched on curiously. He let the letter fall to the floor.

“Remus?” she asked, confused. “What does it say?”

He stayed silent for a few moments before answering.

“It says ‘7 o’clock, St George’s Cathedral. The Blacks’. They’re going to kill me,” Remus began to panic.

“They’re probably not going to kill you,” Dorcas reasoned.

“I have to call Lily. I have to call my mam. Fuck, I have so many calls to make,” he began to pace. “So if it’s 9, that means I have 10 hours to live. Do I pick out an outfit?”

“I will pick out your outfit,” Dorcas cut in.

“Oh that’s good,” he kept going. “At least I’ll look good as a ghost.”

“You’re not going to die,” she assured him. He gave her a look. “Probably. It wouldn't even make sense. People know where you’re going. Lily and I will wait around the corner, it doesn’t say anything about being alone. It’s going to be completely fine.”

“Yeah, totally,” he breathed out. “I’m going to be fine.”

“You still want to make those phone calls, don’t you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“I do, yeah,” he said, leaving the room to go find his phone.

~*~

“You sent him what?!?” Sirius shouted.

“I sent him an owl,” Regulus responded, calmly. Sirius’ shouting drew James into the room. He brightened as he saw Regulus sitting at his kitchen table.

“Hey, Reg,” he smiled.

“James,” Regulus acknowledged.

“What’s going on?” James asked the room.

“My idiot of a brother sent an owl to Remus threatening his life,” Sirius said, exasperated.

“I did not threaten his life, that would be stupid,” Regulus corrected.

“My apologies, Reg. Accidentally threatening his life,” Sirius amended.

“Why?” James asked, making tea for himself.

“Because he won’t shut up about him,” Regulus answered. James froze, turning around with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“It’s not even like a ‘Pure Blood’ thing?,” he said excitedly. “It’s because Sirius is obsessed with him? You’re trying to help,aren’t you? He’s a romantic, I’ve always known. You can’t be mad at him, Sirius, he’s trying to help. Look at him, he’s so sad now. Say thank you.”

The brothers both stared at him. A very faint blush covered Regulus’ cheeks, he essentially just looked less dead. James stood at the counter smiling at them as Sirius slowly turned to face his brother who was decidedly not looking at him.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” he asked, leaning closer to Regulus. “This is your way of setting me up”. A slow smile formed on Sirius’ face as Regulus refused to even acknowledge him. The room was silent for several moments before Regulus broke it.

“You’ve been following the guy around London for weeks now and you haven’t spoken to him,” he defended himself.”I thought you could do with a little… push.”

“Isn’t he adorable?” James cut into their conversation.

They both turned around and stared at him with identical judgemental glares.

~*~

At half six, Remus left the tube station and walked five minutes to the Cathedral. At a quarter to, he got a text saying that Lily and Dorcas were waiting on a park bench nearby, should he need them. At ten to, he stopped walking laps around the cathedral. At five to, he was approached by the most gorgeous man he had ever seen. 

The man smiled at him. He didn’t think this man could possibly be looking at him until he realised that he was the only one lurking around the Cathedral. Then it dawned on him that this must be Sirius Black.

“Your portraits are no good,” was the first thing that came out of his mouth. Sirius’ face fell. The second thing that came out of his mouth was “Please don’t kill me”. He was beginning to think the third shot of tequila he did to work up the nerve to leave the house was a mistake.

“You’ve seen my portraits?” Sirius decided to ask first. 

“You made me realise that there was something going on. I thought that I was just seeing your face everywhere because…” he trailed off, not wanting to tell this stranger that he found him otherworldly before he knew him for more than ten minutes. “I’m crazy,” he finished, cringing at himself. Sirius laughed. “But then I realised that I really was seeing your face everywhere. It’s pretty unforgettable, even if the artists are shit and the paint is decaying.”

“You figured all of this out from my terrible family portraits?” Sirius asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I wasn’t sold on the vampire thing at first, then I found your death certificates and realised that there was a pattern between the Sirius Blacks being born and dying and I figured it must be you needing new ones all the time,” Remus explained.

“How’d you know my name was Sirius? All the public portraits only have the family name Black. There must have been thousands,” he continued his enquiry.

“I narrowed it down to a couple hundred,” Remus answered.

“And how’d you land on Sirius? In the end?”

“Because you look like a star,” it was out of his mouth before he could do anything about it. Sirius’ whole body seemed to relax. He avoided eye contact as though he was the one that was embarrassed. No matter how much Remus wanted to do the same, he couldn’t stop looking at him.

“No one’s going to kill you,” Sirius told him after a minute of listening to the cars drive by. “My brother is just an idiot.”

“Oh,” Remus said, still in shock from his own idiocy. “So why am I here?”

Sirius froze for a second, trying to think of an answer that wasn’t ‘because I am utterly obsessed with you and it was putting a strain on my other relationships’.

“Because I wanted to meet you,” he decided was the best answer. “Have you eaten? We could go get some food?”

“Do you need to eat?” Remus asked, feeling a lot more relaxed now that he knew his life would extend past the next day. Sirius rolled his eyes.

“Yes, vampires need to eat, just not as much as humans. And while we’re on the topic, I don’t drink blood from people unless I really, really have to. Then I steal from a blood bank. But animal blood works fine, most of the time,” he concluded.

“I don’t suppose you like Italian food, what with all the garlic?” Remus joked.

“You’d be right,” he chuckled. “So you don’t mind getting food with me even though I’m…?”

“I’m not vegetarian,” Remus shrugged. “If anything, you just make sure more of the animal is used than normal.”

Sirius shook his head.

“I wouldn’t but the scar that goes through my lips has been annoying me and Lily offered to give me this one,” he lifted the lipstick to show Sirius the colour, “to try cause it didn’t suit her hair colour or something. I’m not sure I like it though.” 

The lipstick in question was a dark red colour that was ruining Sirius’ ability to form a sentence or even a thought. They stood in silence for a moment. Remus sighed and turned back to the mirror and started to inspect the makeup.

“Be honest, is it terrible?” he asked Sirius. Panic shot through Sirius at that. He loved it and desperately wanted to see it again.

“No,” he blurted out. Remus turned back around, slightly shocked by the outburst. “I mean, obviously you don’t need it. Your scars are hot,” Remus blushed. “But this is good too. If it makes you feel better,” Sirius’ eyes fell to Remus’ lips, making him smirk knowingly.

“I think you like it more than that, love, but we’ll talk about it later cause if you keep looking at me like that we’ll miss breakfast,” he turned to the sink and grabbed the cloth to wipe off the lipstick. Sirius grabbed his wrist to stop him.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he said lowly. Remus looked at him through the mirror amusedly.

“Do you want to try that again?” he asked him. Sirius rolled his eyes but complied.

“Please don’t wipe off your lipstick, Moony,” he said, exaggerating the whine in his voice. “As your boyfriend, I would be very upset and consider it a great betrayal.”

“Okay,” he agreed, putting down the cloth but not turning away from the mirror. He looked into Sirius’ eyes and said “but you can’t kiss me because it’ll smudge.” He left the bathroom quickly, laughing when he heard Sirius’ gasp.

Sirius followed him out to the dorm to find Remus tying the laces of his beat up trainers.

“You can’t do this to me,” he said.

“Oh but I can,” Remus responded, smiling.

“What’s this about?” James said from his bed, looking between them in confusion.

“James! You have to help me! Moony won’t let me kiss him!” Sirius pleaded, throwing himself to the ground at the foot of James’ bed. James gasped.

“Nevermind doing anything to him, what about me Moony? He’ll be insufferable,” James said to Remus, ignoring Sirius.

“It’s either no kisses or no lipstick,” he said. 

“What’s lipstick?” James asked. The other two ignored him.

“What if I promise to fix it after?” Sirius pleaded, getting up and walking over to where Remus was sitting and standing between his legs.

“We both know you’d let me wander around with lipstick all over my face just to show off that we kiss on a regular basis. You can’t be trusted,” Remus looked up at him. He knew that eventually he’d give in to his boyfriend, but he was just too fun to mess with.

“That’s not untrue but I would equally enjoy putting it on for you,” Sirius tried, grabbing Remus’ hand. “It’s really hot,” he whispered, barely audible.

“Fine,” Remus agreed quietly, before he knew what he was saying. He stared into Sirius’ eyes as a smile broke out on his face.

Sirius ran to get the lipstick from the bathroom as Remus looked after him, shaking his head in amusement. He cleared his throat, looking around the dorm. He made eye contact with James who grinned and mouthed “you’re so whipped” to him. Remus rolled his eyes and lay back on the bed, closing his eyes. His peace only lasted a few seconds as Sirius came barreling out of the bathroom and clambered on top of him, lipstick already open and ready to use.

“For practice,” he said when Remus stopped him from applying the lipstick. Remus rolled his eyes but let him continue. He applied the lipstick slowly and carefully. His tongue stuck out of his mouth as he bit down on it in concentration. Remus couldn’t look away. He wondered how he’d managed to even pretend to be against this. “There,” Sirius whispered when he’d finished.

He got up slowly and lightly dragged Remus back to the bathroom mirror to inspect his work.

Remus was still half in a daze but managed to look at the lipstick that had been put on him.

“Yeah,” he said, barely above a whisper. He cleared his throat again. “Yeah, it looks good,” he said more confidently, making eye contact with Sirius through the mirror. Sirius grinned at him.

Steve was really beginning to consider a lobotomy. Not a permanent one. There just really wasn’t anything he wouldn’t give to remove his brain from his skull and dunk it in an ice bath. His father was one of the richest men in Hawkins and he himself had been working for a year, so he was sure he could scrounge up enough for some mad scientist to give it a  try. If it didn’t mean certain death. Dustin always joked that he didn’t ever use his brain, so surely it shouldn’t be worth this much trouble. He was in pain. Not a lot but it had gone on for too long. The third time he went to the doctor and came home with no answer he cried. He also gave up, resigned himself to a life of painkillers and no answers. When it got this bad he’d begin to wonder what he did to deserve this and he reached his answers a bit too quickly. All the times he spent roaming the halls of Hawkins High, ruining people’s days with ease. They called him a king. Turns out, when you take away the crown, the head doesn’t lie so easily anymore.

He’d been getting headaches for years, low-level, non-specific, incurable headaches. They had only annoyed Steve, he believed that everyone was in just a little bit of pain all the time and had never really given it much thought. Then he got his ass handed to him by Jonathon Byers and the pain got a little bit worse. Then he got his head bashed in by Billy Hargrove and the pain got a little bit worse. Then he got kidnapped, drugged and beaten by the Russians that had set up camp in the mall below his summer job and now he was lying face down on his bed, crying, not because the pain was unbearable, but because he couldn’t see it ever ending. He had felt a bit of relief when he first lied down, but the aching behind his eyes made up for it quickly.

He began to list all the reasons he deserved this. It didn’t help the pain at all, it just gave him another reason to cry. He thought of the kids he bullied in school, the ways he couldn’t stop his kids from getting hurt, needing help, ruining his relationship with Nancy, not getting into Tech and destroying his parents' marriage. He stopped there. He knew that the longer he cried, the more it would hurt in the morning. And he couldn’t be late picking up Robin - he’d just add that to the list.

Eventually, he fell asleep. But, all good things must come to an end and all best friends have best friend duties, so he got up again. Steve’s mornings went one of two ways: he either woke up in pain and knew that the day would be spent doing nothing, if at all possible, or his pain was way down to a one, maybe even a half a mark on a good day, undetectable unless he thought about it. The doctors once tried to make him keep a ‘headache diary’ to see how often he got them. But when you ask yourself ‘do I have a headache?’ and the answer is always ‘yes’, it just brings attention to it and makes it worse. Today, he woke up in pain.

Steve went through his routine making a conscious effort to move his head and neck as little as possible. Each step felt like it caused an earthquake that shook his brain inside of the skull and sent another round of pain, so he tread lightly. He made himself breakfast purely because he knew that if he took painkillers on an empty stomach he would pay for it later and swallowed 2 pills with his coffee. He took extra care doing his hair, half because driving to his old high school would feel a bit better if he looked good doing it and half because massaging his head helped the pain.

When he got to Robin’s house, she was waiting outside on the driveway, looking down the road towards the direction Steve would be driving from. She opened the door and immediately began complaining, “Steve,” she began, her voice higher from stress, “you’re ten minutes late, I’m barely gonna make it on time and all the good seats for my homeroom class will be gone and I’m going to have to sit next to someone that stinks for the rest of the year,” she spoke so quick that had Steve not been hanging out with her constantly there would be no way he would catch a word.

“I have a headache,” he said quietly. Immediately her expression changed from annoyance to concern.

“How bad?” she spoke lower now, trying not to add to the problem. She knew that if he was mentioning it, it must be worse than usual.

“I don’t know, Rob” he shrugged back at her. His eyes stayed glued to the road. He felt too vulnerable to make eye contact and too tired to try.

“You know, Steve, you could try seeing someone about this again? I’m sure Joyce or Hopper know someone from what you told me about Will’s Upside Down…” she trailed off and gestured vaguely with her hands.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Maybe.” He had no plans of making any such phone calls.

Robin inhaled as if to speak again but they pulled into the high school parking lot.

“I’ll come over later and we can talk more,” she offered. “I’ll bring food.”

“Yeah sure,” he said, offering her a smile. “I’ll see you later”

As she turned to walk towards the school, Steve reached for the glove compartment and pulled out his sunglasses. He didn’t like to wear them around Robin in case she got worried.

He put them on and leaned his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes and covering them with his arm. After a while, he heard the bell ring and the parking lot quietened down. The silence was interrupted ten minutes later by a loud car pulling into the space beside Steve’s. He lifted his head to look at whoever had arrived ten minutes late on the first day. The man clambered out of the vehicle in a manner that was closer to a fall. When he straightened up, Steve saw that it was Eddie Munson.

Eddie Munson the drug dealer. Eddie Munson that sold weed. Weed that had helped his pain until his dad found his stash. Weed that he hadn’t smoked since the Russians. Weed that could help. Eddie Munson didn't so much as glance at him as he strutted towards Hawkins High.

“Hey, Eddie, wait up!” he called as he himself fell out of his car. Eddie turned around slowly, with an eyebrow raised. 

“I’m afraid your rule is over, King Steve, none of us have to listen to your commands anymore,” he called back, turning to keep walking.

“No, I- wait, please, I want to buy from you,” the headache had gotten worse in direct sunlight and was quite possibly clouding his judgement. Eddie whipped around and stormed over to him.

“What the fuck is your problem? Are you trying to get me arrested? Cause you left, okay? You had your fun, so leave me alone. Find another freak, Harrington,” he growled at him. “And lose the shades, you look like a dick.”

“Eddie, please, I’m sorry, really,” he took the glasses off, wincing at the sun. “I just, like, need some weed right now, you don’t understand.”

Eddie scanned his face for any sign that this was some sort of prank but concluded that the man looked truly desperate.

“Oi, mate, would you stop looking so broody? What are you looking at anyway?” James asked him. They were sat in a pub, not much younger than Sirius, drinking. Sirius was glaring at his phone like it had personally offended him when, really, he should have been listening to his best friend.

“Sorry, James, it’s just,” he cut himself off. “Regulus is after texting me.”

“Regulus Black texted you? How’d you manage that one? He never answers me,” James said, intrigued.

“You broke up like a decade and a half ago. Why would he answer your texts?” Sirius asked him, looking up for the first time.

“Because, you know, we’re mature. We’re friends,” James told him.

“Prongs, we both know he doesn’t do friends.”

“I know that,” three hundred years old and he still whined like a teenager, “But I do. So we’re friends, if he likes it or not.”

“I can guarantee he doesn’t”

“Anyway,” James said, dragging out the last syllable, “what did he text you?”

“Oh right, yeah,” Sirius began. “The Purebloods have like a network, I guess. Of persons of interest who might be catching onto the heaps and heaps of corruption or you know,” he mimed biting someone's neck. “So, according to Reggie, there’s this history student who did a final project on my family and their influence. And he had pictures of us. So Regulus said he thought I should know.”

“I mean this in the worst way possible, but that’s a very ‘your family’ thing. Just to have people ready to step in in case someone figures out the bullshit they’ve been pulling for centuries,” James took a sip of his beer. There was a beat of silence as he swallowed. “What’s the bloke’s name?”

“Some guy named Remus Lupin,” Sirius answered. James started laughing. 

“I swear, no one involved in your family drama ever has a normal name. Never like a John or like Steve or some shit,” James rambled.

“He’s cute,” Sirius cut him off.

“Seriously?” James asked, incredulous. “This student is pulling at the threads that keep your family secrets undercover. He alerted the Pureblood network. Not to mention he’s a mortal. And you’re talking about looks.”

“Well, as you know, I’m always Sirius.” “Shut the fuck up.” “And I know that he could ruin my happy little underground existence and he’s a mortal which comes with its own set of problems. He’s still cute, look,” Sirius turned his phone to show James. The screen showed Remus Lupin’s Instagram page. The photo showed a tall man with mousy brown hair smiling at the person behind the camera. White lines crossed over his features, scars that looked like they had been there for years. 

“Okay, fine, the man is hot,” James admitted.

“Thank you,” Sirius said, way too pleased with himself.

“You can’t like him though,” James said.

“Don’t be so dull, James,” Sirius responded.

“Je suis très intéressante, you little bitch,” he scolded him. 

"Désolée, mon meilleur ami. He’s hot but I don’t think he’s really my type, he’s a bit… studious or something,” Sirius said looking at the photo. “One of the cousins will probably send him a death threat by the end of the week.”

“What happens if he figures it out?” James asked. “The whole,” he mimed driving a stake through his own heart. “Thing.” 

“Probably end up in an asylum, would be my guess,” Sirius said, finishing his drink.

~~*~~

Sirius continued to get nearly daily updates on Remus Lupin and his investigating abilities. Between Regulus’ texts, detailing Lupin’s entire academic history and James stalking the bloke's whole following list, Sirius’ days now ran on a constant cycle of Remus Lupin News. it wasn’t an unpleasant cycle to run on, he found.

“Last year he won an award for research,” one text from Regulus read, sent the Tuesday after the initial text. Sirius had begun to read the stream of messages Regulus sent every morning like his own little morning paper. There was no longer a question about who ‘he’ was. Sirius, in an effort to preserve his mental wellbeing, had created a group chat with himself,Regulus and James. The two other men would send whatever information they had come across into the groupchat. Sirius would occasionally comment on an outfit James had seen or a particularly interesting fact Regulus had found.

On Thursday James sent a close up picture he had found of Lupin on his friend Dorcas’ photography page. His scars were clearer than they had been in any of the other photos. In most others they looked almost like a trick of the light but in this one the stood out because of the black and white filter over the photo. Lupin’s two most prominent scars were one that ran across the bridge of his nose and one that cut across his left eyelid and cut off the tail of his eyebrow.

Regulus: Does he have scars?

Sirius: ???

Sirius: Obviously? Have you not seen the million pictures James has sent?

Regulus: I never read James’ texts properly.

James: rude

Regulus: Why did neither of you mention them?

Sirius: thought you knew

James: i thought we were friends :(

Regulus: I’ll have Pandora look into it in the morning. They look old though so it mightn’t tell us anything.

Sirius: I think they add smth to him yk

James: that’s because you are a sucker for a mysterious guy

Sirius: how many times james? I am a scorpio. I like the mystery. I can’t be blamed for that

“Okay, well they’re the same family like you said so maybe they just look the same?” Lily tried to reason.

“200 years of difference, Lils. These fools were known for their inbreeding but that shouldn’t happen. It’s the same face.”

“It can’t be. It’s not like the bloke just keeps coming back to life.”

“I don’t think he’s coming back to life. I don’t think he’s dying,” Remus explained.

“Remus, sweetie, I know that college is stressful, I do. But babes, people die. They have to. It’s like science, or something. No one stays alive for 200 years, except like vampires which we both know aren’t real,” Lily said. Remus stayed silent.

“We both know vampires aren’t real, right Remus?” she asked, leaning back to look at him.

“It’s just that,” “Oh my God” “His family has a history going back so long it predates the Black Death and normally I wouldn’t jump to vampirism but I swear to God there are mediaeval paintings of this guy's parents,” Remus spat out. The idea first popped into his head a whole week earlier and he had been mulling it over for days. Everytime he had managed to convince himself it was bullshit, he would find another piece of evidence. It wasn’t his fault that vampires made the most sense.

“Walk me through it,” Lily sighed. This is why she’s my best friend, Remus thought.

He told her. Showed her, more accurately. Started with the 1973 photograph showing Richard Sharples and his wife. It had been published in a magazine after his assassination. And right there, among the people in the background, was the face that had been mocking him for a week. The picture itself had caused Remus to lose sleep, but that face haunted him during the day. Those high cheekbones, his eyes seemed to be staring straight through Remus even from the background of a picture taken 50 years ago and his hair hadn’t changed since the 19th century at least. The next photo he showed was from the 1920s. On stage there was a woman in a flapper dress and in the table to her left sat the vampire. He was closer to the camera this time and it was clear he didn’t know his photo was being taken. He was smiling and laughing with the man sitting beside him. Undoubtedly, the same man. The next one was from the 1850s, a simple family portrait. Now it was simple, but then it was a symbol of wealth. In true Victorian fashion, three of the people in the photo had serious looks on their faces, but the vampire was grinning wildly at the camera. Remus could feel his joy at ruining the aristocratic look through the photo and almost 200 years of time.

“The rest are paintings but I still think it's the same guy. As far as I can tell he’s been alive since at least the 1700s,” Remus finished.

“They do look very similar,” Lily admitted.

“You can say they look the same, I don’t think I’m in a position to call someone crazy,” he said.

“Yes, okay, they look the same. Like very the same. I would say they were the same person if there wasn’t several decades between the photos. I’m assuming you did thorough research on all of these? This isn’t just some internet thing?”

“How dare you, Lily! I am a very serious history student! Of course I did thorough research before jumping to vampires. I sourced and sourced and sourced again and all of the originals show the same thing. So I jumped to vampires,” he explained.

“What are you going to do? You can’t do your final project by claiming vampires are real,” Lily asked.

“I’m going to do my final project on his family, obviously. And I’m gonna find out if he’s still around. Ask Professor Moody about it in a totally ‘I-don’t-believe-in-vampires’ type of way. And, you know, find him,” Remus told her.

“Remus Lupin, you are not going vampire hunting,” Lily said, sternly.

“I don’t want to go vampire hunting, Lily. I’m a terrible shot. I’m going to go vampire-discovering, if anything,” he responded.

“You are going to go vampire-being-eaten if you're not careful,” she said.

“That doesn’t even make sense, Lily. Doesn’t follow the pattern,” Remus told her.

“You. Believe. In. Vampires,” she responded. “What’s the name anyway? Your vampire crush?”

“I do not have a crush on the vampire. He’s far too old for me,” Remus joked. “Last names ‘Black’ but I only know that because of the portrait. There are more underground super-rich families. Very sneaky. There’s a whole group of like super secret rich people that go back for years and years but no one really knows about them. The most they ever got brought into the spotlight was when Edward the Eighth abdicated. I’ve been going down a rabbit whole of research. Most of the time this group of weird rich people are called ‘Pure Bloods’ and they are very secretive. Very secretive. Makes you think about what sort of blood sucking secrets they might have,” Remus rambled.

“You sound crazy.”

“I know.”

“But I think you’re onto something. Or on something. Either way, best of luck. Call me if you find anything interesting.”

~~*~~

Remus kept digging. He was a lot of things, but a quitter? Sometimes, but not about this. He handed in his final project for the term weeks ago titled ‘England’s Secret Royals: Pure Blood Families and Their Impact on Society’. Professor Moody said that the research was very well executed but that the timeline didn’t quite add up. He wanted Remus to do further research to try and get to the bottom of the whole thing. Remus’ professor was an odd man who never believed anything he couldn’t research himself. Most of his grading was based on your ability to correctly cite and evaluate your sources so luckily Remus didn’t lose any marks for his messed up timeline. His essay made it very clear that someone had lied somewhere.

And so he kept looking for sources and articles talking about the Pure Bloods. 

“I’m getting a bit sick of looking at Nazi propaganda, to be honest,” he said to Lily, one day. “Like, I know what to expect when I type ‘pure bloods’ into my search bar several times a day, I just don’t wanna get put on a list somewhere.”

“I know what you mean. If Andrew Garfield ever goes missing, I’m going to be suspect number one,” she responded as they walked across the lawn.

“I still don’t have a name, you know,” he told her.

“No name for vampire guy? Still? It’s been months. People don’t just disappear from history.”

“Normal people don’t disappear, but I can’t really gain access to birth records for 1800 back to God knows when. Do you know how many ‘Black’s there are in this country?”

“A shit tonne?”

“Exactly.” 

“What about for now?” she asked him.

“What?” he turned to look at her.

“Well, like, these people are rich, yeah? So they’d need a bank account to hord all their wealth. You need a Birth Cert to gain access to an account, even if it’s a family one. And I don’t think Barclays accepts birth certs from the 1800s. So they’d need new ones,” Lily explained.

“They probably just got them forged or something,” he said.

“Or maybe, they used their fuck-tonne of money to pay for the real deal. If they have as much power and money as we think,” she said, excitedly. “Honestly, Remus, sometimes you’re so focused on the past you don’t even think about the present.”

“Is that, like, inspirational?”

“Are you, like, inspired?”

“A little.”

“Then yes.”

“I don’t think we should look at birth records, though. I think we should look at death records. There’s a database.”

“I worry about you, Remus,” she said. He shrugged.

~~*~~

“I fear that we may have overlooked a few things, Lily,” Remus said.

“Oh, I’d say so,” she responded.

They were staring at the General Register Office website trying to figure out what to enter.

“We don’t actually know a whole lot, do we?” she asked him.

“No but I think we can narrow this down, you’re a computer science student so let’s computer science,” he said.

“You want me to hack this?” she raised an eyebrow. “This is a government website. I am not going to jail where the vampires will get me.”

“No, Jesus. Okay, so if we get everyone with the last name Black can you cut it down from that? Not hack just like, make the list smaller? Eliminate suspects?” he asked.

“Yeah, I can but I don’t know what we need to get rid of,” she told him.

“That’s fine, I’ll tell you that,” he waited for her to open up something on the computer.

“Okay, Remus, let’s look for some vampires.”

Together they narrowed down the list. Left people who died in the posher parts of the country. People who died of illnesses that primarily affected poorer communities were gone. Occupations helped narrow it down a lot. Gender alone got rid of half the group. All in all they were left with 240 names.

“Adam Black?”

“No.”

“Stephen Black?”

“Be real, Lily.”

“I don’t really know what we’re doing to be honest,” she asked.

“I’ve been staring at this man’s face for months. I think I’ll know his name when I hear it,” he said.

“All this work and we’re relying on you vibe checking a name?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Alex?”

“No.”

“Arthur Black?”

“No.”

“Sirius Black?”

Remus sat up in his seat.

“What did you say?”

“Sirius Black? I know it’s pretentious but I think that’s kind of the vibe, no?”

“When did he die?” Remus demanded as his eyes scanned the screen.

“Oh, emm, that’s weird. 1974. A year after that photo was published,” she said.

“What does it say about him, please, Lily?” Remus could feel it. This was the man that had stared him down night and day daring him to find him.

“It says ‘Sirius Black, aged 43,’ forty-three? He looked about 25.”

“I guess they want to keep these people alive as long as they can so they just say they’ve got a killer skincare routine. He probably does wear a shit tonne of sunscreen, in fairness,” Remus replied.

“Anyway ‘Sirius Black, aged 43, died of a sudden brain aneurysm on Thursday the fourth of May 1974. He will be missed by family and friends.’” she finished.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s all there is,” Lily said.

“Does it say who sent it in?”

“Yes actually. A friend of the deceased. James Potter.”

“Lily, thank you so much for all your help. It’s been great but can you do two more teeny tiny things please?” he asked.

“We’ve named the vampire Remus. I’m not stopping here. What do you need?”

“Could you check any other birth and death records for Sirius Black?”

“I can check for more in this database but it only goes to the mid-nineteenth century. Any further back and you have to look at parish records, and I don’t think vampires can go into churches,” she said, already typing on the computer.

“Lily Evans, I love you,” he told her earnestly, kissing the top of her head.

“I love you too, Remus,” she responded.

Lily found eight more Sirius Blacks. Every few decades a Sirius Black was born, two decades after the birth of one Sirius Black a different Sirius Black would die of sudden illness or injury. It seemed that a Sirius Black was created and the real Sirius Black would assume his identity around 20 years into his existence. Then the previous Sirius Black would die. There was always around a 10 year period where there was only one Sirius Black wandering around, until another would pop up. 

“Now what do we do?” Lily asked him. “You’ve convinced me that vampires are real. Like up till now I was like ‘hahaha vampires’ but now I’m like ‘wait, vampires?’ We’ve dug up some real shit here, Remus.”

“Well, I want to find him,” Remus said. He was shocked, he couldn’t believe he had a name.

“You want to find this vampire?”

“I mean, he’s gorgeous, the man definitely has an Instagram.”

“So you do have a crush on the vampire?” Lily accused.

“Yes, okay, fine. I have a bit of a crush on the vampire. It’s purely aesthetics though. I’m not in love with Sirius Black.”

“And you are a werewolf, correct?” Remus heard gasps echo throughout the chamber. It made him almost want to laugh. Like him being a werewolf was the most shocking thing of this whole ordeal.

“Yeah, I had to register on my seventeenth birthday. You can check it if you’d like, Professor,” he said, trying to sound less embarrassed than he was.

“I’m sure it’s all in order. As you all know, we are here today to determine whether or not Sirius Black should be given a trial. He has been sent to Azkaban for the time being, and I hope to determine whether we should use ministry resources to grant him a trial. I believe Mr. Lupin’s statement will be instrumental in this decision,” Dumbledore said. By this point, Remus pretty much hated Dumbledore, but the man did know how to talk.

“You mean that we are to take the word of a werewolf, a dangerous creature, in order to decide the future of a known murderer?” an official looking man said, Remus flinched at this. Remus wasn’t able to vote and therefore didn’t see the point in following politics so he didn’t know the man's name. 

“As you can see, Mr Crouch, it is not currently a full moon, so Mr. Lupin is perfectly capable of recounting the events that, I think you’ll find, can shed more light on the situation than we could ever hope to have without him,” Dumbledore didn’t seem fazed by this. Remus looked around the room to try to gauge people’s reactions. Half of them looked at him like he was about to fall apart, the other half looked like they were worried he might suddenly leap out of his chair and kill them. Remus found that he only recognised three people in the entire room: Dumbledore, who was using Remus to further his own agenda, whatever that may be. Nothing different there. McGonagall, who looked at Remus with so much pity that he wanted to curl into himself and cry over the mess that had been created forever. And Snape, who looked at Remus like he always had, with disgust and that ‘afraid but trying not to be’ look that Remus had never seen anyone else pull off quite so well as Severus Snape. He vaguely recognised the other from the papers, but he had always passed those sections off to Sirius.

Mr. Crouch nodded his head to tell Dumbledore to proceed with whatever questions he was going to ask.

“Mr. Lupin will now be given Veritaserum to ensure his complete honesty from this point forward,” he paused as Remus was presented with the drink. He knew this was coming. It had made his stomach turn to think about the secrets that he could be responsible for spilling. Then, he thought, all of the people he had kept secrets for were already dead or close enough to it. He drank it.

“Mr. Lupin, what exactly was your relationship to the Potters?”

“We were friends,” he said confidently. It had been an easy question. He had no doubt worse was to come. “We met at Hogwarts. Lily and I were prefects together and James and I shared a dorm. They were like family.”

“Were?” Dumbledore asked. Although the question was ambiguous, the potion knew what Dumbledore was asking. Remus wanted to punch him already. Or scream at him. Anything would do.

“They had to go into hiding. You made me go on missions, secret from them lot. They knew there was a spy and I looked suspicious, disappearing for days and weeks. I hadn’t spoken to them in months. I knew that they believed that I was the spy. I didn’t know where they were until yesterday evening. Saw it in the papers,” Remus told the court that had been gathered, laughing dryly at the last part. There were tears in his eyes but he would hold them in for as long as he could.

“And how were you acquainted with Mr. Pettigrew?”

“Peter…. We were friends… but he was always a bit afraid of me, I think. He was always kind, though. He would bring me food and homework when I could go to class. I thought he was always a bit on the outside of James and Sirius, like I was. That made us closer, I guess. He always seemed just a little bit out of his depth, in school and the war. He tried though,” Remus didn’t like to think about Peter. At least James and Lily had each other when they died. Peter died facing Sirius alone. He must’ve been afraid out of his mind, knowing that Sirius was going to kill him. Remus tried not to imagine the fear that poor boy must have felt. He’d never even been in love.  Even Remus had had that, despite what it looked like now. He had felt it, if Sirius hadn’t.

“And lastly, if you would tell us about your relationship with Sirius Black, then we can get on to the events that led up to last night?” Dumbledore asked. Remus looked him in his eyes with the most fury he could muster.

“You know well what my relationship with Sirius Black was.”

“I do, and I think it’s important that everyone understands the context of your statement to grasp the importance of it. I remind you that everyone in this room has been Magically sworn to secrecy. Whatever you say cannot leave this room”

“Fine. Sirius Black and I were…. together .” Another round of gasps went around the room, he looked at McGonagall instead of anybody else. She was the only one who’s opinion he still cared about. She didn’t seem shocked by the news. Remus saw his anger reflected in her face. 

“We met at Hogwarts and we became friends. We got together in 4th year. I loved him. We broke up for a time at the end of 5th year, but we got back together around 7th Year.” Remus felt ridiculous talking about his boyfriend problems in front of this group of ministry officials. He felt like they were looking at him like he was a fool. Like he should have known, somehow, what Sirius was going to do. You were all fooled too! He wanted to scream. You all trusted him! 

“Would you mind telling us what caused the separation?”

“I don’t really have any choice in this so you can stop acting like you care about what I want. We broke up because Sirius almost killed another student. He told Severus Sanpe,” the crowd turned to look at the man in question, “where to find me during a full moon. He told him how to beat the safeguards that stopped me from hurting other students. Snape and him had been fighting. They were always fighting. Snape had figured out what I am and was telling other students. I don’t know what Sirius was thinking. Maybe that Snape would get scared when he saw me and stop. Maybe he wanted me to kill him. James stopped it somehow. I never got the full story. I didn’t speak to Sirius for almost a year after it.”

“How did Sirius know how to beat the safeguards?” Dumbledore asked him. No, Remus thought,  I can’t tell them. They’ll think I put James and Peter in danger. They’ll put me down. Fuck, I can’t lie. He was panicking. ‘Then don’t’  a smarter part of his brain said.

“Sirius was always very good at figuring things out when he wanted to. Especially when he wasn’t supposed to,” he said. The serum accepted his half-truth. It wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t the whole story. If Remus was entirely human he thought that it probably wouldn’t have worked. If Remus was entirely human, he mightn’t have even been there.

“And yet, after the incident, you forgave him?” Dumbledore raised his eyebrows over his half moon glasses. Remus wanted to break the fuckers by punching him right in his nose.

“I couldn’t stay angry at him. It hurt too much. Hating him turned into hating myself for still wanting him. It was killing us both, the shame of it. I felt like I was walking around with half of myself missing and the other half too angry and ashamed to do anything. I don’t think I ever forgave him fully. I tried to. But then we joined the Order and there wasn’t any time for long talks. You saw to that, Professor.” Remus said sharply. The slight at Dumbledore did not go unnoticed as several heads turned to look at the old man. Yeah, that’s the man who tore us apart. Every last one of us.

Dumbledore held eye contact with Remus for a moment. “I think we’ve got enough context to begin questioning about the war, don’t you?” he said, mildly. That only made Remus hate him more.

“I think it’s time we took a break,” came a quiet but confident voice. It was McGonagall. He had as much respect for her as he had hatred for Dumbledore.

“You’re alright, Professor,” he told her, trying to sound okay with his current situation. “If I leave this room, I don’t think I’ll be able to walk back in.” She smiled at him apologetically and nodded.

“Go ahead,” he said to Dumbledore.

“Tell us about the very start of the war, how you became involved with the Order of the Phoenix.” He said. Remus was glad that he had dropped the false questioning tone he was using earlier.

“I never had a choice. My war started when I was bitten. It started when I was five, not seventeen. Fenrir Greyback,” murmurs spread throughout the room “Bit me. And then I went to Hogwarts. I think you’d had my future laid out when you first pleaded my case to the Wizengamot, Professor. You helped my parents keep me alive, told them it was wrong to put down a five year old werewolf. You gave me a life, and for that I thank you, but you did not give me a choice in this war. You were training me from the minute I stepped foot in Hogwarts. You knew that Voldemort,” people flinched at the name. Remus was too pissed off to care, “was on the rise, and that eventually, he would turn to the werewolves for support, and that they would support him because what reason had they not to.” Remus knew he was crying. He could feel the tears rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t bother wiping them away. He didn’t have any dignity left to protect. “You knew what you could use me to do. What I could do to fight your war.”

“That may be your opinion,” Remus scoffed at him, “but I am not on trial. You must stick to what is relevant to the murder of Lily and James Potter.” Dumbledore finished.

“To be frank, Professor, I think you are a lot more relevant to their murder than my relationship status,” Remus snapped at Dumbledore, glaring at him. People seemed shocked at the disrespect shown to the headmaster, very few knew how justified it was.

“Please continue, Remus,” he said.

“Don’t you fucking say my name. Like we’re friends. Like you didn’t make me this,” he was practically yelling at him.

“Make you what?” Dumbledore sounded less patient than normal. Remus felt proud of himself.

“I don’t know. Whatever you’re called when you’re the last one left. A soldier? Whatever it’s called, you did this to me so you don’t get to say my name.”

“Okay, please continue, Mr. Lupin.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Remus told him but he did continue. He had to. “Dumbledore had started to send me on these missions the second I turned seventeen. I would spend full moons with packs and plead with them to join our side,” he was now addressing the people instead of Dumbledore. “Then I would report whatever information they had given me to Dumbledore and I would go back to potions class or whatever. I usually ended up in the hospital wing after the moons. That wasn’t much different to how it normally was, except now, the scratches and bites mostly came from other wolves rather than myself. Things didn’t really change when I left school. I would leave for longer periods of time. Stay with the packs longer. I had normal missions too, in between the moons. Werewolves have certain abilities, even when we’re human. We’re stronger, faster, spells don’t have as much of an effect. It takes a lot more to kill a werewolf than it does a wizard. That combined with enhanced senses meant that, more often than not I was on a mission. I began to forget what month it was. I would come back from missions unable to tell anyone where I had been, they were all secret. I guess Dumbledore knew what the Potters and Peter and… Sirius would say if they heard about what I was doing. I don’t think I need to tell you exactly what I did as a member of the Order?” he asked. 

He didn’t look at Dumbledore, he looked at the faces up in the gallery. Politicians that hadn’t been killed or outed as  Death Eaters. None of them were members of the Order. They didn’t know what the fighting had been. Remus knew that they didn’t want to know what he had done to survive.

“I think it’s best that you tell us a bit about your work, so we understand your state of mind these last few months.” Dumbledore said. Remus still refused to look at him.

“You know all of my missions, Professor. Which one would you like me to tell you about?” he was asking Dumbledore but his gaze was focused on the reflection of the light of one of the black marble stones that covered the floor.

“Tell us about your run in with Bellatrix Lestrange,” he said. The people looked at each other, clearly unsure whether they wanted to hear this story.

“Bellatrix Lestrange is a very talented witch. She and her husband have been sent to jail and I’m sure you all know about what they’ve done,” the tears had stopped. Remus had always talked about his missions very impersonally. He had to think about them like they had happened to someone else in order to get to sleep. Moody had taught him that trick. “Bellatrix was arguably Voldemort's most dedicated follower. As well as her undying loyalty, she truly loved the work she carried out on his behalf. She took joy from each and every murder and torture. Each ungodly act was treated like it was a prayer. She took pride in a job well done, is what I’m saying. She found me. Found out who I was, what I was, who I loved and she took it upon herself to torture me. She planned to kill me at some point. All of the werewolves she had encountered were muggles that had turned. Turning wizards is a lot more of a hassle, I suppose,” Remus’ attitude towards this story unnerved many of the politicians. Remus himself had told it many times, to many members of the order. The information he had discovered was useful and it needed to be shared. At this point, the story was an old routine to Remus.

“She had me. Tied me up in silver chains. No other death eater ever came to help. I was supposed to be her kill and her kill alone. There’s probably a plaque with my name engraved on it somewhere, waiting for my head. I was there for over three weeks. It was just me and Bellatrix. She told me that she planned to starve me, she never gave me food. Wanted to see what it would do, but she didn’t have long enough. I can still feel the hunger, sometimes. She began to test spells on me, saw what would work on a werewolf and what wouldn’t. The information was useful but painful to obtain. Greyback didn’t allow it. He had made Voldemort take an Unbreakable Vow back when Voldemort still needed followers. He made sure that the werewolves that joined them weren’t to be tortured or killed without cause. They weren’t to be treated like animals so long as they were loyal to Voldemort. This worked out well for him. It ensured absolute loyalty. More werewolves joined for protection rather than belief in the cause, I’d say.” The crowd looked at each other guiltily. Remus saw tears in McGonagall’s eyes. She had heard the story before and had held them back until Remus had left the room. It was harder, this time.

“I was an opportunity for her to figure out what exactly makes werewolves tick. There’s not a lot of research. Or wasn’t, before this. Wizards would just use petrificus totalus and then transfigure something into silver to kill us. If a werewolf is being put down, they inject us with melted silver, it’s meant to be quicker. More humane,” he smiled darkly as he said this, he liked watching the looks on the people’s faces. He knew that they didn’t like to think about werewolves when they were human. He liked watching them look at him, someone they respected, and try to combine the two ideas. 

“She tried the first two unforgivable curses first. The imperious doesn’t have much of an effect, if you were curious. You just sort of know what the person wants you to do. You have an urge to do it but it’s easy enough to resist. The cruciatus hurts a bit. Nothing crazy. I don’t know if it just doesn’t hurt us as much, or if transformations make it seem okay. This went on for a while. You can find the research, I’m sure. She went through almost every spell meant to harm a person, some that I hadn’t heard, some that their side had created. The last spell she used was the killing curse. I guess she never wondered why no one used it on werewolves. As I said, there really wasn’t any research. She must have just assumed the silver was because the curse was banned. Other Order members had found me somehow and she was running out of time. She hit me straight in the chest but couldn’t stay to see whether it killed me. It hurt, I’ll give it that. It hurt like nothing I had ever felt. Knocked me out for two days and took me out of missions for two weeks. But it didn’t kill me,” Remus paused and enjoyed the shocked looks on the faces staring down at him. He felt an odd sort of pride about how difficult he was to kill.

“Bellatrix saw me again. She looked furious that she had failed her mission. I helped arrest her. I have no doubt that if she’d had the time, she would have found a spell to kill me,” he finished.

Dumbledore let everyone sit with the story for a while. To let the reality of the war sink in, Remus guessed. They had heard plenty from the other side, but not many from their own. The stories they had heard were the victories. The arrests of death eaters or how they had been caught. Not what had been endured to get there. Not from someone who lived to tell it.

“How did Sirius react when he’d heard?” Dumbledore asked. Remus laughed properly for the first time in days. He remembered the look on Sirius’ face and the words he had shouted at Dumbledore.

“He went a bit mad. He was sick with worry. No one knew what had knocked me out. I woke up, two days after the curse, to him screaming in your face,” Remus smiled at the memory, “it was the most he ever learnt about my missions. He looked frightening. After that, we talked more than we had in months. He was given the mission, if you could call it that, to make sure I didn’t die. I had to tell him exactly what she had done to me so that he could write the report. Also for my medical care. It took days. I would only be able to stay awake for a few hours the first couple of days. Even then, I was in shock. I could barely speak, let alone about that.” he told them.

“Then what happened?”

“I went back to work, eventually. As I said, I was barely home and we barely spoke. I didn’t sleep at home. I would go to get clothes or whatever I needed and I would leave. We weren’t together except for a shared meal every now and then. Sometimes, I think we had very different wars. He had partners on his missions, I had handlers. I didn’t go to many meetings. I didn’t strategise. I just went where I was told to and did what I had to. I didn’t have much of a say. I was only told what information I could use in a fight. I learnt how to fight a battle, not how to win a war.

“Then, somehow, it came out that there was a spy. I didn’t know enough to be a spy, but I was suspicious enough. I knew what it looked like. I’m a werewolf. They said that it didn’t matter but that changed when Harry was born. They were suspicious of everyone. I didn’t want to put them at risk by being around them. More Death Eaters knew my face than most members. Greyback made sure of that. I spent most of my time with werewolves. While I might have been a good person, they still saw the other werewolves as dark creatures. I knew that they thought I was the spy, I would have too…” he trailed off. There was a lump in Remus’ throat. He understood why they thought he was the spy, he did. It didn’t mean that the betrayal didn’t hurt any less. He was their friend. He believed them when they said that they didn't care that he was a werewolf. They said that they loved him, and he believed them.

“When was the last time you spoke to James and Lily?” Dumbledore asked him gently.

“The Order meeting back in August, just after Harry’s first birthday,” Remus told him.

“What did you talk about?”

“They told me that they were going into hiding and that they thought I should know. They didn’t tell me where and I didn’t ask. I never saw them again,” Remus’ voice cracked. The words hit him. He cried silently, tears rolled down his cheeks freely. Knowing that you would never see someone again and admitting it felt very different. Admitting it made it more true, somehow. Like before, he still had some chance of seeing Lily smile again or hear James say something dumb to make her laugh. But now that he had said it, they were gone for good.

“Lily told me that she was pregnant. James promised that  we would talk about everything once it was all over. They said goodbye. I thought that it might have been the last time I would hear them say it. I thought I was going to be the one to die, not them. I never thought that the Potters would die. In all this death they had made life and love and I thought it would be enough to save them,” he said through the tears. He was half-sobbing by that point. He saw several other people, including McGonagall wipe their eyes. They hadn’t known about the baby, he guessed.

“When did you last see Mr. Pettigrew?” Dumbledore asked, gentler than he had said anything all day.

“A week ago. I had to go to headquarters to give a report and I ran into him. He smiled and told me that he was sure that this would all be over soon. He was right, I suppose,” Remus remembered his smile. He looked at Remus, very hopeful. Remus had almost believed him. He wanted to believe him.

“When was the last time you saw Sirius Black?”

“Two days ago. The day before the… murder,” it hurt his throat to saw the word. “We were on a mission together. After it was done, he cornered me and said that he was going to find the spy and end this. He looked manic. He was threatening me. He was paranoid, didn’t trust a soul in the Order other than the people who were already dead.” 

“Do you think Sirius was the traitor?” 

There it was. The real question. The only part of this that actually mattered. Remus took a minute to breathe. He’d thought about it since he heard the news. He managed to calm down and stop the sobs. He needed to sound sure. He had to convince them.

“I think that Sirius Black was capable of many things. I think that he was capable of betraying the Order. If I was dead right now instead of the Potters, with the evidence we have, I would say that without a doubt, Sirius Black was responsible. But I’m not. James and Lily Potter are. Their son is an orphan. Sirius would have betrayed the Order, however, nothing would make him give up James. He would have let every other person, including himself, die if it meant that the Potters could live.