doepatronused replied to your post “//I’ve just gotta say… Remus is very lucky to have @pr0ngs​,...”

I LOVE YOU WE LOVE YOU

Somehow, the silence stretching out between them only makes it all worse. 

Sirius stares determinedly out of the window, brows pulled down low like an oncoming storm, and wills himself not to think too hard about it. When he’d made it to James’ place he hadn’t known what to do with himself. Hadn’t known what to say, or what to ask. He’d slid his back down the wall next to the Potters’ front door until he was nothing but a crumpled heap on the floor, and to his shame, he’d cried.

Of course, he hadn’t needed to say or ask anything when James had found him there. James has always understood him almost better than he understood himself. James’d snuck him up into his room, and they’d buried themselves under the duvet and James had charitably not teased him at all for being a snotty mess of tears.

And the next morning, James had stood in front of his parents with his back straight and his fists clenched like he was prepared to fight them over what he was about to say. Sirius is staying with us now.

Sirius can’t bear the idea of anyone else seeing him like that. He’s embarrassed enough that James saw it. He’s embarrassed that he felt any of it in the first place. What should he care? He hasn’t got on with his parents for years now, has taken pride in riling them up and cursing them out, open in his hatred. Even his little brother has grown colder and more distant by degrees. It’s been a long, long time since they felt like his family.

And yet–there’s still an ache of loss in his bones, for the family that they ought to have been. For what he deserved. For all the things they owed him, and never gave him: pride and compassion and understanding and love.

“Yeah,” he confirms shortly, barely more than a grunt. Finally, his eyes flicker back to Remus’ face, and a scowl paints itself across his face.

“Oh, leave off. Stop looking at me like that. Got what I always wanted, didn’t I? No more Walburga, and I get to live with my best mate.” The thing that stretches itself across his teeth is meant for a smile, but instead it’s simply a bearing of the teeth that wouldn’t convince a blind man. “Perfect.”

  The grunt had been simple. Short. A needless affirmation of the only outcome Remus could possibly imagine. And yet the feelings it stirred in him were anything but simple. 

  Confusion. Anger. Perhaps a little jealousy twisting and convoluting his relief and concern for the boy in front of him, quick to be followed by the cold undertones of shame at the reflexive emotions taking over when and where they were least needed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Sirius...?” he spoke softly, a slight tremor of betrayal to his voice; selfish words for selfish feelings. James was the boy’s best mate, and he couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been for Sirius at the time... but it had been months with nothing but second-hand words and placations to appease his nagging curiosity. They were supposed to be friends. All of them. And yet somehow those words left him feeling leagues apart from those he thought closest.

  Oh get a hold of yourself, Remus. This isn’t about you.

  His eyes lowered to his lap, that small, contemplative frown tugging at once placid features. 

//I’ve just gotta say...

“ 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭,  𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 ? ”   it’s a gentle challenge,  a soft opposition,  and a reminder that she’s well aware of his predicament.  not as aware as the others,  of course,  never seeing first - hand what went on every month.  she knows why,  she understands it.  lily doesn’t have to ask ;  she makes quick guesswork and does her own calculations based on the shape the four of them come back in.  every month,  a few days before,  she wonders if she’d be able to do it — to watch the three of them limp in,  remus following suit much later.  madame pomfrey is an excellent healer,  but the newest additions to the wounds that litter remus so liberally still remain pink.  

but none of that is new.  sure,  the information is new to her,  but that doesn’t mean that for the five years’ worth of full moons remus hasn’t had to deal with this ——— it’s who he is.  

 she props herself on an elbow,  returning the crease of his brow with one of her own.  

 “ would i be here,  after,  what,  four years of friendship if that one little thing scared me off ?  honestly,  if that were the case,  i’d’ve ditched peter two weeks into first year after he showed me his rash.  and severus —– severus carried toads in his pockets and i’d help him heal the warts on his hands the old fashioned muggle way. ”   lily remains well aware that these in no way shape up to what he’s proposing,  but she can’t have this conversation without a bit of a laugh.  but once the giggle fades out of her words,  her head cocks just slightly to catch his gaze again.   “ i’ve never thought of you as a monster.  no matter what.  and i never will. ”

  He couldn’t help but to find her comparisons endearing if a bit vindicating, proving to him that truly she hadn’t the foggiest what sort of trouble she’d be getting herself into with a full-moon Remus on her hands. 

  He chuckled softly at her muggle ways, this being something the two of them shared, himself having grown up with a muggle mother who rather insisted on her son knowing the practicalities of both worlds; this wouldn’t stop him from magicking a wart away just the same.

  “Mmm,” he hummed lowly with a private sort of knowing at her words of reassurance, gazing at her for a long moment with the look of a boy who was carefully measuring his desire to be right with his wishes to believe that those words would remain true after it all — after she could touch his scars and feel how deeply and frequently they interrupted his human form, skin once young and soft now addled and mangled in places from his own restlessness; after she could hear the cracking of bones beneath his skin, and see the wiry hairs ripple down his back, sinew stretched and gaunt and inhuman between limbs too long and fingers too dangerous; after she could catch a glimpse of his eyes and see how little of him was left in the beast during those nights, none of the love and admiration that came along with his recognition of her glittering therein.

  After she heard the ghostly, predatory howl that sounded almost — just almost— like the wails of a boy in agony beneath the surface if one listened hard enough. 

  Even the brave James Potter and the enigmatic Sirius Black could tell you just how fearsome and deadly a monster Moony became — especially after they’d so nearly sent Severus Snape to his death because why? Remus was no monster capable of murdering a (reasonably) innocent boy, was he?

  “You’re quite the woman, Lily Evans,” he stated at last, settling on the feeling that often overwhelmed all else when he was around her: awe.  

𝐜𝐮𝐞 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 - 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐟𝐟.   “ 𝐧𝐨,  𝐢 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 mean that you’re already well versed in — ”   a vague gesture is made,  fingers wiggling over her body.  he’s right ;  purely based off that contingency alone she’d be marrying the entire sixth year girl dormitory.   (  there could be worse arrangements,  in all honesty.  )   

she wants to make a quip about how there are at least three girls’ names who she could rattle off without a moment of hesitation that were always giggling messes whenever remus lupin was around,  but somehow lily senses a sort of resignation on his end.  she sighs in defeat as his hand is on her and the head slumps against her shoulder.   “ don’t give me that —- ”   her own knowing look is thrown his way before gaze wanders off into the distance.  somehow,  having her  ‘ pick of the litter ’  isn’t any more comforting ;  seemingly only more frustrating,  and frankly,  almost even infuriating.   (  with the more serious air of the conversation looming over,  it seems silly of her to have brought it up to begin with.  they’re too young to even think about ———–  )   “ yeah,  but — ”   she shakes her head gently and voice drops to a softer note,  one with an underlying tone she knows he’ll catch,  a warm hum meant only for him,  jam packed with everything that she’s not quite ready to say just yet.   “ it’s you. ”  

  Did he know Lily Evans intimately, as well versed as she claimed? One could argue she was correct — they spent a good deal of time together, and it was one of her favored pass-times to sneak out of the castle, strip out of her pajamas and jump into the lake by the moonlight. It had taken him a couple of occasions to not be an awkward, bumbling, self-conscious git about it, but he eventually got there. Which was all well and good, because his assistance was sorely needed the night she got drunk and went for a dip and needed help getting dressed again before returning to the castle.

  But the touch of his hands on her bare skin had been chaste, supportive, the touch of someone who was all too careful and strategic about making sure one female Lily Evans didn’t feel strange or uncomfortable the next day once she realized what had happened; what he’d assisted her with.

  The familiarity was not mutual, however; he’d never let Lily touch him beneath his clothes, even chastely, as a friend would. The scars were still too deep, physically and metaphorically, and he suffered them being visible only by moonlight and fully submersed.

  It wasn’t until she started to argue her point that Remus realized she was, in some ways... serious about her offhanded comment. That perhaps some small part of her, buried in that book, was legitimately considering him as an option down the road... which meant she must have thought him an option now... didn’t it?

  His stomach fluttered inexplicably at the tone of her voice but he ignored it, smiling at her with a small crease of his brow. 

  “Yeah, it’s me,” he poked at her, leaning down a bit closer, not that anyone was around to hear him 

“ 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝, 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐮𝐬, ‘s not like we’ve just promised to spend the remainder of our lives together and probably spoon - feed each other mushed bananas and prune juice,  or whatever old people eat. ”   her nose wrinkles at the thought and a laugh bubbles from her.  yes,  living out her days with remus wouldn’t be bad at all.  in fact,  lily could honestly say she hadn’t imagined a future that didn’t have him in it in one way or another.   (  no,  a future without remus lupin was impossible.  no,  if that were a possibility,  it wouldn’t be her’s.  )   

 the book is splayed out over her chest as arms dramatically flop beside her.   “ i mean,  you’ve seen my bum too many times to count,  so i think we’re off to a pretty grand start. ”    (  false —- it was maybe five times total.  a few drunken mishaps that may or may not have involved the lake,  at least one skirt - flash,  and one purposeful mooning.  come on,  mooning moony — did you really think she was going to miss that hilarious opportunity ?  )   

  “So that’s how it starts is it?” he lowered his book, giving her an amused if skeptical look. “Catch a glimpse of a bum and suddenly you’re marrying each other?” he chuckled, sticking one of many stray chocolate frog cards in his book as a placeholder and setting it aside, paying no mind to the little flourish of a mustache twirl given by a tiny Thelonious Grabe. 

  “If that’s the case I’m betrothed to James Potter a dozen times over I’m afraid,” he gave her a look of mock dismay, a hand resting in accompanying sympathy atop those fiery locks. 

  Remus had never thought it would be like this, the war. Mind you, he was under no delusion as to how terrible a thing it could be, how much people on all sides would suffer, but it wasn’t until he saw the survivors that he truly felt the gravity of it all. 

  Marlene had survived, and yet something inside her had not — a deep and essential part of her very being had left the world with the murder of her family, leaving behind a shattered shell of her former self that physically hurt to witness. He’d been that shell once, years ago when his mother had passed, and he couldn’t help but to wonder if she looked at him this way as he looked at her, wishing so deeply that she could refill that part of him that was lacking. 

  He knew from experience over the years that people did refill... but like great fault lines in the earth there would forever be scars where part of them had been displaced; shifted and cracked, and never quite the same again. 

  Losing his mother had been bad enough — he could not fathom the extent to which her foundations had been shaken. 

  “Don’t think like that, Marls,” he spoke softly, shaking his head and giving her a gentle squeeze with his supporting arm. “Everyone is doing the best they can — try to be strong, yeah?” he reassured her gently, but the words felt empty on his tongue. He had no right to ask such a thing of her. He had no guarantees that the Death Eaters wouldn’t come back to finish the job. 

“ 𝐢𝐟 𝐰𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧'𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 anyone by thirty,  can we just get married ? ”   the question is asked half aloofly and half curiously as lily stares at the words of her history of magic textbook that she isn’t reading,  only idly looking at the letters.  her head rests on remus’s thigh and the spring breeze beckons her to fall asleep right then and there and she’s tempted,  lulled off by the dull textbook language.    /    @willowguarded​ !

  “Mmm?” Remus hummed absently, his attention steeped in his own book hovering over her head, back against the stooped tree that had become a favored study spot for the two of them when weather permitted.

  “Oh — yeah, I don’t see why not,” he stated matter-of-factly. He didn’t think it was necessary to mention to his companion that he had no intention of marrying and risking passing on his affliction to another. Hell, even pursuing anything of a remotely serious nature at school had been a laughable thought. 

willowguarded‌ !

Was told he could find a certain red-headed Gryffindor girl roughly his age mulling about on the dash.

you heard correctly,  the bitch is back !

Remus is doing the thing.

By now, Sirius can at least recognise that it’s happening; it used to be that he just assumed his friend was an occlumens, or something, that he was capable of reaching into Sirius’ mind and pressing the button that said ‘talk about feelings’. He still doesn’t know how Remus does it, and most frustrating of all, he doesn’t know how to resist it.

“It’s nothing,” he hears himself saying, and then grimaces at his own half-confession. With a groan, he burrows himself a little further down into the couch, covering his face with the first cushion his hands find. From behind it, muffled, he mumbles something that might just be why are you like this. Whether it’s directed at Remus or himself is unclear.

“All right!” he groans, and flings the cushion back down again with what is perhaps too much force. It bounces from the sofa, tumbling to the floor. “Fine. It was the worst summer of my life. Happy? Mu—Walburga finally did what she’s been threatening to do for years. Threw me out, disinherited me, blasted me off that stupid tapestry. I’m a tragic, penniless orphan and I’m fine with it.”

Another lie, but this time one that he’s been telling himself. He hates his mother, his father only marginally less. His brother hasn’t really been his brother for a long time now, the childhood intimacy that had tangled them together in a fierce bond of loyalty and protectiveness long since dissolved. And he’s free of them. So it can only be a good thing, right?

Right.

“Are we done?”

  There it was. The half crack. Next would come the boneless stage - ah yes, he was melting just now, oozing his way down the couch cushions and trying desperately to hide his sudden onset of spinelessness. 

  But what came after was nothing at all satisfying like Remus had hoped. No embarrassing hair-removal. No growing of extra limbs. No irreversible hexing of Regulus that got Sirius banned from all Hogsmeade trips for the rest of the foreseeable future. No... this was nothing to gloat over. This was something truly worth the days of awkward silence Remus had endured.

  His expression shifted, brows drawing tighter on his forehead, lowering the now chocolate-less nut from his speechlessly parted lips. It was rare that any of them could render Remus speechless. Voluntarily mute, certainly. But not utterly and completely without words.

  There was no need to explain away the second lie — simply by virtue of knowing Sirius Black Remus knew he couldn’t possibly be fine with it. He may have been the black sheep of the Black family, but for every bit of pure-blood familial pride the boy eschewed there was another facet of his bloodline he shamelessly benefitted from; being cut off from the Black family altogether was to lose one of the few lifelines Sirius had outside of his friends at Hogwarts, fiercely selective boy that he was.

  Remus felt a tug at his own end of that lifeline, like a rope thrown to a sinking person who was in desperate need of pulling-up, and pull he would.

  “Sirius,” he set the book aside, scooting forward in his seat, leaning closer to his friend and comrade. “Sirius, I-...” he paused, finding there were still no words. He exhaled the rest of his breath after a time, resting his elbows on his knees. That explained so much... why he’d had no letters back from his dear friend Padfoot. No bits of dead vermin flesh speckling his window where the Black family owl had landed with tidings from his fellow Gryffindor, letters and parcels always in need of counter-jinx since Sirius could never suffer his family intercepting his correspondence — for Marauder eyes only.

  It wasn’t until James had written back that he’d heard from the boy with dark silken curls, having found it a bit odd, but not for a moment considering something like this could have happened.

@willowguarded

Everything’s fine.

Of course it’s fine; why wouldn’t it be? He’s got just what he’s always wanted. He’s free of his mother and the oppressive weight of Grimmauld Place, and he’s living with James and James’ parents, who are a real family, the kind that don’t hate each other. It’s the dream. Nirvana.

All right, so he’d asked James if they could not tell the others, just yet, but it wouldn’t be the first time he and James had held some secret between them, just because they can, because they’re capable of talking about things without ever opening their mouths. And yeah, he’d been terrified of seeing his parents dropping Regulus off on the platform, and there might have been some embarrassing hand-holding he’ll never admit to, the neat half-moons that his nails had pressed into James’ skin accepted without complaint. 

So what? Everything’s fine. So fine. The most fine.

Which is what he’s saying when he catches sight of Remus’ face, recognises the expression on it, and grinds to a halt.

     “What?” he demands, already keyed up into something defensive and tense. His fingers curl against his palm and there’s something hot at the base of his throat. He repeats himself for perhaps the eighth time. “I said I was fine, didn’t I?”

  Remus Lupin had never been the type to stick his nose in another’s business without open invitation; he’d spent far too many years keeping others out of his own business to take up such a double standard. No, despite being keenly observant thanks to his quiet, passive nature, Remus would never pry or coax information from his friends — often times not even when they desperately wanted him to. 

  You see, he did not need to pry. There was simply a way about him that got under one’s skin — a probing, knowing sort of gaze as he sat in that massive, thread-bare armchair by the fire with a book splayed wide in his lap, momentarily forgotten as he nibbled and shaved bits of chocolate from around a coated almond in that patient, methodical way of his as if chipping away layer after layer of Sirius Black’s resolve to the exposed nerve beneath. 

  He was winning. Sirius was going to snap any minute — he always snapped when things were excessively ‘fine’; with any luck Remus wouldn’t have to say a single word. 

  Something had struck him as a bit odd from the moment he’d met Potter and Black on the platform. Something was stilted in the latter’s countenance. Something heavy and private in the air between James and Sirius that Remus had no notion of over their Summer apart — not even when he’d been to visit, albeit for a brief week. He’d figured Sirius had suffered an argument with his family, as was not unusual for the Blacks, but there had been no rant to follow on the train. No grand show of name-calling and revenge fantasizing that often took up the greater part of their first hour together. 

  Everything had been unsettlingly normal. Everything had been ‘fine.’

Random Headcanon Meme | status: open

✍ : What is your muse’s handwriting like? Is it neat? Sloppy? Fancy?

“Dear Prongs,

what took you so long to write? I feel as though I’ve been waiting months for an owl from youthough I know it’s only been a few weeks since we said goodbye on the train. Is your family still alright with my visit next month? I can hardly wait. Summer has been so very dull here on the farm. Dad’s been away on business and Mom reads in bed most days. I’d like to say the company of chickens give you lot a run for your money, but even that lie feels empty at this point. Please write soon — I might go crazy.

Moony