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"Moooooony... Mooooooony..."
Remus came to a sudden wakefulness. Sitting up in his single bed he scrabbled for his lighter in the drawer of his bedside table. Upon finding it, he felt along the top of the table for the long beeswax candles his mother had made from her recent foray in beekeeping and lit one, bringing the small sparse room into the dim light.
"Moooooony... Mooooooony..."
The sound that had awoken him continued and seemed to be coming from his bed. Far from being alarmed at a small voice emanating from his bedclothes, Remus smiled and ran his hand under both of his pillows and one of his woolen blankets until he found the slim, smooth circle he was looking for. He absently traced his fingers along the carved wooden case that covered the deadly silver underneath. When the boy whose face radiated from the mirror now had given him the artifact he had had an almost uncharacteristic shyness about him—especially when he had been coerced into admitting he'd carved the case himself without magic. With a defiant gleam in his eye he had claimed it had only been to annoy his parents that he'd made it that way, he said that it would bring them no end of grief to think that not only had he given a Black family heirloom to his half-blood werewolf friend, but that he had made a covering for it that tempered its deadliness and disguised the markings and inscriptions that connected it to family history, and had not even used magic to do so. But Remus thought he knew his friend well enough to detect the hint of nervousness, a desire to please that had lurked beneath the bravado-filled veneer.
Scrubbing his free hand through his hair, then rubbing the remaining sleep from his eyes, he smiled at his friend’s small visage.
It had been almost six weeks since he had last seen his friend. In the interim, Sirius looked as if he had grown again. Remus was the tallest of all of them, but Sirius was determined that this should not last for long and was continually researching charms and potions that might aid in his efforts to add a few inches in height with mostly hilarious and ineffectual results. Once, he had consumed a bubbling and foamy broth guaranteed to bring him over six feet, which truly gave him six additional feet, complete with five hairy toes on each one. He had looked like some kind of grotesque octopus and had not been excused from classes as Professor McGonagall, their Head of House, didn’t believe that having magically grown new appendages constituted a reasonable level of “sickness”. Remus had never been more grateful for Peter’s tendency to snap dozens of moving photos than in the three-day period it took for them to finally resorb.
"Wotcher, Moony. You sure do sleep like the dead, don't you? I've been hollering your name for ages."
“Everything alright, Pads?” Sirius had far fewer crises since leaving his family’s home, but anytime he called in the middle of the night there was a lingering sense of anxiety that everything might not be well on his end. He had spent more than a few nights talking Sirius down from some torture or argument or threat his mother had launched at him, or some new slight from his father. The worst was when the fight included his brother, Regulus, who had once been his only ally in a family where he just didn’t fit in but had increasingly turned to a foe over the past few years. James was usually the first line of defense for Sirius when he was in trouble, Remus had noticed that Sirius had started to come to him for comfort more and more after The Hiatus. The only explanation he could think of to explain the shift was that he had wanted to create some further connection between them, to build up the reciprocal trust that had been broken by his choices that night.
"All's well dear Moony! Why, do you not often get calls in the middle of the night? Not even from your numerous Muggle girlfriends?"
Remus groaned, deeply regretting telling Peter about Maggie. He should've known that Wormtail wouldn't have been able to resist spilling his secret.
"Number one, I do not have 'multiple Muggle girlfriends' I have one nearly-girlfriend who happens to be a Muggle. She's quite a nice girl and not the type to be calling in the middle of the night or," he turned the mirror to face the clock on his bedside table, "very early morning!"
Sirius grinned mischievously.
"Oh, now, she doesn't sound like much fun! Nothing like the French girls Prongs and I have been courting over here on the coast. When are you leaving Miss Goody Two Quills and coming to stay with us anyway?"
Remus sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I told you. My mum is off her rocker with all the talk of the Muggle-killings and disappearances. She wants to keep me close to home until I'm headed back to school."
"The day your da started getting the Prophet delivered to your home was the end of fun as we knew it."
"You're telling me! I'm the one who has to live with her. At least she's still half-afraid of our owl or she'd be ordering all of the mail-order kits and potions and wind up blowing up the house by accident. I miss the days when 27 days out of every 28 she just pretended there wasn't any such thing as magic and that my dad and I were just... foreign or something, different customs."
Sirius laughed Remus' favorite kind of laugh. His eyes would completely close and the hollows in his cheeks would deepen. All of the worries that a face he actively schooled away as part of his bad-boy persona disappeared for real, and for a moment he looked as young as he was. He looked how Remus imagined he looked when he was up in the clouds during a Quidditch match, above it all, moving fast, completely free.
Then, as if it had never been there at all, the laugh was gone and Sirius’ face took on an aura of concern.
"Remus," That was strange. Sirius never called him Remus unless a professor was present, and even then he would usually say it with a silly accent or weird inflection. Proper names meant a proper conversation.
“Remus, you are staying safe, aren’t you?” “Of course I am!”
“It's just, you know, I’m staying here with the Potters and Prongs’ old man works for the Ministry. The Prophet, its hogwash, they’re not saying what’s really going on. More deaths. And not just Muggles either, Muggleborns and even half-bloods too.”
“I live in the smallest town imaginable. No one even knows I’m a wizard here, my mum just tells them she sends me away to school. They think I’m a scholarship kid at some posh college. Which, in a way, I am, you know, so it’s not a lie—“
“I just don’t know if right now's the time to be going around with some Muggle!” The pit dropped out of Remus’ stomach. That was what Sirius had called about?
“I really don’t think that’s any of your business. I don’t care that she’s a Muggle, you know, my mum is Muggle, you know—“
“I don’t have anything against Muggles, you know that, Moony! I’m not my parents, I’m not Regulus. I just think you know, you could probably pick a safer person to get off with, is all!”
“Well, I don’t think its really up to you who I get off with.”
Sirius looked as if he were about to speak again but then thought the better of it. He let out a deep sigh and rubbed his eyes.
“Fine. I guess you’re going to do whatever you want to do, I guess it doesn’t matter whether I care about you, er, care about your safety I mean, I guess—“
“Sirius. It does matter. I just, I’m not even really seeing her. We got ice cream one time and we didn’t have much in common. I don’t think she’s pulled a prank in her life.”
Sirius’ face brightened and he looked up at Remus through his overlong fringe.
“Yeah? You need a little more excitement in your life. I’ve always thought that about you. You need someone to get your out of your tweedy, bookish nature.”
“All right, I was just on the verge of siding with you, you don’t need to rub it in—“
“I’m glad. Er, I’m glad you’re not dating her. And not because she’s a Muggle,” Sirius lowered his eyes, “but, you know, because you should be with someone you can really talk to,” then, with a mischievous gleam back in his eyes and a waggle of his eyebrows, “and someone you can really not talk to, if you know what I—“
“Yes, yes, Padfoot, save me the gory details. I get it.”
“Good.”
In the quiet that filled the air, Remus thought he could feel some words that weren’t being said, words that he wasn’t ready to say, and maybe, words that Sirius wasn’t ready to say. It was something in the way that Sirius’ cheeks took on a rosy tint, in the way his own hands began to sweat against the grooves and etchings of the mirror case. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, or maybe it was—
“You want to hear this record Mr. Potter let me borrow? It’s some of that jazzy stuff you like.”
Whatever it was, or whatever it wasn’t, Remus decided it didn’t have to matter right now. What mattered now was that there was no one he’d rather be awake listening to music with at half four in the morning than the grey-eyed boy staring at him hopefully through the mirror.
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing else on at the moment, why not?”