Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

1st September, 1971

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was too loud.

That was Remus Lupin’s first thought as he stood with one hand wrapped around the handle of his suitcase hard enough to make his knuckles ache. Too loud, too crowded, too alive. Steam billowed thick and white around people’s legs and trunks, owls screeched from cages, parents called out warnings and instructions, and children answered with the brittle excitement of people trying very hard not to be afraid.

Remus felt all of it like something scraping along the inside of his skull.

He had never liked crowds. He liked the way people talked about crowds even less—warmth, joy, celebration, the thrill of being among others. Crowds had always felt to him like a hundred sharp sounds pressing in at once, each one demanding to be noticed. Too many voices. Too much movement. Too many chances for someone to look too closely.

He kept his shoulders slightly hunched without realising it, not from the cold but from habit. Make yourself smaller. Less noticeable. Less interesting. Safer.

Beside him, Hope Lupin was trying not to cry.

She had done quite well at it all morning, at least compared to the previous week, during which she had cried over his socks, over his second-hand school robes, over the fact that he preferred plain parchment to the expensive sort because “it all writes the same,” and over a chipped teacup because she had been holding it when she remembered suddenly and violently that Lyall would not see their son go to Hogwarts.

Remus had not cried at all.

He had not, in fact, cried properly in years.

That had worried Hope enough to mention it once, softly, as though speaking too loudly might frighten him into pretending he was normal again.

Now she reached to straighten the collar of his jumper, though it was already straight.

“You’ve got your ticket?”

“Yes, Mam.”

“And your books?”

“Yes.”

“And the chocolate?”

He gave her a look. “Yes.”

“Don’t use that tone with me.”

“It wasn’t a tone.”

“It was absolutely a tone.”

That, at least, made the corner of her mouth twitch.

It made something in his chest loosen for half a second.

Only half.

Her hand moved from his collar to his cheek. Her fingers were cool. “You don’t have to do anything except get on the train.”

He looked away before she could see too much in his face. “I know.”

She was trying to be gentle. He knew that. She had been trying to be gentle with him for years, and he had been making it difficult for nearly as long.

Sometimes he hated himself for that.

Sometimes he hated her for surviving it.

Mostly, on the very worst days, he hated the whole world in a silent and exhausting way that left him too tired even to move properly.

Today, though, there was something else under it all. Something thin and bright and painful.

Hope.

Horribly enough, he had his mother’s name for it.

“You can still owl me every week,” she said.

“Every week?”

“At least.”

“That’s excessive.”

“That is motherhood.”

He breathed out through his nose. “All right.”

A pause settled between them, crowded and private at once. Around them, other parents hugged their children, fussed with scarves, gave speeches that no eleven-year-old in the history of the world had ever listened to fully.

Hope looked at him as if she were trying to memorise his face.

“Your father would have been proud,” she said.

The words hit like a bruise.

Remus’s jaw tightened instantly. “Mam.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “I know.”

His father’s death was one of those subjects that lived in the room even when neither of them said it aloud. Lyall Lupin had not lasted long after the bite. Not in the true sense of lasting. He had stayed, physically, for a while. Gone to work. Come home. Sat at the kitchen table with his hands folded too tightly. Looked at Remus with a grief so enormous it had no proper shape.

Then one morning he had not come down for breakfast.

After that, there had been silence. Then pity. Then people saying words like tragedy and strain and unbearable. Then years of everyone trying not to place the weight of it where it really belonged.

Remus had learned early how to carry blame without anyone handing it to him directly.

Hope squeezed his arm. “You are allowed to have this,” she said quietly. “You’re allowed to be excited.”

He almost laughed.

Excited. As if excitement were simple. As if it did not come mixed with dread and guilt and the old familiar certainty that anything good would eventually turn and bite.

Still, he nodded, because she wanted him to.

The whistle blew.

The train shuddered.

And the moment came whether he was ready or not.

Hope pulled him into a quick, fierce embrace. He stood stiffly for the first second, then hugged her back just hard enough to hurt. When he let go, she had tears in her eyes anyway.

“Write to me,” she said.

“I said I would.”

“And eat properly.”

“I always do.”

She gave him a look sharp enough to call that lie what it was.

He took his suitcase before she could say anything else and climbed onto the train.

The corridor was packed with students and trunks and startled pets. Remus dragged his suitcase along the narrow passage and kept his face carefully blank. He could feel people glancing at him sometimes—not because they knew anything, not yet, but because he was thin and pale and serious-looking and wore clothes that had clearly belonged to someone else before him. He had spent years learning how to make people’s curiosity slide off him before it stuck.

It helped that he looked like the sort of boy adults called quiet and other children called odd.

He found a compartment with no one in it and slipped inside quickly, shutting the door behind him.

Silence fell at once, blessed and brief.

He sat by the window, put his suitcase on the rack with some effort, and folded his hands in his lap to stop them fidgeting. Outside, the platform was a haze of steam and movement. His mother was still there, one hand lifted. He lifted his own in return.

Then the whistle shrieked.

The train lurched.

And just like that, Hogwarts began.

For almost ten whole minutes, Remus had the compartment to himself.

He took out a book mostly for the comfort of holding it and tried to read the same first paragraph three times. Children passed in the corridor, laughing too loudly. Somewhere nearby there was a bang, followed by delighted yelling and what sounded very much like a toad being blamed for something it hadn’t done.

Remus breathed out slowly and turned the page without taking in a word.

Then the compartment door slammed open.

“Brilliant,” said a boy’s voice. “This one’s empty.”

Two boys stood in the doorway, both dragging trunks, both red-faced from the effort and the crush of the corridor, and both so entirely unlike one another that it seemed impossible they had arrived together.

The first had messy black hair, glasses slipping down his nose, and a grin that seemed permanently halfway to trouble. The second was shorter, softer around the face, with light hair and an expression that was a mix of nerves and hopeful determination.

The messy-haired boy looked at Remus, then at the empty seats, then back at Remus. “You don’t bite, do you?”

Remus blinked.

The second boy snorted. “James, that’s a terrible first question.”

“It’s a practical one. We’ve got hours left.”

“I don’t bite,” Remus said, before he could stop himself.

Brown eyes flashed with amusement. “Excellent. Then we’re coming in.”

They did not wait for permission.

The messy-haired boy shoved his trunk up with a graceless sort of confidence that somehow made the gracelessness look deliberate. Then he immediately started helping the other boy with his luggage, talking all the while.

“I’m James Potter, by the way.”

“Peter Pettigrew,” said the nervous boy in a rush.

“Remus Lupin,” he said.

There was a tiny pause.

Not long enough for anyone else to notice, perhaps. But Remus had learned to hear them all: the fractions of silence in which people registered his weird face, his patched clothes, the odd old-fashionedness of his name, all the ways he never fit neatly anywhere.

“Nice to meet you, Remus.”

“Mm.”

He had not meant to sound unfriendly. Or perhaps he had. It was hard to tell sometimes where his moods ended and his intentions began.

Then James grinned and held out a Chocolate Frog as if pauses had never existed. “Want one? We bought too many.”

“James bought too many,” Peter corrected. “I showed restraint.”

“You bought six bags of Liquorice Wands.”

“Yes, because I have standards.”

Remus took the frog, despite himself. “Thanks.”

The train began to move.

London slipped away.

For a little while, the compartment settled into something almost easy. James talked with the unselfconscious confidence of someone used to being liked. Peter interrupted often enough to show that he was used to it and not overwhelmed by it. They told stories from childhood: a toy broom that had flown directly into a greenhouse, Peter getting stuck in a neighbour’s tree, James accidentally turning all the teacups in his kitchen blue when he was six.

Remus listened more than he spoke. He had always been better at listening. Words were dangerous things. Once said, they could not be unsaid, and people liked to remember them in the worst possible order.

James leaned back. “D’you know what house you want?”

Peter sat down beside him. “James wants Gryffindor because both his parents were in it.”

“I’m being practical,” James said. “It’s clearly the best one.”

“According to you.”

“According to history.”

“According to your mum,” Peter corrected.

“That too.”

When James turned to him, he shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe Ravenclaw.”

James made a face. “You do look like you’d enjoy rules.”

“I enjoy books.”

“That’s worse.”

“Not all of us can spend our time making nuisances of ourselves.”

A second of silence.

Then Peter choked on his pumpkin juice, and James’s grin came slowly, brilliantly.

“There he is,” James said.

Remus frowned. “Who?”

“The bite.”

Remus hated how warm his ears went.

About forty minutes into the journey, the compartment door slid open again.

This time, the boy in the doorway did not ask to come in.

He simply stood there, one hand still on the handle, and looked over the compartment as though assessing whether it was acceptable.

He was beautiful in the cold, polished way of carved stone. Dark hair, grey eyes, aristocratic features, and an expression so composed it bordered on bored. His robes were immaculate. His posture was perfect. He looked as though the very idea of dust offended him. There was something clipped and elegant about the way he held himself, and when he finally spoke, his voice carried a faint French lilt under an otherwise crisp, expensive accent.

“This compartment is not full.”

It was not phrased as a question.

James blinked. “No.”

The boy stepped in.

He lifted his trunk onto the rack with controlled irritation, like someone offended by the very concept of physical effort, then sat opposite Remus with all the cold confidence of a prince taking his place at table.

No one spoke for a beat.

Then James, apparently incapable of allowing awkward silences to survive, said brightly, “I’m James Potter. This is Peter Pettigrew, and this is Remus Lupin.”

The dark-haired boy’s gaze moved to each of them in turn.

“Sirius Black.”

There was no smile.

Remus knew the name at once. It was one of those old wizarding names even his father had spoken carefully, like stepping around something unpleasant and expensive. Rich. Pure-blood. Important.

It fit him horribly well.

James, who seemed incapable of being intimidated for longer than three seconds, said, “Do you know what house you want?”

Sirius looked at him as if the answer should have been obvious. “Slytherin.”

Peter went quiet.

James tilted his head. “Really?”

Sirius’s expression sharpened, just slightly. “Why would that surprise you?”

James shrugged. “Dunno. Just sounds a bit serious.”

“Slytherin is an excellent house,” Sirius said coolly. “My family has been in it for generations.”

There was pride in the words. Not warmth, exactly. More the certainty of someone raised to believe certain things were fact rather than opinion.

Remus should probably have stayed quiet. It would have been wiser.

Instead he heard himself ask, “What if the Hat puts you somewhere else?”

Sirius turned to him.

Up close, his eyes were sharper than grey had any right to be.

“It won’t.”

The certainty of it prickled something in Remus immediately. “You don’t know that.”

Sirius lifted one dark brow. “I know exactly where I belong.”

The words were not loud, but they landed heavily all the same.

James looked between them with obvious interest.

Remus said, “Bit arrogant, isn’t it?”

Sirius gave the smallest tilt of his head, like a nobleman acknowledging an underwhelming challenge. “Only if I’m wrong.”

James made a choking sort of noise that might have been a laugh swallowed badly. Peter looked alarmed, as if he thought the two of them were about to start duelling before the train had properly left London.

Remus held Sirius’s gaze for one second more than necessary, then looked away first.

He did not like him.

That was the sensible conclusion.

Not lightly. Not in that ordinary schoolboy way where someone seemed annoying and might improve with time. He disliked him with a deep, immediate clarity.

He disliked the polished disdain. He disliked the assumption that blood and family and old names actually meant anything worth admiring. He disliked the way Sirius spoke as though the rest of the world existed to confirm what he already knew. Most of all, he disliked the fact that Sirius looked exactly like the sort of person who would hear words like half-blood or Muggle-born and arrange his face into that same cold expression.

James, either braver or dafter than both of them put together, said, “My family’s all Gryffindor.”

“Yes,” said Sirius.

One word. Somehow insulting.

Peter looked at James in sympathy.

Remus said, “You always this stuck-up?”

James went very still in delight.

Peter stared at him in horror.

Sirius’s eyes narrowed. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.”

“I assure you,” Sirius said, in the kind of tone adults used before they said something particularly nasty, “I have no interest in seeking approval from strangers.”

“That’s convenient,” said Remus, “because you’re not likely to get it.”

James made a strangled noise into his hand.

Sirius turned his attention back to the window with a composure so perfect it was almost theatrical. “How tiresome.”

Remus hated him.

Completely.

Remus wanted to hit him by lunchtime.

He did not know why Sirius got under his skin so quickly. Plenty of people had been unpleasant to him before. Plenty of people had looked at him sideways, dismissed him, spoken down to him, or made him feel as though he ought to apologise for existing in the wrong shape. Sirius was not even doing that directly—not yet. It was subtler. It was in the assumptions. In the casual superiority. In the way Sirius sat in his expensive robes and spoke about old families as though blood itself were a qualification.

Remus knew that type already. Every Welsh village had its own version, just with less money and fewer fancy names.

Still, there was something else too.

Sirius noticed everything Remus said.

Every muttered remark. Every glare. Every clipped answer.

And he gave it back.

Not kindly. Never kindly. But with attention.

By mid-afternoon, Remus found that almost as infuriating as the rest of him.

At one point, James stood and announced that he was going to walk the train because “there must be at least one interesting disaster happening elsewhere.” Peter immediately went with him.

“Coming?” James asked.

“No,” said Remus.

“Absolutely not,” said Sirius at the same time.

James looked at both of them, delighted for reasons no sane person would be able to explain, and vanished down the corridor with Peter.

The compartment went quiet.

Remus looked out the window and tried to ignore the other boy’s existence.

After a minute Sirius said, “You are Welsh.”

It was not a question. It somehow still sounded like one of the more offensive things anyone had ever said to him.

Remus looked over slowly. “Brilliant deduction, that.”

“Your accent is very strong.”

“So is yours.”

Sirius frowned. “My accent is perfectly ordinary.”

Remus actually laughed. “No, it isn’t.”

Sirius’s expression sharpened. “How would you know?”

“Because you sound like you were raised by a crystal goblet.”

For a split second, Sirius just stared.

Then, coldly: “And you sound like u were brought up in a barn.”

Remus’s temper flared so fast it startled even him. “Better than soundin’ like a funeral.”

The silence after that was vicious.

Sirius sat straighter. “You are unbelievably rude.”

“You started it.”

“I made an observation.”

“You made it like you thought I ought to apologise for where I’m from.”

Sirius’s gaze flicked across his face, perhaps reassessing, perhaps just annoyed he’d been understood. “I did no such thing.”

“You did exactly that.”

“Do stop being hysterical.”

Remus’s fingers tightened around the edge of his book until it bent. There it was—that black, hot anger he carried around half-buried most days, the one that could wake suddenly and burn through him so hard it left his hands shaking.

He wanted to say something cruel. Something sharp enough to cut.

Instead he ground out, “You’re a prick.”

The words landed between them with startling clarity.

Sirius went very still.

Then James reappeared, sliding the compartment door open with all the timing of someone who had once again been blessed by fate.

“Oh, good,” he said cheerfully. “You haven’t killed each other.”

“Yet,” Peter muttered.

Remus looked back at the window before anyone could see too much in his face.

His heart was thudding too hard.

He hated that too.

Later, when the sky had begun to pale gold at the edges and the train was due at Hogwarts in less than an hour, James said, “We ought to change.”

Peter agreed at once and started pulling his school robes out.

Remus’s entire body went rigid.

He kept his face blank by force. “I’ll wait.”

James looked up. “There’s room. We can just turn around.”

“No.”

The word came too quickly.

Peter, bless him, didn’t push. James looked mildly surprised but shrugged. “All right. We’ll go in the corridor after, then.”

Sirius, who had already taken out his robes, looked faintly appalled.

“In the corridor?”

James blinked. “Where else?”

Sirius looked at him as though he had proposed stripping in the Great Hall. “I am not changing in public.”

Peter said weakly, “The lavatories?”

“Yes,” Sirius said at once. “Obviously.”

James rolled his eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

“So I have been told,” Sirius replied coolly, glancing once at Remus in a way that made it clear he had not forgotten a single word of their argument.

James and Peter ended up going together first, still talking over each other as they left. Sirius remained seated, one hand resting on the edge of his book, gaze on the window.

Remus said, without looking at him, “Aren’t you going?”

“In a moment.”

The compartment stayed silent.

Remus could feel every old scar on his body as if Sirius could somehow see through fabric and skin and straight into all the things he kept hidden. The thick ones across his ribs. The twisted old one along his shoulder blade. The ragged marks over his thighs. His body had never belonged to him cleanly again after Fenrir Greyback had been done with it. It was something he inhabited now, not something he trusted.

He had long ago learned how to dress quickly, how to sleep in layers when possible, how to angle himself away from mirrors and questions.

Sirius stood at last, gathering his robes.

When he reached the door, he paused.

“You are very odd, Lupin.”

Remus looked up sharply. “Go to hell.”

Sirius gave him a cool, unimpressed look and slid the door shut behind him.

The second they were gone, Remus moved.

Fast.

He stripped with frantic efficiency, keeping his back to the window on instinct though no one was there to see. His old shirt caught for one horrible second against a raised scar on his side, and anger flashed up so violently he nearly tore the fabric trying to get free of it.

His breathing had gone uneven by the time he tugged his school shirt on.

It was stupid. Completely stupid. No one had seen anything. No one had even pushed. Still his hands shook as he buttoned the collar and knotted his tie.

By the time James and Peter came back, half-laughing over something, he was seated again, fully dressed, book open on his lap.

James glanced at him. “Done already?”

“Aye.”

“Quick.”

Remus shrugged.

Sirius returned a minute later looking immaculate, of course. Not one hair out of place. Not one button wrong. His robes sat perfectly on him like he had been born wearing them.

Remus hated him again on sight.

Sirius noticed and arched a brow.

Remus looked away before he could say something ugly.

Remus looked back at his book, though he was aware of Sirius across from him in an odd, insistent way now. Black. Of course. That explained the polished diction when he bothered to use it, the expensive trunk, the quality of his robes. It did not explain the look on his face when he’d said he might like Gryffindor after all.

By the time evening came, the sky beyond the windows had turned dusky gold.

The train slowed.

Nervousness, which had been sitting in Remus like a stone all day, woke properly.

He changed into his school robes with the others in the cramped, chaotic confusion of children trying not to trip over each other’s feet. James buttoned his robe wrong and had to start again. Peter lost his tie and found it under Remus’s seat. Sirius looked irritatingly composed the whole time, though his hair was impossible in a way that suggested he had run his hands through it too often.

Then the train stopped, and voices flooded the corridor.

“First years! First years over here!”

The giant of a man waiting on the platform was unlike anyone Remus had ever seen: huge and shaggy, lantern in one hand, beard wild, smile unexpectedly kind.

“Hagrid,” he introduced himself, gathering them like startled sheep. “C’mon now, mind the gap. This way, first years.”

They stumbled after him down a steep, dark path toward the lake. The castle rose ahead of them slowly, revealed by torchlight and moonlight together, all turrets and windows and impossible size. Gasps went up around him. Someone behind Remus actually whimpered.

He could not have spoken if asked.

The boats crossed in silence broken only by water and awe. James craned forward so far Sirius had to catch the back of his robe and haul him down before he tipped himself into the lake. Peter looked half-terrified and half-delighted. Remus, sitting opposite them, kept his hands clenched in his lap and stared at the castle as if looking away might make it vanish.

When they reached the steps and climbed them in a huddle of damp nerves and flapping black robes, Professor McGonagall was waiting in the entrance hall, severe and magnificent.

She explained the Sorting.

James whispered, “Gryffindor,” as though trying to influence fate by sheer force of hope.

Sirius leaned against the wall with an expression of bored confidence that fooled no one who had spent a whole train journey watching him.

Remus felt sick.

They were led into the Great Hall at last to a roar of voices and candlelight.

Nothing had prepared him for it.

The enchanted ceiling stretched above them, star-strewn and endless. Four long house tables gleamed under candlelight, students packed shoulder to shoulder, all craning to look at the first years. At the staff table, professors sat in a line like judges or kings. The hat on the stool looked absurdly ordinary for something about to decide the rest of his life.

Names began.

One by one, children went up.

One by one, houses shouted their welcome.

“Evans, Lily!”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

“Macmillan, Edgar!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Pettigrew, Peter!”

Peter stumbled to the stool looking ready to be sick. The hat had barely touched his head when it shouted, “GRYFFINDOR!”

Peter bolted up as if released from a trap and hurried to the cheering red-and-gold table, face red with relief.

“Potter, James!”

James practically ran. The hat didn’t even hesitate.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

James punched the air before remembering where he was and veering toward his table amid laughter and applause.

“Black, Sirius!”

The name passed through the hall in a murmur.

Sirius walked to the stool with his back straight and his face calm, every inch the heir to something old and expensive and merciless. Watching him, Remus felt that same sharp dislike again. The certainty. The polish. The assumption that the world would open correctly around him.

The hat touched his head.

A pause.

Then, clear as a bell:

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Silence crashed through the Hall.

A proper silence. Shocked. Sharp.

Then Gryffindor exploded in cheers.

Sirius did not move.

Not for half a second.

His expression changed in a way so quick Remus almost thought he imagined it: not horror exactly, not embarrassment, but a crack. Something startled and raw slipping through the marble.

Then it was gone.

Sirius took the hat off and walked to the Gryffindor table with his chin high, face smooth, dignity intact by sheer violence of will.

Remus watched him sit beside James.

Something cold and tight settled low in his own stomach.

He had wanted to see Sirius proven wrong. He had, in fact, wanted exactly this. So why did the look on Sirius’s face linger?

“Lupin, Remus!”

Any thoughts he just had vanished.

He walked to the stool on numb legs and put the hat on.

Well, said a voice by his ear. Interesting.

Remus froze.

Hmm. Clever. Careful. Very careful. And frightened, too.

Please, Remus thought, unable to form anything more coherent than that.

No need to panic, no need to panic. You’ll do very well here, I think. Very well indeed. Not Slytherin, certainly. Not quite Ravenclaw, though you’d be comfortable enough. There’s courage in you, however little you think of it. A great deal of it.

“I don’t feel brave,” Remus whispered.

Few do at eleven.

Then—

“GRYFFINDOR!”

The roar hit him like a wave.

He took the hat off too quickly and nearly dropped it, earning a stern look from Professor McGonagall, then hurried to the Gryffindor table where James was waving him over enthusiastically and Sirius had somehow already made room.

“Told you,” James said, thumping him on the back.

“I didn’t say I wanted Gryffindor.”

“No, but you’ve got the look.”

“What does that even mean?”

James grinned. “No idea.”

The feast passed in a blur of food and noise.

James was instantly talking to older students as though they had all been waiting years to meet him. Peter looked dazed but happy. Remus ate because not eating would be noticeable.

Sirius said almost nothing.

He sat with one hand on his goblet, face composed, mouth a thin line. Several older Gryffindors attempted to congratulate him; he accepted it with politeness so stiff it bordered on insult.

By the time pudding appeared, he looked like someone holding himself together with threads.

Remus told himself he did not care.

He was in the middle of a spoonful of treacle tart when a girl’s voice behind them said, cool and smooth, “Sirius.”

Sirius’s shoulders went rigid.

Remus turned.

The girl standing there was older—fourth year perhaps, maybe fifth. Beautiful in the same aristocratic way Sirius was, though softer around the edges and far more controlled. Pale blonde hair coiled neatly back. Perfect posture. Expensive everything. Her face held a small smile that was not kind.

“Cissy,” Sirius said.

The name meant something to him, faintly. Narcissa Black. Cousin.

“Come with me,” she said.

It was not a request.

James looked between them curiously. Peter dropped his gaze. Sirius rose at once, every movement precise, and followed her toward the doors at the edge of the hall.

Remus watched before he could stop himself.

They paused just beyond the main noise of the feast, half-shadowed by one of the stone archways. Narcissa turned to face Sirius fully, her expression cool enough to frost glass.

Remus could not hear every word over the noise of the hall, but he saw enough.

Narcissa’s mouth moved sharply.

Sirius said something short in return.

Her expression hardened. She stepped closer. One hand came up—not striking, not touching, just pointing, elegant and cruel.

This time Remus heard a few words clearly.

“…humiliated…”

“…your mother…”

“…Gryffindor…”

Sirius stood absolutely still, face white and composed and furious.

Narcissa finished with something low and cutting, then smiled at him as though she had done him a favour and glided back toward the Slytherin table without another glance.

Sirius remained where he was for a second.

Then he came back and sat down.

James opened his mouth.

Sirius said, without looking at him, “Do not.”

James shut it again.

Remus looked down at his plate and felt, very unwillingly, the first crack in his certainty that Sirius Black was made entirely of polished stone and smugness.

It did not make him like him.

It only complicated things.

Which was worse.

When the feast ended and the prefects led them up to Gryffindor Tower, the common room was warm and bright and round, full of squashy chairs and red hangings and a fire crackling in the grate.

The boys’ dormitory had four beds.

James claimed a bed by the window. Peter took the one beside him automatically, the unconscious ease of an old friendship. Remus chose the furthest one from the others, nearest the corner. Sirius took the bed opposite.

The unpacking was clumsy for everyone except Sirius, who seemed physically incapable of being untidy even in private. His trunk contained elegant robes, expensive books, and silver-backed brushes. James’s half of the room looked like an explosion by comparison within minutes. Peter folded things carefully and kept glancing around as if he could not quite believe they were allowed to live here now.

Remus unpacked more slowly.

His own things were plain. Some second-hand. A little threadbare. He ignored the comparison.

That first night, the room felt too new to sleep in properly.

The curtains around the beds were half-drawn. Firelight from the common room flickered under the door. James and Peter talked across the room for a while in low, excited voices until James yawned mid-sentence and both drifted off not long after.

That night, long after James and Peter had fallen asleep, Remus lay awake staring up at the canopy.

Across the room, Sirius shifted once.

Then a voice came through the dark, cold and flat.

“I should have been in Slytherin.”

Remus turned his head on the pillow. “You weren’t.”

“That is an extremely stupid thing to say.”

“You say a lot of those yourself.”

Silence.

Then Sirius said, “My family will consider this an insult.”

Something about the words, so carefully controlled, irritated Remus all over again.

“Maybe your family’s the problem, then.”

The quiet that followed sharpened instantly.

“You know nothing about my family,” Sirius said.

“No,” said Remus. “Just what I’ve heard.”

“And what have you heard?”

He looked into the dark and said, “Enough.”

Sirius let out a small, bitter breath. “How enlightening.”

Remus should have left it there. He knew he should. But his temper had never been good, only buried.

“Your cousin looked awful pleased with herself,” he muttered.

The mattress across from him creaked.

“You were watching.”

The accusation in it made something hot flash through Remus. “Hard not to. You looked like you were being sentenced.”

“Better that than stared at like some curiosity.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Weren’t you?”

Remus sat up so fast his bed curtains trembled. “Don’t act like you know me.”

There was movement in the opposite bed too, a silhouette in the dark.

“Then stop acting as if you know me, Lupin.”

James made a sleepy noise from somewhere to the left. Both of them froze.

A beat passed.

Then James mumbled, half-conscious, “Can you two not start a blood feud before breakfast?”

Peter snorted in his sleep.

Remus lay back down hard, furious with Sirius and with himself and with the fact that his chest felt too tight for a simple argument.

Across the room, Sirius said nothing else.

Neither of them slept easily.

2nd September, 1971

The next morning, the Great Hall was bright with autumn sun and the ordinary noise of breakfast.

Cutlery rang against plates. Owls dipped in and out of the enchanted ceiling’s false sky. Someone at the Ravenclaw table laughed loudly enough to turn heads. The smell of toast, porridge, and strong tea sat warm in the air, but Remus had no appetite for any of it.

He had slept badly.

The sort of badly that left his whole body feeling slightly wrong, as though he had been stitched together too quickly and nothing had settled properly overnight. His head ached behind the eyes. His skin felt too tight. Every noise seemed a little too loud, every movement around him a little too fast.

James, naturally, was in excellent spirits.

“I’m tellin’ you,” he said around a mouthful of toast, “that staircase moved on purpose. It saw me coming and decided to be difficult.”

Peter, who looked tired too but in a far more ordinary way, rolled his eyes. “It’s a staircase.”

“In a magic castle.”

“That still doesn’t mean it dislikes you personally.”

“It might.”

“It definitely does,” said Remus flatly, without looking up from his plate.

James grinned. “There, you see? Lupin understands me.”

Remus did not answer. He was picking apart a piece of toast with his fingers, breaking it into smaller and smaller pieces without ever actually eating any of it. Across from him, Sirius had not arrived yet.

Remus told himself he didn’t care.

He told himself that several times, in fact, while being irritatingly aware of the empty space at the table.

Then Sirius appeared.

He entered the Hall late, moving with that same polished self-possession he had carried on the train and at the Sorting, though this morning it sat differently on him. Harder. More deliberate. He looked immaculate, of course—robes perfect, tie straight, dark hair neat in a way that still somehow looked effortless.

But there were shadows under his eyes.

And the set of his face said, very clearly, that anyone foolish enough to speak to him should expect to regret it.

Remus looked down at his plate at once.

Sirius sat beside James without greeting any of them.

The owl came less than a minute later.

A large dark owl swept down from above and dropped a cream-coloured envelope directly onto the table beside Sirius’s plate. The seal was black wax.

The effect was immediate.

Sirius’s hand stopped halfway toward the toast rack.

James went quiet.

Peter lowered his gaze to his porridge with the expression of someone who had suddenly become very interested in oats.

Remus looked despite himself.

Sirius picked up the letter slowly, broke the seal, and unfolded it with rigid precision. He read in silence.

Remus could not see the words from where he sat, but he watched them happen to Sirius’s face. The stillness first. Then the slight tightening around the mouth. Then the complete blankness of someone making a violent effort not to react where others could see.

The letter was from his mother.

That much was obvious.

Cruelty had a way of showing itself even second-hand.

James said quietly, “Sirius—”

“Don’t.”

One word. Soft. Flat. Dangerous.

James stopped talking at once.

Sirius finished reading. Folded the parchment neatly. Set it beside his plate.

Then he reached for his knife and began buttering a piece of toast with terrifying calm.

As if the letter were nothing.

As if whatever had been written there had landed nowhere.

Remus stared at the folded parchment.

It remained beside Sirius’s plate, white and sharp as a blade.

He did not know Mrs Black. He had never met her. But he knew enough about mothers and anger and the sort of wounds people liked to leave where no one else would see them.

Later—much later—Remus would know enough about Walburga Black to imagine the contents nearly word for word. The disgrace. The shame. The betrayal of blood. The sneering contempt for Gryffindor, for impurity, for anything not hard and ancient and cruel enough to please her.

At eleven, he only knew this:

Sirius Black had read a letter from his mother and looked, for one dangerous and fleeting moment, like someone had cut him open where no one else could see.

And instead of making Remus kinder, it only made him angrier.

At Sirius.

At himself.

At the whole bloody world.

Because pity was dangerous.

Understanding was worse.

He hated the way Sirius sat there, all perfect control and cold arrogance, as if no letter in the world could actually touch him. He hated, too, the idea that maybe it had.

Before he could stop himself, he said, “Bad, was it?”

Sirius looked up.

Grey eyes. Sharp as broken glass.

“What do you think?”

Remus felt the answer like a slap.

He had not asked kindly. He knew that. But Sirius somehow had a way of making every exchange sound like a dismissal, like everyone else had already failed some private standard he’d never bothered to explain.

Remus’s jaw tightened.

James looked between them with immediate dread.

Peter did not look up at all.

Sirius returned his attention to his breakfast.

That should have been the end of it.

It was not.

The whole hall had become unbearable. The noise, the sunlight, the scrape of benches, James and Peter trying not to react, Sirius acting as though he could simply swallow whatever poison his mother had sent and sit there glittering with perfect poise afterward.

Remus’s skin prickled.

His hands had started to shake under the table.

He wanted to say something cruel. Something that would crack that smooth expression right down the middle.

Instead, he shoved back his bench and stood.

James blinked. “Remus?”

“I’m done.”

“You haven’t eaten anything.”

Remus shrugged one shoulder. “Not hungry.”

It was obviously a lie. Or perhaps it wasn’t. He couldn’t tell anymore.

He turned and walked out of the Great Hall before anyone could stop him.

The corridor beyond was colder and quieter, though not quiet enough. His footsteps struck too sharply against the stone as he climbed the stairs back toward Gryffindor Tower. He took them too fast, one after another, anger rising with each step until it felt less like an emotion and more like a fever.

Nothing had happened.

That was the worst part.

No shouting. No fight. No scene.

Just a folded letter, a sharp answer, and that horrible sense of having seen something he hadn’t wanted to recognise.

By the time he reached the dormitory, his breathing had gone uneven.

It was empty.

Of course it was. Everyone else was still at breakfast.

He stood still for half a second in the centre of the room, shoulders tight, hands trembling at his sides, then crossed straight into the adjoining bathroom and shut the door behind him harder than necessary.

The small room echoed with the sound.

There was a narrow sink, a cabinet, a tall mirror above the basin.

Remus lifted his head and saw himself in it.

He looked awful.

Pale. Angry. Eyes shadowed with lack of sleep. Mouth hard in a face that still looked too young for that much bitterness.

For one terrible second he did not just see himself.

He saw what he always feared other people saw.

A strange boy. A wrong one. Thin and scarred under the neat school uniform. Angry in ways that had no proper shape. Half-feral some days from the effort of holding everything in. The sort of person who ruined rooms just by carrying too much darkness into them.

He thought of Sirius downstairs, sitting rigid and polished with his mother’s cruelty folded beside his hand.

He thought of his own father, and silence, and all the things no one ever said outright.

His chest tightened so fast it hurt.

Then something in him snapped.

Remus hit the mirror with the side of his fist.

The crack split outward instantly.

Pain shot through his hand, bright and immediate, but it barely registered.

His reflection shattered down the centre, one eye breaking into jagged pieces.

He stared at it, breathing hard.

Then he hit it again.

This time the glass fractured wider, splintering across the whole surface in silver-white lines. A sharp sound rang through the small bathroom, followed by the thin rain of loosened shards into the basin below.

His hand was bleeding now.

He looked at it with detached disbelief for half a second, then back at the ruined mirror. His face stared back at him in broken sections, sliced apart and rearranged into something uglier, stranger, worse.

It suited him.

That thought made him angrier than anything else had.

He gripped the edges of the sink so hard his knuckles ached and bent his head, breathing through his nose in short, harsh bursts. He wanted to smash the rest of it. Wanted to rip the whole bathroom apart. Wanted, with a sick lurch of intensity, to claw his way out of his own skin and leave the ruined thing behind.

Instead he stayed where he was and said to no one, voice rough and shaking, “Get a grip.”

It did nothing.

Blood slid over his knuckles and dripped into the white basin. The contrast was obscene.

He laughed once, breathlessly. There was no humour in it.

Then footsteps sounded outside.

Remus froze.

Not the distant passing footsteps of students in the corridor, but nearer—coming into the dormitory itself. The floorboards creaked once, twice, then stopped.

For one frantic second he thought it might be James or Peter.

Then the bathroom door opened. Sirius stood there.

He had clearly come up straight from breakfast. His expression, already cold downstairs, sharpened into something unreadable at the sight before him.

The cracked mirror, the blood in the sink. Remus with one hand braced against the basin and the other dripping red onto the porcelain. Neither of them spoke. For a moment the room held itself completely still around them.

Then Sirius said, very flatly, “What did you do?”

Remus looked at him through the broken reflections in the mirror and felt fresh anger rise up instantly, hot and embarrassed and savage.

“What does it look like?”

“It looks,” Sirius said, stepping fully into the bathroom, “as though you’ve lost your mind.”

“Maybe I have.”

“That is not an answer.”

Remus barked out a laugh. “You ask a lot of questions for someone who acts like he doesn’t care about anyone.”

Sirius’s gaze dropped to the blood on the sink, then returned to Remus’s face. “You are bleeding everywhere.”

“Well spotted.”

“Stop being difficult.”

“Stop talking to me like you’re in charge.”

A muscle in Sirius’s jaw ticked.

The room was too small for both of them, too full of sharp things and breath and heat. Sirius still looked immaculate. Controlled. Even his anger sat neatly on him. Remus hated it. Hated the contrast between them—Sirius all marble and manners, Remus standing there with blood on his hand and broken glass at his feet like some cautionary tale dragged into school uniform.

Sirius moved toward the sink.

Remus straightened instantly. “Don’t.”

Sirius stopped, eyes narrowing. “I am trying to stop you dripping on everything.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“No,” Sirius said coldly, “you simply punched a mirror instead.”

Remus’s face burned.

“Get out.”

Sirius didn’t move.

For a second they just stared at each other, breathing hard in the cramped bathroom.

Then Sirius said, quieter now but no less sharp, “Was this because of breakfast?”

The question hit too close.

Remus’s temper flared at once. “You think everything’s about you?”

Sirius gave him a look that would have been insulting even without words. “At present, you are standing in a bathroom with half your hand torn open after storming out directly after speaking to me, so yes. I imagine there may be a connection.”

Remus wanted to lie.

Wanted to laugh in his face.

Wanted to say no, this is just what I do, I break things when I get too full of myself, don’t flatter yourself into the story.

But the truth—raw and ugly and humiliating—sat much closer to the surface.

He looked away first.

That was answer enough.

Sirius went still.

When he spoke again, the edge in his voice had changed. Not softened exactly. Just shifted.

“You are insane.”

Remus let out a hard breath through his nose. “Brilliant. Anything else?”

“Yes,” said Sirius. “Wash your hand.”

“Leave.”

Sirius ignored him. Of course he did.

He reached into his robes and pulled out his wand in one smooth, practiced motion.

Remus stilled. “Don’t,” he said again, sharper now.

“Be quiet,” Sirius replied. “You are making this worse.”

“I didn’t ask for help.”

“No,” Sirius said coolly, “you rarely ask for anything.”

Before Remus could move, Sirius caught his wrist.

Firm. Controlled.

Not gentle—but not rough either.

Remus’s shoulders went rigid. “Let go.”

“If you move,” Sirius said, already angling his wand, “you will make it worse.”

“I’ve already—”

“Yes,” Sirius cut in, glancing at the mess in the sink, “that is obvious.”

Remus glared at him.

Sirius didn’t look back. He was focused now. Properly focused.

“Hold still.”

Remus didn’t. Not fully.

But he didn’t pull away either.

Sirius brought the tip of his wand close to the cut.

“Tergeo.”

The blood cleared instantly, lifting cleanly from the skin and vanishing.

Remus blinked.

The injury looked worse without it. Deep. Jagged. Small shards still caught in the skin.

Sirius frowned faintly.

“Of course.”

“Of course what?” Remus muttered.

“You didn’t just break it,” Sirius said. “You had to drive it into your hand as well.”

Remus huffed. “Helpful.”

Sirius ignored him.

He adjusted his grip slightly, turning Remus’s hand toward the light.

“Stay still.”

Then—

“Episkey.

The magic worked fast. Sharp pain flared—quick, bright—then eased just as suddenly. The skin pulled together. Clean. Seamless. The last of the glass slipped free into the sink with a soft clink. Remus sucked in a breath, then stilled. He flexed his fingers. No split. No blood. Nothing. Just a faint ache where the injury had been.

Sirius let go of his wrist and stepped back. Put his wand away like it meant nothing. Remus stared at his hand then lifted his eyes to look at him.

“…That’s not basic.”

Sirius didn’t look impressed. “It is.”

“It isn’t,” Remus said. “Not for first years.”

Sirius didn’t answer straight away.

For once.

He looked at the sink instead.

At the last faint smear of red that hadn’t quite vanished.

Then—

“Tergeo.”

It disappeared. Clean. Like it had never been there. Remus watched that, then looked up at the mirror. It was still shattered. Still wrong.

Sirius followed his gaze. A small pause.

Then he lifted his wand again.

“Reparo.”

The glass pulled itself back together. Cracks sealing. Fragments sliding into place. Until—nothing. A perfect mirror again. Like it had never been broken. Remus stared at it, at himself. Whole again. That did something strange in his chest.

“…Right,” he said quietly.

Sirius lowered his wand.

Silence settled between them, it was different now. Less sharp. Still tense. But not as simple.

Remus leaned back against the sink. “So you can just… fix things like that.”

“Yes.”

“That’s mad.”

“It’s magic.”

Remus glanced at him sideways. “You know what I mean.”

Sirius didn’t respond to that.

Instead he said, “You should not have done that.”

Remus huffed. “Didn’t plan it.”

“That is worse.”

“Yeah,” Remus said. “I know.”

Another pause.

Then—Footsteps sounded outside the dormitory. Voices, loud and familiar.

James.

“…we are absolutely going to be late—”

Peter, right behind him, “—I told you we should’ve left earlier—”

Remus pushed himself off the sink at once. “We should go,” he said.

Sirius nodded once.

They stepped out of the bathroom just as the dormitory door opened. James stopped mid-step when he saw them. “There you are.”

Peter looked between them quickly. “What happened? You just—left.”

Remus grabbed his bag from beside his bed. “Nothing.”

James raised a brow. “Didn’t look like nothing.”

“It was.”

Sirius moved past them toward the door. “If you would all like to discuss it further, we can do so after we miss our first lesson.”

James blinked. “Right—Charms.”

Peter immediately turned. “We’re late.”

Remus slung his bag over his shoulder and followed them out.

They left the dormitory in a rush. James was already halfway down the corridor before the others had properly caught up, talking over his shoulder about being late as though that alone might somehow speed them along.

“If we miss the first lesson, that sets a precedent,” he said, dodging around a group of second-years. “And I refuse to be known as someone who misses important things.”

“You said we had enough time for another piece of toast,” Peter pointed out, trying not to trip as he hurried after him. “That’s already a precedent.”

“That was a strategic delay.”

“That was not strategic.”

Remus followed just behind them, his bag slung over one shoulder, his expression neutral enough to pass. The castle was fully awake now, corridors filling with students moving in every direction, voices echoing off the stone walls. It should have felt normal.

It didn’t.

Sirius walked ahead of them, slightly apart, posture straight and composed as always. If anyone had looked closely, they might have noticed the faint tension still sitting in his shoulders, but no one was looking that closely.

Remus wasn’t either.

Not really.

They reached the Charms classroom just as the last few students were taking their seats. James slipped into a desk near the middle without hesitation, Peter beside him, and Remus took the seat on the other side. Sirius followed a moment later and sat next to Remus, as though it had already been decided.

Professor Filius Flitwick was already mid-explanation by the time they settled.

“—the Levitation Charm is not merely about incantation,” he was saying, his voice bright but precise. “It is about control. Intent. Precision.”

He demonstrated with a flick of his wand, and the feather on his desk rose smoothly into the air.

A ripple of interest moved through the room.

“Swish… and flick,” Flitwick repeated. “Remember the motion.”

The class began attempting it, voices overlapping in uneven confidence.

“Wingardium Leviosa!”

Nothing happened at first.

James grinned anyway, trying again with exaggerated enthusiasm. Peter leaned forward in concentration, muttering the words carefully under his breath. Around them, feathers wobbled, slid, or refused to move at all.

Remus watched the movement once, twice, then lifted his wand.

He followed the motion exactly.

The feather rose.

Cleanly.

Steadily.

Flitwick hurried over at once, delighted, awarding points and moving on just as quickly to correct someone else’s grip.

Beside him, Sirius performed the same spell with equal control. Their feathers hovered at almost identical heights, neither of them acknowledging it, though both of them noticed.

The lesson continued like that for several minutes—small successes, quiet frustrations, the room gradually filling with the soft lift of feathers and the occasional clatter when one fell too quickly.

Then the door opened.

The shift in the room was immediate, even before anyone spoke.

Remus looked up.

Professor Minerva McGonagall stood in the doorway, her expression composed, her posture as exact as ever.

“Professor Flitwick,” she said.

Flitwick stepped down from his cushions at once and crossed the room. They spoke quietly, too low for the class to hear, but it didn’t take long.

Flitwick nodded.

McGonagall turned.

“Mr Lupin.”

The room seemed to narrow slightly. Remus’s stomach dropped, though he had expected this.

Beside him, Sirius went still.

James looked over immediately. “What did you do?” he whispered.

“Nothing,” Remus muttered.

“Come with me,” McGonagall said.

There was no anger in her tone. That made it worse.

Remus lowered his wand and stood, aware of the way attention followed him even though no one meant to stare. He left his bag behind, stepping out into the corridor with McGonagall without another word.

The door closed behind them, and the noise of the classroom faded.

For a few moments, they walked in silence.

McGonagall’s pace was brisk, her footsteps sharp against the stone. Remus matched it automatically, his hands tucked into his sleeves, his gaze fixed ahead.

They didn’t speak until they reached a stone gargoyle he hadn’t noticed before.

“Sherbet lemon.”

The gargoyle sprang aside.

Remus followed her up the spiral staircase beyond without hesitation, though each step felt heavier than the last.

He already knew what this was about.

At the top, the office door stood open.

Remus stepped inside.

The room was warm and cluttered, filled with softly whirring instruments and shelves lined with objects he didn’t recognise. Portraits watched from the walls, their painted eyes following his movements.

Behind the desk sat Albus Dumbledore. Beside him stood Madam Poppy Pomfrey.

Remus stopped just inside the room.

Dumbledore looked up, his expression calm, almost kind, though there was something in it that felt far too observant.

“Mr Lupin,” he said gently. “Please, come in.”

Remus stepped forward and McGonagall closed the door behind them.

“Sit,” she said.

He did. For a moment, no one spoke.

Then Dumbledore folded his hands and said, “I believe you understand why you are here.”

Remus nodded once. “Yes, sir.”

“Then we will be brief,” Dumbledore said.

McGonagall took over, her voice steady and precise. “Your condition requires certain arrangements while you are at Hogwarts. These arrangements are not optional.”

Remus kept his gaze fixed ahead. “I understand.”

“You will not attend classes during the full moon,” she continued. “Your absences will be explained as illness. No further detail will be given.”

“Yes.”

Madam Pomfrey stepped forward slightly. “You will report to me before sunset on those evenings. I will escort you to a secured location away from the castle.”

Remus’s fingers tightened faintly in his lap.

“A passage has been prepared,” Dumbledore added. “It leads to a structure beyond the grounds where you will remain until morning.”

Safe.

Contained.

Hidden.

Remus nodded again.

“You will follow Madam Pomfrey’s instructions exactly,” McGonagall said. “There can be no deviation.”

“I won’t.”

“You will not speak of this to other students.”

“I won’t.”

There was a pause.

Dumbledore watched him carefully. “You are not being punished, Mr Lupin. You are being given an opportunity to remain here.”

Remus’s jaw tightened slightly.

“I know.”

The words came out flat.

Dumbledore did not challenge the tone.

“If you require assistance,” he said, “you may come to us.”

Remus shook his head faintly. “I won’t need it.”

Another pause, quieter this time.

“Very well,” McGonagall said. “You may return to your lesson.”

Remus stood at once.

“Thank you,” he said, though he wasn’t sure what he meant by it.

Then he left.

When he re-entered the Charms classroom, the lesson had moved on.

Flitwick barely paused. “Ah, Mr Lupin, welcome back. Do continue.”

Remus returned to his seat.

James leaned toward him immediately. “What was that about?”

“Nothing.”

Peter frowned. “Are you in trouble?”

“No.”

James didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t push further.

Sirius said nothing.

But he looked at Remus once—brief, sharp, deliberate—before turning back to the front.

Remus picked up his wand again.

The feather rose easily when he cast the spell.

And as the lesson went on, that quiet awareness sat between them again—unspoken, unresolved, and impossible to ignore.

The dormitory didn’t fall quiet all at once.

James talked himself into exhaustion, as expected, his voice drifting in and out of coherence as the story lost shape somewhere halfway through. Peter kept up with him for a while, adding the occasional comment, until his replies grew slower and finally stopped altogether.

“—and obviously I’d be better at it than half the team already,” James muttered into the dim light, “just saying—”

A pause.

“…Peter?”

Nothing.

James shifted, the mattress creaking softly. “Brilliant. Abandoned mid-conversation.”

A few minutes later, even he fell silent.

The room settled after that. Not completely still—the castle never really allowed that—but quieter. Softer. The kind of quiet that pressed in rather than opened up.

Remus lay on his back, staring at the canopy above him.

Sleep didn’t come.

It rarely did when his head felt like this—too full, too sharp, every thought circling the same points without ever landing. The meeting upstairs, the bathroom, the mirror, Sirius’s hands steady on his wrist, the way everything had been fixed as though it had never happened.

He flexed his hand beneath the covers.

Still fine.

That bothered him more than it should have.

Across the room, there was a shift of movement.

Then, into the quiet—

“You were taken out of class.”

Remus didn’t move. “Aye.”

Sirius’s voice carried easily in the dark. Not loud, just precise.

“McGonagall.”

“Yeah.”

A pause followed.

“You’re not in trouble.”

Remus turned his head slightly toward the sound of him. “You’ve decided that, have you?”

“It’s obvious,” Sirius said. “If you were, you wouldn’t have come back.”

Remus let out a quiet breath. “Right.”

Silence again.

Sirius didn’t leave it alone.

Of course he didn’t.

“It wasn’t nothing.”

Remus closed his eyes briefly. “You’ve got a habit of saying that.”

“You’ve got a habit of pretending things aren’t there.”

“They’re not your things to notice.”

“That doesn’t make them invisible.”

Remus rolled onto his side, facing away now. “Drop it.”

“I would,” Sirius said, “if you were less obvious about it.”

That pulled a faint, humourless huff from Remus. “I left a room.”

“You stormed out,” Sirius corrected. “There’s a difference.”

Remus didn’t answer that. Sirius shifted slightly in his bed, the sound of fabric quiet but deliberate. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Remus knew immediately what he meant.

“The mirror.”

“Yeah.”

“You could have made it worse.”

“I know.”

“You usually do that?”

Remus let out a quiet breath through his nose. “Do what.”

“That,” Sirius said. “Lose control.”

The words weren’t mocking, that surprised him more than anything else. Remus stared into the dark for a second.

Then said, “Sometimes.” There was no point pretending otherwise.

Sirius shifted again, the sound of fabric moving against sheets. “I thought you were just quiet,” he said.

“I am.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

Remus almost smiled at that. “Didn’t say it was.”

Silence settled again. Then, after a moment—“How did you do that?”

The question came out quieter. More deliberate.

Sirius didn’t pretend not to understand. “The spell.”

“Yeah.”

Another pause.

This one longer. Remus waited. He didn’t know why. Then Sirius said, “I learned.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s enough of one.”

Remus turned his head slightly, trying to make out more than just the outline of Sirius’s bed in the dark.

“From who?”

Sirius didn’t respond. For a moment, Remus thought he’d pushed too far.

Then—“No one.”

The words were quiet. Flat. Final.

Remus frowned slightly. “You just… figured it out.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not normal.”

Sirius let out a quiet breath. “It is if you need to.”

That landed differently. Remus didn’t answer straight away.

He thought about it instead.

About the way Sirius had moved that morning. The precision. The certainty. The fact that he hadn’t hesitated at all.

“Why would you need to,” he started—

Then stopped.

Because he knew.

Not exactly.

But enough.

Sirius didn’t explain.

Of course he didn’t.

Remus didn’t push further.

Instead, after a moment, he said, “You’re still a prick.”

Sirius’s response was immediate.

“And you are still reckless.”

A beat.

Then, quieter—

“Try not to break anything else.”

Remus huffed a soft laugh.

“I’ll try.”

That was as close to agreement as either of them was going to get.

The room settled again after that.

James shifted once, muttering something unintelligible in his sleep. Peter snored softly from the bed beside him.

Across the room, Sirius went still.

And this time

slowly, eventually

Remus’s eyes closed.

Sleep came easier than he expected.

Not because anything had been resolved.

But because, for the first time since arriving, something had been… acknowledged.

Not understood.

Not fixed.

Just—seen.

And that, whether he liked it or not,

changed things.