Straight On Till Morning
Remus has promised himself he will enjoy the celebration this time. He has much to be thankful for. Harry is safe and whole, as are Ron and Kingsley and Tonks, and a dozen other people he has come to care about in the past three years. That is more people than he has ever cared about before, all of them attempting to fill the space of four people who are lost to him. He has promised himself he won't brood about them when Minerva, grave and yet luminous in her new role as Headmistress of Hogwarts, rises and calls for the crowd's attention. She asks for a moment of silence for the dead.
After the living have paid tribute to the dead, the party commences in earnest, and it's easy to be swept up into the joy surrounding him
Hermione drags him onto the dance floor at some point, and she smiles radiantly at him through eyes bright with tears. He takes a turn waltzing Molly Weasley about, and even she, who has lost a husband and two sons to this war, in addition to the two brothers she lost in the last one, attempts to join in the spirit of things.
When he's not dancing, Remus leans against the wall and watches the doors as people come and go, couples and groups and the occasional witch or wizard alone, looking for air or relief from the din of the party. He tells himself he's not expecting to see a tall, dark-haired man swagger in with a laugh, but he knows he's lying.
Even two years after Sirius's fall, Remus expects to see him sometimes, thinks he'll wake up and it will all have been a bad dream.
He wonders how long it will take, this time, for that to stop.
Harry had worn a wide-eyed, stunned look (most definitely like a deer in the headlamps, Remus thinks wryly) as he accepted congratulations from everyone, shaking hands and nodding as the camera flashed. He hasn't told many the story of what actually happened, and Remus doesn't think he ever will.
But now Harry has stationed himself at the punchbowl; his shoulders slump and his expression is more fitting for a wake than a victory celebration.
"Not enjoying the party?"
Harry jumps guiltily. "Uh--"
Remus smiles. "It's okay, Harry. Everyone knows Neville's not up for dancing yet. If you want to sneak off to St. Mungo's to see him--"
Harry flushes and Remus remembers what it was like to be young and in love, to know you were loved in return. It doesn't hurt anymore to think of those days, and he's had a few glasses of the rum-spiked punch, so even the fresher pains are muted now.
"No, no. It's not that," Harry replies. "I think -- this is going to sound incredibly stupid and soppy--" Remus raises an eyebrow and waits silently. "I think I thought that killing Voldemort--" and Harry pauses to push his glasses up on his nose, a nervous tic that still reminds Remus of James. "I believed they'd come back. That somehow everything he took away--"
Remus swallows hard, his throat tight. "Oh, Harry," he says when he feels able to speak, his voice a hoarse whisper. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and reminds himself just how young Harry is, how much he's lost. Remus is amazed he's managed to hold onto even such a small amount of faith.
"Do you know the story of Peter Pan?" he asks when he's able to speak again, though he can't keep his voice from trembling just a little at first. "Muggle fairy tale. My mum was Muggleborn, you know, used to read it to me--"
Harry nods. "If you believe in fairies..."
"Yes. She said she always believed, and then one day, she got her Hogwarts letter, and she knew there really were fairies. But when I was bitten..." He takes a deep breath, remembering the tears and the prayers, the sterile offices of mediwizards and the dirty back rooms in Knockturn Alley, the big cities and remote villages to which she'd taken him in search of a cure.
"I brought the book to school with me. To remind me of home. And we used to play, your father, Sirius and I -- and Peter, too -- at being lost boys, pirates--"
"Marauders."
Remus laughs softly. "Yes. Marauders. Even after we were too old for such games, we swore we'd never grow up. We wanted to believe we'd live forever, we'd always be friends, and nothing could change that." He stared up at the ceiling of the Great Hall, velvet dark and filled with stars. "I still don't understand, you know. How it happened." How it all fell apart. He clears his throat. "But it did. Life is like that, I guess." His life, anyway, and Harry's as well. Loss has shaped them both. "But he's -- they're all gone, Harry. There's no magic to bring them back, just our memories--"
"But you do it, too," Harry interrupts, and Remus feels his ears burn.
"Do what?" he asks cautiously, unwilling to believe he's been so obvious that Harry, not noted for his perspicacity in dealing with other people's feelings, has figured him out.
"Watch the door. Set an extra place at the table. Still talk about Sirius in the present tense sometimes. I've seen you -- heard you. In fact, you were just doing it, standing over there against the wall hoping no one would notice."
He freezes, caught, and has to work to keep his voice steady. "Harry--"
"You believe, Remus. You know he wasn't dead when he fell." Harry is nearly as tall as Remus now, and his eyes burn with an intensity Remus remembers seeing in Lily's during those last days before she and James went into hiding, a determination to will the world into the shape she desired.
But to hear his own secret dreams and wishes spoken aloud, as if they were something more than dreams and wishes? He knows from long experience that hope is the worst sort of torture.
"Harry, please don't--"
"I didn't just kill Voldemort, you know," Harry says, as if Remus hadn't spoken, "I destroyed him." Remus nods. Everyone within five miles of the confrontation, magical and Muggle, had felt the aftershocks. "I think it may have shaken a few things loose."
"Yes, like your sanity," Remus says before he can stop himself, tongue loosened by rum and anger. He is embarrassed; not only because of this rudeness, but because Harry is exposing his secrets, revealing that he isn't as resigned, as mature as he's always believed himself to be.
Harry laughs. "It's not as though I had much of that to begin with." His smile lingers though his tone becomes serious. "You know I'm right. You've heard the reports."
Remus nods, looks away. Yes, he's heard and read the reports. Over the past week, the world has been awash in strange and magical happenings: unicorns appearing in Muggle groceries, rain in the desert and sight returning to the blind. Odd rumblings in the old, powerful places of the world. A rash of miracles, according to the more sensational tabloids, both Muggle and magical.
"No resurrections have been reported, Harry."
"No, but what if Sirius isn't dead?"
Minerva is bearing down on them as the band strikes up a cheerful waltz, and Harry shrugs, giving him a wry smile. As she leads him away, Harry's words linger in the air.
Remus desperately wants to believe.
Much later, in his solitary bed in Grimmauld Place, Remus grimaces at his own foolishness, but still he whispers fiercely to his pillow, "I believe. I do," before falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.
It is very late, late enough to be called very early, and the room is dark when he wakes to the feel of a cold, wet body beside him, and the sound of gasping, shuddering breaths.
His reflexes are sharp after two years of war. His wand is in his hand, glowing blue before he's even aware he's spoken the word, light washing over the strange and yet completely familiar person next to him.
"R-R-Remus," Sirius says through chattering teeth, staring at him with wide grey eyes, his fringe plastered to his forehead as if he's just got out of the shower.
Shock immobilizes him. His brain tells him it could be some sort of trap -- the dead don't rise, despite two thousand years of Muggle propaganda -- but his gut is screaming at him that this is Sirius.
"What-- How-- Sirius?" he manages finally, fingers gripping his wand so tightly he's afraid it may snap.
"Hi," Sirius says, as if he'd run out for a pack of fags ten minutes ago, instead of having been dead for two years.
This insouciance, more than anything else, convinces Remus that he is truly Sirius.
"'Hi?' That's all you have to say to me?" Anything else he may have said is cut off when Sirius kisses him. Sirius's hair and skin are cold, but his mouth is hot and wet.
Remus knows those lips, these hands, this body. With trembling fingers he peels the soaking robes off Sirius's back, asking questions punctuated with gasps and kisses. He feels as if the rum he drank at the party is still buzzing through his system.
"Harry?" Sirius asks when they come up for air.
"Is well. Defeated Voldemort once and for all," Remus answers between kisses.
"How long was I--"
"Too long," Remus replies, mouth against Sirius's bony shoulder. "Two years."
He is determined to kiss every inch of Sirius, to say all the words he left unsaid before, in case this is real and not some sort of drunken dream or hangover hallucination or short-term bout of insanity.
"Where?" he asks when he raises his lips from the sensitive skin of Sirius's belly.
"The space between," Sirius gasps. "Apparation-- Oh, God," is all he manages as Remus's mouth closes over his cock.
This is the closest to God Remus has ever felt, the soft-hard feel of Sirius's hips beneath his hands, the heavy heat of Sirius's cock in his mouth. He sucks greedily, more desperation than skill at the moment, and Sirius doesn't last long; he comes gasping Remus's name, spilling himself in Remus's mouth. Remus swallows it all, and his questions as well, curiosity pushed aside for these few moments of bliss, of feeling Sirius move beneath him again.
Later, when they are done, and Sirius hasn't disappeared, Remus refuses to go back to sleep. He is still afraid this will turn out to be a dream, or some sort of Time Turner accident, and Unspeakables will show up at any moment to fix it.
"You can't stay awake forever," Sirius says, laughing. "I'll still be here in the morning. I'm back for good."
But Remus doesn't quite trust that promise, not after having lost him twice already. "Tell me," he demands sleepily. "Tell me everything."
Sirius laughs, a joyous barking sound Remus thought he'd never hear again.
"There isn't much to tell." He strokes Remus's hair gently, and Remus is pleased to note his hands are not exactly steady either.
"The veil is death--" Remus prompts when Sirius falls silent, grey eyes going distant for a few moments.
"No. The veil is a doorway to the space between--" Sirius shakes his head and grunts in frustration, much as he did when they were young and he was trying to explain some complex Transfiguration spell Remus hadn't quite grasped yet. "When you Apparate, you know that moment of nothingness before you get where you're going?" Remus nods and tightens his arms around Sirius's waist. "It's like that. The veil is a door, but it doesn't open from the inside. It was--" he shivers and they lose the thread of the conversation for a while Remus works to convert those shivers to quivers of pleasure, whispering his love between kisses and licks and heated touches. He surrenders himself to the feel of Sirius around and inside him, so real and so good that if it is a dream, he never wants to wake.
"Then how--" Remus asks again when they've finished.
"I'm not really sure. I think as long as you believed I was alive, I didn't fade away."
Remus starts laughing and doesn't stop until he is choking on sobs of joy, sorrow, stunned amazement.
"You great fairy," he finally chokes out.
"Takes one to know one, Moony," Sirius says, looking slightly offended. "You were the one who just had my cock up your arse."
Remus can't stop laughing. "No, you git. Harry and I were talking last night--"
"About my being a fairy?"
"About your not being dead."
"Ah, I expect that helped, then."
Remus shudders, knowing how close he'd come to giving up, to convincing Harry to give up. He has to kiss Sirius again to reassure himself.
"Strange things have been happening all over England since Voldemort's defeat. Harry mentioned some things had been shaken loose--"
"A whole lotta shaking going on, eh? Do you still have that Muggle record player?"
"Yes."
"Good. I missed music. And food. And sex. And everything. Even the fleas."
"Nobody missed the fleas, Sirius."
"I couldn't even change into Padfoot. I couldn't--" Sirius's voice breaks and Remus holds him close, stroking his hair, which is still a little damp.
"You're safe now," Remus whispers. "I have you and I won't let you go again." He wants desperately to believe he has that choice, that power.
"Please don't," Sirius answers, sounding very young.
He drifts into a light sleep soon after, but Remus stays awake, watching him breathe and listening to his heartbeat.
Soft golden light is filtering through the old curtains when Sirius wakes with a start.
Remus smiles, kisses him eagerly, accepting his miracle for however long it lasts this time, too grateful to question further.
"We need to tell Harry the good news." He nods toward the night table. "Your old mirror is in the drawer." He'd helped Harry repair his mirror a few months after that night at the Department of Mysteries; Harry had been convinced he could use it to contact Sirius beyond the veil, but it had never worked.
Sirius takes the mirror, eyes shining, and says, "Harry? Harry?"
Harry's face appears immediately, as if he's been waiting for them.
"Sirius," he whispers, glowing with joy. "You're back."
"You don't seem surprised," Sirius says with a smile. It'll be a long time before they stop smiling.
"I knew you'd come back." Harry beams at them, and they grin back. "I never stopped believing." Harry pushes at his glasses, eyes bright with unshed tears. "Well, Remus, we brought our lost boy home."
Pss.150
[1] Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.
[2] Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.
[3] Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.
[4] Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs.
[5] Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.
[6] Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.