To Hope for Anything

To Hope for Anything

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Don't Feel Well?

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- 3 days

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"Remus? Are you okay?" Sirius asked, eyeing concernedly his old friend.

"What?" Remus looked up at him, startled. "Oh, no. I'm fine. It's just... It's just the full moon, you know. It's only two days ahead."

Sirius nodded, and sighed. Remus's transformations hadn't eased the slightest bit with age. It was really quite the opposite: The War, all the wounds and injuries Remus had suffered - curses, hexes, and silver burns - had made his transformations even worse. Of course the Wolfsbane Potion, which Sirius bought for him despite his protests, made them less painful, but it wasn't enough to make them easy. Remus was becoming more and more exhausted and sickly, and full moon by full moon, everyone was becoming more and more worried about him. Remus himself, however, always insisted that he was just fine.

The sound of an opening door shook him out of his thoughts. He looked up at Harry as the eighteen-year-old arrived. The teenager was currently having his Auror training, but he visited Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place nearly every day, sometimes staying with them for a couple of days.

"Morning, guys," Harry said cheerfully. Then he, also, shot a worried look at Remus. "Are you surely okay, Moony?" he asked. "You don't look well."

"Why everyone keeps asking me that?" Remus snapped, sounding irritated. "Yes, I'm as fine as you can expect from me two days before the full moon." He got on his feet and walked out of the room.

Sirius and Harry exchanged worried glances.

"I don't think it's only the full moon," Sirius said, glancing briefly at the now closed door. "He's been really odd these past months. He always looks sick and weak, and is depressed all around. And sometimes he has nightmares and wakes up screaming."

Harry nodded. He knew all of this, living half of the time with the two men. "Maybe it's something that happened the last summer," he suggested. Then he sighed and added, "I wish we knew what exactly happened."

"So do I." Sirius casted his eyes at the floor.

In the end of the summer, Remus had disappeared for a couple of days. Then, Dumbledore had informed them that their friend was at Hogwarts. In the Infirmary. As a patient.

They'd gone over immediately, finding the pale and quiet werewolf waiting for them. He hadn't told them what had happened, and had also forbidden Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey to say a word. Therefore, Sirius and Harry had been left without a clue about what had caused their friends injuries - or what those injuries were. They had their doubts, however. After the War, attacks against werewolves had become more and more usual. They had already been fearing for Remus. It had been only matter of time until he'd become a victim.

Remus had been soon released to Sirius's care. Sirius had taken good care of his friend and, with Harry's enthusiastic help, they'd made the werewolf almost his old self. But, as they'd just witnessed, not quite.

"I think I'm going to talk with him," Harry said. "Maybe I can get something out of him."

Sirius nodded, staying quiet. He knew that Remus wouldn't say a word to him - Merlin knew he had tried enough. Maybe Harry would have better luck.

He watched as Harry left the room as well. As soon as the door was closed, he walked to the fireplace and tossed some of the Floo powder into it.

"Severus Snape," he said quietly. "Severus Snape-Black."

*

"Severus," called a soft voice.

He turned around and saw a dark-haired head in the flames. "Hello, Sirius," he smiled, sitting down on an armchair by the fireplace. "What's wrong?" he asked then, seeing the troubled expression on his lover's face.

"Remus," Sirius only said gloomily, and Severus nodded, understandingly. He knew about the problems with the werewolf.

"I see," he said quietly. "Are you coming here tonight?"

"I don't know," Sirius replied, shaking his head. "I will, if I only can, but Harry's visiting, so I don't know."

"But you will if you can." Severus shook away the resigned feeling. When he had agreed to marry Sirius in secret, he had already known that it would be like this. As long as nobody knew about them, Sirius had to put their relationship on the second place on his list of priorities. His friends would always come before his husband, unless they let their marriage to become public knowledge - something neither of them was ready to do.

"Well... See you, Severus," Sirius said then, hesitantly.

"Bye, Sirius," the Slytherin replied.

The unspoken words, "I love you," hung heavily on the air between them. Neither was able to say them, but they both meant them. And both knew that the other meant them as well.

As Sirius vanished from the fire, Severus let out a frustrated sigh. He pulled a thin silver chain up his collar, fingering lazily the silver wedding ring on it.

'This is what you chose,' he told himself firmly. 'You insisted this first.'

He didn't feel exactly right, however. He wasn't used to share anything, definitely not the only thing that was rightfully only his. And he wasn't used to be the second best. He didn't want to give up his married husband for Lupin and Potter.

He had to talk with Sirius.