Elsewhere

Sirius is twenty, and he has a little flat in a London with no Grimmauld Place and a store simply called 'Black Floyd Necessities' down the street. He's always amused to see other customers there, perusing the electric guitars and amp sets, gleaming motorcycles in a row along the far wall, the leather jackets and cotton t-shirts, combat boots and robes and sometimes, inexplicably, already-fraying jumpers and dark chocolate.

Every day when Sirius walks to the Potters, he passes a newsstand that hands out free papers to everyone, and he takes it and reads about the Weird Sisters and Quidditch scores. On weekends, if he fancies it, he brings the crossword with him for Harry, who is old enough on weekends to fill a few in excitedly and then run to the phone to call his grandma about 43 across, six letters, medicinal menace of the 17^th century.

Lily works as a healer, and she promises often to let Sirius know when Remus arrives and to not be so impatient, for goodness's sake, he'll be here soon, hasn't he seen the construction on the shop at Charing Cross that's going to be called 'Lycanthropy,' doesn't that sound like that could be Remus's?

James tells Sirius that he's waiting for Lily to realize it's going to sell condoms and sex toys, he asked and the construction worker said so, but then again that could be Remus's, eh? Sirius elbows for him to shut up when Harry's around but the eight-year-old is absorbed in reading the crossword to Caroline Potter and doesn't care what his father's on about. Anyway, Sirius hasn't told anyone about the secondhand bookshop on a side-street just two blocks down that's bought the office next door and changed its name to 'So Wise So Young.'

On Wednesdays Sirius has to clean up his flat because Lily drops five-year-old Harry off in the afternoon and they spend the day in Sirius's back yard, an inexplicably vast valley with no buildings in sight except a slowly progressing tree house and three goal hoops for James to play chaser. Harry brings his Nimbus 2000 and Sirius has his old Nimbus 1000 that flies like it used to before James doused it in paint for laughs and Harry can already catch a snitch. Sometimes when Harry is eleven he invites his friends Ron and Neville over and a few extra Weasleys tag along to form a proper team. Sometimes the adults come too and lose spectacularly to their children, feigning disappointment as Harry babbles to his mother about beating Ron's uncle Fabian to the snitch.

He has a horribly-paying job tutoring flunking students over the holidays, but the kids seem to get on with him all right and no one has had to take summer transfiguration twice. The rest of the time he trains to be an auror with James and his cousin Tonks or gives Peter a hand with his father's offices. Every so often he walks by Diagon Alley to say hello to those Weasley boys, Fred and the one without the ear, what's his name, helping their twin uncles out with their joke shop. His name begins with G, and he should remember it. Second generation of Prewett-descended G & F twins, for Merlin's sake.

On Fridays during the school year Harry writes him and begs him to come substitute when the other teachers are out, but Sirius writes back and says that for now, he has to stay at home. Good luck with Grubbly-Plank while Hagrid's in Romania. Keep him posted and win the next Quidditch match.

He's alone, listening to the radio and idly using his toes to fiddle with the volume knob as he sprawls on the couch, when a silver stag appears on the rag rug and tells him in Lily's voice to get dressed quickly, for Merlin's sake, because Remus is at St. Mungo's asking for him, third and a half floor, and he's recovering fast so hurry why don't you?

Before the doe says 'Mungo's' Sirius bounds off the couch and into the bedroom, stripping off the t-shirt and boxers he slept in and grabbing a passably clean t-shirt, rifling around in his drawer for his good navy boxers patterned with little dog bones, hopping into the pair of jeans he left on the floor yesterday so that by the time the doe has faded Sirius only needs to grab his leather jacket and boots before he's out the door.

He apparates, which he doesn't bother much with anymore, so that he appears directly outside that horrid old display of the dummy in nylon. He knows he could've apparated in, but it feels so good, he's been waiting so long to whisper 'I'm here to see Remus Lupin' with his lips practically against the glass and finally the dummy crooks its finger and he's through and the cool watery feeling is like waking up. The waiting room doesn't faze him. He walks through the hubbub to the stairs and goes up them two at a time to the third and a half floor.

By some chance of the fates Lily is at the healer's station when Sirius clomps, breathless, onto the landing and before he can ask 'Where is he?' she's pointed down the hall and said turn and it's fourth on the left, Sirius, and he's free to go. She watches him with an uncontrollable grin behind her hand as he pelts off, racing down the hospital halls in combat boots, his face alight with anticipation and she knows he's been waiting for this for a long time now.

Someone yells after him to slow down, but it's not Lily and he doesn't care, he hurdles round the corner and counts one two three there and the door is open and he sees the foot of the hospital bed and the hint of a foot under covers and that foot must be Remus's foot and this thought makes him laugh out loud because he has waited so long to see Remus's foot again.

Then Sirius is in the doorway. Remus is sitting up in bed, and it is his foot, and he's wearing that jumper shabbier than Sirius remembered it but as he looks up the sound of boots and the laugh and the heavy breathing erase ten years of scars and wrinkles from his face.

'Sirius?' His voice cracks with something that Sirius thinks may be crying, he looks disbelieving, but his mouth is open and his lips are quirking up and twisting into his name again and all he cares about is that Remus is finally here, finally here, and he'll be able to touch that face again.

Sirius might've once asked have we met before, then? but today somehow he's nearing Remus's side, and Remus kicks off the blanket and swings his legs over and pushes himself up and meets Sirius's arms with an embrace and this whole Remus, this recovered Remus is twenty again and he fits so perfectly into Sirius's shoulder that Sirius gasps and tightens his hold and then all that matters is that Remus is shaking in his arms.

'I thought I was going to Hell,' Remus is on the verge of tears, he buries his nose in Sirius's neck and Sirius reaches up and crooks an arm around Remus's neck and whispers secret things into his ear that make Remus shake all the more. Sirius kisses Remus just below his ear and Remus leans into him and clutches at him and Sirius disapparates, never breaking his hold and savoring the grip Remus has on him so that the turn is like dancing.

They land on Sirius's bed, and they fall backwards and Sirius allows Remus to pin him and hold his wrists to the bed and ask, in all seriousness, still trembling a little, if this is real, and Sirius can't bear the hint of uncertainty that he remembered had lingered around Remus's eyes when he really was twenty. He tells Remus that Harry is alive and James and Lily and Peter and Frank and Alice and their sprog N-wossname and Tonks and remember that Gideon and Fabian and old Millicent Bagnold and Remus are all alive, and they are both twenty, and Sirius has been waiting for him and--

Remus's mouth is over Sirius's mouth, in Sirius's mouth, and Sirius laughs into Remus's mouth and lets Remus tangle fingers in his hair, push up his t-shirt and break apart for just a moment to pull it over his head and Sirius reaches up and tugs Remus's jumper up, laughing as Remus struggles and thrashes a little in the sleeves until Remus laughs too and then under that his shirt has buttons, and Sirius fumbles and dammit, Moony, why didn't you die without a shirt on? Sirius has waited for that laughter and he lets Remus pin his wrists again most willingly.

This is heaven, this ambrosial combination of laughing disbelief and time that will stretch on forever and ever, because Sirius can truly know what it is to be twenty without the war, and Remus is in his bed kissing his jaw with quick, urgent fervor again, one hand at the small of his back again and the other clutching his hand so tight that Sirius laughs again.

Not that he intends to let go.