Gravity

Part V: Trust

We make love, too hard, too fast
He falls asleep, his face a mask
He wakes with the shakes and he drinks from his flask
I put my arms around him

Remus lay awake in the darkness, running his fingers slowly through tangles of soft, black hair. Sirius sighed in his sleep, pressing his face closer into Remus´s chest. Asleep, he clung to Remus like a lost child desperately seeking comfort. Awake, he was become more and more preoccupied and distant. He still slept with Remus, still ran with him on the full moons, still dragged him out onto the balcony for impromptu astronomy lessons and teasingly threatened to pull down his mate´s beloved David Bowie posters and replace them with pull-outs from motorcycle magazines, but there was pain in his eyes when he looked at him, and a slight hesitation in his voice at odd moments. And he had started drinking again. Not much, not every night like before, but often enough for Remus´s hypersensitive Sirius/alcohol radar to pick it up. Remus wished he could blame it on the increasing casualties and heavy death tolls among the Aurors lately, or on worry for James & Lily, who had finally gone into hiding the previous week. Deep down, however, he knew it was neither.

Moonlight mixed with city light pollution drifted in through the window, striping the bed sheets with tiger-patterns of light and dark and turning Sirius´s bare neck and shoulders the colour of skim milk. They almost seemed to glow, as if the magic of the secret keeping spell were seeping out through his pores. Secrets. There had been too many secrets lately.

Remus could pinpoint the exact day the problems had started, a bare two months ago. He had gotten off work early, a minor miracle that was probably due to subtle nudging from Lily, who had noticed his usual post-moon exhaustion. On a whim, he had decided to swing by Auror Headquarters on the way home to surprise Sirius. Pausing outside the slightly open squad room door, he had heard the strains of what sounded like a serious conversation, and had hesitated, peering at Sirius and Vesta through the narrow gap between door and jamb. He hadn´t wanted to interrupt an important briefing.

"The latest information from the Department of Mysteries´ analysts indicates that there are at least two moles within the Ministry," Polaris had been saying. "One apparently called `the Chessmaster,´ and another one referred to by an interrogation subject as `Iscariot.´ The first is most likely someone high up in the Department of Mysteries itself."

Sirius let out a whistle, and Vesta raised her eyebrows, but Polaris ignored them, forging on. "Disturbing as the implications of that are, this-called `Iscariot´ is even more worrisome. Judging by the nature of the information presumably leaked by him, he has very close ties to the Aurors, and with this squad in particular."

There was a moment of dead silence, finally broken by Denise´s soft voice. "Then, the traitor is one of us?"

"Not necessarily," Vesta answered, before Polaris could get a word in. "I mean, Pub has no life outside of fighting the forces of evil, so it can´t be her, and it can´t be you and Frank either, since you´re Hufflepuffs." She smirked slightly at Denise´s rather affronted expression. "Hufflepuffs are too loyal to be double agents. If you were going to serve Voldemort, you´d go grovel at his feet and be disturbingly fanatical Death Eaters."

"I hate to say this, Vesta," Sirius broke in, "but someone´s goin´ to eventually, so it might as well be me. You´re the only Slytherin on the squad. Well, except for Captain Moody, and he´s spent too long fightin´ Dark Wizards ever to turn. They wouldn´t trust him if he showed up on Voldemort´s doorstep with Dumbledore´s head in a bushel basket."

"Do you honestly think that after the amount of time I spend doing my make-up, I´d hide this face under a mask?" Vesta arched reddish brows, gesturing at her painted lips and violet-dusted eyes. "Never mind that those loose, baggy robes would do nothing for me."

"It couldn´t be Vesta," Polaris stated coldly. "She would never be trusted by them either. Once a Slytherin joins the Aurors, they´re placed at the top of the Death Eaters´ hit list. There have been two attempts on her life this month alone."

"Pub!" Vesta half-wailed, "You didn´t have to tell them that!" She glared at Polaris, whose reaction, if any, was hidden from Remus by the door.

"Perhaps the information isn´t being leaked on purpose," Polaris said, in what was probably an attempt to smooth things over. "Maybe someone on the squad is going out and getting drunk and accidentally spilling secrets to his numerous girlfriends."

Remus had almost spoken up then, filled with indignation that Polaris would dare imply that Sirius was a security risk. In retrospect, perhaps he should have. Then, the words that followed would never have been said.

Sirius jerked himself upright with indignation, hurt and anger filling those pale eyes. "I would never-"

Denise jumped in before he could finish, a rare display of rudeness from her. "Sarge, Baby Black would never do that. You don´t reveal your secrets to a casual date. You only extent that sort of trust toward someone you´re in an established relationship with." She laughed a little. "I´d probably be first on the suspect list myself if I weren´t an Auror, being married to Frank."

There were more things said after that, but Remus didn´t hear them. All he could focus on was the sudden look of horror on Sirius´s face. A quickly hidden flash of utter misery, eyes widening with some terrible revelation. Don´t listen at doors, his mother had always told him. You might not like what you hear. As his stomach sank through the bottom of his shoes, Remus had found himself wishing that he had followed her advice.

Now, as he tightened one arm around Sirius and stared up at the moonlit white ceiling, he couldn´t help resenting Denise, just a little bit. If only she hadn´t made that comment about Aurors´ partners being security risks, the suspicion would never have been planted in Sirius´s mind. He never talks about work around me anymore, Remus thought sadly. I have to hear everything from Peter.

Poor Wormtail, stuck serving as the communication link between a lonely Remus and a suspicious Sirius. Remus knew he´d taken to venting his worries on Peter lately, and he was almost certain Sirius was doing the same, now that James was no longer around to talk to. Now that he was hiding, gone completely from the wizarding world, so that the Death Eaters couldn´t test their interrogation techniques on the first top secret courier ever to have a family, couldn´t experiment to see just how long an Iris geas-bound never to reveal the ministry´s secrets could hold out while his loved ones were being tortured in his place.

James. Everything came back to James, eventually. James, and Lily, and Harry, and the fragile web of magic that held their safety, woven into Sirius´s soul. James and Sirius were as close as brothers, and little Harry was the son Sirius himself would never have. And so it only made sense that Prongs and Lily would pick Sirius as their secret keeper, when the dangers incurred by James´s position as an Iris finally forced them into hiding. What didn´t make sense what that they would keep it all secret from Remus until after the spell had already been cast.

Sirius had not told him about his decision to become James´s secret keeper, a dangerous and irrevocable step, until it was too late to change things. He hadn´t brought him in on the decision making process, just as he no longer told him what had happened on the job, or where the latest call was taking him out to, despite his obvious need to talk about the things he was forced to see and do. He no longer bounced theories off Remus as to who the Ministry´s leak could be, and neither had Lily, in the last weeks before she disappeared.

There was no other conclusion. They didn´t trust him. Sirius thinks I´m the spy.

Sirius´s words, whispered to him over a year ago, drifted through his mind. "I wan' you to promise me. If they ever... ever come for you, promise you'll say yes."

Sirius thought that they had come for him, that he had said yes. That he had buckled under blackmail, or succumbed to temptation, or been seduced over to Voldemort by his own intrinsic Dark nature, by the curse that lurked in his blood. The curse that now, according to the latest of the Aurors´ mandatory bi-monthly blood tests, lurked within Sirius´s veins as well, kept dormant by the animagus spell. Odd, that. Remus had thought that he half remembered hearing that Dark curses, latent or live, interfered with soul-binding spells such as the secret keeper one. Apparently, he´d remembered wrong. Which didn´t mean that being a carrier for one of the most feared Dark infections in the wizarding world didn´t interfere with other things. Sirius was still waiting for Moody to pull him from the squad and stick him on desk duty. Another source of tension between the two of them, as if Sirius´s suspicion and Remus´s own fear of acknowledging the topic, added to the resumption of Sirius´s former drinking habits and his defensiveness when Remus confronted him about it, wasn´t enough already.

Unconsciously, Remus´s grip on his mate tightened further, and Sirius stirred in response, wrapping one arm around Remus´s torso and burying his face in the junction between Remus´s neck and shoulder before sliding back into deeper sleep. Remus inhaled the scent of Sirius´s hair, fur and shampoo and the faint hint of cigarette smoke that never seemed to go away, and continued to stare up at the ceiling, watching the angle of the shadows slowly lengthen. Sirius suspected him, was cautious around him, had to fear that their relationship was a threat to James, Lily, and Harry´s safety. And yet, despite this, he stayed. Why?

^_~

Three days later

Remus sat tensely in the front room of the flat, listening with one ear to the wizard wireless network, where reports of new raids were being updated hourly, and with the other, for the tell tale whisper of Sirius's running shoes on the stairs.

In the past two days, the Death Eaters had launched a rash of attacks, pushing all Aurors and ministry workers into frantic overtime as they scramble to reach the latest target or predict the next one. Sirius had been out on call for nearly forty-eight hours. Remus himself had only just returned home from a triple shift, to find the flat empty and silent, without so much as a note from his mate. There would have been one, once, even if it were only a scrap of paper with a sentence hastily scrawled between sorties, left in the box out front (postage due) by one of the Ministry's overworked owls.

He was on the verge of taking his out his frustration at the WWN's censors--who never allowed Auror casualties to be announced on the air--on the old spell-converted Muggle radio when the door slammed open to reveal Sirius, gold robes muddy and disheveled and eyes bloodshot.

"Sweet, sufferin´ Christ," he groaned, kicking the door shut behind him with one foot and reaching up to tug open the neck of his robes. "Forty-six solid bloody hours. I feel like absolute hell."

"Are you alright?" Remus was up out of the chair and across the room in an instant--just in time to be handed Sirius's discarded robes, as he stripped down to jeans and rugby shirt and flopped bonelessly into an armchair. Remus dropped the armful of gold silk on the back of the couch and sat down on the armrest of Sirius's chair. "Are you alright?" he repeated.

"What? Oh, yeah. Just tired." Sirius reached up to rub at his eyes, then pulled the rather silly-looking black Muggle ponytail-holder from his hair and scrubbed his fingers through it. "God, today´s been `orrid. And yesterday too. Five civilian casualties so far, an´ we only caught three of the bastards." He yawned, then added. "All low level, cannon fodder. We think. I `exed one who `asn´t woken up yet. Can´t pull my punches when I´m tired. Moody sent me `ome." His accent was unusually strong, `h´s vanishing and consonants mushing together, the way they sometimes did after a few drinks. He has to be close to dropping in his tracks with exhaustion.

"Good," Remus said. "That he sent you home, I mean, not that... It´s not good that those people died." He shook his head, breaking the inevitable Who was it? Do I know them? What happened? train of thought. "When was the last time you ate something, not counting that horrible caffeinated sludge everyone drinks at Auror headquarters?"

"This mornin´?" It was a question.

"Sirius!" The sound exploded out before Remus could stop himself. "It´s eleven o´ clock at night."

"We were busy."

"Everyone was stretched at the Department of Mysteries today, too. Usually, Peter comes around during lunchtime, or fifteen-minute dinner break, or whichever and helps Lily and I sort things, but he wasn´t there today."

"Wormtail wasn´ at work?" Sirius stiffened, snapping the question out in a sharp, wary voice. He sat upright in the chair, pulling himself out of his sagging sprawl. "You sure?"

"Yes. I went looking for him when I had a break, to talk to him about something." To ask him if I ought to confront you about suspecting me. If I should get it all out in the open, stop pretending I don´t notice... "He wasn´t there. I asked if he´d called in sick, but Linda, the Ravenclaw girl who works in the finance department, didn´t know."

"But she´s `is coworker," Sirius protested. "An´ what´s more, I think she likes `im. If `e wasn´ there, she´d find out why."

"She was probably too busy." Remus shrugged, and turned his attention to the mass of tangles that was Sirius´s hair, pulling fingers through lank snarls. It was a poor substitute for the comforting licking a small and very canine part of him wanted to deliver, but it would do.

"Ow. Moony, that `urts." Sirius pulled his head away, removing his hair from finger range. "I´m gonna go an´ check on Petey."

"You´re not going anywhere except to bed," Remus returned. "You look tired enough to splinch yourself Apparating."

"I´ll take Bike, then." Sirius stood up. "If somethin´s `appened to Peter, it´s probably my fault, and-" he cut himself off sharply. A few weeks ago, he wouldn´t have censored himself around Remus. "Look, I´m goin´, okay." He snagged the discarded Auror´s robe off the back of the couch and shrugged back into it.

"Then at least let me come with you."

Sirius blinked at him for a moment, as if unsure of how to answer, then shook his head. "I can´t. If Peter´s in trouble... It could be dangerous." Pathetic excuse. Sirius ought to be able to lie better than that.

All right. That´s it. Remus had had enough. Weeks of silent hurt and sublimated resentment sparked into sudden anger. He was tired of being mistrusted for betrayals he had never committed, tired of questions being evaded, secrets being kept from him, tired of unspoken accusation. "You think I´m the spy, don´t you?" he demanded. "You don´t want me to come because you´re afraid I´m Iscariot, that if Peter is in trouble, I´ll help them and not him."

Sirius shook his head in involuntary denial. "Of course not. How could I think that? Why would I?" But he didn´t meet Remus´s eyes.

"Then let me come. Or better yet, stay here. We can go check on Peter in the morning."

Sirius´s eyes darted toward the radio, a flicker that as good as shouted that Peter might even now be under attack by Death Eaters--highly unlikely, but not impossible.

"You can´t come," Sirius repeated. "I´ve got to go by myself." He took a step towards the door.

Remus caught him by the elbow. "At least tell me why you´re so bloody worried," he demanded. He could hear his voice rising, anger sneaking out into the open.

Sirius jerked his arm away, and his voice held anger of its own when he answered, "Do you honestly think I´d tell you?"

The question hung between them, heavy with pain and suspicion. The accusations had finally been voiced. The issue brought out into the open, where it could no longer be brushed off or ignored.

"Yes!" Remus yelled. The blatant lack of trust implied by Sirius´s statement felt as if were boring a hole through the center of his chest, as if the scent of it, anger and aggression and pain, were burning his nose away. "You´re either going to tell me what´s going on, take me with you, or stay here, damnit!"

He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it, knew that Sirius always responded to anger with more anger, to violence with more violence, but by then it was too late. The words had already emerged, prompted by something fanged and clawed, which was driven to dominate and possess.

"The `ell I will!" Sirius thundered back. He´d drawn himself up to his full height, and for the first time in a long time it dawned on Remus just how much larger than him his mate was. Sirius had a good six inches on him, outweighed him, and had the benefit of Moody´s extensive unarmed combat training. "I´m not your bitch, Remus. You can´t tell me what to do!"

"No, you´re my beta. I´m your pack leader, and I can order you if I want to!" He could feel himself snarling, lips drawing back from teeth, a growl forming deep within his throat. Human vocal chords couldn´t make that sort of noise. His could. Sirius´s could. And they were now.

Sirius´s eyes had gone beyond feral, filled with a pale light that made him look more like his sister Polaris than Remus had previously thought possible. He´s challenging you, a voice growled in the depths of his mind. You´re dominant. Don´t let him get away with it. But a somewhat louder voice was babbling desperately over it: Oh Lord, oh Lord he looks scary as hell and he´s going to kill me and why, why, why did I say that?

"Don´t say that." It was a snarl, low and edged with the promise of fangs. "Don´t say that!" A howl. "We´re `uman! I´m `uman! I won´ let Padfoot think for me anymore." A fist slammed into the doorframe, startlingly loud. Remus jumped, half-surprised that the target hadn´t been his face. "I´m takin´ Bike and goin´!"

"If you don´t love me enough to trust me, don´t come back!"

The only answer was the slamming of the flat door, followed by the thudding of feet on the stairs, fast and angry now, instead of tired. Moments later, a motorcycle engine coughed to life, roaring loudly as only a machine with a sawn-off muffler can.

Sirius had run away. Running meant defeat. The first to back down was always the loser. So why did it feel like Remus had lost? He hates me now. He thinks I´m a traitor, was only waiting for an excuse to leave. He´s not coming back. Eyes suspiciously hot, he stared blankly at the closed door and wanted to howl.

^_~

Padfoot

The Black Bitch roared to life underneath him, a sudden explosion of noise that harmonized with his own violent mood. She was angry too, or at least sounded it. Angry, and straining to go.

The two of them exploded into the sky, without a moment wasted on invisibility charms, and a snarled phrase Apparated the pair of them away, a long, cold blink of disorientation that caused pistons to stutter and tired thoughts to swim. Then they fell out of the sky three blocks away from Peter´s flat, and order returned, bringing sanity with it.

"If you don´t love me enough to trust me, don´t come back!"

Trust. Trust had seduced him into this mess, tangling loyalties until he´d become too bound up in conflicting allegiances to be a reliable secret keeper, even if he´d trusted his own courage, which he hadn´t. He´d crack under torture, or spill secrets while drunk, or tell all to Remus. He´d been terrified that all Remus had to do was ask, and then James and Lily´s secret would have been laid in his lap, like any other burden to heavy to carry, and then it would all be in Voldemort´s hands. So he had given the burden to Peter, quiet, unlikely Peter whom no one would ever suspect. Peter, who hadn´t been at work today. If the Death Eaters had gotten to him...

If they found him, if they hurt him, it will be all my fault. And then they´ll find James and Lily. My fault. All mine. I should have Kept the secret after all. It can´t be as dangerous for a curse victim to Keep one as they say.

That was what else trust had gotten him. The lab results that had made Lieutenant Longbottom shake his head sorrowfully, and Vesta yell in protective anger, and had made Captain Moody call him into his office to explain that, though he seemed to be one of the lucky ones for whom the curse stayed dormant, it was a risk keeping him on the squad. A worthwhile one at the moment, but one slip up, and... Maybe he´d been angrier about that than he´d admitted.

He shouldn´t have yelled. Because maybe, maybe Iscariot wasn´t Remus. His eyes had been so hurt when Sirius had accused him, so filled with pain. Beautiful gold eyes that shouldn´t be allowed to look sorrowful. He´d been indignant, injured, just as if he were truly innocent. What if I made a mistake?

He wanted a fucking drink. Just one--okay a lot more than one. Enough to blur the edges off the pain, until he could no longer remember that he couldn´t trust Remus, couldn´t trust himself, damn near bathed in blood every day until it was a wonder the scent of it didn´t seep out of his pours, had maybe lost Remus forever.

He´d probably overreacted, he decided, as he braked the Bitch to a halt in front of Peter´s building, jumping off her and heading for the concrete steps and red-painted door. He´d over-reacted, jumped to conclusions when he´d heard of Peter´s absence today, blown up at Remus because exhaustion and stress had finally pushed him over the edge. He couldn´t think straight tired, everyone on the squad knew it. That was why Moody had sent him home in the first place, wasn´t it?

The doorknob was cool in his palm as he twisted it open--the night was chilly for October--or was it already November? Midnight had to be soon.

He´d over-reacted, Sirius told himself, as he began climbing the steps to Peter´s flat, footsteps muffled by the carpeting. Carpeting in the stairwell was a good idea. They should get some installed at home.

Home. He couldn´t go home. Remus threw me out. We´ll get in another fight if I go back.

He´d over-reacted, which meant that when he opened the door, Peter would be there. There, with a box of tissues and a mug of tea, nursing a cold or flu miserable enough to have kept him from work and irritated as hell at Sirius for barging in on him at this time of night. And Sirius would apologize, and act chastened, and explain that he´d been worried, and had had a fight with Remus, and he couldn´t go to James´s because he didn´t know where James was, and could he please sleep here tonight. And Peter would whine, and call him an inconsiderate bastard, and say yes, of course, and there´s beer in the refrigerator, do you want some? And Sirius would drink it--just this once, because today had truly been a sod in every conceivable way--and tell Wormtail that he´d made a mistake, and Remus might not be Iscariot, which meant he´d mistrusted him for no bloody reason, and now his pack leader had thrown him out, and he didn´t know whether to crawl back on his belly or stay angry, because crawling would be humiliating, but it was what you were supposed to do when you were wrong, crawl and show your throat. And Peter would sigh in exasperation and ask why all canine animagi went crazy, when turning into a rat hadn´t bunged up his psyche, and Sirius would say that that was because he´d always been a rat, and, and Peter´s flat was empty.

Peter´s flat was empty.

Sirius froze in the doorway, eyes taking in the vacant room. Nearly as cluttered as his own--Peter had always tended to collect things--but more organized. Still organized. There were no signs of a struggle, no overturned end tables or broken lamps... Auror training began to kick in, impelling him round the flat, forcing him through the routine of checking for evidence. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, all normal. Normal, but empty. Too empty.

Beneath the thin ice of calm lent by familiar procedure, a torrent of panic ran though his mind. Where is he? Where is he? His books were there, the refrigerator was full, but, but... His toothbrush was gone. And so was his suitcase.

Quicker than thought, Sirius became Padfoot, and nose replaced eyes and fingers, a faster and more thorough searcher. He´d never done this at a raid site, but no raid site had ever been so vital. As Padfoot, the desire to run back to Remus and beg forgiveness was even stronger--Padfoot had always followed Moony, since they´d first met four years ago--but finding out where Peter was, and whether James and Lily were still safe, was more important.

The room didn´t smell of violence. There was no blood, neither Peter´s nor anyone else´s. Instead, there was merely the scent of Peter, as both man and rat. And other people, including several scents he´d smelled before, though only once, sniffing around an old raid site two nights after it had happened. God knew why he´d done it--some half formed notion that he could pick up the scent of Death Eaters, though he´d never be able to use that in an investigation. But now he was. Death Eaters have been in Petey´s flat. Recently. Less than a day ago. But before that, too, many times. The whole flat bore their scent.

And then he knew.

^_~

Moony

Minutes slid into hours and still Remus sat motionless in the small living room. Sirius had left. Sirius had actually left. And he´s not coming back.

Deep inside Remus, some little part of him had never really expected Sirius too disobey him. Not on something this important, not when he flat out demanded that he do something. Sirius might ignore advice, requests, and even direct orders when he chose to, especially when said advice involved his own personal safety, but when it came down to it, he had always given in to Remus when it really mattered. Of course, screaming at him hadn´t exactly been the best possible course of action.

Now that the fight was over, now that he had cooled down, Remus found himself desperately wishing that he could take back the previous few hours, unsay all of the shouted, hurtful things and replace them with calm, reasonable arguments. Alone in the darkened room, he came up with dozens of things that he should have said. Only now, of course, it was too late.

After the regrets came half-drafted apologies, tangling together with imaginary explanations. Sirius would come back, he had to, and when he did, Remus would be ready. Only he didn´t come back. Midnight became one a.m. became two a.m. became three, and still Sirius had not returned. Most likely, he was crashing at Peter´s flat, still too angry to come home, which meant that Remus would have to find him later at Auror Headquarters. Unless Peter really was in trouble. That was an option he didn´t really want to consider, but one that whispered insidiously in the corners of his mind as the night wore on. His eyelids were heavy with tiredness, but with that worry in his mind, sleep was impossible. Which meant that when the announcement came over the Wizard Wireless at five a.m., he was awake to hear it.

Three minutes after the bulletin announcing Voldemort´s suspected death rang out over the enchanted airways, he had Apparated into the parking lot of Auror Headquarters, completely disregarding his earlier warnings to Sirius on the dangers of Apparating while exhausted. The place was in an uproar, reporters and officials everywhere, crowding to get into the doors, with more people Apparating in every moment. Pushing his way past a curly-haired woman in her early thirties wearing a spectacularly gaudy pair of spectacles, he caught the arm of the hit wizard standing by the door.

"Let me in, I´m a Ministry employee." Granted, he didn´t look much like one at the moment, dressed in rumpled robes and lacking badge or insignia, but at least he didn´t have a camera.

The hit wizard shrugged, and pulled the door open a crack. "Go on in, but it´s on your head if you turn out to be a journalist in mufti. The last paparazzi who bothered Captain Moody went sailing out of here with his camera magically implanted up his-"

"Remus!" A green-nailed hand shot through the open door and grabbed his wrist, and he found himself dragged inside to face a severely frazzled-looking Vesta McGonagall. She wasn´t even wearing any make-up, and her face looked naked and unusually young without it.

"Do you know where Baby Black is?" she demanded.

Remus blinked. Sirius? Sirius was at Peter´s, probably asleep with a half-empty bottle of something alcoholic in his hand and missing the biggest victory of the war.

"Is it true?" he demanded in turn, not answering her. "Is, is You Know Who really gone? They said on the wireless that..."

"Gone, toast, yesterday´s haggis," she said impatiently, waving one hand in the air. "We´ve been pulling in Death Eaters for the past three hours--apparently they all passed out when he, well, when whatever it was happened to him." Her face changed, and her eyes dropped to the floor. "He... Lupin, I´m not sure how to tell you this."

Remus wasn´t listening. Nothing had penetrated after her first sentence. "He´s gone? Really and truly gone? Dead gone?" He could feel an uncontrollable smile spreading across his face. Sirius ought to be here. He would have dipped that ungrateful, Auror bastard backwards and kissed him within an inch of his life, just like that nurse and sailor in Times Square, and never mind the dozens of people watching. Everything´s going to be all right now. James and Lily won´t have to hide anymore, Sirius won´t have to fight anymore, everyone will stop being suspicious of me...

Then the look on Vesta´s face registered. "What? He is gone, right?"

"They, we, think he tried to AK someone only to have it backfire. He sort of, blew up. At least, that´s what the Captain says. The entire raid site was destroyed, with only one survivor." She still was not looking at him, green eyes focused determinedly on her nails, which she was inspecting as though discovering a single chip in their lacquer would mean the end of the world. "Lupin... he attacked the Potters. James and Lily are dead, and Black hasn´t Apparated in, even though we´ve been paging him for hours."

"James and Lily are dead."

The words echoed in his ears, their meaning not quite penetrating. Surely she was not serious. This had to be another one of her practical jokes, like the time she´d left an article about the mating habits of wolves in Sirius´s locker. Perhaps this sort of thing seemed funny to a Slytherin.

"What?"

"Potter and his wife are dead, and your boyfriend´s missing," she repeated. "I, oh damnit, I shouldn´t be the one telling you this. This ought to be the Lieutenant´s job."

Remus gaped at her, stomach plummeting. His ears felt hot, sounds ringing in them as if they came from far away. Seconds ago, he had been filled with a joy so great that he wanted to howl with triumph, and now. James and Lily, dead. And Sirius...

"What about Harry? What about Sirius? What do you mean, missing?"

As she started to explain, Remus felt his stomach sinking even further. His mind barely focused on what Vesta said about Harry, once she revealed that he was alive and not dead like his parents. James and Lily. Sirius was MIA, and Sirius had been James and Lily´s Secret Keeper, which meant that in order for their house to be attacked... Oh God. I should have gone with him. I should have. Whether he wanted me to or not. I should have stopped him somehow.

"Lupin, if you don´t know where he is..." Vesta shut her eyes for a moment, for all the world as if she were fighting back tears. "He would never have given the Potters up willingly. Whose bloody brilliant idea was it to make an Auror a Secret Keeper?"

"His." Remus heard his own voice as if from far away. Vesta´s words were only confirmation of what he already knew. Confirmation he didn´t want to hear.

"Well isn´t that just typical. `Look at me; I´m Sirius Black, alcoholic and chain smoker. I´ll die by hexing years before my lungs and liver dissolve." Her voice began to go shrill. "I´m a masochistic berserker with a death wish who lets his werewolf lover chew on his neck and hangs a giant target sign around it telling Voldie´s minions to come and get me!" It was only when she ground down to a final hand-waving halt that she seemed to realize that said werewolf lover was standing right in front of her. "I´m sorry, Lupin. We´re all worried sick, and the press is trying to break down the door. Pub´s been locked in Arctic Bitch mode since the news broke."

Remus nodded absently. It wasn´t important. The important things were Lily and James and Sirius. Who was going to take care of Harry now, with his parents and Godfather all... Did it hurt? Did he scream when they took him? How long did they hurt him before he told them where to go?

"I'd break," Sirius´s voice drifted through his head. "I know I would. I'd tell 'em whatever they wanted. An' then they'd go after James an' Lily. An' Petey. An' you. An' I'd rather die than have that happen."

"Lupin?" Vesta´s voice sounded concerned. "Lupin, are you alright?" A hand touched his arm. "I´m sorry. I shouldn´t have just told you right out like that. Come into the squad room and sit down."

Vesta´s hands steered him towards the squad room, where a collection of haggard-faced people in golden robes were gathered around a wizard wireless, a scattering of brown-robed Hit Wizards sprinkled among them. Most of the Hit Wizards were exuberant, but the Aurors all looked brittle, faces worried and voices strained. Denise Longbottom was in tears, and Polaris looked as grim as he´d ever seen her. Little details seemed to jump out at him. Her hair was not braided, he noted. She looked as naked with loose hair as Vesta did without eyeliner. It curled over her shoulders instead of falling into her face in feathery wisps like her brother´s, but those pale, hard eyes were all too reminiscent of Sirius the last time Remus had seen him.

He sank numbly into the chair Vesta pushed him towards, knees almost folding under him. The babble of voices from the group by the wireless seemed to make no sense, meaningless noise that had nothing to do with him. They were all dead. What good was defeating Voldemort if they were dead?

Remus was never sure just how long he sat there, letting the crowd of Magical Law Enforcement officers drift around him. Eventually, it occurred to him that someone ought to try and contact Peter, but moving was simply too much effort at the moment. Better to sit, still and small enough to be ignored. If anyone spoke to him, he knew he´d start to cry. Or howl. When the wireless crackled to life, he didn´t even bother listening to it. Until he heard the words "explosion" and "destructive magic."

Head coming up, he refocused on the sounds from across the room. "What? What are they saying?"

"Half a street´s been blown up in one of the London suburbs," Frank Longbottom told him. "Vesta, go with them." He waved a hand at the group of Hit Wizard rushing for the door, already in mid-scramble. "It might be a Death Eater."

"I could-" Polaris started.

"We want them all alive, Pub." From Frank, that was perilously close to cruelty. "You´re on interrogation only until Baby Black is found. Moody´s orders."

Suddenly unable to sit still any longer, Remus jumped to his feet and started after Vesta. He caught up with her in three strides--he´d never been tall, but she was significantly shorter--following her silently out the door and down the hall to the deployment room, the ward-walled chamber that was the only site in the building where Disapparation was possible.

She glanced over her shoulder at him as they entered on the Hit Wizards´ heels. "You think it´s Baby Black." It was not a question. "Trying to escape?"

Remus nodded. He didn´t trust his voice, didn´t trust whatever sound might come out of his mouth. It could be a growl or whimper as easily as a word. He took hold of Vesta´s arm as she Apparated, letting her do the work. Anyone else among Sirius´s squad mates would probably have pried Remus´s fingers away and left him behind--no civilians at crime scenes--but Vesta was Slytherin, and had probably lost more friends to the war than any Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. And she knew about Sirius and him.

They Apparated into a haze of smoke, in the midst of a cluster of shocked-looking Hit Wizards. On the fringes of the group, a portly man in a pinstriped cloak was on his knees, vomiting.

"The Junior Minister from the Department of Magical Catastrophes," Vesta snorted, practically in his ear. "Later he´ll be saying he was first on the scene, the useless bag of wind."

Faint, early morning light was filtering through the smoke, illuminating piles of charred rubble. People lay motionless, limp bundles of clothes splashed with blood. One woman--Remus thought it was a woman--lay with her skull crushed, her brains leaking out onto the pavement. He felt sick, suddenly completely in sympathy with the still vomiting functionary. Sirius sees this sort of thing every day, he realized, a cold, inadequate feeling springing up in the pit of his stomach. No wonder he drinks.

Then a sound filtered through his consciousness, and he looked up from the rubble to see a figure at the other end of the street, pulling himself painfully upright from where the explosion had presumably thrown him. His hair was hanging in snarls around his face, his robes were singed, ripped, and bloody, and he was laughing. A low, harsh laughter, half sob and half eerie chuckle, that made the hairs on the back of Remus´s neck rise.

He stared at the apparition in horror, bereft of speech. Those smoke-scorched robes were golden as sunset, hanging open over jeans and a rugby shirt--both black. And that laughter held echoes of a sound he remembered from Quidditch matches, when Gryffindor´s Beater had thrown himself at bludgers with a complete lack of regard for his own safety. Sirius. Sirius with a wand in his hand and a mad light in his eyes.

Around him, Hit Wizards gasped and whispered, still orienting themselves after Apparating. Most of them were staring at Sirius with something approaching terror, hands going automatically to wands.

"He waved his arm," a man in a business suit was moaning. "Just waved it. And everything blew up. Everything blew up. What is he? What in the bloody hell is he?"

One of the Hit Wizards had his wand out of its holster, lips trying to frame a spell, though the hands holding the length of wood out in front of him were shaking.

Vesta´s voice cracked across the gathering like a whip.

"Nobody move. If any one of you so much as twitches, he´ll rip out your throat with a cutting curse. I´ve seen him do it."

The one with the wand turned towards her, the strip of a police sergeant showing on his sleeve as he moved. His wand stayed trained on Sirius. "An Auror." His eyes gave her a once-over, taking in the wand held low by her side. "Always butting in-" he broke off. "You can use the Killing Curse on him. Take him down from here. It´s the only spell with enough range."

"NO." Her voice was iron, flat and absolute. Remus stared at the man in horror. Kill Sirius?

"You have too. It´s obvious he´s done it. We have to stop him before he gets his wind back and takes us all out. You´re the only one here with the authorization."

"Aurors don´t kill their own."

The man glowered at Vesta, ready to argue, then switched the target of his glare as Remus stepped forward from behind her.

"Get this civilian out of here-" he began. Remus did not listen. They couldn´t kill Sirius. Not even if... He couldn´t have done this. Couldn´t have. But he was the only one standing. With his wand out. And laughing that horrible, horrible laugh. And the Hit Wizard who´d spoken had his wand aimed.

And so Remus did something that he would hate himself for for the rest of his life. He walked forward until he stood in front of the groups of Hit Wizards and screamed, "Padfoot, drop it now."

His voice rang across the devastated street, a barely human sound, more a snarl sliding into a howl than words. The fingers of Sirius´s left hand sprang apart as if with a will of their own, and his wand clattered to the pavement. His eyes met Remus´s, as if he were noticing him for the first time, and he began to laugh harder, hysterical howls edged with sobs. And then the Hit Wizards surged forward to take him.

^_~

Twenty-seven hours later.

"Auror First Class Sirius Orion Black, it is the decision of this Court Martial that you be given life in Azkaban." The words rang through the chamber, echoing off the walls. The handful of people that composed an Auror´s court-martial did not fill the space enough to deaden sound. Sirius, cuffed motionless to the chair beside the dais, didn´t even twitch. He hadn´t spoken once since the proceedings began. There was no point in questioning him, the Ministry´s prosecutor had said. All Aurors had a magically induced allergic reaction to Veritaserum and other truth potions. A fatal one. They could not be drugged into spilling secrets to the enemy, and they also could not be trusted to give viable testimony in their own defence. Not that that was allowed at a hearing to determine sentencing. That was for trials, and there was obviously no need for one of those here. It would only bring unwanted publicity.

Remus did not like the Ministry´s prosecutor. In fact, he hated him. Ripping Bartemius Crouch´s throat out with his fangs and howling over the man´s twitching corpse would have been a very pleasurable way to spend the next full moon. He could almost taste the man´s blood in his mouth, imagining the way he would scream--and then the sound of those words washed over him. "Life in Azkaban."

"Sirius Black, you no longer hold rank on the Auror Corps, you no longer hold any rights under wizarding law, you no longer hold claim to any property or title. Sirius Black, you are dead in the eyes of the Law. Dead in body, dead in spirit, dead in name. All you possess will go to your next of kin, and you will go to the isle of Azkaban, there to remain until your mortal shell crumbles to dust. May the gods have mercy on your soul."

Sirius stared straight ahead; barely seeming to hear the words Crouch spoke. Maybe he did not. He had not spoken since being arrested, they said. Arrested for killing Peter. Little Peter, who would have had barely a chance against Sirius´s skill, now dead at his hands. There hadn´t even been a body, just a finger.

Wolves who turned on their own pack were driven out. Driven out and killed, if necessary, for the safety of the rest. But the rest were all dead. Dead because of Sirius.

The Longbottoms said he must have been under the Imperius, Vesta thought he´d been tortured or blackmailed, Polaris had decided he´d been Voldemort´s creature all along--she´d said as much when she testified. Remus didn´t know what to think. Sirius was packmate, betrayer, lover, and murderer. He had kissed those lips, the same lips that had spilled the location of James´s hiding place to the Death Eaters, lost himself in that body, hot and strong and submissive beneath him. Those hands had rubbed sore muscles and bandaged injuries after every full moon. And those same hands had killed Peter and twelve innocent Muggles.

He deserved Azkaban, surely he deserved it. So why did something in Remus want to cry out, to scream at the court to stop, to take it back, to let Sirius go free? He squashed that small, bleeding voice into a tiny corner of his heart, watching silently as two robed figures glided into the room, waves of cold rolling off them. Sirius came awake then, head snapping up and eyes rounding as they approached him, cringing back against the seat. His face, already pale, drained to grey, until it looked as if he were indeed already dead.

The creatures stopped a few yards away from him, waiting with inhuman patience. Motionless, soundless, like snakes waiting to strike. The cuffs holding Sirius to the chair sprang open, and even from across the courtroom, Remus could see his throat working as he swallowed. The bailiffs started to move forward, ready to drag the unwilling prisoner off to join the Dementors, and then Sirius stood. Walking with staggering steps, like a man dealt a deadly injury, he moved slowly toward the Dementors, manacles dragging at his wrists. He stopped several feel from them, and the two things moved to flank him, escorting him out of the room and from there presumably to the boat that would take them to Azkaban, crossing what was actually a strip of the North Sea but might as well have been the river Styx.

And through it all, Remus didn´t make a sound. He couldn´t. He could only watch that tall, lean frame, that black head, those torn and scorched golden robes, until the doors closed and Sirius disappeared from his life, from mortal existence, forever.

And then one of the bailiffs walked over to where Remus sat and waved him down to the chamber floor. Numbly, he complied. They had already questioned him, forcing his answers with the truth potions they had been unable to give Sirius. Perhaps they hadn´t really meant it when they had released him. Perhaps they were going to try him now. Try him, and sentence him, and declare him as dead physically as he was inside. Werewolves didn´t go to Azkaban. They were put down, like the animals they were. Some had argued that fate for Sirius, claiming the curse in his blood made him legally lycanthropic despite the fact that he´d never manifested any signs of the change. It had been dismissed as too merciful.

The bailiff crossed to where Remus hovered uncertainly on the edge of the chamber floor and stood before him for a long, silent moment. "Remus J. Lupin, you are aware that you were Sirius Black´s next of kin?"

Remus couldn´t answer, only shook his head silently. The man´s use of the past tense was like a knife in the gut, spreading a sharp, stabbing agony through him. An agony that died to a dull, steady ache. Behind him, he heard Polaris make a noise that sounded oddly like a stunned gasp.

"How..."

"He had it changed a year ago." The man shrugged slightly. What traitorous Aurors chose write on their medical forms was nothing to him. Then he held something out to Remus, proffering it with an air of great ceremony. "As Mr. Black´s next of kin, it is your right to break his wand. We can always burn the pieces unbroken, but we´d prefer to follow the proper ceremony. Best for everybody."

Remus´s hand seemed to move without input from his brain, reaching out to grasp the slender object and bring it towards him.

He stood motionless, staring at the length of wood in his hands. Thirteen inches of dogwood and Hebridian Black heartstring, flexible, but likely to snap if bent too hard. The smooth, pale wood felt like silk against his fingers, the balance perfect. It was the same length as his own wand, down to the last millimeter. Everyone was staring at him. Break it, Remus. It´s only wood. Just a little pressure, bend the ends toward each other...

He couldn´t do it. Couldn´t bring himself to cross that last, final line.

In the end, it didn´t matter. Before he could nerve himself up to break the fragile length of dogwood, a pair of callused and slightly bony hands snatched it from his grip. The sound of the wood splintering was louder than he had expected it to be, echoing through the chamber like the report of a Muggle handgun.

Without a word, Polaris Black threw her brother´s shattered wand to the floor and turned on her heel to go. Her boot heels clacked angrily against the marble flagstones as she walked away from then, and she never once turned to look back. But then, perhaps she had something to look forward towards.

Oh I'd pray for him, but I've forgotten how
And there is nothing, nothing that can save him now
With those haunted eyes, and that funny bow
And who was I to deny him?

Lux aeterna Luce-at eis
Domine cum sanctic tuis in aeternum
Quia pius es
Requiem aeternaum dona eis Domine
Quia pius es
Requiem aeternaum dona eis Domine
Quia pius es
Et lux perpetua luceat eis Cum sancris tuis in
Aeternum quia pius es
Tonight the war is over.

^_~