Jabez

A series of quiet epiphanies. Post-GoF, Sirius/Remus slash. "Even the sunlight's older here, faded and cooled with dawn; the floorboards feel odd under his human feet, and his skin is too thin, too sensitive. So long as a dog, and he's almost forgotten - this muted scent of dust, of Remus, of books lining the creaking shelves."

Remus at 12 Grimmauld Place. Post-OotP. "Wide, rough scars on the wooden floor, still matching the shape of Buckbeak's talons. Soft velvet, worn and folded in blue layers on top of the cupboard - old curtains, the ones Remus sees in Black family portraits. No scent of Sirius here - not even on the stiff shirts in that chest of drawers, too formal for Sirius' tastes, no doubt only donned at his mother's command."

Snape's face is strangely smooth in the firelight: as pale and glassy as the Blacks' old china, stained and yellow with age. It is in the midst of this silence, wary rather than companionable, that Snape glances up - and Remus is caught looking at Snape's hands, at the way they curve around his cup of tea.