Binary

It's the first star to the right? Do you see it?

Fingers tighten in a grasp around the window as Remus Lupin peers out the window at the moonless night sky. The house he is standing within was always empty and cold, but there had been a distraction from that stillness. Until two nights ago, and the fact still hadn't sunk in.

He could still feel Sirius's arms around him.

I used to dream, you know. There was a tale that used to entrance me. I would never have to grow up, never have to face the fate they had in store for me. First star to the right, and straight on until morning.

Second star... it was the second star to the right.

Yes, Remus, perhaps. Then again, you always knew me too well. I made things up the way I liked them, and besides, if I didn't get things wrong, you wouldn't have the pleasure of correcting me, would you?

Somewhere, amid all the agony he had been in, Sirius had still found the ability to smile. Right then, right there, with Remus's head pillowed on his shoulder as they stared up into the sky that was endless and forever. For all the things they had to worry about, there was always this. This comfort of arms and friendship and love that had gone deeper than either of them knew.

There's something else, too.

The hesitance in that voice had drawn Remus's head to look into shadowed blue eyes.

What is it, Sirius?

Well, Moony, you do remember that little thing about the star they named me after, don't you? Oh, I don't mean the dog star, and don't look at me like that. The thought was plain on your face, and I can read you as well as you read those books of yours, after all. No, the other thing.

Which other thing?

At the time, his voice had been tinged with faint amusement, and he had turned his attention back to the sky, remembering. Being around Sirius made him feel young, and he loved that feeling. The amusement faded almost immediately, but it had given Sirius a safe place in which to speak, and so he did.

It was a binary, remember? Two stars, circling around each other forever? It always struck me as being almost - well, you know. Romantic.

Howso?

Sirius A wouldn't be itself without Sirius B.

His voice had been shadowed with embarrassment, almost as though he was ashamed of hearing himself admit to such a thing. Remus remembered this with the clarity of a knife cutting deep enough to draw a drop of blood against the skin. He also remembered how, right after that, the words had come out, almost tumbling over each other in his haste to get them out in the open between them.

It reminded me of us. You know, after. After Azkaban, and after I started getting a little bit of my sanity back, and oh, don't start. You know. How we circled around each other for years without saying anything. Then after school, and I had my flat, and I asked you to move in and I told you, and... Remus, what I told you then, it never changed and... I just don't think I'm quite myself when you're not around me. Honestly, I wouldn't quite know what to do with myself.

I think it's mutual, then.

That's all he had said. It was all he had needed.

It had been a reprieve from it all, an escape from the house that pressed so oppressively around them, and the war that was building around them, and the pressure of keeping what had always been so natural between them a secret from the Order. Or rather, the secret that wasn't a secret, as everyone knew, but none acknowledged it out in the open, and when they were to slip, they just looked away.

What they were to each other made them uncomfortable. It always had, but they had overlooked it in the time of war, and as that time had come again, they were ignoring it still the same.

Except Tonks, who looked at them and smiled because she knew, and didn't judge.

Now he was gone, and none of them expressed any regret. An anger boiled up in him, and was swiftly dampened again. It wouldn't do for him to be angry, as they had never understood, and so never would have the chance. For them, life had just gone on as though it meant nothing. Maybe for them, it did, but what he had told Sirius was true.

It was mutual, and just as Sirius A wouldn't be itself without Sirius B, Remus Lupin didn't know quite what to make of himself without Sirius Black. He had always been there, in his mind if not by his side, and now there was nothing there. There wasn't even the fleeting hope that he would return, for who returns from beyond the veil? Who can?

He ignored the voice deep within that whispered that if it was possible, Sirius would find a way. He always had before.

So he ignored his thoughts and traced his eyes upon Orion's constellation rising high in the sky, starting his yearly search for Artemis to see if this year she wouldn't let him catch her at last. Tonight, she was blissfully absent, so there was no chance. Not tonight. His eyes traced the path to the bright star, and he closed his eyes away from it, only to see the stars painted on the inside of his eyelids.

There was a hand on his shoulder then, and he jumped, finally turning away from the stars to see the woman who had been closest to Sirius other than himself. No, Harry hadn't known him at all, so he would only have the most distant glimmer of what he had lost. Nymphadora, she knew as well as he did. She knew, as none other in the Order would.

Sirius had loved her almost as a sister when he was around her, and so Remus had done the same. He still thought of her that way.

"Remus?"

"I'm all right," he answered the unspoken question in her tone, and turned back to the stars again. Then he looked over his shoulder at her.

"Did Sirius ever tell you of the love story between Sirius A and Sirius B?"

"No... should he 'ave?"

"Most definitely," he responded, "and since he cannot, it is up to me."

So, with halting words, significant pauses, and a voice filled with more loss than he ever wished he would experience, he did exactly that. And so they stood there together, sharing silently in the loss, until that bright star faded from the sky in the blazing light of the morning sun.

She touched his arm, and turned away to leave him with his thoughts.

He went back to the room they had shared, and finally allowed himself to grieve that which was lost.

-end-