If In The Future

July 4

Sirius and I went for a walk by the river this morning...with him as a dog, of course, anything else would be too risky. It was extremely hot today and so we ended up going swimming, with me in long robes and everything. Underwater he transformed back for a second and kissed me.

When we got back he let me have the shower first and politely waited outside. He's being so patient I can hardly believe it.

Calliope cornered me at work today "All right, I don't usually pry into employee's personal lives, but I just can't take the suspense anymore. You've been floating around in a daze all morning. What is it?"

I just smiled.

When I came home for dinner, Sirius had made chocolate cake. "I didn't know you could bake," I said, surprised.

"Yeah, I taught myself when I was a kid. It was just me and my parents at home, no house-elfs to cater to my every whim." He grinned. "So if I wanted anything beyond three meals a day, I had to fix it myself."

Looking at the cake, a memory came rushing into my head from some long-forgotten place. Once when we were fifth-years, we had been eating chocolate cake in the Hogwarts kitchen together - just the two of us, no James or Peter. I'd had a bit of frosting on my mouth and he'd reached over to brush it away. I'd panicked at his touch, knowing that in another second of physical contact I would have grabbed him from across the table and kissed him. Now there we were again, and I seized my chance to do what I should have done twenty years ago.

After dinner we decided to play chess. Sirius borrowed my extra set of pieces who, it turned out, didn't trust him at all.

"Who in the hell is that?" asked the white king, jabbing one chipped thumb in Sirius's direction. The pieces were already irritated at me because I haven't played chess since a late-night game with Minerva McGonagall when I was still teaching at Hogwarts. "He's even skinner than you are."

"That's Sirius," I said, "and be polite."

"Wait a minute!" shouted the black queen, "he's the bloke who killed all those people!"

"No he is NOT," I said firmly. "Now will you all behave yourselves and let us play this game?"

"I'm not being ordered about by any murderer, thank you very much," said one of the black pawns, sitting down on the board and giving Sirius a particularly stubborn glare. "He'll probably blow us up if we don't do as he says!"

"I'm not getting blown up!" said another black pawn, taking a seat beside the first. I picked both of them up by their arms, despite yelps of protest.

"You listen to me," I said. "He is NOT a murderer. No one is getting blown up, but a few uncooperative chess pieces could find themselves back in their box for another few years if they continue to disobey. Come on, lads, you're just going to have to get used to him, because he's not leaving."

"Ohhhhh," said the white knight, "I think I'm beginning to understand what's going on here." He winked at the bishop, who gave him a knowing nod.

"What are they talking about?" asked the first black pawn.

"Dunno," whispered the other in response.

"Remus fancies him, you prat," said the black bishop.

"And I completely understand why, he's quite fetching," said the white queen, smiling seductively.

"No he's not, he's a murderer!" roared the black queen.

"Oh, shut your mouth, no one's listening to you anyway," said the black king.

"ALL OF YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTHS!" I yelled. They complied instantly. "Now. We are going to play chess. And either you are going to be quiet on your own or I'm using a silencing charm. Understood?"

"Oh, all right then," grumbled the white king.

The black pieces got used to Sirius in time, though the queen took it personally when he had to sacrifice her. "I say, Remus," asked one of the white pawns at the end of the game (which Sirius won). "whatever happened to that fellow Jonathan?"

"Think hard, idiot," said the white queen. "He's gone and Sirius is here. Figure it out." I swept them all off the board and back into their box. Then I looked over at Sirius.

"And Jonathan is?" he asked, his voice betraying no emotion.

"Jonathan was the man I lived with for ten months about five years ago," I said.

It's funny, I haven't thought about Jonathan for months. I met him at work back when I was still an Auror - handsome, witty, and genuinely kind, I thought that if anyone could help me forget Sirius, it was he. He was the first man I'd dated who didn't pressure me for sex by the third date. In fact, he was one of the first men I'd actually dated, as opposed to met in a bar and gone home with.

Jonathan was a good person; there's no denying that. But he wasn't right for me. For example, he'd take off without telling me where he was going during the full moon. The fact that I'm a werewolf was never something he was completely comfortable with. And there were times where it seemed that all we had in common was sex...which, I'll admit, was very satisfying on a physical level. He just wasn't right for me...for one thing, he'd lived too much of a charmed life. I believe I may have been the first truly damaged person he let himself get close to. Yes, he was an Auror, but that was his career, his chance to be a hero. It wasn't personal like it was for me. I'd try to talk about what I was feeling sometimes and he'd always listen, but I could tell he didn't really understand.

I loved him. I loved his sense of humor and his willingness to try and help, even though he wasn't at all comfortable everything about me. I loved his ability to make me feel desirable and the way he'd do little things to make me feel better after we had an argument. I loved how he kept trying. But I think I always knew that things weren't going to work out between us.

When the Wolfsbane Potion was discovered, it was the sign I needed that it was time to leave him. I didn't need him to make me feel normal anymore. When I told him I wanted to break up, he was disappointed, but I could tell it was neither a shock nor a trauma. He simply packed his things, got an apartment in Hogsmeade, said goodbye, and left. All of this I told to Sirius.

"I'm glad he was kind to you," he said when I had finished. "I'm glad you were happy, at least for a while, with him."

"I don't know if it was really happiness," I said. "It was more just...safety. Something that made me feel like a normal person."

"You are a normal person," he said, taking my hand and looking into my eyes. "Stop thinking that you're so different from everyone else. Anything that makes you different isn't really that important."

"Sirius, I'm a werewolf."

"And I'm a convicted murderer. Those are things that happened to us, Moony, they aren't who we are. Not unless we let them be."

As the words left his mouth, I could tell he was convincing not only me but himself. And I loved him for it.