If In The Past

Chapter Five: Hope Arisen

Dear Remus,

Last night, I was as wakeful was I was that first night in the dormitory. The reasons differ, but I'll get there in a minute.

On that night in the dormitory ten years ago, I sat up and pondered my strange fascination with men. Why was it, I wondered, that they enticed me, caught my attention, haunted my thoughts? One look from the eyes of a handsome man and I longed to know his most hidden secrets. It occurred to me somewhere around midnight that I could conjure up no satisfactory picture of a life spent with a woman. I had nothing against women and was not nor am I now a misogynist, but the thought did not appeal to me. Around one in the morning I fell asleep, having drawn no satisfactory conclusions but finding solace in Lyrio's advice that one day I would figure things out.

Last night, my insomnia resulted from a dark and burning rage. I was reading over the letters I've written and I realized that they were all that remained of my former life. My sole reason for existing is to write fruitless missives to a person who will never read them. I flew into a fury and began to through whatever I could find across the cell. When I had thrown all that was there, I pounded the walls and wailed. The Dementors stood outside my cell, and I fell onto the floor, my worst memories flashing before my eyes. The icy water of the Hogwarts lake, entering my lungs and numbing my emotions with its frigid sting. The scar on your arm, marring that beautiful body and informing the world of the pain within. Peter screaming at me in the street, his every syllable sealing my fate. James and Lily's lifeless bodies, their eyes blank and devoid of all the joy and love that had once dwelled there.

"I DON'T DESERVE ANY OF THIS!" I screamed. "I'M INNOCENT! DO YOU HEAR ME? INNOCENT!"

And the Dementors took a step back.

I couldn't believe it. They retreated. They will be back, but they retreated.

Remus, there is hope that one day you will read these letters. I love you more than I can say.

Your Sirius.

Chapter Six: Amoria Wist

Dear Remus,

Five months have passed since I last wrote. We've both turned twenty-two. These months have been very intense and slow-moving for me, but I had made some progress.

My days have schedule and routine now. Every morning I read The Daily Prophet cover to cover before breakfast so that I will remember that life still goes on outside of this miserable fortress. I meditate on my innocence until lunch. I chant the word, spell it in sign language, tear out letters from the newspaper and rearrange them to spell it, etch it in the walls, write it in the dust. After lunch I spend time contemplating all my good memories. I haven't been writing them down, but have decided to do so again. The good I will write so that I don't forget them. The bad I will write so that I will be the one who forces myself to remember them and not the Dementors.

Amoria Wist. There is a girl that I will never forget, though I wish I could. Dark blonde, loud, persistent, and without shame, she was a bit player in the story of my life until the end of September in our fifth year.

As I was walking from Potions to Care of Magical Creatures, she approached me in the hall. "Hey, Sirius, can I talk to you for a second?"

"Sure," I said, uneasy but a little curious.

"You're good friends with Remus Lupin, right?"

"Yeah," I said, hoping this conversation wasn't heading where I thought it might be.

"Does he ever talk about me?"

You had, once; I recall you saying that she'd look a whole lot better if she left her hair down and didn't pull it back so severely.

"Not really," I said.

"Do you think he'd go out with me if I asked him?"

The Marauders were three weeks away from the Animagi transformations. At that moment it was not Sirius who reacted but Padfoot, with the possessive fervor of an animal whose prospective mate was being approached by a rival. But Sirius triumphed over Padfoot, and decided to be fair.

"I don't know," I said. "Ask him and see."

And she did. You accepted.

Remus, what in the hell were you thinking? You weren't attracted to her, she'd never interested you. You didn't love her. You loved me, Remus, and I loved you. Me, I did. I was willing to give your everything you ever wanted. I risked going through the highly dangerous spell to become an Animagus for you. I once saved you from the Whomping Willow, though that happened after you ended things with Amoria. I knew you better than anyone. I kept your secrets and got you water to clean your wounds after every full moon, though you'd never let me see them. I used to leave Chocolate Frogs on your pillow, in your bag, next to whatever book you were reading. I wanted you to share my bed and my life forever, and I knew that by the time we were fifteen.

And Amoria Wist took down her hair, smiled, and asked you out, and you accepted.

It must have been because you were scared. By the time we were fifteen, I'd heard people wonder about you: why you were always missing school, why you looked so sick...and another rumor, occasionally whispered: "D'you think he's queer?" Having a girlfriend was a way you could prove you were like everybody else, even if you weren't.

Do you know, Remus, what the one thing I'd change about you if I could is? It's not your lycanthropy, and it's not your practicality-above-all-else nature. It's your fear. I can't stand watching how it limits your life.

You and Amoria kept going out for months, though you barely saw her. My resentment of her grew and grew. I found myself wishing she'd fail all her classes and be expelled, that she'd get sick and have to leave school, that she'd undergo some terrible accident and never return. The only comfort I had was that you never went out of your way to see her, and that when you did you always seemed distracted and absent.

One night in April, I snuck down into the common room with the Invisibility Cloak. I was hungry, and planning to go to the kitchens and get a sandwich or three. As I headed down the stairs, my heart stopped and my eyes stared.

You and Amoria were snogging on one of the couches. You were being quite gentlemanly about the whole affair, but she was wild: within seconds she had straddled you and was sucking on your neck.

I was livid. Doing the first thing instinct told me to do, I went back into the dormitory, grabbed a Foul-Smelling Stink Pellet, ran back to the stairs, and gave it an expert throw at Amoria's head. She screeched.

"Amoria, what is it? Oh my God...all right, who did that?"

James and Peter, hearing the screams, ran out of the dormitory. Peter ran directly into me and knocked me over, the cloak sliding away to expose most of my body.

Your face was a mask of bottled rage. "Amoria," you said, "I'm terribly sorry about all this. It won't happen again. Not after I've dealt with him. I'll see you in the morning."

With an expression somewhere between shock, rage, and befuddlement, she marched out of the portrait hole and went, presumably, back to the Hufflepuff Tower.

You faced me and the bottled rage exploded. "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!"

"What do you think you're doing?" I shot back. "If you have to snog, couldn't you find a more private place to do it?"

"That's no excuse for you to act like a stupid git! What the hell is the matter with you?!"

"WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH ME!" I roared. "I'm not the one snogging with some girl I don't even like!"

"Have you gone mad?" you screamed. "How should you know how I feel about Amoria!?"

"SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!" hollered James. A bit intimidated, we both closed our mouths and stared. "Sirius, you're acting like a madman. Remus, he does have a point, the common room is not exactly the best place.

"I'd like to see what you'd do if you were alone with Lily Evans there," you muttered.

He ignored you. "Sirius, what's between Remus and Amoria is what's between them, and not you. Stay out of it. Now, can we all act like rational human beings and go back to sleep?"

"You two can," you said, your eyes not leaving me. "Sirius and I have some things to discuss."

Surprisingly, your voice had become calm and even.

Exchanging looks, Peter and James went upstairs. As the door closed, you sat down on the couch and gestured for me to sit next to you.

"First of all," you said, "you're right."

Whatever I'd been expecting, that wasn't it.

"I don't like Amoria. Well, not romantically, she's nice enough, but...we're not really compatible." You sat further back and stared up at the ceiling. "Damn it, who am I trying to fool, anyway? I'm a freak and there's no getting around it."

"You're not a freak!" I said, surprising myself with the intensity in my voice.

"That's kind of you, Sirius, but I'm afraid you don't know everything about me."

The silence was long and uncomfortable. You stared at the ceiling. I stared at you and wished I could put my arms around you and hold you until you were able to cry and let everything you were feeling out.

Only a month before, I realized I was in love with you. I knew I was attracted to you since our second year, but it had been only recently that I discovered my feelings had grown and deepened.

"She wants things I can't give her," you said, your gaze coming down from the ceiling but still not looking at me. "Time. Emotion. Honesty. Devotion. Someone to carry her books and buy her presents and take her to dances. Sex." Then you cringed, realizing what you'd said.

"You...you can't..." I stammered, fervently hoping that lycanthropy didn't lead to impotency.

"No, I could if I wanted to. Physically, I could. But it doesn't feel right to me, the thought of sleeping with her."

I was positive that you could hear my loud, rapid, and nervous heartbeat. "Have you ever...you know..."

"Slept with anyone? My God, Sirius, you should see yourself blush. You're as red as the Gryffindor flag."

I think I blushed even redder. I couldn't believe that I was sitting down next to you, our thighs almost touching, in a nearly empty room talking about sex. The fact that you and Amoria had been snogging on the same couch minutes before made the whole thing even weirder.

"I haven't," you said, finally looking at me.

"Good," I said before I could stop myself. You gave me an odd look. "I mean, I'd worry about you if you had. We're only fifteen, you know."

"Then you haven't either."

"Er...no."

"You're blushing again."

"Am I?"

"Yes."

"You know what," I said, desperate to change the subject, "I'm not really tired."

"I'm not either."

"I'm more hungry than anything else. Let's go down to the kitchens and get some food."

You laughed, and the tension in my body lessened. "I'm surprised you didn't become a pig when you did the Animagus transformation," you said, grinning.

"Said the man who once ate five rare steaks in a row," I retorted.

"Hey, that was not my fault, it was the afternoon just before the full moon."

"Oh, sure, that's your excuse..."

"Come on, you idiot," you said, smiling, and walked through the portrait hole under the cloak together.