Facing

Facing

Harry had never paid much attention to the ceiling of his bedroom, but he did now. It was plain, bare, white. Sterile, neutral, devoid. It conjured no emotions and it provoked no memories. He found himself staring at it often, for white was the opposite of black, and some things were too painful to remember.

The Dursleys only asked him about it once, in the second week of the summer holidays.

"Boy - er - Harry."

"What."

Uncle Vernon sat down across the room, on the chair between Harry's trunk and his cauldron.

"Like looking at the ceiling, do you?"

"Yes."

"Not anything you'd rather be doing?"

"No."

"Er - right. Dinner's in a quarter of an hour."

He needn't worry, Harry thought. He wouldn't tell the Order that the Dursleys mistreated him. They wouldn't have to be embarrassed by pink-haired young women or dingy men who smelled of stale alcohol appearing on Privet Drive. Their pretending could go on, their world could stay safe.

The weeks passed.

*~*~*~*~*~*

He lies upon his bed, and I do not know what to say to him. I know that I look horrible, coming apart at the seams. My hair has more gray than brown now; my eyes are bloodshot from tears and lack of sleep. I didn't shave this morning and I am still pale from the full moon three days ago.

"You're my guardian now."

"Yes. Sirius specified that in his will."

He made that will mere days after he arrived at my house. I remember him lying across the bed, long legs hanging off the end. "You and Harry will be the sole beneficiaries, Reme," he said. "If anything happens to me, I want you two to be provided for."

I take a deep breath and look at Harry, whose eyes are blank and unfocused. "I want you to come and live with me."

He swallows and bites his lip.

"I know you'd rather have Sirius, Harry. I know you miss him so much that - "

"I don't want to talk about it."

"You can't avoid it forever, Harry. Neither can I. I have a cottage in the country, and I want you to live with me there."

"Not Sirius's house?"

"No. The Order are still using it as headquarters." I destroyed the picture of Sirius's mother. Her screams still echo in my ears.

He sits up and looks at me directly for the first time since I arrived. "If Sirius wanted it," he says.

"He did." He used to lean over in the middle of the night and whisper, "He needs us, Moony. And we need him."

"Go back to sleep, Sirius," I'd mutter, pulling the pillow over my head. Now I wish I hadn't done that.

"But what you want matters too, Harry," I say. "If you'd rather stay here - "

"No."

"Than you'll come with me?"

*~*~*~*~*~*

"This house used to belong to Sirius too," I say five hours later. "This is the place he bought with the money his uncle left him."

It reeks of memories, every corner and corridor and piece of furniture. The couch where we lost our virginity to each other during the Christmas holidays of our seventh year. I see us curled up together, two pale boys, tired and sweaty but fully satisfied from each other's intoxicating presence. The table where we wrote letters contacting the other members of the Order. "How do you spell Sturgis again?" I hear his voice ask. "For some reason, I can never remember..."

"Did you live here too then?"

"Yes. I couldn't sell it after he was imprisoned, no one wanted to buy a house that a murderer had lived in."

"He never told me you two had been roommates."

I turn and face him, face the hair and the body he inherited from James, the eyes that belong to Lily, the soul that is his alone. I open my mouth to speak, but the words are lodged in my throat and will not move.

"Come with me," I say abruptly.

I lead him down the hallway, past the window where I saw the black dog one year ago, past the hole I kicked in the wall when Sirius was taken away. The door to my bedroom is on the right.

I sit down on the faded and patched blanket and hand him the photograph I keep on the nightstand.

Two men, still young, but old for their years, sitting at the breakfast table with their mouths devouring each other. Two lovers, exhausted but reinvigorated by the other's presence. Tonks took it when we weren't looking and developed it in the cellar. My fingers are running through Sirius's hair and his hand is resting on my neck.

Harry stares at it and blinks. "Oh."

"Yes."

"He never told me."

"There wasn't time."

"You never told me."

"I am now."

Harry sets the photograph back on the nightstand and looks at me, his mouth closed but his eyes asking question after question.

"We got together at the end of our sixth year at Hogwarts," I say, struggling to meet Harry's gaze. "We moved into this house after graduation."

"And you were together again after he escaped."

"Yes." He cried after we'd made love for the first time in fifteen years, tears streaming down his face. I kissed them away.

*~*~*~*~*~*

"This room was ours, but the bed is new," said Remus, opening the door across the hallway. He looked up at the ceiling and blushed. "I'm sorry about the mirror...Sirius found it erotic, and I've never taken it down. I can tomorrow if you want."

"No," said Harry. "That's all right. Leave it."

The mirror on the ceiling refused to let him sleep. Blankness was gone; hiding was impossible. Sirius would have wanted that too.

The End