In the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

3 - Brooms, Hands.

They sat together while James dipped and spun over the pitch. Peter was in the row below them, gasping and jerking in genuine fright as James swooped treacherously low to the ground, rippling the overgrown grass with his heels, and shot into the air again. It was almost summer, and the wind brought the oddly homey smell of sun-dried grass. The pitch had been left fallow since the last Quidditch game. Remus watched with absent interest; he had seen this show before. Stealing glances at Sirius, he could see boredom falling over his face as well.

"Wonder what's going to become of him after next year," Sirius muttered, still watching James.

Remus frowned at him.

"What?"

"No more Quidditch," said Sirius, keeping his voice low enough that Peter could not hear over the whip of the wind. "Not in any organized way, anyway. What's he going to do with himself?"

James flattened himself over his broomstick, gaining speed, and shot through the center goal-hoop, whooping.

"What are any of us going to do with ourselves?" asked Remus absently.

Sirius turned to him with a half-grin, his hands rubbing back and forth on his thighs. "No philosophy, Moony. It's early."

Remus seized this window of Sirius' attention and turned bodily toward him, scooting around on the bleacher bench so that his knees touched Sirius'.

"What are you going to do?" Sirius raised his eyebrows, and Remus added, "It's not philosophy. It's curiosity."

"Scholar," Sirius muttered, and it sounded like an insult. But he didn't turn back to James. "I'm gonna fight, is what I'm going to do. I want--"

"Padfoot! Look, watch this, I learnt it last week." James had stopped and was hovering at the foot of the bleachers. Sirius looked quickly between him and Remus. James looked subtly put out. "Come on, look!" he shouted. Rocketing off across the pitch, he corkscrewed violently in midair, turning round thrice, like a crank. Heading back their way, he called, "That's the Glenn Defense. Something, innit?" He beamed at Sirius. He never minded when Remus wasn't watching, but he needed Sirius to see.

Sirius nodded obligingly. Peter clapped.

Remus turned his body back to James, scooting across the bench until his hip touched Sirius'. Sirius would not be looking at him again.

"D'you ever miss him, Moony? Like... not just miss him. Need him. Need him just to exist, anywhere, at all, so that you don't have to feel like it's over?"

"Yeah, I do," Remus lies. He has actually never allowed himself to go down that road. He is far too well-trained in regret, in near misses, in almost-hads. When he feels himself slipping, feels that tug in his chest that wants to pull him down, he repeats the words to himself: it cannot be changed.

Like a spell, it works every time for those who know how to do it.

The whole tower was sleeping, Remus imagined, but for the two of them. Peter soughed heavily through his mouth, like a little boy, and James snored raucously.

Sirius, shielded behind the hangings of his bed, had been utterly silent until a moment ago. Remus had considered whispering out to him, relieved that he was not the only one who lay awake.

Then Sirius had drawn a long, heavy breath, and it had hitched in his throat at the end, and there was a flurry of rustling. Then the rustling died, and there was breathing, mouth-breathing, even and slow at first.

Remus was familiar with the sounds, and it puzzled him that he had never before thought of them coming out of Sirius.

A startling, violent, wet sound--spitting. Then more breathing, faster. Tiny, accidental squeaks of voice escaping with it. The sounds tingled in the nadir of Remus' belly, and he gripped the edge of his mattress, rubbing himself rhythmically against the fitted sheet for relief. He didn't want to touch himself just then; it would have felt dirty, wrong. But he was hard and aching and in need.

Sirius made a sound, a growl-like groan, as if trying to force breath out and hold it in at once. His bed creaked, once, twice, as he turned over. His breathing evened out, still shallow and scraping, like a saw. Remus was still rooting against the bed sheets, silent, holding his breath.

He realized then that James had stopped snoring.

"I loved you for a long time before I even knew it," Sirius tells him, in one of his shocking, tender moments.

"I always thought--"

"I admired James. I loved James. But when you don't... when you haven't figured yourself out, you turn it into--you think those feelings are just... James scoring a goal, James taking a dive on his broom. Admiration."

"Oh," Remus says, unsure what this has to do with him.

"But I figured myself out. What I wanted. Who I wanted. Somewhere in the figuring, I realized it wasn't James."

Remus sucks his lower lip, casting his eyes downward, and reaches out to fiddle with the hair behind Sirius' ear.

"You know, I--"

Sirius interrupts him. "I know. I knew. I always knew."

He sounds like a sage. Remus is ashamed that this surprises him.

Peter had a camera, a big old Muggle one. His father had given it to him for his birthday that spring. The day after their N.E.W.T.s, a fine summery one, he brought it out to the lake with him.

"Moony, you're shortest, so get in front. No, now you're blocking James' chin--you guys, quit moving!" He lowered the camera and whined, "Padfoot, if you're going to make that kind of face I won't take it at all."

"Oh, come off it," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. He raised his wand. "Accio camera!"

Peter fell over himself grabbing at it, but it flew into Sirius' open hands. He wound it and snapped a photo of Peter's indignant face. James threw his head back laughing, and Remus bent and supported himself on his knees. Sirius wheeled around and photographed them. James knelt to his book bag and grabbed his contraband Snitch out of it. "Get this, Padfoot!" He released it and caught it again, and again. Sirius circled him, snapping every angle.

"Don't use up all the film, I'm off to get my broomstick," shouted James, running up the slope to the castle. "Aerial shots!"

Remus sat on the grass, grinning, watching Sirius photograph Peter as The Thinker, as a rock star, as a pirouetting dancer. Then Sirius turned, masked by the camera, and advanced on Remus, snapping, snapping. Remus lowered his chin to his chest, giving the camera the crown of his head. Sirius stooped suddenly and snapped inches away from Remus' face, an extreme close-up.

"I'm boring," Remus scolded, and Sirius only shook his head.

And James was speeding around the West tower, shouting.

"Give it here!"

Sirius tossed the camera up to him, eliciting a cry from Peter, and James circled above them, photographing their upturned faces, and swooped low to let them all chase after him, laughing and cursing, as the shutter clicked and clicked.

Peter promised he'd get the photos developed at a wizard shop over the summer, but as far as Remus knew, he never did.

"I miss Hogwarts, Remus," Sirius says, his voice breaking. "I miss us the way we were. Even with the war on. I miss not knowing what was going to become of us, feeling like we had years and years to figure ourselves out, feeling like--like things could last. I miss being stupid and friends. I miss not knowing about Peter."

Remus closes his eyes and covers his face with his hands. He has no right to be the one who shuts down over this. He has no right to fall apart weeping, or to make Sirius comfort him.

"There's nothing we can do about it," he says, and his voice sounds harder than he's ever heard it, cutting through the softness of the bed, the dawn-darkness, Sirius' loose embrace.

Sirius sucks in a quick breath.

"That's why it hurts, Moony."

(to be continued)