Paint the Silence

Paint the Silence

A combination of love and aggression. Now the violence sleeps inside, abandoned feeling for peace of mind. It's the reason why your teething side frustrates me. Pain comes in stages. Nothing changes.

--Paint the Silence, by South.

When Harry wakes up to see a dark figure silhouetted in his doorway, it's probably near to three in the morning, although he has no watch so he can't be sure. Disorientated, he has no idea who the figure could be; he squints through the dim light and scrabbles on his bedside table for his wand, despite the fact that he'd definitely get expelled if he used magic - no trial for him another time, oh, no, he'd just get chucked out--

"Are you awake?" And it's Sirius's voice, low and slightly hoarse. Harry can just imagine how it used to be, before thirteen years of screaming and silence rotted away his vocal cords, deep and melodious and fluent, like molten silver but warmer.

"I am now," he whispers back, glancing over at Ron's bed but he's still asleep, dead to the world, Ron always is, unless Harry wants him to be asleep - then he's always wide awake.

"I'm glad you are," Sirius's voice murmurs, and then he comes into the room, footsteps quiet and hollow on the empty floorboards, and he sits down on the edge of Harry's bed quietly. He smells like whiskey and something else that Harry only vaguely recognises as Remus. Lightly, Sirius puts his hand on Harry's head, tenderly stroking his hair. Harry lies still; whatever game Sirius is playing this time, he doesn't understand it.

"I've missed you so much," Sirius sighs, "and I'm so glad you're back here with me."

"Er, thanks?" Harry mutters, but Sirius's hand is still on his head, moving slightly so his large, calloused thumb is rubbing idly over Harry's lips. Harry feels himself breathing in short sharp bursts as he murmurs, "Sirius, I..."

He can practically hear Sirius's smile in the dark. "You always did talk too much, James," he murmurs before he leans down and brushes his lips against Harry's.

Harry feels something explode in his chest and fights back a sudden urge to scream and kick, anything, make a big noise so Ron wakes up, or--

But Sirius's lips are gentle and warm against his and he finds himself opening his mouth almost eagerly, reasoning I owe him this at least, but it's still an unpleasant shock when he feels Sirius's hands at the top of his shorts.

Later that night Harry walks Sirius quietly back to his room. The older man seems half-asleep still, his dark eyes glittering and weary. Harry pushes him gently back into his room but holds his face up to bear a last kiss as Sirius cups a rough hand around his chin and smiles blearily and says "Goodnight, James."

A slightly sick, dirty feeling in the bottom of his stomach, Harry watches Sirius get back into bed, switches off the light, and goes back to bed.

===

A week later, Remus wakes to find himself alone in the middle of the sunrise. He feels his heart sink in his chest, vivid memories of the time Sirius sleepwalked and nearly fell out of a window running through his mind. He could be in the bathroom, of course, but it's better not to take any chances, and so Remus gets up, pulls on some boxers, and goes in search of him.

He only has to exit his room when he sees Sirius there, tall and gaunt and exhausted like he usually is, supported by Harry, which is Remus's first surprise of the night.

When Harry sees him, his eyes widen, startled green with a hint of some other emotion that Remus can't decipher or smell, and shoves Sirius at him. "Found him - wandering -" Harry stammers. "Here--see you in the morning..."

Sirius's weight being thrust at Remus surprises him; as Sirius half-falls forwards into his arms, clearly half-asleep, his legs buckle. For a ghastly moment Harry's eyes flicker over the long, silvery scar on his chest, and then for a very long second he gazes mutely into Remus's eyes. Then he takes the opportunity to scarper, bolting down the hallway to his own room and shutting the door very firmly after himself.

Remus sighs and hefts Sirius back into bed, watching him as the sun breaks into the sky and Sirius's breathing evens out, and holding him when beads of sweat break out on his forehead and he cries out wordlessly as the Dementors with their skeletal hands grope for him in his nightmares. Finally the nightmares break and Sirius relaxes back into dreams; Remus allows himself to lie back and close his eyes as Sirius nuzzles up to him and murmurs something that may or may not have been "James".

There are sacrifices, Remus thinks grimly, that one must make.

===

That morning, he catches Harry before breakfast and says, "Harry, last night -- you must understand, if Sirius did anything -- inappropriate, you must tell me, and--" And then he breaks off, because he reasons that his suspicions must be worse than the actuality.

And Harry looks up at him and shrugs. "Don't worry. He's been away from other people for a while. I can understand that, I think." But his voice is hesitant, and his eyes are dark pools, and Remus has to look away in case he seizes the boy by his shoulders and shakes him, and forces the truth out of him.

Of course, he doesn't really want to know the truth.

When they enter the kitchen, and Sirius smiles up at them from his eggs and bacon, Harry recoils.

===

The next summer, as a grieving and morose Harry enters Grimmauld Place, he refuses to talk to Remus until one day in late August when they're both sitting out in the garden on old white metal chairs. The leaves on the trees have already started to turn brown, but the late-evening dusky light streams through them and dapples a pebbly white pattern on Harry's young face.

"I miss him," Harry says all of a sudden, and Remus looks up from his wineglass. "I - I just can't believe that he's gone."

"No," says Remus, very carefully, "me neither."

Harry nods, and takes a deep breath, still staring fixedly up at the sky. Then he very quickly turns to face Remus. "Did he do the same to you?"

"Do what?" says Remus, heart sinking. Harry opens his mouth but Remus's mind shrinks away from the harsh words that he's about to hear so he jumps in. "I know what he did to you, Harry."

Harry nods again. "Of course you do. I thought you did." He looks up at the sky again. "It's going dark."

"It's nearly ten o'clock."

"Yes." Harry's voice shakes a little but he raises his chin defiantly. "He called me James."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." A deep, shuddering intake of air. "I thought it was right, you know. In that small dark room with his hand over my mouth and Ron in the next bed. It felt right. But it can't have been, because he thought I was someone else."

"How often did he--did he go into your room?" Remus paws for details, hating himself for it, every word piercing through him.

A shrug, narrow childish shoulders lifting awkwardly. "Every couple of nights. Every night, by the end. It was all right, though. If I'd have said something, he'd have stopped."

"Did you ever say anything?"

"Once."

"Did he stop?"

"He mustn't have heard me."

"Of course."

A pause. "I think that if I'd have told him that I was Harry and not James he would have stopped," Harry says in a musing voice, and then laughs unevenly. "But I think that maybe, somehow, I didn't want him to stop."

Another pause, more aching this time. Remus wants to reach out and take Harry's hand, because it's trembling, long tanned boyish fingers on the white plastic armrest of his chair shaking like a leaf. Remus looks sideways and sees a tear slip down Harry's cheek but doesn't comment on it because Harry sniffs loudly and rubs a hand roughly over his face.

"He missed your father very much," Remus says finally.

"I know he did," Harry admits. "I felt like - I felt like he was drowning. He needed something to hold onto. So I gave him something. If it made him feel better it was worth it." Suddenly he stands. "I'm tired. I'm going to go to bed."

"You do that," Remus tells him, and grasps onto his arm as he passes by. Harry flinches instinctively away and Remus curses Sirius silently and helplessly, feeling a wave of red fury pass over his eyes.

He stares up at the sky. It's too foggy for stars, London's like that; but he knows where the Dogstar is by instinct and looks up at that wisp of cloud as if Sirius was staring down at him. Fucking Sirius, he thinks, but he can't seem to muster up much righteous anger anymore, just sadness and pity and horror.

Then he sighs, and goes inside. It's beginning to rain, but he leaves the white metal chairs outside to rust.