Seven Things That Never Happened at Hogwarts on Valentine's Day...

-----

McGonagall did make an announcement, at dinner that night, which garnered the Gryffindor table curious looks and uproarious laughter. The Slytherins tapped their goblets on their plates and shouted, "Good show!" until they lost themselves twenty-five points for bad sportsmanship.

Sirius shrank down in his seat, shoulders hunched and blushing furiously as he glared at his plate. He looked very small in Remus' sweater and jeans, both pilfered when they realized that Remus was the only one as thin as Sirius was now. Remus, for his part, fought off the animal contentment that had realized itself as he watched her pulling on his clothing; something about Sirius wearing a part of him around, like maybe --

Maybe nothing, Remus decided, and returned to glaring at people who stared. He was also feeling particularly bloodthirsty about everyone who was lavishing attention on his friend, but that was to be expected; no one teased a Marauder and got away without fitting and

exaggerated punishment.

James sulked and poked at his food. "How come you let Remus see?"

Sirius glared at him, and separated his roast chicken and potatoes. She said, "Because unlike some other people, he is not a ravening pervert."

"I am not a ravening -- "

Lily, downtable, cleared her throat meaningfully, and said, "Be strong, Sirius."

Remus bit the inside of his mouth hard enough to draw blood, and noted Peter doing similar. Sirius returned to scowling darkly and stabbed at his food even as James whirled about to start another fantastic row with Evans about how the heavens wept at her foolish rebuffs to his

undying love.

From her spot next to Remus, Sirius muttered, "Un-fucking-believable."

Remus smiled at her encouragingly. "Hey," he said, "it's Hogwarts. At least we know stranger things have happened." He nudged her shoulder lightly. "Besides, it's not as if you're ugly or anything like this."

Sirius stared at him for a minute, and Remus felt James' narrowed eyes on the side of his face.

"I'm not ugly?" Sirius asked.

"Not ugly," Remus repeated. "Actually, quite pretty." It felt good to say that, and see Sirius stop looking so doomed for a minute, even if the reaction made no sense.

Sirius said, "Oh."

James snorted. "And they call *me* the ravening pervert."

-----

Remus woke up, as usual, to a loud, dangerous-sounding thump.

Sometime during first year, he might have mentioned something about finding a graceful method of it -- but he'd mostly forgotten about it in between sticking Sirius to the ceiling of the girls' bathroom and serving detentions and mucking out swamps and helping James hide from Lily.

That day, instead of just shooting up straight in his bed and becoming increasingly concerned about developing some sort of heart condition, he bolted up, veered wildly to the left as his body realized it was not technically awake and then he fell off his bed in a roll of sheets and comforters with a painful thud to the ground.

All those books talking about animal grace were full of lies, he thought darkly.

He lay there until the sounds of the room were louder than the sound of his own heart launching a full-scale protest against these sorts of things, and then he pushed himself up on his elbows --

-- In time to see Sirius stalking around the room in a shirt and what seemed like nothing else.

She was thumping things about and glaring, giving a wide berth to the skirt tossed haphazardly over the end of her mattress. She was not, Remus thought with doom, wearing a bra.

Remus scrambled to his feet and the altitude gave him a view of James and Peter, attempting the last round on their tie and failing grandly as they stared at Sirius wandering around. Gideon, for his part, was fully dressed, but was inspecting a pair of the pink panties that had been included in Sirius' little goodie box.

He said, "Sirius, these would look better."

"Sod off, Gideon," Sirius snarled.

Remus clawed at his own face. "Oh God, Sirius, what the bloody fucking hell are you doing?"

Silence fell in the dorm as James and Peter pried their eyes off of Sirius' figure to gape at Remus.

For no good reason at all, Sirius' eyes widened as she turned to Remus and she started tugging at the hem of the shirt, which extended no further than to conceal the bare necessities. Remus fought a primitive urge to attack her with a potato sack. Hadn't Pomfrey or McGonagall explained about wearing trousers or something while they'd been terrifying Sirius with the female reproductive system?

Remus decided this was some sort of nightmare.

He pointed at Sirius' bed angrily and shouted, "Bed! Now! Close the curtains!"

Sirius looked startled, but ran to comply, which did nothing but worsen the situation of her not wearing proper support. But at least this time James and Peter were too busy snickering at Remus to stare; it was a comfort, but not a large one.

"Oh you're so forceful, Mister Lupin!" James said, high-pitched, swooning into Peter's arms.

Peter, smiled dashingly and said, "Worry not, Miss Black. I'll be gentle -- "

"Oi!" Remus shouted, hearing Sirius yelling imprecations and looking for her wand behind him. "Does no one in this room remember that Sirius is a boy?"

James, with a prodigious insight Remus loathed, just blinked owlishly behind his glasses and said, "Really, Remus -- I'd think that's more a question for you."

Remus turned bright red and James escaped before any points could be taken.

-----

It took twenty minutes to coax Sirius into women's clothing.

When she finally emerged from her closed bedcurtains, her roommates stopped to stare.

In a rumpled skirt and shirt with the cuffs rolled up, Sirius looked unforeseeably sexy. She was disheveled and unvarnished, as if she'd just woken up. She passed a dangerous glare around the room but said nothing and stalked away to gather her books and things from where she'd thrown them the night before.

"This is so incredibly disturbing," James said finally.

With smug satisfaction, Gideon said, "I always knew he'd be brilliant as a woman."

James, Remus, Peter, and Sirius all turned to stare at Gideon, who was proving that he might actually be stranger than all the Marauders combined.

By the time they made it down to the common room Sirius already had to be restrained from causing permanent damage to two sixth years. And having fallen down some steps, Sirius claimed that walking as a girl was all different and much harder, and that if James did not stop laughing like that immediately Sirius was going to tear him a new one. Also, he declared that his legs were cold, that he felt naked, and that most of all, skirts were for the birds.

Stopping in front of the portrait hole, Sirius pulled his robes around herself like a shield.

"What are you waiting for?" James asked irritably.

Sirius looked like she was having a panic attack. She whipped around, wild-eyed.

"I can't do this," she said, shaking.

"You'll be fine," Peter soothed. "You'll see."

Remus smiled encouragingly, dropping one hand on Sirius' shoulder. He said, "You'll be great. It's Hogwarts -- there's been weirder. And this won't be the weirdest."

"I miss my cock. I can't do this," Sirius said in a rush.

"I can show you mine," James offered. "If it'll ease the pain."

Remus closed his eyes just in time to miss seeing Sirius whip out his wand and James dive for cover. He had a policy about his friends: if he didn't see it, then he had no obligation to take away points for it. It was probably the only reason Gryffindor wasn't in the negatives.

As Remus, Sirius, and Peter strode toward Charms, Remus said, "I'm not condoning this."

Sirius only beamed, and Remus felt something flutter in his chest at that. Sirius was really quite beautiful; but Sirius was a boy, Remus shouted in his head, and that was important. But really, a traitorous voice in Remus' head murmured, Sirius was quite beautiful as a boy, too. He smothered it hatefully beneath a blanket of Prefectly authority, glaring round as people in the hall stared and snickered. He could feel Sirius tensing beside him.

Still, on a grand scale, James had to have had the worst of it that morning.

"Bloody -- sodding -- Sirius, you git!" James shouted as the portrait hole swung shut again.

He would be, naturally, horribly late to their first classes, as the Permaeroticus Hex -- frequently referred to as the Is That An Enormous Log In Your Trousers Or Have You Just Pissed Off Sirius Black Today? Hex -- had been known to take up to twenty minutes to properly wear off.

-----

Remus kept a hand on Sirius' thigh all throughout Charms.

It was less kinky than it sounded -- or more, depending on varying definitions.

Every time Sirius reached for her wand, Remus dug his stubby nails into her leg and preserved a pleasant, still expression on his face. Flitwick had talked the whole period, and Remus' Muggle spiral-bound notebook (which Sirius loved and thought was funny) was scrawled with notes, but Remus had no idea what had been covered. He was intimately aware, however, of how soft Sirius' thigh was, and of each and every catcall and insult or jibe that had been tossed in their general direction, and how his heart really couldn't take much more of this -- nor could Gryffindor's points, for that matter.

As they stepped out of Charms, Sirius punched him hard on the arm and growled. "What the fuck was that for, Moony?" she asked.

Remus scowled. "McGonagall said to watch you," he explained. "And I am."

Sirius narrowed her pretty eyes at that. "So you're only doing it for McGonagall are you."

"Yes -- no. Don't be difficult, Sirius," Remus said, and decided never to spawn, suddenly understanding why boarding schools were so popular in the United Kingdom. "You can't hex everybody who takes a shot at you, you know."

Sirius' eyes glinted dangerously. "Oh can't I."

"That wasn't a challenge," Remus hissed. "Now go and behave in your next class."

"Bollocks," Sirius said clearly, righteously. "I have to defend myself."

"From what? Prats? You'd have to kill James. He's King Prat."

A genuine grin touched the corners of Sirius' mouth, and Remus was grateful for it. "Right." The smile turned wicked. "I hope he's enjoying his hard on right now."

A passing third year gave them a wide-eyed, curious look and Remus moaned softly, burying his face in his hands. If anyone had thought them heterosexual after the Great Photographic Scandal of Year Three then they surely didn't anymore. It all seemed very hopeless.

"Just behave," Remus instructed, lifting his face.

Ignoring him, Sirius stalked toward his Advanced Potions class. There was a new sway in her steps, hard-earned through trial and error, an exaggeration of the round dip and slide with which girls walked always, and Remus found himself staring as Sirius left.

A snicker interrupted his thoughts and am arm looped over his shoulders. Remus turned in time to see James leaning on him, an appreciative grin on his face.

"I've got to hand it to you, Lupin," James said warmly, "you're one lucky bastard."

Remus scowled. "James, shut up." He glanced surreptitiously at James' pants. "Recovered?"

James made a fairly obscene hand gesture. Remus raised his eyebrows. "Ah."

Grinning, James said, "Can I walk you to our next class? Or will your girlfriend bite me?"

Remus thumped him, and stomping toward Arithmancy, muttered, "Keep it up and I'll bite you."

-----

The enormous House point hourglasses were mounted in the hallway near the Great Hall doors. They were generally the location of much hilarity or grief, depending whether or not you were in Gryffindor and if Sirius or James had been left unsupervised at all.

Remus stood in front of the Gryffindor hourglass, his head tilted to the left.

"This," Remus decided, "has to be some horrible prank."

Granted, they'd started the day off in last place with two hundred and twenty-five points, but it was still two hundred and *twenty* points more than they seemed to have now.

Remus wandered into the Great Hall to a loud rush of whispers and stares. Professor McGonagall, at the teachers table, made a stern face and motioned to him. He walked up as if in a trance, dumb with shock. Two hundred and twenty points.

Two hundred and twenty points -- gone -- in the space of two hours. Remus couldn't even wrap his mind about how it could possibly happen. The only time any point loss of that magnitude occurred it was unfailingly the Marauders, and Remus knew for a fact that Peter wouldn't (and most probably couldn't) act alone, that James had been well-supervised during Advanced Arithmancy by himself, and Sirius --

The door to the Great Hall burst open.

Remus whipped around to see Sirius, robe wide open, skirt hiked up, shirt rumpled, and tie loosened. Her hair was a curling mess, and she was very red in the face; her wand was still out, and she stormed into the center of the room and glared round darkly before cupping her hands about her mouth.

"LISTEN UP, YOU LOT!" Sirius started, voice magically amplified to shake the foundations of the building.

Remus' eyes widened, and he froze, balancing himself with one hand on the edge of the teachers' table; his entire life flashing before his eyes.

"DESPITE THE TITS YOU SEE HERE TODAY, I AM A MAN. AND IF YOU'D LIKE TO STAY THAT WAY, TOO, YOU'LL SEE TO IT YOU REMEMBER THAT INSTEAD OF ASKING IF I'D LIKE A GROPE BEHIND GREENHOUSE THREE. I DON'T REGRET HEXING ANY ONE OF YOU STUPID BASTARDS."

Remus saw several boys scowl and ignored the flash of reasonless jealousy.

Sirius inhaled and added, "ALSO, IF ANYONE HAS THE BOLLOCKS TO LAUGH ABOUT IT ANYMORE, EVANS ALREADY ATTACKED ME AFTER POTIONS AND MAGICKED ALL THE HAIR OFF MY LEGS AND I SAY OW AND SOD YOU ALL."

It suddenly made a horrible, horrible amount of sense, really, that they were down to --

"Mister Black!" Professor Sprout trilled, rushing into the Great Hall. She appeared to be as horrified as Remus. "Really! Five points for language!"

Remus knew he couldn't actually *hear* the hourglass in the hallway go empty but he felt it.

He started toward Sirius in the middle of the Great Hall, and by the time Sirius noticed and yelled, "Ohfuck!" Remus was already upon her, one hand on her collar, hauling her bodily out of the Great Hall and back toward the dorms.

-----

Remus had lost his temper with Sirius a sum total of twenty-six times. Remus knew this figure with exact certainty because whenever he shouted at Sirius, he used words like "disappointed" and "know you better than this" frequently, where he found himself never needing them otherwise.

So after shouting at Sirius that he was disappointed and knew he -- she -- was better than that, Remus had frogmarched Sirius to her next class and listened to her under-the-breath whine that she hadn't even gotten any lunch. His only response had been to shove her through the door and stalk off, ignoring the titters from the female half of Sirius' Advanced Care of Magical Creatures class and outlining a rather involved argument he'd propose to McGonagall later that required locking Sirius in some sort of tower until her breasts went away.

Two days passed in relative quiet, with Sirius spending most of his time sulking and playing with his own breasts during class, which did little for the concentration of James or Peter and made Remus more than a little homicidal. But overall, it was better than expected: people were starting to get used to the notion of Sirius being female -- albeit, a terrible one.

Remus should have known it was too good to last.

The other shoe dropped when Remus slumped down in the Great Hall, face down on the Gryffindor table. He was being comforted by Lily over how it'd be all right, really, when he heard an unladylike shout of "Back off, Evans!" and was jerked rudely upward to his feet, Sirius' shining eyes staring into him.

"You've got to be my boyfriend," Sirius said urgently.

Lily made a sharp, squeaking noise. Remus gurgled.

"Are we set then?" Sirius added.

Remus continued to gurgle. It seemed, however, to be too much for Lily.

"Your boyfriend?" she shrieked. "Sirius Black well I never! This isn't very funny at all!"

Sirius rounded on Lily, glaring and not letting go of Remus' collar; he did not at all seem concerned that Remus was dying. "You know what else isn't funny, Evans?" Sirius bit out. "How you're always hanging around my boyfriend when you've got your own man already."

"Does anybody else find this conversation terrifying?" Remus piped up, trying to loosen Sirius' fingers from his shirt while ignoring the curious-cum-amused expressions of nearby students.

Lily's face turned the color of her hair. "I do not! James isn't anyway! And Remus likes hanging around with me!" she trilled.

Remus' attempts grew frantic and Sirius' fingers grew tighter; the whole universe was darkening around the edges.

"Oh yeah?" Sirius sneered, her voice developing the ugly shade Remus knew all too well. She jerked on Remus' collar again and asked loudly, "Remus, tell her: you'll be my boyfriend, right?"

Remus panicked. "Sod you, Black!" he shouted, ignoring the sudden flash of hurt in Sirius' blue eyes, "I bloody will not! And let go of my shirt!"

Lily grinned in satisfaction and Sirius made a low, dangerous growl. Pride deeply injured, she stubbornly did not let go of Remus' shirt and turned round to shout at a passing fourth year, "Oi! Ashley, you'd date me, right?"

When all she received in response was a flat stare, Sirius roared, jerked around to the left and yelled, "Fine! Shacklebot! Kingsley!"

A tall, black boy perked up, looking in their direction. "Yes? Hello?"

"You'd date me, right, Shacklebot?" Sirius asked. Remus buried his face in his hands, but not before he saw Kingsley's expression of excited interest.

"Yeah -- yeah! You're a brilliant bird, Sirius!" he said enthusiastically. "How about we -- "

"See!" Sirius bellowed, jerking Remus about by the collar again, incensed. "Kingsley would date me! I'm gorgeous! And hairless. I am like one of those freak of nature cats!"

The sheer number of laughing students that had gathered in the Great Hall to witness this latest display boggled the mind. Two thirds of Hogwarts' student population seemed to be sitting around smirking at Remus as if they knew how miserable he was and were perfectly content to let him suffer.

It was more than he could bear.

"Sirius!" Remus all but screamed.

It got the brunette's attention, and she stopped glaring at Lily long enough to glower at Remus.

"I don't know if you've forgotten, but you are a boy. One of my best mates, granted, but I am not going to date you. The -- the girl parts have rotted your brain," Remus said decisively. Sirius opened her mouth to protest but Remus cut her off. "I don't know who put this daft idea into your head but you should have hexed them like you did with half your Potions class."

Remus took in the stunned silence with great satisfaction and stormed out of the Great Hall.

Right into Professor McGonagall.

She stared at him solemnly. "Mister Lupin, we must talk."

Remus said, "Oh, hell."

-----

When Remus trudged his way back to the Gryffindor common room later that evening, it was with McGonagall's disapproving voice fresh in his mind. The Gryffindor head of house had never been maudlin or soft-hearted, but she recognized the needs of her students -- far better, Remus reflected glumly, than he had.

The din in the room was at triple its usual murmured chaos, and Remus spotted the source of discord immediately.

In the corner, by the fireplace, James and Peter were barely holding Sirius back from a laughing Gideon, who, despite Sirius' very violent threats and James' very descriptive ones and Peter's rather desperate ones, did not seem at all inclined to stop. They had gathered a crowd of giggling onlookers, girls sprawled out on the sofas and boys leaning against the walls, homework and texts and half-written scrolls for the next day's classes abandoned in favor of better entertainment.

"Mister Lupin," Professor McGonagall had said. "As Mister Black -- Miss Black is one of your closest friends I had assumed you were aware of what has been happening since her accident." There had been a long, disapproving pause before McGonagall had stared down her spectacles at Remus and added, "But I see that I was presuming too much."

A sudden flare of red went up into Remus' vision, beyond the reasonless jealousy of earlier that afternoon or the heightened protectiveness he felt toward Sirius or even the comfortable belonging he longed to have again, before the awkwardness of breasts and skirts and having to wait by the door of the girls' lav so Sirius could figure out the great and terrifying secrets of peeing while seated.

Boys had been bothering Sirius, Remus found, girls had been bothering Sirius, too. Not just with teases or smirks but grabbing and asking horrible questions. "I've heard some," McGonagall had admitted, "very, very inappropriate propositions made toward Miss Black, Mister Lupin." She'd sighed and Remus had gaped, trying to wrap his mind around it.

Sirius? Bullied? It was impossible, downright stupid, Remus resolved. After all, wasn't he near top in the class for DADA? Hadn't he handed out hexes left and right? Wasn't he the utter bane of Remus' life, his sanity, his ability to go through a day without having to listen to one or another teacher remark tartly that with such upstanding, Prefect acquaintances, wasn't it a marvel that young Sirius Black was just as he was without any change?

It had struck him, somewhere amongst protesting to Professor McGonagall that Sirius would never allow himself to be harassed by students, that he remembered what he'd been shouting while not being distracted by how pretty Sirius' hair was. He'd made Sirius promise not to lose them any more House points, he realized with a thud.

And Sirius hadn't. At great expense to himself, apparently.

It suddenly seemed to make a great deal of twisted sense that Sirius had asked Remus to be his boyfriend. After all, if considered otherwise engaged, then it'd be much more difficult for certain ventures to be made; besides which, having a Prefect as a romantic entanglement always proved interesting for those who felt the urge to create mischief. Yes, it was a perfectly sound request and one in which Remus could see logic and cause.

Then he remembered how he'd reacted to the desperation in Sirius' eyes earlier and groaned.

How could he have been so stupid, Remus berated himself. It was so obvious. There had to have been a reason, and if Remus hadn't been so terribly distracted by the fact that he was now Prefecting the only year in Hogwarts where there was an unnatural female with whom he shared a room, then he would have noticed -- he would have thought to ask. He could have done something earlier.

He'd certainly do something about it now.

He took a deep breath, and stalked toward his friends, throwing caution to the wind.

And once he was close enough that he was sure they would all hear him, Remus cleared his throat loudly and said, "I hope you're not harassing my girlfriend, Gideon."

Silence fell in the common room. Gideon stopped laughing with a harsh choke and James and Peter let go, which caused Sirius, in her overbalanced state, to tip over and knock Gideon down, where they landed with a thump.

From behind the couch, Sirius said, "Ow," and "Don't touch that!"

Peter said, "Remus, are you mad?"

James looked grim. "I knew it," he said dolefully. "I always knew I'd taken up with shirtlifters."

Remus reflected that only for Sirius would he ever put the entire rest of his career at Hogwarts so in jeopardy -- he thought that it might be because his friends put themselves in the same position, and Remus felt that it was only fair, only right he return their kindness.

As Sirius scrambled back up to her feet, glancing down at where Gideon was now groaning with pain, Remus said, "Don't be so terribly surprised." He gave a wavering smile to Sirius. "She is, after all, very pretty."

There came grudging, murmured agreement.

Sirius' blue eyes grew very wide.

Lily ran out of the room, very red in the face and looking upset, and several of her friends followed, tossing dirty looks over their shoulders before rushing up the steps after her.

Kingsley Shacklebot yelled, "Oi! She asked me first!"

-----

James, Peter, and Gideon insisted that if they were going to spend any time staring deeply into one another's eyes and declaring that they loved each other beyond gender or magic, then they'd have to do it in the common room. So even though Remus just wanted to apologize for not realizing Sirius' problems and then explain how this arrangement would hopefully alleviate some of those problems until the potion wore off, they were obliged to stay by the fire while Peter looked increasingly pale, and Gideon increasingly amused, leading a still-raving Kingsley up the steps. James took it upon himself to steer the glaring, sneering, giggling, and astonished crowd out of the room, citing that the new couple needed their privacy. Sirius only cursed at him twice, but Remus figured it was a byproduct of shock.

As soon as footsteps faded away, Sirius whirled about and said, "Remus."

Remus smiled ruefully. "I've been an awful friend," he apologized, running his hand through his hair and looking away. "Really poor."

"Damn straight," Sirius said. "I can't believe you'd shoot a chap down like that." She scowled and leaned in closely, narrowing her eyes at Remus. "D'you know that any girl at this school would give their right arm to date me?"

Nodding seriously, Remus replied tartly, "Yes, well aware. After fighting the boys to get at the chance."

Sirius made a choking noise and James voice echoed from the top of the stairs. "Oi, all your clothes had better be on and not disheveled when you two get upstairs to sleep in your separate beds."

Remus glared at the stairwell.

"Sometimes," Sirius said thoughtfully, "I think it might be better if we off him."

"Sometimes I do, too," Remus admitted. He took a deep breath and continued. "So, how do we do this? Just pretend? Hang about together?" He frowned. "We already hang about together."

Sirius laughed nervously. "Makes it all the easier, right?" She sounded even more high-pitched. "But -- but this should be authentic. Right?"

Flushing, Remus stared at the ground, "Yeah. All right."

A thousand reasons why this was a terrible idea and that he'd regret it later were running through Remus' mind when Sirius said, "Oh, sod it," and kissed him, lips awkwardly on lips and not very romantic or sweet at all. When she pulled away, she glared, saying, "It's not as if this is the first time we've done this."

Remus glared and blushed dark red. "Shut up."

Sirius grinned. "Make me."

For no reason that Remus understood, he leaned in closer. "Sirius, shut up."

Her eyelids were drooping and the drowsy, handsome expression was back on her face, so different and yet so much the same as the one that appeared on his boyish features the year before, the same sensual beauty with softer curves, and Remus was near enough to feel the heat off of her skin.

Sirius' mouth looked very pink and soft. "Make me," she whispered.

So Remus did.

By the time they headed upstairs, Sirius looked very thoroughly kissed, and was quiet when Remus took her hand, and navigated them around where James had fallen asleep in the stairwell.

-----

In the end, Remus didn't know what bothered him more: how easily everybody accepted that he and Sirius were a couple, or how easily he accepted it himself.

That morning, he'd woken up and said his hellos and pulled on some clothes before Sirius had popped her head out from between her bedcurtains and yawned her good mornings. There'd been a quick double take, James had suffered additional collateral damage after refusing to shut his mouth, and then they'd all gone about their morning routines, with Sirius locking them all out of the lav while she puzzled the mysteries of the female body. She'd stepped out of the loo looking extremely satisfied with herself and a bit red in the cheeks, only to be told by a darkly-blushing Remus that she was rather loud, and could she "discover" herself at a more convenient time? Sirius hadn't even had the time to be properly embarrassed as she was nearly mowed down by James, Gideon, and Peter rushing into the bathroom, presumably to discover themselves in response.

It had all been so terribly ordinary -- situations considered.

As if his whole world hadn't turned upside-down overnight. As if he hadn't spent the night before in front of the fireplace in Gryffindor, fingers knotted in Sirius' already-knotty hair, kissing her soft lips and thinking how he would like to kiss her like that every day. As if he hadn't felt her fingertips, rough from Quidditch, ride up underneath the hem of his jumper so that he felt the pads of her hands against the small of his back, warm points on his skin.

They'd met eyes across the room early that morning and had both flushed dark red.

The eventual explanations for the previous nights' behaviors were made. Peter breathed a sigh of relief and clapped Sirius on the back, saying she'd really had him there for a moment, what with all that moony-eyed waiting for Remus that night in the common room. Remus, on the other hand, studied the floor, feeling James' narrow-eyed gaze burn across his face.

Otherwise, the fourteenth of February brought on a few snickers and crass glares, but in general the populace of Hogwarts seemed to take it in stride; the rumor mill had done its part to inform the entire castle by breakfast and the only people who seemed resentful or disgusted where the Slytherins and Kingsley, who was still smarting from yesterday's events. Mostly, people looked conflicted, astonished, or jealous.

It was difficult to throw the usual jeers directed toward shirtlifters and the like when the boy and boy in question were technically boy and girl; especially since it was boy and attractive girl. Considering half of the fifth year boys had already asked Sirius if he'd be willing to let them do a little friendly experimentation, it was hardly fair of them to throw a tantrum at Lupin, who'd managed to stake claim; besides which, if they tried, they also knew Remus could be ruthless and always distributed information about who and how someone had managed to lose Gryffindor points.

Flowers and candy were distributed in an abnormal fashion: without explosions or impromptu visits to the Infirmary. James had gotten so caught up with Sirius' gender he'd forgotten to write his promised epic poetry about Lily's; it was quiet at the Gryffindor tables that morning, much to everybody's surprise.

"I thought that you said that everybody thought Sirius and I were shagging." James looked superior.

Sirius was still upstairs, fighting some sort of epic battle with a hairbrush and shrieking about how Snape would suffer the pain of a thousand fires of hell for this, and so Remus felt safe commenting, "They probably still do. You are a rather largish type of whore, Potter."

"Slandering the girlfriend already, eh, Lupin?" James said gleefully. "And on Valentine's Day."

"Yes that's it exactly," Remus answered distractedly. He flipped through the Daily Prophet and frowned at the grim headlines. "Meanwhile, how goes your attempts at wooing?"

James snorted. And as Sirius stomped into the Great Hall, barely more groomed than they'd left her earlier that morning, James said, "As if you're one to talk about romantic conquests."

Sirius slumped into the spot next to Remus and said, "Hell, I've got an awful stomachache."

Remus raised one eyebrow. "Touche."

-----

James and Peter fielded most of the snickers and leers in the hallway, as Remus was too busy growing increasingly concerned with how Sirius was paling. Nearing the DADA room, Sirius braced one hand against the ancient stone walls of the castle, his face the color of yellowing paper and his mouth a thin line, eyes focused straight ahead.

"Are you all right?" Remus asked, stepping in close.

Sirius didn't answer, just kept walking straight ahead and breathing deeply.

Remus glanced at James, who shrugged and glanced at Peter. Peter stared at Sirius. Remus decided he needed some female friends. Who were, actually, female.

They turned a corner, and walked into DADA, picking through the whispering masses to the back row where disaffected Gryffindors were known to sit. James thumped his books down and slumped into his chair; Peter knocked into the corner of the desk but managed the spot next to him. Remus slipped into the next desk over and started horrified as Sirius lowered herself gently, delicately down onto the seat. She stared straight ahead and her face kept whitening until Remus muttered, "Right," under his breath and grabbed her free hand.

"Sirius!" he hissed.

"Oh my God," she said, eyes still focused front. "I think I'm dying."

Dying? Remus was patently against any dying. McGonagall hadn't said anything about tragic consequences to the potion; could someone die if they stayed out of their own gender too long? He hadn't paid much attention to the section on Animagi during Transfiguration and he was starting to wish he'd followed up on pestering James about why exactly he'd taken so many notes for the section.

"Dying?" Remus said uselessly. He twined his and Sirius' fingers together importantly.

Sirius squeezed back and turned to him, eyes shiny. "Dying. You stupid oaf," she said. "Dying." She moaned, and put her forehead down on the desk, whimpering into the wood, "Oh God, oh God. I can't breathe. I'm going to throw up."

Remus nodded. "Right." He glanced over Sirius' head to see James and Peter peering over in concern. "We're taking her to Madam Pomfrey. There's something wrong."

James pointed at the front of the room, where Professor Medlin was setting out something that didn't look quite dead yet, and said, "Peter." The shorter, blond boy went off without a second word, and James stood up to help carry Sirius' weight as they threw one of her arms over each of their shoulders. She moaned as they did this, and James and Remus looked at one another in alarm.

The whispering in the class went up again like a roll of quiet thunder, and the expressions that had been amused or disgusted earlier were growing concerned. Peter pushed people out of the way and met them at the door, saying, "We're set. Let's go."

"She sounds like she's dying," James hazarded as they inched their way down the hallway.

Sirius had stopped moaning in favor of making noises that sounded entirely too much like she was about to cry for Remus' comfort. Normally, in cases like this, when there were crying girls about, either James had just said something or Sirius had just done something so it was easy to figure out who to punch -- if Lily Evans hadn't already done it.

Remus pulled Sirius a little closer to him, feeling the curves and dips of her side against his hip. She was near enough so they were nearly cheek to cheek, and brushing back the fall of hair in her face with his hand, Remus asked, "Hey? Sirius? Where does it hurt?"

James snorted. "You two are utterly vile."

Peter, who had been trotting worriedly beside them lit off ahead, shouting, "Madam Pomfrey! It's Sirius," and Remus never got an opportunity to tell James just how utterly vile he was before he glanced up in time to see Peter dragging Madam Pomfrey over by the hand. She looked more amused than worried.

They all spoke up in a rush, James' jittery concern finally emerging from a shell of practiced jackassed behavior as Remus allowed himself to lose what little composure he had.

"Madam Pomfrey!"

"It's Sirius!"

"There was something in that Potion, you know!" James insisted. "Time release poisons!"

"She's looking utterly white and do you think this could be some sort side effect of being -- "

"It's Snape! I know it! -- "

Sirius moaned.

" -- Madam Pomfrey's right here, Sirius! Ma'am could you -- ?"

"Oh for goodness sake!" Madam Pomfrey finally said, waving the boys to silence and laughing. "You three are a mess!" She looked tolerantly at Sirius, who was back to whimpering and making under-the-breath sobbing sounds. Remus felt his heart go off on an unhealthy tangent at that, and held on longer than was absolutely necessary to Sirius' loose fingers. "Now," Madam Pomfrey said much more gently, "Sirius, come here."

When Sirius made a move to go toward her, Remus followed a step before the Hogwart's nurse pressed a hand to his shoulder and said, "Mister Lupin, this, I promise you, will not be part of your Prefect's duties." Her eyes were twinkling, and Remus didn't see what was so funny, anyhow. "She'll be in good hands."

Remus swallowed hard, and nodded, unlooping Sirius' arm from around his neck and saying quietly, "We'll be waiting right here."

Sirius took three halting steps, head still bent and eyes shut tightly, teeth gritted, before Madam Pomfrey met her halfway, and made clucking, comforting noises, steering her into the Infirmary while saying, "You know, Mist -- Sirius, if you'd listened to me earlier while -- "

The door shut with a thud, and James, Peter, and Remus were left staring at it.

Remus spoke up first. "What the hell was that?"

Peter said. "He looked just awful." He ran his hands through his bangs, a nervous habit that he could never quite shake. "I hope it's nothing serious -- I mean."

"I'll kill Snape!" James roared. He fisted his hands and turned on one heel just as Remus and Peter's hands landed on his shoulders and held him still. "That bastard will burn for this!"

"I've never seen anybody like that," Remus wondered, straining to hold James back.

Peter shrugged helplessly, and grabbed James by the elbow, dragging the struggling, cursing boy to the hard bench just outside the infirmary. "He said he had a stomachache at breakfast, now that I think about it."

Remus considered this, and shoved James' face into his lap to mute the yelling. It was worrisome to him, on a very distant level, that this had become mundane to him.

Remus opened his mouth to say that maybe Sirius had eaten some bad eggs when a blood-curdling cry echoed throughout the castle.

-----

It'd taken the combined efforts of Madam Pomfrey, a barely-straight-faced Professor McGonagall, and Dumbledore to keep James from ramming the door of the Infirmary after Madam Pomfrey had refused to let them enter. Then again, it had been hard to hear, what with Sirius still shrieking like he was being eviscerated just on the other side.

They were being herded from the hallway as a gawking crowd dispersed; Madam Pomfrey had cast a silencing spell, rolled her eyes, and gone back inside. The last words Remus had heard her say before she'd disappeared into the sound-proofed room were, "Sirius, really, this is a very natural process -- "

McGonagall had instructed them to wait in their room, and said that Sirius was not dying, Snape would not be killed, and that Madam Pomfrey was most certainly not using Sirius for her twisted medical experiments, Mister Potter.

James kept breaking Gideon's broom and huffing "Reparo," before doing it all over again.

Peter bit his fingernails and ran his fingers over his bangs so frequently and roughly they were matted to his forehead now.

Remus was having trouble remember what the word "and" meant, so he finally closed James' copy of Quidditch Girls: Robes OFF! and threw it where he'd found it under James' bed and flopped face down on his own.

"What do you think is wrong with him?" he asked the ceiling.

James said, "Maybe it's cancer."

Ever since Remus had explained what cancer was, James had insisted on claiming everything from mosquito bites to the common cold was rooted in it. Despite Remus' subsequent attempts to impress upon him the seriousness of the condition, James persisted, and everybody else ignored him. Except for Lily, who occasionally slapped him across the back of the head and said that if anybody at Hogwarts had a cancerous growth, it was James, who had taught it to talk and wear its hair badly.

"Maybe it's just a stomach virus," Peter said.

Remus nodded distractedly.

A few moments passed before they heard the door to the room open slowly with a characteristic clicking sound, and all three jumped to their feet in time to see Sirius shuffle into the dormitory. Her head was lowered, shoulders slumped. She looked utterly defeated and very tired.

James, Peter, and Remus swarmed around her.

"Sirius, are you all right?" Peter asked. "What did Madam Pomfrey say was wrong?"

"And why were you yowling like a cat?" James demanded. "What did she do? Where there experiments? Did she test things on you?"

Remus said quietly, "Are you feeling any better?"

When Sirius lifted her head, all three boys jumped back, dumbstruck and terrified.

The murderous expression that had met the remaining Marauders only intensified as she glared from James to Peter to Remus, letting her blue eyes settle somewhere in the area of Remus' abdomen, which made Remus very nervous about sleeping in the same room as her that night.

She tore off her cloak, kicked off her shoes, and awkwardly, ever-so-carefully, climbed into her bed, burying herself completely under the covers, still fully-dressed. One arm appeared out of the mountain of blankets, and Sirius yanked her curtains shut. She yelled through the dark fabric, "Wake me up in three hours! Or heads will roll."

James, Remus, and Peter dedicated some quality time to balking in terror before they turned to one another. Nodding in agreement, they slipped out of the dormitory and leaned against the cool stones of the stairwell, bewildered.

"This is the weirdest Valentine's Day yet," Peter mused.

"But not 'ever,'" Remus said dryly.

It was only after ten minutes that James said, "You know, Lupin. Maybe you had the right idea after all."

Remus blinked. "What are you talking about?"

James started inching his way down the stairwell. "You're lucky to have gone and taken up with Sirius. Girls are terrifying." He lit off down the steps, whooping and shouting, "I wish you two every happiness, you nancies!"

It was much, much later, after James was sullen and dripping wet from being shoved into Hogwarts lake and held underwater, that Remus started marching back up the tower steps to wake Sirius, and finally allowed himself to process what James had said.

-----

Remus paused at the shut-tight curtains of Sirius' bed, one hand resting on a post, biting his lip.

He remembered that when he'd first arrived at Hogwarts, he'd spent most of his time being serious and mature, the mediator. Later, he'd started to help James and Sirius on the sly, offering them an odd Charm here, an obscure Hex there -- all in the name of intellectual curiosity.

It wasn't until more recently that Remus found himself at a turning point, where all James and Sirius' mischief seemed to have rubbed off on him. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he barely recognized the image anymore: sun-brown with bits of blond in his brown hair, bleached out from afternoons outside running wild. He was a werewolf wearing a Prefect's badge, bossing peers and younger years about, pretending to be an adult, almost. He could barely reconcile the image of himself trying to drown James in the lake with the boy upon whom there rested the responsibility of the horrible monster he turned into once a month.

But the largest change, Remus had admitted to his mother in a letter, was that he was not so very afraid anymore.

At least -- not afraid of himself. Sirius was an entirely different matter.

Remus took a deep breath, and tugged the curtains open gently, seeing a sliver of late-evening light fall on the dark red covers. His eyes softened at Sirius, curled up underneath a mountain of blankets, hair wild about her face, making snuffling noises into her pillow. For all his wakeful wildness, Sirius slept, if not like an angel, then a much-tamed dog, docile and warm.

"Sirius," Remus said gently. "Sirius? It's been three hours. You wanted us to wake you."

Her eyelids tensed, awake and unwilling. She buried herself further into the sheets, burrowing and making whining sounds. "Tired. Very tired," she said between whimpers.

Remus sighed, and reached over, shaking her shoulder gently. "Sirius? Oi, Sirius. Normally, I'd let you sleep, but you asked specifically, and -- "

Suddenly, her blue eyes snapped open, and she rocked up, panicking as she thrust both hands down into the mess of blankets and rustling around until she relaxed, murmuring, "Oh." Brushing her hair out of her face, she turned very red and started toward the other side of the bed, saying, "Wait here for me a bit, all right?"

Remus nodded, and watched her shuffle off to the lavatory after a stop at her rucksack. He surveyed the room, was grateful that it was deserted, and climbed onto Sirius' bed, laying atop the rumpled sheets and feeling more tired than he'd ever felt in his life.

The curtains on the other side of the bed rustled open, and Sirius climbed back into the sheets, white-faced and shaking, looking very small. She smelled like soap and blood and hot water and looked ill. Remus could bear it no more.

"Sirius," he said urgently.

"I'm bleeding," Sirius interrupted, a faint tone of hysteria.

Remus felt this was a point of concern as well. "What? You're what?"

He would kill Snape. With his bare hands. And some sort of sharp, rusted object.

"Bleeding," Sirius went on, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her shins. She rocked back and forth slightly, movement stilted. "A lot."

"I'll kill him," Remus said calmly. He started to get out of the bed. "You wait here."

Sirius grabbed Remus' arm and tugged hard enough so that Remus landed in a diagonal sprawl over Sirius' pillows.

"Don't be stupid, you sod," she barked. "I'm not actually dying, it just feels like it." Her voice gave out on her for a second, and Remus blinked hard as he realized why Sirius' eyes looked so terribly blue: he'd never seen them swimming with tears before. "I'm bleeding out of my crotch."

Remus suddenly found it impossible to breathe. "Oh," he squeaked.

Sirius stared at him for a minute before she took a deep breath, saying, "I'm having a period. Bleeding like some sort of stuck pig. And my entire belly feels like someone stabbed a hot poker in there and they're twisting it about and I want to throw up and cry and my back hurts and -- "

Large, horrible tears started to roll down her cheeks.

"Oh my God," Remus said.

"I hate this!" Sirius sobbed. She rubbed at her face with fisted hands, crying so hard Remus could barely hear her anymore. It made something ugly and desperate twist in his chest. "I hate this. No matter what I did I don't deserve this and I swear I'll never make fun of Evans ever again about anything."

Remus was officially panicking. What did one say to a male friend who started menstruating? It just didn't happen that frequently.

"I hate being a girl. I hate being a girl," Sirius continued, burying her face in her hands. "I'm terrible at it and I keep falling down or doing stupid things or people lift up my skirt and -- " Remus fought the primitive need to shout who had done it and where could he find them " -- the terrible thing is I don't want to turn into a boy again either!"

Sirius looked up at Remus' dumbfounded expression and wailed anew.

"I'm a poof," she cried, voice breaking. "A pansy. A nancy. A shirtlifter. Every one of those stupid names that James calls us sometimes. I like boys. And I think I might fancy you but I know you only like birds and I'm sorry and I know I'm a terrible girl and I hate it but I don't want to go back because then you won't want me anymore and -- "

Sirius' face was red and streaked with tears. It was utterly unattractive and Remus was getting lightheaded. The room was spinning around him.

" -- I'm so sorry. And even if it was just pretend it was wonderful for me and you're a lovely kisser and you can just pretend I never said anything and if you don't want to be my boyfriend -- even for pretend -- anymore I can understand and -- "

Remus needed Sirius to stop talking. Remus was getting a headache and nothing was fitting together correctly except for a memory very similar to this one.

" -- I'm so sorry I'm such a disgusting, horrible -- "

So Remus kissed her, cupped his hands about Sirius' face and pulled her roughly over so that he could seal his mouth over her own, lips against lips. He was not friendly or polite or any of those adjectives he'd used for the other two kisses, or even very soft about it. All Remus knew was that he wanted Sirius to stop talking and let him think, and to open her mouth so that he could run his tongue along the line of her teeth, to bite her lower lip, to suck her tongue into his mouth and to taste her and remember it for other times when he had to make Sirius stop talking.

It was working.

Remus could taste Sirius, chocolate, and something lightly medicinal layered over the flesh-sweet of her tongue. His hands slid back and around until he was cupping her skull, fingers wound in her dark hair and he liked that, too, feeling the warm, delicate curve of her head and the graceful line of neck. It was getting harder to think, but Remus sensed Sirius' fingers shaking, and then forceful, pushing and then grabbing until she forced them apart, where they broke from one another gasping and red-faced.

Sirius was crying harder than ever -- and male again.

Snape's potion had finally worn off; Remus must have felt it, and just not noticed: the widening of the shoulders, the thickening of the fingers and the angles of the face were all different. Sirius was back again, the pretty, boyish features and high cheekbones reappearing as suddenly as they'd melted away just a few days ago. His entire body had lengthened and broadened, flesh remade into a well-loved, familiar memory. And the dark, curling hair, the kissed-red mouth, and those imploring blue eyes were just the same as the other time Remus remembered seeing Sirius like this: unbearably handsome and so very, very close.

Sirius said, "Stop it. I know you don't like boys, and I'm a boy, Remus, even if right now -- "

His mouth was opening and closing like some sort of wonderful, red invitation and Remus darted in only to have Sirius shove him away, crying.

"Don't you get it?" he shrieked. "I'm not a girl anymore, you stupid -- !"

Remus blinked and murmured, "Oh. Oh," and grabbed Sirius' wrists.

Remus couldn't believe it had taken him that long to get around to noticing it. All the signs were there: a predisposition to Romantic poetry and combing his hair, not enjoying Lily Evans' breasts, kissing Sirius -- increasingly frequently; he was gayer than a Christmas tree and everybody at Hogwarts had probably known it before he or Sirius had figured it out.

When he dragged them together, this time, Sirius didn't push him away, just gasped in a wonderful, dizzying way when Remus pulled away a minute later to suck in a breath and whisper against his soft mouth, "I don't care. It doesn't matter. It never has."

And it didn't -- didn't matter at all, when he realized that he was kissing Sirius, handsome, stupid, completely irresponsible Sirius who was too clever and cruel and crusaded for Remus' virtue. When he realized he was feeling Sirius' quick, sweet tongue pressing into his mouth, frantic against his own. When he realized that this was a messy, unskilled kiss and barely cared because he was kissing Sirius, the best friend he'd ever had.

It was tentative fingers, larger, rougher, boys' fingers that found their way underneath the hem of Remus' jumper this time, and as Sirius' broad palms pressed to Remus' skin, he moaned into Sirius' mouth and drew them closer. Remus twisted his fingers into Sirius' hair and tried to envelop him, consume him, taste every inch of him because nothing had ever made so much and so little sense and been so awkward and wonderful at the same time.

Sirius whimpered into Remus' mouth, and whispered, "Are you --?"

"Shut up. You're not allowed to talk anymore," Remus decided, landing small, biting kisses on the corners of Sirius' lips. "I'm making all of the decisions now. You're terrible at it."

Sirius groaned and slumped forward, face in Remus' shoulder as Remus sucked a kiss to the tempting patch of skin just underneath Sirius' left earlobe, leaving a red, rosy bruise there as a place marker -- for later. The thought gave Remus great satisfaction, as did Sirius' gasp of, "Right. I can work with that."

Sirius' wonderful hands were exploring ever lower on Remus' back before dipping down to Remus' narrow waist, fingers gliding over scarred skin and swirling up and over his shoulder blades again. The barely-friction was driving Remus insane and --

"Oh my fucking God!"

They froze.

"Oh my fucking God!"

Sirius made a faint sound of distress into Remus' shoulder. Remus debated spontaneous combustion.

Gideon's voice was completely hysterical as he demanded, "Is this some kind of kinky sex thing? Why are you doing it in our dorm? Other people have to live here! Oh my God, I need holy water."

There was a rumbling of footsteps, and then James' voice as he called out, "Oi! Lupin? Were you killed? Did you -- oh my fucking God!"

Remus turned to look at their captive audience, mostly out of morbid curiosity: James, Peter, and Gideon stood speechless in horrified shock in front of the open bedcurtain. Peter was a shade of red not found in nature; Gideon was completely white; James, on the other hand, was starting to settle into an expression that bordered far to near "smug" for Remus' comfort.

Sirius cleared his throat, and removed his hands from inside the waist of Remus' pants. "Well. The potion's worn off, you see."

Remus nodded, and untangled his hands from Sirius' wild hair. "Yes, good as new, really."

The bed squeaked horribly as they drew themselves awkwardly apart, careful to keep their hands in their laps lest they managed to drive their roommates to an early death.

"Aren't you all happy for me?" Sirius tried.

Remus gave up and hung his head.

James said, "You're still wearing a skirt."

"And knee socks," Peter observed.

Sirius muttered. "Oh shit."

Silence fell until James finally declared, "Well. I can't say I approve, but I had my suspicions. And Remus, I expect you to make Sirius an honest woman at some point."

Later that night, after a triumphant return to Hogwarts as a man and hexing James' hands to stick to his face so he looked perpetually surprised, Sirius crawled into Remus' bed and fell asleep there, curled up into Remus' side after asking him exactly forty-eight times if he was really sure.

Remus woke up to the earliest streams of morning light and turned around to see Sirius staring intently at him, blue eyes darker than usual.

"Morning," Remus said.

Sirius fidgeted. "It's February fifteenth now," he said. "Lupercalia."

Remus blinked lazily and stretched out across his sheets, feeling honey-thick and warm. "So?"

"Is any of that stuff we read about werewolves mating for life and choosing them on Lupercalia true? I'm just asking for interest is all as you are my b -- one of my best friends and sort of my significant other or at least we've sucked face a lot and I think that enquiring minds would like to know. Just for future reference and such," Sirius said, all in one long, long breath.

It took a moment for Remus to understand all of it, but he said, "Werewolves don't mate for life, Sirius. Nothing and no one does."

Sirius looked deflated. "Oh." A pause. "So. I have to make you keep liking me."

"Something like that," Remus yawned. "I've put up with you this long already. There's really nothing for you to worry about."

Except for life and circumstances and everything, but none of those existed in Remus' bed at half past five on February fifteenth.

Sirius curled up beside him under the covers again, and smiling, asked, "Are you sure?"

Remus smacked him, and then kissed him.

"No, not sure at all," he murmured.

Sirius hummed lightly, and they drowsed until eight, when James shrieked that he'd figured it out, and an enormous stag ripped through Remus' bedcurtains, shoving them off the mattress, and wreaking general havoc.

VI.

February fourteenth dawned rosy and James bounced from bed to bed in the sixth year boys' dormitory until Gideon hit him in the head with a very large and dusty copy of Hogwarts, A History and went back to sleep. Peter followed James down to breakfast, and in the interest of keeping the peace, James stopped by and fetched Sirius from where he was sleeping on the common room couch.

Remus listened to all of it happen through his closed bedcurtains, staring at the ceiling.

It was strange, watching morning flood the room without waking to a loud thump or a shout. Stranger still, after fifth year, to wake without hearing Sirius' voice somewhere close to his ear. Near enough to slip out of bed and into another one, to press their bodies together and kiss and touch, to belong, and curl up in familiar warmth.

Remus turned over on his side and closed his eyes.

They staggered meals now. Remus never ate breakfast and Sirius was never seen at lunch. They suffered through dinner together and Peter sat with his girlfriend from Hufflepuff while James sat quietly with Lily, who cast Remus doleful looks over James' shoulder.

The unavoidable truth was that Sirius had made a choice and Remus had reacted as well as he could.

Sometimes, still, Remus would wake up and think that it was December, that there was snow drifting in fat, white flakes outside the window, with Sirius tracing words into the bedroom window with his brown, calloused finger. And later, downstairs, with his parents bustling around with grins so wide Remus could barely remember when they'd been so happy, they'd spoil Sirius and talk of what a good friend he was, how they'd never seen Remus so relaxed.

Sometimes, Remus would remember all of those things, and then feel the blinding white of the snow outside of the house slush into the grey of the piles by the streets, and then the walls of the Infirmary the morning after, with Sirius' blue eyes imploring.

Those mornings, Remus just turned to his side, and kept his hands still, unwilling to grasp for a pillow, seek comfort in anything but the memory of January and white snow underneath his hands when he ran out of the castle and into the winter. He remembers running and needing not to be in that horrible room with Sirius, remembers James and Peter coming after him, and then he remembered very little else.

It was a little past eight thirty, he thought, when he heard Gideon roll out of his bed and start to pull on his clothes. Remus pushed open his curtains and started to do the same just as Gideon was checking his tie in the mirror.

"Morning, Remus," he said, surprisingly docile -- for Gideon.

Remus nodded. "Good morning."

"Sleep well?" he asked.

"Yes," Remus lied, and watched the fluid lines of Gideon's body, leaner and corded with muscle, less substantive than Sirius, thinner in his hands, smoother and less tangible when Remus ran his fingers along the lines of his back. "And you?" he asked distractedly.

Remus never really expected a serious answer from Sirius, which was why he'd delighted in giving them. Gideon on the other hand, was rarely anything but. The drastic change, he supposed, was what he was looking for, or maybe he hadn't been looking for anything at all.

Gideon said, "No, you stupid sod," and left.

Remus stared after him for a beat, put on his shoes and went to class.

-----

Over the years, Hogwarts had come to treat Valentine's Day like theater, with one explosion after the other followed by the inevitable romantic crescendo. Failing that, at least Lupin could be caught with his tongue down Black's throat, and at least a third of the female population of Hogwarts could swoon at the very thought.

At ten past eleven the night before, James had rocketed up from his Charms paper yelling, "Oh fuck!" and then barreled upstairs into the dorm shouting about how he hadn't even started Lily's Valentine, what with all the upheaval.

None of the charms he'd wanted worked properly, his hand shook too much for calligraphy, and in the end, James gave up, scribbled something onto a sheet of white paper, and edged it with lace pulled off of one of his ex-girlfriends' knickers, and owled it in at one in the morning.

"That is," Sirius had said that day at dinner, "the worst Valentine ever."

James buried his face in his hands, showing signs of wear, and didn't even bother to reply.

Remus knew, somewhere in his head, knew that he was punishing the rest of the Marauders as much as he was punishing Sirius.

The long silences were heavy in the room, and the castle seemed to have been parceled off into pieces for Remus and Sirius, and never should their paths cross. Library for Remus, a concession in any case, as they'd bumped into one another there at least twice before Sirius had taken to asking James to find books for him. The common room for Sirius and his adoring crowd; the girls had seemed to take it upon themselves to heal him after his brush with homosexuality. From all accounts, Sirius was having none of it. Remus listened to Peter report all of it faithfully, but it never fully settled in; it would have been cruel, however, to deny Peter that small ray of hope.

Gideon slid into the seat next to Remus, close enough to press their thighs together.

Remus let his elbow rest against Gideon's arm, and they ate dinner in relative silence.

Later, after James had drifted into an exhausted sleep and Peter had followed, Gideon crawled into Remus' bed like Sirius had once long ago.

-----

Remus watched Gideon sometimes; never after, since Gideon never stayed, but during meals, in the library, in History of Magic. He had fair features, and brown eyes; he was by no means very handsome, or very unattractive. He seemed as innocuous as Sirius had seemed dangerous, dish and whitewater in stark contrast to one another. It did not explain the way that Gideon seemed to be stranger than the Marauders combined, but Remus was reaching for metaphors.

Gideon had surprised him one night after patrols, standing just outside the castle, smirking with half-lidded eyes. He hadn't really asked beyond asking where Remus was going, and Remus never quite said "yes," either. But he'd needed something, then, to distract him from the smell of blood and betrayal still so sharp in his nose, and Gideon smelled like the lemons he squeezed -- three slices per cup -- into his teacup every morning.

"You're not falling in love with me are you?" Gideon had asked the night before.

Remus had tackled him into the sheets, strange and quiet before he'd said, "Yes. Utterly. Madly, Gideon."

There'd been a moment of silence before the taller boy had shoved him off, and stalked to his own bed, throwing himself into the mattress like an argument.

Remus remembered that Sirius used to do that, too, when they fought.

Sirius hadn't slept in his own bed for over a month now.

The silence at their end of the table was broken when Lily walked over and said that if James liked, she could suffer to meet him for butterbeer at Hogsmeade sometime.

And after receiving no response, Lily frowned and asked, "What are you on about, James Potter? Asking a girl with flowery pink disasters and harassing me for five years and now losing interest?" She turned very red, and started to stalk away before James launched himself out of his chair, and fell all over himself reassuring her otherwise.

After five years of failed Valentines, it seemed that James was more surprised by "yes" than he'd ever been shocked by "no," which was an incredible truth given James Potter's ego.

Sirius leaned on one elbow and said, "Git."

Remus hummed in agreement.

Peter looked between the two of them, lips narrowed into a white line.

That night, Gideon met Remus outside of the castle again, lips hot and angry and hard.

He shoved the two of them into a dark corner, near a pillar and a statue of some aging wizard. In between gasping breaths, said, "You two never, did you?"

There'd been almost, and very soon, and just give me a little more time, but never this, as if Sirius hadn't been entirely comfortable with the thought, when he'd been the one to plant it in Remus' head to begin with. Remus remembered being angry with that, to think that they could rub slicked, hot skin to skin and kiss and promise but never cross that last distance.

"Was that why?" Gideon groaned.

It made Remus fierce all of a sudden, that they were talking about this, so Remus slipped two fingers into Gideon's mouth before he turned him to face the wall.

It wasn't so that he could pretend, and he would pretend he believed that, too.

-----

And territory marked as clearly as the lines on the Marauders map was very fluid, it seemed, that night. Remus thought about lines of delineation, about cartography and mountains, rivers and streams, and sat slumped in the shadow next to the statue long after Gideon had buttoned his trousers and left.

The cold seeped into Remus' skin through the thin wool of the Hogwarts robes, and he felt it to his fingertips. Once, what seemed like a lifetime ago, Sirius had claimed that Remus was the human furnace, even if Remus never felt warm enough, and Remus reflected that it, like so many other things Sirius had said before, was obviously a lie. One which had been pretty enough for him to indulge.

It was the clicking of dog's claws he heard first on the stone floor.

And then the padding sounds of human hands on stone.

It was very strange, Remus reflected, to see those same blue eyes finally lock in gaze with his own, after so long without so much as a word exchanged.

"You're out after hours," Remus said dully.

"You know me," Sirius said, surprisingly light. "Raising hell, no doubt."

Remus laughed, and he almost meant it. "Who was she?"

Sirius shrugged, and crawled forward until he was leaning against the statue, eyes sliding shut. "No one." There was a long pause. "Why Gideon?"

It was stupid to think that Sirius wouldn't notice, Remus knew logically. Even if he didn't see it, sense it, Padfoot would smell it. Remus strongly suspected that he'd been expecting silence, a lengthy void of conversation that would give him time to come up with reasons and explanations that didn't sound like they came straight out of one of those novels his mum hid in the bottom drawer of her bedside table.

"He's really quite fit," Remus said airily. "And bends very nicely. Very rarely picks fights."

Sirius snorted. "Like sodomizing a twig, then."

Remus barely resisted the urge to cuff Sirius. Touching wasn't allowed anymore. "Perpetual jackass to the end," he said.

"Yes, that would be, actually, what 'perpetual,' implies," Sirius replied.

"I never should have encouraged you to read," Remus said tartly. He slouched against the wall, and felt every centimeter of the aging stone against his back, like worn sandpaper against his hands, biting into the palms of his hands.

"I'm sorry," Sirius said in a rush. He was looking away, and no light fell on him, like enveloping dark was drawn to him in a cloak. "I know it doesn't mean anything to you. But I'm sorry."

Remus stared at the vaulted ceilings, and looked at where the moonlight streamed into the castle, marred by watery shadows when the wind outside brushed tree limbs into the window, when a bird flew past.

It didn't matter what Sirius said, Remus realized.

"I hate you," Remus said lightly. "A lot, actually. Right now."

There was a sharp intake of breath in the silence, and Remus was glad he couldn't see Sirius' face.

"It's like this ball in my stomach," he went on easily. "And every time I think that I might be ready to forgive you, or at least try to forget about it and let James sleep through the night for once -- it all comes roaring back." Remus traced one of the stones that pieced together the floor, feeling the misshapen edges of it with a fingertip. "I wonder if it's petty that I'm doing this. It's so terribly cliché, really, to have a falling out and then find someone else in the meanwhile.

"Then again," Remus said, closing his eyes, "I think about what you did to me, and it doesn't matter very much anymore."

The intake of breath in the dark this time sounded very much like a sob. It twisted in Remus' chest, something dark and ugly he remembered from fifth year, but much more satisfying now, with a cruel comfort in knowing that Sirius was miserable. He could instruct himself to be good, to stop being horrible, but it didn't matter then, because Sirius was sitting on the ground, knees dirty and crying and Remus could think of nothing else in the world he wanted more.

He breathed in, out, and then said, "It's easier to hate you than to think about how much it hurt to wake up the next morning, Sirius. You can sit there and sob into your filthy robe as much as you'd like but it's -- " Remus choked on the words, so angry and lightheaded he could barely string together a sentence " -- it's different. And I -- and I don't care."

It suddenly became imperative that he leave, and he struggled to his feet and was halfway out of the hall before he paused and rocked back on one heel.

He stared straight ahead and said, "Sirius, you're out after hours."

The sobbing, thick sounds behind him drew closer, and he felt Sirius fall into step behind him, and they made their way silently through the winding hallways of Hogwarts. Past the portrait hole, in the Gryffindor common room, Remus seized his wrist, and dragged him up the steps back to the sixth year boys' room before shoving him toward Sirius' perfectly-made and dusty bed.

And in the morning, when James woke up with Sirius in the room and Lily agreeing on a date, he shouted loudly enough to wake the whole tower before stubbing his toe on his bedpost and calling everything in the room a "rotten fucking arse pirate," which was closer to the truth than James was entirely comfortable allowing himself to come to terms with.

Remus' eyes snapped open at the noise.

He took a deep breath, opened his bedcurtains, and said, "What the hell is going on?"

VII.

"This is not a good idea," Peter said.

"Pixies are highly unpredictable," Remus added.

"They'll bite the living sod out of you," Sirius finished.

James frowned. "None of you have any sense of adventure."

Peter, Remus, and Sirius leveled a very similar glare at James, who did not wilt under pressure.

"This has to be stellar, you berks," he declared, vehement, slamming his left fist into his right palm, and stalking about like a General to his troops. "It's taken me seven years to get to this point, and if Lily's going to put out -- "

"And she really won't, if you put it like that," Sirius interrupted.

" -- sod you, Black! -- then this evening has to be perfect."

Remus crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. "Pixies," he said flatly, "are not perfect. They are nasty, biting creatures who do not take kindly to being caged for display."

James waved his hand offhandedly. "They'll be freed in the morning."

Peter sighed, throwing up his hands. Remus cocked one brow and leaned against a bedpost.

Sirius, who was due for a glorious fit of temper, waved his hands about and shouted, "James, are you out of your mind? Have you no sense of mood? Of occasion? There's no chance you're going to get into her skirt if she's too busy fighting off Pixies or whatever the hell else you let loose to add atmosphere!" He scowled. "How the name of God did you ever get laid before?"

James looked very superior and said, "What is that? The tinny whining of poor, virgin Sirius Black I hear in the distance? Lecturing me about shagging?"

Remus and Peter suddenly became fascinated with other things in the room.

Later, after James had stopped shouting about how utterly not on it was that everybody kept trying to drown him in the lake and where the hell had his Head Boy badge gone and how many points Sirius was losing for Gryffindor, Peter, Remus, and Sirius sat back, and watched him attempting to catch Pixies from the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

-----

Despite the encouragement and offers of a large population of Hogwarts, at eighteen, Sirius seemed content -- or at least determined -- to remain chaste.

It drove James, who had a tendency to live up to his reputation for acting "like a Turkish whore," insane. As such, he devoted a large part of his free time to trying to cajole Sirius into bed -- someone's bed. "This is unhealthy," he'd lecture. "Go shag Marion Wiley right now. She's mad about you." And Sirius would roll his eyes and remind James he didn't quite swing that way, at which point James would shout weren't there plenty of poofs and didn't Sirius know how to find them on his own?

The tableau never lasted long, as Remus was generally found intervening on behalf of his own sanity, and also to annoy James, which was always a benefit.

Nobody ever asked why Sirius had never taken anybody to bed. It was the only thing more obvious than James Potter's lunacy.

-----

"What the sod does she see in him?" Sirius mused aloud.

Remus shrugged. "He's rich," he attempted. "Oh, and Quidditch."

Peter snorted. "There're lots of rich boys at this school."

"Who have better hair," Sirius chimed in.

They were sitting around the perimeter of a rose garden that James had blackmailed Peter into cultivating earlier that week. The flowers were astonishing, cream and pink and delicate -- both colors melting languidly into one another, and edged with dark green leaves. The fairylights which were glowing softly among the flowers and floating overhead were part of a large and very complex amalgamation of Charms and Arithmancy, which Remus charged James ten galleons for, and then ten galleons more, when he realized how much trigonometry he'd have to do by hand to manage it. The privacy charm, however, was the crowning achievement: totally selective and highly complex, with a more convoluted magical dichotomy than Remus had ever imagined -- arguments leading off into tangent points and indecipherable runes -- a degree of cleverness that had to be attributed to Sirius Black and the scratching of his quill into the late hours of night.

"Right, and who have better hair," Remus agreed. "Maybe she actually likes him."

It was a very strange thought, considering very few people actually liked James, much less after he'd spent near six years stalking them. Sirius, Peter, and Remus, who were his best friends, didn't even like him very well, given the sheer number of pranks and humiliations that James had rained down on their heads. The thought that Lily Evans would change her mind about James Potter was too foreign for comprehension.

Peter sighed, and pushed himself up, saying, "It's time."

Sirius and Remus nodded gravely at him. "Good luck, mate," Sirius said.

Peter rolled his eyes. "Let's just pray it's McGonagall that catches me, and not Filch." He moaned. "Why am I doing this?"

"Twenty-five galleons," Remus said.

Peter shuffled off, and five minutes later, just as James and Lily stepped into the rose garden, there was an explosion in the castle.

-----

"Right," Sirius said. "How about I just give you money, as this whole middle-man-Sirius-sucks-arse-at-cards bit is getting tiresome."

Remus cocked his brow and set his hand on the grass. "I'm assuming you fold."

Sirius scowled. "No, you bloody cow I raise -- of course I fold." He threw his cards at Remus' head: a seven, a four, a three, one Queen, and one stuck in Remus' hair. "I have the worst sodding luck at this game. I have half a mind to think that you're making up the rules as you go along, just to make me lose."

Gathering up the cards, Remus plucked the last one -- a six -- out of his hair. "Think what makes you feel better, Sirius."

It would never quite be the same as before, Remus knew. There were scars that ran deeper than the dull ache and occasional flare of hateful anger that still emerged; Sirius had carved some sort of indelible image into Remus' mind. But Sirius had, as long as Remus remembered, always been leaving marks all over Remus: bruises from roughhousing, faint blushes with his concern, and later, dark, kiss-fashioned bruises on his collarbone, on the rise of one hip, behind his ear.

No, never exactly the same, but better now than before. The fact that Peter and James felt confident about leaving them alone together was a good sign; in the intervening months, Remus had taken to using their friends as a barometer.

Sirius snatched the newly shuffled cards out of Remus' hand and set them aside.

"We're not playing anymore," Sirius said determinedly.

Remus blinked innocently. "Why not?"

"I can't bloody afford it," Sirius retorted, slightly red in the cheeks. "Even I'm not rich enough to keep losing to you."

It seemed to have two meanings, but Remus let it pass.

The stars were appearing in the sky and Sirius flopped back on the grass, staring into the dark and stuck his hands deep into his pockets.

The night swirled around them, and Remus watched Sirius watch the sky.

There was a part of Remus that was growing ever more insistent by day, and it said that he was being petty and cruel, mean and senseless. It insisted that Remus needed to grow up, to accept the less-than-comfortable reality that regardless what Sirius did, or would do in the future, those indelible marks that Sirius had made by mouth and hand and heart were just that: indelible.

It was very easy, sitting in the quiet darkness, to see Sirius and think what they might be like had that horrible day in January never occurred, very easy indeed to think that Remus might lean over him and press a kiss to Sirius' full mouth. To think that Sirius might roll them over, and press his weight against Remus' body, warm and solid on that night, which seemed to swim in the silver-stream of the Milky Way and behave more like a wavering fairytale than anything out of reality.

And Sirius was still so very handsome, with his elegant features and long lashes, blue eyes and winsome smile, even when Sirius was not very winsome at all. No, Sirius was unabashed, unashamed, unrepressed, irreproachably himself -- unfailingly.

Remus realized a long time had passed when he heard the croak in Sirius' voice.

"Is it pointless?" Sirius paused. "To wait?"

Remus blinked. "What?"

Sirius sighed, and seemed to melt into the grass. "For you. For -- whatever." A pause. "Or should I give up the ghost, go find Gideon and we can form our own little Holding A Torch For Remus Lupin, The Stupid Sod, Society."

"That," Remus said after a moment's consideration, "is very annoying alliteration."

"Answer the fucking question," Sirius demanded.

Remus flopped out on the grass and stared up. Hogwarts was a sprawling estate, against all odds, nestled in a sparsely-inhabited corner of the Wizarding world, and there were no artificial lights out. The night was dark and wide, open like the expansive arms of Selene with a sparkling of stars and the moon, half-full, hanging luminous in the sky. Remus saw stars and constellations he'd never known before at Hogwarts, laying back on the grass and gazing upward: Hydra, Gemini, Lepus, Orion, and -- Sirius.

When Sirius spoke again, his voice wasn't quite so insistent anymore.

"Is there?" he asked again.

"Why do you keep waiting for me?" Remus asked, in a rush.

Sirius was quiet for a long time before Remus sensed the movement, the sound of a body crawling over grass, the sound of the dried blades snapping beneath hands. Closer and closer still until he was barely breathing and the sky was obscured with Sirius' face, as handsome and tragic as any Greek hero, with all the angles and shadows of his face made more brilliant by the stars, swaying over Remus like the moon did, looming and inescapable.

Suddenly brave, like he hadn't been for months, Sirius ran one hand over Remus' brow, tender and softly, like he wasn't sure, as if he could sense it in Remus, the skittish nervousness of a young horse or -- a young wolf.

"I can't hate you anymore," Remus finally whispered, and it was a long time later he barely whispered, "I don't want to anymore."

When had Sirius' eyes gone so utterly blue? Had it been in the intervening months? Or had they always been that color, and Remus just never noticed; it seemed very likely that Remus had never spent enough time studying Sirius.

"I love you," Sirius said, hoarse. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. But I do -- love you."

Remus blinked. "I see."

And then it only seemed natural to reach up and cup Sirius' handsome face in his hands, to stroke thumbs over Sirius' high cheekbones and to create memories of him anew, with blue, blue eyes against a background studded of stars, and Canis Major winking over Sirius' shoulder.

Remus hoped that Sirius crying on Valentine's Day wasn't going to turn into a tradition, and he stroked away the tears as Sirius gasped for breath: a wet, fighting sound that made Remus' stomach twist and hurt, that made him draw Sirius down, to press their mouths together and to try and say all that he hadn't been able to in the year since that he'd wanted to yell at the top of his lungs.

It was after, long after, after the kiss softened that Remus murmured, "I know. I've always known. I'm sorry it's taken so long," into Sirius' mouth.

-----

Sirius told Remus in the early hours of morning that it was both nothing and everything that he'd imagined, and they lounged against one another, lazy with sleep and closeness.

It had been, just as before, not quite, almost there, and maybe later, and they'd kissed and comforted and forgiven one another until they were drowsy with it, too tired to worry about doing more than throwing their clothes to the foot of Remus' bed and sleeping pressed together, fingers intertwined.

But watching Sirius sleep, eyes closed and lashes throwing long shadows over his face, Remus thought that tomorrow, and maybe the day after, was wide like the sky with possibility.

They slept until noon, and when they woke, golden and honeyed with dreams, they went to the Great Hall to find James and Lily sitting sullenly at opposite ends of the Gryffindor table, covered in tiny red bites that looked nothing like kiss marks.

"You were supposed to be keeping watch!" James howled. "Why did I buy that Pixie-repellant if you weren't going to stick around to sodding use it?"

Sirius stared at him. "So my spraying down poisons would have added to the atmosphere."

Remus chocked on his pumpkin juice, but wisely stayed silent.

James threw himself back into his chair, sulking. "Where's Peter, anyhow?"

Sirius and Remus pointed at one of the far tables, where Peter could be seen wearing a kerchief and clearing off tables by hand, scowling and muttering to himself all the while.

-----

"They're impossible," Sirius reflected. Night had fallen and they were curled up in Remus' bed with Remus running his hands through Sirius' hair, as if to memorize him all over again.

Remus hummed in agreement. "Very impossible." Pause. "But not as impossible as you."

Sirius shouted and tried to muffle Remus with a pillow, telling him what a miserable sod he was.

"Much more impossible than me," Sirius demanded, and with his voice softening, added, "Or you. Or us."

It was a serious moment, but Remus learned long ago that "serious," was very much just a state of mind.

So Remus kissed Sirius, saying, "Believe what'll make you feel better."

And they did.