We Don't Live Here Anymore

(A/N: Title from Pablo Neruda's The Question.)

Remus does not want to come back here. That is not the most important thing, but it is the first thing. So what that Hogwarts is the only true home he's had? (Sirius felt the same way. No. No, he didn't. Sirius was a lie.) He knew, from the moment he left the funeral, that he could never return to the old school. He knew that this was where their ghosts would be, and he knew that he would be the only one to see them. He was too close to going mad already. He could never go home, in more ways than one.

But Dumbledore asked. The old bastard had to ask, didn't he, with those bright eyes and those grandfatherly wrinkles. As if he didn't know how Remus felt. As if Remus owes him anything, anything, after everything. Remus doesn't want to come.

He can't say no. Not to the ghosts. Not to them.

It's all he can do, that first night, not to throw an insult across the Professor's Table at Snape. Snape is watching Remus with that same intense, hating look that he had whenever he saw Remus after that night when the wolf nearly killed him, and Remus wants to make a fool of him. Not that he ever did these things during school. No, it's like he's possessed, so strong is the urge. He resists, somehow. He knows what they would say if they were here. "It's Snivellus!" they'd shout. "Are you a Marauder, or aren't you?"

Is he or isn't he? He can't tell anymore. Sometimes he wonders if he's grown up at all. He was always the mature one, the one who did his homework, the one who the adults trusted, the one who kept the others in line. But it was James who started a family, wasn't it? It was Peter who sacrificed himself for his friends. Merlin, it was Sirius, Sirius of the thousand dung bombs, Sirius of the never-ending sexual innuendo, Sirius the eternal twelve-year-old, who grew out of his teenage rebellion and joined the family fold. Became a Death Eater. Committed murder. Children do not kill their friends. Sirius grew up. And Remus? Remus is still, somehow, that shy little boy. He is waiting for the bright youths with whom he shares a bedroom to notice that he exists. He is living for their laughter. Lost without them.

He was right. They are in the halls. They are everywhere. Remus can't walk into his classroom without seeing James and Sirius in the front middle seats, sword-fighting with their wands. Every question he asks, they answer. Sirius is so damn cocky. Even when he's wrong he sounds right. Remus is fooled, sometimes, and gives him the points he doesn't deserve. He doesn't mind those mistakes, though; he knows every teacher makes them with this one, this boy of the brilliant grey eyes. James is more adept at the subject, but his answers are long-winded, not snappy, and Remus is not tempted to tell him he's right when he's wrong. But maybe that's just Remus. He's always been like this, with these two.

Harry. Oh, God, Harry. Harry is like a ghost made flesh, and it is at first almost monstrous to Remus. He hides it as best he can, but inside he recoils at every glimpse of James's hair and Lily's eyes remade and recombined. It is strange, he knows, that the ghosts he can talk to and laugh with, but the living boy frightens him. No. The boy makes him despair. And rejoice. The boy is everything he's lost. Well. Except the one he wants back the most (no, no, I never missed Sirius. Not even a little. I do not want him back.)

There is an exquisite pain in ghosts made flesh. Remus is addicted, addicted to James's timbre in Harry's voice, to Lily's fire in his fierce loyalty and fierce hatreds. He tries to see only the baby he held, those few times, or more often watched Sirius dandle, but oh, God, Harry. The ghosts flee him, or maybe they merge into him. Maybe, maybe they're all three reincarnated in the boy. Yes, yes, that's it, and never mind that he's thinking as if Sirius died rather than Peter, because in Harry is his father's heroism and his mother's softness, and in him is Sirius's fierce sense of right. Well. The sense of right that they all thought Sirius had, once.

Maybe what they thought Sirius was is so strong that it formed its own ghost to be reincarnated.

It makes Remus ache. This one, this one he will protect.

Remus thought it was bad when he talked to them, but in the end it is worse when he talks about them. "The kindest witch I ever met," he tells Harry, glancing to the side to avoid the eyes that look too much like hers. He finds himself staring right into the originals. She does not look like a ghost. There is nothing pale about her; her eyes are like spring grass, her hair like sunset, and ye holy God, even dead she inspires poetry. Sirius could never understand why James loved her so persistently, but Remus, he who didn't like girls at all, always knew. If he could have fallen in love with a woman...he remembers patrols with her, the castle quiet, his knowledge that if anybody snuck out it would be his friends and they would be invisible. He remembers discussing Tennyson with her, her laughter and her love of language. He remembers their one fumbled kiss, both of them trying desperately to deny who it was they were really falling in love with, the awkward lie of his damp hands on her shoulders and the nervous laughter that followed, the way that her floral perfume smelled merely nice and not world-shattering like Sirius's cologne did. He remembers the look she wore when he told her, when she was engaged to one of them and so was, finally, one of them, where he went once a month. It was soft, that look, soft and unsurprised, soft and loving. She is wearing that look now, while he stares at her and tells her son the memories that consent to pass his lips.

Percy. Percy makes Remus think of James. Oh, this boy is nothing at all like James Potter. He has all the charm of a cooked squid, and he's no more likely to flood the Girl's bathroom than he is to kick his own mother. But Remus sees the Head Boy badge, and he sees James. He sees James's expression the day he got the badge in the post, a day when both Remus and Sirius were visiting, shocked and uncertain. He sees James's expression when he realized that Lily was Head Girl, both terrified and exultant. He sees James stealing Sirius's comb in a desperate attempt make himself presentable for the position, sees Sirius and James wrestling over it and ending up bruised and laughing. He sees James's expression go more and more serious throughout the year, first as a show for Lily and later because he was growing up into an unexplored portion of himself. Later still it was because the world had fallen completely apart. Some of the frivolity, the boyhood, fled his face with each death reported in the Prophet. Remus remembers the nights they sat up talking about it, his own disbelief and fear, Peter's stammering. Sirius was so angry, so angry, red in the face and breathless with it, incoherent, his hands balled into fists so tight that they cramped and Remus had to rub his fingers to relax them. James was only determined, on those nights. His shoulders squared, his eyes hard. He was so determined to fix it. Remus had really believed on those nights that James would save them all. How could he not?

How did he not?

Remus doesn't think of Peter much, and that makes him feel horrible. Sometimes a rat will run by, or he'll have to pass the Whomping Willow to get to the Shack, and Peter will come to him, but other than that...well. He had left Peter behind, he knows. He was never close to the boy, though he was better to him than Sirius and James were. Peter fell behind them all so often; and when push came to shove, Remus fell into Sirius so hard that he could see no one else. Before that, it fell to Remus to tutor Peter more often than he could list, and it always left him vaguely frustrated, because Peter simply didn't care. Maybe that was their fault, and maybe it was the teachers'. From this vantage point, Remus can see that really, nobody cared about Peter. He wishes he could remedy that now; but the ghosts of the others shine as brightly as their faces did, and he still can't look away from them.

Remus tries so, so hard not to think of Sirius. Sirius doesn't deserve it. He never saw Sirius clearly, he knows that. But oh, he sees him now. His face is everywhere. His ghost runs down the corridors before Remus, trailing his fingers over the stones, glancing over his shoulder to shout "Come on, Moony! Are you man, or are you snail?" When Remus takes a shower, Sirius throws back the curtain and yells "Boo," he steps in behind Remus. Sirius looks through his trunk in search of jumpers, scoffing when Remus tells him that they won't fit. When Remus wakes up in the Shack, curled into himself, fetal but not feral, human again, the weight of Sirius is at his back and Sirius's golden hand is draped over his hip. He tries not to look. He tries. He sees Sirius's expression anyway, fierce and tender. Home. No. No. He thinks so hard about James and Lily's home in ruins that the force of the image brings tears to his eyes. But God help him, he can't hate Sirius. Sirius is in everything. Sirius envelops. It has always been this way.

With nothing else, he'd rather die than lose it. He wonders, sometimes, as he looks at the Dementors that the Ministry has sent to guard the school, if Sirius would have rather died than lose it. Or if Sirius gave it up. Gave him up.

There is a muggle phrase, you look as if you've seen a ghost. Remus has seen ghosts. He has had his fill of ghosts. Yet it is not till he sees Peter's name on the map that the four of them made together that he looks like the Muggles say he will. Seen a ghost. Punch to the gut. Strike of lightning. He knows. Merlin, Medea, Circe, he knows. It hurts, the knowledge. It burns. It is better than any orgasm. It makes him into a God, an angel, he flies on his feet oh God he flies. The Shack. Sirius, and Peter, oh God the Shack oh God he runs and he is fast, he is fast, he is faster than Harry on a broom, faster than James the night he saved Snape's life, faster than a Dementor in pursuit. He is fast. His is the speed with which the world changes. The Shack. The Shack.

He knows who is there. Still, when he sees Sirius human, his mind jerks sideways. For a moment he is sure it's the ghost, the one who has been before his eyes this whole time. But no, the ghost has always been young, smooth-faced, gorgeous and golden and whole. That is Sirius. This is Sirius. Gaunt, older than he ought to be, sharp. Haunted. Just like Remus.

Oh God. Oh God please don't let me be wrong.

"Where is he, Sirius?" he asks, and then he has to ask it aloud, because he is speaking in his head to the ghost and the ghost is gone. He does not remember, later, what happens after that. He does not remember Peter- when has he ever? He does not remember the children, the children who could not speak when last he saw this face. He does not remember Snape and his futile, feeble fury. What he remembers is Sirius's arms, thin and shaking but real. Real. Sirius. Haunted, but not haunting. Come home.