A Long Way From Eleven

They were friends first, when Remus was five weeks shy of his birthday and Sirius had stepped into the Hogwarts Express with James and Peter, laughing loudly at some joke or other with the booming confidence of a boy who'd been eleven all his life. They wanted to know if Remus' compartment was free and Remus had nodded, awed and amazed when they spoke to him easily, like they'd been eleven together.

*

Sirius always hung out with James but he always spoke to Remus, asking him questions and prying and prodding with his twelve-year old tact, and Remus indulged the boy though he never gave away too much, smiling his shy smile instead and never stringing a coherent sentence that satisfied Sirius, who kept asking anyway.

*

In third year Sirius visited Remus in the hospital wing, just by himself, without James or Peter and in the middle of the night while Remus wished desperately to sleep, except he was too tired to. He looked at the scratches on Remus' arms and the scars that Madam Pomfrey could not fix anymore and Remus was terrified of the silence so he told Sirius everything. The next day Sirius started speaking again, and Remus knew he would keep talking and they would be eleven forever.

*

Sirius obsessed madly over Fiona Right when he wasn't obsessing over researching on Animagi transformations, and at fourteen he learned how to fix his hair so it fell over his eyes in a carelessly windswept manner and that Animagi transformations depended on will and personality and should never be done on nights when the moon waned or else the results will be permanent. For the most part, Remus smiled in amusement.

*

Fiona dumped Sirius the night they drank their Animagus potions, and Padfoot couldn't decide which direction to wag his tail so he ended up circling it around, like some sort of propeller from the helicopters Remus would see occasionally during summers at home. Remus laughed, and he almost cried when he reached over to pet Prongs except he had to make sure he didn't accidentally sit on Wormtail and Padfoot had tackled him already, enthusiastically licking his cheek, so Remus stuck to laughing instead.

*

Two months and a half after Remus turned sixteen he decided he would ask Gina Waterson out, like he'd wanted to since she smiled at him from across the Gryffindor table after they'd been Sorted, but Sirius only snorted when he told him this and asked him what he wanted with someone like Gina anyway, whose face was too long and whose hair was too brown and whose legs were too skinny and whose nose was off-center. Remus said he thought Gina was nice and pretty but Sirius shook his head and said Marauders didn't do girlfriends and before Remus could bring up Fiona, Sirius dragged him out to the snowball fight James had started.

*

Remus asked Gina out one month after coming back to school after the summer holidays and was turned down because she was already dating Eric Midgen from Ravenclaw. Remus stayed up until late in the common room, moping and sulking until Sirius came down from their dormitory and told him Gina wasn't worth Remus' time anyway, and that he could never rely on girls the way he could on the Marauders, and especially on Sirius, and when Sirius leant over to snog him, Remus let him.

Sirius' lips were chapped and rough and he smelled strongly of musk and Remus had to remember not to look for Gina's soft pliant lips or the sweet scent of Gina's perfume because he was snogging Sirius and really, he ought to be grateful because Sirius had always been there for him, hadn't he, and what had Remus ever done to repay all of that, so he pulled Sirius closer and he didn't wince when Sirius slipped his tongue into Remus' mouth and he let Sirius' hands do what they wanted to do.

They were still eleven together, and they'd be eleven forever, except when Sirius wanted Remus to be seventeen for him, and because they were friends Remus would be, and eventually Remus managed to make himself believe he liked it.