Reprieve

And this love burns inside me like the last light in the world
In the night, shining bright, like some mystery uncovered
I'll keep movin' through the dark with you in my heart
My blood brother

--Bruce Springsteen

Part One

He stayed for a few days at Remus’s flat in Edinburgh. He spent most of the time as a dog because it was safer, Remus had deemed, and because it was easier. Padfoot’s thoughts were less complex than Sirius Black’s. They were rooted firmly in the present and based upon instinct, not complex emotions like guilt over things past that could never be undone.

Remus spent most of each day looking for work and, Sirius suspected, hunting for rumours regarding the escaped prisoner of Azkaban, sowing new ones as needed. He would come home in the evenings exhausted, but with a fierce gleam in his eyes as though something long dormant within him had been awakened. He usually came with supper, and the two of them would sit on the floor in the den, by the magical fire Sirius conjured, and eat and talk. Remus did most of the talking. He would tell about his day, what, if anything, he had discovered, what he thought they should do next. Sirius found it soothing just to listen. Sometimes, when he knew he would have nothing to contribute, he’d simply become a dog and lie at Remus’s feet, allowing the other man’s words to wash over him like a gentle wave, and not worry about anything that lay beyond that little flat. It seemed strange at times that he had so little energy, despite having been caged for so long. Disappointment, he supposed, had drained him. And he was still very thin. His meals with Remus were the first substantial meals he’d eaten in more than twelve years.

Once he fell asleep while Remus was talking, and woke hours later to find the magical fire burning brightly as when it had first been conjured, and the other man asleep, snoring gently, his head cradled against Padfoot’s shoulder, one hand resting limply on the coarse black fur. The fire crackled and its light flickered over his features, lending them a warmth Sirius knew was artificial. When he’d seen Remus in the Shrieking Shack, for the first time in twelve years, he’d been struck by the other man’s haggard appearance. Until this moment, however, he’d not had the chance to truly study his friend’s features or wonder what the twelve years had been like for him.

They had not been gentle. They were both thirty-four, quite young by wizards’ standards. Yet Remus’s light-brown hair was threaded with grey, and there were thin lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. They’d both spent the long years very much alone, Sirius thought. But Sirius at least could escape his human body and mind when the solitude became too oppressive. Whether beast or man, Remus was always trapped.

Unbidden, the words Remus had once flung at him in anger--bordering on hatred--the ones that still haunted him because they still rang true, flared in his memory.

At least you have a choice. You can choose to be a beast or a man, although sometimes with you I don’t think there’s much difference…

Not so for Remus. Except for that one night every month when his curse enthralled him, Remus was always a man, and a good man at that. He had proven it countless times as a student, and afterward. He’d proven it a scant week and a half ago in the Shrieking Shack. But who had been there to remind him of that during the long years? Remus had talked, briefly, about his younger sisters, Julia and Portia, who were both doing well in their chosen fields, but what had become of his parents? Were they still alive? Remus never said. There’d been a girl, Sirius remembered with a small shock. What was the name of that girl he’d started seeing halfway through their fifth year at Hogwarts, the one he’d been afraid to tell them about because James had always said ‘Nothing can happen to one of us that doesn’t happen to the rest of us,’ and the other three hadn’t had girlfriends yet? She’d had a very ordinary name--Joan or Jean or something. What had become of her? And was it really true that he’d had only three friends since he’d been bitten as a child, and in a mere twenty-four hours lost all of them?

It wasn’t fair, thought Sirius. Not any of it.

The part of him that was Sirius considered transforming and Wingardium leviosa-ing the other man to his bed, but he doubted he could do it without waking him. And anyway, there was no guarantee the spell would work properly. The wand he was using was not his own and he had no intention of telling Remus how or where he’d acquired it. He was very lucky to have managed Buckbeak’s Transfiguration. (No points from McGonagall for this one: the eyes were still rather more birdlike than cat, and if one looked closely at the soft grey hairs on Buckbeak’s chest one realise they were actually feathers.) He considered going to sleep and letting Remus deal with the stiff neck he was bound to have if left that way until morning. The part of him that was Padfoot liked and felt comfortable with the warm pressure on his back, that steady heartbeat against his ribs. For nearly twelve years, no human being had touched him. That astonishing, heartrendingly brief, brotherly embrace Remus had given him in the Shrieking Shack had been the first voluntary human touch he’d received in twelve years. But then, Sirius thought, Remus probably had not meant to fall asleep thus, and might be embarrassed when he woke in the morning. He should be wakened and gotten to bed before he became too aware of what was happening…

Remus woke on his own before Padfoot had moved so much as a muscle. He lifted his head and stared at the dog with fire-lit brown eyes. Neither spoke. Padfoot/Sirius hardly dared to breathe. He felt the years spinning around them like a zodiac, with them in the middle at the point where all points met, but they were still somehow untouched. And it seemed in that moment that the years could go spinning off into space and leave them alone. They could not escape on their own, but the world around them could pass them by.

That moment passed, and they found themselves in another one. Remus smiled and looked shockingly younger--as young as he had ever looked when they were students at Hogwarts. He said in a hushed voice that sounded half-awed, “This used to happen, remember? I’d transform, and then when I came back to myself again I’d find you or James or both of you beside me, as though you’d been guarding me. Me, the monster. It ought to feel strange after all these years, but it doesn’t.”

If he transformed now, what would happen? Remus still held a fold of his scruff.

The other man seemed to understand. He looked down at his hand, then up at the dog’s face. He let go and inched away, slowly.

It took only a few seconds to transform. Still, it felt a long time before Sirius said, or croaked, without meeting the other’s gaze, “I have a lot of regrets, but there are only two things I’d change if I could. I should never have trusted Wormtail. No, I know I had no reason not to. Listen. I thought I was being so clever. It made sense. Except that James was my brother, so I should have been his and Lily’s Secret Keeper. I’d have died before I gave them away. And I should never have used you to get back at Snape. I made you a monster that one time. You were never one before that.”

“I was, though.”

“Not to me. Or--any of us.”

He looked up, finally. Remus was no longer smiling. The light in his eyes had gone out and the years had come charging back at full force.

“You’d have died, then,” he said simply, quietly. “Or he might have used an Imperius curse to get the information from you. I know you’re strong, but he killed James, and James was the strongest of all of us. You all would have died, and no one would have known about Wormtail.”

“He might not have been able to break me. James might still be alive. And Lily. Harry might have parents, maybe brothers and sisters--”

“But what kind of lives would they have lived? Would they even have lived for very long anyway? If Voldemort had not tried to kill Harry, would he have been stopped?” Sirius thought Remus looked very tired just then. “As to the other,” he said in an even softer tone, after a long pause, “as to that, I forgive you.”

Sirius felt no relief. “You said you never would.”

“That was before Azkaban. If I’d killed Snape, or if I’d bitten him--I might have been sent there. Or I might have been…exterminated.” He shivered. “Not you, though. You were stupid--sixteen-- So was I, but… I can’t help what I am, but an unsafe werewolf can’t be allowed to run free. Instead, you went to Azkaban for a crime you did not commit, so in a way, you paid for all our sins. You paid and paid. To be honest, I stopped being angry with you about that a long time ago. Even after James and Lily died. I thought about it, and I supposed I held it as evidence against you, but by the time they died I’d stopped being angry with you about that. The hurt stayed, or I thought it did. I don’t know when that left me--probably when I thought you’d betrayed us and I realized I couldn’t afford to be hurt by anyone anymore.”

“But you grieved for me--”

“Yes. Well, I grieved for the boy I’d known. The one who’d turned me into a monster once, but who’d never feared me, not even after I almost killed him.”

“I remember that!” Sirius found himself trembling, though the memory was warm inside him. It sputtered fitfully, like a candle’s flame. He cupped his body around it, struggled to keep it alight. “No, I wasn’t afraid of you. I must have been the world’s biggest prat. No, I am the world’s biggest prat--but--” Difficult, now. He was losing it… The Dementors, the cold, that biting, clawing cold… This couldn’t be a happy thought, but where was it?

Then, hands on his shoulders. Warm hands holding him firmly in the present where there was light and friendship. A forehead pressed to his, and warm breath…

And there it was, that April night twenty-three years gone, safe in his heart where it had always been. He swallowed, muttered, “I knew you were Remus. You came about this close to ripping my bloody throat out and all I could think--I remember--was, ‘But Remus wouldn’t do that.’ Your teeth were about ten centimetres from my stupid throat and all I could think was, ‘But it’s Remus in there, not fecking Lon Chaney, Junior. It’s that scrawny kid who can’t keep on his broomstick and lets me copy his History of Magic homework.’ I swear, that’s what I thought. Nearly gave James a heart attack, that did. You didn’t touch me, though. You--” The thread slipped from his hand. He frowned, grasping for it, catching it, nearly losing it again.

Hands on his face.

“You-- You nearly bit your own hand off, didn’t you? You damn near bled to death. I remember.” He pulled away slightly, looking at the other man, for confirmation, for anything. The brown eyes were difficult to read. “I--” He faltered. “That’s twice I almost got you killed. There must have been other times. God, Remus, how can you--?”

Remus said, simply, “I forgive you, if I have that right.”

This time he was the one to lower his head.

Relief stirred in Sirius’s heart--and shame, too. This man before him, he was so good, still too damn good after all these years. And he’d thought he was the traitor? But that goodness, that mercy, that insistence on understanding were the very things that had once condemned Remus in Sirius’ eyes. Who in the face of an enemy like Voldemort and with innocents dying all around them could remain so profoundly decent? Only a liar, he’d once thought. Only one whose safety and power had already been assured by the enemy. Only Remus, he knew now, and felt something very like tears burning in his throat. In all the world, only Remus. Relief, shame, and that fierce protectiveness he’d always felt toward this person, even before he’d learned his secret, came to him in a torrent that he struggled to conceal. Now he should ask him, he thought. James used to be the one who’d ask if something was wrong; Sirius had never really known how. But James was dead, so it was all on him. Now he could find out how the other man had spent the intervening years, what he had done, who, if anyone, had been with him.

But he did not say a word.

Remus had never asked him about Azkaban.

Minutes passed, fell away, were lost. They both jumped when the clock in the pantry tolled three.

Remus looked up, smiled ruefully. “Time for bed, I think. I wanted to get an early start tomorrow…”

“Doing what?” Sirius inquired gruffly. “Take the day off. You look as though you haven’t had a day off in twelve years.” That, at least, seemed safe to say.

Remus shrugged. “And what will I do on my day off?”

“Hang out with me. I need to leave here soon, anyway.” It was a truth he was loath to acknowledge, but there was no escaping it. “I’m not safe here, and I don’t want you getting in any more trouble on my account.”

“It’s no trouble…”

“Don’t lie.”

“All right, it is, but I don’t care. I owe you and James and Lily and Harry.”

Sirius said, reluctantly, “I have to go.”

“Not yet.”

“After the next full moon.”

“Ah.” Remus inhaled softly. “No. I can’t allow that.”

The growl rumbled in Sirius’s throat.

“There’s nothing to see, anyway,” said Remus quickly. “It’s not like before. I’m having my potion sent to me. It keeps me calmer. I just stay in my room. I don’t need guarding. It’s easier anyway in the summer, when I’m this far north and the nights are very short.”

“I want to be there anyway.”

“Sirius, no.” Remus stood. “The full moon isn’t for another few weeks. You should be gone…tomorrow night.” He started to leave. Sirius did not move. In the doorway, Remus paused and looked back over his shoulder and Sirius’s breath caught in his throat because in that moment the other man looked so young again. They could have been back in Gryffindor. “After one hundred and forty-four transformations alone…I can handle a few more.”

“You counted?” said Sirius in disbelief.

The other shook his head. “No. Come on; you were the natural at Arithmancy. Twelve years times twelve months. I can handle a few more.” He smiled limply, and added, “I promised James I’d forgive you. I didn’t want to at first, but he couldn’t bear it when we weren’t speaking, so in the end I made a bargain. I’d forgive you if you made your peace with Snape--”

Sirius inhaled sharply. That was a thing that would never happen, not now.

“--and if there should come a time when you needed me more than I needed you. I’d meant to hold fast to that promise, but who could have predicted how things would turn out? Anyway, I forgive you--out of love for James, but also because…you will never need me as much as I need you.” And then he was gone.

Sirius stared at the darkness where his friend had been, and it seemed there was something else he could say, something that would call the other man back, but he did not know what it was, so he said nothing. After a time he shifted his gaze to the magical fire. He blew experimentally across the rippling flame. It danced and sputtered, but did not go out.

He wanted to think about what Remus had said. There was something subtle buried in the words, a reproof perhaps, or a plea. Or a confession. He was certain of its existence, but it was very late and he was so very tired…

A small grey kitten emerged from the shadows of the den and came quite close to him. Sirius put out an entreating hand, but the Transfigured hippogriff shied away, no doubt remembering the huge black dog that had carried it here. It watched Sirius out of gold eyes, and Sirius was sure he did not imagine the reproach in its gaze.

“Fine,” he said. “It’s time we were gone. Tomorrow night.”

Buckbeak disappeared again, perhaps gone to hunt small night creatures or to dream about flying free.

Sirius turned back to the fire. It was a long time before he transformed and lay down to sleep.