Biblical and Encyclopaedic

Biblical and Encyclopaedic

November 1991

Lupin knew that if he ever needed to choose a specialist subject for something, Mastermind say, it would be the foibles and minutiae of Sirius Black.

He knew the shape of Sirius' hipbones arching up to meet him and the blazing, intense look in his eyes, but that wasn't the knowledge that mattered most. Lupin knew what Gid Prewett looked like in bed too - although he wasn't exactly proud of that.

What mattered was knowing all the everyday things about Sirius - the smell of his newly washed hair, the curve of the 'm' he wrote, how he liked his eggs for breakfast. Layer upon layer of little details, as if enough of them would bring Sirius back.

Remus wondered where the strange capacity to recollect Sirius came from - whether some hormonal quirk of fate meant that you memorised your lovers in great detail but didn't store that information about friends. He'd shared a room with James and Peter for seven years, and of course he knew them, but nothing approached the way he knew Sirius.

September 1978

Every morning he woke up beside Padfoot, Remus felt a surge of happiness, a sort of warm glow as if he were basking in front of the fire.

Remus rolled against Pad's back, curling his arm around against his stomach, and heard a sleepy sigh.

They hadn't planned for it to be this way, and that was part of the joy of it.

One day Remus absentmindedly said "It seems silly, me paying rent."

And Padfoot replied, casual as anything, "Yeah it is silly, when you've not got a broom."

Two days later he'd opened Pad's drawer to get a t-shirt and found it empty - the t-shirts and pants and socks were all crammed in together because Pad had emptied half the drawers.

Later that week Remus had moved his stuff in. The following month he spent his measly paycheque on a broomstick.

But that was over three months ago, and now Pad was moving slowly, nakedly against him in the morning light, so the thoughts slipped away as he leant forward to meet Pad's lips.

September 1994

Remus hung onto all his memories when Sirius was in Azkaban. The detailed knowledge became familiar like the Quidditch old t-shirts he wore - which had once belonged to Sirius, now he came to think about it.

It was a horrible shock when he saw Sirius' face on the front of the newspaper. Sirius' face looked wrong, with his furious eyes and discomforting laughter.

'That isn't Sirius' Remus found himself thinking, 'He didn't look like that.'

Remus gradually got over the shock, but missed the certainty of knowing Sirius in his memory instead of the dark maniacal eyes on the wanted posters.

It was almost a comfort to be at Hogwarts that year - which was outside of his routine and where Remus could forget about Sirius - or he told himself that, as he lay awake at night, which was almost the same thing.

July 1995

If it had been strange living around posters of Sirius, it was a hundred times stranger to be around the real, physical Sirius in Grimmauld Place.

They cooked together, and Remus was jarred by having to remember their old division of labour - back in the days when he'd been Moony - where Sirius chopped and he dealt with the stove. Remus had been chopping things himself for thirteen years.

Leaving the bathroom one night, he glanced into the bedroom opposite and saw Sirius' jumpers in a neat pile on the floor next to the chest of drawers.

Remus knew what he was going to find even before he opened the drawers: the bottom drawer was empty. All three of the bottom drawers were empty, because Sirius had crammed his clothes into the top two and stacked the overflow jumpers on the floor.

Remus stared at the chest of drawers for a while, until a floorboard creaked and he looked up to see Sirius standing in the doorway, his face very grave.

Remus walked over and touched his shaking hand to Sirius' cheek, and Sirius pressed his lips to the palm.

Then things were right again.

January 1997

After the Ministry - which Remus rationally knew was a victory of sorts, but seemed sickeningly Pyrric - Remus fell back into the habit of his memories of Sirius: updating a few details, adding footnotes.

Tonks slowly moved into his life, started spending the night and sharing his toothbrush, but Remus had no recollection of how she flossed or what colour she liked her tea.

She metamorphosed into Sirius once, obviously working from a photograph because she'd got the parting of his hair right and the shape of the jaw, but she moved oddly and her inflection rose where Sirius' would've fallen. The wrongness of it made Remus sick.

He washed his face in the sink, and looked up to see an old face reflected in the mirror, amazed that anyone could fall for polyjuice.

Remus almost wanted to break up with Tonks, but she never repeated the mistake and - because it was better to miss by a mile than an inch - he learned to live with her.

One day, Tonks moved her spare knickers into Remus' empty drawers and he didn't say anything, just thought of Sirius and how the essence of magic was in the details.