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The rain is falling thick and fast when Remus Lupin Apparates into the grimy North London alley. Feeling his toes numb immediately as he lands directly in a puddle, Remus swipes his already sodden fringe out of his eyes as he pushes on through the downpour. He emerges from the alleyway into the busy main high street of Camden. Not a single Londoner has taken note of his sudden appearance; everyone is hurrying, eyes down, heads bent against the wind and rain as they march on to their destinations. Normally a people-watcher, Remus might usually take the time to wonder where these people were going, what their lives entail. Not tonight.
Tonight Remus walks the familiar path towards a one-bedroomed flat above a betting shop, weaving in and out of disgruntled, rain-sopped people. One man barges straight into him, nearly sending Remus flying to the floor, and Remus, normally one to apologise even when its not his fault, snarls an angry, “Watch it,” in the man’s direction. The man - a tall, burly figure with imposing shoulder width - meets Remus’ eye defiantly, his mouth open for some retort, but then he must see something in Remus’ eyes, something dark and almost wolfish, because he seems to shrink in stature and mumbles a hasty ‘sorry’ before getting the hell out of Remus’ way and disappearing into the crowds.
Remus quickens his step. His legs are now with less feeling than before, the material of his jeans clinging damply to him and his coat may as well not be there at all for all the use it’s doing him. He almost - almost - feels relief when the battered door to the flat appears in sight, until he remembers why he’s here in the first place. He fumbles for his key in his coat pocket, the metal icy cold to the touch, and it takes him a while to fit the damn thing in the lock. It’s always been awkward, and the wood warps in the colder, wetter weather.
Sirius used to barge the thing open with his shoulder, Remus remembers suddenly, and it’s like a kick to the stomach. He drops the keys in a puddle.
“Bloody hell - Alohamora!” Remus says, and the door swings open obligingly.
Remus hurries in, not caring to look whether or not any Muggles saw a man open a door with a tap of a wooden stick and a funny word. The entrance hall to the flat is not a hall at all, not even a room, just about two feet of space leading to a creaking, rickety staircase with a mite-bitten bannister. He takes the stairs slowly, the reality of what he has to do creeping in like bile at the back of his throat. He pauses at the top step, outside the door leading to the flat. The door is red - originally a nondescript white, but painted crimson what feels like a lifetime ago in a fit of boyish freedom - but the paint is chipping and peeling already, and the plain old white is showing in some places.
Remus places his hand on the door, remembering Sirius’ triumphant expression when he returned from the Muggle DIY shop down the road with the pot of cheap paint, his face alight with happiness at being able to paint his door his old school colours.
::
“Imagine my parent’s faces, Moony,” Sirius laughed. “Here I am, in my own home, painting it Gryffindor red - in the Muggle way!”
James flicked him with paint; Peter dived for cover as an all-out paint war started, and Remus had stood there, trying to tell them all that they were ridiculous and they were going to waste the paint, until Sirius splattered him across the nose with red and he’d joined in twice as hard as any of them.
Paint had gotten up the walls, in Remus’ ears, on James’ glasses, and Sirius had insisted Remus take a shower at his place to clean off before going home.
Remus had taken the shower, and ended up not going home at all.
::
Remus nearly jumps out of his skin as the door opens. His hand goes for his wand, but the door only reveals the face of Albus Dumbledore. Remus has never wanted to see someone so much and be left alone so intensely as at this moment.
“Remus,” Dumbledore says, smiling - Remus wants to hit him. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“What are you doing here?” Remus blurts out.
Dumbledore opens the door wider. He’s wearing robes of deep blue and a hat of the same colour, the tip of which brushes the ceiling. He, at least, looks remarkably dry, even comfortable. Remus doubts he’ll ever be comfortable again.
“Why don’t you come in? I’ll make us a cup of tea.”
Remus has had enough tea to last him a lifetime. The night he heard about James and Lily, and Peter, and Sirius - it’s all started to blur a bit - but the one thing he remembers is people pressing cups of warming liquid into his hands again and again, as if it helped any. Emmeline, Frank, Alice, all of them - the ones that are left - they’d all averted their eyes as if scared of looking at him, patted his back, squeezed his shoulder, offered tea and their spare rooms and words probably meant to soothe and console. Remus had barely felt their comforting touches, stiffly returned their hugs, declined their hospitality, and drank the scalding tea, burning his throat and not caring a whit.
“I don’t want any tea,” Remus says, staying put outside the door.
“Well, you must at least come inside,” Dumbledore says, and Remus feels the anger bubbling up inside him again. As if it’s his place to welcome me inside of. Dumbledore gazes intently at him, and then says, briskly, “You came here to do a job, Remus; you can’t very well do it from outside, can you?”
Remus moves mechanically inside the flat. The smell hits him first, nearly making him back straight out again. The smell of petrol, mud, cologne, and that scent that was just Sirius. He stills in his tracks, and Dumbledore shuts the front door firmly. Remus suspects he probably locks it as well.
“Awful weather, isn’t it?” Dumbledore says conversationally, and with a flick of his wand Remus is suddenly warm and dry again. “Did you walk?”
“Apparated to a nearby alley,” Remus mutters, shrugging off his coat. He goes to hang it up on the coat-rack, but the leather jacket already hanging there makes his heart clench and instead he just folds his coat over his arm. He notes, dimly, that his arm is shaking, and he presses it closer to his body.
“Surely you could have just come straight here? The wards would still recognise you, I assume?”
A muscle tenses in Remus’ jaw. “Maybe I liked the walk.”
Dumbledore’s blue gaze softens. “Remus, you can’t blame yourself forever.”
“Why are you here?” Remus asks, whirling to face the old man. “I told you, after the - after the funeral. I don’t need your help. I can do this on my own.”
“I find,” Dumbledore says quietly, clasping his hands behind his back, “that company often helps in these situations.”
A sound escapes Remus’ mouth that would have been a laugh if the whole thing wasn’t so painfully unfunny. “Oh, you do, do you? Find yourselves in these situations often, I take it?”
“You are not the only one to experience loss, Remus,” Dumbledore says calmly.
Remus feels as if Dumbledore has struck him. The whole awful weight of unfairness pushes down on his shoulders, and he sags on to the sofa, flinging his coat over the arm. The sofa is a moth-eaten monstrosity, the springs prone to poking people in every place imaginable and all at once. Remus had hated it on first sight, but Sirius had been so proud of it and absolutely refused to see sense about it.
::
“It’s dangerous, Sirius,” Remus said, trying to be reasonable. “It could have doxies living in it, for all you know.”
“It’s from a Muggle shop,” Sirius scoffed.
“It still could have doxies,” Peter said helpfully. He sniffed the nearest cushion, recoiling in horror. “Merlin’s pants, Padfoot, did an old woman die on this?”
“Probably,” Sirius said, delighted. “Maybe she’ll haunt it for me, too. That would frighten the doxies away.”
“You are mad,” Remus declared, and Sirius grinned at him, and the next thing Remus knew he had been picked up and thrown on to the sofa, nearly squashing Peter in the process, who had crawled away making exaggerated retching noises as Sirius pinned Remus down and rained kisses on him.
Remus had even managed to ignore the fact doxies were probably watching, or the ghost of an old Muggle lady.
::
He glances around the room. Apart from the sofa, the living room holds host to a Muggle television, a bookcase, a wooden coffee table, a fold-away chair leaning against the wall and a dog bed in the corner.
The television was a house-warming present from James and Lily, the former of which had been just as excited at the prospect of a Muggle gadget as Sirius had been. Lily had merely rolled her eyes at the pair of them, even more so at their pure delight at watching just the static on the screen.
Remus can see a few of Sirius’ old school books on the shelves of the bookcase, and he wonders if he should offer them to Dumbledore to take to Hogwarts - they’d probably have to be checked first, as Sirius had a habit of adding his own scribblings and rude annotations and diagrams in the margins, or else ripping out corners of books to write notes to them all during class. Remus imagines someone else with Sirius’ old textbooks, and wishes he had a cup of tea after all, if only for something to hold to keep his hands from shaking.
“If you would like, I can sort through the bedroom,” Dumbledore says, breaking the heavy silence.
“No,” Remus says forcefully, and then sighs, rubbing his eyes. Quieter, he says, “No, thank you.”
Dumbledore nods understandingly. Another silence descends on the room, and suddenly Remus can’t stand it, any of it. Dumbledore and his annoyingly calm demeanor; being here, in this room, suffocating in silence and memories. Knowing he has to get up and do the seemingly impossible task of clearing through all of Sirius’ belongings, all of the things that the Auror department deemed worthless or unnecessary, Remus feels as if he’s been hollowed out from the inside.
“Actually,” he says, and Dumbledore looks over at him in some surprise. “Can I have that cup of tea, please?”
::
A pot of conjured Earl Grey later, and Remus knows he can’t put it off any longer. His gaze keeps on being drawn to the closed bedroom door. Probably best to get it over with, he thinks, bracing himself for the inevitable punch to the gut he knows he’s going to get going into that room. Dumbledore, thankfully, chooses this moment to wash up the cups and teapot in the kitchen rather than simply Vanishing them.
Remus gets up from the sofa with some difficulty. The five or so steps to the bedroom door have never felt so long or arduous. After a moments hesitation, he pushes the door to the bedroom open and takes a steadying breath at the sight that greets him.
The bedroom looks completely ordinary, and that’s the most heart-wrenching thing. The bed is unmade, a tangle of burnt orange bed sheets; one of the pillows is in a different place to the other three, as if the last person who slept in the bed had tucked one arm under it, hugging it to them. Remus stares numbly at the bed for a long moment, thinking. Did Sirius used to hug the pillows when he wasn’t in bed with him? Remus used to be gone for days, weeks, months at a time on Order missions; did Sirius really miss him that much?
Don’t think about that, Remus tells himself, running a hand roughly across his face and eyes. Sirius lied to you. He lied to everyone. For God knows how long, the whole thing was nothing but a lie.
Forcing himself to put one leg in front of the other, Remus moves to the wardrobe. Probably the best place to start, he thinks, trying to assemble his brain into some sort of reasoning process. From his pocket he pulls out a wad of crumpled plastic shopping bags, and opens the wardrobe door. The first thing he does is separate the wizarding attire from the Muggle; the Muggle clothes, they can just go to a local charity shop. Muggles won’t care if they’re wearing Sirius Black’s old t-shirts.
As he’s sorting, Remus realises he really didn’t think this whole thing through. Who would have thought that each item of clothing would be so painful to look at? It’s as if every garment is mocking him; here is the t-shirt emblazoned with a phoenix, one half of the matching pair that Sirius and James bought together, both fresh out of school and so proud to be taking on the dark side; here is the only white shirt Remus thinks Sirius has ever owned, the one he wore to Mr and Mrs Potter’s funeral - Remus doesn’t think he’s ever seen Sirius look so lost and alone, so broken; not even when he ran away from home, not even when his own brother’s death was announced in the newspapers. Remus blinks hard, shoving the shirt into the bag.
Stop thinking. Remus forces himself to barely even glance at what he’s sifting through, until his fingers brush against something soft and his attention is caught by a familiar shade of green. He pulls the jumper off of the hanger, the same jumper that he’s owned since he was seventeen years old, the jumper that Sirius used to borrow all the time in Seventh Year. Remus had just assumed he’d lost it at some point after leaving school. For a split second Remus thinks of putting the jumper to one side to take home with him, but then he remembers himself, forces himself to think of what Sirius did, and shoves the jumper into the plastic bag bound for the charity shop.
The wizarding clothes are easier to get rid of. No one in the magical community would be very happy with wearing Sirius’ clothes, Remus knows - Sirius himself had hated them, always insisting that robes were too stuffy. Remus always assumed that they reminded him of his childhood; he’d seen the formal photos that Sirius had been forced to pose for, his collars stiff and high on his dress robes. Thinking of Sirius’ family is another knife in the stomach; Remus wonders bleakly where Walburga Black is now, and if she’s proud.
Remus gathers the robes in a pile, and points his wand. “Lacero,” he says, and it feels almost cathartic to watch the clothes shred themselves to bits before his eyes. He Vanishes the remains, and as the wardrobe gradually empties, Remus turns his wand on the rest of the room. All of Sirius’ books zoom into a pile - Remus will leave Dumbledore to sift through what he wants.
The hardest part of all is the shoebox Remus finds under the bed, full of notes and pictures from their time at Hogwarts. A part of Remus’ brain is screaming at him to burn it, to light a match and stop torturing himself any further. The tip of his wand is poised, but his hand falters. He can’t do it. In amongst it all he can see James’ handwriting, and Peter’s and even Lily’s. He’ll save this, he decides. He wants to keep the memories of his friends. He wonders briefly why the photos are hidden under the bed, but then supposes that it makes sense, really. Doubtful that Sirius wanted to face Lily and James, even in photo form, day after day.
Remus sends it all to his room in The Leaky Cauldron; he’ll sort through it all another time, when he’s ready.
Remus doesn’t even realise that he hasn’t moved from his crouched position by the bed until he hears the door creak open and Dumbledore speaking to him.
“Remus? Are you all right?”
Remus just stares at the carpet, unmoving.
Dumbledore crosses the room and places a firm hand on his shoulder. “You’ve done enough for today, Remus. The furniture, everything else - I know someone I can owl to collect it. There will be people grateful for it.”
“I should have known,” Remus mumbles.
“You cannot blame yourself,” Dumbledore says.
Remus feels as if he’s heard those words a million times by now. Moody had taken him to the side at the wake, and spoken to him about ‘survivors guilt’ and all the rest of it, but Remus knows he can’t simply stop feeling the way he does. Everyone keeps on telling him that he’s not to blame, that there’s no way that he could have possibly known, or could have seen what was coming. One part of Remus wants to believe them, wants to curl up and wrap their comforting words around him like a blanket, to absolve himself of all the guilt he’s feeling. But then -
“Of course I can,” he says hoarsely. “Sirius is - Sirius was - he told me everything! We shared - everything. I can’t believe I can’t have known.”
“Sirius was a skilled liar,” Dumbledore says, voice even and sombre. “He fooled everyone around him.”
::
James burst through the Floo in a flurry of excitement, charging straight at Remus and whirling him around, clasping him tightly by the shoulders, before Sirius emerged from the kitchen with an expression of befuddlement on his face.
“Are we being attacked?” he asked mildly.
James looked up at him, let out a delighted whoop, and practically leapt on to him in a hug.
“It’s a boy! A boy, Pads! Moony, Padfoot - I have a boy - I have a son!”
Sirius grinned and hurried into the kitchen to fetch the Firewhiskey. Remus’ face had hurt from all the smiling; James looked like he was going to burst from happiness, his face alight, and Sirius’ face was an almost mirror image.
“We want you to be godfather,” James said, looking straight at Sirius.
Sirius’ grin had faltered momentarily, his expression wondering. “I - me?”
“Of course you,” James insisted. “You’re my brother, Sirius.”
Sirius was, for the first time Remus had known, lost for words. Eventually, he nodded, blinking hard and James grinned. Remus had refilled their glasses, knocked his into Sirius’.
“To being a godfather, then,” Remus said, clapping Sirius on the shoulder with the one hand not raising a toast.
::
“We trusted him,” Remus manages, his throat dry. “James and Lily trusted him. And Peter - God, Peter -”
“Peter was exceptionally brave,” Dumbledore says, inclining his head, “and exceptionally foolish.”
Remus looks up sharply, his anger flaring again. “He didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done, had I been closer.”
Dumbledore shakes his head. “You have more sense. At least, I hope you would. To go and confront Sirius, in that sort of state - Remus, you wouldn’t have stood any more a chance, and I would be here comforting a different boy instead.”
“I wish it had been me,” Remus says. He heaves himself up, his limbs feeling impossibly heavy, and sits on the bed. His side of the bed. “If only so I could have asked Sirius why. If I could have spoken to him, looked him in the eye - maybe -”
“There is little to be gained from dwelling on what might have been,” Dumbledore says gravely. “At the end, Sirius Black was not the man you once knew, Remus.”
“Obviously I never knew him at all,” Remus says. “The man I thought I knew - he would have rather died than ever hurt his friends. And especially Harry…”
Remus breaks off, the thought of little Harry too painful. Images of Sirius and Harry flash through his mind; Sirius lifting him aloft, tickling him, buying him his first toy broom -
“Love makes fools of even the most rational of men,” Dumbledore says quietly. Remus glances up, thinks he sees a shadow pass over Dumbledore’s face, making him seem far older than he usually appears. “There is no shame in admitting you were fooled, Remus, but you must not let your grief take over. I know - I know it seems impossibly hard, and I know you are very angry, and you are probably sick of people trying to offer their words of comfort, but -”
“Please don’t tell me it gets easier,” Remus says flatly.
Dumbledore sits next to him, sighing. “Alas, no. I will not lie to you.” Remus looks over at him, surprised. Dumbledore continues, “There will be days when your grief lightens, true enough, and there will be days when you think you will not be able to carry on. Grief such as yours does not fade, but comes and goes like the tide. The trick is learning to wade through the hard parts, and eventually there will be brightness amongst the dark.”
“That’s it, is it?” Remus asks with a humourless laugh. “Just - put up with it, and carry on, and at some point, sometimes, it won’t feel so awful?”
Dumbledore nods. “That’s it.”
“Well, should be a breeze then,” Remus says dryly.
Dumbledore’s smile is equal parts kind and sad. “I don’t doubt that you will overcome this, Remus. You are an extraordinary man.”
Remus stays silent for a moment. Dumbledore gets up, squeezing Remus’ arm firmly before moving to the door. He’s halfway across the room when Remus finally speaks.
“Why did you come here?” Remus asks, genuinely curious.
After all, it’s a school day, and Dumbledore has been ridiculously busy lately, having meetings with the Minister for Magic and helping the Auror department wherever he can. Rounding up the last of the Death Eaters, being a witness at trials, plus all of his Headmaster duties - Remus never imagined he’d take time away from all of that simply to brew Remus a cup of tea.
Dumbledore pauses at the doorway, and half-turns to face him. It’s probably the angle, or the dimness of the light in the bedroom, but Remus thinks he sees a sadness on Dumbledore’s face he’s never seen there before.
“My dear boy,” Dumbledore says, the twinkle behind his half-moon glasses extinguished. “I knew you would be lonely.”