Sirius Black pushed irritably at the scratchy blanket tangled around his legs. A small cloud of dust rose from the unaired wool and promptly inspired an uncontrollable series of sneezes. Having misplaced his handkerchief for the umpteenth time, he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his nightshirt and tried not to dissolve into another coughing fit.
Being ill at Hogwarts was bad enough, where Madam Pomfrey pounced mercilessly on errant splutters and dosed the hapless students with Pepper-Up potion until the steam that came out of their ears could have powered the Hogwarts Express. But at least patients in the Hospital Wing had crisp white sheets, mountains of soup and toast, and more friends bearing chocolate frogs than were possibly necessary for recovery. Sirius had suffered the profound misfortune of falling victim to a nasty bout of the lung-clogging lurgy right at the beginning of the summer holidays, which left him at the less-than-tender mercies of his family and Kreacher.
---Sirius had barely noticed the hacking cough that had descended on him in the last weeks of school. What with the Animagus transformation and Quidditch, managing mischief, Snape-torture and reluctantly, study, there just hadn't been time. He'd written off his dizziness as simple disgust at the prospect of returning to his family, his fever-flushed cheeks as sunburn, and the odd blue bubbles that appeared whenever he brushed his teeth as the product of a flawed batch of mouthwash potion. Despite Remus' concerned glances and James' observations that his banter made even less sense than usual, Sirius honestly hadn't realised something was badly wrong.
Until he'd collapsed face-first into a bowl of French onion soup at a formal dinner on his first night at home.
His cousin Andromeda had rescued him from the ruined china, less-than-politely informing his sneering parents that their son's raging temperature and laboured breathing indicated a severe medical problem and not a lamentable absence of table manners. Corvus and Carina Black were heard to make several snide remarks about their niece's failure to maintain proper pure-blooded composure, but they had at least Floo-called for an Emergency Healer. Alexander Scythax had taken one look at Sirius, dispensed with the usual diagnostic spells, and started brewing four different rapid-acting potions.
It would normally have meant the second floor of St Mungo's, but a major dragonpox epidemic and his parents' general disdain for the eccentric hospital administrator had instead sentenced him to his bedroom at Grimmauld Place and a hired nurse. Mercy Hepplewhite was a hatchet-faced squib, and she seemed to delight in making sure the remedy was at least as bad as the disease. Sirius woozily conjectured that her excellent reputation was based on the way her charges leapt out of bed as soon as humanly possible in order to escape her ministrations. Unfortunately, the lung-clogging lurgy was a particularly unpleasant ailment, and Sirius' case had been bad enough to leave him in her clutches for over a fortnight.
Endless rounds of fluorescent potions and twice-daily pummellings to clear the blue bubbles from his lungs had finally done their job well enough, and the Hepple-monster trotted off to torture someone else. Healer Scythax still demanded several more weeks in bed, warning the reluctant patient that he wouldn't be able to return for his fifth year at Hogwarts unless he was fully recovered. Sirius had protested as loudly as his abused throat would allow, but had eventually submitted, because extra time with members of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black seemed only slightly more desirable than a stint in Azkaban.
---For someone whose usual energy levels gave him a startling resemblance to a rampaging Hippogriff, the lethargy that had settled on him since his illness was maddening. He was painfully bored, but not well enough to do anything much about it. Sirius wondered if that was how Remus felt after his transformation each month. It wasn't really a question that had bothered him before his priority had always been dragging his friend out of the Hospital Wing as soon as possible rather than considering exactly what it was like having one's bones forced into the form of a ravening beast and back again. Moony's holiday letters to Sirius had been wryly sympathetic as well as funny; perhaps Remus also deserved to receive something more than casual concern and bad jokes over his own condition.
Remus.
Now there were the makings of a tricky little problem. Not with Remus exactly, but with the fact that Sirius was thinking about him.
Quite a lot of the time.
In practical terms, there was nothing wrong with thinking about Remus. James Potter was his second brother, but Moony was a good friend. A very good friend, really, considering the way he'd put up with Sirius' fevered antics towards the end of term. The plan had been to send the dungeons into total chaos after Slytherin's victory in the Quidditch Cup. However, after an initial period of mayhem, Peter had remembered both the forthcoming exams and his complete confusion over Ancient Runes. Even James had run out of ideas, and had gone off to annoy Lily Evans. Remus had been the one to keep his friend from losing his head entirely, after a week of crazed activity that had earned Sirius five detentions, three parental Howlers, and two trips to Professor Vasarius to remove vegetable-based hexes. His family (except for Uncle Alphard) had not been happy, so it was probably lucky Remus had thwarted the final scheme starring Regulus as a bunyip.
It was also pretty much standard practice that mates looked out for each other. That was the main reason their gang of Gryffindor idiots were illegally trying to turn themselves into animals for the sake of a werewolf. (Well, that and the thrill of seriously dangerous magic.) Yet ordinary mateship didn't quite explain the way Sirius found his gaze constantly wandering in Remus' direction. Particularly when the approved direction for gazing was at the chest of the blond Ravenclaw prefect with a preference for very low-cut robes. James drooled whenever Lily wasn't looking, whereas Sirius usually offered Sandrine a smile and turned back to Remus.
He was fairly sure it wasn't normal. He wasn't even sure it was legal. Remus was a boy. And a werewolf. Trouble found Sirius easily enough as it was; he didn't need the additional interference of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the Werewolf Registry. He could just imagine the resulting owl from the Ministry:
Dear Mr Black,It has come to our attention that you have been having lewd thoughts about a juvenile male werewolf. This violates six different wizarding regulations, notably the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Under-Age Sexual Activity (1963), and is also a serious offence under section 17 of the International Confederation of Warlocks' Statute on Beast/Human Relationships (1903.)
Further inappropriate fantasies on your part may lead to your expulsion from decent magical society. Please consider this a severe warning.
NB. Treatment is available on Page 3 of the Daily Prophet (there is a particularly fine group of witches lined up for the second week in August.)
Enjoy your holidays!
Algernon Furphy
Legal Division
Ministry of Magic
Then again, Sirius had never been the law-abiding type.
---As an escape from his increasingly uncomfortable self-reflection, Sirius abandoned his sketchy convalescent timetable - staring out the window, being rude to Kreacher, writing a letter or two and being rude to Kreacher - and turned to something rather more productive.
The Animagus transformation was a fiendishly difficult piece of magic, made more so by the sketchy nature of their information. Apart from Peter's lucky discovery of From Man to Moose in his grandfather's library, most of the material had been scribbled down from a haphazard selection of books in the Restricted Section, generally under James' Invisibility Cloak and in the middle of the night. The experiment had almost come to a shuddering halt when Sirius had misread his own scrawl, substituted avus for avis in an incantation, and turned himself into a grandfather. Madam Pomfrey had been extremely suspicious about the urgent need for Anti-Aging Potion at two in the morning.
Nonetheless, they'd been managing fairly well, though the steady stream of misadventures left Remus alternately wringing his hands and endeavouring not to wring his friends' necks. The initial potion, making the body susceptible to changes in species, had been completed successfully, despite its truly vile taste. Sirius had apologised to his tastebuds after consuming the equivalent of a pint of Streeler venom with a chaser of Murtlap essence; James would have been equally colourful, but he'd burnt a hole in his vocal chords with his dose and had no voice for a week.
Stage two was an assortment of complex charms. Once learnt (it had taken them nearly a year), they enabled the caster to access their subconscious mind. With the use of a scrying mirror, one's potential animal form could then be revealed via magically-induced meditation. James and Peter had been identified as a stag and a rat respectively, but Sirius was still formless. The mental focus required for meditation had never been his strong point, and it definitely hadn't helped that his mirror wasn't nearly as powerful as the silver squares his friends were using. Moved by an impulse he couldn't quite explain, Sirius had ducked into Emrys' Antique Emporium on a Hogsmeade weekend and paid well over the odds for a polished brass circle instead. The extra galleons would have been handy, but he felt an obscure sense of pride in attempting the transformation without the use of silver, given that it was toxic to the person he most wanted to help.
He tried not to analyse his unwonted sensitivity too closely.
---The one good thing about being temporarily bedridden was the amount of time Sirius had for uninterrupted contemplation. He was also better able to concentrate than usual, if the hours he'd spent staring at a blotchy stain on the wall were any guide. So it was worth making another attempt at mirror-gazing. Luckily, the spell used to induce magical meditation was wandless, and Grimmauld Place was so well warded that the Misuse of Magic Office wouldn't have been able to sense the Cruciatus Curse, let alone a minor charm.
"Hapax Legomenon!"
Sirius concentrated properly on his mirror for the first time, and felt his consciousness being drawn into an orange spiral down and down and down the edges of his vision clouded over...
He wasn't sure how long it took. Hours, probably, from the way the shadows danced along his bed when he eventually regained his senses. Shaking his head, he focused his attention on the mirror.
There was an image there.
Hardly daring to believe, he muttered the incantation to hold it in place and checked again.
And blinked. Twice.
It was comparatively rare for Animagi to be anything but domestic animals. James' stag had been a surprise; Peter's rat inelegant but typical. Many a vain witch or wizard over the years had been dismayed to find out their inner Fwooper was actually an inner toad. Sirius had been hoping for something at least moderately interesting, although he would have settled for not winding up as a goat or a goldfish.
But the picture in front of him was of an eagle.
A majestic, soaring eagle.
He had thought he'd be relieved when he finally established a solid idea of his other form. The delay had hinted at the undesirable possibility that he was one of the people who simply didn't have an inner animal to bring to life, and Sirius had never liked the idea of failing. Especially at something James and even Peter had already managed.
He wasn't merely relieved. He was practically euphoric.
Sirius had always adored flying. He'd had top-of-the-range brooms from a very early age, provided by relatives who had been eager to encourage his one 'respectable' hobby. Even after the elder Blacks realised that their heir had no intention of behaving like a proper pure-blooded young wizard and tightened their grip on the family Gringotts vault, their son would happily forego other pleasures to keep his older equipment in the best possible condition.
He wasn't a bad flyer years of practice had made him more than competent in the air. He'd made the Gryffindor team as a Beater on brute strength in his third year, and it generally took a bludger to the back of the head to force him from his broom. But Sirius had never really been able to soar amidst the clouds. Lacking the instinctive grace of James Potter or even his cousin Bellatrix, his flying looked somewhat laboured, and he could no more adjust to the sky's hidden eddies and currents than Peter could loop the loop.
This was his chance to escape everything that bound him; an extraordinary opportunity to at last make the heavens his own. He entertained a brief fantasy of finally telling his parents and Regulus exactly what they could do with their rules and conventions, and disappearing into the distance, free as a bird.
It was a cheery thought, and it sustained him as he methodically picked apart the slop Kreacher considered an appropriate supper for an irksome invalid. Munching on a sugar quill that had been part of a get-well package from Moony, Sirius went to sleep smiling.
---His dreams that night were equally pleasant.
...he was flying through blue skies and over white-capped mountains; he was skimming the treetops and watching a stag cavort beneath the canopy. He felt gloriously alive, but very hungry. Sirius knew there was food aplenty in the meadows below, but he decided to wheel around and turn for home. After all, home had Butterbeer, and chocolate cake, and a warm and extremely comfortable rug in front of a crackling fire. Not to mention the person with brown hair and an irresistible smile, who would be waiting eagerly for him to return...
Sirius woke up with a silly grin on his face and a sticky patch on his pyjamas. As he struggled out of bed to change his trousers before Kreacher, or worse, his mother, had a chance to make another remark about his 'disgusting' behaviour, he reviewed the night's events.
And froze.
In his joy at getting what he wanted, he'd forgotten why they were doing this in the first place.
He didn't doubt that he'd have had a go at the Animagus transformation at some point anyway. McGonagall was an obvious example, and Sirius had never been able to resist a challenge, particularly when it was both difficult and dangerous. But the reason he was trying it at fifteen was to help Remus.
An eagle wasn't very helpful. It was a magnificent figure of a bird, but its territory was the skies. Remus' wolf was wretchedly earthbound. Sirius had chosen to become an animal, but Remus had never had a choice. His form was mindless, bloodthirsty, and under sentence of death if it ever indulged its instincts. Sirius' form was, or would be, regal, imposing and unbound by regulations.
He was well acquainted with casual cruelness Lily Evans had not started calling the Black/Potter duo the Two Arrogant Berks in jest but this was a sight nastier than what he usually came up with.
There'd never been any guarantees that their careless idea to become Animagi would produce an ideal result. The project had been highly dodgy from the very beginning, and Moony could easily have found himself with two snails and a beetle as packmates. Or a trio of half-flobberworm, half-human friends, if things went horribly wrong. (The pictures in The Moste Aweful and Tragick Storie of a Human Warthog had been quite alarming.) However, somewhere along the way, Sirius had started to assume that it would all work out, and Remus would have the comfort of his friends during the full moon.
He'd never imagined that their presence would make things worse. Becoming an eagle would give Sirius a grand chance at casting away the worst excesses of his Black heritage. But by staying with the bird, he'd also be forcing Remus to witness that escape every time he transformed. It was bad enough that he turned painfully into a monster each month. Now he'd have to watch as his comrade turned effortlessly into a being that promised total freedom. Remus had no such option. The wolf was stronger than his will, and he was eternally trapped.
Moony would never say anything, even if it did hurt. He'd kept frighteningly quiet when Sirius and James had first confronted him with the evidence of his condition, moving over to his trunk and beginning to pack with a look of total defeat on his face. It wasn't until Sirius had dragged him off to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, locked the door and repeated that he wasn't going anywhere for the better part of an hour that Remus had even opened his mouth. The awe in his voice as the smaller boy had asked if he really didn't mind would have touched a far harder heart than Sirius.' As it was, he'd put his arm around his friend and wondered what on earth he was doing.
He'd stopped wondering of late, when he'd started to realise that Remus meant more to him than he'd ever admit aloud. James Potter had saved his life when he'd started at Hogwarts, a Black hopelessly at sea in a house he'd been taught to loathe, and he'd never really offered his quieter mate much more than the crumbs of that friendship. He was supportive enough, but it was a pretty feeble show, given that Sirius usually exuded about as much comfort as a rampaging Erumpent. Sometimes he thought it was only gratitude that kept Remus around in his more honest moments Sirius knew he simply hadn't earned that sort of loyalty.
Flaunting his Animagus glory at Remus was a singularly poor way to pay him back. Especially since Remus would never let anyone see his pain.
Sirius' friends didn't think there was a problem. Peter seemed extremely happy with his animal alter-ego, despite its unsuitability for the task at hand. James was already crowing about his yet-to-appear horns, apparently unconcerned about their supreme awkwardness inside the Shrieking Shack. Both of them were sure that Remus would be delighted (after the shock wore off and his conscience let up) if they ever managed to present their animal selves to him.
It was only Sirius who was troubled.
Selflessness and Sirius Black usually had about as much to do with each other as Gryffindors and Slytherins. But this dilemma was a familiar one.
The Potter clan had welcomed Sirius with open arms, joking that he was almost a family member, since he and James were joined at the hip. He'd never told James that his trips to the cheerful house near Stoke sometimes made him feel worse than staying at Grimmauld Place ever could. It just wasn't done to tell a bloke you were jealous of his happy family.
Remus understood, though. Hating the wolf within him every bit as much as Sirius detested the House of Black, he knew what it was like to be publicly defined by something you utterly rejected. And Sirius refused to rub his nose in the fact that he had in all likelihood found a way out, when there was no cure for his friend.
The belief in the obnoxiousness of Sirius Black was held widely enough at Hogwarts that this concern for Remus would have struck most of the student population as wildly uncharacteristic. Sirius would probably have agreed with them, if he hadn't been knee-deep in a morass of less familiar feelings.
His dream had made clear several things he wasn't quite ready to cope with. The vague acknowledgment that he rather fancied his friend was one thing; the realisation that he, well, wanted to do something about it was another matter entirely. Unfortunately, it was all a little too obvious to ignore.
The last parts of his dream were somewhat hazy in his memory, but what he did remember had been distinctly more graphic than anything he'd found in the Muggle magazines James had smuggled back to school after Christmas. And they'd all starred the same tawny-haired figure. The same tawny-haired male figure.
James and Peter had black and blond hair, and he'd never fantasised about Frank Longbottom in his life. It seemed that everything these days brought him straight back to thinking about Remus.
Remus had probably never thought about Sirius that way, and would label him a half-wit if he had the slightest idea, but that didn't really change things.
In an entirely inappropriate and almost certainly unrequited way, Sirius cared.
It was a useful, if excruciatingly awkward, thing to finally know for certain, but it didn't provide him with much of a guide on how to proceed.
Showing his affection in the traditional fashion was out of the question. Not only would it bring the wrath of his family down upon his head in five seconds flat, it would also expose his feelings to public scrutiny, make the whole situation seem much too real, and quite possibly damage whatever relationship he did have with Remus beyond all hope of repair.
That left the other scheme he'd been considering on and off for hours. His breakfast of gluggy porridge and his lunch of lukewarm soup - both served to him with the utmost reluctance by Kreacher had distracted him briefly, but he'd spent most of the day pondering his Animagus form.
James would have been completely bemused at the thought of anyone abandoning the prospect of effortless flight. If Sirius hadn't been governed by his new feelings for Remus, he would have concurred. And Remus himself, who had been anxious enough about the whole idea from the start, would have been appalled to think anyone would improvise on already dangerous magic in order to make life easier for him.
It was one of Remus' failings, Sirius thought idly, that he didn't believe he was worth taking a risk for.
Which of course provided an excellent incentive for taking a bloody great one.
---Sirius really didn't know if it was feasible. He didn't usually have a problem with violating multiple laws of magic and nature, but this was a bit more complicated than altering a Picture-Hanging Charm to hang Snape from a tree by his feet. Even if he managed to change the image of his animal form, there was no guarantee that he wouldn't cover himself with feathers and grow a beak when he tried to transform physically. Luckily, four years of rule-breaking had made him extremely good at avoiding all but the most unforseen of consequences.
And he knew what he was facing here. The meditation spell, and by extension the entire Animagus transformation, was designed to produce a single result. To modify that required a great deal of power and an extended period of intense concentration. Sirius flattered himself that he had the first, but he often fell short in the second department.
Still, he wasn't going to give in before he'd had a damn good crack at it.
---Sirius had only made the smallest amount of progress brief flickers at the edge of an otherwise immutable picture when Healer Scythax finally pronounced him recovered. As he tottered around on legs made shaky by disuse, he kept trying. He hadn't yet regained enough strength to torment Regulus and make a safe getaway afterwards, so he had plenty of time to keep to himself and fiddle with the spell. His parents were impressed by his unusual docility, and wondered openly if his illness hadn't 'shown him the error of his ways.'
Sirius snorted and made a vow to earn himself a detention as soon as he boarded the Hogwarts Express.
---By the time he was well enough to spend an afternoon with James in Diagon Alley, he felt sure he was close. The image in the mirror had started wavering madly, as if the transmission from his subconscious was being interrupted. It all meant progress, and Sirius felt rather proud of his efforts. He'd never tried to do something entirely for someone else's benefit before.
He might have mentioned it to James, but he barely had a chance to get a word in edgeways. Rather perturbed by Sirius' pallor, his friend dragged him off to Florean Fortescue's and attempted to feed him a summer's worth of ice cream in one sitting. Sirius had slurped away happily while his companion filled him in on all the details that had been missing from his rather sketchy letters.
"And Remus is still visiting his grandparents in France, y'know," he finished.
"Yeah."
Sirius did know, though he thought it better not to tell James exactly how many times he had read through Remus' letters, searching for signs of more-than-friendly affection. He hadn't found any, though he had wondered about that postcard from Paris...
He realised with a jolt that James had finished his own sundae and was starting to look longingly towards Quality Quidditch Supplies. Sirius licked his spoon clean and went with him to look at the new Nimbus 1500.
---Pleasantly exhausted and disgustingly full, Sirius had thrown a pinch of Floo powder into the Leaky Cauldron's fire and returned home, only to emerge just in time for another miserable family dinner. With his good mood rapidly evaporating, he escaped to his room as soon as decency permitted (the dark look on Corvus Black's face told him he'd misjudged the timing), and took out his mirror for another attempt at his pet project.
"Hapax Legomenon!"The familiar orange whirl took him, and he felt himself being drawn into a dizzying vortex of magic and imagery.
Gradually, a new picture materialised before his weary eyes.
For a moment he saw a bear, and then he recognised the new image as a dog. A gigantic, coal-black dog with his own blue eyes.
Sirius sat back on his heels and thought for a while.
He'd been vaguely hoping for a wolf, but he realised this was much better. They'd started this whole caper to make Moony's life easier, and it wouldn't have brought much comfort if Remus had to watch his friend make a seamless transformation into the same animal that gave him so much grief. They could still have fun together, and this form carried a great deal more potential for domestic mischief. Upsetting old ladies, digging up gardens, hiding bloody bones in antique lounges and chasing annoying little witches in pink robes and hair ribbons...all suitably disruptive activities in which he could now indulge.
As a dog, he'd definitely be able to get far closer to Remus than he would have managed as an eagle, and he was certainly in a better position to subdue a werewolf physically than either James or Peter. He had a sudden mental picture of wrestling canines, and forced himself not to speculate about the nature of their contact.
Glancing back down at his other self, Sirius realised he looked rather like a Grim. He smiled, baring his teeth in an unconsciously dog-like gesture as he imagined the commotion he could cause at Hogwarts. He almost felt sorry for the suspicious types studying Divination. Almost.
Sirius fixed the new likeness to the mirror's surface with a casual spell, and started a tuneless whistle. He almost spared a brief thought for his once-glorious eagle, but he'd never been one for might-have-beens. He much preferred to leave the philosophy to Remus. Dealing with what actually was particularly for a white sheep Black was hard enough. Sirius had made his choice, and now he had to make it happen.
---It took another six months of gruelling study when they all returned to Hogwarts. Fifth year was fiendishly busy, and they had to perfect most of the spells late at night, or in minutes stolen from preparation for the O.W.Ls. (James refused to sacrifice Quidditch for anything.) The general minutiae of life at school took up a large chunk of time, and Sirius often found himself working at his self-Transfiguration in the shower, or in the moments between going to bed and falling asleep.
James and Peter usually toiled away together, as Sirius didn't quite have the patience to deal with some of Peter's clumsier mistakes. It was rather lucky Sirius had taken to shape-shifting alone, because his first attempts made it fairly clear that he'd been somehow meddling with the process. With his wand, he produced a bird with fur; on his first go without it, he managed a dog with a beak. His saving grace was the fact that the early transformations tended to be fleeting.
Sirius righted himself with a swig of Negating Potion, gritted his teeth and concentrated more every time. He'd managed to change the spell once already, and he knew he could get this part right too. He'd lost the urge to flap a non-existent pair of wings when he meant to wag a tail it was only the externals that were delaying him.
One evening, when Sirius had performed a temporary exorcism on Binns and commandeered the History of Magic classroom for the three of them to practice in, he finally did it properly.
He was an Animagus.
Sirius could only shake his thick black coat and wag his tail in awe.
He'd done exactly what he'd set out to do. He'd had an idea, and he'd followed it through. Not out of malice, or as another act of rebellion against his family, but for Remus' sake.
James and Peter redoubled their own efforts, and slipped into their animal forms later that week. Both were slightly shell-shocked by their new shapes; it was distinctly strange to see the world in a totally different light.
There were some odd side effects for all of them: James started eating more vegetables, Peter kept asking the House Elves for more cheese, and Sirius had to stop himself from 'improving' the castle lawns with a few well-dug holes. But as the motley animal trio raced around the lake whenever they could, trying to gain enough condition to keep pace with a werewolf, there were no regrets.
---Despite the early hiccups, Sirius took to his animal form faster than the other two (and James couldn't resist calling him a bloody dog at every opportunity as a result.) When they could all stay as animals for long enough to be safe under a full moon, Sirius persuaded Remus to put aside his homework. Nervously wondering if the other boy's reaction would make up for what Sirius had forfeited, he led him past the old crone's statue and through to the cellar of Honeydukes for a grand unveiling.
James transformed into his stag and bowed his head gravely at Remus, and Peter became a rat and ran gleefully round his feet. Sirius winked at his friend, twirled his cloak with a flourish, and changed smoothly into the big black dog.
Remus could only stare. Speechless, he eventually pulled himself together and hugged them all tightly, heedless of fur and hooves. His composure cracked for the first time since his Sorting, and his rare tears were far more eloquent than any words.
He laughed at James' horns, admired Peter's tail, and patted Sirius' coat as if he couldn't quite believe that he no longer had to endure the full moons alone.
Transforming back, Sirius saw Remus venture a shy gaze in his direction. He wasn't sure exactly what it meant approval of his dog self, gratitude, friendship, or even an echo of that gut-wrenching something he'd been feeling all holidays but he met his eyes and looked straight back, offering a smile in return.
That look had made it all worthwhile.
---The evening turned into a truly grand occasion. Sirius had brought some of his stash of Filibuster's Fireworks with him, and he sent them whizzing around the cellar. James donned his Invisibility Cloak and dashed over to the Three Broomsticks for some Butterbeer, and Remus abandoned some of his prefect-ly scruples and nicked a handful of sugar quills from upstairs as his contribution to the celebration. Peter provided the entertainment, singing increasingly bawdy versions of several popular wizarding songs in a crackly tenor that was even funnier than his lyrics.
Peter went back to the dormitory relatively early, after a giant yawn almost split his head in two, and James simply started snoring where he lay. Sirius ignored his slumbering partner-in-crime and spent the rest of the night talking to Remus. The conversation was mundane, but there was something in the air. Nothing definite Sirius didn't say anything and Remus wasn't sure but it was a start. They stumbled back to Gryffindor tower just in time to get ready for lessons, but it had definitely been worth it. Even when Sirius got a detention for falling asleep in his Herbology class.
---Under the light of the next full moon, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs ran together for the first time. As the four of them explored the Forbidden Forest, barking and howling, squeaking and scratching, Sirius knew he'd made the right decision.
Two years later, after they'd been torn asunder and returned all the stronger for it, Moony and Padfoot slipped quietly away from their packmates one night. As the sun rose over Hogwarts, Sirius and Remus came together at last.
It was rarely romantic. It would never be easy. But whatever it was, it made sense to the two of them.
And that was enough.
---Author's Notes
Thanks to F. for doing what she could with my grammar. Hapax Legomenon is a Greek philosophical term that refers to a word of which only a single occurrence is known. Avus is Latin for an ancestor; avis is a bird. Cheers to the relatives whose constant references to the dreaded lurgy gave me a starting point. And I should acknowledge Schott's Original Miscellany for finally providing me with a title.