All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

Sixth Year : Spilling Secrets

Friday 14th January 1977

Remus was awake, again. Sirius listened to the quiet, shifting sounds of his blankets as he moved, the frustrated sighs, the creaking bedframe. It had been three nights of this, of seeing the dim wandlight from behind Moony’s curtains that meant he was reading, of waking in the night to the sounds of his tossing and turning, of walking down to breakfast the next morning and watching as the circles under his eyes got darker, day by day.

It took no stretch of the imagination to figure out what was keeping him up; ever since the werewolf attack had been announced in the newspapers, Remus had gone quiet, sullen, robotic in classes and strained in their conversations with friends. Sirius hated it, hated how familiar it was—like the transformations on the full moon, he could do nothing but watch Remus rip himself apart from the inside out, helpless to stop it.

The bedsheets shifted again. The wood frame creaked. There was a sigh; more shifting; a muffled groan.

Sirius had had enough. James thought Remus needed space, but they had been giving him space, and it didn’t seem to have done him any good. It was time to try a different tack.

“Oi, Moony,” he whispered, creeping over to Remus’s bed. He parted the curtains, carefully, squinting in the dark. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry, did I wake you up?” Remus squinted back as Sirius cast a quick lumos, settling onto the end of the bed and letting the curtains fall shut behind him. He cast a silencing charm, as well—more reflex than anything, at this point.

“Yeah, but it’s ok.” He crawled further up the bed, so that he could sit next to Moony.

“Oh,” the other boy ducked his head, “Look, I’m not really in the mood for...”

“Oh, no, me neither!” Sirius flushed—Merlin, how desperate must he seem?? “I mean...well, actually, now you mention it...” (There was something to be said about the way Remus’s thin pyjama shirt hung from his shoulders, silhouetted in the dim light...) “But no, not why I came over.”

“Right.”

“So, what’s up?”

“Can’t sleep.”

“I can tell. Want a fag?”

“Run out.”

“It’s ok, I’ve got some off Emmeline. C’mon, shall we go downstairs? It’s late, no one’ll be there, and Prongs’ll give us shit if we smoke here.”

“Ok,” Remus said slowly, sliding out from under the bedcovers. Sirius tried not to look too thrilled that he’d actually managed to coax Moony out of his solitary pity party—maybe Emmeline was good for something.

(That was rude—he liked Emmeline, she was very pretty, and he enjoyed spending time with her, and there were lots of good things to be said for her, not least of which was her generosity with cigarettes. Still—it was satisfying to be the one providing Moony with fags, for once.)

Down in the common room, Remus drifted towards the window, and they sat down together on the loveseat there. Moony curled up, drawing his knees to his chest, and Sirius mirrored his position, so that they were facing each other.