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remix_reduxTitle: The Red and the Black (The Neverland Remix)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daphnaea
Summary: Sirius is reading The Communist Manifesto. Somehow, Remus knows, this will end in disaster.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Original Story: “Marked” byelucreh
Notes: Many thanks to my beta,such_heights, without whom I would have torn much more of my hair out, for pointing out mistakes and also telling me that I could do this.
Part 1
Part 2
“We have now reached the evening that was to be known among them as the Night of Nights, because of its adventures and their upshot.”
Sirius was in a foul mood at dinner the next night. Remus, sitting across from him, wondered about the cause of the more-than-usually hateful looks he was shooting at Lily, who was two seats down, on the other side of James.
“How’s the recruitment drive coming?” Pete asked in an ill-conceived attempt at defusing him.
Sirius glowered. “Bloody awful. No one’s signed up. No one! It’s beyond belief. I mean, can’t they see how much better Communism is? How much happier we all are?”
“Yeah,” Remus muttered. “We’re all ecstatic.”
“I heard that,” Sirius said. “And frankly that kind of attitude doesn’t befit a Gryffindor.”
“Oh, so now I’m under suspicion?” Their eyes met across the table. Neither would look away. “I’ve already given my chocolate, my annotated textbooks, my money, my spare parchment, and my second oldest jumper. What else exactly does the Committee want from me?”
Sirius looked down at his plate.
“…if, by means of a revolution, [the proletariat] makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
“What do chocolate and parchment prove?” Sirius asked his roast potatoes. He fought down a surge of something worryingly like despair, and raised his face once his eyes were clear again. “The Committee wants loyalty, commitment.”
“And how have I proven myself disloyal?” Remus asked, and Sirius scowled at the hint of smile playing about his lips.
Of all his friend’s qualities, it was Remus’s self-restraint that he abhorred and admired most. Anyone who really knew Remus – and few people did – knew that the wolf was not the only monster he kept chained in his closets. But chained they all were. Sirius himself knew how to restrain neither his love nor his hatred, and understood that but for his charm, he would not have been forgiven for either offence. Remus, on the other hand, had not in living memory required forgiveness for anything. Sirius deserved nothing from him, but the Party was different. The Party deserved everything from everyone, and yet things, Sirius knew, were being withheld. There should be no barrier between the personal and the political, but somehow there was. Remus could hand over every book and jumper he had left and yet give nothing of himself.
“It’s nothing you’ve done,” Sirius said sulkily, “it’s the spirit of it all that matters.”
Remus’s eyebrow twitched. “So to be a proper Communist I have to think the right thoughts? Is that it?”
“Yeah,” Sirius said, though he wasn’t entirely sure. “I mean, it’s about sharing the things that matter most, isn’t it? Not just handing over stupid pieces of paper. It’s about honestly treating everyone as your comrades.” That was right, wasn’t it? That was what was missing, up in the tower – not uncollected chocolate but the feeling of brotherhood, of cooperation – perhaps a new taskforce was required.
“Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked.”
Remus’s face didn’t change, but he recognised the tightness growing in his chest as anger. He knew that light in Sirius’s eye – the one that lately spoke of raids and Sneakoscopes and new Committee Decrees – and decided that the greedy bastard had gotten away with enough already. If he wanted something more he could bloody well just ask, instead of lording it over everyone like some petty tyrant.
“So the key to being a good Communist,” he said, “is sharing the things that matter most?”
“That’s right.”
“And what is it that matters most? Things like friendship?”
Sirius nodded cautiously. “Sure,” he said.
“Excellent,” Remus said briskly. “I know just how to prove my loyalty. See, you’ve got three best mates right now, and Comrade Connelly hasn’t got any since he and Frank fell out. I volunteer for re-allotment.” And with that he stood up and carried his plate down to the empty space beside Daniel.
“Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of socialism ended in a miserable hangover.”
Sirius stared after his departed friend, who was now apparently saying something witty to Daniel Bleeding Connelly. Probably about him. He felt like some ridiculous-sounding word, gobsmacked or flabbergasted. Moony had broken the rules. Moony had left. As if the Marauders were the sort of thing you could just walk away from, after seven years, after everything. As if it had all just been a lark. First James and now Remus. They were like rats swimming from a sinking ship. Except that the rat was apparently the only one left. Sirius glanced at Peter, who was eating his pork chop unconcernedly, as if the defection of one of their best mates was utterly unremarkable.
Well, Sirius wouldn’t just take it. The Marauders didn’t have a secession clause. The Americans had gone to war over such a question, and he would do no less.
“Not so much as a sorry-to-lose-you between them! If she did not mind the parting, he was going to show her, was Peter, that neither did he.”
Remus had meant to go straight to the library after dinner, but Sirius cornered him just outside the Great Hall. Sirius had an odd, shell-shocked look on his face, and Remus wondered briefly if he’d been too harsh. It was no secret that Padfoot was having a hard time of it lately, and he’d never functioned well on his own. Perhaps there was a way to back down a bit, without giving up his point entirely.
“So, things all worked out with Connelly, then?” Sirius asked too casually.
“Yeah,” Remus said. “We’re sorted.”
“Fabulous,” Sirius said. “So, what would you think about trading spots with Frank? I know it might be a little odd living with the sixth-years, but then you could be with your new best mate, and what with Frank on the Committee with me and James, it’d just be more convenient, wouldn’t it?”
Remus smiled, all thoughts of clemency abandoned. “That’d be lovely,” he said. “Let’s just run it by Professor McGonagall to make sure it’s all right. Not as if we have a lot of House points left to lose, you know.”
“Next time we see her,” Sirius agreed, and walked off, smirking.
Remus headed slowly for the stairs, buoyed by a fresh wave of bitterness. He’d always known he ranked beneath James, but he hadn’t realized, somehow, even after that night, just how far below he was. If Prongs’d talked of swapping dorms, Sirius would’ve pounded him into the floor. He would’ve brought the tower down around their ears before permitting it. But evidently Remus was only worth having around as long as he didn’t step out of line. Merlin forbid he have his own opinion about anything. He’d been right all along. He was dispensable.
“To every villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher, socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character.”
Two hours later, Padfoot climbed out of the bed and turned back into a boy. For the first time, he didn’t want to go downstairs and start the meeting. He didn’t want to make a speech and hand out chocolate. He wanted to get back under the covers and just stay there until things made sense again. But the Party was waiting for him, and if he gave that up, what would be left?
Sirius put on his hat and descended the stairs.
Hardly anyone came to the meeting that night – Remus hadn’t returned from the library, Prongs and Lily the Traitor were off in some broom cupboard, and Pete, who’d been napping over by the hearth, didn’t even bother waking up. The room seemed draped with an odd silence that even his most authoritative voice couldn’t fully penetrate.
There was no feeling of generosity when he handed out chocolate and authorized a disbursement of funds so Maggie could replace the hair ribbon that had fallen into her cauldron in Potions. There was no sense of righteousness and restitution when he stripped offenders against the Party of privileges. It was as if something had died, but he couldn’t tell if it was in him, or in the rest of them.
Fifteen minutes into the meeting, Moony arrived, but rather than slipping into a seat he headed straight for the stairs. “Don’t mind me, Comrades,” he said brightly. “I’ve got a bit of packing to do.”
Sirius swallowed. “The Party thanks you,” he said, and turned back to his followers.
The next person brought up for capitalist behaviour got hexed.
“Sometimes, though not often, he had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them. They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his existence.”
When Remus got back to his dorm, he didn’t pack right away. He sat down on his bed and stared blankly into the middle distance, wondering what the hell he’d been thinking, starting a game of chicken with Sirius Black. Sirius, who would not only cut off his nose to spite his face, but then call it filthy names as he danced on its grave. It was never a good idea to put oneself between a Black and his pride. Remus did not want to change rooms. But he didn’t care to remain where he wasn’t wanted, either. And the four of them would be going their separate ways soon enough anyway. What difference did a few months make, more or less? The dorm was his home, true, but Remus was good at giving things up.
Rubbing idly at the soft fabric of his quilt, Remus felt something slide beneath his fingers. He picked it up. A short black hair. Remus sniffed his bed suspiciously. It smelt of dog. Backing cautiously away, he picked up his wand and tested the bed for jinxes or foreign objects. But there was nothing. He glanced over at Sirius’s bed. It appeared to be fully functional.
Remus cast a Cleaning Charm on his bedding, just in case, and sat back down a bit gingerly, irked all over again. Padfoot just went where he wanted, took what he wanted, without any regard for other people at all. Maybe he was planning to take his bed, once Remus moved out. Because it was warmer, or had better light, or some such rot.
He picked his wand up again, aiming it at his trunk. Then he hesitated. Really it didn’t make sense to pack yet. He’d not finished his Defence homework for the morning, and he could hardly do it once his books and quills were all put away. He’d pack once he was done with the assignment. It was the only reasonable thing to do.
“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.”
The meeting was not going well. Sirius was prepared to admit that his temper may have run away with him the smallest bit. But that was no reason for Priscilla to be crying, when she’d not even been hexed. And her friend would be fine; he was probably just using the whole thing as an excuse to curl up in her lap. Half the faces turned up toward him were full of vicious glee, and the other half looked terrified. But he didn’t want to hurt any of them. He was trying to help them. If Communism failed, how would they stop Voldemort? How would they stick together though a war? Surely they understood it was all for their own good. It’d only been a month, so far. They were just starting out. In another month – well, at the current rate, in another month Sirius would have an enormous amount of chocolate and no friends left at all.
Sirius couldn’t remember the end of his speech. He mouthed a few stock phrases and smiled out at the room. “And before we adjourn, does anyone else have anything to report to the Party?” he asked.
Kingsley Shacklebolt slowly raised his hand.
“She liked his tears so much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it.”
The sound of raised voices drifted up the stairs. Remus looked up from the three sentences he’d managed to write on protections against blood magic. Sirius’s sharp tones, and the higher pitch of some younger boys. Marlene, then, and another girl. Sirius again. Remus hoped, unkindly, that the mob had turned on Sirius. Perhaps at that very moment, someone was toppling the ridiculous hat from his over-inflated head. Remus smiled at the thought, then winced as he anticipated Sirius’s response. Perhaps he should go downstairs and try to make sure Padfoot didn’t hurt anyone. More than he usually did. Remus discarded the thought. Someone else could manage him for a change.
“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.”
“Silence!” Sirius bellowed. The noise died down, but only a few of the younger students sank back into their seats. “This is a very troubling accusation, and we will address it with the gravity it deserves.” He waited until the expressions of his Housemates had grown somewhat less mutinous before continuing. “Comrade Lupin has shown himself to be exemplary in his dedication to the Communist cause. However, I do not expect you to merely take my word regarding his innocence. Thanks to Comrade Shacklebolt, this matter is now under consideration by the Central Committee. We will investigate, and report back to you tomorrow with our findings.”
“Why wait?” Amanda demanded. “If you’re so sure he’s got nothing to hide, why don’t we go look right now? What does the Committee need to do that the rest of us aren’t allowed to see?”
“But that violates procedure,” Marlene objected. “The whole purpose of having the Committee is that certain responsibilities have been delegated to us alone.”
“I think Comrade Pool has a point,” Frank said. “While generally I agree with Comrade McKinnon, in this particular case, the alleged perpetrator is known to have close ties to the Central Committee, so it’s understandable that there may be concerns about our objectivity. It certainly can’t hurt for them to witness justice firsthand. It will be an education in our thorough and unimpeachable investigative process.”
Shooting Frank a betrayed look, Sirius belatedly wished that he’d gone a bit easier on Alice the day before.
“Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze; but as those who read between the lines must already have guessed, he had been at a famous public school; and its traditions still clung to him like garments, with which indeed they are largely concerned. Thus it was offensive to him even now to board a ship in the same dress in which he grappled her, and he still adhered in his walk to the school's distinguished slouch. But above all he retained the passion for good form.”
Remus couldn’t bring himself to focus properly even after the noise had died down, so he went to his trunk to dig out his battered copy of Peter Pan. His gaze happened upon Sirius’s open trunk, just to the right. It brimmed with his usual mess of scribbled-upon bits of parchment and not-too-dirty clothes and interesting rocks. Amid the tangle was a familiar-looking sleeve. Remus went over and fished out his second oldest jumper, which Sirius had never properly explained the Party’s need for. It looked as if a dog had chewed on the cuffs.
He looked from the jumper to his bed and back again. It was all beginning to make sense. Dropping the bedraggled knitwear, Remus sat down with his book. He was tired, and unexpectedly sad. If Padfoot had wanted comfort from him, why had he not just asked? Was he ashamed of needing anything from Remus? Did he think he would be refused?
Remus thought back over his friend’s behaviour. It was true that Sirius seldom asked him for anything, or at least anything more significant than to be passed the orange juice at breakfast. It hadn’t always been like that, though. For years Padfoot had made endless demands, for chess matches and extracurricular research projects and company and clean socks. But it had been a long time since his homework was interrupted by a wriggling black dog, barking for attention. There had been that night last year, and then the silence, and then that single, quiet request, and Moony and Padfoot had gone on as if nothing had changed. But Remus and Sirius had not. Sirius had surrendered that sense of entitlement that enabled him to be friends with someone else. And Remus had never given it back.
He lay back against his cushions, novel all but forgotten in his hands. Something would have to be done, he thought, before it went too far. In all his letting go of things, Remus had forgotten how and when to hold on.
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.”
“If Comrade Lupin is vindicated,” Sirius said to Kingsley as the crowd approached the stairs, “you will be left crying in the dust of your mistakes.”
“And if he’s not,” Alice said grimly from behind him, “you’ll remember the promise you made to Lily.”
Sirius’s jaw tensed. He hoped, for the first time, that Remus really had packed.
“‘Silence all,’ he called gloatingly, ‘for a mother's last words to her children.’ At this moment Wendy was grand. ‘These are my last words, dear boys,’ she said firmly. ‘I feel that I have a message to you from your real mothers, and it is this: ‘We hope our sons will die like English gentlemen.’”
Despite the noise on the stairs, it didn’t occur to Remus that the Party might be coming to him until Kingsley Shacklebolt pushed through the door, followed by Sirius and Alice and Frank and at least half the rest of Gryffindor.
He sat up, thrusting his book beneath his cushions for its protection. “Hullo,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Remus,” Sirius began, emerging from behind the first-year, “I’m afraid I’ll have to look for something.”
“Go on then,” he said to Sirius, who still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “But why the circus?” He gestured to the crowd now occupying virtually the entire room.
“They’re witnesses,” Kingsley explained.
“To what?” Remus asked, though he already knew. Nonetheless, he was as curious as the rest about how it would turn out. He wanted to know what Sirius would do.
His chocolate, of course, was exactly where it’d always been. Sirius retrieved the box as laboriously as if it was a block of solid lead. “There is a stash of private chocolate here,” he said slowly, and then stopped. He looked helplessly at Remus, as if hoping for guidance. Remus stared blankly back.
“Hex him!” Alice shouted. “You swore.”
But Sirius didn’t raise his wand. The murmuring of the crowd grew louder.
“What’s all this, then?” came James’s voice, loud and insistent though he was still hidden by the crowd. James elbowed his way forward, Lily following in his wake, and Remus felt an odd pang of disappointment. He’d wanted to see what would happen. But now Sirius would have an out.
Once they got to the front, Lily took a sharp look around, taking in Remus, the chocolate in Sirius’s hand, Alice’s set face and the tenor of the crowd, quickly fading from ugly toward self-abashed now that the Head Boy and Girl had arrived.
“Honestly, have none of you come to your senses yet?” Lily demanded. “Your ridiculous meetings have clearly gotten you nowhere but squeezed on top of each other like tinned kippers. It's ridiculous to ask any human being to work towards the common good without reasonable compensation. It's ridiculous to manufacture brotherhood and equality through a political system. It's ridiculous to hand a cache of all material goods to one person and trust him to know what’s best for everyone. It is, however, especially ridiculous to put on a fur hat and then crowd a hundred people into a dorm room.”
Remus felt like applauding, but also knew it wasn’t the moment to call attention to himself.
Sirius stared at her for a moment, then broke into shaky laughter. “She’s right,” he told the crowd. “Thanks,” he said more quietly, just to her. “You and James are going to have horribly clever children, you know.”
She blushed, evidently recognizing the significance of the admission. Remus felt proud of him. “Of course I’m right,” she snapped, and pulled the hat from his head. Remus chose to interpret that as a sign of affection. “Silly of you to overheat your head like that, it’ll only make the swelling worse. It’s like an oven in here.”
Sirius took the hat from her hands and arranged it on her head. “It’s more fetching on you anyway. Want to lead the Movement for a while?” Remus rather wanted to stick a gold star onto him, for most improved fascist autocrat in the class.
"Thank you, I accept," Lily replied, rearranging her hair beneath the edge of the hat. "And my first order is, all of you, clear out. Go back to the common room and recover your property and get on with your lives. Grades have been dropping and we're last in line for the House Cup."
The crowd’s muttering rose up, but then fell away. The Gryffindors lingered for a bit, just to make sure that there really wasn’t any further prospect of bloodshed, but the students at the rear tired of waiting quickly, and the rest began to mill toward the exit as well. Finally only Lily, the room’s actual inhabitants, and little Kingsley Shacklebolt remained. Sirius took the boy aside and said something encouraging. James told Lily about his love of assertive women (as if that taste hadn’t been apparent since he first set his eye on her) and then kissed her until the hat fell off. Pete suddenly and vocally recalled a Herbology paper that’d been due on Monday and dashed out to get research materials from the library before curfew.
Remus was about to retrieve his book from the cushions when Sirius’s shadow fell across him, stilling his hand. There were things that needed to be said. Sirius evidently agreed, as he caught James’s eye as he was manoeuvring Lily towards his bed, and after a few seconds of the unspoken communication that Remus could never fully decode, Prongs grabbed the Map from his trunk and escorted the Head Girl out the door instead.
The room seemed abruptly too empty. Remus drew his legs up and gestured toward the foot of his bed in a vaguely inviting fashion. Sirius hesitated briefly, then settled himself down, facing Remus, who immediately looked away.
“So,” he said.
“So,” Sirius answered.
Another pause.
“They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”
“So… what was all this about, really?” Remus asked at last.
Sirius glanced up quickly. Moony didn’t seem particularly upset about his near-blacklisting, but of course with him it was always difficult to tell. He was still there, though, in the room, and that was probably a good sign. “Communism?” Remus nodded. Sirius shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea. I thought we needed something to keep us together.”
“The four of us?” Remus asked.
“Yeah.” Sirius picked at the stitching on the quilt. “Well, initially us, and then it seemed like a good thing for everyone, you know? Like the opposite of Voldemort, what with him splitting us all into classes of pure-blood and Muggle-born and whatnot.”
“Sure,” Remus said. “I can see that. But then, it didn’t quite work out that way, did it?”
Sirius pulled further in on himself. “I know I buggered it up, all right? You don’t have to tell me that. I know I didn’t do it properly and it all went to hell, but I thought I could fix it. I thought it could still work out, or – I just didn’t know what else to do! How could I just give up, and let everything change, let it all fall apart?”
“You can’t stop things from changing,” Remus said, in his sad, kind voice. “That’s what life is.”
“But why does it always have to change for the worse?” Sirius demanded, feeling foolish and unable to stop himself. “Why does it have to change with people being killed and going away and turning into arses? I don’t want that.”
“What exactly don’t you want?”
“I don’t want you to go!”
“All right,” Remus said. “You don’t want me to go where?”
“To Frank’s dorm.”
“All right,” Remus said again. Sirius looked up for confirmation, and Remus nodded reassuringly.
“I don’t want you to go to Calcutta,” he added, a bit sulkily.
Remus looked taken aback. “Why would I go to Calcutta?”
“I saw the brochure!” Sirius accused. “Under your bed.”
Remus laughed. “Professor McGonagall gave me a bunch of those, when I was moping about not having job prospects. It must have fallen. I didn’t apply or anything. How could I fight Voldemort from India?”
“Right.” Sirius chuckled, trying not to blush. He wanted to feel relieved, but didn’t, yet. “I’m glad you’re not going to Calcutta,” he began, “but I still – I mean, even when you’re right here, like now, sometimes it feels as if – as if you’re not. As if you’re already gone.”
Remus seemed to deflate a little. “Oh,” he said. “I’m… sorry?” he offered, as if unsure whether an apology was the desired response.
Sirius tried to smile and failed.
“Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time that they have happened.”
It was not until he saw that look on his friend’s face, beaten and resigned and accepting, that Remus realized he really was sorry. He didn’t want to stand apart any more. He’d claimed he’d forgiven Sirius, and in a way he had – he’d put aside his anger, anyway. But he hadn’t forgotten. He’d held onto his mistrust. And it had done harm.
“Look, I didn’t mean…” Remus cut himself off. It wasn’t a claim he could really make. He imagined he probably had meant to push Sirius away, at least on some level, even if it was one he never bothered to visit. “I’m here now,” he said instead. “I want to be here.”
“Yeah?” Sirius asked.
Remus nodded solemnly. “I’m not going anywhere, all right?” He nudged Sirius’s leg with his foot.
Sirius smiled more successfully. Both boys looked away, but the silence was more comfortable than it had been.
“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.”
“James, though,” Sirius said, uncoiling a bit to sprawl across the foot of the bed. “He’s really leaving us.”
Remus rubbed his neck, something he did (Sirius knew) when he wanted to neither tell the truth nor lie. “James is preoccupied, yes,” he said finally. “But eventually the novelty of touching Lily without being jinxed will wear off a bit and we’ll see more of him again.”
“Maybe,” he said, kicking at the curtains. “But she’ll always come first now, won’t she?”
“In some ways,” Remus conceded. “But you’d probably be a nearer second if you’d stop being such an arse about it.”
“Oh, so I should just let him get away with ruining everything?” Sirius kicked harder and got his foot tangled in the fabric. He suspected Remus was right and it gave him a cold, panicky feeling.
“Yes,” Remus said simply. “I know we’re Gryffindors and we fight the unbeatable foe and all that, but you have to pick the right one. This is what Prongs wants. And you’re his friend.”
Sirius pushed himself up again. “You can say that, but it’s not the same for you, for any of you. You have your stupid books and Pete has his stupid bees and Prongs has his stupid everything he ever wanted, but this is all I have.” He gestured around the room. “If I lose this…”
Remus raised an eyebrow. “Yes, you’ll be left with only your looks, your charm, your Uncle Alphard’s money, your excessive talents and inexplicable popularity. It must be devastating.”
Sirius kicked him. “But none of that counts for anything. It’s not – I won’t –”
“You’ll be fine,” Remus said, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
Sirius almost believed him.
“The other boys were flying around him now, flouting, scornful; and he staggered about the deck striking up at them impotently, his mind was no longer with them; it was slouching in the playing fields of long ago, or being sent up for good, or watching the wall-game from a famous wall. And his shoes were right, and his waistcoat was right, and his tie was right, and his socks were right.”
Sirius rolled onto his back, his too-long hair flopping across his eyes. He wore an expression Remus had never seen on him before. It was the look of someone consciously letting go of something he desperately wanted. Remus had spent years waiting for this, and now that it was before him, he almost wished for the old Sirius back, the Sirius who had not known how to give up on anything, who would run headlong into the same wall a thousand times and never believe he wouldn’t make it through on the next try. Where would any of them have gotten without his boundless conviction, the hubris that had saved them by refusing to bow to any power greater than its own? They could have just been four boys passing time in a dormitory room, each with his own role, the hero and the sidekick, the outcast and the rebel. Sirius had given them a legend. But the era of legends was ending. Soon they would have to be men instead. Remus wondered if he might not be quite as ready for that as he’d thought.
“They have a world to win.”
“So what comes next?” Sirius demanded after a time. “What do we do now?”
Remus smiled indulgently. “Everything,” he said.
Sirius grinned up at him. “I have accomplished quite a bit for a wizard of my age,” he agreed.
“Mastered complex and highly illegal magic,” Remus offered.
Sirius inclined his head. “Inflicted irreparable psychological harm on a whole generation of Slytherins.”
“Had your very own political revolution.”
“I did, didn’t I?” He propped his chin up on one hand. “Just think what I’ll have done by the time I’m thirty.”
“And what are the mighty ambitions of the scion of the Ancient and Most Knobby House of Black? Youngest ever vanquisher of undying evil?”
“Nah, what fun’s that?” Sirius scrunched his face. “Potter can save the world, I’ll be the first wizard ever to circumnavigate the Earth in a single broom ride while balancing an unabridged copy of Hogwarts: A History on my head.”
“Your vision of greatness leaves me humbled and awed. Though a bit concerned that you’ve deeply misconstrued the purpose of literature.”
Sirius swatted at his leg with his free hand, then lost the momentum of violence and plucked absently at the cuff of Remus’s trousers. “Was it really so wrong, though?” he asked eventually, “To want us to keep being us?”
“That is all we are, lookers-on. Nobody really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of them will hurt.”
“No… Not exactly wrong. But you know, if you were upset, you could have just talked to us, instead of jumping straight to overthrowing the government.”
Sirius collapsed forward onto the bed and shrugged as much as the position allowed. “I… didn’t want to bother you,” he said into the mattress.
Remus pulled his friend up by the collar until his face reappeared. “I’m sorry,” he told Sirius’s fringe.
“What?” Sirius asked, scrambling to sit up.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I made you feel that you couldn’t come to me with your problems. I wasn’t a good friend. I’m apologising.”
Sirius flushed and looked away. “I’m sure you had good reason,” he muttered.
“No, I didn’t. I said I forgave you and that we were still friends and I didn’t live up to it. And I’m sorry.”
Sirius shook his head stubbornly. “You don’t have to apologise to me. I’m the one who –”
“Stop it! Just stop! You fucked up, all right? You fucked up really badly. And you regretted it and I forgave you and that should have been the end of it. You’re a good friend. You’re not supposed to be my punching bag.”
Sirius did not appear entirely convinced, but he didn’t argue, either.
Remus wished he could tell him to stop fighting himself, that he was no worse than the rest of them, but he didn’t want to sound like a girl. “What did Alice mean?” he asked instead.
“Proletarians of all countries, unite!”
“What?”
“Alice,” Remus repeated. “When everyone was in here, and you were looking like I ate your puppy, Alice said you’d sworn to do something.”
“I did not look like that! I was just,” he laughed ruefully, “wishing that you had actually packed, you procrastinating bastard. Would have saved me a load of trouble.”
“I’d say you had the trouble coming. But what did Alice mean?”
Sirius scowled at the failure of his deflection. “Alice was in trouble yesterday and Lily made me promise I’d treat her the same as I would one of you.” He looked up through his fringe. “I wasn’t going to hex you.”
Remus ruffled his hair. “You would’ve broken your word for me?”
Sirius hunched in on himself. “The least I could do,” he said.
“Pads, we went through this, you don’t owe me –”
“I do!” he interrupted. “If not because of that, then just because it’s us. You put your mates first, yeah?”
“And you called yourself a Communist,” Remus said fondly.
“Well, I just meant it to be us, at first. Everyone else was just swept up by my brilliance. I can hardly blame them, but really it would’ve come off better without the tagalongs.”
“But if it’d just been us it wouldn’t have made any difference. We already had all that brotherhood whatnot, without the bloody Charter of Rights and Obligations.”
Sirius tossed his head. “Blacks always want it in writing,” he said.
“He ceased to look at her, but even then she would not let go of him. He skipped about and made funny faces, but when he stopped it was just as if she were inside him, knocking.”
Remus laughed, and realized belatedly that he was actually, honestly enjoying the conversation. Now that the awkward, feelings-related issues had been tied up and put aside, they were just talking again, like friends, as they’d once done all the time, at least until they stopped. Smiling at Sirius’s expectant face, he felt a pang of regret. “But the writing just turns what you want to do into something you have to do,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” Sirius replied, “because we’ve just been outdoing each other with solidarity lately, haven’t we?”
“Everything has ups and downs. It’s not as if none of us have fallen out before.”
Sirius dismissed this with the flick of an eyebrow. “Well, none of us have left school before. All this is about to be over,” he said, waving a hand at the dorm, “so I think it goes a bit beyond Pete spilling tomato sauce on James’s cloak.”
“Yes, and the solution goes a bit beyond sharing each other’s chocolate frogs, as well,” Remus said sharply. “Try sharing James’s happiness. Try sharing Pete’s worries about his father. That’ll give you a bit more to hold onto them by.”
Sirius cocked his head and stared into his friend’s face. “And what should I share with you?”
Remus looked away. “You share moons with me.”
“No, I share them with Moony. You barely remember.”
“I remember that you’re there,” he said.
“Not good enough. What gnaws at you every other night of the month?”
“It’s the same as you, all right?” Remus exploded. “You think I have anything to look forward to? You think I want to be alone? You think I want to find some crap job where they don’t do background checks and then pray no one counts my days off? Being a monster’s a full time job, you know. Pity it doesn’t pay better.”
“All right then,” Sirius said, turning onto his back and stretching his neck to see his friend. “We’ll be bitter and alone together.”
Remus shrugged, embarrassed by his outburst. “I suppose I’ve put up with you this long,” he muttered.
“I am an excellent friend,” Sirius informed him. “You said so yourself.”
“And you are never going to let me forget it.”
“Not ever,” he agreed happily.
“The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing…”
“Do you think it’s true?” Remus asked suddenly. “About Dumbledore?”
“What, about him and the sheep? Or him and McGonagall? Or him and his special biscuits?”
“No, prat. About him and the secret anti-Voldemort group.”
Sirius sat up again. “Not as if the barmy old bastard confides in me, is it?” he said. “But probably, yeah. I mean, I doubt he defeated Grindelwald just to let the next dark lord take over.”
“You thought about joining up?”
Sirius thought about it, about Unforgivables and masked mobs and death in a flash of green light, and hiding from both sides, and then about the twisting urgency in his stomach every time he read the news. “Might do,” he said. “I suppose if Communism’s off the table, a secret society’s the next best thing.”
“And who else would take us?” Remus asked. “A werewolf and a Black.”
“Please.” Sirius sniffed. “As if we’d have anything to do with the wretched Ministry. Pack of useless hypocrites.”
“It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”
Remus slid off the bed and paced to the window. “Yeah,” he said vaguely. He didn’t want to think about the Ministry, who were supposedly the side of light and justice, and who thought he was a savage animal. At least Voldemort, he reflected bitterly, viewed him as a savage animal with a use. Of course, that use was murdering people like Lily. He didn’t want to think about that, either, for all that he was the one who’d brought it up.
The window showed only a reflection of the room, transposed over the blank night sky. “I’m sick of winter,” he said without turning around. “It feels like we’ve been trapped indoors for months.”
“It’s March now,” Sirius told him, from somewhere nearer than his bed. “It’s practically spring.”
“There’s snow on the ground,” Remus said flatly.
“Yes, but the snow is never as cold in March as it was in February. Let’s go out.”
Remus turned to face him. “Pardon?”
“You and I, my friend.” Sirius slung a heavy, insolent arm around his shoulders. “Outside. Going for a spin round the old heap. It’ll be invigorating. I never fly any more.”
“I never flew to begin with.”
“Exactly why you should now, before it’s too late. Here, you take my broom and I’ll nick James’s, so it won’t be on your head if anything happens.”
Remus eyed him suspiciously. “What’s going to happen?”
“Fresh air! Exercise! Vital for the health, you know.”
“Yes, my health is always improved by prolonged exposure to wind chill in freezing environments,” Remus said, but he was allowing himself to be bundled into his hat and scarf and warmest cloak nonetheless.
And then Sirius pushed a broom into his hands and opened the window. The burst of winter air hit him like a shot of whiskey, awful but also good, making Remus want to shrink away and lean into it all at once. It felt real, realer than essays and arguments and House points and worrying. It felt like the breath of things that hadn’t yet been thought or said or even dreamt. And Sirius climbed out into the empty air and there was nothing to do but follow him into the sky, up toward the distant net of the pale, glimmering stars.
The End!
A/N: And for anyone not yet convinced that Peter Pan has the slightest thing to do with communism, I challenge you to read the following and not wonder whether this was where Orwell found some of his inspiration:
“The general feeling was that Peter was honest just now to lull Wendy's suspicions, but that there might be a change when the new suit was ready, which, against her will, she was making for him out of some of Hook's wickedest garments. It was afterwards whispered among them that on the first night he wore this suit he sat long in the cabin with Hook's cigar-holder in his mouth and one hand clenched, all but for the forefinger, which he bent and held threateningly aloft like a hook.”
Author:
daphnaeaSummary: Sirius is reading The Communist Manifesto. Somehow, Remus knows, this will end in disaster.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Original Story: “Marked” by
elucrehNotes: Many thanks to my beta,
such_heights, without whom I would have torn much more of my hair out, for pointing out mistakes and also telling me that I could do this.Part 1
Part 2
“We have now reached the evening that was to be known among them as the Night of Nights, because of its adventures and their upshot.”
Sirius was in a foul mood at dinner the next night. Remus, sitting across from him, wondered about the cause of the more-than-usually hateful looks he was shooting at Lily, who was two seats down, on the other side of James.
“How’s the recruitment drive coming?” Pete asked in an ill-conceived attempt at defusing him.
Sirius glowered. “Bloody awful. No one’s signed up. No one! It’s beyond belief. I mean, can’t they see how much better Communism is? How much happier we all are?”
“Yeah,” Remus muttered. “We’re all ecstatic.”
“I heard that,” Sirius said. “And frankly that kind of attitude doesn’t befit a Gryffindor.”
“Oh, so now I’m under suspicion?” Their eyes met across the table. Neither would look away. “I’ve already given my chocolate, my annotated textbooks, my money, my spare parchment, and my second oldest jumper. What else exactly does the Committee want from me?”
Sirius looked down at his plate.
“…if, by means of a revolution, [the proletariat] makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
“What do chocolate and parchment prove?” Sirius asked his roast potatoes. He fought down a surge of something worryingly like despair, and raised his face once his eyes were clear again. “The Committee wants loyalty, commitment.”
“And how have I proven myself disloyal?” Remus asked, and Sirius scowled at the hint of smile playing about his lips.
Of all his friend’s qualities, it was Remus’s self-restraint that he abhorred and admired most. Anyone who really knew Remus – and few people did – knew that the wolf was not the only monster he kept chained in his closets. But chained they all were. Sirius himself knew how to restrain neither his love nor his hatred, and understood that but for his charm, he would not have been forgiven for either offence. Remus, on the other hand, had not in living memory required forgiveness for anything. Sirius deserved nothing from him, but the Party was different. The Party deserved everything from everyone, and yet things, Sirius knew, were being withheld. There should be no barrier between the personal and the political, but somehow there was. Remus could hand over every book and jumper he had left and yet give nothing of himself.
“It’s nothing you’ve done,” Sirius said sulkily, “it’s the spirit of it all that matters.”
Remus’s eyebrow twitched. “So to be a proper Communist I have to think the right thoughts? Is that it?”
“Yeah,” Sirius said, though he wasn’t entirely sure. “I mean, it’s about sharing the things that matter most, isn’t it? Not just handing over stupid pieces of paper. It’s about honestly treating everyone as your comrades.” That was right, wasn’t it? That was what was missing, up in the tower – not uncollected chocolate but the feeling of brotherhood, of cooperation – perhaps a new taskforce was required.
“Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked.”
Remus’s face didn’t change, but he recognised the tightness growing in his chest as anger. He knew that light in Sirius’s eye – the one that lately spoke of raids and Sneakoscopes and new Committee Decrees – and decided that the greedy bastard had gotten away with enough already. If he wanted something more he could bloody well just ask, instead of lording it over everyone like some petty tyrant.
“So the key to being a good Communist,” he said, “is sharing the things that matter most?”
“That’s right.”
“And what is it that matters most? Things like friendship?”
Sirius nodded cautiously. “Sure,” he said.
“Excellent,” Remus said briskly. “I know just how to prove my loyalty. See, you’ve got three best mates right now, and Comrade Connelly hasn’t got any since he and Frank fell out. I volunteer for re-allotment.” And with that he stood up and carried his plate down to the empty space beside Daniel.
“Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of socialism ended in a miserable hangover.”
Sirius stared after his departed friend, who was now apparently saying something witty to Daniel Bleeding Connelly. Probably about him. He felt like some ridiculous-sounding word, gobsmacked or flabbergasted. Moony had broken the rules. Moony had left. As if the Marauders were the sort of thing you could just walk away from, after seven years, after everything. As if it had all just been a lark. First James and now Remus. They were like rats swimming from a sinking ship. Except that the rat was apparently the only one left. Sirius glanced at Peter, who was eating his pork chop unconcernedly, as if the defection of one of their best mates was utterly unremarkable.
Well, Sirius wouldn’t just take it. The Marauders didn’t have a secession clause. The Americans had gone to war over such a question, and he would do no less.
“Not so much as a sorry-to-lose-you between them! If she did not mind the parting, he was going to show her, was Peter, that neither did he.”
Remus had meant to go straight to the library after dinner, but Sirius cornered him just outside the Great Hall. Sirius had an odd, shell-shocked look on his face, and Remus wondered briefly if he’d been too harsh. It was no secret that Padfoot was having a hard time of it lately, and he’d never functioned well on his own. Perhaps there was a way to back down a bit, without giving up his point entirely.
“So, things all worked out with Connelly, then?” Sirius asked too casually.
“Yeah,” Remus said. “We’re sorted.”
“Fabulous,” Sirius said. “So, what would you think about trading spots with Frank? I know it might be a little odd living with the sixth-years, but then you could be with your new best mate, and what with Frank on the Committee with me and James, it’d just be more convenient, wouldn’t it?”
Remus smiled, all thoughts of clemency abandoned. “That’d be lovely,” he said. “Let’s just run it by Professor McGonagall to make sure it’s all right. Not as if we have a lot of House points left to lose, you know.”
“Next time we see her,” Sirius agreed, and walked off, smirking.
Remus headed slowly for the stairs, buoyed by a fresh wave of bitterness. He’d always known he ranked beneath James, but he hadn’t realized, somehow, even after that night, just how far below he was. If Prongs’d talked of swapping dorms, Sirius would’ve pounded him into the floor. He would’ve brought the tower down around their ears before permitting it. But evidently Remus was only worth having around as long as he didn’t step out of line. Merlin forbid he have his own opinion about anything. He’d been right all along. He was dispensable.
“To every villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher, socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character.”
Two hours later, Padfoot climbed out of the bed and turned back into a boy. For the first time, he didn’t want to go downstairs and start the meeting. He didn’t want to make a speech and hand out chocolate. He wanted to get back under the covers and just stay there until things made sense again. But the Party was waiting for him, and if he gave that up, what would be left?
Sirius put on his hat and descended the stairs.
Hardly anyone came to the meeting that night – Remus hadn’t returned from the library, Prongs and Lily the Traitor were off in some broom cupboard, and Pete, who’d been napping over by the hearth, didn’t even bother waking up. The room seemed draped with an odd silence that even his most authoritative voice couldn’t fully penetrate.
There was no feeling of generosity when he handed out chocolate and authorized a disbursement of funds so Maggie could replace the hair ribbon that had fallen into her cauldron in Potions. There was no sense of righteousness and restitution when he stripped offenders against the Party of privileges. It was as if something had died, but he couldn’t tell if it was in him, or in the rest of them.
Fifteen minutes into the meeting, Moony arrived, but rather than slipping into a seat he headed straight for the stairs. “Don’t mind me, Comrades,” he said brightly. “I’ve got a bit of packing to do.”
Sirius swallowed. “The Party thanks you,” he said, and turned back to his followers.
The next person brought up for capitalist behaviour got hexed.
“Sometimes, though not often, he had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them. They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his existence.”
When Remus got back to his dorm, he didn’t pack right away. He sat down on his bed and stared blankly into the middle distance, wondering what the hell he’d been thinking, starting a game of chicken with Sirius Black. Sirius, who would not only cut off his nose to spite his face, but then call it filthy names as he danced on its grave. It was never a good idea to put oneself between a Black and his pride. Remus did not want to change rooms. But he didn’t care to remain where he wasn’t wanted, either. And the four of them would be going their separate ways soon enough anyway. What difference did a few months make, more or less? The dorm was his home, true, but Remus was good at giving things up.
Rubbing idly at the soft fabric of his quilt, Remus felt something slide beneath his fingers. He picked it up. A short black hair. Remus sniffed his bed suspiciously. It smelt of dog. Backing cautiously away, he picked up his wand and tested the bed for jinxes or foreign objects. But there was nothing. He glanced over at Sirius’s bed. It appeared to be fully functional.
Remus cast a Cleaning Charm on his bedding, just in case, and sat back down a bit gingerly, irked all over again. Padfoot just went where he wanted, took what he wanted, without any regard for other people at all. Maybe he was planning to take his bed, once Remus moved out. Because it was warmer, or had better light, or some such rot.
He picked his wand up again, aiming it at his trunk. Then he hesitated. Really it didn’t make sense to pack yet. He’d not finished his Defence homework for the morning, and he could hardly do it once his books and quills were all put away. He’d pack once he was done with the assignment. It was the only reasonable thing to do.
“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.”
The meeting was not going well. Sirius was prepared to admit that his temper may have run away with him the smallest bit. But that was no reason for Priscilla to be crying, when she’d not even been hexed. And her friend would be fine; he was probably just using the whole thing as an excuse to curl up in her lap. Half the faces turned up toward him were full of vicious glee, and the other half looked terrified. But he didn’t want to hurt any of them. He was trying to help them. If Communism failed, how would they stop Voldemort? How would they stick together though a war? Surely they understood it was all for their own good. It’d only been a month, so far. They were just starting out. In another month – well, at the current rate, in another month Sirius would have an enormous amount of chocolate and no friends left at all.
Sirius couldn’t remember the end of his speech. He mouthed a few stock phrases and smiled out at the room. “And before we adjourn, does anyone else have anything to report to the Party?” he asked.
Kingsley Shacklebolt slowly raised his hand.
“She liked his tears so much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it.”
The sound of raised voices drifted up the stairs. Remus looked up from the three sentences he’d managed to write on protections against blood magic. Sirius’s sharp tones, and the higher pitch of some younger boys. Marlene, then, and another girl. Sirius again. Remus hoped, unkindly, that the mob had turned on Sirius. Perhaps at that very moment, someone was toppling the ridiculous hat from his over-inflated head. Remus smiled at the thought, then winced as he anticipated Sirius’s response. Perhaps he should go downstairs and try to make sure Padfoot didn’t hurt anyone. More than he usually did. Remus discarded the thought. Someone else could manage him for a change.
“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.”
“Silence!” Sirius bellowed. The noise died down, but only a few of the younger students sank back into their seats. “This is a very troubling accusation, and we will address it with the gravity it deserves.” He waited until the expressions of his Housemates had grown somewhat less mutinous before continuing. “Comrade Lupin has shown himself to be exemplary in his dedication to the Communist cause. However, I do not expect you to merely take my word regarding his innocence. Thanks to Comrade Shacklebolt, this matter is now under consideration by the Central Committee. We will investigate, and report back to you tomorrow with our findings.”
“Why wait?” Amanda demanded. “If you’re so sure he’s got nothing to hide, why don’t we go look right now? What does the Committee need to do that the rest of us aren’t allowed to see?”
“But that violates procedure,” Marlene objected. “The whole purpose of having the Committee is that certain responsibilities have been delegated to us alone.”
“I think Comrade Pool has a point,” Frank said. “While generally I agree with Comrade McKinnon, in this particular case, the alleged perpetrator is known to have close ties to the Central Committee, so it’s understandable that there may be concerns about our objectivity. It certainly can’t hurt for them to witness justice firsthand. It will be an education in our thorough and unimpeachable investigative process.”
Shooting Frank a betrayed look, Sirius belatedly wished that he’d gone a bit easier on Alice the day before.
“Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze; but as those who read between the lines must already have guessed, he had been at a famous public school; and its traditions still clung to him like garments, with which indeed they are largely concerned. Thus it was offensive to him even now to board a ship in the same dress in which he grappled her, and he still adhered in his walk to the school's distinguished slouch. But above all he retained the passion for good form.”
Remus couldn’t bring himself to focus properly even after the noise had died down, so he went to his trunk to dig out his battered copy of Peter Pan. His gaze happened upon Sirius’s open trunk, just to the right. It brimmed with his usual mess of scribbled-upon bits of parchment and not-too-dirty clothes and interesting rocks. Amid the tangle was a familiar-looking sleeve. Remus went over and fished out his second oldest jumper, which Sirius had never properly explained the Party’s need for. It looked as if a dog had chewed on the cuffs.
He looked from the jumper to his bed and back again. It was all beginning to make sense. Dropping the bedraggled knitwear, Remus sat down with his book. He was tired, and unexpectedly sad. If Padfoot had wanted comfort from him, why had he not just asked? Was he ashamed of needing anything from Remus? Did he think he would be refused?
Remus thought back over his friend’s behaviour. It was true that Sirius seldom asked him for anything, or at least anything more significant than to be passed the orange juice at breakfast. It hadn’t always been like that, though. For years Padfoot had made endless demands, for chess matches and extracurricular research projects and company and clean socks. But it had been a long time since his homework was interrupted by a wriggling black dog, barking for attention. There had been that night last year, and then the silence, and then that single, quiet request, and Moony and Padfoot had gone on as if nothing had changed. But Remus and Sirius had not. Sirius had surrendered that sense of entitlement that enabled him to be friends with someone else. And Remus had never given it back.
He lay back against his cushions, novel all but forgotten in his hands. Something would have to be done, he thought, before it went too far. In all his letting go of things, Remus had forgotten how and when to hold on.
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.”
“If Comrade Lupin is vindicated,” Sirius said to Kingsley as the crowd approached the stairs, “you will be left crying in the dust of your mistakes.”
“And if he’s not,” Alice said grimly from behind him, “you’ll remember the promise you made to Lily.”
Sirius’s jaw tensed. He hoped, for the first time, that Remus really had packed.
“‘Silence all,’ he called gloatingly, ‘for a mother's last words to her children.’ At this moment Wendy was grand. ‘These are my last words, dear boys,’ she said firmly. ‘I feel that I have a message to you from your real mothers, and it is this: ‘We hope our sons will die like English gentlemen.’”
Despite the noise on the stairs, it didn’t occur to Remus that the Party might be coming to him until Kingsley Shacklebolt pushed through the door, followed by Sirius and Alice and Frank and at least half the rest of Gryffindor.
He sat up, thrusting his book beneath his cushions for its protection. “Hullo,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Remus,” Sirius began, emerging from behind the first-year, “I’m afraid I’ll have to look for something.”
“Go on then,” he said to Sirius, who still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “But why the circus?” He gestured to the crowd now occupying virtually the entire room.
“They’re witnesses,” Kingsley explained.
“To what?” Remus asked, though he already knew. Nonetheless, he was as curious as the rest about how it would turn out. He wanted to know what Sirius would do.
His chocolate, of course, was exactly where it’d always been. Sirius retrieved the box as laboriously as if it was a block of solid lead. “There is a stash of private chocolate here,” he said slowly, and then stopped. He looked helplessly at Remus, as if hoping for guidance. Remus stared blankly back.
“Hex him!” Alice shouted. “You swore.”
But Sirius didn’t raise his wand. The murmuring of the crowd grew louder.
“What’s all this, then?” came James’s voice, loud and insistent though he was still hidden by the crowd. James elbowed his way forward, Lily following in his wake, and Remus felt an odd pang of disappointment. He’d wanted to see what would happen. But now Sirius would have an out.
Once they got to the front, Lily took a sharp look around, taking in Remus, the chocolate in Sirius’s hand, Alice’s set face and the tenor of the crowd, quickly fading from ugly toward self-abashed now that the Head Boy and Girl had arrived.
“Honestly, have none of you come to your senses yet?” Lily demanded. “Your ridiculous meetings have clearly gotten you nowhere but squeezed on top of each other like tinned kippers. It's ridiculous to ask any human being to work towards the common good without reasonable compensation. It's ridiculous to manufacture brotherhood and equality through a political system. It's ridiculous to hand a cache of all material goods to one person and trust him to know what’s best for everyone. It is, however, especially ridiculous to put on a fur hat and then crowd a hundred people into a dorm room.”
Remus felt like applauding, but also knew it wasn’t the moment to call attention to himself.
Sirius stared at her for a moment, then broke into shaky laughter. “She’s right,” he told the crowd. “Thanks,” he said more quietly, just to her. “You and James are going to have horribly clever children, you know.”
She blushed, evidently recognizing the significance of the admission. Remus felt proud of him. “Of course I’m right,” she snapped, and pulled the hat from his head. Remus chose to interpret that as a sign of affection. “Silly of you to overheat your head like that, it’ll only make the swelling worse. It’s like an oven in here.”
Sirius took the hat from her hands and arranged it on her head. “It’s more fetching on you anyway. Want to lead the Movement for a while?” Remus rather wanted to stick a gold star onto him, for most improved fascist autocrat in the class.
"Thank you, I accept," Lily replied, rearranging her hair beneath the edge of the hat. "And my first order is, all of you, clear out. Go back to the common room and recover your property and get on with your lives. Grades have been dropping and we're last in line for the House Cup."
The crowd’s muttering rose up, but then fell away. The Gryffindors lingered for a bit, just to make sure that there really wasn’t any further prospect of bloodshed, but the students at the rear tired of waiting quickly, and the rest began to mill toward the exit as well. Finally only Lily, the room’s actual inhabitants, and little Kingsley Shacklebolt remained. Sirius took the boy aside and said something encouraging. James told Lily about his love of assertive women (as if that taste hadn’t been apparent since he first set his eye on her) and then kissed her until the hat fell off. Pete suddenly and vocally recalled a Herbology paper that’d been due on Monday and dashed out to get research materials from the library before curfew.
Remus was about to retrieve his book from the cushions when Sirius’s shadow fell across him, stilling his hand. There were things that needed to be said. Sirius evidently agreed, as he caught James’s eye as he was manoeuvring Lily towards his bed, and after a few seconds of the unspoken communication that Remus could never fully decode, Prongs grabbed the Map from his trunk and escorted the Head Girl out the door instead.
The room seemed abruptly too empty. Remus drew his legs up and gestured toward the foot of his bed in a vaguely inviting fashion. Sirius hesitated briefly, then settled himself down, facing Remus, who immediately looked away.
“So,” he said.
“So,” Sirius answered.
Another pause.
“They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”
“So… what was all this about, really?” Remus asked at last.
Sirius glanced up quickly. Moony didn’t seem particularly upset about his near-blacklisting, but of course with him it was always difficult to tell. He was still there, though, in the room, and that was probably a good sign. “Communism?” Remus nodded. Sirius shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea. I thought we needed something to keep us together.”
“The four of us?” Remus asked.
“Yeah.” Sirius picked at the stitching on the quilt. “Well, initially us, and then it seemed like a good thing for everyone, you know? Like the opposite of Voldemort, what with him splitting us all into classes of pure-blood and Muggle-born and whatnot.”
“Sure,” Remus said. “I can see that. But then, it didn’t quite work out that way, did it?”
Sirius pulled further in on himself. “I know I buggered it up, all right? You don’t have to tell me that. I know I didn’t do it properly and it all went to hell, but I thought I could fix it. I thought it could still work out, or – I just didn’t know what else to do! How could I just give up, and let everything change, let it all fall apart?”
“You can’t stop things from changing,” Remus said, in his sad, kind voice. “That’s what life is.”
“But why does it always have to change for the worse?” Sirius demanded, feeling foolish and unable to stop himself. “Why does it have to change with people being killed and going away and turning into arses? I don’t want that.”
“What exactly don’t you want?”
“I don’t want you to go!”
“All right,” Remus said. “You don’t want me to go where?”
“To Frank’s dorm.”
“All right,” Remus said again. Sirius looked up for confirmation, and Remus nodded reassuringly.
“I don’t want you to go to Calcutta,” he added, a bit sulkily.
Remus looked taken aback. “Why would I go to Calcutta?”
“I saw the brochure!” Sirius accused. “Under your bed.”
Remus laughed. “Professor McGonagall gave me a bunch of those, when I was moping about not having job prospects. It must have fallen. I didn’t apply or anything. How could I fight Voldemort from India?”
“Right.” Sirius chuckled, trying not to blush. He wanted to feel relieved, but didn’t, yet. “I’m glad you’re not going to Calcutta,” he began, “but I still – I mean, even when you’re right here, like now, sometimes it feels as if – as if you’re not. As if you’re already gone.”
Remus seemed to deflate a little. “Oh,” he said. “I’m… sorry?” he offered, as if unsure whether an apology was the desired response.
Sirius tried to smile and failed.
“Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time that they have happened.”
It was not until he saw that look on his friend’s face, beaten and resigned and accepting, that Remus realized he really was sorry. He didn’t want to stand apart any more. He’d claimed he’d forgiven Sirius, and in a way he had – he’d put aside his anger, anyway. But he hadn’t forgotten. He’d held onto his mistrust. And it had done harm.
“Look, I didn’t mean…” Remus cut himself off. It wasn’t a claim he could really make. He imagined he probably had meant to push Sirius away, at least on some level, even if it was one he never bothered to visit. “I’m here now,” he said instead. “I want to be here.”
“Yeah?” Sirius asked.
Remus nodded solemnly. “I’m not going anywhere, all right?” He nudged Sirius’s leg with his foot.
Sirius smiled more successfully. Both boys looked away, but the silence was more comfortable than it had been.
“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.”
“James, though,” Sirius said, uncoiling a bit to sprawl across the foot of the bed. “He’s really leaving us.”
Remus rubbed his neck, something he did (Sirius knew) when he wanted to neither tell the truth nor lie. “James is preoccupied, yes,” he said finally. “But eventually the novelty of touching Lily without being jinxed will wear off a bit and we’ll see more of him again.”
“Maybe,” he said, kicking at the curtains. “But she’ll always come first now, won’t she?”
“In some ways,” Remus conceded. “But you’d probably be a nearer second if you’d stop being such an arse about it.”
“Oh, so I should just let him get away with ruining everything?” Sirius kicked harder and got his foot tangled in the fabric. He suspected Remus was right and it gave him a cold, panicky feeling.
“Yes,” Remus said simply. “I know we’re Gryffindors and we fight the unbeatable foe and all that, but you have to pick the right one. This is what Prongs wants. And you’re his friend.”
Sirius pushed himself up again. “You can say that, but it’s not the same for you, for any of you. You have your stupid books and Pete has his stupid bees and Prongs has his stupid everything he ever wanted, but this is all I have.” He gestured around the room. “If I lose this…”
Remus raised an eyebrow. “Yes, you’ll be left with only your looks, your charm, your Uncle Alphard’s money, your excessive talents and inexplicable popularity. It must be devastating.”
Sirius kicked him. “But none of that counts for anything. It’s not – I won’t –”
“You’ll be fine,” Remus said, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
Sirius almost believed him.
“The other boys were flying around him now, flouting, scornful; and he staggered about the deck striking up at them impotently, his mind was no longer with them; it was slouching in the playing fields of long ago, or being sent up for good, or watching the wall-game from a famous wall. And his shoes were right, and his waistcoat was right, and his tie was right, and his socks were right.”
Sirius rolled onto his back, his too-long hair flopping across his eyes. He wore an expression Remus had never seen on him before. It was the look of someone consciously letting go of something he desperately wanted. Remus had spent years waiting for this, and now that it was before him, he almost wished for the old Sirius back, the Sirius who had not known how to give up on anything, who would run headlong into the same wall a thousand times and never believe he wouldn’t make it through on the next try. Where would any of them have gotten without his boundless conviction, the hubris that had saved them by refusing to bow to any power greater than its own? They could have just been four boys passing time in a dormitory room, each with his own role, the hero and the sidekick, the outcast and the rebel. Sirius had given them a legend. But the era of legends was ending. Soon they would have to be men instead. Remus wondered if he might not be quite as ready for that as he’d thought.
“They have a world to win.”
“So what comes next?” Sirius demanded after a time. “What do we do now?”
Remus smiled indulgently. “Everything,” he said.
Sirius grinned up at him. “I have accomplished quite a bit for a wizard of my age,” he agreed.
“Mastered complex and highly illegal magic,” Remus offered.
Sirius inclined his head. “Inflicted irreparable psychological harm on a whole generation of Slytherins.”
“Had your very own political revolution.”
“I did, didn’t I?” He propped his chin up on one hand. “Just think what I’ll have done by the time I’m thirty.”
“And what are the mighty ambitions of the scion of the Ancient and Most Knobby House of Black? Youngest ever vanquisher of undying evil?”
“Nah, what fun’s that?” Sirius scrunched his face. “Potter can save the world, I’ll be the first wizard ever to circumnavigate the Earth in a single broom ride while balancing an unabridged copy of Hogwarts: A History on my head.”
“Your vision of greatness leaves me humbled and awed. Though a bit concerned that you’ve deeply misconstrued the purpose of literature.”
Sirius swatted at his leg with his free hand, then lost the momentum of violence and plucked absently at the cuff of Remus’s trousers. “Was it really so wrong, though?” he asked eventually, “To want us to keep being us?”
“That is all we are, lookers-on. Nobody really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of them will hurt.”
“No… Not exactly wrong. But you know, if you were upset, you could have just talked to us, instead of jumping straight to overthrowing the government.”
Sirius collapsed forward onto the bed and shrugged as much as the position allowed. “I… didn’t want to bother you,” he said into the mattress.
Remus pulled his friend up by the collar until his face reappeared. “I’m sorry,” he told Sirius’s fringe.
“What?” Sirius asked, scrambling to sit up.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I made you feel that you couldn’t come to me with your problems. I wasn’t a good friend. I’m apologising.”
Sirius flushed and looked away. “I’m sure you had good reason,” he muttered.
“No, I didn’t. I said I forgave you and that we were still friends and I didn’t live up to it. And I’m sorry.”
Sirius shook his head stubbornly. “You don’t have to apologise to me. I’m the one who –”
“Stop it! Just stop! You fucked up, all right? You fucked up really badly. And you regretted it and I forgave you and that should have been the end of it. You’re a good friend. You’re not supposed to be my punching bag.”
Sirius did not appear entirely convinced, but he didn’t argue, either.
Remus wished he could tell him to stop fighting himself, that he was no worse than the rest of them, but he didn’t want to sound like a girl. “What did Alice mean?” he asked instead.
“Proletarians of all countries, unite!”
“What?”
“Alice,” Remus repeated. “When everyone was in here, and you were looking like I ate your puppy, Alice said you’d sworn to do something.”
“I did not look like that! I was just,” he laughed ruefully, “wishing that you had actually packed, you procrastinating bastard. Would have saved me a load of trouble.”
“I’d say you had the trouble coming. But what did Alice mean?”
Sirius scowled at the failure of his deflection. “Alice was in trouble yesterday and Lily made me promise I’d treat her the same as I would one of you.” He looked up through his fringe. “I wasn’t going to hex you.”
Remus ruffled his hair. “You would’ve broken your word for me?”
Sirius hunched in on himself. “The least I could do,” he said.
“Pads, we went through this, you don’t owe me –”
“I do!” he interrupted. “If not because of that, then just because it’s us. You put your mates first, yeah?”
“And you called yourself a Communist,” Remus said fondly.
“Well, I just meant it to be us, at first. Everyone else was just swept up by my brilliance. I can hardly blame them, but really it would’ve come off better without the tagalongs.”
“But if it’d just been us it wouldn’t have made any difference. We already had all that brotherhood whatnot, without the bloody Charter of Rights and Obligations.”
Sirius tossed his head. “Blacks always want it in writing,” he said.
“He ceased to look at her, but even then she would not let go of him. He skipped about and made funny faces, but when he stopped it was just as if she were inside him, knocking.”
Remus laughed, and realized belatedly that he was actually, honestly enjoying the conversation. Now that the awkward, feelings-related issues had been tied up and put aside, they were just talking again, like friends, as they’d once done all the time, at least until they stopped. Smiling at Sirius’s expectant face, he felt a pang of regret. “But the writing just turns what you want to do into something you have to do,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” Sirius replied, “because we’ve just been outdoing each other with solidarity lately, haven’t we?”
“Everything has ups and downs. It’s not as if none of us have fallen out before.”
Sirius dismissed this with the flick of an eyebrow. “Well, none of us have left school before. All this is about to be over,” he said, waving a hand at the dorm, “so I think it goes a bit beyond Pete spilling tomato sauce on James’s cloak.”
“Yes, and the solution goes a bit beyond sharing each other’s chocolate frogs, as well,” Remus said sharply. “Try sharing James’s happiness. Try sharing Pete’s worries about his father. That’ll give you a bit more to hold onto them by.”
Sirius cocked his head and stared into his friend’s face. “And what should I share with you?”
Remus looked away. “You share moons with me.”
“No, I share them with Moony. You barely remember.”
“I remember that you’re there,” he said.
“Not good enough. What gnaws at you every other night of the month?”
“It’s the same as you, all right?” Remus exploded. “You think I have anything to look forward to? You think I want to be alone? You think I want to find some crap job where they don’t do background checks and then pray no one counts my days off? Being a monster’s a full time job, you know. Pity it doesn’t pay better.”
“All right then,” Sirius said, turning onto his back and stretching his neck to see his friend. “We’ll be bitter and alone together.”
Remus shrugged, embarrassed by his outburst. “I suppose I’ve put up with you this long,” he muttered.
“I am an excellent friend,” Sirius informed him. “You said so yourself.”
“And you are never going to let me forget it.”
“Not ever,” he agreed happily.
“The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing…”
“Do you think it’s true?” Remus asked suddenly. “About Dumbledore?”
“What, about him and the sheep? Or him and McGonagall? Or him and his special biscuits?”
“No, prat. About him and the secret anti-Voldemort group.”
Sirius sat up again. “Not as if the barmy old bastard confides in me, is it?” he said. “But probably, yeah. I mean, I doubt he defeated Grindelwald just to let the next dark lord take over.”
“You thought about joining up?”
Sirius thought about it, about Unforgivables and masked mobs and death in a flash of green light, and hiding from both sides, and then about the twisting urgency in his stomach every time he read the news. “Might do,” he said. “I suppose if Communism’s off the table, a secret society’s the next best thing.”
“And who else would take us?” Remus asked. “A werewolf and a Black.”
“Please.” Sirius sniffed. “As if we’d have anything to do with the wretched Ministry. Pack of useless hypocrites.”
“It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”
Remus slid off the bed and paced to the window. “Yeah,” he said vaguely. He didn’t want to think about the Ministry, who were supposedly the side of light and justice, and who thought he was a savage animal. At least Voldemort, he reflected bitterly, viewed him as a savage animal with a use. Of course, that use was murdering people like Lily. He didn’t want to think about that, either, for all that he was the one who’d brought it up.
The window showed only a reflection of the room, transposed over the blank night sky. “I’m sick of winter,” he said without turning around. “It feels like we’ve been trapped indoors for months.”
“It’s March now,” Sirius told him, from somewhere nearer than his bed. “It’s practically spring.”
“There’s snow on the ground,” Remus said flatly.
“Yes, but the snow is never as cold in March as it was in February. Let’s go out.”
Remus turned to face him. “Pardon?”
“You and I, my friend.” Sirius slung a heavy, insolent arm around his shoulders. “Outside. Going for a spin round the old heap. It’ll be invigorating. I never fly any more.”
“I never flew to begin with.”
“Exactly why you should now, before it’s too late. Here, you take my broom and I’ll nick James’s, so it won’t be on your head if anything happens.”
Remus eyed him suspiciously. “What’s going to happen?”
“Fresh air! Exercise! Vital for the health, you know.”
“Yes, my health is always improved by prolonged exposure to wind chill in freezing environments,” Remus said, but he was allowing himself to be bundled into his hat and scarf and warmest cloak nonetheless.
And then Sirius pushed a broom into his hands and opened the window. The burst of winter air hit him like a shot of whiskey, awful but also good, making Remus want to shrink away and lean into it all at once. It felt real, realer than essays and arguments and House points and worrying. It felt like the breath of things that hadn’t yet been thought or said or even dreamt. And Sirius climbed out into the empty air and there was nothing to do but follow him into the sky, up toward the distant net of the pale, glimmering stars.
The End!
A/N: And for anyone not yet convinced that Peter Pan has the slightest thing to do with communism, I challenge you to read the following and not wonder whether this was where Orwell found some of his inspiration:
“The general feeling was that Peter was honest just now to lull Wendy's suspicions, but that there might be a change when the new suit was ready, which, against her will, she was making for him out of some of Hook's wickedest garments. It was afterwards whispered among them that on the first night he wore this suit he sat long in the cabin with Hook's cigar-holder in his mouth and one hand clenched, all but for the forefinger, which he bent and held threateningly aloft like a hook.”
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