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“Ey, what are you thinking about?”
Remus lifted his head from the papers he had in front of him. It was a silent autumn evening, and his friend had decided to review the essays his students had written for his class. But he had spent at least the last ten minutes looking at the papers without really reading.
Sirius knew this because he had been staring at him all that time.
Since he came back from the veil, Sirius had started to pay more attention to everything. He had always considered himself observant, but now it was as if he had to absorb everything around him, because he knew what it felt like to lose it. And everything included people; those who were still there, who had spent two years without him, who he had let behind. Remus was the only person alive who knew him the most, and Sirius wanted to balance the scales; he wanted to make up for lost time, for those 14 years he hadn’t been in his life, and discover everything he had missed.
So after another two years of living together, he had started developing a skill to understand Remus’s behaviour and mannerisms. Like he always fidgets with his pen when he is marking papers, but gets still if he’s lost in his thoughts; he frowns while reading, but bites his lip if he’s not focused; you can see how his eyes roam over the pages at an incredible pace, so he doesn’t spend ten minutes on a single one.
They made eye contact and Sirius raised his eyebrows in a way of repeating the question. Remus sighed and looked at the same essay again. His hair had become almost half grey by now, and he had had to accept he needed reading glasses, so his always permanent look of a grandpa had become even more evident now.
“I asked them to write about a magic object or creature that is not considered dark magic, but they think it should,” he said. “Someone has chosen the Mirror of Erised.”
Sirius felt his face turn into one of surprise. The Mirror of Erised was not a very popular object. In their years at Hogwarts, it was almost like a myth; they had even made-up stories about it to scare first and second years. He had always wondered what he would see, but it wasn’t something that kept him awake at night; he knew what he wanted, even the things that were hard to admit.
“Well, I guess they have a point.”
Remus agreed. He rearranged the papers and roamed his gaze over one of them.
“Yeah, she had written a beautiful essay,” he affirmed. “Talking about how something that can read your deepest thoughts is too close to have the power to control you to not be considered dark magic.”
“It’s similar to the resurrection stone, don’t you think?” Sirius questioned, crossing his legs and leaning back in the chair. “They give you the illusion of having something.”
His friend shifted in his seat, looking away. Then he adjusted his glasses up from his nose, a sign of nervousness.
“Yes… kind of.”
Sirius knew better than to press the matter or ask about the sudden change of attitude, so he continued on the same path the talk was going.
“Have you seen it? The mirror?”
Remus looked at him again and nodded. He licked his chapped lips. His eyes showed tiredness, as always, but since the end of the war and Teddy’s birth, they had something more, something close to hope, sometimes even happiness—like when he held his son for the first time. But at that precise moment, they showed a complex mix of things, so Sirius let him talk, wanting to understand everything that was hiding in those honeyed irises.
“Three times,” he said.
He tried to conceal the astonishment he felt, but it wasn't easy. He thought about all the times they had talked about that mysterious object between the four walls of their room at the Gryffindor tower, how they joked about what they would see on it, but thought it was nearly impossible. No one knew where the mirror was. But, he remembered, Remus had lived twelve years without him, and two more since then.
“When you were a teacher in Harry’s third year, right?”
Without noticing it, he had stretched out his arm, and his fingers were playing with the corners of Remus’s papers, but his gaze was fixed on his friend’s face. On how he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Halloween night,” he clarified, “when you broke into the castle to…”
During those years, once the war ended and they could start rebuilding their lives, Sirius had started to think about how Remus would have get over everything that had happened since they left school, what were his thoughts, his feelings, how he lived. They had talked about it before, when Dumbledore sent him to Remus’s cottage, but in his new job as Remus Lupin’s observer, he wanted to know those things he wouldn’t tell, like what it was like to hear that Sirius Black had broken into Harry’s dorm, wanting to kill him.
“And what did you see?” he asked, his voice low, almost a whisper.
Remus tried to hide it, but a hint of a smirk appeared on his face.
“The same thing that I saw the first time.”
This time, Sirius couldn’t control his eyes from going big and his mouth opening in an almost-perfect ‘O’. Because if there had been a first time...
“Wait, that was not the first time?”
With a light chuckle that sounded too much like 16-year-old Remus, he shook his head.
“When we were at school," he admitted. "One night, I was patrolling, and searching more secret alleys for the map, you know; and I found a room…” He frowned at the ceiling, as if there he could find the memories he was searching for. “The one with that big white door, remember?” Sirius nodded. “Well, it was there. I don’t know where Dumbledore put it after that night.”
“But why didn’t you say anything?”
“When I saw it, I recognised it,” he went on, ignoring Sirius’s question. “And I thought… 'I have everything I ever wanted, I have friends who love me even if I’m a monster, and the moons aren’t as terrible as they used to be. ' So I was curious, I thought I would see myself without scars, maybe with my parents being happy and not too focused on finding a cure. And I did, I saw myself free of scars, and I just knew that in that image I wasn't a werewolf, but…”
“But?”
“I saw something more. Something I was too ashamed to tell. That I didn’t even fully understand. So I didn’t say anything.”
Sirius was now leaning on the table, his face inches away from Remus’s, as if being closer would allow him to read his mind, to discover his secrets, those that he didn’t know Remus had. He had always been a bit reserved, even with his best friends, so of course, he could see something that made him feel ashamed. But what was it, that he saw the same thing more than twelve years later? That he still desired twelve years later?
“What was it?” he verbalised his curiosity. “You can tell me, you know. After everything we have been through, you can’t scare me.”
A new faint smirk started to show on Remus’s mouth, but his expression was somewhat resigned.
“I saw the same thing that I saw the third time.”
“And when was that?” Sirius, who never had the patience for that kind of game—unless it was with Remus—asked.
“It was the time that it brought you back.”
At first, he thought the words didn't make sense; hence, he frowned in confusion. When Sirius had fallen through the veil, he just felt cold. An intense cold. And then nothing. A limbo, a mental fog and his body trapped in it. He couldn’t sense the passing of time, or anything else for that matter, so when he came back and saw himself alone in that large room of the Ministry, he didn’t understand anything. Where were the Death Eaters? And everyone else?
But suddenly, he had a little body, not so little anymore, hugging him. Harry cried on his chest, and Sirius, still a bit lost, managed to comfort him. Harry told him everything: how he had died, how the time went on, how Dumbledore had died, how he had discovered the horcruxes thing, and how Remus had said he had an idea to bring Sirius back and had told someone to go to the Department of Mysteries and wait here for an hour maximum. No one could stop Harry from being the one who waited there, even if Ron and Hermione were right behind the door, ready for everything that could go wrong.
With everything that was happening that year, he didn’t even have time to ask Remus how he had managed to bring him back; they were too busy trying to discover what suicidal plan Harry had in his head and how to defeat Voldemort. Also, Sirius had to start understanding everything that had changed in those years, like the fact that his best friend was married to her cousin’s daughter and they were expecting, or that his brother had died after trying to betray Voldemort, making things more complicated for Harry, among other things.
Then, when everything ended and they won the war, time just passed by. Harry started the Auror’s training, Sirius sold the Black Manor and bought a house on the outskirts, Remus and Tonks decided to part ways—both taking care of their child, but as friends—so Sirius offered his friend a place to live that where nearer than Wales, Remus started working at Hogwarts again, this time as a war hero, he himself started to look for something to do, finding an interest in Arthur Weasley's project—or hobby if you asked the man—to mix magic with muggle objects... and he had never asked.
“What does it have to do with it?” he said then, really wanting to know for the first time in two years.
Remus took off his glasses and rubbed his face, leaning back on his chair. Then he stood up and told Sirius to go to the couch while he prepared some tea. Ten minutes later, they were sitting opposite each other, both with hot porcelain in their hands, and silent. Sirius, who had developed a new level of patience in those years, just waited for Remus to start explaining everything.
“I was so lost,” he whispered, almost inaudible. “I had stopped going to missions, with Dumbledore dead and Tonks pregnant… And Harry making those dangerous, stupid plans… well, not stupid, just impulsive,” he corrected himself. “I was so lost, and I needed… I needed you. Because I knew that if someone could put some kind of order there, as strange as it sounds, it was you. So, I started searching in every necromancy, ancient and even dark magic book.”
“Please, tell me I’m not a zombie.”
He was just half joking.
“You aren’t,” Remus said, rolling his eyes. “I couldn’t find anything in the books, at least not anything practical, but they gave me information about the veil and what it does to people, and it gave me ideas. They made me… remember things, put them together, and I came up with an idea that I didn’t tell anyone, because I didn’t know if it could work, and because I was ashamed of explaining it.”
“I really don’t get where this is going,” Sirius couldn't help but remark.
“I told Harry to trust me, and I think he wouldn't if it weren’t for Hermione, but what matters now is that he did. He gave me the resurrection stone and went to the Ministry.”
Sirius was more lost with every word, but he didn’t find in himself the capacity to ask anything. Remus’s voice was smooth, deep; he had always been perfect for telling stories, but this one had something so intensely personal, intimate—the candence of his words, the open soul in his eyes, the hurt in his memories—that it had Sirius completely trapped.
»”I had read about… mixed magics. And... You know, when muggles talk about maths, they say that two negatives make a positive.”
“Yeah, you explained some of those things to me before the first war.”
Remus smiled, more sincerely this time. It almost reached his eyes.
“I’m glad your memory is so good.”
“Well, it wasn’t, until I came back,” he shrugged. That was a perk of the death thing. It was almost a free start for his mind, the damage the dementors had done to it, essentially gone.
Remus nodded and took a sip from his cup before resuming the story.
“So… I had the resurrection stone, a negative. I needed another negative that could complement it, another thing that could make you live the illusion of having someone back.”
Sirius thought he was starting to understand, even if there were a lot of loose ends.
“Like the Mirror of Erised.”
“Exactly,” Remus ratified. “So I just needed someone whose deepest desire was to have you back. I think about Harry, but he told me once that he had discovered the mirror and what he saw were his parents, and I couldn’t think about that changing, never.” Sirius could only agree with that. “So I went for the safest option, because if in more than twelve years the image I have seen in the mirror hadn’t changed, why would it have changed just a couple of years later?”
Sirius gulped and left the cup on the coffee table. His eyes were fixed on his friend once more, in that gaze that was avoiding him, in those hands that were fidgeting with the teaspoon, in those bitten lips. He felt his heart do something strange, like going faster and slower at the same time.
“You saw me?”
Remus sighed, and with what seemed like a giant effort, he made eye contact with Sirius,
“I saw us,” he admitted. “I always see us. I’m always free of my scars, and I’m always happy. When I was sixteen, we were just there, with the map in our hands, laughing, hugging…” he shook his head, a beautiful pink colour rising to his cheeks. “When I was thirty-three, I saw us talking, our hands were… intertwined, we were in my cottage, it was warm, I could feel it. And that last time… I didn’t even know if the mirror was where I thought, and I don’t know if it was or if it was Hogwarts’s magic, but I found it.
I had the stone in my hand, and I didn’t have a clue if it was going to work. But I just… I saw us, again. We were just there, standing next to each other, looking at each other, and I could see life in your eyes, Sirius. You were alive, and you were there, with me, one more time.”
At that point, Remus’s voice had broken. Sirius could see tears in his eyes and feel himself tearing too, so he came closer. He grabbed Remus’s hands—that were still around the cup—and covered them with his own. They were hard hands, battered by the passage of time, but they felt reassuring somehow.
“Moony…”
“I just looked into your eyes,” he continued. “And I felt the stone so heavy in my hand. I just… I just wished. I wished with all the force in my heart, and it hurt so much I thought I was going to die right there...”
“Well, I’m so glad you didn’t.”
Remus’s laughter sounded wet, but he had made him laugh, and that was something. He leaned in and kissed his forehead, at the birth of a scar, and felt the bunch of air Remus let out. An immense urge to envelop him in a hug overcame him.
“I felt something then, and I knew it had worked,” Remus said after clearing his throat. “Or at least I hoped it had. Then I appeared in the Ministry… and you know the rest.”
Sirius took the cup from Remus’s hands and rested it on the table next to his. He cupped Remus’s face in his hands, wiping away the tears, and smiled at him. Sirius had become softer with the years and the death thing, but he could resist crying a bit more; he had never liked crying in group. And after everything, he preferred laughter even more than before.
“I thought your deepest desire would be a huge chocolate cake,” he said, smirking.
“Oh my god, you are so stupid, Sirius.”
“Maybe. But I’m your deepest desire.”
Remus hit Sirius’s hands, making him get off of him, and hid his face behind his own hands. It was cute seeing a forty-year-old man blushing like a teenager. Or to be precise, it was cute seeing Remus—that shy, sarcastic kid, that mischievous and innocent teenager, that tortured but kind adult—blush and groan. It had always been cute.
“Don’t mock me.”
“I’m not,” Sirius assured him. “Really. I’m not, Remus.” He grabbed his wrist and took them apart, lowering them. “And you shouldn’t have been ashamed of telling me all those years ago, but I’m glad you did now.”
“I think that if I look in the mirror right now, I might see a big chocolate cake.”
“Mmm, I’m not so sure about that.”
“Well, I-”
But Sirius was old, and even if he had practised—and improved—his patience, old habits die hard. So he shut Remus up with a kiss. It was not a hard, passionate, filthy kiss, as it could have been when they were younger and they bickered in their dorm; it was slow, careful, concise with what it meant. Remus’s chapped lips against his and his callous hands on his neck were everything he wanted right there and then.
Their bodies came closer, closer than ever, even more than those nights in the war, before everything fell apart and they were so scared of losing each other that they slept hugging each other as if life depended on it. Because now it was like the last wall between them had disappeared.
In his forty years, Sirius had kissed some people, and even if it was so long ago, he could swear he had never felt something like what he was feeling kissing Remus Lupin. A want that he thought he had lost came back to him with force, as the first sip of a drink you don’t know you need, but that in fact you crave. He grabbed those grey locks of hair and intensified the kiss, and Remus wrapped his long arms around his shoulders, and they felt warm, and close, and good.
Desire. It was too small a word for what Sirius was feeling, but at the same time, it felt like something he had always felt. What it was Remus Lupin for him, if not a desire; someone so lovely and gentle that he didn’t understand how he had the right to know him? Someone who had been there for him when there was no one else? Someone who could forgive, and love, and take care? Someone who had tried hard enough, he had managed to defeat the force of death?
They came back for air, but without letting go of each other. Sirius searched Remus’s eyes with his own.
“If I were to watch in the mirror-”
“You will probably see James,” Remus interrupted him in that lovely and annoying gentle tone, smiling and caressing his cheek. “And that’s fine. Most times, our deepest desires are those that we can’t have, or that we think we can’t. But you can have me, Sirius, for as long as we have left in this life.”
Remus had always been good with words, and Sirius had always loved him for it.
“Then I’m going to take you, Mr. Lupin.”
He shallowed Remus’s laughter with another kiss, and if that time it definitely was hard, passionate, and filthy, maybe it was because they had wasted too much time, because life had taken too much time from them, but deep inside, they still were those young boys. And maybe their bodies were older and they had to get up in order to get to the bedroom out of mercy for their backs, and maybe the caresses and kisses and laughter lasted much more than other parts of them, and maybe they should have a good talk as the adults they were… But that evening, they just let their desire flow through the air, envelop every corner of the house, and come true.
And it was sure that some student was going to get an A.