By Pollitt
06.21.04
Disclaimer: I don't own them. I make no money this way. Ownership is with Ms. Rowling, Scholastic, etc...
Rating: Barely PG-13
Author's Notes: Written for Thamiris's Multi-Fandom, 48-Hour, Delirium Story Challenge: Forty-eight hours to write a story, however long or short you want, that incorporates "delirium" in some way, shape or form. I know I've had Harry Potter on the brain, and it was bound to happen, me succumbing to the lure of writing in the fandom.
Thank you to Celia and Astrid for the look-sees, support, and for reassuring me when I needed it. To Thamiris for her challenge, and for her wonderful words about the story. And to my crack-out pal, pirl, for the HP crack sessions, etc.
Hopian is the Old English word from which the word hope is derived.
Spoilers for OotP. Big ones, really, really big. I mean it.
He wished, but not with hope. --Milton.
The war is poised on the knife's edge, waiting to taste its first bite of flesh and blood. The casualties have not yet fallen onto the scorched earth, for now they have fallen in quiet homes or on the cold stone where battles have been fought. The streets have long gone dark, and the doors and windows of the homes have been locked tight against whatever might go bump in the night.
In a small room in an attic of an unassuming home, a man reads by candlelight as he so often does, searching texts and legends, making notes on parchment until his eyes dim and the ink of his quill runs dry. Sleep has proven a foe rather than a friend these last few years - each time his eyes close the screams of those lost fill his mind, too many loved ones felled before his eyes. Or, worse yet, his lover's smile, the memory of his touch, teasing and sure, the phantom brush of black hair across his cheek as they kissed, all things never to be seen or felt again.
Pulling himself from his thoughts, Remus Lupin shakes the sleep from his mind and glances down at his parchment. Among the symbols and scrawl he finds a drawing he does not remember making of a dark haired man, his legs slung over the arms of a chair, a book resting on his chest and wearing a smile that was reserved solely for Remus.
Sirius.
Remus knows, if he were a stronger man, he could simply crumple the parchment and throw it into the fire, but letting go of Sirius was something he has never mastered.
A breeze from the window catches his attention and Remus feels his breath stop as he looks up to find a figure standing before him - black hair falls into the man's pale face, his robes are more tattered than Remus remembers, but the face, the eyes...
"Stay back!" Remus shouts, stumbling as he stands from his chair and reaches for his wand.
"Remus, Remus it's me, Sirius," the man who wears Sirius's face says, holding his hands out in front of him as if to calm a wild beast.
"Sirius is dead. He fell. I saw him." Wand in hand, Remus points to the figure, his eyes wide, taking in what stands before him. It looks so much like Sirius, *sounds* so much like him that Remus wants to believe, but in his mind's eye he remembers the graceful arch of Sirius's back as he fell through the curtain. He wonders if this was how Mad Magdalene's decent began, as she sat waiting for a husband who would never return.
"I escaped..."
"You *fell*, I saw you die."
"I fell, yes, but it wasn't death that awaited me. I'm back, Moony..."
"Are you ... ghost?" Remus lifts a shaking hand and slowly reaches forward, feeling the solid warmth of flesh. Pulling back as if burned, he points his wand again. "Why are you doing this to me? You're dead! I lost you."
"I told you that I wouldn't leave you again. I promised you that I wouldn't." Sirius takes a step forward and stops as Remus readies his wand. "I escaped. After Azkaban... so much time was lost."
"Lost." Remus feels a burst of hysterical laughter race through his chest. "You were gone again and I was alone and the war began. We're dying out there. I've been dying." Remus can't help the shudders that wrack his body - he's tired and cold; he's been pouring over books and texts, trying to discover the veil's secret since the moment Sirius disappeared behind it; he's been alone for so long, and now he's nearly certain he has finally lost his mind.
"Moony?" Defying the wand and the wizard wielding it, Sirius steps to his lover's side, nothing but concern and love spread across his face. "Moony what do you mean, you've been dying?"
"Every time we say goodbye, I die a little," Remus hums, turning to look into eyes that he sees in his mind every minute of the day. "Once again I was the one who was left. The one who survived."
"You're not alone anymore. I'm here." Sirius strokes his hand up Remus's back, leaning forward to nuzzle at his temple.
"No!" Remus jerks away, his eyes wild and fever bright. "How do I know... How can you prove you're Sirius?"
"When we were 15, we rigged Wormtail's quills to explode during McGonagall's class."
"Everyone knew that."
"You have a scar, below your shoulder blades and right next to your spine."
"Go on," Remus says, feeling his heartbeat quicken.
Taking a step towards Remus, Sirius continues, "You got it seventh year. James was chasing after Lily, and Peter was off... somewhere. We were in your bed. I told you you were the most handsome creature I'd ever seen, and you found out I... have a sensitive stomach, and as you were attempting to torture me, I reciprocated. You fell out of bed and cracked your back on the bedside table. We told everyone you fell out of a tree and onto a root. We said it marked you mine."
Reaching out, Sirius covers Remus's hand in his own, taking Remus's wand with the other. "Are you still mine, Moony?"
A fine tremor runs down Remus's spine as Sirius moves closer, as Sirius's fingers lace with his own, as the warm body presses along his side, as close as skin. All at once, Remus is very old and very young and waiting for his heart to break once again, for this moment to slip through his fingers like smoke in the air.
"Moony?" The word is spoken into the short hairs of Remus's temple, he feels the damp heat of Sirius's breath, his words, and Remus thinks that just maybe this is real. The touch of Sirius's lips to his skin is the last thing Remus remembers before darkness descends.
"Remus. Dammit, Remus, wake up," Sirius demands, shaking lightly at Remus's shoulders, his voice a mix of concern and impatience. He moves the prone body to the bed and works the top button of Remus's shirt open before the golden eyes open again.
"Sirius?" Remus asks, his voice is quiet but sure, and his eyes no longer burn with a feverish intensity.
Sirius takes one of Remus's hands in his own and presses it to his lips. "Do you need chocolate? You'll feel better."
Remus smiles, marveling that his muscles still know such as action, and shakes his head. Letting his hand curl to hold Sirius's jaw, he asks, "How did I mark you?"
"What?"
"My scar, it was your mark on me. What was my mark on you?" Remus's eyes search for any signs of faltering in Sirius's face.
In answer Sirius pushes aside his robes and pulls up the corner of his shirt, tugging at the waistband of his trousers he reveals the scar, its raised edge curling over his hip.
"We were in the Shrieking Shack when you noticed it, Padfoot'd gotten it during one of our runs. You touched it, touched me, kissed me. You said I was yours until the scar faded away. It never has."
Tears slip silently down Remus's cheeks as he reaches out to touch the raised flesh on Sirius's hip. Sitting up, he leans forward and flicks his tongue across the mark, tasting Sirius's skin.
"Oh god, Sirius," Remus whispers, his voice ragged with tears and exhaustion, and his hands, that scrabble to get purchase on Sirius's clothes, hold tight as he buries his face in the cloth at Sirius's stomach.
"I'm here, Moony. I'm here." Sirius's fingers tangle in Remus's hair, pulling back and cradling the back of Remus's skull as Sirius shifts until they are on their sides, facing one another and once again close as breath.
Their kisses should be hurried, desperate and hungry for the years lost, instead they are slow, quiet and deep, remembering and relearning each other's bodies after too many partings. Sirius lets his touch map out the body he has fought through hell and back to return to. He smiles into a kiss when his fingers brush against the scar he knew he'd find.
"Mine," Sirius growls as he pulls Remus closer still.
"Yes," Remus answers, his finger disappearing into the tangles of black hair, his mouth working to make claim on the side of Sirius's neck. "Mine."
"Yes," Sirius sighs and exposes more bare throat.
They fall asleep curled together like two wild animals, both protecting and protected by one another.
In the gray blue of early morning, Remus wakes and finds two arms wrapped around him and a beloved face, older and more drawn then the last time he'd seen it, asleep on his pillow. He carefully lifts his hand and brushes hair from Sirius's face.
"I love you," he whispers, and for the first time in a long time, hope pushes aside the sorrow.
Sirius's hand covers Remus's a moment before his eyes open, suspiciously bright, "It's always been you."
Remus kisses Sirius quickly and buries his face in the hollow of Sirius's throat, breathing him in until sleep finds them once more.
In a small room in an attic of an unassuming home, two men sleep on an old bed as they have not slept in nearly twenty years. Dreams don't linger for long as they anchor themselves tighter into their embrace. No screams shatter their sleep, no phantom touches haunt their starving skin. Only the quiet breathing of sleep, the soft brush of lips over sleep warmed skin.
The war is waiting to begin, waiting for the day when the sun is shrouded in the smoke of the battlefield. When the morning doesn't usher the sound of birds and doors unlocking. When bumps in the night find their way to the day. But it is not today, when hope finds itself reborn.