Cracking
by Kait


"That was the last of them," Remus said in a very quiet voice as he returned to McGonagall's study, closing the door behind him with a very soft click. "They're all in the hospital wing. Poppy is taking care of them. It's all... we're all... everything's okay." *Don't crack now, Lupin, you've been good, you can do this, you can keep this up, only a little longer and you can be on your own, only six more days and it's the moon and you can slit your own bloody throat and blame it on the fucking wolf, only a few more minutes and you can run away and cry as fucking hard as you need to, you weak little mongrel...* He knew there was nothing about his appearance that would give away the grief... the pain. Not now. His eyes were closed. His motions were still fluid. His voice had not cracked again since that one moment of weakness while he held Harry back. Albus had thanked him for that a few moments beforehand.

He had a feeling that the headmaster was well aware that if he hadn't held Harry back he would have gone after Sirius himself.

Tonks and Kingsley were looking at him. Moody, for once, was not.

"Are you okay, Remus?" Minerva McGonagall asked. He could hear her chair lurching backwards as she stood from her desk. He nodded, his back still too her.

"I had a hard day. I'm coping. We all are." *We all are.* They lost a crucial member of their team tonight. He could not allow himself to turn this into some selfish pity party. Last time... last time he was all alone. He had no one else to cry to, no one to stop him from destroying his body on the full moon. If Dumbledore hadn't shown up the morning after to tend his wounds, no one would have cared if he had bled to death on his basement floor.

But god, he was alive then. Sirius was alive. He was a traitor, true, and in prison, but breathing. At the time, he had thought that was than death. Now he wanted to kill himself for ever thinking there was a fate worse than death for his lover.

"Maybe you should sit down for a few seconds. You haven't relaxed in weeks and you haven't sat down all night." It was Kingsley this time. He shook his head, smiling sadly.

"No...it's okay. I'm alright. Really. You can go bother someone else for the time being." The weak smile did nothing to make the room less tense. Tonks shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

Without the slightest bit of warning, he found a memory from that first week of the summer overtaking his mind.

Sirius had stay with him for a week after Dumbledore initially sent him from Hogwarts. After two days of awkward conversation and confusion as to what was going on, they picked up where they should have left off all those years before, when they were both convinced the other was a traitor. The next five days were spent in bed.

It was possibly the best five days of Remus Lupin's life. It was sure to be now.

He hadn't realized he was shaking until he felt Tonks putting a hand on his shoulder. "Remus... what's wrong?" He pulled away from her.

"What's wrong," he said very slowly and evenly, as if trying to explain the concept to a baffled student, "is that the one person who has made my miserable existence worth enduring, worth suffering through in this world that despises me... he's left me. The one person who I actually could see myself spending the rest of my life beside is gone. My best friend... my lover... my mate, if you want to be crude... is dead. Meaning gone. Meaning not coming back."

Silence.
"And I'll be okay," he said again. Fuck. Why couldn't he stop this shaking?! "I know you don't believe me, but it's happened before and I dealt with it then and I'll deal with it now." The continued silence told him they didn't believe him for a second. He sighed. And why wouldn't the shaking stop?

"Remus!" McGonagall said sharply, striding over to him, her heels making a distinct clicking on the stone floor. "I know what happened last time! The full moon is in six days! We're not going to let that happen to you again! I'm not going to let that happen to you again!" He chuckled slightly. While a little inebriated the other night over an order meeting in Dumbledore's office she had shared with him the fact that she told Harry, in front of Umbridge, that she would do whatever it took to make sure he became an Auror. It seemed to Remus that she was suddenly everyone's cheerleader. The mental image that accompanied that thought was something that Sirius would have scribbled on a napkin over dinner and made the laugh in his throat harden immediately into a sob. He did his best to swallow it.

"Minerva." The sound was more watery than he had expected, but he pretended not to notice. "There are more important--"

"Oh, codswallop!" Tonks said indignantly. "He was our friend! He was my cousin! We should talk about this!" She marched over to him and looked him in the eye. "You loved him!" It sounded almost accusatory. Remus forced a small smile.

"I did. I do. But I thought I made it clear that I really don't want to discuss this right now." He offered them a wane smile. "If being by myself all these years has taught me anything it's how to cope with pain. I'm fine." From the look on her face, he could tell McGonagall would not accept that as an answer. Before she could protest, however, he felt someone lightly touch his arm.

He had no idea how Dumbledore had gotten into the room.

"While I agree that your condition has shaped you into a wholly independent person, Remus, I do think that some of those traits you have developed are less than complimentary to your health. That being said, would you like to retire to my office for a spot of tea? You haven't sat down properly all night, you know." Remus knew it would be impossibly to argue with Dumbledore and merely sighed and let the headmaster lead him out of the room by his shoulder. He found it hard to believe that less than two years ago he had been a professor, for right now he felt just like the frightened little first year who had slept on the floor in front of Dumbledore's office one night in December. He had been so scared and devastated that evening. He sobbed to the headmaster that he thought his dorm mates were becoming suspicious. They were smart. They would figure it out soon. They questioned him all the time. He might as well just drop out...

The kindly teacher had given him a lemon drop once his cries had died down to hiccoughs and then made him a cup of tea, explaining, with that twinkle in his blue eyes, that maybe, just maybe the three boys he shared his room with wouldn't think him to be completely monstrous if he told them about it. And even if they did (which, from the look in his wizened elder's eyes, he sincerely doubted) there would always be a place for him at Hogwarts.

He slid out of that evening twenty five years previous as he took a seat in front of Dumbledore's desk.

"Remus," Albus started, as he magicked a polished pewter tea set to the desk between them. "I admire you for doing what you did back there. If you had lost your grip we may have lost you as well." Lupin nodded in response, a short, stiff motion. "However." There was a significant pause as Dumbledore stopped fixing the tea and glanced up. "That does not mean that you aren't allowed to grieve. You don't have to be responsible all the time." The werewolf looked at his hands, which were still shaking in his lap.

"You know," he said very quietly, with no hint of any sort of emotion in his voice. "Before Harry's trial...Sirius had told him that he could stay in the house if he was expelled, I suppose. And we were... we were lying in bed and he looked at me and he said... he said very simply that it would make his life complete. It was all he wanted in life... after the war. Harry and I by his side. And it seemed so plausible then. I mean, this was Sirius Black. He was invincible. He always had been." He closed his eyes, not even allowing himself to think as the memories poured out of his head.

"Do you remember that time when we were in fifth year?" There was no segue, he just continued to talk, sure that as long as he stayed calm Dumbledore would let him alone soon. "When... Sirius first got that infernal bike. And over Easter holiday he went home with Jamie and fixed it up to fly. And he brought the blasted thing back to school with him. And he was flying it around, thinking he would show off for the girls or maybe even me at that point, who knows, and the engine just... flickered off. And he crashed right out there behind the Quidditch pitch. He was so twisted and bloodied and we all thought he was dead... one of the girls... I don't even remember who... started to scream. Just shriek. James flew over to the hospital wing on his broom, fastest flying of his life, I'm sure. And... I just stood there, in total shock, staring at him bleeding. I was so sure it was the last I'd ever see of him. And then... he just opened his eyes. And smiled. And... I started to cry and curse at him. The screaming girl stopped, she had... probably never seen me raise my voice before. I rarely did. But everyone stared as I just lashed out at him for being so stupid. But... he survived. And he survived Azkaban. And... how could he die now? After all that... his dream was so simple... it seemed very plausible. He and I in bed together every night... Harry close enough for us to watch him... finally getting a real home..." He sighed heavily.

Dumbledore placed a teacup and saucer in front of him and settled back into his chair. He was wearing the same expression of quiet sorrow that Remus remembered from the morning of November second, nineteen eighty-one. It made his stomach clench with something resembling revulsion.

"I don't want to be pitied," he whispered harshly without looking up.

"Remus...no one pities you. You just lost the most important person in your life. If anything we're amazed at how well you're holding up. But at the same time... you need to let your emotions out, Remus. Tell us what you're feeling. You are allowed to grieve for him. You should. It's healthy. This is the man you've been in love with since you were fifteen years old. That is a lot of history to absorb and come to terms with." Remus still did not look up. His stomach was in knots and his hands just kept shaking... All sorts of things were flashing through his mind as he tried to focus on being numb... sixth year after he had finally forgiven Sirius for his betrayal at the whomping willow... their last night together, four days ago... their first Christmas out of school, their first Christmas with Harry, Lily and James' wedding, their meeting in the Shack just two years ago, seeing him for the first time this summer, a hurried tryst in the kitchen in July that left both their lips bruised and poor Tonks gaping, the first time they kissed, the last time they kissed, their graduation, moving into their flat, cleaning the old Black house out together...

"I'm... I..." He breathed deeply. He could control this. He clasped his hands together, hard. All the simple pleasures would be gone. Waking up next to him on cold mornings. Taking showers together. Writing silly letters back and forth while they were away. Having someone to do the dishes.

He dropped his hands and bent over, taking a deep breath before sitting up again. He needed to calm his nerves. He reached for the tea and took a sip. It was prepared perfectly.

He crumpled.

"It's just..." he sobbed hoarsely as Dumbledore rose and walked around the side of his desk. "He would... he would make me tea... a-a-and he was so b-b-bloody aw-awful at it... so d-damned bad that it... it... it... always was... too stro-o-ong or... sweet... and... he-he'll never... I-I'll never..." He stopped trying to explain it and curled into himself. His arms wrapped around his chest as it heaved with long, hard sobs. He barely registered Dumbledore's hand on his shoulder. He barely registered anything but a kaleidoscope of colours and pain that was going so fast, so disjointedly that he wanted to vomit. It was like his reality was folding and stretching out from underneath him.

Sirius was gone.

He had just gotten him back and Sirius was gone again. This wasn't a jail sentence... it wasn't an assignment or an argument or - dear god - even a betrayal. Any of that would have been better than this. Death.

Final.

He could smell blood through his hysteria. It was sharp. Raw. It took him a moment to realize it was running down his back. That his nails, short as they were, had torn the flesh at his shoulders, even through the fabric of his robes. He wanted to drive it from his mind. It just served to wake up the wolf. The wolf who was also grieving. The wolf who had lost Padfoot and knew it. The wolf felt it too, the pain, the frustration, the... breaking. The wolf was broken now, just like him.

He didn't know how long he wept. Fawkes was sitting on his shoulder. He hadn't noticed him there before. Small and just regrowing his brilliant feathers, but still warm and soothing. He whimpered. His eyes ached and his throat felt raw. His head still swam and his heart was... non existent.

"He wanted me to take care of Harry," he whispered softly. Dumbledore was sitting next to him. He didn't look at the headmaster, merely pulled his knees to his chest. "He told me...uh... before we reconciled. When he came in June. He told me the story of Cedric and Voldemort and... I told him the war had started. And there would be death. I was trying to comfort him but I knew as soon as I... said the words... they were flat. He didn't get angry though he just... looked at me. Right in my eyes. Into my head. Like he used to. And he said... he said if he died... that I was all Harry had left. And I had to take over for him. Lily and James would have wanted it that way. He wanted it that way. He had it... he was going to have it drawn up somewhere when he was exonerated." He was silent for a moment and a hiccough escaped his lips. He reached for his tea and then thought better of it.

"Would you perhaps prefer something stronger?" Dumbledore asked soothingly. Remus nodded and accepted the glass of amber liquor that Dumbledore magicked to him. He downed the entire glass in one gulp.

"He hated that I drank so much. Even though my metabolism... the wolf's... wouldn't let me get drunk. Not really drunk. Not the way those poor blokes used to get completely sloshed. He just said instead of drinking we should... talk more. I told him I was scared of talking. I was scared of thinking of it. He said he was too. But we'd be okay together. And... I believed him." A short laugh. "Never believe someone in times of war, sir." He glanced at Dumbledore again, a sad smile playing across his lips. "No matter how many times we promised each other about the future... how could we have known?" Dumbledore summoned the whiskey bottle to the desk and refilled Remus' glass. He downed it at once again and absently stroked the bird on his shoulder again.

"They didn't really know him, you realize." Remus looked over at the headmaster once again, his entire body pale and hollow looking.

"Pardon?"

"The rest of the Order. None of them really knew who he was. They didn't get chance to spend enough time with them. They missed his essence, what made Sirius Black... well, Sirius Black. And they're hurting too because of it." Remus said nothing. "I have a plan to fix that, if you're willing to listen. You see... you need to talk about him. You need to remember. You need to make it all tangible, something you can hear and see and hold on to. You need to make something that you can have there, to prove to yourself that he's still around you. They... they need to know him. They need to realize that Sirius Black is more than a very courageous wrongly accused murdered. They need to understand his humor and temper and loyalty and...his love." Remus' eyes were glassy again as he nodded at Dumbledore. "I see that you've caught on." Lupin's mentor stood after a moment of comfortable silence. "Well then. I think I'll leave the rest to you." He poured Remus a final drink and, when the werewolf had finished it, helped him to his feet. "I think you'll find your companions right where you left them."

Remus managed to nod. A choked thank you got stuck in his throat as Dumbledore showed him down the stairs.

"And, Remus..." He turned back for a moment as he started down the corridor back to Minerva's office. "Don't use the moon to take it out on yourself. Remember your potion. And I'll see in you in six days." With a soft click, the door to the headmaster's office closed. Remus stared at it for a moment before continuing down the hall.

When he opened the door to McGonagall's office, he was not surprised to see Kingsley, Moody, Tonks, and McGonagall gathered around the desk whispering amongst themselves. He was surprised, however, to see that Molly and Arthur Weasley had joined them as well. They were all silent immediately as he entered the room. He cautiously took a seat a few feet away from them, still staring at his hands.

They had stopped shaking.

"There are some things about him," he started in his best teacher's voice. "That I think you all need to know. Things I wish the whole world could know." They watched him attentively. "Sirius Black was the most dedicated, loving, loyal, passionate man I have ever met in my life. I fell in love with him when I was thirteen years old and it's stayed with me ever since." He paused. "I want you all to know him. I want you to know the Sirius that I knew. You all know him as... as a fighter. A wrongly convicted murderer looking for freedom. And that's true. But that's not all of him. It's not even half of him." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Do you want to know him?" He opened his eyes cautiously, gazing back at his companions with more than a little trepidation.

They smiled. All of them. And nodded. Some muttered vague noises of assent. Others just cocked their head to the side, ready to listen. Remus' heart soared.

"Sirius and I met when we were eleven years old..."

-end-

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