Going Home, 1977

 

There really wasn’t much to be said, so Peter excused himself to the lavatory, pleading a hangover, and James caught Lily by the wrist and pulled her into the nearest empty compartment, from which quiet laughter could now be heard.  Curled in his seat, Sirius slept, a soft snore reverberating along his esophagus and buzzing through his nose.

 

Pressing his mouth into a line, Remus watched.

 

Sirius’s neck was long and pale, with a flush of red where his shirt collar rubbed the skin.  Shadows from his eyelashes played along the highest ridge of his cheekbones, and the dark hair curling over the tips of his ears and across his forehead was still damp from the shower he had taken that morning.  Remus could smell the soap on him, almost strong enough to mask the scent of firewhisky in his sweat.

 

They’d all had too much to drink last night, countless bottles of Ogden’s produced from beneath James’s bed and inside Sirius’s trunk and hidden on the ledge outside the window.  There had even been a bottle stuck up the flue of the fireplace, which Sirius had pulled down at about three in the morning and had tossed to Peter — whose agility seemed to have miraculously increased with inebriation, Remus had noted, watching him lunge to catch it.

 

It was around four when the party began to die down, the music growing softer and softer, the whisky finally starting to run out, the partiers themselves wilting like unwatered tulips.  It did not go on forever, as Remus had somehow thought it would.  Their last night at Hogwarts gave way to their last morning there, their last breakfast.  It ended, Hogwarts ended, with all of them hung-over and too exhausted to be nostalgic.

 

Sighing, Remus glanced at the scenery out his window, the bright, blurry green which had finally made an appearance, bringing a close to the long winter.  The castle had been ruffled with snow late into March, and flowers didn’t bloom until halfway through May.  Remus knew, because the second they did, James was handing multicolored bouquets to Lily at every opportunity, sometimes accompanying his gifts with what James called song and everyone else called yowling.  (James had been doing this since fifth year, but the difference was that when she might have hexed him before, Lily now laughed delightedly every time.)

 

Remus looked back at Sirius.  He noticed the dip of shadows into his mouth and the gleam of his tongue just within.  Sirius had a nice mouth.  His lips were full and pink, saved from complete femininity only by the masculine line of his jaw.  Last week, Remus had walked in on Sirius using his nice mouth to kiss a blonde Hufflepuff boy whose name Remus could never quite remember.

 

“Oh,” Remus had said, backing out of the dormitory.  He could just study in the common room.  “Sorry.”

 

Later that night, as Remus was buttoning his pajamas, Sirius touched his elbow.  “Does it bother you?” he asked, voice low as he peered around to make sure James was not eavesdropping, and Remus had lied, “Of course not.”

 

The train rattled, and Sirius stirred, lifting his head very slowly, like an infant testing its strength.  He turned his big blinking eyes on Remus.  “How long’ve I been out?”  He stifled a yawn against the crook of his elbow.  “It feels like ages.”

 

“Not quite an hour, I think.”

“James?”

“Still with Lily, I assume.”  He hesitated.  “I heard noises — ”

 

They had been quiet noises:  conversation too low to be heard, the soft warmth of Lily’s laughter, James’s tender voice; the indistinguishable overlapped I love yous they exchanged like oxygen; the murmur of robes sliding to the floor.

 

Remus turned his gaze on Sirius — Sirius stretching his long limbs like the waving branches of the Whomping Willow — Sirius smiling like he had seven years ago, the day they met, the same eleven-year-old joy crinkling his eyes and lifting the corners of his lips — and felt his stomach knot. Glancing away, he realized that he didn’t want to be the one accidentally listening to those noises, the ones he was never supposed to hear.  He wanted to make them himself, to put his lips against someone else’s, to put his lips against —

 

He looked at Sirius.  He swallowed.  Oh.

 

The other boy rubbed his eyes.  “I may be a little hung-over,” he admitted, and Remus could see languor possessing his frame, draped across his shoulders, creeping beneath his eyelids.  Sirius yawned again, rather loudly.  “But it was a nice night, wasn’t it, Moony?”

 

“Yes, Padfoot,” Remus said, thinking of how some time around five, even after James and Lily had disappeared up the staircase to the dormitories and Peter fell asleep half-naked beside the fireplace, singeing his hair — even after the rest of the students lay sprawled across the common room floor, unconscious, or had intentionally retired to their beds with the hopes of catching a few hours of rest before breakfast and the journey home — Sirius and Remus had remained awake, passing a bottle back and forth between them, counting the indirect kisses.

 

Curling up again in his seat, Sirius’s eyes closed, and after a few minutes, his breathing became deep and even.  Remus watched, and continued watching, and he wanted to speak but could not.  The I was caught on his tongue, and the love was stuck in his throat; but the third word pressed through his mouth, and he said, “you,” and he finally knew that he was not really leaving home in this rattling red train, but that home was asleep across from him, black-haired and gray-eyed and seventeen years old, snoring softly and smelling of whisky.

 

The scenery outside the window grew blurrier as the train wound its way across the countryside, and, with his forehead pressed to the glass window, Remus finally fell asleep.

 

Fin.