Song Of Songs

by Mad Martha

Part 3

"You've changed the wallpaper," Sirius said vaguely.

"So we have," Andromeda said, and she reached over to top his cup up from the teapot.

Remus suspected that in twelve years the wallpaper had been changed several times, but he wasn't about to upset his partner by making such a pointless remark, and mercifully neither Andromeda nor Ted said anything either.  Sirius was already flaky enough.

He was sitting in a deep, upholstered chair in their pleasant sitting room, clutching his teacup like a talisman.  He kept losing track of what he was saying, which would have worried Remus more if it hadn't been perfectly obvious that Sirius was exhausted and overwhelmed.  Andromeda had sent the family solicitors away after an hour; Sirius had started out full of a kind of angry energy when he arrived at the Tonks house, determined to sort out everything from his inheritance to Harry's guardianship there and then, only for his momentum to suddenly fizzle out halfway.  It was a very graphic demonstration of the saying "hitting a wall" and Remus's main concern was where he would take Sirius to sleep it off when he crashed completely.

"Got to sort out about Harry," Sirius said after a moment.  This was the third or fourth time he'd said it.

"You will," Andromeda told him.  She glanced quickly at Remus, who shook his head very slightly.  He thought he understood why the Harry issue was exercising Sirius's mind so much; probably it was something to do with it being the reason for his breaking out of Azkaban in the first place.  His sole focus for the past eight or nine months had been to get to Hogwarts and prevent the disguised Peter Pettigrew hurting Harry, and something like that would be a hard habit to drop.

"Got to make sure he's looked after if anything happens to me."

"Why would anything happen to you, old man?" Ted asked kindly.

"You never know."  Sirius took a sip of his tea.  His eyes were heavy and unfocussed.  "Never thought anything would happen to James and Lily ...  Never thought I wouldn't be there for Harry if it did.  Not Remus's fault ..."

"No one's blaming Remus, Sirius."

Remus reflected that he was blaming himself, but he didn't bother to voice this.  Again, it would only upset Sirius when he didn't need to be agitated more than he already was.

"Get him away from that troll of an aunt ..."  His voice drifted away and Remus was just quick enough to catch the teacup as it slipped from his fingers.  He started and clutched at it convulsively, staring around.  "What?"

"I think," Andromeda said, standing up and gently taking the cup from him, "that you need to lie down on the bed in our spare room for a few hours.  What do you think?  I'm sure that you haven't slept well lately and it's starting to catch up with you."

"Andromeda, we don't want to impose on you," Remus began, but she waved him off.

"It's not an imposition, Remus.  We're family."

Remus found that a little hard to credit - he could just imagine what Sirius's mother would have said in response to such a statement - but he kept his reaction to himself.  It was more important to have Sirius rest somewhere safe for the moment.  Ted helped him to get Sirius to his feet, and they took him upstairs and settled him in the spare room; a pleasant, light-coloured chamber with a simple wooden framed bedstead and a window that looked out over a back garden full of well-tended magical plants and shaded by pear trees.  Sirius collapsed into sleep almost at once, leaving Remus to remove his shoes and cover him with a knitted blanket.

He hesitated then, staring down at him and not wanting to leave, despite knowing that this was his best opportunity to sort out some other, very necessary business.

"Sirius," he said finally, bending over him. Sirius mumbled a little but didn't wake.  Nevertheless, Remus thought that he might hear him on some level.  "Sirius, I need to nip out for an hour or so.  I won't be long, I promise.  Will you be all right?"

No answer. 

"He'll be fine," Ted assured him from the doorway.  "We'll keep an eye on him."  He hesitated, then as Remus stepped out of the room and pulled the door to behind him he asked, "Will you be all right?"

Remus blinked.  "I'll be fine - I just need to sort out somewhere for us to stay for the next few days."

"That's not what I meant."  Ted gave him a kindly smile.  "None of this has been easy on you, Remus.  I wouldn't blame you if suddenly having him back was a little … difficult to take."

"You're thinking I might take off?" Remus asked bluntly.  "I promise you, I'm not going to leave him on your hands, Ted."  He would sooner cut off an arm.  Leaving Sirius here now even for an hour felt a lot like severing a limb.  But ordinary people, especially Muggleborns like Ted, couldn't be expected to understand the full ramifications of the werewolf bond.

"That's not what I meant at all …"  Ted looked rather shocked.  "No, no, I'm just saying that you've lived without him for twelve years.  No matter how much you wanted him back, it's bound to take a bit of adjusting to after so long.  You're practically different people."

That was probably true, but right at that moment Remus didn't care.  He had Sirius back now - the rest was just details.

~~~

"What is this place?"

Sirius stood on the pebbly path outside the little cottage and breathed in the cool, salty air that washed in with the sea.

"It's my parents' holiday cottage," Remus replied.  He could feel Sirius's surprised gaze on the back of his head as he wrestled with the key in the lock (the lock was always difficult, but it was no use trying an unlocking charm for it was already charmed to be opened by just that one key), but didn't let it bother him.  He would be thinking of the terrible row with Remus's parents, no doubt, but that had been fifteen years ago and fences had been repaired in the meantime that he knew nothing about.

"And where are we?"

"On the South Devon coast.  It's an old coastguard's cottage," Remus explained over his shoulder.  "There used to be a little village about a mile or so up the coast - that was a good long time ago, the last of the residents moved away forty-odd years ago.  It's a good spot for fishing here and it's far enough off the beaten track that Muggles don't generally find it.  My brother brings his family here most summers."

And he wasn't about to tell Sirius of the argument he'd had with his brother Rufus when his father handed the key over the day before.  In spite of the fact that Rufus hadn't planned to use the cottage until July, he'd kicked up a terrific fuss about the 'inconvenience' of his brother having the use of it for a few weeks.  Remus usually tried to be generous in his dealings with Rufus, but for once he had lost his temper and said a few things that probably wouldn't improve his relationship with his family in the long term.  Although he couldn't help thinking that perhaps his father had more sympathy with him than it seemed, for he'd still let him use the cottage in the face of Rufus's objections.  But Sirius didn't need to know any of these things.

The lock finally yielded to persuasion and the door opened.  Seeing the way Sirius was simply standing by the boundary wall, drinking in the fresh air and expanse of beach, Remus let him be and grabbed the first of his bags of provisions, carrying it into the cottage and through to the neat little kitchen.  By the time he'd collected the second and put everything away, Sirius had vanished from sight when he looked out of the kitchen window.

The sudden tug of fear in Remus's gut was utterly irrational and he knew it, but Sirius had been safe for less than a full day.  He all but flew out of the cottage door and around the boundary wall … to find his partner sitting on the upper edges of the beach below the wall, in the awkward leggy manner of an unaccustomed adult, picking up handfuls of sand and letting them sift through his fingers.  When Remus approached him, he could see the look of simple, almost disbelieving wonder on his face.

"Are you all right?" he asked, hoping that his momentary hammering fear wasn't making his voice unnecessarily sharp.  What had he expected Sirius to be doing, after all?

"Sand," Sirius said.

"It does tend to appear on beaches," Remus agreed.  He was still wearing his tweedy professor clothes, which he was sure the beach wouldn't agree with, but he folded himself up and sat down beside Sirius nevertheless.  "Are you sure you're all right, Padfoot?"

"There's nothing but rocks around Azkaban," Sirius told him after a moment, watching another handful of sand filter through his fingers.

Remus's heart clenched.  "Isn't there?"

"Hm.  No.  I remember standing on the rocks after I got out, and it was so cold there … but the wind …."  He lifted his face to the sea breeze and closed his eyes.  "It was fresh air, Moony, clean, fresh air and salt and seaweed, like nothing I'd smelled for so long.  If they'd caught me then, it would still have been worth it, just to have smelled that air."

Remus didn't know what to say for a moment.  "You're free now, love."

The face Sirius turned to him then made up for every petty remark Rufus had made.  It was smooth, light-hearted, visibly happy, almost the face again of the young man Remus had last seen before he'd been taken away to prison all those years ago.  Only its thinness and lines betrayed him.  He reached out with the hand that had been sifting sand and Remus took it gladly, feeling the slight grittiness on Sirius's palm and not caring.  For several long minutes they sat watching the waves roll gently over the foot of the beach, and holding hands in a way they never really had before, even as teenagers.

"So," Sirius said eventually, "what's the plan now?"

"We can stay here for a couple of weeks, maybe more," Remus told him.  "I need to go up to Hogwarts in a day or two, though, and sort out my position with Dumbledore.  And you need to talk to him about Harry, so perhaps we can do both things together."

Sirius nodded.  He was frowning a little, thinking.  "We need somewhere permanent to live."

"I know.  I don't like to press that issue so soon, but it is a concern to me.  I don't have anywhere at present, Sirius - I've been living at Hogwarts for the last few months of course, but before that … well.  My last flat was rented week by week, and I was having a lot of trouble meeting that rent."  He decided Sirius didn't need to know what the flat was like.  He hadn't been sorry to leave it, not at all.

"I'll send an owl to the solicitors tomorrow.  I've got money enough in my vault to rent somewhere in the short term, but we need to think bigger if Harry's coming to live with us."  Sirius continued holding Remus's hand, but his free hand began to comb through the sand again restlessly.

Remus accepted the issue of Harry without a blink; of course the boy would live with them, that had never been in question.  In fact, if he hadn't been a werewolf Harry would have been living with him for the last twelve years.  That was magical law, they had sworn binding oaths at the boy's Christening which made them responsible for him in the event that his parents were rendered unavailable.  Remus spared a thought, however, to be grateful that Peter Pettigrew had failed to turn up to the ceremony on time.  At the time they had all been annoyed and exasperated with him, but in retrospect it was a masterstroke of good luck.  Had Peter actually become Harry's godfather too, he would have been able to take possession of the boy quite legally and God only knew where they would all be now.

Remus did wonder a little how living with Harry would work out in practice, though, given how … challenging … he was.  He wondered if Sirius was remotely prepared for this, then realised that it didn't matter either way.  It was going to happen no matter what and they would simply have to deal with it.

"Well, that's tomorrow's job," he said aloud.  "For today, just take it easy."

"I don't mind doing that.  So long as you do it too."

Remus smiled.  "What else do you think I'm planning to do?"

"No idea, but I know you, you bloody prefect!"  Sirius grinned at him.  "I wouldn't put it past you to bring a trunk full of the kiddies' homework with you to mark, or some rot like that!"

"Well, now that you mention it, I think I did leave some unmarked essays on my desk - "

Sirius let out a bark of laughter and yanked on the hand he was holding, pulling Remus off balance.  For a moment or two they grappled with each other playfully, then Remus got a firm hold of him around the shoulders and pulled him down until they were lying flat on the sand and he had Sirius's head resting on his shoulder.  Sirius relaxed against him at once and they lay there quietly for a while.  Remus was conscious that it wasn't a particularly sunny day; the sky was obscured by fragmentary clouds, and the air was cool and damp with moisture that was less suggestive of sea spray and more of impending rain. 

It didn't matter.  They were here, they were together, he had Sirius in his arms once more and they were both free.  It had been a long twelve years during which it had seemed like he was marking time, waiting for something he simply couldn't put a name to.  He had never expected anything good to come of his life, and there had never been anything resembling hope; only a never-ending series of short term, menial jobs that barely, just barely kept body and soul alive.  He had not expected anything more.  The meaning of his life had been taken out of it and transported away to a place that he had spent a great deal of his time symbolically facing towards thereafter - the North Sea and Azkaban, for many of his jobs had been seasonal hires on the north-east coast.  He supposed that in real terms he had simply been waiting to hear that Sirius had died - the average lifespan for a 'lifer' in Azkaban was around twenty years at most - although he still had no idea what he would have done if that message had reached him.

"You won't do anything rash, will you?" his mother had asked him, in a rare moment of empathy after the sentence had been announced.  It had been less a question, more a demand, and one he had agreed to out of numbness more than anything.  The concept, the true meaning, of life imprisonment hadn't yet sunk in at that point and so it hadn't been hard to put aside the thought of ending things.

He suddenly wondered what Kingsley Shacklebolt had done with the vials of poison entrusted to him in case the hearing had gone awry.

"Do you remember our honeymoon?" Sirius asked abruptly.

And just like that, the mood of gentle melancholy was broken.  Remus tried to suppress a laugh at the images that instantly sprang to mind, but felt his stomach jump and Sirius shake with silent mirth in response.

"Ah yes," he said solemnly, but with a quiver in his voice.  "The lovely, salubrious resort of Skegness.  Much beloved of Muggles from the towns and cities of Yorkshire when they get an inexplicable urge to go to the seaside.  Two days of dubious seaside delights and rampaging boredom before we gave in and bolted for civilisation - "

"Where would could at least go and see a movie or something when we got fed up of shagging and quoting dodgy poetry to each other," Sirius finished for him.  "Whose suggestion was it that we went to Skeggy anyway?"

"Buggered if I know.  Kind of joke Prongs like to play on us - not that I can imagine how he knew about Skegness in the first place.  Not the kind of resort I can see his family patronising, can you?"

There was a pause, then they both said "Lily!" and laughed.

"Anyway, there's nothing dodgy about the Song of Solomon," Remus pointed out reproachfully after a moment or two.

"'I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon'," Sirius quote gravely, but the corner of his mouth was twitching.  "'Thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.  Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing - '"

Remus thumped his shoulder gently.  "Oy - you've got a cheek, calling my hair goaty after I had to cut all yours off.  And stop mixing up the text!"

"I'm trying to avoid the bit about leaping upon the mountains and skipping upon the hills.  I don't have the energy for that right now."

"Apparently you have the energy for His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me though."

"'A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts …'"

Remus kissed him then - deeply, fiercely, as he had wanted to kiss him ever since he saw him in corridors of Hogwarts that night, ragged and half-mad and consumed with obsessive purpose.  As he'd wanted to kiss him for so long but had had no opportunity.  As he should have kissed him before they dragged him away to prison.

When they finally came up for air again, Remus rested his forehead against Sirius's and closed his eyes.

"'By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not,'" he quoted.  "'I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.'"  His breath hitched for a moment and he felt Sirius's fingers curling into the folds of his shirt.  "'The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?  It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth - '"

"'I held him, and would not let him go,'" Sirius finished for him in a bare whisper.  He paused, then added, "'His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.  This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.'"

Remus lay back in the sand, holding Sirius closely to him and staring blindly up at the drifting cloud formations above them.  His mind had for days been on a permanent looping litany of things that had to be done, but now it was suddenly still and calm and quiet.

This is my beloved, and this is my friend.

Such simple, expressive words that said absolutely everything that needed to be said about them.  Twelve years of slowly bleeding to death inside had been halted; God had been merciful and given them back to each other.  What would come next was largely unknown, but for the first time in many years Remus felt a deep spark of full-bodied anticipation.  It might be madness - for now they had nowhere to call home, money was in question, it was likely that they were both now unemployed and unemployable, and there was an emotionally damaged teenager with a legal right to demand shelter from them - but he couldn't bring himself to feel a particle of concern about it.  He welcomed these problems with a relish he hadn't felt in too long, for to take life on the chin together had once been the whole point of their relationship … and at last would be so once again.

"I could stay out here all night," Sirius murmured.  "Air, sky, no walls …."

"We could," Remus agreed, "except that I can smell rain coming, and there's food and clean sheets inside the cottage."

"Will it all still be here in the morning?"

There was a note of curiosity in Sirius's tone and Remus wondered if he was also thinking of everything that waited for them in the world beyond the cottage.  If he was, he too seemed quite unconcerned about it and Remus smiled.

"Every last bit of it," he said contentedly.

End Part 3