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There is something about the two of them that just works, Remus thinks. It wasn’t something that he had been able to notice at first, the way that Lily and Sirius seemed to gravitate towards one another, an intertwined loop of him and her in the months before Lily and Sirius become synonymous with each other instead of separate entities. He hadn’t had time to notice them when they, the Marauders, were falling apart, when the friendship that had gotten him through five years of school began to splinter and die.
James and Sirius, Remus knew, could find other friends. Do other things. Be anything. It was in their nature, the two of them all chaos and potential and in James’ case, optimism and the necessary arrogance to impose his will upon the world even when his will wasn’t wanted. And Sirius…Merlin. Sirius Black was a whirlwind of anger and hurt and luxury. Sirius Black had no expectations about his future because he never had to expect anything. The future was the future and Sirius was a Black. There was no reality where a Black didn’t get what they wanted or die trying and even then, in death, they imposed their legacies onto those left behind.
Remus was expecting a calm fifth year. A chaotically calm one of course; a year filled with pranks and tests and the combined genius of Potter-Black, the tenacity of Peter, and Remus’ own patience to come together and plot pranks. Pranks against Slytherins, pranks against Filch, pranks designed to show one Lily Evans that James was smart and cool. He was expecting stressing over OWLs and rolling his eyes at Sirius’ whoring and James’ mooning over the same Lily Evans that was curled against Sirius now, her hair a waterfall of red against black sheets and the pale muscles of Sirius forearm.
Lily was asleep, the bright auburn of her eyelashes making feathery shadows against the slopes of her cheeks, Sirius was staring at them as if they were intruding upon the couple in their room. As if the other three beds draped in Gryffindor red and gold didn’t exist and they hadn’t all lived in this room together for the past five years.
It was his dorm too, Remus thought indignantly and from the short huff that expelled from James, Prongs felt the same. Peter was hovering nervously as he tended to do, as if becoming Wormtail three months ago at the height of October, had made his hesitant nature even worse. The air felt heavy in a way that it never did when the four of them were together and Remus felt it unfair to attribute the tension to the Lily Evans lump slotted against Sirius as if she was always meant to be there.
And it wasn’t Lily’s fault. She had made herself clear from first year onward that she wasn’t interested in James, that she had more interest in girls than boys when she had dated Mary McDonald from second year to fourth year and then went on a stint of shagging—did girls shag the same way boys did?—every other girl that she seemed to come across. If there was a constant in a life filled with magic it was Lily Evans’ constant rejection of James. Her constant rejection of every human with a prick between their legs honestly.
She was lauded as not only the smartest witch that Hogwarts had ever seen in their history, but also the most beautiful. It was never just James running after those green eyes with the hopes that one day, maybe, please, that she’d look back. No, James just happened to be the loudest and most persistent of the men who lusted after and loved Lily Evans.
Even Remus himself had carried a torch for her—still carried a torch for her. But he knew, like he thought Sirius did—though Remus hadn’t known that the torch Sirius carried was actually a forest fire—that no matter how beautifully the sun turned her dark red hair copper and bronze that she was off limits. Lily Evans was, at least in the eyes of the Marauders, James’ girl. He would get the girl. Eventually. Even though the girl didn’t have any interest in him and seemingly no interest in men in general or as she loved to sneer, “boys”.
He wonders what it is about Lily that made Sirius, the most loyal person he knew, choose her over James. There was something that seemed so unbreakable about the pair; Sirius and James, James and Sirius, Padfoot and Prongs, Prongs and Padfoot. Remus thinks, not for the first time, that Sirius must truly love Lily for him to do this, hurt them—hurt James—and all but end their friendship even though it had just gotten stronger.
His friends had become animagi for him. They had spent a glorious month in the Forbidden Forest as Moony, Padfoot, Wormtail, and Prongs with the wind in their fur and nothing between them but time. They had almost finished the Marauder’s Map that would cement their legacies in Hogwarts history forever.
And then, November came around and suddenly Sirius was hesitant for once in his life, and the words “Prongs I need to tell you something…Lily and I, we’re together…I love her” rent the air.
“I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I will have her as long as she has me.”
Screaming, so much screaming—James. Fists being thrown and a yelp of “stop!”—Peter? A laugh, unhinged and vicious as blood dripped down his lip—Sirius.
”She doesn’t belong to you. She belongs to me. She belongs to her.”
Remus shuffles inside their dorm—his dorm—after a moment of hesitation and drops his bag in his still unmade bed. The other two, what’s left of the dying embers that made up the wildfire that was the four of them, the Marauders, shuffle in as well. Some more angrily than others.
There is a shifting of fabric and a quick glance shows Sirius rolling over onto his back, Lily instinctively cuddling closer to him with a small sigh before her body relaxes again.
They fit together, he thinks again, watching them out of the corner of his eye.
This is the most relaxed he’s ever seen Sirius, the most serene that he’s ever seen Lily.
They fit together and its an image that he can’t wrap his head around despite seeing them all around school holding hands, grinning at each other, and once, snogging frantically between classes, Sirius’ hands hidden under the grey of Lily’s skirt.
It is different seeing two people from afar, you can’t really tell who they are and how they fit together. But up close, one can see the way they meld and stick together, a tacky mess of them.
”I love her,” Sirius had said those three months ago. And seeing them now, Remus believes it.