How to Woo Your Werewolf

by doyoubelievemenow

Summary:

Sirius Black has a book. The book has ideas.
Now there are sonnets. There are offerings. There is lurking.
Remus is terrified.
Peter wants new friends.
James is acting weird.
And Regulus Black is up to something.

A tale of courtship, chaos, and questionable magic.
There will be sighing. There will be poetry. There might be a lute.

Or: Sirius reads a very outdated romance advice book and tries to seduce Remus by “courting” him with terrible poetry, random gifts (like a dead flower and a rock), and gallant behavior. Remus thinks he’s having a stroke. The book may or may not be cursed. James may or may not be under it's influence.

Notes:

i feel like i should apologize to Shakespeare or someone for this crude imitation of courtly love.

also the sonnets i tried to write for this.

almost entirely written, updates every two-ish days?

lmk what you think!

Chapter 1: Of Sighing Longingly from Afar

From The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment: A Guide to Wooing One’s Beloved with Decorum, Dagger-Gaze, and Desperate Devotion
by Sir Albrecht the Ardently Unkissed
Circa 1423, enchanted (poorly) in 1871

Of Sighing Longingly from Afar

—

“The gaze is a blade! Wield it not too swiftly, lest ye sever the string of fate prematurely.”

To begin one’s Quest of the Heart, one must first observe the Beloved from a respectful distance —preferably from behind a tapestry, across a moonlit corridor, or whilst perched broodingly in a high-backed chair. Eye contact is far too forward for the early stages. Instead, emit longing sighs, clutch the walls dramatically, and flee whenever the Beloved draws near.

Recommended Behaviors :

 

• Clutch thine chest as though love itself hath stabbed thee.
  
  
• Speaketh not to the Beloved, but instead whisper softly to the wind.
  
  

If addressed directly, reply with cryptic anguish. ("BEGONE" is ideal.)

—

The library at Grimmauld Place was a graveyard of bad decisions, and Sirius Black had thoroughly explored every tombstone by midsummer.

Dust danced in the shafts of grey afternoon light filtering through the heavy curtains. The room smelled like mildew, bloodline arrogance, and something suspiciously like pickled bat spleens. Books lined the shelves like tombs: cursed, whispered-about, sometimes shrieked-about. One had tried to proposition him last week.

Sirius sighed dramatically and flung himself into a high-backed chair upholstered in dragon hide and discomfort. Somewhere behind him, the taxidermied banshee’s head let out a faint, gurgling moan. Regulus had started winding it up in the evenings just to torment him.

He’d avoided Regulus all day (truthfully, he loves his brother), dodging lectures about elf treatment, breakfast, and two awkward encounters in the hallway. His mother had taken to muttering about lineage over brandy again, and his father had issued a decree about “respectable posture.”

And so: the library. His sanctuary. His prison. His last resort.

He stood and drifted between shelves like a gothic ghost, fingers trailing over cracked spines and cursed vellum. He wasn’t looking for anything. He just wanted not to think about Remus Lupin’s hands, or mouth, or neck, or laugh, or—God, stop it.

He paused when his fingers brushed a battered volume wedged behind a copy of Curses for Courtiers and something that immediately bit him.

“Ow—bloody—”

He yanked his hand back. The book clattered to the floor with a dull thud. It was bound in worn red leather, fraying at the corners, its cover embossed in gold filigree and far too many hearts. Sirius stared at the title.

The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment: A Guide for the Starving, Yearning, and Devoutly Hopeless

“…What.”

He crouched. The air around the book shimmered faintly, like heat on pavement. He opened it, cautiously.

The book groaned. Audibly. A puff of glitter shot out and hung suspended in the air like a guilty secret. A voice—breathy, reedy, and a bit too sensual—whispered:

“Dearest reader… prepare thy loins and thy honor…”

Sirius snapped the book shut so hard it sneezed glitter again.

He sat there, blinking, brain static. Somewhere in the cobwebbed recesses of his heart, something stirred. Something that smelled like parchment and lavender and chocolate, and looked suspiciously like Remus bloody Lupin with his stupid soft sweaters and quietly devastating gaze.

“Absolutely not,” Sirius muttered, tucking the book under his arm and already heading toward his room.

He would burn it. Or hide it. Or possibly read just one chapter.

By nightfall, Sirius had retreated to his childhood bedroom with the book, a candelabra, and the kind of manic determination that usually led to detentions or hex scars.

The room was lit only by flickering candlelight. Shadows danced across the faded wallpaper—silver serpents slithering between ink-stained notes and scribbled insults carved into the desk. The banshee was thankfully out of earshot, and Regulus had gone to whatever hell dimension younger brothers escaped to after dinner.

Sirius lit the last candle with a dramatic fwoosh , settled cross-legged on his bed, and opened the book to the introduction.

To the desperate, the devoted, the gallantly doomed: this humble tome shall be thy salvation. Courtly Enchantment is not merely a practice—it is a way of life. Of longing. Of passion that burns like the fever of a noble affliction.

Sirius paused.

“…Fever of a noble affliction,” he repeated reverently, eyes wide. “That’s—Merlin, that’s poetry.”

He flipped the page.

Before battle, the knight gazes longingly across the garden wall at his beloved, who, bathed in moonlight and melancholy, embroiders his sigil upon a handkerchief...

Sirius gasped.

Thy love must be visible in thy posture, thy every breath a sonnet, thy soul bared beneath moon and blade alike.

“Yes. Yes, exactly,” he whispered, clutching the book to his chest.

This was it. This was what he’d been missing. He hadn’t made a move on Remus because—well, because he was terrified. Remus was quiet and careful and smart in ways Sirius didn’t understand. Remus had eyes like autumn and shoulders like poetry. He was never going to respond to half-hearted flirtations and grins across breakfast.

But this? This was a plan. This was gallantry. This was strategy. This was Valiant Gazing.

He stood suddenly, book in one hand, candle in the other. On the wall, the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black cleared his throat in the way of a man deeply, existentially annoyed.

“You’re not seriously reading that drivel,” the portrait sneered. “It’s been banned from every respectable institution for turning half the Durmstrang dueling club into lovesick idiots.”

Sirius ignored him completely.

“I must ready myself,” he muttered, pacing now. “My posture must be longing. My eyes must say ‘I die for thee.’ My… hair must be—something. Flowing.”

Phineas sighed loudly and fake-vomited into his own frame. Sirius stopped in front of the cracked mirror and practiced his Valiant Yet Tragic expression.

He tilted his head. Lowered his lashes. Thought of Remus reading in the library, one hand in his hair. Thought of the way Remus smiled when Sirius got something right in Transfiguration. Thought of the way he looked when—

“Oh no,” Sirius whispered.

He was doomed.

He sank to the floor, The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment falling open in his lap, pages curling slightly with age and menace. Outside the window, the wind howled. Or possibly the banshee. It was hard to tell.

Let thine first step be silence. Let the beloved come to suspect, to wonder, to pine. Gaze longingly. Sigh wistfully. Hide thine torment beneath nobility and brooding.

“Yes,” Sirius breathed, gripping the book. “Yes, I can do that.”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow it would begin. He would sigh longingly from afar . He would lean against pillars. He would look mournful in corridors. He would let his love burn, tragically, with great cheekbones and better lighting.

Remus Lupin wouldn’t know what hit him.

—

The train compartment smelled like Bertie Bott’s, treacle tart, and the faint crackle of summer-stored magic. Hogwarts loomed hours away, the countryside zipping past like a dream Sirius couldn’t quite sit still inside.

He held the book like it was a holy artifact—pressed reverently to his chest, fingers curled around its aged, gilt-embossed spine. The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment had, overnight, become his new religion.

“Is that a romance novel?” James asked without looking up, elbow-deep in a bag of crisps.

Sirius, draped dramatically across his seat like a Victorian widow, clutched the book tighter.

“It’s not a romance novel, ” he sniffed. “It’s private research. Into knightly honor. You wouldn’t understand.”

James raised an eyebrow. “Mate, you once tried to duel a sixth year for calling your hair ‘fluffy.’ I think I understand your brand of honor.”

“I was defending my mane, ” Sirius said with grave dignity. “It was a code of conduct. ”

Peter looked mildly concerned. “Is the book whispering?”

“Shhh,” Sirius hissed, placing a gentle hand over the cover like it was prone to fits of hysteria. “It’s… delicate.”

The book was whispering, faintly. Something about “ravishing gazes” and “soul-laden trousers.” It had done that all morning. No one else seemed to hear it in full, except possibly Remus, who had paused halfway through reading Transfiguration Today and asked, very mildly:

“Is that book whispering about trousers?”

Sirius straightened. His spine became a cathedral of restraint. He absolutely did not look at Remus.

“No,” he said, voice clipped. “Certainly not. That would be inappropriate.”

He tucked the book into his satchel with all the gravity of a grieving widow burying her husband’s sword.

There was a beat of silence.

James squinted. “Did it just call someone a ‘moon-kissed vixen’?”

“It’s in Olde Court Tongue, ” Sirius lied. “You wouldn’t know the dialect.”

Peter leaned into the corner of the seat with the energy of someone who desperately wished he were somewhere else. Preferably underground. Rats, y'know?

Remus turned a page. “Sounds like Elizabethan pervert-speak.”

Sirius didn’t respond. He was too busy staring soulfully out the window at a cow.

From the reflection in the glass, James caught the flicker of Sirius' expression—the half-pained, half-romantic melancholy of a man doing mental calligraphy about a boy’s hands.

James, who had known Sirius since the age of eleven, sighed into his crisps and cast a muffling charm. “Okay. How long have you been in love with Moony.”

“ I AM NOT ,” Sirius said too quickly, too loudly, and with such immediate scandal that the book puffed out a small cloud of glitter in protest.

James and Peter exchanged a look. Remus, blessedly, was too focused on an article about Animagus transmutational ethics to notice. Or maybe he had noticed, and was simply choosing survival over acknowledgment.

“Alright,” James said slowly. “Whatever you say, O Noble Knight of Tragic Horniness.”

Sirius narrowed his eyes. “My quest is pure. ”

James muttered something about needing to buy a saddle for his broom because clearly someone in this compartment was going to joust for love any minute.

The train rumbled on. The sky grew greyer. Sirius opened his satchel just enough to pat the book like a beloved lapdog. He was going to sigh longingly from afar so hard. He was going to look like the romantic ghost of a Byronic duke by the time they reached the gates.

And Remus?

Remus would be helpless against it. Surely.

—

The Gryffindor common room crackled with end-of-summer ease—soft lamplight, laughter, a fire burning low in the hearth. Most students had retired for the night, their trunks still half-unpacked upstairs. The only ones left were scattered like ghosts of good intentions—half-dozing, half-eating, wholly unaware that a Vow Most Sacred was about to be made.

Sirius stood before the fireplace like he was about to duel a God.

He wore a discarded velvet curtain like a cape.

The room smelled faintly of licorice wands, parchment, and hubris.

“I make this vow before flame and fate,” he declared in a low, tremulous voice, eyes shining with overdramatic sincerity. “That I, Sirius Orion Black, do hereby commit my heart, my soul, and my frankly devastating cheekbones to the noble pursuit of Remus John Lupin.”

The fire flickered. A log popped in agreement.

“I shall woo him,” Sirius whispered, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead like a tubercular poet. “With dignity. With mystery. As a prince of old, stricken with courtly fever. There shall be longing. There shall be yearning. There shall be—”

“Has anyone seen my slippers?” came a sleepy voice.

Sirius froze mid-monologue.

Remus Lupin stood at the foot of the stairs, yawning like an exhausted cat, hair a halo of soft chaos, his oversized jumper slipping off one shoulder. He blinked blearily around the room, clearly on the hunt for something soft, worn, and probably full of holes.

He looked perfect.

Sirius made a small, strangled noise. A squeak, really. Like a knight having a spiritual stroke.

Remus squinted. “...Sirius? Are you wearing the common room curtains?”

Sirius did not respond.

Sirius ran .

He spun on heel, cape flapping, and bolted up the stairs like the ghost of melodrama incarnate. One slipper flew off on the third step. A thud echoed from above.

Silence.

Remus blinked at the stairwell. Then at the discarded slipper. Then at the slowly swaying velvet curtain tie that had fallen off Sirius' shoulder during his retreat.

He bent down, picked up his own slippers from behind the couch, and muttered to no one in particular:

“Yeah, alright. Definitely cursed.”

—

The book's first edict came at the top of Chapter One in glimmering, overly romanticized calligraphy:

“Look not upon thine Beloved, lest thy gaze shatter the fragile tendrils of soul-bond before they hath ripened into destiny. Avoid his eyes, for eyes are windows to eternal yearning, and thou art not yet worthy to knock.”

Sirius, of course, took this extremely seriously.

By the next morning, he had implemented a full-scale Eye Contact Prohibition Protocol .

Remus, meanwhile, was just trying to make it through Monday.

They sat beside each other in Advanced Potions, as they had for the past three years. Usually, Sirius whispered terrible jokes during lectures and poked Remus’ elbow whenever Slughorn said “viscosity.” But today…

Remus glanced sideways. “Do you have an extra quill?”

Sirius did not reply.

Sirius stared straight ahead with the stiff-necked posture of a man being interrogated by aurors. He handed Remus a quill without turning his head, arm outstretched like he was passing a torch across a bottomless chasm.

Remus blinked. “...Thanks?”

No answer. Sirius was sweating. Slightly. Only a little. He was meditating on soul-bonds and deservedness . He had just reread Chapter One over breakfast. Twice.

It said: “Thou must master restraint, lest thy wanton gaze stirth carnal dreams before thy spirits are wed.”

Which, frankly, sounded like a threat , and Sirius was not about to risk an untimely soul detonation. He focused on his cauldron with unnatural intensity, muttering something about tinctures of restraint and “not today, Cupid.”

Across the table, Peter slowly chewed his quill and whispered to James, “Is he... alright?”

James, watching Sirius pretend not to see Remus’s hand brush his while they reached for the same beaker, just narrowed his eyes. “He’s doing a thing . Let it cook.”

Remus turned his gaze from the utterly bizarre behavior of his seatmate to his bubbling Draught of Peace.

“Right,” he muttered. “Definitely cursed.”

—

The hallways of Hogwarts had become a battlefield.

Specifically, a battlefield where one dashing knight errant (Sirius Black, self-declared) was waging a war of noble restraint against the most dangerous weapon of all: Remus John Lupin’s face .

The second Sirius heard the telltale cadence of Remus’ footsteps—soft, even, moderately bookish—he bolted . Ducking behind an armor suit near the library, pressing himself to the wall behind a heavy tapestry near Divination, once even diving headfirst into a broom cupboard with the dramatic urgency of a man dodging dragonfire.

“Bloody hell, ” James muttered, pausing outside said cupboard. “You could’ve just walked into the classroom like a normal person.”

“There is nothing normal about forbidden yearning!” Sirius hissed through the crack in the door. “You wouldn’t understand.”

James sighed deeply. “I really wouldn’t.”

Remus, several feet down the corridor, had slowed to a halt. He frowned slightly at the cupboard  Sirius had just vanished behind.

“Did… did that just—?” he asked Peter, who was holding his History of Magic notes like a shield.

Peter offered a helpless shrug. “It’s been like this all week.”

Remus blinked. “Was that Sirius?”

“Sirius is unwell ,” Peter said gravely, and walked off in the opposite direction.

Meanwhile, behind the door, Sirius clutched The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment to his chest like it was a holy relic. The page corner was dog-eared and glowing faintly.

“Should thine Beloved wander near, hide thyself as Galahad did from temptation, for the gaze may rend the veil of restraint and cause uncontrollable longing. Seek cover, noble fool, and live to woo another day.”

Sirius whispered to the book, “Don’t worry. I am a noble fool.”

The book hummed. Somewhere, a passing portrait of a Black ancestor rolled their eyes so hard their wig fell off.

The Hogwarts library was silent, as always, save for the soft turning of pages, the occasional quill scratch, and the distant, ominous thrum of Madame Pince muttering hexes under her breath.

Remus sat across the table from Sirius.

He hadn’t meant to. The table was long, perfectly communal, and Sirius had already been there with his Charms essay sprawled before him. But Remus had sat down with a nod and a polite, “Hey,” like it was nothing.

It was not nothing.

Sirius froze mid-ink stroke, shoulders tensed, eyes locked on a single sentence that he had reread fourteen times without comprehension.

Then—slowly, reverently—he opened The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment in his lap beneath the table.

“Should thine Beloved breach thine perimeter, flee not! But rather, preserve thy virtue with distance most gallant. Slide thyself away as if gliding upon a lake of icy propriety.”

Sirius glanced up. Remus had already begun reading Transfiguration Today again, glasses slipping slightly down his nose, hair a bit mussed from the wind outside. He looked like a painting. Like a tragic prince. Like the most beautiful thing Sirius had ever—

Scrape.

Sirius scooted his chair half an inch backward.

Remus paused.

Sirius pretended not to notice.

Another half inch. Scrape.

Remus looked up. “Are you… alright?”

Sirius smiled tightly, attempting to convey knightly fortitude. “Never better.”

Scrape.

Now his knees were barely tucked under the table. He risked toppling backward with every shift. His quill trembled in his hand.

Remus frowned, looking beneath the table. “Are you—? Why are you moving?”

“Postural correction,” Sirius said, regal and breathless. “Spinal alignment is essential to the... uh... warrior’s bearing. ”

Remus raised an eyebrow, suspicious.

Under the table, Sirius opened the book a little wider. It was now glowing pink .

“Keepest thine posture divine and thy eyes averted, lest thou betray thy wanton yearning.”

Remus said, slowly, “Is your book glowing.”

Sirius snapped it shut and dropped it into his bag with the swift precision of someone disposing of a cursed object. “Private research,” he muttered, sweating visibly.

Remus leaned forward. “Into what? Spinal health?”

Sirius shoved his chair back so fast it almost toppled.

“I just remembered I have to—uh—guard the... Prefect’s lavatory. For honor. Excuse me.”

And he bolted, bag swinging, book thumping audibly as he fled.

Remus stared after him, then looked to Peter, seated two tables over and pretending to be invisible behind a giant Arithmancy tome.

“What is going on with him?”

Peter didn’t look up. “Nobody knows. We’ve all stopped asking.”

Remus, thoroughly unconvinced, turned back to his book.

From the doorway, a pair of dark eyes watched the scene with thinly veiled amusement.

Regulus Black smiled faintly to himself and disappeared into the stacks.

—

The dormitory was dark save for Sirius’ bedside candle, guttering in its holder like it, too, feared what was unfolding.

James lay on his back in bed, arms behind his head, watching Sirius with the wary stare of someone observing a friend perform a ritual that might summon either Cupid or Satan.

Sirius sat cross-legged on his mattress, bare knees knobbly and sharp in the dim light, The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment splayed reverently across his lap. His eyes were alight with the kind of fever typically reserved for prophets or cult leaders.

He cleared his throat—softly, reverently—and began to read aloud.

“Let thy yearning simmer in silence, so thine heart may be tenderized by absence—”

James propped himself up on one elbow. “Tenderized?”

Sirius ignored him, clutching the book tighter. “—for only through distance can love be honed into its truest, sharpest edge. Like a blade forged in longing.”

James blinked. “Did it just compare love to a weapon?”

Sirius slapped the page with the back of his hand. “Yes! It’s brilliant. It gets it. ”

He stood up suddenly, pacing now, trailing candlelight behind him like some brooding Byronic lunatic.

“I’ve been too present, too bold. Eye contact is for cowards. No. No, for the brave. The doomed.” He pointed at nothing, chest heaving. “But I —I must become the enigma. The shadow. The ache.”

James stared.

“You’re planning to seduce Remus by... never speaking to him again?”

“No! I’ll speak when fate wills it. But I shall not seek him.” Sirius collapsed back onto the bed like a swooning maiden. “He must feel my absence like a ghostly hand upon his soul.”

James rubbed his face. “I think you need a cold bath. Or a punch.”

Sirius opened the book again with the reverence of a high priest. “Tomorrow, I shall begin again.”

James audibly groaned.

Sirius looked up, utterly beatific. “James. It’s happening. I’m in love.”

James threw a pillow over his face and screamed into it.

Sirius was brushing his teeth like he was preparing for a duel—standing shirtless in front of the dormitory mirror, toothbrush gripped like a sword, muttering declarations of undying love between spits of foam.

“ Thy gaze is a dagger upon my soul, thy name—thy name—a sonnet etched into my ribs— ”

James sat on his bed, watching this horror unfold with dead eyes and a plan forming. “That’s it. I’m helping.”

Peter, curled on the next bed with a Chocolate Frog and deep regret, glanced up. “Helping how?”

Because James was a good friend, he pulled out his wand with theatrical flair. “I’m going to give the book a little… boost. If Sirius wants to play Renaissance romance games, let’s really get him in character.”

Peter blinked. “You mean like, an enchantment?”

“A subtle one,” James said, already tiptoeing toward Sirius’ pillow where the book lay like a cursed talisman. “It’ll just… amplify all romantic impulses upon reading. Should be a laugh.”

Peter slowly lowered his frog. “That sounds like it’ll go badly.”

James grinned wickedly, eyes glinting. “Exactly.”

He waved his wand in a lazy arc and whispered a charm he absolutely should not have learned from Regulus. A faint shimmer passed over the cracked leather cover of The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment . The little golden hearts on the spine fluttered like butterflies. One of them winked.

Peter stared. “Did that—did that heart just wink ?”

James turned. “Peter. If this works, Sirius might actually get a move on Remus.”

“Or combust.”

“Either way, it’ll be entertaining.”

Behind them, Sirius gargled with water and whispered to his reflection: “Thine smile undoes me like a corset unlaced—”

James and Peter screamed into their pillows in unison.

—

It started subtly. Or rather, what Sirius thought was subtle.

The first sigh happened in Charms. Remus walked into the room, arms full of books and hair sleep-mussed, and Sirius—without thinking—let out a slow, trembling breath like a Victorian widow seeing her husband’s ghost.

“Oh my god,” Peter whispered, visibly distressed.

By lunch, Sirius had sighed six more times. Loudly. Inhale. Groan. Deflate. Like a balloon of yearning deflating in slow motion.

By dinner, Remus turned to him cautiously. “Are you alright?”

“Perfectly well,” Sirius said, gripping the edge of the table like it was keeping him from floating into the ether. “Just… moved by the moment.”

Later that week, Sirius was found standing motionless before a portrait of a young, auburn-haired knight in a tattered cloak. He stared with such intensity that several second-years got nervous and left the hallway entirely.

James found him there, transfixed by a centuries-old portrait of Sir Balthazar the Spleen-Crusher.

“What are you doing?” James asked.

“He has Remus’ jawline,” Sirius murmured. “And that thousand-yard stare of moral restraint.”

James stared at the knight, who was holding a bloody axe and snarling. “That man decapitated a banshee for stepping on his cape.”

“Exactly,” Sirius said dreamily. “The essence of Moony.”

During History of Magic, Remus glanced over at Sirius’ notes.

His name— LUPIN —was scrawled in elaborate calligraphy, surrounded by swords, hearts, crossed arrows, and a sketch of a crowned wolf howling at a disturbingly round moon.

Remus blinked. “Is that supposed to be me?”

Sirius snapped his notebook shut like a scandalized Victorian aunt. “No comment.”

By Saturday, Sirius had taken to carrying a monogrammed handkerchief. Every time Remus laughed or even spoke, Sirius delicately dabbed at his brow.

Remus leaned over during breakfast. “You’re sweating.”

“From longing,” Sirius replied without missing a beat.

Peter put down his spoon. “I think I need a new group of friends.”

—

Remus had had enough. The whispering book. The sighing. The lurking. The sweating. The—whatever was happening under the table in the library.

He cornered Lily in the courtyard between Herbology and Arithmancy, looking vaguely haunted.

“I think Sirius has rabies or something,” he said flatly.

Lily blinked. “Come again?”

“He won’t look at me,” Remus whispered, eyes wild. “But he lurks . I caught him peering at me from behind a pile of toast this morning. Just… eyes. Over carbs.”

Lily tried to hold it together. “Maybe he’s possessed?”

Remus crossed his arms. “By what ? A melodramatic Victorian poltergeist?”

“Well,” Lily said slowly, “he is a Black.”

They stared at each other in silence.

“…So rabies,” Remus repeated.

Lily sighed. “I’ll do some research.”

—

The book had been explicit.

“Speak not. Let silence declare thy desire. For words are knives, and silence, a tender noose.”

So Sirius spoke not.

Instead, he positioned himself in the courtyard at golden hour, standing—no, brooding —atop a stone bench. The wind tossed his hair like a tragic widow's veil. His cloak billowed. He tilted his head just enough to suggest unspeakable sorrow.

He was aiming for “mysterious, tormented romantic hero.”

He looked like he had lost both a duel and his mind.

Remus, walking back from Ancient Runes, paused mid-step.

“…Do you need help?”

Sirius turned to him slowly, eyes glassy, one trembling hand clutching the spine of The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment like a wounded bird.

His voice broke on the single syllable:
“No.”

Then, breathier:
“I just… yearn .”

A long pause. A crow cawed in the distance. Someone sneezed nearby.

Remus blinked once, very slowly.
“Right,” he muttered, beginning to back away. “Okay. He’s not well.”

And with the careful pace of someone leaving a cursed crime scene, he walked off.

—

Remus had long since trained himself not to stare.

It had taken years— years —of carefully constructed self-control, of learning how not to look too long at Sirius Black. Of pretending not to notice the way his hair curled when it rained, or how he bit his quill when he was thinking, or how his laugh sounded when he forgot to be cool about it.

And now Sirius was… standing on a bench. In the courtyard. In the wind.

Remus stopped walking.

Sirius’ cloak was flapping dramatically behind him like he’d summoned the breeze himself. His chin was tilted to a stupid, poetic angle. His shirt was unbuttoned just enough to suggest tuberculosis.

Remus squinted.
“Do you need help?”

Sirius turned, slow and pained like a tragic statue come to life.

“No,” he said, in a voice that trembled with overexerted emotion.
“I just… yearn .”

Remus stared.
Then blinked.
Then stared again.

This was not his Sirius. His Sirius would never use “yearn” as a verb in public.

His Sirius made jokes in bad French accents and hexed Slytherins for breathing too loud. His Sirius once mooned Snape literally . He was loud and infuriating and unreasonably magnetic—but not like this . Not fragile and poetic and vaguely consumptive.

“What,” Remus said softly, to no one at all, “is happening.”

Sirius hadn’t looked him in the eye in three days. He kept ducking behind curtains and pillars. Yesterday he’d dropped a goblet when Remus touched his sleeve by accident. That morning, he’d been caught crouching behind the toast rack, breathing like a hunted thing.

It was almost enough to hope— almost —except this version of Sirius felt wrong . Not sweet wrong. Not romantic wrong. Off . Like someone had replaced him with a haunted Regency widow.

Remus began to back away slowly, like he was dealing with a dangerous, delicate animal.

“Okay,” he muttered, watching Sirius gently place a hand over his own chest like a maiden denied. “He’s not well.”

He turned and walked off. Head down. Books clutched to his chest.

But his thoughts were screaming.

What if he’s cursed?
What if this is about me?
What if it’s not?
Please, God, let it be about me. No—no, that’s selfish. Stupid. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

He didn’t look back.
Not even when he heard Sirius sigh so deeply it startled a flock of birds into flight.

Seeking solace in the library, Remus hunched over a pile of Herbology notes like they were a lifeline.

“I’m telling you,” he whispered urgently, “he’s cracked. Fully cracked. He stood on a bench in the wind and yearned . Who does that?”

Lily, across from him, sipped her tea. “That’s what I said. Possessed.”

“Or enchanted,” Remus muttered. “Or—hexed. Or he’s got… wizard tuberculosis, I don’t know.”

Regulus, sitting at the far end of the table reading Ars Arcanum: A History of Aesthetic Hexes , didn’t even look up.

“He’ll be fine,” he said flatly.

Lily turned slowly toward him. “I’m sorry—what?”

Regulus finally deigned to glance at them. “Sirius is always like this. It’s just worse now. Let it play out. It’s probably educational.”

“Educational,” Remus echoed faintly, like he’d just been concussed.

Regulus shut his book with a crisp snap. “You don’t get it. He found a project. That’s all. Better this than accidentally communing with eldritch forces again.”

Lily raised an eyebrow. “Again?”

Remus looked halfway between exhausted and desperate. “He won’t look at me, Regulus. I think he’s been reading poetry to his toast.”

“That sounds like courtly love,” Regulus said.

Lily blinked. “That sounds like a cry for help .”

“I’m telling you,” Regulus said, standing up and adjusting his cuffs, “you have two options. Ignore him, and it escalates to sonnets and blood oaths. Or… play along and hope it burns itself out.”

Remus stared at him. “That’s not advice. That’s a threat.”

Regulus smiled faintly. “Everything I offer is both.”

He turned on his heel and walked off, humming something faintly operatic.

Remus dragged his hands down his face. “I hate this school.”

Lily, patting his shoulder, said gently, “It’s okay. At least you’re hot.”

Remus groaned into the table.

—

The dormitory was dark, moonlight slanting through the tall windows. Sirius thrashed in his sleep, hair tangled across the pillow, one leg dramatically thrown over the blanket like he was fainting in a Renaissance painting.

The book— The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment —sat open on his chest, faintly glowing, whispering phrases like “unspeakable longing” and “smoldering chivalric duty.”

In his dream, Sirius was in armor. Real, clanking, absolutely-not-practical armor. He stood before a towering castle of glittering obsidian. His steed was a noble falcon. There were roses growing from the flagstones.

At the top of the tower, Remus stood behind a gilded window, arms crossed, eyebrows furrowed. He looked pissed. Sirius loved it. 

“My love,” Sirius gasped, lifting his gauntleted hand.

“You absolute lunatic ,” Dream Remus snapped. “You can’t just duel my uncle and ride a falcon into my bedroom!”

Sirius blinked. “But I brought you a sword poem —”

The falcon shrieked. Lightning cracked. The roses burst into flames.

Sirius jolted awake in a cold sweat, book clutched to his chest like a dying declaration.

“He was in the tower,” he whispered hoarsely.

From across the room, James—already awake, sitting up with his pillow over his face—groaned.

“You moaned ‘my liege’ in your sleep, mate.”

Sirius just stared at the canopy of his bed, breath shallow.

“It was so romantic ,” he whispered.

James made a sound like a dying cow and rolled over. “I’m going to kill myself.”

The room was quiet, the flickering firelight casting long shadows over the scattered belongings of sleeping Marauders. In the dimness of the dormitory, Sirius sat perched at his desk, the book open before him. The golden words on the page glowed faintly in the soft light, as though urging him to read further.

“A Poem for Every Pore” —the next entry in his beloved, absurd text. Sirius' fingers trembled with a mix of excitement and dread.

He whispered reverently to the page, “Oh, hell yes.”

James, who was pretending to sleep on his own bed while half-watching Sirius, winced in secondhand embarrassment. But, of course, he couldn't tear his eyes away from the trainwreck about to unfold. A small part of him regretted ever introducing Sirius to this madness. The other part? Pure, unadulterated delight.

Sirius began to read aloud, his voice growing dramatically deeper with every word as if he were about to announce the beginning of some grand performance.

“Ode to my beloved’s scent, so fragrant in thy presence, so sweet as to weaken the strongest of hearts…”

James' hand shot out from beneath the blanket, pressing hard against his eyes.

“This is so wrong,” he muttered, grinning helplessly.

Sirius, caught up in his own grandeur, barely noticed. He was now pacing in front of the fireplace, fully invested in the poetry of his soul.

“Thy voice—a melody sweeter than all the sirens' songs—my heart doth ache when thy lips part, though I know not what words they speak…”

The words were practically dripping from his mouth, as if every syllable could cause a spontaneous, tragic love affair. His cheeks flushed with a mix of absurd pride and uncertainty.

“I’m going to vomit,” James groaned from his bed, rolling over onto his stomach. He wasn’t sure whether he was annoyed, concerned, or secretly relishing every second.

Meanwhile, Peter—who had somehow slept through the initial dramatics—muttered from the corner, “Should we... should we stop him?”

“No,” James said in a voice full of misery. “Let it unfold. We’re witnessing history .”

Sirius turned another page. His voice took on a more serious, almost hypnotic quality.

“I long to touch thy golden hair, to feel thy heart beat beneath thy chest…”

James buried his face in his pillow. “I hate you, I really do.”

Sirius, blissfully unaware of the damage he was causing, began to mutter his own name in the poem as though the world itself was now his literary playground.

“I Sirius, my name is written in the stars—”

James groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

But Sirius was in it now, fully submerged in the romance of it all. His hand flew to his chest, gripping the air like a knight with a sword, as if making some grand gesture in front of Remus himself. The room seemed to hum with the ridiculousness of it.

And just when James thought it couldn’t possibly get worse, Sirius turned and smiled with infinite satisfaction, finally glancing at James.

"Well?" he asked, his voice hopeful, like a poet waiting for a standing ovation. "What do you think?"

James stared at him, deadpan. " Sirius , you are not even on this planet anymore."

Sirius grinned. "I know, right? It's genius ."

Sirius, still caught in the afterglow of his poetic performance, clasped the book to his chest as though it were a beloved artifact. The firelight flickered in his eyes, a mix of maniacal pride and a sense of purpose that was a little too intense for anyone’s good.

He looked over at James, who was now flat on his back in a dramatic display of “I’m done with this,” and smiled with the confidence of a man who had just composed an epic worthy of a thousand sonnets.

“I’ll return tomorrow,” he said, voice resolute, as though he were embarking on a noble quest.

James, groaning into his pillow, barely lifted his head. “What are you going to do, Sirius? Write him a ballad next?”

Sirius' grin grew wider, even though the absurdity of his idea hadn’t quite hit him yet. He placed the book down carefully on his bedside table, as though it were a delicate creature in need of his utmost care.

“I shall do what I must,” Sirius vowed dramatically, straightening up like a knight gearing for battle. “I will write him something so touching, so profoundly beautiful, that even the stars will weep with envy.”

James sighed deeply. “You’re insane , you know that?”

Sirius shot him a wink, completely unbothered. “A poet must suffer for their art, James. You wouldn’t understand.”

With that, he walked out of the common room, leaving James in a state of exhausted disbelief.

James stared up at the ceiling, the weight of what had just transpired settling on him. "Tomorrow. Gods help us all."

He rolled over with a groan and glanced at Peter, who had been silently watching the whole scene unfold.

“Peter, I swear, I’ll give you ten sickles if you make him stop .”

Peter blinked, then shrugged with an expression that suggested he didn’t care that much. “He’s already gone too far. Nothing we do will stop him now.”

And with that, the room fell into an uneasy silence, save for the soft crackling of the fire.

Sirius had promised to return tomorrow.

And James had a feeling he would keep that promise— in the most dramatic, ridiculous way possible.

Chapter 2: A Poem for Every Pore

Notes:

i genuinely don't think i've ever written something as silly as this story... like ever

i'm enjoying it tho

From The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment: A Guide to Wooing One’s Beloved with Decorum, Dagger-Gaze, and Desperate Devotion
by Sir Albrecht the Ardently Unkissed
Circa 1423, enchanted (poorly) in 1871

—

A Poem for Every Pore

“Words are weapons of the heart—best sharpened on the whetstone of overwrought metaphor.”

Craft for thy Beloved a verse of undeniable passion , written with quill and tears. If thou lacketh poetic skill, press on regardless. The worse the verse, the more obvious thy yearning. Leave it someplace intimate—beneath their pillow, atop their Astronomy chart, or floating mysteriously in their goblet of pumpkin juice.

Acceptable Poetic Forms :

 

• Sonnet (bad)
  
  

• Haiku (confusing)
  
  

• Free verse with internal screaming
  
  

 

Do include : body comparisons to celestial events, mention of scent, and at least one line so awkward it causes physical discomfort.

—

Sirius’ eyes snapped open, his mind tangled between the remnants of a dream and the delicate hum of ambition coursing through his veins. He was surrounded by a chaotic mess of parchment, quills, and an old velvet curtain that had somehow ended up tangled around his legs during his fitful sleep. His heart skipped a beat as he noticed the enchanted book lying open next to him, glowing softly with an otherworldly light.

Sirius squinted at the title of the page in front of him. The words shimmered, almost taunting him with their romantic perfection:

“Of Verse and Verity: Thy Soul in Stanza”

A gasp escaped his lips.

"Oh, this is it. A love poem," he whispered to himself, eyes alight with a mix of ecstasy and determination. "Yes. Of course."

But just as he began to reach for the quill, a low groan came from the other side of the room. James’ voice, muffled by the pillow pressed firmly over his face, echoed with exhaustion.

“No. No more,” James muttered, his voice thick with the dregs of sleep and frustration.

Sirius, undeterred, sat up, holding the book close to his chest like a cherished artifact. "Shhh," he insisted, adopting a mock-serious tone. "I must bleed ink from my soul."

James flung the pillow away, glaring at him with all the subtlety of a man who was about five seconds away from a complete breakdown. “You bled on your Charms essay last week, mate. That’s not poetic; that’s staph.”

Sirius ignored him. He had a mission, and this was the moment. His heart swelled as the instructions in the book whispered in his mind, urging him to begin his poetic journey. A great masterpiece was about to be born.

He plucked the quill from its resting place and stared at the page. The words would flow like honey, he was certain of it. After all, this was his moment of destiny.

James, still tangled in his blanket, rolled his eyes so hard it was almost audible. “You’re not really doing this, are you?”

Sirius didn’t even glance up. “Prepare yourself, James. The world shall soon be graced with a poem so pure, it will transcend mortal understanding.” He dipped the quill dramatically into the ink and began to write.

James, despite himself, watched in horror as the words formed on the parchment— there was no going back now.

Sirius sat at the table in the common room, a serious (ha!), almost sacred expression on his face. His hair, as always, looked like it had been caught in a mild storm, but today it was a perfect reflection of his inner chaos. Surrounding him was an array of six different kinds of parchment, all piled in varying states of disarray—some still smooth, others crumpled from failed attempts.

He was muttering to himself, almost incoherent, as he scribbled furiously with a quill that seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Each line he wrote was louder in his mind than the last, like the crescendo of a symphony that only he could hear.

First came the florid attempt, a soft whisper of romance:

"Thy elbows shimmer in foggy delight."

He frowned at it, then tossed the parchment aside, muttering a frustrated curse under his breath.

"That’s... not quite it," he said, pushing his hair back from his forehead with exaggerated dramatic flair.

The second attempt was more violent. Sirius' quill dug into the paper like it was a matter of life and death. The words spilled out with force:

"My heart is a squid in thine ocean of restraint."

He stared at it, blinking as though the absurdity of his own metaphor had knocked the wind out of him. "That’s... a weird one," he admitted, tossing the paper onto the ever-growing pile.

A deep breath. A moment of silence. The quill hovered. The air seemed to thrum with possibility.

Then, his eyes lit up in sudden inspiration, and he wrote with feverish intensity:

"Oh Remus, thou art like the dawn / If dawn had more scars and smelled like ink..."

He grinned as he wrote the last word, barely able to contain his excitement. The ink was still fresh on the parchment as he held it up to the light, admiring his latest creation like a proud artist gazing at a masterpiece.

"Yes," he whispered to himself, "yes, this is the one. This is it ."

Across the room, James had entered quietly, watching his best friend from the door. His eyes widened as he took in the scene—the pile of paper, the disheveled look, and the fervent passion in Sirius’ eyes.

“Mate, are you okay?” James asked, his voice a mixture of confusion and concern.

Sirius didn't even look up. "I am creating , James. Do not interrupt the process." He waved the quill dramatically. “The poetry— the soul —of it all. It’s... transcendental.”

James blinked, unsure if he should run or stay to witness whatever madness was unfolding. “You just wrote a poem about... Remus... being like a wounded dawn? Smelling like ink?”

Sirius waved the question away as though it were beneath him. “It’s art , James. True art. The soul needs to be tortured to be understood. One cannot simply... write of love. One must suffer for it.”

James let out a long, exhausted sigh. “And... you’re doing this for Remus ?”

Sirius paused, then shot James a look of pure sincerity. “If I do not bleed onto the page, how will he know my heart is his?”

James nodded, utterly confused, but seeing that there was no turning back now. "Right. Alright, well... good luck with that, mate."

Sirius simply nodded, a serene, almost holy calm settling over him as he began the next line of his poetic fever dream.

Peter shuffled into the common room halfway through the madness, cradling a plate stacked high with toast. He stopped short at the sight of Sirius hunched over the table like a cursed monk, parchment scattered in a storm around him, quill clenched in a death grip.

“Er,” Peter said, chewing. “You writing something?”

Sirius didn’t look up. “A declaration of the soul. A hymn to longing. A literary tapestry woven from the threads of yearning.”

James, sprawled nearby with a blanket over his head, muttered, “He’s writing a love poem.”

Peter blinked, then nodded slowly. “Cool. Want help?”

Sirius paused, suspicious. “What kind of help?”

Peter licked jam from his thumb. “I’m good at limericks.”

Sirius looked up sharply, appalled. “ Absolutely not. ”

But Peter was already off:

“There once was a boy from Gryffindor—
Whose heart couldn’t take it no more—
He pined and he sighed,
And dramatically cried—”

Sirius slapped his hand on the table. “Peter, no. Rhyming ‘Remus’ with ‘seamless’ is a crime. ”

Peter shrugged, unbothered, and returned to his toast. “Just saying. People love limericks.”

Sirius looked vaguely ill, like Peter had just tracked mud across a cathedral. “This is courtly enchantment , not… pub entertainment.”

Peter took another bite, mumbled, “Suit yourself,” and wandered off.

James peeked out from beneath the blanket and said, “Honestly, ‘dramatically cried’ was pretty accurate.”

The sun dipped low behind the castle walls, casting golden bars across the dormitory floor. A hush had settled over Gryffindor Tower—except, of course, around Sirius Black.

He sat cross-legged on his bed, surrounded by crumpled drafts and half-drained ink bottles. His hair was wild, his shirt buttoned wrong, and his face bore the haunted look of a man who had stared too long into the abyss of metaphor.

But it was finished.

The poem.

It was… bad.

Truly, breathtakingly bad.

Lines like “My soul yawns for thee, a chasm of ache” and “Thy name stains the ink-sweat of my trembling quill” marred the page like some cursed incantation of heartbreak and grammar crimes.

The last line—his triumphant closer—read:
“Not from boredom, but longing, I think.”

Sirius stared at it with the blank reverence of a madman.

Then he gently—tenderly—placed it beside a brittle sprig of lavender he’d found tucked in the pages of a book he'd bought last winter in Hogsmeade. The lavender smelled faintly of soap and sorrow.

He pressed both items together like they might alchemize into something romantic and holy.

Heart pounding, breath shallow, Sirius crept across the dormitory to Remus' bed like a burglar in velvet slippers. He laid the parchment and lavender on the pillow with all the solemnity of a sacrificial rite.

Then he turned—

—and ran.

No explanation. No flourish. Just bare feet thudding down the stairs and a muffled “Oh God what have I done” echoing through the stairwell.

Behind him, the lavender drooped gently over the edge of the parchment like it, too, was trying to escape.

—

The tower was quiet, buzzing faintly with the hum of firelight and the distant clatter of first years in the common room below. Remus pushed open the door to the boys’ dormitory, rubbing the back of his neck absently. He was full of treacle tart and irritation—Sirius had fled dinner halfway through dessert after knocking over a jug of pumpkin juice with his elbow and whispering, “It’s begun.”

He didn’t know what that meant. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

But as he stepped into the room, he noticed it immediately: something placed neatly on his pillow, like a gift or a warning.

He approached slowly.

Lavender.

And a piece of parchment, folded once, exactly.

Remus sat down and opened it.

He read the poem.

Then he read it again, slower, in case the horror lessened with repetition. It did not.

His face cycled through a staggering array of emotions in the span of ten seconds:

—Mild confusion.
—Growing concern.
—Full-body horror.
—A wince of secondhand embarrassment so strong it made his ears go pink.
—And finally… quiet, pensive worry.

He stared at the parchment like it might start bleeding.

After a moment, he whispered, “This isn’t normal.”

And because he was Remus Lupin—who knew Sirius Black down to the bone—he didn’t laugh. He didn’t mock. He didn’t even sigh.

He just looked toward the door, heart clenching faintly, and said to no one:

“…What’s happened to you?”

Remus found James exactly where he expected him: slouched in an armchair near the fire, a game of Exploding Snap abandoned on the table beside him, clearly waiting for something.

He didn’t look up until Remus stood directly in front of him, holding the crumpled poem like evidence in a trial.

Remus, dead serious:
“Is Sirius… dying?”

James blinked. Then blinked again.
“Dying?”

Remus held out the parchment. “This. He left me this. And a flower that smelled like soap and… despair.”

James took the paper, skimmed it, and visibly fought to keep a straight face.
“Maybe he’s just… expressing himself more these days.”

Remus stared at him.
“He spelled ‘thine’ wrong four times.”

James nodded sagely. “He spelled it ‘thynee.’”

Remus pointed at the second stanza. “And then crossed it out to write ‘thice.’ That’s not a word, James.”

James pressed the parchment to his chest like it was a treasured heirloom. “Poetic license?”

Remus sat down, visibly rattled.
“I’ve seen him impulsive. I’ve seen him dramatic. I’ve seen him challenge a portrait to a duel. But this? This is new. ”

James patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Nothing fatal, I swear.”

Internally, James was screaming with joy.

This is magnificent, James thought. He’s finally cracked. Fully, gloriously cracked. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Aloud, he said with forced calm, “Dying? Why would you think that?”

Remus sat down heavily.
“He wrote about his soul yawning. There are metaphors involving squid. He compared my elbows to fog.”

This isn’t Sirius, Remus thought, heart thudding. Sirius is loud, and impulsive, and a bit of a menace—but he’s not…
Not this.
Not this strange, wobbly version who won’t meet my eyes and smells faintly of ink and potpourri.
Not the Sirius who leaves poems and runs away like a cursed bride.
Something’s wrong.

James patted his knee. “He’s just experimenting with artistic vulnerability.”

Remus stared. “He spelled ‘thine’ as thynee. ”

Peter groaned from the corner without looking up.
“I told you the book was going to possess him. You enchanted it.”

James: “Technically, I amplified it. Which is different.”

(Remus is too busy worrying to catch this tidbit.)

I live with lunatics, Peter thought, nibbling the last of his sugar quill. One of them is writing tragic Elizabethan squid-poems, the other is encouraging it, and now Remus looks like he’s going to cry or hex someone. I need new friends.

Remus buried his face in his hands. “I think he’s sick. Or cursed.”

James looked absolutely delighted. “Oh, he’s cursed, all right. With love. ”

Peter lobbed a cushion at his head. “Stop helping.”

James ducked, grinning.
“Remus, mate, don’t worry. It’s all part of the process.”

This is perfect, James thought. I’m going to get so much blackmail out of this.

This is a cry for help, Remus thought.

I’m moving to Hufflepuff, Peter thought.

The fire crackled low. Most of the tower was asleep, or pretending to be. The only sound was the slow rustle of parchment and James Potter’s whispered villainy.

He crept down from the dormitory barefoot, wand tucked behind his ear, and moved like a particularly smug cat burglar. His target: The Poem.

Sirius lay sprawled across his four-poster upstairs, hair like a halo of bad decisions, the enchanted book still clutched in one possessive hand. James had already done the hard bit earlier— a casual Accio , timed precisely when Remus had gone to brush his teeth.

Now, in the soft glow of wandlight, James sat at a corner table with the parchment unrolled before him like it was an ancient relic of doom.

He made a perfect copy.

Then, with all the solemnity of a scholar defiling scripture, he began to annotate.

“Thy elbows shimmer in foggy delight”
— [?? is this a compliment? is he into knees next?]

“My heart is a squid in thine ocean of restraint”
— [james actually wheezes here]
— [“Squid??? really???” scrawled in the margin, underlined three times]

Peter hovered nearby, clutching a mug of cocoa like a lifeline. “You’re going to Hell for this.”

James didn’t look up. “I booked the express ticket years ago, Wormy.”

He finished his notes with a flourish, then tucked the original carefully back where he found it: under Remus’ pillow, alongside the brittle lavender sprig and a suspiciously folded sock.

Peter narrowed his eyes. “You planning to do something with this?”

James grinned like a war criminal and rolled up the annotated version.

“Oh,” he said. “I know someone who’ll really enjoy this.”

He tapped the scroll, sealed it with a waxy, wonky Gryffindor crest, and whispered, “For research.”

Peter just sighed and took a long sip of his cocoa. “I’m gonna pretend I don’t know anything when this all explodes.”

James patted his shoulder. “Wise man.”

Upstairs, Sirius snored softly, clutching his cursed romance manual like it was a teddy bear forged from sheer delusion.

—

The air was damp and cold, the kind of chill that soaked into robes and made everyone vaguely irritable. Students filtered in and out of the corridor with the glazed eyes of people bracing for another double Potions with Slughorn.

Regulus Black stood primly against the stone wall, immaculate as ever, arms crossed like a judgmental gargoyle.

James Potter strolled up late, hair a disaster, tie entirely decorative.

“Black,” he said with affected civility.

“Potter,” Regulus replied, cool and automatic.

There was no teacher nearby, no other Prefects in sight. Still, both boys straightened as if being evaluated by a panel of ghosts.

Then James pulled something from his sleeve. A tightly rolled scroll, sealed with drippy red wax in the vague shape of a lion.

Regulus did not take it.

“What is that.”

James just smiled. “A gift. Of… emotional significance.”

Regulus took it like it might be a bomb. Broke the seal cleanly. Unfurled it in one swift motion.

He read silently. The air grew colder.

“My heart is a squid in thine ocean of restraint—”

Regulus’ jaw clenched. His eyes kept going. He hit the last line.

“Not from boredom, but longing, I think.”

A long, dangerous pause.

Then, flatly:
“… Soul-yawning .”

James nodded. “Right?”

Regulus looked up. “He deserves prison.”

They both broke at the same time—laughter sharp and stifled, echoing strangely in the stone corridor. It was the kind of laughter that came from watching someone slip on a chandelier.

James wiped his eye. “I knew you’d appreciate it.”

Regulus handed the scroll back. “Frame it. Then burn the frame.”

He turned to go, flicking invisible lint from his sleeve. Then, without looking back:

“Next time he writes something like this, I will report him to the Ministry.”

James grinned. “Worth it.”

Regulus turned and walked away, the click of his polished shoes sharp against the stone floor.

James watched him go, still grinning faintly—but something in his expression softened. Just for a second. Regulus’ spine-straight gait, the elegant cruelty of his movements, the way his hair curled slightly at the nape in defiance of whatever cursed potion he used to slick it—James hated how much he noticed.

Stupid Slytherin bastard. He walked like he owned the air.

Regulus was nearly at the end of the corridor when he stopped. Completely still. Like a statue thinking very mean thoughts.

He didn’t turn around.

“You should be careful with that book, Potter,” he said, voice low and unreadable. “It doesn’t like being mocked.”

James blinked, caught off guard. “It’s a book. What’s it going to do, hex me?”

There was a pause. Regulus turned his head just enough for the light to catch in his eyes.

“Yes,” he said simply.

Then he walked on.

James stood in the corridor for a long moment, scroll still clutched in one hand. The air suddenly felt heavier, like something unseen had turned to look at him.

“…Huh,” he said aloud, to no one. “That’s not ominous at all.”

But he didn't stop smiling.

—

James sat bolt upright in bed with the horrifying clarity of someone who had just realized something was wrong .

“Wh—” he began, and immediately choked on a cloud of glitter. Pink, shimmering, and aggressively vanilla-scented.

He hacked and coughed as it floated lazily through the morning sunlight. Across the room, Sirius blinked awake, eyes bloodshot with yearning-induced sleep deprivation.

“What was that?” Sirius croaked.

James shoved back his covers and staggered toward the mirror above the fireplace.

And screamed.

His hair—usually messily handsome, artfully disheveled—had been enchanted . It curled in perfect , symmetrical heart shapes. Not just a heart. His fringe looped into one . The hair at his crown twisted into another , like a grotesque romantic topiary.

He reached for his wand and tried to mutter Finite—

Poof.

More glitter. Blue this time. Lavender-scented.

Peter sat up groggily. “Why does it smell like a cursed apothecary in here?”

James spun around, his voice a croaky hiss: “The bloody book hexed me!”

Sirius blinked. “Which book?”

James pointed directly at Sirius’ satchel, which was glowing faintly pink and emitting the sound of distant harp music.

“Oh,” Sirius said reverently. “ My book.”

James gagged on a glitter puff.

He sat in the center of the dormitory, wheezing glitter and cradling his head in his hands as Sirius fumbled through his belongings.

“Where is it?” he muttered. “Where—ah.”

He pulled the cursed tome reverently from his satchel. It was warm to the touch, humming softly with smug arcane satisfaction. The red leather gleamed despite the dust, its gold hearts pulsing faintly like something with a pulse.

It glowed .

Just a little.

Like it was proud of itself.

Like it was watching .

Peter took one look and backed toward the door. “Nope. I’m not being cursed by a romantic grimoire. Again.”

Sirius held the book to his chest like a baby. “Shhh. He didn’t mean it. He’s just jealous.”

“ It’s a book, ” James croaked, glitter catching on his eyelashes. “Not a pet.”

The book gave a faint rustle , like a cat swishing its tail in warning.

James and the book stared each other down. The book glowed a little brighter. Innocent. Knowing. Triumphant.

James backed away slowly. “It’s sentient , Sirius. You brought home a sentient, hormonal book.”

Sirius just sighed dreamily. “He just wants to help me woo Remus.”

“ He’s hexing my respiratory system! ”

A faint haze of glitter still clung to the curtains around James’ bed, and Peter had firmly buried himself under two pillows, muttering anti-romance wards.

But Sirius sat cross-legged on the floor, now, illuminated only by wandlight and madness.

The book lay before him on a folded Gryffindor scarf like an altar cloth. He bowed his head solemnly.

“I offer my sincerest apologies for the mockery of others,” he whispered. “They know not of the sacred trials we endure.”

The book purred faintly, or maybe creaked. Either way, it glowed.

“You have guided me true thus far. I—I did not know I could yearn like this. I thought my heart was made of sarcasm and nicked elven wine.” He placed a hand over his chest dramatically. “But you’ve proved me wrong.”

He leaned closer, voice dropping into hushed awe. “He touched my shoulder today. I nearly passed out. I don’t think he even meant it romantically. It was… perhaps platonic. Perhaps accidental. But I felt it. Like lightning. Or indigestion, but sexier.”

The book flipped a page on its own. Sirius gasped reverently.

“Yes,” he whispered. “You understand.”

He placed a hand upon the open parchment, as though swearing a sacred oath.

“I vow to follow your counsel with honor, secrecy, and dramatic flair. I will woo my most beloved Moony with the patience of the moon and the intensity of a thousand sunrises.”

A beat.

Then he added quietly, “Thank you. For believing in me. Even when my metaphors are... squid-based.”

The book shimmered in acknowledgement.

Somewhere behind the curtains, James groaned in his sleep, “You’re in love with a manual. ”

But Sirius heard only destiny.

—

The fire had long since gone out, and the dormitory was quiet—just the occasional rustle of fabric, the wind outside nudging the old windows, the soft rise and fall of someone snoring. Remus lay on his side, blankets pulled up to his chin, staring at the ceiling.

On the nightstand, the poem still sat—creased now, corners curled from handling. The sprig of lavender had crumbled completely, leaving behind a brittle smear of purple dust. It smelled faintly like old books and the sleeve of someone he liked too much.

He reached out and picked up the parchment for what had to be the fifth time.

It was awful. Utterly, irredeemably awful.

“Thy elbows shimmer in foggy delight”
“My heart is a squid in thine ocean of restraint”
“Not from boredom, but longing, I think.”

Remus stared at that last line, expression unreadable.

He can’t be serious. No—he’s Sirius, of course he can be this dramatic—but this?
This isn’t the usual attention-seeking. This is… deranged.
...Tender. God, help me, it’s tender.

He folded the poem slowly, pressing along the creases like it might make the words behave.

Sirius wasn’t himself lately. Not quite. He wouldn’t look at him. He kept lurking, sighing, fleeing rooms like a tragic widow. And now… poetry?

Remus rubbed his forehead.

Maybe he hit his head. Maybe this is a concussion. Or rabies. Or maybe—

No. He wasn’t going to finish that thought.

He slid the poem beneath the corner of his pillow, tucked it there like it was something delicate, or cursed. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling again, frowning.

It had to be a joke. It had to be. But Sirius didn’t usually commit to jokes this… softly.

He closed his eyes. Tried to sleep.

And failed.

What if he’s serious, his brain whispered again.

Remus groaned quietly into his pillow. “He’s not well,” he muttered aloud, to the dark room, to no one.

But he didn’t throw the poem away.

Notes:

i don't really write jegulus that often, so i'm not sure how it is?

there will be more in upcoming chapters tho, next one out on wendsday probably.

Also! I found two really old pandalily oneshots in my drive that are kinda a similar vibe as this story in that they're really just for giggles, and I'm gonna post them either later today or tomorrow if anyone wants to read.

Chapter 3: The Token Gift of Nature (Preferably Hair or Stone)

Summary:

sirius & his hair

Notes:

I think this is my favorite chapter...

they're just a bunch of goofballs

From The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment: A Guide to Wooing One’s Beloved with Decorum, Dagger-Gaze, and Desperate Devotion
by Sir Albrecht the Ardently Unkissed
Circa 1423, enchanted (poorly) in 1871

—

The Token Gift of Nature (Preferably Hair or Stone)

“Nothing sayeth devotion like giving thy Beloved part of the earth. Or thyself. Or both.”

Courtship is incomplete without a tangible token of affection . Seek out an object that speaks the language of thy soul—be it a river-worn stone, a slightly crumpled leaf, or a single noble hair from thine own head. Present it with gravity. Use the phrase “eternal fealty” if possible.

Appropriate Tokens :

 

• A rock shaped vaguely like a heart
  
  

• A hand-snipped curl of thine noble mane
  
  

• A tooth (only if extracted during battle)
  
  

 

Do not explain the gift. Let thy Beloved stew in sacred bewilderment.

—

Sirius woke like a man kissed by prophecy.

The enchanted book lay open on his chest, its pages glowing faintly golden in the early morning gloom, like it had something holy to impart.

He blinked. Read. Then gasped—a sharp, reverent inhale that made James groan into his pillow.

“Merlin’s balls, what now,” James mumbled, face-down.

Sirius sat up slowly, as though in the presence of divinity. “It’s a new chapter,” he whispered, awe-struck. “It flipped on its own. It’s guiding me, James.”

James rolled over, squinting at the shimmer of gold-leaf titles. “Oh God, it’s escalating.”

“It’s escalating in devotion ,” Sirius corrected, clutching the book to his chest. “Listen: ‘Of Gifts Divine: Present Thy Affection through Nature Herself.’ Subheading: ‘If thou hast no pearl or petal, consider hair or a noble stone.’ ” He paused, eyes wide. “James. I have hair. I am noble.”

James stared at him. “You’re about five minutes from making a blood pact with your pillow.”

Sirius looked down at the page again, brow furrowed in earnest concentration. “Do you think Remus would prefer a lock of my hair or a small, moody rock?”

James muttered something obscene and pulled the covers over his head.

But Sirius wasn’t listening anymore. He was on a mission now—heart galloping, thoughts spiraling, hands already rifling through his satchel like the right pebble might fall out of it. A gift. A natural gift. Something primal. Something poetic.

From across the room, Peter cracked one eye open. “Please don’t give him hair.”

“I have really nice hair,” Sirius said, deeply offended. “It would be a treasured relic. ”

“Sounds like a hex in the making,” Peter replied and went back to sleep.

James groaned louder.

Sirius rose with purpose, wrapped in an old Gryffindor blanket like it was a cloak of destiny, book clutched tight to his heart.

“I must commune with nature,” he declared solemnly.

“You’re not even wearing shoes,” James pointed out from beneath the blankets.

“There are no shoes in yearning,” Sirius said, and swept from the room

He moved through the corridors like a knight on a quest. Except instead of armor, he wore flannel pajama bottoms, no shoes, and a blanket knotted at the shoulder like a makeshift cloak. The book was tucked inside, near his heart—where all sacred texts should rest.

His thoughts were loud. Dramatic. Sincere.

This is it. This is how I win him. A token. Not just any token—a piece of the earth itself. Something eternal. Rugged, like him. Strange, like me. Possibly mossy.

The castle walls hummed with early morning stillness. Portraits dozed. The suits of armor ignored him. Even Peeves was absent, as if some cosmic force had warned the spirits of Hogwarts that Sirius Black was on a romantic mission and not to be trifled with.

He’ll open his hand and there it’ll be. A stone. Smooth, maybe. Warm from my pocket. And he’ll know. He’ll just know.

Sirius paused at the front doors, hair wild, eyes alight with zeal.

He deserves the best rock I can find.

The doors creaked open with unearned drama. Wind caught the blanket-cape and flared it behind him.

For Remus Lupin. My beloved. My moonlit scholar. My soft-spoken, cardigan-clad enigma. May this pebble symbolize my undying longing. May it sit in his pocket, or on his nightstand, or be hurled at my head in confusion—I care not. As long as he touches it.

He stepped into the grass, wet with dew, and dropped to his knees reverently.

Show me your secrets, Earth. Give me a rock worthy of his melancholy.

The grass gave way to gravel, and the soft lapping of the Black Lake greeted him like a lullaby composed just for madmen in love.

Sirius knelt by the water’s edge, breath fogging in the crisp morning air, eyes scanning the shoreline like a man searching for holy relics.

Remus deserves everything. He deserves constellations in jars and sonnets in silver ink. But he won’t let himself want that. He thinks he’s too broken, too sharp around the edges. He hides the hunger under dry wit and those bloody cardigans.

His fingers grazed over cold stones—rounded, wet, glinting faintly in the dawn.

But I see it. I see all of him. And if I must speak in flowered prose, if I must tear my soul into poetry, if I must scour this damn lake for a pebble touched by divine moonlight—then so be it.

He held one up to the light. Too jagged. Not worthy.

I will woo him with earth and sky. With aching limbs and dumb metaphors. Because maybe he won’t believe in his own worth—but he’ll believe in mine. And I’ve staked every shred of mine on him.

Another stone—this one smooth, dark, with a thin pale vein of quartz like a lightning scar. Sirius stared. Reverent.

Yes. This one. Scarred but lovely. Silent, but not hollow.

He cradled it in both hands like an offering.

Remus Lupin, you bewildering, bookish, beautiful creature. This is not just a rock. It’s a metaphor. And someday, when you stop flinching from love, you’ll understand that I’ve already placed my heart in your hands.

His voice was a whisper: “For you, Moony. Always.”

The lake didn’t reply—but it felt like it listened.

He held the stone aloft in both hands, inspecting it in the rising light. Smooth, dark, shot through with veins of quartz like scars.

It was lovely. But…

Sirius frowned.

No. Not lovely enough. Not for him. Not for the boy who reads with his whole spine curled in defense and still offers up gentleness like it costs him nothing. Not for Remus, who would never ask for a thing and therefore deserved everything.

He stood abruptly, rock clenched in his fist. “It’s not right.”

At that exact moment, Peter Pettigrew appeared over the hill, squinting and chewing something. “Oi. What’re you doing down here?”

Sirius turned, wild-eyed. “Peter. Excellent. I need help.”

Peter eyed the lake, the glittering pile of rejected rocks, the streak of mud on Sirius’ face, and the faint derangement in his gaze. “…With what?”

“Symbolism,” Sirius said gravely, reaching out and grabbing Peter by the sleeve. “And earthy resonance.”

“I—what?”

Sirius began dragging him toward the shoreline. “I need a rock. A better rock. The right rock. One that speaks. One that yearns.”

Peter, still clutching a mostly-eaten cheese scone, blinked. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I were.” Sirius dropped to his knees dramatically. “It must be round. Smooth. Vaguely shaped like a heart. Or a secret. It must contain the essence of longing , Peter.”

Peter stared. “I don’t think rocks… do that?”

Sirius ignored him, hands sifting through pebbles like a mad archaeologist. “Moony deserves a symbol. A token. A gesture both timeless and humble.”

“You need breakfast,” Peter muttered, taking a bite.

Then, suddenly—Sirius froze.

There it was.

Worn smooth by water and time. Vaguely bean-shaped. Sort of asymmetrical. But when he held it in his palm, something clicked.

It was imperfect. But earnest. A little strange. But quietly enduring.

It was, somehow… Remus-shaped .

Sirius exhaled.

“Perfect,” he whispered, eyes shining.

Peter nodded slowly, backing away. “I’m gonna let you have that moment.”

Sirius didn’t hear him. He was already thinking of ribbon.

—

Peter had always known— always —that he was the only sane one in the group.

James had a death wish disguised as charm. Remus read books that made him cry and then denied it. Sirius… well, Sirius was Sirius.

But this?

This was new.

Peter watched from a polite three feet away as Sirius knelt reverently by the lake, cradling what could only be described as a glorified kidney bean. His eyes were suspiciously misty.

“I shall polish it,” Sirius muttered. “Wrap it in twine. No—velvet. It must have gravitas. ”

Peter chewed slowly on his cheese scone, unsure whether to intervene or just… back away.

They’re already in love, he thought, exasperated. They’ve been in love since like third year. Everyone knows. Even the portraits know. I saw the Fat Lady roll her eyes when Remus blushed last week.

All this enchanted-book nonsense, the sighing, the poetry, the lurking behind toast—it was all so… extra.

He said, carefully, “You know he likes you, right?”

Sirius blinked at him. “He doesn’t.”

Peter gestured vaguely at the heavens. “He does. He really does. He just suppresses it with the force of a thousand suns.”

Sirius looked down at his rock again. “Then I must break through the suppression. Like—like a knight through fog. Or guilt. Or whatever it is Moony’s made of.”

Peter rubbed his temples. Maybe I’m the only one not suffering from a dramatic curse.

Still. He didn’t stop Sirius. He didn’t even tell him the rock definitely resembled a malformed bean. Because Sirius looked so sincere. And so unironically pleased.

Peter sighed.

Fine. Let them have their tragic gay knight romance. At least it’s more entertaining than watching James get hexed by Evans every morning.

Peter watched Sirius wrap the rock in a scrap of velvet he'd conjured from nowhere like a Victorian ghost, and he took a long, slow bite of his scone. Chewed. Swallowed. Thought.

I need new friends.

Not like, entirely new friends. He liked these ones. Loved them, even. In the way one might love a pack of rabid, poetry-reciting wolves who sometimes accidentally set the carpet on fire.

But still.

Surely, somewhere in this castle, there had to be a small group of normal people. People who studied in peace. Who didn’t duel over metaphors or gift each other lavender and stones and write poems about elbow fog.

Hufflepuffs, he thought, a little desperately. Hufflepuffs seem calm. Maybe I could try befriending that one who knits things for mice. She seems stable.

Sirius, meanwhile, was now whispering a goodbye to the rock before carefully placing it into a velvet pouch like it was a horcrux or the Hope Diamond.

Peter closed his eyes.

“More sane friends,” he whispered aloud. “I just need… one. Just one.”

The rock glinted solemnly in the morning sun, like it, too, understood the weight of Peter’s suffering.

—

Sirius stared into the mirror like it might offer him a final warning. It didn’t. It just reflected his ridiculous, mesmerizing, beautiful, perfect hair and the silver letter opener trembling in his hand.

The book had spoken:
“To sever a lock of thine own hair is to sever thine ego. Present it unto thy Beloved.”

He swallowed hard. He was no coward. He had faced slytheins, detentions, and his mother. But this? This was sacrifice.

His hair— his hair —was the one thing he could always count on to make an impression. It was soft, strategic, slightly rebellious. It said: I am powerful, beautiful, and possibly dangerous. It was legacy and weapon and vanity rolled into one. And he was about to cut it.

But Remus deserved everything. And if Remus couldn’t see that—couldn’t see himself as someone worthy of being adored to this absurd, burning extent—then Sirius would just have to prove it, one ridiculous gesture at a time.

He tilted his head dramatically, selected a strand near his temple—something noticeable, symbolic, but not stupid—and sliced.

It fluttered to the desk like it had died tragically young. Sirius caught it mid-fall.

“Goodbye,” he whispered to the lock, already planning a poem for it. “You’ve done well. Your service will not be forgotten.”

From across the room, James muttered into his pillow, “For Merlin’s sake, not the hair now…”

But Sirius was already searching for a ribbon.

Remus must have it. Must know the depth. Must understand the scope of Sirius Black’s yearning soul, made visible in cut hair and lake-rocks and lavender.

He tied the strand like it was a holy relic, heart pounding, devotion incandescent.

Tonight, he would deliver the token.

And Remus would feel it.

—

Remus blinked down at the rock in his hand. It was warm from Sirius’ palm, and slightly damp. It did, in fact, resemble a kidney. A smooth, gray little organ of confusion.

Sirius was watching him with the solemnity of someone who had just recited a vow before a sacred altar. His hair caught the light in tragic waves. His school shirt had one too many buttons undone. He looked like a Byronic ghost who had crawled out of a poetry book and discovered dramatic devotion as a personality.

Remus cleared his throat. “You… took this from the lake?”

Sirius nodded, reverently. “At dawn.”

Remus stared. “And you thought—”

“That you deserved something natural. Unyielding. Beautiful.” Sirius’ voice dipped into something dangerously sincere. “Something that will remain, no matter the tides.”

Remus didn’t know what to do with that. Or the rock. Or the warm, wild bloom of something terrifying in his chest.

He coughed, closing his fingers around the stone. “Right. Well. Thank you.”

Sirius smiled like he’d just won a duel. “There’s more.”

Remus’s eyes widened. “More rocks?”

“No. Hair.”

“God help me,” Remus muttered.

Remus didn’t know what to do with this information. 

He really didn’t.

Because the rock —fine, the “symbolic rock”—was already pushing it. But hair ?

Human hair?

Sirius’ hair?

No, no. That was… that was something else. That was from a different genre entirely.

Remus stood very still in the middle of the dormitory, the rock clutched in one hand, and a small silver ribbon in the other, tied delicately around a short strand of unmistakably black hair.

It had been left neatly on his pillow. Like a gift. Like a threat. Like a token of courtship in a medieval horror story.

He stared at it for a long time, waiting for it to make more sense. It did not.

Eventually, he sat down on the edge of his bed and lowered his head into his hands.

“This isn’t real,” he muttered into his palms. “I’ve died. I’ve died and this is a posthumous hallucination. I got hit by a rogue Bludger and no one noticed and this is what dying feels like.”

There was a soft thud beside him. James, flopping onto the adjacent bed with all the grace of a sack of potatoes.

“You got the hair, huh?” he said, grinning.

Remus didn’t lift his head. “Why is this happening to me?”

James shrugged, completely unhelpful. “He’s in love. It’s tragic and dumb and I’m personally living for it.”

Remus finally looked up, eyes wild. “He gave me a piece of himself, James.”

“Yeah, it’s all very poetic.”

“He should be institutionalized. ”

James beamed. “And yet here you are. Still holding the ribbon.”

Remus looked down. The ribbon was still in his hand. He hadn’t let go.

He closed his fist around it, gently.

“…Shut up.”

Remus didn’t move for several minutes.
The rock sat on his desk like an omen. The lock of hair lay beside it, tied neatly with silver ribbon, like the world's most cursed bookmark.

His brain, normally very good at quietly organizing information into manageable thoughts, was now a chaotic shouting match of Why? and What does it mean? and Why am I a person to whom this is happening?

This was not a flirtation. This was a ritual.
This was something you left at a shrine. Something you buried in the woods under a full moon so your grandmother’s ghost would be avenged.

“Hair,” he muttered aloud, staring at it in disbelief. “He gave me hair.”

Not even a subtle strand slipped into a love letter like a Victorian lunatic. No, this was intentional. This was a curated lock , shorn and tied with loving psychosis.

He backed away a step.

This wasn’t his Sirius.
Yes, Sirius was dramatic. Sirius once fake-died in front of Professor McGonagall because he didn’t want to take a Transfiguration quiz. Sirius craved attention like most people craved oxygen. But Sirius—his Sirius—did not do this.
This was new.
This was deeply, alarmingly unwell.

Remus turned sharply on his heel, grabbing the ribboned hair and storming down the stairs. He didn’t know what he was going to say, only that it would begin with “WHAT THE F—”

—

Sirius was feeling very pleased with himself.

He had completed two full feet of notes on counter-curses while simultaneously basking in the radiant afterglow of romantic triumph. Not everyone could balance spellwork and seduction like this. Not everyone had the range.

He tapped his quill against the side of his cheek, eyes drifting dreamily toward the staircase where Remus had disappeared earlier. He pictured the moment again—the rock, the ribbon, the tender vow of kidney-shaped devotion. A token of my eternal fealty. He sighed aloud. It had gravitas.

He imagined Remus holding the offerings to his chest, overcome with feeling. Perhaps weeping. Perhaps already composing a response poem in some hidden, trembling notebook.

Sirius bit his lip and whispered, “He’s so good at Defense. Even his anguish is precise.”

Just then, Remus barreled into the common room, his gait rapid and charged with righteous force. His eyes briefly met Sirius’s across the firelight. His jaw twitched. He looked—distraught? Furious?

Sirius smiled faintly. Poor thing. So overcome. Doesn’t know what to do with all these new and consuming feelings.

Remus disappeared up the staircase.
Ten seconds later, he reemerged, hair wild, something clenched in his fist.
Stormed across the room.
Paused.
Turned.
Stormed back up again.
Never said a word.

Sirius tapped his quill against the parchment again. “He's definitely writing me a response poem,” he murmured, eyes shining.

Somewhere behind him, Peter muttered, “He’s definitely planning your murder.”

Sirius didn’t hear him. He was too busy daydreaming about a duet. Perhaps something in iambic pentameter.

He stared blankly at his Defensive Magical Theory textbook, open to a section on hex deflection. He hadn't turned the page in twenty minutes. His quill dangled loosely from his fingers, its ink dangerously close to dripping onto the already blot-stained margin.

But how could anyone expect him to focus when Remus John Lupin existed in the world? And not just existed— thrived. Moved through life with understated brilliance and slightly hunched shoulders, like a tragic scholar-hero. Like someone who kept secrets not because he wanted to, but because he had to .

Merlin, he was so smart . His notes were in straight lines. He annotated things . He had a whole system of marginalia—color-coded, no less—and once explained the theory of magical entropy in such perfect, dry terms that Sirius nearly passed out.

And Defense! Remus was so good at Defense Against the Dark Arts it was frankly pornographic. Every time he raised his wand, Sirius had to pretend he was coughing or adjusting his collar or developing a sudden interest in the wall just to mask the urge to s igh dramatically.

He muttered aloud, “Brilliant, tragic, haunted, incredibly well-read—”

Peter, across the table, didn’t even look up. “You said all this five minutes ago.”

Sirius didn’t care. He was already back in his head, picturing Remus in class tomorrow, standing beside the chalkboard, explaining the nuance of basilisk defense to their incompetent teacher. His hands gesturing carefully. Ink on his knuckles. A slight crease between his brows when someone asked a stupid question (like James, always James).

Sirius would gaze at him from two rows back, notebook forgotten, lips slightly parted like some love-struck Shakespearean ghost.

One day, Remus would turn to him and say something like, “Sirius. Your understanding of shielding spells rivals mine.”

And Sirius would die.

Happily.

Right there on the classroom floor.

He didn’t notice when the ink from his quill finally dripped and smudged across his unfinished essay, scrawling a dramatic arc over the words “repelling curse.”

Peter sighed. “Honestly, I don’t even think you like Defense. I think you just like watching Remus do Defense.”

Sirius blinked slowly, then whispered with perfect sincerity, “He is Defense.”

—

The air was damp with greenhouse mist, scented faintly of moon lily and compost. James leaned against the wrought-iron bench like he hadn’t been there waiting twenty-two minutes (not that he was counting). He flipped his notebook closed the second Regulus stepped into view, walking like he owned every blade of grass beneath his shoes.

“You’re late,” James said, trying to sound irritated and not deeply, soul-crackingly charmed.

Regulus raised an eyebrow. “You said this was Prefect business. I almost didn’t come on principle.”

“Mm, but you did.” James smirked, scooting over and patting the bench. Regulus sat, cautiously distant. The space between them crackled.

“I’ve come to share highly confidential Gryffindor intel,” James murmured, dramatic. He flipped open the notebook again and held it out.

On the page was a surprisingly detailed sketch of an odd little pouch—stitched velvet, drawstring top, and one single hair inside, floating like it had been placed in reverence by trembling hands.

Regulus blinked. “…No.”

“Oh yes,” James said, thrilled. “Sirius cut off a lock of his own hair—”

“For Remus,” Regulus finished, tone flat with horror.

“For Remus,” James confirmed, nodding solemnly.

Regulus pinched the bridge of his nose. “He’s fully lost it.”

“That’s not all.” James flipped to the next page. A new sketch: a small, lumpy object that looked vaguely like a kidney. There were shading notes around it. " Smooth. Worn. Wet? Essence of longing?? "

“It’s a rock,” James said reverently. “Taken from the edge of the lake, chosen for its spiritual resemblance to a malformed heart.”

Regulus just stared at the sketch. Then looked at James. Then back to the sketch.

“Soul-yawning,” he said, like he was invoking a terrible prophecy.

James bit back a grin. “You should’ve seen Sirius when he found it. He cradled it like a dying Victorian poet.”

Regulus gave a short, sharp exhale—half a laugh, half a curse. “Your common room must feel like a padded ward right now.”

“Oh, it’s amazing. Peter’s given up on sanity. Remus is in full existential crisis. I’m personally thriving.”

Regulus handed the notebook back. “You Gryffindors are the most emotionally unhinged people I’ve ever met.”

James looked sideways at him, voice softening. “And yet, here you are.”

Regulus didn’t answer. Just stood and dusted his sleeves off like the conversation hadn’t made his ears slightly pink.

But before he turned to go, he paused.

“…If he starts bleeding onto letters again, tell him to use different parchment. It makes them impossible to read.”

James blinked. “You read his first one?”

Regulus exhaled slowly, his breath curling into the cool evening air like smoke. “The book is moving faster now.”

James turned to him, frowning. “What do you mean?”

Regulus didn’t answer right away. He tilted his head slightly, eyes on the stars peeking out over the Forbidden Forest. His expression was calm—too calm, like someone watching a candle burn closer to the wick with quiet inevitability.

Finally, he said, almost to himself, “Let’s hope it doesn’t ask for blood yet.”

James blinked. “Wait. Yet ?”

But Regulus just smiled, that secretive, infuriating, utterly gorgeous smile. Like he was enjoying a joke James would never fully be let in on. He stood, brushing a wrinkle from his sleeve with surgical elegance.

James stared up at him, suspicion curling in his stomach. But right next to it—perilously close—was something warmer, slower. The unbearable awareness that Regulus Black might be the most beautiful, perfect, and utterly impossible person he’d ever met.

The moonlight made him look carved from marble and ink. Every movement he made felt deliberate, cloaked in meaning James hadn’t learned the language for yet. And the way he said blood with that little upward lilt—like it was inevitable, like it had already happened—James felt something dangerously like awe.

And want.

God, he was so screwed .

Regulus gave him one last glance over his shoulder, already walking away.

“I’ll see you next time, Potter. Tell your brother not to give it a name. That’s when they start talking back.”

James sat back hard on the bench, heart pounding.

“…What the actual fuck,” he whispered, notebook still in his lap.

And then, because he was James Potter and could not be stopped, he scribbled down under Regulus’ quote:

Regulus knows too much.
Also: possibly the most exquisite creature to walk the Earth.
Pretty eyes. Sooo sparklyyy.
May be cursed. Don’t care.

—

Remus crashed face-first into a musty tome titled Hexes of the Heart and Other Romantic Maladies . His arms were folded beneath his cheek, parchment crumpled, quill ink-dried mid-sentence. The faint sound of Madam Pince cursing a student ghost echoed somewhere in the Restricted Section, but he was too far gone to care.

He was alone. Utterly, blissfully, tragically alone.

Except for the rock in his robe pocket, of course.

That stupid, lopsided kidney-shaped rock. Warm from being next to his hip all day. Remus had tried to throw it away—twice—but found himself fishing it out of the waste bin with trembling fingers, stomach twisting with guilt.

He hadn’t even looked at the lock of hair again. It was hidden beneath socks and essays in his trunk like some cursed relic. He wanted to throw it into the fire. He meant to. But what if it was magically bound? What if tossing it triggered an enchantment? What if Sirius died?

God, he was losing it.

His eyes were red-rimmed from scanning texts that offered nothing . Not about Sirius, not about enchanted hair, not about bizarre declarations of rock-based devotion. Nothing but a single, brittle page on Ancient French Courtship Madness , which claimed that lovestruck wizards had once duelled over the right to serenade a goat named Célestine.

The drawing was haunting.

One wizard had a feather in his hat and hearts in his eyes. The other wore chainmail made of quills and appeared to be crying. Célestine looked unimpressed.

Remus closed the book with a dull thud , pressing his forehead to the table.

“This can’t be happening,” he whispered to the wood grain.

But it was . Sirius had gone mad. Or been cursed. Or both. And Remus—

Remus wasn’t sure what was worse: that he couldn’t stop thinking about it, or that some awful, traitorous part of him liked it .

The sincerity. The chaos. The care.

He hated how much he wanted to believe it was real.

He hated the rock in his pocket .

Remus rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and sat back in his chair, spine popping. The moon wasn’t even close to full and yet he felt frayed, unraveling at the edges like an old jumper cuff. His thoughts raced, circles within circles, no real conclusions—just panic.

What was this?

The hair. The rock. The poem , dear God, the poem.

He pulled the book on Ancient Magical Lineages closer, flipping through until he found it again: the section on the Noble and Most Deranged House of Black. The page was creased from earlier.

Traits common to this lineage include:

– Emotional extremity
– Delusions of grandeur
– Curses disguised as romantic gestures
– The overwhelming compulsion to dramatize even minor interpersonal relationships

Remus inhaled sharply.

“Oh God,” he whispered. “It’s the Black family madness.”

He stood suddenly and crossed to the window for air. Maybe if he just—saw the sky. Counted stars. Did grounding exercises. Something.

But the grounds below did not offer peace.

Because there— there —in the pale blue twilight, was Sirius Black.

Kneeling.
In the grass.
Staring at a single blooming daffodil.

Longingly.

Not picking it. Not touching it. Just… regarding it. With reverence. Like it had whispered his name in iambic pentameter.

Remus slapped a hand to his forehead and slid slowly down the library wall until he was crouched beside the radiator.

“Oh no,” he muttered. “It’s worse than I thought.”

—

The daffodil was luminous in the dying light, a splash of gold against the damp earth. Sirius crouched lower, squinting at it like it might whisper secrets if he just concentrated hard enough.

“Bold,” he murmured, reverent. “Yet… trembling.”

He nodded to himself, already spinning a metaphor so vast and untethered it could blot out the sky.

“Much like Remus. Yes. This flower is exactly like Remus. Sturdy but sorrowful. Sunny, but only in an ironic way. A soft edge blooming in a cruel world.”

He leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper. “Your leaves curl inward like his handwriting. You nod with gentle fatigue. You rise each year from the dirt with no applause. Just like him. Brilliant. Quiet. Made of damp resilience.”

The daffodil did not respond.

Sirius sighed, chest full of purpose and poetry. “You understand.”

And then he very carefully picked it.

Because Remus needed to see himself as Sirius did: tragic. Beautiful. And very, very floral.

—

The rock sat like a curse in his robe pocket. Heavy. Ever-present. And the lock of Sirius’ hair—curled and bound with some ominous intent—was buried beneath his socks in the bottom of his trunk, and he was terrified to throw it out in case it triggered some kind of emotional curse or gothic hex. That felt exactly like the sort of thing a Black would do.

He flipped through another thick tome— Dark Lineages of Magical Britain: A Cautionary Genealogy —scanning the “Black” section for key terms: hallucinations, enchantment, delusions, romantic frenzy, ritual hair offerings, etc.

Then he found it.

“In rare cases, members of the House of Black have suffered from hereditary spells known as L’Étourdissement de l’Amour : a French affliction characterized by sudden courtship compulsion, dramatic emotional displays, and symbolic gift-giving bordering on the deranged.”

Remus stared. Mouth open.

Beneath the text was a sketch of a 17th-century wizard kneeling before a goat while holding a flaming scroll and his own severed braid. The caption read:
“A famed incident of ancestral Black madness: the failed courtship duel of Thaddeus Black, 1661.”

Remus closed the book slowly. Carefully.

“Oh my god,” he muttered aloud.

He turned toward the window instinctively, like something might confirm it—and there, outside in the dim light, was Sirius Black. Standing very still. Staring longingly at a now picked daffodil.

Remus clutched the book to his chest. His voice was a strained whisper:

“He’s infected.”

Remus pinched the bridge of his nose, the book still pressed to his chest like a protective talisman.

“This is fine,” he muttered. “This is manageable. He’s just—mad. Temporarily. Black family syndrome. Courtship psychosis.”

The daffodil was still being subjected to Sirius’ soulful yearning outside the window.

Remus exhaled slowly, setting the book down with clinical precision. “Right. Right. I’ll have to play along. Just until it burns itself out. That’s what you do with fevers. Or wild animals.”

He imagined going to Madam Pomfrey and saying, Yes, hello, I think my friend is suffering from hereditary romantic delusion. He gave me a symbolic rock shaped like kidney failure and cut off a lock of his own hair. What salve do you recommend?

No. That would get Sirius hospitalized. Possibly exorcised.

Instead, Remus nodded grimly to himself, stood, and murmured with the air of a soldier walking into battle:

“I must indulge the madness to end the madness.”

He was going to accept the next cursed gift. He was going to say “thank you.” He was going to smile. And then, somehow, somehow , he was going to find the antidote to Black Courtship Mania before Sirius escalated to blood offerings.

Preferably before the daffodils got any more ideas.

—

Peter sat cross-legged on his bed, a single candle flickering beside him and his treasured little Muggle notebook open in his lap. The cover read, in fading biro:
“Things That Are Not Normal”

He scribbled furiously, lips pursed.

• Sirius kissed a rock.
  
  
• James talks to Regulus now??
  
  
• Remus is researching ancient French sex magic??
  
  

He underlined the last one three times. Then added a new line:

• I need new friends. Again.
  
  

Peter sighed and glanced around the room, just in time to see Sirius silhouetted against the dormitory window, shirt billowing dramatically (it always billowed, even without wind), whispering poetry at the moon like it owed him money—or love.

Peter stared. Blinked once. Twice.

Sirius placed a hand to the glass and murmured something like, “O pale eye of heaven, does Remus see me as I see him?”

Peter didn’t wait for more.

He calmly closed the notebook, blew out the candle, and yanked the covers over his head.

“Might as well room with a troupe of cursed ballerinas,” he muttered into his pillow. “At least they’d be quieter.”

Notes:

go read my pandalily fics!!! please!!!

also i truly believe these fuckers drove peter so insane he killed them off

honestly, me too budy, me too (joking i love my babies)

next chapter will probably be friday (?) but lowk depends on how stressed i get abt finals

Chapter 4: A Knight’s Vigil: Guarding Thy Beloved’s Path

Summary:

Thou art not a stalker. Thou art a sentinel of the soul.

Notes:

I think this is my favorite chapter yet...

Thanks to everyone who left comments and kudos!!

I rly appreciate them

From The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment: A Guide to Wooing One’s Beloved with Decorum, Dagger-Gaze, and Desperate Devotion
by Sir Albrecht the Ardently Unkissed
Circa 1423, enchanted (poorly) in 1871

A Knight’s Vigil: Guarding Thy Beloved’s Path

“Danger lurketh always—for bandits, beasts, or betrayal. Best to lurk harder.”

A true knight guards their Beloved with unflinching loyalty. This includes: shadowing them down corridors, shielding their beverages from invisible poisons, and interrupting their ablutions in the name of chivalric surveillance. A vigilant heart is a noble heart!

Suggested Duties :

• Block suspicious-looking doorways (even if no one is near).
  
  
• Interrogate their robes for hidden curses.
  
  
• Protect their ankles. Ankles are tragically vulnerable.
  
  

Thou art not a stalker. Thou art a sentinel of the soul.

—

The candle crackled softly, casting golden shadows across the bed curtains and the worn pages of The Courtly Devotions of Ages Past: A Guide to Wooing Nobly, or At Least Dramatically. Sirius turned the page with reverence, already breathless with anticipation. The book did not disappoint.

“Of Knights and Guardianship: Be Thou the Shield Betwixt Thy Love and the World's Cruelties.”
“Thine eyes must be ever-vigilant. Thine sword ever-ready. Thine heart ever-aching.”

Sirius inhaled sharply, as if the words had struck him directly in the chest.

“I must guard him now,” he whispered into the candlelight, clutching the book to his chest like scripture.

Across the dormitory, James groaned from under his blanket, voice hoarse and pained by too many years of friendship. “Sirius, please. He’s going to hex you. Maybe on fire this time.”

Sirius didn’t look away from the book. His eyes were glassy with determination. “I’ll take the hex if it spares him pain.”

He stood, backlit by flickering candlelight, hair in glorious disarray, and declared into the hush of morning, “He is my precious moon, and I—his sword.”

James dragged a pillow over his face. “I should’ve let Regulus keep the poem.”

Sirius didn’t hear him. He was already pulling on his cloak over his pyjamas, muttering about “forming a perimeter” and “emotional shrapnel.”

—

The water had gone tepid. Remus hadn’t noticed until his skin had started to prickle, gooseflesh rising along his arms. He exhaled slowly, watching the ripple spread through the foam that still clung to the surface. Lavender oil and sandalwood—he had hoped it would calm his nerves. It hadn’t.

He dragged a hand down his face and sank a little lower in the water, chin barely above the surface.

The rock—Sirius’ symbolic kidney-heart—was on the tile beside the tub. He’d brought it with him without realizing. It sat there silently, vaguely menacing, as if it was judging him for his confusion.

He was so tired.

He’d scrubbed his hair twice. The scent of soap masked the faint, ghostly whiff of parchment and leather and Sirius Black. But not enough. He could still feel the energy of that boy—wild, radiant, absurd—whirling around him even in the quietest moments.

Remus sat up, slowly, and reached for the towel with heavy arms.

He didn’t really know what was wrong with Sirius. But he knew he needed to figure it out soon, before Sirius escalated from hair tokens to something truly terrifying—like interpretive dance.

He dried off in silence. Dressed carefully. Tucked the rock into his pocket again.

Just in case.

Remus opened the bathroom door and immediately stumbled back a step—because Sirius Black was standing right there. Not leaning. Not slouched casually. No, Sirius was standing at attention , like he was about to be knighted or arrested.

Remus blinked. “Sirius?”

“All clear,” Sirius said solemnly, scanning the corridor like a very handsome, very unqualified security troll.

Remus, towel over one shoulder and hair still damp, stared at him. “Were you… were you waiting outside the whole time?”

“Of course,” Sirius said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I must safeguard the threshold.”

Remus took a moment. A long, slow moment. “The threshold.”

Sirius nodded gravely. “Of your bath.”

There was silence.

“…Did someone threaten my bath?”

Sirius’ eyes narrowed. He muttered something under his breath about “unseen enemies” and “jealous ghosts of ancient courtship rivals.”

Remus squinted. “What?”

“Nothing!” Sirius straightened again. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

Remus stared at him. Then looked back at the steamy bathroom. Then back at Sirius.

And thought: I’m going to have to fake my own death, aren’t I.

Remus took a breath.

Another.

Then a third, just to be sure.

Sirius was still standing there like a statue of himself. Proud. Beautiful. Entirely unhinged.

Remus rubbed a towel through his hair, damp curls flopping into his eyes. You love him, he reminded himself, like a mantra. You love him. You do. He is not a threat. He is just… Sirius.

He glanced over. Sirius was now peering into the shadows behind a suit of armor, wand drawn with a quiet, murmured “For Moony.”

Remus closed his eyes. You love him. He made you tea when you were sick. He memorized your chocolate preferences. He once hexed a portrait for calling you common. He also kissed a rock yesterday, but we’re not focusing on that right now.

He exhaled slowly. You are accepting this madness while you attempt to solve it. Like a cursed Rubik’s cube. Or a flaming crossword puzzle with legs.

Sirius turned back, eyes shining with intensity. “You may proceed to the staircase. I’ll walk five paces behind in case of sudden danger.”

Remus nodded. “That’s… very thoughtful.”

So thoughtful, he thought, so dangerous. So deeply stupid. But also—somehow— so him.

He stepped past Sirius and began walking. Behind him, he heard the quiet patter of his lunatic friend’s feet.

And whispered, one more time, to himself: You love him. You do. You absolutely do. But God help you if this ends in a sword duel.

As Remus made his way down the corridor, he caught sight of Sirius, who was—no surprise—eyeing something with a great deal of suspicion. His gaze was narrowed, his jaw clenched, his posture tense.

Remus followed his line of sight to a suit of armor standing near the stairwell. It looked completely innocuous, standing upright, its breastplate shining in the dim light. No movement. No threat.

Yet, Sirius was pointing his wand at it, muttering darkly under his breath. “ I see you, you twisted hunk of metal... plotting... waiting. ”

Remus sighed, already sensing where this was going.

“No, Sirius,” Remus called, walking up to him. “It’s just a suit of armor.”

Sirius turned toward him, still glaring at the armor. “No, Moony. It’s not. It’s... it’s watching you. Trying to make a move. Trying to sneak up when I least expect it.”

Remus raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms. “It’s a suit of armor , Sirius.”

Sirius, not one to be easily swayed, narrowed his eyes at the armor again, wand still raised. “Oh, I’ll show it,” he muttered. “I’ll show it who’s boss.” And with that, he flicked his wrist, hissing, “ Confundo! ”

The suit of armor vibrated for a moment, then swayed slightly before tipping forward, causing a loud clatter as it crashed to the ground.

Remus winced. “Sirius, what the bloody hell—”

Sirius puffed his chest out, clearly proud of himself. “I don’t trust it. It could have attacked.”

Remus rubbed his temples. “You’ve got to stop seeing danger where there isn’t any, mate.”

Sirius, still standing over the fallen armor with a look of satisfaction, glanced up at Remus. “What? You want me to let a thing like that go unchecked?”

“No, I want you to stop cursing everything that looks at you funny.” Remus stepped forward, grabbing Sirius by the arm and tugging him gently away from the wreckage. “Walk with me.”

Sirius grumbled but allowed himself to be pulled along. “Fine. But I’ll be keeping an eye on it. You never know.”

“You can keep an eye on it from right next to me,” Remus said firmly, steering him closer, so their shoulders brushed. “I’m going to make sure I keep an eye on you. If you’re going to keep... cursing random things, I need to be right beside you so I can intervene before you set something on fire.”

Sirius blinked, genuinely taken aback. “You’re... you’re walking with me?”

“Every step of the way,” Remus said, his voice softening despite the irritation. He paused for a beat, then added, “Just so I can make sure you don’t get yourself arrested for assaulting statues.”

Sirius flashed a grin, though it was laced with affection. “I can’t promise anything, Moony. But fine. I’ll stay close. Just in case you need rescuing from a particularly sassy suit of armor.”

Remus rolled his eyes but allowed a small smile to pull at his lips. As they continued down the hall together, he couldn’t help but think that maybe, Sirius’ antics weren’t all that bad. Some days, at least.

As they strolled through the corridor, the sound of their footsteps echoed faintly against the stone walls. Sirius was still a bit on edge, eyeing the suits of armor as they passed, but his energy was different today. It was less frantic, more... alive in a way that reminded Remus of the Sirius he knew before all this madness.

"Honestly, Moony," Sirius said, shaking his head, "I can’t believe you’re letting that helmet look at me like that." He gestured over his shoulder, pointing to a gleaming suit of armor that had somehow made its way onto the stairs. "It’s just waiting for me to turn my back, ready to attack. You don’t know what it’s capable of."

Remus smirked, but he couldn’t help but notice the way Sirius’ eyes darted back to the armor, not with paranoia anymore, but with something else. Something almost fond . It was so very Sirius in his chaotic, undeterred way.

"You’ve got a lot of faith in your enemies, haven’t you?" Remus said, nudging him with his elbow. "They’ve all got it out for you, apparently."

Sirius gave him a sidelong glance, half-laughing. "Well, it’s only fair. I’ve got it out for everyone ." His tone was teasing, but Remus could tell there was a small shift, an undercurrent of something... more.

He wasn’t sure how to explain it, but Sirius’ little quirks—the ones that Remus had always found endearing, the ones that had made him fall for him in the first place—hadn’t completely vanished. The madness of the Black family curse was undeniably strong, but it wasn’t all-encompassing. Not yet.

"So, did you finish that Transfiguration essay?" Remus asked, trying to steer the conversation back to something a little less... mentally chaotic.

Sirius huffed dramatically. "I had it finished before you even started." His grin was a little too wide, but the smugness in his voice was familiar—one of the things Remus had always admired. That, that was Sirius, no curse could take it away.

Remus couldn’t help but smile back. "I’ll have you know I’m nearly done. Maybe I’ll even let you copy mine if you ask nicely."

Sirius raised an eyebrow, the way he always did when he was teasing. "Oh, now you’re offering? After all that talking about ‘honesty’ and ‘no cheating’?"

Remus shrugged nonchalantly. "Only if you promise not to curse any more suits of armor." His tone was light, but as he glanced at Sirius, there was something more to it—a depth, a quiet plea to see the real Sirius again. The one who had gotten lost in his antics, but had always been a bit more than that. A little more human .

Sirius paused for a beat, almost like he was considering it. "I suppose I could let a few suits of armor off the hook..." His voice faltered for just a second before picking back up. "But only if it means I get a Moony-approved essay. Deal?"

Remus chuckled softly, watching as Sirius tried to stifle his own grin. And there it was—the faintest flicker of the Sirius he knew, the one that wanted to be better. The one who was still trying to prove something, but not just to the world. To himself . Remus could feel the pull of that—could see the struggle behind the show of madness.

He took a deep breath and leaned in slightly. "You don’t need to prove anything to me, you know. Not to me."

Sirius stopped walking for a moment, and his eyes flickered over to him. They weren’t wild. Not this time. Just... searching. Almost vulnerable . For just a second, Remus saw the boy behind the madness—the boy who cared so damn much, who felt too much and never knew quite how to deal with it.

But then the moment passed, and Sirius blinked, straightening his back and putting on his usual grin. "Yeah, yeah, I know. But where would the fun be if I didn’t make it difficult for you?" He wiggled his eyebrows, regaining his usual swagger. "You like the challenge, admit it."

Remus rolled his eyes. "You’re ridiculous."

Sirius gave him a dramatic gasp. "I’ll take that as a compliment."

Remus watched him, unable to help the warmth that spread through his chest. As much as this whole curse was taking Sirius on a weird, unpredictable ride, Remus knew one thing for sure: there was still that part of Sirius. The part that made him him —the one that cared, that loved, and even when he didn’t have a bloody clue what he was doing, tried his best to be the person he needed to be.

For a moment, Remus allowed himself to believe that maybe the madness could be fixed. Maybe there was a way through it, as long as Sirius was still fighting to keep himself .

—

Peter sat at the end of the Gryffindor table, eyes glazed over as he watched the scene unfold before him. Remus sat down with a tired sigh, looking ready to just have a peaceful breakfast for once. But then, of course, Sirius happened.

The moment Remus touched the pumpkin juice, Sirius’ head snapped to attention, his eyes narrowing like a hawk spotting its prey.

“There’s cinnamon,” Sirius muttered, as though he were a detective on the case. “He hates cinnamon. Someone’s tampered with it.”

Peter barely suppressed a groan, staring down at his half-eaten scone. This again .

Remus, ever patient, sighed and looked over at him, raising an eyebrow. “That’s... the seasonal blend. I picked it.”

Sirius didn’t listen, his eyes still focused on the goblet with a laser intensity that was a little too unsettling for Peter’s taste. Then, without another word, Sirius seized the goblet with both hands, as if it might burst into flames if left unattended. He leaned forward, took a dramatic sniff, and then began to sip . Slowly. His eyes never left Remus’. Never.

Peter watched as the rest of the hall carried on with their normal breakfast chatter, and here was Sirius, his gaze locked onto Remus like he was about to declare a war of flavors. It was... too much .

“Oh, for the love of Merlin,” Peter muttered under his breath, crumbling his scone into crumbs. "Why do I even try to have a normal day?"

Sirius made a noise that was somewhere between a satisfied hum and a noise of utter victory. "Mmm," he said, still staring at Remus with that intense, overly dramatic look, "Perfect. Just as you like it."

Remus blinked, looking incredibly bewildered. "Sirius, I just—"

But before Remus could even get a word out, Sirius was already turning to Peter, holding the goblet out like it was some ancient artifact that needed approval.

“See, Peter? It’s the perfect blend," Sirius declared proudly. "No one can hide anything from me. Not even cinnamon."

Peter stared at Sirius, then back at Remus, whose face was the exact picture of confusion and secondhand embarrassment. He was doing that thing again— thinking it was all part of the grand romantic gesture. Meanwhile, Peter was genuinely concerned for his sanity.

I need new friends. Like, really badly. Can I exchange them for anyone else? Anyone?

Peter made a small, strangled sound and shoved his scone into his mouth, wishing he could disappear into the food. What had happened to his normal life? When had this madness become his everyday reality?

Sirius kept going, oblivious to Peter's internal collapse, murmuring about cinnamon and how this was another great sign of their connection. Remus, for his part, was trying very hard not to let his face fall into his hands.

“I really should’ve just stayed in bed,” Peter muttered.

"Did you say something?" Sirius turned his head toward him, eyes wide and innocent.

Peter, utterly defeated, just shook his head. "No. Nothing. Never mind."

As Sirius continued to talk about the virtues of their cinnamon-free pumpkin juice, Peter simply sighed and stared at his plate. The moment was entirely lost on him, and he was pretty sure if one more bizarrely dramatic gesture happened, he’d lose it completely.

I really need a holiday from this madness.

Peter leaned over to James, his voice barely a whisper, but filled with the weight of all his concerns. He watched as Sirius continued to fuss over Remus, who, for reasons Peter could never comprehend, seemed to be tolerating it.

"Is this like a psychotic break?" Peter asked, his eyebrows furrowing. "Or just... courtship?"

James, however, didn’t even glance up from his plate. He was too busy smiling like an idiot, his eyes soft and dreamy as he looked at Sirius and Remus.

“With Sirius, there’s no difference,” James replied, his voice filled with a tone that sounded both fond and utterly unaware of the sheer chaos unfolding around him.

Peter glanced at James, really looked at him for the first time that morning. And there it was—the unmistakable lovesick expression, the soft smile, the way his eyes lingered a little too long on the slytherin table. 

Peter’s mind went blank. He stared, unable to process the full horror of what he was seeing.

Nope. Nope. Not asking. I am not asking.

Peter swallowed hard, turned his gaze back to the table, and silently vowed to never get involved in anything related to the Sirius/Remus dynamic ever again. Because if there was one thing that was clear, it was that this was not normal. Not even close.

His concern deepened when he noticed that Remus— Remus —was sitting there, just... going along with it. Remus had a slightly bemused, slightly exhausted expression on his face, but there was no real resistance. He was just... accepting it. It was as though nothing could phase him anymore. Not the rock. Not the hair. Not even the ridiculous poetry.

Peter felt the weight of it all settle on his shoulders. What am I even witnessing?

He didn’t ask. He didn’t want to know.

And yet... as the morning wore on, Peter couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted. He glanced back at James again, who still hadn’t wiped the lovesick grin off his face. Then his eyes drifted to Remus, who, despite all the nonsense, was still... there , still hanging on somehow.

And in that moment, Peter realized one uncomfortable truth.

He truly was surrounded by insane people .

He silently cursed his luck.

—

Remus stopped in his tracks, looking up at Sirius with a raised brow. Sirius was standing in the middle of the stairwell like an immovable statue, arm outstretched across the path, his expression serious and determined.

"A Slytherin passed through this corridor twenty minutes ago. I must clear the path," Sirius said, his voice low and full of purpose, as though he were guarding the gates to some ancient fortress.

Remus blinked, completely unsure of how to respond. He could feel a headache starting to creep in, the kind that came from trying to make sense of anything that came out of Sirius’ mouth lately.

"Sirius..." Remus began, trying to keep his voice level. "It’s just a corridor. It’s... fine. I’m just going to the common room."

Sirius didn’t budge. "No. The path must be clear," he insisted, his arm blocking the way like a human barricade. His eyes were narrowed, and there was a level of intensity in them that was almost unnerving.

Remus glanced at the empty corridor behind him. A Slytherin? He hadn’t even noticed. But judging by Sirius’ absolute conviction, it might as well have been a full-scale invasion.

"Sirius," Remus tried again, a little softer, a little more resigned. "You’re... you’re being ridiculous."

Sirius tilted his head, his grip tightening on the banister. "It’s for your protection, Moony," he said earnestly, as though he were talking about some great matter of national security. "You don’t understand, but I must guard you. They will try to get to you. I can’t let them."

Remus let out a quiet, frustrated sigh. He could already feel the weight of the situation pressing on his chest. He was trying, really trying, to accept this madness, to help Sirius through whatever was happening to him—but there were days when it felt like he was barely hanging on to sanity himself.

"I’m just going to the common room," Remus repeated. "Please move."

Sirius didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he glanced at Remus, his expression softening just a little bit, like he was seeing him for the first time in ages. "I just... I just want to keep you safe," he said, almost in a whisper, the intensity briefly faltering.

Remus felt a pang in his chest. He knew Sirius wasn’t himself —he could feel it, he could see it in the way Sirius looked at everything, as if the world were full of threats and dangers, none of which seemed real but were still taken so seriously.

"You're not a guard dog, Sirius," Remus said softly, stepping closer, his voice gentler now. "You don’t need to protect me from everything. It’s just a corridor."

Sirius paused, clearly torn. Then, with a heavy sigh, he stepped aside, his arm falling back to his side. "Fine," he muttered, sounding almost defeated, though still deeply concerned.

Remus gave him a reassuring smile as he walked past. "Thanks," he said, his voice a little quieter than usual. He didn't look back—didn’t need to. He knew Sirius was watching him, still worried, still thinking of him as someone who needed protecting from the simplest things.

As Remus made his way down the stairs, he couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. He’d been trying to manage this insanity, but there were days when it felt like the line between caring and obsessing was razor-thin.

And today, Sirius was dangerously close to crossing it.

—

James Potter was on a mission.

Not the usual kind involving dungbombs or Filch’s keys—this one was sacred. Sacred and glittery and currently hidden inside his robes as he skipped down a mostly-empty corridor like a boy possessed.

He didn’t skip often. He was far too cool to skip. Usually. But today? He had the book . Sirius’ deranged love manual. And he was going to show it to Regulus Black.

He nearly collided with a group of second-years, waved them off with a breathless “Sorry, love emergency,” and kept going. His heart was racing. Not from exertion—he was thrilled . Positively giddy. Gleeful. Practically glowing.

He’s going to roll his eyes, James thought dreamily. And then smile. That sharp, unimpressed little smile like he’s above all of us, which, honestly, fair.

He adjusted the book under his arm like it was a bouquet of roses. He could practically smell Regulus’ smug disdain already.

He turned a corner and whispered a soft “Scourgify” at his hair. He wanted to look good. Just in case. For... academic reasons.

Get a grip, Potter.

But he didn’t want to. Not today. Because today, he got to see Regulus again. And more importantly—he got to make Regulus read “Of Knights and Guardianship” and maybe even “Token Gift of Nature (Preferably Hair or Stone).”

James grinned wildly.

This was love. Not Sirius and Remus—no, this. This was real: obsession, mayhem, skipping in the name of high drama. He couldn't wait to see what Regulus said.

He broke into an actual jog.

James stood with the book clutched in both hands like a bomb he’d smuggled through enemy lines. His breath fogged in the cold corridor air as he spotted Regulus approaching, precise and perfectly pressed as ever, expression unreadable.

“This time,” James said, holding it up triumphantly, “I brought it.”

Regulus arched a brow. “You stole it.”

“Borrowed,” James said. “Sirius was... guarding a hallway. I took the opportunity.”

Regulus didn’t even glance at the cover. He stepped closer, stopping just short of touching the thing. “What exactly do you think this is?” he asked softly.

James hesitated. “A book of ancient courtship rituals, possibly cursed. Sirius has gone full lunatic. Hair offerings. Guard duty. Whispering at the moon.”

Regulus smiled. Not kindly.

“It only works,” he said, “on people who already feel the ache.”

James blinked. “What ache?”

Regulus tilted his head, voice quiet and strange, like he was reciting something older than language. “The kind that makes you ruin yourself for someone.”

James stared.

Regulus didn’t elaborate. Just turned to go, cloak trailing like he’d rehearsed the whole thing.

James clutched the book tighter and said nothing.

He remained rooted in place, the book warm in his hands, like it had absorbed the ambient chaos of Sirius’ devotion.

He watched Regulus walk away—gliding, really, like some kind of tragic princeling who probably read poetry for revenge. The words echoed in his head.

“The kind that makes you ruin yourself for someone.”

James squinted.

“Okay,” he whispered to himself. “Okay. That was... kind of hot. But also vaguely ominous.”

He looked down at the book.

“Why did he say that like he’s been personally hexed by fate?”

The rational part of his brain—which was tragically underused—suggested: That was not a normal answer.

The other part of him, the part that liked Quidditch dives and Regulus Black’s stupid, superior smirk, just sighed dreamily and thought:

God, he’s so smart. And haunting. Like a sexy curse. I’m so doomed.

He skipped three steps on the way back to Gryffindor Tower.

—

Remus sat at a corner table with his Ancient Runes text open, quill in hand, doing his absolute best to ignore the very large, very visible presence of Sirius Black four tables away.

Subtle, Sirius was not.

He was seated with a copy of A Dueling Gentleman’s Guide to Romantic Valor conspicuously held upside-down. His elbow was on the table, chin propped on fist, eyes locked on Remus like a tragic painting. Every time someone walked past Remus’ table—Hufflepuff fifth years, a ghost, Madam Pince herself—Sirius flinched, shifted, adjusted his robes like he was preparing for a duel on the library floor.

Remus turned a page, slowly. Quill trembling.

This is fine, he told himself. This is normal. He just wants to protect me from—checks notes—library-based assassins.

Sirius’ hand twitched toward his wand when a Ravenclaw sneezed two tables over.

Remus closed his eyes. Counted to ten.
When he opened them again, Sirius was miming a protective shielding charm in the air with whispered Latin.

Absolutely unhinged, Remus thought.

He also, quietly, and with great shame, smiled a little into his book.

Madam Pince swooped in like a bat from hell, robes flapping and eyes narrowed to slits.

“Mr. Black!” she screeched, as Sirius brandished his wand in what he clearly believed was a heroic, noble fashion. “There is no wand-waving permitted in the History of Magic section!”

Sirius blinked, lowering the wand slightly. “But I was defending Remus’ honor.”

Remus, without looking up from his book, muttered, “From a second-year holding a quill.”

Pince’s nostrils flared. “If I see that wand again near my stacks, you’ll be defending yourself from detention until NEWTs.”

Sirius gave a flourishing bow, wand tucked away with dramatic flair. “Understood, Madam Pince. But know this—I would face a thousand detentions for Remus Lupin.”

“Please don’t,” Remus said weakly, cheeks flaming.

Sirius just smiled like he’d won a battle. Pince stalked off with a furious rustle of robes, and a second-year Ravenclaw dropped his quill and ran.

Remus buried his face in his book. God help me.

He exhaled through his nose, closed his book with a pointed thump , and stared across the four-table divide where Sirius was now dramatically reclining—one leg up, arm thrown across the back of the chair, scanning the room like a paranoid romance novel knight.

“Sirius . ”

His head whipped around instantly, eyes bright. “Yes, love of my life?”

“ Come sit here. ”

Sirius blinked. Sat up straight. “You want me to—”

“I’m not repeating myself.”

Sirius scrambled up so quickly he knocked his chair over. It clattered to the floor as he gathered his things with alarming speed and hustled over like a summoned dog, sliding into the seat beside Remus with far too much enthusiasm.

“Does this mean you accept the hair?” he whispered, eyes hopeful.

Remus stared at him for a long moment. “It means I’d rather have one deranged lunatic next to me than twenty pacing around like you’re ready to hex the library catalog.”

Sirius beamed like the sun. He leaned his shoulder ever-so-slightly against Remus’, opened a textbook upside-down, and within seven minutes, had slumped forward in a gentle, drooling sleep.

Remus looked down at the tangle of black hair now pressed to his sleeve and sighed, half-fond, half-exasperated.

“Utterly exhausting,” he muttered. But he didn’t push him off.

He sat still, careful not to disturb the soft, even breathing against his arm. Sirius had slipped fully sideways, head tucked against Remus’ shoulder like a worn-out dog who'd finally stopped pacing. His hair was warm and faintly lavender-scented—leftover from whatever absurd potion he'd soaked himself in that morning—and Remus, in a moment of sheer weakness, gently brushed it back from his forehead.

It was quiet. The kind of quiet that made Remus' chest ache. He should be reading. Should be working. Should be figuring out what the hell was going on with Sirius and the enchanted love book and the increasingly unhinged declarations.

Instead, he just sat there.

He didn’t move when Sirius shifted slightly in his sleep, or when he made a tiny, content noise, nose pressing closer. He let himself press his cheek lightly against Sirius’ hair for a second—just one second—and closed his eyes.

That’s when Sirius jolted awake with a gasp .

“Remus! I—I fell asleep—I abandoned my post— ” he sat bolt upright, wild-eyed, grabbing for his wand like they were under siege.

Remus instinctively grabbed his wrist. “Sirius. Sirius . You’re not a sentry tower.”

Sirius stared at him, visibly panicking. “But the book said to be ever-vigilant—I was supposed to guard you, and I fell asleep , and what if someone cursed your inkwell—”

“I was doing homework,” Remus said flatly. “You fell asleep on my shoulder. The most dangerous thing in this library is Madam Pince’s glare.”

Sirius looked vaguely scandalized at himself. “But I—”

Remus, very gently, tucked the corner of Sirius’ robe back over his shoulder. “You can protect me tomorrow. For now, just... sit. Please.”

Sirius’ mouth opened like he wanted to protest, but then he looked at Remus—really looked at him, soft-eyed and tired and quietly fond—and nodded.

“Only because I trust you to fend off attackers while I recover.”

Remus snorted. “Deal.”

Eventually, the library's silence shifted. The candles began to burn low, students trickled out, and Madam Pince gave them a look that promised death by overdue fines if they didn’t leave soon.

Remus stretched, bones cracking, and closed his book. “Come on. We should go.”

Sirius blinked at him, blinking sleep from his lashes, like he’d forgotten they weren’t living there now. “Right. Yes. Back to the tower. Must maintain optimal alertness.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “You were drooling on my shoulder twenty minutes ago.”

“That was a feigned vulnerability tactic, ” Sirius said solemnly, standing up and nearly knocking over a stack of parchment. “To lure potential assailants into a false sense of security.”

Remus sighed, gathering his things. “Of course it was.”

They walked back through the castle together, Sirius whispering things like “weak points in corridor defense patterns” and “constant vigilance is the soul’s shield” while Remus nodded along with the weary patience of someone who'd already committed to the long game.

As they reached the Fat Lady’s portrait, Sirius paused dramatically, eyes sweeping the corridor. “Clear,” he whispered, then added, “But you never really know , do you?”

Remus rolled his eyes. “You’re not Mad-Eye Moody, Sirius.”

“I could be,” Sirius said, climbing in after him. “Give me a few years. A staff. A magical eye. A tragic backstory.”

“You already have the tragic backstory,” Remus muttered as they reached the dormitory steps.

Sirius beamed. “Thank you.”

They reached the dormitory, warm and dark, lit only by the low glow of embers in the fireplace and the occasional creak of old wood. Most of the others were already asleep—Peter snoring faintly, James sprawled with a book half on his face.

But Sirius lingered at the foot of Remus' bed, arms crossed, brows furrowed.

Remus, already pulling off his jumper, didn’t need to look up to know what was coming. “What is it now.”

“I just—” Sirius hesitated. “Your bed’s by the window. That draft could weaken your defenses. And you’re—vulnerable when unconscious.”

Remus groaned and flopped back onto his mattress. “Sirius. I’ve survived seventeen years of sleep without a personal guard.”

“That we know of,” Sirius muttered darkly, eyeing the shadows near the wardrobe like they might come alive.

He made no move to climb to his own bed. Just kept standing there like a dog whose bone had been taken by Fate herself.

Remus tossed his blanket aside with a dramatic sigh. “Fine. Get in here before you start pacing.”

Sirius blinked. “Really?”

“Yes. But no sleep sword. And no muttering incantations.”

Sirius looked mildly offended. “I don’t mutter incantations.”

“You literally chanted 'Vigilantia aeterna' last night in your sleep.”

“…for good reason.”

“Get. In.”

Sirius clambered in with a kind of reverence, pulling the blanket over them both with great care, like it might be part of a sacred rite.

Remus rolled to face the wall, muttering, “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

Sirius beamed silently into the dark.

They lay in silence for a while—long enough for the sounds of the castle to settle into their usual rhythm: a distant gust through a corridor, the crack of a log shifting in the fire below, Peter mumbling something unintelligible in his sleep.

Sirius had gone still beside him, though Remus could tell he wasn’t asleep. He could always tell.

After a moment, Remus rolled just enough to glance over his shoulder.

“Sirius,” he said quietly, voice low enough not to disturb the quiet, “why are you doing all of this?”

Sirius blinked, caught. “Doing what?”

“The guarding. The gifts. The... poetry.” He paused. “The rock.”

Sirius inhaled like he was about to deflect with a joke—but for once, he didn’t.

Instead, he stared at the ceiling for a long moment, before saying, “Because you’re everything. And I think if I don’t prove it in every way I can, you’ll forget. Or worse—you’ll believe all the awful things you sometimes think about yourself instead.”

Remus’s chest tightened.

“I know it’s a bit mad,” Sirius added, almost apologetic now. “But loving you sort of... ruins a person. In the best way. And if I’m going to be ruined, I might as well do it properly.”

Remus didn’t speak. He just turned over fully and pressed his forehead to Sirius’s shoulder.

“Okay,” he whispered. “But next time you stand guard outside a bathroom, I will hex you.”

Sirius smiled in the dark. “Worth it.”

Remus lay awake long after Sirius’ breathing had evened out beside him, eyes fixed on the ceiling, thoughts unraveling in knots he couldn’t quite tug loose.

He thinks he loves me.

The words echoed, uninvited and sharp, tangled in warmth and dread. Sirius had said it so plainly—like it was a fact, like gravity or sunrise. As if loving Remus was something inevitable. Natural.

Remus didn’t move. Didn’t breathe too loud. He could still feel the weight of that sentence on the pillow between them.

But surely—it had to be the book. The madness. The strange, ancient enchantments, the poetic instructions, the escalating need to perform devotion. Sirius was many things: dramatic, intense, stupidly loyal. He threw himself into everything like it was a duel to the death. This was just another battle—this time, against an imaginary enemy called Remus’ loneliness .

That had to be it.

Because really loving someone meant knowing them. And Remus had spent years trying to keep anyone from knowing him.

He swallowed hard, guilt settling behind his ribs like a stone.

There’s no way Sirius actually loved him. Not really . Not in the way Remus knew people like him were loved—quietly, briefly, conditionally. Until they found out the full truth.

And yet...

He turned slightly, just enough to glimpse Sirius’ face in sleep, softened and content. His hand was still curled slightly where it had brushed Remus’ arm, like he was guarding him even in dreams.

Remus stared at him for a long time.

What if he does?

Remus hadn’t meant to wake him—he really hadn’t—but his breathing must’ve changed, gone too shallow, too sharp. Because Sirius stirred.

A quiet murmur. A shift of blankets. Then:

“Mm. You’re thinking too loud,” Sirius mumbled, voice thick with sleep.

Remus opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could, Sirius rolled over—unceremoniously, clumsily—and sprawled half on top of him. One arm across his chest, one leg thrown over his hip. A warm, heavy weight. Comforting. Thoughtless.

“Sirius—”

“Shh.” Sirius pressed his forehead to Remus’ shoulder. “You’re safe. I’m here.”

It should’ve been absurd. He was gangly and bony and practically crushing him. But somehow, it worked. The tension in Remus’ jaw, his chest, his fists—unwound.

Sirius let out a content sigh, nestling in closer like a giant, over-affectionate kneazle.

Remus blinked up at the ceiling. The ache in his ribs dulled. The fear receded, just a little.

The room was quiet.

And under the soft pressure of Sirius’ weight and warmth, for the first time in days, Remus’ mind slowed enough to let him sleep.

—

Peter had come with good intentions.

He really had. He’d even brought a backup quill for Remus, knowing full well the one he liked to use always exploded with anxiety ink before big tests. He knocked once, then pushed open the dormitory door, blinking in the early morning light—

And immediately regretted everything.

Sirius was curled around Remus like ivy on a ruin. Shirtless, of course, because modesty had long since left Sirius Black’s vocabulary. He was brushing Remus’ hair off his forehead with painstaking gentleness, then leaning down to kiss it. Once. Twice. A third time, like some quiet little ritual.

“Good morning, love,” Sirius whispered, voice syrupy soft. Another kiss—this time to the top of Remus’ cheekbone. “Did you sleep well? You twitch when you’re having a bad dream, did you know that?”

Remus, still very much asleep, gave a faint little groan and curled slightly closer.

Peter stood there frozen, clutching the damn quill like it was a sword. Watching Sirius press another kiss to Remus’ shoulder, fingers lightly trailing through his hair in slow, absent circles.

He backed out of the room in absolute silence. No one noticed.

Once the door clicked softly shut behind him, Peter sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and muttered:

“I love them. I do. But sweet Merlin, I wish they were slightly less them .”

Notes:

ik i said this was gonna be out tmr but like this is my only escape from organic chemistry right now and i kinda need it...

next chapter saturday probably?

Chapter 5: A Serenade Under Moonlight

Summary:

awww you thought sirius was getting better?!

From The Most Noble Art of Courtly Enchantment: A Guide to Wooing One’s Beloved with Decorum, Dagger-Gaze, and Desperate Devotion
by Sir Albrecht the Ardently Unkissed
Circa 1423, enchanted (poorly) in 1871

A Serenade Under Moonlight

“Music be the language of love, especially when accompanied by inclement weather.”

When yearning consumeth thee entirely, serenade thy Beloved beneath their window , preferably in adverse conditions (rain, wind, minor plague). Construct an original song of devotion, and perform it upon a tragic instrument such as the lute or triangle. Bonus points for rhyming “moon” with “swoon.”

Performance Tips :

 

• Ensure thine sleeves are dramatically soaked.
  
  

• Tremble visibly.
  
  

• Include inexplicable metaphors about wolves and dampness.
  
  

 

If the Beloved throws something, it is a sign of deep emotional stirring.

—

Sirius blinked awake to soft morning light and the smell of Remus Lupin.

Which was, frankly, the best way to wake up.

Remus was warm and pliant against him, breath slow and steady, arm draped across Sirius’s waist like it belonged there. Sirius had spent the last half hour committing every freckle on his shoulder to memory and whispering poetic nothings into his hair, and yet—suddenly—he froze.

The book.

He hadn’t consulted the book.

He sat up slightly, careful not to wake Remus, and stared at nothing in horror. How long had it been? At least a day. Maybe more. What if he had missed an instruction? What if there had been a sacred gesture or trial he was supposed to perform before sunrise? What if Remus’ soul was spiritually adrift because Sirius had forgotten to burn a rose at the foot of his bed?

He gently extricated himself from the bed, whispering an apology to Remus’s elbow. He padded across the room, heart pounding, and retrieved the book from beneath his pillow, where it had been resting like a divine relic.

He opened it.

The gilded lettering shimmered ominously.

Sirius stood by the window in the Gryffindor dormitory, bathed in golden dawn-light, reading from the worn book like it was scripture.

His lips moved silently as he traced the next passage with one reverent fingertip.

“Of Serenades: When words can no longer bear the ache, turn thy love into melody, and let the night air carry thy truth.”

He looked up slowly. The dormitory was quiet, except for the scratch of Peter’s quill and the sound of James humming something tuneless while rolling a Chocolate Frog card between his fingers.

Sirius said, softly but with great gravity:
“It’s time to sing.”

James looked up. “What?”

Sirius turned to them, eyes wild with purpose. “He must know. He must feel it in his bones. And the book says—when that ache outgrows words, I must make it song.”

Peter set down his quill. “…You’re going to sing to Remus?”

Sirius nodded, the way one might nod before going into battle.

“Tonight,” he said, “he’ll be in the Shack. The moon shall bear witness. The wind shall carry my longing to him, aided by a fine lute.”

Peter stared at him. “Where are you getting a lute, Sirius?”

Sirius blinked slowly. “I have a guy.”

James buried his face in a pillow and screamed into it.

Peter wrote a new line in his notebook: “Sirius has a guy for a lute??”

Sirius was already sweeping out of the room like a tragic prince, muttering to himself:
“B minor… yes. That’s the key of yearning.”

Remus slept through it all. 

—

Peter stood frozen in the library aisle, balancing three books on advanced hex theory and one sad cheese scone. Across the room, Sirius hunched like a man possessed, parchment scattered around him like the aftermath of a dramatic duel with a thesaurus.

Sirius muttered as he wrote, quill flashing violently:

“Thy eyes are moons that haunt mine soul…”

Crinkle. Scribble. Ink blot.

“Thy scars the stars I yearn to know…”

Peter approached like one might approach a feral Kneazle.
“Er. Padfoot? Maybe… maybe fewer metaphors about moist longing?”

Sirius didn’t look up. He just whispered, “The ache must drip , Peter.”

Peter slowly backed away.

A few minutes later, Sirius sat back, triumphant. He tapped the top of the final page, where he had dramatically underlined the title:

“Ode to the Wolf-Star, Howling in Mine Chest”

Peter stared at it.

He considered saying something.

Then didn’t.

Instead, he made a mental note to steal the book and hide it under the floorboards.

Peter stared at the ink-smudged parchment.

At Sirius, now crooning softly to himself in a tragic falsetto.
At the quill, gripped like a dagger.
At the final stanza, which included the phrase “my soul’s underpants yearneth for thee.”

Peter closed his eyes.

This could not be his life.

Somewhere across the room, Remus sneezed delicately, and Sirius jolted upright like he’d been summoned by a divine force.
“He needs me,” Sirius whispered, already halfway to the door, sheet music fluttering behind him like wings made of bad decisions.

Peter was alone again.

He looked down at his books. Then at the cheese scone. Then at the nearest exit.

For a moment—a brief, shameful moment—he genuinely considered defecting to Slytherin. Maybe he could trade dorms. Reinvent himself. Grow a sleek, evil ponytail.

Instead, he opened his notebook and wrote:

“Day ??? – Sirius composed operatic wolf poetry.
Remus looked tired.
I fear they are both spiraling.
I fear I am enabling it.
I fear I may never know peace.”

He underlined the final line twice. Then ate the scone in bitter silence.

—

James slouched on the cold bench of the Quidditch pitch stands, scarf looped loosely around his neck, chin tucked into his cloak collar as the sky deepened from orange to violet.

The moon crept up, round and pale as a coin.

He should’ve gone back in by now. His Transfiguration essay wasn’t going to write itself. And yet.

The flutter was back.

It wasn’t nerves. It wasn’t hunger. It wasn’t some noble Gryffindor urge to practice Quidditch drills under the stars.
No. It was something far worse.

Romantic.
Annoying.
Regulus-shaped.

James groaned aloud and dropped his face into his hands.
Because really, how was a person supposed to live a normal seventeen-year-old life when Regulus Black existed like that ?

All sharp lines and biting wit and smug little half-smiles that made James feel like he'd been hexed in the chest. And he probably had, honestly. He wouldn't put it past Regulus to have invented an actual Charm of Mild, Ongoing Emotional Devastation.

James glanced upward.

Somewhere in the castle, Regulus was probably reading a book with unpronounceable Latin words and making clever, cutting observations in perfect cursive. Or plotting something. Or rearranging his pillows by moon phase.

James sighed.

The moon shimmered on the edge of the horizon like it, too, was watching Regulus Black and wondering what the hell to do with itself.

James blinked down at his Transfiguration notes and frowned.

Where there should’ve been a diagram of partial vanishment theory, there was…
Well. There was:

"Thine eyes like poisoned quills,
Scribble doubt upon my soul."

He stared at it in horror.

Next to it, a second line had appeared in even worse handwriting—his own:

"Thy silence—daggers dipped in moonlight."

“Merlin’s bloody pants,” James muttered, slamming the notebook shut like it might stop the bleeding.

It didn’t.

He opened to another page.
More ink-scrawled tragedy awaited him:

"O perfect curse in human shape,
Thou graceless prince of sleepless ache."

“ Nope ,” he hissed, tearing the page out and crumpling it. “Absolutely not. I’m not becoming Sirius.”

And yet, as the parchment hit the floor, he found himself scribbling something new in the margin.

"If you hex me, let it be soft."

He stared at it for a long time.

Then, with a sigh of complete defeat, he wrote under it:

"P.S. I would let you."

James Potter, it seemed, was doomed.

Tucked beneath Sirius’ pillow in the Gryffindor dormitory, the book stirred.

Its leathery cover flexed like it was breathing. The gold lettering shimmered softly, pulsing in rhythm with some unseen heartbeat. Just once—like it was sighing.

The page curled at the edges, fluttering even though there was no wind.

In glimmering ink, a new line etched itself onto the parchment Sirius hadn’t yet read:

“When the ache spreads, so too shall the bond.”

No one was there to see it.

Not even James, who at that exact moment was still scrawling something sappy and vaguely incriminating in the margins of his  transfiguration notes.

The book waited.

—

Remus stared.

The moon hadn’t even risen fully yet. His joints were aching, the transformation clawing at the edges of his nerves—and Sirius Black was standing in the snow, chest heaving, shirt unbuttoned to a frankly criminal degree, with a lute .

The plinking resumed.

“Oh my sweet, my silver-honeyed beast,
Let me be thy prey and feast—”

“Sirius,” Remus croaked through the cracked window, voice already hoarse from the screaming. “What in the absolute hell are you doing.”

Sirius looked up at him with radiant, moon-drunk eyes. “The book said music transcends pain!”

“You’re going to transcend this earth if you keep going,” Remus snapped, but it lacked heat. Mostly because he was too stunned.

And a little because the bastard had a nice voice.

A pause. A plink. Then:

“Thy fangs do rend, thy gaze is bright—
I beg thee devour me in the night—”

“Sirius!”

“Is it the rhyme?” Sirius shouted back, lute poised. “I can change the rhyme!”

Remus slammed the window shut and sat down hard on the floor of the Shack.

He buried his face in his hands.

Remus was horrified .

Mortified. Appalled. Emotionally flayed.

He pressed both hands to the windowpane, watching in stunned silence as Sirius—his shirt billowing like some tragic Brontë heroine— belted out verse after godforsaken verse into the moonlight.

“And if thy claws should shred me whole—
I’d thank thee kindly, heart and soul—”

Sirius sang with the fervor of a man offering his life to the divine.

Remus wanted to die.

And then, salvation descended on leathery wings.

A rogue howler owl , clearly deranged by the noise, dive-bombed from the sky with a screech and ripped into the lute .

There was a snapping of strings. A shout. Sirius spun in a flurry of feathers, trying to shield the instrument.

“ No—NO—this was from Gregorovitch’s cousin! ”

The owl tore out a chunk of wood and vanished into the trees.

Remus collapsed backward onto the Shack floor, staring up at the rafters, half-laughing, half-ready to sob.

Somewhere below, Sirius yelled, “I’ll find another lute! For love! ”

Remus closed his eyes.

He was going to need a very long talk with Madam Pomfrey. Or a priest. Or both.

—

Peter and James skidded to a halt just outside the Shrieking Shack, breathing hard from the run. The last notes of Sirius’s tragic serenade still hung in the air like the smell of smoke after a fire—ominous, cloying, and slightly singed.

“What was that,” Peter panted, looking around wildly. “Was that—was that a lute ?”

James didn’t answer. He was staring up at the shattered remnants of the instrument, one string still vibrating faintly in the wind like the last nerve in his body. “He did it,” he murmured. “The madman actually did it.”

Inside the shack, Remus pressed his back to the door. His fingers twitched, nails lengthening, teeth aching, spine curling in warning. The moon had fully risen. The transformation was clawing at his bones—and all he could think about was that Sirius Black had stood outside in a poet’s shirt and declared his love through iambic moonlight disaster .

“Merlin help me,” Remus whispered hoarsely, “if that song gets stuck in my head mid-transformation, I will eat him.”

Outside, Sirius was already sketching a new melody in the dirt with a stick. “Second movement: ‘Howls Beneath Thy Window.’ Minor key. Soulful.”

Peter turned to James. “This has to be the curse, right?”

James nodded slowly. “Yeah. Probably. Hopefully.”
Then, squinting toward the Shack:
“…Should we maybe—deal with the actual werewolf now?”

“Oh right! ” Peter yelped. “Right! Moon. Wolf. Danger. Focus.”

James grabbed his wand. “Sirius, save the opera for later!”

Sirius looked up dreamily. “But I’ve only begun the bridge…”

James marched toward the door. “You’re about to be the bridge between Remus and a bloodbath if we don’t get in there now.”

Sirius blinked, as though remembering that love poems didn’t block claws.
“…Right. Duty calls.”

Together, they slipped inside, hearts pounding—not from fear of the wolf, but from the sheer, escalating lunacy of love.

As the first sharp crack of Sirius’s animagus transformation echoed through the Shrieking Shack, he fell to his knees—bones reshaping, spine contorting, hands curling into claws. But even through the shift, his mind clung to one thing:

The song must go on.

A ragged sound tore from his throat—not quite human, not quite dog, something in between. And then, as the last of his skin gave way to fur, his new throat opened and let loose a sound so soulfully mournful it vibrated the very wood of the shack.

A howl.

Long, keening, and absurdly on pitch.

It was not a battle cry. It was not territorial.

It was a serenade .

Remus, mid-shift himself, had his jaws parted in a snarl of pain—until the sound hit him. He paused. Confused. Offended. Bewildered.

And then Sirius—now Padfoot, fully transformed, still dramatic—threw his head back and howled again . A haunting, lovesick, theatrical melody.

Remus’s golden eyes narrowed. He made a chuffing sound—somewhere between a growl and a sigh—and lowered himself onto his paws. He circled once, begrudgingly bumping shoulders with Padfoot in passing.

Fine. If he couldn’t escape the madness, he could at least endure it.

Padfoot whined joyously and sat beside him, tail thumping, then let out a shorter, jauntier howl.

Moony bit his ear. Gently.

Padfoot took that as encouragement and launched into a new verse.

From the corner of the room, James—fully stag now—rested his head against the wall in exhausted disbelief. Moony deserved a medal.

—

Padfoot was acting weird .

Not in the usual prank-happy, run-in-circles-until-you-fall-over way. No—this was something else. Something intentional . Almost... tender.

He stayed close, closer than usual, even for them. Pressed to Moony’s side, shoulder to flank, like a sentry on watch. Every time Moony stirred—half-growl, half-nervous twitch—Padfoot would lean in and gently bump him. Nose to jaw. Paw to paw.

He brought over a stick. Set it neatly by Moony’s feet like an offering.

When Moony didn’t react, Padfoot picked it up again and dropped it closer. And then closer still. And then on him.

Moony flattened his ears and stared at him, affronted.

Padfoot wagged his tail furiously, then sat. Lifted one paw like a knight pledging fealty.

Moony, half-feral from the moon, headbutted him.

Padfoot licked his nose.

Then sprawled on the floor, long and luxurious, tail thudding softly against the floorboards. Watching. Waiting.

Just in case.

Moony didn’t quite understand it. But when he finally curled up for what sleep he could manage, he let his side brush against Padfoot’s again.

Just a little.

Padfoot didn’t move.

—

Remus woke to warmth.

His body ached, a dull throb that threaded through his limbs like old bruises, but there was a softness to it. A gentleness. He blinked against the pale morning light filtering through the hospital wing curtains, squinting up at—

Sirius.

Sirius, perched on the edge of the bed like he’d always belonged there, hair loose and wild, his voice low and softer than air .

“—sleep, my wolf, rest thy weary bones / the hunt is past, the moon has flown—”

Remus blinked harder. “Are you singing to me?”

Sirius jumped slightly, his eyes going wide. “You’re awake! I was—no. I mean, yes. A little. Just the ending . You missed the part with the ocean metaphor.”

Remus groaned and rolled his head back. “Of course there was an ocean metaphor.”

Sirius leaned in, unabashed. “You liked it. Your heart rate evened out.”

“I was unconscious.”

“And you stayed unconscious. That counts for something.”

Remus didn’t have the strength to argue. Sirius was already smoothing the blanket over his shoulders, brushing a stray curl off his forehead like he’d done it a hundred times before.

“You were amazing,” Sirius whispered. “You always are.”

Remus stared at him.

Sirius stared right back. Unapologetically, infuriatingly devoted.

Remus sighed and let his eyes drift shut again. “Five more minutes of this, and then I’m making you explain the goat jousting page of this book I found.”

Sirius only grinned. “Deal.”

He hadn’t left the bedside. Not once.

Usually, after the full moon, he was there—yes—but distracted. Nervous energy, pacing, cracking jokes to lighten the air. Sometimes he’d sneak in chocolate, or hex the curtain rail to play jazz. Always hovering, always present, but never like this .

This time, he was folded in on himself beside Remus like a protective animal. Shoulders tense. Eyes sharp. One hand resting lightly on Remus’s blanket-covered arm like he thought he might stop breathing if he let go.

“Does it still hurt?” Sirius asked, barely above a whisper.

Remus opened one eye. “It always hurts.”

“More than usual?”

“Sirius.”

That didn’t deter him. “Do you feel dizzy? What about your ribs? Your breathing sounded strange when you were asleep. Should I get Pomfrey?”

“You’re watching me breathe in my sleep now?”

Sirius didn’t even flinch. “Of course I am.”

Remus blinked.

Sirius leaned forward, brows drawn tight. “You thrashed at one point. And whimpered. I almost—if I could’ve gone into the dream and fought it for you, I would’ve.”

Remus stared at him.

“And you had a scratch here—” Sirius ghosted a finger over a fading cut near Remus’s collarbone. “It wasn’t there last time. I memorized your scars, I know where they go.”

Remus choked on something between a laugh and a groan. “That’s not comforting, Pads.”

“You don’t have to find it comforting. I find it necessary.”

Sirius resumed tucking the blankets tighter around him with the furious precision of a nurse on a warpath.

Remus caught his hand before he could re-fluff the pillow again .

“I’m alright,” he said gently. “You don’t have to keep doing this.”

“Yes, I do.” Sirius’s voice cracked around the words. “Because I didn’t know, Remus. I didn’t know I could feel like this. And now that I do—now that I see you—everything feels like it’s trying to take you away.”

Remus’s fingers tightened around his. “Sirius—”

“I’m staying,” he said, softly but firmly. “Until you tell me to leave. And even then, I’ll probably just sit under the bed and wait.”

Remus closed his eyes again.

He didn’t say it—but he didn’t let go of Sirius’s hand either.

—

The infirmary was quiet. The soft clink of potion bottles and the distant rustle of Madam Pomfrey's office were the only sounds—except for Sirius's breathing.

Remus lay still, feigning sleep, his fingers curled loosely around Sirius’s.

This wasn’t right.

Sirius was quiet. Still. Obedient.

Not his Sirius.

His Sirius was a menace. A clever, gleaming-eyed, sarcastic bastard who picked fights for fun and then kissed apologies onto Remus’s ribs. His Sirius never sat down for more than five minutes unless there was a firewhisky bottle or an argument involved. His Sirius was maddeningly brilliant and impatient and selfish and alive .

This Sirius... he was like a ghost. All soft eyes and trembling hands and single-minded devotion. Everything had narrowed down to Remus. He barely even looked at James or Peter anymore. He hadn’t cracked a single joke. He didn’t even smirk when Madam Pomfrey told him off for trying to spoon-feed Remus himself .

It scared Remus.

He shifted under the blankets and said softly, “Sirius?”

Sirius looked up instantly. “Do you need something?”

“No. I just—” He faltered. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Sirius said it automatically, like a spell. “You’re the one who’s hurt.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Sirius blinked. “What did you mean, then?”

“I mean you’re—” Remus hesitated, then forced the words out. “You’re not being you . You’re not annoying. You’re not insufferable. You’re not making fun of my hair or correcting the nurse’s Latin or pretending to faint because I wouldn’t let you spoon me while I’m still bleeding.”

Sirius tilted his head, confused.

Remus looked at him closely. “You’re just... looking at me like I’m your whole world. And I don’t think that’s healthy. Not for you.”

“I want to,” Sirius said. “You are. You always have been.”

Remus’s stomach twisted. “But that’s not how you usually—”

Sirius leaned forward, voice urgent. “But maybe it should be. Maybe I wasn’t serious enough before. Maybe I didn’t show you—”

“You did!” Remus burst out. “You do ! Just—” He swallowed, hard. “Not like this. Not like I’m the only thing keeping your heart beating.”

He paused. Sirius stared at him, eyes wide, hurt starting to bloom behind them.

Remus reached up, touched the edge of Sirius’s cheek, thumb brushing a streak of dried worry.

“I want you,” he said quietly, “not whatever this... this enchanted shadow version of you is. I want the Sirius who makes me laugh. The Sirius who makes me angry . The Sirius who argues with portraits and hexes his shampoo bottle for being boring.”

“I still have opinions about shampoo,” Sirius whispered, uncertain.

Remus gave a watery laugh. “Then say them. Be you. Because we love that Sirius. Not some cursed courtly knight version who bows before breakfast and treats me like I’ll shatter.”

There was a silence between them, full of air and ache.

Finally, Sirius blinked slowly, as if waking from something. His fingers twitched against Remus’s hand.

“I miss me too,” he said softly.

And Remus, against his better judgment, pulled him into bed and wrapped his arms around him. Just for now. Just until he figured out how to break the spell without breaking Sirius’s heart.

Because he would. He had to.

—

The book had shown him truths no one else could. That love was not merely a feeling—it was a duty . A calling. A sacred, blistering oath.

He turned another page with reverence, fingertips trembling.

“To win thy heart’s desire, thou must become a vessel of devotion; purge thyself of vanity, distraction, and doubt. Let thy every breath serve their comfort. Let thy soul be tethered to theirs, as stars are bound to constellations.”

Sirius inhaled sharply. Of course. That was the mistake he had made before. He had flirted and laughed and teased, and Remus had smiled, yes, but Sirius hadn’t proven anything. Hadn’t suffered for it. Hadn’t sacrificed .

This was why the ache inside him never went away—why even kissing Remus on his cheek that one time, fast and terrified, hadn’t felt like enough. Because he hadn’t given all of himself.

He pressed the book to his lips.

“I'm ready,” he whispered. “I’ll become whatever he needs. I’ll bleed for him. Burn for him. Sing for him. Just tell me what to do.”

The pages fluttered as if in response.

He imagined Remus, golden and wrecked in moonlight, looking at him not with caution but with awe. With love. Real love. Eternal, consecrated, all-consuming.

Sirius smiled, slow and manic. Yes. That’s what the book meant. That was his path.

He was a knight now. A guardian. A lover forged in devotion. And once Remus finally saw the lengths he would go—once Sirius proved that no force, no pain, no rival could stand between them—Remus would have to accept him.

They’d be happy then.

Forever.

Sirius closed his eyes, his breathing slowing, the book still pulsing faintly beside him.

He did not notice the way the ink on the page shifted slightly when he slept, curling deeper into itself like vines tightening around a heart.

—

James stared at the ceiling.

He’d counted the cracks in the stone wall. Twice. He’d tried reading Which Broomstick . Tried sleeping. He’d even briefly considered doing his Transfiguration essay.

Nothing helped.

There was a pull under his ribs. Not pain, not exactly—but something needling and restless, like being half-awake in a dream he couldn’t quite name. He rolled over and glanced at the dormitory window.

Moonlight.

Somewhere, Regulus was awake too. He knew it. Felt it in the backs of his teeth.

James sat up.

“No,” he muttered to himself. “No, you’re not sneaking out to go find the younger brother of your best mate, who probably hates you and definitely thinks you’re insane.”

He threw himself back onto the pillow.

Then got up again.

Socks. Wand. Invisibility cloak. He moved on instinct.

Each stair down from the tower made his heart beat faster—not with fear, but with anticipation . The same stupid giddy buzz he’d felt the last time Regulus had looked at him too long and said, in that flat, velvet voice, “You’re exhausting.”

He’d thought about that for days.

At the bottom of the stairs, James paused, just for a second, hand on the portrait hole.

“What the hell is wrong with me,” he whispered.

But his feet were already moving. Quiet, quick, practiced.

He didn’t see the faint shimmer that pulsed from the book on Sirius’ nightstand, nor feel the way his fingers itched as if seeking parchment or poetry or something to offer.

All he knew was that he had to see Regulus.

Had to be near him.

Just for a minute.

Maybe two.

The dungeons were cold. Damp. Smelled like stone and secrets.

James had no idea what he was doing.

He'd crept down here a hundred times before for pranks, for mischief, for dares. But this felt different. He wasn’t grinning now. His heart was in his throat.

He paused in the shadows across from the Slytherin common room’s hidden entrance, fingers clenching the invisibility cloak. He didn’t even know the password. He had no plan. He was just— here .

And then: footsteps.

Soft. Precise.

Regulus.

Of course it was Regulus.

He came into view like he’d walked straight out of a fever dream—draped in dark green, wand tucked into his sleeve, eyes shadowed and sharp. He stopped short when he sensed the air shift.

James lifted the cloak.

Regulus didn’t flinch. He just looked at him. As if he’d been expecting this.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Regulus said.

James stepped forward. “I know.”

Regulus tilted his head slightly. “Then why are you?”

James opened his mouth. Closed it. The only answer he could think of was I missed you , which made no sense at all.

“You ever…” He faltered. “You ever feel like you’re being… dragged toward someone?”

Regulus smiled. Small. Cruel. Beautiful. “That’s not the book. That’s you.”

James blinked. “Wait, so you do think there’s a book thing?”

Regulus shrugged. “I think you don’t want to admit you like being ruined a little.”

James made a strangled noise. “Okay, I don’t—what the hell does that mean?”

Regulus stepped closer. Close enough for James to smell mint and ink and the weird cold-sweet scent of the dungeons. His voice dropped.

“It means,” he said, “you keep coming back to me like it’s a compulsion. But maybe it’s just your nature.”

James felt dizzy.

He didn’t know if he wanted to hex him or kiss him or run back upstairs screaming.

Regulus looked at the floor between them. “The book works on people who already feel the ache. Don’t forget that.”

Then, without another word, he turned and vanished through the stone wall.

James stood in silence.

The ache in his chest pulsed louder.

He didn’t think. He never thought when it came to Regulus, apparently.

The wall had barely sealed when he murmured “ Atra venia ” — the old password he’d overheard once — and slipped through before it finished closing. He had no idea how he remembered it. Probably wasn’t a great sign.

The Slytherin common room was empty. Cold green light shimmered over black water from the lake outside the windows. Regulus was already halfway up the far staircase.

“Oi,” James hissed.

Regulus turned around, and for a second he looked startled. Just for a second.

“You followed me.”

James shrugged. “You said it wasn’t the book. So I guess that means I’m doing this of my own idiotic volition.”

“That’s meant to comfort me?”

“No,” James said honestly. “But maybe you’ll come on a walk anyway?”

Regulus studied him, arms crossed. Then, slowly, he descended the stairs again, brushing past James with an unreadable expression.

They stepped outside into the night.

The air was sharp and clean, the lake black glass in the distance. They walked in silence for several minutes — James shoving his hands in his pockets, Regulus clasping his behind his back like a tiny dark prince.

It was unbearable.

“So,” James said, after the quiet got too loud. “How’s your… soul?”

Regulus snorted. “Same as yours. Loud. Ill-advised. Filled with longing.”

James nearly tripped over a tree root.

“I—okay. I don’t even know if you’re mocking me.”

“You don’t want to know,” Regulus said mildly. “You’d be too flattered if I weren’t.”

James groaned. “You’re annoying.”

Regulus turned to him suddenly. “You like it.”

James didn’t respond. Not in words.

He just looked at him — really looked — under the hazy spill of moonlight.

And Regulus, for once, looked back without the armor.

“You want to be ruined a little,” Regulus said again, softer this time.

James stepped closer. “Only if it’s you doing it.”

The ache was back. Louder than ever.

James wasn’t quite sure when Regulus started talking again — just that his voice had a cadence to it, low and deliberate, like something practiced and polished over years of making himself untouchable.

“…the thing about infernal contracts is that they’re always metaphor first. Blood for loyalty. Bone for permanence. Love for ruin. Magic doesn’t know how to be subtle.”

James blinked. “Wait, you’re talking about real infernal contracts?”

Regulus nodded, completely unfazed. “Obviously.”

James snorted. “That’s the most Slytherin pickup line I’ve ever heard.”

Regulus just arched a brow. “Did it work?”

James flushed and looked away. “No comment.”

But it had worked. Of course it had.

Because here’s the problem: James had never paid much attention to Regulus Black, not really. Not in the way that mattered. He’d been too busy with Quidditch, with Sirius, with being the shining golden boy.

But now?

Now he couldn’t stop noticing things.

Like the way Regulus’ wit cut like a knife, but never drew blood — unless he meant to.

The way his words had this rhythm, like he spoke in measured spells.

The way the corners of his mouth twitched when he let something genuine slip, only to swallow it back again like it was dangerous.

And — fuck — the way his eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Grey, yes, like Sirius’, but steadier. Colder. Older. Like he was always seeing too much and showing too little.

James hadn’t signed any infernal contracts.

But he was getting ruined anyway.

He didn’t say any of that, of course. He just laughed softly and said, “You know, you’re kind of—”

Regulus turned toward him again, waiting.

James’ brain stopped working.

“—awful. You’re kind of awful.”

Regulus gave the faintest smirk. “You’re a terrible liar.”

James shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and didn’t argue.

They walked slower on the way back.

Regulus wasn’t saying much now, but James could feel the energy vibrating off him like magic under skin — too taut, too bright. His hands were tucked behind his back like always, posture perfect, chin tilted up, as though daring the moon to judge him.

James couldn’t stop smiling.

It was ridiculous. Stupid. Embarrassing. He was grinning , walking beside the most guarded, cutting person he knew — and Regulus was letting him. Not just tolerating him. Enjoying him. Laughing with him. Occasionally brushing James’ sleeve with his own like it meant nothing when it clearly meant everything .

They passed the Clock Tower Arch, slipping into the quieter corridors. James glanced sideways and saw it.

Regulus was smiling too.

It wasn’t the polished smile he wore for pureblood events. It wasn’t the sneer he used on classmates or the sharp smirk reserved for subtle victory. It was a real smile. Soft. Uncertain. A little crooked. Like it had snuck up on him when he wasn’t looking.

James felt it like a kick to the chest.

“Don’t do that,” he said before he could stop himself.

Regulus blinked. “Do what?”

“That. Your face. That smile.” James pretended to groan. “It’s making me crazy .”

Regulus snorted. " You’re the one who started smiling like a lunatic the moment I agreed to walk."

James bumped their shoulders together. “That’s because I’m deranged. I’m also charming, lovable, and deeply cursed with good hair.”

Regulus rolled his eyes, but he didn’t step away.

They stopped at the corridor where they’d have to part — James back to Gryffindor, Regulus to wherever it was the shadows let him sleep.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

“Thanks,” Regulus said, low, almost awkward. “For the book. And... this.”

James’ chest hurt. “You’re welcome. Anytime. Literally anytime. I mean it.”

Regulus nodded, that smile ghosting back. It looked like it belonged there now.

James watched him go, waiting until he turned the corner before letting out a breathless laugh, half-choked with glee.

He leaned against the stone wall, scrubbed a hand through his hair, and whispered to himself, “Oh, I am so fucked.”

Notes:

lmk what you think!

next chapter monday probably

Chapter 6: A Crisis of Courtship

Notes:

hiii...

sorry this is kinda late.... i just started a new internship and i'm pretty busy

i'll try to get the next chapter out as soon as i can, but i'm pretty much rewriting it and yeah

it could be a little bit sorry

Remus woke slowly, the grey of dawn slipping through the tower windows and painting everything in pale blue light.

The first thing he registered was the warmth. The second was the weight.

Sirius.

He was draped half across Remus’ chest like a very determined, aristocratic dog, arm slung over his stomach, face tucked just under his collarbone. He was snoring softly — not loud, just the faintest rasp of breath against skin, rhythmic and utterly unbothered.

Remus didn’t move.

He stayed still, eyes open now, watching the soft rise and fall of the curtains around the bed and the faint flutter of Sirius’ lashes where they brushed his throat.

It had been a week since the serenade. Months since Sirius started guarding stairwells, testing pumpkin juice, and slipping into Remus’ bed each night like it was his assigned post. He never asked. He just climbed in and curled up like he belonged there — like he always had.

And the worst part was... Remus let him.

He let him, because he missed him. Because he loved him. And because even now, in the wreckage of whatever this was becoming, Sirius still felt like safety.

But this wasn’t normal. This wasn’t the Sirius he knew.

The Sirius he loved was sharp-edged and infuriating. Reckless, brilliant, always two steps ahead and utterly impossible to manage. The Sirius who argued just to argue. Who flicked ink at Remus in the library and pulled pranks on prefects and wore his robes like war banners.

This version was... softer. Too soft. Singular. Quiet in all the wrong ways.

He didn’t tease anymore. He didn’t scheme. He just watched , followed, hovered. Like some feral knight assigned to Remus’ service by an ancient curse.

And Remus had been too afraid to ask why.

He shifted a little, letting his hand slide gently through Sirius’ hair. It was soft and unbrushed, trailing over his face in loose waves. Sirius stirred but didn’t wake, just burrowed closer like a sleepy animal.

Remus stared at the canopy overhead.

This isn’t right, he thought.
But he wanted it.
But it wasn’t right.
But he wanted it.

He closed his eyes, burying his face in Sirius’ hair.

Just one more morning.

Sirius stirred again, breath hitching slightly against Remus’ collarbone. Then a low, contented sound — something like a purr and a sigh — slipped from him as he nuzzled closer, eyes still shut. His fingers clenched gently in the hem of Remus’ shirt.

“Morning,” Remus murmured, too softly for anyone else to hear.

Sirius blinked slowly awake, grey eyes cloudy with sleep. His mouth curled into the laziest smile, the kind that felt earned. Real. Warm.

“Hullo, Moony,” he whispered, voice hoarse and fond in that particular way that made Remus ache. “You’re still here.”

“You fell asleep on top of me. Not much room to escape.”

Sirius chuckled, barely more than a breath. He didn’t move away — just nestled his cheek fully onto Remus’ chest like he’d declared it sacred ground. “Good. Didn’t want you to.”

Remus ran a hand absently through Sirius’ tangled hair, thumb brushing gently over the shell of his ear. Sirius closed his eyes again, melting under the touch like a cat in sunlight.

Remus watched him — the softness of his jaw unclenched, the peace in his brow where tension usually lived. He was beautiful like this. Fragile in a way Sirius never let himself be in daylight.

He wanted mornings like this. He wanted them honestly.

He wanted to wake up with Sirius half-draped across him for no reason other than love — not compulsion. Not obsession. Not magic. Just... love.

But the curse clung to Sirius like a second skin. It whispered in his ear at night and bent his instincts into things Remus couldn’t trust.

He deserved better, Remus thought. Sirius deserved to love freely, not like this.

And yet—

Remus kissed the top of his head. Gentle. Quiet. Almost apologetic.

“Someday,” he whispered, “you’re going to wake up and not need me like this.”

Sirius murmured sleepily, “Don’t want someday. Want now.”

Remus closed his eyes.

So did he.

—

Sirius sat cross-legged atop his bed, surrounded by the detritus of failed attempts — parchment shredded like feathers, inky scrawls of half-poems and ruined oaths. The curtains were half-drawn, casting the room in a dull gold. He hadn’t moved in hours.

The enchanted book sat open in front of him, glowing faintly, as if smug in its certainty.

Chapter 6: When Thine Advances Fail
“If thy beloved hath not yet succumbed, the fault is surely thine own.”

Sirius stared at the words, jaw clenched so tightly his teeth ached. He felt them dig like a blade just beneath the sternum. The air around him prickled.

“Right,” he muttered. “My fault. Of course. Should’ve known.”

His gaze flicked to the pile of scribbled lyrics — pathetic, he thought now. Romantic metaphors and wobbly stanzas. What kind of knight wrote “thy scars the stars I yearn to know” and meant it?

“Maybe I’m not knightly enough. Maybe he knows I’m a fraud,” he whispered.

He tugged open the drawer beside his bed and pulled out a weathered envelope — the Black family crest already half-faded, corners chewed by time. Inside, old photos. Stiff portraits. Dark eyes and cruel mouths.

His fingers shook as he laid them out.

“Behold,” he told the empty room. “My noble bloodline.”

Walburga glared up at him from one frame, regal and unloving. Orion, hollow-eyed. Cousins in stiff formation, all perfect posture and poison. Bellatrix, wild and grinning like a predator.

“What legacy?” he spat. “What honour? I bit James in third year and he cried in front of Flitwick.”

He laughed bitterly. It echoed too sharp in the quiet.

The book’s pages turned of their own accord, flipping to another passage.

“Thou must redouble thy vows, prove thy devotion through acts most grand. Let no obstacle deter thee from conquest of the heart.”

Sirius pressed his hands over his face.

“I’d burn Hogwarts to the ground if he asked,” he said. “But he didn’t ask. He never asked.”

He looked back at the book.

“Tell me what to do. I’ll do anything.”

—

Sirius had been pacing for forty minutes.

Peter counted.

Back and forth in front of the fireplace, his boots scuffing against the rug in that frantic, uneven rhythm. His hair was wild, half-tied back with a quill Remus had left behind, and his sleeves were soaked with spilled ink and potion residue.

“Do you think silver flowers or gold ones say eternal devotion?” Sirius asked abruptly, not really waiting for an answer. “Or maybe thistle. That’s dramatic. Tragic. Spiky.”

He spun on his heel, nearly tripping over a stray cushion.

Peter looked up from his Charms essay, dead-eyed. “For what?”

“The serenade. The next one. Or—maybe an offering. Or—” Sirius froze. “Do you think I should duel someone for him? Maybe a public declaration of fealty. A contract in blood.”

Peter blinked. “You’re... not in a cult, right?”

Sirius didn't hear him. He was muttering to himself now, pawing through his satchel for parchment, yanking out old notes, torn diagrams, crumpled poetry drafts. One flew into the fire. He didn’t notice.

“I need it to mean something,” Sirius said to no one. “I need him to know. But he’s slipping through my fingers—no, no, that’s not right, he’s right here , he’s with me every night, he lets me stay —so why does it still feel like I’m losing?”

He dropped suddenly to the floor, parchment snowing around him like ash.

Peter closed his book very slowly.

Sirius started tearing open one of his own books, frantically flipping through pages, muttering lines like spells, “— when thine beloved resisteth still, thou must escalate the gesture— ”

“Sirius,” Peter said carefully, “Maybe you should take a break.”

Sirius snapped his head up. His eyes were rimmed with red, glittering with an unplaceable shine. He smiled — big, white, dazzling. Wrong.

“No need, Wormy. I’m just getting started.”

Peter really was starting to think he was the only sane person left at Hogwarts.

Which, frankly, was terrifying.

It began with Sirius.

He didn’t eat anymore — not normally , anyway. He picked the mushrooms out of every meal and arranged them into tiny, heart-shaped mosaics on his plate. He spelled the steam off Remus’s tea every morning. He started calling him “moonflower,” and then acted like it was Remus’ fault for blushing at it.

He quoted poetry aloud in the corridors, just loud enough for Remus to hear. Recited his own verses in the stairwells. Peter caught him trying to carve initials into a tree in the courtyard — in winter, with a butter knife — muttering, “He’ll see it bloom in spring. Symbolism, Wormtail.”

And Remus? He looked like he was dying slowly. Not in the physical way — no, his color was better than usual, his posture straight, his clothes neat. But there was something in his eyes, something frayed and frantic and sleepless .

Once, Peter found Remus standing perfectly still in the corridor outside the boys’ dormitory. Just... frozen. As if he couldn’t face what was behind the door.

James was no better.

He’d been sneaking off at night again, skipping . Peter caught him humming in the bathroom mirror with a sappy look on his face and smiling at his own reflection .

Peter: “Where have you been?”

James, dazed: “Where the stars speak french.”

Peter: “…Okay. Great.”

Sometimes he walked into walls.

Remus tried cornering Peter after dinner one night, voice low and serious. “Have you noticed anything… off with Sirius?” he asked, too casual to be genuine.

Peter gave him a long, long look.

“Have you ?” he said flatly.

Remus didn’t answer. His hands were shaking.

Peter had known for a long time that all three of his friends were insane in their own special ways. He just hadn’t realized until now that those insanities could sync up like a cursed constellation and drag them all down at once.

He tried telling McGonagall once. Just hinted. Just a whisper. “Professor, I think—”

She gave him a Look. He folded. He was not brave.

Peter went back to his dormitory and found Sirius perched on Remus’ bed like a gargoyle, holding a bouquet of frost-covered thistle and whispering about proving his purity through suffering.

Peter closed the door.

Nope.

—

The lamps burned low in the library, casting long golden shadows between the stacks. Remus sat curled up on the leather couch tucked into the far corner near the Restricted Section, Sirius draped across his lap like a living, breathing velvet throw.

He was asleep again. He’d been doing that more often lately — like a cat that couldn’t stand to be too far from the hearth. His head rested just beneath Remus’ ribs, arms tucked tightly around Remus’ waist as if anchoring himself there. The soft sound of his breathing barely covered the scratch of Remus’ quill.

Remus shifted his knees, tried not to disturb him. Sirius sighed in his sleep, brow twitching, and Remus froze. Waited. Watched.

Only when he was sure Sirius had sunk back into that too-peaceful sleep did Remus return to the page before him.

“Ancestral Enchantments of the Noble Houses” was a brittle old volume, water-damaged at the corners, the ink gone brown with age. The Black family had an entire chapter. Of course they did.

Remus flipped past bloodline tracing and lineage-anchored binding spells , past heir priming and covenant-mirroring . He stopped when he reached:

“Courtship Rites and the Madness of Devotion”

The margin had a note in someone else’s hand — tiny and sharp, ink faded to rust:

‘Most active when object of affection is perceived as endangered. Reactions extreme. Subject may lose sense of personal identity in pursuit of romantic ideal.’

Remus’ mouth went dry.

He scanned the passage.

“Such rituals, often initiated unconsciously through heirlooms or scripted enchantments, produce a compulsion of courtship. The subject may exhibit delusions of chivalric duty, poetic expression, hyper-possessiveness, and emotional fusion with the object of affection. Breakage may result in psychic rupture or severe magical backlash.”

His eyes darted to Sirius, still asleep, his fingers unconsciously fisted in the hem of Remus’ jumper. Even in sleep, he clung. As if letting go meant death.

Remus swallowed hard.

This wasn’t his Sirius — not completely. Not the snide, sharp-tongued boy who argued for the sake of it, who got bored halfway through conversations and started doodling blood sigils on napkins. Not the Sirius who used to skip dinners just to hex the word “NOBLE” off every tapestry in Grimmauld.

This Sirius murmured things in his sleep. Soft, fervent things. Swore oaths under his breath. Said Remus like a prayer.

And that scared him more than the teeth and claws of the wolf.

He traced the page again with his fingertip.

“Severance may be achieved only through direct confrontation of the enchantment’s terms. Ritual items, spoken vows, or ongoing recitations must be nullified. Mutual awareness between both parties is essential. But timing is delicate.”

Delicate. Of course it was. Black magic always was.

He glanced back down at Sirius, who was stirring now, lashes fluttering, eyes still closed. His nose scrunched. A little groan escaped him, and he burrowed deeper into Remus' jumper like a dog in a blanket.

“Mm... Moony?” Sirius murmured. “Still safe?”

Remus paused. “Yeah. You’re okay.”

“Good,” he sighed, loosening slightly. “Would’ve killed someone if not.”

Remus went still. “Right.”

He stared at the book again.

He was running out of time.

Remus watched Sirius go back to sleep, chin resting lightly on his hand, the other arm still absently curled over Sirius’ shoulder. The library was quiet — the kind of deep silence only Hogwarts could hold, where magic seemed to hum faintly in the walls.

Sirius looked so soft like this. Not like a prince, not like a warrior, not even like the cursed knight he was pretending to be.

Just soft.

His hair spilled over Remus’ lap like ink. His cheek was pressed against Remus’ thigh. Lips parted slightly. Breath warm, steady. One hand still clutching Remus’ jumper in sleep, knuckles pale.

And for one horrible, selfish moment, Remus wanted to pretend.

To pretend it was real. That Sirius was his. That this strange warmth blooming in his chest wasn’t fear and pity and cursed love masquerading as something tender — but the real thing. That Sirius had chosen him.

That Sirius wanted him.

God, what would that even be like?

To wake up next to him without fear? To have this — the clingy devotion, the gentle looks, the murmured "Moony"s — but without the enchantment? Without the dread, without the ache of not knowing what was real?

But Sirius wouldn’t want him . Not really. Not the skinny, scarred boy who read too much and talked too little. Not someone who went feral once a month. Not someone who kept their whole self locked in a box just to survive the day.

No — Sirius Black could have anyone. And if he was acting like he wanted Remus, it was because that damned curse made him.

Remus pressed his fingers into his temple.

He shouldn’t let Sirius sleep here. Shouldn’t let him hold on. Shouldn’t keep pretending.

But Sirius stirred just then, nuzzling his face deeper into Remus’ lap with a quiet sigh. Like this was peace.

And Remus — traitorous, lonely, stupid Remus — let him stay.

—

Peter chewed his toast very slowly. He stared straight ahead. He did not blink.

To his immediate left, Sirius was whispering Latin under his breath — not studying, not rehearsing for a test, but murmuring love curses . Peter could tell. There were too many *“adorem”*s and *“in aeternum”*s for it to be anything else.

He had tried to ignore it for the first five minutes. Maybe even ten. But now Sirius was scrawling sigils into the jam with the edge of his spoon, and Peter could feel his sanity beginning to fray.

Across the table, James was humming to himself and drawing little hearts in his marmalade with one finger. Occasionally, he’d glance down at them, sigh dramatically, and add eyelashes.

Peter refused to ask.

Remus, meanwhile, sat as still as a statue, his hands wrapped around his goblet of pumpkin juice like it was a live grenade. His eyes were bloodshot. His expression said if one more thing happens this morning I will go feral .

None of them spoke.

Peter bit into his toast with great purpose and pretended this was normal.

Then Sirius suddenly whispered, “ Flamma cordis mei ,” and blew across the surface of Remus’ drink.

Remus did not blink. “Sirius,” he said, quietly and clearly, “if you enchant my pumpkin juice one more time I will break your wand.”

Sirius grinned beatifically. “Only to make it sweeter for you, my moonbeam.”

Peter stared down at his plate. They were all going to die like this.

And honestly? He wasn’t even sure it would be the worst way to go.

Peter leaned slightly toward James without taking his eyes off Sirius, who was now tracing glowing runes into the condensation on Remus’ goblet.

“I’m going to kill myself,” he whispered.

James didn’t react. He was carefully carving a heart around the word R.E.G. with his knife in the butter dish.

“Or worse,” Peter said. “I’ll switch tables. Snape’s over there. Reading. Quietly. It’s soothing.”

James blinked up at him with the vague smile of someone in a trance. Peter almost slapped him.

At that moment, a Slytherin student — some fourth year, probably visiting a Gryffindor friend for breakfast — passed behind Peter and casually handed him a small jar of raspberry jam.

“You looked like you were out,” the boy said, smiling kindly.

Peter stared at the jar in his hands.

It was just jam.

He started to cry.

No one noticed. Sirius was whispering to Remus about “lunar ecstasy” and “blood-melded vows.” James was dotting “Regulus” with little stars.

Peter unscrewed the jar, muttering, “He saw me. He saw me. ”

It was the most intimacy he’d received in days.

Peter dabbed at his face with a napkin and took a slow, steadying breath. Across the Great Hall, Snape sat alone at the Slytherin table with a book balanced perfectly between his elbows, sipping his tea with the stillness of a man at peace.

Not a single jam-stained declaration of eternal love in sight. No glowing hearts. No whispered Latin. Just…quiet. Solitude. Emotional containment .

Peter watched him like a man lost in the desert beholding an oasis.

Snape turned a page with precise fingers, barely glancing up. His hair hung like a curtain, unmoved by chaos, and Peter thought— God, when did greasy and vindictive start looking like peace of mind?

“Snivellus has it all figured out,” Peter muttered to himself. “He hates people. No expectations. No serenades. No ancient blood-curse fueled gay awakenings.”

Sirius let out a soft sigh and mumbled something about Remus' “divine clavicle.”

Peter’s eye twitched.

Snape shifted slightly and sipped his tea again. Unbothered. Unmoved. A statue of spite and stability.

Peter clutched the jam jar tighter. “I could do it. I could switch tables. I could make friends with Snape. Or… just sit near him. Breathe the same composed air.”

He stood halfway up from the bench, shaking slightly.

Then Sirius hiccupped out, “I would carve my ribs open just to shelter you in my chest , Remus.”

Peter sat back down.

Hard.

Across the hall, Snape blinked slowly and turned another page.

Peter swallowed a sob. “He doesn't know how good he has it.”

—

James sat at a stone bench under the pale midday sun, surrounded by students and laughter and the hum of enchanted quills scribbling out last-minute essays. He squinted at the sky like it had personally offended him. His toast had gone cold. His pumpkin juice tasted like nothing.

He was not thinking about Regulus Black. Not again.

Except he was. Again. Constantly.

He'd tried to blame it on magical fallout. Residual effects from Sirius' cursed romance crusade, maybe. Or some passive glamor spell Regulus had forgotten to lift. Anything, really. But the truth was more embarrassing than a hex:

He kept dreaming about him.

Regulus, standing in candlelight, saying something too quiet to hear.
Regulus, walking toward him with shadows behind his eyes and stars in his mouth.
Regulus, turning away.

James pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, “Get a grip,” to himself.

He looked up—and there he was.

Regulus. Across the courtyard. Books under one arm, hair neat and gleaming in the sun, green robes catching the breeze. He wasn’t doing anything special. Just existing. That shouldn’t have been enough.

James’ heart stuttered like a skipped incantation.

Regulus glanced over. Their eyes met.

A faint smile curved at Regulus' mouth—barely there, but unmistakable.

James dropped his entire goblet of pumpkin juice onto his lap.

It hit with a loud splat , soaking through his robes and splashing onto his notes.

A third-year shrieked. Someone else started laughing. James stared down at himself in mute horror, then dared a glance back across the courtyard—

Regulus was already gone.

James closed his eyes. “Merlin, I’m so doomed.”

He was not thinking about Regulus Black.

He had absolutely not ended up lying on the common room couch at midnight, staring into the dying fire, replaying every conversation they’d ever had in his head like some tragic romance play. He was not scribbling Regulus’ initials into the margins of his Transfiguration notes like a schoolgirl. He was not imagining what Regulus smelled like, or how soft his hands looked, or what it would be like to kiss that mouth that always seemed to know something James didn’t.

Except he was.

He was , and it was getting worse by the hour.

He liked the mystery, the danger, the way Regulus said things that meant five different things at once. The cryptic riddles dropped in conversation like breadcrumbs. The slow, deliberate way he blinked. The way he never quite smiled unless you earned it.

It drove James absolutely mental.

Regulus could say something like “The stars are cruel, but they remember” and James would be left in a puddle for an hour, wondering if that was a metaphor for love, war, or himself.

He wanted to know everything. What Regulus read when no one was watching. What made him laugh. Why his smile always looked like it was hiding grief. Why James couldn’t breathe right when he was near.

He was obsessed .

“James?” came Remus’ sleepy voice from upstairs.

“Studying,” James lied, clutching a book upside down.

Because this wasn’t about logic anymore. It wasn’t about sense or timing or even his pride.

It was Regulus. All of him. The sharp edges and the quiet elegance and the aching loneliness that lived behind his eyes.

—

Regulus watched the sky bleed into morning.

Below, the castle exhaled in sleep. Light flickered in the windows of Gryffindor Tower—always restless, always burning.

He rolled the black ring on his finger. The one with runes he never explained. The one that hummed faintly when Sirius was near.

Potter was a surprise. Not in the way he acted—James had always been predictable. Brash. Obvious. Transparent as glass, and just as easy to shatter. But Regulus hadn’t expected him to feel anything. Not for him . Not like this.

He’d seen it, though. The glances across corridors. The hesitation. The way James stared like Regulus was a puzzle he couldn’t solve, a curse he couldn’t break.

Regulus smiled faintly, bitter at the edges.

“Never would’ve guessed it would be you, Potter.”

He tilted his head back, letting the wind tangle through his hair. His fingers brushed the edge of the hidden page he’d tucked inside his cloak, torn from the enchanted book before Sirius had ever touched it.

He had known what would happen. Of course he had. It was Black family magic. Cursed magic. Love magic warped into something old and hungry.

And still, he’d let Sirius find it. Still, he’d let James follow the trail.

Because sometimes, when you’re drowning, you want to see who’ll jump in after you.

Regulus closed his eyes.

Let them fall. Let them all fall.

And maybe—maybe—one of them would figure out how to swim.

The fire was dying when he returned, casting long shadows against emerald-green stone. Most of the others had gone to bed, their whispers fading behind heavy curtains and secret wards.

Regulus sat in the far corner, legs folded under him, transfiguration book forgotten in his lap. He stared at the page without reading, eyes unfocused.

He could still see the way James had looked at him today. That stupid, startled awe. Like Regulus had done something unthinkable , just by existing under the sunlight.

He dropped an entire goblet.

Regulus smiled, barely.

He’d liked James Potter for longer than he cared to admit. It wasn’t rational. Wasn’t safe. But something about that reckless warmth, that loud, loyal devotion to his friends—it clung to Regulus like smoke.

But Potter had always looked through him. Past him. Laughed with Sirius, argued with Snape, kissed Evans. And Regulus? He was just the younger brother. 

So Regulus had taught himself not to want.

Until now.

Now Potter was looking .

And Regulus didn’t know whether to be afraid… or hopeful.

—

The lock clicked open with a whisper of magic—just a basic charm, barely enough to get her into a sixth-year boys' dorm, but strong enough to suggest whoever had locked it didn’t want to be disturbed. Typical Sirius. Drama wrapped in silk sheets.

She stepped into the room on careful feet.

Moonlight spilled in through the tall windows, silvering the mess of parchment, inkpots, and crumpled tissues that littered the floor. The curtains around the far bed weren’t drawn fully shut.

And then she heard it.

Choked, raw sobbing. Sirius Black, curled inward, face buried in an old, leather-bound book—his body heaving like the grief was tearing him open from the ribs outward.

Lily’s heart sank.

“Sirius?” she whispered, stepping closer.

He didn’t respond—just clutched the book tighter, as though it were a lifeline dragging him under.

With gentle fingers, she reached down and tried to slide it out from under him.

The second her skin touched the cover, pain lanced up her palm—searing and bright like she’d grabbed a live coal. She gasped and flinched back, stumbling into the nightstand. The book thudded to the floor, hissing softly.

Sirius stirred, not fully awake, blinking through tear-swollen eyes. His voice cracked, hoarse with despair.

“Don’t take it,” he croaked. “It’s the only thing that knows how to fix it. It’s teaching me how to deserve him.”

Lily stared, shaken. Her fingers still throbbed where the book had burned her.

She looked at Sirius—this boy who usually blazed like wildfire, now reduced to a trembling shadow—and for the first time, she realized the magic he was caught in wasn’t just dark.

It was hungry .

“It’s not enchanted. It’s possessed .”

“No—no, it’s just intense,” Sirius whispered. “It knows what it’s doing. It knows me.”

Lily’s face twisted with fear. “No, Sirius. It’s using you.”

“I’m better with it—Remus sees me. I think—I think he might love me back.”

Lily rose to her feet. “That’s not love. That’s a lie.”

She raised her wand. “I’m burning this.”

Before she could cast, the book shuddered— twitched —and launched itself into the air with a violent burst of dark magic.

It slammed through the window. Shattered glass flew everywhere.

They both froze as the cold night wind whistled in.
The book was gone.

Sirius clutched the blanket to his chest, stunned. “You don’t understand,” he whispered. “It was working .”

Lily stared at him, throat tight. “No, Sirius. It was breaking you.”

The wind howled through the shattered window, cold biting at her arms. Shards of glass littered the floor like teeth.

Sirius looked broken. Not in his usual, dramatic way—theatrical and volatile and loud—but quietly . Undone. He sat hunched, trembling, staring at the empty space where the book had been like he’d lost a friend. Or a piece of himself.

Lily slowly lowered her wand and crouched beside him again. “Hey,” she said softly. “It’s okay.”

“No,” Sirius murmured, voice ragged. “It isn’t. I—I needed it.”

She watched him, helpless.

He didn’t even flinch when she reached for his hand this time. His skin was cold.

And yet…

Something was snapping into place.

The way Remus had been looking lately—half in love, half in fear. The way he clutched at his wand like it was a lifeline. The way he barely left Sirius’ side, but also didn’t seem to be with him at all.

Remus had called it Black family courtship madness, like a joke. But there’d been something behind his eyes—an edge of truth he didn’t want to say aloud.

The rituals. The Latin. The compulsive behavior.

And the book.

Lily’s stomach turned.

It wasn’t Sirius.

Or—it was. But it was warping him, honing him into something obsessive and singular. All that charm and chaos and brilliance narrowed into a beam pointed straight at Remus Lupin. And Remus—Merlin. He’d been trying to understand it. To accept it. To break it.

She exhaled slowly, forcing calm into her voice. “Sirius… you’ve always been enough.”

He didn’t look at her. Just shook his head. “Not for him. Not really. He needs someone steady. Smart. Good. I’m just… I’m me .”

Lily wanted to scream. He loves you, you idiot. But not like this.

But Sirius looked so lost .

So instead, she tightened her fingers around his. “You don’t need some cursed book to show Remus who you are. He already knows. The real you.”

Sirius’s eyes fluttered closed. “I don’t know who that is anymore.”

And Lily realized—with a jolt of fear—that he meant it .

—

The castle breathed around him. Stone and shadow. Staircases shifting like restless thoughts. He didn’t know how long he’d been walking—barefoot, still in his pajama shirt, the hem caught on a splinter. His fingers twitched as if they should be holding something.

The book was gone. The book was gone .

He still felt it—like phantom pain in an amputated limb. The whisper of parchment, the curl of ancient ink, the steady hand that had guided his every breath for weeks. The certainty. The clarity.

Gone.

He turned a corner, numb, and nearly walked straight into—

“Remus.”

Remus stood in the corridor, robes half-on, wand gripped loosely in his fingers, eyes wide like he’d been searching. Or waiting .

Sirius stopped short. His heart jolted like it didn’t know how to beat on its own anymore. He’d forgotten how beautiful Remus was when Sirius wasn’t watching him through the book’s lens—wasn’t seeing him as an objective to win, a prize to serenade. Just—Remus. Warm and weary and real.

“I—I lost it,” Sirius whispered before he even meant to speak. “The book. It—it jumped. Out the window. It’s gone .”

Remus didn’t speak at first.

Then he said gently, “Good.”

That hit harder than it should have. Sirius blinked, throat suddenly tight. “But it was helping me. I was doing it all right. All the steps, the rituals, the—the lyrics—”

“Sirius,” Remus cut in, quiet but firm, “none of that was you .”

“I thought it was,” Sirius said, voice cracking. “I thought if I followed everything, if I just—just did it right, you'd see how much—”

He stopped himself. He couldn’t say it. Not without the book telling him how.

Remus stepped forward. “You don’t need to be perfect. Or knightly. Or cursed.”

Sirius looked up, desperate. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

There it was.

Remus flinched. Sirius wished he could take the words back. Wished he could bury them in his chest where they ached and grew and wouldn’t stop.

“I don’t know where I end and it begins anymore,” Sirius said, quieter now. “It got inside my head, Moons. I thought it was helping me—teaching me to love you right. But it was using me. And I let it.”

Remus reached out. Touched his arm.

Sirius shuddered.

“You didn’t need to learn how to love me,” Remus said softly. “You were already doing it. Before. You’ve always known how.”

Sirius met his eyes. And for the first time in days—weeks—he felt the fog pull back.

Just a little.

Remus kept his hand on Sirius’s arm, grounding him. He could feel the tremble under Sirius’s skin—like the current of something not quite broken, but bent too far.

“I liked you before all this, you know,” Remus said gently. “Before the madrigals and moon-sonnets and Latin chants.”

Sirius didn’t respond. His eyes were far-off, like he was still trying to hear the echo of the book in the corners of his skull.

Remus continued anyway, quietly, patiently. “I liked the Sirius who hexed a suit of armor because it insulted your hair. Who got banned from the library for declaring war on a globe.”

A faint snort. Sirius’s lip twitched. “That globe attacked me. It had a vendetta.”

Remus smiled. There. A crack in the armor.

“I liked the Sirius who brewed illegal coffee in the dormitory because the tea was ‘conformist.’”
He nudged Sirius with his shoulder. “The Sirius who dragged me up the North Tower because you were convinced that if you howled loud enough, the moon might finally answer.”

Sirius blinked slowly. “I think she did answer. She said I had terrible pitch.”

“That’s the Sirius I miss,” Remus said softly. “The one who’s so dramatic he tried to fake a family curse to get out of exams.”

Another pause. Then Sirius laughed—a short, rusty thing like an old door creaking open—but real. It made Remus ache.

“You—you miss that Sirius?” he said, like the concept didn’t quite register.

“I love that Sirius.”

Sirius froze.

Remus hadn’t meant to say it like that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

He pushed on before Sirius could spiral again. “I don’t want the book’s version of you. I want the one who pretends to be bored but always stays up to walk me back from the Shack. Who eats toast like it personally offended him. Who makes fun of James until he throws his shoe.”

“I always win the shoe fights,” Sirius muttered.

Remus gave him a small grin. “There he is.”

Sirius looked at him, something unfurling in his chest—terror and wonder all at once. “You think I’m still in here?”

“I know you are.”

Sirius swallowed, voice hoarse. “I don’t know how to come back.”

Remus took his hand. Interlaced their fingers. “Then let’s find you together.”

Their footsteps echoed quietly down the corridor, moonlight pooling across the floor like spilled ink. Remus’s hand was still in his, warm and steady. Sirius kept glancing at it like it might vanish.

“I keep thinking,” Sirius said, voice low, “that the book changed everything. That I became someone else.”

Remus looked over, silent but listening.

“But the thing is…” Sirius exhaled, long and shaky. “It didn’t make me feel things I wasn’t already feeling. Not really.”

He paused, trying to untangle his thoughts from all the enchanted poetry and bleeding parchment.

“I loved you before it,” he admitted, “and during it. I think—Merlin—I think you’re the only part of me that stayed the same.”

Remus stopped walking. Sirius did too.

“I knew it before I even knew what it meant. When you punched Mulciber for calling me a slur in third year. When you read to me in the hospital wing and tried to hide that it was poetry. When you got so angry at your own scars because they made you feel like a monster.”

Remus blinked hard. Sirius stepped closer, like he couldn’t help it.

“I loved you when you corrected Slughorn mid-lecture, and your voice shook, but you did it anyway. When you drank three Butterbeers and spent the night theorizing about werewolf societies and whether they’d accept you.”

He smiled, faint and reverent. “I even loved you when you hexed my eyebrows off because I stole your essay and replaced it with a howler that screamed compliments.”

“That was justified,” Remus murmured.

Sirius huffed a laugh. “Maybe.”

They began walking again, slower this time. Closer.

“I thought the book would give me a perfect way to say it,” Sirius said quietly. “But I think the way I feel about you isn’t meant for parchment. It’s too—messy. And real. And loud.”

Remus squeezed his hand.

“And I think you’d rather have a real person than a cursed prince.”

“I’d rather have you ,” Remus said.

They turned the final corner, Gryffindor Tower glowing faintly in the distance.

Sirius glanced over, hopeful and sheepish. “Even if I still write you awful sonnets sometimes?”

Remus smiled. “Only if they’re terrible.”

They disappeared through the portrait hole together, fingers still laced.

The firelight cracked low and quiet, shadows flickering across the stone walls. Everything felt too loud in the silence—Peter’s breathy snore, the soft rustle of bedsheets, the way Remus stood at his bunk, not looking at him.

Sirius lingered near his own bed, one hand resting on the cornerpost like it might anchor him.

They hadn’t talked much after. After the walk. After the words. After Sirius said all those things he never meant to say out loud. Things that had been true long before the book. Long before he went mad with courtship rites and candlelit poetry and stolen, trembling kisses on moonlit stairs.

Now the book was gone. And Sirius wasn’t sure if he was.

He glanced at Remus’s bed. Familiar. Warm. His, almost, for weeks. He’d curled into Remus like a shadow, night after night. Held him through full moons and fever dreams and thick, cursed silence. He didn’t know how to sleep alone anymore.

But he didn’t ask.

Didn’t cross the room.

Didn’t even breathe too loud.

He stripped off his jumper, fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, and slid into cold, untouched sheets. The mattress dipped stiffly under his weight. No warmth waiting for him there.

From across the room: the rustle of Remus settling in. No invitation. No protest. Just quiet.

Sirius curled inward, fists tangled in the sheets. His eyes burned. He could still feel the way Remus had looked at him earlier—soft and scared, like he wanted something Sirius had no right to give.

He didn’t say goodnight. Couldn’t.

He closed his eyes and listened to the space between them. It felt cavernous. Worse than before.

Chapter 7: Revelation at the Library

Notes:

I'm alive!!!!

but barely....

i usually write to avoid studying, but now i really like my job, and i've been procrastinating my writing to do my job.

is this what adulthood is like?

anyways i got back on track, and the normal update schedule should be back.

James flipped a page in Quidditch Weekly , balancing the magazine on one knee, the fire warm at his side. For once, everything was quiet. Peter had gone to bed early with a headache. Remus and Sirius were—well, James didn’t want to get into that emotionally complex soup.

So for now: Chudley Cannons analysis. Maybe peace.

The fireplace gave a soft, unfamiliar pop.

James blinked.

There were no flames. Just embers. No logs had been added in hours.

Then, without warning, something slid into existence in the empty hearth. No crack of apparition, no puff of smoke. It was simply there .

James sat bolt upright, the magazine slipping from his lap.

A book.

Scorched at the edges. Its cover was dark red—maroon, maybe—but smoke-damaged. Its spine slightly cracked, the way books look after they’ve been held too tightly .

The title shimmered faintly in gold, still visible beneath the soot:

Of Chivalric Yearnings & Other Romantic Customs for the Pure of Blood and Purpose of Heart

James’s mouth went dry.

He had seen that book.

He had heard Sirius quote it. Had watched him spiral around it like a planet caught in too strong a pull. They’d all seen it. Felt it.

James slowly stood, the hairs on his arms rising. The book lay still.

He didn’t touch it at first. Just stood there, glaring at it like it might leap up and bite him.

Then he scooped it up with his Quidditch Weekly like it was a dead rat and sprinted up to the dormitory.

He barely had time to flip open his trunk before the book let out a shrill, offended squeal —like a teapot possessed by a drama student.

“Shut up!” James hissed.

Peter, half-asleep, groaned from the other bed and flung a pillow blindly in the direction of the noise. “Kill it. Or yourself. Either’s fine.”

James panicked, slammed the trunk shut, reopened it, then shoved the book under his bed instead. Dust puffed out. He kicked it into the darkest corner he could reach.

Silence.

Then—

From under the bed, faint and almost tender:

“Je te chanterai jusqu’à l’aube… mon cœur, mon âme, mon roi…”

The soft, whispery French lilt crept into the corners of the room like smoke. James’s heart beat faster. Not fear— thrill . Goosebumps down his arms. His pulse synced to the rhythm of the words.

He clutched the edge of the bedframe, swallowing hard.

He didn’t speak French.

But he understood every word.

The weather turned colder. Leaves scattered across the stone floors. Tension lingered in the Gryffindor common room like smoke after a fire.

James wasn’t quite himself.

At first, it was small things. A sudden interest in French. A tendency to wax poetic at breakfast. A compulsive need to polish his broom every evening while murmuring phrases like, “For he shall know me by my gleaming steed.”

Then came the glances—across the hall, across the courtyard, lingering on Regulus Black like James couldn’t help himself. He started sketching—badly. Regulus in profile. Regulus turning pages. Regulus, looking faintly annoyed (his base expression).

He was under the book’s sway. Just like Sirius had been.

And Sirius? Sirius was spiraling in reverse. He’d gone from being all-consuming in his adoration to hesitantly distant, like he didn’t trust himself anymore. He and Remus kept circling each other. Sirius wouldn’t sit on the same couch unless Remus explicitly invited him. Remus wouldn’t ask. It felt too loaded.

They argued. Not loudly. Quiet, clipped bickering in the corners of classrooms and deserted hallways:

“You’re not cursed anymore. You can just say what you feel.”

“I don’t know what’s mine and what’s the book’s, Remus.”

“Figure it out, then.”

But even then, they never strayed far from each other. It was as if a thin red string still tied them together—stretched taut, trembling.

And above them all, the book waited. Beneath James' bed. Whispering in perfect, lilting French.

—

Remus slumped into the armchair beside Lily, eyes sunken, scarf haphazardly wrapped around his neck like he’d been strangled by his own exhaustion. A stack of obscure magical psychology texts loomed beside him like a barricade, untouched.

Lily glanced up from her Herbology essay. “You look like death.”

“I feel worse,” Remus muttered. He dropped his bag to the floor with a graceless thud and rubbed at his eyes. “It’s Sirius. I—can I bitch for a bit?”

She closed her textbook immediately. “Always.”

Remus took a breath, exhaled slow. “I don’t know where we stand. I fell in love with him before the book ever got involved—” He waved vaguely toward the forbidden shelf, “—but then that thing got into his head and now everything he says to me, everything he does , I just... I don’t know if it’s real.”

Lily was quiet.

“He used to be so sharp,” Remus said, voice cracking just slightly. “Rude. Cocky. Brilliant. He'd drag me into trouble with a smirk and call me a prat when I didn’t know the answer to a riddle. I miss that Sirius. The one who didn’t memorize my tea order because he thought it was part of some courtship ritual. The one who made fun of me when I got too serious.”

“And now?” Lily asked gently.

“He’s soft,” Remus whispered. “Too soft. Like all his edges got filed down into something... hollow. And I know that sounds horrible. Who complains about someone being too kind to them?” He laughed bitterly. “But it doesn’t feel like him. It feels like whatever that book wanted him to be. I keep waiting for him to crack a joke or call me a git, but he just—sits there. Watching me. Like he’s scared I’ll vanish.”

Lily touched his sleeve. “He will come back. He’s still Sirius. Just... buried.”

“I want him back,” Remus said, voice hoarse. “Not this dreamy-eyed knight-in-training. Not the version the book carved out of him. Him. I want the boy who made me fall in love in the first place.”

They sat in silence for a moment, surrounded by the rustle of parchment and distant shushing.

Then Lily said, “Maybe... you don’t have to wait. Maybe you can remind him.”

Remus stayed after Lily had gone, curled in the library armchair with a book open on his lap but unread. His eyes drifted toward the dust-moted window, where the sky was shifting violet with evening. His thoughts, as ever, spun in slow, useless circles.

He had confessed, hadn’t he? Or maybe Sirius had. It had all bled together in the aftermath of the book—tears and moonlight and trembling voices in the corridor, confessions spilling out like blood from an old wound. I love you. I’ve always loved you. Words that had hung in the air like smoke.

But now?

Now Sirius barely looked at him the same way. Not with the obsessive, enchanted adoration—but also not like before. Not like Sirius used to. Remus couldn’t tell if Sirius was afraid of being too much or not enough. Couldn’t tell if the love was still real, if it had ever been real.

Sometimes Sirius sat across the common room from him like he was giving Remus space. Sometimes he hovered like he was scared to speak. And Remus… didn’t know how to reach for him without pulling the curse back between them.

He flipped the page of his book. Didn’t read it.

What if Sirius didn’t want him anymore? Now that the enchantment was gone—what if Sirius saw clearly and didn’t choose him?

Or worse—what if Sirius did still love him, but thought he shouldn’t? That the whole thing had been poisoned by magic and madness, and now there was no way forward?

Remus leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. He wanted to ask. He wanted to reach for Sirius’ hand and just ask him plainly.

But he was too afraid the answer wouldn’t be simple.
Too afraid the love had been manufactured.
Too afraid it hadn’t.

And so he sat there, caught in the ache of it—this love that felt too fragile to touch, too entangled in dark magic to trust.

—

Sirius slouched on the sofa, legs hanging off the armrest, head tilted back like maybe if he let the blood rush out of it, he’d stop thinking. It didn’t work.

Across the room, James was hunched over his notes, not studying —no, not really—but scribbling with too much focus, like he needed the quill to keep him grounded. He hadn’t said much to Sirius all week. Not since it came back.

Sirius could feel it. The air around James had shifted—he had that same foggy, far-off expression Sirius remembered from his own time under the book’s spell. Devoted. Detached. Dreamy-eyed and brittle. Sirius had tried to say something yesterday. James just smiled and said he was fine.

Liar.

And now, he was avoiding Sirius, which felt particularly cruel considering Sirius needed him now more than ever. Not even to talk about the book—just… about Remus .

Sirius groaned quietly and turned his face into the sofa cushions.

“Something wrong?” Peter asked from the armchair, voice careful.

Sirius lifted his head. “Yes, Wormtail. Everything is wrong. The sky is too blue, I’m being haunted by my own diary, and I don’t know if my soulmate wants to snog me or bury me alive.”

Peter blinked. “Which soulmate?”

Sirius narrowed his eyes. “The only one. Moony. Keep up.”

Peter chewed his cheek, clearly debating whether or not to respond, then chose silence. Probably wise.

Sirius flopped back with a sigh. “I should talk to him.”

“You should,” Peter said, a little too quickly.

“But what do I say? Sorry I tried to court you with medieval blood magic, turns out my feelings might still be real? Sounds insane. Which is fair, I am insane. He probably thinks I’m a walking love bomb waiting to explode into another verse of Ode to the Wolf-Star. ”

“You did sing to him during a transformation.”

“I howled. There’s a difference.”

Peter looked like he might actually cry for the thousandth time that week.

Sirius didn’t blame him. He felt like crying too. Crying, or hexing himself, or throwing himself into the fire and hoping the book took him back just to explain what came next. Because without it—without the steps, without the script—he didn’t know how to prove anything to Remus.

He wanted to. Desperately.

But now that it was just him… What if he wasn’t enough?

And James, his usual North Star in all things romantic and idiotic, had vanished into his own bizarre love fugue. So Sirius was stuck, spiraling in place, with Peter as the only person talking to him anymore.

It was bleak. It was pathetic. It was—

“Sirius,” Peter said carefully, “why don’t you just… go sit with him?”

Sirius glanced toward the door. The library. Remus.

He chewed his lip.

“I might,” he said. “I just—he’s so quiet these days. Like he’s waiting for me to screw it up again.”

Peter tilted his head. “Are you going to?”

Sirius gave him a long, haunted look. “Probably.”

Ten minutes later he stood outside the library like a statue, hands stuffed in his pockets, heart pounding like he was about to duel a basilisk rather than walk into a room with his not-quite-boyfriend.

Remus was in there. He knew it. He’d seen the flash of his jumper behind the library doors ten minutes ago.

It was supposed to be simple. Walk in. Sit down. Say something like, “Hey, I’m sorry I was magically obsessed with you, turns out I also have a real, horrifying crush independent of blood magic.” Easy.

Sirius took one step forward.

Then froze.

What if Remus looked at him and didn’t smile?

What if he looked tired—like he had been, all week—and Sirius made it worse just by being there?

What if he still didn’t believe him?

Sirius backed away slowly. One step. Two.

Then turned, and fled.

He made it halfway down the corridor before nearly barreling straight into Peter, who was holding a scone in one hand and looked very unimpressed.

Peter blinked at him. “So that went well.”

Sirius scowled. “I didn’t go in.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “You panicked.”

“I strategically withdrew, ” Sirius muttered. “Big difference.”

“You literally ran.”

“I was repositioning. ”

Peter took a bite of his scone. “Into my path?”

“I knew you’d be here.”

Peter gave him a long, blank stare, chewing loudly. “You need therapy.”

Sirius leaned against the wall with a defeated sigh, sliding down until he was crouched miserably on the floor. “I need Remus .”

Peter crouched next to him and offered the rest of the scone.

Sirius took it and bit into it without saying thank you.

They sat in silence for a moment, Sirius brooding, Peter resigned.

“I think he’d forgive you,” Peter said finally. “If you just talked to him like a person and not a haunted Victorian ghost prince.”

“I am a haunted Victorian ghost prince,” Sirius mumbled into the scone.

Peter thumped his head against the wall. “We’re all going to die.”

He rubbed his temples as Sirius muttered into the remains of a scone like it was his confessional. This was, what—day twelve? Thirteen? Of Sirius’ descent into mad romantic martyrdom?

Sirius groaned. “I sang to him. In Latin. With a lute. ”

Peter sighed. “Yes. I remember. You rhymed ‘beast’ with ‘feast.’ It haunts me.”

Sirius slid further down the wall, burying his face in his knees. “He’s never going to look at me the same way again. I’ve ruined it. I’ve cursed it. He deserves someone who doesn't... serenade him mid-transformation while wearing a poet’s shirt.”

“Remus deserves peace,” Peter muttered. “And a drink. And possibly a hex against dramatic bloodline madness.”

Sirius groaned again, muffled this time. “It wasn’t even the worst part.”

“Oh no,” Peter said dryly, “by all means, please continue. Paint me a fresco of your humiliation.”

“I kept a diary,” Sirius whispered.

Peter blinked. “What?”

“A diary. Of the courting. Like a knight. Full of bad poetry and... and pressed flowers. From the greenhouses. ”

Peter slowly turned to look at him. “You stole Professor Sprout’s daffodils to woo a boy who shares your dormitory and your shampoo?”

“I’m in love with him, Peter!”

“Yes, tragically,” Peter said. “And judging by recent behavior, also concussed.”

Sirius let out a miserable laugh and covered his face with his hands. “Why would he ever love me back? I’m not—I’m not good enough. I’m not stable enough. He probably thinks I’m one romantic sonnet away from hexing him into marriage.”

Peter tilted his head. “Sirius.”

Sirius peeked through his fingers.

“You’re a lot of things. Self-destructive. Reckless. Possibly allergic to humility. But he’s always loved you. Even when you were being normal and unbearable.”

Sirius blinked at him.

Peter stood. “You’re just too busy writing tragic ballads in your head to notice.”

And with that, Peter strolled off down the corridor, tossing over his shoulder:

“Next time you steal from the greenhouses, at least get me some gillyweed.”

—

James wasn’t intending to be out this late, but his legs had made the decision without him.

The moonlight slanted through the tall windows, cool and silver against the stone floor. His fingers tapped nervously against his thigh. He told himself he was just going for a walk. Just burning energy. Definitely not wandering toward where Regulus often took his evening solitude.

And yet—there he was.

Leaning against the stone railing, hair like ink, posture lazy and imperial all at once, Regulus turned his head slightly as James approached. The stars framed him like something out of a dream James had no business having.

Regulus raised a single eyebrow. “Following me, Potter?”

James stopped dead. “No,” he said, immediately, then, “Maybe.”

Regulus gave a slow blink. “Honesty. How novel.”

James stepped closer, mouth dry. “What are you doing out here?”

Regulus looked back out at the sky. “Stargazing. Obviously. What else is there to do in a castle full of emotionally deranged Gryffindors?”

James laughed, a little too loudly. “Yeah, well. We like to keep things lively.”

Regulus tilted his head slightly, eyes catching the moonlight. “You’ve been... odd, lately.”

James scratched the back of his neck. “I could say the same about you.”

Regulus said nothing for a beat, then: “I thought perhaps you were avoiding me. Or perhaps trying not to.”

James’s heart slammed against his ribs. “What if I said I wasn’t trying to avoid you?”

Regulus finally turned to face him fully. His expression was unreadable, but his voice was soft. “Then I’d call you foolish.”

James’s stomach twisted. “Why?”

Regulus took a step forward. Close enough that James could smell the faint scent of mint and ink and old parchment. “Because I know what’s happening. With the book.”

James froze. “You—what?”

Regulus smiled faintly. Not kind. Not cruel. Just... knowing. “You think you’re the first one it’s tried to sink its teeth into?”

The silence stretched.

Regulus looked at him for a long moment, then said, almost gently:
“Careful, Potter. Chivalry is a lovely mask for obsession.”

And then he walked past him, the brush of his sleeve ghosting across James’s fingers. James stood there, stunned, blood roaring in his ears, the smell of mint still lingering in his lungs.

—

Remus pushed open the dormitory door with his hip, muttering under his breath as he rifled through his satchel. “Of course I forgot the bloody Transfiguration text…”

The room was quiet, sunlight filtering through the high windows in golden sheets. James’s side of the room was its usual cheerful wreck—robes flung over the bedpost, a broomstick half-tucked under a pile of Quidditch Weeklies, mud-stained socks hanging off the trunk.

Remus made a beeline for his own bedside, retrieving the heavy textbook from beneath a stack of notes. He straightened to leave—then froze.

Something glinted.

Not on his side of the room.

Remus’s gaze snapped to James’s trunk. The lid was nearly closed—just a crack of darkness—but there, peeking out like a dog sniffing the air, was a thin leather corner. Faintly glowing. Faintly twitching .

Remus blinked.

No. No, it couldn’t be.

He took a slow step toward it. The hairs on his arms rose. That hum—familiar, low, metallic like distant bells. His stomach turned.

It couldn’t be.

He crouched, reaching out. As his fingers brushed the air near the crack, the trunk gave a sharp shudder, and the book’s corner slid back inside with unnatural speed.

Remus stumbled to his feet, heart pounding. It was here . The book was back . And it wasn’t with Sirius anymore.

It was with James .

A sharp, nauseating feeling coiled in his chest.

He didn’t grab the textbook. He didn’t breathe. He turned and left the room in silence, the door clicking shut behind him like a whisper of warning.

Remus ran.

He didn’t remember making the decision—his body had just launched into motion the second the dormitory door clicked shut behind him. His feet pounded against the stone steps, breath short, eyes wild. The corridors blurred past: portraits murmuring, torches flaring as he flew down the tower staircases two steps at a time.

It’s back. It’s back. It’s not done with us.

He skidded to a halt outside the girls’ side of the tower. The enchantment on the staircase was supposed to keep him out, but rules had a funny way of bending when you were in mortal peril—or when you whispered the override charm Lily had taught him in third year after a particularly bad moon.

“ Aloquora. ”

He darted up, ignoring the stunned looks from the girls lounging on the common room couches.

“Evans!” he barked.

A door creaked open.

Lily stepped out in her pajama shorts and a ponytail, brows raised, wand already in hand. “Remus?”

He barely stopped before crashing into her. “It’s back.”

Her expression shifted instantly. “The book?”

He nodded, panting. “James has it. It was in his trunk. I saw it. It—it moved.”

Lily’s face went hard. “Bloody hell.”

“I thought we were done. I thought it was over.” Remus ran a shaking hand through his hair. “But it’s still here , Lily. It’s still working . And now it’s got James.”

Lily stepped forward, hands steady on his shoulders. “Okay. Alright. We can fix this. But you have to calm down.”

“I can’t calm down,” Remus hissed. “It’s already done something to Sirius— you saw him . You felt it. If it gets into James, if it’s twisting him too—what if it doesn’t stop this time?”

Lily’s jaw clenched. Her green eyes glittered in the dim hallway light. “Then we burn it properly. Together.”

Remus nodded, too breathless to answer. Too scared to admit what he’d felt in the dorm wasn’t just fear.

It was déjà vu. Like the beginning of something all over again. Like the book had just taken its first breath.

The library was mostly empty by the time they slipped inside, cloaks tight and steps quick. Madam Pince eyed them like she always did—like they were about to set the Restricted Section on fire—but didn’t stop them. Maybe it was the tightness in Remus’s jaw. Maybe it was Lily’s prefect badge gleaming in the low light.

They made straight for the darker shelves. The ones with faded spines and dust choked between the bindings.

“Alright,” Lily whispered, pulling her wand and illuminating it with a soft Lumos . “We need anything on magical compulsions, bloodline enchantments, and possession. I’ll take ‘Peculiar Charms & Curses,’ you start on ‘Magics of Lineage.’”

Remus didn’t answer, just nodded. His hands were already trembling as he scanned the titles. Ancient Bonds and Burdens. Rites of the Unseen Thread. Inheritance: Magical and Malicious.

Every book looked like it could swallow him whole.

He couldn’t stop thinking of Sirius. Of the way his voice had cracked when he said, “It knows me.”
Of James, doodling marmalade hearts and not even realizing something was already tightening its grip around his spine.

He slammed a book open. “I should’ve stopped this earlier,” he muttered. “I should’ve noticed. Done more.”

“You noticed,” Lily said from across the aisle, already flipping through parchment. “You dragged me into this, didn’t you?”

“Fat lot of good it’s done.”

“Remus.” She poked her head around the shelf. “Self-pity isn’t going to help. You want to save them or not?”

That shut him up.

The silence between them became purposeful, charged with a grim urgency. Paper rustled. Pages turned.
Lily muttered something about “familial geasa” and pulled down three more books. Remus squinted at a passage describing courtship madness as a combination of ancestral obligation and sentient enchantment. He underlined a phrase with shaking fingers:

“The afflicted often believe the emotions are their own. This is the trap: when the love feels real, the madness hides within.”

He closed the book and leaned back against the shelf, eyes burning. The trap. He’d wanted it to be real. Even when he knew something was wrong, he’d let it happen.

“Lily?” he said quietly.

She looked up, something flickering across her expression. “Yeah?”

“I think we’re running out of time.”

She didn’t argue.

She just opened another book.

Remus was no longer reading. His eyes were tracking the same sentence over and over — something about ritual purification and severing magical influence — but his brain couldn’t hold onto it. It kept slipping, replaced by images of Sirius. Sirius laughing in the firelight, Sirius curled around him like it was the only safe place he knew, Sirius sobbing into that cursed book like it held his soul.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “What if none of it was real?”

Lily didn’t look up from her book. “What do you mean?”

“Sirius. Us. The way he acted.” He swallowed, throat dry. “What if it was just the book? Some trick. Like—some enchantment that mimicked love just well enough to fool both of us.”

Lily finally glanced over. Her expression was gentle, but wary. “You don’t think he cares about you?”

“I think…” He hesitated. “I think Sirius cares about everything too much. And I think he convinces himself to feel things if it’ll make someone else happy. Or if he thinks it’ll make him… good.”

Lily leaned her chin on her hand, brows drawn together. “You think he’s faking it?”

“I think he’d fake it if he thought it would help me.” Remus stared at the wood grain on the table. “And the book. It—it was telling him how to be. How to act. He wasn’t sleeping unless I was there. He wasn’t eating unless I told him to. That’s not love, Lily. That’s madness.”

A pause. Then Lily spoke, voice quiet but steady.

“I don’t think it was all the book.”

Remus looked at her sharply.

“I think it twisted things. Amplified them. Warped them. But I’ve watched Sirius love people before. James. You. It’s different. But it’s not fake.”

He wanted so badly to believe her.

“I don’t think we can undo what it did to him overnight,” she added. “But we can keep it from sinking into James any deeper. That’s priority one.”

Remus nodded mutely.

“Then we’ll worry about the rest. About you and Sirius. And what’s real.”

Remus swallowed. “What if none of it is?”

Lily gave a half smile. “Then you start over. If it’s real, it’ll happen again. Without the book.”
She reached over and squeezed his hand. “And this time, you’ll know it’s yours.”

She shut the thick tome with a muted thump and exhaled through her nose, brow furrowed. Across from her, Remus looked like he might fold in on himself at any moment, knuckles white around the book he wasn’t reading.

“I think,” she said, slowly, calmly, “we should just keep the book away from James.”

Remus blinked, startled. “That’s it?”

“For now, yeah.” She leaned back in her chair. “Everything I’ve read says this kind of enchantment—this mix of possession, obsession, and compulsive behavior—feeds off proximity. The host has to keep it near. They sleep with it, touch it, reread it obsessively. Break the proximity, break the loop.”

Remus looked unconvinced. “You think that’s enough?”

“No. But I think it’s a start.” Her voice sharpened. “We wait too long, it’ll do to James what it did to Sirius—turn him into some hollow-eyed, love-cursed knight reciting Latin in his sleep.”

Remus winced.

“I’m not letting it take him,” she continued, fire building under her words now. “Not James. Not anyone else.”

“And Sirius?” he asked softly.

Lily hesitated, the flame faltering. “I don’t know yet. He’s tangled up in it more deeply. But James—we can still pull him out. If we’re careful. If we act fast.”

Remus nodded faintly, but his gaze lingered on the scratched tabletop.

Lily lowered her voice. “Hey. We’re going to fix this. All of it. One step at a time.”

“And if he doesn’t love me,” Remus said, so quietly she almost didn’t catch it, “without the book?”

Lily met his eyes, fierce and gentle all at once. “Then he doesn’t deserve you. But I think he will.”

They timed it perfectly. James was on the Quidditch pitch, the rest of the boys at dinner. The dormitory was empty, golden with late-afternoon light filtering through the windows. Lily moved quickly, casting a mild Muffliato around the room while Remus stood frozen, staring at the foot of James’s bed.

“There,” he said, pointing.

The book’s cracked spine peeked out from beneath the bed, curled like a predator waiting to pounce.

Lily knelt and reached carefully. The instant her fingers brushed the cover, the book shuddered in her grasp and let out a soft, sulking sigh —like a lover scorned. She gritted her teeth and stuffed it into the enchanted satchel she’d brought for exactly this reason. Its protests were muffled instantly, though it twitched in her arms like a sleeping cat having a nightmare.

Remus stood back, visibly tense. “You’re sure we can’t just burn it?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Not until we know what it is.”

“And to do that…” He sighed. “We have to talk to Regulus.”

Lily didn’t say it aloud, but part of her agreed with James’s infatuated ravings: Regulus did know something. He’d handled James oddly when they’d crossed paths, and his eyes—far too knowing. That book had a Black signature written all over it, in elegant blood-inked calligraphy.

They made their way down into the castle’s depths, past the Great Hall, past the cold stone archways, until they stood outside the Slytherin common room entrance. Lily knocked—not on the wall, but on the stone column just left of the entry arch. A specific rhythm, exactly as Severus had shown her once, long ago.

A minute passed.

Then: footsteps. The wall slid open with a gentle hiss, and there stood Regulus Black, perfectly pressed and utterly unreadable.

He looked from Lily to Remus. Then down to the satchel in Lily’s hands.

His expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes shifted .

“I was wondering,” he said coolly, “when one of you would figure it out.” He stepped aside. “Come in. But I’ll warn you now: if you’ve brought that book, it’s already too late to pretend this doesn’t matter.”

The Slytherin common room was cool, green-tinted, and cavernous. Like the inside of a snake’s mouth. Regulus didn’t offer them a seat, but Lily sat anyway, arms crossed, the bag containing the book now tucked tight between her boots.

Remus stood, stiff. Watching Regulus like he might try to hex them—or worse, lie.

Regulus leaned against the stone mantelpiece, toying with a silver ring on his finger. “I did it,” he said at last, voice flat. “I planted the book. Slipped it into the Grimmauld Place library before summer ended.”

Remus felt his chest tighten.

Regulus’s tone was too casual. Too calculated.

“I knew Sirius would find it. He always snoops around the west wing when he’s angry.” A faint smile ghosted across his face. “And he’s always angry.”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “So what? You just… left a cursed tome for your brother to stumble across? For fun?”

“I wouldn’t say fun,” Regulus murmured. “I’d say motivation . If he wouldn’t act on what he felt, the book would push him to.”

Remus’s voice was hoarse. “Act on what , exactly?”

Regulus finally looked directly at him. There was no cruelty in his expression—only cold, surgical certainty. “On you.”

Silence. The fire cracked in the grate, low and green.

“I figured if he wouldn’t say it, if he wouldn’t do anything, the book would stir it loose. Make it impossible to ignore. It’s what it was written for. Old family courtship magic, pureblood binding rituals—dressed up in poetry and knightly vows. It does what it's designed to do: force desire into action.”

Remus’s stomach twisted. “You manipulated your own brother.”

“No,” Regulus said softly. “I gave him a nudge. And now he’s done what he never could before— feel something without shame. Isn’t that what you wanted from him?”

Remus stepped back, jaw clenched. “That wasn’t your choice to make.”

Regulus tilted his head. “Maybe not. But I made it anyway.”

He looked at Lily. “So. Are you going to destroy it?”

Lily didn’t answer right away. Her hand gripped the satchel tighter.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “But I do know this—whatever you thought you were doing? It’s gone too far.”

Regulus smiled faintly. “Hasn’t it always, with us Blacks?”

Remus turned and walked out first. Lily followed.

Behind them, Regulus went still—watching the dying firelight flicker across the stone. His smile faded.

—

Sirius stirred his tea with a spoon he didn’t remember picking up. The table buzzed around him—first-years bickering, Ravenclaws comparing essay lengths, the distant sound of a dropped goblet and someone cursing under their breath.

Next to him, Peter buttered a scone with the precision of a man ignoring a war.

“So,” Sirius said, prodding at his porridge. “Do you think I’m… pathetic ?”

Peter didn’t look up. “I think you’re being dramatic. Which is a Tuesday.”

Sirius sighed, slumping against the bench. “Remus hasn’t even looked me in the eye today.”

“Maybe because you recited love poetry to him during a full moon while wearing a silk shirt and wielding a lute.”

“It was linen,” Sirius muttered.

Peter blinked at him. “Oh, well then. That changes everything.”

Sirius dropped his forehead to the table. “He probably thinks I’m a lunatic.”

“Little bit,” Peter said around a mouthful of scone.

“I was cursed. Enchanted. Possessed by a blood-soaked relic of my aristocratic doom.” He groaned. “And even then, somehow , it was still the most sincere I’ve ever been.”

Peter delicately reached for the jam. “Didn’t stop you from singing about his ‘silver-honeyed beast-ness.’”

Sirius slammed his fist lightly on the table. “ I panicked! I panicked, Pete. And now I’ve gone and made everything weird and embarrassing, and he’s too good, and—”

“You always say he’s too good.”

“Because he is ! He’s smart and steady and reasonable , and I’m—what, a walking Shakespearean disaster with unresolved familial trauma and a taste for dramatics?”

Peter chewed slowly, considering.

“Yes,” he said.

Sirius blinked.

Peter swallowed. “But you’re also Sirius Black. And you’d burn the world for the people you love.”

Sirius stared at him, then rubbed at his face.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “And all I’ve done is burn him .”

Peter patted his shoulder with marmalade-covered fingers.

“Stop talking like you’re already doomed,” he said. “You’re not. You’re just—Sirius, and he’s Remus. That’s messy. But it’s real.”

Sirius looked at him sidelong.

“Can you say something less insightful next time?” he asked.

Peter grinned, reaching for another scone. “I could throw jam at you again.”

“…Please don’t.”

The jam had congealed on his plate, untouched. His teacup was cold. The Great Hall rang with the usual clatter and chatter, but it all felt muffles=d—like he was underwater, or like the world had moved on without telling him.

Remus hadn’t come down yet. Or maybe he had and left again. Or maybe he’d used some kind of Cloaking Charm to avoid sitting near Sirius ever again, and really, could you blame him?

Sirius stabbed half-heartedly at a sausage.

From across the table, Peter glanced at him, sighed, and slid over a butter knife like it was a peace offering. Sirius ignored it.

Then he saw him—Remus, entering the Hall, hair still slightly mussed, wearing the jumper Sirius always wanted to steal, eyes scanning the crowd like he was making a list of people to avoid.

And he didn’t look at Sirius.

Not a flicker.

Not a glance.

Sirius’s stomach dropped like a cursed elevator.

Remus walked past their end of the table and sat further down, between Mary Macdonald and a chattering second-year who seemed determined to tell him all about her new owl. Remus nodded along politely. He looked tired.

He looked perfect.

Sirius wanted to crawl into his own skull and close the door.

He shifted on the bench, suddenly too warm and too cold all at once. His shirt was itchy. His knees bounced under the table. His heart beat like it was trying to spell out idiot in Morse code.

Peter looked over his mug. “You alright?”

“No,” Sirius croaked. “No, Pete. I’m a wretched husk of a man. I’ve ruined everything, humiliated myself in spectacular fashion, and I’m pretty sure Remus Lupin now physically recoils at the sight of me.”

Peter chewed on that, quite literally. “You’re being dramatic.”

Sirius grabbed the cold teacup with trembling hands. “That’s my entire personality. ”

And still, Remus didn’t look over. Not even once.

Sirius slumped forward, forehead thudding gently against the table. “Maybe I should just transfer to Durmstrang. They probably have a society for failed courtships.”

Peter took a long, slow sip of pumpkin juice. “They’d probably crown you president.”

Sirius groaned.

—

They met in the back corner of the library, behind a row of forgotten divination tomes that smelled faintly of dried thyme and mildew. The lamps above flickered low, casting golden light across the scratched wooden table where Lily had set the book . Its leather binding looked darker now—less like a textbook and more like a wound.

Remus kept his arms crossed tightly. He hadn’t wanted to touch the thing. Not after everything.

Lily was the first to speak. “We all agree—no more magic. No more of this courtship curse nonsense. We don’t fix this with spells. We fix it with honesty.”

Remus nodded once, jaw tight. “It’s not just dangerous. It’s invasive. It turns feelings into performance. It makes people into puppets.”

Regulus sat across from them, unnervingly calm. He regarded the book like it was an old pet. Familiar. Dangerous. His eyes, the same sharp grey as Sirius’, flicked toward Lily. “I’ll keep it.”

Remus bristled. “Why you ?”

Regulus tilted his head. “Because I won’t use it.”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “You used it once.”

“Yes,” Regulus said flatly. “And that’s precisely why I won’t do it again.”

The room fell quiet. The book pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat you couldn’t unhear.

Regulus reached out, fingers ghosting over the cover. It didn’t burn him. It didn’t fight him. It went still.

“I know what it wants,” he said softly. “And I know how to shut it up.”

Remus hesitated. Then, finally, he stepped back. “Fine. For now.”

Regulus stood, tucking the book into a cloth-wrapped satchel. “No more magic,” he echoed. “Let them sort it out without interference.”

He looked at Remus, then at Lily. “Love’s already dangerous enough without enchantments.”

Regulus didn’t leave right away.

He stood by the door, fingers tight around the strap of the satchel, the book thudding softly against his side like a second heart. Remus and Lily watched him with twin expressions of suspicion and exhaustion—Lily with fire in her eyes, Remus with something rawer, more frayed.

Regulus sighed. “Look, I didn’t do it to hurt anyone.”

Lily crossed her arms. “You slipped a cursed book into your brother’s path like a trap.”

Regulus met her eyes. “Because he was never going to do anything on his own. He’s been in love with Remus since fifth year and doing absolutely nothing about it. I thought—” He faltered, his mask slipping slightly. “I thought maybe the book would nudge him in the right direction.”

Remus blinked. “So you manipulated him into manipulating me?”

Regulus winced. “Not manipulate . It’s—it’s a book of pureblood courtship rituals, not a mind control spell. It heightens feelings. Exaggerates them. Twists them, maybe, but only if there’s something already there.”

Remus looked like he’d been hit. “You’re saying all of that was real ?”

Regulus softened, just slightly. “He loves you. He’s always loved you. The book didn’t create that. It just gave him a… script.”

Lily frowned. “And then punished him if he veered off it.”

Regulus nodded, eyes dark. “That part— that wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t in the original enchantment. The book’s been… corrupted, maybe. Or maybe it just sensed how desperate he was.”

Remus sat down hard in the nearest chair. He looked like he was unraveling.

“I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” Regulus said. “I thought maybe he’d get brave. Maybe he’d say something real. And he did. Even if it was clumsy, even if it was under that thing’s influence, he meant every word.”

Remus stared at the tabletop, his voice barely audible. “You really think he loves me?”

Regulus raised an eyebrow. “I’ve lived with him. I’ve known him. If you think he did all that—sobbed over sonnets, tried to fight a cursed book to impress you, let himself come entirely undone—for anything less than real love, then you don’t know him at all.”

Remus said nothing.

Regulus turned to go, and paused in the doorway. “Don’t let this ruin it. The book’s out of the picture now. If you want him—if he still wants you—maybe it’s time you talk without the magic.”

Notes:

awwww you thought it was gonna get better...

i mean it kinda did at the end ig?

see you thursdayyyyy

Notes:

if anyone noticed the book title changing every time the full one is bought up, yes it is intentional. I couldn't decide on a name so theres gonna be like twenty different ones. Consider it artsy or smth?

chapter two will be up tomorrow, and chapter three will be up Wednesday