The Cost of Loving
By Minnow

Disclaimer: These characters belong to J.K. Rowling and various publishers and corporations.
Summary: Scenes from a relationship: a picaresque account of R/S.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Era: Post-Azkaban to OoTP.
Rating: R
Note: The timing of my behind-the-scenes summaries during GoF chimes reasonably with canon, I hope: Sirius's movements just after PoA are quite complicated.
Dedication: This is for everyone who's stayed with the first two parts, especially if you commented on them. Hugs and thanks.

All headings have been entered in bold. If this doesn't always show up on the site, sorry.

The Cost of Loving, Part III

Price: two beautiful faces. Paid in instalments, October 1981 on.

Wherever he went, Remus always carried a photo of two young boys. It showed him and Sirius on their last day at Hogwarts, sitting on the grass by the lake, not touching, but occasionally sneaking looks at each other from under their lashes, shy, tentative glances. No matter what Sirius had done, no matter how he had destroyed them (under the Imperius, no doubt, but Remus didn't think about it that much) Remus would look at that picture and smile and remember how it felt to be young and happy and in love.

The years had cut swathes out of both those boys' lives, so that neither seemed to have fully experienced them: though Remus wasn't in Azkaban, he often felt that he might have been, often wondered whether he hadn't deliberately cut himself off from love and pleasure in order to delude himself that he was keeping his lover company in prison.

Without a mirror, he could have thought he was still twenty-one. But the mirror told him different. Oh, the boy in the photo would have recognised his older self all right, but he might have been rather sad that life hadn't been kinder to him

Sirius, Remus gathered, was completely ruined by his years in Azkaban: a walking skeleton with discoloured teeth. At school and after, he used to wash his hair every day: now it was long and matted and filthy. But Remus would look at him and see the twenty-one year-old man he had last said goodbye to near the end of the October the Potters were murdered. He would squint a bit, adjust his vision, try to see the wreck of Sirius Black, but he found it very hard. By the end of the first war, he hadn't been able to see the Sirius he loved: now, he couldn't see the real Sirius.

Interest: an escape, July 1994.

After Remus left Hogwarts, the school forwarded an owl from Sirius to him, and they met up again.

Sirius was about to leave the country, but agreed to delay the trip for a little while. They went to the flat, because Remus figured it was too obvious a place for the Aurors to look for Sirius; he thought they'd have a day or two before anyone came round, as long as Buckbeak stayed quietly in the spare room.

The first thing they did was cut Sirius's hair. 'You need to be able to wash and brush it at least, Padfoot. I can't get a comb through it. Not even with magic.'

'Not too short, though, Moony.'

'I can't promise that. It might hurt, okay?' Remus waved his wand: Sirius grimaced.

'Ouch. Oh, no, that's far too short! Everyone'll think I'm bald.'

'It's fine, Sirius. It wouldn't matter if they did, anyway. Cos then they won't recognise you.'

Remus dealt with the teeth next. 'We must get you a wand, but we'd better wait till we're out of England.'

Sirius was pleased that Remus had kept on the flat. 'I paid for the bloody place, after all. Nice to know we have somewhere to come back to when this is all over.'

Remus noted he said 'we'. He also knew that Sirius had regained most of his memories now, and that Sirius's best memories included the other boy in the photo, the boy Remus had been once upon a time; but he didn't know how Sirius would feel about the stranger he must now be, a bit lined, a bit worn, a bit greying. The way Sirius looked at him, though, Remus decided that his lover might still see him as someone beautiful, just the way he still saw Sirius.

Price: feeling second best to a Potter again.

When he thought about it, Remus realised that by 'we' Sirius might mean himself and Harry. He doubted that Sirius would be cruel enough to evict him, especially as they owned the flat jointly, but it would be fair enough for him to point out that Remus's only contributions had been a bookcase and a desk; and Sirius had paid for half the desk, as Remus couldn't afford the whole thing.

Sirius didn't disillusion him about this. He started to ask Remus all about Harry and what he was like, and what he'd been doing. Remus began to wonder if Sirius had only contacted him to discuss his godson.

He made tea, and found some very stale biscuits, and listened to Sirius rhapsodising about how like James Harry looked. His heart was barely mended, and he thought it might already have cracked again. Luckily, he was strong, or he would have found parts of this reunion strangely barren of feeling; except feeling for the dead, and for the living who reminded Sirius of the dead.

'But I'm still alive,' Remus wanted to protest, though he wasn't sure how alive he could really be said to be after twelve years in a sort of suspended animation.

Interest: some hugging; no kissing.

They only spent one night at the flat, agreeing that even now Sirius had been groomed, it would be better for him to leave the country as soon as possible.

'It's not like we're married,' Sirius said – he had to be the one to say, it because he was the extrovert and able to say what he was thinking. 'But we would have been if one of us had been a woman. So it shouldn't be any different, should it, from a bloke coming out of prison and going home to his wife? If his wife hasn't divorced him.'

'Why should I be seen as someone's wife?' Remus objected. 'Anyway, if we'd been married we'd have been divorced before you went to Azkaban.'

'No, we were still together, weren't we? Sort of. Stop being an idiot, Moony. You know what I mean. It's usually the man in prison. But you can be waiting for your delinquent wife if it makes you happy. Don't you want to be married to me?'

'There's been a lot of 'for worse',' Remus demurred.

'Right, then, it can only get better, can't it?' Sirius said robustly. 'Listen, you have to come away with me. We can get to know each other again.'

Remus leaned over and put his arms around Sirius. 'Like this?'

Sirius hugged him back. 'Yeah, like that. It's what marriage is all about, isn't it?'

'Ours was,' Remus agreed. 'Or would have been, if we'd actually been married in the first place.'

'That's because we're both blokes, see. It's an advantage. Women always have headaches, or they have babies, and they're not into sex the way men are.'

'And you'd know that how?'

Sirius flushed a bit. 'Well, James said something once. After Harry. He said that I was lucky you'd never push me away because the baby'd kept you up all night. That was before – you know. The whole spy thing.'

'But Sirius,' Remus said, wishing he didn't feel he had to say this, damning common sense, 'the Ministry of Magic, and the Aurors and everybody…they knew we were together in the end. Don't ask how. Probably Peter blabbed to both sides. So if I go with you it'll just put you in danger.'

'We'll travel separately,' Sirius said. 'I'll take Buckbeak, and we'll arrange where we're going, and then you can Apparate later.'

He touched Remus's hand, and Remus could still feel the heat passing between them as it had since they were teenagers – children, really -- and not fully aware of what they were getting themselves into. He hoped, he really hoped, that Sirius could feel it too.

'Early thirties isn't old, anyway,' Sirius said, as if he were reading Remus's mind. 'A lot of people don't even get married till they're well over thirty.'

Neither of them mentioned commitment again that night, but they slept in the same bed, the big wooden bed, with their arms round each other, but otherwise not touching, and when they woke the sun was high in the sky and it was time for them to part again, briefly.

Interest: a summer together.

Sirius and Buckbeak flew to Morocco first, and Remus arrived a day later. There was a thriving magical community there, where nobody had ever heard of Sirius Black. They bought a large cage full of tropical birds, to put any spies off the scent, and stayed for two nights. It was hot, far too hot to be a summer destination, even with the sea and the miles of empty, sandy beaches.

Remus, who tended to be cold, would have been quite happy to remain in Rabat for a while. He liked to drink mint tea and stare into the waves; he still had to get his head round the fact that Sirius was there, Sirius was with him, right next to him, and he was innocent, and this wasn't a dream. He thought he'd wake up in his room at Hogwarts; or perhaps his body was in wolf form, curled up under the desk in his office, drugged up with Wolfsbane Potion, and his wolf mind had tripped up looking for Padfoot and the rest of the lost pack.

'But I'd always choose to go somewhere hot,' Sirius explained. 'Everyone will know that. We mustn't stay too long in one place.'

Remus took a last regretful look at the Atlantic before they left.

They moved on a few times, with their cage of birds, and a wand Sirius had acquired from a street-seller in Marrakech, when they travelled inland toward the mountains. It seemed to work almost as well as his old one, in spite of its dubious provenance. They lingered near the sun for a while longer than Sirius was quite comfortable with, not because he didn't crave warmth after Azkaban but because he was so determined not to be recaptured.

Before leaving North Africa, they went their separate ways to Tunisia, then decided it was time to leave the south and find somewhere cooler. But first they made a detour to the West Indies together, so that Sirius could sit under a palm tree on the sand, while the tropical birds were allowed out of their cage for a while and flew round under the blazing sun.

All this time, Remus and Sirius were talking about the past, about the Potters, about what had happened to them, about friendship and love and the mourning neither of them had quite completed. Every day, they would seem to inch a bit closer to each other. For the moment, it was about comfort, habit too: habits being very hard for the instincts to forget. They would sometimes kiss, and it was familiar and good and right.

The world left them behind in 1981. Since then, there had been AIDs, Muggle wars, the next generation -- the generation of James's son -- arriving at Hogwarts. But Sirius and Remus were still stuck where they had been when they last saw each other, poised between the present and the past, cut adrift from the future that had arrived while Sirius was mouldering in Azkaban and Remus was sleepwalking through the days in London.

'I didn't sleep with anyone else,' Remus said, quite abruptly one morning in Tunisia. 'I don't have any fearsome Muggle diseases.'

Sirius flinched. 'Fine, Remus. Neither did I, though you need hardly ask. Or Padfoot. Poor Pads. Very restrained, for a dog.'

He then said, 'But I'm surprised you didn't. You were the one who had affairs, weren't you? Not me.'

Remus was incensed. 'Once. Not an affair. For God's sake --- '

'I know it wasn't a big deal. But it happened, didn't it?'

'You were reasonable.'

'I'm not now.'

Remus understood then that in Azkaban a minor indiscretion could stretch and swell to cataclysmic proportions.

They moved on, north this time, to Alaska. 'Too far,' Remus shivered. 'Please, Padfoot. Let's go south again now.'

'No. No.' Sirius hugged Remus to him. 'I can keep you warm.'

And Remus stopped shivering, and hugged him back. It was two days before the full moon, and he would have to wait here in the frozen wilderness, transform far away from civilisation; but it was summer, so it wouldn't be too dreadful. And Padfoot would be with him this time.

Interest: love on the run.

They ended up in the fairy-tale forests of Scandinavia, where it was easy to imagine enchanted princesses drifting among the trees, or lying in glass coffins in a clearing.

In an abandoned woodcutter's hut in the middle of the deepest, darkest forest, they finally made love again, not like hormonal teenagers, or as a couple living together, the way they once had, but like two adults who barely knew each other yet knew each other all too well; like two lovers who were more than tangentially friends; like two halves of a whole that had been apart for far too long.

Perhaps it was never going to be quite the same: but the days of frantic kissing and reaching for each other over and over again in the night weren't gone forever: Thirteen years of celibacy had rekindled a potent lust between them.

It was very, very good, and it got even better, with practice, as it always had in the past. And they had plenty of practice, learning again to kiss for hours, to look, to touch, to moan, to love and be loved with every part of their bodies and souls. It was slower, not so desperate, because there seemed to be an eternity just to gaze, golden eyes into silver ones, open and honest and trusting.

The days drifted past. When they got bored, they made forays to towns twinkling with magical lights strung on wires so fine they seemed to be suspended in air, and ate raw fish, which the wolf particularly enjoyed, and drank chocolate and sat in a trance watching the sea lap at the harbour: a cold, northern sea, this one, not the warm sea of the south.

In August, Hedwig appeared with an owl from Harry, tapping her beak at the windows of the hut in the middle of the night, rattling the panes as she beat her wings against the glass. Sirius sent her away at once, before he read the letter. When he answered, he used one of the tropical birds, whose cage was surrounded by a special warming charm. He was worried about how the bird would fare in non-temperate climes. He was more worried about Harry's scar, and discussed it at great length with Remus.

Remus understood that their time together was over: now, Harry would be hovering between them, and Sirius would fret and fuss about what to do. He wanted to go straight back to England, but Remus dissuaded him.

'You'll be rearrested, Pads. Why not wait a while, and see how things go?'

'All right.' But Sirius couldn't sleep, and paced the small bedroom in the middle of the night, keeping Remus awake too.

They didn't float through another season so lightly, because news continued to come from England, and the tug of James's child was always going to be stronger than the tug of even the dearest of lovers. In the end, Remus knew, he would have to let Sirius go: not only let him, encourage him.

They went home together in the middle of autumn.

Interest: being normal: one autumn, winter and part of spring.

'I know you want to be near Harry, but there's no point in being reckless, is there?' Remus asked.

'No, of course not. We still have to live somewhere, though, don't we?'

The London flat was out, as was any property with a connection to either man: Grimmauld Place was safe, but Sirius refused to stay there for any length of time.

'We are,' Remus said, 'a pair of ordinary guys. Okay?'

'Yeah, I get it,' Sirius said. 'Are we a couple or not?'

'Better not, I think, on the whole,' Remus said. 'Muggles are fine with it now, most of the time, but it could get us recognised. And we're not wizards either.'

'What d'we do? Landlords always ask that.'

'Well, I'm a college lecturer. You know, at a Muggle place of learning. Advanced learning.'

'I like the 'advanced'. What am I, then?'

'What you always were. A mechanic. You can get work at a garage again, can't you?'

'If I can remember the first thing about engines.'

Remus wrote a list:

We are normal. At the full moon, we need to Apparate to somewhere unpopulated, and there should be no problem. Buckbeak must be well hidden. Sirius will put an invisibility spell on him, so Muggles can't see him. We are renting an allotment a bit out of town, where we can tether him for a month or so, until Sirius needs him.

Sirius is a widower. His wife died of malaria in India. He has got over her now, but still looks a bit gaunt and haunted when he thinks of her. She had brown hair and eyes and her name was Mary. She was the same age as him. They didn't have any children.

I am a distant relative of Sirius. I am separated from my wife. She claims I beat her. Domestic violence is all the rage with Muggles, I think, though perhaps I should say she beat me or I won't get any sympathy and they'll put me on yet another register. I've decided I want children. Twins, a boy and a girl. I'm not allowed to see them because I'm too dangerous.

The owls that keep coming to our window: well, Sirius used to be quite a well-known bird impersonator. Sometimes, he forgets himself and calls owls. Absent-minded. That also explains the cage full of tropical birds that we carry with us wherever we go.

We share this exorbitantly expensive flat, and we use both the bedrooms. And bugger, there are two single beds, which is really a pain, though neither of us is excessively fat. It's a Muggle area. A few of the neighbours do look at us funny, as Sirius says. We really need to make an effort to act like ordinary blokes, if that's possible. Sirius has a wedding ring. I took mine off, because I don't like my wife.

'Remus, why do you feel the need to write everything down?' Sirius asked, bemused. 'You can remember things, can't you? You must tell me if there's a problem.'

'Yeah. Well, somebody has to keep track of our new identities. And what we do. For instance, you may need an alibi next time you break into a wizarding house to talk to Harry. What were you thinking of?'

'Dragons, of course.'

They were living in a shabby English seaside town, in a flat on the front, with sea views from three windows. At night, they could hear the waves splashing and receding. The plaster on the once-lovely Regency building was peeling, the interior needed repainting, and the furniture consisted of a lurid orange sofa, the aforementioned beds, a rickety table and one kitchen chair. Sirius managed to get a temporary job at a local Fiat dealer, doing car repairs, MOTs and services. Remus was supposed to be on a sabbatical ('horrible Muggle word,' Sirius objected), and spent hours on end wandering along the stony beaches, collecting shells, in a daydream, in a sort of daze. He was afraid that this might look like eccentric behaviour, but he couldn't help himself. He kept the shells and glued them together in weird shapes: nothing saleable like people or animals, just weird. Sirius was worried that his beloved werewolf was still feeling the effects of the lost years and had retained a touch of lunacy.

They snuggled together on one of the single beds every night, giggling like children and sometimes provoking bangs on the wall from their next-door neighbour, who soon stopped giving them odd looks and started blushing and averting her eyes whenever she saw them, scuttling by in great distress. 'I think we blew our cover,' Sirius said, amused, but Remus was embarrassed, so after that they reverted to their old favourite silencing spells.

At Christmas, they ate a whole turkey between them – Sirius cooked it – and a lot of mince pies. They went to see Buckbeak in the morning, rendering him briefly visible, and gave him his present of rats and dead rabbits. At home again, they drank ordinary whisky, as Muggles did, and they got drunk and did some things that probably scandalised their neighbour even more, because Remus forgot the charm. But they'd had too much whisky to care.

On Twelfth Night, Remus took their tiny Christmas tree down to the street to go away with the rubbish collection: he had some idea of growing it further, but it didn't have any roots. He was worried about the new year. He hoped it wouldn't bring any more distress, but of course Sirius was more and more preoccupied with the Triwizard tournament. Unlike Remus, Sirius kept up with wizarding news, still managed to get hold of his copy of the Daily Prophet every morning, and knew that the world was about to be plunged into turmoil again.

They left the flat, and the town, early in March, with their rent paid up to the end of April. Remus was a bit dismayed about the wasted money, but Sirius said, 'For goodness' sake, it means you can go back there if you like, for a week or two.' Remus shrugged. He'd already packed his case, and just needed to Apparate to his destination.

Before they locked the front door for the last time, they kissed goodbye, long and longing and loving, clinging together as if they could never bear to let each other go again.

They went down to the street, and Remus resolved that before he left for good he would take one more walk by the sea. Sirius was going to collect Buckbeak from the allotment and then fly on to Hogsmeade. Remus was worried that he would travel too far in dog form, and wear himself out. He tried to smile, though, and said, 'Bye, Padfoot. See you whenever, okay?'

Sirius thumped him on the back, rather too heartily. 'Whenever. Be good, Moony.'

Price: Wales. Paid, spring-summer 1995.

When Sirius left for Hogsmeade, Remus decided that he would do something new at least, and went to live at his aunt's cottage in Wales. He felt far less pessimistic about it than he had been in the past, knowing that Sirius was in the world and innocent and might come back some day.

He usually tried to forget his childhood in this cottage, after his parents died. It had been a bleak, lonely childhood, even though he always knew that he'd be going back to Hogwarts and seeing his friends. He'd kept himself going by burying himself in his books. His aunt bred geese and chickens, and made him feed them when he was there. Remus had always hated geese and chickens as a result. He doubted that even the wolf would chase a goose; probably run in the other direction.

The cottage was two miles from any shop, about ten miles from any town or village. As a boy, unable to Apparate, forbidden by his aunt to use his broomstick, Remus used to sneak out on foot to see how far he could get before he saw anyone. It was a masochistic game: masochistic, because his aunt always caught him and punished him. She wasn't given to beatings, but she was quite happy to keep Remus locked in his room for two days.

One wonderful summer when he was fifteen, just after OWLs, the farmer who technically lived next door, though it was half a mile away, had a visit from his niece, a pretty witch about two years older than Remus, who went to school at Beauxbatons. She set out to seduce Remus, as she was bored and her boyfriend was in Paris. Remus was thrilled beyond measure to have his ghastly summer livened up so, and they had a very good time indeed before her parents arrived to fetch her home. As a bonus, his aunt wanted to keep in the farmer's good books – she relied on him for milk – so she allowed Remus to see as much of the niece as he liked.

Remus would have been more than happy to sleep with her, but they never quite got that far, because she started having pangs of conscience about her boyfriend. They got a very long way all the same, even if they didn't actually quite take the final step.

He had never told Sirius about this, aware of the irony that he and Sirius had both either slept, or very nearly slept, with girls the summer before they became lovers. Unlike poor Zoe at Hogwarts with her unrequited love, the summer girl in Wales was nothing like Sirius: she had fair hair and blue eyes.

Perhaps Sirius was right and he needed a secret. He had often wondered over the years what would have happened if the girl hadn't had a boyfriend. Would he still have fallen in love with Sirius? On balance, he decided that he would always have chosen Sirius, but it was sometimes good to surmise that there might have been alternatives: it made him feel more in control.

Interest: a cottage.

Remus remembered the cottage as a sort of hell, where he and his aunt had spent many mealtimes in silence in the small dining room, eating soup and toast mainly – his aunt had very little appetite – and evenings in the slightly larger parlour, where his aunt would sometimes play the piano, an instrument of torture to Remus in those days. If it hadn't been for Lily's Muggle bands, he would have hated music almost as much as he hated geese and chickens.

One of the henhouses, a large, fairly well-equipped one, he had to admit, had served as his cage for full moon nights. He checked that it was still secure with the chain in place, because otherwise he would have to lock himself in the cellar, and the wolf hated being indoors, unless it was drugged up with Wolfsbane potion.

Now, the cottage seemed almost picturesque, bigger than he remembered it: unusual for a childhood home. But then, his aunt had been such a domineering presence that she dwarfed any surroundings.

Remus decided that the cottage would make a far cosier hideout than he'd imagined. The place had been swept fairly clean, but as nobody had lived there for about fourteen years it was dusty and musty, and the windows were caked with grime. But Remus had a wand and his mother's old book of household spells, so he was sure he could soon get the place decent again. For Sirius, when Sirius returned from his complicated mission.

But it was a few months before Sirius arrived.

Interest: an owl, or rather a macaw.

M,

I've got here safely. Hope the cottage is okay and not too full of horrible memories. Remember this bird? She was the one you thought you'd like to keep when we got home. But I am relying on you to send her back with a reply!

I am missing you. Funny, when you're there I never remember how much I miss you when you aren't. That may have come out wrong. I really miss everything about you. Everything. It's very lonely at night. I feel the way I used to feel at school when I had to creep out of your bed early in the morning so James or Peter wouldn't jump up and pull back your curtains to wake you up, and get an eyeful of something that would have completely traumatised them.

I wish we were back there, in your bed, when nothing else existed beyond the two of us, and that everything afterwards had been a bad dream. I wish I could go to sleep with you and wake up with you, and do a lot of things in between with you. Buckbeak is no substitute.

Please write back. I'm very, very bored. Looking forward to joining you in that godforsaken country retreat as soon as humanly possible.

Love, P.

Price: expression of true feelings. Paid, frequently, noted once in an unsent letter.

Padfoot,

Well, it bloody serves you right. You didn't have to go and live in a sodding cave in Hogsmeade, did you? You could be here with me, you wanker. Yeah, and wanking is about all the action either of us is going to get for the next few months, thanks to your being such a moron. As if thirteen years wasn't long enough.

Why, when you become responsible at last, do you have to take it to such ludicrous extremes? You could have paid a flying visit. You could have come back to me. You chose not to. You don't even deserve an answer, really.

Interest: one sent owl.

Glad you've arrived. The cottage isn't too bad. Maybe you'll see it one of these days! I would rather be in London, but it's quite good to get some country air.

Hope this bird will survive the journey. Say hi to Buckbeak from me.

I miss you too.

Love, M.

Price: bad news about Voldemort/Interest: reunion at last. (Paid/balanced June 1995.)

When Remus last saw Sirius, Sirius had been looking good. Better, younger, happier, with glossy hair and not nearly so skeletal.

Now, even through Remus's biased eyes, his vision as ever projected from the heart rather than the head, Sirius was looking very much the worse for wear. His hair was long again, though at least it wasn't too matted, he had lost all the weight he'd put on, and his eyes were haunted.

After Sirius had delivered all his news, he finally leaned forward into Remus's arms, and Remus could feel every one of his ribs through his robes. 'God, Padfoot, haven't you eaten for the past few months?'

'No. And I'm bloody starving.'

Remus looked around dubiously. 'I haven't got much food in the house. You could have warned me.'

'But you do have tea, don't you? I'll have a cup. White, three sugars.'

'That's not going to get you very far, is it?'

'No.' He hugged Remus again, resting his head on top of Remus's. 'Come on, Moony. Let's start with the calories. I'm supposed to be 'lying low' with you, by the way. But you'll have to feed me up first.' He sniggered.

'That is one dirty laugh. Come on, sit down.'

Sirius had three cups of tea, and Remus found a half-eaten bar of chocolate under one of the sofa cushions. 'It can't be that old, because I've only had the sofa a couple of weeks.'

Sirius looked dubious. 'What if it was already there?'

'It wasn't. You don't get Honeydukes chocolate in Wales.'

When Sirius had eaten the chocolate and finished off the milk and most of the sugar, Remus Apparated to the nearest town to buy bread and meat. His magical powers did not include a talent for cookery, so he stocked up on burgers from the local McDonald's, who were doing a 'Buy one, get one free' offer. He bought several boxes of fries as well, then Apparated home again, where Sirius ate nearly the whole lot, leaving one small cheeseburger for Remus.

'Sorry, Moony. But I really did need that. And now I could do with some sleep.'

'There's only one bedroom. Well, there are three, but only one of them has a bed.'

'Is that a problem? Since when don't we share a bedroom?

'We didn't in Morocco,' Remus said.

'We were sleeping on the beach in Morocco. I hope you have a decent bed. Those beds in Hastings were murder.'

'Not as big as the bed in the flat,' said Remus, rather wistfully. 'I do miss the flat. Oh, I know I was miserable all those years, but you were there. Or your essence was.'

'But my whole self is here now,' Sirius pointed out. 'Let's have some time together. While we can. Once the Order's up and running it's going to take up every second. Just like it did before.'

So they had some time together: they should have stayed in the cottage in Wales, where the bad memories had been scrubbed out, and sunshine poured through the windows, and Padfoot and the wolf had acres and acres to run round on full moon nights. They slept in each other's arms and loved each other and were happy; but of course they were always going to have to pay, even for such a tiny sliver of joy.

Price: Grimmauld Place. Paid: forever, until the sun and moon and stars have all gone out.

'I might as well be back in Azkaban,' Sirius used to say.

'For God's sake! It's only boring here, Pads, not deadly dangerous.'

'Ha! You don't know the half of it.'

'I do. Now, shut up.'

Remus wondered why the hell Sirius was crazy enough to offer Grimmauld Place to the Order in the first place. He had alternatives, the best of which was to allow the Order to use his family home as headquarters while he remained in Wales. Risky, but not beyond the bounds of common sense.

But oh no, Remus muttered to himself, Sirius had to do the most foolhardy thing of all, which was to allow himself to be swept back into that awful childhood home with all its associations, so that he'd become sullen and miserable and developed a bloody drink problem.

He was generally fine when Remus was around. Remus tended to keep him within normal limits. When Remus was there, Sirius didn't reek of stale alcohol. He ate well. He and Remus would light a fire and sit in the big drawing-room, by themselves, well away from Kreacher, and play wizarding chess or cards or talk or read, or just sit quietly together staring into the flames in companionable silence, like any quasi-married couple. They even had children to discuss, though they weren't their own children.

When Remus was around, they'd get to bed at a reasonable hour, sometimes rather earlier than a reasonable hour, and not get up till late. If Sirius had nightmares, which he did quite frequently in Grimmauld Place, Remus would be there to wake him and go down and fetch him a cup of hot chocolate with a decent shot of firewhisky in it.

It was hardly exciting, but at least Sirius was safe and occupied.

Unfortunately, Remus was very rarely around. It may, he reflected, have been some particular sadism of Dumbledore's to choose to send him on virtually every bloody mission that required at least a week's travel. When Molly Weasley hinted that Remus was mainly there to keep an eye on Sirius, he had to give a wry smile: he was there less than just about anybody else, and hardly had a chance to say hello to Sirius occasionally, let alone keep an eye on him.

Maybe, Remus thought, Dumbledore was aiming to divide and rule, keeping him away from Sirius deliberately, so that if it came to the crunch Sirius would be there for Harry, without any confused loyalties. But he would be anyway, Remus knew, and he got pretty pissed off about the games being played in and around the Order. Almost as pissed off as Sirius: he could understand why Sirius was angry and frustrated most of the time.

Price: the unavoidable presence of Snape. Paid, Grimmauld Place.

Sirius, as a joke, and to keep him occupied, started an inventory of Black artefacts that he would like to keep to attack Snivellus with.

The list included a knife tipped with indelible poison, an indestructible nest of spiders' eggs that renewed themselves perpetually as one generation of huge, hairy spiders followed another, a torture instrument like a misshapen fork designed to remove teeth with the maximum of agony, and many other family heirlooms.

Snape hated Remus and Sirius, and always had. The worst thing about Snape was that he knew all about them. He was homophobic to a compulsive degree – Sirius thought that was the result of stringent denial – and made it clear that he found Remus and Sirius disgusting.

Snape had always had a habit of sneaking round after them. At school, he once intercepted a note Sirius was passing in a Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson. The note asked Remus to wait after the lesson so they could sneak off and snog somewhere: Sirius tended to be fairly graphic in his notes, so it was hard for Snape to misinterpret it. Snape gave them a filthy look, but didn't quite have the nerve to hand the note to the professor.

Worse, and very disconcertingly, in Seventh Year Snape caught them with their arms around each other, though not actually doing anything. It could have been dismissed as a simple act of male bonding if they hadn't been standing quite so close together; if they hadn't been in a dark, apparently deserted corridor; and if Sirius hadn't been making a choked, incoherent noise as Remus's lips grazed his neck. No use pretending that these things could happen to anybody. Especially as Snape wouldn't have believed an innocent explanation: and there wasn't one.

But then, Snape sought out incidents like that: he had obviously followed them quite some way, because the corridor was by the south tower and miles away from classrooms or Slytherin dungeons.

In Grimmauld Place, Snape had a way of pulling his robes aside a bit when he went past either Remus or Sirius, of wrinkling his nose, of implying that he knew exactly what they did and found it unspeakably revolting. 'I take it you and Black will be having some, er, private time later, so perhaps you could use part of it to discuss Order business,' was one of his barbed comments. He even made the occasional reference to 'your unusual relationship' but he didn't quite dare do this in front of Sirius.

Sometimes, it was all Remus could do to remember he was an adult and not hit Snape with an Unforgivable Curse.

It was irrational, but Remus entirely blamed Snape for Sirius's death. He could list every one of Snape's insults, every time he had taunted Sirius for being stuck in Grimmauld Place. He wanted to confront Snape, to grab him by the neck of his robes and snarl, 'You killed him, you bastard. If you hadn't sneered at him he'd still be alive.'

Quite often during that terrible summer after Harry's OWLs, Remus would wish that the prank in Sixth Year hadn't ended without bloodshed; that he'd at least bitten Snape. If he had a time-turner, he mused, he would go back and finish the job. Then he would run off somewhere with Sirius, and their whole story would be completely different. Not necessarily better. Just different.

Final entry: flashbacks to a bad dream. Paid, Grimmauld Place, summer 1996.

'I had a nightmare,' Sirius said. He hardly needed to: he was drenched with sweat, and his hands were shaking.

'It's okay. It's okay. D'you want some light?'

'Yes, please.'

Remus waved his wand, and flames danced in the lamps around the room; lamps that had come from the cottage, and shed a soft, diffused glow that beautified even these dim, dark rooms with their high ceilings.

'Shall I get you a drink, Pads?'

'No, no. Stay here. I'll be fine.'

'Was it the usual? Come here, Sirius, you're so cold.'

'Shouldn't be. It's the bloody middle of summer. Yeah, the usual. Well, a bit different. I was here, and I was sixteen. And my mother'd just found out about that letter, you know, the letter to you.'

'I know.'

Sirius curled up against Remus, his head on Remus's shoulder. 'Then, my father came along and gave me a hiding. Actually, I don't think he did beat me for that. Must have been another memory. Anyway, I said I'd had enough and was leaving. And then I left, and…it was better. It was you and me, the way it really was. Prongs was there.'

'Well, that wasn't too bad, then,' Remus soothed.

'No. No, it wasn't. It was brilliant. It was the best dream I've had for ages. We were back at school. Never thought I'd find a dream about school so wonderful. We were sitting by the lake. Do you remember that day? When you lost your prefect's badge? It was that day, and I was so happy. God, I'd forgotten how happy I was. I hope you were too.'

Remus laughed. 'Yes. Of course I was.'

'Good. Well, that was hardly a nightmare. So suddenly we were walking down the hidden passageway, the one you said had caved in now. All of us. Even…even Peter. As soon as I saw him I knew the dream was a bad one after all. But it was okay, because a minute later he wasn't there any more. You know how dreams are. Then Prongs wasn't there, but I didn't feel too sad, because you and I were going to Honeydukes, and we were talking about the sweets we were going to buy. But you went off somewhere, and I couldn't find you. I was a bit frantic, because I thought you might have transformed, and we had to get you to the Shack. So I went to the Shack, and Prongs and Lily were there, and they told me that I had to go on now, and leave you behind. I said that Padfoot had to find you, because the wolf shouldn't be on its own again.'

'Sirius, you mustn't let worrying about the wolf get into your dreams! It isn't fair. It's my headache.'

'No, it's not. We're supposed to share things, aren't we? But then, it was like I was hovering above you, looking down. And it was the morning after the full moon, and you were lying there covered with cuts and bruises, but I couldn't reach you. I was calling you, trying to get you to hear me, and I must have woken myself up shouting for you.'

'It was just a dream. I'm here. Right here. And you're thinking about Prongs cos it's nearly the end of term, and you'll be seeing Harry soon.'

'That's right. I'm sorry, Moony. Sorry I woke you.'

'It's okay. I'll leave the lights on for a while, shall I?'

'Thanks. I just hated to see you lying so hurt and all alone.'

'But I'm not alone now. I have you. Go back to sleep, Padfoot.'