AN: For an anon on tumblr who asked for: "Marauders Era Sirius/Remus; Remus has a nightmare and crawls into bed with Sirius". I decided to frame it in the spring of their 7th year, just as the war approaches. I love requests! :D

Spring Chill

When dogs kicked their legs in their sleep, they probably were having the sort of dreams that Sirius was having.

Nothing made sense, the locations were all mixed up, and he kept getting people's names wrong. Common Sirius-dream-material.

This time, he was in one of those muggle schools he'd snuck into with Regulus that one night—Sirius, we're going to get caught and I'll tell mother it was your idea!—except, in the dream, it was Hogwarts. The Defense Against the Dark Arts class was being held in the café-tear-ee-yuh or whatever they called it, and Sirius had an omni-present feeling that he was late for something very important.

"The yak!" James cried, sprinting down the hallway to his friend. "Sirius, where's the goddamn yak?"

Ah, yes. That was the thing he was definitely supposed to be doing. "I lost it!" Sirius exclaimed with a laugh. "I lost it, and I didn't even wash it!"

When Sirius looked away and back at James, he had transformed into Lily. That was probably a fantasy of his before they started hooking up, that sick bastard. All he would need was a mirror to see Lily Evans, then.

"Pervert," Sirius snarked at James-Lily.

"Irresponsible yak herder."

S/he had a point, but in the dream, Sirius had decided that he was done with all of this nonsense and ready for some new nonsense.

Walking out of the school, Sirius came upon a staircase. It led into the clouds and seemed to disappear into them, which seemed like an obvious invitation for any willing Gryffindor to give the climb a shot. So, he rushed up what had looked like a gigantic staircase in two seconds, and attributed it to his Quidditch-toned legs.

At the top, wonderfully enough, was Remus. Lanky, freckled Remus.

"Is this the part where we shag?" Sirius asked eagerly, receiving a drawn-out sigh from Remus.

"Sirius, clouds are made of water. We shouldn't even be standing on them, let alone messing around on them."

Still, the urge to shag in the sky hadn't left Sirius' body entirely. "You could always be gentle," he offered. "Like that one night over the summer, when we had to be quiet so your parents wouldn't hear—"

"Padfoot?"

"Yes?" Sirius responded happily, but Remus' dream form seemed to be looking right through him.

"Padfoot?"

"I'm right here." Moony's voice was the one that sounded a million miles away. Sirius considered calling him out on that before realizing what was going on.

"Nnghk," he said, stirring in his ruby-red sheets. The bed was infinitely warmer with Remus next to him, but the rude awakening was not very chivalrous of him. "Moony?"

Remus slipped beneath the sheets and tucked his head under Sirius' chest, using the opportunity to get closer.

"What is it?" Sirius asked sleepily. "Did Peter finally get his first period?" When he felt Remus' body shiver up against his, the joking stopped. "What's wrong?"

"It's stupid," Remus insisted, gripping tight to him. "It's stupid and you should go back to sleep. I just, er, wanted to get warmer."

Sirius cocked an eyebrow before wrapping a protective arm around Remus. "Sudden chill in your bed?" he asked carefully.

Stupidly, Remus responded. "Yeah, I guess."

"Ah. Well that simply won't do."

"Yeah," Remus echoed again, tucking the comforter around them and closing the curtains back up. The last thing he wanted after an awful, sleepless night was to have Frank Longbottom curiously peering in on them.

"Any reason for this chill?"

Sirius was being too damn nice, and it made Remus want to shake him. The Sirius that had ignored Remus and his feelings for Remus altogether was long dead, and Remus almost missed that 'not having to explain yourself' bit of it. "There's no chill."

Faking shock, Sirius put a hand over his heart. "And to think, my dearly beloved has been telling me lies!"

"Fuck you," Remus laughed without realizing it.

"There's that smile," Sirius murmured, smoothing down Remus' hair. Nothing in the world was better than smiling Moony. Nothing. "Now talk to me."

Remus felt like a child that had to crawl back to his parents whenever something scared him. It was the helplessness like that that set a fire in his stomach. "It was just a bad dream, and I'm fine now. Go back to sleep."

"Tell me about it," he requested.

"No."

"Why not?"

"It was just a dream," Remus affirmed more for his own sake. "And none of it even made sense."

"Then you should have no problem telling me what happened in it."

"Sirius."

"What?"

"It was just bad, okay?" Remus countered, trying not to let how irritated he was by the lack of sleep show when he was talking to his favorite person in the world. "It was about the attacks; the ones on muggles. I know it's ridiculous for me to be worried about that, but I am."

Sirius smoothed his hair down again. "I don't think it's ridiculous," he soothed.

And there it was, that comforting and altogether wonderful voice that made Remus melt into the mattress even after a night terror of men in dark cloaks coming at him with wands drawn and masks of metal. In the dream, their teeth had been metal, too.

"I'm worried, too," Sirius admitted. Nothing the Aurors did could predict the group's movements, or even take a guess as to who they were.

Sighing, Remus wished he hadn't snapped at him. He rested his head on Sirius' chest in a quiet apology that Sirius immediately accepted with a caress of his neck. "I don't like where this is going. All of it, I mean. I heard that prat Crabbe laughing about it with his little circle of repressed and bigoted arses."

"They are indeed arses," Sirius replied sagely. "Not even the nice kind."

Remus laughed again, feeling the tremors fade from his body. "It's tough enough for muggleborns out there," he muttered, disheartened. How was anything supposed to be right when families were being killed in their own homes? "It only feels like it's getting worse."

"They'll catch them," Sirius said with all the false ease and confidence his small frame could hold. Telling someone you love that the world really was as awful and scary as they dreamed it to be wasn't easy. "After all, they're sloppy. Maybe they'll be locked away by the time I train to be an Auror." Oh, if only Sirius could actually believe that.

"Yeah." Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the warmth of Sirius' bed, but for now Remus could be at peace. It wouldn't matter that the peace could only last a night. "I love you." It went without saying, but Remus liked saying it.

Sirius surprised him with a long, sweet kiss on the lips. "Love you too. Sleep tight," he said with a grin, knowing he was the one that was actually holding Moony tight.

"And don't let the fleas bite."

In the morning, they would find out another attack had taken place that very night in Manchester. Sirius never would pretend that the assailants were going to be caught again.