Note: Thank you again for your wonderful feedback! :) I'm concluding this little story with chapter 4b, in the hope it makes you guys happy. As usual, I'm looking forward to hearing what you think!

The Age of Lies, 4b/4

Peter's testimony is not what Remus expects. It's so much worse. If, after all these years, after all that's happened, anyone had called Remus a romantic, he'd have laughed. But for some reason, he expects a story, a narrative, maybe a lesson. Something new. Instead he stares at the maggoty underside of the rock that is their school time friendship. Of all the things, he hasn't expected the familiar.

And when the flood of words degrades into a trickle and then a drought at the end of one hour, Remus is not sure they have truly come out on top.

Hours later, when they're finally done – when the Order has come and gone, when they've taken Peter, when they've checked and re-checked the wards, closed up the hole in the kitchen with magically reinforced tarpaulin – it doesn't feel like they're done at all. For a short moment, Remus had thought this would be the day he finally knew what tomorrow would bring. No such luck.

Remus is set to go home now. But home is a cold, dusty flat with unread books in it, half-empty takeaway containers, and milk that has gone off in the fridge. So naturally he stalls, lights up a cigarette on the patio, and watches the January sun rise, bleary and dull like the eyes of a fevery child.

With every drag, every exhale, he can feel the last remnants of anger seep out of his mind, his body – and other things come trickling back. The bone-deep fatigue he's ignored since he stepped foot in his flat and found Sirius and James snooping through his things. The lingering smell of death and woodfire in every breath he draws, of gunpowder and brimstone in every useless spell he casts. The holes Greyback has torn into his neck and back, their edges held together by Dittany and stubbornness. A message for the Order, the man had said, and not one Remus ever intends to pass on. But no, of course not. A message for Remus himself. A reminder where he belongs.

Middle age can't come quick enough.

The patio door opens and closes behind him, and of course it's Sirius Black. Bloody menace, thinks Remus. Bipolar arsehole. Peter's words are ricocheting around in his mind like so much shrapnel, unkind and without mercy. But wrong? Sirius is making soft shooing noises, and Remus turns wearily towards man and baby.

Harry is wrapped in a thick blanket printed all over with cuddly cartoon dragons, and only his tiny little face peers out. Sirius holds him up like a shield. As if Remus had the energy left to attack him.

Instead, he extinguishes his cigarette. James would have a fit if he smoked around Harry.

"You're back, then," he states.

Sirius looks up quickly, as if he's surprised he isn't being ignored. He catches himself quickly. "Lily's passed out on the sofa," he says, in an explanation of his presence on the patio. "And I sent James to bed, I think he's been crying. The baby was getting all soggy."

"Soggier, I should think," says Remus, and Sirius gives him a very careful smile.

The baby should look out of place on someone like Sirius, with his leather jacket, and his movie star youth, and the tattoos peeking out of his shirt. Instead, he handles Harry with well-practised ease – they all do, he's the first baby in their group of friends, and just passing Harry around can keep them entertained for hours. A desolate James, on the other hand, is a territory far less travelled.

Remus deliberately turns his attention back on the Potters' surprisingly well-kept garden. He supposes hiding does get boring. "James has taken this hard," he informs the shrubbery beyond the patio railing. "But he has so much more to lose than either of us. Came closer, too."

"We already lost it," says Sirius, stepping up next to him because, apparently, why not. "I mean, I did. Threw it away. What an idiot, eh?"

He is surprisingly hard to ignore, even now. For some reason Remus has expected this would go pretty much like sixth year, six months of silence or longer. He should have known. Sirius can't stand repetition.

Somewhat belatedly, Remus finds himself nodding. He can't bear to look at Sirius's face now, instead he tries to catch Harry's attention. But Harry just coos and wriggles in his godfather's arm, determined to tumble down eventually, as awake as only a baby can be after a night like this.

"How are you feeling?" says Sirius. It is not a question he typically asks, and Remus takes some time to ponder it. Somewhere beneath the fatigue, he's sure he's feeling something.

"Like we dodged a bullet," says Remus finally. "Muggle expression," he clarifies after a moment.

"I've watched all your shitty crime programmes, haven't I," says Sirius. "You're right. Dodged it big time."

Well, that doesn't sound right, thinks Remus. "Little bit grazed by it, maybe," he offers.

"True," says Sirius. "Where's Peter?"

"Order Headquarters." He still can't look at Sirius properly, but out of the corner of his eyes, he sees one of those posh eyebrows rise in surprise.

"Not with the Aurors?" says Sirius.

"Lily and I talked James out of it," says Remus.

Sirius still shows no sign of getting it as he confusedly keeps a somersaulting Harry from flinging himself off his arms.

"Oh, you posh boys. Pure as the driven snow," Remus says eventually, when no reaction is forthcoming. "You two really think you're invincible, don't you? Think it through. If there is a trial – if he talks –"

"Let him," says Sirius, with deep, careless conviction.

"Failure to register as an Animagus gets you up to five years in Azkaban," says Remus. "Let Peter talk, and he takes out two of Voldemort's major opponents for years, just like that. I mean, don't let this get to your head, but it may very well change the course of the war."

"I think you're underestimating Peter's sense of self-preservation, mate," says Sirius. "He has nothing to gain from telling them we're all Animagi, he'd be out of Azkaban so fast as a rat – " His brain catches up with his mouth. "Oy, that's not good, is it."

"Voldemort is the vindictive type," says Remus. "I doubt even the walls of Azkaban could stop him. Peter fucked up, he'll want leverage. Taking you and James out – that's leverage."

Sirius nods, his expression darkening. His voice, when he speaks, somehow sounds younger. "You really think they'd convict us, after all these years? We were underage at the time."

"You are of age and still unregistered," Remus reminds him. "The law isn't vague on this."

"Oh," says Sirius, which is his go-to response for the occasions his juvenile delinquency catches up with him. "What do you suggest instead? That we let him go? Or that we –"

He doesn't complete that sentence. Remus understands perfectly well. He's not sure he could say it out loud either, let alone kill one of his oldest friends even if Peter's plans had succeeded. He's glad it wasn't tested.

"Suppose we let him go," says Remus. "With a strong memory charm, of course; he needs to forget all about Regulus. He'll have nowhere else to go; he'll have to go back to Voldemort. But he'll be useless as a spy."

Oh, god, thinks Remus. All the things that could go wrong. To start with, he wouldn't trust any of his memory charms to persist under Voldemort's scrutiny.

"You mean, he has to try and stay in Voldemort's good graces by his wits and magical prowess alone?" says Sirius. He laughs. "He'll be dead in three months."

Might be kinder to kill him ourselves, thinks Remus. But he also thinks of the perfect silent Killing Curse Peter has demonstrated, how he has very nearly brought all of them down, how he has played them like pawns in a giant chess match, and shudders. "Don't go underestimating him now," he says. "I listened to him. I –"

"Tell me," says Sirius softly.

Remus is vaguely aware he's wringing his hands, and instinctively thinks No. It's enough to have stared into that abyss once today.

"Veritaserum," he says after a while. "A funny old thing. It finds truths where there are none. Convictions, false conclusions, misunderstandings. Repeat a lie enough and it turns into truth, and Peter repeated his lies a lot, was trapped in them and he shifted and chose and arranged them until they made sense. I know why he did it. I know where we went wrong. And yet -"

He knows why Peter hates Sirius, the way Remus never could. He hates feeling that maybe he should, too. Peter had been as much of a bystander to The Prank as Remus, neither of them had heard the full story until the next day. How, then, can Remus's reaction be completely right, and Peter's completely wrong? Maybe they're both half wrong. Maybe they're both half right. If Peter should have hated Sirius less, maybe Remus should have hated Sirius more.

This is seriously fucking with his head.

Maybe Sirius has thought about this more than he lets on, because he says, "We were kids. Kids are horrible to each other."

"We still are," says Remus. "You saw how fast it turns sour when you let it." Sirius has the decency to look slightly ashamed at this.

"Peter…" Remus continues, "Peter just had one hell of a head start."

The words sound almost logical when they leave his mouth, he thinks. Like he's already distilled the jumbled mess he's witnessed from Peter into something palatable. Into a lesson they can learn from. But no, he's just picked a handful of things that sort of fit together and ignored the rest, because the truth is, he doesn't understand this. Any of it.

Because no matter how sour this has turned for them – no matter how much he's wanted Sirius to piss off with his understated accusations and his needless paranoia and his pathetic remnants of teenage love, no matter how much he's wanted to be left alone until the end of his numbered, miserable days – today he's seen Peter fire a Killing curse at Sirius bloody Black, and Remus's first instinct has been to get right into the middle of that.

That must say something about him. Other than the fact he's a moron.

Remus wants to say something, wants to explain that he's lying, like a teacher does, he simplifies and omits until the truth is but a lie, because a child might not understand quantum mechanics but they will grasp Newton's first law. And this is not even Newton's first law, it's just an apple that once fell on Peter's head. But a look at Sirius's face tells him it's unnecessary, that Sirius is already as flummoxed as he is.

He still doesn't know how to feel about any of this, but suddenly he realises he'd quite like Sirius's perspective. Maybe that'll help. It used to, before.

That's why he turns Sirius's earlier question around on him and asks, "How are you feeling?"

"I seriously don't know." Sirius makes a helpless gesture with one hand that would have been one hell of a lot more expansive, had he not been holding a still squirming Harry. "Many different things. All at once. I don't even feel like I can give any of these things the appropriate… attention right now, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

The apology hangs between them like a delicate flower. Remus considers it wearily. He doesn't often get apologies from Sirius, and he's not quite sure what to do with this one. There was a time when he would have taken what he could get. Not now.

"Did you really say all these things?" says Remus. "To Peter, I mean. That I have no reason to be fighting for the Order. That you tested me. That you pity me."

Sirius's face twists into a grimace. "It all sounded so much worse when Peter said it," he says. "He made it sound like - like I was terrible. That you were terrible. That's not what I meant –"

"Oh, you should have heard what he had to say about you," says Remus lightly. "Overbred lunatic was one of his kinder expressions."

Sirius snorts. "Well, he's not entirely –"

"But you said these things," says Remus.

The deceptive early morning calm hangs around them for a long while, interrupted only by Harry's baby noises. "Yes," says Sirius finally.

Remus lets him hang in that limbo for a short little while, but, biggest jerk in the universe or not, he supposes Sirius has a right to know. "Peter fabricated the evidence," Remus says eventually. "I never even knew there was any. I thought you were just being an arse for no other reason than –"

"Other than what?"

"I don't know," says Remus sharply. "What reason does Sirius Black need for anything, except the sky is blue and I'm a Werewolf?"

He is surprised, as he always is, when he finds sharp edges from where The Prank has shattered him. He's thought they have all been smoothed over by now, evened out by the tides of so many moons.

Reliably, Sirius's bouts of self-deprecation never last very long. "I'm not sixteen anymore," he states calmly. "What, did you think I was just going to abandon you without at least some semblance of a reason?"

"You're saying you occasionally try and meet the barest minimum of human decency now?" says Remus.

"No," says Sirius. "No, that's not what I'm saying!"

"What are you saying?" says Remus.

"What I'm saying," says Sirius, "is I'm sorry. I should have trusted you."

It is the second sorry in the span of about ten minutes, and Remus still doesn't know what exactly to do about it.

Maybe meet it halfway.

"I should have been more trustworthy," he says. He's talking to the shrubbery again, but he guesses it's a start.

"It's not your fault–" starts Sirius.

"We knew there was a spy in the Order," says Remus. "James chose to ignore it, because he thought distrust would paralyse the Order, and he was quite right about that. You became fixated on one lead, but at least you were willing to face the situation at all. And I? I trusted no-one. I lied to you more times than I want to admit. I isolated myself from everyone and pretended the Order is more important than the dents in our friendships. But that's what it is, isn't it? That's what the Order is, and that's what we're protecting. People."

"You're being too kind to me," says Sirius.

"Trust me," says Remus, "I'm not. I haven't been kind to anyone in an eternity. Sort of miss it."

"Willing to face the situation," quotes Sirius with all the contempt he occasionally has for himself. "I was a drama queen. I wasn't content with being betrayed by some random Order backbencher. No, for me, it had to extraordinary. It had to be someone close to my heart."

He pauses, and, rarely for him, re-examines his words.

"And look at me," he says, "now I'm twisting this into a bloody compliment. Mother would be so proud. So here's the truth: I did what I thought was right, and I hated it all the way. I was wrong, and I still hate it. I'm sorry."

Remus tries to think of something to say, of something to refute this – but in the end, he just nods. He wants to give Sirius the benefit of the doubt, wonders how it would have been with the roles reversed, if Sirius had been the one to whom all the evidence had pointed – but right now he's bone-tired.

Instead, he asks a question Sirius would never have answered twenty-four hours ago. "Where's your brother now?"

"Safe," says Sirius without hesitation. "At Hogwarts. Dumbledore sends his regards, by the way."

"What did he have to say about the entire –" Remus flails – "Peter situation?"

"Nothing much," says Sirius. "The usual welcoming feast type speech. Those who are closest to us can hurt us the most, nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak. It sounded impressive and sort of soothing. But you should have heard him talk about Horcruxes with Regulus."

"Horc – what," says Remus.

"Long story," says Sirius. "Literally long story, they talked for hours. I'm saving it for when we are all a bit more awake. Suffice to say Dumbles looked like it's Christmas."

For the first time in ages, Remus almost laughs. "Dumbledore always looks like it's Christmas," he says. "Largely because Dumbledore looks like Santa."

"Well, this Santa wants Regulus to go back to Voldemort," says Sirius.

His light tone is betraying nothing, but Remus has known this man for a long time and can pinpoint exactly how he'd react to a proposition like this.

"Let me guess," says Remus. "The china?"

"The teapot and two saucers found an unfortunate end," says Sirius with a shrug. "Regulus made me stop, I don't think he likes loud noises."

"Yes," says Remus. "I don't think he ever made a very good Death Eater."

Sirius laughs softly at that. "True," he says.

"Why does Dumbledore want him to go back?"

"Oh, many reasons," says Sirius. "The other Horcruxes he's discovered are in the possession of Death Eaters, and it will be infinitely easier –" Sirius rubs his eyes. "Bollocks, I'm sounding like Dumbledore now. Anyway, I told him to shove it, I think he just likes the idea of having another spy among the Death Eaters."

"And Regulus?"

"Said he'll think about it." His mouth quirks. "I could tell he wasn't a big fan of the idea. He looked at me like, why did we put this guy in charge?"

"We're all so willing to put ourselves in danger," Remus reminds him. "We need someone who has no problem sending others."

"Well, I have a problem sending him," says Sirius sharply.

Harry has been good-natured so far, but now he starts crying. Sirius makes noises at him, the absent-mindedness of which only seem to offend Harry further. He makes him fly like an – like an aeroplane, Remus wants to think, but of course not, like a flying motorbike. But that doesn't calm him down, either. To be fair, Sirius doesn't seem too fazed.

"Did you really tell James I'd be a shit godfather?" says Sirius, raising his voice over Harry's cries.

Remus closes his eyes. Shame about the baby, though, he thinks, Peter's words etched into his mind, traces of acid he'll never get rid of now. He'd said them like an afterthought, like Peter hadn't plotted to hand this tiny sniffling baby over to Voldemort.

In sum, shit godfathers have never been the issue here.

"You were a shit boyfriend and I projected," Remus says. "Tell you what. I'll take it back if you figure out what his problem is in the next minute."

"Deal," says Sirius, as Harry turns it up a notch.

"There's literally about three things that could be wrong with him," Sirius informs him, seemingly undisturbed by the crying, rocking Harry without effect. "He's hungry, he needs a nappy change, he wants to make some noise. This stuff isn't hard. I'll just pop inside and -"

He turns, but there is Lily already, standing in the patio door. They haven't even heard her come out.

"This stuff is hard, you pillock," she says. "Give him to me, it's time for elevenses."

Lily is still in yesterday's things, her copper hair in a hasty bun on top of her head, her face bearing the imprint of a sofa cushion. She shivers visibly when she steps out on the patio in socked feet, and draws her powder blue shawl tighter around herself.

"Elevenses?" asks Remus with a meaningful look at the just-rising sun.

"He takes it early," says Lily. She holds out her arms, and Sirius passes her Harry, whose crying changes from pissed-off to goal-oriented. He immediately starts pawing at her blouse.

"I guess that answers that question," says Sirius.

"Doesn't count," Remus says.

Then Lily just looks at the two of them, with heavy-lidded eyes, swaying like a water plant in a slow, twisty current. "Oh, you idiots," she says.

Without another word, she steps forward to give Sirius a very solemn one-harmed hug and a kiss on the cheek, and for a moment, he doesn't let her go. "Thank you," he says into her hair.

"What for?" she says. Clearly, her plan has been to replace talking with hugging at this ungodly hour.

"For letting him in," says Sirius simply, and he leans down, cups her face in his hands and presses his lips gently to her forehead. Lily accepts it gracefully.

Then Lily turns to Remus, gets up on her tip-toes and gives him a hug and a kiss, too, and he he's surprised how much he relishes the touch, something long-forgotten, her sleep-heavy body in his arms, the warmth she's radiating, even if his injured body protests against the pressure. His body, after all, is stupid. The meaning of this all is clear: Shared horror at the shadowy fate waiting for them, shared relief at their improbable escape.

Harry, of course, is the only one not acknowledging the gravity of the situation. But he will, in time, thinks Remus. Lily turns without another word and steps back through the patio door into the living room.

They're alone, then, without even the admittedly cute but not particularly eloquent Harry between them, and suddenly everything seems harder. Remus takes advantage of the lack of minors in the vicinity and lights another cigarette, and he offers one to Sirius without asking.

Sirius accepts it. That, at least, is something they still have in common.

Slowly killing themselves with cigarettes. An excellent start.

"I thought more things would change," Sirius says finally, watching the smoke twirl and combine in the frigid morning air. "Today was extraordinary, I thought it must change everything. And yet – we're talking about letting Peter walk. We're talking about sending my brother back."

"We're talking," Remus points out.

Sirius regards him with a guarded expression. "Yes," he says. "That."

"You can't know what has changed," says Remus. "We dodged a bullet. We somehow avoided a tragedy, and we don't even know the shape of it."

"Yes, we do," says Sirius. "James and Lily and Harry."

And you, and me, Remus doesn't add. That monstrous fool, that careless monster. The memory of Peter's litany is still too fresh in his mind. He knows exactly what sort of fate would have awaited them. Remus put down like an animal, beheaded by Macnair's silver axe, or else enslaved by Fenrir Greyback, serving Voldemort whether he liked it or not. Sirius shut away somewhere, insignificant, powerless, suspended an inch away from death, trapped inside Azkaban or Grimmauld Place or a neverending Imperius.

And Regulus, dead on the Potters' kitchen floor, his body unmarred except for the scars he brought, and his secrets gone with him.

Sirius looks down at the cigarette in his hands, and suddenly sleepless nights and adrenaline and dodged bullets seem to catch up with him. "Oh god," he says. "What if –"

And Remus steps forward, he can't not, Lily started the hugging and now it's on them to finish it.

He goes into it expecting pain, of all things, but of course Sirius has paid attention, and stays clear of his bruised left side, of his torn-up neck and back. Everywhere else, he holds on tight.

"What-ifs have no place here," Remus says. "No more. No what-ifs, no doubts, no silence, no lies -" and Sirius has his head on Remus's shoulder, breath close to his ear, and at least one of them is crying, the shivers reverberating through his chest and his thoughts.

They dodged a bullet, Remus reminds himself. Then why does it feel like they stepped right into its path? Like everything they have been, everything they thought they have been, everything they could be, has toppled over and been replaced with a mad sort of new reality?

He notices, acutely, that Sirius's hand is hovering over where he knows Remus is hurt.

"Do you want to talk about it?" says Sirius. "About what happened to you in the forest."

This is usually Remus's line, or used to be, in that weird bygone age. Not today, thinks Remus, not today and not tomorrow and preferably not before all those bones in the forest have become dust. But maybe he can talk about something sufficiently like it. Things want out, it seems to be that sort of day.

He realises he's holding his breath, and exhales, quite deliberately. "I almost didn't come back," he says.

He half expects a needling, paranoid question, but Sirius might just understand now. "Peter intercepted your messages, didn't he," he says.

"I thought the Order had abandoned me," says Remus. "I thought they were okay with me dying in a forest somewhere. All those people who died, they trusted me, but the Order never -" He laughs softly, it's either that or crying again.

Sirius's hand is on the back of his head now, a warm and almost comforting presence.

"I'd have been there," he says. "If I'd known you were in danger. You know that, right? No matter what, I'd have been there."

It's such a Sirius thing to say. Of course, it's also such a Sirius thing to do. Maybe it's a blessing it wasn't tested.

"I thought you'd reached your breaking point," says Remus. "No, don't argue. There is a breaking point, for all of us. I know it, I was there. I thought I was done after Christmas. Done with the fucking Order, I mean. I thought I should just vanish off the edge of society. Take myself off your paranoid hands." He draws a shuddering breath. "See, you were right after all."

"Bullshit," says Sirius, as eloquent as ever. "You came back," he points out.

"I hate self-fulfilling prophecies," says Remus, and wonders if Sirius has any idea how lonely it is in the frigid forests of Wales, when everyone else is gone. "Anyway, the rent on my place was paid through January and I was starting to miss sleeping in a real bed."

Sirius snorts. "I'm not sure that stupid mattress qualifies."

"Oh, you should be so lucky," grumbles Remus, but Sirius hears it, and laughs, a little, and Remus thinks Sirius knows exactly how lucky he is if he gets to share that back-breaking mattress ever again. Or maybe it's not laughter.

It's not entirely clear what anything is, today.

"This fucking war," says Sirius thickly. "I'm sick of it."

They break the embrace, but only a little, they're still breathing each other's air, close enough to kiss, or, say, have a hushed conversation. Because that kissing lark will obviously have to wait.

"What did you think of?" Remus says, grasping a sudden impulse by the throat. "When you summoned the Patronus last night."

"Why are you asking?" says Sirius, and belatedly, Remus tries to think of a reason, anything, except he's always been hopeless at Patronuses, because he doesn't get them. And if anyone shouldn't be able to get them, it's Sirius, with his haunted house of memories.

"It's like the war has tainted them," says Remus. "My memories. Like they're insignificant next to the war. Especially now, it's like, all this time, I was missing something, ignoring something… like my memories should be unhappy…"

Sirius lays a hesitant finger on his lips before Remus can let his brainstorming coalesce into a new truth about himself. Leave them alone, it says. You'll need them later.

"Today, my brother returned from the dead," says Sirius simply. "And he was standing right in front of me. At that moment, I wasn't thinking what it meant. I wasn't thinking he might be an impostor, or a liar. I grabbed that feeling and didn't let go. The Patronus just… came into existence, because it recognised him. I don't think I even tried to summon it."

His smile his fleeting, but it's there, and it's something Remus hasn't seen in too long: Happiness.

This is the smile he wants to make happen again. He used to be able to, in the past.

"Could you do it again?" says Remus.

Sirius is confused. "Can I summon a Patronus?"

"Can you not think?" says Remus. "Can you grab a feeling and not let go?"

"Ah," says Sirius. "Yes. Probably my best thing. You know, before all… this."

Remus nods, slowly and purposefully. "I'm tired of wasting time," he says. "Last time, I took six months to forgive you. Thinking and thinking and thinking. At this rate, we might be dead before we're fine."

At this, Sirius steps back, creating some actual, if minuscule distance between him, but watching him curiously.

Of course, most of Remus's deliberation is going on inside, and it goes as follows: He's tired of being played like a puppet, or a pawn. He's not going to let Peter win this one.

"Where are you going with this?" asks Sirius.

"Home," says Remus. "I'm going home. I'm tired, and I need to sleep."

He almost doesn't say it. But fuck him, he's a Gryffindor, for better or worse. And that is why Remus, after much consideration, adds, "Are you coming?"

As if to underline his words, he steps forward, closes that tiny gap that separates them, and Sirius's arms encircle him again, solid and warm and smelling of leather and cigarettes, and he feels, rather than sees, Sirius's slow nod. "If you'll have me," he says.

"I'm only asking this once," says Remus.

At this, there is laughter. "Come on, then," says Sirius. "I'm taking you home."

The End.