Mister Padfoot
Gryffindor Tower
Second Bed on the Left
The third of February, the year nineteen-hundred and seventy-six
Nine o'clock

Padfoot,

I write to you from the darkest depths to which a man might descend: the dungeons. As you will have noticed, if you've bothered to read the time and date (which you never do), it is late evening. Why, you may ask upon future readings, am I lingering in the dungeons so long after curfew?

Well, allow me to refresh your ever fleeting memory: You set my arm on fire during Transfiguration, and, in trying to put it out, I upset a cage of pixies that went on to steal McGonagall's hat. Despite her many attempts at coercion (some of which were so unspeakably erotic that I dare not put them in print, lest this letter go astray), I refused to explain what I was doing (although, I should think that shouting "Oh god, I'M ON FIRE, put me out put me out" is fairly self-explanatory). Thus, my punishment. In fairness to McGonagogglies, the sentence she has imposed consists mainly of sitting quietly and not burning down the castle while she helps Filch root out a Bogart that's taken up residence nearby.

I am writing to you to pass the time, even though I will see you in an hour when I go upstairs and everyday afterwards until you drive me mad and I no longer recognize you. And o! what a sweet reprieve insanity will be. Also, I am irritated, because it is dank down here, Padfoot, and I didn't bring a jumper, and something has been drip-drip-dripping for the past hour, and I'm going to find it and kill it, even if it's a pipe. Especially if it is a pipe. I will send it to meet its pipe ancestors (aqueducts, mostly, I imagine).

Right now, you are probably working up some new and interesting way to keep me in detention for the rest of my natural life (may it be brief and chocolaty.) Or you are with Alice, though that doesn't seem likely, since she threw a pumpkin at you yesterday and told you never to breathe near her again. Unless you are very bored, in which case I'm sure the two of you have made up, but she's still not speaking to you, because her mouth is otherwise occupied. Har har. Didn't I have taste, once? I can't remember.

At any rate, it is simpler perhaps to list what you are not doing. You are not:

1. Sitting in a dungeon being dripped at, you bastard.
2. Feeling guilty that I am sitting in a dungeon, being dripped at.
3. Doing your homework.
4. Staying out of trouble, setting a good example, keeping clean behind your ears, etc. etc. ad nauseum.
5. Getting drunk (I'm guessing on this one, but really Padfoot, it's only Wednesday.)
6. Writing a letter you have no intention of sending.

I can scarcely imagine your reaction were I to hand this to you. You wrote things when you didn't have to? Tsk tsk, Moony. You have brought shame upon your house. I cannot look at you. Well, apparently I can imagine. Yet I persist in writing. What is wrong with me? My head is wrong, you'd say. Probably. It's just that I can't really think of anything interesting to say that doesn't somehow involve you. Perhaps that's because when something interesting happens, I run it through the filter that is you. What will Padfoot think? Has Padfoot seen this? I wonder what he'd say if he were here instead of me, and how much more interesting it would be to hear about it second hand from him than experiencing it right now, as it happens.

And that's the problem, isn't it? YOU light me on fire. YOU leave me to be eaten by a pipe-monster. YOU poured jam in my ear last Thursday when I fell asleep at breakfast, even though you know how tired I get before the full and that I really strongly dislike apple-flavored anything.

You also stayed with me the next morning when my leg wouldn't heal correctly, and you are… probably not reading this anymore (as if you ever were, as if I would ever allow it.)

I should probably stop now, before I get the insane urge to be completely honest.

Good evening,

Mr. Moony

(Scribbled hastily on the back of an old charms essay that was found on the floor of one disorganized flat, crumpled shortly thereafter, 23rd of June, 1978)

S—

I think that I am ill. I am sweating and shaking, and there is obviously something wrong with your head, because you have gone out for eggs and alcohol, and when you return, I have absolutely no idea what you will say, or what I will say. Which is why I am writing you this note.

Hello, Sirius. Please do not drink whatever it is you purchased until you've finished reading this.

I don't understand you, you know. You call me an old maid and a wet blanket and a variety of other equally unflattering names, and then you kissed me just now, right over there, on the sofa. Do you have any idea what this means? Of course you don't. It means that I now know that your eyeteeth are quite sharp and your lips are chapped and your mouth tastes like rainwater. It means that I will never be able to talk to you again without remembering the aforementioned facts.

And so, I am leaving (just as soon as I finish attaching this note to your favorite shot-glass, where I am sure you will find it), because I think that you should think about exactly what you meant when you said "I want to try something" and then kissed me and then ran away. I would say that I want you to think about it for as long as I've thought about it, but empires have been assembled in less time, and you aren't very good at thinking in the first place.

I don't know about this, Sirius. I just don't know.

—R

(Written with shaking hands in a journal kept hidden beneath a shared bed on the ninth of January, 1979)

Sirius,

Please know that I am trying very hard to understand what it is that has happened to my life. Our lives, I suppose. Oh hell.

It's just that it's all so illogical and strange and you make weird noises when you are sleeping, and when you are not sleeping, come to mention it. And I let you see me in the shower—the shower, Sirius!—which may not seem like such a leap for you as co-founder of Trouser-less Tuesdays, but for me it's quite the anomaly.

But it's nice, too.

Bugger. I don't even know what my point is anymore. I think I had one, and it had to do with whether I should be committed to some sort of research facilityas a case study in pathological neuroticism.

Only then you tell me to shut up and come here and everything else fades into the background.

Then again, perhaps "neurotic" isn't the right word.

—Remus

Padfoot
Somewhere, Very Far Away (or Possibly Not)
12 December 1980

Padfoot,

I wish I knew where you are.

It's a silly wish, I realise, and I like to think that were I given a magic lamp I might come up with something a bit broader in scope, but for now: I just wish I knew where you are. If I did, I would buy an enormous map and pin it to the wall beside our bed (not the wall with the stain, because I know how much you like the stain, even though it does not even remotely resemble a giant slug, no matter what you say). And I could point to the place where you are and say, "There. There he is. He is 327 kilometers away, in a country with 2 vowels in its name, where it was 22 degrees today, and he is probably wearing a fez, as is customary."

I could put my finger on that dot and know that you were in it somewhere, eating, drinking, snoring, shouting, being an irritating wanker, and all the other activities of which you are so fond. I could hate the dot, and only the dot, for having you.

But I can't know where you are, because there's a war on, haven't you heard? and no one ever knows where anyone is, even when they're in the same room. I don't have a dot, so I hate the whole map.

—Moony

(Written in a shared bed by wandlight, 29th of September, 1981)

Sirius,

I don't know what to do anymore.

We were so certain, so sure, weren't we? How can I talk to you when you barely look me in the eye anymore? I never realized how easy it was to talk to you until suddenly it wasn't.

I don't know what you think. I know there is something like betrayal in your eyes, and something like resentment in your voice, but there's still something like love in your mouth, and that's what keeps me up at night. How terrible it must be for you to love a traitor.

I can't hate you, either, you know. I want to, sometimes. But usually, I don't. I just want you to still be around when this all blows over (it will, won't it? How could it not? People can't live like this, not for long).

Perhaps tomorrow I will leave. I could wake up early, pack my things and be gone before you come home, if you even bother. In a day I could be free of all of this, but then where would I be? Away from you. And that's the problem, isn't it?

When we were very young, I had a set of encyclopedias. Do you remember? They were large and unwieldy and I left them at home after Second Year, but I loved them, because they gave me the sense that whatever I needed to know was pressed between their pages, waiting to be learned. I know that there are no reference books for how to make someone who loves you trust you, or, alternatively, how to leave someone you love behind, but still, it would be nice to hold a book in my hands again, to feels its weight, its sincerity, and believe with all my heart that it can help me.

Mostly, I miss you.

—Remus

(Scrawled on the back of an old photograph late at night on the first of November, 1981)

Sirius,

Only you could ruin the world and still be the most tragic thing in it.