YAY WE HAVE A BONUS HERE, GUYSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

24 days left, guys what the fuck are we still doing???????

*while im still stuck in 2018*

oh my god!!!! this is the sweeeteest!!!! i wish you and your family a very happy life <33

“May I?” “You may.”

(a snippet from the same unpublished raising harry AU except make it wolfstar for all of you who have been suffering through shitposts, have a treat for sticking around <3)

context: sirius and harry relocate to grimmauld place.

-

“Are you sure you’re going to be--”

“Ask me that one more time, Remus,” Sirius said harsher than he intended.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright here?”

“Arse.”

Remus gave him a wry grin over his glass of wine, lips already stained berry from the glass he had before, looking perfectly relaxed on the opposite end of the couch from Sirius. “Still haven’t answered the question.”

“I’m not sure I have an answer.”

Remus clicked his tongue, “You always have an answer. An opinion. It’s one of my favorite things about you, even if it is frustrating.”

“Am I frustrating you?”

“Every second since I met you,” he said, and Sirius opened his mouth, Remus holding up a finger immediately before Sirius could say a single word, “And before you respond with something clever regarding your time prison, no the 12 years there were not any sort of reprieve. Every time I thought I had gotten rid of the traces of you….one more would appear. Dog hair on my clothes, a neatly folded sweater, one year I even found an old letter you wrote me from hols when we were fifteen.”

“Well at least I know I won’t have to become a ghost to haunt you when I die…” Sirius mused, giving Remus a wink before taking a sip of his own wine. 

“...Are you going to be alright here?” Remus asked for the third time, and Sirius actually laughed, watching as Remus’s smile split his face wide open and suddenly Sirius was fifteen again, sitting across the Gryffindor common room with a quiet, golden boy who had the best barbs tucked away behind books and big sweaters. 

Sirius laughed quietly, looking up at the mantle where the ticking clock was. Sirius missed the stained glass windows already and the handsome emerald green clock and the soft beige rug that was in the sitting room at his home by the seaside. And then he thought of Harry’s smile when they arrived that day, trunks in hand, Harry rushing to the backyard to go flying, leaving his trunk in the middle of the hall.

It annoyed Sirius that Harry did that at first, because trunks didn’t belong in the middle of walkways and Sirius had told him to bring it up to the bedroom he had chosen the last time they had come together. Harry had blindly chosen a bedroom then as well, waving Sirius away with his hand and just nodding along, more interested in the backyard and his firebolt. 

It annoyed Sirius, and then…it didn’t.

It was so normal. As if Harry had been leaving his things around and Sirius had been getting mildly irritated for their whole lives. 

He thought of Harry’s messy hair and flushed cheeks when he finally came inside after Sirius had called him for dinner twice. Remus had come over to help them settle in, so had Andromeda, Sirius offering dinner in exchange, the table that Sirius had eaten lonely meals at just a few months ago feeling much bigger. 

“I think so,” is what Sirius settled on.

“Were you thinking that entire time?”

“Oi!”

“It was a long pause, thought you had fallen asleep.”

“I believe that’s your modus operandi, Moony,” Sirius said so easily, the nickname fizzling into the air like smoke after a firework. “Remus,” he corrected when he realized his fumble. Remus. 

“I can be Moony…I…missed being Moony.” Remus cleared his throat, “I missed you.”

“Remus…”

“I can’t tell you that? I can’t tell you how I missed you? And even though the dog hair on my clothes and the sweaters and the stupid notes you used to write me were frustrating to find…they also made me miss you? Can I not tell you I thought about you every day for almost 13 years?”

“You can tell me whatever you’d like,” Sirius said, “And I’ll tell you I did the same except it’s not quite so endearing or sentimental. Because what else was I supposed to think about? You were my…you were going to be my fiancee and you didn’t even try….”

“I’m sorry.”

“I…I know.”

“Then--”

“I’m not at forgiveness yet, Remus.” Moony. Whoever you are. “I’d really like to be, but I’m not.”

“I should go.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t get there.”

“You think you will? You think one day you’ll be able to look at me and want me again?”

“I want you right now. It’s not a question of want.”

Remus put down his wine glass on the end table, shifting on the couch so he was closer to Sirius, no longer on opposite ends of the couch--of the world. On the same page, in the same proximity for the first time since that night in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. The lights were dim, the clock ticked on the mantle as Remus’s knee touched Sirius’s. Amber eyes scanned his face looking for any type of sign and Sirius closed his eyes.

Moony.

“Can I hold you?” Sirius opened his eyes. “...Can I hold you?”

He breathed in deeply, already watching Remus’s hands between them, itching to touch Sirius. Sirius’s hands were longing to do the same. 

Remus was all scratchy cardigans and half-shaven face. Bumps and bruises, and Sirius remembered running his hands over every part of Remus entranced by the indentations of scar tissue and raised freckles. Nothing about Remus was smooth. Clever, but lacking social charm. Knew how to clear a room. Knew precisely the wrong thing to say at the wrong time. But their relationship had been. 

Against all odds, Sirius and Remus, Moony and Padfoot, my love and my darling, had been the smoothest course Sirius had ever sailed. 

“Can I hold you?” Remus asked one more time, even softer, his face moving closer.

“....the only thing I can think of to say is your name. Every version of it.”

“Yes…no…” Remus offered, “maybe…in a few hours…just for a second…”

“That’s a lot of options.”

“Yes or no, then.”

Yes.

Yes.

Hold me. Please. Remind me of what it was like to give my burdens to someone else to carry just for a little while.

“Yes.” 

Remus moved slowly, daring to touch Sirius’s hands first, then his wrists, thumb caressing his pulse point while long fingers skimmed over tattoos and the dark hair on his arms again. Sirius sat still, inhaling and exhaling deeply, afraid Remus was going to make him come undone with the most innocent of touches. Remus’s hands moved up to his arms and Sirius continued to fight with lingering resolve. 

It wasn’t passion, though.

No.

Not like when they were seventeen and they would take turns edging each other into madness with wanton looks in the hallway and hands in places they definitely shouldn’t have been in the middle of class, and kisses that always left someone begging for more. Or even when they were nineteen and finding intimacy in learning how to fix a leaking sink and a tiny shower that really couldn’t fit the two of them properly, but they insisted on being in there together anyway. Sirius would have to hold Remus’s arm when they got out of the shower, so much excess water on the linoleum flooring, taking care not to let his boyfriend-fiance-nearly husband slip. 

The one thing Sirius always handled with care…was Remus, and now it seemed like it was the opposite. Not that Sirius asked for it, or explicitly told Remus that.

This Remus now though, this thirty-something Remus was feeling every valley and curve of Sirius’s arms, then shoulders, moving closer until their faces were mere centimeters apart. 

Sirius inhaled.

Remus exhaled.

Sirius and Remus. One name it was always said so fast and together- SiriusandRemus, carved into trees, etched into pavement, signed on leases and wedding certificates that never came to be.

*plays in the background

(murder husbands inspired the desire to write the proposal out. sirius to remus. ((remus to sirius isn't quite this casual)))

Warm summer sunlight was barely poking through their bedroom curtains when Sirius woke up, trying to stay still as possible in bed, not wanting to wake his boyfriend. Even in the dead of night, he gravitated to Remus like a moth to a light, a barnacle clinging to the side of a boat for dear life even in calm waters. It had been that way since seventeen, though there wasn't much of an option then given the size of the dormitory beds, but wasn't any different now at 25 when they had a much bigger bed and a bedroom entirely to themselves. Sirius studied Remus in the morning light, counting freckles across the bridge of his nose and the pink left on his cheeks from time spent outside with their four-year-old and not enough sun lotion.

Sirius loved to count the freckles, especially when Remus was asleep and wasn't aware he was doing so. Though he loved to count the freckles during the day too because Remus's mouth would turn up at the corners and his face would flush from the intensity of the attention, but he never told Sirius to stop. Sirius loved the shape of Remus's mouth, the way it was slightly open when he slept; the sandy hair, and the way it captured the sunlight, turning more golden. Less grey.

Sirius wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life waking up next to someone who never complained about Sirius's full body weight on top of him, counting freckles, and making wishes on eyelashes that had fallen out onto cheeks.

"Marry me, Remus Lupin..." Sirius whispered, pressing a soft kiss just on Remus's cheek, as he always did before he got up in the morning. He could hear Harry in his room already, talking away to his toys and stuffed animals as he waited for Sirius to open the door.

"Okay," Remus mumbled in return, and Sirius halted, propped up on the palms of his hands, hovering above Remus.

"You're asleep."

"Sort of."

"You're supposed to be asleep."

"Kind of am," Remus stirred, bringing a hand out from underneath the covers to find the back of Sirius's head, his eyes still half-closed. It was clumsy, long fingers hitting Sirius's face, nearly poking an eye out before he was able to rest his hand where he wanted it to go. So Remus's long fingers could tangle in the curls that had escaped from the hairband overnight. Sirius would find it with the pillows when he made the bed later.

"You weren't supposed to hear that."

"Mmmm but I did. Sorry, too late. Answer still stands."

"...You'll marry me?"

"Yes."

"I have a ring," Sirius told him. Sirius also had plans. He also was working up to book a day at Remus's favorite fancy restaurant--the one they went to and just ate cheese and drank wine until closing. Sirius was going to show him the ring before their first glass. Sirius was going to say something romantic that would make Remus blush, and give the proposal speech of a lifetime.

But like most things he had planned out for him and Remus...they just never worked out the way Sirius built them up to in his brain.

"A ring?"

"Yes. It's in the dresser. Has been for months."

"Can I see it in an hour?"

"You survive this and in some terrible way, which I suppose no one can ever describe, you are compelled, you are corralled, you are bullwhipped into dealing with whatever it is that hurt you. And what is crucial here is that if it hurt you, that is not what’s important. Everybody’s hurt. What is important, what corrals you, what bullwhips you, what drives you, torments you, is that you must find some way of using this to connect you with everyone else alive. This is all you have to do it with. You must understand that your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less."

- James Baldwin, The Artist's Struggle for Integrity

ayeeeeeeee! ;)

Re-blog this if:

- you’re gay - can read - support gay people - want to hold a match between your fingers as you wander the halls of an ancient castle because it’s your only source of light amidst the ghosts of people long past - are an antelope - or want a chocolate bar.

No one will know which applies.

omgggg these doodles are tooooo cuteeeeeee <33

🪴 You 🍄 Are 🐛 So 🐞 Loved 🦥

Love you too!!! Such sweet messages and cute emojis! Thank you anon xxx

break me!!! why dont you-

The Best Worst Thing to Have Ever Happened pt. 1

An AU in which James/Lily are somehow still alive, and Harry chooses to continue living with Sirius and Remus. (this one doesn't hurt, not so much; similar to Fault Lines, it will also be posted in installments on tumblr because it's just a dribble.)

"What's it like to be living my life, Sirius?"

--

June 1995

Sirius had always been susceptible to things that went bump in the night. Remus joked that Sirius didn’t know the meaning of a good nights sleep and had been saying it for years. But usually, when Sirius sat bolt right up in bed, a chill running down his spine and heart racing, it was nothing. Black magic was just particularly paranoid and sensed every movement.

Every noise.

Every unwanted whisper.

“Sirius, go back to sleep…” Remus mumbled next to him when Sirius had reached out to grab his husband’s shoulder, communicating a sense of urgency. A fire when there wasn’t even a spark. Remus had become an expert at navigating the imaginary emergencies and quieted anxiety half-asleep.

Sirius sat still though, listening and hoping to narrow in on magical or muggle.

A lost postman.

A stray animal--that had happened before.

But there was nothing.

Still, he kept his hand on Remus’s shoulder.

“Baby…” Remus rolled over to face Sirius, one eye cracking open a sliver, “Everything is fine.”

“I…don’t know.”

“Do you hear something?”

“No.” Sirius felt Remus’s hand snake out from underneath the covers, placing it gently on Sirius’s chest. He was sure his husband could feel his racing heart, a breath away from taking off his shirt just for more space. “It’s just a feeling.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“Like…something terrible is going to happen today. Or…not terrible…I don’t know.”

Remus shifted, moving out of the cocoon of blankets realizing Sirius wasn’t as quick to settle this time around. More awake than he wanted to be at four in the morning, but climbed on top of Sirius’ lap nonetheless.

It was a faint buzzing.

This feeling.

A paralyzing sort of ache that made Sirius want to stay in bed, his mind drafting a letter into work for why he couldn’t have the hearing today. Everything was going to have to wait until the feeling passed and Sirius was sure the sun would come up. Right now he wasn’t so sure.

“You get these feelings every year just before Harry comes home.” Remus’s face was mostly shadows, eyes catching hazy morning light every so often, but otherwise Sirius was looking into darkness. If it wasn’t for Remus’s body on top of his, he might have drifted there altogether. “Every year it’s fine, right?”

“Yeah. Mostly. He’s getting taller and moodier so... I dunno if that’s fine.”

“It’s not terrible.”

“No.”

“Might just have to trust me, love. It’s just a feeling.”

“I…” Sirius sighed, “No, you’re right.”

“No, tell me.”

“It feels like magic. Like someone’s trying to get in here…except not…really. Do you feel it at all?”

“No,” Remus shook his head, “I’m sorry.”

It was probably nothing. Just like every year, when he felt the feeling and it had been nothing then.

Remus usually could pick up traces of magic if there were any to be found, even without Black magic.

“It’ll pass?” asked Sirius.

“I think so.” Remus nodded and brushed his fingers through the dark curls that were sticking to Sirius’s forehead from sweat. “I love you.”

“One more time.”

“I love you,” Remus repeated without hesitation, coaxing Sirius back down in bed.

The feeling didn't pass, though Sirius managed to get out of bed, disappearing to his desk at the ministry hoping to drown out lingering worry with legal procedures. Until mid-afternoon when a patronus came.

A report to the ministers office.

Wizarding council robes swirling around his ankles, wondering if this was the day that Sirius would lose his job for saying bullshit instead of objection in a hearing room.

Remus was there as well when Sirius arrived in front of the Minister’s office.

Harry.

Sirius knocked, and the door opened by magic, two people already seated in front of the minister and Albus Dumbledore.

Messy jet black hair that didn’t belong to his fourteen year old.

A violent swear from his husband.

“I should’ve stayed in bed…” Sirius muttered, the door behind them shutting as the minister invited both of them to take a seat next to Lily and James.

--

James couldn’t talk about it. What had happened.

James would start and immediately stop and Sirius wasn’t sure if it was because there was magic involved preventing him from doing so or too much weight behind the words. His tongue not strong enough to carry it, or not willing to pass it off to someone else.

Knowing James, it was probably the latter.

Sirius didn’t ask him to explain after a third attempt. There was no pressure, even as the sun started to come up and it was made clear that James wasn’t going to just vanish into the light. It wasn’t an odd fever dream. It wasn’t like the other times Sirius had gotten drunk off his arse and made-up conversations with his best friend in nearly the same spot. Sirius kept unconsciously reaching a hand out to touch James’ face as he spoke; kept his eyes open afraid that if he blinked James would disappear again. But James would just smile--that stupid wide one he had seen on his kid for the past fifteen years; the one he had missed the most on days dark clouds rolled in and promised nothing but storms--and return the touch, warm hand touching Sirius’ face. And how could Sirius make that up? How could he make up Lily’s obnoxious cackle from the next room as she talked with Remus?

If it was a fever dream, it was a really fucking good one.

Sirius would gladly let whatever illness this was consume him if it meant he could have his best friend next to him for the rest of his days.

James looked older than when they had last seen each other, more facial hair too, Sirius remembering teasing James to no end when it took him three months to get anything that resembled a five o’clock shadow. James had been so proud.

Sirius wondered if James was proud this time around, even if no one was around to share it with him.

Of course, Sirius looked older too. They all did after…after surviving a war and doing their parts to rebuild themselves in a world that had opened wide and swallowed them all whole.

“Don’t…be mad at anyone,” James squinted up at the sunlight,

“I’ve been mad at Dumbledore since he let me spend a night in Azkaban…” Sirius muttered, “Being angry at him for this is just another reason.”

“You’re right. I’m impressed you haven’t killed him yet.”

“Shouted at him? Definitely. I’ve tried to get him sacked a handful of times too but…I’ll settle for having the board micromanage him…” Sirius grinned softly, “This doesn’t feel real.”

“Lily stopped me from writing so many times just to say that we were okay…so many times, Pads, you have to believe me, I tried.”

“I would’ve tried too.” Sirius swallowed, “I’m not mad at you. Least of all.”

Sirius left out the part where he had spent a whole month angry at a person who was no longer living because they had left him.

How dare you leave me like this?

What about me?

What am I supposed to do without you?

Sirius had figured it out--how to live in a world without his best friend who had loved him when he thought it wasn’t possible--after years of scrambling and searching for dry land.

“You’re different,” James told him, “I think…same but different.” A not quite comfortable silence enveloped them.

“It’s been fifteen years, I should hope I’m different. You are, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” James nodded, “So…how’s my kid?”

And that was when it hit him.

You could be unbelievably happy for something having worked out…and unbelievably hurt at what was about to unravel at the same time.

This was the terrible, sinking feeling.

Sirius shoved down the slight hurt at the phrase my kid. Because Harry…Harry had been Sirius’ kid for years and years. Sirius was the one who was there fore the late-night fevers and trips to St. Mungos; Sirius had been to every Quidditch game and hung up every exam score. Sirius’ desk at work at a picture of the three of them--Remus, Harry, Sirius. His family. And in a few hours…in a single sentence, this shifted.

Pushed from the cliff, falling down to the ground in a heap because it occurred to Sirius that Harry…had his parent’s back. The ones he was supposed to have before the worst thing to have ever happened, happened, and he was put into Sirius’ care.

Suddenly, Sirius was sixteen all over again, out cold on the streets running aimlessly and searching for someplace to go.

I’m lost.

Who will want me now?

Where do I belong?

Because his kid…might not be his anymore.

Sirius never expected to feel this way again at 35. Not when there was a wedding band around his finger. Not when there was a tattoo of July 31st on the underside of his wrist and a bedroom upstairs decorated in Quidditch posters and a desk in the parlor with art supplies.

“Alright?” James asked, breaking Sirius out from racing thoughts that had just come to fruition.

“Yeah. Sorry…” Sirius pasted on a fake smile, “Harry’s the best. I…was just thinking I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

--

Happiness was so incredibly fleeting.

People talked of happiness like it was some holy grail destination. A white whale. And once you captured this elusive happiness it would be yours forever and never leave.

But that wasn’t true.

Happiness was an emotion, just like sadness or anger, ebbing and flowing like the waves on the shore.

One moment Sirius was happy to have his best friend back; Harry was overjoyed to meet his parents, their dinner table of three turning into one for five. A week of pure elation and laughter with shared memories and time spent playing Quidditch in the backyard.

The innocent getting to know you questions and the high of the happiness rollercoaster all coming to a screaming and startling halt when a different sort of question was posed.

So, how would you feel if next week we took Harry home?

Sirius wanted to scream.

And he did, when he got on his bike under the impression he was taking a joy ride and for once there were plenty of adults to supervise a teenager with insatiable curiosity. He yelled as loud as he could, masked by the sound of an engine, choking on exhaust fumes until his throat felt it would bleed.

This is his home.

He’s already there, can’t you see that?

You can’t take him

Sirius didn’t know how but he had managed to maintain his head. Legally, it wasn’t as simple as just taking Harry home. Which is how they all ended up in the sitting room of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Lily and James on one couch, Sirius and Remus on the other, Harry caught in the middle on a chair looking at his hands.

“There’s no pressure either way, Harry. It’s your choice, who you want to stay with,” James’s voice was thick with emotion as he spoke, holding onto Lily’s hand so tight Sirius could see light knuckles from across the room. He was holding onto Remus’s hand in a similar way, already preparing to have the rug pulled out from underneath his feet.

“...I don’t want anyone to be mad at me,” Harry said. Sirius pulled his eyes away from James to look at Harry who was looking the floor. Caught in the middle of a game of tug-of-war he didn’t ask to play; keeping score and tallying up points when he just wanted to enjoy being there. He knew Harry had hoped for a forfeit, and Sirius had hoped for one as well…even if it ended badly in his favor. For some sort of legality and clause in ancient ministry rules that stipulated what took precedence--adoption papers or biology. But the ministry was unsure of which one to void, laws coming up empty, and it was instead put into the hands of an almost fifteen year old.

It seemed irresponsible.

It seemed unfair to give an impossible, bone crushing weight to a child (though Harry would disagree if those words were ever told to him).

But there they were.

“I won’t be mad at you, love, they’re your--” but with an elbow to his side Remus, Sirius stopped speaking, realizing for the first time that Harry had picked his head up and was looking at James and Lily. Not Sirius. Not Remus.

“You…seem very nice. I...like getting to know you, ” Harry said, “but you might as well be strangers to me. I’m…sorry.”

Sirius watched as James and Lily put on the same fake smile Sirius had been wearing since that day in the ministers office. The smile he used to pretend everything was okay when he had seen this coming from the very beginning.

A rift.

The feeling was back.

The paranoid, lingering feeling that something…terrible was going to happen returned as he walked James and Lily to the door of Grimmauld Place after Harry left to go to his bedroom.

“Good for you. You’ve…obviously made him really happy.” James words were harmless but his tone said otherwise. His face gave him away, looking at Sirius with an odd sort of mixture of betrayal and confusion.

What’s it like living my life, Sirius? You always did fancy being a Potter.

“You don’t mean that.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”