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The forest always was the most magical in the wintertime. Sirius remembers marvelling, so early on, at how beautiful the trees, and the flowers, and the ivies were at midsummer, and how green and lush and verdant they stayed right up until the very end of August when the sun began to tip lower on the horizon and the forest, in turn, quietened to that spellbinding umber, all crunching leaves underfoot and grey squirrels darting along twisting branches and hiding in their hollows in the oak trees, tucking away fat acorns for the winter. Springtime, too, was a spectacle, with the crystal clear waters it brought to the beck behind the cottage and the pretty white daisies it coaxed to burst through the grasses in the garden, and all the days in those glorious interstitial phases between the seasons - the nearly-summer, the almost-spring - when the forest seemed to quarrel with itself over what it ought to do with its leaves, and its waters, and its howling winds. Those liminal days were as enchanting as any Sirius could recall.
But the winter - when the beck would freeze like glass and hold itself in stasis between its own frosty banks, and the squirrels would feast on their hidden bounties, and the oak and the ash and the beech would all surrender the last of their leaves as the mighty pines stood steadfast against the first snow - was when Sirius truly felt he'd come home. He would sit, that first December, for hours; alone, at the open window, watching the flurries and the flat, white sky, and the winter birds as they flitted between bare branches and plucked berries, red as garnets, from the rowan trees up the trail. The icy winds and the frosts never did breach the cottage walls, of course, Remus doing something clever in the sitting room each morning that brought about a fire that danced and sparked in the grate until long after sundown, and the old stove in the kitchen appearing to run on good will alone, so rarely did either of them seem to stoke it. But even outside, beyond the crumbling walls that held the two of them so tenderly, the chill that gripped the trees and the beck and the very earth beneath their feet never did seem to bother them too much; right in the heart of the forest, where the pines grew tall and the weak winter sun barely glanced the frozen ground before it sank back below the treeline, it never did feel too cold to Sirius. Whether it was the trees, or the cottage, or the old stone circle that called to them, always, he never was sure what it was keeping them warm through those colder months; keeping his feet snug in his boots as he crunched over broken twigs and snow drifts, and the tip of his nose warm and dry even in the biting winds that roared down from the north at night, howling through their clearing and rattling the leaded glass windows in their very frames. He assumed, the first winter, that it was simply Remus, doing something brilliant again; whispering some old forgotten words and waving a hand so that Sirius's might stay warm in the snow, but when asked Remus insisted that no, he'd done nothing, and in truth he too had noted the relative comfort with which they'd weathered that first winter together, and how much warmer the cottage seemed for having Sirius there, and how the blackberries from the bramble up the trail tasted that much sweeter than last year.
"James has asked us to theirs for an early Christmas,” Sirius remembers saying, that first December, as they crouched over the wild beds in the cottage garden and picked leafy herbs from the frozen earth.
“That’s kind of him,” said Remus, smiling over at Sirius. And then: “You should go.”
Sirius frowned. “And you,” he said, shucking a bushel of icicles from the soft green stems he tugged from the soil, the fractals skittering across the hard ground like cut diamonds. “They’d love to have you there.”
“Okay," said Remus, with a blithe smile that Sirius wouldn't quite understand until they found themselves at the Potters' a week later, sitting down to a makeshift Christmas feast before James and Lily would whisk Harry away to the coast to spend the rest of the month with his grandparents. "You're both welcome to join us down there," James had offered back in the November, and Sirius had thanked him and insisted that they'd do quite well enough in their cottage in the woods for Christmas Day, and not mentioned how Remus still didn't manage to be away from the forest for any period of time beyond a morning with Harry there, or a trip to the nearest town there so that Sirius might stock his own winter wardrobe ahead of the coming snow. He didn't mention how that was likely how it'd always be, and how the two of them would likely never come down to Fleamont's on the coast for a long, lazy Christmas break, and how the cottage was home now, and always must be home. And how, despite the absurdity of it all, that was exactly how it should be, and how Sirius grew happier with each passing sunrise.
But that first Christmas - that first early December at James's house - had found them crowding round a table heaving with turkey and parsnips and cardboard crackers stuffed with bright paper hats, and a bemused-looking Remus politely asking who the old lady on the television on the lunchtime news was, and a flabbergasted James staring at him open-mouthed over the gravy.
"I knew the country had a queen," Remus said later, as they walked hand-in-warm-hand back along the trail through the woods, boots crunching over the frozen earth and the lightest snowflakes settling in Remus's curls. "I just never knew what she looked like."
Sirius grinned, and shook his head. "I'm not sure I've ever seen James lost for words before today."
"I hope I didn't offend him."
"If you did, he deserved it," Sirius laughed, squeezing Remus's hand in his. "He's a pompous git," he said fondly. "He’s only bothered because his dad always made him watch the Queen on Christmas Day when we were young."
An owl hooted peacefully above somewhere, drawing Sirius's gaze skywards towards the flat, white clouds beyond the canopy; he had, by then, long since stopped worrying about precisely what business the forest owls had during daylight hours.
"I liked the paper hats," Remus said after a spell. "And the lights on the tree."
Sirius glanced at him at that, a gentle smile pulling at his lips, and simultaneously reached a quiet realisation and a slight, red-faced embarrassment that he could feel creeping its way up past his scarf, flushing his cheeks in the cold air.
"I shouldn't have assumed, should I?"
"Hmm?"
"I shouldn't have assumed that you celebrate Christmas," Sirius said softly, Remus's slight bemusement over the day's proceedings - the crackers, the Queen, the jolly songs Lily had put on the record player after lunch that Sirius had noticed Remus not singing along to - slotting neatly into place. And he'd felt silly and ignorant in that moment, and wished he could take the day back somehow and not insist that Remus come along if he didn't want to, and how boorish of Sirius not to think of that.
But Remus had simply smiled, and shaken his head, and said: "I don't, but we do."
Sirius had found him, two days later, out on one of the trails, cradling a thick wad of green winter sprigs in one arm as he reached up towards a fine spray of red berries dangling temptingly from one of the rowans. "Christmas decorations?" Sirius said, leaning up to tug at the berries still just out of Remus's reach, and Remus smiled again, and shook his head again, and took himself back off down the track towards the clearing with a curious Sirius in tow. They spent the rest of the morning tucking the evergreen branches and the berries and the pearly-white mistletoe around the cottage; a bough there, a garland strung up here, Sirius reaching up to hook holly and conifer along the beams in the cosy sitting room, all under Remus's gentle instruction, and it wasn't until they were done, and they were standing back out in the snow looking at the great pine wreath Remus had just wound together and bound to the cottage door with some quiet, whispered words, that Sirius finally understood.
"Yule?"
The word sounded silly and unfamiliar on his tongue. He knew the vague concept, from somewhere; some proto-Christmas, some early celebration of... something. Something wintry, something festive, and when Remus looked to him in delight he felt that same pang of ignorance again and wished desperately he knew more, because how wonderful a thing; how wonderful for Remus to deck the cottage every December with the forest's bounty, and find magic and celebration in something so old and deep and natural. It was so entirely him that Sirius wondered how he hadn't puzzled it out before; of course Remus wouldn't concern himself with cardboard crackers and plastic baubles and television jingles when he had the evergreens, and the berries to pin to the old oaken beams, and the distant hum from the stone circle deep in the woods; the forest's own winter song.
"Sort of, I suppose," Remus shrugged, and nodded, and looked back to the cottage. "Or our version of it; we never really gave it a name. My grandma and I would always do this."
"And what else?" Sirius asked, suddenly aching for something he couldn't yet place; some cause or meaning calling out to him, tucked away just around the next corner.
"Just simple things, really," Remus shrugged again. "Good food. Lots of sleep; the forest seems to rest at midwinter," he said with a grin. "So I try to as well."
Midwinter. Sirius thought back, then, to that glorious day in the height of summer, when the trails had been verdant and thick with flower blossom, the air close and sweet and mild, and how the temple had come alive for Remus that wonderful, singular night, the very earth around them singing with that heady solstice magic.
"And the stone circle?" he said, thinking of how keenly he'd felt its call that month, and thinking he understood until Remus, to his surprise, shook his head, and said:
"Not at midwinter. It doesn't seem to need me at midwinter."
And that had been, more or less, their first winter; on the solstice Remus had stacked the fire in the morning and set about making the most delicious spread of soups and breads and sweet, spiced biscuits, and they'd hunkered down together in the cottage and watched the snow falling beyond the crooked leaded windows, and Sirius had marvelled at the way even the ever-busy grey squirrels seemed to know to retreat to their hideaways that day, and the way the whole forest was quiet, and calm. At darkness, Remus had lit all the usual candles and gas lamps with the usual brilliant wave of his hand, and they'd passed the most wonderful evening chatting about this and that, and nothing in particular; the cottage, and the recipe for the rich potato soup, and how Remus's grandma would make it for him every solstice, and how he'd never quite managed to get it tasting as good as hers. They talked about other things, too; more important things, like how much Remus missed her after she passed, and how happy he'd been as a child when it was just the two of them and the forest and, wonderfully, how happy he was then, to be sitting together with Sirius in the very depths of the wild winter, sharing the great pan of potato soup with him and knowing that they were both precisely where they were supposed to be.
The rest of the first winter passed in a sleepy drift of snow and soup and evergreens, and Sirius at last finding some small measure of aptitude, albeit a clumsy one, in the cottage garden that kept their pantry fully stocked even as the dark January tipped fiercely over into a freezing February and a reluctant, blustery March. The end of the month brought brighter days, and the night began to slip away to a quiet, balmy spring, and in a blink they found themselves back at the temple at midsummer, stretched out together in the ferns and the grasses, Remus's fantastic symphony of light and colour bursting overhead. Summer spilled lazily through into a mild, sunlit autumn, and Sirius wondered at how a year had passed since he'd packed his bag and left the city and come here - come home - and how it felt both as if no time at all had passed and as if he'd always been here, since the first pages of history, amongst the streams and the towering oaks and the holly bushes that brightened and berried as the autumn gave way to the glorious white winter.
***
"It's funny," James is saying, through his laughter, to an irate Lily, who stares at him in horror across the sea of toys and wrapping paper littering the living room floor.
"It's rude, James!" she says, and looks to Remus and Sirius with an apology hanging on her lips as Remus blinks down at the book in his hands. He frowns, and scans the back cover, and then a small, impish smile begins to tug at his dimples until he's throwing his head back and cackling in mirth.
"It's funny," he nods, grinning over at James and passing the Secret Santa gift to Sirius, who tuts as he reads, and shakes his head, and then grins despite himself.
"A who's who of the British royal family," he drawls, reading the blurb on the back of the small book. He rolls his eyes at James. "Very droll."
James preens at that, and any disquiet Lily might've worried about is soon quelled in the way James and Remus elect to sit next to each other at the lunch table of their own volition, and both grow sillier and sillier as they work their way through the bottle of pine schnapps Remus had so wonderfully distilled at the start of the winter and gifted a bottle of to James and Lily by way of thanks for inviting him again to their early Christmas. It feels like a pattern already, even if it's only their second year, and as they bid their goodbyes and make their way back north to the woods Sirius privately thrills at the unspeakable comfort he now finds in the gentle rhythm of their winters. An early Christmas with James, Lily and Harry, and then their own quiet midwinter in the woods, marked by boughs of holly wound around oak beams and a pot of Remus's potato soup bubbling merrily on the stove. The duality of it all is charming, he thinks, as he helps Remus gather armfuls of pine sprigs and green conifer to deck the mantlepiece in the sitting room, and by the solstice he once again finds himself filled with the most tremendous sense of wellbeing as he stands out in the snow and breathes in the icy morning air, and grins into his mug of apple tea.
"You want to go, don't you?"
Sirius looks over his shoulder in alarm, and finds Remus leaning against the doorframe, socked feet rooted on the oak floor and a knowing smile pulling at his lips.
"What?"
"To the stones," Remus says, and Sirius finds himself caught between a blissful relief that Remus wasn't suddenly suggesting Sirius leave the forest altogether and a quiet, nudging curiosity as to how precisely Remus could've read his mind and sensed how drawn he is to the temple, when Sirius himself only knew it after Remus spoke the words out loud.
"I do, actually," he says dumbly, clutching his tea and blinking back across at Remus in the cottage. "I don't know why, but I do."
Remus smiles. "Then let's go."
They bundle themselves up in their boots and scarves, Remus brewing a new pot of the apple tea and decanting it into a flask for them so that they might keep warm on the walk through the woods although, as it happens, Sirius finds himself so thrumming with energy that he barely feels the cold at all as they set off down the trail. They duck under fallen branches and around snow drifts blocking paths, walking hand-in-hand where the trail is wide enough to let them and then Sirius takes the unspoken lead, guiding them along the long-familiar tracks, clambering down the steep bank and finding the narrow, hidden way through the frozen undergrowth, and past the ancient oak tree with its bare, frosted branches, trunk now lost in a sea of holly bushes.
He's seen the temple in the winter months before. They still come here, on the full moon, so that they might delight in the way the nighthawks flit from branch to branch through the shimmering air, and how the trees and the ferns come alive as they do to Remus's call. He's seen the stones glistening with November frost, and the dais in the very centre of the circle covered in a blanket of white January snow. But there's something about the temple today - in the noonday winter sun, as it hangs fragilely at its low and fleeting zenith - that's shifted, somehow; grown deeper, more rooted in the frozen earth, and calling to Sirius in a way he can't ever remember feeling before, not even at the height of the summer when Remus always says he feels it most keenly. He feels, too, Remus's eyes on him, as he climbs down the bank and into the circle itself, and its entirely without conscious that Sirius finds himself resting a bare hand on the mirror-smooth surface of the dais, where a pool of melted snow has frozen like glass in the stone's concave centre. It's cold on his skin, but not unpleasantly so, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world to stand there for a spell as the ice glints in the weak December light, and the winter birds flit quietly away to their lofty perches, and Remus watches, and the forest holds still around them.
They're quiet on the walk home. Remus takes his hand, warm palm against cold skin, and guides him back along the trails, through the trees and over the frozen becks until they're back at their clearing, and he's ushering him inside to toe off his boots and warm himself with a fresh pot of tea as Remus lights the cottage with candles and firelight, and the dark night outside draws in.
"Thank you," Sirius says at length, as they huddle in their twin armchairs near the low sitting room window, a log crackling happily in the grate.
"For what?"
"For coming with me to the stones," he says, and sips at his tea; cinnamon, tonight. "I think I just wanted to see them today."
"Perfectly understandable," Remus says at that, and smiles at Sirius over his teacup, and there's something in his smile - something secret, and old - that Sirius can't quite parse. He smiles back, instead, and sips again at his tea, and they slip into a happy evening of laughter and stories and another bottle of Remus's pine schnapps, and kisses over the stove as Remus warms his midwinter potato soup which they devour with more tea and great hunks of brown bread and salted butter. They retreat back to their armchairs by the window after dinner, looking out at the clearing beyond the garden and the way the moonlight catches the fallen snow and makes it sparkle like glitter, and when the old clock in the hall chimes the hour and their minds turn to sleep, Sirius leans in to blow out the candle on the low windowsill.
And when he does, three curious things happen.
First, a sound. A sort of hushed thump, or thud; like a heavy boot landing from a height in freshly-settled snow. And then, as the smoke from the candle eddies lazily up and catches in the dim glow from the embers in the grate, a soft, golden light falls on Remus's face, on the freckled, white-scarred cheek turned towards the leaded window. It's all gilded warmth and aurora, picking out the copper threads in his eyelashes as Sirius stares at him. And, a breath later, a bright, ringing laugh, as Remus's mouth splits into a delighted grin and he throws his head back in mirth.
"What's so funny?" Sirius says dumbly; not following, not understanding. Not knowing the provenance of that lovely golden light until Remus smiles at him, and nods his head gently towards the window, towards the clearing outside.
"Look."
So Sirius does. He turns, and looks, and sees, there on the other side of the clearing, the tallest evergreen, dusted with snow, and now lit with a host of pretty golden orbs; baubles of light clinging to its branches, like starlight held in diamonds or in the pretty glass jars that line the long shelf in the hallway of the cottage. They dance and drift this way and that in the night, casting their glow over the pine needles and the snow and through the leaded windows of the sitting room to land, so charmingly, on Remus's smiling face, and Sirius grins at him in wonder.
"Wow," he breathes, looking from Remus back out to the golden tree, and back again. "That's new."
"It is," Remus grins back, and there's still something there; some joke that Sirius isn't a part of yet.
"Did you know you could do that?"
"I didn't do that," Remus says simply, beaming across at him, his socked feet tucked up into his armchair as he pulls the sleeves of his jumper over his hands like mittens, and nods over at Sirius, and says: "You did."
Sirius will marvel, much later, at how despite everything - despite the sheer unlikeliness of everything he knew to be true about the forest, and about the trees, and about Remus - he genuinely never saw this coming. He knew Remus to wield some strange and wonderful alchemy, and he knew the forest to be kind and wild and untamed and he knew - and had seen, and had felt - the power of the stone circle, and Remus had even told him, that first winter together, how much warmer the woods seemed for Sirius's presence, and how much sweeter the brambleberries up the trail tasted when they plucked them from their thorny beds. Sirius knew all this, and he knew and understood and loved the madness of it all, but never had he considered himself to be anything other than an observer of the whole glorious story. A steward, or visitor: someone to stand steadfast by Remus's side as he made the nighthawks dance and the heavens open and the summer squashes sprout effortlessly from the vegetable patch in the cottage garden, ripe and sweet and wonderful. He'd assumed, all year, that this was to be his long-pondered inevitability - his own path through the forest, his own tale to write. A welcome piece of ordinariness and sanity in the wild and magical puzzle that was Remus. So when Remus grins at him in the low, golden light of the tree, and relights the candle between them with a wave of his hand, and nods to Sirius to blow it out again - when Sirius does, and when three more trees beyond the window swiftly light themselves with those glorious baubles of light - it's to nought but a dumbfounded stare from Sirius, and a frown, and a: "I don't get it."
"Neither do I," Remus says happily, sinking back into his armchair and looking, Sirius thinks, suddenly entirely at peace, as if some great question has just been answered and he no longer need trouble himself with riddling it out. "It just is."
"But, how-" Sirius starts, shaking his head. He frowns out at the trees, and back to Remus, and says: "I did that?"
"You did that."
"I don't get it," Sirius says again, dumbly, and blinks across at Remus; and maybe feels something strange and elemental tingling in his fingertips, and maybe knows, somehow, that Remus is right.
Remus smiles at him charitably then. "I did wonder," he starts, pushing himself up from his seat and reaching over to the teapot sitting empty on a low wooden table. He mutters something under his breath, and leans to pour a fresh cup of something hot and spiced and sweet for Sirius. "I always said it was something I have, didn't I?" he says kindly, settling back into his chair with his own mug held in both hands. "Not something I am. I wondered if it would be something you had too, in the end."
"But you said you got it from your grandmother?" Sirius says, still held in some strange hinterland between reverie and clear, bright understanding.
"That's right. And her mother before her, and her father before her, and on, and on."
"So you think it comes from bloodlines, surely?"
"No," Remus says simply, smiling at Sirius over the rim of his teacup, the golden light from outside the window dancing and sparking in the porcelain. "I think it comes from love."
***
The forest always is the most magical in wintertime. For Sirius, at least, this much is true; the springs come and go, the summers follow, and the autumns pass by in a promise of wonder and ice and snow and sprouting buds in the cottage garden that ought not be there in the morning frost but that Sirius coaxes from the ground anyway, and delights Remus with their bright winter flowers and the way their perfume carries on the cold northern winds and fills the house even on the darkest December day. He spends Novembers building and planting and repairing, running his hands over the broken ivories of the piano in the sitting room so that Remus might make it sing again, and he spends Januaries walking the frozen trails of their forest, hedgehogs and winter foxes scampering to his side as if he might've called out to them through the pines. The summers remain as glorious as they always were, Remus their ever-loyal steward, wielding the waters and the rains and the lush, verdant ivies and plucking fresh mushrooms from gnarled roots in the forest floor, and then the wheel turns, and the faithful year hands itself over to darker days and winter mornings and Sirius, lighting the evergreens with glowing golden orbs and gathering red berries from the highest branches so that they might garland the cottage together, and keeping Remus warm through the frozen nights.
And the temple, in the woods, in the snow; the stones calling out to Sirius as keenly now as they call to Remus in the height of summer, guiding them hand-in-hand through the pines and over the frigid becks to find its beating, thrumming energy and each other at the foot of the dais, white with ice. Sirius will warm them both, as he does so naturally now, and keep the chill of the frosted ferns and grasses and the sleeping ground beneath them from reaching their bones. Remus will smile, and feel between them to take Sirius's hand in his, and Sirius will feel Remus's eyes on him in the darkness as he watches, and waits. The December birds will quieten overhead, and the foxes and the hedgehogs and the white-coated hares will still in the undergrowth, and the icicles clinging to the evergreens circling the temple like sentinels will shine bright as diamonds. Sirius will smile back, and blow out a low, gentle breath that sends a spectral frost floating high above them, holding itself there over the stones; a mist shimmering in the freezing night.
And from the clearest winter sky, a silent snow will begin to fall.