Chapter Text
Remus sits in his office and whistles.
He whistles while he marking papers, signing his name with a flourish that’s twice its usual size. He whistles while planning tomorrow’s sixth year lesson plan on casting nonverbal wards, nothing with satisfaction that the centaurs have agreed not to trample his students on sight when he brings them into the Forest. He whistles while watering a series of hanging plants best described as the soon-to-be victorious conquerors of every bookshelf in his office.
Why not whistle?
Tomorrow is the new moon, Neville has volunteered to take over his patrol duties, and he solved the morning crossword in sixty seconds flat. His students are passing their NEWTs and OWLs at record highs, and his latest creature shipment has cleared international customs without even so much as a ‘why exactly do you need so many bloody grindylows, anyway?’ Plus, his new magical analgesic are doing the trick, and his hip doesn’t hurt at all.
Oh, and did he mention that his desk is covered in hundreds of well wishes from across wizarding Britain, helpfully screened for hate mail and Howlers by a certain messy-haired stay-at-home father holed up homeschooling from Godric’s Hollow?
All because last night, The Daily Prophet announced that he, Remus Lupin, would be the next Headmaster of Hogwarts.
For months, he’s feared the day might never come; it felt too good to be true from the moment Minerva asked if he’d be willing to inherit the office. Willing! Every night since, he’s expected to wake up and find out it was all a dream. The worst part is that he knows his fear was reasonable; it wasn’t so very long ago in the grand scheme of things that Remus had sacked himself from this very office rather than wait to be fired.
Thankfully, Minerva has meticulously crossed the Ts and dotted the Is, making sure that no administrative error would give any blinkered old Wizengamot codger a loophole to deny a certain social climbing half-breed’s appointment. For months, poor Sirius – because surely Minerva understands ‘tell no one’ can’t include his other half – has dealt with Remus pretending he doesn’t care, that it’s fine, and that he never wanted to be headmaster all that badly anyway.
Now, everyone knows, and the world hasn’t come crashing down.
It’s really happening.
Also, Sirius is making his favourite rarebit for dinner.
Remus is still whistling when a student knocks on his door. As soon as he calls for them to come in, he realises what they’ll see: Professor Lupin sitting at his desk, whistling along to his gramophone’s rendition of Sante Fe Peach, surrounding by skulls he found in the basement and his own fan mail. Suddenly, a hint of lilac blows past him. He shivers.
Dominique Weasley walks in, immediately flipping shining red hair over her shoulder as only a fourteen-year-old descendant of Veela can. Remus suppresses the urge to shove the pile of letters in front of him on the floor. Where Victoire is aloof and Louis shy, Dominique wields her mother’s imperious head tilt only as one tool in a vast mischief-making arsenal. No wonder she was sorted into Gryffindor.
‘I was wondering when our dear caretaker would find your stash of dungbombs in the Great Hall,’ Remus says casually. ‘Fourth suit of armour on the left, if I remember.’
Filch is no longer in the post, of course; he had a heart attack the very day it was announced that Remus would take over old Horace’s position as assistant headmaster. Coincidence, surely.
‘How do you always know?’ Dominique asks, frowning and crossing her arms.
‘Magic.’
The blank map sits open in his desk drawer below him, eager for the nine comforting words that reveal its secrets – not that Remus needs to speak to see them, of course, seeing as he has a rather personal relationship with its creators. Harry was happy enough to lend him the map; wanting to watch children wander the halls of your alma mater gets less attractive the older you are, and Remus needs every tool he can get to manage the ever-growing clan of Weasley-Potters.
Dominique sighs and rolls her eyes. Remus is unperturbed; he lives for the mild irritation of children. Any teacher that doesn’t is either a masochist or in the wrong field.
‘A few detentions cleaning the halls with Ms. Parkinson, I should think,’ Remus says mildly. ‘And I’ll have to write your mother.’
Dominique’s expression rapidly shifts from disinterested to horrified. Ah, fourteen; old enough to get in trouble but too young not to care what your mum thinks – or to not get caught in the first place, especially when facing a veteran mischief-maker like himself. It’s what makes him so good at his job.
‘Whatever,’ she groans, turning to leave.
Remus falls for it. He’s already starting to whistle again when she darts back and grabs a letter.
Hubris, thy name is Dominique.
Fuelled by magical pain management, Remus lurches forward to snatch it back, but Dominique slides out of his grasp, slippery as an eel. Eyes racing back and forth across the text, she throws it aside when satisfied, her mysterious goal satisfied. The nerve of this girl, truly; too many family holidays with Remus sat asleep on the sofa full of eggnog while the rest of the family gossips and shoots marbles have eroded his authority.
The key is not letting it bother him. Behaviour that makes other teachers bristle at disrespect, Remus takes as an opportunity to show students he’s listening; that it’s okay to make mistakes because he won’t over-punish them for minor infractions. Like every young person, Dominique is simply struggling to figure out who she is in a world she’s only just beginning to understand.
Serotonin is already flooding his brain as he leans back in his chair, unbothered. This is, after all, a good day.
Then: Dominique stops, paused in the centre of the open door. Standing with the dark classroom behind her and with the reflection of Remus’s candles shining against her lustrous hair, she looks almost angelic.
The worse part, he’ll think later, when he’s inextricably strapped to a hulking Muggle machine and pondering where it all went wrong, is that she doesn’t even say it to be cruel.
‘You’ll be the youngest Headmaster Hogwarts has ever seen?’
‘Snape was younger,’ he says automatically, so shocked he forgets to call Snivellus ‘Professor.’
Dominique rolls her eyes. ‘No one who matters counts Snape.’
‘Well. Then, yes.’
‘You?’
Several floors below, something explodes. It makes quite a lot of noise, then suddenly none at all. So do we all before we die, Remus thinks.
Whatever emotion Dominique sees on his face causes her to look away in embarrassment. She realizes, now, the crime she has committed. She is the tipping point, the impetus, the catalyst, in forcing a middle-aged person to realize that they have crossed the ineffable boundaries into ‘old.’ He cannot go back to the person he was thirty seconds ago; the only justice is that neither can she. Starting now, her life becomes a race against time. Several floors down, Remus smells fire.
Dominique slips out the door, footprints echoing loud and quick against ancient stone. Remus sits there, staring at nothing.
Of course he’s one of the youngest headmasters Hogwarts has ever seen. He’s only in his fifties, after all. It’s a respectable age to join the ranks of Hogwarts’ highest position – not shockingly early, sure, but still plenty ahead of schedule. Considering Dumbledore’s age when he died and the average age range of the motley crew manning the Head’s office walls, it’s actually quite an accomplishment.
In fact, when wartime necessity is excluded – Dominique and her friends are clearly teenagers of taste to so readily dismiss Severus; why did he defend him again? – Remus might even be considered an exceptionally spry choice for Headmaster. If not for the werewolf thing, all the letters to the editor would be about how wonderful it is that new Headmaster will bring such a youthful perspective. After all, someone wrote a letter to him about it anyway! He fumbles for the letter, but to his dismay, it’s signed in the shaky loopy signature of one Elphias Doge. The very old can do many things, but they cannot bestow the grace of youth.
When he tosses the letter away again, it flutters unsatisfyingly to the ground in fits and starts. He’s being ridiculous anyway. He closes his eyes and takes a calming breath, but Dominique’s wide-eyed surprise is burned into his retinas.
Is it truly so unbelievable that no one – except that looming malodorous shadow known for bullying students and powerfully unappetizing potions – younger than Remus has ever stepped foot into the role?
He looks around his office with new eyes, seeing the towering stacks of skulls spilling out over dusty cabinets and piles of discarded cage, not as the charming collection of an eclectic professor, but the ravings of a madman-to-be. His overstuffed shelves leave so little room that extra books pile up from the floor, their cracked leather covers shivering as wind blows through his open window. Photos of Harry and Sirius fight, kick, and scratch each other, jumping to the tops of their frames just to be glimpsed above a growing parchment mountain. He still hasn’t done anything about the ominously growing crack in the stone nearest the door; nor has he attempted to divest himself of the not one, not two, but three extra gramophones tucked into various corners.
Nearly folded reading glasses sit over the planner Hermione gave him for Christmas, which cheerfully poses next to his mokeskin pill case. Several elbow-patched blazers and robes hang precariously from the same claw-foot stand that holds his orthopaedic dress shoes and the growing army of canes he keeps forgetting at school. If only he ever remembered to note them in the planner.
Worst yet, Remus spots a crumbled brown paper bag in the bin. Earlier, it contained his lunch: two apples, a variety mix of nuts, and a baked potato. Every day, he brings his snacks to work in identical bags. Tomorrow’s berries and yoghurt are already prepared in the fridge at home. Sirius doesn’t like it when he says it, but Remus knows that fibre is important.
Merlin. It’s true.
He’s old.
And it was such a good day.
***
‘You all right in there, Moony?’
The answer, of course, should be yes: Remus’s greatest accomplishment has just been shared with the rest of the wizarding world, and he’s got months still before he even has to do any work for it. Not even the hate mail pouring into his forwarding address at Harry’s should be enough to dampen his joy.
‘Why are you staring at the mirror like a banshee’s howling in your ear?’
Sirius leans against the door frame like he was born to it, like pureblood glory is tied directly to the ratio of suitability for rangy limbs and ink-black hair, like Walburga Black’s portrait screams out of rage that her son walks into so many rooms the wrong way, like the Black family crest is French for ‘in door frames we stand.’
Then there’s Remus, whose skin may as well be sloughing off his face for the way it flaunts every worry Remus has ever had. Maybe Gilderoy’s right to have those shipments of doxy stingers sent to his ward every fortnight; he’s certainly got a youthful glow about him in the Prophet’s society pages. Not that he frequents the Prophet’s society pages.
At this moment, with Sirius still standing in the door frame, brows increasingly furrowed the longer Remus’s inner monologue continues, Remus might not admit to reading at all. Reading is for old people.
Merlin, is Sirius fit. He’s just gotten back from the latest Shacklebolt bat mitzvah – in a society of ten thousand strong, even The Weird Sisters can’t be picky – and he’s still dressed in the tight trousers and sheer top that surely made Queensley (family name, of course) swoon at the bimah.
Meanwhile, Remus is so grey he might just slip into the society pages himself. It’s not just his hair; it’s the whole pallor, his overall energy. When students talk about the Grey Ghost, they probably mean him, and he just hasn’t realized that because he’s too busy floating around the school, retracing the steps of the saddest, greyest man who ever (unfortunately) lived.
If Dominique had been sent to Sirius for discipline (Remus’s brain briefly wars with the attractive image of Professor Black before his teacher side tamps it down in disgust), Dominique wouldn’t have looked at him with the same surprise. He’s just as old—older, even, although Sirius aggressively twists his nipples any time he dares mention it—but Sirius is cool. Sirius is hot. Sirius was born to stand in door frames. Dans l’encadrement de la porte nous nous tenons.
Remus presses his long fingers to his cheeks and pulls down. He imagines the whole thing –some might call it his face – will come off with it, revealing the grey, wilted muscle beneath. It stays put, only making him look somewhat deranged instead. Disappointing.
‘Moony?’
‘I’m fine,’ Remus says. He doesn’t lift his hands. ‘Great, actually. Spiffy niffler, as the kids say.’
‘No one says spiffy niffler, Remus.’
Real name. Sirius is scared.
‘They do so say spiffy niffler,’ Remus says. ‘It means ‘brilliant.’ You’re such a shrake, I swear.’
‘You made that one up.’
‘I did,’ Remus admits, pleased that Sirius laughs. Truly so kind of Padfoot to pity the nearly dead. Maybe Remus can take the standup comedy routine to area nursing homes, then bid on which one gets the honour of ushering him into the beyond.
Deciding he’s had enough, Sirius wraps his arms around Remus, who is so tense that it must be like hugging a telegraph pole. ‘You’re all anyone was talking about at the bat mitzvah.’
Of course they were. Remus can hear them their questions: why would Hogwarts choose such an ancient, old decrepit man to lead it into financial ruin?
What, exactly, are Hogwarts’ finances, anyway? Remus doesn’t know. This is a shocking thought. He makes it his business to understand every galleon that comes his way; how has he failed to think about this before? Is the Ministry funding Hogwarts? If not, who is? It is all magic? And if Hogwarts doesn’t need money, does anyone? Should he have bought that sea-green peacoat when he was twenty-six after all?
No. He would have looked like a berk. As Sirius has said many times, sea-green is not his colour.
‘That’s a shame,’ Remus says, normally, after a normal amount of time.
He can’t help but relax a little into Sirius’s arms, though. They’re very nice arms: (magically) tan, (naturally) lean, strong enough to comfort Remus when he’s panicking, a mode that to anyone else usually looks like Remus staring neutrally in any given direction.
‘A shame? I’m proud of you,’ Sirius says softly. ‘Really bloody proud of you, actually. Kingsley was really happy for you.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without his support,’ Remus says truthfully.
The Minister for Magic has no direct control over the Hogwarts Board of Governors (do the governors pay for Hogwarts, or are they paid? If so, who pays them?), but Remus knows Kingsley spent far more time than he’ll admit to wining and dining each governor until they’d have signed their own wands away – or even let a (decrepit) werewolf take over Hogwarts.
Sirius is warm against his back. He relaxes even more.
‘I’m going to miss teaching,’ Remus admits, closing his eyes to cut through the blaring sirens – OLD! NO FUN! LAME! GHOST IN A HUMAN BODY! – still going off in his mind.
‘I know,’ Sirius says, rubbing his shoulder. ‘But you’ll still teach that advanced Defence class, right?’
‘The NEWTs tutoring session, yes.’
‘Good. Hogwarts shouldn’t lose its best professor to pencil pushing just yet.’
There’s something else, something more, unsettled inside him, something beyond the existential dread inflicting on him by insensitive youth. A kind of exhaustion he doesn’t have the words for, nor why it’s happening. It’s always been there, he thinks, and so why put words to it?
Instead, he lets Sirius continue massaging his neck and shoulders, blaming hoary brain cells for not noticing when Sirius started. He leans into it with a groan of pleasure.
As his eyes flutter shut in bliss, he feels the hardest tissue yet—the one below Sirius’s denim trousers.
He grinds against Sirius, laughing breathlessly at the answering groan. ‘Sorry, Moony—'
‘Don’t be sorry,’ Remus says, grateful for the distraction. He turns around and pulls Sirius forward by his hips until they’re grinding, breathless in each other’s ears. Sirius’s cologne, heavy and sweet, fills his nose.
Shouldn’t a man have a little fun before he dies in office, like one of those American presidents who keeled over from a bad glass of milk?
Remus’s cane lies forgotten in the other room as he lowers himself, gripping Sirius’s hips with an tightness indicating a mad grab for stability as much as anything sexual. Sirius groans something about that being the hottest thing in the whole wide wizarding world.
Suddenly, though, he stops.
‘Wait! Why are you giving me a gobby? It’s your big day, not mine!’
Remus ignores him, pulling the zipper of Sirius’s gloriously skintight trousers down one stop at a time and breathing in one of his favourite scents: Sirius’s unwashed balls.
‘This is for me, not you,’ he says.
‘You’re demented,’ Sirius insists, one hand shooting out to grip the countertop like a man possessed, the other gripping Remus’s (terrible, grey, thin, dying, wispy, frail) hair like he’s scared it will fly away. Considering his condition, it probably will.
‘Fine, then. Just think of it as your reward for doing such a good job at Queensley’s bat mitzvah.’
‘That’s even more demen –’
As always, Sirius shuts up when Remus puts his prick in his mouth.
There’s nothing quite like stretching his lips around Sirius’s girth to get Remus shifting in his robes. It’s too bad Sirius can see him up there. He’ll just have to blow him so hard Sirius forgets what Remus looks like – it’s worked all these years until now, after all, hasn’t it?
With each bob of his head, he pushes Sirius’s heavy length farther intro his throat until drool pools at the corners of his lips. His grip on Sirius’s thighs tightens, heat coiling in his stomach as his mind begins to blissfully float away, the sound of his own slurping and the tremble in Sirius’s thighs overwhelming everything else – and that’s when Sirius says the worst thing imaginable.
‘Oh, Moony,’ groans Sirius. ‘You should teach cocksucking classes.’
Remus’s current batch of students instantly comes to mind. At that exact moment, Sirius cums. Remus swallows dutifully, but his prick wilts.
‘My turn, love.’
‘… I’m not hard anymore. Don’t worry about me, you know how it is at our age.’
Sirius looks suspicious, but he shrugs and helps Remus up. ‘Make it up to you later, alright?’
‘Alright.’ Remus glances in the mirror. A ghoul looks back at him. Meanwhile, Sirius’s arse still winks goodbye as he leaves the room. He’s every bit as smashable as he was the first time Remus woke up with a stiffy.
Why isn’t Sirius melting into dust like Remus? What single element does Sirius possess that keeps him above the grave while Remus is clawing like hell to escape the coffin? How does he possess such incalculable allure no matter how old he gets?
Something glints in the mirror.
Keys.
As quickly as it began, Remus’s search comes to an end. He looks to the ceiling – they really need to get that water damage looked at – in absolution.
He knows what he must do.