mini_fest | Fic: While The Snow Lay Round About

Title: While The Snow Lay Round About
Author:

treacle_tartlet
Rating: PG
Characters: Remus/Sirius
Prompt: #15
Warnings: There’s a hint of underage boys (they’re sixteen or seventeen) getting up to no good, but absolutely nothing graphic.
Summary: Remus and Sirius have both decided to spend Christmas at Hogwarts instead of going home.
Word Count: 600
Disclaimer: They’re not mine, they belong to JKR et al; this was written for fun, not profit.
A/N: This wandered away from the prompt and would not be enticed back, I’m afraid. I hope it’s enjoyable anyway. Thanks to

absynthedrinker for the sanity-check and reassurance.

“Thought I might find you here,” Sirius says quietly. Remus is sitting on the rocky outcrop that concealed the entrance to one of the Hogsmead tunnels, watching the Whomping Willow sapling batting at snowflakes. He looks up at Sirius’s approach, and smiles.

“Of course you did, you’ve got the map, you twit.”

“Didn’t even check it,” Sirius replies smugly, sitting down next to him. Remus doesn’t respond, and they sit for a while in silence as the snow drifts down around them. However, Sirius has never been very good at sitting around doing nothing, and the urge to talk eventually overwhelms him. He nudges Remus with his leg.

“What are you doing out here, anyway?”

“Enjoying the peace and quiet,” Remus says, elbowing him back. Sirius opens his mouth to answer, then snaps it shut again, his retort unvoiced. It is a running joke among the Marauders, the fact that Remus is the only one who knows the secret of shutting Sirius up, and James has made a game of trying to beg or bribe the answer out of him. Of course, there is no answer, not really, or at least not one that Sirius has ever been able to discern. It is only that Remus is so self-contained, which Sirius finds compelling and unnerving in equal measure in part because Sirius himself feels sometimes as though he lives entirely in other people’s perception of him; pretty boy, bad boy, rebel and rabble-rouser, the Black black sheep. There is a stillness about Remus, though, and it makes Sirius want to be still, too. It rarely lasts for very long, though.

“But why are you staying at school for the hols?” he asks. “You always go home.”

Remus frowns, and fiddles with the frayed sleeve of his robe. “The full moon is in two days, and I…I just thought it’d be easier for Mum and Dad if I stayed here. They’ll have a house full of visitors…” Remus’s voice trails off, and he shrugs uncomfortably. Sirius says nothing, can think of nothing to say.

“Anyway,” Remus continues, running a hand through his snow-damp hair, “why are you staying?”

“Anything’s better than Christmas at Grimmauld Place,” Sirius mutters. “All that tradition and no-one having any bloody fun, and Grandmother Black ruling with her iron fist. Regulus will be sulking over something, Bella’s one twig short of a broomstick, and Cissy will probably bring her prick of a fiancé. Andromeda was the only decent one of the lot of them, and she’s been disowned.”

“You love all that, though,” Remus points out. “It gives you something to rebel against. You’d be terribly bored, otherwise.”

“You make a fair point,” Sirius laughs.

“So why did you decide to stay?” Remus asks, leaning against Sirius as he does so. Their hands brush against each other, and neither of them moves away. Sirius’s heart is skittering in his chest; he feels as though he’s teetering on the brink of wonder or destruction, and he’ll never know which unless he steps off the edge.

“I just…” Sirius begins, groping for the words he needs to say, “…I just want to be with you.”

Hesitantly, he laces his fingers with Remus’s, and squeezes. Remus, after a moment’s pause, squeezes back, and rests his head on Sirius’s shoulder.

They sit in stillness, listening to the snowfall, until the cold forces them back into the castle, to dinner and eggnog pilfered from the indulgent kitchen elves and eaten on Sirius’s bed; to pulling the curtains to and curling up under the covers together; to kisses and sighs and promises, and pretending, for just a few hours, that there isn’t a war brewing outside.