you say that I treat you like a book on the shelf
Remus is trying to interest Sirius in organizing the books. There are a lot of them, shoved on shelves in what seems like random order, piled in corners in the library, and Remus feels that if they could put them in some sort of arrangement that makes sense, it would somehow solve something. Sirius is dubious about this, and does not seem to care about the books. Somewhere in the shelves must be favorites from his childhood, because for all that Sirius pretended to care about nothing but Quidditch, he was always carrying books around and reading them while he walked, tossing them under the bed and leaving them abandoned among his dirty socks.
Being Sirius's book always meant having a broken spine and dog-eared pages from being read in inappropriate places, and from the look of the books in the library, maybe none of them were his after all. Maybe they could find some that were if they excavate Sirius's childhood bedroom, which so far Sirius has refused to do, to Remus's frustration. There must be things here Sirius wants, reminders of the time before he was so old and so angry, a hollow-eyed man who jumps at shadows.
"Let the books alone, Moony, they bite," Sirius says, and Remus refrains from touching them, although he's had long experience handling biting books and other hazards of malevolent libraries. He still looks at them, trying to sense whether they're already in some meaningful pattern that he only has to discover. He has ruled out the idea that this shelf is arranged by topic, by the author's name, or by any visible feature of the books, except perhaps a certain grimness.
"If we made a start on the less aggressive shelves, we might be able to make a dent in this by tea-time," Remus says.
Sirius looks at him skeptically. He is stretched out on a sofa which even after being Scourgified still manages to look dusty. It's possible that the color is supposed to be dusty something. Remus is not an expert on furniture. Sirius has his feet up on the sofa arm, and he is being terribly still. Remus isn't sure when he learned not to be in constant restless motion.
"Aren't you supposed to be resting?" Sirius says, and Remus knows he is. It's the day after the full moon; he still feels nauseated from the Wolfsbane potion, and every muscle still aches. The books would be a welcome distraction. Instead he paces, the careful measured steps he's learned to take these days of the month.
"We could do those boxes in the attic," Remus says.
"Not without reinforcements," Sirius says. "Merlin only knows what's in the ones that belonged to my father. He might be up there himself, for all I know, preserved in some horribly macabre way."
"Sirius."
"Yes, I know, don't make jokes. It's inappropriate to my station."
"Your station? What are you, a train?"
"My time of life, then. Whatever it is that makes people look at me that way when I actually experiment with having a sense of humor."
"It's just that it's a little morbid," Remus says.
"You'd be morbid too if you'd spent--"
"I know."
"You could let me say it."
"--twelve years in Azkaban," Remus says. "I know ."
"You really want to face the books."
"No, it's fine," Remus says. "I'm just restless. You know."
"You always used to be restless before and then collapse afterwards," Sirius says. "I remember one time you told me that if I woke you up to tell you anything about Quidditch, you'd ... no, I can't remember what you said you'd do."
"Bite you," Remus said. "And then you wouldn't want to wake people up the day after the full moon." He can't explain his restlessness, can't explain that he's just as tired but that he's learned that lying in bed doesn't help, and just means spending hours staring at the ceiling and thinking, which he really can't bear. He's grown used to the pain over the years, and has ceased feeling that he wants to give it all the attention it selfishly demands.
"That book is going to bite your hand off," Sirius says.
"I'd ask who you know who's lost a hand to a book, but I'm afraid you might tell me."
"One of my great-uncles, I think," Sirius says. "Want to look for the bloodstains?"
"Alternatively, you could help."
"I knew you'd say that," Sirius says, but he comes over and begins stacking books on the floor. Some of them he mutters charms over before putting them firmly out of range of the others. One or two he levitates, watching them the entire way to the floor as if to ensure they don' t make a break for the door.
Remus helps make stacks, more cautiously, and then watches as Sirius begins to arrange the books quickly but deliberately back onto shelves, removing other books in the process. There's some method to what he's doing, but Remus can't see it.
"Should we do this by topic or--"
"From old to new," Sirius said. "This is about the middle, don't you think? If we make this the 1800s, that ought to about do it. There aren't as many really old ones."
Remus turns over a volume in his hand. "That's not going to make things easy to find."
"It's the only way that makes sense," Sirius says, and Remus doesn't argue. Maybe when they're done the books will tell a story that makes sense from beginning to end. It's more than he thinks he can do.
*****
"I don't need books, Sirius, you don't need books," Remus says, laughing, but Sirius is dragging him into the bookstore, waving his hands about. They are two years out of school and Remus will still follow Sirius anywhere.
"Of course you do, Moony, you're just dying for the latest Broomstick Romance, aren't you? Don't try to pretend you don't read them behind very serious covers--"
"I think you mean you do," Remus says, but it's too late; Sirius is up on his toes investigating shiny new books, or at least shiny new used books, and Remus has lost him.
"Look, they have a complete set," Sirius says in a voice that he usually reserves for Quidditch equipment when anyone else is in earshot. Sirius loves books with a whole-hearted love of which he is hotly ashamed, which is fairly typical of Sirius. "And, look--"
"I'm going to go look at paperbacks," Remus says, and takes himself off to look at books he can actually afford. Sirius will come out with a wildly eclectic stack of everything from adventure novels to poetry, or else he won't, and Remus doesn't really feel like watching Sirius wrestle with his sense of masculinity.
He ends up picking out an old Agatha Christie novel, because he's gotten fascinated by the way mysteries are put together and then resolved so neatly, with every motive laid bare. This one is called The Hollow , and he reads the first pages with the sense of detachment that comes from knowing that one of these people will be dead in a few pages. It usually happens quickly.
Sirius appears under a tower of books that appear likely to fall on the head of anyone unlucky enough to come near him. He looks flushed, as if he's been climbing the shelves after them, which is in fact a possibility. "Is that all you're getting?"
"Yes," Remus says. "And I'll read those when you're done."
"You don't even know what they are," Sirius says. "They could be Broomstick Romances, for all you know."
"Have you ever actually read a romance novel? I mean, they can't be as bad as all that, can they?"
"Lily says they're horrible. She says her sister reads them--Muggle ones, I mean--and they're basically all about girls getting carried off by utter bastards and reforming them."
"Too true to life, then, you think?"
"James is not reformed," Sirius says. "He's just temporarily insane." He shrugs as if to imply that under a female influence, anything might happen to a man.
"Well, if he'd stuck to kissing you--"
Sirius laughs, as if Remus were joking. "He might have done better to have tried it."
Remus wonders if Sirius has really forgotten the time that Remus walked in on him kissing James between the library stacks, one late night when they'd been researching something improbable for nefarious reasons. They were all chasing each other round the stacks, trying to laugh silently, carried away by the wildness of two a.m., and Remus slid round the corner in his stocking feet and stopped dead, because Sirius and James were tangled awkwardly and kissing, all elbows and knees.
Remus told Sirius about it later, late at night when they'd been tangled themselves in bed, about how he'd seen the hungry way Sirius moved, the way he looked at James with a kind of fierce and hopeless tenderness. "Like this," Remus said, and kissed him, and Sirius said, "No, it wasn't like this," and maybe that was how history started to change for Sirius.
"He might have," Remus says, and maybe it's better for all of them to believe that it was never that way, even if it makes James the one who's a real man and Remus the one who's always teased about romance novels. It makes it easier for Sirius, and it's hard enough as it is.
"Give me yours," Sirius says.
"They'll fall on your head," Remus says, scraping together his change and handing it over before Sirius can put his books down and pick up the ones that have toppled to the floor.
"Addict," Sirius says, clearly covering his actual annoyance with mock annoyance. "Can't wait a minute longer to get your fix, and then in an few hours it'll be lying tragically discarded on the floor--"
"They're mysteries," Remus says. "It's not like you can read it again and forget what happened the first time."
"Then what's the point?" Sirius says, collecting his own purchases again.
"Reading it the first time," Remus says, and hands his book to Sirius. "You can carry it now if you want."
"The last straw!" Sirius cries, and collapses dramatically in a shower of books; the bookseller looks appalled and people are staring, but Remus can't help laughing.
*****
Remus walks up and down the shelves in the bookstore, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the selection. It's one thing when he's just going to be sneaking books to read in corners, but he can feel the weight of Sirius's money heavy in his pocket. It's got to be a good present, worthy of a man whose last present to his godson was a racing broom.
Something useful, Sirius said. Not more books about Quidditch--Harry would buy those himself, and anyway Remus doesn't think Harry will learn much about Quidditch from a book at this point. Not novels, although Remus is tempted to buy him something truly escapist, books about sailing ships or Aztec temples or ancient Rome. But he knows how badly Sirius wants to be of use to Harry, and he knows that Sirius will not see the use in ancient history.
The set of Defense Against the Dark Arts books he finally settles on have several virtues. They are expensive, which means he can actually spend most of the money Sirius sent with him without spending a great deal more time shopping. They are certainly useful under the circumstances, and Remus has to admit he takes a certain amount of pleasure in the idea that Harry is still interested in what Remus tried to teach him.
Also they have glossy covers and bright moving illustrations; they are undeniably very cool, and Remus clings to the belief that there is some part of Sirius that will still appreciate that. He pays for the set, pretending he doesn't notice the way the shopkeeper's eyes flicker over his worn clothes before deciding that cash in hand isn't worth questioning. Wrapped in brown paper, it is a satisfyingly heavy parcel.
He Apparates back with the books and is met with a challenging look from Sirius, who's been pacing in front of the fire. This is one of his restless days, when instead of lying listlessly he paces and his hands twitch.
"Well, did you get it?"
"Them," Remus says. "There's not a book in the store that costs as much as you wanted to spend, unless you think Harry has a taste for first editions." He unwraps the books with a painful moment of uncertainty.
Sirius looks through one of the books, and then looks up at Remus and grins. "Very cool," he says.
Remus smiles wryly back. "And informative," he says.
"But mostly cool. Harry's not that fond of books, but these ought to do for him."
Remus doesn't point out that Sirius sent him out after books. There's no point in arguing with whatever way Sirius wants to revise recent history, except when Sirius tries to cast Remus as the villain. This doesn't seem to be one of those days.
"What was that gift-wrapping charm?" Remus says. "I'm fairly out of practice."
"Moony," Sirius says. "You can't do proper gift-wrapping with a charm. You have to have interesting paper, and ribbons, and spellotape--"
"This may be another excursion," Remus says.
"All right, maybe a charm," Sirius says. "You don't want to go out again tonight."
Remus doesn't say You mean you don't want me to . He's spent too many years agreeing that he was the one who really wanted things for him to stop now. Anyway, he doesn't really want to go out again into the cold, and he doesn't think it matters what Sirius admits to or what he doesn't. He's stopped believing he'll be able to know what Sirius feels if he just puts the evidence together right.
"There might be one in one of the books in the library," Remus says.
"You and books," Sirius says, coming closer. "You even smell like a bookstore. I think I could probably taste the ink."
Remus kisses him, hoping Sirius can.
*****
After he gets used to the fact that he's always going to be short of money, Remus learns to read books over again, even mysteries. It's not as good as reading them the first time, but it's satisfying in a different way. Once you know how it's going to end, there aren't any alarming surprises.
The day he hears that James and Lily have been killed he is reading The Hollow again, even though he knows by now that the murderer is the awkward, dull wife no one seriously suspected. He leaves it lying half-opened for a week and then thinks about tossing the book into the fire, because it will probably always remind him of that week, the same way that the smell of leaves at a particular point in autumn always will.
He doesn't, because all that will do is give him one more thing to miss. Instead he leaves it out deliberately and makes a (fairly short) grocery list in the back of it one afternoon, more or less out of spite. He washes the teacup he was using that morning and puts it away, and throws away that morning's newspaper.
Most of the mystery novels end up in the trunk that Remus takes to Hogwarts years later, along with the dog-eared collection of books about Defense of the Dark Arts that he's acquired at great pains over the years. They're old-fashioned, now, even more so than when he started reading them. Modern mysteries are about detectives investigating bloody shootings described in gory detail. Remus likes the older, cleaner puzzles, where no one really cares about the person who is now a body in the library.
Minerva is also an admirer of murder mysteries, and he spends a pleasant breakfast listening to her talk about the advantages of various fictional ways of dispatching victims tidily. He's aware that various people are eyeing them strangely because they're talking cheerfully about poison over kippers. He enjoys it anyway, and offers to lend her his books in return for some of her own.
He can't bring himself to ask for his books back when he leaves, although he gives hers to a house-elf to return to her after he's safely away on the train. He's not sure whether it would be worse for her to try to convince him to stay or to tell him regretfully that it's really best that he is leaving.
One afternoon at Grimmauld Place when Minerva stops by, she brings a brown paper package of his books with her. "I thought you might be wanting these back," she says, and then talks to him about Lord Peter Wimsey for half an hour. He can't tell her how grateful he is for the break from watching Sirius pace, so he only thanks her gravely for the books and puts them on a kitchen shelf next to a set of Harlequin Romances that Tonks brought for Molly, who likes exotic Muggle settings.
"I'm not surprised by your taste in Muggle literature, Lupin," Severus says, running a scornful finger across the spines. "I wouldn't expect much more from Black's housewife."
"What do you think would be more appropriate?" Remus asks. " War and Peace?"
Later Sirius says, "He thinks he knows so much--" and Remus wants desperately to find some way to keep him from going on. This must be how it feels, he thinks, his chest clenching, to have the past erased, little by little, until it's gone.
"It doesn't matter," he says instead, wrapping his fingers through Sirius's hair. "It doesn't matter what he thinks, does it?"
"It doesn't matter what people think of me," Sirius says. "It matters what they think of you."
Remus rests his head on Sirius's shoulder. "I'm used to it," he says.
There's a pause. Sirius strokes Remus's hair, untangling it with his fingers, a lighter and more thoughtful touch than his usual desperate embrace. "I could be the housewife," Sirius says after a while. "I'm the one stuck in the house."
"We could take turns," Remus says. "If that's our only problem--" It's not, of course, but for a moment it's nice to believe it could be.
"I could wear an apron," Sirius says, and Remus laughs.
The next time Molly and Arthur are there, Sirius does wear an apron, helping Molly with the cooking despite her skepticism and the unquestionable peril involved in allowing Sirius to cast charms on knives. Remus sits in the corner with his feet up in a chair, reading one of Molly's romance novels. They're not as absorbing as the mysteries, but it's a change to read a book where no one winds up dead in the end.
*****
Remus doesn't go back to get his things from Grimmauld Place until the end of the summer, after Dumbledore has confirmed that the house belongs to Harry now. Minerva comes with him, theoretically in case of ambush, but really he thinks because she's worried about him. He has no idea any more how to respond to someone being worried about him, so he encourages her to wait for him in the library while he folds up his clothes and takes odds and ends off the shelves and puts them neatly away.
"I'm ready," he says, coming into the library, his trunk waiting for him in the hall outside. Minerva looks up from a book.
"Already?" she says. "You're a quick hand at packing."
"I travel light," Remus says. Tonks has offered to let him leave the trunk in her flat, and while he thinks she hardly has room for it, he hasn't refused the offer.
"I think those are your books," she says, pointing out the small, neat stack on the last shelf by the door. Remus crouches down to look at the shelves. His books are the last ones in Sirius's odd chronological arrangement. There are only two bare shelves after them. Not much room for anything new.
Remus wonders if Sirius wasn't interested in reading much anymore, or if he wasn't interested in reading anything new, or if he believed there wasn't much more time. Or maybe he just planned to start a new shelf. Remus can't know now.
"Remus?" Minerva asks, her voice gentle.
"Just an unsolved mystery," Remus says. He picks up The Hollow. The publication date is 1946. It belongs on the shelves with the books published the year Tom Riddle left Hogwarts, before he and Sirius were born. He's not sure where to put it, there at the beginning or here at the end or somewhere in the middle. He's not sure how to fit it into the story Sirius was trying to arrange the books to tell.
The Long and Tragical History of the House of Black , Sirius would have said, and Remus prefers to think of the way he would have said it at seventeen, his face solemn but with laughter lighting his eyes. In the end, he supposes that it's really up to him what he thinks is most important. It's not the day Sirius tossed the book aside on the library floor so that they could argue endlessly and tiresomely about nothing instead.
"You may as well keep the books," Remus says. "I've already read them all." He looks at the one in his hand. "Just let me put this one where it goes."
He scratches a brief note inside the front cover, on the other side from the grocery list, standing in front of the shelf with the books from the 1970s. We lived in London , he writes, and in the summer we listened to music with the windows open and smoked cigarettes after dark. He wanted to buy the book for me, and I wouldn't let him. We were in love.
He knows Minerva is waiting, and so he only adds, The first time, I didn't know how it would end.