Downstairs? Remus thought. What could they want with us there? He stole a glance at Burrett out of the corner of his eye as their Death Eater contact turned away, half expecting her to question this unfamiliar procedure. But the senior werewolf neither spoke nor hesitated; perhaps she'd received orders like this before. Well, he could hardly refuse now. With a rising sense of apprehension, he followed their guide.
As they descended the staircase into the lower recesses of the house, the feeling began to rise in his chest, subtly but inexorably: a dawning fear, a slow dread of what lay before him. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck was beginning to rise; his skin pebbled in goosebumps and his breathing quickened. For a few seconds he could not pinpoint the source of this mounting dread, could not understand what his sharpened senses were trying to tell him. Then he heard the soft, deliberate intake of breath from Burrett just ahead of him, and all at once the source became obvious, unmissable: the smell of blood, wafting in faint currents in the air. Iron, rich, freshly-spilled and cloying in his nostrils and the back of his throat. And... something else, something familiar, like sweat and living, vital heat...
His heart froze like a stunned creature within the vault of his ribcage. He nearly stumbled; grabbed at the stone wall beside him for balance. Sirius?
For a taught, sparking livewire moment, he could not move, could not breathe. Then his heart exploded into frantic action. A wave of heat cascaded through his limbs as the blood rushed from his head and torso and into his extremities, his nervous system falling back on its ancient autonomic response to fear: fight, or flee. His ears were filled with a hollow rushing noise, his vision swam dizzily, making the flagstone floor below him rush upward; the small muscles in his fingers spasmed tight as he clutched at the wall, fingernails making a faint rasping noise against the rough granite while he fought to keep from falling to the ground.
They were headed down to a dungeon, and Sirius was inside of it.
Eyes stinging, he raised his head and looked up, into the barrel of the dim hallway still before him. In the foreground of his view was the shadowed back of Burrett's cloak, receding ahead of him: his whole violent reaction, from the first whiff of familiar blood, had only taken enough time for her to walk a few steps ahead of him. If he gave her another second, she'd look back and notice him holding onto the wall like he'd just been kicked in the chest by a horse.
No, no. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't allow her to doubt him now. He took a deliberate breath, freeing up his frozen lungs; pushed himself off the wall and stood up straight. Schooled his face, willed his racing heart to slow. Then he began walking again.
In the same fraction of a second, Burrett glanced behind her and gave a small scowl. "Hurry up," she mouthed.
By the time they finally reached the end of the hallway and approached the last door on the left, Remus's face was a smooth, neutral blank again. His shoulders were relaxed, his arms loose by his sides. When the Death Eater turned to address them, he would see only the faces of his two enforcers, indifferent to their environment but willing to do as they were ordered.
Persuade, he said. Remus allowed his mind to reach into the deep well of his assumed identity, the affect and attitude of one of Fenrir Greyback's pack members. He raised a sardonic eyebrow.
"Why call on us for that?" he asked. "Keeping people alive is your specialty, not ours."
Unconsciously, he braced for a reprimanding look from Burrett. But she seemed in no mood to disagree with him: she was examining her nails with the haughty air of one who does not plan to buckle down and get to work without a good reason.
"Unless you want him to answer your questions solely in a series of barks, yips, and growls," she said, "we're the wrong tools for the job."
Within the shadowed eyeholes of the mask, Remus could just see the Death Eater's eyes narrow. Although no mouth was visible, he was certain the Death Eater was smirking.
"Not you," he said, one gloved hand making a dismissive gesture toward Burrett. He turned his head instead toward Remus and pointed. "You, alone. We believe the prisoner knows you well."
Despite the sweat sticking his clothing to his skin, Remus could feel a wave of cold washing from his head to the tips of his fingers and toes. They know. They know who we are to each other, and they know he has the secret.
He stepped into the cell behind the Death Eater. In here, the smell of blood was a thousand times stronger, not an occasional whiff of iron on the air but a solid, three-dimensional map of scent, swimming and swarming in the close atmosphere. There was a splatter of it near the right wall, dry and stale; a fresher fine spray across the center of the room; a thick, dense puddle of it in the corner. And there, against the back wall, was the source of the smell, strongest of all, mixed with the less all-encompassing scents of sweat and bile and filth and hair and vital living flesh: Sirius.
For all that he was easy to identify by smell, by sight he was no more than a lump of deeper darkness in the dark room - but it was clear that he was connected to the wall by chains, and that most of his body was curled up, crumpled on the floor. Remus blinked hard and swallowed with difficulty as his stomach turned, threatening to be sick.
He moved slowly forward, approaching that crumpled shape behind the Death Eater. As he did, he could see the shape stir, unfold, and then sit up. He could hear the clink of chains, the drag of exhausted limbs. As Sirius lifted his head and the narrow beam of light from the outside hall illuminated his features, Remus could see him clearly: gaunt, raw-boned, fish belly pale with bruised eye sockets and sunken cheeks. His hair fell in matted, felted hanks that stuck to the sides of his face; every crease, scar and faint wrinkle of skin was outlined in dark residue, the remains of dried blood. Here and there, the skin was split open in wounds like rifts and fissures, unclean and patchy with scab tissue. Almost unrecognizable -
Except the eyes. The eyes were still Sirius's, alert and lucid, fever-bright and glinting with stubborn defiance. Not far below them, the thin, parched and bleeding lips parted to reveal teeth like a set of bloodstained blades and files. When he spoke, it was in a voice that was gravelly and exhausted, but familiar enough to shatter Remus's heart.
"Yes, he knows me," Remus said quietly, in a voice that did not shake. And it was true, Sirius would know who he was now, even though the light from the hallway was at his back and his features were obscured in shadow. His voice hadn't changed, even if his tone had. He stepped to the side, out of the light entirely, moving in an oblique half-circle around the side of the room so that he could face Sirius directly without the Death Eater between them.
"You lot have done a poor job with him, haven't you?" he continued. "Did it never occur to you that beating him just strengthens his resolve? No wonder they called me in."
"Do not -" the Death Eater began, but Remus turned his head abruptly towards him and pointed back toward the door, his expression arrogant and disdainful.
"Out," he commanded. "Leave him to me. I know how to break him."
"Moony..." Sirius mumbled it to himself under his breath, an automatic response to the familiar presence. Oh, he recognised him by his voice, by his stance, by every single feature he could barely make out in the dim light. They'd spent entirely too much time together for him to not be intimately familiar with every detail. If it had been quiet enough and they'd been closer, he could have known him even from the sound of his breathing.
Relief didn't set in, however, because he knew there was no relief to come. That wasn't part of the plan, after all. Instead his mind was scrambling to deal with this new circumstance, to know how to react. He peered up at Remus, not acknowledging any other presence, and he would have braced himself if he'd known what to brace himself against. As familiar as he was with Remus, he had never seen him quite like this. Werewolf.
It wasn't a bad look on him, obvious connotations aside. Feral, dangerous. A stark contrast to how he knew him.
Only on the periphery of his mind did he register the other werewolf and the Death Eater exiting the cell. Then he was alone with Remus and he shifted a little, trying to sit more upright.
Clearing his throat, he listened to the door falling shut. "So. How have you been?"
This was Remus Lupin after six months undercover among the werewolf packs: his hair grew long and ragged, reaching unevenly down toward his shoulders in some places and picking up in curls in others, giving him a look that went well past "scruffy" and could better be described as "slovenly;" he was no longer clean-shaven but sported a layer of short, thick brown stubble that - as he had long ago predicted when they'd all started having to shave back at school - grew over his scar tissue in strange, irregular patterns; his eyes were reflecting the dim light from the hallway oddly, so that they were no longer brown but almost yellow, luminous around to his dilated, ever moving pupils; he wore Muggle-style clothing that covered him from neck to ankle, and though it was still mostly drab brown and grey in color, it was threadbare and worn, ragged in a way that no self-respecting wizard would ever wear; his stance, once so understated and perfectly calculated to slip under the radar of people's attention, now conveyed power, dominance, and no wish at all to appear understated. This was not a man, but a werewolf, a predator in a world of so much easy prey.
He stood quite still in the darkness of the cell while his Death Eater guide left the room. He gave no response at all to the muttered, "Just call out when you're done with him," as the heavy door closed behind him, plunging them into complete darkness.
For a moment, there was silence. Remus did not answer Sirius's question, nor move closer to him. The air inside the cell, no longer moving in and out of the open door, was once again going still - the atmosphere was stuffy, contriving to be humid and chilly at the same time.
Then, with a soft scraping sound, there was a small supernova burst of red light and a bursting corona of warmth. A ball of red and yellow flame had appeared in the air between Sirius and Remus, and as it floated slowly to the stone floor and settled there like a flower fallen from a tree, the shadows of the room shifted and Remus was finally striding closer.
"Look at me," he commanded. In the firelight he was holding up four fingers, his thumb folded inwards. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Four. I'm exhausted, not imbecile." Sirius looked at Remus, not because he had commanded it but because what else was he going to do? It was a sight for sore eyes, even underneath everything that was unfamiliar. Somewhere down there was still Remus Lupin, the boy whom he had asked all the questions about the muggle world first time they were alone together in their dorm. The boy he had grown up with. The man before him now, who held himself in a way that he didn't know, but that wasn't altogether unbecoming.
There were goose-bumps on his bare skin, now that it was exposed to warmth again for the first time in too long. His eyes stayed on Remus and he got closer to smiling a genuine smile than he had in a long time. "You're looking awfully manly there, Moony. Ain't the worst."
"Shut up," Remus responded at once, as sharply as he could manage. It was hard to look into that bloodstained, exhausted face and see recognition in the eyes, see something like pleasure in the faint quirk of the lips. Sirius was glad to see him, and he was showing it freely, without the natural suspicion that he should be showing to a werewolf who had been brought here to force him to talk. That wasn't something either of them should be doing yet - not until they were certain it was safe.
"Follow my fingertip with your eyes," he continued, folding three fingers down so that Sirius could see only his index finger. "Don't move your head. And what was the name you wanted to give the Giant Squid during our first year at school?"
Sirius, Remus knew, would probably understand what he was doing, at least if he wasn't too addled by his - how long had it been? Weeks? Months? - of imprisonment and torture. This was the same procedure that Madame Pomfrey used to conduct for him when she collected him from the Shrieking Shack after each transformation: a test of eye movement, pupil dilation, the ability to follow simple directions. It was to make sure he hadn't sustained any concussions or other injuries that might affect his brain. Only in this case, instead of asking, "who is the current Minister for Magic?" Remus was asking a question that would tell him if Sirius's responses were being controlled by someone else. Someone who didn't know all of their stupid in-jokes from ten years of friendship.
"Cuddles. Which is a great name for reasons that are threefold." As he had painstakingly explained back then. His eyes were blurry from exhaustion, but the pupils followed Remus's fingertip easily enough.
He knew his guard should be up. However, it did feel good to be im a familiar presence, even knowing that it might get twisted into something awful at any point. As close as he was to the darkest pit of despair right now, even the smallest flicker of something that felt good resonated.
Remus's presence brought more warmth than that spell he had cast that illuminated the cell. "That bird with you looks rough, mate, don't tell me you're seeing her."
It was a tease, accompanied with a hint of a glint in his tired eyes. Humour brought him more strength than hope, he had none of that. "You can do better than that."
At Sirius's unhesitating answer, something in Remus's chest relaxed; he lowered his hand, then let out a long breath that he had not been aware of holding. Yes, that was precisely what he had said back then, when they were all new students at Hogwarts: the Squid's name is Cuddles, for threefold reasons. The mathematical reason, the zoological reason, and the emotional reason - he'd explained each at length. None of it had made much sense then, and it didn't make any more sense now. But that wasn't the point: the point was that no Death Eater would know about that long-ago interaction between four eleven-year-old boys.
Well, now he was satisfied that Sirius was neither suffering from a brain injury nor acting under the influence of the Imperius Curse. He was intact and unharmed - well, unless you counted the fact that he was here, in a Death Eater's dungeon, in the process of being tortured for information.
"You haven't checked whether I am who you think I am," he pointed out, ignoring Sirius's suggestive comments about his companion for the moment. "Go on, ask me a personal question."
Not that he was about to wait for Sirius to be certain of his identity before invading his personal space. Kneeling down on the cold stone floor before his friend, he reached out to grab hold of one manacled wrist.
"Let me feel your pulse," he said. "What hurts the most right now?"
"I know you are who I think you are, you're very recognisable," Sirius muttered, figuring that he probably couldn't ask Remus to simply show his patronus. "What happened with the chocolates I used to get from the girls for Valentine's at school?"
There, that was personal enough. Insider knowledge and the kind of memory that felt bittersweet. But then, there was no memory left these days that didn't have bitterness attached to him.
His eyes followed Remus's actions as he took his pulse, lips quirking up into a smile. Such a practical and caring thing to do. Such a Remus thing to do, in other words. He really had missed him. "I don't know. Everything hurts. I know you know the feeling."
He had witnessed his transformations a few times, after all. "I'm not going to break, Moony. They aren't-- It won't happen. So it's fine. It will be over one day."
"The chocolates that you used to get from the girls for Valentine's were routinely left on the floor of our room, as I recall," Remus answered, his gaze lowered and his brows knit in an expression of deep concentration as he drew the manacle up Sirius's arm and out of the way. "Carelessly abandoned at random, resulting in unsightly clutter and putting us all at risk of tripping and doing ourselves a terrible mischief."
Only then did his eyes flick back up, glancing briefly at Sirius's face before focusing back down on his wrist. Despite the gravity of the situation, a hint of a smile could be seen in the way the corners of his eyes crinkled.
"Whereupon," he concluded, "I selflessly took on the duty of cleaning up the mess by removing the chocolates to a place of safety, where they could put no one in danger..."
As he spoke, the pad of his thumb was gently massaging into the underside of Sirius's wrist, searching until it found a vein. His pronouncement trailed off as he took Sirius's pulse: for a solid thirty seconds he knelt still and silent, eyes unfocused, counting the number of beats. When he let Sirius's wrist go, placing it gently back on the ground, his expression still registered concern.
"I know you won't break," he said, now looking into the exhausted face before him again. "But your body will, sooner or later."
He shook his right arm, as if trying to regain the feeling in a limb that had fallen asleep; his wand slid smoothly down from inside his sleeve until it was resting in his hand.
"Right. Can you sit up a bit straighter for me? Rest your back against the wall. We should have enough time for me to clean up some of these bigger injuries, at least. Then, let's think about to get you out of here."
As Remus recounts what happened to those chocolates, Sirius's eyes close for just a few moments. It's almost as if he can feel himself be transported back, to a time when there had been little to worry about, when he had just been entertained by Remus taking it upon himself to eat his chocolates and sell it as a selfless deed. Especially when Remus would then bitterly complain about feeling sick when he'd eaten too much.
His eyes opened when Remus took a hold of his wrist and there was an uncertain frown. He wet his cracked lips and cleared his throat, doing what he could to force his tired mind to keep up with what was happening.
Sitting as straight as he managed, he looked up at Remus. "Careful, Moony. They know who you are. Who we are. They're not gonna... I don't want you in any more danger than you are already."
Was that selfish? It definitely was. "I can take what they do to me." He trailed off there, the implication clear. He didn't want to have to take them doing anything to Remus.
It was difficult to watch the way Sirius moved here in this dark, lonely cell; it was painful to understand that he had been reduced to moving like this, stiff, slow and uncoordinated, for a long time before this moment. How long had he been stuck here, in pain and without any hope of rescue, knowing that the only way this would ever end was with his death? Sirius was a strong-willed person, Remus knew that better than most people: even so, the effort of will it must have taken for him just to survive to this point was staggering.
It occurred to him somewhere in the back of his mind that Dumbledore - or maybe several members of the Order - must have known what was happening to Sirius. And they hadn't told him. They'd had the ability to get in touch with him, even among the werewolves - he's been summoned by secret Order contact more than once in the past few months - but they'd never told him. Had anyone told James and Lily what was going on? Had they told Peter? Or had it been felt that it was safer to let Sirius endure what he could here alone? He was going to have to think about this later on, and about what it meant. But there was no time now.
"Right, good," he said quietly, steadying Sirius upright against the wall with one hand on his shoulder. He was examining a particularly crusted gash across the right side of Sirius's chest. "Let's start with this cut here."
He glanced up into Sirius's face, his lips pulling back in a brief sympathetic grimace: the light from the magical fire beside them glinted off teeth that were noticeably sharper than usual. "I'm going to have to decontaminate it first, I'm afraid. Tell me if you need a moment and I'll stop, all right?"
There was no need to warn Sirius that decontaminating an injury without using a numbing potion was painful - all of them had performed this procedure for one another at some point in the past couple of years.
As he set to work cleaning the area with a conjured cloth, he finally responded to Sirius's warning. "Yes, it looks like they know who we are," he agreed, looking studiously down at Sirius's chest rather than up into his face. "That's why they called me here in the first place. But I'm not leaving you here, whatever you think you can handle."
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As they descended the staircase into the lower recesses of the house, the feeling began to rise in his chest, subtly but inexorably: a dawning fear, a slow dread of what lay before him. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck was beginning to rise; his skin pebbled in goosebumps and his breathing quickened. For a few seconds he could not pinpoint the source of this mounting dread, could not understand what his sharpened senses were trying to tell him. Then he heard the soft, deliberate intake of breath from Burrett just ahead of him, and all at once the source became obvious, unmissable: the smell of blood, wafting in faint currents in the air. Iron, rich, freshly-spilled and cloying in his nostrils and the back of his throat. And... something else, something familiar, like sweat and living, vital heat...
His heart froze like a stunned creature within the vault of his ribcage. He nearly stumbled; grabbed at the stone wall beside him for balance. Sirius?
For a taught, sparking livewire moment, he could not move, could not breathe. Then his heart exploded into frantic action. A wave of heat cascaded through his limbs as the blood rushed from his head and torso and into his extremities, his nervous system falling back on its ancient autonomic response to fear: fight, or flee. His ears were filled with a hollow rushing noise, his vision swam dizzily, making the flagstone floor below him rush upward; the small muscles in his fingers spasmed tight as he clutched at the wall, fingernails making a faint rasping noise against the rough granite while he fought to keep from falling to the ground.
They were headed down to a dungeon, and Sirius was inside of it.
Eyes stinging, he raised his head and looked up, into the barrel of the dim hallway still before him. In the foreground of his view was the shadowed back of Burrett's cloak, receding ahead of him: his whole violent reaction, from the first whiff of familiar blood, had only taken enough time for her to walk a few steps ahead of him. If he gave her another second, she'd look back and notice him holding onto the wall like he'd just been kicked in the chest by a horse.
No, no. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't allow her to doubt him now. He took a deliberate breath, freeing up his frozen lungs; pushed himself off the wall and stood up straight. Schooled his face, willed his racing heart to slow. Then he began walking again.
In the same fraction of a second, Burrett glanced behind her and gave a small scowl. "Hurry up," she mouthed.
By the time they finally reached the end of the hallway and approached the last door on the left, Remus's face was a smooth, neutral blank again. His shoulders were relaxed, his arms loose by his sides. When the Death Eater turned to address them, he would see only the faces of his two enforcers, indifferent to their environment but willing to do as they were ordered.
Persuade, he said. Remus allowed his mind to reach into the deep well of his assumed identity, the affect and attitude of one of Fenrir Greyback's pack members. He raised a sardonic eyebrow.
"Why call on us for that?" he asked. "Keeping people alive is your specialty, not ours."
Unconsciously, he braced for a reprimanding look from Burrett. But she seemed in no mood to disagree with him: she was examining her nails with the haughty air of one who does not plan to buckle down and get to work without a good reason.
"Unless you want him to answer your questions solely in a series of barks, yips, and growls," she said, "we're the wrong tools for the job."
Within the shadowed eyeholes of the mask, Remus could just see the Death Eater's eyes narrow. Although no mouth was visible, he was certain the Death Eater was smirking.
"Not you," he said, one gloved hand making a dismissive gesture toward Burrett. He turned his head instead toward Remus and pointed. "You, alone. We believe the prisoner knows you well."
Despite the sweat sticking his clothing to his skin, Remus could feel a wave of cold washing from his head to the tips of his fingers and toes. They know. They know who we are to each other, and they know he has the secret.
He stepped into the cell behind the Death Eater. In here, the smell of blood was a thousand times stronger, not an occasional whiff of iron on the air but a solid, three-dimensional map of scent, swimming and swarming in the close atmosphere. There was a splatter of it near the right wall, dry and stale; a fresher fine spray across the center of the room; a thick, dense puddle of it in the corner. And there, against the back wall, was the source of the smell, strongest of all, mixed with the less all-encompassing scents of sweat and bile and filth and hair and vital living flesh: Sirius.
For all that he was easy to identify by smell, by sight he was no more than a lump of deeper darkness in the dark room - but it was clear that he was connected to the wall by chains, and that most of his body was curled up, crumpled on the floor. Remus blinked hard and swallowed with difficulty as his stomach turned, threatening to be sick.
He moved slowly forward, approaching that crumpled shape behind the Death Eater. As he did, he could see the shape stir, unfold, and then sit up. He could hear the clink of chains, the drag of exhausted limbs. As Sirius lifted his head and the narrow beam of light from the outside hall illuminated his features, Remus could see him clearly: gaunt, raw-boned, fish belly pale with bruised eye sockets and sunken cheeks. His hair fell in matted, felted hanks that stuck to the sides of his face; every crease, scar and faint wrinkle of skin was outlined in dark residue, the remains of dried blood. Here and there, the skin was split open in wounds like rifts and fissures, unclean and patchy with scab tissue. Almost unrecognizable -
Except the eyes. The eyes were still Sirius's, alert and lucid, fever-bright and glinting with stubborn defiance. Not far below them, the thin, parched and bleeding lips parted to reveal teeth like a set of bloodstained blades and files. When he spoke, it was in a voice that was gravelly and exhausted, but familiar enough to shatter Remus's heart.
"Yes, he knows me," Remus said quietly, in a voice that did not shake. And it was true, Sirius would know who he was now, even though the light from the hallway was at his back and his features were obscured in shadow. His voice hadn't changed, even if his tone had. He stepped to the side, out of the light entirely, moving in an oblique half-circle around the side of the room so that he could face Sirius directly without the Death Eater between them.
"You lot have done a poor job with him, haven't you?" he continued. "Did it never occur to you that beating him just strengthens his resolve? No wonder they called me in."
"Do not -" the Death Eater began, but Remus turned his head abruptly towards him and pointed back toward the door, his expression arrogant and disdainful.
"Out," he commanded. "Leave him to me. I know how to break him."
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Relief didn't set in, however, because he knew there was no relief to come. That wasn't part of the plan, after all. Instead his mind was scrambling to deal with this new circumstance, to know how to react. He peered up at Remus, not acknowledging any other presence, and he would have braced himself if he'd known what to brace himself against. As familiar as he was with Remus, he had never seen him quite like this. Werewolf.
It wasn't a bad look on him, obvious connotations aside. Feral, dangerous. A stark contrast to how he knew him.
Only on the periphery of his mind did he register the other werewolf and the Death Eater exiting the cell. Then he was alone with Remus and he shifted a little, trying to sit more upright.
Clearing his throat, he listened to the door falling shut. "So. How have you been?"
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He stood quite still in the darkness of the cell while his Death Eater guide left the room. He gave no response at all to the muttered, "Just call out when you're done with him," as the heavy door closed behind him, plunging them into complete darkness.
For a moment, there was silence. Remus did not answer Sirius's question, nor move closer to him. The air inside the cell, no longer moving in and out of the open door, was once again going still - the atmosphere was stuffy, contriving to be humid and chilly at the same time.
Then, with a soft scraping sound, there was a small supernova burst of red light and a bursting corona of warmth. A ball of red and yellow flame had appeared in the air between Sirius and Remus, and as it floated slowly to the stone floor and settled there like a flower fallen from a tree, the shadows of the room shifted and Remus was finally striding closer.
"Look at me," he commanded. In the firelight he was holding up four fingers, his thumb folded inwards. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
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There were goose-bumps on his bare skin, now that it was exposed to warmth again for the first time in too long. His eyes stayed on Remus and he got closer to smiling a genuine smile than he had in a long time. "You're looking awfully manly there, Moony. Ain't the worst."
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"Follow my fingertip with your eyes," he continued, folding three fingers down so that Sirius could see only his index finger. "Don't move your head. And what was the name you wanted to give the Giant Squid during our first year at school?"
Sirius, Remus knew, would probably understand what he was doing, at least if he wasn't too addled by his - how long had it been? Weeks? Months? - of imprisonment and torture. This was the same procedure that Madame Pomfrey used to conduct for him when she collected him from the Shrieking Shack after each transformation: a test of eye movement, pupil dilation, the ability to follow simple directions. It was to make sure he hadn't sustained any concussions or other injuries that might affect his brain. Only in this case, instead of asking, "who is the current Minister for Magic?" Remus was asking a question that would tell him if Sirius's responses were being controlled by someone else. Someone who didn't know all of their stupid in-jokes from ten years of friendship.
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He knew his guard should be up. However, it did feel good to be im a familiar presence, even knowing that it might get twisted into something awful at any point. As close as he was to the darkest pit of despair right now, even the smallest flicker of something that felt good resonated.
Remus's presence brought more warmth than that spell he had cast that illuminated the cell. "That bird with you looks rough, mate, don't tell me you're seeing her."
It was a tease, accompanied with a hint of a glint in his tired eyes. Humour brought him more strength than hope, he had none of that. "You can do better than that."
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Well, now he was satisfied that Sirius was neither suffering from a brain injury nor acting under the influence of the Imperius Curse. He was intact and unharmed - well, unless you counted the fact that he was here, in a Death Eater's dungeon, in the process of being tortured for information.
"You haven't checked whether I am who you think I am," he pointed out, ignoring Sirius's suggestive comments about his companion for the moment. "Go on, ask me a personal question."
Not that he was about to wait for Sirius to be certain of his identity before invading his personal space. Kneeling down on the cold stone floor before his friend, he reached out to grab hold of one manacled wrist.
"Let me feel your pulse," he said. "What hurts the most right now?"
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There, that was personal enough. Insider knowledge and the kind of memory that felt bittersweet. But then, there was no memory left these days that didn't have bitterness attached to him.
His eyes followed Remus's actions as he took his pulse, lips quirking up into a smile. Such a practical and caring thing to do. Such a Remus thing to do, in other words. He really had missed him. "I don't know. Everything hurts. I know you know the feeling."
He had witnessed his transformations a few times, after all. "I'm not going to break, Moony. They aren't-- It won't happen. So it's fine. It will be over one day."
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Only then did his eyes flick back up, glancing briefly at Sirius's face before focusing back down on his wrist. Despite the gravity of the situation, a hint of a smile could be seen in the way the corners of his eyes crinkled.
"Whereupon," he concluded, "I selflessly took on the duty of cleaning up the mess by removing the chocolates to a place of safety, where they could put no one in danger..."
As he spoke, the pad of his thumb was gently massaging into the underside of Sirius's wrist, searching until it found a vein. His pronouncement trailed off as he took Sirius's pulse: for a solid thirty seconds he knelt still and silent, eyes unfocused, counting the number of beats. When he let Sirius's wrist go, placing it gently back on the ground, his expression still registered concern.
"I know you won't break," he said, now looking into the exhausted face before him again. "But your body will, sooner or later."
He shook his right arm, as if trying to regain the feeling in a limb that had fallen asleep; his wand slid smoothly down from inside his sleeve until it was resting in his hand.
"Right. Can you sit up a bit straighter for me? Rest your back against the wall. We should have enough time for me to clean up some of these bigger injuries, at least. Then, let's think about to get you out of here."
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His eyes opened when Remus took a hold of his wrist and there was an uncertain frown. He wet his cracked lips and cleared his throat, doing what he could to force his tired mind to keep up with what was happening.
Sitting as straight as he managed, he looked up at Remus. "Careful, Moony. They know who you are. Who we are. They're not gonna... I don't want you in any more danger than you are already."
Was that selfish? It definitely was. "I can take what they do to me." He trailed off there, the implication clear. He didn't want to have to take them doing anything to Remus.
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It occurred to him somewhere in the back of his mind that Dumbledore - or maybe several members of the Order - must have known what was happening to Sirius. And they hadn't told him. They'd had the ability to get in touch with him, even among the werewolves - he's been summoned by secret Order contact more than once in the past few months - but they'd never told him. Had anyone told James and Lily what was going on? Had they told Peter? Or had it been felt that it was safer to let Sirius endure what he could here alone? He was going to have to think about this later on, and about what it meant. But there was no time now.
"Right, good," he said quietly, steadying Sirius upright against the wall with one hand on his shoulder. He was examining a particularly crusted gash across the right side of Sirius's chest. "Let's start with this cut here."
He glanced up into Sirius's face, his lips pulling back in a brief sympathetic grimace: the light from the magical fire beside them glinted off teeth that were noticeably sharper than usual. "I'm going to have to decontaminate it first, I'm afraid. Tell me if you need a moment and I'll stop, all right?"
There was no need to warn Sirius that decontaminating an injury without using a numbing potion was painful - all of them had performed this procedure for one another at some point in the past couple of years.
As he set to work cleaning the area with a conjured cloth, he finally responded to Sirius's warning. "Yes, it looks like they know who we are," he agreed, looking studiously down at Sirius's chest rather than up into his face. "That's why they called me here in the first place. But I'm not leaving you here, whatever you think you can handle."