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Title: Therapy (Fighting for a Wasted Love)
Author: Evandar
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance/Angst
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Warnings: Mental health issues, canon-compliant anti-werewolf prejudice
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: Remus sits in the waiting room, and tries not to hear through the door. He wants to pretend that Sirius has some kind of privacy.
AN: This was my entry for Team Magic on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
rs_games 2014. The title comes from the song Dog Days by Within Temptation.
“How does that make you feel, Mr Black?”
Remus tries to pretend that he isn’t listening. He’s not supposed to be able to hear, but there are no wards placed between the room where Sirius is in therapy and the waiting room and it’s close enough to the full moon that he can catch every word that’s said. It’s good practise, he tells himself, for when Sirius comes out, looking more fragile than ever; he wants Sirius to have the illusion of privacy, even if it is only an illusion.
Sirius’ silence in response to that question gnaws at him. He wants to get up and pace. He hates sitting still while Sirius is in there, and he hates that he’s bound by his loyalty to stay instead of venturing along the corridor for a coffee. He hates the other patients with their sad eyes and their cold looks – there’s a man who comes for help with his lycanthropy sometimes; every time they meet, he seems offended that Remus isn’t here to do the same – and he hates the same old issues of Witch Weekly with their tattered covers and incorrectly filled-in crosswords.
“Tired. Old. I’m old now.”
Remus has been in Muggle hospitals over the years. Mostly when concerned neighbours found him coated in his own blood and passed out in a hallway on ill-fated shopping attempts after the full moons. He likes Muggle hospitals. They’re filled with noise and bustle, even if most of the noise comes from machines. There’s no rhythmic beeping at St Mungo’s. There’s no smell of disinfectant. Everything is kept clean and sterile and silent and it’s only his wolf’s nose that lets him smell the magic that keeps it that way. The Healers have a tendency to talk in hushed tones, as if everyone around them is on the brink of sleep or death, except for the occasions where the pitch their voices just so he knows that he and Sirius aren’t really welcome here.
(This isn’t a vetinary hospital. What is the Ministry thinking, sending them here?)
He’d much rather – if there was any choice in the matter – Sirius be taken to a Muggle hospital. He can’t. He’s too…pureblood. No, that’s unfair, and it’s unfair that he still thinks that way even after knowing Sirius for twenty-four years. (Fuck, they are old.) Sirius is too magical for Muggle hospital. Everything he is, and everything he says and does, revolves around magic somehow. His childhood traumas, his adult traumas, his relationship with Remus, his coping mechanisms…all the things that his therapist pulls out of his brain to dissect every day are magical in some way, shape, or form.
A Muggle doctor would lock Sirius away without question. As it is, magical Healers are only just giving him the benefit of the doubt – and that’s mostly to do with the headlines and the Ministry’s compensation settlement.
“You’re thirty-three, Mr Black.” Thirty-four, Remus corrects in his head, because Sirius’ birthday was in February, and he hears Sirius echo that thought through the door. “Thirty-four. That’s not that old, is it?”
“I don’t remember Azkaban very well. Not years. Not things like that. Just flashes of important stuff.”
“Important?”
Remus shifts on his bench and tilts his head back, closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to stare at the beige walls or the waving magazine covers any more.
“People. People I knew before. Bella. Barty Crouch Jr – he was friends with my brother. People.”
People that are dead or still locked away, completely mad (though Remus is inclined to believe that Bellatrix was mad before Azkaban; Sirius had believed it too). People that Sirius grew up with. His relatives, the friends of his relatives; some Death Eaters had even been his own friends before he’d gone and got himself Sorted into Gryffindor. People that Sirius still doesn’t entirely believe are gone. Sometimes, he says things that makes Remus wonder if he knows that Regulus is still missing and not living with Crouch in a neighbouring apartment block.
He’s been told a hundred times since Peter was caught that Sirius is far saner than he has a right to be after twelve years in Azkaban’s maximum security wing. He’s been informed that he’s lucky; that Sirius is lucky. He’s never been entirely sure if people are joking when they say that, but he holds his tongue and reminds himself that they don’t know Sirius the way he does, and that if they knew then they wouldn’t be saying anyone was lucky at all.
Sirius is only sane because of Padfoot. Because dogs are simpler and stronger than humans. Because their emotions aren’t prey for Dementors. Because they can slip between cell bars and swim miles through rough, cold sea on a diet of gruel, and live for months on rats and scraps stolen from bins and still not break. But sane men don’t wake up silent from their nightmares and leave their partners to find them curled up under the sofa in a sad ball of black fur the next morning. They don’t look at their old wand and think ‘fetch’ before they think of defending themselves. Padfoot has destroyed Sirius as much as he’s saved him – people aren’t supposed to spend that much time in their Animagus forms, and if they do, there’s always the risk that they won’t come back.
“Just people.”
Remus sighs, and it’s unbearably loud in the hush of the waiting room. He opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling tiles and he lists the names of every magical creature he knows and then does it again in Welsh. He starts with blaidd-ddyn. Werewolf.
…
He must have drifted off somehow, because he snaps awake at the sound of the door opening, and he lifts his head, neck cracking, just in time to see Sirius’ therapist open the door.
Sirius is dressed in one of Remus’ shirts. It hangs off him in a way that makes him look unbearably fragile, but he likes the smell of it and Remus wants him to be as comfortable as he can be while he’s here. Besides, it soothes something instinctual to see Sirius wearing his clothes again. He smiles, and he thinks it almost reaches his eyes this time. He can’t remember what – if anything – Sirius spoke about in the last half of his appointment, so he doesn’t have to lie as much, but Sirius is still pale and drained, and the skin around his nails is bloody from where he’s torn at it in frustration.
Remus stands.
There’s always been something fragile about Sirius. Even as a teenager, when he was manic in his intensity and determined to prove that the side he had chosen was the side that was right, there had been the occasional flash of vulnerability. That vulnerability is more pronounced now. The lost look that haunts Sirius’ eyes; the frustration he shows at failing to perform simple tasks just because he’s forgotten how. It makes Remus want to sweep him into his arms and take him away from the world, and it makes him want to howl with sorrow for the loss of the boy Sirius had been and the loss of the future they’d told themselves they had.
He smiles at Sirius’ therapist. She’s probably a nice enough woman, despite her apparent inability to remember facts about her patients, and she tries very hard to hide how wary she is about the werewolf who sits in her waiting room every week. (He wonders how she deals with her werewolf patient, but he supposes that’s not his business – maybe she just forgets why he’s there.) As such, her fingers tighten on the doorknob, but she smiles back with a display of even teeth, and she doesn’t quite shut the door with a snap.
Sirius blinks at the noise, looks at Remus like he’s coming out of a daze. “Ready to go?” he asks, as if Remus is the reason why they’re there.
“Please,” Remus replies, and he winds his arm around Sirius’ waist as they walk. It helps Sirius stand, because he’s always tired after therapy, and it reassures Remus too – reminds him that Sirius is a flesh and blood person and in his life again; not a memory or a ghost like he’s been for so long.
He doesn’t ask Sirius how it went. If Sirius wants to tell him, he will. More often than not, he tells him by shifting into Padfoot and begging to go outside where he chases chickens round the yard and barks at the sheep on the next farm over, or by resting his head on Remus’ knee and looking at him pleadingly until Remus gives in and scratches his ears.
One day, he hopes, Sirius will be as resilient as Padfoot has had to become, and one day – just maybe – Sirius will be strong enough to push Padfoot into the background again.
He guides Sirius through the halls of Saint Mungo’s and the whispers that follow them, and he knows that he doesn’t dare to hope that day will be any day soon.
Author: Evandar
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance/Angst
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Warnings: Mental health issues, canon-compliant anti-werewolf prejudice
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: Remus sits in the waiting room, and tries not to hear through the door. He wants to pretend that Sirius has some kind of privacy.
AN: This was my entry for Team Magic on
rs_games 2014. The title comes from the song Dog Days by Within Temptation.“How does that make you feel, Mr Black?”
Remus tries to pretend that he isn’t listening. He’s not supposed to be able to hear, but there are no wards placed between the room where Sirius is in therapy and the waiting room and it’s close enough to the full moon that he can catch every word that’s said. It’s good practise, he tells himself, for when Sirius comes out, looking more fragile than ever; he wants Sirius to have the illusion of privacy, even if it is only an illusion.
Sirius’ silence in response to that question gnaws at him. He wants to get up and pace. He hates sitting still while Sirius is in there, and he hates that he’s bound by his loyalty to stay instead of venturing along the corridor for a coffee. He hates the other patients with their sad eyes and their cold looks – there’s a man who comes for help with his lycanthropy sometimes; every time they meet, he seems offended that Remus isn’t here to do the same – and he hates the same old issues of Witch Weekly with their tattered covers and incorrectly filled-in crosswords.
“Tired. Old. I’m old now.”
Remus has been in Muggle hospitals over the years. Mostly when concerned neighbours found him coated in his own blood and passed out in a hallway on ill-fated shopping attempts after the full moons. He likes Muggle hospitals. They’re filled with noise and bustle, even if most of the noise comes from machines. There’s no rhythmic beeping at St Mungo’s. There’s no smell of disinfectant. Everything is kept clean and sterile and silent and it’s only his wolf’s nose that lets him smell the magic that keeps it that way. The Healers have a tendency to talk in hushed tones, as if everyone around them is on the brink of sleep or death, except for the occasions where the pitch their voices just so he knows that he and Sirius aren’t really welcome here.
(This isn’t a vetinary hospital. What is the Ministry thinking, sending them here?)
He’d much rather – if there was any choice in the matter – Sirius be taken to a Muggle hospital. He can’t. He’s too…pureblood. No, that’s unfair, and it’s unfair that he still thinks that way even after knowing Sirius for twenty-four years. (Fuck, they are old.) Sirius is too magical for Muggle hospital. Everything he is, and everything he says and does, revolves around magic somehow. His childhood traumas, his adult traumas, his relationship with Remus, his coping mechanisms…all the things that his therapist pulls out of his brain to dissect every day are magical in some way, shape, or form.
A Muggle doctor would lock Sirius away without question. As it is, magical Healers are only just giving him the benefit of the doubt – and that’s mostly to do with the headlines and the Ministry’s compensation settlement.
“You’re thirty-three, Mr Black.” Thirty-four, Remus corrects in his head, because Sirius’ birthday was in February, and he hears Sirius echo that thought through the door. “Thirty-four. That’s not that old, is it?”
“I don’t remember Azkaban very well. Not years. Not things like that. Just flashes of important stuff.”
“Important?”
Remus shifts on his bench and tilts his head back, closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to stare at the beige walls or the waving magazine covers any more.
“People. People I knew before. Bella. Barty Crouch Jr – he was friends with my brother. People.”
People that are dead or still locked away, completely mad (though Remus is inclined to believe that Bellatrix was mad before Azkaban; Sirius had believed it too). People that Sirius grew up with. His relatives, the friends of his relatives; some Death Eaters had even been his own friends before he’d gone and got himself Sorted into Gryffindor. People that Sirius still doesn’t entirely believe are gone. Sometimes, he says things that makes Remus wonder if he knows that Regulus is still missing and not living with Crouch in a neighbouring apartment block.
He’s been told a hundred times since Peter was caught that Sirius is far saner than he has a right to be after twelve years in Azkaban’s maximum security wing. He’s been informed that he’s lucky; that Sirius is lucky. He’s never been entirely sure if people are joking when they say that, but he holds his tongue and reminds himself that they don’t know Sirius the way he does, and that if they knew then they wouldn’t be saying anyone was lucky at all.
Sirius is only sane because of Padfoot. Because dogs are simpler and stronger than humans. Because their emotions aren’t prey for Dementors. Because they can slip between cell bars and swim miles through rough, cold sea on a diet of gruel, and live for months on rats and scraps stolen from bins and still not break. But sane men don’t wake up silent from their nightmares and leave their partners to find them curled up under the sofa in a sad ball of black fur the next morning. They don’t look at their old wand and think ‘fetch’ before they think of defending themselves. Padfoot has destroyed Sirius as much as he’s saved him – people aren’t supposed to spend that much time in their Animagus forms, and if they do, there’s always the risk that they won’t come back.
“Just people.”
Remus sighs, and it’s unbearably loud in the hush of the waiting room. He opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling tiles and he lists the names of every magical creature he knows and then does it again in Welsh. He starts with blaidd-ddyn. Werewolf.
…
He must have drifted off somehow, because he snaps awake at the sound of the door opening, and he lifts his head, neck cracking, just in time to see Sirius’ therapist open the door.
Sirius is dressed in one of Remus’ shirts. It hangs off him in a way that makes him look unbearably fragile, but he likes the smell of it and Remus wants him to be as comfortable as he can be while he’s here. Besides, it soothes something instinctual to see Sirius wearing his clothes again. He smiles, and he thinks it almost reaches his eyes this time. He can’t remember what – if anything – Sirius spoke about in the last half of his appointment, so he doesn’t have to lie as much, but Sirius is still pale and drained, and the skin around his nails is bloody from where he’s torn at it in frustration.
Remus stands.
There’s always been something fragile about Sirius. Even as a teenager, when he was manic in his intensity and determined to prove that the side he had chosen was the side that was right, there had been the occasional flash of vulnerability. That vulnerability is more pronounced now. The lost look that haunts Sirius’ eyes; the frustration he shows at failing to perform simple tasks just because he’s forgotten how. It makes Remus want to sweep him into his arms and take him away from the world, and it makes him want to howl with sorrow for the loss of the boy Sirius had been and the loss of the future they’d told themselves they had.
He smiles at Sirius’ therapist. She’s probably a nice enough woman, despite her apparent inability to remember facts about her patients, and she tries very hard to hide how wary she is about the werewolf who sits in her waiting room every week. (He wonders how she deals with her werewolf patient, but he supposes that’s not his business – maybe she just forgets why he’s there.) As such, her fingers tighten on the doorknob, but she smiles back with a display of even teeth, and she doesn’t quite shut the door with a snap.
Sirius blinks at the noise, looks at Remus like he’s coming out of a daze. “Ready to go?” he asks, as if Remus is the reason why they’re there.
“Please,” Remus replies, and he winds his arm around Sirius’ waist as they walk. It helps Sirius stand, because he’s always tired after therapy, and it reassures Remus too – reminds him that Sirius is a flesh and blood person and in his life again; not a memory or a ghost like he’s been for so long.
He doesn’t ask Sirius how it went. If Sirius wants to tell him, he will. More often than not, he tells him by shifting into Padfoot and begging to go outside where he chases chickens round the yard and barks at the sheep on the next farm over, or by resting his head on Remus’ knee and looking at him pleadingly until Remus gives in and scratches his ears.
One day, he hopes, Sirius will be as resilient as Padfoot has had to become, and one day – just maybe – Sirius will be strong enough to push Padfoot into the background again.
He guides Sirius through the halls of Saint Mungo’s and the whispers that follow them, and he knows that he doesn’t dare to hope that day will be any day soon.
