The Button Nest
wolfstar x fem!whimsy!reader
summary: you’re a shy crow animagus, quietly watching the marauders from the shadows, admiring them from afar. you think you’re invisible, but sirius and remus have started noticing you in ways you never expected. then, after a sudden accident leaves you vulnerable, the quiet distance between you begins to unravel, one button at a time.
warnings: shy reder, animagus transformation, animal form, accidents and injury, vulnerability, slow-burn romance, subtle emotional tension, insecurity, blood, infirmary, angst, lonely reader, anxiety, social awkwardness, mention of ravenclaw!reader, teasing and gentle flirting, mild language, moments of self-doubt, themes of trust and acceptance, angst, happy ending.
w/c: 6.1k
a/n: as someone who was always seen as 'weird', this was so healing to write <3 masterlist
It wasn’t unusual for you to be roaming the grounds late at night.
In fact, it had become something of a ritual—an instinct more than a plan, something stitched into your routine without you ever deciding it. The forest always felt more alive once the rest of the castle fell asleep, the air cooler, the trees older, the world quieter in a way that let your thoughts breathe.
Most nights, you slipped from your bed and disappeared beyond the edge of the grounds, feathered and weightless in the shape of a small crow, darting through branches and perching high in the canopy where no one thought to look.
What was unusual, however, was this: Remus Lupin limping through the forest, his arms slung around the shoulders of Sirius Black and James Potter like they were the only things keeping him from falling apart entirely.
Now that—that was something new.
You stilled in the trees, tucked between the leaves, dark eyes following the scene below.
It was strange, not because they were out after curfew. That much you’d come to expect from the troublesome Marauders. But because even here, in the middle of the forest, long past midnight, the three of them still carried with them that same impossible brightness.
You had never spoken to them before, not once, and yet somehow you knew their names the way everyone did. James Potter, Quidditch star with a laugh loud enough to rattle windows. Sirius Black, the most troublesome student, who drew people to him like a flame. And Remus Lupin, softer than the others but no less magnetic, with his weary kind of stillness that felt older than all of them combined.
You’d seen them around—of course you had, everyone had, but you’d been watching them for longer than you’d care to admit. Not deliberately, or creepily, you hoped.
It was just that once you started noticing them, you couldn’t seem to stop.
They moved through the castle like they belonged to it, like the halls bent slightly to let them pass. Even when they weren’t trying to be the center of attention, the world seemed to place them there anyway, everything revolving around their presence like they were born to be the stars of some story no one else had been invited into.
And even now, deep in the forest where no one was meant to see them, that pull hadn’t faded. The trees themselves seemed to lean toward Remus, branches curving like they knew he was hurting. The wind circled Sirius like it was part of him, rustling his hair just so. And James—he kept his head high even though his shoulder bore half of Remus’s weight, eyes sharp and steady in the dark like someone who refused to be afraid.
From your branch above, your small body shifted forward slightly, feathers ruffling against the bark.
Remus looked worse than you expected. Pale and exhausted. His mouth was tight with pain, and he leaned heavily on both of them, clearly fighting to stay upright. It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened. You didn’t need someone to spell it out for you.
You already knew.
You’d known for some time now, if you were honest with yourself. It wasn’t a secret, not if you paid attention.
The monthly disappearances, the gray pallor that settled into his skin for days afterward, the limp he sometimes carried with him, the faraway look he wore when he thought no one was watching.
It was clear, if you knew how to see it. Remus Lupin was a werewolf.
You weren’t afraid of him.
You weren’t sure what you felt, actually. Not pity, not fear. Just this soft ache in your chest, a fluttering concern that made your wings twitch and your claws dig slightly into the bark beneath you.
You wanted, more than anything, to help. Not in a way that would ever be noticed, not in some dramatic act of kindness or courage. Just… to be useful. To ease the weight of whatever he carried, even if only for a moment.
But you didn’t move. You stayed quiet in the branches as they passed beneath you, Sirius murmuring something to Remus that made the corner of his mouth twitch upward, just barely.
James glanced up once, scanning the canopy, but didn’t pause. None of them noticed the crow perched above them, holding her breath.
You watched them disappear between the trees, the sound of their footsteps fading into the dark, and felt that familiar twist settle in your chest again.
You were never part of their world. That much had always been clear. You moved through corridors like a ghost with pockets full of silence, a soft-footed observer in a universe that burned far too brightly for someone made of distance.
Where they shone with the ease of constellations, you lingered at the edges like mist, half-invisible and entirely forgettable.
It was not envy that caught your breath when you looked at them, it was something lonelier than that.
You told yourself it was mere curiosity, a passing glance toward something golden.
But the truth pressed heavier than that simple excuse. You had spent so long folding yourself into the corners of rooms, shrinking beneath your own voice, that to witness something so effortlessly vibrant felt almost otherworldly.
It was not that they demanded your attention. You would have resented them if they had. It was that your attention, unbidden and unwilling, bent toward them in spite of you.
As though their presence altered the air itself. As though their laughter rewrote gravity.
You tried to retreat, to withdraw as you always had, but the further you pulled, the harder you were drawn in.
It was the slow inevitability of celestial force, like a lonely moon being dragged across the dark by a sun too blinding to ignore.
You told yourself you were content in the quiet, and maybe you were. But every so often, when the night made the world gentler, and their noise softened into something almost tender, you allowed the wondering.
You let yourself ache for the impossible. To imagine, just briefly, what it might feel like to stand in the warmth.
And then, as always, you turned back into the branches, into the dark, into the small and silent shape of someone who was never meant to be seen.
You stay in the tree long after they pass, eyes tracking the shape of them as they disappear into the thicket, the way James’s silhouette leads, the way Sirius shifts slightly to support more of Remus’s weight without ever making it seem like a burden.
They speak in low voices, too distant for words to reach, but the rhythm of their steps is steady, if uneven, and for a moment you allow yourself to believe they’ll be alright.
Still, you follow.
You shift in the branches, feathers settling against your sides as your body lightens, stretches, and then lifts, black wings cutting through the night with soundless ease.
You dart above the treetops, careful to stay far enough that they won’t hear the flutter of your passage, but close enough that you can still see them through the breaks in the canopy.
You watch as Sirius ducks beneath a low-hanging branch—too low, it turns out. The edge catches his shoulder, just barely, and he swears under his breath.
James chuckles while Remus winces and lets out a soft noise you can’t quite hear. They all pause for a beat, just long enough for Sirius to adjust his grip around Remus’s back.
And that’s when you see it.
The glint of something small and dark tumbling from Sirius’s cloak as he shifts. It falls soundlessly into the underbrush, half-hidden by shadow and leaf, but you catch the flicker of it all the same.
A button. Round, worn, and gleaming faintly in the moonlight as it lands near the base of an old root.
They don’t notice.
They keep walking, unaware, their laughter returning faintly on the wind as they near the edge of the woods.
You watch them for a few more moments—watch as James pushes the castle door open with his shoulder, as Sirius leans close to say something low into Remus’s ear that makes him sigh softly despite himself.
Their backs retreat into the stone, swallowed by the warmth of the light spilling from within.
Only once the door swings shut behind them do you move.
You dive, wings spread in a wide curve, and land beside the tree root. The button sits half-buried in moss, still holding the faint warmth of Sirius’s coat.
You press your beak against it, tilting your head. It’s not much, just a lost scrap. An unremarkable little thing that no one will miss.
You nudge it into your beak carefully, curling your claws against the bark to steady yourself. The metal is cool, and a little heavier than it looks. A strange weight for something so small.
You glance up once more toward the castle, just to be sure. And that’s when you see him.
Sirius.
He’s paused in the doorway, slightly turned, head tilted back toward the woods. His eyes scan the tree line..
For a second, your eyes lock—his wide, gray, still crackling with whatever storm he always carries behind them, and yours small and dark and unblinking.
Then he gives a tiny tilt of his head, just barely perceptible, like a question.
Then he turns and disappears into the castle all the same.
And you lift your wings again, button tucked in your beak like a treasure, and fly after him—back toward the tower.
The days that followed blurred into one another with a kind of quiet that felt dreamlike. Nothing monumental had happened, but something within you had shifted.
You told yourself it meant nothing. Just curiosity, perhaps. A trick of loneliness. A moment that would fade if you left it untouched. After all, you didn’t really know them.
And yet, your gaze sought them in every room. You lingered in places you normally passed through.
You didn’t know how to name the feeling that followed you. It was not love, not yearning, not anything so clear. Just a soft ache that fluttered behind your sternum whenever they looked your way.
So you tried to smother it gently, the way you always had, with quiet rituals and familiar comforts.
That afternoon, the castle pulsed with early spring. Laughter echoed through open halls, and golden light spilled across the stone like a secret.
You had left the library later than usual, the small wooden box clutched protectively to your chest, your bag slipping slightly off your shoulder as you hurried to make it down the hallway before the rush swallowed you.
You weren’t paying close attention to where you were going. Your fingers curled tightly around the lid of the box, and your thoughts, once again, had drifted far ahead of your body
You didn’t see them until you collided.
Your shoulder struck something solid—someone’s chest—and your breath caught in your throat as the impact jarred the box from your hands.
The lid sprang open, and in an instant, a hundred small fragments of your quiet world tumbled across the cold stone floor.
Buttons scattered in all directions, clinking and skipping like startled birds, tiny kaleidoscopes of color and shape spinning out across the corridor.
You dropped to your knees with a sharp breath, heart racing, hands frantically collecting what you could before they rolled too far.
You reached for them with trembling fingers, too humiliated to look up, your mind already preparing for the laughter, for the awkward glances, for the words you’d have to stumble through.
But the first voice you heard was warm, low, touched with a gentle humor.
“Are you okay, love?,” came the voice, unmistakably Remus Lupin’s.
Your breath froze.
You looked up slowly, dread tightening behind your ribs—and there he was.
Remus stood just above you, tall even when slightly tilted from the weight of his cane, his soft knit sweater stretched slightly across his frame, the collar turned wrong in a way that made your fingers ache to fix it.
His gaze was steady, unreadable, but not unkind—warm in that quiet, bone-deep way he always seemed to carry, as if the tiredness in him was ancient and affectionate and chose what it wanted to notice.
Beside him, Sirius Black was already crouched to the floor, hair falling in black waves around his cheekbones as he reached for one of the stray buttons—a glossy red one with a cracked side. He held it between his fingers and tilted his head as he offered it out to you.
“I think this one belongs to you,” he said, and there was a smile in his voice—not mocking, not teasing, just bright and real and somehow far too much for your chest to hold at once.
You reached for the button slowly, your fingertips brushing his for a second too long. “Thank you,” you whispered.
Sirius turned the button once more between his fingers before letting it go.
“This looks exactly like the one I lost the other night,” he said thoughtfully. “Coat got caught on a branch, and I remember it falling.”
You blinked, your mind scrambling to build some sort of casual response. “Oh. That’s… funny. What are the odds?”
Sirius narrowed his eyes with mock suspicion, but only smiled. “Yeah. What are the odds.”
Remus’s voice broke in again, quiet but curious. “Do you usually carry a whole collection around with you?”
You glanced down at the box in your lap, half-full, many of the buttons still scattered across the stone.
“I collect them,” you said. “I find them, and rescue them, I guess.”
Sirius leaned closer, crouching again, interest flickering in his expression. “You rescue them?”
“Yeah, I just think buttons are really cute,” you said softly, cheeks warming. .
There was a pause, quiet and weightless, suspended like a held breath.
Then Remus smiled, slow and gentle. He leaned down slightly, balancing his cane with practiced ease, his gaze steady as it met yours.
“I think you’re really cute,” he said, voice low but certain, as though he were stating a simple fact rather than handing you the sun.
Your breath caught. The heat in your cheeks flared instantly.
Sirius, still crouched beside you, let out a bark of laughter. “Moony,” he said, grinning wide, “you’re absolutely flustering her.”
He then picked up a button shaped like a starburst and turned it over in his hand.
“Do they have names?” he asked, half-smiling.
You hesitated again, but they were both still looking at you like they genuinely wanted to know. And so—shyly—you nodded.
“That one,” you said, pointing to the pink with the curved edges, “is Dai. The red one is Cheri, the little navy blue one is Ruxy, and the green swirl one is Teo.”
Sirius grinned. “Ruxy looks like a cutie.”
“She is!” you said automatically, and then blushed again.
Remus gave a small laugh—barely audible, but sincere.
And then Sirius’s gaze flicked back to you, brighter now, edged with something that felt almost like a secret.
“Well then,” he said, voice low and amused. “Can I have a button named after you, Miss Ravenclaw?”
The words hit you all at once. You stared at him, mouth parting slightly.
“I—um. You can have the whole box,” you said too quickly. “If you want, I don’t mind.”
Sirius laughed, rich and surprised, eyes narrowing just slightly as he leaned in a little.
“All of them?”
“They’d be safe with you,” you answered, almost without thinking. “With you and Remus.”
Remus looked at you again, gently. “But I thought you said they were precious.”
“They are,” you murmured, your fingers curling tighter around the box. “But I think they would be safe with you.”
Sirius leaned back, something like admiration flickering behind his lashes.
You didn’t quite know what to do with the way they were both looking at you.
And just when the silence stretched a little too long, a voice called from the far end of the corridor—“Oi! Sirius! Remus!”
All three of you looked up.
James Potter stood down the hall, grinning, fingers laced with Regulus Black’s in a way that felt less surprising than it should have been. Regulus looked vaguely annoyed, but didn’t pull away.
Remus stood first, then Sirius, both of them brushing imaginary dust from their sleeves.
Before turning to leave, Remus looked down at you once more, his expression softer than it had been all afternoon.
“Buttons like these,” he said gently, his voice as low and warm as a lullaby, “are safest with someone like you.”
He smiled once more, and then he was gone—walking beside Sirius, their shoulders brushing as they headed toward James and Regulus, leaving you behind with your heartbeat in your throat and your button box held close to your chest like it had just turned into something more than what it had been that morning.
In the days that followed, you found yourself seen in ways you had not expected. It was never loud or showy. Just the kind of noticing that lingered in the spaces between things.
Sirius would greet you with a grin that curved wide, his laughter always arriving half a beat early, as though he had been waiting for yours.
Remus had a different quiet, a warmth that never needed words. He would glance at you across the Great Hall, the corners of his mouth tilting up slightly, as though something about your presence softened the sharpest parts of his day.
Their light caught you even when you were not trying to catch it.
And somehow, you found yourself orbiting them without realizing when it had started. You did not speak of it. You simply moved in tune with it, steps quieter, glances longer, as though gravity had chosen for you.
But on full moon nights, the gravity changed.
You could never remain in the Ravenclaw dormitories, not when the thought of them beyond the walls left your chest tight and your sleep restless. So you became what magic had allowed.
You shifted. Feathered and silent, you slipped into the dark as a crow, wings slicing through the wind with singular purpose.
You did not follow too closely. You never let yourself be seen, but you watched. You hovered high in the trees, a shadow among branches, waiting for their safe return.
It was not out of duty. It was something far deeper, far stranger. It was worry, but it was also something you refused to name.
Especially when it came to Remus.
There was something about the way he moved beneath the moonlight that left you breathless. Something quiet and aching, something wild and controlled all at once.
It drew you in the way a fire does to someone who has always lived in the cold. You had not meant to fall into such devotion, but you did.
What you had not meant to do was get caught.
You had not seen the branch until it was too late. It had splintered beneath your landing, sharp as a blade, and pierced clean through the delicate bones of your crow’s foot.
You had cried out, a sound that belonged to neither bird nor girl, and now you are trapped. Your leg is twisted, impaled through the narrow branch, wings fluttering uselessly, body trembling from pain and fear.
The forest is deep and dark around you. The sky is heavy with clouds. The world below is quiet in the way that makes sound feel impossible.
You try to pull free, but it only burns. You try to breathe, but each breath comes thin and shaky.
You had come to protect. You had come to be sure they were safe.
And now, you are the one in danger, and no one knows you are here.
Remus was lying curled in the grass, his body trembling with the aftershocks of transformation. His skin was slick with sweat, chest rising and falling in slow, shallow breaths.
James crouched beside him, murmuring something too low to hear, while Sirius stood just behind, watchful and steady, arms folded tightly across his chest.
They were preparing to carry him back—like always. The routine had become muscle memory by now: someone took his shoulders, someone his legs, and they would move through the underbrush in silence, just three boys and the weight of what they refused to name.
You watched from above.
You always watched.
Perched in the tree line, your feathers damp and trembling, your heartbeat a staccato against the splintered wood that held you. The pain was sharp now—constant.
The branch had pierced clean through your crow’s leg, the wound throbbed with each flutter, and your small body had begun to lean sideways from exhaustion.
You really were trying not to fall.
You tried to call out again, but the sound was strange and half-formed, stuck somewhere between your beak and your pain. You blinked, dizzy and panicked, watching Remus blink slowly up at the trees, unaware that you were breaking just above him.
Sirius glanced up. It was casual at first, a flicker of curiosity. His brows furrowed slightly, his gaze lingering.
"There's a crow watching us," he muttered.
James looked up too. “Bit early for birdwatching, innit?”
“Looks hurt,” Sirius added, voice quieter now, cautious. “Wing’s twitching.”
“Probably just spooked by us.”
But Sirius didn’t look away.
You wobbled again, wings fluttering helplessly, and this time the pain stole your breath entirely. Something gave—a soft sound, barely audible—but Sirius stepped forward like he heard it anyway.
“That’s not normal,” he said, a strange edge to his voice. “That—James, that bird's not flying off.”
James straightened, still holding Remus’s arm draped over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s not scared of us. It’s watching us. Bleeding, even.”
You blinked again, vision swimming. The pain was starting to blur the edges of things.
And Sirius had always been sharper than he let on. He stepped forward, squinting up into the tree line, eyes narrowing. “It’s too still, like it’s waiting.”
Something about the way he said it made your stomach turn.
They didn’t know you had followed them—every full moon, without fail. That you had shifted the second they were gone, just to make sure they were okay. That you stayed out of sight. That it wasn’t a coincidence, the way a crow always seemed to circle above them at the end.
They didn’t know because you’d never told them.
Because what would they say?
The shy Ravenclaw girl who barely spoke at meals. Who had feathers hidden beneath her skin and a fondness for strange winds.
You hadn't meant to be seen.
You hadn't meant to fall.
And now, all it took was one branch and one mistake to unravel it all.
Sirius took a step closer.
“Something’s not right,” he said, voice low now. “I’m going up.”
“Pads—” James started, but Sirius was already reaching for a low limb, already climbing, already listening to something he couldn’t name but couldn’t ignore.
Sirius climbed carefully, boots pressing against bark slick with moss, one hand braced on a branch as he narrowed in on the trembling bird.
The crow didn’t flinch. It only watched him with dark, glassy eyes, chest rising unevenly with every breath. Its feathers were ruffled, one wing visibly twitching from strain, its claws caught by a jagged splinter of wood. The wound had darkened the bark below it with a smear of blood.
And beside it, nestled in the fork of two branches, was a small, uneven nest.
A nest filled with buttons.
Sirius froze.
Red. Pink. Navy. Green.
His breath hitched.
Cheri. Dai. Ruxy. Teo.
It struck him like a gust of cold wind, the memory rising all at once—how you had shown him those buttons in the quiet corner of the hallway when you bumped into him and Remus, your voice barely above a whisper, explaining that you named the small things you kept close.
He looked back at the crow, still trembling, and his chest clenched with certainty.
“Y/N,” he said, voice low but sure, “it’s you.”
And in the seconds that followed, you shifted.
Feathers melted into skin. Wings collapsed inward and became arms, trembling and bruised. Your body curled in on itself, still perched awkwardly in the tree, leg bloodied and twisted at an angle that made Sirius’s stomach flip.
You clutched the branch with shaking fingers, hair matted and face flushed with effort and something deeper—shame, thick and suffocating.
You didn’t cry from the pain. Not even when your injured leg gave a sharp spasm, tearing through the nerves like fire, or when your fingers trembled uselessly against bark still sticky with your own blood.
You cried because you had been seen.
It had always been the one thing you wished for. The softest, most secret ache of your childhood.
To be seen. Not glanced at, not acknowledged in the polite way professors nod at a raised hand or classmates murmur a distracted hello—but truly seen.
To be noticed with intention. To be understood in your full, strange shape. You had begged for it in silence, prayed to stars without names, asked the moon to make you visible.
And now the universe, in its crooked wisdom, had answered. You had been seen—bloodied, exposed, and caught in your smallest truth.
You had sat through years of being overlooked, of having your voice mistaken for wind or your presence mistaken for absence. You had learned to expect it, but never stopped wanting otherwise.
You had begged, in ways that did not involve words, to be noticed
And now, here you were.
Revealed in trembling flesh and blood. Not behind a desk, not through the soft offering of a smile or a story or a named button—but like this.
Injured, fragile, unraveled, and caught.
They had seen you, truly seen you. Not the version you curated in classrooms or in hallways with quiet nods and subtle glances. They had seen the strange bird who followed them into the night.
The girl who built nests out of threadbare things. The one who had watched them like they were made of light and belonged to a constellation she would never be brave enough to touch.
And it was cruel, wasn’t it? How the universe had finally answered your oldest prayer, but in the wrong language.
How being seen could still feel like being misunderstood.
You hadn’t wanted them to think you were weak. You hadn’t wanted their pity or confusion. You hadn’t wanted their worry to be born from the sight of your blood or the way your hands shook. You hadn’t wanted to be caught.
You had wanted them to understand.
You had wanted them to see the quiet devotion threaded through every watchful flight. The care behind every shadowed perch. The love it took to stay hidden when every part of you wanted to land at their side.
But now that they had—now that they had seen the part of you you kept hidden beneath feathers and wind—you wanted to disappear all over again.
Isn’t that the tragedy of it? That the very thing you once begged for could arrive in a form you didn’t recognize. That after all the aching, all the hoping, all the prayers you sent to unseen gods, being seen could still feel so much like being misunderstood.
And yet, even in that moment, even with shame biting at the edge of your vision and tears sliding down your cheeks, part of you still clung to the hope that perhaps—just perhaps—they hadn’t misunderstood you after all.
“Hey—hey. Look at me,” A voice low but urgent breaks through your haze.
Hands find your face, thumbs brushing beneath your eyes with a softness that makes something in your chest splinter further.
“Don’t cry, love. Please don’t cry. You’re alright. You’re safe. I’ve got you, just breathe with me, yeah? Just stay with me.”
You try to look away, but he won’t let you. His gaze holds yours, steady and unwavering, the kind of look that feels like being tethered—pulled back to something real, something warm.
You barely notice Remus limping toward you until he drops beside the branch, breath catching in his throat.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, and his voice breaks around the edges. “Is it your leg? Are you hurt? Y/N—what happened?”
You can’t answer, not right away. Your mouth opens, then closes again, but Sirius is still there, crouched in front of you, hands steady despite the thudding panic you can feel rising in both your chests.
He speaks again, softer now. “You—you’ve been watching us? All this time?” His voice trembles with something between awe and heartbreak. “Alone? During every full moon?”
You nod once, a small, broken motion, tears slipping down your cheeks in silence. Your jaw is clenched so tightly it aches.
“I didn’t want you to know,” you whisper. “I thought—if you saw me, it’d be weird or pathetic, or—”
He cut you off gently, reaching out to cup your cheek with a care that made your throat tighten.
“Pathetic?” he echoed, incredulous. “Pathetic? Y/N, you’ve been dragging your body into the sky just to keep us safe. You bled for us tonight. You’ve been doing this alone. That’s not pathetic—that’s... that’s fucking brave.”
His voice broke on the last word.
Below, James appeared at the base of the tree, voice rising in concern.
“Sirius?” James shouted. “Is it hurt? Is it—wait, where are you?”
“It’s Y/N!” Sirius called back down. “It’s her. She’s an Animagus.”
“What?” James’s voice cracked. “What do you mean it’s her?”
But Sirius wasn’t listening anymore. He was already helping you into his arms, cradling your body close with infinite care, his hand pressed protectively to your injured leg, holding you like something precious and breakable.
He whispered reassurances as he climbed down, slow, careful steps that betrayed the panic beneath his steady hands.
By the time Sirius’s boots hit the earth again, Remus was already beside him.
His breath came ragged, the lingering tremors of the transformation still curled in his limbs
Now, standing just steps from you, Remus looked like the ground had given out beneath him. All the color had drained from his face, but it wasn’t just shock.
You tried to speak, but the moment Sirius set you down gently in the grass, Remus was already kneeling, like his body had moved before his mind could catch up.
“Y/N?” His voice cracked, hoarse and thin. “What—what happened? What were you doing out there?”
You couldn’t meet his eyes. Not with the weight of both their gazes pressing into your skin. “I didn’t want to be a burden.”
“A burden?” he repeated, the word leaving his mouth like it tasted wrong. “You’ve been following us? While I’ve been transforming? Every full moon?” His breath hitched. “While I was—”
“I didn’t want anyone to worry,” you whispered. “I just needed to know you were okay.”
Remus inhaled sharply and let it go like a wound reopening. His hand hovered near yours, trembling. Then he reached for you anyway, brushing your hair back from your damp, dirt-streaked cheek.
His fingers paused near the scratch below your ear, reverent, aching.
“You shouldn’t have had to do that alone,” he said, softly but with conviction, like he was swearing an oath he never should’ve forgotten. “You shouldn’t have had to hide this. You didn’t have to hide this.”
“I didn’t think you’d understand,” you murmured, tears threatening again.
“We understand now,” he said, brokenly. “And it shouldn’t have taken blood for us to see it.”
Sirius’s jaw was clenched so tight it trembled. Remus’s voice was frayed, but firm. And both of them looked at you like you had done something immeasurably brave. Like you were worth mourning, protecting, holding—everything.
You finally looked up at them, eyes glassy, face streaked with tears and dirt and disbelief.
Sirius exhaled sharply, pressing a kiss to your temple. Remus closed his eyes, his hand settling gently over yours.
James crouched nearby, still stunned, but his voice was gentle when he finally spoke. “Next time, you don’t watch us from the trees. Next time, you’re down here with us.”
The walk back to the castle was slower than usual. Not because the path had changed, or because the forest was any darker than it had been—but because something between the three of you had shifted.
Sirius carried you most of the way, arms secure beneath your back and knees, murmuring quietly each time you winced, while Remus walked close beside him, watching your face as though afraid it might disappear.
James had gone ahead to clear the way and fetch Madam Pomfrey, but you hardly noticed his absence.
Your body ached, but it was the tightness in your chest that throbbed hardest. You had never meant for them to know, not the Animagus form, not the secret flights, and certainly not the nest tucked into the trees like a childhood you’d never outgrown.
By the time Sirius set you down gently on the edge of the infirmary bed, your throat was dry from trying not to cry again.
Remus didn’t speak at first. He just knelt beside you, hands gentle as he peeled away what was left of your sock and began tending to your leg. His fingers were deft but soft, brushing the dried blood away with a damp cloth, jaw clenched as he examined the wound with quiet intensity.
You hated the silence. You hated how heavy it felt.
“I’m sorry,” you said, the words breaking free before you could stop them. “I know it’s weird. I know I’m weird. I didn’t mean for you to find out like this.”
Sirius, who had been standing nearby, leaned forward suddenly, resting one hand on the mattress beside your hip.
“Stop,” he said, firm but not unkind. “Don’t do that. Don’t apologize for being the one person who cared enough to follow us into the dark.”
Your breath caught.
“I just… I didn’t want to be a burden,” you murmured, your voice barely more than a breath. “I didn’t think you’d understand.”
Remus’s hands paused in their careful rhythm as he finished unwinding the gauze. He looked up slowly, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet but certain.
“Y/N, if you truly believe we’d ever mock you for caring—for watching over us in the only way you could—then I’ve clearly failed to show you the kind of man I am, and the kind of man I hope to be.”
Your fingers curled in your lap. “I watched you,” you whispered, eyes flicking toward Remus. “Every month. I couldn’t sleep knowing you were out there. I just... needed to make sure you came back.”
Remus didn’t look away. He soaked the cloth in warm water and pressed it gently to your scraped skin with hands that trembled slightly—not from fear, but from how much he was holding back. “You never needed to explain that,” he said. “But I’m glad you did.”
Sirius moved closer, silent until now. He sat down beside you on the bed, his palm finding the small of your back, grounding you.
“You watched over us,” he said, his voice low and rough at the edges. “Even when we didn’t ask. Even when we didn’t know. You broke your body trying to keep us safe. And you’re still sitting here thinking we might call you strange for that?”
You looked up at him then, wide-eyed, voice shaky. “I mean... I collect buttons. I sleep with open windows so I can hear the wind. I speak to animals. I—I’m not exactly—”
“Normal?” Sirius offered, a half-smile playing at his lips. “Good. We’re not either.”
Remus finished wrapping your leg and looked up, expression softening like a wave pulling back from shore. “You think we’ve spent all these weeks noticing you for no reason? You think we didn’t see the way you listen more than you speak, or how your eyes always catch the smallest things—the things no one else notices?”
“You care in ways no one else ever has,” Remus added, more gently now. “You cared about me in a way I didn’t know how to accept until right now.”
Your breath caught. “Wait… are you saying...?”
Sirius laughed under his breath and leaned a little closer, his forehead nearly touching yours. “Love, we’re saying we’ve been completely enchanted by you for ages. We just didn’t know how to say it until tonight.”
You blinked, stunned. “Really?”
“Really,” Remus said, his voice warm. “In every way that matters.”
You opened your mouth to respond, but nothing came. Your throat was too full of something tender, too new.
Remus leaned closer, his voice softening. “Listen to me,” he said. “You don’t have to hide yourself from us. Not your wings, not your magic, and certainly not your quiet. We like you—we care about you—for everything you are. You’re not strange, love.”
Your lip trembled.
“And the button nest?” he added, grinning now. “It’s the most heartbreakingly you thing I’ve ever seen. That nest in the tree… it wasn’t weird. It was beautiful.”
Sirius smiled, something quiet and bright in his expression. “Well, we were talking about it on the way back—Remus and I, and if there’s ever room for two more in that nest, we’d be honored to be named and to be part of something you created.”
You blinked. “You want to be… buttons?”
“Not just buttons,” Sirius said, bumping his shoulder gently against yours. “Your buttons.”
Remus looked up then, meeting your eyes with something deep and sure and aching in its sincerity. “If we’re lucky, maybe you’ll even give us names.”
You looked down at your lap, hands trembling in your lap, and then, slowly, a smile tugged at the corners of your mouth, tentative but real.
“You can be in my button nest,” you said, voice barely a whisper.
And for the first time, it wasn’t just that someone had seen you.
It was that they had recognized you — all the strange, quiet, fragile pieces you’d kept tucked behind your ribs, the ones you had never dared to name aloud.
They hadn’t flinched from your softness, or your silence, or the wild devotion stitched into the things you loved. They had understood it. And more than that, they had chosen it.
Chosen you.
You had spent your life making altars out of small things. Buttons, feathers, the hush between words. You had prayed in your own language — not in churches or temples, but in the way you noticed everything others overlooked. You had asked the world for so little: just to be held in return.
Just to matter to someone the way you had quietly, unfailingly let others matter to you.
And for so long, the world hadn’t answered.
But maybe it was not that it hadn’t heard you. Maybe it had simply taken time.
Because now, without asking, without performing, without even meaning to — you were seen. Not in passing, not in pieces, but fully, tenderly, and without having to translate your love to the world.
You were no longer a distant thing.
And perhaps, after all, the universe had been listening the entire time.
Now, it had spoken , softly and reverently, in the form of two boys who looked at you as if you were something celestial stitched into the earth.
After all, the button nest had always been waiting for them too.
a/n:
to the readers with soft hearts and quiet hopes; may someone see your soul the way you see the world. to the readers who love gently, who notice everything, and who wait, patiently, to be noticed in return; may your button nest always be full ❤️🩹
-dalia
