classics week: no one ever said it would be this hard
Title: no one ever said it would be this hard
Author: throughadoor
Rating: R
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: Remus Lupin and the Order of the Phoenix
Notes: Pre-HBP canon, but it looks like most everything made it through without getting jossed too badly. My notes say that lisew and circusgirl did beta duty. This is the first Remus/Sirius story I ever wrote solo, originally posted in September 2003.
"Shake it down, would you?"
Remus Lupin looked across a valley of well-worn and moth-eaten patchwork at Sirius Black, his arms outstretched to match Remus', a thick, heavy quilt pulled taut between them.
"I said, shake it down, would you?" Sirius said while attempting to ward off a sneeze. "Otherwise we'll end up with a face-full of 'em."
"You know," Remus said wryly, "I really do think this might be nothing more than dust bunnies."
"Dust bunnies? Are they a dust-eating type of creature?" Sirius looked puzzled, and paused in his harsh thumping of the quilt.
Remus laughed. "Dust bunnies," he said, "it's a Muggle expression, it means, ah, clumps of dust."
Sirius snorted. "I always forget you're a son of a Muggle."
It was meant to be an insult, a play on a Muggle expression they'd learned in a fairly racy Muggles' Studies lesson on parentage in the Muggle world when they were students. But Remus only laughed. If his laugh was hollow, it was because to look at Sirius and see a worn and broken man mouthing the dirty curse words of the school boy he once was made Remus feel empty in a place below his belly, but he tried not to dwell on such things.
"Your mother --" Remus started.
"--was a vile, heartless monster with rubbish for brains and an eel for a tongue." Sirius smiled with forced pleasantness. "Anything else?"
Remus shook his head. "You always did take the fun out of that one." He stepped forward, as though to fold the quilt between them. "If there are pixies nesting in here, we're not going to get them out today. Perhaps Molly knows a remedy? You could ask her tonight while, ah, before the meeting."
Sirius stepped forward to meet him, but frowned. "I still think I ought to come with you. Practically the whole bloody Order will be there, one more pair of eyes can hardly hurt."
Remus gathered the edge of blanket from Sirius' grasp. Arms free, Sirius began to pace about the room. Remus sighed. "It can be when that pair of eyes belongs to an escaped criminal," he said pointedly.
When Sirius only continued to pace, Remus added, "and even if Peter hasn't made your status as an Animagus know among the Death Eaters, you heard what Mad-Eye said, we're to bring him back on broomsticks. Padfoot may keep you out of sight, but I doubt he can ride a broom."
"I still don't see why I can't at least Apparate to the house with the rest of you, make sure he's all right. I'm the one who's been writing to him all summer, letting him know he hasn't been forgotten, and --"
"--and in part because of that, he's gotten quite riled up and we're having to retrieve him before we're sure it's safe," Remus said smoothly, setting the quilt on the bed and sitting down beside it. "You know how the charm works, if he stops thinking of the dwelling of his mother's blood as his home, Dumbledore said himself--"
"Dumbledore said this, Dumbledore said that," Sirius said mockingly. "You'd think you were back in school, worried he'll take away House points for your misbehavior," he added, glaring accusingly in Remus' direction.
Remus reached out and caught Sirius by the arm in mid-stride. He tugged lightly and Sirius sank onto the bed next to him. Cooped up like this, Sirius went looking for a fight in every nook and corner of the house and seemed to find one with Remus more often than not.
"Somebody has to stay behind and stand guard," Remus said earnestly.
Sirius smirked. "Of course."
"It takes a brave man to stay put."
"Oh, certainly."
"Please?"
"Well, since you asked so nicely."
Remus pressed his lips against Sirius' furrowed forehead and then across his mouth, cautiously and without letting any other part of their bodies touch.
"We'll be back in time for the meeting," he said, rising to gather his tattered wool robe. He paused at the doorway. "Really, I don't suppose you could much have the meeting without us." He opened the door.
"Halfbreeds! Scum! Violators of the house of my fathers! Blood traitors!"
"Bloody hell, not again," Remus muttered. Sirius was right behind him, clipping at his heels as they thundered down the stairs.
"Stains of dishonor, children of filth!"
"You know, half the time I think it's those blasted dungbombs setting them off," Remus called behind him.
Sirius thumped him on the back, which nearly sent him tumbling face first down the stairs. "Come on, mate, you know you wouldn't miss this for the world. Practically the only excitement we've got around here is my dear old mum."
The flight of stairs between the upper wing and the second floor landing seemed to get longer each night, which might have been an enchantment of some kind or merely Remus' own weariness. "I'd settle for a good night's sleep, that'd be enough excitement for me," Remus said and by then they reached the foot of the stairs, and the image of Sirius' mother screeching in their direction.
"You! Blood traitors, freaks, PERVERTS! Shaming the name of my fathers with your unnatural --"
Remus watched Sirius go white with shock and for once he wasted no time hurling insults back at her but nearly flattened Remus against the wall as he wrenched both curtains closed single-handedly.
The shouting stopped abruptly but Sirius seemed glued to the spot, silent, gaping. Remus placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, guiding him down the hallway before he found his words and woke the whole damn lot of them up again.
Not too many minutes later, after Remus had placed a mug of tea with a liberal splash of fire whiskey in his hands, Sirius looked up and said, "Well, I certainly hope she hasn't started down that line in front of anyone else."
Remus studied his own hands. "It probably just sounds like more of her pure-blood nonsense anyway." Knowing who Sirius was mostly thinking of, he added, "The children seem to know well enough to just cover their ears."
Sirius seemed lost in the bottom of his tea cup, as though he thought the answers to his troubles lay beneath the surface and he hadn't failed out of Divination with a "T" in his fifth year.
Before becoming all too well acquainted with her unfortunate likeness, Remus had met Sirius' mother once before, in his sixth year of school. Sirius had always complained that holidays with his family were horrid, and he'd begged Remus to stop by for tea when Remus had come into London before Christmas to visit his aunt.
The door knocker had been the first thing to go when the Order took up headquarters, but Remus still remembered tapping his hand against the brass snake's head, only to have it come alive and hiss in his direction.
"Haaalfbreed, paaaart-human, werewolf, WEREWOLF!" the snakes-head had hissed.
Remus had stood helplessly out on the steps, wondering if he should make a run for it, when Sirius had hastily opened the door. "Son of a bludger," Sirius cursed, "I forgot to tell you not to touch the door knocker. Dad's got it charmed, see, ruddy stupid if you ask me --"
"Sirius," a woman's voice had croaked behind him, "Sirius, stand back, there's a werewolf at the door."
Sirius rolled his eyes. "I know, mum, he's just one of my mates from school--"
But before Sirius could finish, a woman bent over a cane with a snake's head that was near identical to the one on the door knocker but carved in wood appeared in the doorway. "Do you mean to tell me you were going to let a werewolf into your father's house? I might not be able to stop you from associating with every half-breed and piece of mudblood trash at that school of yours, but I won't have you bringing that filth into this house." She'd cast a glare toward Remus but hadn't met his shocked gaze. "Now get out, you heard me, get out!"
When Sirius had returned from the holiday with three trunks and a determined grimace, Remus had tried not to blame himself, even if Sirius had gone to stay with James. Sirius had always been recklessness looking for a reason.
"I told Harry about my family today," Sirius said.
Remus' head snapped up to attention. Lost in thought, he'd let Sirius brood silently and his tea had gone cold. "What did he say?" he asked, and tapped his wand against his mug and muttered, "Lumos."
Sirius shook his head, dark hair hanging in his eyes and hiding his expression. "Oh, I reckon he thinks they still aren't as awful as that aunt and uncle he lives with."
"I hope you didn't tell him about how you ran away from home -- you'll give him ideas," Remus said lightly, but then instantly regretted his words.
"I know that you think I left because of what she said to you," Sirius said, and Remus started to disagree, because when it was put that way, well, it made him sound rather -- but then Sirius added, "and it was, but not in the way you think."
Remus raised his eyebrows for him to continue.
"It was, oh, it was so much worse," Sirius said, laughing shakily. "After she, ah, set you off, she started tearing into me about inviting a werewolf into the house of Black." His tone on the last three words was sharp and mocking. "And she would have eventually worn herself out, but, I don't know, maybe I was trying to get myself tossed out, but I told her about, ah --"
Remus could see Sirius peering at him desperately, asking him to understand without making him say it. He nodded. "Well, I can imagine she wasn't very happy about that."
Sirius' shoulders sagged. "It was just another bit of blood treachery to her, you know. A crime against the family, not passing on the noble line. And then she started in on the obligations to our fathers and I -- it was just one more thing in my life she'd managed to make all about her pure-blood mania and so I left."
Remus reached across the table and cupped Sirius' chin in his palm, lifting up so they were eye to eye. "She didn't deserve you. The whole ruddy lot of them, none of them deserved you."
Sirius pressed his lips against Remus' curved fingers and it wasn't quite a kiss until he pulled away to stand up. "It's nearly dawn," he said, "and you've got to set off tomorrow and I've got," he grabbed their tea mugs and clinked them against each other, "a long, busy day cleaning out doxie-infested china dressers or some such rubbish, I'm sure."
They climbed the steps silently, careful not to wake the snoring portraits. Sirius made a jabbing gesture in the direction of his mothers' curtains, but Remus steered him by the shoulder toward the narrow staircase to the upper wing.
Remus supposed there was some official version of events that had Sirius sharing a room with Buckbeak. But anyone who believed that had certainly never seen the perverse pleasure that Sirius seemed to derive from allowing hippogriff dropping to cover every visible surface of his mother's old bedroom. Remus had taken Sirius' father's bedroom, because the heavy oak door was best-suited for containing him during his werewolf phases.
As Sirius pulled the door shut behind them, Remus imagined Sirius got some kind of perverse pleasure out of that, too.
Remus pulled a damp and ragged handkerchief from the pocket of his loudly printed shirt. When Dumbledore had given him the assignment, he'd apparated the Muggle clothes right into Remus' lap and they reflected Dumbledore's odd sense of humor. A button up shirt with cheerful tulips printed across the front and a pair of many-pocketed shorts that were apparently favored by Muggle tourists. The shorts were bright orange.
Remus hung to the back of a group of Muggle tourists, paying little attention as the Muggle guide recited the confused Mugglized history of the Great Pyramids. Remus had studied Muggle History in general and the Muggle explanations for the monuments left behind by the Most Ancient World-Wide Wizarding Championships. However, he wasn't sure he could listen to the legend involving thousands of Muggle slaves and years of labor without snickering. He could only imagine what Tribeck the Great would make of the Muggle interpretation of his legacy.
"But, Mummy," a small girl asked, "how did they build them so tall?"
The mother gently explained to her daughter about scaffolding, a type of Muggle means for getting by without magic, and Remus let out a deep sigh.
Dumbledore had assured him that a Muggle tourist group was the easiest way to gain access to the Gringott's Egyptian headquarters without alerting the Ministry to his presence. Officially, Remus was in Egypt to inquire about an open professorship at the small school set up for the Gringott's wizarding employee's children.
"From here you can see the grand scale of the base," the guide said, gesturing grandly.
Remus slipped away from the group, his eye caught by an enchanted emerald colored brick that went unnoticed to Muggle eyes. He tapped his wand from where it rested inside one of the enormous pockets, muttering a charm for disillusionment before slipping past the Muggle signs of caution and tugging his wand out of his enormous shorts. He touched his wand to the brick, muttering the spell. He felt a tingling sensation in his fingers and toes, and instantly found himself on the other side of the stone façade.
Remus wasn't sure what the Muggles who gained access to Tribeck the Great's golden goblet winning effort from the Most Ancient World Wizarding Championships saw inside the pyramid, but from what he saw, it was all business.
A great cavernous room, dimly lit by torches that were mounted against the slanted stone walls. Dozens of ancient mahogany desks and at the desks sat dozens of goblins. Goblins examining gold coins and bars of silver with over-sized and bewitched magnifying glasses and goblins testing charmed locks, goblins scribbling mysterious tallies in mysterious gilded ledgers.
Most of the goblins didn't even register his appearance, but a few closest to him glanced up and eyed him suspiciously. Remus didn't see a single wizard in sight and was frantically wracking his brain for the few words of Gobbledigook he knew when a middle-aged wizard in light cotton robes burst out from behind a heavy curtain.
"Goodness," the wizard said, "we don't get too many through that entrance. But you couldn't have gotten through without a password, so I suppose you have some official business?"
Remus patted his Muggle clothes self-consciously, but there'd been no room in the enormous pockets for a set of robes.
"Remus Lupin," he said, "I've come to inquire about the teaching position." He paused carefully. "I was referred by Bill Weasley."
A flash of recognition crossed the wizard's eyes. "Right good," he said. "Rolf Meeks. I'll take you back so as to set up an interview."
There was no teaching position. Fortunately, Remus seemed to have met up with one of the Gringott's wizards who had already been initiated into the Order of the Phoenix.
Remus ducked behind the curtain after Meeks and the thick fabric on his back felt like a ghost. On the other side of the curtain, there was a small chamber, lined on every wall with elaborately decorated gold sarcophagi. Meeks strode to one in the opposite corner and seemed to tickle it under its nose. The sarcophagus came briefly to life, sneezed and swung open, revealing a narrow tunnel. Meeks nodded from over his shoulder and Remus followed him.
The tunnel was damp and quickly grew narrow . It seemed to go downhill for quite some time until suddenly they were in a small room filled with soapstone carved cats. "Nobody much comes down here," Meeks said. "I suppose we should do the meeting of the wands?"
When a witch or a wizard was inducted into the Order of the Phoenix, a simple charm was performed on their wand, so that they could identify each other through tapping their wands and muttering a spell. Remus and Meeks tapped their wands together and a small burst of orange sparks emerged from each. The sparks were actually shaped like tiny birds -- Dumbledore's design again.
"So," Meeks said eagerly, "what can I do for you?" He looked like a wizard who'd been living too long underground, longing for excitement. It made Remus terribly weary.
"I've come on behalf of Albus Dumbledore," Remus started, and Meeks nodded reverently. Dumbledore was well-known even here. Remus continued, "to see what progress is being made with the goblin community."
Meeks frowned. "Goblins are a tricky lot, you know. Hard enough to get them to understand you, then you've got this bunch -- they hardly let us in the vaults, if you know what I mean." He laughed nervously.
Remus nodded. "And you've impressed upon them the likelihood that Gringott's will be targeted by Voldemort's Death Eaters?"
Meeks stiffened visibly at the use of Voldemort's name in a way that Remus -- whose daily routine including discussing the reality of Voldemort's whereabouts at the dinner table -- hadn't felt in a long, long time. "You have to understand," Meeks said, "some of us have been here since before, ah," his voice cracked, "the first time that he, ah, tried to, well -- you know. And of course we heard, of course, but it's still a bit of a hard sell."
Remus began to see that Meeks had allowed Bill Weasley to induct him into the Order for a bit of excitement, but was perfectly content for that to be the only bit of excitement inside his pyramid. He sighed. "Could I speak to a few of the more sympathetic ones myself, perhaps?"
"Well, what exactly would you say?"
Remus sighed again, seeing he had no choice. "I'm the Order's representative for non-human and part-human magical creatures. I'd hoped to try to discuss goblins' rights, make them see what there is to gain from supporting the Order."
"And what makes you think they'll listen to you?"
Remus reached for the collar of his tulip-printed shirt, unhooked the top button so he could show Meeks his scar. He was already dreading his saucer-eyed expression, the kind of look he'd grown tired of in the group of Muggle tourists on the other side of the pyramid walls.
"It's ridiculous, is what it is. The Order is no place for parents with children," Remus said. He was, frankly, exhausted. He'd Apparated back from Egypt having made little progress with the goblins, only to find Grimmauld Place in even more disarray than usual as the children were preparing to return to school. He'd been hoping for at least a decent night's sleep before escorting the children to the train station. Instead, it had taken almost an hour to settle Molly down, and he'd offered to relieve Arthur from guard duty at midnight so he could stay with her. At best, he could hope for a few hours sleep before taking over the watch and maybe another hour after dawn before the children were banging around, waking the portraits.
Sirius, on the other hand, looked up from the bed with a bemused expression. There was a copy of the Quibbler spread out in his lap. "Quite right," he quipped. "We ought to have the children themselves fighting the war, send their parents home. They're not hardly much older than we were when things started up before."
Remus regarded Sirius skeptically. "You know, sometimes I can't tell if you're serious, when you get like this."
Sirius shrugged. "Neither can I," he said. There was a pair of successive loud thumps somewhere beneath them, the familiar sound of the Weasley twins Apparating -- in a manner Remus could only assume they believed to be covert -- into Harry and Ron's bedroom after the officially sanctioned lights-out.
Remus, for one, was looking forward to some peace and quiet at Grimmauld Place. When he said as much, Sirius disagreed.
"You'd feel differently if you were hanging around this wretched place by yourself for weeks at a time."
The last thing Remus wanted was to fight this familiar battle one more time, because all it would do was eat into his few possible hours of sleep. But he was still shaking sand out of his ears and for that he glanced over and Sirius and said, "And you'd feel differently about hanging around the house if you'd spent the last three days trapped up in the moldy basement of a pyramid."
He expected Sirius to snap back, and was already anticipating how just how little sleep he'd get if he found himself stretched out on the rock-hard (literally, the cushions were stuffed with tiny sharp pebbles) sofa in the small sitting room down the hall.
Instead, Sirius grinned maniacally, holding up the paper that had been sitting in his lap. "Didn't you see? I was just in Egypt last week, first stop on the Hobgoblins world tour." Sirius laughed, and Remus couldn't help but join in. "Come on to bed," Sirius said, "you've only a couple hours until you've got to go relieve Arthur."
Remus tapped out the lamps with his wand, and found his way to the bed by touch. Sirius rolled toward him in the bed in the dark and wove their hands together.
Even now, their touches were still hesitant, as though both were waiting for the other to pull back and decide that too much time had passed and too much had passed between them for any of it to possibly work. Remus didn't know if they were supposed to take turns on a schedule, but on that night, Sirius was the one to reach for Remus, and Remus reached back.
The meeting would be starting late, held up waiting for Dumbledore, whose appearances were even more rare now that the school term was in full swing.
"Probably up to his ears in trouble from that horrible Umbridge woman," Remus muttered to no one in particular.
"Suppose you're glad not to be at Hogwarts this year, eh Remus?" Kingsley asked from across the table.
Remus grimaced. Umbridge's vendetta against part-humans and half-breeds had made it near impossible for him to obtain a position, and before Dumbledore had reformed the Order, he'd been reduced to tutoring the child of a fairly prominent wizarding family in remedial magic. The family was at their wits end and hadn't cared about Remus' mysterious lack of references or specific requests for days off. The child had almost certainly been a Squib, and Remus had been almost relieved when the call from Dumbledore had come.
Now he was drawing a small salary -- which he suspected was coming directly from Dumbledore's personal vault -- for "duties performed for the Order." However, as the Ministry continued its iron-fisted crackdown, "duties performed for the Order" had meant "binning up rubbish at Grimmauld Place" more and more in the last few months. Remus took his turn at guard duty, and frequently volunteered for relief duty as well, in part to ease his nagging guilt over whether or not he was pulling his weight. He felt vaguely responsible for Sirius as well, and Sirius felt nearly twice as useless, eyeing Remus reproachfully every time he left the house.
Which was all to say, was Remus happy to be away from Hogwarts and Dolores Umbridge? Yes and no.
Mundungus shuffled into the kitchen sheepishly, late as well, although if they made a practice of holding up meetings on account of Mundungus, they'd never start on time. "Sorry 'm late," he offered. "Came straight from the 'og's 'ead, I did."
Just as Remus started to say that they were still waiting on Dumbledore, Molly rose half out of her seat in anger and shouted, "The Hog's Head? The HOG'S HEAD? You were supposed to be following Harry! And I would think that after the last time you'd have learned your lesson, I can't BELIEVE you, when Dumbledore hears about this --"
All those present at that table shrank away from Molly as though in physical pain. Mundungus flapped his hands helplessly, as though trying to fight off a flock of screeching birds. "Wait, wait," he said, "you've got it wrong. I was following 'arry, jus' like I was supposed to. I followed 'im to the 'ogs 'ead, see?"
Molly's tirade paused. "Oh, well, that's quite a different thing all together. Wait -- you let Harry go to the HOG'S HEAD? What in the world were you thinking? That place is dangerous, who knows --"
Arthur placed a tentative hand on his wife's shoulder. "Molly, Molly, calm down. Why don't we let Mundungus sit down and tell us what happened?"
Molly's lips remained pursed in a hard, straight line and Mundungus seemed to take this as an indication that it was at least safe to sit down, although he did so tentatively, as though he feared Molly would send both him and his chair flying out of the room. Remus could hardly blame him.
"Thought I wasn' supposed to let 'im know 'e was being followed," Mundungus said pleadingly. "Anyway, couldn'a shown me face in the 'ead anyway, banned fer life on account of a difference o'pinion with a 'ag over the price of dragon eggs. I tell ya, she was a tough ol' bird, knocked me front teeth out and --"
Remus could see Molly starting to fume again, so he quickly said, "Yes, but what was Harry doing there?"
Mundungus snapped back to attention. "Right, 'arry. 'E was never in any danger, I swear," he said, casting a quick glance in Molly's direction. "'Ad a whole lot of 'is mates with 'im, the one 'o was 'ere in the summer an' four of your lot, too, Molly."
Molly's eyes grew wide and her hands, which had been loosely folded together on the table -- grew white at the knuckles. Remus glanced at Sirius pointedly. "Yes, but what were they doing, Dung?" Sirius asked.
"Ah, Defense Against the Dark Arts."
"WHAT?" Molly shrieked. Kingsley and Tonks both edged themselves closer to the edge of the table, looking as though they'd rather be anywhere else.
"Couldn't quiet 'ear everything, was wearin' me veil, but I reckon they're startin' some type of group for teachin' each other Defense Against the Dark Arts, somethin' about not gettin' the proper learning in school. They want to keep it a secret, though, probably why they were at the 'ead, eh?"
Glancing tentatively at Molly, Remus saw her lips open and close as though she could not yet muster the amplitude necessary to communicate her objections to secret Defense Against the Dark Arts training sessions.
Before she could get started again, Sirius jumped in. "Well, I think it's a terrific idea," he said, thumping his fist against the table enthusiastically. Which was, perhaps, just what Molly needed to get going.
"Of course you do," she said shrilly.
"And what does that mean?" Sirius shot back.
"It means," Molly said, "that you'd like nothing better than for Harry to end up just like you."
Sirius glared. "And what exactly is wrong with that?"
Molly started to say something, probably about Sirius' fugitive status, but before she could get it out, Remus jumped in. "Now, let's just --" not sure what to say, he turned to Mundungus. "They haven't got themselves into any trouble yet, have they, Mundungus?"
Mundungus shook his head.
"And Harry and his friends have certainly proved themselves plenty capable of getting into quite a bit without attracting the attention of their professors," Remus added.
"What are you suggesting?" Molly asked, "that we just allow them to go on with this, knowing full well that it could get them expelled or, or -- or much worse!"
"But, Molly," Arthur intoned, but when she whipped around to glare at him, he fell silent.
Kingsley, nearly forgotten at the other end of the table, cleared his throat. "Considering all that Dumbledore has to deal with, it seems wise not to make this any greater of an issue than it needs to be," he said.
"Quite right," called out a voice from the doorway, "that Dumbledore, he can't even keep track of time anymore."
Standing in the doorway was Dumbledore, twenty minutes late and looking as though he hadn't a care in the world. Remus could not help but feel as though he was back in Gryffindor tower and he'd been caught planning to copy James' Charms essay.
Everyone shifted uneasily in their seats as Dumbledore sat down at the head of the table. "So," he said cheerfully, "what is it that we're planning on not telling me?"
Hoping to provide a balanced version of events, Remus spoke up. "While Mundungus was following Harry on his Hogsmede weekend, he learned that he and some of his classmates are attempting to, ah, start a group for tutoring each other in Defense Against the Dark Arts."
Remus thought he might have seen a gleam in Dumbledore's bespectacled eye. "Are they now! Well, I suspect that Dolores Umbridge wouldn't like that one bit," he said, amused.
Molly looked as though she wanted to say something, but apparently thought better of it. The rest of the group waited for Dumbledore to continue.
Finally, Arthur asked cautiously, "Will you be speaking to them about it?"
"Oh, no, no," Dumbledore said, folding his hands together, "I could hardly do that without Professor Umbridge involving herself. No, no," Dumbledore continued, "I don't think I'll be saying a word about it." He turned to Sirius. "Sirius, I assume you've devised some means of communicating with Harry?"
Remus watched as Sirius' eyes widened. He coughed. "Er, well--"
"Perhaps you could pass along a bit of a warning to him?" Dumbledore asked.
Sirius nodded and the meeting began.
After the meeting ended, Dumbledore left in haste and the rest of the members of the Order began to drift out into the night. Molly, however, hung back.
"Sirius," she said, "When you speak to Harry --"
"I think I'm perfectly capable of advising Harry myself, thank you very much," Sirius said curtly.
Molly arched her eyebrows. "And what exactly do you plan to tell him? How to build a better dungbomb?"
"He's my ruddy godson!" Sirius snapped. "He's not just some hobby I fell into after I broke out -- he's why I broke out in the first place. You think I don't understand what kind of danger he's in? You think I didn't know about the prophecy when he was born? You think I wouldn't die to protect him?"
Molly got a hard, sad look in her eyes. "No one doubts your love for Harry," she said. "I just doubt your ability to not let it cloud your judgment."
Sometimes when Remus looked at Molly, he hated her because she'd lost nothing, seven children, all alive and well and healthy. Sometimes when Remus looked at Molly, he pitied her because she had absolutely everything to lose.
"At the very least," Molly said finally, "you can tell my son that he'll be expelled for sure and his future will be ruined. There's plenty of time for him to learn to defend himself later, and he's much too young to be worrying about such things right now. And you can tell Harry and Hermione the same," and she pointedly said, "even though I have no authority over either of them, I have only their best interests at heart."
Sirius nodded, although he gave no further sign of agreement.
"Do you swear you'll repeat it to them?"
Sirius nodded again, but this time said, "I do."
Molly looked at him for a long moment, then bustled out of the kitchen.
Sirius turned to Remus. "Can you believe that woman?"
Remus almost could. Sirius walked around looking like he had nothing to lose, which is probably why he and Molly Weasley could never agree on anything. And why Remus could never believe that any of this would last.
Dumbledore requested the Order provide guard duty for Harry during his Quidditch matches as well, and considering the number of times Harry's life had been threatened while he was aloft his broom, it really wasn't a terrible idea.
Perhaps if anyone but Remus had been assigned duty for Harry's first match of the season, Sirius would not have been so dismayed that he'd been forbidden to attend. He'd pointed out over and over that he'd watched Harry fly in his third year, as Padfoot, from the safety of the Forbidden Forest, until finally Remus snapped, "Yes, and you were seen then, too, and that was when no one but Wormtail and I knew you were an Animagus. You can't just go bounding about the countryside anymore, that snot nosed brat of Lucius Malfoy's could see you and it's not as though you could Apparate off the premises, is it?"
Remus shut his mouth after that, realizing he was beginning to sound like Molly Weasley. From the look Sirius gave him when Remus turned to leave, Sirius rather agreed.
Sirius had been right about one thing, the edge of the Forbidden Forest was the perfect place to hide and watch the Quidditch pitch. He did so in human form, however, as in his animal form he wouldn't have been use as a guard at all. It would be a full moon that night, though even without his carefully plotted lunar chart, Remus could feel the pull under his skin. He would take care not to linger once the match ended, so as to be safely behind the locked doors of Grimmauld Place's master bedroom when the change took him.
Remus reached into his cloak for a pair of omnioculars, which he and Sirius had found while cleaning out the attic. Sirius had been fairly certain they were harmless, he seemed to think they were left from when the Blacks had bought a box at the Quidditch World Cup when he and his brother were still boys.
Sirius spoke of his brother so rarely that Remus had barely known what to say when Sirius had remarked, while polishing the dusty lenses of the omnioculars with the sleeve of his robe, "Regulus was always bloody awful at Quidditch."
The omnioculars seemed to work fine, though -- so far they hadn't forced him to see any horrific crashes or given him vertigo.
He'd been to a number of Harry's Quidditch games the year he'd taught at Hogwarts, and Harry had only improved over the last two years. He swooped and soared as though he was one with his broom, he an extension of it or vice versa. It was as though --
It was as though he was James, really. No matter how many times it was said, and by whom, Harry continued to bear an uncanny resemblance to his father. And as much as Harry had probably heard it more times than he could bear, it simply could not be overstated.
Molly had once snapped that Sirius saw Harry as a chance to have James back. In his most selfish moments, crouched in the forest watching Harry excel at Quidditch, Remus felt this was true -- it was as though James was between himself and Sirius all over again.
Remus watched as Harry narrowly missed being dislodged from his broom by a bludger and breathed a sigh of relief.
Remus was fond of Harry, as the son of his old friend, as a bright former pupil. But he firmly believed that it would do no service to Harry at all to try to replace the parents he had lost. Loss was never without meaning, and the loss that Harry felt served its own purpose, however cruel it might be.
Sirius, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to fill that hole, as best he could, as though to make up for all the years when he'd been … unavailable. Remus sometimes wondered, however, if Sirius was aware of how much he looked to Harry to fill the gap inside Sirius himself. Harry, at least, never expected Sirius to be someone that thirteen years of imprisonment had irrevocably destroyed.
And Remus, without thinking, without even realizing, often did.
Lost in thought, Remus had failed to notice that the match had ended. Judging from the crowd, Gryffindor had won. However, some sort of skirmish, nothing more than a flurry of red and green robes from this distance, appeared to be taking place on the field. Remus raised the omnioculars to eye level just in time to see Harry sock Lucius Malfoy's son in the stomach.
He nearly smiled. So much like James, through and through to the end.
When the horrible Umbridge woman lumbered into view, Remus wished briefly for a pair of the eavesdropping gadgets that the Weasley twins had used to wreck havoc all that last summer. Whatever the verdict, Harry's face was near white with outrage. Remus studied the aftermath intently: it was almost relaxing, after long days spent fighting against the coming war, to watch the small defeats of children unfold.
"And then what happened?" Sirius asked impatiently, sitting across the kitchen table. After their spat before, Sirius had prepared an apology in the form of a stew that was waiting on the stove when Remus passed through the kitchen fire.
"No idea," Remus said, chewing on a particularly tough bit of carrot. Sirius' cooking had improved considerably since he'd become house bound, but it still left a bit to be desired. He swallowed intently and added, "I couldn't hear and once I was sure he wasn't in any danger, I was more concerned with getting out of the forest to a spot where I could Apparate without being seen."
"You didn't speak to Harry at all, then?" Sirius asked incredulously.
Remus shrugged. "You said yourself he was rather peevish about being followed, I though it'd be best to keep my distance. Besides, the sudden appearance of a known werewolf and disgraced ex-professor on school grounds so close to the full moon probably would not have gone entirely without a bit of a ruckus."
Sirius scraped his spoon against his near empty bowl. "You could have at least said hello to Harry," he griped. "Sent him our regards."
"I was trying," Remus said in a carefully even tone, not wanting to quarrel twice between sunrise and sunset, "to do what was best for Harry. He wants to be like any other student, not reminded at every turn that he has to be guarded every time he leaves the castle."
"I don't understand why you won't let yourself get close to him. For God's sake, he's James' son--"
Remus slammed down his glass of mead, feeling liquid slip down his fingers as it sloshed over the edge of his cup. "You think I could somehow forget?" he said icily, "He's James' son and James is dead, Sirius, he's dead and Lily is dead and they both died in the service of the Order. It's a terrible fate, growing up without parents, but the last thing Harry needs is to get attached to you or me or anyone else who could very well end up just like his parents."
Sirius stared at him as though he was made of stone. "You've got no heart," he said.
Remus stood up from the table. "You're hardly the only one who came back broken."
Remus tugged nervously on the collar of his cloak and resisted the urge to itch his nose, currently engorged to twice its normal size as part of his disguise. Although the heritage of many of the items in his satchel would undoubtedly be recognized by the long-memoried shop keepers of Knockturn Alley, it was best not to advertise that the Order of the Phoenix was being funded through the plunder of the House of Black.
Knockturn Alley was the last stop on a bit of pawning that had taken him all over the wizarding world: the underground magical markets of Tokyo, the floating shops of Paris and the invisible dwellings of Iceland. Everywhere and in between and now he'd returned to London with the hope of unburdening himself of the last few, least traceable items of magical merchandise upon the shop keepers who would be most likely to recognize them.
After that, there'd be no avoiding returning to Grimmauld Place. Certainly, it made sense to spread the paraphernalia out among as many shops and under as many disguises as possible, it lessened the possibility that the wrong sort would realize that a liquidation of the Black family assets was under way. However, Remus was willing to admit -- if only to himself -- that he'd been dragging things out in order to avoid Sirius after their last quarrel.
He pushed open the heavy door to Borkin and Burkes, his hands covered with thick dragon-skin gloves. "'Ello?" he called into the dimly-lit room, his potion altered voice sounding strange with its heavy accent. "Is there anybody 'ere?" he added. He sounded rather like Mundungus.
A short man with a bent and gnarled spine suddenly appeared behind Remus, although he'd barely inched inside the door.
"Can I help you?" the man asked in a tone that was anything but solicitous.
"Er, Mr. Borkin?" Remus asked.
"No, I am Mr. Burkes," the man replied, stepping behind a cobweb-etched counter. "Now," he said insistently, "can I help you?"
"Er, right." Remus fumbled for his satchel. "'Eard you did a little buyin' along with your sellin', things that 'ave a, er, limited clientele?" Remus had found that it was better to appear foolish and inexperienced -- it made the shopkeepers more likely to assume that he'd stumbled over whatever it was he was trying to sell by accident and had no knowledge of its origins.
Mr. Burkes eyes Remus appraisingly, but finally said, "Well, let's see what you have, then."
Remus removed the first item from the satchel, a large, heavy leather-bound book. The leather was cracking, however, and the spine was badly compromised. The pages spelled strongly of mildew and if the book had a title, it was illegible through the grime that coated the cover. "A mustification is in place, I assume?" Burkes asked.
Remus nodded.
Burkes produced his wand from a fold in his robes and muttered, "mendificious" over the book. The two men watched in silence as the leather smoothed and mended and the words The Diary of Sir Thomas Thomalais Black bloomed across the cover in bright gold-lead script.
"Goodness me," said Burkes, "where did you come across this little treasure?"
"Some ol' 'ag's estate sale, if you ca believe it. Whole mess o' books up in 'er attic, most of 'em mustified so bad you couldna even read 'em, but I've always had a knack for charms, ever since I was in school." Remus smiled at Burkes hopefully.
"You know, of course, that the diaries of Thomas Thomalais Black are on the Ministry of Magic's list of criminal distributables? Burke said coolly.
"You sayin' I should take my business elsewhere?" Remus asked, trying not to let on his nervousness. Arthur had told him that Borkin and Burkes had been under Ministry surveillance for suspicion of trafficking dark items for quite some time, but what if he'd been wrong, what if --
"Oh, no, there's no need for that," Burkes said and Remus tried not to let his smile betray his relief. "Handy little mustification spell," Burkes continued, "makes the more subversive titles practically unrecognizable. Have you any more in your collection?"
Remus removed A History of Blood Typing and Testing Methods Through the Ages and A Question of Muggles from the satchel, tapping both lightly with his wand so that the dog-eared pages unfolded themselves and warn-out jackets grew fresh and crisp.
"Very nice indeed," Burkes muttered. "First editions of these two … I can give you a hundred galleons for the lot of them."
The problem with pretending to be a halfwit is that people were always trying to short-sheet you. "Er, I don' know," Remus stammered. "That'd barely cover me expenses. What you say about two hundred?"
"One-fifty."
"Sold!" Remus said at once, eager to get out of the shop.
He crossed out into the well-worn and pot-holed street of Knockturn Alley with his satchel much lighter but his pockets weighed down with Galleons. He still needed to pawn off several anti-Muggle detection devices, and the shop down the way looked promising. Depending on how long it took, he might do well to get a room at the Leaky Cauldron when he was finished. No point creeping into the house late at night and waking up the portraits, he told himself, and he almost believed it.
He was halfway across the street when he felt a small scrap of parchment that resided in the front pocket of his robes burst into flames. Although he'd been instructed that the parchment might do this, that it was it's purpose, he still found it a might alarming, but tried not to show it as he casually ducked between shops and poured the residual ashes into his palm.
The ashes drifted lightly across his skin and formed first letters, then words, then sentences, then a message in full: "Arthur attacked on duty. Please come. --S."
It was the "please" that made Remus' heart ache.
It'd been fairly easy to avoid Sirius for most of the week. Somebody had to take Arthur's guard shifts and Dumbledore wanted them patrolling in pairs besides, and somebody had to escort the Weasleys and company back and forth from Grimmauld Place to St. Mungo's and there were a million other things in between. It could all start at any time. It could all be starting now.
Six days in a row, Remus fell into the bed as Sirius dragged himself out of it and they sometimes looked at each other in a way that said "later" but they hadn't been able to manage much else.
"… well, they're called stitches, Molly, and they work very well on -- on Muggle wounds --"
It felt strangely surreal to be standing over Arthur's hospital bed, Molly glaring and shrieking just like she might if they were all sitting around the dinner table. If Lord Voldemort himself showed up at the Burrow, Molly would probably scold him for not wiping his feet on the mat first. It was an almost reassuring type of relativity.
Knowing how those rows tended to go, Remus slipped away from Arthur's bed to the bed across the room.
The man in the bed was gaunt. He'd probably been refusing to eat. It happened, sometimes, fear of feeding your own body. Remus knew.
"It's not the end of the world, you know," Remus said softly.
"What do you know? Why don't I bite you, see how you like it?" the man snarled.
Remus grimaced. "It wouldn't do any good. Besides, you're only harmful for three nights two weeks from now. Bite me now and it's just perversion."
Remus looked over his shoulder, made sure that he wouldn't be seen by any of the healers. He tugged at the collar of his shirt, revealed his silvery scar.
The man drew a deep shaky breath. "Werewolf, get away from me!" he hissed.
Remus smiled sadly. "You better get used to it."
The man shrank back further into his bed. "My life is over."
Remus weighed these words. "All our lives could be over at any time. You get used to it."
"I'll never find anyone to love," the man said quietly, possibly not even to Remus anymore.
"You can still keep people close," Remus said delicately. And he though of his own life, thirty years with the bite this fall, and who he'd kept close as he'd walked through it. He thought of Sirius, in bed at the end of the world, and how close he'd let him in, really.
"Our lives are over from the day we're born," Remus repeated. "They're only ever what we do with them."
He walked out the door, and headed for home like he knew exactly where it was.
"I'd better go!" Harry said quickly, and his head vanished into flame.
Remus and Sirius both sat motionless for a moment, watching the fire flicker cheerfully.
"Well, then," Remus said, "I do hope he's alright."
Sirius laughed ruefully. "Sometimes I think he's trying to get himself expelled," he said.
Remus bumped their shoulders together playfully. "Ho, well, you'd certainly know how to go about it," he said. "I'm sure you'd be glad to give him a few pointers in that department."
Sirius looked pensive for a moment. Remus waited for his expression to cloud at the thought of James and the mayhem of their youth, but instead Sirius just smiled fondly. "We were really a ruddy awful lot, weren't we?"
It was the kind of question that didn't really require an answer, but Remus would rather talk about James than go back to trying to demystify the stove or help Sirius look for the wretched Kreacher.
"You really, truly were," Remus said, and this time he was the one to laugh. "You truly were," he added, "but no worse than any other fifteen year olds, I imagine."
Sirius frowned. "Harry doesn't think so."
Remus arched his eyebrows. "When I was teaching at Hogwarts," he said measurably, "Harry stood by gleefully while that imposter Crouch turned Draco Malfoy into a bouncing ferret. He's no better and no worse. He's simply shocked by the imperfections of his fathers, he'll get over it."
"We're not his fathers."
Remus thought of wrapping books to give Harry for Christmas, of offering him advice, side by side, through the fire. "We nearly are," he said, and it felt strange to be on the other side of their familiar dance.
Sirius smiled a mischievous half smile, and for a moment it finally looked at home on his worn-out face. "Are you calling us parents?"
Remus flushed, chose his words carefully. "Well, you're his godfather, at absolute least, and, ah, by some customs that would make me a godparent as well." He paused, and Sirius' hand found his own before he knew he was looking for it. "Wherever we're scattered, whatever happens, we're connected. We're a family, of sorts. We're family."
No matter what Snape might have scathingly implied during his visits to Grimmauld Place, their mostly house-bound lifestyle left little time for love in the afternoon of any other luxuries of hours. On this afternoon, however, with the usual ghosts resting quietly in the corners rather than casting about and between, they retreated upstairs for the pleasure of each other, and for once it felt like something more than comfort.
Remus lay on his side as Sirius moved behind him, their bodies woven together at ankles and wrists and other more intimate places. With the crisp cotton under his cheek and the warmth at his back, Remus felt blanketed in a cloud of contentment so thick that all things around him were beyond notice --
-- like the creak of the hastily left unlocked door.
And so it was the muttered accusations that wrenched him to attention, the familiar sneer of disapproval:
"There the buggerers be, and sodomizing right upon my mistress' bed. Oh, if she could see, her son the blood traitor, committing perversion with a werewolf, bold as brass --"
Sirius' withdrawal was swift enough to be painful and he sat bolt upright in bed, all the embarrassment, all the shame in his face and across his shoulders channeled into the rage in his voice. "GET OUT! GET OUT, YOU WRETCHED THING, GET OUT!"
"As Master wishes," Kreacher replied, with a thick undertone, and then he was gone as though he'd never been.
Remus turned to face Sirius in the bed, but he was already met with his back.
The remnants of their meal were rapidly turned cold and congealed, but not one of those sitting at the table paid any mind. Remus' eyes were fixed on Sirius. He could feel the stares of Tonks, Moody and Kingsley trained upon himself.
"I said," Sirius repeated, "I'm going with you, and there bloody well isn't a damn thing any of you can do to stop me."
"We know you only want to protect Harry--" Kingsley started in protest.
"But, mate, what good can it do?" Tonks added. "At best, we'll make it through and you'll be surrounded by a Ministry squad who curses first and asks questions later."
"Don't be such a ruddy idiot," Moody concluded.
Sirius looked straight at Remus, unwavering.
There were a mere million things Remus wanted to do in that moment, but with each, there wasn't enough time (he wanted to wait for Dumbledore), he wouldn't do so in the company of others (he wanted to cup Sirius' chin in his palm) or there remained the simple reality of impossibility (he wanted to ask James what he thought they should do).
None of it mattered. He knew Sirius' face like his own and he knew his mind was made up.
Remus reached for his wand.
To say that the aftermath looked like a war zone would be both redundant and an understatement.
The aftermath was a war zone.
And in the midst of the smoke, the shrieks, the cold dead ice frozen in his veins, this:
"Remus -- you need to make some decisions about what's to be done."
"There's not -- I won't put Harry through that," the voice said. Funny how it seems to function all on its own, without though, input or effort.
"Remus, are you sure?"
"What's done is done. Sirius knew what he was doing. He's gone." But what is gone, he wanted to ask the voice. If Sirius was gone, he wasn't here. But Remus wasn't here, either, oh, no. He must be where Sirius was, then.
"I am deeply sorry, Remus --"
And then, realization. Remus was here, and Dumbledore was here and Dumbledore was making apologies because Sirius, because Sirius was --
"Oh, I'm certain you are. Harry will look only to you again, I'm sure that's not at all what you wanted."
"I do not deny the role I inadvertently played in Sirius' death, nor will you ever hear me do so. However, I had only the deepest respect for the bond that Harry and Sirius shared, and the one you shared with each other."
Bullshit.
Remus found himself back at the kitchen table, unmoving like a dead man. He reached automatically for the cup in front of him, and then realized it was the same one he'd abandoned hours (Hours? Could it have been hours? Days, maybe. More like years) before and jerked his hand back as though it had been burned, even though the cup had long since gone cold.
"Let's get this cleared away," Molly said from somewhere behind his shoulder, her words tight but not in their usual way, laced with an emotion that Remus felt like he ought to be able to reach out and grasp, like the cold cup of mead that danced past his ear or the platter of steaming replacements that moved through the air in the opposite direction.
All around Remus, chairs filled in, hunched bodies, worn and shocked faces all looked identical, but these must be his friends, his comrades, they were taking cups from the table into their own hands.
This must be a wake.
Remus had never been to a wake. There'd never been enough time before for such rituals.
There would probably never be time again.
So Remus drank from the cup placed in front of him and let the sounds around him become words and sentences and stories about a man he thought he should be able to recognize but couldn't.
Several hours passed, and Remus raised his many-times emptied goblet shakily and said, "Remember that time, in fourth year --"
The faces around the table had individualized expressions now, and names to lend to them. Kingsley, Tonks, Mundungus and Moody. Arthur and Molly Weasley, and also Bill. But not a one of them would remember anything that had happened in Remus' fourth year at Hogwarts. Even if Minerva McGonagall had been there, or Dumbledore, or even Severus Snape, they'd been merely minor characters in the drama of the Marauders' misspent youth. Save one -- who, if Remus ever came face to face with him again, he would grant no time for speech, let alone reminiscence -- Remus was the only one left to remember. Remus was the only one left.
With that, the fog of grief, of despair, lifted and he could think clearly again. It was replaced by a cold deadened feeling to the right of his heart, and Remus did not expect that feeling would ever go away. But he could not afford the convenience of incoherence, the solace of madness. He had to be strong. He had to be.
His unfinished sentence remained hanging in mid-air and when it became clear he would not complete it, the rest of those seated at the table took it as their cue to excuse themselves and drift away.
When Remus looked up again from his empty cup, only Arthur Weasley remained.
"Remus," he said, "if there's anything I can do."
In a wild moment, Remus wondered what shape his own mourning took in Arthur's eyes.
"Did you know?" he asked, but trailed off, not knowing what there was to know, what there had been to see about them.
"I knew," Arthur said, "that you were first in each others' hearts."
Remus made a noise. If it wasn't a laugh, it was a sob. "But we weren't, really, you know. We couldn't be. So many other things had to come first. Sometimes I wondered if we'd even --"
But he stopped himself. Whatever else might have been, might have happened, Remus had loved Sirius, would always love Sirius, and he had to remember that now, when no one else would.
Somebody had to keep living. Somebody had to go on. Somebody had to remember. Somebody had to put the house in order. Somebody had to behead Kreacher. Somebody had to look after Harry.
Remus stood up, under a weight that he couldn't possibly fathom.
Remus stood up.
Author: throughadoor
Rating: R
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: Remus Lupin and the Order of the Phoenix
Notes: Pre-HBP canon, but it looks like most everything made it through without getting jossed too badly. My notes say that lisew and circusgirl did beta duty. This is the first Remus/Sirius story I ever wrote solo, originally posted in September 2003.
"Shake it down, would you?"
Remus Lupin looked across a valley of well-worn and moth-eaten patchwork at Sirius Black, his arms outstretched to match Remus', a thick, heavy quilt pulled taut between them.
"I said, shake it down, would you?" Sirius said while attempting to ward off a sneeze. "Otherwise we'll end up with a face-full of 'em."
"You know," Remus said wryly, "I really do think this might be nothing more than dust bunnies."
"Dust bunnies? Are they a dust-eating type of creature?" Sirius looked puzzled, and paused in his harsh thumping of the quilt.
Remus laughed. "Dust bunnies," he said, "it's a Muggle expression, it means, ah, clumps of dust."
Sirius snorted. "I always forget you're a son of a Muggle."
It was meant to be an insult, a play on a Muggle expression they'd learned in a fairly racy Muggles' Studies lesson on parentage in the Muggle world when they were students. But Remus only laughed. If his laugh was hollow, it was because to look at Sirius and see a worn and broken man mouthing the dirty curse words of the school boy he once was made Remus feel empty in a place below his belly, but he tried not to dwell on such things.
"Your mother --" Remus started.
"--was a vile, heartless monster with rubbish for brains and an eel for a tongue." Sirius smiled with forced pleasantness. "Anything else?"
Remus shook his head. "You always did take the fun out of that one." He stepped forward, as though to fold the quilt between them. "If there are pixies nesting in here, we're not going to get them out today. Perhaps Molly knows a remedy? You could ask her tonight while, ah, before the meeting."
Sirius stepped forward to meet him, but frowned. "I still think I ought to come with you. Practically the whole bloody Order will be there, one more pair of eyes can hardly hurt."
Remus gathered the edge of blanket from Sirius' grasp. Arms free, Sirius began to pace about the room. Remus sighed. "It can be when that pair of eyes belongs to an escaped criminal," he said pointedly.
When Sirius only continued to pace, Remus added, "and even if Peter hasn't made your status as an Animagus know among the Death Eaters, you heard what Mad-Eye said, we're to bring him back on broomsticks. Padfoot may keep you out of sight, but I doubt he can ride a broom."
"I still don't see why I can't at least Apparate to the house with the rest of you, make sure he's all right. I'm the one who's been writing to him all summer, letting him know he hasn't been forgotten, and --"
"--and in part because of that, he's gotten quite riled up and we're having to retrieve him before we're sure it's safe," Remus said smoothly, setting the quilt on the bed and sitting down beside it. "You know how the charm works, if he stops thinking of the dwelling of his mother's blood as his home, Dumbledore said himself--"
"Dumbledore said this, Dumbledore said that," Sirius said mockingly. "You'd think you were back in school, worried he'll take away House points for your misbehavior," he added, glaring accusingly in Remus' direction.
Remus reached out and caught Sirius by the arm in mid-stride. He tugged lightly and Sirius sank onto the bed next to him. Cooped up like this, Sirius went looking for a fight in every nook and corner of the house and seemed to find one with Remus more often than not.
"Somebody has to stay behind and stand guard," Remus said earnestly.
Sirius smirked. "Of course."
"It takes a brave man to stay put."
"Oh, certainly."
"Please?"
"Well, since you asked so nicely."
Remus pressed his lips against Sirius' furrowed forehead and then across his mouth, cautiously and without letting any other part of their bodies touch.
"We'll be back in time for the meeting," he said, rising to gather his tattered wool robe. He paused at the doorway. "Really, I don't suppose you could much have the meeting without us." He opened the door.
"Halfbreeds! Scum! Violators of the house of my fathers! Blood traitors!"
"Bloody hell, not again," Remus muttered. Sirius was right behind him, clipping at his heels as they thundered down the stairs.
"Stains of dishonor, children of filth!"
"You know, half the time I think it's those blasted dungbombs setting them off," Remus called behind him.
Sirius thumped him on the back, which nearly sent him tumbling face first down the stairs. "Come on, mate, you know you wouldn't miss this for the world. Practically the only excitement we've got around here is my dear old mum."
The flight of stairs between the upper wing and the second floor landing seemed to get longer each night, which might have been an enchantment of some kind or merely Remus' own weariness. "I'd settle for a good night's sleep, that'd be enough excitement for me," Remus said and by then they reached the foot of the stairs, and the image of Sirius' mother screeching in their direction.
"You! Blood traitors, freaks, PERVERTS! Shaming the name of my fathers with your unnatural --"
Remus watched Sirius go white with shock and for once he wasted no time hurling insults back at her but nearly flattened Remus against the wall as he wrenched both curtains closed single-handedly.
The shouting stopped abruptly but Sirius seemed glued to the spot, silent, gaping. Remus placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, guiding him down the hallway before he found his words and woke the whole damn lot of them up again.
Not too many minutes later, after Remus had placed a mug of tea with a liberal splash of fire whiskey in his hands, Sirius looked up and said, "Well, I certainly hope she hasn't started down that line in front of anyone else."
Remus studied his own hands. "It probably just sounds like more of her pure-blood nonsense anyway." Knowing who Sirius was mostly thinking of, he added, "The children seem to know well enough to just cover their ears."
Sirius seemed lost in the bottom of his tea cup, as though he thought the answers to his troubles lay beneath the surface and he hadn't failed out of Divination with a "T" in his fifth year.
Before becoming all too well acquainted with her unfortunate likeness, Remus had met Sirius' mother once before, in his sixth year of school. Sirius had always complained that holidays with his family were horrid, and he'd begged Remus to stop by for tea when Remus had come into London before Christmas to visit his aunt.
The door knocker had been the first thing to go when the Order took up headquarters, but Remus still remembered tapping his hand against the brass snake's head, only to have it come alive and hiss in his direction.
"Haaalfbreed, paaaart-human, werewolf, WEREWOLF!" the snakes-head had hissed.
Remus had stood helplessly out on the steps, wondering if he should make a run for it, when Sirius had hastily opened the door. "Son of a bludger," Sirius cursed, "I forgot to tell you not to touch the door knocker. Dad's got it charmed, see, ruddy stupid if you ask me --"
"Sirius," a woman's voice had croaked behind him, "Sirius, stand back, there's a werewolf at the door."
Sirius rolled his eyes. "I know, mum, he's just one of my mates from school--"
But before Sirius could finish, a woman bent over a cane with a snake's head that was near identical to the one on the door knocker but carved in wood appeared in the doorway. "Do you mean to tell me you were going to let a werewolf into your father's house? I might not be able to stop you from associating with every half-breed and piece of mudblood trash at that school of yours, but I won't have you bringing that filth into this house." She'd cast a glare toward Remus but hadn't met his shocked gaze. "Now get out, you heard me, get out!"
When Sirius had returned from the holiday with three trunks and a determined grimace, Remus had tried not to blame himself, even if Sirius had gone to stay with James. Sirius had always been recklessness looking for a reason.
"I told Harry about my family today," Sirius said.
Remus' head snapped up to attention. Lost in thought, he'd let Sirius brood silently and his tea had gone cold. "What did he say?" he asked, and tapped his wand against his mug and muttered, "Lumos."
Sirius shook his head, dark hair hanging in his eyes and hiding his expression. "Oh, I reckon he thinks they still aren't as awful as that aunt and uncle he lives with."
"I hope you didn't tell him about how you ran away from home -- you'll give him ideas," Remus said lightly, but then instantly regretted his words.
"I know that you think I left because of what she said to you," Sirius said, and Remus started to disagree, because when it was put that way, well, it made him sound rather -- but then Sirius added, "and it was, but not in the way you think."
Remus raised his eyebrows for him to continue.
"It was, oh, it was so much worse," Sirius said, laughing shakily. "After she, ah, set you off, she started tearing into me about inviting a werewolf into the house of Black." His tone on the last three words was sharp and mocking. "And she would have eventually worn herself out, but, I don't know, maybe I was trying to get myself tossed out, but I told her about, ah --"
Remus could see Sirius peering at him desperately, asking him to understand without making him say it. He nodded. "Well, I can imagine she wasn't very happy about that."
Sirius' shoulders sagged. "It was just another bit of blood treachery to her, you know. A crime against the family, not passing on the noble line. And then she started in on the obligations to our fathers and I -- it was just one more thing in my life she'd managed to make all about her pure-blood mania and so I left."
Remus reached across the table and cupped Sirius' chin in his palm, lifting up so they were eye to eye. "She didn't deserve you. The whole ruddy lot of them, none of them deserved you."
Sirius pressed his lips against Remus' curved fingers and it wasn't quite a kiss until he pulled away to stand up. "It's nearly dawn," he said, "and you've got to set off tomorrow and I've got," he grabbed their tea mugs and clinked them against each other, "a long, busy day cleaning out doxie-infested china dressers or some such rubbish, I'm sure."
They climbed the steps silently, careful not to wake the snoring portraits. Sirius made a jabbing gesture in the direction of his mothers' curtains, but Remus steered him by the shoulder toward the narrow staircase to the upper wing.
Remus supposed there was some official version of events that had Sirius sharing a room with Buckbeak. But anyone who believed that had certainly never seen the perverse pleasure that Sirius seemed to derive from allowing hippogriff dropping to cover every visible surface of his mother's old bedroom. Remus had taken Sirius' father's bedroom, because the heavy oak door was best-suited for containing him during his werewolf phases.
As Sirius pulled the door shut behind them, Remus imagined Sirius got some kind of perverse pleasure out of that, too.
Remus pulled a damp and ragged handkerchief from the pocket of his loudly printed shirt. When Dumbledore had given him the assignment, he'd apparated the Muggle clothes right into Remus' lap and they reflected Dumbledore's odd sense of humor. A button up shirt with cheerful tulips printed across the front and a pair of many-pocketed shorts that were apparently favored by Muggle tourists. The shorts were bright orange.
Remus hung to the back of a group of Muggle tourists, paying little attention as the Muggle guide recited the confused Mugglized history of the Great Pyramids. Remus had studied Muggle History in general and the Muggle explanations for the monuments left behind by the Most Ancient World-Wide Wizarding Championships. However, he wasn't sure he could listen to the legend involving thousands of Muggle slaves and years of labor without snickering. He could only imagine what Tribeck the Great would make of the Muggle interpretation of his legacy.
"But, Mummy," a small girl asked, "how did they build them so tall?"
The mother gently explained to her daughter about scaffolding, a type of Muggle means for getting by without magic, and Remus let out a deep sigh.
Dumbledore had assured him that a Muggle tourist group was the easiest way to gain access to the Gringott's Egyptian headquarters without alerting the Ministry to his presence. Officially, Remus was in Egypt to inquire about an open professorship at the small school set up for the Gringott's wizarding employee's children.
"From here you can see the grand scale of the base," the guide said, gesturing grandly.
Remus slipped away from the group, his eye caught by an enchanted emerald colored brick that went unnoticed to Muggle eyes. He tapped his wand from where it rested inside one of the enormous pockets, muttering a charm for disillusionment before slipping past the Muggle signs of caution and tugging his wand out of his enormous shorts. He touched his wand to the brick, muttering the spell. He felt a tingling sensation in his fingers and toes, and instantly found himself on the other side of the stone façade.
Remus wasn't sure what the Muggles who gained access to Tribeck the Great's golden goblet winning effort from the Most Ancient World Wizarding Championships saw inside the pyramid, but from what he saw, it was all business.
A great cavernous room, dimly lit by torches that were mounted against the slanted stone walls. Dozens of ancient mahogany desks and at the desks sat dozens of goblins. Goblins examining gold coins and bars of silver with over-sized and bewitched magnifying glasses and goblins testing charmed locks, goblins scribbling mysterious tallies in mysterious gilded ledgers.
Most of the goblins didn't even register his appearance, but a few closest to him glanced up and eyed him suspiciously. Remus didn't see a single wizard in sight and was frantically wracking his brain for the few words of Gobbledigook he knew when a middle-aged wizard in light cotton robes burst out from behind a heavy curtain.
"Goodness," the wizard said, "we don't get too many through that entrance. But you couldn't have gotten through without a password, so I suppose you have some official business?"
Remus patted his Muggle clothes self-consciously, but there'd been no room in the enormous pockets for a set of robes.
"Remus Lupin," he said, "I've come to inquire about the teaching position." He paused carefully. "I was referred by Bill Weasley."
A flash of recognition crossed the wizard's eyes. "Right good," he said. "Rolf Meeks. I'll take you back so as to set up an interview."
There was no teaching position. Fortunately, Remus seemed to have met up with one of the Gringott's wizards who had already been initiated into the Order of the Phoenix.
Remus ducked behind the curtain after Meeks and the thick fabric on his back felt like a ghost. On the other side of the curtain, there was a small chamber, lined on every wall with elaborately decorated gold sarcophagi. Meeks strode to one in the opposite corner and seemed to tickle it under its nose. The sarcophagus came briefly to life, sneezed and swung open, revealing a narrow tunnel. Meeks nodded from over his shoulder and Remus followed him.
The tunnel was damp and quickly grew narrow . It seemed to go downhill for quite some time until suddenly they were in a small room filled with soapstone carved cats. "Nobody much comes down here," Meeks said. "I suppose we should do the meeting of the wands?"
When a witch or a wizard was inducted into the Order of the Phoenix, a simple charm was performed on their wand, so that they could identify each other through tapping their wands and muttering a spell. Remus and Meeks tapped their wands together and a small burst of orange sparks emerged from each. The sparks were actually shaped like tiny birds -- Dumbledore's design again.
"So," Meeks said eagerly, "what can I do for you?" He looked like a wizard who'd been living too long underground, longing for excitement. It made Remus terribly weary.
"I've come on behalf of Albus Dumbledore," Remus started, and Meeks nodded reverently. Dumbledore was well-known even here. Remus continued, "to see what progress is being made with the goblin community."
Meeks frowned. "Goblins are a tricky lot, you know. Hard enough to get them to understand you, then you've got this bunch -- they hardly let us in the vaults, if you know what I mean." He laughed nervously.
Remus nodded. "And you've impressed upon them the likelihood that Gringott's will be targeted by Voldemort's Death Eaters?"
Meeks stiffened visibly at the use of Voldemort's name in a way that Remus -- whose daily routine including discussing the reality of Voldemort's whereabouts at the dinner table -- hadn't felt in a long, long time. "You have to understand," Meeks said, "some of us have been here since before, ah," his voice cracked, "the first time that he, ah, tried to, well -- you know. And of course we heard, of course, but it's still a bit of a hard sell."
Remus began to see that Meeks had allowed Bill Weasley to induct him into the Order for a bit of excitement, but was perfectly content for that to be the only bit of excitement inside his pyramid. He sighed. "Could I speak to a few of the more sympathetic ones myself, perhaps?"
"Well, what exactly would you say?"
Remus sighed again, seeing he had no choice. "I'm the Order's representative for non-human and part-human magical creatures. I'd hoped to try to discuss goblins' rights, make them see what there is to gain from supporting the Order."
"And what makes you think they'll listen to you?"
Remus reached for the collar of his tulip-printed shirt, unhooked the top button so he could show Meeks his scar. He was already dreading his saucer-eyed expression, the kind of look he'd grown tired of in the group of Muggle tourists on the other side of the pyramid walls.
"It's ridiculous, is what it is. The Order is no place for parents with children," Remus said. He was, frankly, exhausted. He'd Apparated back from Egypt having made little progress with the goblins, only to find Grimmauld Place in even more disarray than usual as the children were preparing to return to school. He'd been hoping for at least a decent night's sleep before escorting the children to the train station. Instead, it had taken almost an hour to settle Molly down, and he'd offered to relieve Arthur from guard duty at midnight so he could stay with her. At best, he could hope for a few hours sleep before taking over the watch and maybe another hour after dawn before the children were banging around, waking the portraits.
Sirius, on the other hand, looked up from the bed with a bemused expression. There was a copy of the Quibbler spread out in his lap. "Quite right," he quipped. "We ought to have the children themselves fighting the war, send their parents home. They're not hardly much older than we were when things started up before."
Remus regarded Sirius skeptically. "You know, sometimes I can't tell if you're serious, when you get like this."
Sirius shrugged. "Neither can I," he said. There was a pair of successive loud thumps somewhere beneath them, the familiar sound of the Weasley twins Apparating -- in a manner Remus could only assume they believed to be covert -- into Harry and Ron's bedroom after the officially sanctioned lights-out.
Remus, for one, was looking forward to some peace and quiet at Grimmauld Place. When he said as much, Sirius disagreed.
"You'd feel differently if you were hanging around this wretched place by yourself for weeks at a time."
The last thing Remus wanted was to fight this familiar battle one more time, because all it would do was eat into his few possible hours of sleep. But he was still shaking sand out of his ears and for that he glanced over and Sirius and said, "And you'd feel differently about hanging around the house if you'd spent the last three days trapped up in the moldy basement of a pyramid."
He expected Sirius to snap back, and was already anticipating how just how little sleep he'd get if he found himself stretched out on the rock-hard (literally, the cushions were stuffed with tiny sharp pebbles) sofa in the small sitting room down the hall.
Instead, Sirius grinned maniacally, holding up the paper that had been sitting in his lap. "Didn't you see? I was just in Egypt last week, first stop on the Hobgoblins world tour." Sirius laughed, and Remus couldn't help but join in. "Come on to bed," Sirius said, "you've only a couple hours until you've got to go relieve Arthur."
Remus tapped out the lamps with his wand, and found his way to the bed by touch. Sirius rolled toward him in the bed in the dark and wove their hands together.
Even now, their touches were still hesitant, as though both were waiting for the other to pull back and decide that too much time had passed and too much had passed between them for any of it to possibly work. Remus didn't know if they were supposed to take turns on a schedule, but on that night, Sirius was the one to reach for Remus, and Remus reached back.
The meeting would be starting late, held up waiting for Dumbledore, whose appearances were even more rare now that the school term was in full swing.
"Probably up to his ears in trouble from that horrible Umbridge woman," Remus muttered to no one in particular.
"Suppose you're glad not to be at Hogwarts this year, eh Remus?" Kingsley asked from across the table.
Remus grimaced. Umbridge's vendetta against part-humans and half-breeds had made it near impossible for him to obtain a position, and before Dumbledore had reformed the Order, he'd been reduced to tutoring the child of a fairly prominent wizarding family in remedial magic. The family was at their wits end and hadn't cared about Remus' mysterious lack of references or specific requests for days off. The child had almost certainly been a Squib, and Remus had been almost relieved when the call from Dumbledore had come.
Now he was drawing a small salary -- which he suspected was coming directly from Dumbledore's personal vault -- for "duties performed for the Order." However, as the Ministry continued its iron-fisted crackdown, "duties performed for the Order" had meant "binning up rubbish at Grimmauld Place" more and more in the last few months. Remus took his turn at guard duty, and frequently volunteered for relief duty as well, in part to ease his nagging guilt over whether or not he was pulling his weight. He felt vaguely responsible for Sirius as well, and Sirius felt nearly twice as useless, eyeing Remus reproachfully every time he left the house.
Which was all to say, was Remus happy to be away from Hogwarts and Dolores Umbridge? Yes and no.
Mundungus shuffled into the kitchen sheepishly, late as well, although if they made a practice of holding up meetings on account of Mundungus, they'd never start on time. "Sorry 'm late," he offered. "Came straight from the 'og's 'ead, I did."
Just as Remus started to say that they were still waiting on Dumbledore, Molly rose half out of her seat in anger and shouted, "The Hog's Head? The HOG'S HEAD? You were supposed to be following Harry! And I would think that after the last time you'd have learned your lesson, I can't BELIEVE you, when Dumbledore hears about this --"
All those present at that table shrank away from Molly as though in physical pain. Mundungus flapped his hands helplessly, as though trying to fight off a flock of screeching birds. "Wait, wait," he said, "you've got it wrong. I was following 'arry, jus' like I was supposed to. I followed 'im to the 'ogs 'ead, see?"
Molly's tirade paused. "Oh, well, that's quite a different thing all together. Wait -- you let Harry go to the HOG'S HEAD? What in the world were you thinking? That place is dangerous, who knows --"
Arthur placed a tentative hand on his wife's shoulder. "Molly, Molly, calm down. Why don't we let Mundungus sit down and tell us what happened?"
Molly's lips remained pursed in a hard, straight line and Mundungus seemed to take this as an indication that it was at least safe to sit down, although he did so tentatively, as though he feared Molly would send both him and his chair flying out of the room. Remus could hardly blame him.
"Thought I wasn' supposed to let 'im know 'e was being followed," Mundungus said pleadingly. "Anyway, couldn'a shown me face in the 'ead anyway, banned fer life on account of a difference o'pinion with a 'ag over the price of dragon eggs. I tell ya, she was a tough ol' bird, knocked me front teeth out and --"
Remus could see Molly starting to fume again, so he quickly said, "Yes, but what was Harry doing there?"
Mundungus snapped back to attention. "Right, 'arry. 'E was never in any danger, I swear," he said, casting a quick glance in Molly's direction. "'Ad a whole lot of 'is mates with 'im, the one 'o was 'ere in the summer an' four of your lot, too, Molly."
Molly's eyes grew wide and her hands, which had been loosely folded together on the table -- grew white at the knuckles. Remus glanced at Sirius pointedly. "Yes, but what were they doing, Dung?" Sirius asked.
"Ah, Defense Against the Dark Arts."
"WHAT?" Molly shrieked. Kingsley and Tonks both edged themselves closer to the edge of the table, looking as though they'd rather be anywhere else.
"Couldn't quiet 'ear everything, was wearin' me veil, but I reckon they're startin' some type of group for teachin' each other Defense Against the Dark Arts, somethin' about not gettin' the proper learning in school. They want to keep it a secret, though, probably why they were at the 'ead, eh?"
Glancing tentatively at Molly, Remus saw her lips open and close as though she could not yet muster the amplitude necessary to communicate her objections to secret Defense Against the Dark Arts training sessions.
Before she could get started again, Sirius jumped in. "Well, I think it's a terrific idea," he said, thumping his fist against the table enthusiastically. Which was, perhaps, just what Molly needed to get going.
"Of course you do," she said shrilly.
"And what does that mean?" Sirius shot back.
"It means," Molly said, "that you'd like nothing better than for Harry to end up just like you."
Sirius glared. "And what exactly is wrong with that?"
Molly started to say something, probably about Sirius' fugitive status, but before she could get it out, Remus jumped in. "Now, let's just --" not sure what to say, he turned to Mundungus. "They haven't got themselves into any trouble yet, have they, Mundungus?"
Mundungus shook his head.
"And Harry and his friends have certainly proved themselves plenty capable of getting into quite a bit without attracting the attention of their professors," Remus added.
"What are you suggesting?" Molly asked, "that we just allow them to go on with this, knowing full well that it could get them expelled or, or -- or much worse!"
"But, Molly," Arthur intoned, but when she whipped around to glare at him, he fell silent.
Kingsley, nearly forgotten at the other end of the table, cleared his throat. "Considering all that Dumbledore has to deal with, it seems wise not to make this any greater of an issue than it needs to be," he said.
"Quite right," called out a voice from the doorway, "that Dumbledore, he can't even keep track of time anymore."
Standing in the doorway was Dumbledore, twenty minutes late and looking as though he hadn't a care in the world. Remus could not help but feel as though he was back in Gryffindor tower and he'd been caught planning to copy James' Charms essay.
Everyone shifted uneasily in their seats as Dumbledore sat down at the head of the table. "So," he said cheerfully, "what is it that we're planning on not telling me?"
Hoping to provide a balanced version of events, Remus spoke up. "While Mundungus was following Harry on his Hogsmede weekend, he learned that he and some of his classmates are attempting to, ah, start a group for tutoring each other in Defense Against the Dark Arts."
Remus thought he might have seen a gleam in Dumbledore's bespectacled eye. "Are they now! Well, I suspect that Dolores Umbridge wouldn't like that one bit," he said, amused.
Molly looked as though she wanted to say something, but apparently thought better of it. The rest of the group waited for Dumbledore to continue.
Finally, Arthur asked cautiously, "Will you be speaking to them about it?"
"Oh, no, no," Dumbledore said, folding his hands together, "I could hardly do that without Professor Umbridge involving herself. No, no," Dumbledore continued, "I don't think I'll be saying a word about it." He turned to Sirius. "Sirius, I assume you've devised some means of communicating with Harry?"
Remus watched as Sirius' eyes widened. He coughed. "Er, well--"
"Perhaps you could pass along a bit of a warning to him?" Dumbledore asked.
Sirius nodded and the meeting began.
After the meeting ended, Dumbledore left in haste and the rest of the members of the Order began to drift out into the night. Molly, however, hung back.
"Sirius," she said, "When you speak to Harry --"
"I think I'm perfectly capable of advising Harry myself, thank you very much," Sirius said curtly.
Molly arched her eyebrows. "And what exactly do you plan to tell him? How to build a better dungbomb?"
"He's my ruddy godson!" Sirius snapped. "He's not just some hobby I fell into after I broke out -- he's why I broke out in the first place. You think I don't understand what kind of danger he's in? You think I didn't know about the prophecy when he was born? You think I wouldn't die to protect him?"
Molly got a hard, sad look in her eyes. "No one doubts your love for Harry," she said. "I just doubt your ability to not let it cloud your judgment."
Sometimes when Remus looked at Molly, he hated her because she'd lost nothing, seven children, all alive and well and healthy. Sometimes when Remus looked at Molly, he pitied her because she had absolutely everything to lose.
"At the very least," Molly said finally, "you can tell my son that he'll be expelled for sure and his future will be ruined. There's plenty of time for him to learn to defend himself later, and he's much too young to be worrying about such things right now. And you can tell Harry and Hermione the same," and she pointedly said, "even though I have no authority over either of them, I have only their best interests at heart."
Sirius nodded, although he gave no further sign of agreement.
"Do you swear you'll repeat it to them?"
Sirius nodded again, but this time said, "I do."
Molly looked at him for a long moment, then bustled out of the kitchen.
Sirius turned to Remus. "Can you believe that woman?"
Remus almost could. Sirius walked around looking like he had nothing to lose, which is probably why he and Molly Weasley could never agree on anything. And why Remus could never believe that any of this would last.
Dumbledore requested the Order provide guard duty for Harry during his Quidditch matches as well, and considering the number of times Harry's life had been threatened while he was aloft his broom, it really wasn't a terrible idea.
Perhaps if anyone but Remus had been assigned duty for Harry's first match of the season, Sirius would not have been so dismayed that he'd been forbidden to attend. He'd pointed out over and over that he'd watched Harry fly in his third year, as Padfoot, from the safety of the Forbidden Forest, until finally Remus snapped, "Yes, and you were seen then, too, and that was when no one but Wormtail and I knew you were an Animagus. You can't just go bounding about the countryside anymore, that snot nosed brat of Lucius Malfoy's could see you and it's not as though you could Apparate off the premises, is it?"
Remus shut his mouth after that, realizing he was beginning to sound like Molly Weasley. From the look Sirius gave him when Remus turned to leave, Sirius rather agreed.
Sirius had been right about one thing, the edge of the Forbidden Forest was the perfect place to hide and watch the Quidditch pitch. He did so in human form, however, as in his animal form he wouldn't have been use as a guard at all. It would be a full moon that night, though even without his carefully plotted lunar chart, Remus could feel the pull under his skin. He would take care not to linger once the match ended, so as to be safely behind the locked doors of Grimmauld Place's master bedroom when the change took him.
Remus reached into his cloak for a pair of omnioculars, which he and Sirius had found while cleaning out the attic. Sirius had been fairly certain they were harmless, he seemed to think they were left from when the Blacks had bought a box at the Quidditch World Cup when he and his brother were still boys.
Sirius spoke of his brother so rarely that Remus had barely known what to say when Sirius had remarked, while polishing the dusty lenses of the omnioculars with the sleeve of his robe, "Regulus was always bloody awful at Quidditch."
The omnioculars seemed to work fine, though -- so far they hadn't forced him to see any horrific crashes or given him vertigo.
He'd been to a number of Harry's Quidditch games the year he'd taught at Hogwarts, and Harry had only improved over the last two years. He swooped and soared as though he was one with his broom, he an extension of it or vice versa. It was as though --
It was as though he was James, really. No matter how many times it was said, and by whom, Harry continued to bear an uncanny resemblance to his father. And as much as Harry had probably heard it more times than he could bear, it simply could not be overstated.
Molly had once snapped that Sirius saw Harry as a chance to have James back. In his most selfish moments, crouched in the forest watching Harry excel at Quidditch, Remus felt this was true -- it was as though James was between himself and Sirius all over again.
Remus watched as Harry narrowly missed being dislodged from his broom by a bludger and breathed a sigh of relief.
Remus was fond of Harry, as the son of his old friend, as a bright former pupil. But he firmly believed that it would do no service to Harry at all to try to replace the parents he had lost. Loss was never without meaning, and the loss that Harry felt served its own purpose, however cruel it might be.
Sirius, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to fill that hole, as best he could, as though to make up for all the years when he'd been … unavailable. Remus sometimes wondered, however, if Sirius was aware of how much he looked to Harry to fill the gap inside Sirius himself. Harry, at least, never expected Sirius to be someone that thirteen years of imprisonment had irrevocably destroyed.
And Remus, without thinking, without even realizing, often did.
Lost in thought, Remus had failed to notice that the match had ended. Judging from the crowd, Gryffindor had won. However, some sort of skirmish, nothing more than a flurry of red and green robes from this distance, appeared to be taking place on the field. Remus raised the omnioculars to eye level just in time to see Harry sock Lucius Malfoy's son in the stomach.
He nearly smiled. So much like James, through and through to the end.
When the horrible Umbridge woman lumbered into view, Remus wished briefly for a pair of the eavesdropping gadgets that the Weasley twins had used to wreck havoc all that last summer. Whatever the verdict, Harry's face was near white with outrage. Remus studied the aftermath intently: it was almost relaxing, after long days spent fighting against the coming war, to watch the small defeats of children unfold.
"And then what happened?" Sirius asked impatiently, sitting across the kitchen table. After their spat before, Sirius had prepared an apology in the form of a stew that was waiting on the stove when Remus passed through the kitchen fire.
"No idea," Remus said, chewing on a particularly tough bit of carrot. Sirius' cooking had improved considerably since he'd become house bound, but it still left a bit to be desired. He swallowed intently and added, "I couldn't hear and once I was sure he wasn't in any danger, I was more concerned with getting out of the forest to a spot where I could Apparate without being seen."
"You didn't speak to Harry at all, then?" Sirius asked incredulously.
Remus shrugged. "You said yourself he was rather peevish about being followed, I though it'd be best to keep my distance. Besides, the sudden appearance of a known werewolf and disgraced ex-professor on school grounds so close to the full moon probably would not have gone entirely without a bit of a ruckus."
Sirius scraped his spoon against his near empty bowl. "You could have at least said hello to Harry," he griped. "Sent him our regards."
"I was trying," Remus said in a carefully even tone, not wanting to quarrel twice between sunrise and sunset, "to do what was best for Harry. He wants to be like any other student, not reminded at every turn that he has to be guarded every time he leaves the castle."
"I don't understand why you won't let yourself get close to him. For God's sake, he's James' son--"
Remus slammed down his glass of mead, feeling liquid slip down his fingers as it sloshed over the edge of his cup. "You think I could somehow forget?" he said icily, "He's James' son and James is dead, Sirius, he's dead and Lily is dead and they both died in the service of the Order. It's a terrible fate, growing up without parents, but the last thing Harry needs is to get attached to you or me or anyone else who could very well end up just like his parents."
Sirius stared at him as though he was made of stone. "You've got no heart," he said.
Remus stood up from the table. "You're hardly the only one who came back broken."
Remus tugged nervously on the collar of his cloak and resisted the urge to itch his nose, currently engorged to twice its normal size as part of his disguise. Although the heritage of many of the items in his satchel would undoubtedly be recognized by the long-memoried shop keepers of Knockturn Alley, it was best not to advertise that the Order of the Phoenix was being funded through the plunder of the House of Black.
Knockturn Alley was the last stop on a bit of pawning that had taken him all over the wizarding world: the underground magical markets of Tokyo, the floating shops of Paris and the invisible dwellings of Iceland. Everywhere and in between and now he'd returned to London with the hope of unburdening himself of the last few, least traceable items of magical merchandise upon the shop keepers who would be most likely to recognize them.
After that, there'd be no avoiding returning to Grimmauld Place. Certainly, it made sense to spread the paraphernalia out among as many shops and under as many disguises as possible, it lessened the possibility that the wrong sort would realize that a liquidation of the Black family assets was under way. However, Remus was willing to admit -- if only to himself -- that he'd been dragging things out in order to avoid Sirius after their last quarrel.
He pushed open the heavy door to Borkin and Burkes, his hands covered with thick dragon-skin gloves. "'Ello?" he called into the dimly-lit room, his potion altered voice sounding strange with its heavy accent. "Is there anybody 'ere?" he added. He sounded rather like Mundungus.
A short man with a bent and gnarled spine suddenly appeared behind Remus, although he'd barely inched inside the door.
"Can I help you?" the man asked in a tone that was anything but solicitous.
"Er, Mr. Borkin?" Remus asked.
"No, I am Mr. Burkes," the man replied, stepping behind a cobweb-etched counter. "Now," he said insistently, "can I help you?"
"Er, right." Remus fumbled for his satchel. "'Eard you did a little buyin' along with your sellin', things that 'ave a, er, limited clientele?" Remus had found that it was better to appear foolish and inexperienced -- it made the shopkeepers more likely to assume that he'd stumbled over whatever it was he was trying to sell by accident and had no knowledge of its origins.
Mr. Burkes eyes Remus appraisingly, but finally said, "Well, let's see what you have, then."
Remus removed the first item from the satchel, a large, heavy leather-bound book. The leather was cracking, however, and the spine was badly compromised. The pages spelled strongly of mildew and if the book had a title, it was illegible through the grime that coated the cover. "A mustification is in place, I assume?" Burkes asked.
Remus nodded.
Burkes produced his wand from a fold in his robes and muttered, "mendificious" over the book. The two men watched in silence as the leather smoothed and mended and the words The Diary of Sir Thomas Thomalais Black bloomed across the cover in bright gold-lead script.
"Goodness me," said Burkes, "where did you come across this little treasure?"
"Some ol' 'ag's estate sale, if you ca believe it. Whole mess o' books up in 'er attic, most of 'em mustified so bad you couldna even read 'em, but I've always had a knack for charms, ever since I was in school." Remus smiled at Burkes hopefully.
"You know, of course, that the diaries of Thomas Thomalais Black are on the Ministry of Magic's list of criminal distributables? Burke said coolly.
"You sayin' I should take my business elsewhere?" Remus asked, trying not to let on his nervousness. Arthur had told him that Borkin and Burkes had been under Ministry surveillance for suspicion of trafficking dark items for quite some time, but what if he'd been wrong, what if --
"Oh, no, there's no need for that," Burkes said and Remus tried not to let his smile betray his relief. "Handy little mustification spell," Burkes continued, "makes the more subversive titles practically unrecognizable. Have you any more in your collection?"
Remus removed A History of Blood Typing and Testing Methods Through the Ages and A Question of Muggles from the satchel, tapping both lightly with his wand so that the dog-eared pages unfolded themselves and warn-out jackets grew fresh and crisp.
"Very nice indeed," Burkes muttered. "First editions of these two … I can give you a hundred galleons for the lot of them."
The problem with pretending to be a halfwit is that people were always trying to short-sheet you. "Er, I don' know," Remus stammered. "That'd barely cover me expenses. What you say about two hundred?"
"One-fifty."
"Sold!" Remus said at once, eager to get out of the shop.
He crossed out into the well-worn and pot-holed street of Knockturn Alley with his satchel much lighter but his pockets weighed down with Galleons. He still needed to pawn off several anti-Muggle detection devices, and the shop down the way looked promising. Depending on how long it took, he might do well to get a room at the Leaky Cauldron when he was finished. No point creeping into the house late at night and waking up the portraits, he told himself, and he almost believed it.
He was halfway across the street when he felt a small scrap of parchment that resided in the front pocket of his robes burst into flames. Although he'd been instructed that the parchment might do this, that it was it's purpose, he still found it a might alarming, but tried not to show it as he casually ducked between shops and poured the residual ashes into his palm.
The ashes drifted lightly across his skin and formed first letters, then words, then sentences, then a message in full: "Arthur attacked on duty. Please come. --S."
It was the "please" that made Remus' heart ache.
It'd been fairly easy to avoid Sirius for most of the week. Somebody had to take Arthur's guard shifts and Dumbledore wanted them patrolling in pairs besides, and somebody had to escort the Weasleys and company back and forth from Grimmauld Place to St. Mungo's and there were a million other things in between. It could all start at any time. It could all be starting now.
Six days in a row, Remus fell into the bed as Sirius dragged himself out of it and they sometimes looked at each other in a way that said "later" but they hadn't been able to manage much else.
"… well, they're called stitches, Molly, and they work very well on -- on Muggle wounds --"
It felt strangely surreal to be standing over Arthur's hospital bed, Molly glaring and shrieking just like she might if they were all sitting around the dinner table. If Lord Voldemort himself showed up at the Burrow, Molly would probably scold him for not wiping his feet on the mat first. It was an almost reassuring type of relativity.
Knowing how those rows tended to go, Remus slipped away from Arthur's bed to the bed across the room.
The man in the bed was gaunt. He'd probably been refusing to eat. It happened, sometimes, fear of feeding your own body. Remus knew.
"It's not the end of the world, you know," Remus said softly.
"What do you know? Why don't I bite you, see how you like it?" the man snarled.
Remus grimaced. "It wouldn't do any good. Besides, you're only harmful for three nights two weeks from now. Bite me now and it's just perversion."
Remus looked over his shoulder, made sure that he wouldn't be seen by any of the healers. He tugged at the collar of his shirt, revealed his silvery scar.
The man drew a deep shaky breath. "Werewolf, get away from me!" he hissed.
Remus smiled sadly. "You better get used to it."
The man shrank back further into his bed. "My life is over."
Remus weighed these words. "All our lives could be over at any time. You get used to it."
"I'll never find anyone to love," the man said quietly, possibly not even to Remus anymore.
"You can still keep people close," Remus said delicately. And he though of his own life, thirty years with the bite this fall, and who he'd kept close as he'd walked through it. He thought of Sirius, in bed at the end of the world, and how close he'd let him in, really.
"Our lives are over from the day we're born," Remus repeated. "They're only ever what we do with them."
He walked out the door, and headed for home like he knew exactly where it was.
"I'd better go!" Harry said quickly, and his head vanished into flame.
Remus and Sirius both sat motionless for a moment, watching the fire flicker cheerfully.
"Well, then," Remus said, "I do hope he's alright."
Sirius laughed ruefully. "Sometimes I think he's trying to get himself expelled," he said.
Remus bumped their shoulders together playfully. "Ho, well, you'd certainly know how to go about it," he said. "I'm sure you'd be glad to give him a few pointers in that department."
Sirius looked pensive for a moment. Remus waited for his expression to cloud at the thought of James and the mayhem of their youth, but instead Sirius just smiled fondly. "We were really a ruddy awful lot, weren't we?"
It was the kind of question that didn't really require an answer, but Remus would rather talk about James than go back to trying to demystify the stove or help Sirius look for the wretched Kreacher.
"You really, truly were," Remus said, and this time he was the one to laugh. "You truly were," he added, "but no worse than any other fifteen year olds, I imagine."
Sirius frowned. "Harry doesn't think so."
Remus arched his eyebrows. "When I was teaching at Hogwarts," he said measurably, "Harry stood by gleefully while that imposter Crouch turned Draco Malfoy into a bouncing ferret. He's no better and no worse. He's simply shocked by the imperfections of his fathers, he'll get over it."
"We're not his fathers."
Remus thought of wrapping books to give Harry for Christmas, of offering him advice, side by side, through the fire. "We nearly are," he said, and it felt strange to be on the other side of their familiar dance.
Sirius smiled a mischievous half smile, and for a moment it finally looked at home on his worn-out face. "Are you calling us parents?"
Remus flushed, chose his words carefully. "Well, you're his godfather, at absolute least, and, ah, by some customs that would make me a godparent as well." He paused, and Sirius' hand found his own before he knew he was looking for it. "Wherever we're scattered, whatever happens, we're connected. We're a family, of sorts. We're family."
No matter what Snape might have scathingly implied during his visits to Grimmauld Place, their mostly house-bound lifestyle left little time for love in the afternoon of any other luxuries of hours. On this afternoon, however, with the usual ghosts resting quietly in the corners rather than casting about and between, they retreated upstairs for the pleasure of each other, and for once it felt like something more than comfort.
Remus lay on his side as Sirius moved behind him, their bodies woven together at ankles and wrists and other more intimate places. With the crisp cotton under his cheek and the warmth at his back, Remus felt blanketed in a cloud of contentment so thick that all things around him were beyond notice --
-- like the creak of the hastily left unlocked door.
And so it was the muttered accusations that wrenched him to attention, the familiar sneer of disapproval:
"There the buggerers be, and sodomizing right upon my mistress' bed. Oh, if she could see, her son the blood traitor, committing perversion with a werewolf, bold as brass --"
Sirius' withdrawal was swift enough to be painful and he sat bolt upright in bed, all the embarrassment, all the shame in his face and across his shoulders channeled into the rage in his voice. "GET OUT! GET OUT, YOU WRETCHED THING, GET OUT!"
"As Master wishes," Kreacher replied, with a thick undertone, and then he was gone as though he'd never been.
Remus turned to face Sirius in the bed, but he was already met with his back.
The remnants of their meal were rapidly turned cold and congealed, but not one of those sitting at the table paid any mind. Remus' eyes were fixed on Sirius. He could feel the stares of Tonks, Moody and Kingsley trained upon himself.
"I said," Sirius repeated, "I'm going with you, and there bloody well isn't a damn thing any of you can do to stop me."
"We know you only want to protect Harry--" Kingsley started in protest.
"But, mate, what good can it do?" Tonks added. "At best, we'll make it through and you'll be surrounded by a Ministry squad who curses first and asks questions later."
"Don't be such a ruddy idiot," Moody concluded.
Sirius looked straight at Remus, unwavering.
There were a mere million things Remus wanted to do in that moment, but with each, there wasn't enough time (he wanted to wait for Dumbledore), he wouldn't do so in the company of others (he wanted to cup Sirius' chin in his palm) or there remained the simple reality of impossibility (he wanted to ask James what he thought they should do).
None of it mattered. He knew Sirius' face like his own and he knew his mind was made up.
Remus reached for his wand.
To say that the aftermath looked like a war zone would be both redundant and an understatement.
The aftermath was a war zone.
And in the midst of the smoke, the shrieks, the cold dead ice frozen in his veins, this:
"Remus -- you need to make some decisions about what's to be done."
"There's not -- I won't put Harry through that," the voice said. Funny how it seems to function all on its own, without though, input or effort.
"Remus, are you sure?"
"What's done is done. Sirius knew what he was doing. He's gone." But what is gone, he wanted to ask the voice. If Sirius was gone, he wasn't here. But Remus wasn't here, either, oh, no. He must be where Sirius was, then.
"I am deeply sorry, Remus --"
And then, realization. Remus was here, and Dumbledore was here and Dumbledore was making apologies because Sirius, because Sirius was --
"Oh, I'm certain you are. Harry will look only to you again, I'm sure that's not at all what you wanted."
"I do not deny the role I inadvertently played in Sirius' death, nor will you ever hear me do so. However, I had only the deepest respect for the bond that Harry and Sirius shared, and the one you shared with each other."
Bullshit.
Remus found himself back at the kitchen table, unmoving like a dead man. He reached automatically for the cup in front of him, and then realized it was the same one he'd abandoned hours (Hours? Could it have been hours? Days, maybe. More like years) before and jerked his hand back as though it had been burned, even though the cup had long since gone cold.
"Let's get this cleared away," Molly said from somewhere behind his shoulder, her words tight but not in their usual way, laced with an emotion that Remus felt like he ought to be able to reach out and grasp, like the cold cup of mead that danced past his ear or the platter of steaming replacements that moved through the air in the opposite direction.
All around Remus, chairs filled in, hunched bodies, worn and shocked faces all looked identical, but these must be his friends, his comrades, they were taking cups from the table into their own hands.
This must be a wake.
Remus had never been to a wake. There'd never been enough time before for such rituals.
There would probably never be time again.
So Remus drank from the cup placed in front of him and let the sounds around him become words and sentences and stories about a man he thought he should be able to recognize but couldn't.
Several hours passed, and Remus raised his many-times emptied goblet shakily and said, "Remember that time, in fourth year --"
The faces around the table had individualized expressions now, and names to lend to them. Kingsley, Tonks, Mundungus and Moody. Arthur and Molly Weasley, and also Bill. But not a one of them would remember anything that had happened in Remus' fourth year at Hogwarts. Even if Minerva McGonagall had been there, or Dumbledore, or even Severus Snape, they'd been merely minor characters in the drama of the Marauders' misspent youth. Save one -- who, if Remus ever came face to face with him again, he would grant no time for speech, let alone reminiscence -- Remus was the only one left to remember. Remus was the only one left.
With that, the fog of grief, of despair, lifted and he could think clearly again. It was replaced by a cold deadened feeling to the right of his heart, and Remus did not expect that feeling would ever go away. But he could not afford the convenience of incoherence, the solace of madness. He had to be strong. He had to be.
His unfinished sentence remained hanging in mid-air and when it became clear he would not complete it, the rest of those seated at the table took it as their cue to excuse themselves and drift away.
When Remus looked up again from his empty cup, only Arthur Weasley remained.
"Remus," he said, "if there's anything I can do."
In a wild moment, Remus wondered what shape his own mourning took in Arthur's eyes.
"Did you know?" he asked, but trailed off, not knowing what there was to know, what there had been to see about them.
"I knew," Arthur said, "that you were first in each others' hearts."
Remus made a noise. If it wasn't a laugh, it was a sob. "But we weren't, really, you know. We couldn't be. So many other things had to come first. Sometimes I wondered if we'd even --"
But he stopped himself. Whatever else might have been, might have happened, Remus had loved Sirius, would always love Sirius, and he had to remember that now, when no one else would.
Somebody had to keep living. Somebody had to go on. Somebody had to remember. Somebody had to put the house in order. Somebody had to behead Kreacher. Somebody had to look after Harry.
Remus stood up, under a weight that he couldn't possibly fathom.
Remus stood up.