Running
As part of tarie's Illustrated Ficcish Wish Fulfilment Swop, this is for klena, to illustrate her pic, Hallo Sirius.
Author - Shaggy
Title - Running
Rating - PG-13 for a bit of swearing
Pairing - Remus/Sirius
Disclaimer - Not mine, no profit
Summary - The night of the TriWizard tournament was a full moon.
It’s late evening when he leaves the castle, and the grounds are still light and warm beneath the pinkish tones of the setting June sun. The enormous black dog sniffs the air and tosses his head, shaking human thoughts to the back of his mind: anger, fear, helplessness; the image of Harry, bruised and terrified, blood dripping from his arm. Another shake and the dog breaks into a run, sprinting out of the grounds, past Hogsmeade and into open countryside.
~*~
The sky is inky-black and cloudless, and Padfoot is still running, dirt-encrusted legs moving up and down like pistons over heather, bracken and rocks. His breathing is uneven and heavy with exhaustion, heart burning from the effort of racing for hours over rough Scottish countryside. He’s grateful for the meal of dragon steak Hagrid provided for Fang’s ‘new little friend’ that afternoon, giving him enough energy to prevent him collapsing from exhaustion as he charges onwards.
Padfoot races through the night, swift as a Valkyrie, carried forward by magic, animal instinct and human need. The brilliant silver moon above taunts him, not fast enough, and the stars twitter, it’s too far, but Padfoot is a stubborn dog and so he keeps on running a race he cannot win, refusing to concede defeat before dawn.
~*~
He slows down on the outskirts of town, casting long shadows over litter-strewn streets as the sun rises, dirty-yellow but triumphant in a dishwater grey sky. The ragged skyline is dominated by the factory, which closed down years ago, ripping chunks out of the town around it when it closed its gates. The surrounding streets are rundown and messy, with too many of the houses now standing empty; the whole place echoes with the loss of prosperity, community and a way of life. There weren’t too many copies of The Guardian in the dustbins of Hogsmeade, so Sirius doesn’t know about the decline of the Industrial North or urban decay, but he can feel the hopelessness of suburbs teetering on the border of slums, and wishes a town defined by absence wasn’t such an appropriate place for Remus to live.
It isn’t difficult for him to find Remus’ house, an unremarkable terrace in a row of unremarkable houses. He sneaks up the cobbled alleyway between the houses, pausing to breakfast on discarded pizza and half a kebab, before slipping into the concrete yard behind the house. The dog creeps into the crumbling outbuilding that was once an outside toilet, but now appears to be a cemetery for bicycles and mops and Sirius walks out a moment later, glancing up at the windows around him with a wary eye. He needn’t worry about being seen, he decides, since half the houses in the street are boarded up, and he’s quietly confident that none of the residents of the others are members of the Neighbourhood Watch.
The back door is old, battered wood, ill-fitting the frame after years of being warped by the elements. It looks like it would cave in easily if you put your shoulder to it, but Sirius can feel the crackle of magic as he touches the door handle. It tingles against his fingers, like static electricity, jolting him awake. The combined thrill of magic and a challenge is exciting rather than off-putting; he can almost feel the magic in his blood, dormant for too long with only the familiar-as-breathing Animagus transformations for exercise, waking up as he places one hand in the centre of the door and steadies the palm of the other over the handle. He hasn’t learnt a great deal of wandless magic during his year of freedom, but, luckily, housebreaking is his special area of expertise.
‘Alohomora,’ he commands, his voice low and steady as he focuses every ounce of energy on the door handle. The door opens easily enough, stiff, and with a shriek of protest from the hinges, but whatever magical protections Remus put up fall away easily before him. He wonders if Remus designed them that way on purpose.
The house is threadbare, scrupulously clean and about twenty years out of style. Sirius wanders through the ground floor (not much of it; the house is an old two up, two down, with a lean-to for the kitchen), staring at the scrubbed Formica, sagging sofa and uncomfortable-looking dining chairs like a gawking tourist on an expedition around a stately home. There’s a grindylow tank stowed under the coffee table and a neat row of books on a self running down one side of the living room.
The mantelpiece is covered in photographs in cheap frames and Sirius has to stop and catch his breath when he sees Lily and James smiling and waving at him, the infant Harry gurgling between them. He chides himself for his own sentimentality, and for the stab of disappointment he feels at not being included in the cluster of photos (stupid-how many times must the Aurors have been here?) and heads off upstairs to look for Remus.
Sirius had expected to find him locked in the bedroom-Remus had told him he’d locked himself in his office during the full moons the year he’d been teaching at Hogwarts-and is confused to find the bedroom empty. Sirius searches frantically for a few minutes, stupidly checking in cupboards and under the bed and is almost convinced that Remus must be spending the full moons somewhere else, somewhere he hasn’t told Sirius about, when he glances up and sees the hatch in the ceiling.
Fifteen minutes, a near-broken shoulder and several hundred muttered curses later, Sirius finally breaks open the hatch to the attic. Something hits him on the head as the trap-door opens-Remus’ wand, obviously jammed into the gap for safe keeping. Sirius catches it before it clatters to the ground, feeling a rush of pleasurable excitement at holding an actual wand again at long last, despite the gnarling foreboding at the pit of his stomach. The stench of dried blood and excreta assaults his nostrils the moment he lifts his head through the hole into the attic. It’s quite a thing to be able to make a man who has lived in a cave for a year shudder and recoil in disgust, he thinks with bitter humour.
Blinking as his eyes adjust to the dark of the attic, he can just make out a figure moving at the far end. From what he can remember, Remus usually slept for hours after his transformations, but he supposes that he did make quite a lot of noise-it’s possible he might have woken Moony himself.
Sirius creeps gingerly across the attic, stooped low beneath the pitched roof. It’s only after he stubs his foot on a beam that he remembers that he is carrying a wand and mutters, ‘Lumos,’
The attic is small, so the spell is enough to illuminate it fairly well. Sirius barely notices the eerie shadows casts by the roof supports, the deep claw marks in every piece of wood, the tattered spider webs hanging overhead or the rips in the insulation beneath his feet. All he can see is Remus, crouching battered and bloodied against the wall.
Sirius stumbles towards him, transfixed and horrified; he wonders briefly if it’s his own memory playing tricks on him again, because he’s never seen Remus like this, not once after the hundreds of mornings-after he spent comforting his friend. There are wide, jagged cuts across every inch of his body, blood congealing around the edges of the wounds in thick red-black clumps. His skin is covered in sweat and dirt, his hair tangled and encrusted with what Sirius assumes must be vomit, judging by the cloying, acrid-sweet smell.
Sirius stares at him in horror, at the brutal tattoos of agony blazing all over Remus’ body in all their filthy glory and he knows, he knows why Remus looks this way: this is the result of a true transformation, spent utterly alone without the emollients of Animagi companions, Wolfsbane or Madam Pomfrey’s ministrations. It would break his heart to see it if he wasn’t so fucking angry.
He crosses the final distance across the attic in two strides and glares down at Remus. ‘Moony,’ he says roughly, eyes blazing as he looks down at his wreck of a friend.
Remus lifts his head to look up at Sirius, wincing in pain as he moves, but there’s the faintest smile on his lips, a glimmer of hope in his eyes as he meets Sirius’ stare. ‘Hallo, Sirius,’ he says simply, but Sirius just growls at him.
‘Don’t you “Hallo Sirius” me,’ snorts Sirius angrily. ‘What the fuck happened to you?’
Remus looks faintly amused. ‘It was the full moon last night,’ he explains. ‘Actually, I’m rather hurt you don’t remember.’
‘You know fine well what I mean,’ retorts Sirius, gathering up blankets from the floor to wrap around Remus’ shoulders, the gentleness of his touch at odds with the harsh tone of his words. ‘But then, you didn’t actually say that Snivellus was still making the potion for you, did you, Moony?’
‘I didn’t want you to worry,’ mumbles Remus, looking faintly embarrassed.
‘Worry, my arse,’ scoffs Sirius, pushing the hair back off Remus’ face and tying the blanket around his shoulders. ‘I could have done something if you’d let me. The only reason I agreed not to come to you for the full moons was because you said you were all right with the Wolfsbane.’
‘It’s not that I didn’t want you here,’ says Remus quietly. ‘It would have been too dangerous. Half the Aurors in the country are still looking for you, you know.’
‘You could have come to Hogsmeade,’ counters Sirius tetchily, wrapping an arm around Remus’ waist and helping him struggle to his feet, ‘or I would have brewed the damn potion for you myself. Not like I didn’t have enough time on my hands.’
‘I’m fine, really,’ Remus lies feebly. ‘It’s not so bad.’
‘Bollocks, you are.’ Sirius leans back, pouting at Remus slightly. ‘Why won’t you let me help you?’
‘You could help me downstairs,’ Remus relents with a small smile.
It’s awkward getting Remus out of the attic and down the narrow ladder that leads to the landing. Remus’ body is covered in cuts, and he hisses with pain when Sirius inadvertently knocks them. Sirius is patient and gentle, manoeuvring Remus as carefully as he can, but he can’t avoid the pain completely.
Sirius’ is relieved when they finally make it downstairs and he deposits Remus on his bed. His own muscles ache, and he’s suddenly very aware of just how exhausted he is after running hundreds of miles overnight. It’s a little brighter now, the morning sun fully up, milky-pale light filtering through the net curtains, warming the room with its geriatric brass bed covered in a patchwork eiderdown that Sirius almost thinks he might remember.
Remus’ face is wan and drawn; the unhealthy pallor of his skin providing a stark backdrop to the furious red gashes, but there’s still an odd smile on his lips.
‘What?’ asks Sirius when he returns from a trip to the bathroom with a basin of water and a washcloth, along with half the contents of the bathroom cabinet, balanced precariously in his arms.
‘You’re fussing,’ Remus tells him. ‘You always were a right old woman.’
‘Am not,’ insists Sirius, dabbing Murtlap essence onto a damp cloth and patting Remus’ cuts tenderly. ‘You’re just a terrible patient.’
‘Worse than Madam Pomfrey,’ continues Remus regardless, wiggling slightly under Sirius’ touch. ‘I could do this myself, you know.’
‘Like you looked after yourself last night?’ asks Sirius, the trace of scorn still evident in his voice. He hasn’t forgiven Remus for his martyrdom.
Remus doesn’t answer, just sits quietly and lets Sirius attend to his wounds, relaxing slightly as the Murtlap essence and occasional muttered healing spells soothe the pain of his many cuts. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ he asks suddenly.
‘Dumbledore sent me,’ answers Sirius evenly.
‘Oh.’ Remus looks at Sirius questioningly. ‘What about Harry?’
Sirius sighs. ‘He’s…he’s OK. He’s safe.’ He closes his eyes and briefly remembers Harry’s face, terror-stricken in Dumbledore’s office, and the look of dismay when Dumbledore sent him away. Remus isn’t up to hearing the whole story yet, he decides. Sirius doesn’t feel up to telling it. Remus is still looking at him, waiting to hear more. ‘Honestly, it’s all right now,’ Sirius assures him, not quite truthfully. ‘I’ll tell you everything later, but for now, you need to rest.’
Remus grumbles a protest, but Sirius ignores it, pushing him back lightly onto the bed and lifting his feet so he’s lying down properly and tucking the eiderdown over him. Remus allows himself to be stretched out, like an invalid child, and smiles indulgently at Sirius.
‘Thank-you,’ he says, catching hold of Sirius’ hand and stroking the knuckles with his thumb. ‘I’m…I’m glad you’re here.’
‘Good.’ Sirius stifles a yawn, fighting to keep his eyelids open. Remus shuffles across the bed and pats the empty space beside him.
‘You look like you could do with a kip yourself,’ Remus tells him. Sirius can’t argue, just falls down next to him, collapsing into the long-lost comfort of a bed and Remus, still familiar after countless nights on hard floors, cold and companionless.
Remus strokes the hair back off his face and Sirius is suddenly horribly self-conscious, aware that his hair is filthy and probably riddled with lice, and that his beauty routine of a weekly dunk in a freezing cold mountain stream probably means he stinks too. Remus doesn’t seem to mind: he’s gazing at Sirius with a warm, gentle affection that makes Sirius’ heart ache, though his eyes are drooping too.
‘Thought I’d stay for a bit,’ Sirius mutters, ‘if that’s all right with you.’
Remus grins. ‘I think I could just about bear it.’
Exhaustion from more than one night spent travelling overcomes Sirius, and he falls asleep, resting in human form for the first time in as long as he can remember. The last thing he notices before consciousness slips away is the press of Remus’ lips against his forehead, a perfect goodnight kiss in mid-morning. Perhaps he isn’t too late after all.
Author - Shaggy
Title - Running
Rating - PG-13 for a bit of swearing
Pairing - Remus/Sirius
Disclaimer - Not mine, no profit
Summary - The night of the TriWizard tournament was a full moon.
It’s late evening when he leaves the castle, and the grounds are still light and warm beneath the pinkish tones of the setting June sun. The enormous black dog sniffs the air and tosses his head, shaking human thoughts to the back of his mind: anger, fear, helplessness; the image of Harry, bruised and terrified, blood dripping from his arm. Another shake and the dog breaks into a run, sprinting out of the grounds, past Hogsmeade and into open countryside.
~*~
The sky is inky-black and cloudless, and Padfoot is still running, dirt-encrusted legs moving up and down like pistons over heather, bracken and rocks. His breathing is uneven and heavy with exhaustion, heart burning from the effort of racing for hours over rough Scottish countryside. He’s grateful for the meal of dragon steak Hagrid provided for Fang’s ‘new little friend’ that afternoon, giving him enough energy to prevent him collapsing from exhaustion as he charges onwards.
Padfoot races through the night, swift as a Valkyrie, carried forward by magic, animal instinct and human need. The brilliant silver moon above taunts him, not fast enough, and the stars twitter, it’s too far, but Padfoot is a stubborn dog and so he keeps on running a race he cannot win, refusing to concede defeat before dawn.
~*~
He slows down on the outskirts of town, casting long shadows over litter-strewn streets as the sun rises, dirty-yellow but triumphant in a dishwater grey sky. The ragged skyline is dominated by the factory, which closed down years ago, ripping chunks out of the town around it when it closed its gates. The surrounding streets are rundown and messy, with too many of the houses now standing empty; the whole place echoes with the loss of prosperity, community and a way of life. There weren’t too many copies of The Guardian in the dustbins of Hogsmeade, so Sirius doesn’t know about the decline of the Industrial North or urban decay, but he can feel the hopelessness of suburbs teetering on the border of slums, and wishes a town defined by absence wasn’t such an appropriate place for Remus to live.
It isn’t difficult for him to find Remus’ house, an unremarkable terrace in a row of unremarkable houses. He sneaks up the cobbled alleyway between the houses, pausing to breakfast on discarded pizza and half a kebab, before slipping into the concrete yard behind the house. The dog creeps into the crumbling outbuilding that was once an outside toilet, but now appears to be a cemetery for bicycles and mops and Sirius walks out a moment later, glancing up at the windows around him with a wary eye. He needn’t worry about being seen, he decides, since half the houses in the street are boarded up, and he’s quietly confident that none of the residents of the others are members of the Neighbourhood Watch.
The back door is old, battered wood, ill-fitting the frame after years of being warped by the elements. It looks like it would cave in easily if you put your shoulder to it, but Sirius can feel the crackle of magic as he touches the door handle. It tingles against his fingers, like static electricity, jolting him awake. The combined thrill of magic and a challenge is exciting rather than off-putting; he can almost feel the magic in his blood, dormant for too long with only the familiar-as-breathing Animagus transformations for exercise, waking up as he places one hand in the centre of the door and steadies the palm of the other over the handle. He hasn’t learnt a great deal of wandless magic during his year of freedom, but, luckily, housebreaking is his special area of expertise.
‘Alohomora,’ he commands, his voice low and steady as he focuses every ounce of energy on the door handle. The door opens easily enough, stiff, and with a shriek of protest from the hinges, but whatever magical protections Remus put up fall away easily before him. He wonders if Remus designed them that way on purpose.
The house is threadbare, scrupulously clean and about twenty years out of style. Sirius wanders through the ground floor (not much of it; the house is an old two up, two down, with a lean-to for the kitchen), staring at the scrubbed Formica, sagging sofa and uncomfortable-looking dining chairs like a gawking tourist on an expedition around a stately home. There’s a grindylow tank stowed under the coffee table and a neat row of books on a self running down one side of the living room.
The mantelpiece is covered in photographs in cheap frames and Sirius has to stop and catch his breath when he sees Lily and James smiling and waving at him, the infant Harry gurgling between them. He chides himself for his own sentimentality, and for the stab of disappointment he feels at not being included in the cluster of photos (stupid-how many times must the Aurors have been here?) and heads off upstairs to look for Remus.
Sirius had expected to find him locked in the bedroom-Remus had told him he’d locked himself in his office during the full moons the year he’d been teaching at Hogwarts-and is confused to find the bedroom empty. Sirius searches frantically for a few minutes, stupidly checking in cupboards and under the bed and is almost convinced that Remus must be spending the full moons somewhere else, somewhere he hasn’t told Sirius about, when he glances up and sees the hatch in the ceiling.
Fifteen minutes, a near-broken shoulder and several hundred muttered curses later, Sirius finally breaks open the hatch to the attic. Something hits him on the head as the trap-door opens-Remus’ wand, obviously jammed into the gap for safe keeping. Sirius catches it before it clatters to the ground, feeling a rush of pleasurable excitement at holding an actual wand again at long last, despite the gnarling foreboding at the pit of his stomach. The stench of dried blood and excreta assaults his nostrils the moment he lifts his head through the hole into the attic. It’s quite a thing to be able to make a man who has lived in a cave for a year shudder and recoil in disgust, he thinks with bitter humour.
Blinking as his eyes adjust to the dark of the attic, he can just make out a figure moving at the far end. From what he can remember, Remus usually slept for hours after his transformations, but he supposes that he did make quite a lot of noise-it’s possible he might have woken Moony himself.
Sirius creeps gingerly across the attic, stooped low beneath the pitched roof. It’s only after he stubs his foot on a beam that he remembers that he is carrying a wand and mutters, ‘Lumos,’
The attic is small, so the spell is enough to illuminate it fairly well. Sirius barely notices the eerie shadows casts by the roof supports, the deep claw marks in every piece of wood, the tattered spider webs hanging overhead or the rips in the insulation beneath his feet. All he can see is Remus, crouching battered and bloodied against the wall.
Sirius stumbles towards him, transfixed and horrified; he wonders briefly if it’s his own memory playing tricks on him again, because he’s never seen Remus like this, not once after the hundreds of mornings-after he spent comforting his friend. There are wide, jagged cuts across every inch of his body, blood congealing around the edges of the wounds in thick red-black clumps. His skin is covered in sweat and dirt, his hair tangled and encrusted with what Sirius assumes must be vomit, judging by the cloying, acrid-sweet smell.
Sirius stares at him in horror, at the brutal tattoos of agony blazing all over Remus’ body in all their filthy glory and he knows, he knows why Remus looks this way: this is the result of a true transformation, spent utterly alone without the emollients of Animagi companions, Wolfsbane or Madam Pomfrey’s ministrations. It would break his heart to see it if he wasn’t so fucking angry.
He crosses the final distance across the attic in two strides and glares down at Remus. ‘Moony,’ he says roughly, eyes blazing as he looks down at his wreck of a friend.
Remus lifts his head to look up at Sirius, wincing in pain as he moves, but there’s the faintest smile on his lips, a glimmer of hope in his eyes as he meets Sirius’ stare. ‘Hallo, Sirius,’ he says simply, but Sirius just growls at him.
‘Don’t you “Hallo Sirius” me,’ snorts Sirius angrily. ‘What the fuck happened to you?’
Remus looks faintly amused. ‘It was the full moon last night,’ he explains. ‘Actually, I’m rather hurt you don’t remember.’
‘You know fine well what I mean,’ retorts Sirius, gathering up blankets from the floor to wrap around Remus’ shoulders, the gentleness of his touch at odds with the harsh tone of his words. ‘But then, you didn’t actually say that Snivellus was still making the potion for you, did you, Moony?’
‘I didn’t want you to worry,’ mumbles Remus, looking faintly embarrassed.
‘Worry, my arse,’ scoffs Sirius, pushing the hair back off Remus’ face and tying the blanket around his shoulders. ‘I could have done something if you’d let me. The only reason I agreed not to come to you for the full moons was because you said you were all right with the Wolfsbane.’
‘It’s not that I didn’t want you here,’ says Remus quietly. ‘It would have been too dangerous. Half the Aurors in the country are still looking for you, you know.’
‘You could have come to Hogsmeade,’ counters Sirius tetchily, wrapping an arm around Remus’ waist and helping him struggle to his feet, ‘or I would have brewed the damn potion for you myself. Not like I didn’t have enough time on my hands.’
‘I’m fine, really,’ Remus lies feebly. ‘It’s not so bad.’
‘Bollocks, you are.’ Sirius leans back, pouting at Remus slightly. ‘Why won’t you let me help you?’
‘You could help me downstairs,’ Remus relents with a small smile.
It’s awkward getting Remus out of the attic and down the narrow ladder that leads to the landing. Remus’ body is covered in cuts, and he hisses with pain when Sirius inadvertently knocks them. Sirius is patient and gentle, manoeuvring Remus as carefully as he can, but he can’t avoid the pain completely.
Sirius’ is relieved when they finally make it downstairs and he deposits Remus on his bed. His own muscles ache, and he’s suddenly very aware of just how exhausted he is after running hundreds of miles overnight. It’s a little brighter now, the morning sun fully up, milky-pale light filtering through the net curtains, warming the room with its geriatric brass bed covered in a patchwork eiderdown that Sirius almost thinks he might remember.
Remus’ face is wan and drawn; the unhealthy pallor of his skin providing a stark backdrop to the furious red gashes, but there’s still an odd smile on his lips.
‘What?’ asks Sirius when he returns from a trip to the bathroom with a basin of water and a washcloth, along with half the contents of the bathroom cabinet, balanced precariously in his arms.
‘You’re fussing,’ Remus tells him. ‘You always were a right old woman.’
‘Am not,’ insists Sirius, dabbing Murtlap essence onto a damp cloth and patting Remus’ cuts tenderly. ‘You’re just a terrible patient.’
‘Worse than Madam Pomfrey,’ continues Remus regardless, wiggling slightly under Sirius’ touch. ‘I could do this myself, you know.’
‘Like you looked after yourself last night?’ asks Sirius, the trace of scorn still evident in his voice. He hasn’t forgiven Remus for his martyrdom.
Remus doesn’t answer, just sits quietly and lets Sirius attend to his wounds, relaxing slightly as the Murtlap essence and occasional muttered healing spells soothe the pain of his many cuts. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ he asks suddenly.
‘Dumbledore sent me,’ answers Sirius evenly.
‘Oh.’ Remus looks at Sirius questioningly. ‘What about Harry?’
Sirius sighs. ‘He’s…he’s OK. He’s safe.’ He closes his eyes and briefly remembers Harry’s face, terror-stricken in Dumbledore’s office, and the look of dismay when Dumbledore sent him away. Remus isn’t up to hearing the whole story yet, he decides. Sirius doesn’t feel up to telling it. Remus is still looking at him, waiting to hear more. ‘Honestly, it’s all right now,’ Sirius assures him, not quite truthfully. ‘I’ll tell you everything later, but for now, you need to rest.’
Remus grumbles a protest, but Sirius ignores it, pushing him back lightly onto the bed and lifting his feet so he’s lying down properly and tucking the eiderdown over him. Remus allows himself to be stretched out, like an invalid child, and smiles indulgently at Sirius.
‘Thank-you,’ he says, catching hold of Sirius’ hand and stroking the knuckles with his thumb. ‘I’m…I’m glad you’re here.’
‘Good.’ Sirius stifles a yawn, fighting to keep his eyelids open. Remus shuffles across the bed and pats the empty space beside him.
‘You look like you could do with a kip yourself,’ Remus tells him. Sirius can’t argue, just falls down next to him, collapsing into the long-lost comfort of a bed and Remus, still familiar after countless nights on hard floors, cold and companionless.
Remus strokes the hair back off his face and Sirius is suddenly horribly self-conscious, aware that his hair is filthy and probably riddled with lice, and that his beauty routine of a weekly dunk in a freezing cold mountain stream probably means he stinks too. Remus doesn’t seem to mind: he’s gazing at Sirius with a warm, gentle affection that makes Sirius’ heart ache, though his eyes are drooping too.
‘Thought I’d stay for a bit,’ Sirius mutters, ‘if that’s all right with you.’
Remus grins. ‘I think I could just about bear it.’
Exhaustion from more than one night spent travelling overcomes Sirius, and he falls asleep, resting in human form for the first time in as long as he can remember. The last thing he notices before consciousness slips away is the press of Remus’ lips against his forehead, a perfect goodnight kiss in mid-morning. Perhaps he isn’t too late after all.