HP -- Saint Sirius
Title: Saint Sirius
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Lupin/Tonks
Characters: Sirius, Peter
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,585
Warnings: some language; scattered sketchiness; Sirius; AU; self-Britpicked
Prompts: Roses and
I met a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's
Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein
- "Werewolves of London" - Warren Zevon -
Summary: In his unrivaled munificence, Sirius undertakes to get Remus a date.
Author's Note: An AU where Voldemort never really came to power in the first place, because I write them for Death Note so much that the habit was bound to bleed over to Potterdom. (Speaking of Death Note, HI, MATT!) Thanks so much to eltea for betaing! ♥ Written for (and originally posted on) metamorfic_moon, where it won Best AU and tied for first-place Community Choice for the Midsummer Tales event. :3
SAINT SIRIUS
You know, I am a really, really good person.
Stop laughing.
Honestly. The people we value most are our friends and family, and, as far as looking out for friends and family goes-or as far as looking out for friends and family members that didn’t threaten to evict us when we were children goes-I’m your man.
Regardless of what anyone might tell you, that’s the reason I Flooed my head into Remus’s fireplace on a Saturday night. It certainly wasn’t because he was the only one who would be home.
The room was empty, so I took the opportunity to admire the à-la-Stonehenge arrangements of books on every available surface. There was an old, frayed world map pinned to the wall-slightly crookedly at that-and a very bizarre lamp in the shape of a pheasant was the only other decoration.
Or the only other what-passed-for-decoration-with-Remus, anyway.
“Mooooonyyyyy,” I called.
Remus’s extraordinarily disheveled head appeared around the side of the doorway to the kitchen. My lustrous locks had retained their pigmentary integrity-as I like to declare whenever a suitable occasion arises-but Remus’s hair had sustained the first flecks of silver almost four years ago, and the scouting parties had since multiplied like happy rabbits.
The fact that Remus looked like he’d just shoved his head into a blender was not helping matters. Dark circles underscored his startled eyes, and even in the green glow my head was spilling over the room, he looked awfully pale.
Whatever you may hear about harassment-as-hobby combined with crushing boredom, the real reason I had peeked into Remus’s living room was that a full moon had risen and slipped away just the night before, and I didn’t want to leave him to his own devices for too long.
Especially since Remus’s favoured devices are misery and self-deprecation.
He’s so Hamlet.
“Mooonyyy,” I repeated. “I want your soul. I mean, company.”
“I bought you a telephone so that you can call first in case I have visitors,” he reminded me. “As opposed to bursting into discoloured flames in the fireplace like the spawn of Satan.”
“I am the spawn of Satan,” I reminded him.
Unmoved by my superior logic, he navigated between a few particularly precarious towers of books. “I call you.”
“Because you fear the puke-green hellfire that swathes my being?” I intoned.
“Or because I’m polite.”
It was a good thing he’d called last time; I’d been in the bedroom with a strapping young man from Belgium when the phone rang. Having Remus’s head arrive in the middle of that situation would have made things more than a little bit awkward.
For instance, awkward enough that I might have had to go all Hamlet myself and select “not to be” with gusto.
I did kind of suspect, though, that the reason Remus favoured telephones was to avoid showing his face.
This made my current mission all the more crucial.
“If you were polite,” I returned, “you’d let me drag you out for Chinese.”
“I’m not hungry,” Remus answered automatically, back to me as he attempted to extricate an armchair from a mountain of reading material.
Remus was stubborn about that-he didn’t want to feel like a charity case.
The way I saw it, I hadn’t sat around biting my tongue until my parents finally kicked the bucket so that I could wander around not spoiling people with my hard-earned inheritance.
Reg was out in southern France, after all, blowing his share one day at a time. Last I heard, he’d been thinking about buying a yacht.
“Of course you’re hungry,” I sniffed. “You’re starving. You’re ravenous. Now quit lollygagging and let me force-feed you some beef and broccoli.”
Remus sighed. “Only,” he conceded, “because you used the word ‘lollygagging.’”
“Fantastic,” I said. “Meet me in front of your place in ten minutes, or I’ll Apparate into your bathroom and paint the walls with toothpaste again.”
Experience had taught him to know that I was serious.
…oh, shut up.
-
In light of toothpaste-related potential crimes, Remus was standing just outside the glow of the streetlamp by the building’s front stairs, gazing up at the waning moon and shivering in the chilly mist that curled in and out of the orange light when I arrived.
I kept buying him warm coats and trying to sneak them into his closet, but the man was onto me. Never try to manipulate people who are smarter than you.
“Moooonyyyy,” I greeted him cordially as I approached. “There’s this thing. It’s called ‘being warm.’ And there’s no law against you doing it.”
“I don’t know,” Remus muttered back, mutinously. He looked even worse in proper-person-wan, weary, and wryer than usual, which was quite a feat. “It sounds like it might be dangerous.”
“You’re the most dangerous thing I’ve met in the whole of Great Britain,” I assured him. “Remind me why I’m buying you dinner when you’ll probably rip my throat out afterward?”
Remus started towards the restaurant, his slightly-ragged, not-very-warm coat trailing in his wake. “I’d rip out your stomach,” he replied. “Then I could eat your dinner as well as mine.”
“Eeeew,” I said.
Remus smiled.
-
I blew on my tea, sipped it, and burned my tongue anyway.
Fucking tea. People will tell you it’s some sort of life-giving elixir, but I know the truth.
The universe’s nefarious lies aside, I gave Remus a Look over the rim of my overrated teacup.
“I take it you’re going back to Hogwarts next year, then?”
He nodded and nabbed the last pot-sticker with a deft swoop of his chopsticks. We will not go into my difficulties with such antagonistic utensils; the treatises would fill volumes.
“It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” he reported. “And Dumbledore’s been a saint about it-he makes all sorts of exceptions for me, you know, and subtly bullies Severus into making the-” He lowered his voice. “-Wolfsbane.”
Yes, even in a Muggle-infested restaurant, Remus wouldn’t talk about the caprices of the wizarding world at a reasonable volume.
Never mind the fact that everyone in earshot would have taken us for nutters at “Dumbledore” and left it at that.
I put my tea down before I hurt myself and folded my arms on the table. “Staff’s decent, then,” I summarised. “What about the kids? What about Harry, eh?”
“Ah,” Remus said, setting his chopsticks down before I could envy his dexterity too much. “I thought you might ask. He’s a good kid-smart, grounded. Put-together, you know.”
“Must take after Lily, then,” I mused. “I’ve been worried he’d turn out a brainless git like his dad.”
“I’m sure the brainless git in question appreciates the sentiment,” Remus remarked.
I reached out with my primitive fork and stabbed the piece of moo shu pork Remus had been eyeballing.
“I’ve a confession to make,” I announced before I’d finished chewing, because no edible article in the world is more important than whatever I want to say through it. “I have fostered an ulterior motive for inviting you here.”
Remus looked disappointingly unsurprised as he permitted, “Go on.”
I folded my hands primly and went in for the kill. “I want to set you up on a date.”
At least I earned myself a bit of shock this time, though it was largely overwhelmed by cynicism and a characteristic dry amusement.
“With whom?” Remus inquired. “A girl who splinched herself into her own pet cat? Our children would have fantastic hearing, though the hairballs would be a nightmare.”
“No.” I pouted. “I’m not nearly that creative, for starters. For continuers, she’s my cousin, and you’ll like her.”
Remus’s expression transitioned seamlessly to utterly unimpressed. “You wheedle me into coming out to dinner,” he said, “plot to leave me with the bill-”
“Never,” I declared, hand over heart, “after that one time in Hogsmeade. And that was James’s idea, the brainless git.”
“-and consistently treat my personal space as your personal stomping grounds-”
“You know it’s in my nature. Be glad I haven’t humped your leg.”
I didn’t dare to check if any Muggles had started to stare.
Or had started to call the authorities with their Remus-sanctioned telephones.
“-and now you’re trying to convince me to date someone who is related to you?” He sat back, crossing his arms, and arched an eyebrow slowly. “You make a compelling case indeed, Mr Black.”
“I know you want me, Moony,” I wheedled, “but Tonks is a charming second-best.”
“Tonks?” he prompted, casting back in the marvels of his memory banks. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“You haven’t,” I informed him. “Which is why you’re morally obligated to give her a fair chance.”
He pushed a hand through his hair, dismantling more than a few nests that homeless rats could have put to good use.
“I’m not in any way obligated to do anything,” he responded. “But I’ll give you five minutes to convince me otherwise.”
Pensively I asked myself if it was possible to explain Tonks in five minutes.
The verdict was a resounding round of derisive laughter.
“She’s… interesting,” I improvised. “Really interesting. Too interesting. You’ll love ’er.”
He would, too-I knew it, somehow, at a gut level, the way I knew that the Cannons wouldn’t win a game if you tied the other teams’ hands behind their backs with barbed wire, because they didn’t know what winning meant. I knew it because Remus loved me, despite himself, in the hapless, heedless way he loved everything, and because Tonks was enough like me that Andromeda was kicking herself for letting me into the house during her daughter’s formative years.
The crucial details, however, were three: Tonks was less obnoxious, more colourful, and, crucially, female.
She was perfect.
“What makes you think she’ll agree to this?” Remus asked.
I skewered the bit of sweet-and-sour chicken he’d been admiring. My plan to revenge the pot-sticker he had snagged was nearing completion. “Well, every guy she’s ever dated has turned out to be a dick,” I noted, “so you can’t exactly do any worse.”
“Your confidence is inspiring,” Remus said.
“I get that from everyone,” I informed him. I thought it over. “No, wait, she dated Charlie Weasley, too, and they parted on good terms.”
Suddenly, Remus was thirty percent more attentive and eighty percent more likely to murder me in cold blood in the middle of a restaurant.
“How old is she?” he demanded.
“…young,” I admitted.
Remus set an elbow on the table and applied forehead to open palm. “You’re the worst matchmaker on the planet Earth.”
“Don’t underestimate me,” I warned. “I’m the worst matchmaker in the whole solar system. On the upside, thirty-eight is the new eighteen.”
Remus’s second elbow joined the first, and he distributed his forehead between both hands. “Please tell me she’s over eighteen.”
“Well over,” I assured him cheerfully. “I think… Anyway, the important part is, even if the date’s worse than Snivellus’s stylist, at the end of it, you can say ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’”
Remus raised his face enough to consider the prospect. “I have kind of always wanted… I mean, it’s one of my favourite films.”
“I thought ‘An American Werewolf in Lon’-”
“That was a terrible movie, dramatically as well as ideologically, and if you suggest otherwise, I will have your head.”
I giggled, and he sighed. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Last time I checked,” I answered brightly. “Serious enough to… pin… you … in the… loo?”
Remus stared, and then he started clutching at his chest.
“My soul,” he choked out. “You’ve killed it. Oh, God, the hemorrhaging-”
“Buck up, laddie,” I suggested. “You’re better off without it.”
Remus tilted his head, drumming his fingers on his cheek. “You’re really determined to drag me into this, aren’t you?” he wanted to know.
It was time for my secret weapon.
I pulled my secret weapon out of my coat’s largest pocket and displayed it in both hands.
“I brought you chocolate,” I coaxed.
Remus scratched his head. “I can’t figure out if you’re bribing me or fattening me up to eat.”
“Both,” I said.
-
We had only taken three steps outside the restaurant, ducking automatically away from the misting rain, when a motorbike roared up to the curb and rumbled to a stop.
It was not remotely Remus’s fault that I completely ignored him in favour of the shiny thing.
“That is a nice bike,” I said, lighting a cigarette partly just to see it better in all of its sweet, shiny glory. The flame blazed briefly, reflected in the spotless chrome, and the bike’s rider stepped off, tugging his visored helmet free.
The kid shook out disheveled red hair and straightened his jacket, grinning.
“Charming, isn’t she?” he asked. “Am I right to take it that you’ve got a baby at home?”
“Custom,” I answered contentedly. “Very custom.” I tilted the cigarette box towards him, flicking a specimen partway free, and he took it.
“Thanks, man.” He whipped out his own lighter before I could give him a hand and took a long, gratified drag. “It’s been one of those days, you know?”
“Believe me,” I told him, “I know.”
We leaned against the wall of the restaurant together, hoping that the rain wouldn’t pick up enough to mar his beautiful machine, until the cigarettes burned low. The redhead cast his to the damp pavement and crushed it out, offering me a hand to shake.
I took it.
“I owe you one,” he said. “See you around.”
It was only when he’d sauntered into the Chinese place, a little bronze bell jingling cheerfully behind him, that I realised that I had completely lost track of Remus.
After all that work to coerce him into some social interaction and deprive him of the opportunity to spend the post-full-moon day sulking, I’d let him wander off unsupervised.
If there was an award for Brilliance Except When Faced with Motorcycles, I’d be getting it.
I pitched my cigarette into a puddle and jogged off, glancing every which way, without waiting for the hiss. The streets were all blaring horns and blurring headlamps, and tyres squealed on the wet pavement.
Well, it wasn’t like me running through the streets, radiantly luscious locks streaming behind me in the breeze, was really anything new. My neighbours probably thought I was some sort of somndamnbulist.
Actually, I’m an ordinary insomniac, but I prefer to keep people guessing for as long as I can.
Streets gave way to streets, sidewalks merging, everything smeared and faded in the thickening rain. I hoped that kid had gotten his bike under cover-that he was tucked away somewhere, chowing down on chow mein with somebody who didn’t care whether or not he smoked inside.
That sort is increasingly difficult to find.
Especially now that anti-smoking legislation has picked up.
In any case, my brisk run through the dim streets soon bore fruit: I caught sight of Remus wandering by the wrought-iron fence about the park, peeking through it with the sort of absent interest he took in most things that weren’t books or red meat. A young woman was balancing on the curb not far away-her arms out for balance, her trench-coat a striking shade of deep teal.
Her shoulder-length hair was a mostly-subtle crimson colour, but the purple-and-white-striped socks gave her away.
Even as I watched-well, even as I drew back into an alley to see if independent elements would spontaneously combine-Tonks slipped on the curb and tumbled into the blessedly empty street.
It was, in typical Tonks fashion, a ten-point fall, complete with flailing arms and an ignominious squeal of dismay.
Remus, of course, had long since made it his life’s mission to prove that gallantry was lurking in the shadows when you least expected, so it came as no surprise that he pounced upon the fallen maiden and helped her to her combat-boot-clad feet.
I ducked into a convenient doorway to make the switch to my canine alter ego-no point in letting my clothes get soaked if it started to rain in earnest.
Equipped with a better nose and better ears, I padded a little closer. If you’re going to eavesdrop, do it right.
The other advantage was that, being colourblind, I could actually look straight at Tonks without fear of having my retinas scarred by the rainbow.
“Are you all right?” Remus was asking, remarkably coherently given the proximity of an attractive female.
“Fine; fine,” Tonks sighed, waving a dismissive hand. “This happens all the time. ‘Clumsy’ is my middle name. Well, it’s not, but it really ought to be. You know, I considered changing it just so that I could say that, and it’d be true?”
Remus laughed softly, realised that his hand was still under her elbow, and drew back to shove his fists into his pockets. “I’ve considered going by my middle name in Muggle company.”
Tonks’s kohl-rimmed eyes widened precipitously. “How’d you-”
Remus grinned and motioned to her Weird Sisters tee-shirt.
Tonks beamed back, cocking her head and setting a hand on either hip. “You must be a teacher,” she said.
Deciding that this had gone on long enough, I trotted over and nudged my wet nose at Remus’s palm.
“I thought the dogcatcher had gotten you by now,” he remarked, scratching behind an ear. “No such luck, I see.”
From close up, I could tell that Tonks was blushing happily, more than could be attributed to the cold alone. “What a beautiful dog,” she cooed.
My ears detected Remus’s mutter of “You don’t know the half of it.”
Tonks knelt and itched beneath my chin. I tried to stop my tongue from lolling like an unrolling ribbon, but I couldn’t help myself.
Pet me pet me pet me ohh, right there.
“What’s his name?” Tonks asked.
I glanced at Remus, and even with dog-vision, I could see the impulse to blurt out “Some son of a bitch” warring with his better judgment on his face.
He settled with “Beezlebub,” and I shot him a glare.
Tonks petted my ears a little more, tactfully choosing not to comment on my lack of identification, before ruefully rising to her feet.
“I’d better head homeward,” she noted, scuffing her imposing boots on the paving stones.
“Not good to be out here too late,” Remus agreed, running a hand through his hair.
They stood there, avoiding each other’s eyes, for a long moment.
I barked, and they both jumped.
“Hush, Beezie,” Remus said.
Oh, I was going to kill that man.
In the meantime, he and Tonks extraordinarily awkwardly parted ways, with a painfully noncommittal mutual wave-thing, a terrible idea that apparently occurred to both of them in unison.
Remus gazed wistfully after her for a second or two, and then he shook himself and started off in the opposite direction, leaving me to scamper to catch up.
Let me tell you-you know you’ve been friends with someone too long when they know you want to say something even though you’re still a dog.
We sidled into a narrow alleyway, and he shed his coat and draped it over me, at which point I switched back.
“What?” Remus prompted.
“‘Beezie’?” I asked indignantly. At his unaffected eye-roll, I added, “That was Tonks.”
Again his attention was mine. All part of my plan for world domination.
His eyes widened. “That-?”
“Can I pick ’em?” I preened. “Or can I pick ’em?”
Remus poked his head out around the edge of the alley, peeking past the corner of the brick. “I-she was nice.”
“Takes after me,” I explained. “Tomorrow I’ll use my incredible skills of perception to figure out when she’s free for a hot date.”
Remus snorted-but he didn’t try to discourage me in the slightest.
“Now what?” he asked instead.
I paused.
“Now,” I answered, “we find my pants.”
-
The next morning at eleven fifty-eight, I Apparated into Tonks’s living room.
She came running at the Pop, and, unlike Remus, had the grace to look vaguely surprised at my arrival.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she said, which apparently passed for a greeting.
Kids these days.
“You could call first,” she added before I could get a word in.
Two of a kind, they were.
Two of a totally lame kind.
“I do have Muggle friends, you know,” she went on, proceeding into the kitchen to knock over a chair and start up some tea. “I tell them I work in retail in a bad part of town, so that if anybody curses me too badly on the job, they’ll think it was a holdup that went sour.”
Pointedly, I raised an eyebrow. “Proper ray of sunshine, you are.”
“Well?” she prompted, returning with a teacup and rushing towards me, hoping to pass it off before her traitorous hands could drop it on the floor. “What do you need? You’re not exactly one to stop by and talk.”
I stretched my hands out for the cup. “Sunbeams,” I told her. “I’ve got a melanin deficiency, and I need your inspiring optimism.”
“I’m still holding hot water, Sirius,” came the reminder.
I wriggled my fingers in a Gimme sort of way. “You’re going out with Remus. Are you free this Friday?”
She dropped the tea.
Like I said-I’m a really, really, stupidly good person.
Fortunately, between Auror training and practice due to personal experience, Tonks’s Healing was fairly efficient. A few minutes of howling in agony and a quick teacup repair brought us back to Square One.
“Who the hell is Remus?” she asked, re-offering the tea.
“The bloke you met last night,” I answered.
She dropped it again.
Being a really, really good person really, really does not pay off.
More screaming and frantic spellwork followed, and then Tonks slammed the teacup down on the table before it could go for a hat-trick.
“How the hell do you know who I was and was not meeting last night?” she inquired.
I looked at her.
Then I got out of my chair, moved to an unsuspecting square of carpet, and made the switch.
Tonks stared.
“You are Satan’s right-hand man,” she said.
I transitioned back, shook out my hair, and itched behind my ear-which isn’t nearly so nirvanic when you can’t use your own foot.
“Right-paw,” I corrected.
Tonks made a point of directing her gaze above my head.
“Why do all of your visits end with you standing naked in my living room?” she asked.
“In defense of the last few incidents,” I replied, “it’s exceedingly difficult to Floo correctly when you’re drunk.”
“Bad dog,” Tonks said.
-
My behavioural issues aside, the first stage of my mission was complete: by my assiduous calculations, Remus and Tonks had just departed, presumably arm-in-arm, for the nice Italian place I’d recommended.
I stepped out of Peter’s fireplace, coughing, and brushed soot out of my beautiful hair.
“You could clean the damn thing,” I suggested.
“You could call first,” he said.
He flipped a page of his book, but I’m betting that was just for show.
“I swear you lot have a telephone fetish,” I muttered back, batting ash from my sleeve.
Peter deigned to look up. “Why are you dressed like a cat burglar?”
“Not cat burglar,” I corrected. “Dog stalker.”
He stared.
All right, he was justified this time.
“We’re going to follow Remus and his date,” I explained.
“You’re the creepiest person I know,” he replied.
“Rumour has it that Snivellus kills kittens and feeds their livers to students with detention.”
“Second-creepiest. Why are we stalking our own friend?”
I took to pacing. “Because he’s dating my only and favourite niece.”
Peter smirked. “Whose brilliant idea was that?”
“Mine,” I answered.
Peter stared some more.
“I don’t call,” I told him, “because it gives people time to block the entrances.”
Sighing, Peter heaved himself out of his chair. “Should I dress up like a housebreaker, too?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “We can stop by the residential district and make some extra money on the way back.”
-
“I’m a genius,” I whispered.
“That wasn’t quite the word I was thinking of,” Peter whispered back.
The case for his opinion was that we were hunkered down in the midst of some remarkably aggressive rosebushes, thorns tugging at our clothes as dew began to settle deeply into the fabric.
The case for mine was that Remus and Tonks were strolling the paths of the rose garden, enthralled with their own conversation, huddled together with their hands clasped.
Admittedly, the clinging was probably partly motivated by the temperature or lack thereof, but that didn’t make it any less adorable in my book.
I grinned as they wandered slightly closer, Remus motioning to one or another of the flowers. Tonks leaned forward and breathed the scent-and then she turned to give Remus the Look.
As in, the You’re the most wonderful thing ever to light my fragile universe Look.
“I should be canonised for this,” I murmured, imagining the afterparty.
“I believe you have to die to become a saint,” Peter cut in.
I frowned. “I guess I’ll settle for knighthood, then.”
“‘Sir Sirius’ would be fun to sign,” Peter mused.
Before I could detail to him just how much of an understatement was the word ‘fun,’ the evening’s lovebirds drifted closer, and I managed, with no little difficulty, to shut my mouth.
“This is just…” Tonks looked so happy I wanted to throw a water balloon and/or a mild hex at her.
Sorry; force of habit. That’s what school really teaches you, you know.
“…so… nice.”
That was Remus for you-nice to a fault. Nice to an earthquake. So nice you wondered when niceness had come into fashion again, because he made it look damn good, which was weird, because he was otherwise completely fashion-averse and, furthermore, slightly socially crippled.
The mysteries of the universe are many and varied.
Mr Nice Guy was smiling softly. “It is,” he managed. “I mean… I hadn’t expected much-not because of you, of course, but because I just-it never works out. Not for me. That sounds self-centred somehow, but I feel like a utility. I feel like an encyclopaedia. And maybe part of that’s teaching, because you do have to act like a resource, and I’m probably cut out for all of it, or people wouldn’t think that way, but-” Sheepishly he broke the eye contact, all self-effacing demureness.
He was looking right at us, but either the dog-burglar getups were working, or Tonks was so distracting that he hadn’t even noticed the two tossers hiding in the bushes with their mouths hanging open.
“-you treat me like a person. You treat me like a person that you actually like.”
I wanted my wand. Somebody needed an anti-sap spell, pronto.
That, or I needed a recipe for maple syrup.
Tonks just beamed like a sweet, white crescent moon, and she and Remus clutched each other’s hands a little tighter and wandered away.
I turned slowly to Peter.
“Come on,” I hissed.
He stared at me. “Come on what?”
“We can’t let them get away,” I insisted.
“Of course we can; it’s their da-”
“Shut up. I planned everything and set it all up and blackmailed everybody into being here, so it’s my date.” I looked at him severely, employing the patented Down the Black Family Nose Angle, but he didn’t offer the appropriate servile response. “We’re going to change to Padfoot and Wormtail,” I announced, “and we’re going after them.”
“That’s a very bad idea,” Peter said. “We’ll get caught, and Remus will hate us forever. Having your friend hate you forever is one thing, but having a friend who turns into a bloodthirsty creature of incredible power once monthly hate you is quite another.”
“Where’s your spirit of adventure and possible grisly death?” I asked.
“Under the bed with my spirit of reality checking,” he replied.
I wrinkled my nose. “How the hell did you end up in Gryffindor, Pete?”
“There is a broad, thick, extremely obvious line between cowardice and circumspection,” Peter sniffed.
“Oh,” I retorted, “I see. You braved a dictionary. Well-done.”
“It was harrowing,” he explained. “Can we please focus?”
“I assure you, I am extremely focused on your unwillingness to stalk-aid-whatever-poor Moony in his time of need.” I eyed him again, distastefully, and he sighed. “Well,” I decided, “I’m switching, and if you don’t come with me, I’ll just leave you behind for the aphids.”
“Wretch,” Peter said, but that was the last piece of scintillating wisdom he offered before turning into a familiar rat, so we all know who won.
Not that it comes as any great surprise.
A rather petulant rodent and a sleek, gorgeous black dog crept out of one bed of rosebushes and across the path to the next. There, within earshot of the doe-eyed couple that was their target, they attempted to blend in very well indeed so that the sleek, gorgeous dog could become a sleek, gorgeous man with a sleek, gorgeous voice, the sound of which he liked a bit more than was probably healthy.
But who’s to judge?
“I…” Remus shifted his weight, clutching Tonks’s hands in either of his. “There’s something-I suppose I should wait to tell you, but I’d rather have everything on the table now, and I feel like you’ll listen better than most people do.”
Tonks smiled gently. “You can tell me,” she promised.
I smacked Peter’s arm. “No!” I protested, somehow remembering to keep my voice low. “Tell her after you’ve slept with her, you brainless git!”
“Ow!” Peter objected, shoving back. “Why are you hitting me?”
“Because you’re the closest available humanoid,” I said.
“Fine,” he conceded, none too appeased. “Why are you encouraging Remus to sleep with your niece, then?”
I considered it.
Then I reached out and smacked him again.
“What?” he hissed.
“Logic,” I said. “Logic and I are incompatible, and I’ll have none of it.”
“You cur-”
I clapped a hand over his mouth. “Shut it, Wormtail; your blathering’s made us miss all the fireworks.”
Sure enough, Remus was standing still but poised to run, shaking from more than the cold, and peeking at Tonks in tremulous trepidation.
“A werewolf?” she repeated.
Remus managed a little nod.
Tonks chewed on her lip. “You mean a werewolf like…” She did the morph thing, and, even after at-least-eighteen years of acquaintance, I shuddered as if it was the first time.
It’s totally different when I change shape at will, of course.
Shortly, Remus was holding hands with a metamorphmagus-style simulacrum of a werewolf and looking like he was going to be very, very ill.
Grotesquely, as always, Tonks flipped back.
“Don’t even say the M-word,” she cautioned contentedly.
“…which one?” Remus choked out.
“‘Monster’ was the one I was thinking of,” she told him, “though I guess ‘metamorphmagus’ is too much of a tongue-twister anyway, and it’s a bit early for ‘marriage.’”
“I think we should pick a different letter,” Remus said faintly. “Like Q.”
“I think my mother is going to lay an egg when she sees you,” Tonks reported cheerfully.
“Does that happen often?” Remus asked. “I suppose it must be troubling to make omelets out of your half-siblings.”
Playfully Tonks hit his arm-ah, heredity-before threading hers through it.
“She doesn’t bat an eyelash at Goth makeup and Mohawks anymore,” she informed him. “I’ve got to keep her on her toes.”
“Does she even have toes?” Remus inquired. “Most birds and reptiles have claws. Though I suppose platypi-”
Tonks laughed delightedly. “I can’t believe you!”
Remus grinned. “Just tell your mother I’m a figment of your imagination, then. Problem solved.”
They were still giggling conspiratorially as they whisked past us and out of the garden, whither then I ken not.
I got up, and my valiant fellow stalker/assistant/resident naysayer joined me.
“Well, Pete,” I remarked, “we have learned one thing.”
He scowled. “That you’re a damned bloody idiot, and I don’t know why I’m friends with you?”
“That,” I permitted, “and that if you’re ever on a date, if you hear rustling in the bushes, distract her and pretend you didn’t notice a thing.”
“I’ll make a note only to date when I’m abroad,” Peter muttered. “Or when I’m carrying a weapon.”
“I’m bulletproof,” I reminded him.
“Ah, yes. I had forgotten your cracked-up alter ego.”
“Shame on you,” I sniffed. “Sir Sirius is unforgettable.”
“Evidently not.”
We stood for a moment, watching the way Remus and Tonks had gone. They would work, Andromeda would turn a heretofore-unfathomable shade of purplish-red, and all would be well in the world.
“What about you, Sir Sirius?” Peter asked quietly.
…which was creepy. Nobody should be reading my thoughts like that.
No, really; some of the things I think about are unfit for human contemplation.
But I’d scar him for life later.
“Some of us are just better off alone, Pete,” I replied.
“I’d get a girlfriend just to spite you for including me,” Peter sighed, “but I doubt I’ll be brave enough for at least six months after what I saw tonight.”
I grinned. “Like I said-some of us are better off alone.”
Peter shook his head. “Now what?”
“Now…” I planted my hands on my hips. “We find my pants.”
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Lupin/Tonks
Characters: Sirius, Peter
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,585
Warnings: some language; scattered sketchiness; Sirius; AU; self-Britpicked
Prompts: Roses and
I met a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's
Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein
- "Werewolves of London" - Warren Zevon -
Summary: In his unrivaled munificence, Sirius undertakes to get Remus a date.
Author's Note: An AU where Voldemort never really came to power in the first place, because I write them for Death Note so much that the habit was bound to bleed over to Potterdom. (Speaking of Death Note, HI, MATT!) Thanks so much to eltea for betaing! ♥ Written for (and originally posted on) metamorfic_moon, where it won Best AU and tied for first-place Community Choice for the Midsummer Tales event. :3
SAINT SIRIUS
You know, I am a really, really good person.
Stop laughing.
Honestly. The people we value most are our friends and family, and, as far as looking out for friends and family goes-or as far as looking out for friends and family members that didn’t threaten to evict us when we were children goes-I’m your man.
Regardless of what anyone might tell you, that’s the reason I Flooed my head into Remus’s fireplace on a Saturday night. It certainly wasn’t because he was the only one who would be home.
The room was empty, so I took the opportunity to admire the à-la-Stonehenge arrangements of books on every available surface. There was an old, frayed world map pinned to the wall-slightly crookedly at that-and a very bizarre lamp in the shape of a pheasant was the only other decoration.
Or the only other what-passed-for-decoration-with-Remus, anyway.
“Mooooonyyyyy,” I called.
Remus’s extraordinarily disheveled head appeared around the side of the doorway to the kitchen. My lustrous locks had retained their pigmentary integrity-as I like to declare whenever a suitable occasion arises-but Remus’s hair had sustained the first flecks of silver almost four years ago, and the scouting parties had since multiplied like happy rabbits.
The fact that Remus looked like he’d just shoved his head into a blender was not helping matters. Dark circles underscored his startled eyes, and even in the green glow my head was spilling over the room, he looked awfully pale.
Whatever you may hear about harassment-as-hobby combined with crushing boredom, the real reason I had peeked into Remus’s living room was that a full moon had risen and slipped away just the night before, and I didn’t want to leave him to his own devices for too long.
Especially since Remus’s favoured devices are misery and self-deprecation.
He’s so Hamlet.
“Mooonyyy,” I repeated. “I want your soul. I mean, company.”
“I bought you a telephone so that you can call first in case I have visitors,” he reminded me. “As opposed to bursting into discoloured flames in the fireplace like the spawn of Satan.”
“I am the spawn of Satan,” I reminded him.
Unmoved by my superior logic, he navigated between a few particularly precarious towers of books. “I call you.”
“Because you fear the puke-green hellfire that swathes my being?” I intoned.
“Or because I’m polite.”
It was a good thing he’d called last time; I’d been in the bedroom with a strapping young man from Belgium when the phone rang. Having Remus’s head arrive in the middle of that situation would have made things more than a little bit awkward.
For instance, awkward enough that I might have had to go all Hamlet myself and select “not to be” with gusto.
I did kind of suspect, though, that the reason Remus favoured telephones was to avoid showing his face.
This made my current mission all the more crucial.
“If you were polite,” I returned, “you’d let me drag you out for Chinese.”
“I’m not hungry,” Remus answered automatically, back to me as he attempted to extricate an armchair from a mountain of reading material.
Remus was stubborn about that-he didn’t want to feel like a charity case.
The way I saw it, I hadn’t sat around biting my tongue until my parents finally kicked the bucket so that I could wander around not spoiling people with my hard-earned inheritance.
Reg was out in southern France, after all, blowing his share one day at a time. Last I heard, he’d been thinking about buying a yacht.
“Of course you’re hungry,” I sniffed. “You’re starving. You’re ravenous. Now quit lollygagging and let me force-feed you some beef and broccoli.”
Remus sighed. “Only,” he conceded, “because you used the word ‘lollygagging.’”
“Fantastic,” I said. “Meet me in front of your place in ten minutes, or I’ll Apparate into your bathroom and paint the walls with toothpaste again.”
Experience had taught him to know that I was serious.
…oh, shut up.
-
In light of toothpaste-related potential crimes, Remus was standing just outside the glow of the streetlamp by the building’s front stairs, gazing up at the waning moon and shivering in the chilly mist that curled in and out of the orange light when I arrived.
I kept buying him warm coats and trying to sneak them into his closet, but the man was onto me. Never try to manipulate people who are smarter than you.
“Moooonyyyy,” I greeted him cordially as I approached. “There’s this thing. It’s called ‘being warm.’ And there’s no law against you doing it.”
“I don’t know,” Remus muttered back, mutinously. He looked even worse in proper-person-wan, weary, and wryer than usual, which was quite a feat. “It sounds like it might be dangerous.”
“You’re the most dangerous thing I’ve met in the whole of Great Britain,” I assured him. “Remind me why I’m buying you dinner when you’ll probably rip my throat out afterward?”
Remus started towards the restaurant, his slightly-ragged, not-very-warm coat trailing in his wake. “I’d rip out your stomach,” he replied. “Then I could eat your dinner as well as mine.”
“Eeeew,” I said.
Remus smiled.
-
I blew on my tea, sipped it, and burned my tongue anyway.
Fucking tea. People will tell you it’s some sort of life-giving elixir, but I know the truth.
The universe’s nefarious lies aside, I gave Remus a Look over the rim of my overrated teacup.
“I take it you’re going back to Hogwarts next year, then?”
He nodded and nabbed the last pot-sticker with a deft swoop of his chopsticks. We will not go into my difficulties with such antagonistic utensils; the treatises would fill volumes.
“It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” he reported. “And Dumbledore’s been a saint about it-he makes all sorts of exceptions for me, you know, and subtly bullies Severus into making the-” He lowered his voice. “-Wolfsbane.”
Yes, even in a Muggle-infested restaurant, Remus wouldn’t talk about the caprices of the wizarding world at a reasonable volume.
Never mind the fact that everyone in earshot would have taken us for nutters at “Dumbledore” and left it at that.
I put my tea down before I hurt myself and folded my arms on the table. “Staff’s decent, then,” I summarised. “What about the kids? What about Harry, eh?”
“Ah,” Remus said, setting his chopsticks down before I could envy his dexterity too much. “I thought you might ask. He’s a good kid-smart, grounded. Put-together, you know.”
“Must take after Lily, then,” I mused. “I’ve been worried he’d turn out a brainless git like his dad.”
“I’m sure the brainless git in question appreciates the sentiment,” Remus remarked.
I reached out with my primitive fork and stabbed the piece of moo shu pork Remus had been eyeballing.
“I’ve a confession to make,” I announced before I’d finished chewing, because no edible article in the world is more important than whatever I want to say through it. “I have fostered an ulterior motive for inviting you here.”
Remus looked disappointingly unsurprised as he permitted, “Go on.”
I folded my hands primly and went in for the kill. “I want to set you up on a date.”
At least I earned myself a bit of shock this time, though it was largely overwhelmed by cynicism and a characteristic dry amusement.
“With whom?” Remus inquired. “A girl who splinched herself into her own pet cat? Our children would have fantastic hearing, though the hairballs would be a nightmare.”
“No.” I pouted. “I’m not nearly that creative, for starters. For continuers, she’s my cousin, and you’ll like her.”
Remus’s expression transitioned seamlessly to utterly unimpressed. “You wheedle me into coming out to dinner,” he said, “plot to leave me with the bill-”
“Never,” I declared, hand over heart, “after that one time in Hogsmeade. And that was James’s idea, the brainless git.”
“-and consistently treat my personal space as your personal stomping grounds-”
“You know it’s in my nature. Be glad I haven’t humped your leg.”
I didn’t dare to check if any Muggles had started to stare.
Or had started to call the authorities with their Remus-sanctioned telephones.
“-and now you’re trying to convince me to date someone who is related to you?” He sat back, crossing his arms, and arched an eyebrow slowly. “You make a compelling case indeed, Mr Black.”
“I know you want me, Moony,” I wheedled, “but Tonks is a charming second-best.”
“Tonks?” he prompted, casting back in the marvels of his memory banks. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“You haven’t,” I informed him. “Which is why you’re morally obligated to give her a fair chance.”
He pushed a hand through his hair, dismantling more than a few nests that homeless rats could have put to good use.
“I’m not in any way obligated to do anything,” he responded. “But I’ll give you five minutes to convince me otherwise.”
Pensively I asked myself if it was possible to explain Tonks in five minutes.
The verdict was a resounding round of derisive laughter.
“She’s… interesting,” I improvised. “Really interesting. Too interesting. You’ll love ’er.”
He would, too-I knew it, somehow, at a gut level, the way I knew that the Cannons wouldn’t win a game if you tied the other teams’ hands behind their backs with barbed wire, because they didn’t know what winning meant. I knew it because Remus loved me, despite himself, in the hapless, heedless way he loved everything, and because Tonks was enough like me that Andromeda was kicking herself for letting me into the house during her daughter’s formative years.
The crucial details, however, were three: Tonks was less obnoxious, more colourful, and, crucially, female.
She was perfect.
“What makes you think she’ll agree to this?” Remus asked.
I skewered the bit of sweet-and-sour chicken he’d been admiring. My plan to revenge the pot-sticker he had snagged was nearing completion. “Well, every guy she’s ever dated has turned out to be a dick,” I noted, “so you can’t exactly do any worse.”
“Your confidence is inspiring,” Remus said.
“I get that from everyone,” I informed him. I thought it over. “No, wait, she dated Charlie Weasley, too, and they parted on good terms.”
Suddenly, Remus was thirty percent more attentive and eighty percent more likely to murder me in cold blood in the middle of a restaurant.
“How old is she?” he demanded.
“…young,” I admitted.
Remus set an elbow on the table and applied forehead to open palm. “You’re the worst matchmaker on the planet Earth.”
“Don’t underestimate me,” I warned. “I’m the worst matchmaker in the whole solar system. On the upside, thirty-eight is the new eighteen.”
Remus’s second elbow joined the first, and he distributed his forehead between both hands. “Please tell me she’s over eighteen.”
“Well over,” I assured him cheerfully. “I think… Anyway, the important part is, even if the date’s worse than Snivellus’s stylist, at the end of it, you can say ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’”
Remus raised his face enough to consider the prospect. “I have kind of always wanted… I mean, it’s one of my favourite films.”
“I thought ‘An American Werewolf in Lon’-”
“That was a terrible movie, dramatically as well as ideologically, and if you suggest otherwise, I will have your head.”
I giggled, and he sighed. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Last time I checked,” I answered brightly. “Serious enough to… pin… you … in the… loo?”
Remus stared, and then he started clutching at his chest.
“My soul,” he choked out. “You’ve killed it. Oh, God, the hemorrhaging-”
“Buck up, laddie,” I suggested. “You’re better off without it.”
Remus tilted his head, drumming his fingers on his cheek. “You’re really determined to drag me into this, aren’t you?” he wanted to know.
It was time for my secret weapon.
I pulled my secret weapon out of my coat’s largest pocket and displayed it in both hands.
“I brought you chocolate,” I coaxed.
Remus scratched his head. “I can’t figure out if you’re bribing me or fattening me up to eat.”
“Both,” I said.
-
We had only taken three steps outside the restaurant, ducking automatically away from the misting rain, when a motorbike roared up to the curb and rumbled to a stop.
It was not remotely Remus’s fault that I completely ignored him in favour of the shiny thing.
“That is a nice bike,” I said, lighting a cigarette partly just to see it better in all of its sweet, shiny glory. The flame blazed briefly, reflected in the spotless chrome, and the bike’s rider stepped off, tugging his visored helmet free.
The kid shook out disheveled red hair and straightened his jacket, grinning.
“Charming, isn’t she?” he asked. “Am I right to take it that you’ve got a baby at home?”
“Custom,” I answered contentedly. “Very custom.” I tilted the cigarette box towards him, flicking a specimen partway free, and he took it.
“Thanks, man.” He whipped out his own lighter before I could give him a hand and took a long, gratified drag. “It’s been one of those days, you know?”
“Believe me,” I told him, “I know.”
We leaned against the wall of the restaurant together, hoping that the rain wouldn’t pick up enough to mar his beautiful machine, until the cigarettes burned low. The redhead cast his to the damp pavement and crushed it out, offering me a hand to shake.
I took it.
“I owe you one,” he said. “See you around.”
It was only when he’d sauntered into the Chinese place, a little bronze bell jingling cheerfully behind him, that I realised that I had completely lost track of Remus.
After all that work to coerce him into some social interaction and deprive him of the opportunity to spend the post-full-moon day sulking, I’d let him wander off unsupervised.
If there was an award for Brilliance Except When Faced with Motorcycles, I’d be getting it.
I pitched my cigarette into a puddle and jogged off, glancing every which way, without waiting for the hiss. The streets were all blaring horns and blurring headlamps, and tyres squealed on the wet pavement.
Well, it wasn’t like me running through the streets, radiantly luscious locks streaming behind me in the breeze, was really anything new. My neighbours probably thought I was some sort of somndamnbulist.
Actually, I’m an ordinary insomniac, but I prefer to keep people guessing for as long as I can.
Streets gave way to streets, sidewalks merging, everything smeared and faded in the thickening rain. I hoped that kid had gotten his bike under cover-that he was tucked away somewhere, chowing down on chow mein with somebody who didn’t care whether or not he smoked inside.
That sort is increasingly difficult to find.
Especially now that anti-smoking legislation has picked up.
In any case, my brisk run through the dim streets soon bore fruit: I caught sight of Remus wandering by the wrought-iron fence about the park, peeking through it with the sort of absent interest he took in most things that weren’t books or red meat. A young woman was balancing on the curb not far away-her arms out for balance, her trench-coat a striking shade of deep teal.
Her shoulder-length hair was a mostly-subtle crimson colour, but the purple-and-white-striped socks gave her away.
Even as I watched-well, even as I drew back into an alley to see if independent elements would spontaneously combine-Tonks slipped on the curb and tumbled into the blessedly empty street.
It was, in typical Tonks fashion, a ten-point fall, complete with flailing arms and an ignominious squeal of dismay.
Remus, of course, had long since made it his life’s mission to prove that gallantry was lurking in the shadows when you least expected, so it came as no surprise that he pounced upon the fallen maiden and helped her to her combat-boot-clad feet.
I ducked into a convenient doorway to make the switch to my canine alter ego-no point in letting my clothes get soaked if it started to rain in earnest.
Equipped with a better nose and better ears, I padded a little closer. If you’re going to eavesdrop, do it right.
The other advantage was that, being colourblind, I could actually look straight at Tonks without fear of having my retinas scarred by the rainbow.
“Are you all right?” Remus was asking, remarkably coherently given the proximity of an attractive female.
“Fine; fine,” Tonks sighed, waving a dismissive hand. “This happens all the time. ‘Clumsy’ is my middle name. Well, it’s not, but it really ought to be. You know, I considered changing it just so that I could say that, and it’d be true?”
Remus laughed softly, realised that his hand was still under her elbow, and drew back to shove his fists into his pockets. “I’ve considered going by my middle name in Muggle company.”
Tonks’s kohl-rimmed eyes widened precipitously. “How’d you-”
Remus grinned and motioned to her Weird Sisters tee-shirt.
Tonks beamed back, cocking her head and setting a hand on either hip. “You must be a teacher,” she said.
Deciding that this had gone on long enough, I trotted over and nudged my wet nose at Remus’s palm.
“I thought the dogcatcher had gotten you by now,” he remarked, scratching behind an ear. “No such luck, I see.”
From close up, I could tell that Tonks was blushing happily, more than could be attributed to the cold alone. “What a beautiful dog,” she cooed.
My ears detected Remus’s mutter of “You don’t know the half of it.”
Tonks knelt and itched beneath my chin. I tried to stop my tongue from lolling like an unrolling ribbon, but I couldn’t help myself.
Pet me pet me pet me ohh, right there.
“What’s his name?” Tonks asked.
I glanced at Remus, and even with dog-vision, I could see the impulse to blurt out “Some son of a bitch” warring with his better judgment on his face.
He settled with “Beezlebub,” and I shot him a glare.
Tonks petted my ears a little more, tactfully choosing not to comment on my lack of identification, before ruefully rising to her feet.
“I’d better head homeward,” she noted, scuffing her imposing boots on the paving stones.
“Not good to be out here too late,” Remus agreed, running a hand through his hair.
They stood there, avoiding each other’s eyes, for a long moment.
I barked, and they both jumped.
“Hush, Beezie,” Remus said.
Oh, I was going to kill that man.
In the meantime, he and Tonks extraordinarily awkwardly parted ways, with a painfully noncommittal mutual wave-thing, a terrible idea that apparently occurred to both of them in unison.
Remus gazed wistfully after her for a second or two, and then he shook himself and started off in the opposite direction, leaving me to scamper to catch up.
Let me tell you-you know you’ve been friends with someone too long when they know you want to say something even though you’re still a dog.
We sidled into a narrow alleyway, and he shed his coat and draped it over me, at which point I switched back.
“What?” Remus prompted.
“‘Beezie’?” I asked indignantly. At his unaffected eye-roll, I added, “That was Tonks.”
Again his attention was mine. All part of my plan for world domination.
His eyes widened. “That-?”
“Can I pick ’em?” I preened. “Or can I pick ’em?”
Remus poked his head out around the edge of the alley, peeking past the corner of the brick. “I-she was nice.”
“Takes after me,” I explained. “Tomorrow I’ll use my incredible skills of perception to figure out when she’s free for a hot date.”
Remus snorted-but he didn’t try to discourage me in the slightest.
“Now what?” he asked instead.
I paused.
“Now,” I answered, “we find my pants.”
-
The next morning at eleven fifty-eight, I Apparated into Tonks’s living room.
She came running at the Pop, and, unlike Remus, had the grace to look vaguely surprised at my arrival.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she said, which apparently passed for a greeting.
Kids these days.
“You could call first,” she added before I could get a word in.
Two of a kind, they were.
Two of a totally lame kind.
“I do have Muggle friends, you know,” she went on, proceeding into the kitchen to knock over a chair and start up some tea. “I tell them I work in retail in a bad part of town, so that if anybody curses me too badly on the job, they’ll think it was a holdup that went sour.”
Pointedly, I raised an eyebrow. “Proper ray of sunshine, you are.”
“Well?” she prompted, returning with a teacup and rushing towards me, hoping to pass it off before her traitorous hands could drop it on the floor. “What do you need? You’re not exactly one to stop by and talk.”
I stretched my hands out for the cup. “Sunbeams,” I told her. “I’ve got a melanin deficiency, and I need your inspiring optimism.”
“I’m still holding hot water, Sirius,” came the reminder.
I wriggled my fingers in a Gimme sort of way. “You’re going out with Remus. Are you free this Friday?”
She dropped the tea.
Like I said-I’m a really, really, stupidly good person.
Fortunately, between Auror training and practice due to personal experience, Tonks’s Healing was fairly efficient. A few minutes of howling in agony and a quick teacup repair brought us back to Square One.
“Who the hell is Remus?” she asked, re-offering the tea.
“The bloke you met last night,” I answered.
She dropped it again.
Being a really, really good person really, really does not pay off.
More screaming and frantic spellwork followed, and then Tonks slammed the teacup down on the table before it could go for a hat-trick.
“How the hell do you know who I was and was not meeting last night?” she inquired.
I looked at her.
Then I got out of my chair, moved to an unsuspecting square of carpet, and made the switch.
Tonks stared.
“You are Satan’s right-hand man,” she said.
I transitioned back, shook out my hair, and itched behind my ear-which isn’t nearly so nirvanic when you can’t use your own foot.
“Right-paw,” I corrected.
Tonks made a point of directing her gaze above my head.
“Why do all of your visits end with you standing naked in my living room?” she asked.
“In defense of the last few incidents,” I replied, “it’s exceedingly difficult to Floo correctly when you’re drunk.”
“Bad dog,” Tonks said.
-
My behavioural issues aside, the first stage of my mission was complete: by my assiduous calculations, Remus and Tonks had just departed, presumably arm-in-arm, for the nice Italian place I’d recommended.
I stepped out of Peter’s fireplace, coughing, and brushed soot out of my beautiful hair.
“You could clean the damn thing,” I suggested.
“You could call first,” he said.
He flipped a page of his book, but I’m betting that was just for show.
“I swear you lot have a telephone fetish,” I muttered back, batting ash from my sleeve.
Peter deigned to look up. “Why are you dressed like a cat burglar?”
“Not cat burglar,” I corrected. “Dog stalker.”
He stared.
All right, he was justified this time.
“We’re going to follow Remus and his date,” I explained.
“You’re the creepiest person I know,” he replied.
“Rumour has it that Snivellus kills kittens and feeds their livers to students with detention.”
“Second-creepiest. Why are we stalking our own friend?”
I took to pacing. “Because he’s dating my only and favourite niece.”
Peter smirked. “Whose brilliant idea was that?”
“Mine,” I answered.
Peter stared some more.
“I don’t call,” I told him, “because it gives people time to block the entrances.”
Sighing, Peter heaved himself out of his chair. “Should I dress up like a housebreaker, too?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “We can stop by the residential district and make some extra money on the way back.”
-
“I’m a genius,” I whispered.
“That wasn’t quite the word I was thinking of,” Peter whispered back.
The case for his opinion was that we were hunkered down in the midst of some remarkably aggressive rosebushes, thorns tugging at our clothes as dew began to settle deeply into the fabric.
The case for mine was that Remus and Tonks were strolling the paths of the rose garden, enthralled with their own conversation, huddled together with their hands clasped.
Admittedly, the clinging was probably partly motivated by the temperature or lack thereof, but that didn’t make it any less adorable in my book.
I grinned as they wandered slightly closer, Remus motioning to one or another of the flowers. Tonks leaned forward and breathed the scent-and then she turned to give Remus the Look.
As in, the You’re the most wonderful thing ever to light my fragile universe Look.
“I should be canonised for this,” I murmured, imagining the afterparty.
“I believe you have to die to become a saint,” Peter cut in.
I frowned. “I guess I’ll settle for knighthood, then.”
“‘Sir Sirius’ would be fun to sign,” Peter mused.
Before I could detail to him just how much of an understatement was the word ‘fun,’ the evening’s lovebirds drifted closer, and I managed, with no little difficulty, to shut my mouth.
“This is just…” Tonks looked so happy I wanted to throw a water balloon and/or a mild hex at her.
Sorry; force of habit. That’s what school really teaches you, you know.
“…so… nice.”
That was Remus for you-nice to a fault. Nice to an earthquake. So nice you wondered when niceness had come into fashion again, because he made it look damn good, which was weird, because he was otherwise completely fashion-averse and, furthermore, slightly socially crippled.
The mysteries of the universe are many and varied.
Mr Nice Guy was smiling softly. “It is,” he managed. “I mean… I hadn’t expected much-not because of you, of course, but because I just-it never works out. Not for me. That sounds self-centred somehow, but I feel like a utility. I feel like an encyclopaedia. And maybe part of that’s teaching, because you do have to act like a resource, and I’m probably cut out for all of it, or people wouldn’t think that way, but-” Sheepishly he broke the eye contact, all self-effacing demureness.
He was looking right at us, but either the dog-burglar getups were working, or Tonks was so distracting that he hadn’t even noticed the two tossers hiding in the bushes with their mouths hanging open.
“-you treat me like a person. You treat me like a person that you actually like.”
I wanted my wand. Somebody needed an anti-sap spell, pronto.
That, or I needed a recipe for maple syrup.
Tonks just beamed like a sweet, white crescent moon, and she and Remus clutched each other’s hands a little tighter and wandered away.
I turned slowly to Peter.
“Come on,” I hissed.
He stared at me. “Come on what?”
“We can’t let them get away,” I insisted.
“Of course we can; it’s their da-”
“Shut up. I planned everything and set it all up and blackmailed everybody into being here, so it’s my date.” I looked at him severely, employing the patented Down the Black Family Nose Angle, but he didn’t offer the appropriate servile response. “We’re going to change to Padfoot and Wormtail,” I announced, “and we’re going after them.”
“That’s a very bad idea,” Peter said. “We’ll get caught, and Remus will hate us forever. Having your friend hate you forever is one thing, but having a friend who turns into a bloodthirsty creature of incredible power once monthly hate you is quite another.”
“Where’s your spirit of adventure and possible grisly death?” I asked.
“Under the bed with my spirit of reality checking,” he replied.
I wrinkled my nose. “How the hell did you end up in Gryffindor, Pete?”
“There is a broad, thick, extremely obvious line between cowardice and circumspection,” Peter sniffed.
“Oh,” I retorted, “I see. You braved a dictionary. Well-done.”
“It was harrowing,” he explained. “Can we please focus?”
“I assure you, I am extremely focused on your unwillingness to stalk-aid-whatever-poor Moony in his time of need.” I eyed him again, distastefully, and he sighed. “Well,” I decided, “I’m switching, and if you don’t come with me, I’ll just leave you behind for the aphids.”
“Wretch,” Peter said, but that was the last piece of scintillating wisdom he offered before turning into a familiar rat, so we all know who won.
Not that it comes as any great surprise.
A rather petulant rodent and a sleek, gorgeous black dog crept out of one bed of rosebushes and across the path to the next. There, within earshot of the doe-eyed couple that was their target, they attempted to blend in very well indeed so that the sleek, gorgeous dog could become a sleek, gorgeous man with a sleek, gorgeous voice, the sound of which he liked a bit more than was probably healthy.
But who’s to judge?
“I…” Remus shifted his weight, clutching Tonks’s hands in either of his. “There’s something-I suppose I should wait to tell you, but I’d rather have everything on the table now, and I feel like you’ll listen better than most people do.”
Tonks smiled gently. “You can tell me,” she promised.
I smacked Peter’s arm. “No!” I protested, somehow remembering to keep my voice low. “Tell her after you’ve slept with her, you brainless git!”
“Ow!” Peter objected, shoving back. “Why are you hitting me?”
“Because you’re the closest available humanoid,” I said.
“Fine,” he conceded, none too appeased. “Why are you encouraging Remus to sleep with your niece, then?”
I considered it.
Then I reached out and smacked him again.
“What?” he hissed.
“Logic,” I said. “Logic and I are incompatible, and I’ll have none of it.”
“You cur-”
I clapped a hand over his mouth. “Shut it, Wormtail; your blathering’s made us miss all the fireworks.”
Sure enough, Remus was standing still but poised to run, shaking from more than the cold, and peeking at Tonks in tremulous trepidation.
“A werewolf?” she repeated.
Remus managed a little nod.
Tonks chewed on her lip. “You mean a werewolf like…” She did the morph thing, and, even after at-least-eighteen years of acquaintance, I shuddered as if it was the first time.
It’s totally different when I change shape at will, of course.
Shortly, Remus was holding hands with a metamorphmagus-style simulacrum of a werewolf and looking like he was going to be very, very ill.
Grotesquely, as always, Tonks flipped back.
“Don’t even say the M-word,” she cautioned contentedly.
“…which one?” Remus choked out.
“‘Monster’ was the one I was thinking of,” she told him, “though I guess ‘metamorphmagus’ is too much of a tongue-twister anyway, and it’s a bit early for ‘marriage.’”
“I think we should pick a different letter,” Remus said faintly. “Like Q.”
“I think my mother is going to lay an egg when she sees you,” Tonks reported cheerfully.
“Does that happen often?” Remus asked. “I suppose it must be troubling to make omelets out of your half-siblings.”
Playfully Tonks hit his arm-ah, heredity-before threading hers through it.
“She doesn’t bat an eyelash at Goth makeup and Mohawks anymore,” she informed him. “I’ve got to keep her on her toes.”
“Does she even have toes?” Remus inquired. “Most birds and reptiles have claws. Though I suppose platypi-”
Tonks laughed delightedly. “I can’t believe you!”
Remus grinned. “Just tell your mother I’m a figment of your imagination, then. Problem solved.”
They were still giggling conspiratorially as they whisked past us and out of the garden, whither then I ken not.
I got up, and my valiant fellow stalker/assistant/resident naysayer joined me.
“Well, Pete,” I remarked, “we have learned one thing.”
He scowled. “That you’re a damned bloody idiot, and I don’t know why I’m friends with you?”
“That,” I permitted, “and that if you’re ever on a date, if you hear rustling in the bushes, distract her and pretend you didn’t notice a thing.”
“I’ll make a note only to date when I’m abroad,” Peter muttered. “Or when I’m carrying a weapon.”
“I’m bulletproof,” I reminded him.
“Ah, yes. I had forgotten your cracked-up alter ego.”
“Shame on you,” I sniffed. “Sir Sirius is unforgettable.”
“Evidently not.”
We stood for a moment, watching the way Remus and Tonks had gone. They would work, Andromeda would turn a heretofore-unfathomable shade of purplish-red, and all would be well in the world.
“What about you, Sir Sirius?” Peter asked quietly.
…which was creepy. Nobody should be reading my thoughts like that.
No, really; some of the things I think about are unfit for human contemplation.
But I’d scar him for life later.
“Some of us are just better off alone, Pete,” I replied.
“I’d get a girlfriend just to spite you for including me,” Peter sighed, “but I doubt I’ll be brave enough for at least six months after what I saw tonight.”
I grinned. “Like I said-some of us are better off alone.”
Peter shook his head. “Now what?”
“Now…” I planted my hands on my hips. “We find my pants.”