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Chapter Text

There hasn’t, really, been time for apologies between them, for their mutual, and misplaced, suspicions.

Remus has only seen Sirius once, since. At James and Lily’s wake, it was not, exactly, a time for words.

(Sirius had punched the wall, knocked over two wreaths, and left another in an explosion of petals, before McGonagall interceded, correcting all the little things Sirius had become, on sight, hysterical about: she’d conjured glasses to place on the empty bridge of James’ nose, and ordered a pillow of white flowers, removing one of clashing autumnal orange, to rest by Lily’s still-vibrant red hair.

Quietly, with very wet eyes, she’d told Sirius she’d stun him if she had to. Sirius was still, after that, but it was the stillness of a wand held ready to loose an explosion, and although he stood near the front, all the company seemed to sense the blast radius around him and keep it clear. Remus, himself, stayed near the back. But they had, at one point, caught eyes and exchanged nods. He thought that moment might be the most coherent he’d seen Sirius, the whole time of it.)

Remus has not reached out. He supposes it’s about equal chance it’ll go one way or the other. Either without James- and without Peter too, a loss in some ways worse, for how it reshapes their marauding memories- he and Sirius will drift into a rough acquaintanceship, where they exchange nods amid crowds and look away, pained. Or Sirius will show up, looking for the one friend he has left.

The knock on his door comes just after dawn on November 8th, 1981, and Remus goes to answer it both expecting it to be Sirius and braced for disappointment.

(He’d thought it was Sirius, when the news came, about the Longbottoms – but it was only Sturgis Podmore, there to tell him Sirius had gone after his cousin Bellatrix alone and wound up catching her at the Longbottoms’ door; probably would have gotten himself killed, too, if the noise hadn’t woken Alice and Frank up, keeping them from being taken unawares.)

Sirius has his hands braced on both sides of Remus’ door. Remus exhales, and the tightness in his chest lessens.

“What do you know about breaking up a marriage?” says Sirius, by way of hello.

“Er,” says Remus.

“Thought as much.” Sirius takes his hands off the door, waving Remus to move aside, and enters Remus’ shabby little flat as if he’s done so hundreds of times.

He hasn’t: Remus hasn’t rented this place very long, and through the year of James in hiding they’d grown more and more distant. Sirius does not so much as look around, but throws himself into the nearest chair.

He sits elbows on his knees, hands clasped together in thought, and Remus realizes, contrary to his immediate assumption, Sirius is not drunk. He is wild-eyed and sallow in a way that suggests sleeplessness, to a friend who shared a dorm with him for seven years.

“Dumbledore speak to you? About the sister?”

“Er-”

“Must have done,” Sirius says, opening his arms expansively, as if to say, ‘no baby here, and you clearly aren’t asking’. “Godfather comes second to blood magic, in the scheme of things, it seems. Harry’s safer under the sister’s roof than anywhere in the world, Dumbledore says.”

“…Dumbledore is usually right-”

“He offered,” says Sirius. His tone is a blunt weapon. “To be Secret Keeper. It was my idea, to… what we did instead. My fault. I convinced James. I convinced Lily. And thought myself terribly clever, the whole time I came up with the plan that killed them.”

“Ah,” says Remus. He has been aching, aching with the question of why they didn’t tell him. Did Lily think– did James think – he knows perfectly well, that Sirius thought it was him, and that’s all right, especially given he thought it was Sirius right back, but if Lily and James thought he… He can’t ask, wanting too badly to take Sirius’ words as an indication he hadn’t lost their trust, too.

“I reckoned I’d get your help with the planning, this time,” Sirius says. “I’ve been hanging about the house, the past couple of days, thought I might get in that way. The husband tried to kick me, threw stones, too. He won’t do.”

It takes Remus a second to catch up. “As a dog,” he says. “You were hanging about as Padfoot. And now you want to break up Lily’s sister’s marriage.”

“Harry,” Sirius says, “is supposed to be with me, I’m his godfather. Harry needs to be under the sister’s roof. It’d be a lot easier, if she didn’t already have a pillock of a husband.”

Remus suddenly needs to sit down. It is very early, and he’s not sure whether or not his best remaining friend is plotting murder. He’s also a little uncomfortable to find himself almost happy that, even if it is murder on the table, Sirius has come to plot with him.

“What, exactly,” says Remus, “are you proposing?”

Sirius points at him. “That, essentially,” he says. “Proposing. Though, first, the seducing.”

“Of Lily’s sister.” Remus is tempted to ask whether Sirius has seen Lily’s sister. He has– permanently pursed lips, bitter-glittering eyes– and between her blond hair and expressions, was reminded more of Narcissa Black than Lily... though Lily’s sister was not half so pretty. But Sirius must have, if he’s been hanging around the house…

“Who else?” says Sirius. “If you mean Lily might not like it… she’d like it less, Harry growing up in that man’s house. I can fix that. I’m a lot better-looking than Lily’s brother-in-law.”

“There is- generally more to a marriage than looks,” Remus says. His brain, on a loop, is saying ohmyGodohmyGodohmyGod, but he’s always been the best of the group at reining in the hysterics. Especially now that he’s sitting down. “There’s a child involved- their own child, that is-”

“I’d keep the other kid, too,” says Sirius. “What do you think I am?”

There’s an awkward beat.

Sirius looks away first. “I have to do something,” he says, his fist clenching and unclenching. “I’d like to think I’m above using a love potion–”

“Sirius-”

Sirius waves him off before Remus can become more horrified. “I wouldn’t, but– it’ll be better if you’re keeping me in line.”

“Because I’ve always been so good at that,” Remus says, before he can stop himself. Before he realizes he probably has been more successful at keeping Sirius within the realms of legality than anyone else left alive. “What are you thinking of doing, then?”

Sirius, abruptly, resumes his thinking pose. “I don’t know.”

“Historically,” Remus says, “you haven’t had a lot of difficulty with women.” He’s watched enough women’s eyes go right past him and latch onto Sirius over the years to know.

“I didn’t have to chase them, though,” Sirius says, as if that was a given. “Women just seem to– show up, sometimes. I don’t know! We watched James do plenty of chasing, with Lily, but that didn’t work out until he stopped…”

Remus is about to counter this, as he has definitely seen Sirius flirt, most especially in Muggle bars; he almost says the name Marlene McKinnon and bites his tongue before bringing up another dead friend. Thinking on it, though, he’s not sure Sirius has ever had to say more than ‘how about it, then?’. Thinking on it, he’s pretty sure it was more often whichever girl was in question saying that to Sirius.

“What do you reckon?” Sirius asks Remus, as if he’s somehow likely to know more on the subject of successful seduction of married women. Sirius reaches into his jeans pocket, pulling out a stack of letters so thick there’s definitely been some ‘enchantment of a Muggle artifact on hand’. “I’ve got Lily’s letters, to me, ever since we started writing in sixth year. There’s some stuff about her sister, here. I thought that might be a start.”

He holds the stack out to Remus. After what feels like a long moment, Remus takes the parchment. When he opens the top letter, the ink on the cared-for letters is still so crisp she might have penned it yesterday. His own letter stack from Lily is nowhere so thick as Sirius’, but her hand is as familiar to him as his own. As familiar as any of the Marauders’ handwriting, still living, somewhere, on their lost map.

Remus, sighing, looks up and meets Sirius’ desperate, hopeful eyes. “It’s a start,” he agrees, thinking, as he has so many times over the years, okay, so we’re doing this. As he smooths out the letter on his lap, a thought catches him. The sister, Sirius keeps saying. “Er- you do remember Lily’s sister’s name, right?”

“Of course. It’s Poppy,” Sirius says, automatically, and Remus briefly thinks OhMyGod again, before Sirius gives him a wan version of his smile and says, “Don’t worry. I know perfectly well it’s Prunella.”

Remus, sure he’s kidding, begins to half-smile back, but as Sirius, tapping the letter parchment, adds, “Prunella Black. Doesn’t sound so bad,” finds himself breaking into a laugh, if a silent one, for the first time since… since, perhaps, the last time both of them were with James.

Chapter Text

The young Mrs Dursley, of Number 4, Privet Drive, is trying to get through the grocery with two one-year-olds, when the handsomest man to ever speak to her says, “Can I help you?”

Her first assumption is that he must work there. But he’s dressed too nicely, in a jumper and trousers that are clearly a bit posh. He’s a bit posh, himself. The blue of the jumper makes his eye color jump, and his short, swooping dark hair looks recently trimmed. His hair’s unfairly glossy.

Petunia’s sister had once offered to let her use a hair potion that made hair look that glossy, but Petunia Dursley, then Evans, had turned her sister down.

(After being turned down from her sister’s magic school, Petunia had spent a lifetime turning down her sister. Petunia had turned down several pleas from Lily to meet with her, about a year before her sister died.

She was still getting used to those words: died, and dead, meaning really, this time, gone.)

For this man to be offering help, she must look overwhelmed. She is overwhelmed. Her hair is askew. Dudley is letting out the low wails that prelude a scream, and the other one is sitting in the cart, not as properly secured as none of the carts were built for two children this size, and she couldn’t well leave him in the car or home alone, could she. Some new woman named Figg moved in just off Privet Drive and has offered to help watch the boys, but Petunia’s not about to leave Dudley with her and not sure what this Figg woman’s after, anyway. After the way this trip has gone, she may have to take her up on it, next time. Vernon certainly isn’t going to be picking up the groceries himself, after his long days in the office…

“You could pass me that milk carton,” Petunia says grudgingly. She continues eyeing Mr. Too-Handsome as he puts the milk right in her cart. Right next to Harry.

“Is your… little one all right in there?” he asks, eyeing Harry, who’s a little small even in the carrier Dudley outgrew at six months. 

“He’s not mine,” snaps Petunia, instinctively, and then, because now she’s gone and said the sort of thing she has to explain, “He’s my sister’s son. I’m… watching him.”

“Kind of you,” says Mr. Handsome.

 Harry reaches for Mr. Handsome’s finger, and Mr. Handsome hesitates, looking at Petunia, before drawing his hand just out of reach.

“Do you have a shopping list?” says Mr. Handsome, his hand still hovering emptily.

“Of course I have a shopping list.”

Mr. Handsome shuffles from side-to-side a little, impatiently. “If you give it here—er, if you’d allow me to assist, we’ll have you out of here and home in half the time.”

It’s not exactly pleasant, being at the store with two babies needing this much care, but part of Petunia recoils, at being stuck home again. Everything was so much easier, with just Dudley; it wasn’t so hard to get out of the house, for one.

“Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” says Petunia.

“It’s not a bother.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“I’d like to help you, though.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m nice,” barks Mr. Handsome, and Petunia instinctively pulls the cart closer to her.

Mr. Handsome holds up his hands and says, slowly, “Because my… mother raised me right, and I can’t in good conscience go about my shopping watching you struggle."

“Everyone else seems to manage,” Petunia says sharply, and finds herself blasted by the full force of Mr. Handsome’s blinding smile.

“I’m not everyone else,” he says. “May I help you?”

Petunia will never be sure quite what came over her, if it was the novelty of a man this good-looking wanting to run her errands or that she can’t remember when someone last offered her help and meant it. But she pulls her shopping list out and places it in his still-extended hand.

“If it means so much to you, well,” she says, as he peruses her handwritten list. He blinks, and for a moment she’s not sure he can read it. 

“It isn’t a long list,” she adds.

He swallows, tucking the list away. “You’ve very pretty handwriting,” he says, sounding a little far away.

Something is wrong with this man. Petunia still blushes at the compliment.

“If you’re not going to check the list, I’ll be needing it back,” she says, but he’s already reaching for eggs, exactly the size she intended.

“I’ve memorized it,” he says.

“Oh, have you?” Petunia says archly. “I’ll be cooking what, exactly?”

“The stuff of dreams,” he says, “in the shape of Spaghetti Bolognese.”

“…That’s Shakespeare.”

“Is it?” Mr. Handsome says. “Surely not the Spaghetti Bolognese?”

Dudley has, without Petunia fussing to get him to quiet, halted the brewing temper tantrum on his own. To her consternation, as soon as she turns her attention back to him, his little face screws up, ready to yell again.

“Duddies, here’s your dum-dum,” she says, swooping a pacifier out of her purse, quickly. Dudley had lost interest in his pacifier, but since Harry’s arrival, Dudley’s been trying to grab at Harry’s and wanted his own again.

By the time Dudley’s settled again, Petunia’s lost sight of Mr. Handsome—and him with her list—but follows Harry’s wide, green (Lily’s) eyes to where Mr. Handsome is collecting the correct cheeses and the roast she’ll need for Sunday.

“Thank you,” Petunia finds herself saying, more times than she is comfortable with, every time he runs something back to the cart, and eventually, as it just makes sense and the moving cart seems to keep the babies at ease, she finds herself going through the store with him, pushing along as he collects the pasta and the like.

An older woman gives her a furtive, approving look with one look at Mr. Handsome’s blue jumper—and that’s not a new feeling, not at all, Petunia’s been proud, always, to be out in public with Vernon, felt that I’ve got a boyfriend, look, I’ve got a husband rush, it’s just… she’s not used to so much actual looking. And then she passes the woman from Number 7 Privet Drive and oh, no, she’s been asking enough questions about Harry’s arrival already—

Dudley saves Petunia from having to talk to her neighbor with an absolutely explosive sound from his diaper. The smell, too, is instantaneous, and Harry, immediately downwind, bursts into tears.

Dudley, hearing the wail, starts in himself.

“Never mind the rest of the list,” Petunia says, ready to get out of there. She has a nappy change for Dudley in the car, but checkout line looks to be a nightmare first.

Mr. Handsome, looking between the cart full of both babies and groceries—he’s been stacking them very cautiously around Harry’s carrier—manages to harangue another, empty cart that seems to have just drifted toward them down the aisle.

Before she can ask what he’s doing, he’s moved the groceries into the second cart.

“I’ll handle the rest of the list,” Mr. Handsome says, determinedly.

If it comes to it, Petunia will come back for groceries on another, normal day, without slightly wild-eyed men in blue jumpers present. More concerned with the ongoing screams and smells, she takes her cart, emptied of anything but babies, and sets about heading outside to change Dudley in the backseat of her car. Though Harry’s often oddly, eerily silent in comparison, like a story of a changeling child, he’s crying avidly in his carrier, and seems to be trying to say “foot”.

He can talk, pretty well, for age one. Not much of a walker, not like her Dudley, but he certainly does more talking. He can say Mama and Dada all too well and Petunia’s had to hush him in front of Vernon several times already, for asking very clearly for lights and a “wand”.   

Harry’s vocabulary’s annoyingly ahead of Dudley’s, for that matter. Petunia’s about to draw out a wipe when she realizes Harry needs a change, too; he can wait until she gets home, she thinks, but sighs, if she has to go back in, she’s certainly not going to leave him in the car… so she’s finishing changing her second diaper, and her hands still smell two wipes on and she’s worried something landed on her dress, and can’t find the spot, but she can tell… when Mr. Handsome emerges with the cart of groceries, all bagged.

“Here we are,” he says. “I’ll just put these in your trunk, shall I?”

Petunia stares at him. “Are they waiting for me inside to pay?”

“Oh, no,” he says. “It’s fine.”

Her first thought is that he’s stolen groceries, something about his expressions suggests to her he may not be above doing so, but she’s reminded, looking at him, how posh and glossy he looks.

“I have my checkbook,” she says, fumbling for it. “How much do I owe you?”

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’ve got money.” He pauses, tilting his head almost hopefully. “I’ve got a good amount of money, really.”

“That must be nice for you,” says Petunia. Dudley’s reaching for her, and not buckled into his seat yet; she swings him up and onto her hip, even though he’s heavy these days. She has the car door open, still, and Harry’s cooing, for some reason.

“It’s other things that’re nice, really,” Mr. Handsome says. “Money’s just… metal. Paper, that is. Both.”

Only people who have downright heaps of money say things like that. Posh, indeed.

“It comes in handy,” Mr. Handsome says, popping the latch of her trunk. He loads the bags in.

“I’m certain,” Petunia says. “But I don’t hold with charity—"

“What’s wrong with charity?”

Dudley’s pulling at her hair. She frees a strand, with difficulty. A few blonde strings remain in his fist.

“I suppose, if someone needs it… but my husband makes good money. I can pay you back.”

“It’s a gift,” he says. “A kindness. Like you watching your sister’s son.”

She’d forgotten she’d told him that. She almost protests. Because it’s not true. She’s not kind. She hasn’t been feeling particularly kind toward Harry, at all. She just doesn’t know what else to do.

“I can’t accept,” she says, buckling Dudley into his car seat.

Mr. Handsome closes the trunk. “You can throw the groceries out of your car, if you like,” he says. “Be a shame though, wouldn’t it?”

He makes a little face, at Dudley or Harry or both of them. Harry coos, again. It’s not a sound he’s been making much on Privet Drive.

“Who are you?” Petunia demands.

“My name?”

He doesn’t offer it. She’d meant a little more than that, but straining for politeness, Petunia says, “Yes. You haven’t given your name.”

“You haven’t given yours?”

“Dursley,” Petunia says. “Mrs. Petunia Dursley.”

“Your given name’s prettier than the last,” he says.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Phonetically. Trips off the tongue a little better. Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t think of such things, generally,” she said. He’s looking at the boys like he wants to ask their names, but thinking better of it, and she’s increasingly… suspicious. She’s not sure, what, exactly, she suspects him of, and he was too distractingly handsome to wonder in the first place. Vernon’s always saying things, about men this pretty, and they’re floating through her mind now, making her question his intentions.

“I’m a Mr. Black, myself,” he says, in a rush. He pauses, looking for her reaction, as if she might know the name—Black’s a wildly common surname—then mutters something that sounds like “Ryan”.

“Ryan?” There was an American actor on a soap named that; mostly, though, she’s met a few girls named Ryan, taken after the surname. But the only boys she know with that first name are closer to Dudley’s age. “That’s unusual.”

“Is it?” Mr. Handsome Sounds-Like-Ryan Black says, sounding vaguely concerned. “It’s spelled, er… R-i-o-n.”

“Unusual,” Petunia says, again. “Was the spelling to make it less Irish?”

“I reckon it’d make it more Irish,” Mr. Handsome says, baffled, and Petunia decides not mention Vernon’s thoughts on things being too Irish and how they certainly don’t mention any of the Irish relatives in her own family tree.

She brushes through another ‘thank you’ and secures both children firmly, then goes to get in the front seat of her car.

“Do you shop here often?” Mr. Handsome blurts.

Petunia gets in her car. “Why?” she asks, her hand poised to shut the door.

“I’m—new around here,” he said. “Trying to learn the neighborhood. Think you could show me about, sometime?”

Petunia does not like that she currently owes the man the cost of groceries. She’d almost think he’s—no, that’d be silly. More concerningly, his gaze keeps flicking to the car’s backseat. To the boys.

“I’m very busy,” she says, and shutting her door, starts her car.

Her engine makes a popping noise, and the car does not turn over. She tries again. She has a perfectly in order, new model car, Vernon sees to that.

Two minutes later, she’s still trying to turn the car over, both Harry and Dudley are fussing, and Mr. Too-Handsome is mouthing ‘can I help you’ as he raps on the window.

She rolls down her window, to say she’ll need to phone from the grocery, for a tow.

“I could take a look under the hood for you,” he says.

She declines—her husband wouldn’t want anyone less than a professional fiddling with the car.

“I’d offer you a lift home to avoid the wait, but I’ve only—” He waves, vaguely, and she follows his hand to a parked motorbike.

Something in her relaxes. There’s something funny about him, and since Harry’s been around, she’s been paranoid about any funny people.  But Lily’s sort, they don’t drive motorbikes. It’s all the ridiculousness of chimneys and broomsticks. Hooligans, generally, drive motorbikes, and Vernon wouldn’t like it, at all, but Petunia thinks she understands now: he’s simply that rich, the sort of rich who do whatever they like.

“What do you do for a living?” she asks him, interrupting a bit of a ramble of how he may not be a professional mechanic but keeps his bike well enough in order.  

Mr. Too-Handsome hesitates, as if remembering, before answering. “Family business. And investments.”

Vernon approves of that sort of wealthy far more than hearing independently wealthy, a state which is enviable but annoying. She nods, approvingly, beginning to fetch the boys out of the car to go inside to use the telephone, when another man about their age comes walking up.

His jumper and trousers look decidedly less posh than Mr. Handsome’s, though very respectable and tidy, and Mr. Handsome starts at seeing him, thrown off by the stranger’s approach.

“Can I offer you a jump?” the man says, holding out the appropriate cables. He’s young but drawn and tired; he’s badly in need of some meat on his bones. “I’m parked right there.”

“Which car?” Mr. Handsome asks, sounding startlingly skeptical.

The tired-looking man nods at a green car one over, and Mr. Handsome scoffs, apparently unimpressed by the vehicle.

“We can get you moving in a moment, ma’am,” the new man says, very firmly, looking as if he’s staring down Mr. Handsome. “We wouldn’t want you stuck here in the grocery lot. I can tell it’s a very simple fix.”

 “Oh, you can?” Petunia and Mr. Handsome say at the same time, Mr. Handsome with far more irritation.

 “Would you allow me?” the man says, and Petunia, anxious to get going, lets him pop the hood. She doesn’t see him pull out his keys, but he opens his own car easily enough and Petunia’s never seen anyone jump a car faster in her life. Her engine roars to life.

Tired-looking man and Mr. Handsome are now muttering to each other, seemingly about the motor, but there’s something oddly familiar about them together and a hefty amount of exasperation being exchanged, for a meeting between strangers.

Petunia may be almost discourteous, in how rapidly she runs through her thanks and peels away. The car seems to be running absolutely fine. Once back in her driveway, she makes sure it's starting properly, multiple times.

She does not tell Vernon about the car trouble, or the interesting man-- men, really-- at the grocery. She thinks she’d better not.

But she wakes up that night to the sound of an engine’s put-put-put that distinctly sounds like a motorbike looping down the street. Unable to go back to sleep, she finds herself going to the nursery where they’ve stowed Harry beside Dudley, until they find somewhere better for her sister's son, and thinks about kind and nice and other things she knows too well she isn’t. An hour later, she thinks she hear that motorbike engine again.

On the porch of Number 4, Privet Drive in the morning, only after Vernon’s left for work with a kiss goodbye and coffee she made him in hand, she finds a bouquet of cultivated petunias on her porch. Petunias are most certainly not in season.

Thinking of the last time she found something on her porch, and how much trouble that’s been, Petunia promptly, without opening the attached note, drops the flowers into the nearest bin.

Despite herself, the next time she hears a motorbike, she still finds herself rushing to the window blinds.

Chapter Text

Sirius Black, as a clever man who is fully aware of his cleverness, knows that the plan is not going well.

“It’s a shame you’re not the one who can turn into a dog,” says Sirius, spinning his wand between his fingers at Remus’ tiny kitchen table. “I can’t very well go walking Moony down her street.”

Remus’ hand clenches around his tea cup. Cleverness aside, Sirius couldn’t say for sure if Remus is stifling a laugh or about ready to hit him.

“No, you very well can’t,” Remus agrees, without inflection. He sips his tea.

James would have carried the joke. He’d have gone in, on what sort of a collar and leash best suited a werewolf and what the fine people of Privet Drive would make of one, and Remus would have cracked a smile and joined in rather than being so… flat.

Flatness is the worst, of Remus’ tones. Sirius would far rather Remus be annoyed with him outright.

James would be annoyed with him, by now—the way James always would, when something was a great joke in the beginning and then Sirius kept it going a bit too long.

Lily would have been annoyed with him long before now.

Lily’s letters haven’t been as helpful as hoped. Petunia ‘likes soaps’, she’d written, in one. When Sirius began plotting both a delivery of bath soaps and a conversation in the soap aisle, Remus had explained, in context, he was entirely sure by ‘soaps’ Lily meant a television programme.

Sirius had once joked to Lily, amid wedding planning, maybe he’d seduce her sister.

Mercifully, you have too much neck for my sister’s taste, she’d written back. He’d only fully gotten the joke after seeing Vernon Dursley. He scratches his chin with his wand. Maybe I’ll grow a beard—the better to hide the existence of my neck, Sirius thinks, tucking that away with all the lines he’ll never get to write Lily.

“Walk this back with me,” says Sirius. He tilts his wand toward the bottle of whiskey perched precariously by Remus’ sink. The bottle bobbed its way jauntily through the air until it reached his hand.  

That’s what they’d done, the four of them, with snags they ran into while becoming Animagi, with the Marauders’ Map. That was how they’d solved the antler buds that James’ hair had luckily been thick enough to cover up during the week it took them, the enchanted ink spill they’d had to get off Peter’s skin. Figure out where you’d gone wrong, to go forward.

Remus takes the bottle Sirius has been pouring a glass for himself from and, with a sigh, adds some to his tea.

“You’re doing well enough,” says Remus.

Sirius, his whiskey glass lifted, gives Remus a hard look. He keeps glaring as he sips, slowly.

“It’s a long game. She hasn’t rung the police, about the unsigned flowers. There’s that.”

That’s an important distinction. The police had been rung by someone on Privet Drivet, that was for sure, with a noise complaint regarding a motorcycle. Sirius had been pulled over in broad daylight—he could have outrun the police car trolling through the neighborhood, of course, but that would only work against the plan. He’d assured the officer his motorbike ran near-soundlessly and demonstrated, but after that he had to stop puttering through the neighborhood loudly enough to grab her attention. There seems to have been a call in to the dogcatcher, too. 

He suspects Dursley, of that. Dursley’s only spotted him once as Padfoot but the man went to grab a golf club, to take a swing at him. Sirius had lingered, to see if Dursley was the sort of man who meant only to protect himself or to come at him. After a while of snarling and waiting, while Dursley came nearer with the club, he gauged Dursley as a man who fully meant to strike a ‘stray dog’ with the club but didn’t have the courage to come close enough. Not when it came down to it.

Sirius had done a lot of thinking, about how easy it would be to tear open Vernon Dursley’s barely-there neck. Of course, it would be easier if Petunia was a widow, to get himself into her house and Harry’s life. But mostly, it just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, a man like Dursley, still taking up space and air in a world where James Potter was dead.

“I thought you were against signing the flowers,” says Sirius. “She didn’t bin the poinsettia, though.” She’d binned the flowers he’d dropped off three times before that. The poinsettia had been a December choice, as the weeks kept slipping by. Petunia keeping the poinsettia was his grand success to date; he’d gotten a laugh out of Remus, too, that a ‘Poinsettia Black’ would fit well on his family tree.

“I’m still in favor of deniability between her grocery friend and the mysterious bouquets,” says Remus, “given that I’m still of the opinion mysterious flowers are only charming in novels.”

Sirius pats the pocket he kept Lily’s letters in. “Novels she reads,” he says. Or read, past tense. He hasn’t seen Petunia do much reading. “‘Grocery friend’ is putting it a bit hopefully, too.”

Petunia had gone to a different grocery, further away, the week after he’d introduced himself, disappointingly… but then she’d made a ‘milk run’ barely a day later. Not just to her local grocery but at the same hour and time of day she’d last seen him. There’d been spots of color, high on her cheeks, when she’d spotted him flipping through a Muggle magazine near checkout.

She’d given him a narrow-eyed look when he’d asked, perhaps not idly enough, about the whereabouts of her little ones.

“Home with my husband,” she’d said.

“Doesn’t he work?”

“It’s a bank holiday,” Petunia had said, witheringly. It wasn’t a wizarding sort of thing, to celebrate banks; Sirius had nodded but frustratingly had to research that later.

That was about all the conversation he’d managed that time. Sirius had tried commenting on the singer on the magazine cover, who he knew a little of from Dorcas Meadowes’ records. Petunia had made one sniffing comment on the singer ‘dressing like that’. Sirius had held his tongue, though his eyebrows had lifted enough that Petunia blushed more deeply, either with anger or embarrassment, and she’d quick-stepped her way out of the store.

He’d then stayed clear, on one grocery run, at Remus’ urging that he couldn’t look like he was there all the time, and outright missed another, sheer bad timing as he couldn’t quite watch Privet Drive every waking hour. Not quite.

In their latest exchange, he’d gotten Petunia’s opinion on the best produce, getting around her initial protest he could ask someone who worked there by pointing out, in a mock-whisper, of course, they’d only care about moving product, and not have his best interests at heart.

“And I have your best interests at heart?” Petunia had said, so dryly she sounded like Lily for a moment, while Harry blinked at him with Lily’s eyes from his secure spot in her shopping cart.

Sirius had fumbled in silence too long for a charming reply; Petunia had finally just sniffed and given him brisk advice on the best grapefruits.

She’d recently done an immense shopping to ready for upcoming Christmas dinner, looking harried, but although Sirius had worn a green jumper and Santa hat for optimum effect, she’d outright hurried right by him when he went to make his hello. He’d realized later Dursley was sitting in the car, with the boys. Petunia was still shopping when Sirius left. Dursley had been yelling at the boys in their car seats.

Sirius isn’t sure what he’d have done if it’d been Harry wailing, but it was as usual the Dursley boy that was crying, Duddy or Diddy or something, while Harry was silent and watchful. Wizarding children could be, sometimes; Sirius remembered from class that children born with magic had at times frightened Muggles, for just that wide-eyed watchfulness. Dursley stopped yelling to make suspicious eye contact with Sirius as he’d walked by; Sirius had doffed the Santa hat and mock-bowed, keeping his eyes on the back. Dinky stopped crying, distracted by the sweep of the hat.

That was the grand extent of Sirius’ progress. He’d driven by on his motorbike once while she was pushing a stroller around her neighborhood. Remus had urged him only to wave, not to alarm her, and maybe that’d worked, because she’d hesitantly waved back as he passed.

But with the weather turning there hadn’t been walks since. Beyond the grocery, there’s few places he can plant himself. Petunia doesn’t go into an office, doesn’t belong to any group he could join. If she left Privet Drive for anything but shopping, it was only when Dursley was home. Even then, with two one-year-olds, it was only for takeaway or to visit Dursley’s family.

Petunia seems to have phone calls with women she knew from work, back when she worked. She cooks. She gardens, when she gets both boys down for a nap. It’s a nice garden, even if she has been losing control of the weeds with one nap or the other ending too soon. Sirius has been slinking through the garden as Padfoot often enough to be something of an authority on it.

James had been a good gardener. Most of the labor in a wizarding garden was little more than a flick of the wand, but he hadn’t minded getting dirt in his fingernails, when Mrs. Potter thought some bush or another needed more hands-on care. Sirius had spent a lot of hours lounging about in the Potters’ garden while James worked; he’d only laughingly rouse himself when James threatened to tell his mother that her darling-always-welcome Sirius was such a layabout.

Until all this, Sirius had only ever brought two women flowers.

Mrs. Potter, often, when he swept in from his bachelor’s flat for tea.

Lily, when Harry was born. Though before that, he’d wound up carrying wedding bouquets, as part of various best man duties tossed his way. He’d wound up carrying some of the endless flowers, in and out of the funeral too.

“Deniability aside, she must suspect you,” says Remus. “She hasn’t told her husband.”

“Or he’d have called the police,” Sirius agrees. “I’d half-like them to try and arrest me; I haven’t had a good fight in weeks.”

It’s Remus’ turn to give him a look.

“You’re right,” admits Sirius in response. “The Muggle police wouldn’t be a good fight.”

Remus adds more whiskey to his tea. He looks tired. The next full moon is December 26, which puts something of a damper on his Christmas and means Remus made plans with his parents for New Year’s, instead. Sirius doesn’t have plans himself, though he’ll drop by to make sure Remus’ chains are secure.  

Annoyingly, most of the Dursleys’ Christmas shopping itself has been done by catalogue, or by the husband, who seems to stop in at some store or another every day after work for another grotesquely oversized stuffed animal. With that mountain of packages, more than enough for four children, let alone two, Harry will at least have a nice Christmas on that front. It’s not as if he’ll remember it. Harry certainly won’t remember his first Christmas with Lily and James and Sirius managing to visit with eggnog and a small mountain of presents. Sirius almost brings it up to Remus before realizing he’s not exactly sure where Remus spent last Christmas.

He spins his emptied whiskey glass. He’d wanted to be in that house with Harry, by Christmas. A confidence spell or love potion or murder would have managed that, but, morals aside, Dumbledore’s got eyes on Privet Drive.

Arabella Figg came out in curlers from her new house on Wisteria Walk one of the days his motorcycle was puttering particularly loudly through the neighborhood; he’d put down his motorbike’s kickstand, gotten himself invited in, and left covered in cat hair but having convinced Arabella not to mention him. She’d always thought him a ‘nice boy’, somehow, liked that he called her Arabella although she was his mother’s age, liked that he and James had included her when they’d gotten those Order T-shirts printed and passed them out. While having scones on her settee, she’d referenced the T-shirt nonsense, in a tone so affectionate Sirius thought she might just have that nonsense framed.  

Arabella had gotten to see Harry, hold Harry. Just the once so far, but once was more than Sirius had managed. Despite all the presents they bought, Dursley was apparently cheap in some ways; Arabella had gotten it around through the neighborhood grapevine that she’d pop in to watch the boys free of charge and that, with a little time, had eroded suspicion. It’s irritating to Sirius, both that the Dursleys allowed a near-stranger into their house, when Harry so needs to be protected, and also that Arabella, and backing her, Dumbledore, managed the very thing he’s failing at.

“I could still buy a house in the neighborhood,” muses Sirius. That’d get Dumbledore’s attention for sure, but the man couldn’t stop him.

“You’ve got the money, you could.” Remus’ tone remains bland, if more carefully following a little bit of whiskey.

“Don’t leave it at that,” says Sirius, irritated. “I could Polyjuice myself into looking like Vernon Dursley, put the man in some cupboard. I haven’t tested Lily’s protection, but it shouldn’t keep me out. I could move into their house unseen and haunt them. I could convince her I’m Arabella’s nephew, never mind the risk of that putting them off Arabella. I could, sure. Do you think it’s wise, or not, that’s the thing.”

“Wise?” Remus puts his hand on his face. “I’ll say this, I don’t have a better idea. I wasn’t the one with the ideas.”

Sirius kicks his chair onto its back legs, balancing, as if it’ll balance out his thoughts. He’s always hated it when Remus did that, put all the credit on him and James, but the last thing he needs is to pick a fight.

“If you hadn’t shown yourself by her car that first day,” says Sirius, thinking, trying to walk back again, “we could’ve used that as a solid second seduction chance—"

Remus’ face twitches behind his hand at the word ‘seduction’, like he’s going to laugh. Mostly Sirius calls it ‘the plan’, even to himself. Every time he says, or even thinks, the word ‘seduce’, he can practically hear James crowing and Lily despairing in his direction.

Practically. And there’s the rub. He’s not going to hear them, ever again. He’s not hearing them. He’s conjuring them out of memory, and more, something like understanding…

“Excuse me,” says Remus, which at least interrupts that thought train. Sirius didn’t like where it was barreling, anyway. “I think I misheard you. Did you suggest a woman you can’t get might go for me?”

“I don’t think ‘can’t get’ is quite decided yet, but that should’ve been our backup plan, yeah,” says Sirius, and nearly topples his chair when Remus starts to laugh, so startlingly hard he winds up coughing.

Sirius doesn’t find it as funny as Remus seems to, but the amusement, eventually is catching. “I suppose you’ve been thrown to the wolves enough in your life already.”

Between coughs, Remus says, “Thanks, except that I think it’d be rather lowering, for wolves, to be compared to the Dursleys.”

“She’s not so bad,” Sirius says reflexively. Remus hasn’t been watching them as much as he has, just a few times, under a shabby Invisibility Cloak from their Order work; it doesn’t have a spot on James’ good one.

“Yes,” Remus says. “She is. More than that if I, somehow, seduced Petunia Dursley after you failed—and for many, many reasons, there is no world where this comes to pass—exactly how do you plan to wind up raising Harry? Or did you plan on handing that responsibility right over to me? I’m not the one who’s Harry’s godfather.”

“I don’t need reminding,” Sirius says. “You could have taken me in as Padfoot. Presuming a world where that all came to pass.”

“Of course,” Remus mutters.

“If Vernon Dursley wasn’t such gobshite, I’d have gone the dog route in the first place,” Sirius says. He pauses, then shakes his head.

“What?”

Remus would rather not know, Sirius suspects, but as he’s trying to build back trust, he shrugs and says, “I was considering there may be some Muggle women who might not mind, a dog getting into their house and turning into a tall dark stranger.”

“A tall dark stranger who looks like you.”

“Granted. I’m fairly certain Petunia’s not one of them, though.”

“I’m entirely certain.”

“Well, it was never a very serious consideration.”

James wouldn’t have been able to resist the opening for a very bad pun, never mind that they all were sick of them after first year and their entire class at Hogwarts seemed to spend the next six years using synonyms for ‘serious’ at all cost.

Remus sighs, and there’s a wry twist to his lips as he does, but it’s gone as if never there by the time he finishes his breath.

“Go on,” says Sirius. “Say your bit.”

“There’s no bit.”

“You want to tell me off about something.”

“It’s only that… I don’t think James and Lily would want this.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” Sirius says. “No, I don’t think they would want to be dead, either.”

Remus pauses, deliberately. Sirius forces his grief-wrapped petulance down and waves him on.

“It wouldn’t hurt to explore other avenues, like buying a house in the neighborhood.”

“Because you don’t think I can really manage this.”

“Because… I don’t think James and Lily would want Petunia Dursley, for you.”

Sirius feels sucker-punched. “You don’t think Lily would want her sister—"

Remus keeps looking down at his tea and forcing himself to look back up. Sirius can see the grief biting at him, too. “I can’t speak for Lily, but I strongly believe she cared more, for you—”

“Differently.” Sirius thinks of Regulus, compared to his friends. Differently.

“They wouldn’t want you punishing yourself with that woman, Sirius.” Remus shakes his head, takes a deep breath. “She’s not warm, she’s not kind, she’s not smart, even.”

Sirius stares down at his hands, a long time. She’s not a spot on Lily, he hears behind Remus’ words. He’s thought it himself. It’s not just that Petunia wound up married to a man like Dursley. She chose Dursley. That man, alone, speaks ill of her.   

“She does the crossword,” he says finally, still at his hands. “After her husband’s gone for work, before she throws out his paper.”

“Is she good at it?”

“No.” Sirius shrugs. “But when no one’s watching, she tries.”

They sit in silence for what feels like a long time, before Remus says, “If there was somewhere she wanted to go, badly enough to accept anyone’s invitation, that would be a real start.”

Pubs, clubs, restaurants, museums… did anything matter to Petunia, beyond the sphere of her neat little neighborhood? Sirius taps Lily’s letters in thought. She wanted to be posh. She’d wanted to go to Hogwarts, once.

It’s something to keep thinking about, as 1982 looms.

Sirius goes to spy through the Dursleys’ window on Christmas evening, after werewolf-Remus is chained up and snarling.

There’s no stocking out for Harry. The stack of presents was all for the Dursleys’ own son. Harry’s too little to care, or understand. He only plops down, when the other one pushes him away from his latest push-toy. He gets on his little feet and walks toward another toy, the popper, and all’s well, at least, until Petunia’s son notices where the sound is coming from and wails, that Harry has his things.

Petunia, rather than scolding her son, puts Harry in the playpen, out of reach of her own child’s toys.

Everything in Sirius goes cold. He almost changes form, back from dog to himself so he can storm in and get Harry out of there, by instinct.

He’s been contemplating enticing this woman with anything from opera tickets to breaking the Statute of Secrecy in some fantastical way. But there it is, the reminder of James saying, Lily cried for hours after we left dinner with her sister, of Mary Macdonald, who never had an unkind word to say about anyone, muttering at the wedding chapel that, Lily’s sister hasn’t shown up, that bitch. Lily had never called her sister names. Her friends did that for her.

Sirius had let himself forget that, lately.

Magic as old as sacrifice is tricky, but it might still work if Harry was living in a house where Petunia was kept under lock and key.

He fights down the thought. His plan is still the best possible plan. It’s an effort, to drag himself away, back to his flat. The flat’s walls still have the holes he’d punched and blasted into them back in early November. He adds a few more holes, drinking.

James would have gotten his son out of there, that minute, protection be damned.

He’s not so sure what Lily would say. It would have hurt her, to see that. But it’s her protection, not James’, when it comes down to it. He doesn’t think she’d want it broken. Not over gifts, not yet. It’d worry her, though. The casual cruelty of it.

He tries to drink enough not to dream, but it doesn’t work. He wakes up with Regulus still on his mind, his younger brother, and all the times in their childhood Sirius idly broke or took one of Regulus’ toys. All the times, before Regulus came to a foolish end, that Sirius might have reached out and didn’t bother.

Sirius understands casual cruelty, of course. He doesn’t like to admit it, but it’s harder to ignore, in dreams.

The first time he sees Petunia in 1982 is halfway into January. It’s taken that long for his anger to simmer down to something manageable. She still starts a little when she comes across him in the frozen foods.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” he says.

“Or you,” she says. The boys aren’t with her. Unless it’s another holiday celebrating banks, that suggests a win for Figg’s column. Her eyes dart over his hair, briefly, as if she’s picturing his Santa hat, the time she ignored him. “I hope you and your family had a Happy Christmas.”

“I don’t get along with my parents,” says Sirius, casually. “They preferred my brother.”

Petunia drops the fish sticks she’s turned to collect. “Preferred?”

“He came to a bad end. Fell in with the wrong sort.”

“Oh,” says Petunia. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. I know something about that.”

“What,” says Sirius, feeling rather molten, “you can’t tell me you fell in with the wrong sort, Mrs. Dursley? Or did you also happen to have a brother that did?”

He’s immediately aware that he’s just set Petunia up to refer to James Potter as the wrong sort, and that if she does, Sirius might have to hex her.

Petunia stares into the frozen food case, the cold blasting her face. Her fingers are tense on its door. “My sister died,” she says. “Recently. That’s why I have her son, you’ve seen him.”

It feels too strange, to offer empty condolences about Lily as if he really was a stranger, when he was the only one by her and James’ side at Harry’s christening. Sirius stays silent.

“We weren’t close,” adds Petunia hastily, putting the fish sticks in her basket.

“I wasn’t close with my brother, either.”

Petunia nods, sharply, as if confirming understanding, as if saying goodbye. She half pivots on her heel, then turns back.

“Older or younger?”

“My brother was younger.”

Petunia purses her lips. “My sister was, too.” Almost suspiciously, she adds, “My parents preferred her, too.”

Sirius rocks forward on his heels. “Were you the rebel in your family, too?” he asks, smiling as he knows she wasn’t.

Petunia doesn’t react the way he expects. “I left home as soon as I could. I saw my family, but I’ve never been back there.”

“Me neither,” Sirius says, his surprise showing. “Not the house, that is, I’m in London often enough.”

“Oh, you grew up in London,” says Petunia, her tone somewhere between sagely expecting that and enviously impressed. She’s forgotten to check if anyone around is watching them; one of her Privet Drive neighbors is, in fact, practically gaping from the end of the aisle. But Petunia’s looking at him. “I used to work in London.”

The standard reply would be to ask where Petunia came from, but Sirius has heard enough about Cokeworth to suspect she’d close right back up.

“Do you get in to the city often?”

She still closes up. “My husband works there, but with all the riots and bombs, no, I—”

“Surely,” says Sirius, flashing a smile, “you wouldn’t let an occasional news story stop you from shopping at Harrods?”

It’s the only Muggle store he knows the name of; half the time he used to meet Andromeda to catch up in London, she was coming from there, with bags.

“Surely,” he says, pushing it a little, thinking of where’s posh, “you still get a day to yourself  around Knightsbridge or Chelsea?”

It’s as if he’s said a spell, the way Petunia’s face changes at those words.

“Around Sloane Square, you mean.” Petunia gives him a newly studying look, a nod, at his tidy jumper, as if she’s added something up.

“Sure,” says Sirius.

“What,” says Petunia, “is it again that brought you to Little Whinging? You’re hardly—” Her hand darts to his empty ring finger. “Typical.”

“Of the sort that likes to leave London?” Sirius arches his eyebrows. They’re still standing in the frozen foods section. He’d suggest a change of venue, but then she’d bolt for sure.

Petunia gives him an expectant, unembarrassed look.  

“It’s a matter of family obligation,” says Sirius. “You understand that, of course. Given your sister’s son.”

Petunia jerks a little, reflexively, a touch of embarrassment entering her eyes. They look little like Lily’s, not green, rather unnervingly lighter.

“I ought to be going.” She grabs, rather haphazardly, at more boxes of frozen foods, to fill her basket.

“Did you like London?” he asks her. “When you lived there?”

“It’s a city that’s always getting more expensive,” she says, reflexively. “To raise children—"

“Do you miss it?” Sirius interrupts. His tone’s too rough. “I miss what it was, for me, when I first left home. Do you miss what it was, for you?”

Petunia straightens her shoulders, lengthening her neck. “It’s where I met my husband,” she says, chin up, emphasis on the key word. “It’s never been much else, for me. Excuse me, I’m running late, but it was—it was nice talking to you.”

Sirius is still angry at the woman. But… “You too,” he says, waving her off.

Once she’s checked out, he buys a whole pile of the Muggle papers at checkout and takes them back until he’s determined the restaurant Petunia would be most interested in. There’s one the princess who just married into the royal family frequents—accordingly to the papers, said princess was the most famous of the well-heeled crowd from around Sloane Square. Sirius tends to forget their country has a princess, it’s part of such a different world from his own, long at war. But that tracks, with how Petunia took that.

The Italian restaurant is a little too upmarket for takeaway, but that’s where being a wizard comes in handy. Sirius waits until a night he knows Dursley is working late at the office—he’d complain-bragged about his importance to his company loudly enough to a neighbor for a lurking dog to pick up on it.

 Then he heads up her porch with the takeaway, along with matchbooks from the restaurant, bearing its famous name, and rings the bell of Number 4, Privet Drive.

Petunia looks paler and more wide-eyed than ever, when she opens the door and sees who’s standing there.

“I was coming back from London, thought you might—”

“How did you know where I live?” She tries to whisper, but it comes out whisper-shriek, as she peers around to see if any neighbors are watching. From her reaction, someone’s peering through their blinds.

He smiles, slowly. “You’re in the phonebook, Mrs. Dursley." The whole Order had to learn to use phonebooks to find certain Muggle addresses quickly while fighting Voldemort; Sirius doesn’t like to think about why.

"I won’t keep you, only wanted to drop this off for you. Thought you might appreciate a break from all that cooking you do.” He holds out the bag and the restaurant matchbooks, logo face-up.

When she doesn’t reach to take it, Sirius sets the takeaway bag down on the porch. He’d rather be leaving presents for Harry to outdo his cousin’s pile. He’d rather be pushing through the open door, knowing Harry’s so close inside. Instead, he gives Petunia a little wave and walks jauntily back down to his motorbike. He kicks up the kickstand and hops on.

“Don’t you have a helmet?” Petunia calls, from the door. She’s picked up the takeaway bag, even if she is eyeing it like it’s a bag of dogshit.

“Somewhere,” calls Sirius back, and he takes off.

He waits three days and makes sure to take his motorbike right past Number 4, Privet Drive, at leisurely speed, on his way to the grocery. He stands by the rack of paperback aisle and has made it through most of one before Petunia peers down the aisle. Sirius’ heart lurches.

Harry’s in her grocery cart, alongside Dudley, both boys standing and trying to peer over the sides. Petunia keeps moving their hands of the edge and urging them to sit down.

He hasn’t seen Harry so up close in too long. Harry’s bigger. His hair’s longer.

“Petunia, how’d you like the food?” calls Sirius, grinning.

She stops, scrutinizing him. “For all I knew it might have been poisoned.”

Sirius shrugs. He tries to focus on her, not Harry. Harry’s staring right at him, a little confusedly before he breaks into a baby grin. A few more of his baby teeth have come in.

“I understand if you binned the whole thing, though, quite a waste—”

“I didn’t waste it.”

“Garden compost? Fed it to your dog?” He’s trying not to look at Harry. Harry, meanwhile, is clapping his hands, taking Sirius ignoring him as a game.

“My husband has a perfectly strong constitution, so—”

“So you let him try it first,” says Sirius. He resists the urge to crow. Possibly-poisoned food, but so expensive, she’d decided she might as well test it out on Dursley. The course of true love and all. “Sensible.”

“You’re not,” she says. Her tone’s suddenly blunt, some pretense dropped. “A sensible man. You’re strange, and a stranger, bringing a married woman dinner, for no reason.”

“There’s a reason,” says Sirius, shutting the still-open paperback in his hands. He puts it back on its rack. “I thought of you.”

Petunia stares at him and, without needing to look, bats gently at Dudley, who’s trying to heave himself out of the cart. He’s reaching the climbing-out-of-cribs age; Harry’s a couple months behind him. Lily had written about Harry getting himself out of his Godric’s Hollow crib, but magical means had been involved; James had been far more amused than Lily about that one.

“This isn’t,” says Petunia, prying Dudley’s hands off the crib while squinting at Sirius, “how people do things.”

He leans against the wire book rack. “Normal people.”

“Yes.”

“Boring people.”

“Normal isn’t—"

“Interesting,” says Sirius. “Normal isn’t interesting. Little Whinging’s very normal, very nice, and I’m a young man from London with no lack of fortune and time on my hands, spending my days in these parts out of family obligation. Is it so strange,” Sirius puts his hands in his pockets, “given that, I find you interesting?”

In the grocery lights, Petunia’s eyes look paler than ever. Dudley makes a whine for attention; Petunia shushes him, a shush so soothing Sirius thinks, bitterly, she’d only use that tone on her own son.

“I’m normal,” she says at last.

“So you agree, that normal isn’t interesting? That is interesting.”

Petunia looks around before hissing, “I have no aspirations of being interesting!”

“Everyone,” says Sirius, “has aspirations of being interesting. At least to someone.”

Petunia draws herself up. She picks up Dudley, still fussing, bouncing him, holding onto him as if he’s something of a shield. Harry’s attention is suddenly off Sirius, watching Dudley bounce. If he picks his little hands up to be picked up, Sirius might not be able to stop himself. But Harry only watches.

“Do you often find married women so interesting you buy them dinner?” says Petunia, scathingly.

“No.”

Petunia gives him a mulish look. “You would say that.”

“I hardly mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s too late for that!” Her whisper-shriek lands on the latter side; Sirius winces.

Sirius takes a moment, planning his angle, before speaking. “Does being married mean your life’s so closed, to new acquaintances of the other sex, to any overture of knowing you better?” he says, his tone idle. “I suppose that’s how things are done, but then, I’ve never cared very much for the done thing.”

He thinks she mutters something, maybe the words ‘money’ or ‘Sloane’ and ‘strange’, again, though he can’t tell if it’s a true sentence at all if mostly lost in Dudley’s hair as she eases him, protesting, back in the cart. It’s empty, but for the boys, and there’s a more-than-small triumph: she’s clearly dragged her son and Harry to the grocery to see if the strange Mr. Black was about, not for essentials.  

“And I suppose,” says Sirius, “you’d like to see more of me, too. Or you wouldn’t be standing here, now.”

“For all I know you’re a serial killer,” Petunia snaps. “I might be standing here trying to confirm that, for the police.”

Sirius looks pointedly at the two boys. It gives him an excuse to meet Harry’s green eyes.

“With the children as a diversion,” she adds hotly, a little despairingly. “One of them might be wearing a wire, for all you know.”

Sirius’ mouth twitches. “Sensible and a sense of humor.”

Her mouth takes on a little “oh” of shock, and she hesitates, expression dancing between outrage and uncertainty. She looks unsure if he’s making fun of her, which he rather was. But from her expression he supposes no one’s credited her with a sense of humor in a while; James had called Lily’s sister humorless.

“What are you after?” Petunia no longer sounds merely a little despairing. There’s something of a tremble, in her voice, though the suspicion hasn’t left her eyes. He looks evenly at her, making sure not to so much as turn a blink toward Harry.

Sirius holds his hands up, close to his chest, in small surrender. Harry imitates him, in the cart.

“I’d like to have a conversation with you somewhere beyond a grocery aisle. Possibly somewhere with chairs. Because I find you interesting. That’s all.”

She’s very still, frozen for a long few moments, and then one of the boys makes a sound. Sirius, not looking, couldn’t actually say which; he should be able to tell his godson’s sons apart, and yet, for all his visits, with Lily and James in hiding, he missed so much. This is hardly the first time he's seen Harry with baby teeth come in during a stretch without seeing him.

“Whether that’s all or not,” Petunia snaps, turning the cart away, and the two children in it, away from him, “that’s impossible.”

Harry waves goodbye. Lily and James both liked to take credit, for teaching him that.  

Petunia heads straight out of the grocery, right toward her car, not even bothering with the pretense of purchasing something as that would force he through checkout.

She doesn’t look back. Sirius, with a sinking feeling, suspects perhaps he should have run the takeaway plan by Remus. He jogs after her.

She’s breathing a little raggedly, by her car, as she unloads the boys into their car seats. It’s not exertion; it’s upset.

“Go away,” she says, when she sees him. She hasn’t told him that before.

He stands by the driver’s side door, blocking it. He steps out of her path.

“I will, but let me say,” he says. “It’s not so impossible, to see me, if you do—"

She finishes buckling Dudley in, then leans to again tighten Harry’s strap—the car seat’s too big for him, but she does, reassuringly, double-check it, then closes the door.

Dudley immediately wails, but she ignores it, for a moment, though her face strains.

“I’m married,” she said. “There are small children in my car. I don’t go shopping in London, or to dinners. There’s nowhere around here I could show you. What do you suppose the neighbors would think, if I went to sit down with you somewhere, to talk? It’s. Impossible.”

“You wish you could, though,” says Sirius, very sure. “Talk more with me.”

Petunia, very exasperated, gives him a sweeping head-to-toe glance and doesn’t answer. She pushes past him, to the car door.

“Petunia.” He says it urgently, to make it look at him, but his own desperation leaks into his voice. He’s come this far, this fast, despite his haphazard plan, and yet he sees walls building before his eyes, ones he can’t scale, that will keep him this close and no closer. He half-closes his eyes, to hide the fear in them.

“I could come over when your husband isn’t home.”  

Petunia freezes, but not the same jerky way she did before, her shoulders tightening up. It’s more like he’s string-cut her, lanky limbs going loose and wobbly. Sirius’ hands start fidgeting, after a few moments of her staring. Forcefully, he stills them. Tilting his head, he drops a purposeful wink.

Still absent words, Petunia reaches forward and slaps him.

He could’ve caught her hand—he saw it coming but didn’t try. His hand only goes to his cheek as hers leaves it. It wasn’t a soft strike and certainly smarts, but only enough to feel awake, really.

He bursts out laughing, throwing his head back, not a happy sound but unable to help himself. The laugh catches as he sees Petunia’s cringed-back pose, as if fearing a return blow. To stifle the laugh, he closes his mouth and moves the hand at his sore cheek into a fist pressed to his lips hand, his other hand held up in surrendering apology. It takes him far too long to choke his laugh down; it’s as if she’s jarred something loose in him, something that’s been walking the edge of hysteria all this while.

Petunia’s face is different, when he gets ahold of himself. There’s a flash of something like wonderment, something like hate, but at least she isn’t cringing, anymore.

“You,” she says.

“I was too, ah, forward there,” Sirius says, lowering his hands very purposefully, “and I apologize, really, if it came out—”

“You,” Petunia repeats, something wrapped around the word this time. Something like venom or disbelief, but not quite either.  

“Me?”

“I cut your face up into little pieces,” she says, and the whatever-it-is in her voice goes more shrieking-high.

Her sentence makes absolutely no sense, which means it has to be some Muggle thing he’s missing. It sounds vaguely like something Lily’s quoted.

“That’s something Shakespeare, isn’t it?” Sirius says wisely.

She points at him, accusatorily. Sirius has never particularly liked fingers being wagged in his face.

“You’re the best man!”

It’s Sirius’ turn to freeze. For a moment, he feels as if she’s jinxed him, the ice sweeping down his spine and into his gut feels so physically real. He forces a grin, after a second that takes him a minute.

“I like to think I’m the—"

“In the pictures,” Petunia says, her voice eerily high. She doesn’t sound like Lily, much, the way everyone said Regulus’ voice could sound just like Sirius’, but at those piercing levels, well. Lily’s voice got plenty high, when she was upset. He could count on his hands the times Lily’s voice got this high in his hearing, but… still. He remembers each time, so clearly it hurts to catch the familiarity.

“In the moving, stupid—laughing!—pictures! You were her best man!”

There’s a long moment of silence. Petunia’s whey-colored face has gone far past spots of color; she’s alarmingly red from forehead to chin.

Sirius weighs his options and finally shrugs. His fingers itch for a cigarette, though he doesn’t go so far as to conjure one. He’s not sure what he’s done with any of his packs of them, all these weeks of plotting.

 “Lily’s best man,” Sirius says, holding the words. “James’ best man, really. It’s a nice thought, though, that I was Lily’s, too.”

Petunia makes a small, struck noise, before hissing, “I knew it.”

“Well,” Sirius says, “You knew just now. Seems a bit of a stretch, to say—"

“I knew there was something wrong with you!”

“Of the many things wrong with me,” Sirius says coldly, “I wouldn’t count being the Potters’ best man among them. Lily looked for you at the wedding, you know. Even though she knew you weren’t coming, she still looked for you.”

Petunia puts her car door in between him and her. “Stay back.”

“I’m still only trying to have a conversation.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying.”

“I think you do.”

“You’re here to—punish me—”

“Punish,” Sirius repeats. That’s an interesting conclusion she’s jumped to. “I thought about it, seeing as how you handled Harry’s Christmas. I've seen you wait, when he's crying, before you pick him up, your sister's son.”

“You spy,” Petunia breathes out in response. “You, you—rat!”

 It’s the wrong word. Sirius, instinctively, grabs her wrist, half-snarling, “I’m no rat,” and Petunia, just as instinctively, screams to high heaven.

A man shouts, from across the car park, and begins running.

Hell, thinks Sirius, and makes a mad dash for his motorbike. He starts it with a touch to the wand in his pocket, its wheels spinning by the time he hops on and rushes his way out of there.

He doesn’t stop the motorbike once, the whole way to Remus’ place. Remus isn’t there, at his latest interview or back at that temporary bookstore job or something—Sirius really ought to ask him; he supposes he still hasn’t been paying much attention, to Remus’ own life, amid everything.

When Remus shows up around sunset, he finds Sirius sitting outside when he comes back, on the ground, his back against his motorbike.

“What went wrong?” says Remus simply, setting his briefcase on the ground beside Sirius. So it was an interview, Sirius thinks blearily.

“I wonder if I’d feel better,” says Sirius, “if Peter was dead, instead of in Azkaban. I meant to kill him.”

Peter had been quick, quicker than Sirius knew he could be, in how he’d gone for his wand. It was a second’s thing, even with Sirius’ wand already out and raised, Peter had yelled “How could you” in a crowded street as he readied a spell, and Sirius didn’t understand, until much later, what Peter was thinking. Sirius' whole mind had felt sluggish since the second he’d seen James dead.

He had yet to forget, not for one early-morning minute. He kept wanting to forget, to think of them as he had for most of the past year, out of his sight but safe, in Godric’s Hollow, to pretend he might be expecting Lily’s latest letter with a scrawled postscript from James… but there was no unseeing it, the image lived behind his eyelids, except when he was Padfoot.

He didn’t have to think, when he was Padfoot, of finding James’ wand so far from his body and no signs of a duel on his body. That haunted Sirius the most, maybe. James hadn’t gotten to really fight, James, who’d spent half their boyhood bragging about the quickness of his wrist, his skills, his theories on how Quidditch and dueling went hand-in-hand, really, James, who’d never landed them in detention for fighting without making sure to win the fight first, James, who’d died before Lily, which Sirius knew because it was James…

But also because he’d seen Lily’s face. She’d died with grief on her face, and fear, and hope maybe too. He’d been in the ruins of the cottage in Godric’s Hollow for minutes, after, with the Muggle police sirens’ wail winding nearer, before Hagrid’s hand landed on his shoulder.

He was going to kill Peter or die doing it and all the better, if it was and, instead of or. That’s all there was, when Hagrid took Harry and the bike.

“I don’t think you’d feel better, no,” says Remus. He sits down, too, and he’s in his best robes, but he sits in the dust outside his cottage all the same, beside Sirius, his back against the motorbike’s other wheel. “I think there’d have been some satisfaction, in Peter being dead. But I don’t think anything would be better.”

“Remus,” says Sirius, lolling his head over to look at him. “I’m going to sound mad if I tell you this.”

Remus smiles faintly. “You realize you have to tell me, now. Can’t leave it at that.”

“I think James moved my bloody wrist.”

Remus blinks. Clearly, that did sound mad.

“I don’t remember doing it,” says Sirius. “Disarming Peter. My wrist just bloody moved. He’d gotten me, he was quicker than me, Remus, I’d mucked it up and the whole street was going to blow. Somehow, my hand moved in time. Only James would have been quick enough, of all of us.”

Remus’ mouth parts, closes, opens again and stutters on the air.

“I told you it’d sound mad,” says Sirius.

“James did always go for the disarm, in dueling.” Remus sounds like he’s placating him; that annoys Sirius more.

“I’m not suggesting he’s a ghost, not James, but—"

 “But," sighs Remus. "There are, of course, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of. Even in a wizard's philosophy." Remus is not placating him after all, only trying to be calm. Remus passes his hand over his eyes, and Sirius sees wetness on it catch the light, when he moves it away.

“You believe me?” Sirius isn’t so entirely sure he believes himself. It might have been luck. It might have been magic. It’s a sliver, that second, separating his life from—well, in the weeks since, he’s come up with a pretty clear picture of what Peter was trying to do.

“I think…” Remus exhales. “I think if James Potter was going to work through anyone, it’d be you. But…”

Sirius waits.

“I also think James would say your dueling reflexes have always been excellent, too excellent to be such a rubbish Quidditch player.”

Sirius snorts. It’s not that it’s so terribly funny. It’s that it is, precisely, what James would say.  

“Petunia Evans knows who I am,” he admits. "Really am, unfortunately. It went a bit... badly.”

Remus frowns harder than Sirius expects.

“Dursley, you mean,” Remus says finally. “Petunia Dursley.”

Sirius isn’t sure how he could have forgotten, when that’s the problem. The odds of him changing that last name, without involving magic, have moved straight on toward impossible. He supposes it's that he keeps thinking: it's a pity, that he never really met Petunia Evans.