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The sight of the Auror waiting by Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop startles Remus. Another rebel – wearing jeans and a leather jacket instead of the uniform or any wizard's outfit.
"Professor Lupin..." Kingsley says in his characteristically slow rhythm, reassuring and oddly arousing. "This time there is a recent sighting..."
There's nothing Remus can report. If he'd spotted the escaped prisoner's name on the map he confiscated two days ago.... He wouldn't say that, but how he glimpsed... He can't explain why, a week earlier, nobody besides the portrait and young Weasley did.
He's abandoned watching the map for one evening only to ask Aberforth again if a stray has come to the Hog's Head for scraps – perhaps for a conversation like those he has with his goats. Now a reprieve from chasing the ghosts of his youth is tempting.
"It's a bit chilly. Tea? It's on me." Thanks to having a regular income, for once, Remus can afford little heart-shaped cakes, or one to share – even better.
"May I?" he'll say at Puddifoot's, in the romantic rosy light, which will bring out the deep brown complexion's warm reddish undertones, and he'll swipe off Kingsley's knit cap, caressing the shapely shaved head.