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Remus was at the schoolhouse door at precisely 3pm, as he always was each day. It was as reliable as the sun rising, or that Harry would get chocolate milk for breakfast. He quite liked that daddy picked him up each day so reliably. Nearly no one else’s father did so in the village. Most of the people at pickup were ladies, most a lot older than his dad.
Harry liked school well enough, though sometimes it was boring listening to Ms. Clifford and if he fell asleep she would rap his knuckles with a ruler. They held class at town hall, a long building sturdy enough to combat the consistent grey smattering of rain that hit the island so faithfully each day. Harry had seven children in his school, all his own age. He liked Jamie the best of them, he always had the most interesting stories about his older cousin.
Today he found Remus waiting in the entryway with a bright red macintosh that was too short for him, hitting just below the knees. He was chatting with Marnie’s mum, a woman with bright pink hair he often heard the other mums whisper about in the cafe. He wondered if they whispered about Remus too, he and Marnie’s mum both seemed to be the most interesting people on the island.
Remus knelt down as Harry approached. He loved that about his father, he always was bending to his level so Harry could reach forward and pull his face towards his own much easier.
“Hello Harry!” Remus said, cheek smashed against Harry’s head. He pulled away. His eyes were bright. “How was school today?”
“Good. I got a good mark on my test today. You can ask Ms. Clifford.”
“Wonderful job!”
Harry nodded. “Yes, and she said for me to tell you that children who get top marks are allowed a popsicle today.”
Remus looked over to Marnie’s mum, who had put a hand to her mouth.
“Is that so?” He said, mouth pressed into a line. Harry tried to temper his eagerness at his apparent success.
“Oh yes! She said we can pick any flavor we want.”
A small giggle came from Marnie’s mum, though Harry could not fathom why she was laughing. Remus bent forward again, smiling in that way of his that didn’t look like a smile but had all the characteristics of one.
“Well, I can’t go against Ms. Clifford.” He said gamely. “Do you think she allows the parents of top students to receive a treat as well?”
Harry nodded. He could feel the smile crawling across his face. “Oh yes. Papas are definitely are allowed a treat.” Harry found himself wrapped into a quick embrace, Remus’s hand running through his hair before moving to take his own.
“In that case we must be off Gemma. Need to see Rodney before the shop shuts.” Remus said, glancing at her.
Gemma waved, “Bye Remus, bye Haz. Great job!”
Remus gave Harry’s hand a squeeze as they walked out the door. Harry turned around and waved to her. “Thanks! Bye Marnie’s mum.”
They walked out the wooden door into the cold wet drizzle. There was always wind on the island and it made Remus cold. Harry quite liked it, he felt they lived in one of his father’s spooky stories, the ruins of the abbey sticking out behind old community buildings. In the distance, often obscured by fog or mist, stood Holy Island castle, and Harry loved to traipse around the grounds when they found the time.
“You know her name Haz. It’s impolite not to use it.” Remus reminded him as Harry disentangled himself from Remus’s hand to inspect a few promising puddles.
“Okay.” He said, knowing full well he had no intention of doing that. He dipped a toe in a long puddle down the pavement, pleased to find it nearly covered the entire foot of his Wellies. He stomped a few times, careful not to get the dredges of rainwater on their clothes. They moved to the next puddle.
“What do you think of a day at the park with Marnie tomorrow?”
Harry made a face, which judging by the noise of surprise his father made was the wrong thing to do. He tried to cover the faux pas. “I dunno dad. I wanna play with the cows and Marnie’s scared of ‘em.”
“We can play with the cows another day, I suppose.” Remus said quietly, guiding them towards the general store. After a moment he continued, and Harry didn’t like that tone of voice, quiet and inquisitive normally meant his father was about to root something out that was going to give him trouble. “Do you not like Marnie?”
“She’s kooky.” Harry said, twirling his finger near his temple the way he had seen Jamie do the day before. “She told us that there’s something called Gnargles hiding in the abbey and we can’t go there after sunset.”
Remus was very quiet for much too long after that. So long, in fact, that Harry looked up to find his father with a somewhat sorrowful look on his face, the one he got sometimes when Harry couldn’t sleep and found him at the kitchen table, looking out the window. It made Harry feel funny in his stomach. He wished he wouldn’t look like that, and he suddenly felt very bad for what he said about Marnie. Remus shook his head, clearing the face with it and turned towards Rodney’s shop.
“Let’s get that popsicle, shall we?” He said quietly.
Harry licked at the popsicle, careful not to get any on his sleeve. He glanced a few times towards Remus, that feeling in his tummy still not quite gone. Remus was eating slowly from a bag of Hula Hoops, eyes trained on the horizon.
“You know, Harry,” he began, “just because someone is a little strange doesn’t make them bad or kooky.”
Harry shrugged, suddenly wondering why he thought it was such a bad thing in the face of Remus’s argument.
“I was strange too, you know.”
Harry snorted. “You’re not kooky.” He thought of his father, mild and quiet and always reading a book and holding doors for people in town.
A smile played on Remus’s face, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I was the kookiest, darling. Stranger than Marnie and stranger than Gemma. I’m stranger than even old man Roger on the hill.”
Harry furrowed his brow. Their little bungalow was just visible up the road, the red clay tile sticking out against the grey sky. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It’s true, Haz.” Remus looked over to Harry, eyes solemn, “And I am sorry to say that you are strange too. And Jamie should feel sorry he isn’t. It’s not right to make fun of someone for something that makes them unique.”
Harry looked down at his popsicle, red dribbling down his fist. He felt sad. When Jamie had called Marnie kooky yesterday Harry thought it was funny, but he remembered the tremor in Marnie’s lip and it suddenly wasn’t very funny anymore. He pictured his father, if he was as strange as he said, feeling that way. He looked up to Remus.
“I’m kooky too?”
When Remus smiled it was wider this time. “The kookiest, darling. It’s a wonderful thing, I promise.”
They walked towards the gate, the garden haphazard with toys and seagrass, the familiar bright red door and black painted trim. Harry couldn’t remember another house, though his father sometimes spoke of one he lived in as a baby, with is other father and mother. It could not have been better than this place.
Harry’s little fist grasped at the back of Remus’s knee, a welcome reminder that his father was there. Harry was small for a six year old, with bright green intelligent eyes that were currently trained at the door of their small cottage. Harry could feel his father tense, the way he stopped at the little garden fence. A big hulking dog sat at the door, tail beating a senseless tattoo on the step. He looked shaggy and large and slightly foreboding as Harry peered behind Remus’s trousers. The wind rustled the sea grass that snaked its way through their cottage garden.
Remus wasn’t moving from the gateway, so Harry wasn’t moving either. Harry knew that his father was the most sensible man in the world so if he was stopping there was no reason he shouldn’t stop as well. The dog snuffed, lowering his head and peering at them through strange, soulful eyes. Harry was thinking he might like to pet him, if daddy would be alright with it. He looked up towards Remus, tall as ever, to find his mouth set in a small, tight frown, his face a ghostly white. He looked like Marnie after Helga locked her in the closet, Harry had never seen his daddy so nearly close to tears. He narrowed his eyes at the doggy.
“Hey!” Harry shouted, and the dog snapped his attention to Harry. He felt Remus flinch. Harry sucked in a breath. “Hey,” he tried his voice again, which wavered with a slight tremor, “You’re scaring daddy! If you’ve got a home to go to, well, please go!”
“Haz-” Remus started but it sounded like he could barely speak.
The wind swept between them as the dog blinked slowly at the two of them. Remus had shifted even more in front of Harry, his wide hand splaying atop his head in a gesture of warning. The dog looked to Remus, who eventually cleared his throat.
“What are you doing here?” Remus said to the dog, who lowered himself so far into the step it looked like it wanted to dig a grave to go further.
“Daddy?” Harry said, tugging nervously at his trouser leg. Remus barely looked down at Harry.
“You- you can’t. You’re-you’re not supposed to be here.” Remus said, voice trembling and trying to be brave. The dog barely moved. The sky deposited a large amount of rain, and Remus’s hair was beginning to plaster itself to his forehead. Harry wondered what was so scary about this doggy. He watched his tail thump on the step. Once. Twice. When it was clear that the dog had no intention of moving Remus’s hand slipped from Harry’s head to his hand and he pulled them forward towards the entrance. The dog was even bigger up close, and made absolutely no move as they passed it, its eyes tracking them as Remus unlocked the door and dragged Harry through the entryway. To Harry’s surprise, Remus left the door open and the dog trotted in after them.
Remus brought Harry into the kitchen, kneeling down in front of him, hands on his shoulders. His eyes looked wild and panicked, and Harry tried to swallow down the fear that was building in his stomach.
“Haz, I need you to listen to me carefully, alright?”
“You’re scaring me daddy.” Harry said, trying to fight the tears that were springing up in his eyes. Remus moved to wipe them away.
“There is nothing to be scared about. I’m here. I’ll keep you safe. Please just stay here and listen to me, alright? Promise you’ll be brave?”
Harry nodded, and Remus brought him a coloring book to sit at the table. He watched his father walk out of the kitchen towards the entryway, listening to his wet footsteps and the front door close. There was silence as Harry waited for what was going to happen next. He picked a green crayon and began to fill in the pastoral coloring scene in front of him.
“Where were you Christmas of fourth year?” He heard Remus’s voice, colder than he ever had heard float by. He put his crayon down.
There was a shuffling, then: “Tried to rescue Reg from the old bat’s house. Got a nasty curse scar on my left bicep.” The voice sounded strange, tight and pinched and nasal in a way he hadn’t really heard before. When had a man arrived? He craned his neck to try and get a view of the doorway to no avail.
There was a pause. “Aren’t you going to ask me?” Remus said, voice still cold and terse and not his. There was a sharp bark of laughter.
“Oh Moony, I know it’s you. I know.”
“Don’t— don’t bloody call me that.”
Harry, coloring abandoned, gave into curiosity and made his way towards the doorway to try to get a better view. He took his time— his father was always able to catch him at the slightest noise, which was incredibly irksome when he wanted some of Mrs. MacDonald’s sweets at night.
“Sorry.”
Remus must have been not paying attention, because Harry was able to make it to the doorway without being heard, and waited patiently for his father to move and reveal the man that was distressing him so much. The dog was nowhere to be found.
“Just— just tell me why you’re here. Are you looking to root us out? Report our whereabouts?”
“What?”
“We—we can’t be found, you must understand that?” Harry watched Remus run a hand through his hair.
“I’m not going to tell anyone. I wasn't even sure you were alive until just now.” The reply was flat, nearly mechanical.
“Well how did you find us? Are the wards wrong? I—we don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Harry saw a hand, pale and thin, wrap around Remus’s bicep. Remus shook it off. “Remus, er- Lupin. Listen to me. You’re panicking.”
Remus let out a little laugh. “I haven’t seen you in four years of course I’m fucking panicking. You—you thought I was the traitor. Last I saw you you were-” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “on trial for their murder.”
There was a pause, and Harry worried at his lip, wondering if he should say something. He did not like hearing his father so close to tears and this was a bad man for making him feel like it.
“That’s the last you’ve heard and yet you let me in?”
It must have not been a question Remus expected because he let out a heavy sigh. “I knew it wasn’t you, Sirius. I knew it couldn’t have been.”
“We could have used that at the trial.” Came the reply. Remus let out a laugh that sounded more tearful and manic.
“Too bloody late. None of you were telling me anything by the end of it. Had to find out about the switch from Dumbledore. And by then we were in hiding and honestly, Harry’s more important.” He said, his voice wobbly.
“Right, right. Look we have a lot to talk about. Why don’t we get dry, and I can put the kettle on.”
Remus stood at the entryway, hands at his sides. Harry watched his shoulders shake and suddenly realized that this man had made his father cry. He had never seen Remus cry. He had seen him be still in a strange unnatural way, or somber on each Halloween. He had seen Remus nearly dead on his feet every so often after disappearing for an evening. But he had never seen his father cry, and Harry had had enough of this. He moved away from the doorway, fear stuck in his throat, and walked towards the two men.
The man with the strange accent was shorter than Remus, with high cheekbones and a sallow appearance. His long black hair was tied into a braid and he wore strange clothing, like a long dress. Harry stomped his feet and stood by his father, taking his hand. He tried to muster all the courage he could find in the face of this man.
“Hey you! We want you and your dog out of here!” He said in the sternest voice he could manage. The man looked at him, head cocked to the side. “Stop making my daddy sad.” His words seemed to have the opposite effect he expected on Remus, who seemed to shake twice as hard. The man’s expression was nearly devastated- like he had his favorite toy taken from him and smashed to bits.
“Haz please go back to the kitchen, this is grown-up talk.” Remus tried. Harry shook his head, staring daggers at the man.
“Nuh huh. This is a bad man. He hurt you.” Harry said, narrowing his eyes. The man rubbed a hand across his face. Remus let out a strangled little sob.
Suddenly the man did something he wasn’t expecting. He dropped down onto one knee, so his face was level with Harry’s. Remus tensed, drawing Harry a bit closer to his side, but said nothing, so Harry did not retreat.
The man looked about his father’s age, with dark grey eyes. His face wasn’t scarred like his father’s but he had a faint few scattered across his cheeks and nose. He looked unfathomably sad.
“Hello, Harry. You are very brave for protecting your father.” He said quite seriously. Harry nodded.
“How do you know my name?”
The man looked up towards Remus and must have found something because he turned back, nodding. “I knew you when you were a baby. And you’re right. I am a bad man, and I have hurt your father. I’ve come here to apologize. Apologize and to meet you.” He said it in a way that made Harry feel very important. Harry looked up towards his father, hoping for some indication of what to say next. Remus had his mouth covered and he looked to be holding back some sort of violent emotion. Harry squeezed his hand.
“Well you’re making daddy cry so I don’t want to meet you.”
The man looked so sad at that, that he might nearly cry too. Harry was normally the one crying, not the adults. It was getting a little tiresome. The man nodded. “Well, Harry, I hope maybe one day I can change that. My name is Sirius.”
Harry stuck true to his word, refusing to say hello, just watching the man named Sirius distrustfully as he eventually stood up and addressed Remus.
“I’ve been looking for you two any chance I got. I— I was in Azkaban for a few years during the trial but as soon as I was released and heard the news, well, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve been searching whenever I can.”
Remus wasn’t in tears anymore, he just looked like he was sagging, like a tree under too much weight. He nodded. “Come, I’ll put the kettle on.”
Harry refused to leave his father with this strange sad man, so he sat at their old rickety wooden table, eyeing him as he filled in his coloring pages. The man was thinner than even Nana Crowley, Harry noticed. His knuckles were knobby and red. Remus must have noticed too because when he returned with three steaming mugs he had placed a few pieces of buttered toast in front of the man who eyed them with something like disbelief.
It was quiet for a moment as they all settled in, and Harry tried very hard to look preoccupied and not like he was listening.
Finally, Remus set down his mug. “You were in Azkaban?”
Sirius nodded. “Peter had used my wand and the Veritasium was called into question until they could find him.”
Remus tapped his fingers on the counter. “How long?” He said tightly.
Sirius shrugged. “Just a few years.”
Remus took in a sharp breath, he was watching the man across from them very closely. “That’s barbaric.”
Sirius wasn’t looking at either of them. He was watching the film of minerals swirling atop his tea. “It was a fair punishment for the sins of my youth, Remus.”
“You didn’t do anything though-”
“I was arrogant and suspicious, and I thought I knew how to outsmart everyone. And look where it’s got us.” Sirius gestured to the room at large. Things were quiet after that— Remus didn’t seem to want to argue whatever point Sirius was going down. Sirius saw the fight was moot and changed tact. “Anyway, when I was finally released I began to search. I—I couldn’t believe it. I was there before I went after Peter, you know,” He looked at Harry briefly with a strange tenderness to his eyes, “I held him before I gave him to Hagrid.” He swallowed. “I should have stayed.”
Harry looked to Remus at that but his face was blank. He took a sip of tea. “There’s no use rehashing things, Sirius.” At the use of his name, Sirius looked up, face solemn but eyes intent. “Why did you need to find us? To bring all this back?”
Harry was starting to feel a little out of the loop here as he watched his father. Something seemed out of place. Whenever Remus talked about his other parents it was vague, and Harry had never felt the need to push him more than just ‘they died in a very hard way, Haz’. He was beginning to regret it.
Sirius looked down at the table. He fingered a few pen markings that Harry had made years before. “Call it the last selfish thing I’ll do for the rest of my life, if you want.”
Remus snorted, derisive. “I doubt it’ll be the last.”
Sirius nodded, head bowed. “I just needed to know. To see you’re both safe.”
A particularly strong wind rattled the windows of their small cottage. Harry had had enough of this strange talk, and it didn’t seem Remus was going to kick the stranger out anytime soon. He put his crayon down.
“Where’s your dog?”
Sirius looked at him, that strange softness still in his eyes. He furrowed his brow and took beat too long to answer. “He’s- I sent him home.”
“You live here? On the island?” Harry said doubtfully. He knew everyone on Holy Island and none of them fit the man’s description. Strange and sallow and haunted-looking.
“He’s just here for a bit Haz.” Remus said, voice still a little wobbly but nearly back to its mildness. He gave Sirius a look. “Are you staying for supper?”
Sirius nodded, almost too eager, and Remus extracted himself from the bench to make his way towards the stovetop. Harry didn’t know what questions to ask the stranger so he merely looked down at his drawing, feeling very much like he wished the man had never come at all.
“What are you drawing?”
Harry looked up and away, hoping his dismissal was obvious. “I’m coloring.” He said, because Remus had taught him it was rude to ignore people.
“You’re very good at keeping inside the lines.”
Harry’s gaze lingered a little longer on the man. He nodded. “Yes. Timothy likes to scribble at school. He once made the sun blue. I told him it was wrong but he wouldn’t listen.”
Sirius snorted, but he was looking in Remus’s direction. Remus was busy chopping onions so Harry wasn’t sure what was so interesting about that. Harry figured he could ask a few questions now, so he picked one from the slowly building bank of them.
“Why do you talk so funny?”
Sirius blinked in surprise at him before letting out a quick bark of a laugh. “What?”
“You talk like the people on the telly.”
Sirius was full on laughing now, near tears streaming down his cheeks. Harry wasn’t quite sure what made him so funny. When he regained a bit of breath he looked towards Remus. “Godric, if James knew you’ve bred all the Southern out of him.” He said to him and Remus rolled his eyes but did not expand on the point. “I come from a different part of England, Harry. We all talk like this.” They fell into quiet that felt a little sad again, Harry was sick of being confused.
“James? Like my other papa?” He asked, looking at Remus. His shoulders were tense but he nodded, dumping the onions with a satisfying sizzle into the pan. Harry narrowed his eyes at Sirius, who looked weary. “You knew my daddy?”
Sirius swallowed. “Yes. We all were friends.” He looked to Remus for something but continued no further.
“If you were friends why didn’t my daddy tell me about you?” Harry knew all about Remus’s friends. About Marlene and Dorcas and his mother and father. About Gemma and Marcus here on the island. He had never once heard anything about a Sirius.
Sirius looked impossibly sad. “I wasn’t a very good friend in the end, Harry.”
Strangely, Harry thought of Marnie. He reached over and gave Sirius’s long white hand a pat. “It’s okay. Sometimes people aren’t good friends. As long as you always say sorry and try to make things better that doesn’t make you bad.”
Harry watched a few wet spots appear under where Sirius’s head was hung. His shoulders shook and Harry watched with concern, realizing he had made Sirius cry. He looked to Remus, who steadfastly was stirring the pan, mouth set in a frown. Harry wished they were playing puzzles together, this really felt all too much. Sirius sniffled and gave Harry a watery smile.
“Thanks Harry. You’re a very good lad, do you know that?”
Harry nodded because he had been told that from all the old ladies in town. “Yes. Hilda says I have manners like the Queen.”
“I can only guess where you learned it from.” Sirius said, eyes darting back to Remus, who approached with three bowls of pasta. He handed Harry one with a suspiciously large amount of shredded cheese on top.
“Haz, why don’t you eat in the living room and let the adults talk?” He said, moving his coloring out of the way. Harry looked at Sirius’s bowl, filled to the brim with pasta. He nodded slowly, interest in this stranger losing out the fatigue at his lack of understanding.
“As long as I can watch telly.” He negotiated.
Sirius let out a snort, and Remus looked very very tired. He nodded. “Go on then, but keep the volume down.”
__
Harry nodded his quiet thanks, spinning around on the bench and very carefully carrying his pasta towards the living room. Remus watched him, that sharp streak of fondness that always threatened to swallow him whole whenever he looked at Harry too long familiar and welcome now. He held onto that feeling for a moment, trying to stay the tidal wave of emotions roiling beneath it with the sudden reappearance of Sirius fucking Black in his life. Sirius, who looked so different, so shell-like, so timid as he looked forlornly at his pasta unwilling to eat before Remus did. Remus couldn’t look at him so instead took a bite, relieved when he heard the clink of metal against Sirius’s bowl.
They ate in silence for a while as Remus tried to sort out his thoughts. He thrust the roiling feelings as far away as they could go and focused on the immediate dangers.
“Does anyone else know you’re here? That we’re here?”
Sirius seemed as if he couldn’t look at Remus long either. He shook his head. “No.”
“Do you swear it?”
His mouth twitched in what looked like could be a ghost of a smile. “Solemnly.”
Remus felt a flare of anger at the cavalier way Sirius so willingly wormed his way through the past he worked so hard to keep shut, to keep away from Harry. “Christ Sirius we’re not friends anymore, stop playing like we are.”
Sirius looked suitably chastened, though it made Remus feel no better. “Sorry Remus. Sorry.”
When they were students Remus had only heard Sirius say sorry maybe four times, and three of those four had been to Remus himself. He wondered if Sirius felt it was easier just to apologize to him instead of not doing the thing in the first place. He sighed.
“Look, I think I can understand why you’re here. You’re his godfather. I know he was supposed to go to you if anything happened.”
“That’s not-”
“It’s just that, well, something did happen didn’t it?” He felt his knuckles tighten around the fork. He did not add the thoughts he wanted to, the accusations. Instead he took a breath. “And I did the best with what I had.”
There was a long moment of silence between the two of them. Remus focused intently on the meal in front of him, trying ridiculously to blink back tears.
He heard Sirius put the fork down. “I’m not here to take him away, Remus.”
Remus looked up, surprised to find tension bleeding away from his body. Sirius was staring at him, his eyes as sharp and serious as he always remembered them.
Remus swallowed. “You’re not?” He said before he even realized he was speaking.
Sirius shook his head. “I lost that privilege. I know that.” He bit his lip, something soft in his gaze. “Besides, I think papa trumps godfather at this point, don’t you?”
Remus felt his cheeks heat up and he stammered out a reply. “I— I’m sorry it’s just that when he started talking he called me da and I tried, I really did to change it—”
Sirius’s smile was tired, but it was there. “Remus, I’m not accusing you. I wanted to thank you, actually.”
“Thank me?”
Sirius swallowed and took a breath. “You’re—” he began, then cut short, seeming holding back words, “you suit fatherhood very well. And I am thankful Harry has that in his life.”
Remus felt the admission play out in real time across his body. It was a loosening of the muscles between his shoulders, the tenseness released. No one, not even Gemma or Marcus understood the things that happened the way Sirius did, and in that alone meant they were always going to be more than strangers. Instead of saying all that, Remus just gestured at the half eaten plate.
“Eat your food.” He said lamely to such an admission. Sirius did.
The TV murmured from the other room, and Remus thought of Harry, of the boy he was becoming. It wasn’t a new feeling, this inadequacy. He had felt out of his depth ever since he held a wailing baby Harry in the ruins of his friends’ home. He felt like he was doing things wrong every day of his life, but he always told himself it was better than not doing them at all.
“You’re good with him.” Sirius said, watching Remus as he ducked away from the praise. He pressed his lips together, stared off towards the living room, his features softening.
“Sometimes I think I’m mucking it all up.” Remus said, picking at his nails. “He’s a quiet kid, I worry he’s lonely.”
“I dunno. I seems like he gets it from you.”
The comment caught Remus unawares. Sirius’s deep grey eyes connected with his for a fleeting moment. “You think?”
Sirius nodded enthusiastically. “Sure. He’s got that same,” he waved to Remus’s general appearance, “intensity you do. Like you’d be able to figure anything out if you looked at it long enough.”
“Huh.” Remus said, turning back to his food and falling back into silence, “it’s just that he looks so much like James, is all. And he’s got Lily’s eyes. It never occurred he’d be anything like me.”
He heard Sirius snort, get up and take their empty bowls to the sink. It felt like a strangely homely gesture for someone who had never stepped foot in this house before. Stranger still it felt alright.
“He’s very much like you, Remus. It’s almost adorable.”
“I’m not adorable.” He grumbled. He heard the faucet run, thankful Sirius had picked up on the no magic unspoken rule of the household.
“I remember you, eleven, giving a very stern talking to Franz Parkinson about bullying when we entered the compartment.”
“Well there really was no need for him to start things off in such a terrible way, was there?”
“You also had no qualms telling James and me that we sounded like right ponces.” He said from the sink with a small shake of laughter. “Something tells me Harry is shaping up to have the exact same scenario play out when he takes the Express.”
Remus tried to shake off the melancholy he felt at the memories, but it was to no avail. It was like an abscess, this pain. He thought years would build some scar tissue but the wound was just as tender as the day it was formed. Any memories of the before time felt like a knife through his stomach. He heard the water turn off and Sirius approach.
“I’ll be off, if that’s alright.”
Remus looked up at Sirius’s carefully blank expression. It was an expression he had never seen on his face before, it made him nearly unrecognizable. He wondered how different he had become in the years they had seen each other.
“You’re leaving?”
Sirius lifted a hand and scratched the back of his neck, he looked out into the living room. “Well, er, yeah. I guess I’ve done what I set out to do. And I don’t think it’s right for me to disturb—”
“You’re going to go?”
Sirius looked confused. “I think I’ve overstayed my welcome as is, haven’t I?”
It was quiet save for the hum of the television as the two men regarded each other. Remus had no idea what was making him want to suddenly hold so tightly. It was like poking a bruise. He swallowed, pushing away the strange wave of fear and desperation he felt at the thought of his only other tether to his boyhood threatening to slip away. “We- well, I think it might be good for Harry to have someone else to talk to.”
Sirius narrowed his eyes. “You… want me to stay?”
Remus did not want to spell it out so plainly, so instead, he shook his head. “Just think it’ll help Haz, is all. It wouldn’t do any harm.”
Sirius pressed his lips into a line, thinking. Remus looked at the sharp angles of him, so different, yet the vestiges of his adolescence still clung to him. It hurt to remember the trees they climbed, the sneaking around the castle at night, it hurt to remember it but it suddenly felt so much more painful to forget the way he had been doing all these years.
“Once a week, if you want. On Sundays. We do a bit of footie in the park in the mornings and have tea and read. Maybe Harry can get to know you.”
There was a wetness around Sirius's eyes, and Remus wondered what he was thinking. There was a time when Remus knew every reaction he could draw from Sirius, but this quiet, reserved character felt strangely foreign to him. His smile was small but genuine when he looked back at him. He wondered if maybe he could get to know this new Sirius as well.
“Yeah, alright. Sure.”