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“He’s… nice.”
“He’s nice.”
Harry huffed. “I didn’t expect him to be nice!”
“Sorry, did you think I’d be best mates with a bellend?”
“I dunno,” Harry smirked, but the tension didn’t slip away. “Some of the stories you tell about school, the gum incident—”
“Yes, yes, you’ve made your point. Now,” said Peter, crossing his arms and doing his best to look stern in the face of Harry’s amusement. “What was this about Remus being nice?”
“Well, between the stories, and the war, and the—” Harry stopped abruptly, making a face that said he wished he’d stopped speaking several words earlier.
Peter glanced quickly around the room, just in case he’d misunderstood and they’d gotten themselves found out, but the dorm was empty. “The werewolf bit, you mean?”
Harry shrunk in on himself. “It’s just— between the muggle films, and the things people say… I didn’t know what to expect.”
Peter wasn’t mad. James might have been, but James would have expected Remus to have been around for Harry to understand. To know, as they had, once. Hell, even Peter had thought him dead in one manner or another, for surely nothing else would have kept him away for so long. (Unless Remus, too, had had too much to hide.)
But regardless of the reason, Harry hadn’t know him, had only the stories from Peter and whatever he heard from the world around him, which was not known to say kind things— about werewolves, or indeed, Harry himself.
“I’m not mad,” said Peter. “Not at you, at any rate. A lot can change in ten years, I daresay you, Ron, and Hermione will be completely different people when you’re our age.”
Harry rolled his eyes, but stopped looking quite so downtrodden, so Peter counted it as a win. “Yeah yeah, you’re all so old and grey, what are you, forty?”
“Forty--”
“Forty-five, then?”
Peter mimed a curse to the chest, and finally, finally, Harry laughed.
“Look,” said Peter, once they’d both sobered again. “I don’t know why Remus hasn’t come around. I barely know why I couldn’t, and I live in here. Maybe he couldn’t— he was incapacitated or warned away or I dunno, breeding magical elephants in Africa— or maybe there’s something else going on.”
“Maybe he really is like Black, you mean?”
“Well he hasn’t spent twelve years in Azkaban, so he’s got that going for him, but yes. There’s still a lot we don’t know about how the war ended— so many lies in what we do know— all I’m saying is, I’m glad you’re getting to know how nice he is, but don’t let your guard down, either.”
Harry nodded solemnly, and before anymore conversation could be had, Ron stomped up the stairs. Their moment of privacy was gone.