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Chapter Text

On a dreary night in October, Sirius Black is trapped amidst a vast ballroom, somehow feeling claustrophobic despite the many windows. Claustrophobic is what he felt often, like his voice had been taken away like in those sissy princess movies his brother was always watching secretly. Said brother was standing next to their mother as she talked to some old balding man, smoothing out his hair with one hand, not even sparing the boy a glance. He stood there, head up, feet glued to the floor, it made Sirius want to gag. While his brother was being pet like some kind of dog, Sirius was standing on the other side of the room on an expensive wooden chair trying to mask his boredom. His mother was ignoring him, she had been ignoring him since she caught him teaching one of their stable boys’ notes on the piano.

The boy was named Sam, he had a freckled face and his two front teeth showed when he smiled. He didn’t want to call his mother a cock block, but that's what he thought at the moment when he caught them and pulled him out of the room by his hair.

His mother was haughtily laughing at something the old man said, pushing his arm slightly, making the bile in Sirius’s throat almost come up again, his father was probably off fucking his secretary in the closet they kept his and Reg’s old baby toys in. Like she could read his thoughts, his mother glanced his way, cold eyes sharpening upon seeing him slouching in his chair.

Feeling like he couldn’t breathe again Sirius gets up and walks out to the ballroom’s large balcony, he tries to not notice the way his mother’s eyes follow him as he leaves.

The balcony is empty, chairs lining the sides with glass tables in front of them, near the end leaning against the edge stands a man with a cigarette, the smoke floating into the midst of a dark sky. The man has dark hair, like all Blacks do, and hands lined with silver rings, his suit is certainly flashier than anything Sirius’s mother would let him wear, being bright red and pinstriped.

“ Oh hello.” The man says softly, he turns around and smiles, keeping the cig still in his fingers. Sirius walks up to the balcony banister and puts his legs in between two columns and swings back, holding onto the columns in front of him, here he looks at Alpharad from a different angle, he grins.

His uncle was probably his favorite member of his awful family besides his cousin Andy, who had a nose piercing and plays guitar.

The whole family seemingly hates him but for some reason, he’s still invited to everything and every time he comes everyone glares at him until he skulks to some secluded area where Sirius usually finds him. Alpharad is an artist which is a thing his parents hate and he likes to travel at crucial moments in his family’s lives, like whenever there's a big wedding. He laughs a lot whenever Sirius talks to him and he finds that Alpharad’s probably the coolest adult Sirius knows, and he knows a lot of not cool adults.

“ I thought you were going to America,” Sirius says, using information he heard from an argument between his mum and Alpharad earlier in the week.

“ Soon.” His uncle says, turning back to the sky, his eyes looking far away. “ Your mum wanted me to stay a while longer.”

“ Why? It’s so booooooorinnnng here.” Sirius elongates his words, dragging them out and getting louder as he groans and leans back from the banister.

Alpharad smiles at the gesture, “ She’s my sister, and she asked me.” He briskly says. Sirius doesn’t stop himself from pouting, sure if his mother told him to do something he would, but that's different. Alpharad was an adult and he shouldn't be told to do anything.

“ She’s not talking to me,” Sirius says.

“ Why not?”

Sirius looks away and shrugs, “ ‘Mad at me.” He mumbles.

“ Well, don’t fret too hard about it.” Alpharad says, “ My sister is a hard and cruel woman.”

Sirius thinks about this, what he said is certainly true, but he doesn’t know why he would stay if he didn’t like her, or at least thought that of her.

“ You should take me with you.”

“ Hm?”

“ Take me with you, to America.”

Alpharad looks at him, he looks pained in a way, which doesn’t make sense since it's an easy solution to all their problems.

“ How would I do that?” He asks.

“ Easy!” Sirius yells, there's a slight echo, “ Stuff me into your suitcase.”

“ What if security finds me with a stowaway? What then?”

“ We’ll just bribe them, Americans love bribes, I would know, we learned about it in history, it’s how Watergate happened.”

“ I don’t think-”

“ -And if the bribes don’t work we can just sail across, my friend James, his dad has this HUGE boat, we can get there no problem.”

“ What if your mother finds out?”

“ She won’t, I can steal one of those mannequins from the store, she won’t even know the difference.” Sirius girns, proud at his brilliant plans, Alpharad just smiles and shakes his head slowly.

“ Maybe one day, kid, not now.”

“ Why not now?!” Sirius groans again, he’s throwing a slight tantrum but his parents aren’t here to scold him so he doesn’t care.

“ There's nothing in America for a 13-year-old.” Alpharad looks back, having humor in his words even though Sirius is completely genuine.

“ Yeah there is!” He yells.

“ Yeah? Like what?”

Sirius thinks, he pulls himself up from where he’s hanging onto the balcony’s banister, with his two legs in between, he looks at the stars and the cliff that the balcony sits on.

“ They have better movies.” He says, at this, Alpharad lets out a low chuckle, and Sirius grins.

“ Oh really?”

“ That’s what James says.”

Alpharad laughs again, and then stubs his cig on the top of the banister.

“ You know what kid, once you're 16 I’ll pay for your trip to America.”

“ And we’ll go to the movies,” Sirius says, Alpharad’s smile grows wider.

“ And we’ll go to the movies.” His uncle says, before laughing again, leaning both of his arms on the banister. “ Never change Sirius.” He states.

_

Alpharad did never take him to America, instead when Sirius was 15 he ran away/ was kicked out once Sirius punched Lucius Malfoy in the balls because he called James’s mom a whore for having him out of wedlock.

His family had said worse things, and done worse things, but on that Friday night Sirius had been longing to be back at school, and he was so sick and tired of sitting at that table and pretending like everything was normal. And the sneer as Lucius said it, a sneer directly at him, he said it because he was trying to appeal to his parents by taking a jab at Sirius, one at James’s family was always meant to be at him, his friendship with James had always been a heated subject. Something about the way that he said it, meaning to be directly insulting him, and the way Reg’s eyes shifted before passing the salt to their shit-for-brains father who was absolutely eating every vile thing Lucius was saying just completely threw Sirius into a rage.

And honestly, it had been coming for a while, he had a knapsack packed and ready, he had a cab fare, he had Andy’s address and number, and he had James’s parent’s address memorized.

So later when Sirius turns 16 a few months later, he falls asleep at his best friend’s house watching The Breakfast Club on DVD. He had run out with his mother screaming behind him and still had a bruise on his leg from where she tried to grab him. The bruise thumbed, he could almost hear it as he lay on the floor of the Potter’s basement. The basement was small with a high ceiling, James had somehow managed to put movie posters all over the wall without any motherly interference. Sirius felt his eyes drift to “The Graduate” and “ American Werewolf” a couple of times throughout the movie. In the middle of the room in front of the TV lay a gaudy green couch, and despite it, he and James had chosen the ground, their backs against the bottom end of it. His friend snores quietly behind the contrast-sounding TV, Bender raising his fist in the middle of the football field. Slowly, and less triumphantly, Sirius raised his hand, holding it in the air for the slightest second before he heard noises behind him on the staircase.

Mrs. Potter slowly patts down the stairs in her bright pink slippers, before she can get any lower Sirius quickly grabs the remote and shuts the TV off, she had told them to be in bed at least an hour ago, James denying her wishes with an insistence that Sirius hadn’t lived if he hadn’t watched the rest of the supposed “iconic” movie.

She arrived in the basement, and Sirius shut his eyes, lays his head back on James’s, and listens to the sounds of Mrs.Potter walking across the room. She walks to the other side, causing a loud sound, from what Sirius knew of the room she had started the laundry. She then walks out and slowly stops, Sirius’s breath begins to quicken as he hears the cease of soft footsteps.

Then a sound in front of him, a dress wrinkling with movement, he hears a sigh and then feels the feeling of a woman’s lips on his cheek, and then another to the person next to him. With a soft laugh, the woman retreats up the stairs, making the wooden stairs creak with every step.

Another sound then occurred, and Sirius recognized it, even if he was across the ocean he would. The slight hiccup, how his friend never seemed to be out of breath, how his voice was loud but comforting, how his laugh always seemed to get him out of the most depressive periods. Sirius opens his eyes to his best friend’s grin.

“ Wanna watch it again?”James says, despite the secretive nature of their situation, he kept his voice above moderate volume.

“ Duh,” Sirius says back.

Alpharad had gotten a hold of him later, he had Andy’s number and while babysitting he called him, knowing he was there. On that phone call, Sirius curled the phone line in his finger as he heard his uncle’s voice slightly shaking on the other side of the phone.

“ I’m glad you made it out.”

“ Me too.”

He didn’t ask about America, his uncle didn’t ask him what happened, they just continued small talk like they usually did. Sirius told him about school and he told Sirius about America, it was awkward but relief washed through Sirius as Alpharad tried to skitter around the subject of his disownment.

“ Where are you staying?” His uncle says towards the end of the call.

“ The Potters.” He answers.

“ Ah,” Alpharad says, “ With the big boat.”

Surprised that he even remembers that anecdote Sirius finds himself laughing into the phone, “ Yeah it's a yacht.”

“ Think it can make it across the Atlantic Ocean?”

Sirius smiles as he breathes in the flowery smells of his cousin's kitchen.

“ Fuck yeah.”

_

James Potter was his most valiant and loyal best friend. People at school said they shared the same brain, whether that was an insult or a compliment.

James loved football, Frankie Valli songs, movies with happy endings, and running around their dorm shirtless just to rile up the girls and getting a detention afterward. He was the shining light in Sirius’s dull and cloudy life that had been caused by being locked up in Grimmauld for most of his small life. He was Sirius’s best friend and then when they were 17 he had gotten someone pregnant.

They were standing on the football field, Sirius had been in detention for the last hour. Sirius had gotten detention for wearing black kohl beneath his eyes and mouthing off to their science teacher when he was informed that it wasn’t “proper” for a man to be dressed that way, not even mentioning how it was out of dress code. Sirius had called Mr. Slughorn a wanker, and in return had resulted in him sitting in the only room in their fancy school that had no air conditioning wishing he could be back in their dorm blasting Black Sabbath and wrestling with James when he told him to turn it down.

They were supposed to sneak out to the girl’s dorm, Emmeline Vance had invited him, and he had been able to convince her to let him bring James so he could talk (or annoy) Lily, but when he walked out of the classroom the hallway was empty.

So already, Sirius’s hair was standing on end.

It was near the beginning of summer, ever since Sirius ran away he had been growing his hair out, spending hours in the bathroom trying to match the pictures in a magazine he had snagged from a store in town, and forever heat damaging his hair with a half working half dying straightener, the back of his neck was drenched and he was beginning to vaguely regret his decisions.

The one place that James always went to was the football field, it was pretty small, their school decided to place more money into rugby, and it was off the side in the middle of some trees, easy to miss. James had become pretty well known at their school for his athletic prouise, being the only reason they kept football. Because of this he usually had birds sitting on the sidelines cheering him on as he practiced, but today the bleachers were empty. The sun was going down, casting the bright green grass in an orangish hue. James stood on the edge kicking a football around in his foot, dribbling, and then hitting it aggressively to the goal.

It missed, bouncing off the frame of the goal and to the side.

Sirius watched as his friend froze, unmoving, and the ball continued to roll away.

“ Yo dibshit! Nice shot!” Sirius yelled, putting his hands in his pockets as he walked up. James turned to face him, a small smile forming on his face, his eyes were redder than normal.

“ Padfoot.” He said, monotonly. It was weird, Sirius felt his skin crawl. The only other event he saw his friend act like this was when Sirius had rang his doorbell a year ago, bleeding from several places on his body.

“ What are you doing out here? Vance said we had to be there before 9 or the hall monitors would catch us.”

“ Oh yeah, I- um, I don’t think I’m feeling up to it,” James said quietly, walking to the side to retrieve his ball. He had shifted his eyesight quickly away from Sirius, he recognized it in a second. He wasn’t telling him something.

He caught up to his friend, breaking into a trot as he had to catch up to where he had walked on the field. “ What?!” He said as he stopped in front of where his friend stopped, holding the ball in his hands. “ Hello?! “ He waved his hand in front of James’s face. “ Girls?! Evans!? Lily Evans?! What do you mean you're not feeling up to it?” He began violently waving his hand, James suddenly grabbed his wrist, gingerly putting it down.

“ I already saw Lily today.” He avoided Sirius’s gaze again, looking to the ground.

“ What do you mean saw? Like privately?” Sirius says. James remained silent, but that didn’t stop his voice from getting erratic, his tone stuttering.

“ We thought we might talk about what happened last Saturday.”

“ Oh, so she asked you out?”

“ No- I mean-” He started rubbing his neck, his voice catching. “ I didn’t exactly tell you the whole truth about what happened.”

“...What?” Sirius sat there, James had never lied to him before. “ What do you mean you lied? You told me you snogged Evans, that's it.”

“ You see, um,” James said, clearly struggling, he could see his friend’s eyes water a bit. Sirius was beginning to get uncomfortable, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear the upcoming information or not.

“ We were both rather drunk and- I guess it got a bit-”

“ James.” Ringing in his ears. His best friend is now shuffling his feet, he won’t look at him, Sirius just wants him to look at him.

“ She said, that she hadn’t gotten her period in a while, and-”

“ James-!” Sirius yelled. Birds in the distance chirped, marking the silence.

James looked up, making eye contact finally.

“ Don’t tell me you…” He denied it, and as he began to doubt more James’s expression got more scary. His friend's eyes were just more watery and he slowly nodded.

“ She’s pregnant.”

_

“ I don’t understand why you're being so stubborn,” James says, he’s carrying Harry on his hip, and with the other hand, he swats Sirius’s away from dipping it into the cookie dough bowl.

“ Because I don’t want to sit in a room with a bunch of pompous arseholes who think they're better than everyone and play some stupid song from some stupid dead old composer that the professor tells me to play,” Sirius says, swiping a taste of the batter despite James’s protests and plopping onto a seat at their dining table, inches away from the kitchen counter in their tiny flat.

“ News flash buddy,” Still with Harry on his hip, James points at Sirius with a wooden spoon that he was using to mix the dough with, “ You’re also a pompous arsehole, but you think you’re better than everybody else and you are.”

Sirius raises his eyebrows at this, “ Still not taking it.” He says, much like a child, James groans.

“ You are wasting your talent, Black, wasting it-” James takes a look at him, Sirius takes a swig of the pint he left on the table, “ drinking and partying” He says this like it's foreign, the fact makes Sirius get slightly annoyed.

“ God, you sound like my Uncle.” Sirius says, “ You have a child at 17, and now all of a sudden you're an old man.”

“ Some people just mature faster than others Padfoot,” James says, sticking out his neck and throwing Harry up slightly on his hip making the boy giggle. The kid is almost 7 now and he still clings to his parents like he was a baby.

“ Yeah, I can see the bald spot forming from here.” Sirius snickers, James’s jaw drops at this, and he lets go of Harry from his hip.

“ I do not have a bald spot!” As James yells this he turns to Harry who’s now exiting the kitchen to the living room. “ You hear this Harry? You hear how he treats me?”

“ I don’t care.” The boy says.

“ Hey bud,” Sirius whispers as Harry passes by his chair and they high-five, leaving Harry grinning as he leaves the room.

“ You're terrible,” James moans, hands on hips like a true dad, “ He likes you more than me and you’re not even directly related to him.”

“ Not directly,” Sirius says, putting his pint to his lips again.

“ God parentage means nothing, we just did it to get Lily’s hag of an aunt off of our backs.” He says and Sirius snorts into his beer. “ You remember how awful she was, walking around with that cane,” James pitches his voice, mimicking the old woman, “ Baptise him at least! Don’t damn this child to hell even more than your fraught marriage already did.” Sirius laughs loudly, almost spitting his beer out his nose.

“ And you know what Lily told me.”

“ What Jamie?” Sirius was still laughing.

James peers out behind Sirius, presumably checking to see how far Harry is, “ She told me that the old bitch died while having sex with one of the workers at the old home,” His eyes bulge as he says this and Sirius just laughs harder.

“ She well deserved it too,” James states.

“ James oh my god!”

“ Who deserved it?” Lily says walking into the kitchen, she’s wearing a red blazer and frilly shirt, looking most certainly lawyery.

“ Nobody!” James says loud but his face goes pale and he looks at Sirius with terror that almost makes Sirius burst out laughing again. “ How was class?” He asks as Lily makes her way over to where he’s standing at the counter.

“ Fine, and that's true by the way.” She says coolly.

James just cocks his head innocently, “ Hm?”

“ That thing about Aunt Anna dying while riding the old home employee, all true.” She points at Sirius as she says this and then with a swift movement takes a dip of a finger in the cookie dough and puts it in her mouth before wacking James sharply on the head.

Despite the abuse James just laughs, cheeks red while he rubs the back of his head. Sirius finds it sickening.

“ Oh so you let her treat you like that but when I do I’m mistreating you?” He says, Lily raises one eyebrow and sits across from Sirius at the table.

“ Of course.” James says, sitting next to Lily and taking his baking gloves off, “ She’s my wife.” At this, Lily smiles and kisses James on the head where she previously hit him, and Sirius has to keep himself from throwing up.

“ Lily, do you agree with me that Sirius should take a piano course to better expand his brain and help his worldview?” A little while later James says. Lily looks at Sirius skeptically.

“ You play piano?” She asks.

“ Used, to play piano.” Sirius corrects.

“ He was good too,” James says, Sirius glares at him, but this doesn’t affect him.

“ I think you should, doesn't hurt does it?” Lily says.

“ It does, it would be a waste of my precious time.”

“ Sirius, you only have 2 classes per week, you have so much free time,” James says, rehashing his argument from earlier.

“ Free time that I need.”

“ Need for what?”

Sirius tries not to focus on the woman he left in his bed this morning or the numerous different cigarette stubs he’s left all over his apartment because he was too lazy to find a place to properly dispose of them.

“ Work.”

James snorts at this, “ You don’t have a job.”

“Yeah I do.”

“ Yeah right. I’ve never seen you do any manual labor in your life, you couldn’t even run the mile without heaving on the floor.” Lily snorts at this.

This annoys Sirius some more, he looks at his watch pointedly and gets up to leave from his chair, leaving his beer bottle on the table. “ Oh look at the time, I should be heading out.”

Despite the teasing, James’s face drops at this. “ It’s only 7.” He says.

“ Yeah, and I have a shift at 7:30 so I should really get going.” Sirius gets up and makes his way to the door, James following and Lily rolling her eyes from the table.

“ Shift? Shift where?”

“ At the…. Uh.” Sirius stops, hand on their flat’s front door. “ At the zoo.”

“ The zoo,” James says, unimpressed.

“ Yes.” He says, and attempts to shut the door, “ So if you’ll excuse me.” He tries to close the door but James holds it open, failing his attempt.

“ You know I’m just worried about you.” He lets go of the door and Sirius lets up too, letting his hands fall as he stands at the doorway.

“ There's no need to.”

James looks at him with a face that fully reads “ I truly doubt that”.

Sitting on the couch by the door, sits Harry, reading a small wooden picture book and as Sirius leaves he waves slightly the boy’s eyes sparkling. In response Sirius does a sailor salute, making the boy grin and his dad go “ Alright get out of here, don’t get your face stomped on by a giraffe.”

The face James gave him sticks in his mind as he walks back to his apartment, and as Sirius lies down, and having to pick up a used cigarette butt that somehow found itself on his sheets, his phone starts ringing. He picks up, and as he listens to a stranger on the other side, his whole body gets cold, and suddenly years after he left home, he feels claustrophobic again.

_

Alpharad went silently, no pain. That’s what happens when you get old, you get yourself in hospice, you go to sleep one night, and boom, you're dead. Sirius hadn’t ever been able to visit Alpharad in America, he always said he would, there was never enough time, at least that's what Sirius told himself. There was to be a wake in a few month’s time, and during that time Sirius continued normally. James looked at him with concern whenever he found himself over at his flat, but he just waved it off like always. He would be fine, he was fine, and he would be eventually.

The night of the wake he tried to get James and Lily to get him to babysit, but they refused, and was able to get one of Lily’s friends to do it instead. It annoyed him, but he rather be home drinking than taking care of a kid so he wasn’t too mad. It was James and Lily’s anniversary, they were probably at a restaurant having a nice time, Sirius sat on his bed again, the blinds down, bathed in darkness, and then an idea came to him.

Drinking as he got up, as he got out of his flat, and as he got into his bike, he drove to the place he once ran away from. It was raining, and he didn’t notice this until way later when he was too focused on keeping the beer bottle in his hand as he climbed the steps to his old family’s home.

He rammed the door with his hand, getting no response he went to just shoving the big doors open but he wasn’t able to open them until he used his shoulder to haul them open. The light was too bright, and as he walked in he felt like he was walking into the sun, he walked until he made it well into the room, his boots dragging against the tiled floor. He heard whispers coming from his left and right but he ignored them and kept walking until somebody grabbed his arm aggressively.

“ Sirius.” His brother says, gripping his arm tight enough to bruise, “ What are you doing here?”

“ It's a wake,” Sirius says obviously.

“ I know-”

“ It’s Alpharad’s wake.” He pulls his arm out of Regulus’s grasp. “ He was my uncle too.”

Regulus looks at him and his nose makes a small movement before Regulus’s whole face scrunches in disgust. “ Your breath smells like alcohol.”

Drunk Sirius supposedly finds this hilarious because he lets out a loud and obnoxious laugh in response. Regulus just continues to look at him horrified. The crowd behind his brother parts and from it comes Sirius’s mother, she glares the same icy stare at him as she walks forward. She’s wearing a dark and long dress, and she looks skinnier also older, with more wrinkles, Sirius thinks with a snort.

“ Leave now.” She says. Regulus, like a good boy, walks over to stand at her side and this just makes Sirius angrier.

“ He was my uncle too,” Sirius repeats.

“ You are no longer part of this family. You haven't been for a long time.”

“ I know that!” He slurs his word and like a toddler throws his bottle to the ground, smashing it, causing a scream to let up from the audience that's formed around them. He’s causing a tantrum but his brain is too overloaded from beer for him to care.

“ You hated him.” He says, using all the hatred in his body and directing it through his words.

“ Leave now.” His mother reiterates.

“ You hated him and he hated you! Did you even see him die? Or did you off him yourself?!”

At this his mother fumes, her eyebrows arching and the yell she lets out could shatter class. “ Leave this house now!” At her command guards from the sides of the room come to grab him but he lifts his arms in a pleading gesture.

“ I’ll leave.” He says, and then takes a glass from a nearby audience member, a woman with a pointed face, and smashes it on the ground in front of her.

“ Fuck you.” He says, and then he walks out. Walking out of the house, he almost stumbles on the tiles, and as he almost falls on his face someone grabs his arm again. Looking back he sees his brother’s timid face. Regulus saves him and then lets Sirius’s arm go, standing on the step higher than him.

“ Are you proud of yourself?” He says.

“ A bit yeah,” Sirius says, gaining his footing on the wet ground.

“ You think this makes you better? Throwing a tantrum like this?”

“ At least I’m not standing around like some kicked puppy.”

“ But you are,” Regulus says, he lifts his jaw in superiority and Sirius looks at him skeptically,“ Standing around. That's what you're doing.” His brother then walks up the steps back into the house, blinding Sirius more when he opens the door.

He scoffs, immediately deleting his brother’s words from his mind, and then walks back to his motorbike that he parked slightly on the curb. He rides for about 4 miles before his bike starts having engine issues and stops going. So now he’s stranded at the side of the road, drunk, wet, and depressed, and then at his absolute low, he gets a call on his phone. A call that ends up being the worst in his life.

Chapter Text

Harry Potter was a strange child.

He often came in wearing clothes too big for his scrawny build, with obscure and old bands that Remus barely even knew when he was a kid. His hair is in constant disarray, he always manages to mouth off to everyone, including other teachers. He says strange things, draws strange things, and on more than one account leads Remus to believe that he is going crazy just because of the insanity that occurs because of a little boy with round glasses and an unusually shaped scar on his forehead.

“ Daniella told you to put glue in Draco’s shoes?” Remus was crouched on the floor, at his question the little boy just nodded his head earnestly.

“ And who is Daniella?” He asked and to his response, the boy just pointed to the side of the classroom. To their right sat a green snake, sitting on the window sill of their classroom. At this revelation, Mary, his teaching assistant, screamed. Despite the number of 9-year-olds around, Remus not thinking, yells out “ Holy fuck! “

Later on, he has to sit through nauseating long conferences with Draco’s parents where he has to repeat that the Potters were basically impossible to get in contact with, and no they could not sue them because they hadn’t technically done anything to directly harm their little git of a child, and also long meetings with Dumbledore about his “ speech” around the children.

It always just ended with Remus sitting on his sorry arse in the teacher's lounge, exhausted, nursing a lukewarm coffee in a small plastic cup.

“ Snakes… Well, that’s a new one.” Peter says, sitting across from him at the table. He was also drinking coffee from a plastic cup but he had just sat down, so his would be less lukewarm than Remus’s. In response, Remus just sits his head down on the table with a BANG.

“ Maybe he’s possessed or something,” Peter says, chuckling as he says it. His attention is quickly pulled away from Remus as Mary enters the room, her heels clicking against the hard school ground. Peter takes a sip of his cup and follows her with his eyes as she sits down at the table at the other side next to Remus, Peter gets a bit red as Mary starts talking.

“ Awww,” Mary says, patting Remus on his back. “ Have you been able to get in contact with Potter’s parents yet?” She says.

Remus lifts his head from the table, his fatigue is not only mental but also physical. Somehow he can feel the dark circles underneath his eyes, he can feel it in the way Mary looks at him as he looks at her back.

“ No. “ He states, going back to hold his coffee but not drink it. Mary tuts, resting her hand on her cheek.

“ Damn, they’ve got to be some kind of Amish at this rate.” She sighs, Peter snorts and Mary kicks him underneath the table. “ This isn’t funny!”

“ But you just-“ Peter starts up but Remus cuts him off with a groan.

“ I think I have to just hold out till the end of the year.” He moans, Mary hisses with her teeth and pats him on the back again, and Peter just laughs again.

The year had just started.

He had been at Hogwarts for about a year and he was already fucking up, but also someone had to be sabotaging him at this point with how more outrageous this job was getting by the second. No way he’d been searching for a school to take him and his sickly constitution all summer and the one school that did just happened to have some weird little gremlin that made his life miserable. And frankly, this wasn’t really all Harry’s fault, all the parents seemed pretty crazy as well. The number of times he had to explain his absences was because he was sick and not because he was doing deals on the black market was too much.

And Harry was a smart kid, with the morbid and bizarre things he drew during his free time aside. With that thought, Remus walks into the school’s secretary’s office the next day with a goal. He makes his way to the front of the school holding two coffees, one as a bribe, and as he heads into the office he accidentally bumps into someone coming out, spilling the coffee he bought for himself all over his shirt.

“ Oh, my apologies.” A snide voice drawls out in front of him, his stomach drops as he registers the voice.

“ It’s okay, needed a new shirt anyway,” Remus says trying to wipe his shirt and throwing the coffee into a nearby bin, in front of him Lucius Malfoy just scoffs silently.

“ I see you’re still employed.” He sees.

“ Yep, still employed.”

“ Did you have a mishap earlier this month? We didn’t see you for a while.”

“ Well, I had to take a short leave, got a bit sick.”

“ Happens often doesn’t it?” Malfoy stares at him, his cold eyes scan Remus’s face and Remus wants to just dump the other coffee on the dick’s head, but he keeps smiling instead.

“ I have a pretty weak constitution.” Remus smiles and laughs awkwardly wanting to get out of this conversation as quickly as he can.

“ Huh.” Malfoy spits out, “ You know Lupin, I would be more careful with those sick days, the parent board is already weary of you as is,”

“ I’m aware yes but I’ll assure you that-”

“ Teaching at Hogwarts is a pretty sought-after job,”

“ I’m aware sir-”

“You’re not looking at a very secure position, especially continuing with that lifestyle of yours,” He says with venom.

“ I’ll try my best sir,” Remus says, and then Malfoy leaves, just before sizing him up obviously. He lets out a breath as he enters the office. My lifestyle? What does that even mean? He thinks. As Remus is trying to figure out if he’s been hatecrimed or not he finally approaches Ms. Meadows’s office, taking a deep breath and placing his bribe in front of him.

Ms. Meadows was a mean person, she glared at everyone who came by her office and most kids (and parents) are scared of her. Really the only person who he’s seen her been any semblance of kind to is Dumbledore.

“ Good morning,” Remus says as he walks in.

“ Shit morning.” She spits, she’s bent over at her desk, Remus only being able to see the top of her head. She looks up and eyes the stain on Remus’s shirt. “ You look like shit.”

“ Well y’know,” He gestures over to the door, “ Malfoy.” Meadows makes a noise of understanding. Remus had been on the rocks with the parent board for a while now, ever since he’s started, and been teaching too much history that’s apparently too accurate for third graders to learn. Malfoy being the head, he’s had many interactions like that, this was probably the first one where he’s made any known implication of his sexuality though. Remus reminds himself to keep his private life more under raps, knowing him if the parent board finds out anything more incriminating he’ll be sacked for sure, whether Dumbledore sticks up for him or not.

“ Dick.” Meadows mumbles under her breath, Remus smiles and pushes the coffee forward, a sort of bond being formed over a mutual dislike.

“ Well,” He preserves and continues to smile, “ I was wondering if you could look something up for me.” Meadows eyes the coffee and takes it, opening the cap and surveying the liquid inside, seemingly satisfied, she puts the cap back and on and takes a sip.

“ What is it?” She asks.

“ The Potters, do you have their file?” He asks, and Meadows squints her eyes a bit before pulling over a chair in front of her.

“ Sit.” She says and Remus does as he’s told. She gets up, dusting off her pants, and goes into the back, seconds later coming back with a huge binder, she then sits back down across from him with a SLAM. Remus watches her work, her nose scrunched in concentration, without looking up she says, “ Potter enrolled late right?”

“ From what I know,” Remus responds.

“ Nobody has seen Potter’s guardian before, never participates in any school events.” She keeps flipping sharply through the binder. “ Very weird for a Hogwarts parent.” She looks up suddenly, and Remus gives her a concerned look in return. “ Usually by now Dumbeldore would get in contact to get them more involved,” She continues.

“ It’s weird right?” He says, everythings she saying is already information Remus knows from his past experience. Meadows just hums dismissively and unclips clasps of the binder taking out a page and handing it over. On it are two numbers, and that’s it, Remus looks at it and then back up at Meadows who’s now getting up to put the binder away.

“ This is it?”

“ Any semblance of contact we have with Potter’s guardians, Dumbeldore most likely has more information but he hasn’t put it on file.” She says, disappearing to the back again. Remus looks at the numbers unsatisfied, Meadows appears from the back and raises her finger to the entrance.

“ Now get out of my office.”

_

Remus heads back home, numbers in tow, and calls each one on his phone, both end up being dead numbers. The next morning he walks into his classroom dejected. He went through his usual routine, restocking his shelves, cleaning the tables again, and greeting the parents as they dropped off their children. And like usual no Potters and no Harry until at least an hour after school starts.

A pack of Marlboros is smacked onto his desk by a little brown-toned hand. Remus almost jumps out from his chair and then stares down at the pack of cigarettes on his desk. He then looks up to the 9-year-old who just gave him said cigarettes and is faced with a grinning Harry Potter.

“ For teacher’s appreciation. “ The boy says. Remus just looks at him wide-eyed and then glances at Mary who is working nearby with Hermione on reading a book and sounding out the words. She is wearing a similar surprised expression as him.

“ …Thank you, Harry. “ He says slowly, Harry then grins wider and walks off to where Hermoine is sitting with Mary. And then a few hours later Remus is looking through and marking papers when the same strange boy comes stomping in from recess. He says nothing to Remus as he waltzes over to where he left his bright red sweater and hauls it over his head. Remus watches him out of the corner of his eye as he walks back to the entrance of the room. The boy then stops and turns back around, staring at Remus.

“ Yes? “ Remus says instinctually in his “ teacher voice “ that’s a pitch higher than his usual.

“ What’s this? “ Harry says, pointing his finger at Remus. He ponders the question before following Harry’s finger to the small speaker on his desk that he has to play music whenever he’s grading.

“ Oh, this? It’s a speaker.”

“ No, what is…?” The boy then spins his finger in the air, Remus realizes.

“ Oh the song, well it’s Mott the Hopple.”

“ I know it.” Harry promptly states.

“ Do you? “ Remus says, smiling. He’s honestly not surprised, he guessed with all the unusual band t-shirts the boy sported that the Potters had some affection for 70s British rock.

At Remus’s question Harry just nods, then instead of leaving, continues to stand in the doorway. He stares at Remus in his big glasses, he stares and then he begins to squint like he does when Remus gives him a coloring page to do. Remus does what he usually does whenever he finds a child staring at him, and he smiles and tilts his head only slightly as he waits for a reaction.

“ Mr Lupin?” Harry asks.

“ Yes? “ Remus answers.

“ Do you like men? “ He promptly says.

Remus basically stops breathing out of surprise and all he can get out is a “ …What? “

Harry is still staring at him inquisitively.

Mary was still outside at recess so he couldn’t turn to her for help and he certainly wasn’t coached at this sort of thing since he wasn’t out yet to his colleagues. He didn’t know if he would be fired since he was so desperate for the job he had tried to not pass for anything but straight so it was probably not in his best interest to say anything, certainly when he had Malfoy and the parent board breathing down his neck. And was it even good to be teaching 9-year-olds about this type of thing? Probably not right? But also on the other hand Remus would have loved to be helped when he was confused at 9 years old, but then again he wasn’t confused outside of the occasional dream about Jared Leto. But Harry was different and maybe this was why, maybe Remus could be missing the chance to greatly change this kid’s life for the better-

“ That’s fine! “ Harry yelled from the doorway, bringing Remus out of his thoughts. He then ran out the door, leaving Remus frozen in his chair.

_

One of the most curious things about Harry Potter is pick up. Remus, like the teacher he was, was in charge of observing the children until they were scooped up by their parents. But Harry was never picked up, or if he was it was certainly never from his parents. The one time he had been picked up by some semblance of a parent, it was by some blonde woman, who after questioning said she was Potter’s guardian’s work colleague.

This was all pretty unsafe, but Remus had already bothered Dumbeldore enough about it and every time he did, the old man just shook his head with an annoying smile and said he had it “handled”, whatever that meant. Dumbledore was somewhat acquainted with Harry’s family which is why they were able to get by with so little contact for so long and why Remus was allowed to just let Harry head home on his bike alone instead of getting picked up.

It was near the end of the day, he and Mary had let the kids outside for an extra recess to give them some sort of a break, considering that Remus suspected that Mary was nursing a particularly bad hangover with the way her face and demeanor were signaling to him. They were sitting on the side of the playground, Mary resting her head on her knee, Remus trying his best to keep a watch on the kids who were scattered around the playground which was too big for the 20 kids they had under their watch at a time, when two little heads came running up to them, one with curly hair, one with bright red hair. He looked down to look at Hermoine and Ron, Ron looking like he was about to burst out into tears any second now.

“ Mr. Lupin.” Hermoine said, furrowing her eyebrows and scrunching her nose, clearly trying to look like what she thought was a “responsible adult” Instead she kind of just looked like she was concentrating on the spot in between Remus’s eyes.

“ Yes? “

“ We lost Harry.” She says, Ron sniffs and looks down to his feet. Remus’s head does a bit of a loop, but he decides to press a bit more before totally losing his shit.

“ Well, I’m sure he’s somewhere if you look hard enough,”

“ We can’t find him anywhere.” She says, and at this Ron promptly breaks out into tears, awakening Mary from her hangover-induced haze as she clambers down on her knees in her pencil skirt to comfort him. She then throws a concerned glance at Remus, he keeps his wit and looks back to Hermoine who is still standing there in her little flower-patterned skirt and frizzy hair pinned back into a ponytail.

“ Well let's think, where was the last place you saw him?” He was aware he was treating this child as some sort of object to be found, but you couldn't do much when you had a kid on the verge of hysterics. Hermoine, surprisingly handling this well, at least better than her friend who hadn’t ceased crying loudly, took a deep breath and pointed towards the edge of the playground where a gate lay.

“ We were at the gate.” She forces out, she looks on the edge of tears since she now had to admit to breaking a rule.

“ Luv you know you're not supposed to be over there, what were you doing?” Remus says, chanting a prayer in his head.

“ Harry said he was gonna climb it and be right back.” She says. God fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…. Remus thinks as he squeezes his eyes again and catches a terrified look from Mary.

“ So he hasn’t been back?” He says, his voice wavering a bit. Hermoine shakes her little head, making her hair wack back and forth. Remus takes a deep deep breath, tries his best not to burst into tears himself, and gets up on his feet.

“ Mary take the kids inside.” He says, Mary nods and gets up from her knees to blow her whistle. As the kids line up Mary looks to Remus looking even more terrified.

“ Are you going to Dumbledore?” She says, hands still on Ron’s shoulders since he’s still sobbing.

“ Going to have to.” He sighed.

“ You know you could get fired right?!” She sputters. Remus not trying to talk in case he loses his cool waves her off to lead the kids inside. He follows until she gets everyone back to the classroom and then walks down to the principal’s office. The old man is sitting at his office table when Remus is ushered in by Meadows and he lifts his white-bearded head and smiles as Remus nervously waddles in, his legs being basically jelly and trying to not fall flat on his face.

“ Remus, how can I help you?” He says kindly, there’s a dagger digging into Remus’s stomach as he does this.

“ Well- there seems to be a bit of an incident.”

“ An incident.” The man says, his smile fading a bit.

“ Yes um-” Remus gulps, shifting his sight outside to the window where the playground is seen. “ Me and Mary were taking our class to an extra recess and Potter, he um- seemed to climb the gate without us knowing.”

There's an uncomfortable silence. Dumbledore sifts his hands together at the table, leaning forward to study where Remus is standing in front of him, sweating.

“ Well, that’s a problem.” He says finally.

“ I’m sorry, I should've been more careful, it’ll never happen again I swear-” Remus sputters out, trying to save his job.

“ I suppose we should contact his guardian, I’ll contact the police and we’ll see what we can do.” The man says, cutting him off.

“ His guardian- but sir, we haven’t been able to since-” Remus is interrupted with another sign.

“ Ah yes, I forgot, well-” Dumbeldore hums and opens a drawer at his desk pulling out a small notepad and scratching something down with a pen. He then rips it and then holds it out, frozen in place, Remus doesn't move. “ C’mon now.” He says, and Remus startles to grab the paper, on it is the address of some place called “Tonks’ Auto Repair Service”, Remus stares at the address before he’s brought to reality again by Dumbledore talking.

“ It’s the address of his guardian’s workplace, you should be able to get a hold of him there. I assume Ms. Macdonald can take over pick up for you?” He says calmly, Remus just nods, still holding the paper, his hands slightly shaking.

“ Remus”, Remus looks up at the difference in tone, “ We don’t want the parents to know anything’s gone arie now do we?”

Remus, still unable to form steady sentences, just shakes his head with widened eyes.

“ Good. Now head to the address and then call me, if we're not able to find him by then we’ll need to start search parties, if anything we should be able to find him before you let his guardian know. “ Remus just nods again and continues to shake in his boots, he continues to shake as he fills in Mary and gets outside to his mangled Chevy in the parking lot.

“ Ok, ok, breathe.” Remus chants to himself once inside his car and looks back down to the address on the notepad paper Dumbledore gave him.

Tonk’s Auto Repair Service

433 W Hogsmeade Ave

Ask for Sirius Black

_

Ted wouldn’t stop laughing and if it didn’t annoy Sirius before it was for sure starting to.

“ I can’t believe it!” He chuckles, Sirius in response pulls himself outside from below the Honda with a leaking pipe, leaving his face covered in dust and oil. Ted continues to laugh as he hands Sirius a washcloth and wipes his face. As he cleans his face he talks, making his voice muffled. “ Shut up.” He says, and then throws the cloth back at Ted who dodges it easily from where he’s sitting on a plastic stool by the car.

“ I mean your young, your- “ He gestures to Sirius sitting up on the creeper with his dirty face and matted hair,” some-what good looking, what have you been doing?!” Ted says.

“ Taking care of my best friend’s kid is what I’ve been doing.” Sirius spits back, and Ted just snorts.

“ Listen, kid, I’m not trying to make fun of you or anything, it’s just-” He stops to rub the back of his neck. “ 3 years? “ At this Sirius kicks Ted’s stool, making him yell and Marlene turns her head from where she was sitting at the front. Despite Sirius’s protests and acts of violence he just keeps going. “ Like c’mon, you have to admit that that's a damn long time not to get any action.”

“ Shut up Ted! “ Sirius yells, but this just succeeds in getting Marlene’s full attention, she turns back again with a grin and walks over, bringing a stool over and sitting on it with those stupid cargo shorts she always wears.

“ Who’s not getting action?” She smirks, and Sirius really contemplates quitting.

“ Sirius,” Ted remarks back and Sirius puts his head in his hands, they smell like tar.

“ Well hey, that's not fair.” Marlene says in a faux sympathetic voice, “ he has a kid after all.” She says and then makes a face, pouting like she cares but he knows she doesn’t.

“ Don’t tell Andy,” Sirius says to Ted, giving no attention to Marlene.

“ Whaaaat?” Ted says, “ You think I tell her everything just because she’s my wife?” Ted points the wrench he's holding towards Sirus, “ I’m very capable of keeping secrets.”

Sirius glares at him for a good 15 seconds before Ted lets up and sighs in defeat.

“ Why can’t I tell her?”

“ Because she’ll get all,” Sirius thinks of a word to describe his older cousin, “ motherly…” He says. At this Ted raises an eyebrow, as much as they both love his cousin, nobody exactly called her motherly, because motherly always made them think of their mums and nobody ever wanted to think of their mums.

“ She’ll get all worried, and try to set me up with some rando and I just-!” Sirius is rambling now, he had kept the topic of romance pretty quiet until now and didn’t want to dredge it up. He was never the romantic type, that was always James’s job. James would be the one who bought flowers and went to his love’s window sill, Sirius was more the type to hit it and then leave the next morning without a word. At least when Sirius was even able to hit it, the concept seemed somehow foreign to him now, despite how much he did it when he was in school.

Marlene and Ted stare at him, and Sirius looks back at them. “ I just can’t deal with that right now!” Sirius waves his arms around. Ted stares at him and tilts his eyebrows upwards, it’s a bit similar to when Sirius showed up on their doorstep a week after he got kicked out, something close to sympathy and protection.

“ You wouldn’t go on one date…?” Ted says, his somewhat Italian accent making his voice go more high pitch.

“Ted,” Sirius says, he gets up to get another tool from the toolbox he left by the filing cabinets since Ted seemed more committed to talking about Sirius’s love prospects instead of helping him with the job he was supposed to be doing.

“ What about that girl down at ‘Broomsticks?” Ted got up to follow him.

“ No fucking way,” Sirius grabs a clamp and slams the top of the box down as he turns back sharply.

“ Sirius listen,” Ted says, and Sirius promptly ignores him, walking back to where he left the creeper beside the car. Marlene is still sitting on her stool, looking at the scene with amusement. Sirius backs down and rolls himself back down under the car, he can still hear Ted’s voice.

“ We're just worried about you, you never seem to take any time for yourself anymore.”

“ Oh, like I took so much time before.” Sirius snapped back, keeping himself under the car, working slower so he didn’t have to see Ted’s puppy dog eyes. “Taking time for yourself”, Sirius knew what he was implying, he used to be so selfish, so full of it all the time, as a teen Sirius would never imagine him making a decision that didn’t benefit him or James, he looked back and felt only spite. He’s not like that anymore, every time he thinks of even taking any of those sorts of actions there is a little boy, begging to be put to sleep with a bedtime story.

“ You did, you know you did kid,” Ted says softly, He is treading on sensitive territory now, Sirius knows. He was never able to rile Ted or Andy up, no matter how much he tried. Andy because she and Sirius were just always too similar, she knew too much, it's like she knew how his mind operated. Ted was just because Sirius guessed he was wired differently, didn’t see malice in the words that Sirius or Andy ever said, he always seemed to take more importance in actions. Before he started up the shop he played baseball, it's evident as you step into their house, there are pictures everywhere. “You only get points by running to every pitch”, he would say, “-a real player never half-asses it”. Sirius never liked baseball but somehow Ted was able to goad him into trading cards, he had a whole binder of them at home.

Sirius stops working and rolls back to where Ted is sitting on the stool again, Marlene is watching them from where she is sitting on her stool, her boot tapping the hard floor.

“ No.” Sirius reiterates and Ted’s face drops.

“C'mon! We met this one bird at this bar near Cambridge- shit Sirius-!” Ted says, and smiles smugly, and then pats Sirius’s dirty shoulder. “ she works in a records shop,” He nudges him, “ eh?” Sirius just glowers with a frown.

“ No.” He repeats.

“ C’mon Black, see the girl.” Marlene says from her post, “- and then you can get married and give the kid a mom.” She snarks and Sirius groans.

“ Harry doesn’t need a mom,” Sirius shrugs, “ a therapist maybe.” He says this and thinks of their conversation from a week ago. Harry’s googly eyes under the glasses as he says, “ How come you're alone?” The kid always had a knack for asking Sirius the questions he never wanted to answer, he had to get more used to that, especially how that conversation ended up going, Sirius having to explain sexuality and preference in a roundabout way that was understandable to a 9-year-old. It was all so uncomfortable that Siruis shivered just thinking about it.

At Sirius’s comment, Marlene just snorts and Ted continues to frown comically, and then the bell that sits on top of the front door rings. Marlene gets up to greet the potential customer, and Ted gives him a look that he isn’t done with the fatherly goading.

“ So what exactly is your type?”

“ Sod off Ted.”

“ No this is important, what if me and Andy make a mistake and you prefer people with webbed feet or something.”

“ I’m not letting you set me up on a date Ted!”

“ Just humor me.” Ted squints at him, waiting for an answer. Sirius racks his brain, he thinks of Harry’s questions, he thinks of how he left his wallet at home yesterday, the way that James would roll his eyes whenever Sirius hogged the record player at parties.

“ Someone…. Smart.”

“ Smart?”

“ …Yea.”

“ Well, that's not very specific.”

Sirius groans again and then stops when Marlene approaches back from the front counter. “ Black, some bloke is asking for you.” She says.

“ What?” He says confused, he looks at his watch, he should be done with all his appointments and pickups for the day. Marlene just shrugs and cocks her head back to front to tell him to follow her. He walks with her to the counter and is faced with a man he has never seen before, if he had he would definitely remember. He felt his heart stutter as the man turned to him as he walked beside the counter, his eyes looked manic, his hair messy like he had run his hands through it a million times. He looked like some kind of a weird combination of a broke college student and librarian, he was taller than Sirius, and his hazel eyes pinned him down immediately, making a shiver run up Sirius’s spine.

“ Your Sirius Black?” He says, his voice is wavering, his eyes are doubtful.

“ …Yes? Can I help you?” Sirius sizes him up again, he tries to rack his brain if they had met before, the guy feels likes something out of a weird dream. As Sirius answers his question the man’s eyes grow surprised and he’s sized up in return, he then takes a deep breath and holds out his hand.

“ I’m Remus Lupin.” He states.

Okay, I guess I don’t hold the award for strangest name anymore, Sirius cautiously takes the man’s hand to shake it and then freezes.

He’s heard that name before, he’s thought that same thought before.

Fuck

“You’re… You’re Harry’s teacher.” He says, probably too quietly than he should’ve, this is the first time in years that Sirius had felt nervous around any sort of teaching figure, his heart is rapidly beating. The man starts to try to say something but he could give fuck all about it, he starts yelling now. “ Did something happen? Did something happen to-?!”

The man looks at him, his brows moving making his face sympathetic and guilty, which only resolves to Sirius to make him feel worse. “ Harry he um- He was able to escape from school property about half an hour ago and-”

“ HALF AN HOUR AGO?”

“ Sir-” Lupin jumps as Sirius starts yelling, Marlene is still standing nearby at the counter, eyes looking back and forth between them. Sirius keeps yelling because the voice in his head is yelling and Sirius isn’t just going to let it keep going.

“ You lost him half an hour ago and you’re just now coming here?!”

“ Sir, we have it under control, we have people on deck to-” Lupin continues, but Sirius isn’t listening anymore. He runs back to the garage to get his wallet and house keys, Lupin yells behind him, but he ignores him. As he’s grabbing his stuff Ted is sitting over by a bike that Sirius was going to stay late to fix, “What’s going on?”

“ Harry ran away from school.”

“ What?!”

“ I’m going to see if I can find him, I’ll try to be back before-” Ted cuts him off.

“ Take the rest of the day off.”

“ Are you sure?” Sirius turns back, Ted just nods. He runs back to the front where Lupin is talking to Marlene, she just looks at him her lips pursed, and shrugs, Lupin frowns. As Sirius walks past the entrance Lupin looks at him, and then back to Marlene, and like he just noticed where Sirius was going he suddenly looks back and then follows Sirius outside. “ Hey!” He yells behind him.

Sirius ignores him, but the guy catches up and runs next to him.” Sir, I’m sure-”

“ Listen, I’m not gonna sit back and wait while you gits try and fail to find him!” He's yelling again, he’s yelling at his kid’s school teacher. Lupin frowns again, it pulls on his cheeks and Sirius notices that there's a scar on his right cheek. It's weird, and as Lupin frowns at him Sirius can’t take his eyes off it.

“ Do you have any clue where he went? He’s a kid, he wandered off.” Lupin says back, his voice grows cold, and Sirius has to stop himself from being surprised.

“ Harry’s smart, he doesn’t walk without reason.” Lupin raises an eyebrow at him.

“ Sounds like you know where he went.”

“ I have an idea.” He states, Lupin looks at him incredulously. Sirius just passes him again, Lupin calling out behind him. “ Where are you going?!”

Sirius turns around sharply and then realizes the meaning of Lupin’s statement. Sirius has no car, no bike, no nothing, he barely has enough money to spare a bus ride. But he wasn’t going to falter and look like some deadbeat so he keeps glaring.

“ Where do you think?!” He says almost too defensively, Lupin seems to catch on to this and looks at him.

“ You need a ride?”

_

5 minutes later he finds himself in his kid’s teacher’s car.

“ You have an address?” Lupin says, he has the GPS pulled up.

“ I’ll tell you where to go as you drive,” Sirius says, Lupin looks at him suspiciously and then puts the car in drive.

Sirius looks at the man next to him, he seemed about Sirius’s age, which was weird, other than the occasional student teacher Sirius never thought that teachers were ever this old. “Lupin” always felt like an old name to him, Harry coming home to say that he tried to bring his art project home but Mr. Lupin wouldn’t let him, said it was too “dangerous”. Sirius asked him what he made his art project from and Harry just looked at him, blinking those big eyes and Sirius had decided that it was better not to ask.

Sirius had been careful, he didn’t want to get himself a reputation at Harry’s school for the situation he was in. He certainly didn’t want Lily and James’s old parent friends coming up to give their best wishes, or trying to indoctrinate him into whatever book club they were holding or what school fundraising event they were volunteering for. And it was going well, Dumbledore assured Sirius that there would be no fuss about Lily and James’s deaths, that they would keep it mostly between them, and that Harry’s school life would be the same as before.

But then came the emails, notes, and forms that Harry brought home every day.

“ Mr. Lupin keeps asking if he can talk to you.”

“ Huh?” They were sitting at dinner, Sirius had opted for pancakes since Harry had gotten upset about a beetle dying outside during recess. Harry takes something from his pocket, unfolds it, and hands it over to Sirius. It’s a blue paper and as Sirius reads it he stifles a groan, parent-teacher conferences. Sirius just ignored it and ignored it. It’s not like he could ever make them anyway, if he wasn’t pulling later shifts at the garage then he was picking up different jobs to do after. But they just kept coming until Harry was basically giving him a new blue slip every day. This “ Mr. Lupin” apparently thought that he could just be worn down until he gave up and just came, but Sirius refused to. Thinking about having to sit in that room across from some old codger while they addressed Harry’s “behavior” and eventually deciding that it stemmed from Harry’s situation at home made Sirius want to pull his hair out.

No fucking way.

Sirius looked at the thing he had been precisely avoiding that was now sitting beside him in the car. He didn’t look like some old man who would scoff at him as soon as he entered a classroom, but he did kinda dress like one. Lupin sideway glanced at him back. They stop at a red light and Lupin sighs, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel.

“ So your son…” He starts and Sirius can feel what’s about to come from his bones.

“ Not my son.”

“ …What?”

“ His parents died a couple of years ago,” Sirius says blankly looking out the window.

“ Ah well. I didn’t know about that.” Sirius just barely nods his head back.

“ Look.” Sirius looks back at him, Lupin barely takes his eyes off the road, just sparing him a quick glance. “ I’m not going to act like this is in any way shocking to me.”

“Uh-huh.” Sirius just hums back.

“ He’s been acting up for a while now.”

“Uh-huh.”

“ I’ve been trying to get in touch with you to talk to you about it.”

Sirius snorts, and inspects his nail to where there’s a remnant of the green paint that Harry insisted on painting his hands with “ I know.”

“ You knew,” Lupin says, his voice taking that cold tone again.

“ Well, I can’t exactly avoid the papers my kid brings home every day.”

“ You knew?! And what have you been doing?! Ignoring them?!”

“ Not exactly.” Lupin is now turning away from the road, he looks at Sirius like he's some disturbing circus act. “ I work late, and wouldn’t be able to make any of them if I tried anyway.” They sit in silence for a bit, Sirius can feel the rage bubbling under the man next to him. It’s kind of funny in a way, he feels a bit warmer at the fact.

“ So what are you? Some sort of uncle or something?” Lupin says coldly, he doesn’t look away from the road.

“ Godfather,” Sirius says frankly, he can see the surprised stare coming from a mile away.

“ That actually happens?”

“ Yeah. Why do you think people do it?”

“ Harry doesn’t have any other relatives?” Lupin spits back. Sirius fumes a bit, he thinks of Petunia’s scowl at the funeral and his blood boils more, but he tries not to yell again, he doesn’t want to start a fight when the man is driving him to his lost kid.

“ What are you trying to imply exactly?”

“ It just seems that you’re a bit…” Lupin tilts his head a bit, and glances down at Sirius’s dirty face, his soiled uniform,- “ -Stretched a bit thin.”

“ ‘You saying that I’m a bad parent?”

“ No! Not bad maybe a bit… unqualified?” He says like it’s better. He smiles at Sirius, his heart beats fast again and he can’t tell if it’s because of anger or because of something else.

“ I appreciate the concern. But how I decide to raise my kid is really none of your business.”

“ It kind of is.”

“ Not really.”

“ Kind of.”

“ How in the hell would it be any of your business?!”

“ Because you’re not the one who has to sit through hours of conferences after Harry decides to set some poor kid’s hair on fire!”

There’s a pause.

“ He didn’t tell me about that one.”

“ I guess not,” Lupin says matter of factly. Sirius finds himself laughing, Lupin glances back at him in surprise.

“ It’s not funny!”

“ Of course.” He calms his laughter, swiping a tear from his eyes.

“ The parents almost sued the school, their kid almost went bald,” Lupin says.

Sirius quells his laughter and continues to grin at Lupin’s disgruntled face. “ Right. Not funny. Very Serious.” He didn’t bring up the obvious joke, but even then it seemed that Lupin picked up on it, he glanced back to the road, exhaling out of his nose.

“ Why did you have fire around 9-year-olds anyway?”

“ We didn’t. My teaching assistant keeps matches on her desk, and sometimes she lights candles, honestly, it was more of an oversight on my part.” He says, squinting at the road signs ahead, Sirius holds up his finger to point him where to go.

“ Well Harry never does anything without reason so I’m sure the kid deserved it,” Sirius says, laughing a bit.

“You’re insane.” Lupin states, glaring at him, Sirius feels a bit like he’s back in school again, even though he doesn’t know why, James certainly never made him feel this way.

“ This explains the cigs.” Lupin mumbles.

“ What?”

“ The cigarettes, Harry gave to me, said it was for teacher’s appreciation.” He stares pointedly at him.

“ Ah right.” He looks at Lupin, putting on a smirk he would in front of teachers after he and James got caught for some kind of prank. “ Thought you would appreciate those.”

“ In what way?!” Lupin’s face gets a tad more red.

“ I don’t know.” Sirius shrugs. “ Maybe you would chill a bit, stop sending the papers.”

They stop at a red light, Lupin gives him that same look as before, like he’s seeing a bear ride a tricycle right towards him.

“ That is so irresponsible!”

“ Oh c’mon, it’s a little funny,” Sirius says, still smiling. Lupin is about to say something before Sirius sees the playground, pointing and yelling loudly, startling Lupin out of anything he is about to say.

“THERE!”

Right as Sirius yells the teacher breaks on the gas, causing the car to skrrt loudly on the hard ground. Lupin continues to look at him frazzled as he gets out of the car to follow Sirius to the playground. Sirius is partly running, Lupin following hesitantly behind, and as he sees a small bundle of messy black hair he lets out a breath of air. He’s sitting on one of the swings, like kids do, not even sending his legs up in the air but sitting there, his legs drooping. His glasses are a bit foggy and he’s missing a shoe, which doesn’t worry Sirius any less. He runs to a crouch in front of him and stops the swing from his sad little sway, he can feel Lupin staring at him but he tries to ignore it.

“ Hey, buddy.” He adjusts his head to look under to where Harry’s eyes are focused on the ground, on further inspection he sees the boy’s lip trembling, he keeps his voice very soft.

“ Care to tell me what you’re doing here, and not at school?”

The little boy sniffs sharply and instead of making eye contact looks to the side.

“ We didn’t see them.”

“ Hm?”

“ Yesterday, we didn’t see them. You forgot.”

Them? Forgot? What did he forget?

Sirius turned around to Lupin standing awkwardly behind him on the edge where the swing area ended.

“ What’s the date?”

This seems to catch the man off guard as he jumps as Sirius addresses him.

“ Uh- November 16th?” He says and Sirius slaps himself inwardly and suppresses a groan.

That makes sense.

James and Lily had their funeral on the 15th, Sirius had sat there, one hand holding an umbrella, one hand in Harry’s as they went through eulogies, he had cried but he turned his face away so Harry couldn’t see, but he doubted the boy assumed anything else. As they left, to go to the reception, Harry’s little body stood their stagnant, feet planted as he looked upon the twin graves in front of them.

“ C’mon bud, we’ll come back another time.” He said, just to say something.

Harry had looked up at him, through those big glasses shielding those big eyes of his-

“ Promise?” The boy said.

At that moment, because Sirius felt like there was nothing else he could do he kneeled down and held up a pinky finger, Harry looping his own with his. Harry was a smart kid, he remembered dates, really it was Sirius’s fault. He had done everything not to think of them, even though a grim example walked around his house on the daily. He had a late shift doing paid work for Andy’s gallery so he must've forgotten.

“ Look Bud I’m sorry.” He keeps his voice down to a lower level, he most certainly doesn’t need the teacher from some kind of hell hearing in his private conversations. “ We can go this weekend I swear.” He holds out his pinky finger, a sort of faux promise to him, but he’s willing to pull out anything if it means that Harry won’t walk around their house depressed like something out of a horror movie.

Harry looks up at him, through those big green eyes that most definitely came from Lily, you can see every emotion through them, he wonders if that ever made court any harder for her.

“ Ok.” Harry nods smally, and clutches Sirius’s pinky in his own. He stands up, gesturing Harry to do the same and as they walk to where Lupin is standing at the edge of the sand pit, Harry keeps his head dipped down low, it breaks Sirius’s heart but there’s nothing he can do now.

“Thanks for the ride, I promise it won’t happen again,” Sirius looks at Lupin who’s standing there all tall and concerned and it annoys him how he stayed the whole time, he could’ve gone without the stares. “ We have this thing, we go to the graveyard where his parents are buried every year, had a late shift and I forgot.” He grins trying to relieve the sadness of the situation and he ruffles Harry’s hair beside him, Lupin’s eyes follow the motion and then he goes back to scanning his face.

“ The dead parents?” Lupin manages out.

“ Yes,” Sirius says trying to keep his smile stagnant. “ The dead parents.” He says. “ He must have tried to get there himself and got lost on the way.” He gives a small laugh but with the two sticks in the mud with him, it doesn't do anything.

“ Do you need a ride home?” Is all the teacher says, he points behind his shoulder to his car.

“ No, it’s ok, I can call someone.”

“ It’s not any trouble, I need to head back to school anyway.”

Sirius looks at him, and Lupin looks back, Harry stands there and silently and sadly takes Sirius’s hand in his, he was still looking at his shoes.

“ Sure. Fine.” He relents.

On the drive back, Sirius had to give the bloke his address, which he would’ve preferred otherwise. It’s silent, Harry sitting in the back and leaning his little face against the window. Somehow Sirius finds himself squinting at Lupin next to him. Stupid school, and stupid teachers, if Sirius had the time he would just homeschool him, the only reason Sirius agreed to send Harry to Hogwarts is because James and Lily wanted it.

There was a sort of comfort in Lupin’s presence though, he found himself a bit shaky after their conversation on the way there, Sirius only really hung around Ted, Andy, and sometimes Marlene so being around someone his age was uncomfortable territory for him.

As they get out of the car, Sirius hands Harry his keys and tells him to let himself in.

“ Well,” He lets some air out of his mouth, turning around to face Lupin who unexpectedly got out of his car and was standing on the curb, “ Thanks, again.”

“ I’m guessing I’m not going to see you at any conferences any time soon?”

Sirius laughs despite himself, “ Probably not.” They sit there on the side of the road, somehow Sirius has a hard time telling his feet to move.

“ Could you um-” Lupin starts, looking at the ground and rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “ Give me your number. For safety purposes?”

“ My number?” He sits there, surprised by the question scanning his mind for excuses, “Dumbledore should have it.”

“ Well, he hasn’t given it to me,” Lupin says, shoving his hands in his pockets and shrugging.

“ Y’know, what,” Sirius laughs again, his heart oddly thumping in his chest, weird, he thinks, “ I’ll give you my work email.” Lupin seems to get peeved a bit by this but he takes it anyway.

“ By the way,” He adds after he has Lupin type it into his phone, “ You should really take your car into a shop, looks like shit.” He waves, Lupin still standing on the street when he closes the door to the house.

Chapter Text

When Remus was 7 some boys from his neighborhood had pushed him into a nearby stream and he had come back home soaked wet from struggling to swim back to shore. He remembers how cold he was, he sat there, his mum handing him warm milk in a mug to drink. She asked him what happened just about a million times, the whole time he kept his mouth shut.

Passive, that’s what he always was. He wouldn’t say that his mother was exactly the one who taught him to be that way, but standing up for himself didn’t exactly make things easier when everything in Wales reminded him of how much his presence in his parents’ lives burdened them. He had just about every major problem every season, a million allergies, and a major bout of depression starting his freshman year of college.

“ You're not like other boys cariad,” His mother’s voice came from his cell while he was lying on his loft bed with crisp bags littered on his sheets.

“ You're a very melancholy boy, never laughed much when you were a baby.” She said cheerfully and slowly.

Nothing about himself worked very well, his body working against himself, his mind working against himself. Sadly to admit, but at every point he’s alone, and he’s accepted that fact about himself. He never wanted children, he had a million cousins, and they had all run away from him as soon as they saw him pulling out Homer’s Odyssey instead of wanting to play Red Robin and getting his arms ripped off. He liked helping people though, he was never really able to help himself and kids had a certain way about them when you were a teacher. They didn’t quite respect you but Remus didn’t mind that.

Nothing had hit him as hard as seeing Black walk out of his car with Harry though, so as he sat in his car, hands on the steering wheel watching as a guy probably about his age and with no child-raising experience ushered Harry into a pretty nice townhouse in Notting Hill he felt something switch in his brain. Maybe he finally grew a backbone.

Safe to say he was surprised to see that Harry’s guardian was some random bloke off the street who looked like he would chuck a beer at his head during a concert. Not to mention the man was astonishingly attractive and Remus had stood in that repair shop struggling to get feeling back in his legs as soon as he saw him. Everything was coming into focus more, Black was irresponsible, it was like giving a kid to one of the guys Remus hated while in Uni, he raised Harry like he had some extra roommate and not like a child, shows of affection at the playground aside.

The man was clearly out of his depth and something in Remus’s heart burned with concern at the fact.

He was out of depth and his poor parenting skills were leaking down to Remus having to do overtime at Hogwarts every week to keep the stuck-up parents of the school happy.

A few days later Remus finds himself left alone with Harry at the end of a school day. Mary had left as did all the kids, and Harry stayed back with Remus to organize the classroom. They were rearranging the bookshelf, Harry stopping to look through an old copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that Remus had brought from home. Remus kept cleaning up the bookcase, taking glances at Harry who was continuing to get surprisingly far in the book while Remus picked up the slack. As he finished he turned himself over to address the boy from where he was kneeling on the carpet.

“ Are you enjoying it? It was one of my favorites when I was a kid.” He says. Harry just looks back at him and then nods, closing the book and putting it back on the shelf.

“ You can take it home if you’d like.” He says at Harry’s reluctance to put it on the shelf all the way, assumingly so he could find it the next day.

“ Really?” Harry says, his eyes growing brighter.

“ Yep. Just bring it back when you’re done, I’ve never had anyone be so interested in the library before.” Remus gives his adult smile, and Harry looking at him all big and wide-eyed, takes the book and hugs it to his chest.

“ Thank you.” He says, Remus nods.

“ Hey Harry, do you mind if I ask you a question? A sort of an adult question.” Remus says and Harry shakes his head.

“ Your uh um-” Remus tries to grasp on a word that correctly describes their situation but can’t find it, “ Your uncle, sorta not, do you like him?” He studies Harry’s face as he asks and he doesn’t see glimpses of any negative emotions.

“Yeah,” Harry says.

“ And you don’t mind that he doesn't pick you up from school.”

“ I don’t mind.” He turns away, still hugging the book to his chest. “ He’s busy, and…” He drifts off, squinting his eyes a bit, “....sad.”

Busy and sad? Well, that wasn’t a reassuring combination of words. Harry’s looking at his shoes now, lying before him on the carpet and Remus goes through his options of continuing the conversation, he takes a look at the clock, it’s almost four, he thinks.

“ Do you want me to take you home?” He says, Harry stares at him for a minute, taking in the question, and he then shakes his head up and down frantically, Remus takes that as a yes. He shoots off a quick email to Sirius informing him and then takes Harry out to the parking lot, still clutching the book to his chest.

_

Dear Mr. Black,

It’s almost an hour after pickup and as I have your address I have decided that it’s probably just easier to drop Harry off myself.

You’re welcome,
Remus Lupin

Sent from iPhone

Sirius stares at his phone.

You’re welcome? Who the fuck did this guy think he was?! Sirius was hauling up a canvas onto a nailed-in installation when he got the buzz on his phone, Benjy stood suspending the large canvas into the air as Sirius sat there tapping his phone trying to formulate a response.

“ Hey! Black! A little help here!” He heard Benjy call from behind him, but he ignored him.

Was this allowed in Hogwarts’ teaching code? This had to be some kind of overstep. No way this was allowed.

To be fair Harry’s whole enrollment must’ve been some violation of the code, he was enrolled way too late since Sirius didn’t know about the process beforehand and the only reason he was still able to get him in was because of Dumbledore. But still! He must be able to complain to the old man about this, Sirius does not participate in any school events because he didn’t want this exact thing to happen. He was a troubled kid, no shit teachers probably babied Sirius at Hogwarts more than others. Rich society was like some sort of gossip mill on crack, leave your parent’s house and never come back, and all of a sudden your science teacher is telling you if you need anything just let him know.

God, it was all infuriating, his business was his business, and he didn’t need anyone else butting in.

As he had these thoughts he heard a bang and looked away from his phone to see Benjy dejectedly looking at the canvas on the hard ground. He looked up to glare at Sirius and then suddenly stood up straighter when a woman with straight black hair and a killer stare came waltzing in through the gallery front door.

“ I don’t quite remember the instructions the artist gave us for this piece but I sure as hell know it wasn’t to leave it on the floor,” Andromeda says, her gaze and voice like ice, Benjy nodes quickly and moves to put it up again.

“ Won’t happen again, mam!” He yells out, the secondhand embarrassment almost makes Sirius wince. As she turns she tucks some hair behind her ear and as soon she lands her eyes on Sirius her face instantly softens up.

“ You have anything to say about this?” Despite the seriousness of the question she smiles, and Sirius puts his phone behind his back, attempting to hide it, Andy’s eyes follow the motion anyway.

“ No mam.” He says, grinning, Andy smiles back at him and like some sort of cat, pounces, snatching his phone from his hand.

“ Hey! Andy!”

“ Don’t tell me you hired a babysitter?!” She says looking at the lit phone screen in her pedicured hands.

“ No,” He grabs the phone from where Andy’s reading it, “ I didn’t “.

“ So what’s the deal, why is some random man driving your kid home.” She raises an eyebrow at him suspiciously.

“ He’s Harry’s teacher.”

“ And you’re not happy about this? Him driving Harry home?” She scans his face, and sometimes it annoys the hell out of him about how easily she can read him. Blacks were always about lack of emotion, you keep everything buried and when you have everything under your hand you take what’s yours like some kind of snake. Or like some game of poker, thinking about the amount of times Sirius had to sit in one of his father’s games makes him shiver.

“ Well no. I don’t know this guy, he could be a child molester or something.”

“ Have you met him?”

“ Yeah, once.”

“ Does he seem like a child molester?”

“ Well not really but you never really know-”

“ I don’t understand the problem,” Andy says, Sirius finds that her French accent spikes whenever she decides to interrogate him, making her “the’s” sound like “ Thee”. “ You’ve had Marlene pick up Harry before, you don’t know her.” There’s some scuffling coming from Benjy again, Sirius walks over to help him haul the canvas up, anything to avoid this conversation.

“ Marlene’s my colleague, and besides that was one time and I was desperate.”

“ Are you not desperate now?” She asks, pouting her lip a bit, Sirius jumps and hangs the canvas successfully on the nail in the wall. He claps his hand to get the dust off.

“ No, I am not.” He says, he glares a bit.

“ Huh,” Andy says. Like this is news to her. “ Anyway,” She tucks some of her long black hair behind her shoulder and ear, “ Speaking of desperate, are you free tonight?”

“ I’m busy.”

“ Doing what?”

Tonight was his and Harry’s movie night they did every week, but he wasn’t going to tell Andy that on the basis she might call him pathetic again.

“ None of your business.” He says.

“ Oh, so you're not busy.”

“ I just said-!”

“ I booked you a reservation for 6 at Madam Puddifoots.” She looks down at her phone, calmly typing out a long message.

“ What?! With who?”

“ Amelia, you know her, you met her at our Christmas party.” She says not looking up from her phone.

“ Andy I just told Ted-”

“ I know.” She looks up, eyes like daggers, “ He told me,” She puts her phone in her suit jacket and puts her hand on Sirius’s shoulder. “ The Potters died two years ago,” She says, Sirius tries to not make that information make him go cold. “ You have not taken any time for yourself since then, when was the last time you’ve had sex?”

“ Andy oh my fucking god-”

“ It’s ok Ted already told me.” She smiles and Sirius groans, “ Just go on the date ok? I’ll get Ted to get you the day off tomorrow just in case.” Andy says.

“ You two are disgusting.” He considers the day off and then looks back at Andy whose eyebrows are raised, waiting for a response, “ I’ll go.” Andy smiles a smile only an evil villain would have, “ But I’m getting that day off.” He says.

“ Great,” Andy says swiftly and then a ringing starts up from her suit jacket, she puts a finger up, showing the conversation isn’t over, and then struts away to another part of the gallery. “ Hello? Oh no, no, love, there’s no way we’d be able to get a flat screen into the gallery at such short notice,” He can hear her saying to her phone as she walks.

Sirius looks back to his phone, to the email, to the sent from iPhone, that ends the email. He makes a split-second decision and his fingers are moving rapidly against the keyboard.

Dear Lupin,

My number is (xxx) xxx- xxx, call me NOW.

-Sirius Black

Sent from iPhone

Surprisingly seconds later after Sirius sends the email his phone goes off, an unknown caller, he picks up and hears a voice on the other side.

“ Hello?”

“ Hi yeah hello, care to explain why you’ve kidnapped my kid?”

There's a pause.

“ I’m not-” Lupin starts.

“ I don’t care what you are or not doing, maybe next check in with the legal guardian before just shoving some kid that doesn’t belong to you into your fucked up car.” After another pause, Sirius hears the man take a deep breath.

“ Do you know what time it is?” He says. Sirius can feel his eyebrows coming together and he takes a look at the gallery’s clock.

“ 10 after 4?”

“ Correct.”

Another pause.

“ So? What?”

“ Pickups at 3:15 Black.”

“ Harry can get home by himself.”

“ Yeah but he didn’t”

“ What?”

“ He didn’t go home, he stayed at the school past 4.”

Sirius stood in the gallery, silent. Harry hasn’t ever done that before.

“ He wasn’t supposed to do that.”

“ Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Harry isn’t happy having to go home himself every day?”

“ If he was he would tell me,” Sirius says confidently, annoyingly he hears Lupin snort from the other side of the line.

“ Are you driving right now? That’s not very responsible.” Sirius states.

“ I’m not driving.”

“ So what are you doing?”

Another short pause. Lupin doesn’t say anything but Sirius does hear a familiar young boy chirping in the background.

“ Are you at my house?!” Sirius yells into his phone. Andy got off her call and was now helping Benjy hang up string back and forth on different corners of the wall, she looked at him with amusement.

“ I-” Lupin stutters.

“We’re making waffles!” Harry yells in the background, cutting Lupin off.

“ You have got to be kidding me.” Sirius rubs his face in aspiration.

“ Look, he had the keys and wanted me to come in and I didn’t want to just leave him home alone-”

Sirius hung up.

He turns to Andy who had stopped helping Benjy and was berating him from the sidelines, she turns her attention slowly to where Sirius walks up.

“ You heading out?”

“ Seems like it,” Sirius frowns, putting his phone back in his pocket.

_

Harry crouches down, putting his book down with 3 other ones on the first shelf of a frankly huge but empty bookshelf. As the boy stands back he grins and then runs back to the kitchen. Remus looks around the house, it was nice. With how much Black seemed run ragged he didn’t expect Harry to be living this nice, but as he looked, some things seemed off. Well first, the empty bookshelf, this was the only one, in the living room at least, and it was almost empty. The only things that seemed to be decorating the interior of the house were projects Harry had made throughout the years and a randomly placed piano in the corner. On the piano, Remus made his way over, was sheet music for a Bowie song.

Hearing struggling come from the kitchen, Remus walked in, opening a cabinet that Harry was trying to not fall from a kitchen counter to open. He opened the cabinet, the only thing being in there being said waffle mix. Examining the back he looked around the kitchen for the other ingredients while Harry shuffled himself into a chair to look at the homework Remus had him take out. As Remus opened and closed cabinets and peered inside their fridge he realized something.

They didn’t have any food, what in the hell did Black feed him?

They had at least eggs, flour, milk, and butter which worked at least for the waffle mix, Remus dumped everything into a bowl and then poured it into a waffle iron. A waffle iron, because they had a waffle iron and this whole big nice townhouse, but no vegetables. Remus had never been more perplexed in his life. Afterward, he put them on the table and helped Harry with his homework until the front door slammed open. Black stomped up, boots catching Remus red-handed sitting at his dinner table pointing to a timetable in front of Harry on his homework.

“Padfoot!” Harry chirps from his seat at the table, Sirius walks over calmly and ruffles the boy’s hair.

“ So does Hogwarts have some sort of babysitting service now?” Sirius says, laughing without humor.

“ No.” Remus bluntly says.

“ So you do this with all the parents, chauffeuring their kids home? For free?” He snarkily says, Remus almost expects him to start growling at him.

“ No. But like a normal person- Harry, it’s times 4, add two more,” He points to the sheet sitting on the table, in response Harry scrunches up his face and puts his pencil’s eraser in between his eyes, “ -like a normal person, I get a bit worried when I see a 9-year-old be left home alone.” He realizes this is a big step into someone’s privacy, but when a kid is pulling your arm and begging for him to stay there really is not much Remus can do.

“ I’ve been taking late jobs for years, he’s fine with being home alone, right Harry?” Harry just shrugs, taking a break from rubbing his eraser violently against the paper. Seemingly not expecting that response Black’s eyes bulge a bit.

“Your kitchen is basically empty.” Remus gestures to the fridge and cupboards.

“ We manage just fine, thank you.” Sirius spits back. “ Don’t really have the time to buy groceries every other week.”

“Maybe you should hire a sitter,” Remus suggests.

“ Maybe you should mind your own business.” Black spits back. It’s a childish response, even Harry recognizes this as his eyes go back and forth between them. Remus, suffering the juvenile wrath of the man in front of him, gives up with a sigh and stands up from the table.

“ I should get going.” He says, as he stands from his chair he hears Harry let out a “ No!” He walks to the door and Sirius follows him, continuing to talk as he does.

“ You didn’t tell me how much I should pay you, all I have is a 20 but I’m sure that can be good lunch money for the next week. “ He grins infuriatingly and takes out a 20 from his pocket and as he does Remus swats it away.

“ Hey-” Remus cuts him off.

“ Listen I’m sorry that I tried to help you out-”

“ I don’t need your-”

“ But you're obviously overworked and parenting is about more than keeping the lights on.”

“ What would you know about parenting?!”

“ I am a teacher!”

“ Yeah, teacher.” Sirius looks at him, chin pointed up, “ Not a parent.” Remus just glares at him and turns towards the door, not expecting Sirius to keep speaking.

“ I don’t know why you’re lecturing me about parenting when you can barely keep your car working.” He spits out, Remus just stands there and as Sirius keeps talking,” It looks like its tail lights barely work, it’s a hazard, really I should report you to the police.” And he keeps talking, “ Has Hogwarts become some kind of military school, Harry’s a kid, he does kid things, clearly you shouldn’t be a teacher if you can’t handle the slightest bit of trouble, years ago kids would blow up whole toilets and they barely even called your parents.”

He clearly needed to get some things off his chest so Remus just crossed his arms and resolved to wait it out.

“ How long have you been working at Hogwarts anyway? You certainly weren’t employed last time I checked, you're basically a kid, how the hell did the old man find you?”

“ A bar in Cambridge,” Remus states.

Not expecting such a blunt response Sirius stops. “ Really?” He asks, Remus just nods.

“ Well, I don’t say I’m surprised.” He says almost snootily, it reminds him of another asshole who's making Remus’s life hell and he can’t help getting even more annoyed as he reaches that thought. They stand there, Remus keeps his back straight and the door is open letting the cool air in.

“ Are you done?” Remus asks.

Sirius looks at him wide-eyed,“ Sure.” He says.

Remus holds up his phone in his hand, “ I have your number, expect a memo soon about the next conference date in around…” Remus scrunches his nose in thought, Sirius just looks at his phone horrified, and then back to Remus still standing in the door frame.

“ Wait-”

“ …About 5 business days.” Remus finishes up, smiling warmly.

“ You can’t do that!”

“ We're allowed to send messages to any Hogwarts parent, it’s perfectly in our right Mr. Black, you sign permission when enrolling your child.” He bows his head in leave and makes his way back to his car, Sirius standing enraged on the doorstep.

“ Hey wait!” He yells but Remus ignores him and watches his figure grow smaller in his rearview mirror, his smile growing wider.

_

“WANKER!” Sirius screams from his doorstep just as the car gets going and leaves the neighborhood. His face feels red and his head is light and as he watches the car get smaller from a distance he stomps back into the house, slamming the door. As he walks back into the kitchen Harry is still sitting at the dinner table, this time with crayons massacring his homework.

“ I thought we weren’t allowed to say that word.” He scrunches his face in confusion and Sirius just pulls out a chair and angrily drops into it, once again he feels 16 again but this time he doesn’t like it.

He turns to Harry, “ What have I said about letting strangers into the house.”

“ He’s not a stranger.”

“ Might as well be.”

Harry just lifts his eyebrows in disbelief, Sirius ignores him.

“ Is this why you're lonely?”

“ Harry,” Sirius lifts his hand to his face in aspiration, “ For the last time I’m not lonely. Just because I’m alone doesn’t mean I’m lonely.”

“ Both those words are the same.”

“ Okay, you clearly need to be paying more attention to this then,” Sirius points to the homework on the table, tapping his pointer against the table with a thud. He ruffles Harry’s hair again and the boy giggles trying to pull the hand away. “ Besides I’m not alone, I have you.”

“ I don’t count.”

“ Yes, you do, who else am I going to watch movies with?”

“ A girl,” Harry says promptly.

“ I cannot take a girl to Seven Samurai.” He bumps Harry slightly on the shoulder.

“ Yes, you can!”

“Nuh-uh, don’t think so.” At the mention of girls, Sirius’s stomach drops in a horrid realization. Sirius hops from his chair, Harry still chirping in the background as he goes to the phone.

“ That reminds me, we’ll have to move movie night to tomorrow.” He says, as he tries to rack his brain for the number he’s trying to call. At his statement, Harry comically frowns.

“ Why?!” He yells.

“ I have a thing,” Sirius says vaguely, he would really prefer to keep any information about his alleged date from Harry’s sweet mind.

“ What thing?” At this, Sirius cuts him off with an exaggerated and loud shush as he brings the phone to his ear.

“ It’s a secret!” He says in a faux whisper but this only tempts Harry more as he continues to yell, “ What thing!?” repeatedly as Sirius stands by the counter trying to prevent the boy from climbing up his legs.

“ Hello?” A man’s voice comes in from Sirius’s phone.

“ Hi, Arthur! Are you and Molly busy tonight?” Sirius tries to sound cheerful, he always finds that every Weasley except for Molly tiptoes around him like he’s about to off himself any second.

“ No sir, just spending the night with the wife and kids,” Arthur says back happily.

“ By any chance do you have room for one more, something came up and I need someone to watch Harry for the night.”

“ Well…” Arthur hesitates, this has been the second time Sirius has dropped Harry off at the Weasleys this week and he has been meaning to stop relying on them so much, but he doesn’t have any other options. Looking after Harry is a bit of a feat, and certainly putting him with 4 other highly erratic kids is probably not how they want to spend their night, but Sirius needs to be able to do this date to get his cousin off his back so he’s willing to grovel.

“ Please? For family?” Thus the groveling, Sirius was only related to them distantly through his great grandfather but pulling up the family card always seemed to work.

“ Well alright.” Arthur relents and Sirius silently fist pumps the air as Harry keeps yelling at his knees. About an hour later Sirius finds himself at the Burrow letting Harry loose to where he tackles Ron to the floor in their living room. Molly puts her hands to her hips and looks upon the scene with amusement and as she looks back to Sirius standing by the door he grins and the look forms into one more of annoyance.

“ This is the last time I promise,” Sirius says, Molly just shakes her head.

“ Don’t worry about it. Parents-,” She bumps him slightly with her hip, “ -we support each other,” she gives him a pointed look, “ no matter how irresponsible.”

“ I’m responsible Molly, I’m an adult.” He says, he’s getting frustrated that he has to explain that constantly.

“ Didn’t see you at the conference on Monday.” She says, Sirius groans. “ It’s a big thing, to have two children somehow hotwire a car, usually in a conference they have guardians of both children there.”

“ I was busy.”

“ You're always busy Sirius.” She says sizing him up with her eyes, Sirius glares at her, this doesn’t affect her. “ You should really be more involved, what's the point of sending your child to Hogwarts without volunteering for any events?”

“ It’s what James and Lily wanted.” Sirius shifts from one foot to the other uncomfortably, “ My parents never volunteered.”

“ ‘And look where that got you.” She glares at him and then squints behind him where you can see his motorbike from a nearby window.

“ I don’t feel very supported right now.” He makes a face at her, receiving one back from Molly whose arms are now crossed around her chest. Arthur walks over, the glasses over his eyes making them look bigger, the creases around his eyes crinkle as he smiles and puts his arm around Molly’s waist.

“ Alright, Sirius?” He says.

“ Hi, Arthur.”

“ Where are you off to tonight?”

“ He has a date!” Harry yells from where he’s in a pile with the other Weasley children, Sirius’s eyes widen and when he looks back to Arthur and Molly they wear similar expressions.

“ Oh!” Molly gasps.

“ It’s not serious-” He stumbles, “ Andy is making me and-”

“ Well it's about time, you know I was thinking about setting you up with that single mum,” Molly snaps her fingers and looks to Arthur for help, “ Y’know with the tooth gap, she helped out with the bake sale.”

“ Glinda!” Arthur pipes up.

“ Yes!” Molly grins evilly back at Sirius who’s about ready to leave. “ Oh c’mon don’t be embarrassed, doesn't hurt to give the child a mum, Harry must be lonely, being in that house all by himself.”

“ He’s not lonely, he has me,” Sirius scowls, and at this Molly’s brows furrow and Sirius thanks them again and makes his way back to his bike parked on the road.

_

“ So what do you do for work?” The girl across the table asked, busing her fork around in her Alfredo and frankly annoying Sirius with how she’s metal mixing her rings.

“ I’m a mechanic.”

“ Full time?” She looks up from her food.

“ Yes, full-time.” He says blandly, his eyes drifting back to the street, already getting bored with the conversation.

“ Ever thought about doing anything else?”

“ No.” Sirius lies.

“ Oh well,” Amelia squints her eyes a bit, “ Andromeda said you went to Oxford, I’m sure you could get a job anywhere.”

Sirius snorts into his food, “ I dropped out.”

“ Oh.”

There's an awkward silence, Frank Sinatra is playing on the overhead speakers in the restaurant, and he isn’t feeling the ambiance.

“ Well I had to go back to business school for my degree, it’s never too late.”

“ I don’t plan on going back to school.” He responds dryly. “ There's nothing wrong with the job I have now.”

“ You don’t think so?”

“ No, I don’t,” Sirius can feel himself get irrationally angry. Before Amelia can say anything else the waiter comes back over, pouring a new amount of wine in both of their glasses.

“ Is there anything else I can get you?” The waiter asks.

“ Yeah the check please,” Sirius smiles and tilts his head as the waiter nods and walks away. Amelia’s mouth drops open in shock.

“ You made her cry?!” Andromeda yells from the other side of the phone the next day, he’s at Broomsticks’ right now taking over a shift even though he left this extra job months ago. He’s looking through their pantry for Grenadine and can’t reach the higher shelves because of his blasted height. He walks back into the empty bar to look for a stool as he responds.

“ I did not make her cry,” He stops as he picks up a stool and ponders, “ At least not fully.” After Sirius asked for the check safe to say that things got a bit chaotic, apparently the girl had never been so rejected before, because before Sirius knew it she was swearing to tell her father that Sirius had been rude to her and stomping out of the restaurant, leaving Sirius to order a wine bottle to go.

“ You are terrible,” Andromeda says.

“ Andy, you put me on a date with a piece of wood, what do you expect me to do?”

“ How could you say that? I put you on a date with a highly respectable woman-”

“ She’s a business consultant.”

“ An independent and career-driven woman-”

“ A business consultant for Microsoft.”

“ Do you enjoy behaving like a child?”

“ I think I’m allowed to do that when she looks at me like I stepped in dogshit when I told her what I did for work.” He says and he hears Andy takes a deep breath on the other side of the line.

“ Sirius, if you don’t stop closing yourself off to everybody you're going to be lonely forever.”

“ I am not lonely!” He finds himself yelling as he kicks the stool into the pantry. “Why does everyone keep saying that?” He murmurs.

“ Well, you certainly act lonely.”

“ How do lonely people act?”

“ Bitter.”

“ Rather be bitter than be sleeping with someone who types numbers for a living.”

“ If I knew you hated business consultants so much I would've put you on a date with someone else.”

“ I don’t hate business consultants specifically,” He jumps up on the stool, putting his phone to his side, and then brings it back to his ear as he surveys the bottle of liquid he grabbed. “ I just don’t like being looked down on.”

“ I highly doubt she was doing that.”

“ She told me that she didn’t like rock music because she’s too old, too old for rock music! Can you believe that?!”

“ I think you're taking all this a bit too personally.”

Sirius grumbles an unintelligible response as he walks out of the pantry and hands it off to the person taking the next shift at the bar, he keeps Andromeda on the phone until he gets home, he walks this time, being that the bar’s only a short walk from his house.

“ So what? You're just never going on a date again?”

“ I didn’t even want to go on that date in the first place, you forced me into it.”

“ I was just trying to loosen you up a bit.”

“ I’m loose!” Sirius says as he tries to fit his keys into the holes in his front door, “ I’m so loose!”

“ Yeah okay, and you know who else said that?”

“ Who?”

“ Grandpa Cignus, just before he died.”

“ Shut the fuck up no he didn’t”

“ Uh- yeah, he did.” She says, they're going more into their old ways now, fighting like two kids, back and forth and comparing each other to their hated family members to make each other even more angry.

“Cygnus died in the 80s, you were barely alive then.”

“ Well then someone told me.”

“ You're so full of shit!” He yells into his phone, comforted by the fact that Harry wasn’t there so he could swear openly. Sirius was able to convince the Weasleys to keep him for the morning and a bit of the afternoon so he could take that extra shift at the bar.

“ At least I didn’t make a girl cry over rock music.” Andy snorts through the phone and Sirius drops his keys.

“ She did not-!” He starts and then stops as he sees something by the front door as he bends down to get his keys.

“ Hello? Sirius?” Andy calls from his phone.

“ Lemme call you back.” He stands slowly upward, his keys in his hands as he squints at his peripheral.

“ What? Sirius, what happened?” She yells before Sirius hangs up. He walked up to where he saw multiple plastic bags lying beside his front door. There’s a Tesco label printed on the front of them and when looking inside he sees vegetables, produce, things Sirius has never bought in his life. As he stands holding a bag of carrots and onions in his hands he racks his brain for how these would have even ended up here. He wasn’t that drunk the night he had his date and even if he had somehow managed to buy groceries he doesn’t know where he would find a Tesco close by let alone how he would manage to transport everything on his bike. As he stands on his entrance’s front steps and looks at the bags he remembers a car and a man squinting disapprovingly at his fridge. He brings his phone back to his face and calls a number.

“ Hello?” The voice calls from his phone, and Sirius has to hold himself back from absolutely screaming, instead, he channels a more silent rage.

“ Did you buy me groceries?” He asks, and even more infuriating, Lupin has the gall to laugh.

“ So you must’ve seen them.”

“ It’s kind of hard not to when you put them right by my front door!”

“ Well, it’s not like I had the keys to your house, where else was I supposed to put them?” He says cheekily and Sirius almost wants to chuck his phone against the steps, but he doesn’t because he’s an adult.

“ Where do you get off? Doing all this? Are you trying to do something illegal or do you just like pissing me off?”

“ I’m doing this because I want to.” It’s all the guy says, like that's enough explanation, it enrages Sirius and he finds his hands shaky and all sweaty.

“ You're not expecting me to pay you back, are you? Cause god knows I didn’t ask for all this.”

“ Don’t worry about it,” Lupin says shortly.

“ How do you even have the money for all this? You’re a teacher.”

“ I got my paycheck yesterday, I don’t need to buy much food for myself anyway.” He says, Sirius gets a feeling that’s a bit of a lie and finds himself glancing at the bags at his door again.

“ What am I even supposed to do with all this?”

“ Cook I’d guess.”

There’s a silence as Sirius stands there, he listens to a soft breath come from the other side of the phone, somehow it makes him antsy. He tries to imagine what Lupin is doing right now, he probably has some small flat somewhere, probably in Camden, does he look like someone who would live there? Probably right? He thinks of the knitwear and corduroy that Sirius met him in, like some kind of country dad. Sirius smiles at the thought.

“ You do know how to cook right?” Lupin’s voice brings him out of his thoughts, he realizes that he must’ve just gone silent for 30 seconds.

“ Of course I do! I’m an adult!” He says rather too loudly.

“ You seem a bit defensive of the fact.”

“ Probably because lately it seems like everyone treats me like I’m not.”

“ I’m not trying to patronize you, Black, I just want to help.” He says softly, Sirius just shuts his eyes hard on his face as he keeps talking, “ Hogwarts values relationships between its parents, you have not been involved at all since you enrolled Harry.”

“ And that’s what you think you’re doing? Getting me involved?”

“ Well you haven’t been participating at all so I guess I’m overstepping to level the scale.”

“ What the fuck are you talking about?”

“ Just take the groceries!” Lupin suddenly yells at the phone, it startles him and he has to take his head a bit away from the screen. “ Just take the groceries and cook with them I swear to god, it’s a gift just take it.” He takes a deep breath, seemingly trying to calm himself, “ Harry’s a smart kid, and I know you know that, and I don’t exactly think you’re stupid either Black.” Sirius would laugh at this if he wasn’t almost completely stunned. “ I think somewhere deep inside you, you know you need help, you’re just too much of a stubborn git to ask for it.”

Sirius doesn’t know how to respond to that so he just stays quiet.

“You’re welcome,” Lupin states, and then he hangs up.

Sirius looks at his phone.

You’re welcome?

Chapter Text

“ He’s completely irresponsible.” Remus rants as he walks out of a nearby cafe with Mary and Peter in tow. They were both considerably shorter than him so as he walked out with his coffee they had to run to catch up. “ I thought parents usually appointed people as godparents who were y’know, fit to raise kids.”

Mary runs up in her high-heeled boots and her reusable thermos in her hand, “ And all this seems… legal?” She tilts her head, “ You mention it to Dumbledore yet?”

Remus frowns at the mention, because yes he mentioned it to Dumbledore, and no did the man give him any substantial information that made him any less angry about Sirius’s attitude toward parenting.

“ I’ve known the Potters for a long time, Sirius….,” The old man said to him, “ He’s had a rough time in life, I find it better just to give the boy space.”

At the time Remus had nodded, emitting the energy of a person who understands, but inside he decided that was the exact thing he wouldn’t do. So yeah maybe he’s been a bit pushy, and yeah maybe he’s passed some boundaries, but when he brought it up with Dumbledore all he got was a quaint smile and:

“You’re a smart man, Remus, I trust you not to get too carried away.”

Whether Remus has gotten “carried away” or not was really not a thing he could judge unbiasedly at this point.

And Harry seemed happy, and he acted out less in class. In turn, the parent board seemed happier, and even though every time he stayed after at Black’s house to look after Harry and he thought he might see actual smoke come out of Black’s ears out of anger, he told himself that it was for Harry, and that he was doing his duty as a teacher because god knows how happy he would be if any of his professors in college cared for him the way he was doing for Harry.

“ I talked to Dumbledore, he doesn’t seem to care,” Remus says, at this Mary huffs.

“ Well, that’s not surprising.”

“You’re telling me that you’re doing all this,” Peter catches up to them on the sidewalk, “ for free?”

“ I don’t want to be paid for it, it’s not labor, I’m doing it because I want to.”

“Uh-huh.” Peter scoffs. They approach the school again, walking towards the auditorium and sitting down, coffees in hand.

“ Whatever you’re doing seems to be working,” Mary giggles, she then sneaks a glance to where Malfoy and Molly Weasley are setting up a microphone for the meeting on stage, “ Peter get this,” She gestures to him to lean in with her bright pink nailed finger, “ It’s been a whole week…,” She widens her eyes, “ Not one Potter conference.”

“ You’ve got to be shitting me!” Peter yells in disbelief, and all the parents and teachers whether on the stage or sitting in the fold-up chairs turn Peter’s way, causing the man to slouch down in his chair to avoid scrutiny, when he speaks again it’s in a whisper, “ Not one?”

Mary grins and shakes her head, “ Not one.” Mary pats Remus on the shoulder from where he’s sitting in between them, “ And it’s all because of this one.”

“ Bollocks Remus!” Peter yells again, but this time in a whisper.

“ I don’t think I’m the only reason, most of the trouble comes from Draco and I think he’s gotten a bit more timid since the whole hair-on-fire debacle.”

“ Still!” Mary whispers shouts, “ I might try to run by my idea for a dance team again, Malfoy seems way more lenient today don’t you think?” They all turn to look at the stage simultaneously where their school’s therapist Mrs. Trelawny accidentally drops an extra folding chair they were bringing on stage, Mrs. Weasly goes to quickly help her and as she does she spares a worried glance towards Malfoy who silently returns it, and then goes back to fiddling with the microphone.

“ Wow.” Peter gasps.

“ Not even a peep,” Mary says. “You’re a miracle worker Lupin,” she slightly bumps him with her shoulder and he can’t keep himself from grinning. Then, a loud tapping comes from the auditorium’s speakers, Malfoy seems to get the microphone working.

“ Testing? Oh well, hello, and welcome to our first PTA meeting of the year,” At this, there’s a polite and small cheering from the audience which is abruptly cut off by Malfoy, “ No interruptions please, I expect your full attention, we have a lot to get done.” Mary, looks at Remus making a face, and beside Malfoy on the stage, Molly Weasly doesn’t try hard to conceal her frown.

They carry on with the meeting addressing, concerns and whatnot:

“ Now many parents have brought up issues with the books that are included in the English curriculum for primary students.”

“ Oh here we go,” Remus groans.

“ Some find them not suitable for children so we will be sending in a representative to inspect class libraries in the next week or so.”

Remus promptly raises his hand, and he swears he can see a vein pulse in Malfoys forehead.

“ Question, Mr. Lupin.”

“ Dumbledore said that were allowed to supply our class libraries with whatever we want.”

“ Well, Mr.Lupin I regret to inform you that Dumbledore isn’t the end all be all of what gets decided around here.”

“ Oh so you’ve taken this issue up with him I assume?”

“ Well no-”

“ Not to be rude sir,” Remus says, despite this Malfoy just continues to scowl, “ But I’ve heard no complaints from the children regarding the books so I don’t understand what the problem is.”

“ Children are Children, Mr. Lupin, they don’t know better.”

“ The parents aren’t the ones reading the books sir, the children are.”

“ But the parents are the ones concerned unless you’d like to take it up personally with them there’s not much I can do about it.” Malfoy snarks, Remus feels his blood boil and then a sense of dread as the man continues to smirk evilly, “ Actually, you’d have the perfect opportunity at this year’s Picnic.”

Oh no

“ And it’s just your luck because it seems we have an open spot for a teacher on our planning committee since Ms. Hooch unfortunately contracted strep throat.” Malfoy says, “ I bet you’d love to fill in for her, the children would greatly appreciate it I’m sure.”

The Hogwarts annual picnic was an event started 10 years ago when a group of parents apparently decided that they wanted to make the teachers’ lives a living hell for one Saturday out of the year. It was pretty much what you would expect from a typical school-run picnic, games, food, bouncy castles, children running, children screaming, children overloading the cheap bouncy castle they rented and bringing the whole thing down and almost trapping a 7-year-old in the wreckage.

It was a mess, something always went wrong every year and until now Remus had spent the Saturday lying on his couch using the much-needed break to watch the History Channel.

Remus forces a smile onto his face, the whole PTA’s eyes on him, he was walking on a tightrope, Malfoy shaking it with a force and putting a pool of crocodiles below him, except instead of crocodiles in this case it was feral mums with nothing else to do on a Saturday. His blood boils, he wants to slap all that fake bleach from Malfoy’s blond head.

“ Sure, I’d love to.” He says instead.

“ Lovely.” Malfoy grins, “ Anyways, the lunch team has started a new menu-”

He continues but Remus has already started to wallow and look at his shoes in disbelief. Mary shakes his arm slightly.

“ Hey this might be a good thing,” She says, “ Parent board might be less likely to fire you if they see you volunteering.” This doesn’t help him at all, he buries his head in his hands on his uncomfortable folded chair, his coffee now at his feet.

_

When Sirius was 18 he got a piece of gum stuck on the bottom of his docs. The docs he bought with his own money by working at a nearby music store in Godric’s Hollow for the whole summer. He freaked out, James watching nearby trying not to laugh, and even when he rubbed his shoe against the ground and went home and tried to get the gum off with silverware from the Potter’s kitchen the gum still didn’t come off. In the end, he covered the hardened gum with black paint.

Standing in his kitchen years later, looking at his kid’s school teacher who somehow managed inside his house again, he thinks of that memory.

“ Your house is so bleak,” Lupin says.

Lupin is standing in his living room, squinting around his house with his hands on his hips.

“ Bleak? Bleak how?”

“ You have no decorations, it’s like somebody died.” He scrutinizes. Sirius doesn’t mention that technically someone did die in here, at least the people who had the house died.

“ I don’t really see how not having any, I don’t know-” He gestures to his empty shelves, “ vases or something, is so important.”

“ Harry lives here, wouldn’t you think it would make him more comfortable for the place to be livened up a bit.” He gestures again, this time to their bookshelf in the living room, the bottom shelf had begun to be more occupied with books that Harry has started bringing home. He looks at Sirius with the same look he always does, his brows furrowed, his brown eyes get smaller, and the scar on his cheek stretches a bit, Sirius tries not to stare too much.

“ You think you know everything Lupin,” Sirius says, he’s putting up the dishes and as he reaches for a particularly high shelf, a hand comes behind him to grab the glass and daintily puts it up. His heart beats faster and he looks over to Lupin standing behind him, giving him a face that says, I know more than you.

The man had taken to driving Harry home every day, staying a few hours later until Sirius got home, he had started doing this without asking Sirius and it was really getting on his nerves.

“ Who cares?! You basically have a free babysitter.” Ted says during a shift later at the garage. He’s bent over working on the engine of a Chevy, hood up, it somehow reminds Lupin’s junk pile of a car. Sirius is standing by, handing Ted tools when he needs them.

“ I care! If I needed babysitting I would get it, I don’t need some swat of a teacher coming in and telling me how I should parent.” Sirius rants, Ted snorts and comes up and holds out his hand for Sirius to give him a wrench. He complies and crosses his arms around his chest.

“ What is he saying?” Ted says, bent over so Sirius could only see the back of his head.

“ Why didn’t you come to the conference on Monday? You should clean your stovetop more often Black, you should give Harry a bedtime Black, you shouldn’t ride a bike Black, it’s dangerous.” He takes a pack of Marlboro’s from his uniform’s pocket and shoves a cig in his mouth, “ You shouldn’t smoke Black it causes cancer, you should learn how to cook Black!” He complains loudly, earning a look from Marlene at the front and he finds Ted giving him a look when he looks back after lighting his cigarette.

“ What?” He asks, blowing the smoke out.

“ You don’t know how to cook?” Ted asks, grinning slightly.

“ I know how to cook!” He stumbles, “ I mean not exactly, I know how to cook some things.” Ted just snorts at this and shakes his head. “ Why is he acting like this?!” Sirius continues.

“ Hogwarts teachers are just different I guess.” Ted remarks.

“ The teachers never acted this way with me and I was basically disowned dammit!” Sirius says, slamming a wrench into Ted’s hand.

“ Accepting a little extra help doesn’t make you incompetent Sirius,” Ted says, lifting his head from the hood.

“ I know what I’m doing.” Sirius says, Ted looks at him skeptically and slams the hood down, “ I’ve been doing it for almost 3 years now!” Sirius then gestures to Marlene at the front, Harry sitting next to her on a stool, reading one of the books Lupin gave him. “ Look at him! He’s fine!”

“ Yes because the conferences, and the stealing cars, and the conversing with snakes makes a fine kid,” Ted says, wiping his hands with a nearby flannel.

“ I did worst things when I was kid trust me.” Sirius snorts, “ Besides it hasn’t been as bad lately.”

“ I wonder why,” Ted says, setting the cloth down, and putting his hands in his uniform’s pockets.

“ Why can’t you ever agree with me?” Sirius asks, discarding his cigarette in a nearby bin after putting it out, “ I feel like all you and Andy do is lecture me, I’m not a kid anymore.

“ Then stop acting like one,” Ted says, twisting around to address Sirius who’s following behind him to the back of the garage, “ Not everyone is against you, Sirius.” Sirius glares at him but it doesn’t do anything, Ted just keeps trotting along.

Back to reality, he gives Lupin the same glare as the man goes for another dish from the washer, quickly and sharply he snatches the glass from his hands. “You’re not obligated to be here anymore, Harry’s asleep. There’s no more babysitting to be done.”

“ Not a babysitter.”

“ That isn’t what you’re doing?”

“ Babysitters get paid.”

“ Oh?” He leans back against the kitchen counter. “ What’s your rates?”

“ 25 an hour.”

“ Your fired.” He says flatly, Lupin just laughs as he makes his way to the door.

“ I don’t want you to pay me, Black.”

“ I wasn’t planning to.” He heads over to the door where Lupin is putting his arms through a corduroy jacket.

“ You should really put some more things on the shelves though, it’s depressing in here.”

“ So you’ve said,” Sirius says, Lupin just glares at him and then Sirius shuts the door. He walks to the window and watches the Chevy pull out of the parking spot on the street and drive away slowly, there’s a weird tingling sensation in his stomach. It’s like he’s being tickled, he hates it. He walks back down the hall to his room when a light underneath a door catches his attention, he opens Harry’s door and sees the boy sitting at his bed, wide awake, reading a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Upon noticing the door open Harry indiscreetly shoves his book under his pillow and feigns sleep.

“ I saw that,” He says and turns the light on, Harry sitting back up on the bed with guilty eyes.

“ Are you going to give me a bedtime?” Harry says droopily as he gets the book from under his pillow and fiddles nervously with the pages.

“ No.” Sirius laughs softly.

“ Why not?”

“ I had a bedtime when I was younger,” Sirius says, “ It didn’t stop me.” Harry smiles and Sirius gestures for him to hand the book over, he does and Sirius opens the first page to writing with a sharpy on the back reading, Lupin Grade 3.

“ You like all this stuff? All the reading and the homework?” He looks at Harry, the boy squeezes his eyes shut for a second out of thought. Sirius hadn’t ever really seen Harry read this much since his parents had died, let alone do any homework, that was a new development that he could only really credit to Lupin.

“ It’s fun,” Harry says, Sirius raises an eyebrow at this.

“ Fun?”

“ Well, fun, sometimes,” Harry says sheepishly.

Sirius continues to look through the pages, the pages worn, gold with scratch marks throughout. How old was this book? Sirius thinks.

“ I like reading,” Harry mentions, Sirius takes his attention off the book to Harry again, “ Mr. Lupin said I could take home any book from the library if I wanted,”

“ The library? From school?” Sirius asks, Harry shakes his head up in down in a sort of frantic nod.

“ It’s getting late-” Sirius moves to put the book on Harry’s bedside table.

“ You don’t like him.” Harry spits out, when Sirius looks back he’s looking down at his hands.

“ Certainly an understatement,” Sirius chuckles and upon looking at Harry’s expression it doesn’t seem to lighten the mood at all.

“ Do you?” He asks, Harry nods again, and he ruffles Harry’s already erratic-looking hair, “ Then I do too.” He gets up to turn the lights and before he does he puts his voice in a lower tone, “ Now go to bed or the monsters that live in your closet will eat you.” He flicks the switch down, putting the boy in darkness, screaming as Sirius closes the door.

“ There are no monsters!”

As he sits in bed that night he decides that he would let up a little, but it would only be on his terms, and it would only be for Harry. No way he’ll be doing anything because Lupin told him to.

_

“ Where are we? ” Black says next to Remus in the driver’s seat. He’s scowling across the street and it’s making Remus want to punch something. Instead, he focuses on getting his coins into the parking meter he parked in front of.

“ It’s a charity shop.” He responds, Black gets out of the car, only wearing a leather jacket in the cold fall weather. He looks at him skeptically and it just angers Remus more.

“ Why are we at a charity shop?”

“ To look for home decor, what do you think?”

“ At a charity shop?” Black says, his voice getting higher in surprise and Remus would almost find it funny if he didn’t find the man infuriating.

“ I’m certainly not rolling in cash, are you?” He says spitefully, Black makes a face and they head to the other side of the street. Remus doesn’t know how he got here, he was considering going somewhere to maybe buy a Black a plant, because every time Remus was in that house even if he opened a window it felt like there was hardly any air in there. He had never intended for the man to tag along though, certainly not that he would call him to inform him of the fact.

“ Just pick me up at work, around 2.”

“ I thought you said home decor wasn’t, and I quote, “ important ”.

“ Well my cousin keeps bugging me to get something to put on our coffee table, so I figured why not.” Why not? Seems like the exact phrase Remus would use to describe Black’s mentality. “ Besides if you’re going to go and buy a load of shit without me asking I figure that I might as well supervise,” The man chuckles on the other side of the phone, “ don’t want my living room looking like an old home’s.” And thus here Remus is, scanning the aisles of a charity shop he frequently visited with a slightly bored Sirius Black behind him. He’s gotten a small shopping cart even though Remus guesses that they won’t even buy anything to warrant it, and he’s gliding around like some kid in the supermarket. He almost rams in Remus’s back twice and cackles evilly every time Remus glares at him.

“ Would’ve helped to have Harry’s input,” Remus says offhandedly, lifting a suspiciously looking piggybank and looking at the bottom.

“ I dropped him off with my cousin, she wanted to take him to some play Dora’s in.” Sirius shrugs, looking away from Remus and further down the store. “ I doubt he would care, he’s not a picky kid.” He’s leaning over the front handle of the cart, feet on top of the bottom, he kicks off as Remus keeps moving down the aisle.

“ Is Dora your cousin’s kid?” He asks, keeping his eyes on surveying a mug on the shelf. Sirius stops the cart suddenly.

“ Yeah, my cousin Andromeda, and her husband, Ted, owns the shop I work at.” He eyes Remus suspiciously.

“ Cool.” He says, looking at the crude painting of one mug and moving on to look at another one.

“ What’s cool?”

“ Oh it’s just-” Remus glances back, Sirius still sizing him up weirdly, “ It’s cool that you’re close to your family, all my family’s back in Wales.”

“ Wales?”

“ Ydw i.” He says, “ I came to London for college, was homeschooled till’ then.”

“Must’ve been nice.” Sirius says, a faraway tone in his speaking. “ It makes sense.”

“ What does?”

“ That you're homeschooled, it explains a lot.”

“ What exactly does it explain Black?” He says, putting a mug back on the shelf, he walks up the aisle more, Sirius still trailing behind him. He grins, flashing Remus with his bright teeth, there's a slight gap in between the front two, Remus thinks. The man just shrugs at Remus’s question.

“ We can’t all go posh when it comes to schooling.” Remus snarks.

“ Hogwarts is posh? You work there.”

“ Yeah, I do and really they don’t pay us nearly enough, considering how much they get in donations.” He says, Sirius laughs again from where he’s balancing on the cart. “ What?” Remus asks.

“ Nothing, I agree with you, in my 4th year they gave us a whole rugby field when they couldn’t even afford a piano for the music room that would tune correctly.” The faraway look approaches Sirius’s eyes again, Remus thinks about how Harry was enrolled late, and how Dumbledore allowed it even though it was against the school’s policy.

“ You know the parent board asks about you.” Remus slips in and at this, Black just groans loudly. “ You should make an effort to integrate yourself more.” He says, trying to get rid of the nagging feeling that the picnic is creating, after this he probably has to make a stop at a party shop to book an order of balloons. He does not revel at the thought.

“ And have to sit in a room while a bunch of pratts like you nag me for 2 hours straight? No way.” Sirius snarks.

“ Why’d you enroll Harry then?” He asks, putting his hand and stopping the cart where it was wheeled up to him. “ Why put in this effort to not even interact with the school itself?”

“ His parents went,” Sirius says bluntly, “ James’s parents went, it's what they wanted.” He’s not smiling anymore, it makes Remus’s stomach drop a bit.

“ What about this?” He picks up a silver candlestick from a nearby shelf, Remus takes it and tries not to laugh as he looks at it.

“ For what?”

“ I dunno,” Sirius says sheepishly, “ Candles.” Remus can’t stop it this time, he laughs.

“ Candles?”

“ What?!”

“ Nothing, nothing,” He’s still laughing, Sirius just continues to stare at him wide-eyed, “ It’s just your taste, it seems so…”

“ Don’t say it.”

“ Posh,” Remus says this seems to hit a nerve as Sirius glares at him like he stabbed one of his family members.

“ At least I don’t have the style of a 90-year-old man!” He retorts.

“ I’m not the one picking up things that look like they’d belong in Dracula’s castle!” Remus responds, still not able to stop himself from laughing, at this, Sirius pushes the cart into his hip again, and he just laughs even more. They continue through the store, the two not being able to agree on a single thing.

“ It’s my house!” Sirius yells as he presents something to Remus that he instantly shoots down.

“ Well I’m buying, and I don’t think a painting that looks basically haunted is appropriate home decor for raising a child.”

“That’s what you think.”

Remus finds himself groaning out of frustration as they get nowhere and the cart that Sirius is rolling around is still empty.

“ Hey! Look!” Sirius calls from beside him, Remus looks over to Black holding a small wooden carving of a wolf. He’s absolutely beaming and Remus almost has to squint to see through the figurative life his smile is emitting.

“ No.”

“ What? C’mon.” He gestures to the carving “ Wolf,” and then to Remus, “ Wolf.”

“ What.”

“ Your name means wolf dumbarse.”

“ No, I know that. Black that thing carries no significance, it’s useless,” Remus says, “ Besides how do you even know that?”

“ I dabbled a bit in Latin in school, oh look! “ Sirius turns around the carving in his hand, settling on a hole on the tale that sticks up, he blows and a whistle comes out another hole in the wolve’s mouth. “ Ah?” He says, at Remus’s unimpressed face he just puts it back sadly on the shelf. “You’re such a bore.” He mumbles, and Remus just glares at him, and in a move of indescribable childishness he wacks Sirius on the back of his head.

“ We have not decided on a single thing and we have been here for an hour.” Remus sighs a bit later, having been through the whole store.

“ Hey I’m not the picky one here,” Sirius says, Remus ignores him.

“ Put the cart back and wait for me at the entrance.” He results back to his original thought and leaves Sirius at the cart, walking up to the counter.

“ Where are you going?!” Sirius calls from the cart, but Remus just pulls his attention to the lady at the front. She’s wearing a weaved hat with grey curly hair sitting on her shoulders, she’s an older woman and she smiles as she sees Remus.

“ Hello, Remus! What are you doing here?” Ms. Sprout says. Ms. Sprout owns this charity shop as well as works as a science teacher, she’s the main reason Remus comes here, she pushed him to after seeing him feigning to decorate his classroom once he got hired. Remus doesn’t mind though, he’s always preferred charity shops, it reminds him of home, that one charity shop in the square where Remus would always buy band t-shirts and records from.

“ Just looking for some things to decorate my house, do you have any plants in stock by any chance?” He asks, at this Ms. Sprout lights up, her main specialty is plants.

“ Any in particular love?”

“ Something low maintenance probably.” He responds and she nods and moves to a door behind her desk. Remus takes a look at the entrance and sees Sirius waiting for him, foot tapping impatiently against the ground. Ms. Sprout appears at the front desk again, carrying a cactus in a mahogany pot.

“ Here we are!” She places it gingerly on the counter. “ This suit you?” Ms. Sprout asks.

“ This is great, thank you,” Remus says, smiling, as Ms. Sprout rings him up. Remus makes his way back to the entrance after he pays, Sirius looks at the cactus with a strange mix of surprise and disdain.

“ We came all this way… just to get a cactus.” He says once they get back to Remus’s car.

“ I didn’t see us agreeing on anything so I thought a plant would be a safe bet,” He moves the cactus to where he placed it on the glove box to the back seat, “ Besides, cactuses barely need anything to live, should be easy enough for you.”

“ Ha, ha.”

“ Plants are good, teaches kids responsibility, it’s like a pet in a way.”

“ Whatever you say,” Sirius responds sarcastically, not putting on his seatbelt, Remus catches it immediately, and as Sirius reaches across to click himself in he grumbles stubbornly.

“So what was that all about?” Sirius asks as they pull out of Remus’s parking spot, Remus cringes. He didn’t think Sirius would notice, he should've known better than that.

“ What are you talking about?”

“ That lady who was checking us out, you clearly knew her, why did you tell me to wait by the entrance?”

“ She teaches at Hogwarts,” Remus says, hoping that would speak for itself. It doesn’t. He just continues to look at Remus expectedly.

“ So?”

“ So, I didn’t want her to see us together.”

“ I don’t understand.” He sees, in confusion, his nose scrunches slightly.

“ I didn’t want her to see me shopping for home decor with you and assume.”

“ Assume what?” He tilts his head a bit and it almost reminds Remus of a dog.

“ You know!” Remus yells as he pulls into another lane, he can feel his face getting hot, “ That were,” He gestures to the space in between them, “ y’know.”

“ That were a couple?” Sirius asks, the tips of his cheeks smiling slightly. Remus doesn’t look at him.

“ Word gets around at Hogwarts I don’t want it getting back to me.”

“ What? Why?” Sirius asks, at this point, Remus thinks that he just enjoys asking stupid questions to rile him up.

“ Why do you think? I could get fired!”

“ For being gay?” Sirius says with an air of disbelief.

“ Yes.”

“ No way.” Sirius scoffs, he laughs and looks out the window onto the street. “Dumbledore doesn’t care about that stuff.”

“ He doesn’t, but the parent board does,” Remus says clutching the steering wheel, “ If the parents find out that I was seen alone with a guy, let alone a guy parent,” He shakes his head, “I’m already on thin ice already with everything going on with Harry, Malfoy would have me sacked for sure.”

“ Malfoy?”

“ He’s head of parent board,” Remus says, and then gets surprised when Sirius lets out a loud laugh.

“ Oh god.” He says, still giggling. “You’re scared of Malfoy?”

“ Well-”

“ Malfoy? He’s such an arse!”

“ Well, at least he shows up to pick up, unlike somebody.” Remus spits back, and Sirius just laughs louder.

“ Of course, you think this is funny.” Remus scoffs.

“ A little bit, yeah,” Sirius catching his breath, his voice now hoarse from laughing, and then like a light switch his face grows cold and he turns to Remus, “You’re seriously not comparing me to Malfoy.”

“ Maybe I am.” Remus shrugs.

“ Well, that’s bullshit.”

“ Oh?”

“ Malfoy is a snobbish pratt, the only reason he has a kid is to keep his family line going.”

“ Isn’t that why you have kids…?” Remus asks, surprised that he struck such a cord, “ To continue your family?”

“ No!” Sirius yells, “ You have kids because you want not because you have to.”

“ And you would know?”

“ Yes!”

“ And that’s how you got Harry?” Remus says, “ Because you wanted to have children.”

At this Sirius stops, looks at Remus, and then looks back toward the window where Remus is pulling into the street beside Sirius’s house.

“ I-” He starts and then stops himself, “ You wouldn’t understand.” He’s slouching in his chair, he looks at Remus, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “ So, are you?”

It takes a second for Remus to realize what he’s asking.

“ Am I what?”

Before Sirius can elaborate on his question, a boyish yelling interrupts them.

“ Padfoot! Padfoot look!” Harry yells from where he’s jumping up to Sirius’s window at the side of the road. The boy’s face is covered with face paint, Sirius opens the door and grins at where Harry is hopping.

“ Look at you!” Sirius says. Behind Harry a woman emerges from the front door, wearing stiletto heels she makes it over to where Harry is bopping up and down. Sirius looks at her with an eyebrow raised. “ I thought you took him to a play.”

“ He made it backstage where the kids were doing makeup,” She smiles, not making her look any less intimidating, “ Apparently he asked for it,” She shrugs.

“You’re an amazing mother, but a terrible babysitter,” Sirius says.

“ Speaking of babysitters.” The woman turns her attention to Remus sitting in the front of the car. “ You must be the teacher we’ve been hearing so much about.”

“ Good things I hope.” Remus smiles awkwardly and spares a glance at where Sirius is standing.

“ A good mix of both I would say.” She says and Sirius shoves her slightly on the shoulder. “ I’m Andromeda, so nice to meet you.” She smiles widely and waves.

“ You too!” Remus calls as Andromeda walks back inside.

“ Are you coming in? Andy said were going to watch Monty Python!” Harry says from where he’s hanging onto the door where Remus let the window slide down.

“ Not today, sorry Harry.” At this Harry frowns, lower lip pouting and Sirius ushers him back inside.

“ I don’t think Monty Python is an appropriate movie to show to children,” Remus says as Sirius turns back to him and Harry runs back inside.

“ Oh shove it, he’s seen worse.” Sirius waves him off, Remus looks at him skeptically, Sirius grins once again and Remus finds himself use to it. Remus reaches towards the back and hands Sirius the cactus, Sirius laughing.

“ Don’t worry, “ Sirius says, “ I won’t tell anyone you were here!” He exclaims as he walks up the short path to his house.

“ Not funny!” Remus calls back.

_

Sirius has been through a lot of scrutiny in his life, but being compared to Lucius Malfoy might have been the worst thing he’s had to go through.

Well, at least he shows up to pick up, unlike somebody.

He was too busy laughing at the hilarity of the situation to let the statement set in but as he got ready for bed that night he realized, looking at himself in the mirror.

Remus Lupin, his kid’s 3rd-year teacher, had indirectly implied that Lucius Malfoy was a better parent than him.

So with all that in mind, Sirius walked into work the next day with a vigor that Ted would only describe as “ Soprano-esc”, to ask if he could get out earlier to pick Harry up from school.

He had to make it seem like it didn’t bother him, that Lupin hadn’t gotten under his skin, so he would just make it seem like he had a change of heart, like his comment hadn’t affected him. Even though it seemed like every time he closed his eyes he saw Lupin’s stupid scarred face, smirking at him.

He took the tube there, he dropped his bike off at home because judging by Lupin and Molly’s reaction to it, he didn’t exactly expect to be welcomed with open arms if he pulled up on his bike. As much as he was determined to go back to Hogwarts, he was also dreading it. He hadn’t been to the school since he graduated and one of the reasons he never picked up Harry was because he didn’t want to be struck by the constant reminder of his friend’s passing.

But just like he feared as he walked up to the entrance, everything looked the same. It almost struck him by surprise, it had been so long, and yet they had not made any improvements, the brick walls were the same, and they still had that huge willow that Dumbledore planted in their first year, even though the parent board thought it was a hazard. He shivered when he walked inside, the hallways looking identical to his old memories and as he made it to the 3rd year classroom it felt like walking through a ghost town, not a single child or teacher in sight. He poked his head through the door, the classroom was empty except for a young woman wearing a denim dress and long boots, as well as a lanyard.

“ Excuse me?”

The lady poked her head up, she was rearranging the tables lined up in the classroom, as she put her eyes on Sirius she dropped a single crayon into a brightly colored cup on the table.

“ Oh hello.” She eyed him suspiciously, “ Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for pick up, where is-”

“ Oh!” She suddenly pipes up rather loudly, almost making him jump, “ A lot of classes had extra recesses so they shifted pick up to outside.”

He stands there, probably looking like an idiot, because he had a whole routine he was going to do once he saw Lupin and he didn’t remember how to get outside to the playground.

“ I can take you there if you want?” The woman then says.

“ That would be great thanks.” He says, the women smiling at him and walking out of the classroom to lead him to back doors that lead to a huge field and playground. He tries to squint his eyes to see if he can spot the football field but it doesn’t look like they still have it, he tries not to think about how much that would upset James if he were still alive.

“ Remus! You have a pick-up!” The lady in the jean dress yells as they approach the playground, Lupin standing in a circle with another guy and Molly Weasley. Lupin turns around once the lady addresses him and a nice but fake smile shows across his face, that is until his eyes land on Sirius and it drops dramatically.

“ What are you doing here?” He says.

“ Why do you think?” Sirius joins the circle, “ Pick up.”

“ I’m surprised you were able to make it with your busy schedule,” Molly chimes in, smiling sweetly despite her passive aggressiveness.

“ Well,” He shrugs, trying to seem nonchalant, “ I had some free time open up, so I figured why not.” He spares a glance at Lupin who returns it, his stomach does a weird squirm.

“ I’m planning on picking up fewer shifts, so you’ll see me more often.” He grins, Lupin glares at him, slightly but it’s enough of a change in demeanor that Sirius notices.

“ How lovely,” Molly says, “ What days do you usually work again? I’m sure we can set up a playdate again soon.”

Sirius gets a certain worried dread in his mind at how Molly’s acting, but he continues otherwise, answering her question. “ That would be great, I usually only work Monday through Thursday-”

“ Oh so you don’t work Saturdays?”

“...No?”

“ How wonderful!” She claps her hands together and grins. “ We needed one more volunteer for the picnic!”

“ Picnic? What picnic?”

“ The annual Hogwarts picnic, we’ve had it for a couple of years now, you would know if you involved yourself more, but this gives you the perfect opportunity to start.”

Bad, bad, definitely bad, coming to the school today was definitely a bad idea.

“ Molly I don’t think-” Lupin starts up.

“ Nonsense Remus! Weren’t you just complaining about needing help with setting up catering?”

“ Yes but-”

“ Then it's done!” Molly says, and then like a firecracker a flash of red hair runs through the circle settling on Molly’s legs, almost knocking her over. “ Ronald Weasley!” She yells, the little boy in question hiding behind her.

“ Sorry!” He shouts as Molly tries to turn around to chastise him but he just avoids her glare. “ Well it seems about time for me to go,” She laughs without humor.

“ Remus is part of the committee so I’m sure he can fill you in on all the details.” She steps up to Sirius, pats his face gingerly with her hand, and then walks away, Ron holding her other hand.

“ …What just happened?” He turns to Lupin beside him. Lupin lets out a sigh.

“ Welcome to Hogwarts.”

_

“ How did I end up here?.” Sirius moans from where he’s hauling pounds of cheese and crackers into the back of Lupin’s car.

“ Quit complaining,” Lupin says in the grocery parking lot, Harry waddles up behind him, struggling to hold a big bottle of wine, Lupin picks it up out of his hands and gingerly places it in the back of his car so that it wouldn’t move when they drive.

“ What are you getting wine for?”

“ Why do you think?” Lupin gives him a look and Sirius can’t help laughing as he straps Harry into the backseat.

“ I thought we were supposed to be watching kids? Shouldn’t we be sober for that?”

“ You’ll understand once we get there.”

And understand he does, they pull up to the parking lot and immediately Sirius hears loud shrieking, which as they approach the back of the school seems to come from all around them. It's a nightmare, the whole field and playground are filled to the brim with children, there's a bouncy house, and multiple stalls with food and he swears some mum glares at him as she crowds around in a circle towards a stall giving out temporary tattoos. Lupin walks ahead handing off the whine to the lady that Sirius met earlier in the week. Harry next to him is clutching onto his hand, eyeing the park and jumping up and down, impatiently.

“ Let loose kid,” Sirius says, letting go of his hand and pushing his head slightly, the boy grins at him and runs over to where Sirius sees a familiar bundle of red hair.

“ Black!” Lupin yells from where he’s talking to the lady, waving him over, Sirius tries to suppress a groan as he heads over. He puts the bag of snacks that he was holding on the table with the rest of the catering.

“ This is Mary, she’s my teaching assistant.” Lupin gestures to the woman next to him.

“ We’ve met,” Sirius states, Mary only giggles.

“ It’s a pleasure to meet you, “ She smirks and glances at Lupin next to her, “ Maybe once you’re here Malfoy will yell at you instead of Remus.”

“ Mary, don’t say that,” Lupin chastises, pouring the wine into a red solo cup and handing one to Mary.

“ You talk like Malfoy is some kind of dictator,” Sirius eyes Lupin skeptically.

“ He basically is.” Mary snorts. “Dumbledore only really deals with technical stuff, so the school is basically at the parents’ command.”

“ I don’t remember that being the case when I went here.”

“ You were a kid, kids don’t notice things like that,” Lupin says, mixing his wine in his cup, “ Besides, I heard that the parent board wasn’t as strict before Malfoy was elected a couple of years ago,” he shrugs.

“ Why doesn’t somebody else run?” At this Mary and Lupin both laugh.

“ Malfoy has all the parents under his thumb,” Lupin says, “ With the amount of money his family donates, no one would stand a chance.”

“ Well, that sucks.”

“ Just be lucky you don’t have to deal with it.” Lupin snarks.

“ You know,” Mary shoves Lupin slightly with her cup, “ You wouldn’t be such a punching bag if you didn’t try to fight with him so much at meetings.”

“ If I don’t nobody will,” Lupin says, putting his head down slightly, looking embarssed, “ Also I already let the parent board confiscate my speakers, I’m not letting them take my library.” Mary just shakes her head.

“ Oh, well we can’t have that,” Sirius says dramatically, Lupin glares at him but it only makes him want to laugh.

Loud and ear-splitting sobbing starts up from the face painting booth, and with the speed at which Lupin and Mary turn to the sound and put their cups down you would think it’s instinctual.

“ What happened?” Sirius says, eyeing the booth where it seems like a 14-year-old is trying to calm down a 6-year-old, mirror in hand and paintbrush in another.

“ I told you getting the art kids to do face paint was a bad idea,” Mary says, Lupin just sucks in his teeth and gives his drink to Mary, and makes his way over to the source of the sound, as he approaches he puts his hands on his hips and the teen who was previously face painting goes white at Lupin’s appearance. Despite the fear, Lupin just kneels at the teen’s level speaking in a calm voice that makes the kid’s face get less stressed. Sirius finds himself unable to take his eyes away, until Mary laughs in front of him, making him aware that there is still someone in his presence.

“ It’s certainly lively here.” He says, and is returned a sizing look from Mary, her hands around her waist.

“ Mm, hm.” She hums.

About an hour later, Sirius somehow ends up volunteering at the snow cone booth, red solo cup with wine in hand.

“ Well, don’t you look cheery?” A familiar voice pipes up above where he’s slouching down in his chair. He looks up to the source of the voice and is hit with the sight of Andromeda wearing a bright red parent volunteer shirt. She throws a matching one onto Sirius’s lap and then sits beside him on a fold-up chair. “ You're supposed to wear one of these.” She says.

“ What the hell are you doing here?”

“ I always volunteer for the picnic,” She says, lifting the dark sunglasses she’s wearing on her face to rest on her head, “ Even though Dora’s graduating, I still want to be caught up, volunteering is a great way to be let in on school gossip.” She smirks.

“ Is Dora here?”

“ Yeah, she’s probably somewhere in the bushes smoking weed,” Andromeda shrugs, “ I told her she had to stay for about an hour before leaving.”

“ You're unbelievable.”

“ What are you doing here?” Andromeda directs the question back at him.

“ Molly roped me into it.”

“ Ah,” Andromeda says understandably. Sirius moves to put the volunteer shirt over his head.

“ So you’ve been here for about an hour? What’s the so-called gossip you so graciously volunteered for?”

“ You mostly.” Andy grins and then laughs as Sirius just slouches down more in his chair and groans loudly.

“ Noooooo.” He whines.

“ What do you expect?” Andy teases, “Nobody has seen you in years, and then you all of a sudden show-up, people are bound to be curious why.”

“ This is exactly the reason I didn’t want to volunteer for these stupid things in the first place.”

“ Yet here you are,” Andy smirks at him knowingly, for some reason he feels his cheeks heat up.

Another hour passes more easily now that he has Andy for company, they eventually run out of the snow cone syrup so the booth is abandoned by the kids pretty quickly.

“ Is Cissy here?” He asks and eyes Andromeda wearily.

“ I haven’t seen her, but I’ve seen her rotten husband so I would assume so.” She says bluntly, but there's a clear emotion in her eyes, Sirius suspects that gossip isn’t the only reason she came today. Before he can push any further though Harry runs and rams straight into Sirius’s legs, he looks up and gives a hyper smile.

“ Padfoot!” He yells.

“ What's up puppy?”

Harry looks up at the snow cone cart beside him, “ Can I have some?”

“ Harry I’m sorry but there's no more syrup left.”

“ Pleaseeeeee?”

“ You want just ice?” Harry nods fervently and Sirius spares a glance at Andromeda who’s just looking upon the scene fondly. “ Well ok,” he scoops up a cup of ice and hands it over to Harry.

“ Oh also!” Harry says, moving his hands around the cone as it’s cold, “ Mr. Lupin wanted me to ask you if you could help over by the stage.” He then points over to said stage, where Lupin is standing and as he catches his eye he makes a pointing gesture that directly translates to you, here, now.

“ What does he want?” Sirius asks, Harry just shrugs, running back toward the playground.

“ You mind staying here?” He gets up and asks Andy.

“ I don’t mind at all.” She says and then makes a shooing gesture to Sirius, teasing him. Sirius frowns and makes his way over to the stage. As he does, Lupin sizes him up and then laughs.

“ What.”

“ That shirt is horrid.”

“ Andy gave it to me, she said we had to wear them.” Sirius says defensively as Lupin just continues to look at him with amusement and Sirius doesn’t like the way it’s making him feel, “ What do you want?”

“ I can’t get this keyboard to work and we have performers arriving in 20 minutes.” He gestures to the keyboard beside him.

“ What makes me think I know anything about keyboards?”

“ You have a piano at your house.”

“ A piano is different than a keyboard.”

“ Just look at it!” Lupin suddenly shouts.

“ Fine.” Sirius complies, leaning down to look underneath the keyboard for any wiring issues, “ Who shat in your cereal this morning?”

“ No one.” Lupin grumpily says, “ I’m just not happy to spend one of my only free Saturdays calming down sobbing children.”

“You’re a teacher, isn’t that basically what you do on a daily basis?”

“ Yes, but today was supposed to be my break,” Lupin says, “ I had about 5 hours worth of documentaries recorded, I got cheap whisky from Tesco, I’m not supposed to be here.”

“ Sounds riveting” Sirius says sarcastically. “ You act like somebody’s holding you at gunpoint, I should be more angry, Molly basically forced me here.”

“ I was forced here too, they didn’t need any other teachers for the committee before Ms. Hooch got sick, and Malfoy saw the opportunity to make my life miserable.”

“ Oh so this is about Malfoy again,” Sirius picks his head up from where he was looking below the keyboard, “ You can argue at PTA meetings about books but you can’t stand up for yourself when some smarmy arsehole tries to get you to attend a picnic?”

“ You wouldn’t understand.” Lupin just says, squinting at something in front of him, Sirius just snorts. “ Besides how do you even know Molly anyway?”

“ Harry’s friends with Ron, they watch him the nights I can’t get off,” Sirius explains, “Were also distantly related.”

“ What?! How?”

“ Arthur’s only related to Blacks by marriage,” Sirius shrugs, “ It’s enough to be aware of though.”

“ Black… Where have I heard that surname before…” Lupin, mumbles, before he can reach any conclusions though Sirius cuts him off.

“ I think I’ve found your problem,” Sirius says, pushing a tab up on the keyboard and pushing down a key emitting a small sound, “ Your sound was off.” He grins and Lupin just huffs from aspiration.

Before Lupin can defend his oversight though a commotion starts up by the end of the playground, seemingly coming from the parking lot.

“ What is it now?” Lupin groans, and Sirius looks back over to see Andromeda had abandoned the booth, curious, Sirius follows Lupin over to the crowd. As they get closer Sirius sees flickering red and blue lights.

“ Holy shit is that an ambulance?” Sirius says as he follows Lupin through the crowd.

“ Oh god,” Lupin wallows, before getting to a clearing where the crowd is around the doors of an ambulance, two EMTs conversing with a manic mother, Malfoy standing by her side holding a hand around her hip. Sirius would recognize that crying anywhere, the mother was wearing a dark dress, with dull highlighted bleached hair, it was Narcissa Malfoy.

“ What the hell happened?” He turned to where Molly was standing next to him in the crowd.

“ Apparently little Draco tried to climb a tree and had a nasty fall, said he was Paddington Bear,” Molly says, shaking her head.

“ I told him not to, but he just wouldn’t listen,” Harry says, suddenly appearing next to him. He shakes his head as well, mirroring Molly perfectly. He then turns innocently to Sirius, “ Can we go home now?”

Sirius looks back over to where the Malfoys are talking to the EMTs, though now it seems they have shifted their attention to berating Lupin, who is now accompanied by Mary.

You wouldn’t understand.

“ In a bit bud, stay here.” He pats Harry gently on the shoulder and without thinking he makes his way up to the ambulance.

“ This is all because of those damned books Lupin!” Malfoy shouts.

“ Paddington is a fairly appropriate book for children to be reading-” Lupin says.

“ My poor baby!” Narcissa wails.

“ Ms, I’m sure he’s fine, they said he probably barely got a concussion.” Lupin insists, as he approaches Mary looks at him nervously, wringing her hands.

“ A concussion at this age? This could impact his brain forever!”

“ Like I said, they said barely-”

“ This is the last straw Lupin!” Malfoy screams, arm around his sobbing wife, “ I gave you one last chance but I’m done! I’m taking this to the parent board!”

“ Sir it isn’t his fault, I was supposed to be watching him-”

“ Mary it’s ok,” Lupin cuts her off. “ If you want to discuss my position with the board then that’s fine.” He relents and Sirius feels a flash of anger pass through him at Lupin’s easy defeat.

“ I don’t see what the big idea is,” Sirius adds, causing every face to turn sharply towards him, supposedly not knowing he was here until now, “ kids do this all the time, getting hurt is what makes them learn, a little fall isn’t gonna make your kid anymore stupid.”

“ Excuse me?! What makes you think-”

“ And considering what I know from experience, the kid probably isn’t going to be hitting any records in intelligence anyway.” He snarks, and Lupin looks at him with horror.

“ Black.” He says. “ Shut. Up.”

“ Why?” Sirius responds.

“ What are you doing here Sirius?” Narcissa says, lifting her hands from her face, revealing her eyes smeared with mascara.

“ Well, Cissy.” He says and Narcissa’s eyes start to glare at the use of the old nickname.” I’m here to volunteer, just like everyone else.” At this Malfoy sneaks a glance behind him, seeing Harry still standing beside Molly, snow cone cup in his little hands.

“ Ah, I see. I heard about the crash, never thought you’d be stuck with the Potters’ brat.” Malfoy snarks, smirking, “ But I guess freaks tend to stay together.” He glances pointedly behind Sirius again, this time his gaze falling on Andromeda who seems to be taken upon Harry’s care, her eyes crinkle at the sight and Sirius just gets more infuriated.

“ No wonder this school has gone to shit,” Malfoy continues, “ You infect everything, I thought you would stop at your family but it seems you’ve started to corrupt Hogwarts as well.”

Sirius starts forward, but a hand in front of him stops him.

“ Sir I don’t think that’s necessary-” Lupin starts.

“ From now on I’m taking this up with the superintendent, maybe he’ll do something about that Dumbeldore since the man clearly can’t even be trusted to hire competent staff.” At this, he glares pointedly at Lupin, who lowers his hand.

“ Having kids be taught by such deviancy, it’s disgusting.”

Lupin’s eyes closed at this, his face getting redder, getting exactly what Malfoy meant. Sirius felt the fire in his belly get heavier, his nails digging into his palms.

“ Lucius, let’s go,” Narcissa pleads, grabbing her husband’s arm to guide him away.

“ Hey, Malfoy?” Sirius calls, Malfoy, whose back is now turned, turns back around to face where Sirius is standing.

“ What?” He spits, and Sirius, feeling younger than he’s felt in a while, gets a blast from the past as he promptly throws his fist across Malfoy’s face.

_

It’s absolute mayhem, somehow Sirius’s punch devolved into a floor wrestling match with some bloke he’s never met pulling him up screaming.

“ I’ll show you deviancy Arsehole!” He screams as he gains footing on the floor again. Malfoy meanwhile is being pulled back up by Narcissa whose face is turned down in disgust, her sharp nails digging into Malfoy’s arm no doubt leaving a mark.

“ Lucius, let’s leave now.” She spits, and Malfoy nods, defeated, and the two of them slither away.

“ Impressive.” The bloke who pulled Sirius up says beside him. “ Been waiting for someone to do that for a while now.” He holds out his hand, “ Frank Longbottom, nice to meet you.”

“ Sirius Black.” He shakes his hand, even though he’s feeling rather light-headed.

“ You should consider trying out for the parent board, we need someone as outspoken as you,” Frank says.

“ Oh I’m not-”

“ Think about it and then get back to me,” Frank says, grinning, and then goes back into the crowd, joining a short blonde women holding a nearly identical blonde boy.

“ What in the world is going on here?!” A stout and tall woman with a booming voice emerges from the crowd, which no doubt got larger in the wake of the fight. The excitement and tension seem to go down, a whole group of adults putting their heads down in shame.

“ Black socked Malfoy in the face!” Frank yells, laughing as he says it. At this the woman, who Sirius now recognizes that he has a better look at her face, turns towards him with a huff.

“ Sirius Black,” McGonagall says disappointedly, “ I would’ve thought you knew better.”

“ Some things never change Minnie.” He grins and this doesn’t seem to quell her disappointment as she stomps away, parting the crowd as she does.

“ Clear away! What are you? Children?!” She yells as she leaves, and to her command the crowd clears, Andy, catching his eye and winking as she walks away. In the end, there is only an angry Remus Lupin, hands on his hips as he frowns at where Sirius is standing.

“ PADFOOT!” He feels an overwhelming force hit his legs, almost making him fall over, Harry looks at him, grinning and eyes sparkling. “ That was so cool!”

“ No, not cool Harry,” Lupin says, walking closer. “ Violence is never cool.”

“ Awww,” Harry says sadly, making Sirius laugh, patting the boy on the head.

“ Harry, do me a favor and go help the Weasleys pack up the popcorn booth.” Lupin cocks his head over by where all the stalls are positioned.

“ Okay!” Harry easily compiles and takes off running. Lupin then takes this opportunity to look at him straight-faced, disappointment clearly showing.

“ Are you proud of yourself?” He asks.

“ You know what?” Sirius says, smiling, “ Yeah I am.”

Lupin surprisingly doesn’t lecture him, but shakes his head and laughs a laugh he hasn’t heard yet. Sirius’s heart flutters. He then looks back at Sirius, looking and not saying anything.

“ What?”

“ Your nose is bleeding.” He says.

“ Oh fuck.” Sirius says before raising a hand to his nose and coming away with blood, Lupin just scoffs in front of him.

“ Come with me, I have a first aid kit in my classroom.”

He follows Lupin back into the building, going into the room Sirius had stumbled into earlier in the week, Lupin moves and crouches down to his desk and pulls out a small first aid kit as Sirius looks around the room. His eyes land on the small library beside the rug at the back of the classroom and he gasps, slightly delirious.

“ No way that’s the library you’ve been adamantly defending this whole time!” He yells.

“ What do you mean?”

“ It’s tiny!”

“That’s the only space they give me.” Lupin huffs and Sirius just finds himself giggling.
“ Reading is crucial in a child’s development, if it was up to Malfoy I would have no library, so I deal with it.” Lupin then drags a seat over by a nearby table. He grabs some sanitary towels from the first aid kit and slams it close on his desk. “ Sit here.” He pats the seat, and Sirius sits down. It’s far too small and he feels cramped, but he doesn’t complain.

“ Harry loves it,” Sirius says, “ He talks about it all the time.”

“ I’m glad it’s making someone happy.” Lupin snorts. He holds up the towel to Sirius’s nose, pushing Sirius to lean his head back. Sirius tries to take the towel himself but Lupin smacks his hand away. “ You really didn’t have to do that.”

“ Do what?”

“ Stick up for me.” Lupin says, “ I can handle it myself, I’ve been fine up to now.”

“ He said he was going to get you fired,” Sirius says back.

“ He says that every time something goes wrong with his kid,” Lupin says, “ Which I can tell you is a lot.”

“ It’s ridiculous that you let him treat you that way.” Sirius insists, and Lupin just shrugs.

“ I don’t know, a part of me thinks he’s right,” Sirius looks beside him and Lupin's eyes get dull, “ Maybe I am a bad teacher.”

Sirius then in a swift move that takes up all his knocked-out energy grabs Lupin’s wrist where he’s holding the towel, bringing it down so he can look him directly in the face.

“Remus.” Sirius says adamantly, Lupin’s eyebrows shoot up on his face, color growing slightly on his cheeks, “ I think I can say more than anyone,” He takes a breath, “You’re not a bad teacher.”

There are still sounds coming from outside, parents wrangling their children to leave, and large sounds from volunteers disassembling the booths, the sun has begun to set, putting the classroom in an orangish hue. Somehow Sirius hadn’t noticed how close his chair was to Remus’s and with it being so small, their thighs were almost touching. They stare at each other, the only things he focuses on are the sound of Remus’s breath and the feeling of his wrist in his hand. He can almost feel the pulse rapidly speeding up as they look at each other.

“ REMUS!” Mary yells slamming open the doors that Sirius hadn’t noticed Lupin had closed. At Mary’s entrance, they jump apart rapidly, Sirius scooting his chair back and letting go of Lupin’s wrist.

“ Was I… Interrupting something?” Mary asks suspiciously, her lips quirking slightly.

“ No!” Lupin jumps out of his chair, “ What do you need?”

“ Minerva wants to talk to you.”

“ Alright. I’ll be out in a second.” He responds. Mary walks back out of the doorway, eyeing Sirius with a slight smile as she does. She leaves them and they sit there in silence, but unlike before there’s no mysterious energy, just pure awkwardness.

“ Keep that towel to your nose,” Lupin remarks, making his way over to the classroom entrance, “ I’ll see you on Monday?”

“ What?” Sirius asks, slightly shell-shocked.

“ For pickup?”

“ Right!” Sirius realizes, “ I’ll be there.”

“ Great,” Lupin says, grinning, his cheeks slightly pink, and then he leaves, leaving Sirius alone in the classroom.

The room is almost completely silent but as Sirius sits there he realizes the only thing he can hear is the rapid beating of his heart.

Weird, he thinks.

Chapter Text

Strange things are happening to Sirius.

His stomach is acting weird, and his heart keeps clutching violently. He thinks he’s ill, he thinks he’s contracted some sort of disease, maybe something from his family’s past habit of inbreeding.

“ Something’s going on with you Black,” Marlene says, she squints her eyes like she’s trying to solve a puzzle.

“ Nothing’s going on with me.” He responds, and Marlene just scoffs out of disbelief.

“ No, she’s right.” Ted chimes in, they’re all sitting in the shop, a lull causing them to be bored, and they pass a cigarette around. Ted passes it to Sirius as he smirks, “ Asking for fewer shifts,-” He shakes his head, “-you’ve been working here 3 years and you haven’t asked for one break.”

“ I’m trying to be a better parent.”

“ You know what I think,” Ted says, Sirius passes the cig to Marlene who cackles at his dark expression, “ I think it’s that teacher.”

“ The one that came in here last month?” Marlene says, eyes wide as she breathes out smoke.

“ Yeah. The one he talks about all the time.”

“ I do not talk about him all the time.”

“ Yes, you do,” Ted says, passing the cig to Sirius’s fingers. “ All you've been doing is complain, Ted you won’t believe this, Lupin says that I should get rid of all my lighters,” He pitches his voice higher, trying to mimic Sirius’s voice and Marlene just laughs again.

“ It was a dumb suggestion,” Sirius grumbles, cigarette between his lips.

“ Hm.” Ted smirks, “ Plus we’re not even mentioning the Malfoy thing.”

“ What are you talking about?!”

“ Sirius c’mon,” Ted says, “ You punched a bloke for him.”

“ Awww knight in shining armor.” Marlene coos.

“ I didn’t punch Malfoy for him, I punched Malfoy because he was being a dick!”

“ Marly, look how red his face is! Look!”

“ Shut up!”

After his shift is up he gets a pint with Marlene at Broomsticks’, Harry’s at some class playdate Molly is hosting so he doesn’t have to pick him up. Marlene’s wearing a baggy shirt with denim shorts, and bright red stripes line her tights. There are some skid marks and rips that show as she leans over to sit on the bar’s stools. The bartender takes their order, calls Marlene love and then as she walks to the other side of the bar Sirius doesn't miss that Marlene’s eyes follow.

“ When was the last time you went on a date?” Sirius asks, Marlene whips her head back to where she was watching the bartender, face getting slightly redder. Predictably getting under her skin, Marlene’s eyes crinkle, the black eyeshadow over her eyelids twinkling in the low bar lights.

“ I’m focused on myself right now.” She says. Her shirt says LOVE SHACK in bright red letters. “ Not everything in life is about romance.”

“ Really?” Sirius slurs slightly, “ Because it really feels like it.”

“ That’s just because you have a kid,” Marlene says, the pretty bartender drops their drinks in front of them and Marlene brings her pint to his lips. “ Everybody wants you to be able to fulfill the typical nuclear family.”

Sirius snorts, “ They just think I can’t do it alone.”

“ Can you?”

“ I can.”

“ Welp.” Marlene shrugs. “ At least you have options, good chaps to bring home to the parents,” She smirks, “ Teachers and the like.”

Sirius imagines trying to bring Lupin to his parents, his parents wouldn’t be happy with him bringing anyone home, let alone a broke secondary teacher. Though Effie and Monty would most likely love him, mesmerized by the amount of big words he knows. Imagining sitting at a dinner table with James’s family with Lupin makes his joints go wobbly somehow, it’s too comfy of a scene, even though he bets he would get Lupin badgering him about something, like how much sugar he puts into his tea. The thought doesn’t get him angry though.

“ It’s not like that,” Sirius says, face reddening by his thoughts, Marlene looks at him, not convinced.

“ It could.”

“ Well, it's not.” Sirius takes a swig of his pint and wipes his mouth off with his sleeve.

“ See that's your problem, Black, you have chances you just don’t take them.” Marlene says, “ If I had someone pull out all the stops for me I’d be on them in a second.”

“ The problem is that I haven’t actually liked anyone in a long time.” She says, slightly downtrodden.

“ I don’t mind being alone.” Sirius says, looking at the other side of the crowded bar, “ It makes things easier.”

“ Yeah sure, but what happens when you actually like someone.”

“ That's never happened before,” Sirius says, Marlene looks concerned but says nothing more. As they leave the bartender hands Marlene a strip of paper and she throws it into an outside street bin.

Whether Ted brings it up, Sirius can’t deny that he’s been acting differently, but it’s not like he’s doing it on purpose.

His face gets extremely hot at inconsistent times and it wouldn’t be so bad if he could just wallow in his misery. Staying home and getting better is what he wants to do, but he can’t, because he has a child to pick up from school every day now, and when he goes to Hogwarts the sickness just gets worse.

Somewhere deep in Sirius’s heart, he can’t say that Lupin wasn’t the main factor in his body deciding to change and fuck his whole life up.

“ Oh hello.”

In the 3rd year of Hogwarts class, Sirius steps in and immediately blasts all his senses, it’s loud and bright, and a smell he doesn’t exactly recognize but can describe as crafty hits his nose. He takes his bearings and as he does he brings all his attention to Remus Lupin standing in front of him. He’s wearing a blue cardigan that most likely smells like mildew from how worn it looks and a graphic tee from the movie The Breakfast Club on it. Weirdly, there are heavy eye bags under his eyes, and he seems paler, it worries him a bit. On top of all of that, Remus sports a paint splatter right on his cheek, and his jeans don’t look any better, Remus catches Sirius eyeing his pants.

“ We had the kids painting today.” He explains, smiling sheepishly, his eyes crinkling. And there it is, Sirius feels ill, his heart doesn’t feel like it’s properly working and it’s like he’s forgotten how to breathe. Remus keeps smiling and Sirius has to restrain himself from trying to rub the paint off his cheek with his thumb.

“ Did you give them something to paint on? Or did you figure that using yourself as the canvas worked well enough?” He snarks instead, getting the reaction he wanted, Remus frowning, he smiles, his stomach getting warmer.

“ It helps them calm down at the end of the day,” Mary says, she stacks up papers and then evens them up with a quiet bang to the table, “ It’s like therapy.”

The classroom was well empty now, as Sirius looks around he finally sees Harry beside Mary, holding another stack of papers against his chest. He handed them over to Mary and then looked at Sirius, looking a bit sad before running up to him.

“ Hey bud, how was school?”

“ Good.”

“ Nothing happened that I should be aware of?”

“ Nooo,” Harry says. He looks to Remus who stands beside them, and he just smiles.

“ He’s right.” Remus says, “ He said he didn’t want you getting into any more fights.”

“ Oh really?” Sirius says, at that Harry’s face goes red, and he goes to hug his legs, shaking his head vigorously. “ Well thank you, sorry I was so late today, there was an accident on the tube.” Remus’s eyebrows shoot up at this.

“ You took the tube here?”

“ Well yeah.” Sirius says, “ Can’t exactly bring the bike around here, after all Lupin, it’s dangerous.” Sirius states, using Remus’s words against him.

“ Rem thinks everything is dangerous.” Mary pipes in.

“ Most things are dangerous,” Remus responds, he then spares a hesitant glance towards Sirius that makes him almost sweat.

“ I can drive you home if you want,” Remus says, “ I just need to make and drop off some copies if you don’t mind waiting a bit.”

Sirius wants to decline, but as he considers it as he looks down at Harry at his feet, Harry grins, mouthing please silently. The tube does take a rather long time, and Sirius did just get off a pretty labor-intensive shift, so he sighs.

“ Sure.” He relents, and Harry continues to grin.

“ You want to make those copies and me and Harry can finish everything up here?” Mary asks from where she’s still at the desk, putting papers in folders.

“ That would be great thanks Mary,” Remus says and then heads out the door cocking his head toward the hall, “ C’mon.” He says. Somehow Sirius had been roped in this but he for once, doesn’t argue and follows Remus down the empty school hallway.

As they make it to the copy room, shoved in a small dark room with no windows, Sirius gets a look at the worksheets Remus places face down against the clear surface of the copy machine.

“ Isn’t algebra a little advanced for 9-year-olds?” Sirius inquires and Remus just laughs shortly, he finds the sound of Remus’s laugh fairly pleasant, he could listen to it forever.

“ These aren’t for me, they're for another teacher.”

“ Another teacher getting you to do their work so last minute? You really have a problem saying no Lupin.”

“ I don’t mind having to stay a bit later, and besides Ms. Hooch seemed like she was in a hurry, and with the divorce and the strep throat, it was the least I could do.” He shrugs, then smirks at Sirius in a way that makes his knees all weird and wobbly. “ But you don’t know about all that.”

“ I don’t,” Sirius says.

“ You would know if you were at the PTA meeting,” Remus says, holding the copier lid down, the light sliding underneath it and making a large sound as it spits out copies one by one. “ Parents act like they care about the school, lousy as it is, but they just want an excuse to gossip about one another's lives.”

“ Can’t exactly blame them though, this school is like an episode of a bloody TV show.” The coping ceases, Lupin replacing the previous paper with another one, and pressing buttons making the machine go into action once again, Sirius tries not to watch as Remus’s fingers move on the keypad. “ With all the book banning, and arguing, affairs and…” He sneaks a sly glance at where Sirius had propped himself on a plastic table next to where he’s standing, “ and punching.” He finishes, smirking slightly, Sirius feels embarrassed, even though when he did the actual punching he was rather proud of himself.

“ I guess I just have to join PTA then,” Sirius states, this takes Lupin by surprise as his eyes widen rapidly and he curls over, losing sight of his breath and coughing. It starts fine and then evolves into coughs that sound like they majorly hurt.

“ Uh, are you-?” Sirius starts, holding out a hand, even though he doesn’t know what he is planning on doing with it.

“ You? On PTA?” Remus cuts him off, letting out another cough into his elbow and continuing working at the copier as if nothing happened. As Sirius looks at him, he zeros on his eyebags again, the man almost looks like he’s amid a terrible fever, the coughing being obvious evidence.

“ I mean maybe- are you ok?” Sirius asks, Remus just smiles and presses one last button on the copier.

“ I’m fine, just a bit sick,” Remus responds cooly but with a slight edge to his voice.

“ Really? Because that sounded bad.”

“ It’s fine Black.”

“ The last time I heard coughing that bad it was from my grandfather.”

“ What happened to him?”

“ He died.”

A silence goes through the small copy room, the copier finishing printing. Remus squints at him, his mouth in a straight line.

“ Well, I’m not dying.”

“ You don’t know that.”

“ I would know if I was dying Black,” Remus says, picking up a pile of copies and dropping them in Sirius’s arms.

“ Most people don’t know they’re having a heart attack until they drop dead from the pain.”

“There’s no way that’s true.”

“ It is!”

“What’s your source?”

“ Me!”

Remus scoffs, “ You unbelievable.”

“ I’ve witnessed heart attacks before Lupin, and I’ll tell you, everything’s fine until all of a sudden they start shitting themself when their arse stops working. And boom! They’re dead.”

“ Jesus.”

“ Oh, I’m sorry Professor, would you rather me say defecate instead?”

“ That’s enough out of you.” Remus picks up his stack of copies and heads out the door, Sirius following.

“ They defecate themself to death, is that what you want me to say?”

“ People shit themself during a heart attack because it disrupts your nervous system which then affects the muscle control of your bowel movements,” Remus says as he unlocks another classroom, walking in and dropping the stack of papers on the desk at the front of the room.

“That’s what I said.”

“ No, you said their arse stops working.”

“ Basically the same thing.” Sirius drops the papers on the desk as Remus walks back towards the door.

“ It’s not.”

Remus turns around, passing his papers to Sirius in turn to lock the classroom room door, Sirius tilts his head slightly.

“ What makes you think that you’re so much smarter than everyone else?” He asks.

“ I don’t see you sporting any PhDs.”

“ ‘Course not.” Sirius says, “ I dropped out of college.”

Remus locks the door with a sharp click and then turns back to Sirius, a puzzled expression on his face, “ Are you hearing what you’re saying right now?”

“ Of course.” Sirius says grinning, somehow his heart started rapidly beating throughout this whole exchange, “ My ears are always open.” They continue back down the hallway, Remus stopping, and letting out a sigh.

“ How did we even get here?”

“ You said you weren’t ill.” Sirius says, “ Which you are.”

“ Right.”

“ Rem!” Mary calls from down the hall, she waves her hand and is sporting a messenger bag across her chest, a backpack in her other hand. Harry stands next to her, hands tight on either of his backpack straps over his shoulders. That marks the end of their conversation, to Sirius’s disappointment.

“ Why don’t they don’t just stay in Narnia? It’s so much better.” Harry pipes up from the back seat of Remus’s car.

“ Harry Narnia isn’t actually their home. England is.”

“ But England is so boooorinngg!” Harry yells, and the chuckle Remus lets out as he stops the car at a red light makes Sirius’s heart flutter.

“ Don’t worry Harry, I agree with you, England is boring,” Sirius says, “ But that just means it’s up to us to make it more interesting.” Sirius tries not to show how excited he is about the smile that Remus gives him after he says it. Around 20 minutes into their car ride it gets a little too quiet from the back seat and upon further inspection, Sirius is surprised to see Harry sleeping quietly against the window. At the same time he notices this, Remus in the driver seat lets out a fatigued sigh and as Sirius pulls his gaze to the front seat, he has his forehead pressed against the steering wheel and then he lifts it as the light turns green. They sit in silence a bit, Sirius noticing how dark and prominent the eyebags on Lupin’s face are. Really the man looks about 10 years older than he is sometimes.

“ How old are you exactly?” Sirius says, barely thinking. Remus sideway glances at him warily, his mouth in a firm line.

“ 26.”

“ No shit!” Sirius shouts, and the man’s eyes get slightly wider.

“ What?!”

“ It’s just you don’t look it sometimes.”

“ Wow, thanks.” Remus says, “ And what exactly is a 26-year-old supposed to look like?”

“ Ideally me.”

Remus’s eyes go up and down Sirius’s body judgmentally and he tries not to shiver.

“ Ok.” Remus snorts.

“ What?”

“ I’ve never seen someone my age keep their shoes in such a state of disrepair, but ok.”

“ Oi lay off,” He looks down at his docs, “ I’ve had these since I was 18, so I would say they look good all things considered.”

His docs are fairly worn, there are scuffs up and down the fronts and you can barely see the threading anymore, being that Sirius wears them primarily to the shop and he gets doused with some kind of dark liquid daily. When he looks up and off his feet, Remus is fully looking at him, his eyes even wider than before.

“ What are you staring at me for?”

“ You got them at 18 and they still fit?”

“ Well yeah.” Sirius scoffs and Remus looks at him, looks back at the road, and then spares another glance to his feet.

“You’re insane.” He says, Sirius just laughs.

“ What?”

“ No, it’s just crazy.” Sirius breathes out of his nose and shakes his head. “ We could’ve gone to school together.”

“ Well no, because-”

“ Oh yeah,” Sirius says dramatically, “ the homeschooling.” Remus rolls his eyes.

“ Where did you go to college then?”

“ Trinity.”

“ Ah.” Sirius squints at the road at the lady taking the crosswalk as Remus stops, the light goes green but the lady with her little dog is still going, someone honks behind them but Remus doesn’t let up. Finally, she gets to the end and Remus keeps driving.

“ Well Cambridge isn’t that far from Oxford,” Remus snorts dismissively at this, “ We could’ve been friends.”

“ Black, we’re not friends now.”

“ Hm, I guess not no,” Sirius says, his stomach tugging a bit. “ You look tired.”

“ You have a weird way of complimenting people.”

“ It wasn’t a compliment, it was an observation, I’m showing concern.”

“ I told you I was fine.” Remus rubs his eyes, “ I just didn’t get much sleep last night and my Keurig decided to stop working this morning.”

“ Just get a new one.”

“ Don’t have the money for that.”

“ Buy coffee from a cafe then.”

“ Again Black, money.” Remus says, “ Besides, I can probably fix it, I just didn’t have time this morning.”

Sirius gives a judgemental nod and Remus glares at him as he pulls into the street beside Sirius’s house. The sun had gone almost down again, casting a soft air around them, the street was almost empty. He looked out the window to look at his lonely little house, lights off, there was a drawing Harry had done at school taped to a window. As he peered at Remus at the corner of his eye a swarming started in his mind, this all felt fairly domestic. He pressed his lips together and tried not to look at Remus again as the man next to him sighed once again. He wasn’t just trying to be annoying, a part of him wanted Remus to let him help him, which was a weird realization to come to, it made Sirius’s cheek heat up and he scrunched his eyes together as he made a split-second decision.

“ Do you want to come in?”

Remus lets out a short laugh and Sirius feels himself being pulled into hell.

“ No it’s ok,” He says.

“ I want you to.” Sirius reiterates, he sees surprise flick through Remus’s face for a second and he back peddles, “ I mean- I bet Harry wants you to.”

Remus turns his body to look at Harry who’s still conked out against the car window. His left eyebrow shoots up in suspicion.

In the end, Sirius doesn’t get Remus inside his house, and he gets way more distraught about it than he would expect. So distraught in fact that once he puts Harry he finds himself sliding down against his bedroom door like some love-struck teenager. He groans into his hands as he sits on his floor and hopes Harry can’t hear him.

_

“ It’s you!”

Mary is standing amid the 3rd year classroom once again, today she’s wearing a wrapped shirt, a long skirt, and boots, she almost looks like a hippie from the 70s. She’s smiling a big smile, and she eyes the coffee Sirius is holding in his hand slyly. Sirius looks around as she walks over, Remus is nowhere to be found, and now he’s regretting all his previous decisions.

“ Picking Harry up early?”

“ Uh-no,” He sputters out, Mary tilts her head, “Where’s-?”

“ Oh, Remus? He’s not in today,” Mary states cheerfully, “ Sick he said, it happens a lot.”

“ Oh.”

“ I mean, you saw him yesterday, looked dead walking.” Mary snorts but Sirius finds himself not listening, his hearing blurring a bit.

“ What’s that?” Mary asks, taking Sirius out of his daze. He looks down at the undrunk coffee.

“ Nothing.”

“ Would that nothing be why you came in the middle of the school day?”

“ No.”

“ You said you weren’t picking up Harry.”

“That’s right.”

“ And Remus’s Keurig is broken,” She says, eyeing him and smiling knowingly, Sirius’s gut stirs uncomfortably.

“ Do you know his address?” Sirius asks, and Mary’s eyebrows shoot up on her face.

“ I do,” Mary says, the air shifts a bit, it gets a bit less cheery and Sirius almost starts sweating.

“ Can you…?” Sirius lifts his eyebrows assumedly, Mary doesn’t move.

“ What are you planning to do if I give you his address?”

“ What do you think?”

“ He won’t let you in,” Mary states, “ I’ve known the man for almost a year and he won’t even let me past the entrance.”

“ Is he embarrassed or something?” Sirius snorts, he finds it hard to believe that any part of Remus is capable of being messy.

“ I’m raising a 9-year-old alone, can’t be messier than my place.”

“ He’s….” She thinks, “ …Private “, she then squints at Sirius in front of her. “ I can give you his address, but you have to do something for me first.”

“ Sure, whatever you want.” He says offhandedly and then begins to regret it when Mary smirks.

About 20 minutes later Sirius finds himself on a stage in front of about 40 people wearing a fake mustache and playing a keyboard fashioned as an old-timey piano with mountains of cardboard.

“ This town ain’t big enough for the both of us!” 14-year-old Percy Weasley yells while holding up a toy gun, hand slightly shaking. The stage’s ground was covered by sandy cloth and at some point Sirius swore he saw some kid through a prop meant to look like a tumbleweed across the stage. As Percy stuttered out his line, Sirius leaned forward to give a dramatic music cue and quickly caught Mary’s wide grin sitting in the front row right next to Molly.

“ You better be ready to duel for it!” The other boy in the cowboy hat across from Percy yells, clearly hamming in the whole thing more than necessary, Sirius tries not to wince.

They sit there for a second, the auditorium is quiet, Sirius glances over to Percy and the boy’s mouth starts quivering, he seems to forget his line. Molly looks like she’s going to rip the purse she’s holding in her lap apart from nervousness, Mary covers her mouth with her hands. Sirius looks up from where he’s waiting for his next cue and sees Dora standing on the other side backstage. Her hair is chopped up to her ear and it was bright purple today, she’s wearing a dress attuned to the Wild West period, and as she reads the situation her cheeks fill up with air and she holds her hands on her hips. She catches Sirius’s gaze and he grins as he gets an idea, Dora’s face going slack from horror.

He hops up on his piano stool, stomps his foot, puts his hand to his mouth, and yells in his most exaggerated Southern accent he can-

“GOD! BY JOVE IS THAT A FLYING SAUCER?!”

“ What do aliens even have to do with the Wild West?” Dora says afterward, she’s still in her Southern bell outfit.

“ I didn’t see you coming up with any better ideas,” He gestures to Percy clinging to Molly at the side of the stage, though Sirius seemed to save his arse during the show he still seemed pretty embarrassed as he cried to his mum, “ Your supposed to be the actor here, where’s your improv?”

“ I was backstage!”

“ And I was behind a piano, did you see me freezing?”

“ Why are you even here? Don’t you have a job?”

“What do you mean? This is my job.”

“ No, it’s not!” Dora yells, even though the girl is almost 18 now she’s still able to get riled up the same as when she was a kid.

“ Yes, it is. I’m up for an Oscar this year, you didn’t know?” Sirius continues.

“You’re ridiculous!” She huffs and stomps away grumbling, her combat boots showing clearly under her dress as she walks over to the rest of the cast. At this same time, Mary waltzes over to Sirius from where a bundle of parents lie. She eyes him up and down again as she does, she’s no longer smiling.

“ I’m taking my performance didn’t go over well with the parents?” He asks.

“You’re never setting foot on that stage again,” Mary states simply.

“ Your loss,” Sirius says, he rips the fake mustaches off his face and mumbles a quiet ow as it rips off his skin.

“ I think I understand now why Remus finds you so annoying.”

“ Oh really?”

“Yeah.” Mary says, “You’re unpredictable.”

“ Well I’m not a teacher,” Sirius shoves his hands in his pockets, “ Not everyone needs a contingency plan for every second of every day,” He drawls mockingly. Mary smiles slightly and then walks over to a table stationed on the side of the auditorium, she writes something on a notepad and hands it over to Sirius.

“ His address.” Mary states, “ He’s a bit frail, promise not to shake him up too hard?”

Sirius takes the paper and reads the writing, smiling, “ No promises.” He says.

_

“ -And I told him and he didn’t believe me.”

“ What?”

“ They don’t make Sunday.”

“ Why not?”

“ Because of god.”

When Harry Met Sally plays idly on Remus’s TV in his small flat as he leans over his counter a few feet away, phone tucked into his shoulder.

“ I thought you were doing better.” Peter’s voice says on the other side of Remus’s phone.

“ There is no better,” Remus responds, he’s crouching over his kitchen counter looking at the back of his Keurig, in his other hand he’s holding an ice pack to his neck, he woke up this morning with a fever and was barely able to get up to tell Mary that he couldn’t come in. He’d gotten a bit better since then, but his whole body still felt somewhat like a sauna.

“ So that’s what your life is, constant suffering?” Peter asks from where Remus now put his phone beside him on the counter.

“ N0 ‘cause I’m not that dramatic.” He pries the back of the Keurig open and looks with no direction at the inside of the machine, Peter continues from his phone.

“ I thought your sickness was based on your mood, and you seemed so much happier.”

“ It’s not based on my mood, it’s based on trauma,” Remus continues to squint on the back of his Keurig, “ and what do you mean I’ve been happier?”

“ I don’t know, you just have.”

“ Yeah cause almost losing my job multiple times in a week makes a bloke so much happier.”

“ Well if I had someone punch someone for me I’d certainly be happier.” Peter states, Remus just scoffs at this as he turns the Keurig back around to survey the top, “ Malfoy hasn’t even said a thing about it to Dumbledore, it’s like you have a bodyguard.”

“ He’s not my bodyguard and Malfoy hasn’t said anything because he’s probably planning on taking it up with the board once he gets reelected,” Remus says, and Peter huffs.

“ Maybe you should just run and beat Malfoy, the parents like you better.”

“ A teacher can’t run for head of parent board Pete.”

“ Ah right.” He pauses, “ You should ask Black to do it!”

“ Absolutely not.” Remus doesn’t even take a second to consider it

“ Oh come on, you want to.”

“ What the-” Remus dissembles the spigot of the Keurig, “ No I don’t.”

“You’re basically raising his kid for him, he owes you.”

“ He doesn’t owe me anything.” Remus says, “ I’m helping Harry because I want to.”

“ Not because the guy has a motorbike?”

“ 70 people die in Motorbike accidents a year.”

“ That cannot be true.”

“ It is.”

“ I don’t believe you.”

“ It’s true.”

“ Are you sure?”

“ I- fuck!” Remus lifts his head and bangs it on his top cabinet, making his head spiral all over again.

“ You alright?” Peter calls. At the same time as Remus finally gets his balance back a knocking comes from his flat’s entrance.

“ Yeah uh- Let me call you later Pete.” He gets out, hangs up the call, and drags his feet over to his door, where the person on the other side of his door continues to knock again. He makes it to the door and pauses to lean his head against the cool surface of his door and he takes a deep breath struggling to quell his spinning head.

He opens the door and his head almost starts spinning again from who he’s faced with, as it reveals Sirius Black standing in front of him. The man blinks, hand still in the air, fists, ready to rap the door again. He’s wearing the same leather jacket and his hair is up but it’s fuzzy almost, strands flying everywhere from where he has it back behind his neck. His eyes leave Remus’s and look sharply down and then back up like he can’t believe that Remus is standing in front of him.

“ What the fuck.” Is all Remus can say.

“ Sorry, I should’ve called.” Sirius rushes.

“ I’ll say,” Remus says, reaching a hand to steady himself on the other side of the door frame, “ How are you here right now?”

“ Mary gave me your address,” Sirius says, grinning cheekily and something happens within Remus’s stomach. He ignores it.

“ I don’t exactly remember house calls being part of my babysitting contract.”

“ I thought you weren’t a babysitter?” Black says, he does that thing where he tilts his head like some kind of confused puppy. He would find it cute if as soon as Remus thinks that thought another banging within his head comes with it. He shuts his eyes hard against his face and almost forgets Sirius is there until he calls his name, waiting at the doorway.

“ Are you-?” Sirius starts.

“ What are you doing here?” Remus cuts him off.

Black stops, his arms are at his side now, and he bends over to pick up something from the ground. A to-go cup with a cardboard sleeve, identical to the one that Sirius is carrying in his other hand, that Remus is just now noticing. Another thing he’s noticed is a plastic white bag handing off the inside of Sirius’s elbow.

“ You said your Keurig was broken,” Sirius says, coffee in hand.

“ You came all the way here to give me coffee?”

“ No.” Sirius says, sticking out his bottom lip as he frowns at how Remus is probably squinting at him through his semi-blurry vision, “ I went to Hogwarts to give you coffee, and then when you weren’t there, I came all the way here.”

“ Why?”

“ I just told you.” He says, “ You said your Keurig was broken.”

This is weird, this is really weird. Remus thinks. He keeps having these little strokes, every time he talks to Black it’s like he gets thrown off balance. His keen senses are not working the way they’re supposed to. He would consider himself a person with good vision, noticing every little thing, it’s what makes him an alright teacher most of the time. But not noticing a whole bag and to-go cup is a whole other level. Not only that but his mind has been so occupied. Every time he gets time to relax he’s getting playbacks from a movie in his brain. Every time he sits in his desk chair in the classroom he thinks of Black’s face as he pushes the wet flannel to his nose. His eyes were bright and filled with… something. It’s like a puzzle Remus can’t figure out, Sirius black.

“What’s that?” Remus directs his attention to the white bag, Sirius looks and lifts up his elbow slightly.

“ Oh. Soup.”

“ What?”

“ Mary said you were sick. And by the looks of you-” He looks Remus up and down again, “you’re a bit more than sick.”

“What’s considered more than sick?”

“ Ill maybe,” Sirius suggests, grinning slightly, Remus groans and pinches the bridge of his nose, Sirius keeps talking, “ Diseased maybe. You look a bit like one of those zombies in those haunted houses.”

“ You come to my house,” Remus states, and he hears Sirius snort at the word house used to describe his box of a flat, “ -uninvited I may add, and all you do is insult me.”

“ I wasn’t insulting you, I was backing up my claim with sufficient evidence, Mr. Lupin.”

“ Oh my god.”

“ Did I do good? Can I come in now?”

Remus looks at the man in front of him, standing and leaning slightly so his head is basically over the line into Remus’s flat.

The only person Remus has had in his flat the past years he’s lived in London has been Peter, and that was against his better judgment when he needed someone to replace his water filter when he was bedridden with a cold that felt like it was lighting his body on fire.

He could just tell him to drop off the coffee and soup and leave. He looks at Sirius, at his clear and cold blue eyes, and wonders.

He wonders about the glint in Dumbledore’s eyes as he talks about how Sirius has had a hard life, how Sirius and Andromeda comfortably jab at each other’s characters, he thinks about a classroom, a sunset, a hand tight on the pulse of his wrist, his pulse: bum, bum-

- “ I think I can say more than anyone, You’re not a bad teacher.”

A second, a lack of breath, Remus recalls that memory, and his blood goes even hotter in his body, as he and Sirius look at each other there’s a silent competitiveness, Sirius’s boot is edging the boundary to Remus’s apartment and as Remus looks back to the soup and coffee he gets the feeling he lost as soon as he asked Harry to let him drive him home.

“ Come in,” Remus says, cocking his head and walking back to the inside of his flat. Sirius follows behind him and closes the door softly behind him.

_

“ It’s just so optimistic of you Harry.”

“ Well, you’d be amazed what falling madly in love can do for you.”

Remus never turned off the TV so it sounds softly in front of Remus’s worn sofa, as Sirius steps into the middle of the flat he keeps his hands in his pockets and studies the moving pictures playing out of the TV. His back now to Remus, he goes to unbox the soup Sirius handed over seconds ago.

“ You should reheat it, the place I got it from doesn’t exactly travel well,” Sirius states as he turns quickly back and points loosely to the soup where Remus places it on his counter. There is a smile playing on his cheeks, it suits him and doesn’t make Remus any less skeptical about why he’s here.

“ Alright then,” Remus says, taking the small to-go container and popping the top off to put it in his microwave for about 30 seconds.

“ I like it here.”

“ Huh?”

“ Your flat, I like it.” Sirius’s face is now fully facing him, “ Very tweed.”

It doesn’t necessarily sound like an insult but it very much feels like one, Remus ignores the ill intention and lets out a dry laugh.

“ Along with the rom-com playing, I’d say you’ve made the right little life for yourself as a 26-year-old old soul.” He snickers. The microwave stops with a beep and Remus moves to take the soup out, waving away smoke wafting from the liquid.

“ It’s my mum’s favorite,” Remus responds. It’s not exactly a lie, but he would never admit how many times he’s popped the disc in when he’s in his flat alone. Sirius humms in response as he sets the coffee occupying his hands on the coffee table, turning back to the TV and plopping himself on Remus’s sofa like he lives here.

“ I’ve never seen it.” He says laying his back into the cushions of the couch, he’s getting comfortable and Remus is getting more confused by the second. He certainly is getting a tad bit too comfortable for just a quick visit.

“ Well, then we’ll have to rewind it from the start.” Remus grabs the remote, scrubs the movie to the beginning, and sits on the floor in front of his coffee table putting the soup in front of him. And in a move Remus would never predict, Sirius slides off the couch next to him, leaning back against the bottom of the couch. Remus places coasters underneath each of the coffees, Sirius squints at the sight but says nothing about it.

The movie continues, and they get to New York, Harry carrying a large knapsack across his shoulder and walking away from Sally’s car. As they watch the TV in silence Remus makes small movements to study Sirius’s face. His eyelashes are unusually long and he has a small mole underneath his eye. Heat builds in his chest, and there is a space between them on the floor but as the movie continues, Harry and Sally meet again in the airport, Sirius stretches out his legs aligning them parallel to where Remus has his on the floor. It would take only seconds for Remus to bump their shoulders together.

There's a slight bang in his head, heat flowing through his fingers, he ignores it.

Harry and Sally meet again in a bookstore, they walk alongside in New York’s autumn, and Sirius watches the screen, his mouth in a straight line. Remus by now has finished his coffee, as his thoughts bring his eyes back to Sirius’s face once again he decides he needs a vice to get him through this.

“ Do you want a drink?”

“ What? “

“ I have whisky.” Remus cocks his head back to his kitchen cabinets.

“ Sure.” Sirius snorts, but the smile doesn’t leave his face as he watches Remus get back up toward the kitchen, his knees click and the blood rushes to his head making it hard to stay straight, but he continues. He pours whisky into two different mugs and places the bottle softly in front of them as he sits back down and hands one of the mugs to him. Sirius looks at the mugs skeptically.

“ I don’t have people over that often,” Remus says, Sirius just laughs again.

“ Mary said you’re very private.”

“ I guess so.”

Sirius’s smile keeps steady on his face, and it doesn’t waver as he looks at the image all around the mug Remus gave him.

“ Is this…” He points to a figure on the mug, the tiny woman holds a boy and an arrow.

“ Diana.”

“ The god?” Sirius looks back quickly to Remus who nods, “ And this is-” He points to another figure.

“ Mercury,” Remus responds.

“ Ah, right.” Sirius says, “ I should've known with all the… wings.” He spins the mug slowly in his hand looking carefully at the thin printed picture. “ Wow they’re all on here aren't they?”

“ My parents had a thing for Roman mythology.”

“ I can tell, Remus.” He says and Remus just looks away to the TV. Harry hits a baseball with his bat with a ting, “ You made a woman meow?” Jess says.

“ Is that why you hate gossip so much?” Sirius asks. “Because you're a private person?”

“ Well, that and also that it's inherently mean-spirited.” Remus retorts.

“ Have something to hide don’t you?” Sirius asks, voice getting higher with humor.

Remus has another playback go by in his head.

So are you?

Am I what?

Why does this feel almost like an interrogation? He invited Black in to find out more but now it feels like he’s being picked apart under a police light.

“ I could ask you the same question.” He says, Sirius looks away from his eyes, smile fading.

“ Nothing to hide, I’m an open book Lupin.” Sirius takes a sip from his mug, he looks hesitantly to where Remus is sitting beside him. “ Ask me anything.”

“ How do you know Malfoy?”

Sirius sighs, puts his mug down in his lap, but answers the question.

“ Narcissa, she’s my cousin.”

That explained the way she acted towards him at the picnic. The sneer she directed towards him, it seemed so personal.

“ Cousin, so she’s-?”

“ Andromeda’s sister.”

“ Huh.” Remus looks back to the TV, he gets a sense he’s treading sensitive territory, “ And I assume they’re not on good terms?”

“ Nope.” Sirius says, popping the p. “ Andromeda got basically thrown out when she eloped with Ted.”

“ Why?”

“ The Blacks, they're very traditional.” Sirius says, his eyes slightly fogging over, “ They won’t stand for you making any decision that isn’t on their terms.”

“ And you..?”

“ Ran away when I was 16.”

“ 16? Where did you go?”

Sirius looks back, smiling again as he drops the mug from his lips, “ The Potters.”

“ The Potters.”

“ Yep.” Sirius smiles, “ Either that or I’d become a runaway one-man band.” He goes to pour more into his glass leaning forward and then backward. “ Could never get a handle on bass guitar though.” He shrugs.

“ I wanted to join Steely Dan when I was younger.” Remus confesses, Sirius snorts and his heart jumps, “ My parents didn’t want to break it to me that they broke up in ‘81”

“ That shouldn't stop you, I’d go see your impersonator band.”

“ Well, thanks.” They both laugh softly, there's a warm feeling in the air.

“ That explains the piano then,” Remus says, searching for more questions he’s not sure he wants the answers to.

“ Yep.” Sirius says, “ Well no,” He scratches the small hairs on the back of his neck, “ My parents forced me to learn when I was a kid.”

He sniffs slightly, “ That piano has been collecting dust really,” he adjusts how he’s sitting, one leg under the other, Remus keeps his eyes open.

“ I’ve been meaning to chuck it.” Sirius says quietly, “ Sell it maybe.”

“ Don’t sell it.” He finds himself saying.

“ Why not, it’s just taking up space.”

“ Play it then.”

“ I can’t, my parents-” He looks down, “ They ruined a lot of things for me.”

“ There's nothing saying you can’t make music your own.”

Remus can’t tell if this was a meaningful thing to say or not, if anything Sirius could be seething right now, Remus can’t see his face now, it scares him slightly.

A bloated silence takes the air, Remus puts his thumb through and out the hold of his mug handle.

“ So,” Sirius starts, turning to face Remus on the carpet, Remus feels his eyes go wide, “ What did you want to be when you grew up?” He says almost cheerfully, Remus breathes out softly in a laugh.

“ Er- Well, I don’t know.”

“ Oh come on!”

“ I wasn’t a very auspicious kid.”

“ But you must've wanted to do something.” Sirius says, almost pouting, “ You couldn’t have just ended up here.”

“ I don’t know, I read a lot, it kind of just made sense to… keep reading.” Remus smiles, shifting his shoulders back, “ That and other things.” Remus says more quietly, not wanting to expand on past traumas just yet, Sirius just looks at him and hums unsatisfied, not pushing forward.

They continue again in silence, a double date doesn’t go as planned, and Marie and Jess head into a cab leaving Harry and Sally alone on the street.

“ I can see why your mum likes this movie.”

“ Hm?”

“ It’s unrealistic.”

“ What?”

“ I mean,” Sirius says, “ They’ve spent so much time together there’s no way in hell they wouldn’t be together by now.”

“I can’t figure out if you’re trying to be more cynical or optimistic.” Remus squints at him with confusion.

“There’s nothing more disappointing than wasted time.”

“ My parents knew each other for about 3 years before they got married.”

“ Why would you ever wait that long?” Sirius says softly and wistfully, he hasn’t seen Sirius ever get this thoughtful, and surprised by the fact makes him almost want to laugh.

“ To make sure you’re making the right decision.” Remus keeps his eyes on the screen, “ Maybe they didn’t think they were right for each other at the time.”

“ Sounds like a case of doubt and indecision to me.” Sirius brushes it off.

“ I figured it out,” Remus says, “You’re cynical, definitely more cynical.”

“ Nothing wrong with not getting your hopes up.”

“ No, I agree with you,” Remus says. “ I haven’t dated since college, I have every right to be cynical too.”

“ You haven’t dated since college? Why not?”

“ It’s a lot… Being with me,” Remus brings his attention to a stray thread on his sweatpants, picking it in a nervous fidget. The dehydration in his body makes his hands shake though, he slides his hand on the cloth of his pants, finger missing a thread.

“ What’s a lot?” Sirius asks, he doesn’t take his eyes off him, he looks genuinely confused.

“ I’m not exactly in great shape.” Remus chuckles without humor, he can feel the frown that forms on Sirius’s face, “ My heart spasms on occurrence, and I’ve never really been able to avoid any sort of bug that goes around. I basically lived in the hospital as a kid.” He shrugs.

“ You don’t have any kind of diagnosis?”

“ Some say it’s due to mental distress, I had a bad bout of trauma when I was kid, a pretty bad burglary to my parents' house.” He takes a sip of his drink, “ Never was the same after that.”

“ Is that how-?” Sirius makes a swiping motion down his cheek, referring to his scar.

“ Yep, a steel wrench actually, my dad left his tool kit on the kitchen table so.”

“ Jesus.”

“ It’s okay.”

“ I’m sorry.”

“ It happened a long time ago.” Remus shrugs.

“ I decided that it takes a lot to just get through every day, ‘might as well make that easier for other people. “ He almost murmurs, “ No child should have to go through that.”

The air between them is heavy. Remus didn’t know why he talked as much as he did, but it was too late, his mouth had gotten loose and he had made it awkward.

“ Besides,” He laughs a bit in an attempt to release some tension, “ I can’t even keep kids from keeping paint off my pants, I highly doubt I can keep a long-term relationship intact.”

“ I haven’t shagged anyone in 3 years,” Sirius states, and Remus chokes on the sip of whisky he just took, he fails and ends up coughing loudly.

“ What?” He asks, catching his breath.

“ Andy and Ted keep trying to set me up on these blind dates, and I finally went on one just to get them off my back and I wanted to tear my skin off.”

Remus just laughs, a scratchy sensation in his throat as he can’t believe the information he’s hearing. It seems to be a common occurrence this evening.

“ I can’t imagine having to do that daily.” Sirius just says genuinely.

“ Well, it’s probably different-, “ Remus says, god this conversation has gotten out of control, “ when you're in love.”

Sirius just scoffs, “ Yeah ok.”

“ No really, I bet if you just go on a date with someone you like,” Remus takes a sip of his mug and Sirius stares at him straight-faced, he doesn’t like the feeling it’s stirring. “, you’ll, y’know,” he stammers a bit, “ not want to tear your skin off.”

“ You’ll feel differently.” He continues.

“ Okay,” Sirius says in disbelief. “ So how does being in love feel?” he raises his eyebrows, takes another sip of his drink, cocky.

“ You know, you're-” Remus starts, taking a glance at Sirius beside him and he can feel his face heat up, he laughs nervously, “ Your heart will beat fast and your hands will get sweaty and-” He stammers again.

“ You’ll find that you won't want to be anywhere else in the world.” He says, making eye contact with Sirius, almost seeing his reflection in his eyes. Music plays out on the tv and Remus for sure thinks he imagines it but a finger graces his own on the carpet.

“ I think that’s a load of bollocks,” Sirius says, breaking the silence.

“ Really. “

“ Yep, “ Sirius grins, self-assured, takes another sip from his mug and Remus notices that his cheeks are getting pinker.

“ And I hate to say it Lupin, considering it seems like you haven’t shagged anyone in a while. I'd say this is the one subject you can’t pretend to know everything about.”

“ What?” Remus gapes, “ How do you know that?”

“ Have you been in love before? “

“ I mean- “

“ HAH! “ Sirius jumps up from where he’s sitting and points, his eyes are getting brighter and Remus’s face hurts from how much he’s been smiling in the past minutes.

“ Have you? “

“ Ha, “ Sirius snorts, “ No.”

“ Then how can you tell me that I don’t know anything? “

“ Because I’ve seen it.”

“You’ve seen what? True Love?” Remus spits, he’s not even paying attention to the movie anymore.

“ Yeah.” Sirius takes a long sip from his mug, “ Fuck it wasn’t my parents, the only thing they could agree on was how to make my adolescence the most miserable.”

“ Who then?”

“ Harry’s parents,” Sirius says, staring at the TV screen but not watching it.

“ Lily got pregnant real young, we were about 17 and even then she still decided to put herself through college.” He says, “ She was exhausted nearly every day and every moment James was there.”

“Once…” He drifts off, calling back the memory and then laughing dryly as it comes to him, “ Once James, he had me drive him all the way to this little bakery at the edge of town, just to get this pastry she was craving, and we got there right when the shop was closing and James had to beg the old lady that ran it to open it back up just so he could buy his pregnant girlfriend this one danish.”

“ When we finally came back it was around 3 am and Lily was already asleep, and James didn’t even care. He just kissed her on the forehead and asked if I wanted a pint.”

“ That’s true love,” Sirius concludes, he tries to take another sip of his drink and then as he does realizes it’s empty. As he leans forward to pour more into his mug and Remus thinks. He thinks until he hears a small sniffle coming from beside him. Sirius’s eyes are watering, but not crying, he lowers his mug from his face and looks away to wipe his nose with his sleeve.

Remus’s thoughts go into hyper gear, in his wildest dreams would never be the outcome of this situation so in an ungraceful move that probably makes things worse he speaks up.

“ Sirius, are you-”

“ I’m fine!” Sirius pipes back, way louder than necessary, the action just makes Remus’s hands shake more.

“ Well, it’s getting late and uh-” He looks jerkingly at the watch on his wrist, “ - I have that thing I have to do s0.” He gets up and walks towards the door.

Remus is stunned for a second, looking at his mug then to the empty soup bowl on the coffee table, and then to the TV as Harry is running to a New Year’s party. The door opens and before Remus can think again he gets up and runs to the sound, holding the door open before Sirius can close it.

“ Hey-” He says, Sirius looks up at him, the rims of his eyes are red and his nose is slightly more pink from when he was rubbing it. As he turns around and Remus holds the door his hair backs away from his face and Remus can see him clearly for the first time. Somehow a voice in his head says wow.

“ I didn’t thank you for coming, “ He says, slightly out of breath, “ And for the coffee and… soup.”

“ It wasn’t too much trouble.”

“ No.” Remus states, “ No cause it was, and you-” A part of him wants to stop, but at this point, his heart is beating too fast and he can barely even hear anything but Sirius’s breathing.

“ You still haven’t told me why.

Sirius lets go of the door, leaves his hands at his sides, and frowns slightly, looking him up and down, like some specimen in a tube.

His senses heighten, he hears breathing and the blood running through his body, his vision focuses on a mole right below Sirius’s eye and the taste of the soup he can still taste on the back of his tongue. In the moment he’s almost tempted to beg for Sirius to stay, playbacks playing in his head, a finger, hooking in on his own on his living room carpet.

He almost wants to kiss him, right in his doorframe.

“ Just think of it as me returning the favor.” He says and then closes the door.

The movie keeps playing as Remus stands still in front of his door.

I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible!

Remus can’t help but take this as some sort of dark omen.

_

Sirius drives back to his apartment as fast as he can, even though physically he can’t make his motorbike go any faster than it already is. He greets Dora at his house in a daze, she looks at him weirdly but doesn’t say anything of it as he hands her 50 dollars for the babysitting.

In a robotic recreation of his nighttime routine, he checks on Harry through a crack in the door, he brushes his teeth and then can’t help to find himself sitting on his bed with insomnia as he stares at his ceiling. Playbacks form in his head. Manic curls on his slightly damp forehead and wobbly fingers, the way Lupin’s smile faded and appeared through the evening. He imagines sitting at a dinner table, a finger looped with his hand, comfortable, he feels comfortable, it’s like it was always meant to happen. Playbacks happen in his head.

“ There's nothing saying you can’t make music your own.”

It’s basically corny, but the thought brings him out of his bed. He walks out to his living room, the piano with the Moonage Daydream sheet music, he hovers one finger of a key and lets it come down lightly, filling the quiet room with a soft ding. He swears under his breath as his hand freezes.

The first time he played a full song on the piano it had been in a room full of people during his music class he and James took to skive off work. It was a stupid song he heard in some commercial and he played it back almost perfectly, the class clapping as he finished, James slinging an arm over his shoulder and grinning. He had almost forgotten that memory, his eyes grew blurry as he recalled it and even now he couldn’t even place the name of his music teacher at the time. His eyes watered, but there was no hole in his stomach, instead just a playback of an ill man in a tattered sweater vest, chuckling as Sirius spills his whole soul out on his flats carpet .

What happens when he likes someone? He doesn’t know.

Chapter Text

A few days later from Sirius’s house call he forces Marlene to go back to Broomstick’s with him. He chugs almost a whole pint before gathering the courage to confess his most recent realization.

“ So what are you saying?” Marlene says, struck with surprise, her eyes are wide but her mouth is curved with humor. “ You want to shag this guy? The guy you said wears loafers like some grade-A librarian”

“ I mean I guess.” Sirius moves his bottle around in his hand, the liquid moves around the bottle languidly. “ That, and other things.”

“ Damn Black, how is Harry going to feel when he finds out you’re trying to shack up with his teacher.”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know how.”

“ How to what? Try?”

“ Yes, that. I don’t know how to do that.” Sirius groans into his hands, “ I haven’t done this in years and it’s worse because it all feels so real.”

“ Well just look for the signs and then strike when the time is right,” Marlene says simply.

“ You make it sound like some sort of animal mating ritual.” Sirius snorts into his pint, “ Besides, what signs? I barely even know if he’s interested in me, let alone in blokes.”

The latter point Sirius was more positive of, based on the flailing and the paranoia and the accusatory Malfoy shouting and pointing, but even then it didn’t hurt to be cautious. There’s too much at stake here, it’s only around the middle of the school year, and he’s still gonna have to see Lupin at least one more time if it ends up that he read the room completely wrong and bollocked everything up.

God, he was old and jaded. He had never thought this way about romantic prospects before. There was no reason, no consideration, back at the picnic when Remus’s face turned downward at Malfoys scrutiny Sirius wanted to rip the whole world apart.

“ You're asking the wrong person.” Marlene snarks.

“ You’re the one giving me advice though,” He points aggressively at the wooden stained bar, “ You're here. At this moment. You have to give me something.”
He couldn’t talk to Andy or Ted about this, they had been in their little bubble of marriage too long to know anything about dating, and Sirius didn’t think he could spare the embarrassment and another 30 minutes of Ted laughing at him.

“ It's different for each person,” Marlene glances at him and then sighs “ But there’s still general things, like long glances, smiles, all that sappy stuff.”

“Y’know, signs,” Marlene explains.“ You’ll know when it happens.”

“ I don’t know how to do that.” Sirius whines.

“ You already said that.”

He leans his head into his arms and Marlene pats him on the back.

“ Take action, take time,” Marlene smirks through her beer. “Nothing gets done when you just moan about it to your lesbian coworker.”

“ This is embarrassing.” She states simply like the grass is green, cows go moo, and Sirius is hopeless.

Sirius groans again.

He decides to take action days later when he volunteers to chaperone for some field trip, he doesn’t get the specific details till later, all he knows is that Remus smiled at him when he told him he would chaperone. He really needs to stop agreeing to things he doesn’t know the full extent of.

“ I didn’t even know London had a museum all about post.” He says stifling a sigh, hands underneath his armpits as a gust of cold winter air blows by.

“ Then you don’t know London well enough.” Remus pipes up behind him. He’s wearing a heavy coat, buttoned to the top, and a green scarf around his shoulders, it compliments his eyes well. Sirius didn’t get the closest look earlier but he’s pretty sure he saw about 5 layers underneath. Remus is counting each child in their group, there is a bit of a kerfuffle near the end of the crowds of children, Remus moves his neck slightly to get a look towards the end of the crowd, but does nothing. Sirius makes a big show of being surprised by his lack of action and Remus sighs.

“ It’s not my problem,” Remus states, there’s a lanyard around his neck, and he pokes his thumb through the bottom of the loop as he talks, “ I’m not technically the lead for this trip so I can’t do anything.”

“ I think there’s smoke coming out of your ears.”

“ Can it Black.” He sniffs slightly as he says it, and Sirius’s attention goes back to the man’s worn face, dark circles, nose red. Turns out that after the whole Paddington Bear, Malfoy punching incident, Remus had been somewhat barred from leading the planning for any other school events on behalf of the PTA. Sirius somehow feels like it’s his fault but also part of his brain is confused as to why Remus would be upset to have less work, so he just laughs instead. Besides, the man was still clearly sick, Sirius didn’t think that anyone, even as stubborn as the man in question, was capable of taking control of a whole school trip with a debilitating sickness.

Today, Remus has a cane tucked in between his hip and elbow as he leans his weight on it. From what Sirius has seen he uses it sparingly, but Sirius can still catch the limp when he doesn’t. He can’t quite put a finger on if he noticed these things before, he would think that he’s observant enough to notice a whole limp but he guesses he’d always been a bit blindsided.

They make their way from the bus into the museum and then end up on a train, through tunnels and screen-projected rooms. Remus smiles at them as they sit in a cart together, knees knocking. Sirius is nothing but completely calm, you could put him in a Buddhist monastery for how calm he is about all this.

“ This is certainly boring,” Sirius says and Remus frowns at him, some of the light of the projected videos reflects off his face, and the bridge of his nose shows clearly through the light, there’s a beauty to it.

“ No, it isn’t,” Remus gets the attention of Harry and Luna who are sitting in the cart in front of them, “ See look.” He makes a gesture to tell Sirius to listen.

“ Did you know that in 1852, the first postboxes were green but they had to change them to red because the green caused them to be so camouflaged that people couldn’t find them?”

He grins, looking the most excited Sirius had ever seen for a fact about the postal service, but the kids were less convinced. Sirius tries not to laugh as Harry doesn’t even spare him a smile.

“ Tough crowd.” Sirius whistles.

“ Weird. When I was a kid I went mad for facts like that.” Remus says with a frown so comical it makes Sirius mirror his frown immediately.

“ I thought it was cool Mr. Lupin!” A small voice chimes in excitedly in front of them.

“ Thanks, Luna.” Remus sighs.

The train ride ends and they continue to the children’s play area of the museum, Sirius staying at Remus’s side as he talks with Mary and Peter. He watches as Remus holds a plastic water bottle in his hand, fidgets with the cap, and then brings it down to his side, a normal thing, but somehow Sirius’s tunnel vision is still blurring.

“ Sirius.”

“ Huh..?” Remus is looking at him again, the water bottle still at his side, somehow in the last minute Mary disappeared. Sirius hears a loud “ OW” and finds Remus and Pettigrew’s heads wiping around so quickly it makes him jump.

The OW occurs and then there’s some crying and then some yelling and Peter grimaces over to where the commotion is coming from, a big red slide, and some kind of pulley system that sends letters upward. Sirius looks around for Harry and sees him on the opposite side of the room with Hermoine squinting at an envelope, his heart slows down.

“ I’ll take care of it,” Peter says and he jogs over to where little Dean knocked his head against the bucket attached to the pulley.

“ Never a dull moment is there?” Sirius asks, Remus peels his eyes away from the racket to smile at Sirius with a smile that spreads to his whole face.

“ No, but..” He says, tilting his head in thought, “ You sure appreciate silence more.”

“ Sounds titillating. “ Sirius says sarcastically, Remus bumps him softly with his elbow and Sirius tries not to focus on how his skin burns with the touch.

“ I’ve got bad news,” Mary says walking back with a frown on her face and a walkie-talkie brandished on her side. She makes eye contact with Pettigrew and beckons him over. Remus gives him a pointed look as the man waltzes over and Peter just snorts.

“ He’ll be fine, nothing to start a fight over,” Peter jokes and Sirius doesn’t miss the glance he quickly throws his way.

“ What happened?” Remus brings the attention back to Mary.

“ Trelawny seems to have lost the buses.”

Remus and Peter both groan and Mary just frowns harder and puts her hands on her hips.

“ Why in hell is she in charge of the buses? I once saw her forget where she put her glasses,” Peter moans, “ and they were on her face.”

“ It was either that or give her a group of 8th years,” Mary explains.

“ How did she even end up volunteering for this trip? The woman is a walking cack attack.” Peter snarks.

Remus brings his hand to his face, pinching his nose, and then laying the water bottle flat on his forehead.

“ I may have suggested it.” He says and Peter and Mary both turn to him with frustrated looks, Sirius just lets out a quiet laugh.

“ Remus. Why.” Mary demands.

“ I feel like she’s always so closed off, I brought it up and she seemed happy to help,” Remus says defensively. “ Besides nobody was volunteering, what was I supposed to do?”

“ Remus this trip was supposed to be easy,” Peter says. “ And now it is decidedly not.”

“ You can thank Malfoy for that.” Mary snorts, crossing her arms over her chest.

“ Mary, don’t” Remus warns.

“ What?! It is!” Mary says, “ First he takes the trip away from you and gives it to bloody Flitwick, and then for some reason none wants to volunteer, don’t you find that weird?”

“ Well maybe nobody wanted to volunteer because it’s a museum about post”, Sirius adds, this does not go over well as Mary, Peter, and Remus’s faces all turn to him with indignation.

“ Just saying.” He shrugs.

“ Something bad is gonna happen, Remus, he’s scheming I swear.” Mary takes a lower tone this time, but Remus’s strict face doesn’t falter.

“ Where is Trewlany right now?” Remus asks.

Mary huffs, and then sighs in defeat,“ I think they came back to the entrance to regroup,”

Remus lowers the water bottle from his head, “ Tell them to give me 5 minutes, I think I remember a bit of the license plate numbers.”

“ Remus, I can handle it, take a break,” Mary gestures to the entrance and then vaguely to Sirius. “ Walk around a bit before we have to get back on the buses, if we can find them.”

“ I’m fine Mary.” Remus says, “ I caused this mess, I can fix it.”

“ Considering that Flitwick almost shit his pants at the sight of you this morning, I'd say otherwise.” Mary smirks then leans towards Sirius and says in a lower voice, “ ‘said he thought he saw a ghost.”

“ That’s quite enough Mary!”

“ You do look pretty pale,” Sirius says a moment later, taking a walk along the museum as Mary rushes to find the buses and Peter takes over watching the kids with the other chaperones. “ I swear when I walked into the school today you were almost transparent.”

“ I get it, I look like shit,” Remus says, stopping to read a panel of text in an exhibit. Sirius stands next to him and looks into the glossy photograph in front of them to see their reflection. Remus is squinting to read, his nose scrunching, Sirius has to bite back a laugh at how endearing it is. As he looks at his reflection he finds stains on his pants, sees the frizziness in his hair, and feels insecure, which would be the first time.

“ Is the PTA really going to care if you take one more sick day?” He asks.

“ It’s not about that,” Remus says and then squints in thought as he walks away to the next exhibit, Sirius following behind, “ We’ll it’s sorta about that, but that’s not all.”

“ I don’t like being away from my classroom for too long,” He continues, stopping again to wave at another teacher with another group of children, “ My job is to be present, be there for the kids, if I can’t even do that then what’s the point.”

“ I don’t know…” Sirius hops up and balances on a nearby banister, “ Staying alive, keeping your sanity…” He hops down beside him.

Remus furrows his eyebrows looking unconvinced.

“ I like my job, “ Remus says, stopping suddenly.

“ Sure,” Sirius responds, “ And I like mine but I’m not bending over backwards for it.” Remus looks at him, mouth in a slant and he leans sideways a bit more on the cane for support, he’s relying on it more as they’re away from the kids. They are standing right in front of a red carriage and behind them, they hear a cheerful, “ Excuse me”, taking Sirius out of his sappy state.

Next to him stands a woman with a small group of people behind her, looking at a nearby exhibit, her smile is fake and she wears a bright red tour guide shirt.

“ Mind making room? I have a big group I’m about to bring ‘round here.” She says, Sirius mutters a quick apology as he scoots over and as he does he catches sight of Remus’s confused face.

“ Meadows?” Remus says. The woman's smile fades and her eyes droop so quickly that Sirius is almost impressed.

“ Lupin.” She responds bluntly.

“ What are you doing here?” Remus asks.

“ It’s my lunch.” She says, “ I like to keep busy.”

“ Well okay.” Apparently, this is a sufficient enough answer because Remus continues to shuffle out of the way for Meadows’ oncoming tour group.

“ Who was that?” Sirius asks.

“ School secretary.” Remus glances back at him, under his breath he hears Remus mumble how long is her lunch?

“ So tell me, Black, “ Remus says a bit later, he walks a bit faster, turns over, and stops at another exhibit. He does all this pretty successfully with the cane still in position, Sirius feels the temperature in his body rise a bit as Remus looks at him.

“ Are you still an open book?” Remus asks, this is the first reference to the conversation in his flat since it happened. It made sense, considering that near the end Sirius had embarrassed himself and basically ran out of the flat, he wasn’t rushing to bring it up again.

“ I would say so.” He goes on, and a sort of fear bubbles within him. He’s a bit afraid that at some point Remus will find out something about him that will be so rotten that he’ll stop talking to him. He had let go of those types of thoughts years ago when there was a car crash and a piece of him was buried 6 feet under the ground. But despite that, he still yearns for Remus to ask him questions, to let himself open for him to see everything, maybe he’s just being masochistic.

“ So you don’t mind if I ask you another question?” Remus inquires, a slight glint in his eye.

“ Ask away,” Sirius responds almost immediately.

“ How did you get there?” Remus says, “ In that garage, what happened to your grand dreams of making music?”

“ Well the dreams weren’t exactly grand, they were childish if anything.” He says, Remus looks at him incredulously.

“ Y’know that Motorbike, the wretched Motorbike,” He continues anyway, “ I brought it up from scratch, found it on the side of the road after high school, and brought it to what it is now.”

“ Impressive.”

Sirius shrugs, despite the way his stomach flips for the praise, “ I had a lot of help.” He thinks of the long afternoons in Ted’s driveway sweating over motors, James sitting nearby with a manual over his head. The memory came suddenly, Sirius stopping and having to find his voice again as Remus looked at him to continue.

“ I- uh, wasn’t exactly employed when everything happened with Harry’s parents.” He says watery, “ God parentage or not I still needed to prove to the courts that I could support a kid to get custody so Ted was nice enough to offer me the job and that was it.”

“ My whole sense time became so messed up, “ Sirius sniffs, wipes his nose even though nothing’s there, “ I guess that happens with kids, you were a person before you had them, and then all the sudden it’s no longer your 24th year living but the 2nd year you’ve had ‘em’”

“ It took a while for me to get used to it even though it just so naturally came with everything else. Before I knew it I had been there for two years.” He stops, realizes how much he’s talked, and realizes how deep the hole in his stomach has got, he can’t bring himself to look away from the checkered floor below his shoes.

“ Sorry.” He says.

“ It’s okay,” Remus says back quickly. “ I know what you mean, no need to apologize.”

“ There’s nothing more important than making a child feel wanted .”

“ Harry’s lucky to have you.” He then says and then is when Sirius gains the strength to look up and he is absolutely glad he did. He’s rewarded with a smile that he could only describe as bright. Despite how pale the man’s skin was and how soft and monotone his voice could get, Sirius had never felt anything better than the look that Remus was now giving him. A train horn rings distantly in the museum, and the hole in his stomach turns into a squiggly one. Sirius has to look away in fear of blinding himself or showing his cards too soon as his face is probably the same color as the aforementioned postboxes.

“ We should head back soon…” He hears Remus mumble under his breath. He begins to walk back the way they came and then stops and turns as Sirius doesn’t follow this time.

“ C’mon.” He beckons, no smile this time, just pure unadulterated fact, he knows what he’s doing when he says it, he knows the action and he knows the outcome. He knows.

Somehow the gesture feels comfortable, like they’ve done it a million times and a little voice hiding in the dark crevices of his mind whispers that it’s a sign.

_

Thankfully the buses are found and a distressed and withering Trewlany is comforted as she begs for forgiveness. No kids are lost and Sirius watches Remus take count of the children about 40 times on the bus ride back. Despite how tired Sirius was after having to sit through hours of postal history, Harry was just as ecstatic as ever, jumping up and down as Andy and Ted met them by the school entrance. As they got ready to leave for a congratulatory dinner for Andy’s new gallery opening, Harry squeals over a trinket that Sirius was goaded into buying from the museum gift shop.

“ Look! “ Harry turns over a little red postbox in his hand shaking it with a manic grin, “ It’s a salt shaker!”

Harry was not interested in the post-museum at the start, but he was eventually won over by Remus’s determination and enthusiasm, culminating in a fit in a gift shop and Sirius losing about 15 dollars. Andy and Ted, confused about what they were supposed to be impressed by just kindly smile. Andy shoots him a look.

“ Don’t ask.” Is all he supplies.

As Harry explains all the things they could crush to put into his new salt shaker, Sirius hears a door open a little while behind him.

“ Hey teach!” Sirius calls to Remus as he locks up his classroom, Mary being dismissed a little while earlier. Sirius isn’t going to admit that he tried to stall from time to see how long it would take Remus to leave.

“You’re still here?” Remus asks, adjusting the bag on his shoulder, cane at his side. Sirius just shrugs, avoiding the question. He’s thankfully saved by the screaming of a 9-year-old.

“ Mr. Lupin! Did you see?” Harry asks, holding up his salt shaker. Even though Sirius is sure he saw it numerous times on and off the bus Remus still leans down, forearm on his cane, and smiles.

“ I did, it’s brilliant,” He says softly, fueling the fire of Harry’s endless bundles of energy. Sirius wants to bottle the smile on his face, and the tone of his voice, everything really. He feels a smile spread upon his own face but before he can stop it he catches a wicked grin on Andy’s face as she speaks up.

“We’re going to dinner, why don’t you join us?” Andy asks, patting Sirius on the arm for extra effect.

“ I don’t want to intrude,” Remus says, caught off guard, fiddling with the collar of his dress shirt.

“ Don’t be stupid!” Andy flowery says, and then laughs, Sirius sees one of Remus’s eyebrows twitch.

“ Well…”

“ Cmon! It’ll be fun, since Dora’s at a friend’s house I need more young people to absorb the energy of.” Andy says, Sirius frowns and in contrast, Ted chuckles, looping a hand on Andy’s waist.

“You’re almost 40 Andy, I think you’ve taken everything you can get” Sirius states and Andy smacks him in the arm.

At the end of the day, nobody can ever say no to Andromeda Tonks, and Sirius ends up sitting in a booth next to Remus with Andy and Ted across from him and Harry in his own chair at the foot of the table.

“ Wound’t expect you to want to eat here,” Remus says sometime later, Harry finished his coloring page and now was playing a tense game of eye spy with Ted.

“ Eye spy something red.”

“ Is it your shoes?”

“ No…” Harry giggles when Ted lets out a grunt like he’s taken damage from his wrong answer.

“ We love it,” Sirius says, sneaking a fry from Remus’s plate, their elbows are touching. “ Were related to the owners.”

“ Are you just related to everybody?”

“ Basically.” Sirius grins, he then glances outside the glass window they’re situated next to, Remus’s shitmobile of a car sitting next to the sidewalk. He glares comically and Remus catches it immediately.

“ Stop it,” Remus says.

“ It concerns me.”

“ Everything concerns you.”

If it’s about you… Sirius thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

“You’re one to talk.” Sirius snatches another fry, using it to emphasize his point, “ Don’t you worry that’ll break down and get you stuck out in the middle of nowhere?”

“ I’m never driving outside of London,” Remus says, “ It was my dad’s, he gave it to me when I left for college.”

“ Your dad is trying to kill you,” Sirius states, Remus snorts.

“There’s a multitude of other things trying to do the same thing,” Remus says with all the humor reserved for a dark joke like that. He doesn’t catch the mood change in Sirius, so when he looks back he grows concerned.

“ Sorry.”

“ No, it’s okay, it was funny,” Sirius says, not laughing but trying his best to smile. He’s surprised a joke like that would unearth piles of dread within him.

“ When I was younger we drove all the way to Camden from Wales in that car,” Remus says, bringing his water glass to his lips, Harry shouts out from his highchair, eye spy with my little eye…!

“You’re so sentimental.”

“ I wouldn’t say that’s me being sentimental.”

“ When something has a memory attached to it, it sure is.”

“ The memory was just evidence to explain my point.” He explains, partly mocking Sirius, partly trying to lecture him, give the man a laser pointer and he would break out into a lesson in a second. “ I’m saying that since I’ve seen it drive farther distances before it won’t spontaneously combust anytime soon.”

“ No, you’re being sappy and you just won’t admit it,” Sirius teases, leaning his hands on his cheeks. “ ‘Just like me and my boots.”

“ Do not compare my perfectly fine car to your boots.”

“ You wish you had boots like these.”

“ And get athlete’s foot every day? No way.”

“ Hey!” Sirius pushes him, “ I do not get athlete’s foot.”

“ Remind me how long you’ve had those boots again?”

“ My feet smell wonderful like flowers and have never acquired any type of fungus in all my years of living!”

“ Black stop talking about feet there’s children around.”

“ They should be honored to be in my feet’s presence.” Sirius says not any quieter, at this Harry giggles, “ Right Harry?” Sirius says and then pushes Harry’s chair slightly making the boy giggle more. He looks back to Remus looking upon the scene with amusement.

“You’re impossible,” Remus says, a smile still on his face. Harry goes back to the game, this time Guess the Animal. Is it a mammal? No…

“ Nothing wrong with being vulnerable, someone even might find that attractive.”

“ Yeah right, like who?” Remus bluffs.

“ Me,” Sirius says before a second passes. There’s a lull in Harry’s game so all Sirius can see is Remus and all he can hear is Franki Valli and the Four Seasons playing on the Diner’s overhead speakers.

Remus doesn’t look at him but his face does get redder, and he goes to drink more of his water, a smile being slightly hidden on the rim of the cup. Sirius does not doubt that his face hasn’t pulled the landing of his attempt but sirens are going off loudly in his mind, and he struggles to keep himself together as Andy orders a vodka to go and Remus mutters around his glass.

“ My car is fine.” He says.

_

Harry has a very one-track mind, events in his childhood have made him prioritize happiness over anything. His happiness at the expense of others had always baffled him though. Despite seeing a smile on his godfather’s face there was always more, always a slip when there was quiet. A nap while Harry was eating lunch, a nap while they had their move nights, a dazed look as Harry went higher on the swing.

Something was too much, something was wrong, and Harry had known that something was wrong for a while, but he’d thought that they had gotten to a comfortable point. But it was only comfortable for Harry, Sirius was still sad, and that made Harry sad.

Using his 9-year-old brain and minimal compare and contrast skills Harry concludes that maybe it was time for another person to enter the dynamic. Sirius had always been by himself, he was independent in Harry’s mind, just Padfoot, only Uncle Padfoot. He assumed it would always be like that, but Harry can’t exactly hold Sirius up if he decides to fall asleep where he’s standing.

Harry thought he had a lot of work to do, Sirius wasn’t exactly a model citizen, he always had oil and grime on his pants, his boots were dirty, and he was always a bit too loud even though Harry always seemed to enjoy it. So Harry needed someone that he liked, someone that Harry deemed strong enough to take upon everything. Someone as strong as his mum when she was able to open the peanut butter jar. But not exactly like his mum, his mum would never be replicated. Not even Harry could do that, as much as he tried.

Harry at first didn’t have to do much work, adults always seemed to know what to do and before he knew it he found Mr.Lupin in his living room almost every day, it was good. They seemed to disagree a lot but Harry always remembered his parents fighting like that, so he assumed it was fine.

But something was still not enough. The puzzle piece didn’t quite fit enough, and Harry supposed it was time to take matters into his own hands.

“ Bathroom!” Harry says, jumping out of his chair.

“ Alright,” Sirius laughs, “ Don’t fall in.”

“ I won’t!” Harry doesn’t go to the bathroom though, he has a plan. For his 7th birthday they had rented out a small room in the diner for guests, the room was small enough that it would be well suited just for two.

He makes his way up to the front of the diner, out of sight of where his party is sitting, and climbs up a stool next to the bar where Gideon Prewett is talking to a phone attached to a string, attached to a wall. He ends the call when he sees Harry wave at him from where he’s kneeling on the stool.

“What’s up bud?” Gideon asks.

“ I have a question.”

“ Well, shoot.”

Harry turns his head back towards the booth where his godfather is sitting to check if he can see him.

“ Can Sirius reserve the room?”

“ The room…?” Gideon blinks, arms over the counter to get on Harry’s eye level, “ Oh you mean the back room. He wants to reserve that room?” Gideon squints a bit and then a grin forms on his face. “ What for?”

“ Date,” Harry says.

“ Oooh a date?”

“ Yes.”

“ Time and Day?” Gideon takes out a small notepad from his pocket and clicks a pen.

“ Friday, 7:00 pm.”

“ It’s done.” Gideon clicks his pen again. Harry holds out his hand and Gideon snorts while he shakes it.

“You’re contributing to a good cause.” He says.

“You’re a weird kid, Potter,” Gideon responds.

“ Thank you.” Harry smiles.

_

“ On the other side of the lamp, someone had dug herself a cozy hole, someone who lay looking up at the serene winter sky and whistling very softly to herself.” Mary pitches her voice slightly higher as she angles the next page to the group of kids sitting before her, “ What song is that?” Said Moomintroll. “It’s a song of myself,” someone answered from the pit. “A song of Too-Ticky, who built a snow lantern, but the refrain is about wholly other things”.”

Remus sits on a small children’s chair at the edge of the carpet, marking worksheets on a clipboard as Mary reads out loud to the class. It’s about the end of the day by now, parents should be coming in another 20 minutes, despite that there’s a soft knock on the classroom entrance. Mary doesn’t stop reading and no kids look over so Remus turns over from his chair to see Sirius standing awkwardly by the doorway.

Remus gains a flash of emotions at that moment, but reason overweighs the rest like usual, he gestures for Sirius to come over, and he obeys sliding over another chair next to him.

“ “I think it exists,” he said. Too-Ticky did not reply. She crawled up to the snow lantern and lifted out her candle. “ We’ll take this home”, she said. “ Before the Groke comes and sits down on it.” Mary continues from where she’s sitting on her chair on the carpet, she eyes them warily but doesn’t pause her reading.

“You’re early,” Remus whispers.

“ I got off work early.” Sirius leans closer, his chair is touching Remus’s, and their shoulders almost touch as Sirius leans closer. “You look better.”

Remus snorts at this, the past week he had checkups done by Sirius every time he came to pick Harry up. Sure maybe Remus came back to work a little prematurely but he didn’t need someone coming in every day telling him to take more ibuprofen, or bringing him bizarre but helpful gifts.

“ What is it?” Remus said a few days ago, standing in his classroom with a burning heart and Sirius had walked up to him and dropped a paper-wrapped container in his hands.

“ Incense,” Sirius said, grinning like he was waiting for Remus to get on his feet in thankfulness.

“ Why are you giving me this?”

“ It’s calming, supposed to help with the y’know.” Sirius makes hand movements near his head that Remus could only imagine could him referring to his chronic migraines.

Things like that, the way that Sirius smiles at him, his cheeks slightly tinted, the way he’s seen Sirius almost every day. It’s striking, and it’s making Remus wary, somethings going to happen any moment, and he doesn’t think it’s going to be good.

“ I feel better,” Remus responds, Sirius smiles.

“That’s good.” Sirius looks back to the carpet full of children and then glances back to Remus, Remus strikes through an answer with his red pen with a scratch.

“ Do you eat out often?”, Sirius says, after some contemplation on his part.

“ No,” Remus says, scratching out another answer. It’s a 10/10, he draws a smiley face on the corner of the page.

“ Would you like to?”

Remus shrugs, he moves his finished worksheet to the back of his pile and moves on to the next one, thankful to have something to take up his eye contact. He’s not sure if he could stand looking at Sirius as he tries to wheedle him down.

“ No,” Remus says, “ There’s nothing I order at some posh restaurant I pay an arm and a leg for that I can’t just make at home.”

Sirius thinks about this, weaving his fingers together, out of the corner of his eye he can see one silver ring on his thumb and pointer finger, Harry catches sight of Sirius in the crowd and waves, and he waves back.

“ What if you didn’t have to pay for it,” Sirius states.

“ What are you getting at?”

“ I’m saying I’d pay for it.”

“ Why would you do that?”

“ Because we’d be getting dinner, together.”

“ “I use to dive from here,” Moomintroll whispered very softly and looked at the yellowed and broken reeds that stuck out of the ice. “The sea was so warm, and I swam nine strokes underwater.” Mary reads.

“ With Andromeda and Ted again?”

“ No, just us.”

“ What? Why?” Remus turns away from his paper to look at Sirius, he’s grinning sheepishly.

“ Why would I pay, or why are we getting dinner together?”

“ Either, both, I-” Remus gapes, “ What are you talking about?” His voice gets slightly louder.

“ I wanna take you out for Dinner, as in I want to take you on a date.”

"What?!”

He yells and the whole crowd of children in front of him look back, Marry looks at him almost horrified, and Sirius stares with his brows furrowed. His face reddening and his palms sweaty Remus gets up from his chair, red pen still in hand.

“ Sorry,” He says embarrassed, and then gestures for Sirius to get out of his seat, with his lips pursed the other man does.

“ What are you-” Sirius questions as Remus pushes him out into the hallway.

“ You think this funny?” Remus shuts the door behind them, looking around for anybody else in the hallway, there’s none.

“ No,” Sirius says.

“ What are you doing coming in here and asking me that, in the classroom no less, are you out of your mind?!”

“ We were quiet, they were all listening to the book its not like they heard us!” Sirius yells back, gesturing with his arms.

“ You don’t know that!”

“ I don’t know what you’re getting so mad about!” Sirius says, “ Is this your way of telling me no or what?

Remus stares at him, in disbelief at what’s happening.

“ Of course, it’s a no.” Remus spits out, “ What is this? Are you trying to embarrass me or something? Did somebody put you up to this?”

“Nobody put me up to anything!” Sirius yells, “ I’m asking you because I want to.” His face gets redder as he rubs the back of his neck, “ And I like you,-”

“ And you like me too, so that’s what adults do when they like each other, they y’know date.”

If Remus didn’t know better he would think he was standing in front of a 17-year-old boy, but no, he isn’t.

“ I can’t date anyone right now, let alone a parent Sirius.” Remus states, “ Let alone a male parent.”

“ Oh, c’mon that doesn’t matter.”

“ Yes, it does!” He yells out, this takes Sirius by surprise, and his eyes widen. “ This might all seem fun and games for you, but I have something real at stake.”

“ You can’t let this school boss you around forever!”

“ I never said it was bossing me around,” Remus says, “ Just because I can’t do whatever the fuck I want doesn’t mean I’m some doormat.”

“ At least I know what I’m doing, and not hurting myself by choice, working some job that doesn’t even respect me enough to give me proper time off.”

Remus takes a deep breath, his heart is beating in his head, and his blood is way boiling by now.

“ I can’t just make decisions and not consider the consequences.” Remus breathes out, “Besides what made you think you could just waltz in and assume I’d say yes automatically?”

Sirius chuckles, puts his hands in his pockets, bites his lip and Remus clenches his fist tight, his nails digging into his palm.

“ Remus, cmon.”

“ What.”

“C’mon,” Sirius smirks, “ All of this, all the help, your telling you just did it just because you wanted to?”

Remus is horrified, he’s horrified that he even let it get this far.

“Parents aren’t allowed access into the classroom until the school day ends.” He says, in the most monotone voice he can muster.

“ What-? Remus.” Sirius’s face dramatically falls.

“ You can wait out here till 3:30,” Remus states and then slams the classroom door, leaving Sirius alone in the hallway.

_

Remus hasn’t seen Sirius back to pick up Harry since that day, but also Remus has avoided the classroom like the plague during pickup so it wasn’t exactly Black’s fault.

He would say he handled that situation rather well, childish bickering aside. He had helped all he could, he didn’t need to be so present anymore, if he felt like he needed to lend a hand he could do it from afar.

Every day since then, there had been a lonely part of him screaming in his mind, he didn’t want to admit that he missed Sirius, but he would mourn how comfortable they had been able to get. He hadn’t ever felt like something before, but just because it’s a new feeling doesn’t mean Remus can’t handle it.

And he was handling it. And when Remus went home that day, watched When Harry Met Sally, and drunkenly cried on his carpet, that was because of stress, not because of Sirius.

He pushes the look on Sirius’s face as he slams the classroom door to the back of his mind as he walks to the secretary’s office. Meadows glances up as he walks in, eyes going back to where she’s looking at a text on her phone but still taps perfectly on her keyboard.

“ Taking a break from touring?” Remus asks, smiling in good nature, Meadows just scowls.

“ What?”

“ Y’know… Cause you’re a tour guide.”

“ I know that.” Meadows states, she’s stopped typing now, “ I prefer to keep my personal life private if you don’t mind.”

“ No, um- I get that too- uh-” Remus struggles and then just gives up, he hands over the envelope in his hand, “ Attendance for today.” Meadows takes it without another word, going back to typing on some sort of spreadsheet on her computer. Remus stands by the desk, unknowingly trapped in a design of his making when Meadows speaks.

“ Are you sponsoring someone for the head of PTA?” She glances away from the computer.

“ I’m not sure that would do anything but harm whoever I would sponsor.”

“ That’s not true.” Meadows says to Remus’s surprise, “ The parents like you,” She taps the space bar loudly with her mint green fingernail, “ The ones not kissing Malfoy’s arse at least.” Remus laughs at this.

“ Thanks.”

“ Not a compliment.” She states, “ Just a fact.”

“ Oh.”

“ There she is!” Another voice comes in from the entrance of Meadows’s office.

Remus almost jumps out of his skin at the sound of the voice, and when he looks over, sweat over his brow, Lucius Malfoy struts into the office. That is until he spots Remus. He stops in his tracks, his theatrical smile fading.

“ Lupin.” He spits, and Remus’s stomach drops.

“ Hello.” He smiles despite everything in his body telling him not to, “ You look well.”

“ Well, the bar isn’t very high.” Malfoy snides and Remus has to look away to hide his frown. Meadows isn’t as considerate as he is thankfully.

“ What do you want.” She snaps, not looking away from her computer.

“ Submitting my background checks for the upcoming election,” He hands over a faxed sheet in a shiny envelope, Remus tries not to scowl, “ Make sure it goes straight to Dumbledore for me?”

“ I’m quite capable of looking over the records myself,” Dorcas takes the envelope almost in a snatch, “Dumbledore barely touches records, let alone ones for PTA.” Remus thinks he sees a vein on Malfoy’s face pop.

“ I’m sure you’ll be at the meeting at the end of this month?” Malfoy turns his attention back to Remus, clearly not getting anything more from Dorcas as she throws his envelope to the side.

“ Of course.”

“ And I assume there will be no more… indiscretions.” He says, looking Remus up and down like his whole existence is an affront to nature.

“ Of course not sir.”

“ Members of the district will be there to observe the candidates, I need everything to go as smoothly as possible.”

“ It will.”

“ I hear Lupin’s sponsoring Black as a candidate.” Meadows pipes in, Remus whips his head around, sweating more now than he was before, the woman in contrast silently observes her nails. Malfoy’s eyes are wide, a silent rage bubbling up, Remus feels like he’s trapped in a boiling hot room.

“ I’m not- I swear-,” Remus says defensively.

“ What possibly had brought you to that idea Ms. Meadows.” Malfoy cuts him off, venom in each word.

Meadows shrugs, “ Pettigrew told me.”

Of course, he fucking did. The fucking traitor. Remus thinks.

“ Sir, I can assure you I will not be sponsoring anyone-”

“ Whether you do or not is not any of my business.” Malfoy interrupts, “ Not that it matters,” He gives him a look over once again, “ In your state.”

He then walks out, the heels of his shiny dress shoes clicking against the wooden floor, Remus almost wants to faint. When he turns back to Meadows for a reaction she’s reading a file quietly, no expression on her face. Completely unbothered.

Just when Remus thinks his situation can’t get any worse he hears Harry yell behind him. Thankfully Sirius wasn’t with him, but a familiar woman in a similar dress to Sirius with short choppy bleached blonde hair.

“ Mr. Lupin!” Harry yells, backpack jostling as he runs in, the woman behind just smiles and follows behind slowly.

“ Hullo,” Remus responds, it seems almost robotic now.

“ Marlene.” The woman says, putting out her hand.

“ Remus.” He says back shaking her hand.

“ I know.” She states simply and Remus wants to get out of this office as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Harry has other plans.

“ I need to tell you something!” Harry exclaims.

“ What is it?” Remus crouches down, tries, and fails to ignore how it makes his limbs ache.

“ Sirius told me that you left something at Gideon’s,” Harry says, pressing his lips together like he’s struggling not to laugh. Remus looks back to Marlene for reassurance but she’s too busy looking to the desk behind him.

“ What did I leave?” Remus says, and racks his brain.

“ Your wallet,” Harry says.

“ What.” Remus checks his pockets, and well, he’s right.

How the fuck-

“ He’s been buzzing since I picked him up, ‘been holding onto his information for some time,” Marlene says, at this, Harry shakes his head up and down vigorously.

“ The kid’s a walking defibrillator.”

Behind him, Remus hears a giggle and turns around to see Meadows smiling sheepishly into her file.

“ Funny.” She says, Marlene grins, sporting red cheeks almost identical to the women behind the desk.

What the fuck is going on, Remus thinks.

About an hour later Remus is driving his car miles away from Hogwarts to that little diner to retrieve his wallet. He doesn’t even know how this could have happened, but then again he had been so empty-minded. With Sirius right beside making him smile like a dopey idiot all night, he’s not surprised he left something crucial there. As he waits in traffic, thunder rings from above him and he notices that somehow he had ended up in an isolated area, there was no one around…

That’s when it happened, a popping sound sounded from behind him and when he turned around to look at where the sound came from a louder more mechanical sound occurred throughout his car. His ears ringing, heart beating loudly, and eyes cloudy he pulls to the empty side of the road and sits there as his car just decides to… give up.

“ C’mon.” He mutters as he attempts to ram his key in the ammunition and when nothing happens he resolves to slam his head into his steering wheel, only making his head spin in pain.

Out of options, or maybe just waiting for the right moment, he pulls out his phone.

_

“ We’re home!” Harry yells as he and Marlene walk through Sirius’s front door. He’s currently sitting on his couch nursing his ruined life when Harry runs up to him and pats his knees with his hands repeatedly.

“Guess who we saw on our way back,” Marlene says, shoving her head into the fridge and taking out a pint. Sirius’s heart jumps and then sinks.

“ Lupin?” Sirius takes a swig of his drink, “ He’s always there,”

“ Well no duh he works there,” Marlene plops down beside him on the couch, Harry is still staring at him earnestly with big eyes, it’s starting to unnerve him a bit.

“ We ran into Gideon. Y’know Prewett.”

“ Oh,” Sirius says, shoving a hand into Harry’s rat’s nest of hair to try to smooth it out. Somehow every brush just gets stuck, he’s just about given up on trying to straighten it out, Lily had sometimes been able to when she was still around… maybe if he asked Remus… oh right.

“ You left your wallet at the diner,” Harry says, yanking the hand Sirius has on his head playfully. “ You have to go to get it right now!”

Sirius groans and drops his head to the back of the couch, “ But the diner is so far.”

“ Padfoot! You have to go now!” Harry shouts.

Sirius focuses on the ceiling of his house, thinks a bit, and then gets up from the couch, roots around in a drawer with various tools and knick-knacks, and to Harry’s dismay, comes back with the very wallet. He drops it into his hands. Harry’s eyes get big with sadness but also he looks back and forth between Sirius and the wallet like he can’t even comprehend what’s happening.

“ Wha-”

“ Nothing gets past me kid, I saw you hide it earlier.” Sirius supplies, “ What else did you nick, hand it over.” Sirius holds out his hand, Harry looks at it with wide eyes. “ C’mon.”

And what Harry puts in his hand is not something else of Sirius’s but a completely different wallet.

“ Where…?” Sirius looks at the wallet in his hands, corduroy lining, wait a minute…

That’s when he gets the call.

_

“ Don’t say it.”

Remus is standing against his car, arms crossed over his chest, face slightly red, Sirius’s stomach flips, and accompanying the feeling, thunder comes from miles away.

“ I wasn’t going to,” Sirius says, slightly grinning, wanting to laugh. He walks over to the car, pops open the bonnet, and tries not to concentrate on the footsteps of Remus walking over beside him.

After a second of looking over the contents in front of him, he decides to test a hunch.

“ Gimme your keys.” He says, and Remus does.

He hops in the car pushes the keys into the ignition and tries to start the car again and is faced with a whining sound.

“ Can you fix it?” Remus is now standing by the door, shifting from foot to foot in a nervous fidget. Sirius also notices that he didn’t have his cane today, how long were you waiting out here for me? He thinks.

Sirius leans back out of the car, “ Doesn’t look like it. Your alternator is down, and I don’t have anything to replace it.”

“ What do you mean it’s down?”

“ Ageing y’know,” Sirius shrugs, the gesture makes Remus tap his finger faster on his arm, “ Happens a lot, alternator powers the battery of the car, without the battery…” He shrugs again.

“ If you had let me look at it earlier-”

“ Don’t “ Remus warns, Sirius doesn’t continue. There’s no physical door Remus could slam in his face this time but based on the tone of his voice, Sirius doesn’t doubt he could get creative.

They stand there again in silence, a gust of wind goes by and Sirius watches Remus as he curls into himself, some anger dissolving from his face, it’s less of him getting angry but more of him giving up.

“ So what now?”

“ I’ll call a tow truck and I’ll tell them to take it back to Ted’s,” Sirius says, takes out his phone and calls a local dispatch center he knows.

After he gets off the phone he puts it in his pocket and skips a foot behind his leg, “ Shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes.”

Remus huffs predictably at the time but doesn’t say anything. Sirius goes through his phone, and starts a text to Ted about how much an alternator would be to replace and how much they could discount it, under his breath he mumbles an imitation of Remus’s low-toned speaking voice.

“ Thank you, Sirius, I really do appreciate you coming out of your way to find me and fix a problem that could have been solved ages ago.”

“ I don’t want to hear it Sirius,” Remus says, turned away.

“ Thank you, Sirius! I will forever be in your debt as my stubbornness resulted in me being stuck IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.” He continues. “ Funny, it’s almost like somebody warned you that this would happen.”

Another silence. Sirius doesn’t exactly want to leave, to leave makes him feel like a string snapping, a conclusion to their relationship.

“ You're a child,” Remus says slowly, almost so quiet that Sirius can’t hear it.

“ I’m the child!?” Sirius blanches, “ I’m the child?! What’s so adult about this Remus?” He gestures around to the empty road almost in a frenzy, “You calling me for help out in the bumfuck nowhere doesn’t exactly seem like an example of being an adult!”

“ Especially, when I told you-!”

“ I had it handled!” Remus yells, “ I don’t need your help!”

“ Do you see what you’re saying right now?!” He yells, “ So you can force shit on other people but as soon as you need help, you’ve got it handled?”

Remus scoffs,“ Sirius you were never there, you were working multiple jobs, feeding Harry takeout every night-”

“I DIDN’T ASK YOU TO!”

Remus jumps like he’s been shocked.

“ I didn’t ask you to fucking push your way into my life,” He rambles, “ Hell I’d finally be fine without you in it!”

“ Whether you like it or not you have to take responsibility for this.” He waves in between them, referencing the now-loaded relationship they’ve made. “ You can’t say this is all my fault.” His voice catches, it’s different from their moment in the classroom, his confidence has been shattered, and he’s basically grasping at strings now.

“ Sirius. I’m not-” Remus tries to intercept, voice stern.

“ Who says what I was doing wasn’t handling it.” His voice is wobbly now, he lets his arm down at his side.

“ I’m not obligated to do anything, Sirius.” Remus says, “ I helped you because I thought you needed it.”

“ And what about after?” Sirius asks, “ I would say groceries and babysitting are enough, what about after that?”

Remus stops for a bit, “ I don’t know.” He partly murmurs.

“ Why did you call me?” Sirius asks.

“ What?”

“ I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of calling a tow truck yourself,” Sirius states.

Remus looks at him, his eyes almost look like they shimmer, Sirius can almost see his reflection if he squints hard enough. Like in the museum he gets self-conscience, he hides the battered cuff of his jacket behind his back.

“ I-”

A loud booming ring of thunder comes from the sky, and not a mile away this time, almost inches from where their standing.

And then it starts to pour.

_

Remus settles into the driver’s seat, his head settling on the cushion, making a shiver run up his spine. He sheds his jacket and as he does he looks over to Sirius doing the same in the passenger seat, except unlike Remus he’s only wearing a t-shirt underneath. A different type of shiver runs through his body, but he ignores it.

They sit in silence for a little bit, the rain going hard against the windows, Remus trying not to look at Sirius’s arms.

As he stares out the window, leans his head to it, and feels the rhythm of the rumblings he hears scuffling and turns around to see Sirius rummaging through his glove box.

“ What are you doing?” Remus says urgently, Sirius ignores the tone in his voice and keeps digging.

“ I’m bored,” Sirius responds before letting out an excited yell and pulling out an old portable CD player. Sirius lets out a low whistle and Remus tries his hardest not to be embarrassed.

“ You weren’t lying when you said you’ve had this car for a long time.”

“ Shut up,” Remus says, Sirius ignores him again in favor of popping open the player to see what’s inside.

“ Is there something already in here? Oh shit!” Sirius holds up the CD player to Remus to display the CD of Steely Dan’s Aja.

“ Well isn’t that funny,” Sirius says softly, and if Remus weren’t so hopped up on adrenaline and anger from fighting with him earlier he thinks he would probably swoon. Instead, he just groans with his head on the back of the seat. He tries to ignore the fumbling Sirius does with the buttons on the player and then-

In the corner of my eye
I saw you and in Rudy’s-
You were very high,

“ It still works!” Sirius exclaims, giddy as he puts the CD player in between them, Steely Dan thrumming softly out of it.

The CD player keeps playing, as Remus doesn’t respond to Sirius’s ecstatics and they sit in silence until Sirius breaks it.

“ You think I’m immature.”

Remus snorts.

“ Well, I’m not.” Sirius says, “ I’ve been taking care of Harry for about 3 years now, haven’t had him killed yet.”

“ That doesn’t mean-” Remus brings a hand to cover his eyes.

“ He likes you a lot.” Sirius states, “ Tells me all the time, it’s like he’s trying to sway me or something.”

A light bulb flickers slightly in Remus’s brain. He thinks of Mott the Hoople and a classroom during recess months ago, when he was younger.

“ Has Harry ever asked you weird questions…. About like…” He starts, not really wanting to finish, but Sirius just stares at him and tilts his head to the side.

“…sexuality?”

“ What?” Sirius says, stews a bit, and then looks back to Remus, “ I mean yeah, but he’s a kid, so it’s not like it’s a shock or anything.”

“ He’s been kind of weird lately.” Sirius continues, “ Saying weird shit, before I came he for some reason stole my wallet and put it in our junk drawer.”

“ Oh speaking of, I almost forgot.” Sirius then leans over to dig into his jacket pocket and brings out Remus’s wallet. Remus takes it with shaky hands.

Remus has to keep himself from screaming, but before he can say anything a ring goes out from Sirius’s phone, he picks it up. Remus hears only one side clearly as Sirius doesn’t even try to lower his voice in their small distance away from each other.

“ Hey Gid- yeah I- what?”

His voice pitches higher, his face gets slightly redder, and he looks manically at Remus and then back to the phone.

“ I didn’t know he did that, no yeah cancel it… have a good night.” When he gets off his phone he stares at it for a second, then looks to Remus.

“The kid booked me for this private room they have at Gid’s, don’t know why he did that.” He chuckles.

“ Harry told me I left my wallet at the diner,” Remus says slightly stunned, he’s still holding his wallet and when he looks up Sirius’s pink face has gone pale.

They stew in the implications of this, Remus doesn’t take his eyes off where he places his hands in his lap.

“ I’m sorry about that,” Sirius says quietly.

“ It’s alright.” Remus says back, “ He’s a weird kid, that Harry.”

“ Sure is.” Sirius snorts. “ I guess he thought he was doing me a favor.”

Remus tries not to sigh, he can see from his view down that Sirius placed his hand on the glove box.

“ Listen, Sirius, about the other day-” His voice catches, “ I’m sorry that I was so harsh.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything and doesn’t even give any indication that he’s listening.

“ I just want you to understand that I have a lot on the line, you and Harry,” He gulps down some fear, “ You mean a lot to me.”

“ Hogwarts means a lot to me.”

“ God Remus.” Sirius groans.

“ What?”

“ I mean-” Sirius laughs without humor, pulls a hand across his face, “ Don’t you think that’s kind of sad?”

“ What?”

“ I mean there’s more to life than just work.” Sirius snarks, “There are other things that can make you happy.” He looks at Remus and then shyly away, the subtle meaning of the statement hanging in the air.

“ You're saying that you could make me happier than job security and stability.” Remus yanks it down. “ You?”

“Maybe!” Sirius shouts.

“ Yeah! Real fucking matture!” Remus yells back. “ Just because you can keep a kid alive doesn’t make you capable of higher thought, clearly you need someone to tell you that.”

“ Oh, so that’s what you were doing this whole time?” Sirius says, “ Trying to prove your better than me?”

“ No!” Remus says.

“ No, that’s what you’re doing. Fucking my whole life just so you could prove a point!”

“ You really think I fucked up your life?”

“ YES!” Sirius screams, “ Cause look where I am, “ He gestures to the inside of Remus’s car, “ Stranded in some car all because I decided to haul my ass to the middle of nowhere for some guy who doesn’t even like me.”

“ I never said I didn’t like you.”

A second passes, and he can hear a sharp intake of breath on Sirius’s end, “ What? “ He hisses.

“ I said that I wouldn’t date you, I didn’t say that I didn’t like you.”

“ Well I’m sorry Mr. Lupin for the misunderstanding but I’m pretty sure that’s the same thing.”

“ You needed to pay more attention in school then,” Remus states, at the frown on Sirius’s face he explains:

“ Your immature and infuriating….” Remus says, keeps his eyes down, “ but I like you.”

“ You slammed a door in my face,” Sirius says.

“ Yeah because the shit you said was deranged.”

“ You just said you liked me!”

“ Not everything is about you Sirius.” Remus states, “ How you act is going to affect Harry forever, you think I could just stand by and watch that?”

“ Harry isn’t just some pet you can feed and be done with, you think you can keep going raising him on the bare minimum?”

“ You're his father Sirius.” He continues, “ Why can’t you accept that?”

“ Because it’s not me!” Sirius yells, he leans forward, closer to Remus and somehow his voice rings through his whole body. His hands are still slightly shaking.

“ Or it used to not be me,” he lets out a groan, head falling into his hands, his hair falling in a curtain, Remus can still see his scowl.

“ This was never supposed to be my life, I never deserved any of this!” He says, “ The house, that’s James’s house, none of it is mine, for god’s sake even the sheet pans are Lily’s.”

“ I was supposed to just go on living, I was never supposed to do anything meaningful.” He says. “ Even taking care of Harry, I still think they’re gonna come back one day,” He chuckles without humor, “ That they’ll just pop out of the closet, surprise the car accident was a prank!-“

“ It was all a joke.”

“ It is meaningful,” Remus states, “ Just because you’re grieving doesn’t mean your life is for not Sirius.”

“ I like how you say my name.”

Remus starts, the heat rising to his face.

“ You say it like it carries some important weight, “ He looks up now, eyes glossy and bright, Remus sees his reflection and thinks of a puddle after a rainstorm.

“ Remus you cause this light to go up inside me,” Sirius says earnestly, “ Might sound stupid but I swear that’s what it feels like.”

“ For the first time in my life, I feel like so-“ He looks at Remus, supposedly seeing the expression on his face, looking away, not making eye contact, Remus feels like he can hear his car start to run, a slow brrrrrr sounding from his skull.

“ Not purposeful, because I know my purpose, but I feel like a person.”

A hand touches his, the car rumbling gets louder, Remus’s eyes shake, his head moves closer, he lifts his pointer over Sirius’s.

A glint in an eye, a whistle, a snow cone on a sunny day, soup on a coffee table, a postbox, Sirius’s jacket collar, Sirius’s voice, Sirius’s right hand slowly coming to rest on the back of Remus’s neck.

He hadn’t even realized he had gotten close enough for Sirius to do that, but he had, and now he’s basically leaning over the gear shift. He slides his hands up Sirius’s forearms, and he moves his nose to Sirius’s cheek, the rumbling gets louder, it gives Remus a foreboding feeling but if it means whatever risk he takes in this moment could get his car to start, he’s willing to take it.

The growling gets louder, and then all at once when Remus tilts his head into Sirius’s mouth, it stops.

The CD on the radio in front of them has ended, the only sound coming from the pitter-patter of the rain outside his car window, and the movement of Sirius' hand making its way from the back of his neck to cradling his head in his palms.

Remus at some point pulls away slightly for air, and almost desperate, Sirius chases him, Remus tightens his grip on his arms, digging his nail into the skin there.

Sirius somehow gets closer, pushing and pushing, and pulling. A groan, a slight pull on the hairs on the back of his neck, a hand slipping underneath Remus’s sweater, a giggle spilling from Sirius’s mouth before Remus kisses him, it's all too perfect and the foreboding comes true.

He doesn’t know how long they had been going before the light entered Remus’s vision, but if he were to describe this scene as serene and quiet the light was a big blaring horn.

Suddenly, Remus’s senses came back to him and he pushed Sirius off him as quickly as possible. So quickly in fact that the impact Sirius’s back makes to the car seat makes a loud sound, and almost comically accompanies the wide-eyed shocked look on his face.

Remus looks away immediately and takes in his surroundings as the tow truck pulls up next to them.

It was still raining, and despite the loud growling of an engine his car was still not working.

What was he doing?

Before he could spiral though, a familiar voice calls from outside.

Sirius, like he was brought out of a trance, jumps and almost hits his head on the ceiling of his car. He rolls down the window to see Dorcas Meadows leaning down to his car window, umbrella in hand.

“ You called?” She says, her eyes looking to both him and Sirius, if she notices anything about the state of them she certainly doesn’t show it.

“ Meadows?” He squeaks from his seat, his palms are so sweaty, he probably looks ridiculous, “ What are you doing operating a tow truck??”

She smiles, “ I like to keep busy, “ She says.

_

About half an hour later Sirius and Remus are soaked, sitting in Ted’s garage as Marlene shamelessly flirts with Dorcas Meadows over the towing contract.

“ We’ve got an old Rolls Royce just rotting in the back.”

“You’re joking,” Meadows says bluntly and montonely, despite this theres a slight pinkness to her cheeks.

“ Never.” Marlene grins, “ I can show you sometime if you decide to stop by?”

“ Marlene,” Sirius says, venom and anger in his voice, his fringe is sticking to his forehead in a way that Remus tries not to find attractive.

“ Jeez, somebody’s in a bad mood.” Marlene snarks, gets the paperwork done, and turns to Remus with a sympathetic look on her face.

“ We’ll have to keep the car overnight, just a few more days as we wait for some shipments to come in.” Marlene explains, “ Then we can talk procedure and price.”

Remus lets out a long and deep breath.

“ Alright.” He says, Sirius stills beside him.

“ How are you getting home?” It was the first thing he said to him in about an hour.

“ I don’t know,” Remus responds.

“ Marlene how much longer are you staying,” Sirius asks, Marlene, who was now occupied with staring into Meadow’s eyes, looked back suddenly.

“ For another hour at least.”

“ Could I borrow your car?”

Marlene looks quickly between them and smiles, her voice coming out scratchy and high, “ Suuuuureeee.” She says.

Remus finds himself in the passenger seat for the first time in ages, Sirius’s driving is erratic and makes his hair stand on end, but he doesn’t comment about it. When he finally drives Remus back to his house, he waits for a moment. Hand on the handle of the door, he waits mostly for Sirius to say something, but the squirm in Sirius’s lip shows that’s most likely not going to budge.

“ I-”

“There’s this coffee place a bit south of Hogsemede.” Sirius interrupts him, he looks almost nervous, his eyesight darting to random places.

“ Okay?” Remus says after Sirius doesn’t finish his thought.

“ I just thought-” Sirius shrugs, “ I could come in during lunch,” He says, face reddening like a tomato.

Remus’s heart drops.

“ Sirius, I-” Remus starts, stops a bit, having to swallow the trudge his stomach does, “ I’m sorry.”

“ Right,” Sirius states, he’s looking away so Remus can’t see his face, his fingers drumming absently on the steering wheel.

Somehow Remus can get back to his front door after that, and the loneliness of his flat hits him like a truck. He thinks he can still see the stain from when Sirius placed the coffee on his coffee table.

Almost like a cliche, one his mom would certainly like, he finds himself slumping against his front door, groaning into his hands.