Chapter Text
Sirius stepped away from the fireplace as the green flames went down, only to immediately trip with something and almost meet the floor with his face.
He cursed under his breath as he recovered his balance.
“Mary?” he heard James scream from somewhere on his left, probably the kitchen. Instead of replying, he turned around to see what had caused his fall.
“Stupid cat.”
For the look in its yellow eyes, the cat seemed to have the same opinion about him, giving him a short hiss before sprinting away. Sirius was past caring about it. Lily had found Bast meowing in their front door as soon as they moved, a little tortoiseshell no older than a couple months. The little cat had been adorable at first, purring on his lap and starving for pets, but at some point he had turned into padfoot in the house and Bast had despised him ever since.
“You’re not Mary” said James when he saw him walk inside the kitchen. His best friend was staring firmly at a big knife as it floated around the table, cutting a potato into cubes.
“How kind of you for noticing” he replied as he cleaned the ashes of the fireplace from his hair. He took one of the chairs from the table in the corner of the kitchen and sat next to James. “Mary is coming?”
“She’s gonna tell us all about her new non-American guy” replied James, giving him a quick smile.
“non-American?” he asked.
Sirius heard about Mary often enough, but he had barely seen her since the war had ended, nearly five years ago. Even before that, she had already started to become a distant memory from their early years of school.
In more than one way, Mary Mcdonald had been the first victim of the war for their generation, back in that strange cloudy time that had been their fifth year of Hogwarts. The school year had lasted eight months, but looking back to it, Sirius always felt it had lasted two decades. No one had come out of it the same, and he had came out the worst of it.
She hadn't returned to Hogwarts after that, and Sirius’ had always been a bad writer.
“Apparently, she met them at a diplomatic conference.” James said as he swirled his wand around in swift motions. The potato cubes flew inside a pot of boiling water in a single file. Another couple moves of his wand and a kettle filled with water and settled on a different stove. He turned to look at Sirius and fixed his glasses before continuing. “Moony is still with his parents, right?” James eyed him with suspicion “Are you here to steal my food again?”
Sirius feigned offence.
“I can boil my own potatoes,” he said. “Sometimes I even remember the salt.”
James laughed, and Sirius allowed for a few moments of amicable silence to go by before he spoke again.
“How do you feel about a bit of adventure?” he asked as casually as possible, tapping with his fingers on the wooden table.
James chuckled and didn’t even turn from his cooking to answer, summoning condiments and utensils. “I live with a five year old wizard, I get enough adventure trying to keep the statute of secrecy”
“So this will be nothing in comparison,” replied Sirius in his most cheerful voice. “We’ll be done before you notice.”
At that point, James realised he was being serious and lowered his wand to look at him confused. “Mate, what are you on about?”
Before he could answer, the door to the garden opened and a little kid bolted inside, leaving a path of mud behind him.
“Uncle!” Harry ran directly to Sirius for a hug and he obliged enthusiastically, rising from his seat and lifting the boy in his arms.
“Woah, hey there prongslet!” Harry was covered in dirt, but Sirius couldn't find it in him to care. He ruffled Harry’s hair, noticing it was longer than usual, reaching almost past his chin “Fancied a new hairstyle?”
“We went for a cut a few days ago,” explained Lily with a defeated smile, who had entered right behind her son. Her own red curls were tied, and her hands were as full of drying dirt as the boy's. Some serious gardening had been going on. “We woke up with him looking like this the next day.”
“I wanted to look like you,” Harry explained to Sirius. He didn’t even try not to melt into a puddle. For the billionth time, he wondered how James and Lily coped with living with him everyday without imploding.
“Not exactly an explanation that will do with the muggles,” said Lily, smiling at them.
“And here I was hoping to get your haircut,” he said, ruffling his hair again and putting his godson down. “You know, I think I upset Bast when I came in. Why don’t you go find her and apologize for me?”
Harry liked the idea, because he fixed his glasses and immediately bolted away.
“Calmed little fella” he said sarcastically as all three of them stared at the door frame.
“He takes after his mum” replied James, as if they didn't all know he was the one who gave Harry his restless energy.
“I thought you were Mary,” said Lily, turning to the sink to wash her hands. The kettle James had put on the stove started to boil and he summoned mugs and tea bags from the cabinet.
“That’d be because your husband screamed Mary when he heard someone coming from the fireplace.” explained Sirius.
“Because I thought you were Mary,” complained James.
“Are you staying for lunch?” said Lily, a playful smile on her face. “Mary is coming”
“I gathered,” he replied. He sat back on the chair as James vanished the trail of tinny muddy steps that Harry had left behind.
“He’s here to tempt me into mischief.” informed James. “Or to steal my potatoes. Lily tell him no.”
Lily chuckled as she sat in front of Sirius, the corner of the kitchen table in between them and poured the tea for the three of them.
“Mischief? at your age?”
“Only for a good cause. You know I’m staying out of trouble these days.” Sirius winked and took a small sip out of his cup. It was over-sweetened and almost too hot for drinking, just as he liked it. Then he played the secret card. “Is for Moony”
“Why didn’t you start there?” James complained. He fixed his glasses and sat down next to his wife.
“The law?” asked Lily. Her green eyes shone with understanding.
“The law,” he confirmed.
The law for lycanthropic wizards had been drafted almost a year before, and it had been moving around the ministry’s bureaucracy at the speed of a snail jinxed with a slowing charm. In the short run, the bill was meant to provide werewolves potions and medical access after full moons and eliminate the registry. In the long run, the hopes were on the wolfsbane potion. If it could allow them to be back into shape, then more werewolves could maybe start to get jobs, and then, maybe, people would get used to them. Or at least, that’s what Remus thought, always the rational. Sirius would’ve prefer to tell anyone that had a problem with the likes of Remus to fuck off, but he couldn’t figure out how to translate the feeling to legal terminology.
Not in a way that the bigoted bastards in the ministry would approve of, at least.
“It's not getting delayed again, is it?” Asked James with concern.
Sirius shook his head. “No, no, August 14th, It's settled. But Dorcas has been doing some inquiries. She thinks we need more people.”
“Sirius,” said Lily, her voice full of suspicion. “You are stalling. Why are you stalling?”
Sirius took a sip of tea just to give himself time to think how he would continue. “Dorcas and I ran the numbers, and we think it’s time to do a bit of convincing.”
“Convincing?” James shook his hair and gave him an anxious look. “Not in the way I’m thinking, right?”
“Of course not.” Sirius said quickly. “We’re not that desperate just yet. And you are not exactly the person I’d come to for buying people”
Lily chuckled a bit at that, but James visibly relaxed.
“She is collecting a couple of favors, but won’t risk her job with Greengrass.” Sirius kept going. “But she must have dropped a word with her bestie, because yesterday, Iris Greengrass showed up at my office last friday. She says she can put a word with her father.”
James and Lily didn’t seem very impressed by the sudden generosity, and Sirius couldn’t blame them. The Greengrass had been one of the few old blood families that hadn’t joined Voldemort and his Death Eaters, but everyone knew it had been a matter of survival more than beliefs. If Voldemort would’ve won, their status would’ve protected them. Now, old Greengrass was one of the few to be out of Azkaban.
“If?”
Sirius finished his tea and put the cup away. “If we can recover something she lost.”
“Did she try an accio charm?” asked James, “I'm almost sure she was there when we learned it.”
“She thinks someone stole it. It disappeared after some posh dinner, apparently.”
“And this mystery item would be?”
The sound of something suspiciously similar to a cat being chased with a toy broom came from upstairs, but neither of them paid it too much attention.
Sirius couldn’t help but flinch before asking something he didn’t really need the answer of. “You guys remember that Slytherin locket thingy?”
Slytherin’s locket had been the key to the end of the war, although Dumbledore had taken the why’s and how’s to his grave. After falling on Dorcas Meadowes lap as a post mortem gift from Regulus, things had gotten mental on the Order. Nevermind the bomb the locket had been on Marlene’s and Dorcas' already fragile relationship, and the awkwardness it had risen between her and Sirius. From then on, their missions had gone from gathering information and helping people to safety, to the weirdest goose chase for ancient artifacts and sometimes even straight up robbery. They had all worked in secrecy even from each other. By the final weeks of the war, only Dumbledore had known what anyone was doing.
“Merlin’s balls, why on earth did she get it in the first place?” Asked James, his eyes full of surprise behind the glasses.
“Dorcas gave it to her,” answered Lily. “She didn’t really tell us why, but she hated the thing.”
Sirius nodded and for a few seconds, the three of them stayed quiet. They all knew Dorcas had known more than she had ever let on - or at least suspected it - but after Dumbledore’s death, she had refused to talk about anything, even to Marlene. Sirius had always wondered if it wasn’t some sort of petty revenge. Dorcas had been high on the list of suspected spies, back when they were losing the war, and she hadn’t been quiet about how much it bothered her. In the end, it took her fathers death and being at the center of the Order’s strategy planning for Sirius to start trusting her.
“And she can't know a thing, Greengrass doesn't want her to know she lost the locket”
James passed his hand through his hair and sighted. “Alright, I guess we’re doing this,” he said. “Do we at least have a suspect?”
Sirius grinned.
“Have you ever been to the Malfoy's mansion?”