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“Come on, daddy!” Remus let out a chuckle as his hand was pulled through the front door of the local primary school by an excited, six year old Teddy.
“You do realize I’m here to hear your teachers’ complaints about you, right?” Remus asked lightly with a glance down at his son. Teddy merely stared up at him blankly for a few seconds before shooting him a wide, innocent-enough looking grin and pulling him to the nearest classroom. “Of course you don’t,” Remus breathed out, sending his son an amused look.
Luckily for Remus, Teddy behaved throughout the meeting with his primary teacher. After receiving the expected “Teddy is very energetic” and “Teddy can’t sit still” and “Perhaps if you enrolled him in a sport to let him burn off some energy”, Remus thanked the teacher and stood up to leave. Teddy trailed after him, looking rather nervously up at his father.
Remus gave him a small smile and held out his hand.
Teddy quite enjoyed the meetings with the Physical Education teacher and the Music teacher, but his excitement was near blinding as they neared the Art classroom. He gabbed on and on about Mr. Black and the art projects they were working on in class. It was clearly Teddy’s favorite class.
Before they entered the classroom, Teddy took a moment to point out his class’ artwork that was displayed. Insisting that he needed to be taller to see which was his, Remus lifted Teddy up and deposited him on his hip, laughing when the child squirmed in his arms. He immediately declared that the piece in the top left hand corner was his, and Remus stepped closer to get a better look.
“Ah, so that’s why you always come home with glitter in your pockets,” Remus said, nodding at the piece of bright yellow construction paper with an incredibly sparkly dog on it.
They finally stepped into the art classroom and Teddy wiggled to get his father to set him on the ground, immediately rushing up to the desk across the room. “Mr. Black! I showed my dad my dog!”
The man behind the desk leaned forward on his elbows and whispered to Teddy, loud enough for Remus to hear, “Do you think he liked it?”
“Yes! He’s going to get me one for my birthday!” Teddy said enthusiastically, utterly confusing Remus as to when he’d agreed to that but Remus decided not to comment.
“Hello,” the man smiled politely, standing and offering his hand to Remus. His hair was long and dark, pulled back into a loose bun at the back of his head, and his grey eyes were filled with warmth. “Sirius Black. Mr. Lupin, it’s nice to meet you. I’m afraid I wasn’t provided any comfortable chairs for the occasion, so I suppose we must suffer together in these child-sized ones.” At that, he gingerly sat back down behind his desk and Remus followed suit, realizing that the both of them were too short to comfortably use the desk at it’s normal height.
Remus crossed his legs and leaned forward, prepared to hear the normal comments about his son’s behavior. Teddy was currently flitting around the room, pointing out his different pieces and pulling his folder out of his cubbyhole.
“Teddy is a model student in class, Mr. Lupin,” Mr. Black began, eyes flickering between the file on his desk, Remus, and the scurrying child. Remus stared at the man for a moment, utterly gobsmacked by this proclamation. Mr. Black seemed amused by his reaction before he continued, “Teddy is always the first to have his station cleared, he knows where everything goes in the classroom, and he even helps some of his neighbors to clean their desks.”
Remus has let his eyes drift momentarily to his son, who seemed content to start a whole new project by himself even though school was technically not in session. Remus watched Teddy squeeze a large amount of glue onto paper before dumping almost an entire bottle of glitter on the paper. Turning back to Mr. Black, Remus had a moment, when the other man was distracted by the happily humming child, to admire his son’s teacher.
Mr. Black’s shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and even though his shirt looked clean at first glance, a closer look revealed small paint stains around the collar. There were pencil smudges on his hands and there seemed to be some sort of tattoo on his wrist, but Remus couldn’t make it out.
A brief look back at Mr. Black’s face told Remus he’d be caught staring and the teacher quickly cleared his throat, reaching up to scratch behind his ear lightly. Remus tried not to chuckle when he noticed glitter falling from the man’s hair onto his shoulder. “It seems you share the same love of glitter as my son.” Mr. Black smiled fondly before cleared his throat again and continuing his analysis.
“He has this… enthusiasm for art that you rarely see in someone so young. I can tell that your son is very excitable, but I’ve never had any behavioral problems with him. It seems that all of his energy gets put into his artwork. Would you like to see some of it?”
Remus caught himself looking at Mr. Black’s hands again and shook himself slightly, looking up into the man’s face. “What?”
“Your son’s work? He has a folder that we keep throughout the year where he can stash his finished projects and take them home at the end,” Mr. Black’s lips were turned into a small frown and, catching Remus staring at them, his tongue unconsciously darted out to swipe over his bottom lip.
Remus closed his eyes and took a deep breath, calming himself before he nodded. “I’d love to see his work.”