→ (signpost) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-09-28 02:55:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | door: harry potter, remus lupin, sirius black |
Who: Remus and Sirius
What: Planning, plotting, hexing, &c.
Where: Three Broomsticks
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: None
Remus had been quite serious when he told Sirius not to come near the Three Broomsticks until Bellatrix had come and gone. In the interim, Remus had tried to determine whether the visit in question had occurred, all without leaving his own room, his face pressed to the window and a spell upon the door below. It had nothing to do with fear of encountering the Black sisters, nor did it have anything to do with any unease he might feel. Quite simply, he was worried he would hex Bellatrix on sight, and he wanted to avoid that. Mild mannered and sickly as he was, he still had a wolf within him, and his anger was a thing on a razor's edge as of late.
It had begun when Remus had left school. The Headmaster had sent him to live with the werewolf community, in the hopes that they could figure out how the werewolves would figure in the coming war. Remus, as a young wolf, had no trouble joining the pack that called the depths of the Forbidden Forest home. He'd known none of them as a child, since his parents had moved him every few moons, and he'd no past for them to fear. He was smallish, of unimpressive stature and girth, and even the older males weren't threatened by his presence. He'd joined the large pack with barely any notice, as insignificant as he'd been during his early years at Hogwarts - until James and Sirius had determined him to be a mystery worth solving.
But in the woods no one had wanted to solve Remus. He'd listened, reported, and he'd learned that the werewolves would not take the Mark, but that they would side with the Dark Lord. It had been a blow for the Order, because the werewolves were growing in numbers and their ruthlessness was unparalleled. It was with these other werewolves that Remus had finally come to understand that his temper was a thing that required controlling, now that he had come into adulthood. Under the skin of the sickly boy lived something with teeth, something that growled, and he'd feared it dreadfully those first few months. Living in the wild, it brought out the wolf, and it made them all more animal than man.
And now Remus was back where he'd begun, living among wizards that relied on wands instead of teeth, and he was worried he'd not be able to hold himself back, even now, mid-month, where the moon was nothing to fear.
Remus was sitting at the table that abutted the window of his room, his robes tossed upon the bed and a grey, nondescript shirt with long sleeves and worn elbows on his thin frame. His brown hair was an unkempt mess, and it matched the wrinkled brown of his trousers. He had a quill between his fingers, and he was making notes about the current wards and watches at Hogwarts. He'd made it into the library on various occasions, but he'd not ventured further yet, not wanting to encounter the new Headmistress unprepared.
Sirius’ recent experiences had been a good deal more complex than his old schoolmate’s. He was plenty worried about the dark wizard attempting to take over the known magical world (not at all diminished by his new habit of calling the aforementioned wizard “TOM”) but he was equally worried about sharing minutes and hours with the man through the door. Sirius knew enough occlumency to fend off the surface attacks of most legilimens, but at school he had focused mostly on occlumency in dueling, trusting he in his own ability to hex the ears off anybody who tried to read his mind while he was looking right at them. The last week had been dedicated to further serious research on the topic, however, as his effortless existence inside Michael Kaczmarek’s mind scared the hell out of him, so much so that he had to admit it even to himself. Sirius was tired, but satisfied that the Muggle had no knowledge of his, Sirius’, mind.
The security of his mind ensured, the problem of the wizarding world around him was now higher on Sirius’ list of priorities, and the vague understanding that things weren’t quite “right” amongst the three present Marauders colored Sirius’ view of almost everything in that world. He accumulated everything he could find about the Second Wizarding War, especially the Battle of Hogwarts and everyone that was a confirmed participant. Sirius stopped just short of breaking into the Ministry of Magic to find out more, but both the Prophet and local libraries posted complaints about break-ins and the theft of historical materials.
With his usual total disregard of the rules, Sirius strolled up the main street, cutting through Hogsmeade as if he was not the living embodiment of a known mass murderer long dead. He got a few double-takes but no solid recognition, and since he casually ignored almost everyone and everything, nothing got in his way as he paraded straight into the Three Broomsticks and took the stairs to the rooms three at a time without so much as a wink over the bar at Rosmerta. He hesitated at the end of the hall, glancing over his shoulder down at the circling stairs before focusing again at the line of doors. He flexed his shoulders in his leather jacket.
The massive black dog trotted down the hall, nose to the floor. It was not at all difficult to separate the wolf’s scent from the many others, fundamentally different as the wolf was in human form, but unmistakably him nonetheless. A few claw clicks later the dog was again a man in Muggle leather boots, and the clicking was the metal buckles of his leather jacket. “Remus?” He threw open the door to Remus’ chosen chambers with that as his only herald, clearly certain of his welcome, no wand in sight. He swept in with autumn air and entitlement spread over his tired grin. “Remus!”
Remus didn't see Sirius enter the Three Broomsticks, but the wolf within him recognized the scent of the dog well before Sirius reached the room. There was no ward on the door, and even the lock was disengaged by the time Sirius threw the door open. Remus had stood from his chair, and he was stood in front of the desk, leaning back against it with his hands on the wood and his attention on the door. He'd not seen Sirius during the moon. The wolf had seen Padfoot, but that was altogether different, and the last time he'd seen the man that was bursting in the room was at the end of a wand, in front of James' cottage.
It wasn't that Remus was nervous, precisely.
Bugger. No, he was nervous, but that wasn't anything new with Sirius. It had happened at the end of every hols, when they'd returned to Hogwarts. Remus had always suspected he'd be cast aside with each reunion, as if Sirius (and by inseparable extension, James) would have realized that there wasn't much to Remus that was particularly interesting, and that keeping him around as a mate was no longer entertaining.
After the fight at the cottage, Remus was certain that was how it would all end. James and Sirius going off together, best mate as always, and he'd be left to put the pieces together. He wondered how he'd done it after James had died, after Sirius had found himself in Azkaban, and it made him terribly lonely. It made him think of his childhood, and he had to shake his brown head to make the thought leave him. It wasn't time for that, not when Sirius was here after he'd expressly told him not to come without word.
"You careless fool. I told you not to come, Padfoot," Remus finally said, moving forward with the words and using his wand to close the door behind Sirius, locking it with the same flick of his wrist and cypress and unicorn hair.
Sirius did not so much bypass this criticism as crunch it underfoot as he strode into the room. He moved into the center of the small space, dominating it immediately with height and presence. Everything about him seemed to make noise, the rattle of buckles, the thud of his feet, even the harsh autumn exhale of his breath heaving a little quickly from his acceleration down the hall and through the door. His dark hair was a perfect fall of silk down over one ear and eyebrow, and the flawless skin was tinged only faintly by the cold air, leaving the handsome, aristocratic features largely untouched by weather or time. As always, Sirius was a force of nature.
“That’s probably why I came, come to think of it,” Sirius replied cheerfully, swirling in a half-circle just to give the place a full once over before circling around near enough to clap one open palm on Remus’ shoulder, as if the sandy-haired man had just won a quidditch match. The impact was maybe a bit harder than it strictly needed to be, a somewhat juvenile demonstration of fleeting power, and then he circled away around the exterior of the room. He put his hand out and mussed Remus’ papers on the desk, bending over curiously to see what was written there and then appearing to lose interest a few seconds later.
Sirius flopped on Remus’ bed, arms outspread, beautiful ebony eyes bland with theatrical boredom. “She’s not here anyway,” he said, disappointed. “I would have sniffed her out.”
Remus watched Sirius walk into the small space like he owned it. That had always been Sirius' way with everything, and it had drawn Remus' attention from the very first. Then, it had been an innocent sort of awe. Remus had been small and sickly and generally unimpressive and, even at ten, Sirius had seemed to dominate a room. James wouldn't have liked to hear it told, but Sirius had always drawn attention in a way James hadn't. James had to work for it; Sirius didn't.
And Remus stepped aside, as one always did when Sirius Black was in his stride. He let Sirius touch what he would, where he would. He watched his papers get sorted, then ignored, and then he watched Sirius flop upon the bed, as if he owned the room and everything in it. And perhaps he did. Remus had always known he was weak where his friends were concerned, turning a blind eye when they did all the dreadful things they did to Severus and other, lesser boys. But Sirius, Remus would generally allow Sirius to get away with nearly everything. It was only his suspicion that Sirius was a traitor that had tempered that as of late. But now he didn't believe that of Sirius anymore, and it was easy to slip back into the way things were in Hogwarts.
Well, save for the fact that Remus had grown a bit of a spine - and a growl - in recent months.
"She's not here, no," Remus agreed, and even without Padfoot's nose, that should have been evident. Remus wouldn't have been nearly as calm if Bellatrix was in attendance, and he certainly wouldn't be staring at Sirius upon the bed, an exasperated expression upon his face. "But you could have heeded, Sirius. Don't make me get as cross with you as I am with James," he cautioned, though things with James had smoothed over some.
Remus took a step forward, and he sat himself upon the bed, at Sirius' ankles. Closer, the size difference between the boys was more evident, and Remus sat back against the footboard and bent his legs up, a worn hole at the knee showing a boy's knobby leg, not yet fulling grown into the man he would become. He waited, because Sirius would say something eventually; Sirius always did.
Sirius had grown some, at least an inch in every limb. The motorcycle jacket still fit quite well, and you could tell that he had been making inroads in Muggle London’s music scene, because the wizarding music of the time they had come from tended to favor dramatic robes in sharp lines, not leather. Sirius took great pride in the scuff of his boots and the total lack of pureblood respectability in everything from his skinny white shirt to the loose cuffs of his jacket, because all of it wasn’t respectable. It made perfect sense to him, and even in the year after he had left Hogwarts, he still seemed to find time for his appearance.
“I’m so very intimidated, Moony.” Sirius lifted one boot and casually prodded Remus with one side of it, rather taking care not to get dirt on him, but still delivering enough contact to demonstrate just how little he was bothered by Remus and his temper. “I’m not going to be ordered about by the likes of you.” He grinned at the ceiling and spread his arms out behind his head, testing out the springs of the bed as he tried to find a comfortable spot. The white shirt came up with his shoulders, revealing a pale stretch of skin. The dark eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling.
After a second, Sirius said, “I don’t think I get as much time here as you.”
Remus was as unsurprised by Sirius' clothing as he had been by the motorbike. Early on, he'd realized that Sirius glomped onto any trend that was likely to displease his family. Remus had always wondered if, somewhere along the line, they'd learn that Sirius really liked clean lines to his robes and quiet instrumentals, but he doubted it. Sirius had been shaped by his very desire to stand apart from his heritage, just as surely as Remus had been shaped by the werewolf that bit him. Perhaps it would have been different for Sirius, had he been sorted into another house, but Remus doubted it. Being sorted into Gryffindor, it had just been an early indication that Sirius was not destined to toe the Black line, unlike his cousins and brother.
When Sirius tapped Remus with his dirty boot, Remus simply waved his wand and cleaned the thing, without even thinking about it; his wand work had always been good. "You'd do well to listen to me," he said, though it was a frustratedly fond tone that issued the warning. "Someone needs to do the thinking, now we've ended up in this strange place, and I'll remind you that James has lost all control of his senses." And there was more to it than that, but Remus was not immune to that pale stretch of skin, and he went quiet as his mouth watered and his train of thought left the room and lost itself amid the downstairs patrons.
Remus cleared his throat, because words were required when Sirius spoke again. "I'm here every day," he admitted. "Mornings, usually."
“Oi!” Sirius exclaimed, as his dark boot came away shiny and scourgified. “Aw, Moony, you ruined it,” he said, stomach contracting and thighs flexing so he could sit up entirely on the centre of the bed and fold into thirds so he could examine his boot on the opposite thigh. “Now they don’t match.” He made a little huffing sound of annoyance through his nose and gave a little toss of his head to swish the silky threads out of his dark lashes. It was impossible to tell whether Sirius tossed his head because of the overlong hair, or the overlong hair was in place so that Sirius could toss his head. The move was entirely unconscious, but elicited by a certain desire for movement and intention.
Obviously not all that concerned, Sirius continued, “Nobody says I’m not doing any thinking. I just don’t get as much time to do it in, seems like. The Muggle doesn’t owe me anything and he’s not the kind you ask favors. I’m waiting until I really need to be here for something. I’m sure that time will come.” Sirius rubbed his thumb against his lower lip for no reason at all, and then twisted around to pull his wand from the inside pocket of his jacket. He pointed his wand at the opposite boot, which, a second later, took a shine like the one Remus had altered. Sirius put the two boots together to study the effect.
“Have you found out anything new?” Sirius asked.
"Shall I do the other?" Remus asked, a grin on his lips at the unexpected victory. Annoying Sirius was always a victorious thing, because it was the darker-haired boy that usually managed to make Remus scowl for a multitude of different reasons, stemming from ruffled hair to jokes at his expense. He wondered if clean boots completely destroyed Sirius' outfit, and he rather hoped they did, in retribution for all that James and Sirius had put him through in recent weeks. He was wondering that very thing when Sirius tossed that long hair and, not for the first time, he considered cutting it while Sirius slept. Menace. But as Sirius cleaned the second boot himself, Remus figured it wasn't appropriately terrible. He didn't wait for a response before swishing his wand turning both boots a lovely and thorough shade of paleish pink.
Remus looked very proud of himself.
"I learned nothing that makes me more inclined to trust anyone in your family, and nothing that makes me feel the kindness James seems to feel toward the Blacks all of a sudden. I think I need to speak to the Headmistress, and I think we need to reconvene the Order, if with new members, to prepare for whatever is coming with Voldemort. We don't know this world well enough to win a war in it, should it come to that. If that's too boring to think about, we can just pretend we're exploring," he offered with tolerant academic beneficence and a tap to Sirius' daintily colored boots.
Sirius’ eyes widened in appropriate horror as he stared down at his precious boots, which he’d managed to procure in Chelsea by a great deal of trouble, as he’d had to use Muggle money and that stuff wasn’t exactly growing on trees. Now completely unrecognisable and resembling a pair of booties that a forlorn cupid might wear, the pink boots turned his entire ensemble into a lolly on a stick. Sirius shot Remus a theatrically hard look, nothing like the anger he’d displayed at James’ new cottage, so many muscles drawing the lines of his eyes together that he looked like a particularly aristocratic stage villain. That look meant something unfortunate was to come, but he was going to bide his time.
“There’s nothing boring about war,” Sirius returned, not casual at all. He lost the annoyed expression and returned to his cool, uncaring surface expression. It was a default and did not signify inattention at all. His wand seemed to slide through his fingers, the lighter maple wood a counter to Sirius’ visible features, its tough, inflexible surface the only visible characteristic it appeared to share with its owner--unless you counted the warm dragon’s heartstring at its core. Sirius studied his wand, not really seeing it. “I suppose since Dumbledore’s gone the Headmistress must be McGonagall.” Sirius sighed. McGonagall was a tough old bird, and he wasn’t looking forward to showing up in her office like an errant schoolboy (which he had always been, and might always be). “She’d have the contacts to start up the Order again.”
Remus grinned.
Oh, Remus knew precisely what that look meant, though it was rarely directed at him. In the middle of all this dread of Blacks and wars, it felt wonderfully normal to be on the receiving end of a glare that was caused by pink boots. Remus was practical, and he planned, and he was overly concerned with things like dying at the hands of the Dark Lord, but he was still eighteen, and the smile that graced his lips at that moment was entirely teenager. It brightened his sickly features considerably, that smile, and for a moment he looked like any boy on the cusp of adulthood.
Sirius' comment about war not being boring, that sobered Remus slightly, but he was also glad of it. Sirius liked to be a prat every bit as much as James did, but he knew when to take things seriously, and Remus had always respected Sirius for standing up to his family, a feat Remus was fairly sure he'd never have been brave to undertake, were their situations reversed.
"McGonagall is Headmistress," Remus confirmed, a fact he knew from skulking about the grounds. There was relief in that admission, because McGonagall had always liked him, and she would be easier to deal with (in some ways) than someone they didn't know. "She probably already knows some was poking about. It's why I haven't been back," he admitted. Getting into Hogwarts once, knowing the things he knew about the grounds, that was doable. Twice was unlikely with the likes of Minerva McGonagall heading up the school.
"I was thinking the same thing, of her starting up the Order. But we'll have to convince her Voldemort is alive, and that will be no easy feat," Remus admitted, concern seeping into the sigh that followed the admission.
Sirius rather liked the grin, though he did not show it. James was free with his grins, bestowing a general goodness of being at anyone who cared to pay attention, but Remus tended to be stingy with his good moods and that was probably why the grins came off so well. They weren’t as bright, sure, but they were… the thought trailed away without completion. Sirius allowed his mind to search for a word, uninhibited by self-analysis. The solution floated to him eventually, giving him a sleepy, ignorant look as he turned his attention inward to wait for it to fully form. ...Deeper. That was it. Remus’ grins were deeper.
Satisfied with this brief foray into non-being, Sirius blinked lazily at Remus. He hadn’t been listening but he still fully absorbed what Remus had said given a moment’s reflect, a trick he managed to get away with in every class since first year. “Poking around? You’re enough of a sneak to manage it. But then I suppose you had to lounge about and read everything. Bet it was a challenge to avoid Pince without James’s cloak?” He sat up a little straighter, the pink boots thudding down on either side of the bed, and his eyes started to take on a white-gold gleam. The word challenge did that to him.
“Oh, it can’t be that hard. There he is, scribbling away, old TOM.” Shockingly, Sirius said the word “TOM” exactly the way he wrote it: bold, with something to prove. “Not hard to show her, is it? Seems like she would remember something that important, his name, if they shouted it about after this Battle of Hogwarts.” Sirius slouched again since no great challenge immediately presented itself, and he idly pulled Remus’ discarded robes from under his leg, where he had smashed them into the quilt.
Remus had no notion that his grins were being catalogued, and he might have gone slightly red around the collar had he known. He'd always been shy, and he'd never gotten the opportunity to learn if that was due to the bite, or just due to his demeanor. But either way, he was shy, and he'd only gotten better about attention direction toward him in recent years. He had never been the type to shuffle or trip, and he didn't draw unintentional attention to himself the way Severus did. No, he was the type to sit quietly in corners and go unnoticed, and any kind of careful scrutiny had always made him uncomfortable.
"I didn't want to take unnecessary risks," Remus admitted of his visit to Hogwarts. He had always been, out of the four of them, the worrier. He did things carefully and methodically, and breaking into schools and libraries was done in the same manner. James and Sirius had always made him take risks, but they hadn't been there with him on this journey. And he couldn't remember what Peter had ever done, save be slightly too cruel and eager for comfort. But those things were easily noticed now, after the fact, when they couldn't do a bit of good. "Your pink boots are not storming into Hogwarts," he said immediately, because that gleam in Sirius' eye was a dear old companion.
"Tom R. could be Tom Ravenclaw for all she'd know. It's not enough proof, Sirius," Remus explained, his expression going unfortunately somber. "We'll need more than that." Though he had no idea what yet, and that was what troubled him the most. Without backing, they'd get nowhere, but he had no current plan for getting proof, not for someone like the Headmistress, who tended toward caution laced with bravado. He'd never being a journal with Tom R. to her for proof, not without more to accompany it. He watched Sirius tug at the discarded, more-rumpled robes. "Unless you have a suggestion," he said with great trepidation.
Obviously unable to sit and think without something to do with his hands, Sirius laid his wand across his thighs and occupied his fingers with Remus’ discarded robes, pulling them an inch at a time out from under his own body and idly twisting the sleeves into knots without paying much attention to what he was doing. Sirius was one of those people that chewed the ends off of quills in an absent-minded way that drove girls to distraction.
“Nothing too risky about McGonagall,” Sirius said, off-handedly, in precisely the way he said that phrase so many times before. “Especially now. What’s she going to do, expel you?” He paused, bowing his head under the thought and eying the patch on one elbow of the sleeve under his fingers. Again he gave a little toss of his head as he revived himself into the conversation. “I’m going to have to talk to her at some point. I don’t know why storming should be delayed.” A smile slid over his face like flame licking up wood.
“I think me walking in all alive and pretty will be enough to convince her to put extra security measures in place,” Sirius said confidently. “I can tell her about the book with Tom in it, and that will just encourage her toward caution. I bet she’ll do the rest on her own. They won’t be on full army alert, but I bet they are ready to be if we make a bit of noise with Bellatrix.” Now the smile turned black and wide.
Remus watched the tugging and knotting of his robes without much concern. They were worn and oft patched, and there was nothing Sirius could do to make them worse than they already were, save unless he turned them pink without warning. And, perhaps, even that would be an improvement. Too, he was accustomed to Sirius' inability to remain still, and he merely lifted a tawny brow when Sirius said there was nothing risky about McGonagall. "You think there's nothing risky about her because you always won her over with your irascible charm, Padfoot," he said knowingly, because even Minerva McGonagall had found Sirius' antics endearing, no matter how she tried to hide the fact. "Some of us weren't as adept at chatting up professors as you."
As for what the Headmistress could do, Remus rolled his eyes and gave Sirius the fondly exasperated look that was so familiar from their school years. "She could throw us all in Azkaban, for starters, if she thinks we're polyjuiced or dangerous. They just saw the end of a war, Sirius. It can't hurt to be careful, and it can do a lot of harm not to be." But even Remus had to admit that walking into the Headmistress' office might end up being the best weapon in their arsenal. He sighed. "If we're walking in there, we're doing in the light of day, so we appear less threatening, and we're doing it together. If we could find the cloak, I'd stash you beneath it, just to be safer." Better two dead men walking than a convict, after all.
Sirius scoffed at that. "She's not going to call the dementors without hearing me out first. I don't even look like that bloke in the paper, anyway." Sirius had found his own way to deal with this potential future his whole world spelled out around him. All those things had happened to another him, some other man that had experienced all those terrible things. He had to take precautions to keep from going down that path, and he could avoid becoming that other man. There the connection could end.
"And for polyjuice, all we have to do is sit in that office for more than an hour and she'll know we don't have any of that. It's just a question of being ourselves, Moony. The woman probably knows me better than my own mother. Likes me more, too." Sirius tossed the robe aside and flopped back on the flat pillow, boneless. "We can't skulk around forever. We need allies. The Head of Hogwarts is a powerful friend, even if it is McGonagall." Sirius' expression clouded briefly with passing concern. "You don't think she knows about the animagus thing? That would put her in a bad mood."
Sirius ran his fingers back through his hair, stroking the side of his head and rotating his shoulders to manage it and stretch the joint at the same time. "Light of day is good though. James's cloak is gone, no sense crying over it."
Remus knew when it was best to just go along with Sirius Black, and he'd a feeling this was one of those times. He was even being bright, which wasn't like Padfoot. It was easy to steer Sirius off course normally, but he could already tell that wasn't going to work here. The fact that Sirius had actually recalled the amount of time the polyjuice potion lasted was indication enough of that, and this was almost worse than James' suggestion that they walk about with a big black dog through all of wizarding London.
After a long, put-upon sigh, Remus nodded his concession that Sirius was right. The Headmistress was unlikely to call the dementors immediately. "It doesn't hurt to be careful, Sirius. This war of theirs just ended, and everyone is on edge. Voldemort returned once, they say, and why can't he return again? And now he has, and it's sure to get ugly. But, I concede that we can't skulk about forever." As for the animagus? "I think she knows about that, the cloak, the map, all of it. Best be prepared for an earful."
Remus sat forward when Sirius did all that stretching. It was completely unintentional, of course, and then he had to figure out what the bloody hell he was meant to be doing. He settled a hand on one of Sirius' shoulders. "I'm sorry I doubted you." It seemed as good a thing to say as any, and he meant it.
Sirius put on a new kind of grin as Remus gave his long-suffering sigh, different from the slick black one he had worn a moment ago as they talked about Bellatrix Lestrange. The sound of warm breath coming from Remus’ lungs was almost like a call to victory, in some ways. Sirius never heard it unless he had managed to argue down all of the worrier’s main concerns and the other boy had to cooperate despite his better judgment. (Remus had a different angry silence when he strongly disapproved but was bound by loyalty. The sigh was better.)
Sirius preferred not to think about McGonagall’s reaction to learning about him sneaking around in fur without Ministry control. He made a sour face, but didn’t reply. It was obvious he wasn’t going to prepare for anything, preferring instead to simply show up and looked shocked and hurt she should dig up such childish tricks. Yes, that was the plan.
The apology lit Sirius up quickly. He smiled. Only someone who knew him as well as Remus or James would have been able to tell how much that rusty needle of suspicion and betrayal still hurt. He was quick to cast it aside and behind him. “I forgive you, I suppose. If you forgive me for thinking the same.” He put an arm up too, pale skin and long, youthful limbs. One of his hands splayed gently sideways over Remus’ temple and ear, two fingers threading neatly through the sandy brown hair. Sirius gave a little push, and the gesture avoided being a caress by the tiniest of pressures, merely enough to tip Remus’ head on his neck.
Remus took Sirius' grin to be a victorious one, and he thought it rather unfair that the git looked all the better for being smug. Surely - and he'd not found it yet - there was something that didn't look good on Sirius Black. Some mystery emotion or expression that was, as yet, undiscovered. But - and this concession was made begrudgingly - it was nice to see Padfoot smile. It had been a hard month, and the moon was nearing, and Remus felt better knowing they were all a little at peace.
Remus let that touch linger a little too long, perhaps, before pushing at Sirius' hand playfully, as if the wolf very much disliked the affection. But the sickly looking boy's smile said he didn't mind it at all, and it was only years upon years of hiding just how much he didn't dislike it that made it seem entirely casual. He reminded himself - thankfully - that he went and married some girl in the future, which should - he hoped - preserve all appearances of disinterest in Sirius Black for eternity.
"We'll talk to James, and we'll plan to go to Hogwarts," Remus finally said, a verbal concession, and he realized he'd somehow been talked into a much more dangerous approach to this entire thing than he'd been planning on his own. "After the moon," he added, because the shift in time was still playing with him, and the last thing they needed was something to go entirely wrong, as it seemingly had when they'd tried to kill Peter in the Shack.
Sirius made no attempt to prolong the contact because the initial movement had been completely uncalculated, a result only of many years slumped in front of fires and hunched over old parchments. He gave Remus an extremely canine grin, complete with a flash of pink tongue pressed against the back of his throat, and allowed his hand settle against the back of his neck again. Another stretch, a yawn that displayed every molar, and then a restless shift that took him off the bed. Sirius could never stay in one place all that long, not unless he was asleep.
He rocked up onto the toes of his pink boots, looked down to give them a calculating, considering look, and then rotated about to face no direction in particular, bouncing one thigh idly off the edge of the bed. “After the moon,” he agreed. Something was in his face, under the curve of his lower lip, and he was trying to manage it carefully. It was unlike Sirius to hold things back, or to give a damn how things were said, so it looked as if he had eaten a particularly nasty Every-Flavour Bean. “Where shall we go, now that the Shack is compromised?”
Sirius might have liked to go compromise the Shack--and whomever was hiding in it--himself.
"Do put that away, Padfoot," Remus said of Sirius' tongue, a good-natured laugh accompanying the edict. He watched Sirius rise with no surprise, because he'd realized in their first year that Sirius was terrible at sitting still. The pink boots still made him smile, and Remus didn't bother hiding his pleasure at the destruction of all that carefully crafted dirt and malcontent. "I don't know where we'll go, but we'll figure something out. If it comes to it, I'll go with the werewolves. James hasn't offered, and he has Lily now, Sirius. I don't think we can count on him to join us," he said carefully, because he knew how little Sirius liked Lily's marriage changing things.
"In the meantime," Remus said, glancing toward the window, "better go back to the cottage. James is too trusting by half, and so is Lily. If James has tangled himself up with the Blacks, you should be there, not here." The look he gave Sirius said he was being very serious (no pun intended), and that he wouldn't back down at all, so there was no real point in trying to sway him.
Sirius’ expression clouded over. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Evans; she was decent enough, smart, and pretty enough that he’d tried to charm her out of the gate before she had made it clear she wasn’t going to be charmed--on principle, probably. James was certainly happy, and Sirius didn’t want James to be un-happy. It was just that there had always been the four of them, him, James, Remus and Peter, and it wasn’t like that anymore. It would never be like that again. He had quite a bit of champagne after James’ wedding and had gotten completely sloshed afterwards, which Remus was probably remembering as they spoke.
One good thing about Lily, Sirius was confident that she could handle James and any Blacks that dared come down the road. Sirius hated his family and he always would, and somehow managed to forget that James himself was a cousin several times removed. (Most pureblood wizards were.)
“Don’t hang out with them,” Sirius said, annoyed that Remus would even suggest it. “I said ‘we,’ not ‘you.’ Don’t be a martyr.” He knew Remus was no such thing, but it was Sirius’ way to overstate. It would be better to talk about Remus’ furry little problem than James. “He’ll be around if we need it, but it can be just the two of us.” Sirius was confident, but he also knew it would be a lot better if there was some boundaries for the wolf, even if they would test them later.
Sirius pointed his wand at his boots. Both turned deeply black. Then he rolled his eyes back over Remus’ way and flicked the tip of his wand at him. It was so casual and so fast, totally without warning. Sirius aimed for the hair, which was harder to hex pink than, say, clothing. It might be worth it.
Remus knew Sirius hadn't handled the changes that came with James' wedding well, and he worried that being here would actually worsen that. He wasn't about to bring it up again, but James was being odd, and he wondered just how much time their friend was spending with Narcissa Black lately. It wasn't that Remus didn't like Lily, because he did, and he trusted her. She was a smart witch, and she'd always been smarter than James, but he was sure he would have heard from her if she knew about James and Narcissa speaking often, and he wondered if he should broach it himself. But, like so many things in his life, he preferred to hold off, rather than risk making things worse than they already were. He always felt terrible about fighting with his mates, and he wanted to keep the peace if at all possible.
When Sirius insisted about the moon and the werewolves, Remus looked at him a moment, and then he sighed. "You give me your word you'll go back to the cottage and keep an eye on things, and we'll find somewhere for the moon." He paused. "Together." Perhaps it was a bit of blackmail, but Remus was a bit of a mother hen- er- wolf at times, even if it made him the most boring member of his adopted pack.
Remus watched the pink boots return to their shiny black with a frown, and he was too slow to notice the wand pointed in his direction. Sirius managed to get a good hit, and Remus' hair turned bright and undeniably pink. Retaliation happened before the shade had even seeped into the tawny strands of hair, and Remus' return hex made all of Sirius canary yellow - or, well, it intended to. He'd a vantage point atop the bed now, where he'd jumped in an attempt to avoid Sirius' wand.
If successful, that little bit about promising to be a nice boy and watch James at the cottage would have been blackmail. James could bloody well take care of himself, in Sirius’ cherished opinion, and even if he couldn’t they’d get over there and pull him out of whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into. Sirius was under the impression that they had put every ward on that place it could hold, and if Lily was there a lovesick James wasn’t likely to go trotting out waving around anti-Voldemort propaganda. This general lack of forethought was typical of Sirius.
Slowed down by the fact that he was laughing like a loon, Sirius threw up a shield charm just in time to ricochet the yellow spell off onto the window. It turned the light flooding in a lovely spring yellow, and some of the bleedoff turned the left side of Sirius’ hair, chin and eye a vague amber-blonde color, like new ale. Assuming he’d dodged the hit, Sirius brandished his wand in a characteristically demanding gesture and thrust all four sides of the quilt on the bed up toward the ceiling. He was grinning wildly and running for the door, counting on the blanket to keep the wolf caught up long enough for him to escape further retribution.
“‘Til next time, Moony my lad!” he shouted back across the room, aiming a final hex that made the blanket sprout daisies.
Remus was too busy laughing to pursue, and he only struggled free of the blanket long enough to peer out of it as Sirius yelled from the door. He should have known there would be another hex, but it was rather too nice to see Sirius laughing and being himself, especially after all the weeks of stress and arguing. It almost felt like being back at Hogwarts, and Remus relished the feeling. Unfortunately, that moment of remembering cost him, and the daisies that sprung up around him made his sneeze loudly, which Remus felt certain was not at all attractive. But his smile was genuine, and he flopped back against the the hammock-quilt, and he breathed in the green scent of the daisies, and he thought it was rather nice, all things considered. He yawned, and he slid his arm behind his head, and - for once - he decided not to fret.