InsaneJournal

It hadn't been the summer Sirius anticipated on having, what with being locked up for a good bit of it, but things were turning around and despite the possible backlash from some parents about having their children taught by him and Remus, being back at Hogwarts was something Sirius was looking forward to. It would be the first year where the two of them started off living in the same quarters, which made the coming and going much easier. No more sneaking around early in the morning or late at night.

He hefted a box -- manually, for some reason, keeping his wand in his pocket -- up onto a table and started going through it. Truthfully, this was their home, and there was more here at the school than at their flat, but they did move things back and forth over the summer.

"Any bets on when the first howler will show up?" Sirius didn't specify whether that howler would be about him and Remus or about him as a convict. It didn't matter much to him which way it fell.


Sirius may have been content with manual labor, but Remus preferred magical efficiency- his wand was close at hand as he worked to unpack their belongings. "You mean, aside from the ones that Minerva has no doubt already received?" Remus asked, quirking an eyebrow as he glanced back across the room. "Perhaps the better question, then, would be to see who gets more of them." At least turning it into a friendly competition was generally better than taking such protestations seriously.


"Oh that'll be me for sure," Sirius said casually. "I mean, I'm not only gay and living with a fellow professor, but I'm also an ex-con who was so recently as last month in jail for murder." Given that this arrest hadn't transported him to Azkaban, it had been much easier for him this time around to fall back into old patterns. He shot a wry grin over to Remus.


The old patterns were comforting, and Remus was more than a little relieved that Sirius had come to a point where he could at least joke about last month's proceedings. That was certainly better than the alternative, at least. So when Sirius grinned, Remus just rolled his eyes. "As a suspect for murder," Remus amended. "You didn't actually do anything wrong." Well, apart from vigilantism, but that was another story entirely.


"I didn't get there in time," Sirius said simply as he unpacked a stack of books from the box and set them out along the empty shelves.


Remus paused midway through his work, looking back to Sirius with a more, well, serious gaze. "If we're judging ourselves based on bad timing and unfortunate misses, none of us are innocent, Sirius." Least of all Remus himself.


"I'm not judging. I'm stating fact. The only thing I did wrong in that instance was not getting there in time." Or, he thought, not killing Lady Noir himself when he had the chance, but what good would that have done except put him in jail for murder instead of suspected murder.


"You could have not been there at all, Sirius, which is the more likely thing to have happened. The odds that you and Fabian would happen to stumble upon Anastasia in the midst of an attack are practically astronomical." It was less fact, in Remus' mind, and more happenstance.


"True," he said, though he also didn't voice some of his thoughts on that matter. If it really was quite as happenstance as it played out. After all, had she really looked all that surprised to find them burst inside as they had? Sirius left it at that and finished with the box he had. He turned to pick up another one.


Remus was quiet for a moment, focusing instead on rearranging books on the shelf in front of him. Somehow, in the few short months of summertime, he'd somehow expanded said collection by… well, by more than a dozen, at least. "Well," he offered, after a minute or so, "howlers aside, I'm looking forward to the new class this year."


"Me, too," Sirius said. "Wait, you said the new class, which means the firsties. I'm not looking forward to them at all. I am, however, looking forward to being back here at school." Which is something he didn't think he'd say back in June at the end of the last term, when he was questioning even continuing to teach at all.


Remus just laughed a bit. "It's perhaps somewhat different, since I'm the Head of House," he offered. "I know that they can be pre-pubescent terrors, of course, but I foolishly hold out hope for them each year, all the same."


"You wouldn't be you if you didn't," Sirius returned with a smile of his own. "I'm just looking forward to new trouble makers willing to play maid for my classroom and office, since you know I hate to clean." After all those years when he had to clean or scrub or polish in detention, it was only right that he now got to reap some of those benefits himself.


"Sometimes I think that's the only real reason you became a Professor at all," Remus offered, rolling his eyes somewhat dramatically. "Never minding a care about the next generation or education, you just wanted to be able to give out detentions freely and wantonly." Of course, the day would likely come when Sirius found a true protege among the students, and there would be less punishment and more tutoring in the trouble-making arts. Harry had a bit of this, Remus supposed, as had the Weasley twins. But none had yet lived up to the Marauders' name.


"Actually," Sirius said, pausing slightly for the effect, "I became a professor so I could be with you."


Remus had opened his mouth to reply, but paused, then snapped it quickly shut. He had, perhaps, suspected as much- though he'd never wanted to presume or even consider asking if he was right in that. So, instead, he just exhaled, turning from the bookshelf and offering a faint smile to Sirius, shaking his head. "All these years, and you still surprise me."


A beat and then Sirius grinned. "Then I'm not losing my edge, am I?"


Remus just laughed, shaking his head. "I don't think you ever will."