Chapter 1
Moony
I wake up to my door being knocked on so hard I swear it shudders against the frame. I gingerly get to my feet, still sore from a full moon that was particularly rough-no one was there to help me. “I’m coming!” I shout, pulling on a stringy old sweater that smells like broomstick oil, even after all these years, and even after James magicked the stain out.
“About bloody time!”
I freeze, staring at the person before me.
Sirius Black, dressed in black denim and leather and his long curly hair freshly mussed, and I notice his bright blue eyes look particularly tired. I haven’t seen him in three years, almost four.
He looks like a fucking rock star, because of course he does. Still insanely good looking, and charming, and arrogant, as he pushes past me into my flat and scoffs at the mess. Hypocrite, I know his flat isn’t even close to being clean. His wand is out before I can stop him, and everything zips into neat little piles or floats back into the kitchen or my bedroom.
“Sirius.”
He is pointedly ignoring me, as if that’ll work.
Sirius Black can never keep his eyes off of me for too long.
“Sirius!”
He slowly turns back to me and I’m horrified to see tears. Not from my shouting, but from something else.
I take a step forward, “Sirius…?”
“Moony,” and suddenly he’s crashing into me, and crying, sobbing into my shoulder and this is not the Sirius I know at all.
“They took him! They kidnapped him and left Lily and I don’t know how to get him back and they're talking about a spy and someone sold them out and I didn’t know where else to go Remus!” Fear fills my stomach and sends my heart down to my navel.
“Death eaters took James?!”
A sob, a nod.
“Who sold him out?!”
Sirius won’t reply, suddenly quiet with his tears.
“Sirius who was it?”
“The rat.”
But I can barely hear his mumbling, and I need to make sure it’s not who I think it is, because if I’m right, I might go mad. It’s all been too much, in the span of twenty minutes, to have your ex show up unannounced for the first time in three years, and learn one of your best mates has been kidnapped by racist fascists, possibly because your other best mate sold him out.
“Sirius, who was it?!”
“Peter Pettigrew.”
I lurch back from him and rush to the door, not even thinking straight. “Remus! Remus don't!” I’m halfway down the hall when all of a sudden a big black dog tackles me, bringing me crashing down. The noise is loud enough to bring attention to my neighbor, Pandora Rosier, who is a whimsical tarot card reading witch, who is kind and makes excellent vegetarian food-even though I myself could never give up meat.
“Remus, since when do you have a dog?”
She’s standing in the hallway, wearing blue checkered sweatpants with the Ravenclaw emblem and a white tank top, her white blond dreadlocks whipped up into a bun. Her wide silvery blue eyes startle me everytime I look at her, it’s like they can see into my soul. “Not mine,” I grunt, “It’s a stray.” Padfoot steps way too hard on my back, and then jumps off and goes into my flat. I say my goodbyes to Pandora and follow him.
The dog becomes a man in a blink of an eye.“You fucking idiot,” he says the moment I close the door. “You're supposed to be the responsible one, Lupin. I’m the one who can go running around like I’ve lost my mind. We can’t both go mental.” His words piss me right off again. “Considering after all those years of being the responsible one, I’d say I’ve got a right to act fucking mental, Black.” He flinches, and I soften, until he traces the tattoo on his forearm, the one that is of little footprints, surrounding the prints of a stag, dog, wolf and rat. All five sets surround his forearm, like a band.
“What are we going to do about James?”
He hangs his head, letting his hair cover his face. “Lily is at Grimmauld Place, with Mary and Marlene, her and James’s house got destroyed and she’s pretty shaken up. Dumbledore went to visit her, and basically said we need to “get the band back together” to save James. I need you to come back with me and we can figure it out from there.”
I don’t hesitate for a moment, waving my wand and spelling all my necessary things into the suitcase they all got for me for my 21st birthday, back when I was naive enough to think I could be a teacher and not a soldier.
Sirius looks slightly shocked, like he thought he’d have to fight for me to come. “Alright,” he mumbles, “Let's go.”
Number 12 Grimmauld Place makes me want to claw my skin off. And I’ve done that before and it isn’t pleasant. The entrance hallway is dark and less dusty than the last time I’d been there, and half the creepy animal sacrifice decorations had been removed.
Sadly, the hallway where Wallburga Black’s portrait hung was still as horrific as ever, but I noticed with satisfaction that the pictures Sirius and I had knocked over once during a passionate hooking up had never been rehung.
The kitchen is brighter than I remember, and actually smells good, with a pot bubbling on the stove. A bleached blonde stands, stirring, and multitasking by monitoring a knife cutting up onions on its own. “Marls, look who’s here,” Sirius rasps, clearly drained from being back in his childhood house.
Marlene McKinnon whips around, her brown eyes lighting up and she squeals.
“Remus!”
She barrels towards me, dropping the spoon and hugging me with such force I take a step back to steady both of us. Her head barely comes up to my shoulder.
“Marlene. How’ve you been?”
“Alright, not bad. Terrible about what happened to James and Lily. Poor girls been a wreck. How’ve you been holding up?”
I shrug and study her. Her bleached blonde hair, sandy brown roots growing in. Her bangs are freshly cut, and her baby tee is red, her bell bottom jeans fraying at the ends. She has a lip ring, like Sirius, one they’d gotten together after they both turned 19. I remember being fascinated with playing with Sirius’s while kissing.
She starts to tear up. “Aww Marls, don’t get soft on me now yea?” If she starts crying I will too. Marlene is too much of a dick to let anything like emotions get in the way. “‘M not. It’s the stupid onions.”
Sirius sighs and says, “McKinnon, try to not burn my utensils please.” He grabs the wooden spoon she’d dropped too close to the open flame, and it is slowly burning away. She snatches it from him and waves the mini torch, and he hisses and jumps back. “Thats right, fucking vampire, burn.”
In the second year, before werewolves and animagi, there was a rumor that Sirius was a vampire, probably started by Snape. It's nice to know that even after all these years, and after everything that has happened, some things never changed.
A terrible banging at the door startles everyone, and a sharp wail sounds throughout the house. Marlene and Sirius wince. “Lily,” Marlene explains. “Ever since the kidnapping, it just reminds her of…” She trails off and then quickly says, “But Mary’s up there with her.”
Sirius runs up the stairs to the door, and answers it, and shouts the most profane cuss words I’ve heard in a while. I run after him and stop, heart pounding, Lily’s wails still in my ears.
Peter Pettigrew lays unconscious on the doorstep, looking worse for wear, wrapped in an invisibility cloak that’s so familiar. Laying on him is a note in elegant sprawling handwriting.
Here’s the traitor
-R.A.B.