A Party
Unlike Harry, who was probably off trying to kiss arse with his old mates, Sirius had no problem branching out.
Draco and Blaise seemed to stick to Sirius like a bad hex, but they weren’t terrible to be around really. It was boring at times, talking about first year homework with eleven year olds. There was something refreshing about it all too, like Sirius really had rewound his life and started it over.
Sirius lost some of the worst parts: his parents, their expectations. Sirius lost good parts too, like James and the brother that he lost long before he had died.
There were different good parts about his restart: Harry, a chance to truly live, Harry, a war he could end, and Harry.
And since Sirius had done his part to get rid of Voldemort for the time being, he was enjoying lounging around outside with Blaise and Draco while he waited for Harry to get back from the group of Gryffindors he was talking to near the edge of the forest.
“What’s Harry see in them?” Blaise asked, looking where Sirius was.
Harry was rocking on his heels, looking anxious to Sirius even from across the lawn. There were three or four kids sitting on the ground, playing some game Sirius couldn’t see. Harry had been over there for ages and they still hadn’t so much as asked him to sit.
“Beats me,” Sirius said, curling his lip. Those kids were bastards, Sirius had no idea what made Harry befriend them in the first place. Hermione had always acted as if she were better than Harry, Ron had been a right arse to Harry in his fourth year
“He’s the Boy-Who-Lived,” Draco groaned, throwing his head back as proof that the Blacks were genetically dramatic. “I don’t know why he wants to befriend a Weasley.”
Sirius hummed again, he still had no answer. What he did have was a map that needed to be updated, a rat that needed to be found, and a week of homework that needed to be finished before classes started in the morning.
Apparently, because Snape had never experienced a real friendship in his cursed life, having Harry be unconscious in the Hospital Wing for over half a week didn’t mean Sirius didn’t have to write essays.
Writing essays… it was so strangely normal that Sirius nearly laughed.
That was what Blaise and Draco worked on, in between pithy comments about their classmates and small rocks being tossed at each other. Sirius had his map out, toying with the seventh floor area, trying to decide how to best edit it.
Harry described the room to Sirius at length, multiple times. Sirius knew where it was located, he knew how to add it… it just wasn’t sticking.
Sirius looked up again, looking for Harry, and curled his lip at the dejected curl to Harry’s shoulders as he walked back across the lawn.
“Are there any clubs or something?” Sirius asked, thinking about how to convince Harry that he didn’t need Ron or Hermione. He tried to think of clubs that Hogwarts used to have that Harry might like. “A quidditch club or dueling club?”
“There’s quidditch, but we can’t bring brooms until next year,” Draco said, adding a pout. “I tried to convince Father to let me bring mine and he said absolutely not.”
“Waaah,” Blaise said unsympathetically. He had a twig dangling in the corner of his mouth as he rolled up an essay he’d been working on. “Nobody’s going to join a dueling club with you two after you killed Quirrell,” he told Sirius. “You can’t possibly think people have already forgotten.”
“That was almost a week ago, it’s old news,” Sirius said, waving away the reminder.
It was kind of hilarious to Sirius, that Harry just killed a bloke in front of thirty students. Harry didn’t find it funny, he especially wasn’t amused by the feared squeaks and pale faces he kept encountering.
Sirius added those students to his list of arseholes that he’d be fine making as unhappy as they made Harry.
“What’s old news?” Harry asked, having only caught the tail end of their conversation. Harry flopped gracelessly on the ground and put his head on Sirius’s shoulder glumly. Sirius wrapped an arm around him in a mindless fashion, still thinking about how to make Harry make new friends.
“Nothing,” Sirius said smoothly. “We should start a club or something, or - oh I know!” Sirius brightened at his own brilliant idea. “We could have a party!”
“They’re eleven, Sirius,” Harry muttered quietly, as if parties weren’t originally made for children to enjoy.
“I’m not saying we get bloody booze and blow,” Sirius huffed. “We can nick some food from the kitchens, grab a bunch of nonsense games, invite all the first years.”
All the first years except for Ron Weasley who had both lost Peter and hurt Harry’s feelings. They were both unforgivable offenses, Sirius knew that kid was a wanker.
Draco and Blaise were immediately on board and so was Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass when Blaise yelled across the lawn for them to join them. Harry didn’t seem very excited about it, but Sirius suspected it was exactly the thing he needed to branch out, make friends, and be more social.
They decided to have it after dinner the next day and Sirius gave them all jobs. Daphne and Pansy were to collect as many games as they could, Draco and Blaise were in charge of inviting everyone (Sirius didn’t specifically say to not invite Ron, but he didn’t think Draco would even if his life was on the line).
Sirius would get food and Harry was to write down the location of the Room of Requirement on a few scraps of paper to pass out.
It was just the thing they all needed, really. After all, half their year had just seen their professor die in front of them.
The promise of a party carried Sirius through his classes the next day. Classes were so damned dull that he and Harry started up their own way to pass time in each class.
In Charms, Harry wanted to practice silent spells so they did that while the others worked on a basic lumos. Sirius wasn’t much of a tutor, but Harry was enough like Lily that simply seeing Sirius succeed at something was driving him to work twice as hard at it. By the end of that class, Harry could get a weak light at the tip of his wand.
Flitwick also gave them each ten points which was the opposite of what Sirius wanted. Sirius figured that he could find an epic way to ensure Slytherin lost the House Cup by the end of the year though.
Herbology was the worst, since Sirius had never cared about that class even when he had been a true student. Harry gave up on his silent spells when he saw Sirius sticking leaves on Crabbe and then it became a challenge of who could stick the most leaves without getting caught.
Harry won on a technicality because Sirius snorted too loudly and one of the Ravenclaw boys sent him a thumbs up when he saw what they were doing.
“It’s not funny,” Crabbe complained at lunch when everyone was still laughing over the leaves covering his back.
“It is,” Daphne disagreed. “You can’t see it because the leaves are blocking your vision.”
It wasn’t that funny of a jest, but Sirius laughed louder than anyone when Harry finally started snickering at that comment.
Sirius spent almost the entirety of Transfiguration making innuendos to Minerva. He was careful enough that she didn’t outright scold him, but Sirius saw the suspicion in her gaze. Harry didn’t help matters as he turned dark red with every comment Sirius made about gripping his wand.
“Were you flirting with McGonagall?” Harry asked Sirius when class ended and Harry fled the room. Sirius followed him at a more leisurely pace, smirking at Harry’s obvious embarrassment.
“You don’t understand,” Sirius said earnestly, “she’s my soulmate.”
Harry blinked, Sirius kept up his lovesick expression.
“Snape called you a homosexual,” Harry said.
“When did he do that?” Draco asked, having snuck up on them silently but unable to hold his tongue apparently.
“Er… I dunno, in a few years,” Harry waved Draco off and seemed to be waiting for Sirius to respond.
Sirius heard Theo make a quiet comment to Daphne as they passed them, something about Harry making more predictions. If Harry wasn’t careful, he’d be given Trewlaney’s job in a few years.
“I was joking,” Sirius confessed to Harry. “Circe, Pup, where’d your sense of humor go?”
“I am funny,” Harry said, huffing all indignantly like Sirius didn’t spend the last class trying to make him laugh. “I’m funnier than you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Sirius smiled slowly, a wicked idea building in his head. “Are you sure?”
Draco’s head swiveled side to side while he walked just behind Sirius and Harry while they made their way to the last class of the day.
Harry hesitated, smart boy. But his pride and stubborn side won out when he finally nodded at Sirius haughtily.
“You’re just crude, not funny,” Harry insisted. “I can be funny, if I wanted to be.”
“Great.” Sirius slung his arm around Harry, refusing to let him book it after making such an audacious statement. “Prove it. I dare you, on the honor of the marauders, of which you’re now a part, to try and make our next esteemed professor laugh.”
Harry stopped in his tracks and the haughty twist of his lips disappeared when his mouth dropped open in a horrified manner.
“Siri… our next professor is Snape,” Harry protested.
“Is it?” Sirius asked sweetly. “Historically, I can assure you that he doesn’t find jokes about bats, grease, or horribly oversized noses to be funny. I can’t imagine why, stick up his arse, honestly.”
Draco looked at Harry like Christmas had come early for him, just as delighted as Sirius was by Sirius’s challenge. If Harry didn’t catch sight of him watching and waiting to see what he would do, Sirius was sure that Harry would refuse.
“What are you going to do if I get detention?” Harry asked.
“Me?” Sirius had never been so fond of Harry before, probably. He hugged him on his side briefly then shrugged. “I’ll get one too, don’t worry.”
As if Sirius would leave Harry to face detention alone.
It took thirty minutes for Harry to work up his courage to try and make Snape laugh and less than five minutes after it failed for Sirius to land in detention with him that evening.
“You said - you said…” Sirius still wheezed with laughter every time he thought about it. He and Harry were halfway through their detention, cleaning the trophy room, and Harry was still fuming over their punishment.
“What was it?” Sirius asked again, lazily swiping at trophies with his rag. “‘I can’t do that’?” he quoted incorrectly.
“‘I’m a frayed knot’,” Harry said with a sigh of concession. He cracked a little grin and shook his head as he cleaned much more diligently. “It was funny when the twins told it, I guess Snape really doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
Snape didn’t. It was absolutely worth missing the beginning of the party they planned.
The classroom had been silent while Harry forced himself through the joke and Sirius was sure that more people would have laughed about it if Snape didn’t look ready to kill Harry. It made it easier for Sirius to guilt-free drop some ink in his cauldron, blowing it up and earning himself the same detention Harry had.
They also lost four points, which wasn’t even denting the points that the other professors kept handing out for their ‘marvelous mastering of magic’.
“You should tell Charity that joke tomorrow,” Sirius told Harry when they finally finished and Filch let them leave. They passed the dungeon entrance and instead headed up the stairs. Blaise told Sirius that he could fetch treats from the kitchen after Sirius told him how to reach it so there was nothing keeping Sirius and Harry from going straight to the party.
“So maybe I’m not funny,” Harry scowled. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“No, you’re funny!” Sirius assured him quickly, not meaning to make it some hurtful thing. Merlin, all Sirius wanted to do was cheer Harry up, show him all the great things that they could both be a part of with their second chance.
“It was all Snape,” Sirius swore. “He seemed right pissed before class even started. Anastasia told me that Charity is covering defense until Dumbledore finds a new professor, you can try again tomorrow. She’s brilliant, she was a year above me, Ravenclaw. We used to listen to records together.”
If Harry was mollified, Sirius didn’t know. He was distracted though.
“Who is Anastasia?” Harry asked.
“Anastasia Burke?” Sirius said. “Second year? Black hair?” When Harry only shook his head, mystified, Sirius sighed.
“This is why we need to get you out making friends,” Sirius told him. “C’mon, the party doesn’t end until you make at least ten friends.”
“Ten?!” Harry shoved at Sirius, starting a shoving match between them. “It took me five years and a war to make four of them!”
“Ten is nothing,” Sirius said. He pushed Harry and then started running down the corridor, making Harry chase him.
“You only had three!” Harry yelled, running full speed to try and catch Sirius.
Sirius ducked to the side and tried to trip Harry, but Harry jumped over his outstretched foot and Sirius laughed.
“I had three best friends,” Sirius corrected him. “I had loads of other friends though, didn’t I?”
“Yeah?” Harry finally caught Sirius and shoved him lightly in the shoulder. “Name them then.”
Name them? Sirius could do that.
Mary Macdonald… she truly had died not long after Harry was born.
Dorcas Meadows… Voldemort had killed her personally, it hadn’t been pretty.
Marlene McKinnon… she had been killed with her entire family by a group of death eaters.
Frank and Alice Longbottom… both permanent patients at St Mungo’s Hospital.
Edgar Bones… he had been killed during an attack on a muggle town, blown to pieces and probably Peter’s inspiration for his own faked death.
Elaine Trueblood… she had been forced into a marriage before she even finished school, one to Edgar to keep her safe from talk of muggleborn laws being enacted… Sirius heard about her death from Azkaban.
“Then there was Pandora,” Sirius said, finishing his list off and ticking them off his fingers to a silent Harry. “I think she died a few years ago, I remember someone saying something about a potions accident in Azkaban.”
“Jesus.” Harry stopped just outside the room they were headed to and he seemed weary all of a sudden. “Sirius, are all your friends dead?!”
Sirius paused to consider that. Most of them were… Sirius had years to accept that, even if he didn’t like it.
“Amelia, Emmaline, and Remus are about all that’s left,” Sirius said. It struck him then how profoundly sad that was… so many of his classmates and friends had died in a war that hadn’t ended, only paused.
Sirius shook off the gloom that tried to fill his mind then, focusing on who he did have.
“And you, of course,” Sirius told Harry, pasting on a bright smile. “It’s quality over quantity, right?”
“If that’s the case…” Harry paused before reaching for the doorknob, long enough to grin at Sirius - a bit sly, a little shy, all Harry. “Then I don’t need to make ten friends tonight, do I?”
Sirius reached past Harry to open the door then he literally shoved him into the spotlight.
“No chance,” Sirius told him brightly, waving to the room full of kids. “Ten friends, Harry. It’s easy.”
Harry needed friends, something to keep him occupied and keep him from ever following someone else through a veil in the Department of bloody Mysteries.
As long as Harry didn’t replace Sirius, then Sirius would wingman him all night until everyone adored Harry almost as much as Sirius did.
The Slytherins were too easy to befriend, they were too enamored by Sirius and Harry’s ‘advanced magic’, Harry’s fame, ‘Sirius’s’ relation to Salazar Slytherin. Sirius also avoided the Gryffindors, based on the fact that Harry already knew them.
“Susan!” Sirius found the red-headed girl that was related to Amelia, Edgar and Elaine’s girl. Susan sat in a circle with half a dozen other students, some Sirius recognized and some he didn’t know. There was the girl Harry went to the Yule Ball with and her twin sister, Mandy Brocklehurt, Lily Moon, then a boy with blonde hair and beady eyes.
“Sirius! Hi!” Susan was just as friendly as her dad had been, which made her a great place to start. She smiled at Sirius from where she had been sitting, playing what Sirius thought might have been a muggle card game.
“Have you all met Harry?” Sirius asked, yanking on Harry’s wrist so he stumbled forward and awkwardly lifted a hand.
The Patil sisters giggled, which was annoying. Susan and Mandy waved back, neither of them looking as suddenly pensive as Lily Moon or the boy.
“I’m glad you’re out of the Hospital Wing,” Susan told Harry, seemingly genuine to Sirius. “My Aunt told me that they think Professor Quirrell was possessed, it’s so awful.”
“My dad works at St Mungo’s and he said that there was a lot of dark magic infecting Professor Quirrell,” Mandy told Harry, quite sympathetic really.
Sirius gave Harry another push toward them and gave him a subtle thumbs up when Harry sent him a scowl.
“I… er… I didn’t mean to kill him,” Harry said.
“Of course you didn’t!” Susan said while the Patils nodded and the boy seemed skeptical. Susan scooted over so there was space between her and Mandy. “Do you guys want to play cards? It’s called Uno, Terry brought it from home.”
“I’ve got some things to check on but Harry would love to,” Sirius said. “Have fun!”
Harry gave Sirius another deeply unimpressed look when Sirius left him behind, but Sirius only wanted to walk around and spread the word that Harry didn’t purposefully kill anyone and if Sirius heard otherwise there would be problems.
Shy or not, nobody deserved to be treated like like a fucking killer when they were clearly innocent.
The party was absolutely a success in Sirius’s correct opinion. There were groups of kids talking about their upcoming flying lesson, some of them playing some game that involved biscuits and empty milk jugs.
Best of all, once they saw that Harry wasn’t some terrible person, Harry seemed to be in the center of attention. Sirius was relieved to see that Harry wasn’t shrinking away, hiding in a corner and glaring at everyone, but it made Sirius’s left arm feel a bit empty.
“I think this is the longest you two have ever been apart,” Blaise told Sirius when he found Sirius glaring in a corner. Blaise handed Sirius a bottle of pumpkin juice and Sirius suddenly and fiercely wished it were firewhiskey.
A few more years… then Sirius could get them all properly trashed.
“Who?” Sirius asked, as if he didn’t know.
“You and Potter.” Blaise waved to where Harry talked with Neville and Hannah. Sirius couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but he could see Hannah hanging on Harry’s every word.
“I don’t live in his pocket,” Sirius sniffed. “I want him to make other friends.”
“Because he’s driving you batty?” Blaise just kept talking before Sirius could warn him to shut the hell up. “Honestly, I don’t know how you two don’t kill each other. Have you even slept in separate beds yet? I swear Theo said you two probably shower together.”
“Blaise…” Sirius stayed perfectly calm even when his blood began racing with a low simmering of anger.
What did a bunch of annoying kids know about Sirius and Harry? What did they know about how Harry was the only person left in Sirius’s life long before they went through the veil? What did they fucking know about how Harry was the only thing that Sirius thought about for twelve years when he was tormented, isolated, bloody tortured?
They didn’t know a damn thing.
“Go away,” Sirius said, keeping his gaze fixed on Harry. “If you’re here when I say three, I’ll curse you.”
Sirius wasn’t able to say one before Blaise moved across the room so quickly that it was nearly apparation.
Since there was nothing at all wrong with Sirius and Harry being close (And why wouldn’t they be? Nobody else knew the things they did, knew of the future that could happen if they weren’t careful), Sirius stormed over to Harry and shoved his way in the conversation.
“I was telling Neville that we met his grandfather,” Harry said, accepting Sirius at his side without any comment. Harry even scooted over to make more space for Sirius, because there was nothing wrong with having a best mate.
“He and my grandmum don’t get along well,” Neville said, smiling nervously. “He calls her a p-prude and she says he’s an idiot.”
Hannah and Harry laughed, which seemed to bolster Neville’s nerves.
“He’s very friendly,” Harry told Neville. “I spent half a summer at Diagon and he - he…” Harry trailed off and Sirius bit the inside of his cheek at his slip up.
It wasn’t quite so easy to keep all sorts of things to themselves, now was it?
“We met him on the first day of school,” Sirius said, taking pity on Harry and cutting in. “He gave us sundaes, it’s really the best ice cream in the country.”
“We should all go there this summer!” Hannah said with flaps of her hands. “I’ve never been before! I saw it when I went for my supplies, but my mum wouldn’t let us stop.”
“We should all go!” Sirius agreed immediately. “It’ll be a summer reunion!”
“We can go on July 30th,” Harry said, smiling blandly at Sirius while his eyes were a touch too innocent. “Since it’s your and Neville’s birthday.”
Damn. Sirius actually forgot that Neville had been born the day before Harry. How could he forget? It had been a huge deal in the Order as they all fought over which boy the prophecy could have been about.
The majority of people thought it would be pureblooded Neville, which was proof that even the ‘right side’ of the divide could carry prejudices. And when the ‘right side’ was led by Dumbledore, who became more and more suspicious to Sirius by the day, it wasn’t any big shock to Sirius.
Sirius had always suspected that even the best of people had a dark side, some of them just hid it well. Peter had hidden his for eleven years.
It wasn’t much longer after that conversation and agreement to get as many of the students in their year to meet over the summer that kids started to leave. Someone mentioned curfew being over and Harry started explaining the best routes for them to make it to their dorms without being caught.
Most of the kids had left when Sirius caught Harry frowning after a pair of the Gryffindor girls who left with whispered goodbyes to Harry and Sirius both.
“I think Ron might really hate me,” Harry told Sirius quietly. “I’m not terribly surprised that Hermione didn’t show up, but Ron? He must actually hate me to have missed out on a first year party.”
Sirius felt a twinge of something uncomfortable in his gut at how forlorn Harry sounded over Ron. It didn’t make a damn bit of sense to Sirius, but the party was meant to help Harry not make him more distraught over his crappy friend.
“On the bright side though, I think everyone else loves you,” Sirius told him while they waved goodbye to another small group that set off toward the Ravenclaw Tower. “I barely saw you all night, you’re so bloody popular now.”
Harry rolled his eyes and pushed his shoulder against Sirius’s.
“Because I thought you’d annoy me if I didn’t come up with ten names,” Harry said. “How can you stand it? Talking to them all? I thought I was going to cry having to listen to them complain about how hard charms is.”
Sirius laughed, partially relieved that Harry hadn’t found anyone else he’d rather spend all his time with.
“They’ll be interesting in a few years,” Sirius said knowingly. When the last two kids cleared the room, Harry pulled his cloak from his bag to toss over the two of them for the trip down to the dungeons.
“Just wait until we corrupt them all,” Sirius whispered while they walked. “I don’t know why you can’t just admit that Draco’s going to be hysterical when we break him of his habits.”
“Because he’s a dick,” Harry said bluntly. “He called Hermione a mudblood then said that Cedric got what was coming to him.”
Sirius winced, that was pretty awful.
“That sounds a lot like Lucius,” Sirius told him. “Cissa is as snobby as they come, but she always had the sense to keep things to herself. Her and Alice were friends all the way up until Cissa’s wedding. I think Alice was in the wedding party, now that I think about it…”
Sirius hadn’t been there, but he saw photos. Sirius had all the photos of that wedding saved in an album at Grimmauld Place, they were the last ones that he had of Regulus.
“Hogwarts sounds different when you were a student. A real student," Harry stressed the difference, as if Sirius needed it. “I got the impression that you and your friends didn’t associate with any of the Slytherin or future - past? - death eaters.”
“It’s not like we knew who would turn out to be a death eater when we were eleven,” Sirius said defensively. “Cissa was my cousin, second favorite behind Andy. I knew Bella ate up that pureblooded bullshite, I thought Cissa might go the Andy route.”
“Andy is Tonks’s mum?” Harry asked. They took the turn for the dungeon, neither of them accidentally turning toward Gryffindor anymore. They did that the first week… Sirius pretended that it didn’t bother him to sleep in the dungeons that were dark, chilly…
It was better with Harry there; Sirius never would have voluntarily slept in the dungeons otherwise.
“Yeah.” Sirius did some quick math at the mention of Tonks. “I think she graduated last year. Merlin, she’s older than I am now.”
That was strange to think about. Everyone Sirius once knew who was still alive would be older than him. If Sirius tried to see Andy, she wouldn’t talk about family dinners where they sat side-by-side and tried to make themselves invisible. Andy would see Sirius as a kid, not someone who shared an entire history and childhood with.
It was a relief to have so much of his history stripped from him - Sirius James never lost his brother or his best friend; Sirius James didn’t have parents who hated him. Sirius James could do anything he pleased with nobody but Harry to risk disappointing - but there were apparently parts of his past that Sirius found he was sad to lose.
“Maybe I’ll write to Andy,” Sirius mused later that night. After a few comments from the boys about the party, Sirius didn’t even think about it before climbing up in Harry’s bed and settling down beside him.
Sirius and James used to sleep together all the time, mostly because of Sirius’s nightmares. Sirius didn’t know if it was better or worse that Harry slept about as poorly as he did some nights - certainly they woke each other up more than Sirius and James had, but it was nice to have someone who got it.
“I could go see her this summer, pop in and introduce myself,” Sirius went on, thinking aloud while Harry checked the map to make sure the others had all gotten to their dorms without issue.
“You’ll have to tell me how it goes…” Harry mumbled distractedly. “I’ll be stuck with the Dursleys, I’m sure.”
Sirius snorted. He was lying on his back, staring up at the cleverly charmed ceiling, the one that twinkled a dark and starry night back at him.
“You’re not staying with them anymore,” Sirius told Harry firmly. “You’ll stay with me. Hell, it’s your bloody house, not even Dumbledore can find you if you don’t want found.”
“That’s great,” Harry said. “Sure, whatever you want to do.”
Sirius rolled on his side to see what had Harry so distracted. Harry was staring intently at the map, his eyes moving just slightly while they tracked a dot that Sirius was too lazy to look at.
“Someone get caught?” Sirius guessed. “Goldstein? Now that kid is bloody loud.”
“Er, no.” Harry shoved the map to Sirius, too aggressive with such a precious relic. “I think Dumbledore hired a new professor.”
“Did he?” Sirius took the map and rolled back on his back so he could hold it up over his head to inspect. Dumbledore was alone in his office and Sirius slowly traced the map from Dumbledore’s office to the quarters for the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
When he saw the dot, Sirius felt his heart actually skip a beat. Sirius didn’t know who he had expected, but it wasn’t Remus.
“Moony?” Sirius said, unsure if his suddenly racing heart was excitement or nerves. Sirius and Remus had such a tangled history, so much love and hurt dealt between them, betrayals and apologies… How was Sirius meant to pretend that Remus was a stranger? How was Sirius meant to sit in his class and act as if he didn’t know every constellation of scars on Remus’s body!
“Two years too soon,” Harry said, his voice sounding muffled behind Sirius’s too loud thoughts. “I don’t think it’s exactly a coincidence, do you?”
A coincidence? No. Sirius didn’t believe in those.
Whatever reason Dumbledore had for hiring Remus, Sirius was sure that he would find out eventually. Remus was too much Dumbledore’s man, too grateful for the opportunities Dumbledore gave him… Whatever the reason would be, Sirius didn’t think it was a coincidence that Remus was brought in a week after Sirius was partially involved in the death of Quirrell.
And, Sirius realized with the last bit of humor he had about the appointment, it meant that Sirius and Harry were going to have to be careful. If anyone could recognize the Sirius in Sirius, it would be Remus John Lupin.