Leo Rising

A month goes by, too fast for Harry to catch, and before he’s ready, the June full moon rolls around. In the week before it, Remus seems to grow increasingly tired. Afternoons that are usually spent on loud laughs and baking projects become slow, achey times of naps and teacups.

Harry comes downstairs one morning, the day of the moon, to find Sirius sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by parchment.

“Are you alright?” Harry asks, sitting down and sliding a mug of coffee to Sirius.

Sirius groans. “I’m trying to find a dose of Wolfsbane for Moony. Nobody fucking brews it because it takes four bloody weeks and has fucking aconite in it, so I…” He lets his head drop into his hands. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it in time.”

Harry winces. Before coming to live with Sirius and Professor Lupin, he’d never really considered the effects of lycanthropy outside of the transformation on the full moon. But in the last month, he’d had a strange window into the lengths Professor Lupin went to to keep himself healthy. Harry had watched him take iron supplements every morning to stave off an anaemic iron deficiency, which was apparently very common among lycanthropes.

“It’s not that I actually lose that much blood every month, it’s just that a fair amount sort of gets lost in the transformation.” Remus had explained to him, after Harry had worriedly asked if he actually bled out every full moon.

The kettle whistles, bringing Harry out of his thoughts and back into reality. He stands for a moment in front of the stove, turning over the facts of lycanthropy in his mind.

“You worried about him?” Sirius asks, putting the parchment down. Harry hesitates, then nods.

Sirius stands up, walking around the table to pull Harry into a hug. “I know it’s hard to watch him go through all this.” he says quietly. “I’ve been doing it for almost twenty-three years and it doesn’t get any easier.”

“Do you…” Harry pauses. “Do you–are you two–you’re not just good mates, are you?”

Sirius barks a laugh, pulling out of their hug and placing his hands on Harry’s shoulders. “No, Harry, we’re not. I’ve been wondering when you’d figure it out. But, er, we’re…I love him. Have since we were kids.”

Harry smiles. “That’s good. You seem good for each other.”

Sirius pulls him into another hug. “You’re so like your father,” he whispers.

I know, Harry thinks. He doesn’t say it.

✶ ✶ ✶

Remus comes stumbling downstairs an hour later, attempts to make himself tea, and is thwarted by both Sirius, who pushes him into a chair, and Harry, who makes three cups of chamomile tea.

“You really don’t have to, Harry,” Remus says for the hundredth time.

“But I want to.” Harry says simply. “Besides, it’s easy now that I can use magic.” He carefully levitates three mugs out of the cupboard and onto the kitchen table. One of the mugs narrowly misses Sirius’s head, but they all end up solidly on the table in one piece.

Remus huffs a laugh. “Flitwick’d be proud of that one, if he could see over that ridiculous moustache,” he says drily. Harry chokes on a laugh, nearly spitting out his tea, and Remus’ eyes widen in horror as he realises what he’s said. “Merlin, Harry, please don’t go spreading that around Hogwarts. I, er, I hold all of my colleagues in the highest esteem, er, of course.”

Harry snickers into his toast. He’s not sure if it’s the fast-approaching moon or something else, but in the past weeks he’s seen a much different, much funnier side of reserved, quiet Professor Lupin.

He thinks it’s something he could get used to, really, but that it might be a little awkward when they went back to school. He’s finally getting used to calling Remus, well, Remus. He’ll have to switch back to Professor once the new term started.

Harry smiles to himself. He’s used to thinking about the start of term like it was going to save his life, but now, for the first time in his life, he isn’t desperately looking forward to the end of the summer.

He feels almost like a normal teenager.

“Harry, I’m headed to the shops, you want to come along?”

Harry jumps up. “Yes! Magical or no?”

Sirius wrinkles his nose. “I’m not sure. We just need groceries, but Moony, didn’t you say you could use some willow bark?”

“It’s fine,” Remus mumbles. His head is pillowed in his arms, tea abandoned on the table in front of him.

“He does need it,” Sirius says, winking at Harry conspiratorially. “We’ll go to Diagon. Ready in five?”

Harry nods and darts upstairs to get dressed. His wardrobe is still rather limited, but instead of Dudley’s old clothes it’s Sirius and Remus’. Sirius had promised to take him shopping by the end of the month, but Harry isn’t too worried about it. He rather likes his combination of old band t-shirts and cuffed corduroy trousers.

He’ll never tell anyone this, but he thinks he looks, well, cool. His hair has grown longer than it ever has, now that he’s finally escaped from Aunt Petunia and her kitchen scissors, and despite the way it dangles in his eyes sometimes, he likes flicking it back with a toss of his head.

Harry pauses in front of the mirror in the hallway and scrubs a hand through his hair, trying to make it look effortlessly tousled in the way that Sirius’ always does. It ends up appearing as if he’d just rolled out of bed, so he frantically tries to smooth it down before ducking away.

Sirius’s eyes twinkle with something familiar when Harry appears at the top of the stairs.

“Your hair’s getting long, sprog,” he says. Harry flushes pink.

“I–er–I’ll cut it, or something, before school.”

Sirius shrugs good-naturedly. “You don’t have to. But if you want to keep it longer like that, I’ll have to show you how to take care of it. Won’t be too difficult, just conditioner and a defuser and such.”

Harry nods. He doesn’t know the first thing about hair products. He knows his hair isn’t straight like Ron’s or Remus’s, but his loose waves definitely couldn't compare to Hermione’s tight, shiny curls that she pulled into a pouffe at the crown of her head every morning.

“Did my dad–did he ever–was his hair like mine?” he asks, before he can stop himself.

Sirius tilts his head, considering. “It was, yeah. He usually kept his a little shorter than yours is now, but I think there were a couple times when he went a little too long between haircuts and had some kind of emo fringe thing going on. We can try to find some of the products he used, if you want.”

Harry grins. “Yeah, yeah, definitely. That would be great.”

✶ ✶ ✶

Diagon Alley is not as crowded as it usually is. Though, Harry reasons, he’s usually there when about half his entire school is doing their back to school shopping, so maybe he doesn’t have the greatest idea of the baseline crowds anyway.

The pair of them get some looks, Harry being the Boy Who Lived and all, but Sirius escapes the suspicious glances, having applied a glamour to his features before leaving. He's now parading around with a long, sharp nose and shoulder length platinum blonde hair.

He looks like a Malfoy, and Harry tells him this. Sirius barks a laugh.

“Good ol’ Narcissa is my cousin, you know.”

Harry nearly cracks his neck turning to look at his godfather. “She’s your what? You’re related to Draco Malfoy?”

Sirius sees the look of disgust on Harry’s face and wrinkles his nose. “Most all pureblood families are, sprog, but Narcissa’s a Black. Bellatrix, er, Lestrange is her sister, and their father Cygnus is–was–my mother’s brother. That’s the French side of the family, and then my father’s from the Japanese side.”

Harry tilts his head in confusion. “The–sorry, the French side of the family? Are your parents–were they–”

Sirius grimaces, but there’s humour behind his eyes. “Cousins, yes. Any self-respecting member of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black would never admit it, but the entire family is absolutely crawling with incest. I’m admitting it, of course, but only because I was disowned.”

Harry turns to look at Sirius. "You were disowned? Was it--what happened?"

Sirius gives a short, tight nod. “Yes. I–” he pauses, and looks as if he’s deciding how to proceed. “I almost died the night I ran away. Your dad’s parents saved my life, I owed everything to them. Still do. They, er, they died when we were 18. Dragonpox.”

“They were good people?”

When Sirius smiles, his eyes are glittering with unshed tears. “The best.”

✶ ✶ ✶

It begins to rain in the late afternoon: large, fat drops tumbling out of the sky and running in thick rivulets down the window panes of the flat. Harry curls up in his room, in his cosy bed by the window, and begins reading Emma, a classic novel by a muggle author that Sirius has recommended to him.

Around six o’clock, Sirius brings him a sandwich for supper, and together, they eat quickly, and discuss their plan for the moon. Harry will stay upstairs, in his room, while Sirius is with Remus in their magically-expanded cellar.

“And if you need anything, you can use the fire in me and Moony’s room and call Minerva, okay?” Sirius tells him, heavy hand on Harry’s shoulder. “And don’t worry too much about us, yeah? We’ll be alright.”

“I know,” Harry says, though he can’t prevent the anxiety stirring in the pit of his stomach. He’s seen the scars slashed across Remus’s face and arms, and knows what the wolf is capable of.

Sirius bids him goodnight and then descends the stairs all the way down to the cellar, where Remus is waiting for him.

Harry watches the moon creep above the horizon and tracks its progress across the sky even as his eyes itch with tiredness.

Below, Moony breaks free of his human form and howls into the night.