Chapter Twenty Six
In the end, Remus allowed himself five minutes of sulking time before the prospect of spending time with Harry and Sirius together became too enticing. He turned his mind to her next pressing matter at hand; the Ministry hearing. He considered how best to bring it up, and decided on waiting until after dinner. That way, Harry could hopefully relax a little first, and then he and Sirius could talk to him, privately and together , and they could form a plan.
This plan was quickly disrupted when he walked into the kitchen in time to hear Sirius say to Harry, “personally, I’d have welcomed a Dementor attack. A deadly struggle for my soul would’ve broken the monotony nicely.”
“Oh, don’t say that. You silly dickhead.” Remus chastised, but he was smiling. Sirius always knew the right thing to say to Harry, even when it would likely be the wrong thing coming from anyone else. “Come on, let’s eat.”
Remus continued to try to discern Harry’s feelings over dinner, but he found himself drawn into a conversation with Arthur and Bill over goblins.
“They’ve suffered losses too,” Arthur was saying. “Remember that family who was murdered in Nottingham?”
“That’s right.” Remus blinked, surprised he’d remembered this. “I think it depends on what they’re offered… if they’re offered the freedoms wizards have denied them for centuries, we could actually get somewhere. Any luck with Ragnok, Bill?”
“He’s feeling pretty anti-wizard at the moment, the Ministry owes the goblins quite a bit of gold from the tournament, you know. They’re refusing to pay”
“There’s a surprise -” Remus began, but stopped short as he noticed a distinct tension from the other end of the table. Of course, Sirius and Harry were at the centre of it. It appeared that Sirius had just out right asked Harry about Voldemort at the dinner table. Why could he not let one thing lie for five minutes?
Molly was seething. They spent the next ten minutes arguing over what they should tell Harry, a conversation that should absolutely not have happened in front of the boy, and all of them threw out insults they’d live to regret. In the middle of it all, Remus caught Sirius’s eye, and he knew. Sirius was right; it was time to introduce Harry to the war.
*
Overall, Remus thought the conversation was rather a disaster. For the Weasley kids, Molly had the final say, but for Harry… well, Remus thought at least James and Lily would be at peace knowing there was a whole village playing parental roles in their son’s life. Ginny stormed off, excluded entirely from the situation, Molly and Sirius looked like they were about to duel, and Harry was frustrated at how few of his questions were being answered. Remus observed a wrath within Harry that hadn’t been there before, and it disquieted him. He had expected Harry to be surly, after everything he’d been through. What he hadn’t expected was for Sirius to match his energy exactly.
This is what happens , he thought, when you isolate a child in a home without love.
Together, the two of them were able to zero in on and destroy the atmosphere of any room. The others began to shrink away from them, making excuses to leave the room or run small errands.
Remus didn’t mind so much. He knew it was a case of letting them both ride their feelings out, and in the meantime he could use it to his advantage to give the others the more boring tasks he’d been putting off. When Harry and Sirius got too much, he’d send them up to feed Buckbeak, where he’d discovered they were happy to spend hours just feeding him chicken and talking. Remus tried not to feel jealous; they had a lot of lost time to make up for. They’d come back to him when they were ready.
For Sirius, this took about a week. It had been a particularly gruelling day of clearing in the house. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were all furious that they’d been prevented from learning more about the Order. Molly and Sirius were coping with their falling out by being overly polite with each other, but openly hostile to Remus who had somehow ended up on the wrong side of them both. Ron had uncovered a nest of doxies, who he’d tried to hex but ended up setting Ginny’s hair on fire. She’d retaliated with a bat bogey hex, which Remus had to admit was rather good, and hard to undo. Instead of helping, Fred jumped out of the way of Ron’s flailing, and a firework he’d been working on fell out of his pocket, exploring and disturbing Walpurga’s portrait. She started screeching slurs at poor Hermione, who had the bad luck at being in her line of vision at the time.
By dinner, hardly anyone was talking to each other. Moody and Tonks arrived to a stony silence.
“Blimey you lot” said Tonks. “We’ve camped out on watch all day not allowed to say a word or scratch our bums… how come you get to be the miserable ones?”
Moody’s magical eye lifted to the ceiling. “Sirius… that’s quite a record collection you’ve got there, bring us some down will you - and I could do with a drink.”
The Weasley twins, who had just come of age, were more than happy to start a round of fire whiskeys.
Sirius leapt up - his record collection from his teenage days was still his pride and joy. He returned with ‘Night at the Opera’, instructing Moody in no uncertain terms that he should play the B side first. Tonks was quick to argue with this, a cheeky glint in her eye as she proclaimed ‘I’m in love with my car’ to be her favourite, and soon she and Sirius were in a heated debate. Remus sighed, not getting involved, and thought how similar the cousins could be sometimes.
Gradually, the mood improved, and Remus noticed Sirius looking at him from across the room. He’d been noticing it a lot recently, actually. When ‘Love of my life’ started to play, it got too intense for Remus and he stepped out into the hall, patting his pocket for cigarettes.
“Here, I’ve got one” A voice behind him said.
There he was, Sirius Black, handing him a cigarette with one hand, pushing his long hair back with the other. They stepped out onto the doorstep, careful not to cross the line where the Fidelius charm stopped. It was a tight fit, and they were stood very close to each other. Sirius was the first to speak.
“I’m sorry I got mad before. You’ve done so much for Harry… so much I wasn’t there to do, and you did a bloody great job at it too.”
Remus sighed. “I feel like I always say the wrong thing… push him in the wrong moments, and end up just pissing him off. And the way he gets angry with the silent brooding and never admitting what’s wrong. It reminds me of James so much I forget why I was angry myself. But… he’s so different from James too, and I forget it.”
Sirius smiled a sad smile, full of nostalgia and regret for moments lost.
“He loves you, you know. And you love him. I can see it. That’s what matters.”
Remus looked over at Sirius. “And he loves you. It doesn’t matter the time you spent apart, you’ve got now. You’ve got time now.”
The air was heavy with the words they weren’t saying to each other. Sirius tried to lighten it by asking “Can you still do that thing where you light it with a click of your fingers?”
Remus acquiesced, and, as he lent over to light Sirius’s cigarette, he grinned. “There’s plenty I can still do” he replied.
“In that case…” Sirius stepped up to Remus, so they were even closer together, their bodies were touching, and Remus kissed him.