History's Footnote

To the first boy who lit me a flame

Does your heart still remember my name? 

The next few months passed listlessly for Sirius. Harry returned to Hogwarts, and no one let him out on missions. He had less freedom now than when he’d been on the run. The only sense he had of time passing was the slow decay of leaves on the single tree outside his window. 

Remus came by when he could, but the missions were taking a toll on him. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sirius asked. 

Remus moved closer to him, hand on his waist. “I don’t want to talk, no…”

He pushed him into the nearest room, the one with the tapestry, and against the wall, kissing fiercely along his jaw and down his neck.

Sirius sighed, he tasted of cold, of adventure, of the outside world. He started asking more about the mission, but was distracted effectively by the sudden realisation that Remus was kneeling in front of him, undoing his belt.

“Oh - ” Sirius choked out, his head lifted against the wall. He was stood exactly where his name had been blasted off the family tree. He found he suddenly didn’t care. In fact, he didn’t care much about anything. 

*

The spaces of time in between Remus’s visits were long, empty days which Sirius filled with drinking. He stopped cooking, and dirty plates began to stack up. When he received a cryptic message from Harry, he impulsively decided to talk to him directly over floo.

When his appearance only seemed to distress Harry, he was disappointed. Harry didn’t seem to understand what Sirius knew to be true, that it was worth the risk to see him. 

Sirius tried to dislodge the bitter feeling in his chest, and move the subject on to the contents of Harry’s message. Together with Ron and Hermione, Harry had plenty to say about his new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. 

“You should hear Remus talk about her,” said Sirius.

“Moony knows her?” Hearing Harry use his nickname always knocked the breath out of Sirius. He sounded so much like James. 

He shook himself, and replied “No, but she was personally responsible for the anti-werewolf legislation that has prevented him from being able to get any kind of conventional job. She’s written all kinds of laws holding back the rights of magical creatures - anyone who isn’t a witch or wizard, basically.”

While the three of them took this information in, Sirius looked around at the common room. It hadn’t changed much since he’d been a student, and he felt an ache in his sternum for times gone by. That was when the idea came to him.

“Hey, why don’t we meet up properly? I could become Padfoot, meet you in Hogsmeade - ”

“NO!” 

Harry’s response was so visceral, Sirius nearly dropped out of the fire completely. He felt anger rise within him as Harry tried to explain how dangerous the situation would be. He knew James would never have reacted this way, and decided to let Harry know this, before returning to Grimmauld Place, his eternal prison. 

He sat on the floor of the kitchen, a faint pounding in his head, and he regretted everything he said instantly. Mentally, he thought through the conversation, and saw his feelings for what they really were. It wasn’t anger he had felt, it was loneliness. It was despair, regret, grief for a life he had once had but was his no longer.

*

“That’s what you’re wearing?” 

“Hello to you too, Tonks.” Replied Eloise, somewhat curtly. 

The two of them had just apparated, separately, to outside Grimmauld Place. Eloise had been in talks with merpeople all morning, and had left Remus there to work on their next steps. She was wearing robes from her lawyer days, still preferring to look professional where she could. It contrasted Tonks’ look of grubby dungarees, which she’d matched with extremely short green hair. Eloise smiled and embraced her warmly. She always looked cute, even when she was angry.

“I’m serious,” grinned Tonks. “How are you planning on painting in those?”

“I think you forget I’m a witch sometimes. Some of us actually bothered to learn household spells.”

“Pfft. You’re no fun. I’m definitely going to get paint on you today.”

Eloise rolled her eyes, and together they rang the doorbell.

“Where’s Moony?” Sirius answered the door without so much as a ‘hello’.

Remus had warned Eloise that Sirius was going to be difficult, so she pushed straight past him into the house. Behind her, she noticed Tonks shrug to Sirius before following her in.

“He’s busy, you know that.”

“He’s always busy.”

Eloise kicked off her shoes and turned back to him. “Yet he always comes back here. Would you rather he was with the werewolves? He’s staying out of the fray, largely doing admin tasks - at your request, Sirius. So do you think you could stop being such a prat?”

Sirius scowled, and contented himself with picking small flecks of paint off of the hallway wall. Eloise surveyed him cooly. She was six years younger than him, but it felt like the other way round sometimes. She reflected that thirteen years in Azkaban hadn’t left him much time for him to grow into a fully fledged adult, and resolved to give him more chances.

“So, why are you here?” He muttered.

With his lack of twenties in mind, she chose to take this as an olive branch. A bare, wintery branch, but a branch nonetheless. She nudged Tonks to take over.

“We-ell…” Tonks bounced forwards, “I noticed I was missing from that beautiful family tree room. I thought we could repaint it, get rid of them all!”

She pulled two buckets of paint from her pocket, far too large to have fitted in there without magic. She lifted them towards Sirius, and raised her eyebrows. Sirius looked up from his paint-picking. 

“Can we blast off the other names first?”

“A fine suggestion!”

The tension successfully broken, they went through to the family tree room to investigate. After a brief discussion, which consisted of Tonks and Eloise bickering, they all settled on yellow. Eloise tapped the paint and it obediently changed colour. They were methodic to begin, covering each old family member one by one, but after Sirius got the wines in it quickly descended into silliness. They all laughed together as they splattered the regal Black family in blobs of paint, blasting off bot of Sirius's parents one by one and then the three of them doing Bellatrix's together. Sirius's wand hovered over his brother's face for a moment, but he lowered his hand, and decided just to paint it over. Regulus's face was just visible through the last layer, his solemn expression pale and ghoulish through the yellow. Sirius shivered, staring until a shriek from Tonks diverted his attention. Somehow, Tonks’ dungarees were more paint than original material, and she was trying her best to get some on Eloise’s robes, but it seemed to always mysteriously slip off again. 

After noticing they’d managed to get drops on the ceiling, Tonks decided to get onto Eloise’s shoulders to complete the job. While she was up there, she finally managed to drip some paint onto the collar of Eloise’s robes.

“YESSSS!!!” She celebrated, and Sirius laughed a full bellied laugh that was so surprising that it made them both laugh, and none of them could stop.

Meanwhile, Remus was collecting up his notes from the meeting. The results hadn’t been what he wanted, but he respected them. The merpeople had decided they were leaving Europe, and they had every right to. It simply wasn’t their war to fight. He’d agreed to maintain protections for their old homes,  in the event that they would be able to return home one day. He imagined, briefly, a world where he could run too. Pick up Harry, and Sirius, and not look back. 

Fuck. He was so tired. All he wanted was his own bed, but as he stepped out, he forced himself to apparate to Grimmauld Place instead. On the threshold, he paused, sensing a different kind of energy than the usual oppressive loneliness. He opened the door to a scene of high spirits, and an overwhelming display of the colour yellow. 

“Erm… hello?” He stood in the door, eyebrows raised.

“Reeemus!!” Eloise shouted, and they all ran at him with paint covered hands.

Remus was a moment away from casting a shield spell, but he caught a mischievous sparkle in Sirius’s eye, and it disarmed him so completely he didn’t even feel the effects of the paint being dropped all over him. His tiredness evaporated, and the scene descended into a full paint fight.

Eventually, they all exhausted themselves, and sat down to admire the final look, Eloise quietly lifting the excess paint off the floor and back into the bucket with a flick of her wand. 

“I think it’s missing something” Tonks announced, holding up a hand she’d dipped into the paint, which was now red. She strode up to the corner of the room and placed her palm flat against the wall. Eloise stood up next to her, and added her own. When they stood back, Remus saw that their hand prints overlapped, connected by their pinkies.

“Oh, I LOVE that!” Said Sirius, tripping over his feet as he dragged Remus up to add their own underneath. Obediently, Remus added his hand print to the wall, pressing it hard and firm. He smiled as Sirius added his own and the four of them stood together, arm in arm, in front of their new family tree.

It was a lovely day. But when Sirius woke up around noon with a throbbing head, Remus had already left. No matter how happy he felt, the moment these people walked out the door, he felt empty again. He felt they always took their happiness with them. 

Two days later, he received a message. The Order had experienced its first attack.