Sirius
“Fred, please stop.”
Sirius felt as if he’d repeated that phrase one million times over, and it had only been an hour.
It turned out that Remus was right— the older kids were a lot to handle. Fred and George weren’t as bad as Molly and Remus made them out to be. They needed constant attention and entertainment, but that was all, really. They were incredibly articulate three year olds, with an amusing passion for trouble that they had inherited from their Prewett uncles.
It was Missy and Percy that drove Sirius up the wall.
He was pretty sure he couldn’t call children “annoying know-it-alls,” but it almost slipped out a few times.
Missy acted like the entirety of the world’s knowledge was stored in her six year old brain, and spent most of her time ordering Percy around even though they were barely ten months apart. Between the two of them, Sirius felt like he was back in school.
Their blunt distaste for Sirius’ extroverted, untamed view of life felt like wisps of his childhood returning. It made him remember a cold, ghostly hand lying on top of his own. Of the small voice of a little brother warning him, “Sirius, you know Mother doesn’t like it when you do that. Sirius, you’ll get yourself in trouble."
“Fred, please stop.”
Fred darted behind Sirius and shot another string of tiny fireworks at his twin. The zaps of light disintegrated once they touched skin, but George put on a show, howling with snot dripping from his nose as Fred laughed.
“If you don’t stop torturing George, we won’t go and meet Moony at the river,” said Sirius. He took a cigarette from his pocket, leaving it unlit and dangling from his lips. He gave an exaggerated sigh and leaned against the kitchen counter.
That stopped Fred in his tracks. He stomped his foot. “I want to go with Moony and Percy!”
Sirius raised his hands in mock defeat. “We can’t go if you keep hurting your brother. Hands are for…”
He racked his brain for the vocabulary that Lily used with Harry. Her variation of baby talk was torture to hear, and it felt even stupider to say out loud.
“Hands are for hugging,” he managed to say evenly. “Not for attacking a fellow troublemaker.”
(Which was extremely hypocritical, since Sirius and Remus had done exactly that barely twelve hours prior. Sirius had only been tied up for an hour, but it had hurt his ego more than he wanted to admit. It didn't help that James had arrived bursting with uncontrollable laughter, gasping something about “receiving an anonymous tip that Sirius might be caught up at the Potters’.” Sirius had a sneaking suspicion that the anonymous tip had taken the form of a wolf patronus, but he was not about to give Remus any credit.)
Fred clenched his hands into fists and pushed them at Sirius’ face. “Look! I stopped. Can we go see Moony?”
Sirius used two fingers to pull the cigarette from his lips, as if it really were lit. “You have to promise to stop with the fireworks, Fred. Save them for a time when they’re truly needed. Trust me, there are cleverer ways to annoy a brother besides outright abuse.”
“Do you have a brother?” George asked. He wasn’t tall enough to reach the doorknob, but he jumped hopelessly in an inspiring attempt.
Sirius twisted the knob for him. “No,” he said, “but I have friends like brothers. Do you know what my friend Peter taught me?”
“What?” Fred asked.
Sirius bent down to Fred’s level and lifted his pinky. “A pinky promise. Once you make it, you can never take it back. Pinky promise me that you won’t hurt your brother.”
Fred hooked his finger around Sirius’ and nodded solemnly. “Pinky promise.”
Sirius looked into Fred’s wide eyes and managed a smile. “Good lad.”