Chapter 3
“That was revolting.” Marlene mumbled as she watched the departure of a young blonde woman who had been shamelessly throwing herself at a married man. Her married man, specifically.
“What? Our Harry is quite a charmer.”
Marlene rolled her eyes, and handed Harry the change she’d gotten him at the register. He thanked her quickly and ran off to find his favorite muggle arcade game.
“Right. All Harry. The fact she was undressing you with her eyes was totally secondary to the charisma of our 8 year old.”
“I didn’t notice.” Sirius cringed. He really hadn’t. It was the sort of thing that doesn’t really register after a while. But he still felt irrationally guilty.
“It’s like people have never seen a young man caring for a child before…” her voice still rang out irritated.
“So you’re saying that I’m only worth the illicit ocular disrobing because we have a kid?”
He pulled her in close to him, and kissed the top of her hair.
“I wouldn’t go that far…”
Marlene found herself looking into her husband’s eyes and wishing that they weren’t in the middle of an arcade full of muggles and their children. She really was a lucky woman...
“Right because I seem to remember something about a 4th year scribbling my name all over her notebooks?” He smirked. He would never let that go, even after all this time.
“Oh shut it. And it’s my name thank you very much. I was just a little premature.”
Just then Harry came bolting in their direction.
“Duckie! They’re after me! Hide me!”
Harry made a futile effort at hiding behind Marlene as a strangely familiar looking muggle wearing a nametag that read ‘Nigel F.’ approached.
“Are you this boy’s parents?” Nigel the arcade employee asked in a way that sounded a lot like an accusation.
“That depends… what did he do?” Sirius asked through a cringe.
“I did nothing!I demand a solicitor!”
At that point they noticed he was shoving an inordinate number of gold arcade tokens into his pockets.
“I don’t know how he did it but he made the machine spit out tokens.”
“So you didn’t actually see him do anything?” Marlene raised an eyebrow.
“Ah well. I guess he gets it from you. Get out of here. The lot of you. Don’t come back.”
“Fine then! We can find some place that doesn’t have faulty machines!”
As the family of three turned heel and left Sirius leaned in and whispered to Marlene.
“Who knew Filch had a kid who works in a muggle arcade?”
“The implication that someone did the deed with Argus Filch will haunt me for the rest of my days…”
“What are you whispering about, Pads? Duckie?”
“Nothing Harry... Who wants ice cream?”