Chapter 3
"These ones, do you think? Or the ones on the end?"
"Sirius, it makes literally no difference, whatever you pick we can just modify 'til they fit him anyway, will you please just make a decision so we can leave."
"You need to calm down," Sirius said loftily, scooping up a few boxes of nappies and dumping them in the trolley. "There, what's next on the list?"
Remus shifted Harry so he was more firmly seated on her hip, and unfolded the crumpled napkin she'd scribbled the list on during their hasty breakfast at the café next to the train station. "Baby food, I guess? I don't know what kind. What do one year olds even eat?"
"Why in Merlin's name are you asking me?" Sirius asked, pushing the trolley off down the aisle towards the food section. "Soft stuff, I guess? But I'm pretty sure he's on proper food now, he was eating an egg last time I visited... anyway. Eggs. And more porridge? He seemed to like it back at the café."
"Sounds about right," Remus nodded, racking her brains for memories of what her aunt and uncle had fed her little cousins on the few occasions she'd seen them. "Maybe stuff like yoghurt and fruit as well - bananas, grapes, satsumas, stuff like that. We can put a suspension charm on it all so it doesn't go off."
"We'll need things for dinners as well - if we get some meat and vegetables will we have a way of cooking them?"
"If we can find a hostel with a kitchen, yeah. D'you reckon he'll eat pasta?"
"No idea. Oi Harry, do you like pasta?"
"Ba," Harry replied, chewing on his fingers.
"We'll have to expand the bag again." Sirius slowed down when they reached the breakfast aisle, picked up a few bags of porridge oats and tossed them onto the growing pile in the trolley.
"And a place to hide while we get all this shit inside it, can't be going full-on Mary Poppins in broad daylight outside the Asda in Urmston. Speaking of - Sirius, we really need to get a move on."
There was an older couple eyeing them from over by the muesli. The man grumbled something under his breath that sounded a lot like "deviants". The woman murmured in agreement. Remus shivered.
"What's the rush?" Sirius asked distractedly, scanning the rest of the cereal aisle for inspiration and not noticing any of this. Then she blinked and turned around, as if only just realising how on-edge Remus was. "Look, it's okay," she said, lowering her voice. "We've covered our tracks, no one's going to find us here."
"That's not what I meant," Remus said through gritted teeth, watching the couple pick up some boxes and move on to the next aisle. "It's just. How we look right now. People around here aren't... the attitudes - we don't fit. I mean, we're wearing leather jackets and flannel for fuck's sake, we should've stayed in Liverpool or gone straight to Manchester-"
"Okay, you're making exactly no sense whatsoever right now," Sirius told her. "We agreed to stay out of the major cities as much as we could because that's where they'll be expecting us to be, yeah? We wouldn't even be going to Manchester if there were any hostels around here."
"Yeah," Remus agreed with a sigh, jigging Harry on her hip to try and stop him picking up on her anxiety. "Yeah. Just. We need to be careful, and probably change our clothes sooner rather than later."
"Why? I mean sure, you do sort of look like the lovechild of a librarian and a lumberjack, but I look bloody fantastic."
"Fuck off, neither of us has slept in over twenty four hours, we both look like shit. How do you even know what a lumberjack is?"
"I think you'll find I have a vast array of knowledge spanning many-"
"Sirius."
"Right. It was on that weird show we watched with Li- we watched on the CCB a few summers back, Minty Pylon or something."
"You mean the BBC, and it's Monty Python, oh my god-"
"Whatever, now who's getting sidetracked? I thought we were in a huge rush to escape what I can only assume is a shop full of militant vegetarians, given your terror that we'll be attacked because of our jackets of all things-"
"You are way too used to London. Just - let's just finish up and get to Manchester before anyone tries anything, alright?"
Remus let out a long breath, ignoring Sirius' baffled, "tries what?", and readjusted Harry again, smiling at him reassuringly. She even managed not to grimace when he shoved a handful of her hair into his mouth.
It wasn't until later that Sirius finally clocked on.
"You were worried they'd think we were a couple!" she burst out suddenly, far too loud in the mostly-empty hostel foyer.
The guy manning the desk looked up, eyebrows raised. Remus glared daggers at Sirius.
"Look, it's alright," the man said. "We're not like them bible-bashers down the road, we don't deny entry based on... stuff like that. Kid friendly and all," he added, nodding at Harry in Sirius' arms. "Erm. So are you actually-"
"Two beds please, in an empty room if you've got one," Remus cut him off.
"Right, 'course," the man nodded hastily, flipping open a folder and flicking through to a blank page. "How many nights?"
"Just the one. Is there a kitchen?"
"Yeah yeah, nice and clean, working stove and all."
"Good. How much?"
Sirius moved back while Remus sorted out the money, fishing a plastic toy elephant out of her pocket and giving it to Harry, who looked like he was on the verge of starting to fuss. He made a happy noise and waved it around, almost clunking Sirius in the face.
"Aroo," he declared.
"That's right," Sirius nodded, feeling herself smile. "That's what an elephant says. Can you say elephant?"
Harry blinked at her.
"El-e-phant," she tried again, sounding out each syllable.
"Pant," Harry replied. "Arooo!"
"Alright, we'll work on that."
"Homenum revelio."
Nothing happened.
McGonagall lowered her wand and sighed. "There's no one here, Albus."
"That is apparent, yes," Dumbledore replied absently, walking through and scrutinising Pettigrew's empty hideout as if searching for a convenient note or something else that would immediately indicate his whereabouts. "Nothing out of place, either. You say no one has heard from him in over a week?"
"Not a word. So if he's been taken, he went quietly. That is... somewhat unsurprising. But I can't imagine the other side would bother holding onto him while their organisation is being decimated. The aurors have been through every known Death Eater hideout and no one has reported him found. So either he's dead..."
"Or he is also in league with Miss Black," Dumbledore finished. "If all this were under different circumstances, I'd comment on this group's impressive sense of loyalty."
McGonagall frowned. "That's something I haven't been able to let go of. If you'd told me even two days ago that Sirius Black would betray James Potter - her last remaining family, for all intents and purposes - I'd have laughed you right out of the building. None of this makes any sense, Albus."
"If there's one thing we've learned, Minerva, it's that very little makes sense in a war."
"Hmm." McGonagall pursed her lips and looked around again. "I suggest we search the place once more and move on to other possible refuges."
"Agreed. We can charm the door to alert us, should he return."
"As long as the alert doesn't come in the form of a short folk ballad this time."
"Are you sure? I thought it added quite the light-hearted touch to the hunt for the Rowles. The aurors seemed to appreciate it."
"Until Alastor got it stuck in his head and started panicking about being enchanted by a fey bard, you mean."
"Until then, yes."
"I think that man at the desk was lying about the kitchen," Sirius said, sweeping a finger across the grimy counter top and grimacing at the trail of off-white it left in the discoloured surface.
"No shit," Remus grumbled from where she was bent over the stove, which was making a lot of alarming clicking sounds as she pressed buttons and twisted various knobs. "Stove's bust as well."
"Can you fix it?"
"Probably, with magic, if no one comes in. Take Harry and go make sure no one's hanging around in the corridor."
"Aye-aye." Sirius scooped up Harry from where she'd sat him in one of the chairs around the wobbly table and carried him over to look out of the kitchen door, which was not actually a door but a curtain made out of strings of beads, for reasons Sirius couldn't even begin to fathom. At least Harry seemed to like them, batting at the strings and giggling at the rattling noise they made.
"No one's there."
Remus didn't answer, but Sirius heard her start to mutter spells under her breath, accompanied by small clinking noises as the stove rearranged itself.
She stood and let Harry play with the beads until the sound of a door opening and approaching voices made her peek out of the doorway again.
"Someone's coming!"
"Motherfucking - alright, almost done."
There was a small knot of people coming down the hall, laughing and jostling each other. Behind her, Remus was still cursing, just barely audible over a series of loud clangs.
"Hurry up!" Sirius snapped, turning around, only to stop short at the site of Remus calmly stirring a bubbling pot on the suddenly-functional stove. "How did you-"
"Come and sit down with Harry, his bib's in the front pocket of the bag. Are the concealing charms holding up?" Remus asked, tipping a jar of pasta sauce into a second pan with her free hand.
Sirius sat Harry on the table and checked quickly to make sure his scar was still hidden. "Yeah, all fine."
She was in the processes of negotiating Harry into wearing his bib when the people entered - three twenty-somethings, all with huge amounts of hair, arguing loudly and incomprehensibly. The only words Sirius could make out were 'milk-snatcher', 'tories' and 'absolute cunts', none of which made any sense to her but made Remus smirk.
"Oh my god, a baby! Rick, stop swearing in front of the bloody baby you twat!" one of the girls exclaimed, rushing over to coo over Harry. "Hiya, little one! Oh, he's adorable, is he yours?"
"Um," Sirius said, tightening her hold on Harry and shifting him away from the stranger a little. "No, he's my nephew. Just babysitting for the afternoon."
"Pol, shove off - sorry about her," one of the others said apologetically, dragging her friend back. "She gets all excited around babies 'cause of her aching womb."
"Fuck off, I do not have an aching womb. Just look at that face, Sally. Look at it," the one now known as Pol said, pointing at Harry impatiently. "Look at that tiny adorable face."
"Stop scaring infants, Pol," said the other member of the group from the sink, where he was filling the kettle. "Here, how'd you get that stove working? We've been trying for days."
"Elbow grease," Remus mumbled, not looking up from her pans.
"Impressive. I'm Rick, by the way. That's Pol and Sally. Sorry in advance."
"Nice to meet you," Sirius said, mind going inconveniently blank as she tried to think of plausible aliases. She noticed the one called Sally was wearing a tartan skirt and heard herself blurt out, "Ah, I'm Kat. That's - Minnie, over by the stove. Minnie."
Remus scowled at her. Sirius ignored it.
"So, what you doing round here, then?" Pol asked, plonking herself down in the chair across from Sirius. "Visiting family?"
"I - yeah. My sister and her husband. We're just watching their kid so they can have a day off. Only they're having their day off in their very small flat, so we had to bring the kid back here and here we are, haha."
Remus shot her an odd look. So did the newcomers.
Sirius cleared her throat. "So what about you lot?"
"Oh, we just came to watch the footie yesterday, thought we'd stick around for a bit and see the sights before we head back to uni."
"Huh. Are you. Having fun?" Sirius asked stiltedly, absently trying to figure out when she'd gotten so bad at making conversation.
Remus finished with the stove and went over to the sink to drain the pasta, temporarily disappearing in a cloud of steam.
"Yeah we are, this is such a great city. Wish I'd come here for uni instead of Preston Polytechnic," Rick said from where he was making a cup of tea at the counter.
Remus came up behind Pol with three bowls of pasta balanced in her hands, and cleared her throat. "S'cuse."
Pol jumped, hand flying to her chest. "Christ, you scared the living daylights out of me! How'd you move so quietly?"
Remus shrugged and edged around her to set the bowls down on the table. Sirius pulled the one with the smallest portion towards her and manoeuvred Harry into his own chair so she could feed him.
"Aah, he's so sweet," Sally beamed, watching Harry reach for the spoon Sirius was using to cut up his pasta into more manageable sizes, only to start smearing sauce all over his face once he got hold of it. "How old is he?"
"One and a bit," Sirius said, taking the spoon back and scooping some food into Harry's mouth before he could get upset about it.
"Bloody adorable - his mum and dad must be so proud," Pol said.
Sirius opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out. She clenched her jaw instead and carried on feeding Harry. Pol, obviously sensing a dead end, turned to Remus instead.
"So, Minnie - you must be good with your hands if you managed to get that stove working! We thought it was a goner, Sally was all set to make a complaint."
Remus, her mouth full of pasta, simply made a noncommittal noise and shrugged.
"Do you do stuff like that for a living?" Rick asked, sipping his tea.
Remus swallowed. "Nah," she said, looking into her bowl with an expression that decidedly did not invite further questions, letting her hair fall forward and obscure even more of her face than it usually did.
Pol exchanged a very unsubtle glance with her friends and stood up. "Well, we'll leave you to your dinner," she said brightly. "We're in room nine if you fancy stopping in. See you!"
They filed out. Remus and Sirius waited until they head the door close down the corridor before they both slumped in relief.
"I swear to god we used to be better at socialising than that," Remus said, the barest hint of a laugh in her voice.
"I was, at the very least," Sirius shot back. "Weren't we like, the most popular kids in school at one point?"
"Fucking war, mate," Remus sighed. "Gets right up your arse and cores you out like a fucking apple."
"Great, thanks for that image."
"Fucknapple," Harry chirped.