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shimotsuki.
All Will Be in Order
When Remus Lupin moves in at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, he must come to terms with Sirius Black and a friendship too long submerged by mistrust, loss, and Azkaban. He must learn to work with Molly Weasley, who seems to be nearly as frightened of werewolves as she is of Voldemort. Clearly, adjustments will have to be made. ( Remus, Sirius, Molly | GoF>OotP | gen )
Chapter 3: A Long Summer (5490 words | PG/mild profanity)
Author's note: Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katyhasclogs for help with British food culture. Additional notes are at the end of the chapter. (Revised, September 2011.)
( 1. The Perfect Flat ) | ( 2. The First Mission ) || ( Chapter Index )
All Will Be In Order
3. A Long Summer
"You awake, Padfoot?" Remus rattled the knob of the door to the second-floor bedroom that the heir of the House of Black had chosen yesterday. It wasn't, he thought, Sirius's boyhood room. "They'll be here any minute."
The door opened and Sirius slouched through, dressed but still yawning. "Bugger this. I don't see why we have to start cleaning at nine in the bloody morning."
Remus chuckled and gave him a nearly gentle nudge with a convenient elbow. "Molly's owl promised something nice for breakfast. Surely that's worth waking up for."
Sirius looked unconvinced, but he grunted and led the way downstairs.
It was a sunny morning, Remus knew, because he'd managed to charm open the heavy floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains in his own room. But the corridors and stairways of the house on Grimmauld Place were dark as midnight. The soft glow from his wand fell on what appeared to be gas lamps mounted here and there on the walls, but they were not in working order. Not yet, Remus amended firmly. Light would be a priority.
Cobwebs clung to their robes as they brushed past. They had simply been too busy the day before, working with Moody and Dumbledore to check the old security spells and set the necessary new ones, to make any headway on the housecleaning beyond their own two bedrooms and a place for Buckbeak. And so the rest of the house was thick with cobwebs—except for the lowest few feet, where Kreacher the house-elf appeared to have kept them cleared away. Some of the webs had occupants, too, hairy black spiders a little larger than Remus would have liked. He shot a Shrinking Spell at every one he saw.
"I wonder how Molly and the children feel about spiders," he mused.
Sirius shrugged. "Not my fault if they don't know what to expect in an abandoned house."
Remus rolled his eyes under cover of darkness. It would be a long summer indeed if certain people planned on being uncooperative the whole time.
Or maybe Sirius was just sleepy. He never had been one for mornings.
They reached the ground floor, followed the hall to the back of the house, and picked their way down one more stairway, because the Floo connection in the basement kitchen was the only one Dumbledore had allowed them to keep open. It would be safe enough; with the house itself under the Fidelius Charm, only those who knew the Secret could Floo in at all.
The kitchen was pitch-black beyond their small circles of wandlight, and it was hung just as thickly with cobwebs as the rest of the house. A carpet of dust covered the stone floor, except for the places where they had disturbed it yesterday in the course of their spellwork, and another spot by a low cupboard where there were many sets of house-elf footprints.
"Kreacher could be keeping things just a bit cleaner." Sirius scowled. "Little blighter."
Remus raised his wand, illuminating the heavy iron chandeliers above the long kitchen table. Wonder of wonders, they still held candles.
It took multiple applications of Evanesco—the cobwebs were thick and sticky enough to resist even magic—but he got one chandelier cleaned up and lit it. The sudden increase in light, dim as it was, made him blink. Now he could see Sirius across the room, emerging from a deep cupboard with a dusty bottle of firewhisky in one hand.
"How's this, Moony?" The scion of the house grinned rather wickedly. "It'll be just what we need tonight, after a full day of ruddy housecleaning."
Remus grinned back, glad that Sirius was recovering his sense of humour. "I see you knew right where to look for that."
The old grandfather clock upstairs began to groan out the chimes for nine o'clock. With a sigh of resignation, Sirius stashed his bottle back in the cupboard and went to light a fire in the fireplace. Remus moved further into the shadows, attacking another chandelier with a series of rapid and persistent Evanescos. He was determined to make the kitchen a little less gloomy, if it was to be the first part of the house that Molly and the children would see.
Almost as soon as Sirius had the fire lit, though, a spinning figure appeared in the grate, and then a small plump woman clutching an enormous wicker basket stepped out into the kitchen. She looked a little breathless from the Floo trip, and her eyes widened as she took in the dust and the cobwebs, but her face wore an expression of relentless friendliness.
The new arrival squared her shoulders and offered her hand with a bright smile. "Hello, Sirius. I'm Molly Weasley." Even in the feeble light, Remus could see her turn rather pink. "We, erm, met in the hospital wing at Hogwarts."
Sirius had told Remus, with great glee, about Molly's bloodcurdling shriek when he reverted to human form at Dumbledore's request. Remus paused in the midst of his scramble to illuminate the kitchen, wondering if he should ride to her rescue, but Sirius merely bowed over her hand and took the basket with effortless grace.
"It's a pleasure, Molly." He smiled, only slightly bitterly. "Welcome to the Gloomy and Most Filthy House of Black."
Remus grinned to himself and turned back to the cobwebs clinging stubbornly to the stubby candles in the second chandelier. It was always amusing to watch Sirius play the role of gracious host, and it fit him all the better in this house, no matter how much he might hate being here.
"I need to Floo the children and have them join us—I didn't want to bring the whole crowd through at once—but do have a crumpet first." Molly gestured at the basket. "There's butter, and my strawberry jam." She smiled perkily again, reminding Remus of a newly Sorted student worried about finding a seat at her House table. "I thought it might have been a while since you'd had fresh crumpets."
Sirius's eyes lit up, just as they had always done when James or Peter nicked something particularly good from the Hogwarts kitchens. "Ta. We love crumpets with jam—" He stopped and looked around, frowning. "Remus? Where'd you go?"
"I'm right here." With a nonverbal Incendio, Remus lit the now-clean chandelier, and the flare of light made Molly jump. "Sorry about that." He gave her an apologetic half-grin as he crossed the room to join the other two by the fireplace. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"Molly," said Sirius expansively, still in full lord-of-the-manor mode, "this is my old friend, Remus Lupin."
"I'm delighted to meet you, Molly." Remus extended a hand and a warm smile. He had liked the Weasley children very well at Hogwarts, and he knew the whole family had been good to Harry. "We certainly appreciate your kind offer to help with the decontamination."
But Molly merely stood and stared, making no move to take his hand. Her eyes were huge and dark, and her pulse beat wildly in her throat; she looked for all the world like a small animal that had been cornered by a—
Remus lowered his hand and concentrated on keeping his smile from slipping, his face from reddening. Stepping back, he turned away, toward the table. "Let me see if I can clean this off a bit, so we'll have a spot to set the basket down." He busied himself with Evanescos again. "The crumpets smell lovely."
He heard Molly start breathing again as he moved further away from her. "Th—thank you, Remus."
Sirius deposited the basket onto the table and crossed his arms over his chest, looking sullen.
Oh, for Merlin's sake, Remus sighed inwardly. Someone had to remember his manners, and it clearly wasn't going to be the lord of the manor after all.
His stomach felt like lead, but Remus reached into the basket and extracted a crumpet. It was still hot. He broke it in two, balancing the pieces in one hand, and waved butter and jam onto it with a twist of his wand.
"Delicious," he pronounced, smiling carefully at Molly again—the mildest, least threatening smile he could produce; he was pretty sure he'd even been able to keep the resignation out. "Go on, Sirius, have one."
There was no response.
Remus looked from Sirius, in the midst of a fit of the sulks, to Molly, edging slowly away from him even as she pasted a nervous grin across her face.
It was going to be a very long summer.
. * . * .
About a century later, the first day of housecleaning was finally over.
The Weasleys wouldn't be staying overnight until enough bedrooms had been decontaminated—which meant a reprieve, at least for tonight. Even as the last redhead was disappearing into the Floo, Sirius hurled himself at the spider-filled cupboard and came out clutching the bottle he'd been dreaming of all ruddy day long.
He performed a perfunctory cleaning charm on a pair of antique tumblers and poured three fingers of whisky into each, pushing one across the newly cleaned kitchen table toward Remus. Then he tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and let the liquor slide down his throat, burning all the way. He sat still for a minute and waited for the tingle in his hands and feet that spoke of really good firewhisky, well aged.
Sighing in blessed relief, he looked up to find Remus watching him, eyes twinkling in his tired, slightly grimy face.
"That bad, eh?"
"Gah." Sirius poured himself another three fingers. "Mages preserve us from that woman!"
Remus laughed and reached for his own glass. "I know Dumbledore essentially forced all these Weasleys on you. But really, decontaminating the house would be a lot more work if it were just the two of us. And Molly means well."
"Does she?" Sirius heard how hard his voice sounded, but he didn't much care.
Remus sipped at his drink and nodded firmly. "She does. She's only getting on your nerves because she's trying too hard to be nice to you."
"Shows what you know." Sirius slammed his tumbler down on the table, spilling blue flame. "I'm hacked at Molly because of how she's treating you."
Remus blinked at him, looking surprised.
Surprised.
Sirius felt rage come boiling up like a cauldron full of seething Stinksap Potion. "Bloody hell, Remus!"
"Sirius—"
"There's no way you haven't noticed. She has no right to tiptoe around you acting all suspicious and afraid. This is my house and you are my friend and you are worth a dozen of her with her meddling questions and her picky little household spells—"
"Sirius."
There was steel in that voice. Sirius stopped short, mid-rant.
Moony wasn't twenty-one any more. Sirius forgot that, sometimes. Now he stared at the greying hair, at the new lines carved into a once familiar face. At the brown eyes whose spark of laughter had suddenly been replaced by weary resignation.
"This is how things are, now." Remus took another sip of firewhisky, and smiled at him, although the smile was bleak. "People know what I am, and they...react accordingly."
Sirius thought of a twelve-year-old boy, tall and gangly, white with shock and terror one post-moon night in Gryffindor Tower. "You've got to promise me. All of you! Promise me you won't tell anyone—ever. If people find out, that's the end. I'll never finish school, never find a job—never have a chance to prove I'm just as good as everyone else."
"It's a relief, in a way." Remus reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. "I never realised how much effort it took, always hiding things and worrying about being exposed. Now there's no need for any of that."
Sirius watched his friend's face settle into a mild, neutral expression. It might as well have been a brick wall for all that Sirius could read in it.
Moony had changed, all right. He had always worked to keep his face and his voice under careful control, thanks to the dark secret he carried. But it hadn't taken long for his friends to learn to read him. And Sirius had been the best of the lot at knowing what Remus was thinking.
Now he couldn't see through the mask at all.
Sirius took another gulp of firewhisky to cover a sudden shiver.
"All right," he said, "so you're known as a werewolf. That doesn't mean you have to expect people to treat you like rubbish." He scowled. "And it certainly doesn't give Molly the right to act like you're some kind of criminal. For Merlin's sake, Moony, the children aren't like that! They know about you, and they like you well enough."
"They do." Remus's smile warmed a little. "Today was the first I'd seen them since I left Hogwarts—I didn't know quite what to expect. Ron wasn't exactly thrilled in the Shack that night, you'll remember."
"Yeah," Sirius granted, "he had a bit of a shock at first. But then he offered to be chained to the rat, alongside you. Ron's a good kid."
"Hermione will be all right, too, don't you think?" Remus fiddled with his glass. "She said she had figured me out long before she told Harry and Ron, and it didn't seem to bother her when she spoke with me after lessons."
Sirius laughed. "That one? Not a problem. Once Harry's here, you should ask him what she got up to last year, about the house-elves."
"You see, though," said Remus, his smile turning wry, "the children all knew me before they knew what I was. Molly, on the other hand, met a werewolf today." He shrugged. "It makes a difference."
Sirius shook his head. "Then she's a closed-minded bigot, condemning you before she knows a thing about you outside of what happens one night a month."
Remus was suddenly very interested in his drink. He tilted the tumbler and turned it in his hands so that the pale golden firewhisky left brief ribbons along the sides of the glass. When he spoke, his words were almost too quiet to hear.
"It's human nature to be distrustful of a werewolf." One corner of his mouth turned up again, but he kept his gaze fixed on his whisky. "You lot were, too, when everything started going to hell around us."
"Is that what you thought?"
Sirius felt as though a heavy fist had slammed into his stomach.
Had Remus believed, for the two long years since that night in the Shack, that all his friends had turned against him?
Because of his lycanthropy?
"It's what happened." Remus looked up now, but his face was unreadable again.
"No. It was not because you're a werewolf." Sirius swallowed. "And it wasn't everyone. It was only me."
Remus stared.
Sirius stared back as understanding began to dawn. "Of course you don't know. I was the only one who could've told you." He held his old friend's gaze. "You need to hear this, Remus."
Remus set down his tumbler.
"I swear to you, on the graves in Godric's Hollow, that James and Lily never doubted you. Never. They gave me hell for being such a suspicious bastard." Sirius ran a hand over his face. "They were right, and I was wrong, and it was all of you who had to pay for my blindness." He shuddered, overcome by a wave of loss and grief and the soul-deep cold of dementors keeping watch.
The warm touch of a hand on his shoulder brought him back.
"Those were bad times," said Remus quietly. "No one knew what to think."
"It wasn't that I thought for sure you were the spy," said Sirius desperately. For all that Remus's hand was gentle on his arm, the mask was still very securely in place. "It was only that I couldn't shake the worry that you might be."
Remus nodded slowly and sat back, lacing his fingers together around his glass.
Sirius felt his jaw clench. "Not to make excuses, but the rat didn't help. He was always nosing around, making innuendos about you—making me wonder where you were, and why you weren't with the rest of us."
Remus sighed. "Peter did a good bit of damage to you as well, telling me he thought it would be too hard for you to abandon your family forever. Saying that maybe you were having second thoughts about fighting on the side of the Order. I thought he was being ridiculous at the time, but after...after, I thought about his words again, and he had made me think I didn't really know you. He made it too easy for me to believe you had been the traitor."
"Where were you?" The question that had plagued Sirius for fourteen years came bursting out. "All those times we couldn't find you? Those Friday evenings you didn't spend at James and Lily's?"
Remus gave a small, tense smile. "Hillards."
Sirius stared. This was not an answer he'd ever imagined. "Hillard's? Who the hell was Hillard?"
Remus laughed humourlessly, a small huff. "No, Hillards. It was a Muggle grocery, up in Sheffield. Tesco bought them out, eventually, but that was...after."
Sirius drew a breath and let it out slowly. "So your deep dark secret was that you were minding the till in a Muggle grocery."
"Stocking shelves and sweeping floors, actually," said Remus. "But yes." He shook his head at his glass, and Sirius reached over to refill it. "I was ashamed, Padfoot. I was breaking Wizarding law by working at a Muggle job, and even so I was barely able to cover the rent on that horrid little flat I had. I didn't want you lot to know."
They stared at each other again. Such small things, Sirius thought; the fragile pride of a poor young man, and the sly careful sowing of seeds of doubt.
"Look at them, sitting there brazen as anything," came a low hoarse mutter. Both of them jumped. Sirius twisted in his chair, and there was old Kreacher the house-elf, poking his head into the kitchen. "What would poor Mistress say? There were blood-traitors in this house today, Kreacher saw them, and now Kreacher sees Master, who broke Mistress's heart, and that werewolf friend of his. Scum and filth in the house of my Mistress! What should Kreacher do?"
The elf turned away, and the door slammed shut behind him.
Sirius took one look at Remus's startled expression and began to laugh in spite of himself. After a moment, Remus joined in.
"Well, Moony," Sirius choked, "there's someone who won't treat you differently because you're a werewolf. Kreacher hates all of us equally."
Remus laughed again, and Sirius thought that, just maybe, some of the wariness might have gone from his eyes.
. * . * .
The first few days at Grimmauld Place simply flew by. Molly didn't think she had ever been so busy in her life. But they were finally beginning to wrestle the great gloomy house into submission.
She felt a certain glow of pride on the third evening, climbing the mostly cobweb-free staircase with hissing gas lamps to light her way. There was an unimaginable amount of work left to do, of course, but there were enough usable bedrooms for all of them now, and the part of the kitchen nearest the fireplace was clean enough to cook in if you weren't terribly fastidious.
"Ron?" Molly poked her head into the bedroom that Fred and George had claimed. All four children were in there, playing a game with Exploding Snap cards—which might actually be Exploding Snap, or might be something a little more...creative. She decided not to look too closely. "It's about time for Hermione to arrive."
"Oh. Right." Ron jumped to his feet at once.
"That's a forfeit!" George looked smug.
"Is not." Ron scowled. "Ginny's still in—she can play my hand too." He pushed his cards at Ginny, who accepted them with a raised eyebrow, and then he turned to follow Molly down the stairs.
In the kitchen, Sirius and Lupin—Remus, Molly corrected herself hurriedly; be polite—were sitting at the table, sharing sections of the Evening Prophet. Sirius looked up and nodded, more at Ron than at Molly, while Remus smiled a quiet hello to both of them.
Taking care to keep the table between herself and the werewolf, Molly settled down on the far side to wait. She pulled out another chair for Ron, but he ignored her and went to stand by the fire, fiddling listlessly with the tarnished silver tankards that crowded the mantelpiece.
Molly stole a glance across the table at her two companions. She frowned a little at the tumblers of firewhisky they were nursing. At least she hadn't ever seen either one of them drink too much. She did wonder what would happen if Fred and George got their hands on the bottle, but Lupin—Remus—had insisted (with something of a twinkle in his eye) that that would not be possible. "Not even for the twins," he had said, quite firmly.
Sirius finished with his section of the Prophet and pushed it aside, disordered and crumpled. Wordlessly, Remus passed Sirius the section he'd been reading, and reached for the discarded one. He spent a moment straightening each page, and then refolded the section, creasing it neatly, before he began to read it.
That was very like Remus, somehow. Molly had been surprised when she saw just how skilful his housecleaning spellwork was—she didn't mean to be the old-fashioned kind of witch who thought that men couldn't be trusted to keep a house up properly, but honestly, Remus was faster and more precise with his cleaning charms than most women she knew.
He seemed to like things very tidy, Molly concluded, studying the way he folded the newspaper in half again after he turned the page. It wasn't at all what she would have expected of a werewolf.
Remus looked up and spotted her watching him. He smiled again, apparently unconcerned, but Molly felt her cheeks grow warm. She was glad when the flames in the fireplace suddenly turned green.
"Hullo!" came Arthur's voice from the hearth. "Hermione's arrived at the Burrow—shall I send her through?"
"Hi, Dad," said Ron. "Yeah, go ahead."
"All right." Arthur paused, looking sheepish. "I'll be another hour or two, Molly. There's something I need to finish tonight."
"Be careful, dear." Molly sighed. Arthur seemed to be bringing more and more work home with him these days, and until they could get the library cleaned out there was simply nowhere for him to work at Grimmauld Place.
Arthur's head disappeared and was almost immediately replaced by a bulky rotating shape, which resolved itself into a mass of bushy hair and rather a lot of luggage. Ron leapt back hastily, dodging the spinning sharp corners.
"Hello, Ron—Mrs. Weasley—Sirius—Professor Lupin!" Hermione was pink-cheeked and beaming. Molly went to hug her—or at least, the closest she could get to a hug, since the girl was carrying her cat Crookshanks in his cage in one hand and dragging her school trunk behind her with the other. But when Hermione tried to hug Molly back, she dropped the cage. The door sprang open. Crookshanks bolted and made a beeline for Sirius, hopping up on his lap and butting his hard little head up against Sirius's unshaven chin, purring all the while.
Sirius broke into a boyish grin that erased years from his gaunt face. "Look, Hermione. He remembers me!"
Molly frowned at this reminder that her youngest son and his two best friends had been very friendly with a fugitive from Azkaban—for heaven's sake—for the better part of a year.
But Hermione merely set down the trunk and righted the cage. "Of course he does. He's very intelligent, you know."
"I know," said Sirius quietly, scratching Crookshanks behind the ears. The ugly orange cat (or was he a Kneazle?) closed his eyes and preened.
"This is so exciting," said Hermione breathlessly, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. "Helping Professor Dumbledore! Doing something that will really make a difference!"
"Yeah," Sirius muttered, "like polishing the old family silver!"
Molly saw Remus shoot his friend a quelling look, but Hermione was busy peppering Ron with questions about the house and didn't seem to have heard.
"Oh," said Hermione suddenly, turning toward the table again. "Professor Lupin, there's something I've been wanting to ask you."
"Certainly." Remus smiled at his former student—perhaps a little cautiously, Molly thought. "What is it?"
"I was reading through the latest issue of the Annals of Magizoology," she began.
Molly, looking the right way at the right time, saw Remus exchange some sort of glance with Sirius. But Hermione missed it, because Ron snorted and she paused to glare at him.
"Anyway," she continued, turning her back on Ron and crossing her arms, "there was an anonymous article about grindylows."
"Was there?" Remus's expression was completely bland. But Sirius was sniggering.
Hermione narrowed her eyes at the werewolf who had been her teacher. "You did write it. Didn't you?"
"I did," he admitted, the neutral facade shifting into a wry half-grin. "How did you work that out?"
"Well, first of all, the article covered lots of things you taught in your classes!" Her eyes shone. "I had no idea at the time that you were teaching us original research. That's brilliant!"
Molly thought Remus looked slightly bemused by Hermione's excitement. "That's not exactly unusual, you know," he said quickly. "Professor Flitwick developed some of the Charms he teaches, and the same is true for Professor McGonagall and her Transfiguration spells."
"Still," said Hermione, "those spells have been taught for years. But we were the very first students to learn these new things about grindylows." She beamed at him again. "Anyway, the article sounded like you. I could hear your voice in my head as I was reading it." Then she frowned. "But why didn't you sign your name to it?"
Remus smiled again, but this was a weary smile. "Can't you work that part out for yourself as well?"
Hermione's face fell. "I was hoping there was some other reason." She bit her lip. "You're saying the journal wouldn't have published it if they knew who the author was?"
Remus lifted one shoulder in acknowledgment. "Or what."
Sirius, who had been rubbing Crookshanks under the chin with one bony finger, glanced up sharply.
But Remus drew a deliberate breath and settled into another smile. "I quite enjoy doing the research. I'm just glad it can be published at all."
Hermione looked like she wanted to argue, but Molly didn't know how much time the children really ought to be spending with these two—Sirius swore rather a lot, and Remus was, after all, a werewolf. "Come along, dear," she coaxed. "Let's get your things upstairs. You'll be sharing a room with Ginny."
"And we're all playing—er—cards, in the twins' room," Ron broke in. He pounded on up the stairs, leaving Hermione and Molly (levitating Hermione's luggage) to bring up the rear.
"Don't you think that's stupid?" Hermione persisted, pausing halfway to the first-floor landing to turn back and look at Molly. "If an article's good enough to publish, why should it matter if the person who wrote it happens to be a werewolf?"
But Molly was only half-listening; she was bracing herself, because Hermione was about to come face-to-face with the house-elf heads mounted on the wall.
. * . * .
The next morning, Remus went to Diagon Alley for groceries, with the key to Sirius's Gringotts vault shoved deep in his pocket. "If we're feeding the entire ruddy Order," Sirius had insisted, "we're definitely using the Black family fortune. Because my sainted parents would drop dead at the thought, if they weren't already long gone." He had cut off Remus's attempt at a protest before it even got started. "It's not charity. It's for the Order. Shut up and get on with the shopping."
When Remus returned to the house two hours later, his pockets full of shrunken parcels, he could hear Molly's voice and various thumping sounds coming from somewhere upstairs. He deposited the groceries in the kitchen, where Ron and Hermione were busy pulling all the dishes out of the cupboards and giving everything a thorough scrubbing. Then he slipped carefully past Mrs. Black's portrait and found Molly, Ginny, and the twins clearing cobwebs in a small study on the second floor.
"Oh, Remus," said Molly, breathless and a little wild-eyed, "I'm glad you're back." She hurried over to him, in her agitation standing a little closer than she normally dared. "I need to ask Sirius about these"—she gestured at a row of cabinets that were humming and quivering ominously—"but he's, erm, upstairs with the hippogriff." She bit her lip.
This was not a good sign. "What happened?"
"Well, Severus Snape stopped by, and he said some things, and then Sirius started shouting..."
"Ah." Remus sighed. "I'll see if I can get him to come back down." He crossed over to the stairway. "Oi! Padfoot!"
Behind him, he heard a choking sound, and someone dropped a broom. But there was no response from above.
He tried again. "It's about time for lunch! Why don't you and I take a turn making sandwiches?"
"I'm not hungry," came faintly—and sulkily—from the third floor.
"That's what you say now, but if you don't eat with us, you'll be nicking Buckbeak's ferrets long before teatime!"
Silence again.
A slow grin spread across Remus's face. He'd just realised that he had a secret weapon. "Never mind, then," he called. "I'm sure I can find someone else to drink the hot butterbeer I've brought you from the Leaky Cauldron."
Nothing for a moment. Then, thumping footsteps on the stairs. Sirius appeared, trying not to smile. "All right, Moony, you win."
Remus clapped him on the back. The two of them turned away from the staircase only to find their way blocked—Fred and George had emerged from the study and stood, transfixed, with the oddest expressions on their faces.
Sirius raised an eyebrow.
"What's the matter?" Remus asked, concerned.
The twins exchanged a glance.
"Er," said one of them. "We wanted to help you make the sandwiches."
"Well. Thank you." This was the first time that either Fred or George had shown the slightest interest in helping in the kitchen, but Remus decided to accept the offer at face value. Now that he was no longer their teacher, he preferred not to inquire too closely into the affairs of the twins. "Just let us have a look at these cabinets first."
When they reached the kitchen, they found Ron and Hermione, still surrounded by piles of sudsy crockery. The sandwich-makers claimed the table and began slicing bread, ham, cheese, and cucumbers.
"All right, George," said the twin who must be Fred, "go on, then."
George looked up from his jar of mustard and caught Remus's eye. "So if you're Moony—"
Unable to keep still after all, Fred turned to Sirius.
"—and you're Padfoot—"
"—then who's Prongs?"
Remus looked over at the dish-washers. Hermione shook her head. Ron shrugged.
Sirius, wielding a long bread knife and looking every inch the mad convict, grinned at the twins. "You saw Harry's Patronus at the Quidditch match that time, right?"
"Yeah," said Fred, "it was—oh! Prongs was Harry's dad, then?"
"Right in one," said Remus, breaking into a wide smile himself. He suddenly understood how Harry had come by the Map.
But the smile vanished when he realised what the next question was going to be. And he wasn't the only one—Hermione clapped a hand over her mouth, and Ron frowned hard at his brothers.
They didn't get the message.
"What about Wormtail?" Fred asked cheerily.
Sirius actually growled. His eyes narrowed, and he spat into the fireplace. "Wormtail is a rat."
Five seconds too late, George caught Fred's eye and mouthed, Scabbers. Fred went green.
The kitchen was frozen in painful silence. Remus took a step nearer Sirius. He saw Hermione draw a breath and try to think of something to say.
In the end, it was George who swallowed hard and soldiered on. "But that Map, though. It's absolutely brilliant! How did you lot work it out?"
Sirius blinked, met George's gaze, and began to chuckle. "Well. That's a rather long story."
Remus relaxed.
And then he realised that both of the twins were gazing, with expressions of profound awe, not only at Sirius—but at him, too.
It was Remus's turn to blink.
"You'd have time to tell us, though," said Fred, hopefully, looking from one Marauder to the other. "It's going to be a long summer."
. * . * .
( On to Ch 4 ) ( Up to Chapter Index )
Author's notes: The twins-meet-Marauders scene is based on two drabbles originally posted to the Official Drabble Thread at the (late lamented?) Sugar Quill. It wasjesspallas's "Oblivious" (chapter 4) that first made me think about how the twins might have discovered who the Marauders actually were, although I've taken a different approach to that revelation.
Regarding first-war backstory, we see Remus move into his dreadful Sheffield flat (which makes the one he's got in this story look positively palatial) in Erosion, and Peter makes Sirius start to wonder about Remus in Seeds of Suspicion.
.
All Will Be in Order
When Remus Lupin moves in at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, he must come to terms with Sirius Black and a friendship too long submerged by mistrust, loss, and Azkaban. He must learn to work with Molly Weasley, who seems to be nearly as frightened of werewolves as she is of Voldemort. Clearly, adjustments will have to be made. ( Remus, Sirius, Molly | GoF>OotP | gen )
Chapter 3: A Long Summer (5490 words | PG/mild profanity)
Author's note: Many thanks to
katyhasclogs for help with British food culture. Additional notes are at the end of the chapter. (Revised, September 2011.) - Sirius tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and let the liquor slide down his throat, burning all the way. He sat still for a moment and waited for the tingle in his hands and feet that spoke of really good firewhisky, well aged.
Sighing in blessed relief, he looked up to find Remus watching him, eyes twinkling in his tired, slightly grimy face.
"That bad, eh?"
"Gah." Sirius poured himself another three fingers. "Mages preserve us from that woman!"
( 1. The Perfect Flat ) | ( 2. The First Mission ) || ( Chapter Index )
3. A Long Summer
He heard a soft hissing noise and then old-fashioned gas lamps sputtered into life all along the walls, casting a flickering insubstantial light over the peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpet of a long gloomy hallway, where a cobwebby chandelier glimmered overhead and age-blackened portraits hung crooked on the walls.
—Order of the Phoenix, chapter 4
. * . * .
"A werewolf?" whispered Mrs. Weasley, looking alarmed.
—Order of the Phoenix, chapter 22
—Order of the Phoenix, chapter 4
. * . * .
"A werewolf?" whispered Mrs. Weasley, looking alarmed.
—Order of the Phoenix, chapter 22
The door opened and Sirius slouched through, dressed but still yawning. "Bugger this. I don't see why we have to start cleaning at nine in the bloody morning."
Remus chuckled and gave him a nearly gentle nudge with a convenient elbow. "Molly's owl promised something nice for breakfast. Surely that's worth waking up for."
Sirius looked unconvinced, but he grunted and led the way downstairs.
It was a sunny morning, Remus knew, because he'd managed to charm open the heavy floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains in his own room. But the corridors and stairways of the house on Grimmauld Place were dark as midnight. The soft glow from his wand fell on what appeared to be gas lamps mounted here and there on the walls, but they were not in working order. Not yet, Remus amended firmly. Light would be a priority.
Cobwebs clung to their robes as they brushed past. They had simply been too busy the day before, working with Moody and Dumbledore to check the old security spells and set the necessary new ones, to make any headway on the housecleaning beyond their own two bedrooms and a place for Buckbeak. And so the rest of the house was thick with cobwebs—except for the lowest few feet, where Kreacher the house-elf appeared to have kept them cleared away. Some of the webs had occupants, too, hairy black spiders a little larger than Remus would have liked. He shot a Shrinking Spell at every one he saw.
"I wonder how Molly and the children feel about spiders," he mused.
Sirius shrugged. "Not my fault if they don't know what to expect in an abandoned house."
Remus rolled his eyes under cover of darkness. It would be a long summer indeed if certain people planned on being uncooperative the whole time.
Or maybe Sirius was just sleepy. He never had been one for mornings.
They reached the ground floor, followed the hall to the back of the house, and picked their way down one more stairway, because the Floo connection in the basement kitchen was the only one Dumbledore had allowed them to keep open. It would be safe enough; with the house itself under the Fidelius Charm, only those who knew the Secret could Floo in at all.
The kitchen was pitch-black beyond their small circles of wandlight, and it was hung just as thickly with cobwebs as the rest of the house. A carpet of dust covered the stone floor, except for the places where they had disturbed it yesterday in the course of their spellwork, and another spot by a low cupboard where there were many sets of house-elf footprints.
"Kreacher could be keeping things just a bit cleaner." Sirius scowled. "Little blighter."
Remus raised his wand, illuminating the heavy iron chandeliers above the long kitchen table. Wonder of wonders, they still held candles.
It took multiple applications of Evanesco—the cobwebs were thick and sticky enough to resist even magic—but he got one chandelier cleaned up and lit it. The sudden increase in light, dim as it was, made him blink. Now he could see Sirius across the room, emerging from a deep cupboard with a dusty bottle of firewhisky in one hand.
"How's this, Moony?" The scion of the house grinned rather wickedly. "It'll be just what we need tonight, after a full day of ruddy housecleaning."
Remus grinned back, glad that Sirius was recovering his sense of humour. "I see you knew right where to look for that."
The old grandfather clock upstairs began to groan out the chimes for nine o'clock. With a sigh of resignation, Sirius stashed his bottle back in the cupboard and went to light a fire in the fireplace. Remus moved further into the shadows, attacking another chandelier with a series of rapid and persistent Evanescos. He was determined to make the kitchen a little less gloomy, if it was to be the first part of the house that Molly and the children would see.
Almost as soon as Sirius had the fire lit, though, a spinning figure appeared in the grate, and then a small plump woman clutching an enormous wicker basket stepped out into the kitchen. She looked a little breathless from the Floo trip, and her eyes widened as she took in the dust and the cobwebs, but her face wore an expression of relentless friendliness.
The new arrival squared her shoulders and offered her hand with a bright smile. "Hello, Sirius. I'm Molly Weasley." Even in the feeble light, Remus could see her turn rather pink. "We, erm, met in the hospital wing at Hogwarts."
Sirius had told Remus, with great glee, about Molly's bloodcurdling shriek when he reverted to human form at Dumbledore's request. Remus paused in the midst of his scramble to illuminate the kitchen, wondering if he should ride to her rescue, but Sirius merely bowed over her hand and took the basket with effortless grace.
"It's a pleasure, Molly." He smiled, only slightly bitterly. "Welcome to the Gloomy and Most Filthy House of Black."
Remus grinned to himself and turned back to the cobwebs clinging stubbornly to the stubby candles in the second chandelier. It was always amusing to watch Sirius play the role of gracious host, and it fit him all the better in this house, no matter how much he might hate being here.
"I need to Floo the children and have them join us—I didn't want to bring the whole crowd through at once—but do have a crumpet first." Molly gestured at the basket. "There's butter, and my strawberry jam." She smiled perkily again, reminding Remus of a newly Sorted student worried about finding a seat at her House table. "I thought it might have been a while since you'd had fresh crumpets."
Sirius's eyes lit up, just as they had always done when James or Peter nicked something particularly good from the Hogwarts kitchens. "Ta. We love crumpets with jam—" He stopped and looked around, frowning. "Remus? Where'd you go?"
"I'm right here." With a nonverbal Incendio, Remus lit the now-clean chandelier, and the flare of light made Molly jump. "Sorry about that." He gave her an apologetic half-grin as he crossed the room to join the other two by the fireplace. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"Molly," said Sirius expansively, still in full lord-of-the-manor mode, "this is my old friend, Remus Lupin."
"I'm delighted to meet you, Molly." Remus extended a hand and a warm smile. He had liked the Weasley children very well at Hogwarts, and he knew the whole family had been good to Harry. "We certainly appreciate your kind offer to help with the decontamination."
But Molly merely stood and stared, making no move to take his hand. Her eyes were huge and dark, and her pulse beat wildly in her throat; she looked for all the world like a small animal that had been cornered by a—
Remus lowered his hand and concentrated on keeping his smile from slipping, his face from reddening. Stepping back, he turned away, toward the table. "Let me see if I can clean this off a bit, so we'll have a spot to set the basket down." He busied himself with Evanescos again. "The crumpets smell lovely."
He heard Molly start breathing again as he moved further away from her. "Th—thank you, Remus."
Sirius deposited the basket onto the table and crossed his arms over his chest, looking sullen.
Oh, for Merlin's sake, Remus sighed inwardly. Someone had to remember his manners, and it clearly wasn't going to be the lord of the manor after all.
His stomach felt like lead, but Remus reached into the basket and extracted a crumpet. It was still hot. He broke it in two, balancing the pieces in one hand, and waved butter and jam onto it with a twist of his wand.
"Delicious," he pronounced, smiling carefully at Molly again—the mildest, least threatening smile he could produce; he was pretty sure he'd even been able to keep the resignation out. "Go on, Sirius, have one."
There was no response.
Remus looked from Sirius, in the midst of a fit of the sulks, to Molly, edging slowly away from him even as she pasted a nervous grin across her face.
It was going to be a very long summer.
About a century later, the first day of housecleaning was finally over.
The Weasleys wouldn't be staying overnight until enough bedrooms had been decontaminated—which meant a reprieve, at least for tonight. Even as the last redhead was disappearing into the Floo, Sirius hurled himself at the spider-filled cupboard and came out clutching the bottle he'd been dreaming of all ruddy day long.
He performed a perfunctory cleaning charm on a pair of antique tumblers and poured three fingers of whisky into each, pushing one across the newly cleaned kitchen table toward Remus. Then he tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and let the liquor slide down his throat, burning all the way. He sat still for a minute and waited for the tingle in his hands and feet that spoke of really good firewhisky, well aged.
Sighing in blessed relief, he looked up to find Remus watching him, eyes twinkling in his tired, slightly grimy face.
"That bad, eh?"
"Gah." Sirius poured himself another three fingers. "Mages preserve us from that woman!"
Remus laughed and reached for his own glass. "I know Dumbledore essentially forced all these Weasleys on you. But really, decontaminating the house would be a lot more work if it were just the two of us. And Molly means well."
"Does she?" Sirius heard how hard his voice sounded, but he didn't much care.
Remus sipped at his drink and nodded firmly. "She does. She's only getting on your nerves because she's trying too hard to be nice to you."
"Shows what you know." Sirius slammed his tumbler down on the table, spilling blue flame. "I'm hacked at Molly because of how she's treating you."
Remus blinked at him, looking surprised.
Surprised.
Sirius felt rage come boiling up like a cauldron full of seething Stinksap Potion. "Bloody hell, Remus!"
"Sirius—"
"There's no way you haven't noticed. She has no right to tiptoe around you acting all suspicious and afraid. This is my house and you are my friend and you are worth a dozen of her with her meddling questions and her picky little household spells—"
"Sirius."
There was steel in that voice. Sirius stopped short, mid-rant.
Moony wasn't twenty-one any more. Sirius forgot that, sometimes. Now he stared at the greying hair, at the new lines carved into a once familiar face. At the brown eyes whose spark of laughter had suddenly been replaced by weary resignation.
"This is how things are, now." Remus took another sip of firewhisky, and smiled at him, although the smile was bleak. "People know what I am, and they...react accordingly."
Sirius thought of a twelve-year-old boy, tall and gangly, white with shock and terror one post-moon night in Gryffindor Tower. "You've got to promise me. All of you! Promise me you won't tell anyone—ever. If people find out, that's the end. I'll never finish school, never find a job—never have a chance to prove I'm just as good as everyone else."
"It's a relief, in a way." Remus reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. "I never realised how much effort it took, always hiding things and worrying about being exposed. Now there's no need for any of that."
Sirius watched his friend's face settle into a mild, neutral expression. It might as well have been a brick wall for all that Sirius could read in it.
Moony had changed, all right. He had always worked to keep his face and his voice under careful control, thanks to the dark secret he carried. But it hadn't taken long for his friends to learn to read him. And Sirius had been the best of the lot at knowing what Remus was thinking.
Now he couldn't see through the mask at all.
Sirius took another gulp of firewhisky to cover a sudden shiver.
"All right," he said, "so you're known as a werewolf. That doesn't mean you have to expect people to treat you like rubbish." He scowled. "And it certainly doesn't give Molly the right to act like you're some kind of criminal. For Merlin's sake, Moony, the children aren't like that! They know about you, and they like you well enough."
"They do." Remus's smile warmed a little. "Today was the first I'd seen them since I left Hogwarts—I didn't know quite what to expect. Ron wasn't exactly thrilled in the Shack that night, you'll remember."
"Yeah," Sirius granted, "he had a bit of a shock at first. But then he offered to be chained to the rat, alongside you. Ron's a good kid."
"Hermione will be all right, too, don't you think?" Remus fiddled with his glass. "She said she had figured me out long before she told Harry and Ron, and it didn't seem to bother her when she spoke with me after lessons."
Sirius laughed. "That one? Not a problem. Once Harry's here, you should ask him what she got up to last year, about the house-elves."
"You see, though," said Remus, his smile turning wry, "the children all knew me before they knew what I was. Molly, on the other hand, met a werewolf today." He shrugged. "It makes a difference."
Sirius shook his head. "Then she's a closed-minded bigot, condemning you before she knows a thing about you outside of what happens one night a month."
Remus was suddenly very interested in his drink. He tilted the tumbler and turned it in his hands so that the pale golden firewhisky left brief ribbons along the sides of the glass. When he spoke, his words were almost too quiet to hear.
"It's human nature to be distrustful of a werewolf." One corner of his mouth turned up again, but he kept his gaze fixed on his whisky. "You lot were, too, when everything started going to hell around us."
"Is that what you thought?"
Sirius felt as though a heavy fist had slammed into his stomach.
Had Remus believed, for the two long years since that night in the Shack, that all his friends had turned against him?
Because of his lycanthropy?
"It's what happened." Remus looked up now, but his face was unreadable again.
"No. It was not because you're a werewolf." Sirius swallowed. "And it wasn't everyone. It was only me."
Remus stared.
Sirius stared back as understanding began to dawn. "Of course you don't know. I was the only one who could've told you." He held his old friend's gaze. "You need to hear this, Remus."
Remus set down his tumbler.
"I swear to you, on the graves in Godric's Hollow, that James and Lily never doubted you. Never. They gave me hell for being such a suspicious bastard." Sirius ran a hand over his face. "They were right, and I was wrong, and it was all of you who had to pay for my blindness." He shuddered, overcome by a wave of loss and grief and the soul-deep cold of dementors keeping watch.
The warm touch of a hand on his shoulder brought him back.
"Those were bad times," said Remus quietly. "No one knew what to think."
"It wasn't that I thought for sure you were the spy," said Sirius desperately. For all that Remus's hand was gentle on his arm, the mask was still very securely in place. "It was only that I couldn't shake the worry that you might be."
Remus nodded slowly and sat back, lacing his fingers together around his glass.
Sirius felt his jaw clench. "Not to make excuses, but the rat didn't help. He was always nosing around, making innuendos about you—making me wonder where you were, and why you weren't with the rest of us."
Remus sighed. "Peter did a good bit of damage to you as well, telling me he thought it would be too hard for you to abandon your family forever. Saying that maybe you were having second thoughts about fighting on the side of the Order. I thought he was being ridiculous at the time, but after...after, I thought about his words again, and he had made me think I didn't really know you. He made it too easy for me to believe you had been the traitor."
"Where were you?" The question that had plagued Sirius for fourteen years came bursting out. "All those times we couldn't find you? Those Friday evenings you didn't spend at James and Lily's?"
Remus gave a small, tense smile. "Hillards."
Sirius stared. This was not an answer he'd ever imagined. "Hillard's? Who the hell was Hillard?"
Remus laughed humourlessly, a small huff. "No, Hillards. It was a Muggle grocery, up in Sheffield. Tesco bought them out, eventually, but that was...after."
Sirius drew a breath and let it out slowly. "So your deep dark secret was that you were minding the till in a Muggle grocery."
"Stocking shelves and sweeping floors, actually," said Remus. "But yes." He shook his head at his glass, and Sirius reached over to refill it. "I was ashamed, Padfoot. I was breaking Wizarding law by working at a Muggle job, and even so I was barely able to cover the rent on that horrid little flat I had. I didn't want you lot to know."
They stared at each other again. Such small things, Sirius thought; the fragile pride of a poor young man, and the sly careful sowing of seeds of doubt.
"Look at them, sitting there brazen as anything," came a low hoarse mutter. Both of them jumped. Sirius twisted in his chair, and there was old Kreacher the house-elf, poking his head into the kitchen. "What would poor Mistress say? There were blood-traitors in this house today, Kreacher saw them, and now Kreacher sees Master, who broke Mistress's heart, and that werewolf friend of his. Scum and filth in the house of my Mistress! What should Kreacher do?"
The elf turned away, and the door slammed shut behind him.
Sirius took one look at Remus's startled expression and began to laugh in spite of himself. After a moment, Remus joined in.
"Well, Moony," Sirius choked, "there's someone who won't treat you differently because you're a werewolf. Kreacher hates all of us equally."
Remus laughed again, and Sirius thought that, just maybe, some of the wariness might have gone from his eyes.
The first few days at Grimmauld Place simply flew by. Molly didn't think she had ever been so busy in her life. But they were finally beginning to wrestle the great gloomy house into submission.
She felt a certain glow of pride on the third evening, climbing the mostly cobweb-free staircase with hissing gas lamps to light her way. There was an unimaginable amount of work left to do, of course, but there were enough usable bedrooms for all of them now, and the part of the kitchen nearest the fireplace was clean enough to cook in if you weren't terribly fastidious.
"Ron?" Molly poked her head into the bedroom that Fred and George had claimed. All four children were in there, playing a game with Exploding Snap cards—which might actually be Exploding Snap, or might be something a little more...creative. She decided not to look too closely. "It's about time for Hermione to arrive."
"Oh. Right." Ron jumped to his feet at once.
"That's a forfeit!" George looked smug.
"Is not." Ron scowled. "Ginny's still in—she can play my hand too." He pushed his cards at Ginny, who accepted them with a raised eyebrow, and then he turned to follow Molly down the stairs.
In the kitchen, Sirius and Lupin—Remus, Molly corrected herself hurriedly; be polite—were sitting at the table, sharing sections of the Evening Prophet. Sirius looked up and nodded, more at Ron than at Molly, while Remus smiled a quiet hello to both of them.
Taking care to keep the table between herself and the werewolf, Molly settled down on the far side to wait. She pulled out another chair for Ron, but he ignored her and went to stand by the fire, fiddling listlessly with the tarnished silver tankards that crowded the mantelpiece.
Molly stole a glance across the table at her two companions. She frowned a little at the tumblers of firewhisky they were nursing. At least she hadn't ever seen either one of them drink too much. She did wonder what would happen if Fred and George got their hands on the bottle, but Lupin—Remus—had insisted (with something of a twinkle in his eye) that that would not be possible. "Not even for the twins," he had said, quite firmly.
Sirius finished with his section of the Prophet and pushed it aside, disordered and crumpled. Wordlessly, Remus passed Sirius the section he'd been reading, and reached for the discarded one. He spent a moment straightening each page, and then refolded the section, creasing it neatly, before he began to read it.
That was very like Remus, somehow. Molly had been surprised when she saw just how skilful his housecleaning spellwork was—she didn't mean to be the old-fashioned kind of witch who thought that men couldn't be trusted to keep a house up properly, but honestly, Remus was faster and more precise with his cleaning charms than most women she knew.
He seemed to like things very tidy, Molly concluded, studying the way he folded the newspaper in half again after he turned the page. It wasn't at all what she would have expected of a werewolf.
Remus looked up and spotted her watching him. He smiled again, apparently unconcerned, but Molly felt her cheeks grow warm. She was glad when the flames in the fireplace suddenly turned green.
"Hullo!" came Arthur's voice from the hearth. "Hermione's arrived at the Burrow—shall I send her through?"
"Hi, Dad," said Ron. "Yeah, go ahead."
"All right." Arthur paused, looking sheepish. "I'll be another hour or two, Molly. There's something I need to finish tonight."
"Be careful, dear." Molly sighed. Arthur seemed to be bringing more and more work home with him these days, and until they could get the library cleaned out there was simply nowhere for him to work at Grimmauld Place.
Arthur's head disappeared and was almost immediately replaced by a bulky rotating shape, which resolved itself into a mass of bushy hair and rather a lot of luggage. Ron leapt back hastily, dodging the spinning sharp corners.
"Hello, Ron—Mrs. Weasley—Sirius—Professor Lupin!" Hermione was pink-cheeked and beaming. Molly went to hug her—or at least, the closest she could get to a hug, since the girl was carrying her cat Crookshanks in his cage in one hand and dragging her school trunk behind her with the other. But when Hermione tried to hug Molly back, she dropped the cage. The door sprang open. Crookshanks bolted and made a beeline for Sirius, hopping up on his lap and butting his hard little head up against Sirius's unshaven chin, purring all the while.
Sirius broke into a boyish grin that erased years from his gaunt face. "Look, Hermione. He remembers me!"
Molly frowned at this reminder that her youngest son and his two best friends had been very friendly with a fugitive from Azkaban—for heaven's sake—for the better part of a year.
But Hermione merely set down the trunk and righted the cage. "Of course he does. He's very intelligent, you know."
"I know," said Sirius quietly, scratching Crookshanks behind the ears. The ugly orange cat (or was he a Kneazle?) closed his eyes and preened.
"This is so exciting," said Hermione breathlessly, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. "Helping Professor Dumbledore! Doing something that will really make a difference!"
"Yeah," Sirius muttered, "like polishing the old family silver!"
Molly saw Remus shoot his friend a quelling look, but Hermione was busy peppering Ron with questions about the house and didn't seem to have heard.
"Oh," said Hermione suddenly, turning toward the table again. "Professor Lupin, there's something I've been wanting to ask you."
"Certainly." Remus smiled at his former student—perhaps a little cautiously, Molly thought. "What is it?"
"I was reading through the latest issue of the Annals of Magizoology," she began.
Molly, looking the right way at the right time, saw Remus exchange some sort of glance with Sirius. But Hermione missed it, because Ron snorted and she paused to glare at him.
"Anyway," she continued, turning her back on Ron and crossing her arms, "there was an anonymous article about grindylows."
"Was there?" Remus's expression was completely bland. But Sirius was sniggering.
Hermione narrowed her eyes at the werewolf who had been her teacher. "You did write it. Didn't you?"
"I did," he admitted, the neutral facade shifting into a wry half-grin. "How did you work that out?"
"Well, first of all, the article covered lots of things you taught in your classes!" Her eyes shone. "I had no idea at the time that you were teaching us original research. That's brilliant!"
Molly thought Remus looked slightly bemused by Hermione's excitement. "That's not exactly unusual, you know," he said quickly. "Professor Flitwick developed some of the Charms he teaches, and the same is true for Professor McGonagall and her Transfiguration spells."
"Still," said Hermione, "those spells have been taught for years. But we were the very first students to learn these new things about grindylows." She beamed at him again. "Anyway, the article sounded like you. I could hear your voice in my head as I was reading it." Then she frowned. "But why didn't you sign your name to it?"
Remus smiled again, but this was a weary smile. "Can't you work that part out for yourself as well?"
Hermione's face fell. "I was hoping there was some other reason." She bit her lip. "You're saying the journal wouldn't have published it if they knew who the author was?"
Remus lifted one shoulder in acknowledgment. "Or what."
Sirius, who had been rubbing Crookshanks under the chin with one bony finger, glanced up sharply.
But Remus drew a deliberate breath and settled into another smile. "I quite enjoy doing the research. I'm just glad it can be published at all."
Hermione looked like she wanted to argue, but Molly didn't know how much time the children really ought to be spending with these two—Sirius swore rather a lot, and Remus was, after all, a werewolf. "Come along, dear," she coaxed. "Let's get your things upstairs. You'll be sharing a room with Ginny."
"And we're all playing—er—cards, in the twins' room," Ron broke in. He pounded on up the stairs, leaving Hermione and Molly (levitating Hermione's luggage) to bring up the rear.
"Don't you think that's stupid?" Hermione persisted, pausing halfway to the first-floor landing to turn back and look at Molly. "If an article's good enough to publish, why should it matter if the person who wrote it happens to be a werewolf?"
But Molly was only half-listening; she was bracing herself, because Hermione was about to come face-to-face with the house-elf heads mounted on the wall.
The next morning, Remus went to Diagon Alley for groceries, with the key to Sirius's Gringotts vault shoved deep in his pocket. "If we're feeding the entire ruddy Order," Sirius had insisted, "we're definitely using the Black family fortune. Because my sainted parents would drop dead at the thought, if they weren't already long gone." He had cut off Remus's attempt at a protest before it even got started. "It's not charity. It's for the Order. Shut up and get on with the shopping."
When Remus returned to the house two hours later, his pockets full of shrunken parcels, he could hear Molly's voice and various thumping sounds coming from somewhere upstairs. He deposited the groceries in the kitchen, where Ron and Hermione were busy pulling all the dishes out of the cupboards and giving everything a thorough scrubbing. Then he slipped carefully past Mrs. Black's portrait and found Molly, Ginny, and the twins clearing cobwebs in a small study on the second floor.
"Oh, Remus," said Molly, breathless and a little wild-eyed, "I'm glad you're back." She hurried over to him, in her agitation standing a little closer than she normally dared. "I need to ask Sirius about these"—she gestured at a row of cabinets that were humming and quivering ominously—"but he's, erm, upstairs with the hippogriff." She bit her lip.
This was not a good sign. "What happened?"
"Well, Severus Snape stopped by, and he said some things, and then Sirius started shouting..."
"Ah." Remus sighed. "I'll see if I can get him to come back down." He crossed over to the stairway. "Oi! Padfoot!"
Behind him, he heard a choking sound, and someone dropped a broom. But there was no response from above.
He tried again. "It's about time for lunch! Why don't you and I take a turn making sandwiches?"
"I'm not hungry," came faintly—and sulkily—from the third floor.
"That's what you say now, but if you don't eat with us, you'll be nicking Buckbeak's ferrets long before teatime!"
Silence again.
A slow grin spread across Remus's face. He'd just realised that he had a secret weapon. "Never mind, then," he called. "I'm sure I can find someone else to drink the hot butterbeer I've brought you from the Leaky Cauldron."
Nothing for a moment. Then, thumping footsteps on the stairs. Sirius appeared, trying not to smile. "All right, Moony, you win."
Remus clapped him on the back. The two of them turned away from the staircase only to find their way blocked—Fred and George had emerged from the study and stood, transfixed, with the oddest expressions on their faces.
Sirius raised an eyebrow.
"What's the matter?" Remus asked, concerned.
The twins exchanged a glance.
"Er," said one of them. "We wanted to help you make the sandwiches."
"Well. Thank you." This was the first time that either Fred or George had shown the slightest interest in helping in the kitchen, but Remus decided to accept the offer at face value. Now that he was no longer their teacher, he preferred not to inquire too closely into the affairs of the twins. "Just let us have a look at these cabinets first."
When they reached the kitchen, they found Ron and Hermione, still surrounded by piles of sudsy crockery. The sandwich-makers claimed the table and began slicing bread, ham, cheese, and cucumbers.
"All right, George," said the twin who must be Fred, "go on, then."
George looked up from his jar of mustard and caught Remus's eye. "So if you're Moony—"
Unable to keep still after all, Fred turned to Sirius.
"—and you're Padfoot—"
"—then who's Prongs?"
Remus looked over at the dish-washers. Hermione shook her head. Ron shrugged.
Sirius, wielding a long bread knife and looking every inch the mad convict, grinned at the twins. "You saw Harry's Patronus at the Quidditch match that time, right?"
"Yeah," said Fred, "it was—oh! Prongs was Harry's dad, then?"
"Right in one," said Remus, breaking into a wide smile himself. He suddenly understood how Harry had come by the Map.
But the smile vanished when he realised what the next question was going to be. And he wasn't the only one—Hermione clapped a hand over her mouth, and Ron frowned hard at his brothers.
They didn't get the message.
"What about Wormtail?" Fred asked cheerily.
Sirius actually growled. His eyes narrowed, and he spat into the fireplace. "Wormtail is a rat."
Five seconds too late, George caught Fred's eye and mouthed, Scabbers. Fred went green.
The kitchen was frozen in painful silence. Remus took a step nearer Sirius. He saw Hermione draw a breath and try to think of something to say.
In the end, it was George who swallowed hard and soldiered on. "But that Map, though. It's absolutely brilliant! How did you lot work it out?"
Sirius blinked, met George's gaze, and began to chuckle. "Well. That's a rather long story."
Remus relaxed.
And then he realised that both of the twins were gazing, with expressions of profound awe, not only at Sirius—but at him, too.
It was Remus's turn to blink.
"You'd have time to tell us, though," said Fred, hopefully, looking from one Marauder to the other. "It's going to be a long summer."
( On to Ch 4 ) ( Up to Chapter Index )
Author's notes: The twins-meet-Marauders scene is based on two drabbles originally posted to the Official Drabble Thread at the (late lamented?) Sugar Quill. It was
jesspallas's "Oblivious" (chapter 4) that first made me think about how the twins might have discovered who the Marauders actually were, although I've taken a different approach to that revelation.Regarding first-war backstory, we see Remus move into his dreadful Sheffield flat (which makes the one he's got in this story look positively palatial) in Erosion, and Peter makes Sirius start to wonder about Remus in Seeds of Suspicion.
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