— Chapter One —
Setting the Scene
On a day like any other, Remus Lupin descended the stairs from his attic room, to begin the morning rituals of dealing with the post and vandalism that his second-hand bookshop attracted in equal measure. It had the makings of a fine summer day, with the scent of flowers in the air—though that, he realised, was due more to the broken window pane in the door and the flower stall opposite than the bright June day dawning over London. Sunlight spilling through skylights above the bookshelves speared the worn carpet with shafts of light. Shattered glass littered the doormat like dew caught in the morning light, crunching slightly underfoot. He carefully retrieved the half-brick and added it to his collection stacked outside the back door, flicking his wand at the window and muttered Reparo absently on his return.
He thumbed through the stack of post on the doorstep, discarding a handful into the fireplace along with the crumpled note that had been tied to the brick, and smiled—no Howlers today—and set to opening the legitimate correspondence of his bookshop: enquiries after obscure manuscripts, an invitation to an auction of out-of-print books, a rejection of his offer to purchase a number of valuable, though moth-eaten spell books from the estate of Tobias Hardcastle, deceased (the estate maintains that the significant fire and Doxy damage sustained in the late seventeenth century adds character to the volumes, and therefore increases their value fourfold. With regret, your offer of a mere fifty galleons is declined. Yours, etc.), and a polite reminder about his rent—which, he suspected, was greatly in excess of his neighbours', but was just one of many things a person in his position had to put up with.
It had been worse in the months immediately following his resignation from Hogwarts; once Snape had seen to it that word got out, there was barely a landlord in the country that would let him near their property, and those that did charged him double. "Just had it decorated, got to cover my costs," he had been assured on more than one occasion, but more than likely it was for backhanders to his fellow tenants, covering their loss of earnings as members of the magical community voted with their feet on the issue of werewolves in society.
Two years on, most people were beginning to forget; he hadn't had a death threat in two weeks now, and the last time anyone had attempted to set fire to the shop was at least a month ago—little did they know about the charms and protections he'd set about the tumbledown building—but he still got the letters, threatening all manner of things he had long since given up reading about.
A tapping on the glass caught his attention; looking round a raven-black owl swooped away, low over the heads of the early morning traffic through Diagon Alley. It had left him a small, brown paper parcel, which looked considerably less interesting than the remarkable plumage of the owl that had delivered it.
It wasn't unusual for him to receive books by owl post—in fact, it was a large part of his work for the Order of the Phoenix. A number of informants and spies within the Ministry and the darker elements of the wizarding community regularly used his bookshop as a dead-letter drop to communicate with Dumbledore. But unwrapping the package, Remus knew at once it wasn't a message for the Order, since by agreement only books concerned with exotic birds were used for passing messages, and reading the subheading to the volume (on the mating behaviours of the werewolf) Remus had a feeling it was more likely a joke from Sirius.
There was nothing in it, not in that way—which, of course, was the way Sirius had deliberately chosen to read it—but Remus might as well have been talking to himself for all the difference it made. He supposed it had more to do with Sirius being so bored, cooped up inside, than anything—and maybe a hint of jealousy—though Sirius was more than welcome to try his hand with her if he liked, since (as Remus had pointed out on many occasions) she was only a business associate. But Sirius wasn't in much of a position to do anything these days, and Remus could see how it was wearing him down. He was surprised Sirius had lasted so long, if he was honest—sitting still and keeping out of trouble were certainly not traits he had been known for at school—but thirteen years in Azkaban would change anyone.
And he did sort of have a point, anyway—though there had definitely been nothing in Lupin's working lunch with Eleanor last week, they had almost gone out when they'd first met, years ago, just after leaving school. But then James and Lily had died—and everything else that had gone with it: Pettigrew dead, or so he thought, Sirius framed for it all—his world had been turned on its head; going out with her had been the last thing on his mind. Whatever there had been between them—if there had been anything there at all, sometimes he still wasn't sure—had faded into nothing more than friendship, and even that had drifted away from them over the years.
So it had come as a pleasant surprise to find her working behind the scenes at Flourish and Blots, and perhaps the smile it had put on his face—and that she was still turning heads, twenty-five years later—had led Sirius to draw the obvious conclusion. Maybe there was something in it after all, and maybe there wasn't, but it buoyed his mood as he passed the day, cataloguing a crate full of books the Ministry had recovered from an unsuspecting Muggle household.
Late in the afternoon, leafing through a quaint book on divination that was entertaining even if it had little practical value in terms of instruction—Sirius's book put aside for closer examination that evening—he was startled by the loud crack of a phoenix feather apparating, falling gently to rest on the table in front of him. He barely remembered to snatch it up and dispose of the evidence in his haste to hang the closed sign in the shop window and lock the front door, disaparating before the book he'd knocked from the table hit the floor.
And so a day that had started out like any other became a day like no other—except perhaps, a shadow of that awful Halloween fifteen years ago; the one that had started with the prophecy he found himself racing across London to try to protect…