After more than a decade of loneliness, learning to love again had come easier than Remus could ever have expected-something akin to riding a bike. Now that he was living with Sirius in a thronging household, learning again to hide their love was much more difficult and Remus feared falling and crashing that bike. After waking up in his bed, at dinner, Remus had sat apart from Sirius, watching warily as he had toed the line of appropriateness. It was understandable that he wanted to educate Harry in the face of war but Molly was right: he was not James. Harry Potter was just a boy and whilst his innocence had probably been stolen long ago, whatever remained of it was precious. He ought to be sheltered from what they were facing for as long as possible. It was what Lily and James would have wanted for their son.
With everybody else in bed and a busy day of purging Grimmauld Place in hopes of making is more hospitable ahead, Sirius had coerced Remus into sharing a drink in the basement kitchen. Remus usually couldn't stand to drag up old memories but Sirius recounted them with such vigour that he was content to just hold his hand and listen in awe of the way his face lit up with laughter when he remembered something which tickled him. He would get sad too but a misery in which you have empathetic company is cushioned by chaste kisses in a kitchen. They were only barely aware of the radio when a song from their youth started playing. "You used to love this song."
"I used to love a lot of things," Sirius sighed, running his hands through his hair and standing up. "Still do as a matter of fact." He leaned down over his shoulder with his arms around him planting a soft kiss on his head.
"You had me going there." Remus could still barely believe it. Waking up beside him felt like slipping into a particularly cruel dream.
"Don't I always?" Sirius quipped, leaning his head on his. "Dance with me?" He moved to turn up the radio a notch, bowed and held out a hand. "For old time's sake?" Remus turned down the radio and stepped in to his arms, both arms around his neck.
Remus remembered this song fondly but he had not listened to it in longer than he cared to admit. It had been playing one of the very last times the Marauders had been together before Lily and James had gone in to hiding with Harry. Before that Remus had given it to Lily and told her to think of it as a phone call, to play it whenever she wished that they were together and that he would do the same. Ever since, the thought had haunted him that it had been skipping in the record player on Halloween as their house and their lives came crashing down around them. "What's wrong?" Sirius was staring at his face, the only book he had ever put so much effort in to reading.
"Nothing," Remus lied, "Just...don't be so hard on Molly. She loves Harry like you do and there is nothing wrong with wanting a normal life for the boy." Sirius bowed his head and stopped dancing.
"Any chance of a normal life for the boy died with Lily and James on Halloween."
The landing above creaked and Sirius dropped Remus's hands, dashing across the room to stick his head in to the stairwell. "Speak of the devil," he said trying and failing to sound upbeat. Harry gingerly stepped down in to the kitchen and Sirius threw a clumsy arm around him.
"Sorry-"His face was painted with the same awkward, guilty expression Lily often got when she was worried she was interrupting a private conversation. He sat down in Remus's empty seat and Sirius sat next to him, draining his glass of fire whiskey.
"Not at all," Remus assured him, switching channels on the radio as their 'phone call' song played on. "Old men have all the time in the world to reminisce. Do you want a drink?" Sirius raised his empty glass with a smile. "I meant tea."
"Mood killer," Sirius gibed playfully leaning back in his chair with a wink at Harry. Remus boiled the kettle and removed three mugs from a low cupboard.
"You know you ought to pick a kinder poison," he instructed Sirius, "Cleaning the house won't be fun with a throbbing head-"
"Cleaning the house won't be fun, period."
Harry was smiling and leaning across the table, his head rested on his hands, the same way James so often did. Sirius was staring at him, probably thinking the same thing.
"First and foremost, Molly is a mother," Remus explained, watching steam rise from the kettle, "It's her natural duty to keep our wandering minds from troubling realities with mundane menial tasks." Remus took the kettle off the boil before it whistled loudly, waking everybody up and filled the three mugs to the brim.
"I pray for her children that she doesn't live on to bother them quite as long as mine," Sirius quipped bitterly and Harry smirked behind his hands. Remus shot him a disapproving glare as he passed out their mugs. Harry smiled gratefully and used his pyjama sleeves to shield his hands from the burning mug. "I didn't break out of prison to clean-"
"Just to murder," Remus countered with a serious expression. Harry sniggered and Remus dissolved in to a tender smile and Sirius laughed in spite of himself. He was barely recognisable from the emaciated man Harry had tried to beat the life out of on the dusty floor of the Shrieking Shack but when he smiled he was utterly transformed. Remus saw the boy who had dragged his feet in the library and said inappropriate things louder than necessary; had sat at the end of his hospital bed and danced for his entertainment; kissed him in the shower; bombed in to a lake one cold July morning; given him a moonstone ring; thrown up on him after their graduation party and asked him to live with him. Remus knew that his smile had a transformative effect on him too and struggled to hide it. He felt lightened by it, slouching no longer, a weight lifted from his shoulders. He was always in jest, a smile twitching at his lips and he knew that he now radiated constant warmth, which before had only peaked through the gaps of hastily constructed but towering battlements.
"I'm not ruling that out," Sirius replied, sipping at his tea and smirking sideways at Harry. Harry sat there beaming and Remus was surprised by how sincere their union felt, daydreaming about how life could have been for them as a trio; if the boy who lived had become the boy with two fathers.
"Molly may be a better cook but they didn't add a dash of disdain and a peppering of disapproval to all my meals," Sirius spat and Harry took a huge gulp of his scalding tea, his green eyes tearing up. That summer Voldemort's Deatheaters had sent dementors after Harry. He had used magic to save not only his life but that of his cousin too, effectively breaking the law against uses of underage magic and magic in the presence of muggles and been summoned to a Ministry hearing. They were intent upon making an example out of him and it was needless to say the least. Remus knew that Dumbledore would not allow anything to come of it but the boy was worried. The prospect of being expelled in the eve of war, weighed down upon him. It came as no surprise that he couldn't sleep but he belonged at Hogwarts and that was where he would stay. "It's the bloody holidays. Harry shouldn't have to clean, not as a boy but as a Potter," Sirius insisted and Harry looked glumly up from his mug, feigning a smile. "James was the messiest person ever." His disregard for order and cleanliness had often driven Remus mad. If not for the Hogwarts house elves, their dorm room would have been a war zone. "It's fundamentally against Harry's nature to clean."
"I'm used to it," Harry mumbled, speaking for the first time with a voice not quite as deep as James's had been and without the well spoken north London accent. Sirius stared at him inquisitively. They all knew so little of each other's lives. Remus and Sirius had agreed to spare each other the trouble of filling in lost, unmentionable years but for Harry those years were his formative ones. The times between school terms seemed far from blissful.
"The Dursley's treat you better than a house elf I hope?" Sirius asked after Kreacher gave an audible snore from his cubby hole which sounded a lot like 'human waste'. Harry turned back to look at them, raising an eyebrow pensively.
"They did make me live in a cupboard once and they are always giving me socks for Christmas. Perhaps they're hoping it works the same way and that I'll leave."
"A...cupboard?" Harry's tone of childish jest was lost on Sirius. His whole body had tensed the way a dog's does before it attacks and the smile drained from Remus's face.
"Under the stairs..." Harry informed him casually, sipping on his tea, "But they gave me Dudley's old toy room before I turned eleven with a bed and everything-"Sirius remained wound tight and Remus longed to reach out for him. He had seen that face before. He was drowning in regret and trying to keep his head above water.
"Tell me that they feed you?" he asked, bewildered, wrapping his hands dangerously tight around his hot mug of tea.
"Yeah...when I behave myself," Harry said shortly, eyes on Sirius's no doubt burning hands and flushed cheeks, suddenly sensing that he had said too much.
"And when you don't?"
"They...don't," Sirius inhaled like he might explode and released his tea, running red hands through his hair. Harry launched excitedly into an amusing anecdote in the hope of diverting Sirius's rage, "like before second year when a house elf apparated into my bedroom and dropped a cake on the head of uncle Vernon's boss's wife. A howler came from the Ministry to tell me that I'd been expelled and they put bars on my window to stop me from escaping to Hogwarts and Ron, Fred and George tore them off with their dad's flying car." Sirius was barely listening. No doubt all he had taken from Harry's story was that he had been imprisoned too and his hands were shaking and curled in to fists.
"They never hit you I trust," Remus asked softly as Sirius simmered. Rather than feeling angry, Remus felt guilty. Sirius and Remus had spent one long weekend painting and decorating their spare room to create a nursery for Harry but he had only managed to spend one night of his life in it and it had been locked ever since. Remus knew that were it not for his condition, Harry could have had a chance to be happy and loved with him and vice versa.
"Not really," Harry said with a shrug and a wary eye on Sirius, "I mean nothing worse than being bitten by a basilisk or...attacked by Voldemort." Sirius was not assured by the sarcasm Harry had inherited from his mother.
"What did they tell you about your parents?" Sirius asked and Harry looked afraid to open his mouth.
"That...they died in a car crash-"Sirius rose from his seat, blowing out a sigh like a volcano on the verge of eruption.
"Fucking bullshit!" he bellowed, slamming his hands down on the table, causing their mugs to clatter and hot tea to spill and drip on to the floor.
"Sirius..." Remus murmured softly, clearing away the mess with a quick spell. He watched Sirius as he paced, breathing hard. Harry kept his eyes down, a hand at his temple.
"It wasn't so bad," Harry explained in a quiet voice which lacked the confidence James's had always burst with, "I don't know how I would have coped back then if I'd known all I do now."
Remus did not know what they would have told him, had Harry been left in their custody but they would have adorned the cabin with photos of their golden days. They would have told Harry bedtime stories about his parents and he would have grown up knowing with absolute certainty the depth of their love for him. "Looking back on it, there was something nice about being just Harry." Sirius remained by the sink, his hands pressed down on either side, hunched over the counter top. There was an uncomfortable silence broken by feet tiptoeing down the stairs. Molly appeared in her nightgown with a disapproving frown at the sight of Harry sat at the dining table.
"Harry, dear it's late." She summoned him over and he left the table and his empty cup of cooling tea, his eyes on Sirius. "You two ought to know better."
Remus could not blame Molly for having difficulty accepting Sirius back in to her life. She had not loved him for half of her life. She had seen what the papers portrayed; a madman, cast out by his family only to sell out and murder his friends and go to prison without trial, laughing maniacally all the way there. Remus had heard her talking to her husband in low voices, one of the few pros of being a werewolf was a keen sense of hearing, and he knew that what unnerved her about Sirius was that he showed no outward signs of the madness which had infected everybody else who had been to Azkaban. She just didn't know how often he spoke to shadows and cried out in his sleep only to wake from a nightmare and turn the light on. She had not found him curled up on his brother's bed, crying because they had parted on bad terms and what happened to him was still a mystery. She did not know that he would give his body to be back again in Hogwart's sheltering walls before the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room listening to James learning guitar chords and watching Remus beat Peter repeatedly at chess as Lily braided his hair. He was a complex mess of a man but his wishes were simple and they haunted him like shrapnel, a dull ache from which he might never recover.
"Sorry if we woke you, Molly," Remus apologized, never taking his eyes off Sirius's turned back.
"Yes, well be careful in future. Voices tend to carry in his house," she advised knowingly, lips pursed as though she had overheard Sirius's complaints about her. She pushed Harry up the stairs with a warm smile. "Off you pop, love." He unwillingly went up to bed and with a sad smile at Remus, Molly followed.
"He'll never know," Sirius mumbled, wiping his face roughly, "What we all were and how much we loved him or the bright future that we had planned. We promised his mother that he'd never be alone and he's been in a cupboard like a forgotten heirloom." Remus got to his feet the moment Molly and Harry were out of earshot and wrapped his arms around Sirius. He straightened up and leaned in to him with a shuddering sigh. He had never held his tongue and it had to be difficult to do so for so long in front of Harry but he did not want Harry or anyone to know how deeply wounded he was by the past. He never told Remus the context of his nightmares and when he got the glazed look or a wandering mind he would never confess just where he had been. He wanted to protect them and project the image of his old self; rash, rebellious, fun loving and friendly but he was not all of those things any more.
"Haven't we all darling?" Remus whispered in to his ear and a smile tugged at his lips, "But we dust ourselves off and we carry on. Let us not waste what time we have fretting over lost hours." Sirius turned in his embrace and kissed him fiercely.
"I think I know just where to start...Have you ever been in my parent's room?"
A/N: One day I might stop writing about Remus but it is not this day. I hope you enjoy this sprinkling of fluff. Please review if so, especially if you have any prompts or requests.