There's a clatter of high-heeled feet on the stairs and Lily comes rushing down, her hair in fantastic disarray.
"No, Sirius," she snaps - a little breathlessly, so he chooses not to take that into account. "You're not making any comments about how good I look now!"
"Ahahaha," he grins, his mouth twisting into what is usually the sort of mischievious smile that earns him a laugh from her, "you always look wonderful, Lily."
She laughs, accepting defeat in the face of that huge grin. "Tell James," she says in a theatric whisper that carries across the room to her husband, currently struggling with a tie, "that he could take lessons in complimenting from you."
"I heard that!" yells James from across the room, nearly choking himself as he tugs the silk tie into a shape resembling a squashed oblong. Lily rolls her eyes, smiles and crosses over to him. "You were supposed to, you twit. Isn't it astonishing," she calls over to Sirius, lounging on the sofa, on leg hanging over its sides and watching the proceedings with amusement, "how absolutely incapable most men are of tying ties?"
"Oh, Moony's fantastic with them," Sirius assures her solemnly. "It's this tie-tying skill that threatens to set him apart from us Marauders, you know."
"Really," says Lily, wrinkling her nose and smoothening the tie, now miraculously in perfect shape. "You know, it's positively ridiculous - he isn't attached and he swears he hasn't got the faintest inclination of anything like that? Sirius, are you all right?"
"Oh, yeah, sure, just choked on something," he mutters, pulling himself upright.
"Because, I mean, really! With a brain like that - and he's just so pathologically nice. And a good sense of humour..." She goes on talking as she hurries over to the cot, whose occupant is happily engrossed in a mobile consisting of various farm animals, who are all now trying to outdo each other volume-wise. "Silencio! James, what possessed you to buy this thing?"
"Er," says James, quailing under her glare. "Well, it's sort of cute, you know... and Harry does like it," he added defiantly. "Look, Lily, we really need to get a move on. You know how crowded the restaurant's going to be, and they'll give our seats to someone else for sure if we don't turn up on time, and I'm determined not to let anything spoil our anniversary, so let's go-"
"Wait," gasps Lily, picking up the gurgling bundle from the cot and thrusting it at Sirius, who recoils as though he has been asked to kiss a Flobberworm. "Please, Sirius, or he'll be so cranky tomorrow, just - I don't know, sing him a song or something, or tell him a story, he's sweet, he won't mind what you do, please-? And you're his godfather so you'd better be up to it!" she adds, giving him that famous glare again before her face softens slightly at his horrified look. "There's no need to treat him like a bomb, Sirius, you know he loves you, he won't give you any trouble-"
"Lily!" James bellows, mindful of a rather tight budget and an intense desire to escape the confines of a very well-tied tie as soon as possible.
"-and just show him his mobile or something if he starts crying-"
Sirius's face is a picture painted by an artist with an excellent sense of humour.
"-not that he will, I've just fed him, he'll be a darling, Sirius, don't worry!"
"Right," says Sirius, looking down at a smiling face with startling green eyes with a mixture of horror and resgination. "Right, no worries, of course..."
"Lily!" screeches James, half hanging out the door.
"All right, I'm coming, be good, boys!" She gives them a grin that is not totally unmixed with mischief and hurries to join James.
"...so..." says Sirius, shifting the baby slightly in his arms. "It's just you and me, mate."
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Sirius is at the end of his tether, and Harry hasn't even begun to give him trouble.
Silently, he offers up immense thanks and gratitude and grateful astonishment to the countless mothers who have, over the years, endured much more than a two month old child with apparently huge reserves of energy that even Sirius, the Beater and the muscle-man of the Marauders, has never seemed to possess.
Harry has worn him down with boredom.
After the first five minutes, during which Sirius effected the perilous Transfer of Baby to Cot, he had sat down to enjoy the very peaceful scene before him, which consisted of Harry gurgling happily at the ducks and cows on the mobile, now restored to their noisy state with a wave of Sirius' wand. After five more minutes, Sirius wondered how in Merlin's name the kid could stand to stare at the same miserable animals rotating in precisely the same orientation over and over and over and over...After ten minutes, Sirius's eyes had acquired the glazed-over look he had previously been able to attribute only to a History of Magic lecture in warm weather with Moony in the hospital wing (it was much more fun to provoke him, compared to James or Peter). He concluded, foggily, that Harry was precisely what Lily had told him - absolutely no trouble at all.
He is on the brink of dozing off and earning himself a concussion on the corner of the cot when Harry's face begins an almost comical vertical progression downwards. The blissful baby smile fades and the mouth begins to tremble and pout; the chubby cheeks seem to invert and realign themselves below his mouth; his eyes begin filling with alarming rapidity. And before Sirius can blink, he opens his mouth, draws in a shaky breath, and begins to wail in earnest.
Swearing under his breath, Sirius leaps up, banging his head on the mobile and causing the ducks to moo, stubs his toe on the bottom of the cot, and yelps in pain. Harry is, it appears, someone very in tune with his environment, and he begins to wail at a dreadfully high pitch.
"Dammit," mutters Sirius feverishly, looking around him desperately for something that will help him with a wailing baby. Quacking sheep now seem so bloody irritating that he silences them with his wand. Trust James' son, he thinks, half-furiously, to be this devious.
"All right, all right, mate, look - um - here, want a - a - dammit! what's that thing called?! - teddy? Teddy bear? Urgh," he adds in an undertone, preferring to forget certain embarrassing periods in his life which had also involved teddy bears. Harry looks up, whimpering and remorseful, as if to say call yourself a godfather?! And then his eyes begin to leak again.
Taking his courage in both hands, Sirius gingerly hefts the little body into his arms. His baby-carrying technique, he is sure, is going to land him a sprained arm tomorrow, or give Harry a coma. He wonders how a consummate ass like James had ever managed this. How the hell he became a father - ! But there wasn't any doubt about how good he was at the job, so... Well, if James could, surely he could as well, so he cradles the baby in his arms while it whimpers and wails a little more, but this time at more manageable decibels. "Er, look - tell you a story, eh? How about that? I'm sure I have a couple of good ones up my sleeve..." He roots around desperately in his brain, but every escapade he has ever been involved in seem to slip his mind at this crucial point... Moony would have been good at this-
-strangely, he remembers everything concerning Moony...
"Right, ok, look - tell you about Uncle Remus, eh - haha oh Merlin what a name..." He chuckles, and this seems to settle little Harry a bit. "Right, right... where the hell do I begin, anyway?"
On a blistering cold day in the middle of their first winter in Hogwarts, when snowballs flew thick and furious and snowball alliances were formed and broken as quickly as melting ice. Sirius and James were not from wizarding families for nothing, and of course their intellects provided the necessary, so whoever found themselves on their team was very lucky indeed. After Sirius had triumphantly concluded a particularly vicious round with a spell that caused the oncoming snowball to melt instantaneously and rain on his opponent even from as far as twelve feet away, he glanced around a spied that small, slightly wistful-looking boy - whatshisname - sitting on a rock nearby. The boy watched his glance stay on him, and offered a tentative smile. Blimey, thought Sirius, he looks really bad. I wonder why. He strolled over to find out.
"That was after his first full moon, of course - he looked really bad then, it wasn't so bad when he grew older, but at eleven his body was so - so puny I was surprised he was still standing. Not that I knew," Sirius assures a wide-eyed Harry. "I just thought he'd fallen ill, and he'd missed a day of lessons - he was in my house, you know, and I was wondering who that kid was with the ratty grey jumper."
In the hospital wing, with his face in bandages so that only his eyes and nose and forehead showed - brown-gold eyes that were filmed over with tiredness. "No, it's nothing, really, I was - just clumsy, I fell and scraped my face - stupid thing to do-"
"Was it Snape?" Sirius was thirteen and spoiling for a fight - and concerned for his friend, the quietest, the one with the deceptively straight face even when his eyes might glint with humour. "We'll deal with him - you'll be coming out of here and he'll be going in, you watch-"
"No, please, Sirius, it wasn't him. Not everything is his fault, you realise." He smiled, tiredly, and James ruffled his hair. Peter grinned at him, a little uncertainly. "Now leave me alone, all right? I think I need a little rest, only a few hours - be out of here before you know it-" His voice fades.
"And I completely agree!" snaps Madam Pomfrey, who had been hovering in the background. "Off, you three!" She closed the door behind them.
"Hang on," said James, slowly, one floor down."Why does he need bedrest if it's only scratches on his face...?"
"We started worrying about him, of course - wondering what on earth he was up to - wondering what the hell was going on, in fact. It took us an amazingly long time to figure it out, actually, considering. And not like your old Moony gave anything way, mind - regular human - what's that thing Lily called him? - containment unit, he was..." Sirius stares into space and rocks Harry gently, sitting on the arm of the couch as history unwinds itself, its face now a boy's, now a man's, sometimes a wolf's.
A warm day, a beautiful one, the best of the summer so far. Moony's eyes were unreadable. For a long moment, Sirius did not breathe - he seemed to sense, not for the first time, the wolf that lurks behind the eyes of his friend, the gold that shoots through the mild brown sometimes, a feral gold that makes him wonder, makes him want to know. Time was frozen.
"All right. I see. What do you intend to do, now that you know?" His eyes were still inscrutable, but Sirius could tell from the rigdity of his shoulders and his body that he was anything but calm. "If you don't want to talk to me, that's all right. I'll understand. But I'd prefer you leave now, if that's the case."
It was Peter who protested, pleading, almost. "Moony! You don't think we'd do that, do you?"
"Don't be an ass, Moony!" cried James, relieved, insulted, saddened. "You think we wouldn't - just because - "
"Moony," said Sirius, his voice the only one of theirs with calm and intensity both. "To hell with everyone else."
Because he knew how it felt to be an outsider inside yourself.
"And then it just - well. I mean, I know it sounds stupid, but that's when I realised - I mean, okay, James was a good friend all right, and he's a bloody good bloke and all, even if he's a bit full of himself, but Moony - you know? Just... he's just... Moony."
The train was issuing copious amounts of steam by the time the Marauders said their goodbyes to about half the school population. Sirius happened to glance over at Remus, and caught the most peculiar expression on his face. It seemed to be a mixture of wistfulness, self-mockery, and resignation. When Remus caught him looking, his face went completely blank, and then he smiled - his normal, usual smile, a little sweet, a little amused.
In that particular instant, Sirius experienced something that might have been a revelation. What was the definition of a revelation? he thought, staring blankly out the train window, holding the thought like a candle flame inside him, still shaken by it - by the suddenness of its warmth and its certainty. James and Peter were both dozing, their heads bobbing with the motion of the train. Remus - whom he studiously avoided, without bothering to know why - was immersed in a book. It seemed a little anticlimatic to Sirius, who was used to the noise and fun and colour of end-of-year train journeys - what with this being the very last time they were riding on the Hogwarts Express.
He remembered little moments like these - forbidden in the Rules For Boys, but there nevertheless - when he sat playing chess with Peter on a sunny afternoon and caught himself grinning at the way Peter chewed on a fingernail as he considered his next move - feeling an almost uncharacteristic rush of affection for a friend like him. But - this was more, more than that - when he was lazing around in the library, flipping random pages of random books, he'd looked up and seen Remus' distant, preoccupied look, searching for a word or a phrase or a piece of information that would complete his essay, rolling his quill around between his forefinger and thumb - a - a feeling, an emotion, although he wasn't very outwardly emotional - not like that, not soppy emotion - he who was the original leader of back-slapping and the conspiratorial wink...
This was different - a look Moony would freeze at when he caught it, its intensity was rather alarming, according to him -
"-this was different." Sirius looks down at Harry and it takes him a few seconds to realise he is fast asleep, his breath making his little chest rise and fall gently. Sirius goes on talking, quietly, determinedly, trying to dispel the feeling inside him - a feeling of melancholy longing, but with a burning warmth inside. Something he wanted - would never get, perhaps - had he been deluding himself...?
Ridiculous - inexplicable. Those were the two words that echoed in his mind as he swung his legs down and sat hunched over in bed, the curtains brushing the bed beside him. But his mind was clear - clear as the moonlight that shone through the window and touched Moony's brown hair, gently this time, almost caressingly. When it was full - not a sliver like this - he thought that it was clear - clear and sharp as a knife, ripping through his skin and pulling out the wolf from within, painfully, but fully, totally, completely. Sirius could not remember much of Padfoot - confused shapes and images in dulled colour are what he retains in his memory, but he remembers something of Padfoot and Moony, their wild canine rushes through the Forest, outpacing even Prongs, sometimes, leaving Wormtail far behind - although the wolf (no werewolf, this was wolf, beast, through and through, no vestige of Remus the boy remained) was not one for company, and Padfoot could be intimidated by it. A primal tug of connection. A brown and white wolf and a huge black dog.
Inexplicable, thought Sirius, thinking of his tossing and turning, unable to sleep long after the others had dropped off, that night, seeing Moony poring over a book - he'd bugged him to tell him a story ("You'd do better reading Hogwarts: A History, really, Sirius") or sing him a song or something ("You don't want to die young, mon ami! I can't sing!") or just talk to him, for Merlin's sake. And the last had worked, it actually had. Sirius dimly recalled hearing Remus' voice go on and on - he didn't usually do that, he didn't usually talk, but Sirius had poked and prodded him, had exasperated the exasperating mystery that was Remus J. Lupin, until Remus tried to show him how and what he thought, and by that time Sirius was sleepy, so Remus had only got to the part about how good it felt to be in Hogwarts, away from his family, in first year, when he dozed off. And - he must have been dreaming, really he must have - but maybe Remus had leaned over from his bed and ruffled his hair a little away from his face where it tickled his nose.
And now he was watching him sleep.
And this was the mystery, wasn't it? Because through all of him - of Sirius, Sirius Black, the blockhead, the brilliant mischief maker, through all of it, something about Remus suggested permanence, to him. Not boring, mum's boy permanence - his was a presence that couldn't easily be forgotten, that faded away in the colour of his life, sometimes, but was left, lingering, like a shadow that underscored his actions. Remus was an anchor. Remus might give them a look, sometimes, when they had had run-ins with Snape, and left them defiant but with the bitter aftertaste of dim guilt; Remus would grow red at the bawdy jokes, Sirius' insinuations, which made Sirius provoke him more, and Remus would throw something harmless at him or tell him to shut up, that was crossing the line - but Remus might get angry, if Sirius tried attacking Snape on behalf of him, he would coldly tell him he would not like to be an accessory, he could manage his own battles, thank you kindly. Or Remus could be vulnerable, darkness shadowing his eyes, the lines of his face prematurely old and tired.
He was wolf, and then he was Remus. Both seemed to fit his skin, both were him, and yet he was a mystery, a miracle, a secretive smile. Remus knew Sirius' likes and dislikes and every characteristic of his ("Stop pulling at your lip, Sirius," he used to say, without looking up at all, bent over a book, frowning slightly). Sirius, in the middle of everything that was his tangled life, wanted to know. He should be able to figure him out, he knew what to say to make him laugh, make him angry, provoke him, irritate him, upset him, comfort him - everything. And yet he felt something at the corner of his eyes, a few glances, maybe, a couple of expressions that were hiding something - was it the wolf or the boy? And did he have any right, in the end, to question it? Who cared, if Remus was not who he was? James and Peter were both wierd, sometimes, even Lily had her grumpy unreasonable side (although James attributed this to "woman stuff") but Remus?
No, Sirius thinks, revising in his head, still cradling a sleeping Harry. It was not that he did not know Remus, or had never known him - he wanted to know more. He wanted to know everything.
Scrap that - he wants to know, he is still amazed, curious, exasperated, drawn on. He is the volatile one, the mercurial temperamental one, with shames and dark humour and anger and arrogance and natural self-confidence and devilry and fierce loyalty and affection and happiness. He needs nothing and no one to validate his actions, yet Remus' opinion counts for a lot. Peter tagged along, but Remus followed silently - no, he didn't always follow - he knew exactly what he was doing. So what was it? thinks Sirius, what is it?
But does it matter?
"Your Uncle Remus," whispers Sirius, grinning into Harry's peaceful face, "is a wierd guy, but I love him all the same."
"Thanks very much," says Remus quietly, from the door, his keys in one hand, a grin creeping its way around his face.