At the ANU Harry Potter club, we host a fortnightly "Fangasm" exchange. You put three prompts onto a piece of paper and you get someone else's in turn. Apart from these three things, you have free reign to do what you will - we've had songs, dances, dioramas, puppet shows, comics, fanart and, of course, fanfic. This past fortnight, I was given the prompts "Room of Requirement", "Buckbeak" and "Purple". After last time's similarly confusing promts (Blaise Zabini, Astronaut, House Elves) I decided to write something completely solemn.
Purple Robes and Prose
The house was finally falling into relative silence. The children (if the teenaged horde could truly be addressed as such anymore), already wearied by their visit to St Mungo's that afternoon, had completely exhausted themselves with a few enthusiastic rounds of exploding snap after supper and had taken very little persuading from Molly to head off to their respective beds. The excitement that had surrounded the lead up to Christmas had ground to a comfortable, but sudden, halt.
Now, where Sirius' voice had filled the rooms with rousing choruses of carols, the slightest breeze whistled icily through the ancient floorboards.
Remus crept along the second floor hallway, each hand clasped around a large mug of tea. He was careful not to make any noise that might wake Harry and Ron in the room closest the landing as he made his way to door that was slightly ajar at the end of the hall, the bedroom where Buckbeak had taken up residence.
Nudging the door open a little further, Remus lifted the mugs a little in offering.
"Knock, knock." He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. "I brought tea."
Sirius was sat in a winged armchair by the window, lazily stroking Buckbeak's back with a slippered foot. He looked up, startled, and then smiled, motioning to an empty second chair beside his own.
Remus closed the door as he entered the room. He passed one mug to Sirius and sank into the seat.
"Ta, Moony."
"It's much cleaner in here than I expected," Remus mused. "It's much cleaner most everywhere. You've been busy."
"You've not been here to see," Sirius said simply, "you don't know. I might have been keeping things clean for weeks. But you've been off with the werewolves, so you wouldn't know."
Remus sighed. "Let's not do this again. Please."
An uncomfortable silence hung over them as they sipped at their tea. For a moment, it was 1980 and they were barely more than kids who thought it'd be a good idea to split the rent on a place in Hogsmeade. For a moment, it was 1980 and no one could be trusted, not even your best friends. For a moment, they remembered.
But the silence was broken when Buckbeak abruptly shook his head, causing Sirius to lose his train of thought and his footrest.
"Sorry," Sirius turned to Remus. "That was low of me. I just get so damn frustrated, stuck in this place. I wish I was out there helping, I wish I had something better to do than dust cobwebs from the ancestral home."
"I wish you did, too." Remus replied honestly, finishing his tea and displaying his mug. "Besides, you should let me do the washing-up, at least," he quipped, grinning at his friend.
Sirius let out one of his bark-like laughs as he jumped up from his chair. "Come on, I'll help you."
"It's only the supper things, not too much to do. I insisted that Molly shouldn't, but then I didn't myself, I got distracted by feeding Buckbeak…" Sirius' voice trailed off as he crouched by hearth. The fire in the kitchen grate had burnt itself to embers, but it didn't take much to be coaxed back to a roaring blaze.
Remus discarded his cloak and rolled up his sleeves, his forearms were soon covered in warm, sudsy water as he passed dishes to Sirius. Sirius, as he dried each dish, placed each unsystematically on the table.
For a moment, it was 1980 and they were enjoying domesticity. For a moment, it was 1980 and they were trying to forget the magical world they were part of.
For a moment, it was 1995 and it was just the same.
"I like the robes." Sirius smirked, sitting on a spare bit of table as he dried the last plate and Remus turned away from the sink. "They're new, no patches. I hope you didn't buy them for yourself, though."
"Ah, no." Remus turned around once for show. The robes were new in fact, coloured a deep grey that was probably better described a shade of purple. Although they were nothing special, they certainly weren't his usual style. "Christmas gift from Nymphadora. Thought I should wear them on the off-chance she'd be here. Wouldn't do not to use a gift, besides, especially not a useful one."
Sirius looked away a little, his face revealing a smile that looked to Remus more than a little forced. "She's a nice girl, Tonks. Takes after her mum like that. You could do worse."
Remus moved closer to his friend, his voice soft and heartfelt. "She's hardly my type."
Sirius' eyes met Remus' earnestly. He looked at him for a long, evaluating moment before... "I suppose not."
In that moment, it was 1995 and suddenly things made so much more sense than they ever did in 1980.
"You know, Moony, I hardly feel like myself anymore," Sirius kept his sight on Remus as his friend moved a little closer. "It's not just… I know the Dementors never actually got at my soul. But some days it feels like it."
Remus put a steadying hand on Sirius' shoulder as he continued to speak.
"I just know they took something from me, though. It's like niggling thoughts in the back of my mind. It's like…" Sirius paused, looking down for a moment and taking a deep breath, "It's like when we were making the Map, and I knew there was that room I'd stumbled across in second year, but no matter hard we looked, we couldn't find it anywhere again. And even when we'd finished the Map, I was never satisfied that is was perfect, because I knew I was missing something."
"Are you saying you're missing something now?"
"No." Sirius shook his head, but then looked up again quickly. "Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. My confidence, for one thing…" he trailed off.
"And?" Remus prompted, his hand a warm weight on Sirius's shoulder.
"And this." Sirius said, his own hand meeting Remus', fingers intertwining. "The old me would have worked this out much sooner. This I should have done a long time ago."
Without preamble, Sirius wrapped his other hand around the back of Remus' head and pulled him into a gentle kiss.
Somewhere upstairs, a clock chimed midnight.