a/n: Will (eventually) be slash (RemusxSirius). Apologies if that offends you. Oh, and disclaimer: the Marauders, Harry Potter, etc., obviously don't belong to me and I only wish I were making money off this.
x.x.x
The Spy Game
x.x.x
Two: Give the Kid Some Cake
x.x.x
At twenty five years old, Walburga Black was in her prime. She had sleek black hair that fell over her shoulders in soft waves. Her bright blue eyes were shaded by long, thick lashes, and she had a lovely set of straight, white teeth behind full, crimson lips. Her delicate skin remained wrinkle-free, and because of her strict diet and exercise regime, she possessed quite a dainty figure. No one would guess she had given birth—twice.
She was beautiful. And she knew it.
Beauty, unfortunately, didn't pay. She also knew that. Another thing Walburga knew was that raising two growing boys in a nice house and a safe neighborhood cost money. What she needed was an education. A college education. Now that would pay. She thought of all the well-paying jobs she could hold if only she had a college education.
But she didn't have a college education. Her husband was the one with the education. She'd married him fresh out of high school, without even a thought of continuing her education at the University. Her husband had a medical degree, and one medical degree per family was plenty.
Of course, her family now had no medical degrees. Her family now had no degrees of any kind, unless she took into consideration the mercury thermometer suctioned to the window above the kitchen sink.
She sat in front of the vanity in her bedroom and plaited her hair.
Legally, there was still a medical degree in her family. Her husband had barely been gone a month. Legally, he was still her husband. There was time for him to come back.
She stifled a bitter laugh. Don't be such a child, Wal. He's gone and that's that.
When she had realized what, exactly, had happened, she had wanted to fly into a rage. She had wanted to scream and shout and throw things and then crawl into bed and cry and sob until her last ounce of strength was gone. She had wanted to slip silently into the bathroom and—click—lock the door and fill the bathtub with warm, soothing waves and step in with her razor and just—
But she didn't. She didn't scream or throw things and she only cried late, late at night, when she was alone in bed. And she didn't slit her wrists in the bathtub and float into oblivion. She didn't.
Because she had two children.
She had two young boys.
She had Sirius and Regulus.
Her heartbreak and frustration meant nothing. Her sons meant everything. She had stayed strong, would continue to stay strong, for them.
Unfortunately, despite Regulus' recently acquired affinity for playing doctor, her sons did not have any medical degrees.
And strength, like beauty, did not pay.
She had not gone to college and her sons had not gone to college. Her husband had not just gone to college but to medical school. Her husband held a well-paying job as a pediatrician.
Her husband was gone.
He had probably run off with that—that—freak of his. It was inevitable, really. Orion was sneaky, certainly, but Walburga was sneakier. She'd noticed the signs. She'd just ignored them in the hopes that she had been wrong, was becoming nit-picky, had been imagining things.
But ignorance was no longer an option. She had two growing sons and an absent husband and a pile of bills to be paid and no medical degrees.
She remembered the blond man in the grocery line a few months ago. He had offered her a job as a secretary at his law firm. "Why thank you," she had said politely, "but I'm really no good with a typewriter. And my husband works."
He must be desperate for a secretary, she had thought at the time. He must be quite desperate, to be asking women with no qualifications.
He had given her his business card, though, and now she just thanked God she hadn't thrown it away immediately.
She finished her hair and picked up her lipstick.
The day she realized he was gone, she had fished that business card out of her purse and given the lawyer a call. She had known that she would need to find work. Soon.
Walburga had met with him, and later his partner, to discuss the specifics of the job. Today she would be starting work, while her elder son was at school and her younger at daycare. She would only work part-time, however, so that at 3 o'clock she could pick up Regulus from daycare and go home.
Fuck but she wished she had gone to the University. Then she'd have some qualifications for a job other than a secretary. Secretary. She didn't even actually have the qualifications for that.
Well—qualifications or no, a job was a job. Her good looks were, apparently, enough qualification for MR. ABRAXAS MALFOY, ATTORNEY AT LAW.
And, well—money was money. She'd get what she could with the qualifications she had.
Anything for her sons.
x.x.x
Plink, plink, plink.
Sirius waited. Sure enough, Remus opened the window and leaned his head out.
"Hello," Remus stated plainly.
Sirius grinned. "Hello!"
Remus' eyes widened fleetingly and Sirius realized that perhaps his greeting had been too loud. Remus seemed averse to loud speaking, for some reason or another.
"Can you come outside?" Sirius asked. "We could go to James' house and play. It's what best mates do, you know."
Remus bit his lip. "I—I don't think so," he said in that meek little voice that Sirius, for some reason or another, found quite endearing. "My d-dad is up."
"So?" Sirius asked. "Can't you just tell him you're going out to play? That's what I tell my mum."
"I—" Remus paused. "I d-don't think so."
"Why not?"
"He—he wouldn't l-like it, I don't think."
Sirius furrowed his brows in confusion. "But, can't you at least ask? I mean, you can't know until you've—"
"No," Remus said firmly. Well, not quite firmly. He hadn't stuttered, anyway. "I'm sorry. I just—I can't. Not n-now."
Sirius swallowed the hot disappointment fighting its way up his throat. "But—don't you want to be best mates?" Sirius wasn't sure why, exactly, but there was something about this Remus boy that made Sirius want to be his friend. Remus could be a Marauder like Sirius and James and now Peter, too, and they could all be best mates.
Remus said nothing, apparently having chosen to instead inspect the weathering paint on the windowsill.
"All right," Sirius said, sulking a bit. He pouted. "Sorry to bother you. I'll go now."
He had swung his legs over the branch and was about to jump when the other boy stopped him.
"Wait!" Remus exclaimed. Well, it was closer to a whisper than an exclamation, but Sirius heard it nonetheless.
He paused and looked expectantly at the the boy in the open window.
"I-I'd like to be b-best mates," he murmured softly, avoiding eye contact.
Sirius grinned. "Brilliant!" he said. "You're a Marauder already, anyway. Me and James decided, so there are four of us if you count Peter Pettigrew, but you don't know him. He goes to school. And so all four of us can all be best mates now and we'll do all sorts of Marauder stuff and it'll be really fun. And it's okay, you know, if you can't come outside and play with us all the time. We can still be best mates. I'll just come visit a lot. Me and James both will. I don't think Peter can, 'cause he doesn't live around here. But he can sometimes, maybe, if his mum drives him." He was rambling, he knew, but he didn't care. Remus was his best mate now, and Sirius was ecstatic.
"O-okay."
"And who's the scary man that answered the door when me and James came that one time? Is he your dad? He's really scary. D'you think maybe if I came after school and knocked on the door you could answer so that I wouldn't have to talk to him?"
"Err—" Remus said. "I don't—I d-don't think s-so. He wouldn't—he wouldn't l-like that, really. I can m-maybe c-come outside and play sometimes. When he's asleep."
Sirius scrunched his face, puzzled. "When he's asleep? But won't you be asleep too? I mean, won't it be nighttime?"
"W-well I don't r-really know. S-sometimes it's n-nighttime."
He scrunched his face even more. Sirius wanted to ask Remus what he had meant by that, but he sensed some type of nervous tension radiating from the other boy and decided that, for once, he would keep his mouth shut.
"I have to go home now," Sirius said, "or else my mum will be worried, 'cause I came straight here when I got off the bus. But I'll visit tomorrow."
Remus smiled. "Okay."
Sirius smiled. "Okay."
He jumped from the tree branch and picked up his bookbag from the ground, not bothering to dust off the dirt from the bottom.
He took his time walking home.
x.x.x
Best mates. Remus didn't know exactly what that meant, but he liked it.
Remus couldn't hold back a little smile as he closed the window, watching Sirius walk across the yard.
He didn't think he had named the tree too soon.
x.x.x
Severus Snape did not like the first grade. At all.
The little black-haired boy sighed as he listened to the awful teacher—Ms. Prewitt, was it?—read a riveting story about boys named Dick and dogs named Spot. Or something along those lines.
Severus Snape was not happy.
First, he was stuck in a room with the two most obnoxious and, really, just plain mean boys he had ever met. Stuck for an entire school year.
Second, he had been thoroughly humiliated and unjustly punished last week in front of the entire class. All because of those two obnoxious boys, too. Well, Pettigrew had been the perpetrator, but Severus blamed it mostly on Potter and Black. The stupid Pettigrew boy had obviously just been trying to impress them. Well, it had worked.
Third, his knuckles hurt. Still.
This wasn't what school was supposed to be like. He remembered finger painting and counting and reciting the alphabet in kindergarten last year. Then he hadn't been stuck in a room with the nastiest boys ever. Then school had been an escape, not another number on his Why I Hate Life list. Which was, in all actuality, a pen-on-paper list that Severus added to, oh, every other day or so. His mother had found it once and had told him that he was too young both to be so disillusioned by the world and to spell half those words. He had told her to kindly shut up and stop invading his privacy, and that his spelling skills were. indeed, well above grade level, thankyouverymuch.
He wondered fleetingly what the word fuck meant. He certainly heard his parents say it enough. Well, usually they would shout it. "Fuck this," "fuck that," "fuck you."
It didn't sound very nice.
Well good, Severus thought. He wasn't looking for a nice word to describe how he was feeling at the moment.
He scowled.
Fuck the first grade.
x.x.x
"Remus!" Sirius exclaimed. And there he was. After weeks of Sirius' tree climbing and pebble tossing, Remus had, for the first time, somehow slipped out of the house. And there he was. Sitting underneath the tree that Sirius had come to think of as his own and waiting for him.
"Hello, Sirius," Remus said, shuffling to his feet. "W-we can play now, if you want. You can show me what b-best mates do."
"Brilliant!" he said, grinning and showing his teeth. Well, the teeth he hadn't lost yet, anyway. "Let's go to my house first so I can drop off my bookbag."
It had become habit for Sirius, rather than going straight home, to stop by to visit Remus immediately after getting dropped off at the street corner by the bus. His mum either didn't notice or didn't care that he usually arrived home at least a good fifteen or twenty minutes after the bus came, which Sirius was perfectly fine with. "Then we can go get James!"
"O-okay." The corners of Remus' mouth lifted just a bit.
Sirius realized that he had, as of yet, never been this close to his newest best mate (because, despite what James said, Sirius still was still slightly dubious about Peter Pettigrew's best mate potential), and Sirius took a moment to study him.
Remus was thin, nearly to the point of being scrawny, and at least an inch or two shorter than Sirius. He seemed, though, to contain a great store of hidden strength, lurking beneath the false pretenses of a delicate stature and a shy nature, just waiting to be unleashed. His clothes were ragged at best—threadbare and patched-at-the-knees blue jeans, an over-sized, long-sleeved black t-shirt, and a pair of sneakers that, while lacking laces, had a formidable number of holes, particularly in the toe area. His skin was pale like the pages of a new book, his eyes big and shadowy, and it was clear even to Sirius that Remus hadn't been outside in a while.
Remus, perhaps noticing Sirius' scrutiny, looked at his scruffy shoes and nervously ruffled his shaggy hair.
"C'mon, then," Sirius said, leading the boy away from the Spooky Ghost House and toward his own home.
x.x.x
"Mum!" Sirius shouted. "Mum, come here!"
"What is it, Siri?" his mother called as she traipsed down the stairs.
He groaned, embarrassed by her use of his babyish nickname. "Why do you have to call me that?"
Mrs. Black rolled her eyes. "What is it, Sirius?"
"You have to meet Remus!" Sirius exclaimed, inclining his head to the boy standing next to him.
"Hello, Remus," she said pleasantly. "It's very nice to meet you."
"It's nice to meet you t-too, ma'am." Remus averted his eyes and ruffled his hair again.
Mrs. Black focused her attention back on Sirius. "Do Remus' parents know he's here, Sirius?"
Remus bit his lip.
Sirius shrugged. "Yeah. Can we go to James' house now?"
She frowned slightly. "All right. Just be home before dark."
"Okay!" he said, promptly dropping his satchel in the front walkway and sprinting out the door, Remus trailing close behind.
x.x.x
"What should we do now?" James asked as the three Marauders lay on the Potters' backyard, stretched out on their backs on the crisp, autumn leaves strewn across the lawn.
The leaves had been in several neatly raked piles. That was before James and Sirius had spotted them, of course. Once the lovely, neat piles had been spotted, a massive three-way leaf fight had quickly ensued. Well, a massive two-way leaf fight had quickly ensued between James and Sirius. Remus had kicked about a few leaves here and there, occasionally picking one or two up and crunching them in his hands. Mostly he had watched the James and Sirius and grinned to himself at the antics of his two new friends.
"That one looks like cloud!" Sirius cried, pointing to the sky and ignoring James' question altogether. He and James immediately burst into shaking fits of laughter. Remus smiled in amusement and giggled softly a handful of times, but his eyes grew rather heavy as he looked pensively at the sky.
"Hey, Remus?" Sirius nudged him in the side.
He flinched. "Err—yeah?"
"What's that one look like to you?"
"Which one?"
Sirius pointed to the same cloud that he had so aptly described a moment ago.
"Umm—" Remus bit his lip. "Looks like a wolf."
"A wolf? Nah," Sirius stated. "It's bigger than any regular old wolf. I bet it's a werewolf!"
"What?" Remus said.
"A werewolf. The people that turn into big mean wolves on the full moon and go around killing people and stuff—or else they bite you and turn you into a werewolf too!"
James laughed.
"Sounds scary," Remus said timidly.
"Scared, Remus?" James teased.
Remus said nothing.
"I bet you aren't really scared," James continued. "Us Marauders are fearless, after all. You're probably just covering up 'cause you are one!"
They boys giggled. Sirius shrieked and jumped up. "Get him away, James! Get him away! He'll eat me!"
Remus grinned.
"Look, James—he's—he's—bearing his teeth!"
"Don't be silly," Remus said. "I can't g-get you."
"Of course you can!" Sirius exclaimed, apparently urging Remus to play along. "You're a—a—man-eating monster!"
"N-no I can't." Remus grinned again and Sirius rolled his eyes. "After all, it i-isn't the full moon, yet. Then I can get you."
Sirius' eyes lit up. They all laughed and Sirius plopped back down onto the grass. "Phew," he said, mockingly wiping his brow. "That was a close one."
Remus wondered how he'd gotten so lucky as to have made these two friends. Friendship had, until quite recently, been a completely foreign concept to him.
He watched the wolf-shaped cloud as the sky turned pink and orange around it and hoped that he hadn't been too reckless by sneaking out of the house like that. He would certainly be punished if his dad woke up and found him missing.
Well, he decided, who really cared? Let him be punished. The afternoon with his new friends had been well worth it.
x.x.x
"So," his mum said at dinner that night, "why don't you tell me about your new friend Remus?"
Sirius grinned. "He and James and me are all best mates. And Peter, too," he added as an afterthought. "But you don't know Peter. He's in our class at school."
"So Remus is also in your class at school, then?"
"No," he responded. "He doesn't go to school."
She frowned. "Doesn't go to school? And he's your age?"
"He's six, he said."
"I suppose he's home-schooled," Mrs. Black said.
"What's that?"
"Well, it's when instead of going away to school during the day, you stay home and your parents teach you instead."
"Oh."
"Mum!" Regulus piped in. "Can I have cake for dessert?"
"We don't have any cake, dear."
"I want cake! Can't I have cake?"
"No, Reg. We don't have any."
"But why—"
"Shut up!" Sirius exclaimed. Four-year-old brothers could be so annoying. "She already said we don't have cake."
Regulus pouted.
"Sirius Black! Do not tell your brother to shut up." She turned her head to his brother. "And Regulus Arcturus Black! Eat your fish and stop whining."
Regulus pouted again.
"So," Sirius' mum continued, "where does Remus live?"
"The Spooky Ghost House!"
"Pardon?"
Whoops. "Er—he lives next door to the Evans."
She frowned again, though her tone of speech was as light as always. "Well, perhaps you'd like to have him for a sleepover?"
Sirius grinned. "Could James come too?"
"I think that would be doable, yes. I'd have to contact both their parents, of course—well, Virginia and I are good friends, and since James has slept over here before, I'm sure that won't be a problem. I've never met Remus' parents, though. Don't know their number or I'd give them a ring. I suppose I'll just have to pay them a visit sometime."
Sirius frowned, remembering how big and scary Remus' father was, but said nothing. His mother was a grown-up, after all. She wouldn't be afraid.
"What's a sleepover?" Regulus asked. "I want one, Mum! I want a sleepover!"
She sighed. "A sleepover is when you have a friend stay overnight at your house, and you may have one next weekend, maybe, or the weekend after."
"Hooray!"
x.x.x
Regulus had been put to bed for the night and Sirius' mother was sitting on the couch, reading a fat, boring looking book with small words and no pictures.
"Mum?" Sirius said, pushing the book out of the way and crawling into her lap.
She sighed and reached for her bookmark. "What is it, dear? It's nearly bedtime."
"When will Daddy be home?"
She sighed again. "Please stop asking me this, Sirius. Your father won't be home for a very long time."
"Why?"
"He's—he's on a business trip, dear. Please stop asking."
"Well, where then?"
She sighed. "You know that your father is a doctor for children?"
Sirius nodded.
"Well, he's gone far away. To—to Africa. He's gone to Africa, because there are a lot of sick little children there who need his help. And Africa is a very long way away and he can't call us because there aren't any telephones in the part of Africa where he is and he'll be gone for a very long time. You just have to be patient."
"How long?"
"Very long, Sirius."
"Like—a year?"
"Longer, I would say."
Sirius swallowed, feeling the hot, salty liquid begin to prickle his eyes. "B-but," he said, "but what about me and Reg? We're children, too. What if we get sick?"
"Then we'll just have to make do," his mother said, ruffling his hair. She kissed him on the cheek. "Go on to bed now, Siri, and don't ask about your father anymore."
He pouted. "Fine," he said, hopping off his mother's lap.
"Goodnight," she called as he walked up the stairs. "I love you."
"Love you too," he mumbled, blushing, because professing his love for his mother was just not something to be done loudly or without much embarrassment. Secretly, though, he was thrilled. Maybe his dad loved the little children in Africa, but his mum loved the little children right here at home. And that wasn't too bad, really.
He sniffled, wiped his eyes, and went to bed.
x.x.x
Lily knocked on her sister's door. "Petunia?" she whispered, cracking the door ajar and poking her head in through the gap. "Petunia, you asleep?"
"Wha's it?" her sister called groggily from the twin bed in the center of the room.
Lily entered the room, closing the door behind her and tiptoeing to her sisters bed.
"Can I get in with you?" she asked.
"Yeah," Petunia answered, now slightly more awake. "What's the matter?" she asked, scooting over a bit as Lily crawled into the little bed.
"'M scared," Lily mumbled.
"Nightmares?"
"No," she said. "Well—yeah. But that's not all. It's—it's that house."
Vague though her explanation was, Lily knew her sister would understand. That house. That house next door. Petunia called it the Shrieking Shack, an apt name indeed, given the shriek-like noises it seemed to emit at regular nightly intervals.
"Noises?" Petunia asked.
"Yeah." Lily was a terribly light sleeper, and the slightest sound could keep her awake for hours. "Like—like screaming," she continued. "I'm scared."
"It's okay," her sister said in a comforting voice. Petunia was already eight years old and very big and brave. Lily always felt safer when she slept in her sister's bed with her. "Nothing in that house can get you."
Lily felt her eyelids droop and she nestled her face into her half of Petunia's pillow. "Mm," she mumbled. "Thanks Pet."
"Welcome Lils."
x.x.x
Plink, plink, plink.
Nothing.
Pink, plink, plink.
Nothing.
Plink, plink, plink.
Nothing.
"Remus?" Sirius called. "Remus are you there? Remus, you hear me?"
Nothing.
"Are you asleep or something?" he called.
Nothing.
"Are you even home?"
Nothing.
"You okay?" he called, just in case Remus was home. "Well—I'll be back tomorrow I guess."
Nothing.
"Bye bye."
Sirius climbed down from the willow and picked up his bookbag from the dirt, frowning slightly as he headed home. They had had so much fun playing in the leaves with James yesterday. Sirius had been hoping Remus might be able to come out again sometime soon.
x.x.x
When Lily got off the bus that afternoon, she'd noticed Sirius Black, the annoying friend of the more annoying James Potter, do something quite odd.
Lily knew where Black lived, and she figured that even Black wasn't dumb enough to not know where his own house was. But he didn't go to his house. Instead, he crossed to the opposite side of the street—her side. And then he proceeded to walk all the way down the street, past her house, and to the Shrieking Shack.
She wondered fleetingly if Black frequented the awful place—Lily certainly didn't make a habit of observing his every move, after all—because he certainly looked as if taking a stroll to that house was an everyday occurrence for him. She then decided that, no, even Black wasn't insane enough for that. Why he was even going once, though, puzzled her. A dare, maybe? Certainly he wasn't that foolhardy? God only knew what was lurking in dark crevices of that place!
Or maybe Black knew something she didn't?
Petunia had already dropped her books on the kitchen table and gone searching for an afternoon snack, but Lily remained standing in the doorway, one foot inside the house and one foot out, wondering about Black.
Perhaps she should follow him?
"I'm going for a walk, Petunia," she called. "Tell Mum if she asks."
"Okay," Petunia replied from the kitchen. "Don't go too far."
"i won't."
Lily shut the front door and, before she had a chance to second guess herself, quickly scampered next door to the Shrieking Shack.
"Remus?" she heard. It was Black's voice, for sure, but where was it coming from?
She looked around the yard and saw a book satchel lying on the ground underneath a large tree. Was Black in the tree?
"Remus are you there?" she heard, and was now able to discern that the voice was not only definitely Black's but was definitely coming from the tree.
She crept slowly to the trunk of the willow, next to the satchel, attempting to make as little noise as possible.
"—asleep or—"
"—home—"
"—okay—back tomorrow—"
"—bye."
She heard rustling in the branches. Uh-oh. Black was climbing down.
She ran.
x.x.x
Lily had no trouble sleeping in her own bed that night.
The Shrieking Shack was mercifully silent.
x.x.x
a/n: Mucho thanks to last chapter's reviewers. Reviews equal love.