Chapter 87

Taller

Remus was torn between laughter and surprise at the scene before him. Both feelings were a result of different people.

But then again, when one lived with Sirius Black and James Potter surprise was a daily occurrence so that was nothing new. He wondered how long it would be before nothing surprised him any longer.

"What does that mean?" James exclaimed, clearly not conditioned to just roll with everything his best friend does yet.

"I don't think there's more than one definition to what I said." Sirius answered, his amused expression confusing James even more.

"Obviously there is, because you can't mean what I think you mean."

"No, I'm pretty sure I do."

"But you never..."

"There's no point in delaying the inevitable, mate." Sirius shrugged.

"But why?"

"Why not?"

"Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?"

"I'm the Vampire King and I've violently kidnapped him and replaced him with this." Sirius said with a deadpan look on his face, moving his hands to indicate he was talking about himself.

"Well tell your vampire king I want my friend back."

"No, James, I am the vampire king, how am I supposed to... you know what nevermind. Yes James I am already packed."

"No, you're not. You're just pretending to be so we won't bug you about it. You never pack until the morning we leave, and you're so noisy doing it you wake us up, on purpose might I add. That's the way it's always been." James contradicted, thus the reason for Remus' humor. James seemed to have inherited some of Sirius' theatrics. Though Sirius was much better at it.

"Yeah, all two times we've done it. I think I'm going to sleep in tomorrow, I don't want to have to pack, besides there's no moon tonight, I don't want to wake Remus up that early." Sirius shrugged again. Remus muttered a thanks and awkwardly played with his hair.

"But that's not how it works. You don't sleep in... ever."

"I sleep in all the time."

"No you don't, I haven't got up before you since first year!"

"James, you're definition of sleep in is noon." Remus couldn't help but add.

"What other definition is there?"

"Nine o'clock." Sirius answered with a shrug.

"Nine isn't sleeping in! Nine is early!"

"I don't know how you can spend all day in bed."

"I don't spend all day in bed."

"Hey, since you done packing you can help us." Remus interrupted with a smile. This conversation was boring him already and it looked like it would last a very long time. Besides they had stuff to do before bed.

Sirius jokingly whined for a while but helped out anyway, mostly helping Remus as the werewolf was horrid at organizing and was trying to just throw everything into his trunk haphazardly.

By the time they were done Sirius was pretty sure Remus' trunk had never been more organized, and Remus was shocked at how much stuff he could actually fit in the thing.

They stayed up playing exploding snap for as long as they could not wanting their last day to end and have to go home, or to be more specific to send Sirius home.

The Hogwarts Express didn't look nearly as menacing to Sirius when they climbed on board as it had during Christmas, it simply looked depressing. A reminder of what the next two months had in store.

As usual the train ride home was quieter than the ride to Hogwarts had been with Sirius' subdued nature and James deciding the eight hours of sleep he'd gotten last night hadn't been nearly enough. Remus and Peter simply did their summer homework, not wanting to take up precious holiday time on school work.

As they exited the train they found James' (and by extension Remus and Peter's) family easily. It really was quite helpful that their families were such good friends, a group of six was much easier to find than three groups of two.

Remus couldn't help but wish that group could have been a group of eight, but if wishes were horses than beggars would ride. There was no point in hoping for the futile.

It took Sirius much longer to find the Blacks, but then he wasn't looking very hard and when he did he was surprised by his mother's reaction, she just stared at him for quite a while. He grew tired of this very quickly.

"What is it?" he asked harshly, not even trying to be polite.

She didn't answer at first just looked away her head turning from him.

"You're taller." She commented, successfully sounding like she couldn't care less but walking away before he could decide whether it had been a complement or if she'd just been stating an observation. He looked to Regulus for an answer.

"What was that about?" he asked with much less hostility than he'd had before. Regulus just shrugged.

"Am I really that much taller?" He asked again, putting a hand on his head as though that was supposed to help him judge.

"Yeah, a couple inches, I noticed earlier, but it's not that big of a deal." Regulus said using a tone of voice not unlike his mother's and walking off just as she had.

Sirius hesitated for a moment before continuing, unsure of what had just transpired he decided it was best to pretend it never happened for now. He could think about it more when he was safely alone in his room.

That may well have been the closest thing to a normal conversation they'd had in almost four years.

A/N) This chapter's short I know, the next one will be longer.

I love Christmas shopping, ^_^ Christmas time is the best.

No top ten today, my brain isn't working enough to figure out what to say about the next one.