A/N. Grin. Oops. Been a while since I updated then eh? Sorry. I don't like this chapter so I was trying to make it better. Then I couldn't so I gave up. Then my email broke. Then I forgot. Then I just didn't. But here you go, and I'll get the next one up as soon as. No reviews replies this chapter haven't got the time right now, but thank you to you all anyway, I love the reviews your sending and if there a question you want answered then ask again (if you even remember what you wrote last time) and I'll do replies next time ok? Or email me. Or IM at MSN, name (I think). Enjoy and R and R!

Rainbow Over The Moon

Chapter 4: Home is Home and Life is Life

Friday morning dawned and Harry meandered down the stairs, again in his pajamas, once he smelled the tempting lure of bacon.

He arrived in the kitchen and found Remus frying up bacon, sausage, egg and tomatoes all at once. He skilfully slid the mass onto a plate and passed it to Harry who sniffed it appreciatively. Apparently, cooking was one of Remus' many skills.

Harry tucked in while Remus repeated the procedure for Sirius and himself, and the pair sat down to join him.

As Remus and Sirius polished off the last of their meal and began to fight over the last sausage, Harry was still fighting his way through the mass of food on his own plate.

"So…" he began as he finally gave up on the eating thing. Sirius and Remus shared a look. "What're we doing today?"

"Whatever you want to…it's absolutely chucking it down, so outside is probably not the most brilliant of ideas." Sirius said, leaning back and patting his full stomach. He was filling out a good bit and now, and was almost back to his pre-Azkaban brawniness, and didn't fit Remus clothes anymore either.

"Can…can I have a look at some of the books in the study, Remus?" He asked, not wanting to be rude or presumptuous.

"Of course. You don't have to ask."

Harry grinned. "Cool. I'm interested in a bit of magical theory and sometimes I don't understand what the teachers, especially Professor McGonagall, are talking about because I don't know why the things happen. Plus…OWL year, I should probably try and get a background understanding." Harry explained.

"I had problems with that too. But it clicked one day really suddenly. And then most things make a bit more sense." Remus said, sympathetically.

"See even genius Remus had problems in school. I never totally understood it until I tried to teach it to Peter, and that helped me understand what I was doing and what was inside of me and all sorts…" Sirius added his two bob.

"I just think it'll really help to know why a certain incantation is used to do a certain thing to something…and then I can use that theory to apply to something else and not have to remember every spell under the sun." Harry said.

"I'll tell you what helped me a lot with that…Latin. I learnt a bit of Latin one summer." Sirius thought for moment and then added. "I wasn't a geek or anything, but, you have no idea how boring my summers were. The idea of me learning Latin of my own free will should give you some clue." Sirius said and screwed up his nose.

"Yeah, I didn't really think you were really into books or anything." Harry said.

"Me? No way. Only just skated by through school thanks to charm and the amount of plotting and pranking we did. In fast that's probably the only reason any of us passed out exams." Sirius said. He sat forward and lent his elbows on his knees as if he were about to tell a story. "I just smiled my way through and learnt everything by using magic in pranks. Remus has a brain like a sponge and can remember what he learnt in lessons exactly. Never needed to revise. Probably why he's such a good teacher. James was just clever and liked to know everything. Peter…Peter, well he was a bit thick. Another reason the rest of us passed, we taught the lot to him twice over."

Remus nodded his agreement. Harry rested his head on one hand and thought for a moment. "You know, having you two around could be useful." He commented. Harry had in fact been hanging onto every word. Having the best professor ever at hand was not an opportunity a smart young fellow, such as himself would ignore, and he was drinking in the learnables as much as he could before he had to face the inadequacies and idiocies (and sheer incompetence) that was the trend with some Hogwarts' professors.

Remus slapped his hand on the table suddenly and stood up. "Right…find clothes…find pen…" and with that he wandered off, presumably to get dressed, muttering to himself all the way.

"He may be a genius Harry, but I reckon he's lost the plot." Sirius said matter of fact with a sharp nod of his head. .

…………………………………………………………………………..

"You two and my Mum and Dad, and Snape, I'm guessing, were all in the same year at school right?" He said and leaned back in his chair in the study later that day.

"Yep, your Dad was…no, wait, Peter was the oldest…rat…then your Dad, then your Mum, I think, then Remus, then me." Sirius ticked the details off on his fingers, he was sitting on a pillow on the floor and stacking books.

"Yeah…Siri was the little baby of the group." Remus added as he passed around more tea, which Harry noted with a smile was just the way he liked it. It hadn't taken Remus long to catch onto that; two sugars and dead milky. Remus returned to his desk chair, and swivelled in it, pushing himself from side to side with his legs.

"Oi…as I recall, I wasn't the last one to do 'it'. So don't go calling me 'baby'." Sirius exclaimed as Remus stuck his tongue out at him.

"Well neither was I, so stop looking at me like that…" Remus shot back.

"Do I wanna hear this conversation?" Harry put in.

"Erm…well, let's just say, Peter got very lucky one night with a very drunk Hufflepuff." Remus added. Harry scowled at the mention of the rat.

"Harry…he wasn't always a traitor…I know he ruined your life, he ruined all our lives, but he was there in our past. You need to get used to hearing him come up in conversation. The Peter we knew, wasn't the Pettigrew rat you know." Remus said with a seriousness and wisdom that sounded extremely powerful in his soft voice.

Sirius' eyes took on a haunted look and he said nothing as Remus continued. "I had a lot of time to think after the time in the Shrieking Shack. Cursing his name every time we want to bring up a part of our history won't catch him. He's paid his penance by suffering at the hands of his 'Lord'. You saw him. Don't get me wrong, I still hate the conniving little shit, but I won't smear my past, my memories, our memories, with what a future Peter Pettigrew would do."

Sirius still said nothing, but his eyes filled in once again and returned to their normal blue as he reflected on something Harry could take a decent guess at.

In the comfortable quiet, Harry's thoughts managed to meander back to where they had been in the conversation before. "Hang on…so that means…my Dad was the last one to…you know. I always thought he was a bit…of a ladies man."

"Ahh…he was, at least until it came to being serious. But for some reason, in a sweet sort of way, your Mum, was his first time. Course, this got him no end of ribbing from me…but there you go. I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity like that now was I?" Sirius said and gave a hearty chuckle, enjoying the memory and purposefully not becoming morose as he thought on their lost friend.

Harry looked like he found that notion sweet, but too informing at the same time. "Ok, sweet, but that brought up some images I didn't really need." Harry frowned in confusion. It normally hurt to talk, or even think about the parents he never knew, but Remus and Sirius, somehow…their presence made the memories nicer, more real. But at the same time, it gave him a new pain to deal with, he couldn't have found this out for himself…he never knew his parents, and never missed them in that way. Now he knew there were things to miss. He quickly shook it off and pushed the conversation forward. "How old were you when I was born?"

"Erm…well, Lily was about what…seven months at your twentieth?" Sirius asked Remus, "So they were all twenty, I was nineteen."

"Whoa…you were like… still kids!" Harry said. He hadn't realized.

"Children were something of a valuable and precious gift during a war." Remus said cryptically.

"Wait…so that means you two are only thirty-five?" Harry asked.

"Only thirty-five? Why? How old do we look?" Sirius exclaimed. "Besides, I'm only thirty-four." He added proudly.

"Only for another month, and Sirius, if you think about it, twelve years in Azkaban…" Sirius shuddered, "And thirty odd years of monthly transformations, don't exactly promote ageless appearances." Remus said and waved his hand over his face.

"Too true, old friend, too true. Perhaps we shall just wither away. Slip away into the afterlife. Maybe we won't even notice." Sirius wailed dramatically. "Hey…then we would be like Binns. Do you remember that?" He said dropping his melodramatic air as he started laughing. Remus thought for a moment and then joined him.

"What?" asked Harry who was confused by the hilarity of the situation.

"Oh, sorry Harry. It was our fifth year. Must have been January, winter, definitely and we were in History of Magic. And Binns was late. He hadn't shown up. So Professor McGonagall, who was Deputy Head then too, comes rushing in and asks us to go back to the common room for that lesson. So as we were trying to find out why, Professor Binns comes in behind her…looking very white and transparent. No one ever looks at the man, this must have been the only time ever, all eyes were on him and…" Remus broke down laughing again.

"And he says…open your books to page ninety-three. Please be quiet, I'm not feeling too good!" Sirius broke too, but gasped out, "So McGonagall jumped out of her skin and rushed out of the room, shouting for Professor Dumbledore!" and he broke down completely as well, Harry joining them.

"He comes in through the blackboard now you know." Harry said, wiping his eyes under his glasses.

"Yeah, he started doing it a couple of lessons later. That was probably after McGonagall convinced him he was dead. It was announced at dinner later that day, that she was delighted to tell us that Professor Binns had unfortunately died in his sleep, but would carry on teaching so there would be no changes to our curriculum." Sirius said.

"While we're in here, is there any homework you want to get out of the way, Harry?" Remus said as he stacked some books to one side.

"I dunno, I've more or less done my homework, but I think Potions needs improving and I want do some more work on Defence, except, I don't know who we'll be giving the work to, seeing as the last Defence teacher was a Death Eater acting as a paranoid old Auror." He said as he picked up his own stack of books.

"There's a load of books in here what'll help with that. And us of course…I can help with Defence, so can Sirius." Remus said as he shoved some books back onto a dusty shelf and sneezed.

"Why?"

"I used to be an Auror you know. So did your Dad. Officially anyway, technically, your Mum and Remus here were too. They had been trained for it as part of the Order of the Phoenix." Sirius explained. "But Remus couldn't be Registered Auror, because of the werewolf 'legislation laws'." He drawled sarcastically and rolled his eyes at the mention. "And your Mum was kept as the pretty secretary in the ministry who people didn't mind their tongues around, while she secretly cracked open hundreds of current cases." He cackled at the thought.

"I've heard of that. The Order, I mean. Kinda like Dumbledore's secret army of the light." Harry admitted.

"Yeah, where did you hear that? Not many people know about the Order." Sirius frowned.

"Erm, partly because of the visions I get from Voldemort, you know, through the scar. And because of what Dumbledore said last year…about the old crowd." Harry replied.

"Oh, right. The visions…how bad do they get?" Remus asked with a frown to match Sirius'. Both deepened as Harry described the visions.

"They're not too bad I guess…the revels…they're the worst. And when he does the Cruciatus torturing thing, that batters." He mumbled, focusing on his hands.

"Urgh, we staked out a revel once for the Order. Had nightmares about it for weeks." Sirius said with another shudder.

"I remember that…horrible. There's too many a night one of us woke up screaming. That's one bloody good thing about sharing a house…there's people around. But…let's not talk about it…lighter topic of conversation if you please." Remus put in, pouring an obscene amount of sugar into his tea.

Harry felt comforted by the short comments the two men made. It made him feel a little more secure knowing he wasn't the only one to suffer nightmares, even if the visions were his speciality alone. 'Fun fun joy joy.' But like Remus said, he snapped his thoughts away from that dark topic and searched for a lighter one.

"What's Waterfront Bash 84?" Harry asked, remembering Sirius' T shirt.

Remus and Sirius looked at each other twice before either replied.

"We'll tell you when you're older." They said simultaneously, and shared another look, small grins playing about their lips.

"Tell me!" Harry implored.

"Sorry. Can't. Not old enough." Sirius said.

"Yes I am! Please…." He begged and pulled puppy dogs eyes.

"No, your just and iddy biddy baby. And we wouldn't dream of exposing your delicate consitution to such things." Remus added theatrically.

Harry pouted and the three fell silent. Remus and Sirius both seemed to be thinking about something which had apparently been a lot of fun, judging from the small smiles and grins they were sharing. Harry made himself a mental note to find out what exactly Waterfront Bash was, or had been, and if maybe, it was still around.

………………………………………………………………………………

Dinner came around quickly and the three were once again in the kitchen, filling themselves with chicken and salad and this delicious type of warm potato salad. Stuffed and sleepy, they flopped into chairs in the living room, Sirius with his arms dangling over the arm of the sofa and his legs sticking out the other end, Harry curled in an armchair and Remus stretched out happily by the fire.

"Harry, your birthday's in a week, do you wanna do anything special?" Sirius asked.

In the warmth of the fire and the amiable atmosphere, Harry let himself go. For the first time in a long, long while, felt he really, truly was loved and he wouldn't ever exchange the happy existence he had here for anything.

"Er…be with you guys?" He mumbled sleepily. Sirius barely heard it before they both dropped off for a nap. But Remus smiled a secret smile to himself and behind his closed eyelids, his eyes twinkled.