Will you respect me in the morning, Padfoot?
Do I respect the Minister for Magic?
The love of a fine dog?
No pun intended, you understand.
The smell of a mother's cooking?
Do I respect the school, the establishment?
Don't answer the last one...
Yes, Remus, I will respect you in the morning.
A man walked into a bar. Boom boom.
He was handsome without trying to be, and the fact that he wasn't trying to be helped him to blend into the crowd, but when one noticed him, it was hard to take their eyes off him for too long. For this reason, many eyes were upon him as he strode into the room, enjoying every scrap of attention he could get. He moved like a dancer, but something about his eyes indicated that simple dancing wasn't quite what he had in mind. His glossy black hair fell around his face carelessly and he wandered vaguely, but his eyes scoped the room carefully, looking for someone or something in particular.
...And there he was.
"Can I buy you a drink, sir?"
His voice was deep, sultry, containing promises of a great many things beyond just a drink; his expression, however, had gone completely wooden.
The man at the bar, the one he had approached, had sandy hair flecked with grey, though he looked hardly a day older than eighteen. His face and arms were peppered with small scars, and his eyes looked up into the world with hope but no expectation. Something about him suggested perpetual melancholy, from his sad, pessimistic eyes to his tattered, patched robe - though now, recognising the handsome man, his eyes filled with a hitherto unknown joy, and he smiled briefly but warmly. "Hello, Padfoot." His voice was quiet, deliberately restrained.
The man called Padfoot showed none of this restraint; he tossed his mane of black hair and all but dove forward into the man at the bar, embracing him tightly. "Oh, oh Moony. It's been such a long time since I saw you."
Now that the ice had been broken, Moony was unashamed of the contact between them. Arms flung around the other man, they held each other tightly for a long moment before breaking apart, grinning mischievously. "Where's Prongs? It's not like him to miss out on an occasion like this one."
"Well," and it was evident that Padfoot had been aching to share this news from the moment he stepped into the bar, "he's off with Lily, isn't he?"
Both men smiled knowingly, laughed, and embraced once more. "It's been so long, hasn't it..." Moony observed, though his voice dropped considerably, the laughter and joy vanishing as quickly as it arrived. Looking at Padfoot, now, in this place... it was so hard.
"I know..." Padfoot whispered his reply, brushing a lock of the greying sandy hair from Moony's face. "I... I'm sorry. It was unforgivable. Let's drink to my shame."
"North and south and east and west, trying to avoid arrest... Christmas Bob is a PhD, got a Dip. Ed and a BSc... he did all his work by mail, something something something jail... you might think that Bob's a crim, but I... need some more whiskey..."
Moony's brow creased as he heard Padfoot singing the bizarre song, though unless it was a more bizarre song than he had thought, he was not in possession of the full set of lyrics. "Where'd you learn that?" He asked, gesturing to the barman for another bottle.
"Australia," came the prompt reply as Padfoot sat down beside him again, laughing at some inner joke - either that, or Australia was just a particularly amusing country in itself. "They sing a lot of songs about weird things... I'll have to teach you this other song later, it's about a... well, I forget what it's about, but a bloody good song it is."
He lightly shrugged his shoulders, turning his attention to the bottles the barman was handing over, pushing over some more change. "Ah, well, Australia." This was said as though it explained everything. It probably did, in some part of his mind.