II
"... and Peter was just lying there on the floor for over an hour!"
Sirius finishes his story by throwing himself to the floor, howling with laughter. James quickly follows suit by slumping in a heap on top of Sirius's legs and wiping tears away from under his glasses. Peter chuckles a little – just another of a long line of obvious attempts to pretend the constant practical jokes didn't bother him in the slightest.
I just shake my head and glance across the room at Lily. Not much has changed since our last year together in the tower. The only visible difference is that she's playing with Harry while she rolls her eyes at the antics of our decidedly juvenile friends.
"Honestly, Sirius, will you never grow up?" She probably means to sound good-natured and amused, but there's an undercurrent of annoyance in her voice.
James quickly sits up and tries to school his features into an expression more suitable for the father of a nine-month-old. "C'mon, Lily! It was a great joke! And it's not like Peter here minds getting petrified, do you, Wormtail?"
"'Course not – heh, heh – not like it's the first time!"
Lily huffs, "Whatever. I thought you lot would have grown out of that by now. We've been out of school for three years and..."
"And what?" Sirius interrupts her. "We're all supposed to be boring old adults now who never have any fun? Just sit around talking about work?"
"It'd be a nice change, that!" Lily shoots back.
I tune them all out as Lily and Sirius gear up for another blazing row, their third since we arrived at the tiny house in Godric's Hollow a few hours ago. Apparently, Sirius, in lieu of finding actual work, has settled for needling Lily at every opportunity. James, torn between his wife and his best mate, does his best to play peacekeeper but their tempers are so fierce and their fuses so short that he can do little more than gesture helplessly between them once they get going.
Peter shrinks back from everyone. I've noticed he's been doing that a lot lately. He was never the most outgoing of our merry little band, but recently he's become even more of an observer than active participant.
Sirius and Lily have worked themselves into a real shouting match now and little Harry looks like he's about to burst into tears.
Three. Two. One...
Waaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
Thought so. Lily scoops him up in her arms and marches up the tiny staircase to his bedroom. James is glaring daggers at Sirius for upsetting the baby and Sirius... He's absolutely red in the face and glaring right back. That's my cue, then.
"Well, Prongs, I must be off. Thank Lily for lunch when she comes back down, will you?" I stand up and carefully place the book I was reading on the small bookcase, making sure the spine doesn't stick out beyond the surrounding titles. James nods shortly at me and resumes his glaring at Sirius. "Padfoot? You ready?"
"More than," he barks and stomps out the front door.
I follow him a few seconds later after I collect his leather jacket and my cloak from the end of the sofa. He's standing under a streetlight, smoking one of his obnoxious clove cigarettes and glaring darkly at the little house.
By the time I reach him, he's muttering under his breath about Lily. I do what I've always done and ignore him. We walk a few blocks before he finally calms down.
"So, Moony, a nice break from all the doom and gloom, eh?"
I can't help but laugh out loud. We haven't gotten together much recently; everyone's busy with their own lives and hanging around with friends isn't such a priority right now. Plus, with the war on, Lily gets nervous about having so many Order members under one roof. Still, it was a pleasant afternoon. In between the shouting matches, anyway.
Sirius grins crookedly at me, his earlier mood fading into the late afternoon air like the smoke curling from his cigarette. We walk on in silence until we reach the designated Apparition point at the end of the lane.
"Look, mate, I'm sorry about that back there. It's just that she's driving me batty! Ever since she popped out that kid, she's been acting like she's so much better than the rest of us." Sirius grinds the butt of his cigarette under his heel, then shoves his hands in his pockets and starts to look mutinous again.
Secretly, I have to side with Lily on this. Sirius has done little more than drift since we left school. Meanwhile, the rest of us are struggling to build our lives. Some of us struggle more than others, but I can hardly expect Sirius to see that. Life's just one big party for him.
Of course, saying any of this out loud would do more harm than good, so I just nod and punch his arm.
He punches back – much harder than necessary – and grins again. Typical.
"All right, Moony, you up for some real fun?" He leers at me and waggles his eyebrows in a familiar expression. It brings back a thousand memories: trying to sneak into the Prefect's bathroom under James's cloak, clumsy flirting with Madam Rosmerta, breaking curfew to meet Hufflepuff girls behind the greenhouses, crashing a post-Hogwarts party at Emmeline Vance's house with a fifth of Old Ogden's...
"What kind of fun are we talking, here?" I ask warily.
Sirius whacks me on the back and crows, "A party! This sweet young thing I know is having her birthday tonight and she practically begged me to be there."
"Oh, I don't know, Padfoot. I've got to get up early for work tomorrow and ..."
"Nonsense! We'll just pop in for a minute, make the birthday girl happy and then go down the Leaky Cauldron for a pint. Make it an early night!" He gives me his best puppy-dog-eyes expression.
Literally.
As soon as the last word left his mouth, he transformed and is now sitting at my feet, tongue lolling. I never could say no to that face.
I sigh. "All right, but no more than thirty minutes at the party. And if you skive off with some bird and leave me stranded, I'll tell everyone about the time you got locked out of the tower, starkers, and had to beg McGonagall to let you back in."
He barks once and leaps up to start slobbering all over my face. I push him away before he gets drool all over my robes.
"And change back, will you? You're going to have to do a Side-Along."
In an instant, he's standing next to me again, black hair sticking up all over his head. It's no wonder people often mistake him as James's brother.
"All right, all right. Don't get your knickers in a twist! We'll go in a minute; first, I have to remember where it is that we're going."
"Sirius!"
"Gods, man, lighten up! I know exactly where it is. Here, hold my hand like a good little boy."
"Arse." I drape the jacket and cloak over my arm, clasp my hand around his bicep and steel myself for what will no doubt be the Worst Side-Along Apparition in the History of the World. He's never been any great shakes at navigation.
He's just drawn his wand and is about to cast the spell when Peter scurries up next to us.
"Where you off to, then?" He looks pathetically eager to be included, an all-too-familiar look. Peter could be a great wizard (he's certainly powerful enough to be) but he's such a shrinking violet that, more often than not, people forget he's even there. He tries to make up for it by being as ingratiating as possible. Drives Sirius crazy. He's not the only one.
Sirius sizes him up, then answers with a smirk, "Party, loads of girls. You in?"
Peter nods and Sirius looks at him, then me, and an evil grin splits his face. "How about it, Remus? Think I can manage a triple?"
Peter grabs hold of the other arm and Sirius raises his wand before I can manage more than a few words.
"Padfoot, no, you can't..."
"Appareo triplicus!"
"Gerroffme!" a voice cries out from somewhere under my left knee.
We've landed in a heap, next to a brightly painted garden gate. Judging by the softness under me, I've landed on Peter. I open my eyes to find Sirius's face no more than two inches above mine.
A shadow falls on us and a deep voice says, "Wotcher, Sirius."
"NO, I WILL NOT MAKE OUT WITH YOU, REMUS!" Sirius shouts as he clambers off me, making sure to plant a hard elbow in the centre of my chest. "Wotcher, Ted. Can you believe this guy, trying to seduce me in broad daylight?"
The deep voice, Ted, chuckles. "Yeah, yeah, you Blacks have it so rough. Everybody always trying to get in your pants."
"Too right," Sirius agrees.
I close my eyes as the dull burn of embarrassment floods my face. You'd think I'd be used to it by now.
Peter squirms under my leg and I roll to my side to let him up. I knew this party was a bad idea. Less than thirty seconds and Sirius has already made me look like a complete fool. What does the rest of the evening hold in store?
Sirius grabs the back of my robes and hauls me to my feet. I busy myself with brushing bits of grass off to avoid looking at Ted, who chuckles again and opens the gate to let us into the garden.
"Girls are 'round back," he says. "Go on in, introduce yourselves. Don't let the shrieking scare you off."
Shrieking? What kind of party is this?
Peter pales visibly and Sirius is practically rubbing his hands together in glee. He lopes around the side of the house, calling out, "Oh, birthday girl! Come out and give your Sirius a big wet kiss!"
One high-pitched squeal rises over the dull roar emanating from the back of the house and less than ten seconds later, a brightly coloured blur is racing around the corner. Sirius lets out an Ooof! as the blur collides with him, knocking them both to the ground.
Peter and I stop dead in our tracks, staring at the two figures now wrestling on the ground. I hear Ted laughing again behind us.
The birthday girl is small and cute and peppering Sirius's face with kisses while he tickles her.
She's also no more than ten years old.
Less than ten minutes later, Peter, Sirius and I are firmly ensconced in the middle of an elaborate garden-tea-birthday party, surrounded by nearly a dozen chattering girls who insist on our calling them all Princess Whatever-Their-First-Name-Is. Peter looks horrified and awkward and ready to bolt. He has enough trouble with girls our age, let alone a gaggle of prepubescents in frilly summer dresses who giggle every time one of us speaks.
I've actually been forced to spend time with girls this age a bit, courtesy of my little sister, but I'm sure my face mirrors some of the same horror. It's rather a lot to take in all at once. Especially when one is not expecting it.
Sirius is so going to pay for this one.
Ted, who is apparently the father of the aforementioned Birthday Girl, has abandoned us. He excused himself to look for his wife, Andie, in the house and hasn't come back out yet. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we don't see him again for the rest of the evening.
In the meantime, Sirius is in his element. Eleven little girls hanging on his every word... His head won't fit through any doors for at least the next fortnight.
It's not so bad right now, actually. Sirius is spinning some tall tale about fighting off a nasty, greasy troll at once (who sounds suspiciously like a Slytherin of our acquaintance) and all the girls are oohing and aahing in all the right places.
Well, almost all the girls. I just looked up from my careful selection of the perfect cream puff to find the birthday girl watching me closely.
"Are you going to eat all of that?" she blurts out.
"I was planning on it, yes. Why?"
"You're awfully skinny."
"Thank you for the lovely compliment, Princess –" What did Sirius call her? "– Dora."
She blushes and ducks her head, muttering, "Sorry," and something else I can't quite hear over the sudden burst of giggles coming from the other end of the table.
"I'm sorry. Could you repeat that?"
"Don't call me Dora. My name is Tonks."
"Yes, Your Highness. Princess Tonks it is." I pick up the cream puff and take a huge bite as she giggles. "Hah moulder youf today?"
She laughs outright this time. "I'm ten. I get to go to Hogwarts next year."
"Aren't you a little old for a princess party, then?" Oh, gods, did I just say that out loud?
Princess Tonks doesn't seem too bothered by the question, though. She shrugs one little shoulder and the teacup in her lap wobbles dangerously. "It was Mum's idea. It's easier not to argue with her."
"I see," I say, even though I don't really.
I take another bite of cream puff, only to spit most of it out onto the table when she suddenly bellows, "MUM!"
An upstairs window flies open and a dark-haired witch sticks her head out. "Nymphadora Tonks, how many times have I told you ladies don't raise their voices?" she yells.
Princess Tonks rolls her eyes theatrically at me and I have to stuff the cream puff back in my mouth to keep from laughing.
Sirius stops his story long enough to shout up at the witch above, "Wotcher, cousin!"
She waves back at him and then calls down to her daughter, "What did you want?"
"The camera," her daughter yells back, in what is probably her most ladylike voice. "I want a picture of Sirius and his friends! He brought Remus and Peter to my party!"
"Pleasure to meet you, Remus, Peter." Andie nods at both of us before looking back to her daughter. "It's in Dad's study," she says and shuts the window.
"I'll be right back," the princess says and runs off to the house. She trips over the hem of her skirt and falls through the open door.
I start to get out of my seat to see if she's all right, but Sirius waves me back down.
"She's fine. Dead clumsy. I'm surprised she's stayed sitting this long without falling over." He turns back to his adoring audience and launches back into his story.
Peter pokes me in the shoulder and gestures toward the house. "As soon as she gets her picture, let's get out of here."
"Absolutely."
A few moments later, Sirius is just wrapping up his story as the birthday girl emerges from the house, walking slowly and carefully with the camera cradled in her arms. Andie and Ted follow behind her, no doubt ready to leap forward if she starts to wobble.
Princess Tonks imperiously tells her friends to get out of the way and spends several long minutes trying to fit Peter, Sirius and me in the viewfinder. At last, she manages it (with a little help from Ted) and tells us to get ready. I nudge Sirius, whose attention has wandered to the confections littering the table.
Andie mouths thank you to me as Ted slides his arm around her waist.
Sirius wraps his arms around our shoulders and grins widely for the camera. "Isn't this great?"
"Splendid," I drawl. "Exactly the sort of wild party I needed."
He throws back his head and laughs just as the birthday girl calls out.
"Say cheese!"