"Do you even know what you've done?"
Remus stiffened as the man slammed his hand into the table, which creaked alarmingly. Complaints were normal in their dingy little store at the end of the street. It was obviously run down and cheap, and many people made unreasonable demands that the wait staff had to do their best to accommodate to keep the place afloat.
It wasn't something Remus usually complained about – he needed the job. Finding a job had always been tricky, keeping one for the five months he had managed to keep his current one was close to a miracle.
The man sighed, fist almost half into the wood of the table where Remus usually ate his lunch (on the odd occasion he managed to take a lunch break).
"Just leave. You've been a good employee, and I thought you were the most levelheaded of the bunch. Pack your things, I don't want to see you again. Merlin only knows if we'll manage to keep this bar open after that stunt you pulled."
Remus wanted to argue. The words clung to the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them back at Rabastan's disappointed gaze. There was nothing he could say that would make things better, not now when Rabastan wouldn't hear his reasoning.
"Alright," Remus muttered, grabbing his coat from near the door. There were other people desperate for a job. Everyone was replaceable in these kind of jobs, Remus should have realized that even if he desperately hoped for some sort of stability.
A surge of bitterness welled up in him as the door slammed behind him. It would be yet another bitterly cold night with him searching for another job. He couldn't worry his mother by returning early, and in their small apartment even the opening of the door would wake his mother.
The noticeboards were full of requests, but Remus knew none of them would welcome a werewolf in their midst. The Animague were fine. The demi-humans were welcome. People only feared the ones who couldn't control their transformations, even if they were fully conscious during the whole process – they were completely unwilling to believe the latter.
Remus still read every request. He would have loved to teach like his mother had, or he would have liked to work around books – but those jobs were surrounded with people who believed they needed to be 'protected' from people like Remus.
A little blue notice was tucked into the corner. Remus had to move and replace a few other notices to even read it.
Help needed for long term project.
Must be dedicated and willing to travel.
Remus recognized the address to be only two or three streets away. He wasn't sure what to make of the lack of description on the job, but it was one of the few notices that didn't ban were-kind outright.
It took less than ten minutes to get to the specified street. He walked past the door several times before he noticed the little stag tucked just above the doorknob. The windows were dark, but Remus risked knocking anyway. There had been no specified time for when whoever had put the notice to be available, after all.
There was some scrabbling at the door, and Remus was tempted to casually make it seem like someone else had knocked, but the door swung open before he was able to make up his mind.
The man at the door seemed to light up when he noticed the blue paper in Remus' hand.
"I told you someone would notice it!" The man yelled back into the house, before grinning at Remus. "Come in, come in. It's cold outside. We can talk inside."
Remus would swear he only blinked, but suddenly he was not only inside the bright room, but the door had been closed and he had been shoved into a couch.
"I'm James, the man at the door introduced himself. He's Sirius." James pointed at the shaggy dog that had immediately approached Remus.
"Animagus?" Remus asked, careful not to move as the dog sniffed him.
The dog whined loudly at Remus' question.
"How did you know?" The dog whined in a human voice, before taking the seat next to Remus in a human form. "No one around here knows."
Looking at Sirius' human face, Remus realized why the name had sounded familiar. Sirius Black was notorious for causing chaos and miraculously disappearing from the scene. His photo was hung up in most of the stores and restaurants where Remus had worked. Even Rabastan's pub had a photo of him in the back room just above Remus' lunch table. It had certainly made taking lunch a little less lonely.
Although, the number of times Remus had been forced to clean up after the Animagus had made a mess didn't really leave him with a good impression.
"So, it's you?"
"What do you mean by that?" Sirius yelped. "What did I do to you? It wasn't me, I promise."
"You know Sirius?" James asked curiously, taking the couch opposite the one Remus had been dumped in.
"Not personally, but I know his mess." Remus side-eyed the Animagus, who immediately looked to the side and started whistling cheerily.
"That's good, because this is also Sirius' mess." James grinned.
Sirius gasped, sitting up straight for the first time.
"How could you, James? This is betrayal! I wasn't the only one to stick Wormtail in that emergency ship!"
The pair glanced at each other for a long, silent moment, before they burst into laughter.
"His expression was hilarious," James choked.
"His expression when he realized we had pre-programmed the co-ordinates—" Sirius was almost in tears at this point.
"—to send him back home." James was nearly on the floor.
Remus watched the two splutter and chuckle until they were barely able to breathe, almost afraid to ask the question of what the job was really supposed to be about. He wasn't sure he wanted to be involved in all of this anymore.
Trying his luck at another deadbeat job seemed more reliable than this pair of wheezing males. Remus was just about to stand, when Sirius grabbed his arm.
"Don't-don't misunderstand. Wormtail's the reason we ran out of fuel in the first place. Otherwise, we would never have ended up landing here, but finding a third pilot was more difficult than we originally thought."
"Landing here? What do you mean?"
James and Sirius exchanged glances.
"If you don't agree to this job, you must swear that you will not tell a soul about what we're going to show you. It won't be a job in the traditional sense – I hope we'll all be friends – but if you disagree, we're going to have to make sure you don't spread the secret."
Remus looked between the two, and their uncomfortably grave expressions.
"I'd like to see you find someone, other than my mother, who would even have a conversation with me," Remus commented, "but I'll be sure not to go out of my way to spread this secret of yours."
Less than five minutes later, and Remus was staring slack-jawed at the jet-like shuttle that had been hidden within their home. There was definitely not enough space in the building to house everything he had just passed – he had just walked all the way here in about ten minutes, so he would know.
"Let me correct myself, find me someone who would actually believe me on the slim chance they would actually want to speak to me," Remus muttered.
Remus traced his fingers around the body. The cool metal reminded him that this wasn't just a dream, that the stars that had always seemed impossibly far away could be reachable now.
"So, are you willing to be our last co-pilot? We'll teach you everything you need to know. Wormtail wasn't exactly the brightest planet in the solar system but he learned quickly enough," Sirius said, following Remus around the shuttle. "We can have your mother stay here, then you won't have to worry about her. The house elves will take care of her."
Remus wondered if being a little selfish for once was fine.
Taking a deep breath, Remus nodded to himself.
"When do I start?"
Written for: [1378 words]
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