[SIRIUS BLACK]
Sirius Black is feeling more than a little foolish. His mood has taken an extreme nosedive after what was practically a euphoric ride on his Harley. The warm London air had been whipping through his hair, the feel of pure speed and power was at his fingertips, and a beautiful girl had been holding him close…
Fuck, I am an idiot.
He's leading the way past Tom, to the back of the bar where they can enter Diagon Alley through the usual entrance. He's steadily avoiding the gaze of the young muggle woman behind him, his thoughts churning.
Sam. Fucking Sammy. Of course she has a Sam, he thinks. He can't honestly believe he hadn't once questioned how this beautiful, sexy, fun, funny woman would be available for him-
For him to what? Flirt with? Ride his motorcycle with? He's never had another woman on his bike, he thinks angrily. No witch or muggle or otherwise has ever accompanied him on his Harley for a joyride. Before Azkaban, his motorcycle may have turned heads, but ultimately it was for him.
You never thought another woman would appreciate it like she does.
His memory flits back to just the last half-hour: Finnie gradually getting comfortable and holding him closer as they rode through the city. She clearly loved to ride; he could feel her smiling against his back, and she had practically shrieked with glee every time he sped up unnecessarily or weaved between obstacles with cavalier recklessness.
Sirius shoulders open the door at the back of the bar with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. He holds it open with his outstretched boot, one hand shoved deep in his jeans pocket. Finnie breezes past him with an eyebrow raised behind her ridiculous mirrored sunglasses, her heels clicking on the hardwood and then on the brick. His stomach, which had sunk to his feet as soon as she had uttered 'Even Sam?' gives another lurch as her scent wafts past – buttery vanilla and sharp cherries.
It isn't her fault, he reminds himself, that she was forced to leave all of those loved ones behind and join them in this war. Sure, she had ultimately chosen to stay but he was behaving like a perverted old man. He winces internally.
Striding between two trash cans, Sirius lifts his wand and taps the appropriate bricks in the wall in front of them. His musings continue as the bricks spin and swirl apart, forming the archway to Diagon Alley. He barely registers Finnie's small gasp.
Part of him feels a little stubborn. She really should have mentioned something about this Sam earlier, in his opinion. But, it occurs to him, perhaps it has been too painful. She's been doing remarkably well getting on with everyone thus far, but she has definitely not divulged a lot of information regarding her personal life. It may have been completely intentional.
Sirius sighs to himself. He ought to thank her, at least a little, for waking his arse up the way she has. Her inability to not throw herself body and soul into every activity and every interaction with the people around her has forced him to remember how good it feels to do just that. Even now, she's practically twittering with excitement, her head whipping in all directions as she tries to take in every detail of the quaint shops and kiosks that make up Diagon Alley.
Watching her try to keep her mouth from bubbling out commentary regarding everything she sees is downright adorable, and Sirius feels that disappointment finally settle around his heart. Finnie-the-muggle was reawakening Sirius to his own zest for life, and he wasn't quite ready to back off completely and let that all go just yet.
His disappointment is tangible, and the vibe between them has significantly cooled. Sirius finds himself wishing he could just start over, take back all of the flirtatious bullshit and just get to know her a bit better.
If nothing else…I guess I can be – her friend?
Sirius' body seems to almost physically reject the thought, and he feels nauseous.
Completely oblivious to the tumult of his emotions, her initial excitement having waned a little, the girl sidles up closer to him and says in an undertone, "I wish I could've been dragged back a couple extra years – before Voldemort got resurrected or whatever." He raises an eyebrow as he looks down at her – he's good six inches taller, even with her heels. She sighs, "Sorry, I just mean this place was described as really vibrant and busy and shit. But now…"
She isn't wrong. Any witches or wizards out doing some shopping are flitting between the stores without loitering in the street at all. Half of said stores are boarded up at the windows. There's a tension in the air, a distinct sense of danger lurking.
"You know," he says in a low voice, trying to ignore the smell of vanilla swinging from her hair as they walk side by side through the near-empty street, "I don't know that I've seen it that way for several decades."
Finnie has been keeping a very sharp eye on her surroundings, an almost auror-like vigilance that appears to be an auto-pilot of hers he hadn't before noticed. But at his words she turns to face him and raises an eyebrow in question. "This-," he hesitates, trying to find the word, "-climate you're noticing was one that had been growing since even my final year at Hogwarts, over twenty years ago."
"And," he goes on, facing forward and narrowing his eyes on what appears to be a bright, colorful entity at the end of the block, "When it reformed, became safe again, I was unfortunately already in prison."
He can feel Finnie's gaze on his profile as they near what he is beginning to think is their destination. She studies him, and eventually mutters, "Well, fuck. I hadn't ever thought of it that way."
He grins down at her briefly, but changes the subject. With a chin lift in the direction they're headed he asks her, "That isn't what I think it is, is it?"
She whips her head forward, and, slowly, a brilliant smile begins to stretch across her face. Suddenly impatient, she grabs his sleeve and begins – there's really no other word for it, the bird was frolicking – towards the shop squealing, "YesyesYES – let's go let's go let's go LET'S GO-!"
Looming, four stories tall, is the most wild, colorful shop in the whole of Diagon Alley. Its walls are painted lavender, with splashes of every other color twinkling and whirring in the windows. Where the rest of the streets are anxious and sparsely populated, the cobblestones in front of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes are packed with witches and wizards of all ages, clamoring for a look. Sirius' attention is diverted by a particularly large purple poster on one wall as they approach, which exclaims:
"Why Are You Worrying About You-Know-Who?
You SHOULD Be Worrying About U-No-Poo!
The Constipation Sensation That's Gripping The Nation!"
Sirius gives a great bark of laughter at this, and he begins searching the crowd in particular for Molly, whose reaction he has got to see.
Finnie has let go of his sleeve in order to physically toss aside some of the children jostling to get inside the shop. "Out of the way – Out of the way, youths!" She's yelling shrilly at anyone daring to get between her and the shop entrance, "V-I-fuckin'-P, coming through! FRED! GEORGE!" She appears to have caught sight of the twins farther inside, "SAVE ME A NOSEBLEED NOUGAT, I'M SERIOUS!"
A freckled hand seems to appear out of nowhere from inside the doorway and grabs hold of Finnie's outstretched forearm. As one of the twins hauls her bodily inside she shrieks with a face masked in pure delight, "Oh my god, you guys, THIS PLACE IS FUCKING AMAZING!"
Her excitement is mirrored on every other face he can see both in and out of the shop. It's downright contagious, he can feel his muscles and blood thrum with it. Despite looking a bit daft, he can't seem to wipe the grin off of his face.
That is, of course, until he spots Remus and Tonks about ten meters away, just on the outskirts of the crowd. They are having what appears to be an extremely tense conversation. Sirius briefly considers pretending he hadn't noticed them. But with a resigned sigh, he shoves his other hand in his pocket and begins striding through the outer layer of the crowd towards where his best mate and cousin are having yet another lovers' quarrel.
Tonks looks close to tears as he approaches, and he most definitely regrets walking over. "I'm so sick of this conversation, Remus," she hisses at Mooney, whose back is stiff from where Sirius can see him. "You've got nothing but excuses, and I'm really starting to think the bottom line is that you regret-"
"Of course I regret it, 'Dora!" Remus practically snaps back, "But not because of you! Because of me and my—"
She looks as though he's slapped her. "Stop," she wheezes out, sounding pained. "Just stop, I-," she takes a deep shuddering breath, "I get it, okay? I'll leave you alone." Barely sparing Sirius a sideways glance, she makes a beeline for the shop and is almost immediately engulfed in the crowd.
Mooney shoves his hands into his greying hair, and seems frozen to the spot, vibrating with clear frustration. Sirius continues to approach him, but carefully, rounding the man until he's standing were Tonks had just been seconds before.
Lupin looks downright haggard. His face is contorted with self-doubt and anger. Sirius does a quick count in his head, and calculates that the full moon is only two days away, which certainly doesn't help. Sirius stands there quietly for a minute, just visually assessing his friend. When it becomes clear that Lupin doesn't intend to be the first to speak, Sirius drawls at him, "If she was a lousy shag, mate, you should just say so."
Mooney's head whips up, and for a moment Sirius thinks the werewolf may hit him. His hair is sticking up from where his fingers had been pulling at it, and his lightly scarred face is full of so much hopeless rage it's a wonder he didn't transform right on the spot.
"You know damn well—," Mooney spits out, seething.
"That you're acting like a martyred prat?" Sirius interrupts casually, withdrawing a hand from his pocket to inspect his fingernails. "Yes. I'm aware."
Lupin's face seems to fall, and his rage disappears almost as quickly as it had evolved. Mooney was never the hot-tempered one; that had always been James. Sirius feels a small pang of regret, for his rather blunt words.
"I know your heart is in the right place, mate," Sirius mutters softly, replacing his hand in his pocket and averting his eyes from his friend's rather deflated form. "I just wish you thought yourself deserving, is all. The rest of us do."
Lupin winces, but raises a hand to flatten his demented hair. "Yes, I know," he shoves his own hands in his pockets, as well. "You're a good friend, Sirius." Sirius just shrugs, knowing the conversation has essentially ended.
Remus clears his throat, but then mutters under his breath, "Before that, er, rather unfortunate sidebar occurred, Tonks did let me know that she and Moody had managed to destroy the locket horcrux that Regulus had retrieved."
Sirius raised an eyebrow. That had been one of the first tasks they had embarked on after Finnie's extremely detailed meeting with Dumbledore. Sirius and Lupin had wrangled the locket from Kreacher's hidey-hole, and turned it over to Moody and Dumbledore to destroy.
Sirius and Remus had drunk quite a bit of firewhiskey that evening at the Hog's Head. Sirius, because he had needed to come to terms with the fact that his brother had died doing the right thing by the side of the Light, and Lupin because…well, because of Tonks.
"What took them so bloody long?" Sirius asks petulantly, "We gave them that awful thing a week ago."
Lupin just shrugs, "They probably experimented on it a bit- you know Dumbledore."
Sirius grumbles under his breath some more as the two wizards move slowly towards the joke shop to regroup with everyone. After a brief silence, Sirius remembers something and elbows his friend to get his attention as they move forward, step-by-step, in the queue to get inside, "Can muggles floo to Hogsmeade?"
Lupin frowns as they take another step forward, and shakes his head, "I sincerely doubt it. Hogsmeade is the only wizarding hamlet in the country; I don't think there's any way for Finnie to get in with all of the charms and spells erected around it."
Sirius just grunts, he'd thought as much. Mooney decides to go a bit on the offensive, "Still pining for some extra quality time with our wee Finnie, are you Padfoot?"
Lupin watches as his friend's shoulders straighten a bit defensively, but his mouth thins. "She's got someone," Sirius mutters quickly, with obvious reluctance, "Someone from her time. Sam."
It's clear that this was a recent discovery. Lupin had been quite enjoying witnessing his friend reemerge from the half-life he had been living, thanks to the arrival of the precocious muggle who seemed to know how to push all of his buttons. Sirius was laughing more than ever, he was acting like the life of the party once more, and most of all he was confidently flirting with a woman who Lupin could see making him very happy.
"Well, so what?" Remus lifts a challenging brow at his irritatingly handsome best mate, "He's there, she's here. And you're here."
Sirius scoffs, and he almost looks sixteen again, "Mooney, I'm not going to waste energy on a bird who's pining for some other bloke, alright?"
Remus snorts. From the corner of his eye, he can see a trio of women just on the inside of the shop door, all smiling behind their hands, attempting to get Sirius' attention with sideways looks and flips of their hair. They're a bit young, but reasonably pretty. It's obvious they've been keeping an eye on Sirius this whole time he and Remus have been in the queue. One of them loudly giggles which starts a domino effect of the other two joining in until it's a horrifying chorus.
But Sirius, who before prison was the consummate ladies' man, isn't even seeing them. He's busy standing on tiptoe, gazing out over the crowd at a pale-haired, pretty chit in heeled boots. Her sunglasses pushes her riotous hair off of her face. She's calmly reading the back of a product box while Fred or George frantically waves their wand, trying with increasing desperation to staunch the stream of blood from her nose, which appears to be flowing at an alarming rate.