Disclaimer: Same as usual: I don't own the characters or world and I write this just for fun!

A/N: Here's the next (rather short) part. Thank you so very much to those of you who are keeping up with this and especially to those who review! Your feedback is always appreciated! -Isa

Part VII

London, 1985-

Meanwhile Severus sat at the desk in the back room at the restaurant. He was certain that Remus would be back. Earlier, when Hua had woken him from his sleeping place on the old velvet sofa where he had passed out in the earliest hours of the day, he had been rather surprised that she announced there were two visitors for him. The fact that one turned out to be Black was a less than ideal start to his day.

If Remus was everything that Severus had yearned to be as a teenager -smart, calm, generally well-liked and respected- Black had everything he wanted: looks, lineage and money. As he had stepped out to greet them he had thought that he could be the good host and act as though the years-worth of envy were behind him. But the fact was that every fibre of his body still stung with the recognition that no matter how well he succeeded in his endeavours, he would never possess Black's natural poise and ease. It galled him. It didn't even help that, going by his reaction, Black still thought he was responsible for he worst beating his father had given him. At the time, when he had received the apology letter, the coincidence had pleased him and he had rather enjoyed the thought that Black felt guilty.

The truth was that the very same evening they had been summoned by the headmaster, Tobias had caught Severus magically regrowing a dead geranium in the back garden. Eileen had happened to be out. With no one to restrain him, Tobias had told his son that he would give him such a thrashing the magic would be beaten right out of him as well as teach him a lesson about what peeping toms deserved. In truth though, if it hadn't been for the magic, Tobias, often guilty in his own schooldays of the same crime as his son was accused of, wouldn't have done much more than shout at the boy. In fact he had been rather reassured to find out that his weakling, room-dwelling, bookish, sallow-skinned beanstalk of a son had a healthy interest in girls.

"Hem hem" Severus heard.

"Come in Lupin." he said, turning in his chair and motioning for Remus to sit down on the sofa.

"The waiter just let me come in." Remus offered.

"The waiter", Severus said, arching his eyebrow "happens to be the other co-proprietor of this place."

"Oh." Remus answered, not certain what this piece of information implied.

"So. Here you are." Severus said. "I assume you have questions." he continued. Remus nodded, not sure where to start. Sensing that the other man would not be able to ask anything without prompting, Severus picked up a satsuma from a shallow porcelain dish on the desk, reached for Remus' hand, flattened it out into an open palm and placed it there. He opened the top drawer of the desk and took out Prunella's wand. Pointing it a the citrus fruit he pictured what he wanted to happen in his minds eye.

"Glubo!" he said.

Remus almost flung the satsuma in the air as soon as he saw it peeling itself right there in his hand without any action on his part.

"How did you do that!?" He shouted at Severus, who grinned.

"It's a talent of mine." he said. "I can make all sorts f things happen. The only real effort on my part was to brush up on my latin." he said offhandedly, trying to not sound too smug.

Remus stood watching in utmost fascination. Once the fruit had shed all of its peel, he picked up a segment and ate it.

"This is real." he said.

"Yes." Severus answered, stepping closer. Remus instinctively backed away.

"Don't be afraid." Severus said. "The reason I've shown you this is because you were my first magical human experiment."

Remus' jaw dropped. This was an explanation that had crossed his mind, but he had always laughed it off. Yet the evidence in front of his eyes and all the open questions seemed to confirm what Severus was saying.

"So that's a magic wand?" Remus asked, gingerly picking up the wooden stick.

"Exactly." Severus answered.

"And what was it? Glubo!" Remus said, pointing at the dish of remaining satsumas. Nothing happened.

"It doesn't work with everyone." Severus answered. But Remus suddenly pointed the wand at him and repeated the incantation. To Severus' horror he found his shirt and trousers starting to peel off his body and did what he could to keep them from doing so. To no avail. In a matter of seconds he stood there, regretting his relatively recent bad habit of not bothering with underwear when he forgot to sign up on the weekly roster for the communal muggle washing machine in his building. He was dumbfounded. He stared at Remus until he saw the other man look pointedly away. Suddenly scrabbling to put his clothes back on he asked:

"What did you do differently?"

"I didn't mean to, only it struck me that it would be very amusing if it worked on humans as well." Remus said, feeling dizzy and letting himself fall on the sofa. Severus didn't bother to express how glad he was that the spell had focused on his clothes and not his hair or his skin as the element to peel off.

"Interesting." He said, surveying Remus carefully. "And nothing like this has ever happened before?"

"I don't know." Remus answered.

"Nothing? Not even when you were a child?" Severus asked, coming to sit next to Remus on the sofa and grabbing his upper arm.

"No!" Remus said somewhat alarmed. Then he paused. "I was bitten by a dog with rabies as a child." he said. Severus groaned.

"No, wait!" he said. "I was very little and it didn't break the skin. But my parents' neighbour took me to this place. It was like a hospital, but there were moving paintings in the hallways. When I told my parents about it they said that I must've had strange dreams while I had a high fever in hospital." His eyes grew wide. "And I remember people waving sticks like that one!" he exclaimed, pointing at the cherry wood wand he had put back on the desk after magically stripping Severus. He looked at the black-haired man. "The doctors told me I had had childhood epilepsy."

"Right, and you had headaches every month at school. I remember that!" Severus said excitedly. Remus gave him a wide-eyed look.

"In case you haven't remembered everything: I used to follow you around. I'm sure Black told you all about it on your way out. I know about those headaches." Severus said.

"How?" Remus asked, incredulously. The question seemed to embarrass Severus so he added "Oh, right, I was your human experiment..." wishing very hard for that not to be the answer. His heart sank a little when the other man nodded. "Great."

"Do you still have the headaches?" Severus asked.

"Not as badly as before." Remus answered.

"Here, let me give you something for them..." Severus said, turning to a lacquered and painted cabinet with many small drawers labelled in Chinese. Pulling out a small vial he handed it to a very reluctant Remus. "From my acupuncturist." he said, hoping the little lie would convince Remus to accept the sample of his new experimental batch of pain-relief potion. Remus accepted the tiny bottle but his posture indicated that he had half a mind to "forget" it on the desk on his way out when he left.

"So..." Severus said.

"So... what?" Remus parroted, unhelpfully.

"So... that's all you know?" Severus asked hopefully.

"About what?" Remus asked, puzzled.

Severus' shoulders fell. Here he had been, hoping that his former schoolmate would have some kind of information he didn't, but that clearly wasn't the case. So what was the solution to this problem? He could tell that this man wasn't a natural wizard, or at least hadn't shown signs of being one up to now, but he clearly had been in contact with magic and did have some capacity for doing it. He would need to ask Wesle Lai his opinion, since he was his only trusted contact in the wizarding world, now that Prunella most probably growing dirigeable plums in heaven. But lately Wesley had given him the feeling of wanting to keep him in the dark so as to retain him as his potion brewer. And this made Severus doubt that he would answer his enquiries fully. His best, in fact his only plausible option, was to go to the wandmaker. And that meant finding his way into a place he had dreamed about visiting for a long time: Diagon Alley.