This is How I Disappear
By justification to wormtail
A/N: This chapter delves a bit into the memories of Remus and Sirius.
Disclaimer: not mine except for most of the second generation of Weasleys that appear in this story.
Begin chapter four
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"It. Has. Been. An. Entire. Bloody. WEEK!"
"Sirius, stop hitting your head against the wall, you'll just end up breaking it again. Oh, and by the way, do you happen know where my book is?"
"But it's true, Remus, completely and utterly true and he still refuses to believe us!"
"Well that's because he, like Ron, thinks that he's either gone mad or just dozed off."
"For a week?"
"Well they always did try to copy off my work during school, so they must be a bit dense…"
"Hermione? Is Ginny with you today?"
"No Sirius," the pregnant witch sighed, then realized something. "Why the hell did you two turn all of the lights off?" The two lamps sitting on small tables on either side of the bed flickered to life. "Please don't tell me that you've been doing anything adult rated."
"Alas, no." said Sirius dramatically as he threw himself down onto the bed. "Moony refuses to while we're still in our eleven-year-old bodies." Hermione wrinkled her nose and nudged a stray shirt into a pile of dirty clothes sitting next to the door.
"Did you even take the children into consideration Remus?" She looked around in confusion. "Where is he?"
"Under here," the muffled voice came from underneath the bed. "Yes, found it! And no," Remus added as he slid out into the room, "Sorry Hermione, I didn't. But we would have used a silencing spell."
"How? You two don't have any wands on you." She looked at the two boys in confusion.
"Wand-less magic, non-verbal spells," Sirius grinned upside-down at the witch as he hung half of his body off the foot of the bed. "They're truly a blessing to be counted my dear." he winked and Hermione rolled her eyes at the boy.
"Look, I came up here to ask you about your condition," she said. "The school year starts in one week and I was wondering how long you two would be stuck at this age." Remus's expression darkened.
"Until the anniversary," he said. "Then we'll be twelve. And the year after we'll be thirteen, then fourteen, and fifteen."
"So what you're saying is," Hermione started.
"That we have to go through puberty again!"
"No Sirius, that's not what I'm saying."
"You're telling me that you're living the cycle again, the cycle of life starting at eleven?"
"If you trim it down a little that's the general idea."
"When we arrived in the other world we were babies again," Sirius said somberly, "James and Lily had been watching the fight with others through the veil, it was the dead that Harry, Neville and Luna had heard then. You, Ron and Ginny couldn't because you hadn't seen somebody die right in front of your eyes."
"A bit like thestrals really," Remus added.
"Alright," said Hermione as her brow furrowed, "but if you two fell through the veil fourteen years ago and on the other side you were infants again and you're still aging, then why do you look like you're eleven?"
"Well what I think is that time just goes more slowly for life there," said Remus. "Because the spirits weren't aging one bit, it was just us."
"So that proves that we weren't dead," chimed Sirius, "just that nobody could see us. We were still solid figure-object-thingies and we could still move things around."
"Okay, but you had said before that you were still here, as in stepping on the ground alongside us, right?" The two nodded simultaneously. "Then how come you didn't know that Lestrange and Dumbledore were dead?"
"DUMBLEDORE'S DEAD!?"
Hermione groaned and hit her forehead. "Sorry, I thought that you two knew…"
"N-no," Remus stuttered, tears welled up in his eyes. "He can't be dead, can he?"
"Oh boy," Sirius whispered as he slid off the bed and hugged his companion, resting his chin on top of the lycanthrope's head. "It's alright Remus; he's in a good place now, better than before. He wouldn't want you to linger in the past."
Remus sniffed and nodded his head, lower lip trembling dangerously. "I know," the boy asserted, "I shouldn't wallow in self-pity." He looked up at Hermione's confused face and gave a watery half-smile. "My parents were murdered at the beginning of the first war with Voldemort," he explained. "I was twelve and they had been my only family left. Dumbledore took me in and treated me like his own son as well as his equal…he became my father and I suppose that he still is my father in a sense, only dead. Just like my first one."
"Oh…"
Hermione wanted to say more but found that she couldn't, so she took leave of the room and apparated down the two flights of stairs that she wouldn't have been able to navigate otherwise. Crouching in front of the fireplace, the witch tossed a handful of floo powder into the flames.
"Ginny!" she hissed loudly. "C'mon Ginevra, I need to talk to you!" A girl with bright red hair peeked around the corner and let out an exited squeal when she saw her mother's head in the fireplace. Hermione groaned as she realized that Ginny must be out shopping and Ron had sneaked over to the Potter residence with the children. "HAROLD JAMES POTTER, RONALD BILIUS WEASLEY!! YOU TWO GET YOUR BUTTS OVER HERE THIS INSTANT!!"
On cue the two fully-grown men scurried into the den with the equally guilty expressions of small children getting caught doing something naughty on their faces. They tripped over each other while trying to get to the fireplace first and explain themselves. Ron looked up and grinned at his wife who raised an eyebrow in response.
"It was all Harry's fault, love," he explained cheerfully. Harry ran a hand through his already messy hair as he looked away. He was sitting on top of Ron, the redhead was lying sprawled on his stomach, facing Hermione and seemingly oblivious to the ten laughing children who had followed them into the messy room. "He wanted to talk about the two time travelers."
Harry glared down at his best friend and forcefully kicked him in the side. "Ow, low-blow, Potter," Ron grunted through gritted teeth. "Wow – you know that actually hurt!" The kids giggled at the two.
"Really now, Harry," Hermione said disapprovingly as she stepped through into the Burrow, "in front of the children? Merlin, how many of them are over?" Ron tried to get up, but Harry wouldn't budge from his position.
"Well Molly's gone shopping with Ginny for the day," the black haired man answered. "Getting some gifts for the kids or something like that; and George had to do some interviews for employees at the joke shop. So there's: Florence, Glen, Lacey, Merry, and Charleigh - Ron brought them over. George dropped off Fred and Percy. And I've got Albus, James, and Lily."
"That means that there are ten of us, Mummy!" Charleigh chirped as she played with a loose tooth. Hermione smiled at her second youngest daughter, thinking about how ironic it was that she was having the same problem as Molly did with her children, only in reverse. Florence and Glen, the twins, beamed at their mother as they navigated the room to get to her.
Florence reached Hermione first and started to talk fervently before Glen arrived. "Hey Mum, guess what we found out!"
Glen leapt over her father's head and landed next to her sister. "Da told us that one of the weird boys who're staying over is a werewolf!" Florence nodded vigorously in agreement.
"Yeah, Mum!" she said. "And Uncle Harry also said – "
"that the other one – "
"is his – "
"godfather – "
"and– "
"that he can turn into the Grim!"
"And also – "
"that he went to Azkaban – "
"for twelve whole years!"
"And survived!"
"Da said that he's the one and only – "
"Sirius Black – "
"The first person to ever escape Azkaban – "
"and live through it."
"But they also said – "
"that he died two years later – "
"along with the werewolf – "
"and that they – "
"were together – "
"like you and Da are!" Glen finished breathlessly. Hermione laughed in agreement.
"Yeah, they were, but we didn't know that until a week after they went through the veil." She explained. "Professor Lupin – that's the werewolf, he was my DADA professor in third year – well anyway, Remus had left us a note telling us to go into Sirius's room and look for Sirius's old school trunk. It held their conjoined will and everything that they had been meaning to tell all of us, but never got a chance to." She looked at her husband and brother-in-law as she remembered that day.
Harry had refused to go with the four other people chosen to scour the room (Ron, Hermione, Mr. Weasley, and, surprisingly, Kingsley Shacklebolt) in favor of staying locked up in his room, talking to no one, and scarcely eating the food that Mrs. Weasley had deposited in front of his door. He had been too depressed after losing two of his last connections to his parents to do anything else.
When they got to the door Kingsley had had to use alohomora on it so that they could get in, and when they did the place was a pigsty. There were countless posters and pictures decorating the silvery-grey silk walls depicting such things as Muggle motorcycles and Gryffindor banners, there were even Muggle photographs of random places around Hogwarts as well as many of the students and professors from the Marauders' school years.
Boxers and other various articles of clothing littered the mahogany flooring along with several old school books, abandoned card games, board games, candy wrappers and worn-out photo albums. One of them was open to a page that was plastered with photographs of Remus and Sirius together; holding hands by the lake, eating breakfast next to each other with furious blushes on their faces, one even showed McGonagall trying to get their attention off of each others' mouths so that she could finish her lesson. Kingsley had laughed when a red-faced Ron pointed it out and stated that he remembered that day, McGonagall had apparently transfigured them into toucans just to get them to stop.
After about half an hour of fruitless searching, Mr. Weasley remembered something that Sirius had said to him once. "I always needed to hide important things from my parents when I still lived with them, otherwise they'd have been destroyed…James helped me find a spell that I could use. It needed a password to be found, kind of like the Fidelius Charm…I've told it to Harry before, discreetly, but I didn't tell him what it was …
"Voilà comment je disparaître.
"This is how I disappear.
"Cliché, I know. But you'll understand the meaning one day, probably soon…" Three weeks later the battle at the Ministry took place. They found the trunk and its contents; Harry finally came out of his room, and the members of the Order of the Phoenix held a ceremony in honor of their two fallen friends and comrades. Everybody moved out of 12 Grimmauld Place, even Kreacher was sent to work in the Hogwarts kitchens, the house soon fell into a state of disrepair. It had been abandoned until the Golden Trio used it as a hideaway for some months during Voldemort's rise to power, now it was uninhabited save for doxies and other magical creatures as well as Kreacher, who was now buried in the back garden.
"Can Sirius still change into the Grim?" Hermione was brought out of her thoughts as Glen looked up at her expectantly.
"Why don't we just talk about something else for once?" Harry mumbled irritably as he got off of Ron. "We've talked about this enough in the past week." Ron flicked him playfully in the side of the head.
"No we haven't," he replied cheerfully. "Hardly talked about it at all!"
"Yeah," said Harry sarcastically. "And it's helped so very much…still think you're in dreamland, Weasley?"
"If I recall correctly, it was you, not me, who thought that they were sleeping."
"Better then thinking I was mental with five and a half kids still to take care of."
"Touché Potter, ye may have won this round but I will be back!" Hermione rolled her eyes. Why on earth did she marry such an idiot? "Now c'mon kiddies, I've got to feed you before Grandmum Weasley comes back, she'll flay me alive if your tummies are even remotely empty."
Harry looked around at the nine children in the room, then at Hermione. "There's no more food here, one of the things they're shopping for, so: Floo or apparition, 'mione?"
"Apparating would be faster but I'm worried that one of the children will get splinched - "
"There's no need to fret about that, love," Ron interrupted, "they'll be in my capable hands!"
"So floo it is then!" Hermione clapped her hands together in finality and smiled. "Harry, how about you go through first with Charleigh, Albus, and Lily and wait for the others to come through?" Harry nodded and took Albus from nine-year-old Percy, who had been holding him. Lily raced forward with her cousin Charleigh, both grabbed hold of one of Harry's legs as he stepped into the emerald flames.
"Four twenty-two, Orchard Hill!" The green flared and the four family members were gone.
"Alright," said Hermione brightly, "who's next?" There was a semi-mad rush as the six remaining children tried to figure it out between them, they loved to travel by the Floo Network.
Ron laughed. "Okay, okay, settle down you lot. The fireplace isn't going anywhere." He looked over the children and realized with a shock that one of them was missing. "Hermione?" the redhead asked tentatively. "Love…d'you know where Merry is?"
"Merry?" Hermione's calculative brown eyes scanned the room, no sign of the youngest Weasley offspring in the cluttered den of the Burrow. "No, when did you see her last, Ronald?"
"When Florence and Glen were telling you about what they'd found out." He looked around worriedly for his three-year-old daughter. "Oh boy, I really, really, hope that she didn't wander off into the garden again…those bloody gnomes are still vicious."
Hermione looked out the window and groaned. That was exactly where the toddler had ventured.
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End chapter four
Finally I finished! Sorry for the cliffhanger, it'll carry on in the next chapter. I just didn't know another way to end this one otherwise.
Thanks so much if you reviewed, it really means a lot to me.
I'll do my best to get the next one up within a ten-day marking period.
ciao, nicole
Oh, and sorry if the part in French is off, I used an internet translator.