For disclaimer and author notes please see chapter 1. Additional AN: city and street names are picked at random from google maps, and may or may not have any connection to reality.
1986-07-30 09:30 UTC, location unknown
"You don't seem too happy, Sirius?", asked Penny. "You think Snape got away too easily right?"
"Damn right he did, but as long as he's unable to go back to his old ways, I don't think I will do anything. And to compensate, it really felt good to see what looks like a permanent schism between Dumbledore and Snape.
The thing that has been burning me up the most, all these years, is that Dumbledore spoke up on behalf of a known death-eater and got him out of a trial, while he allowed me to be chucked in without even a trial. I don't think I will ever forgive him for that, and this seems like so much poetic justice that I have a good mind to go over and gloat".
Hobby looked meaningfully at Andy, then he spoke up. "Lord Black, sir, any such gloating from anyone - not just from you - will be taken as an indication that that person had a hand in their falling out, effectively undoing that schism you just mentioned. Much better to let them both stew."
Sirius shook his head - he hadn't yet gotten used to Kreacher's changed behaviour, and now this elf not only understood but pronounced the word "schism" correctly. That was mind-blowing to the old dog!
Penny noticed this, and sat down next to him.
"Sirius, this is Hobby, who belongs to the Phantom, but doesn't always stay with him. He has been explicitly instructed to speak his mind, which is great for us because Nick and I truly appreciate the company and the refreshing conversation. He has also been taught proper English, not the patois that passes for English among his kin. The Phantom communicates with us through him."
"Hmm; I should have guessed. Kreacher's behaviour became completely un-elflike after he met the Phantom. If he can do that to an elf he is not the master of, I can only imagine his effect on elves that belong to him", said Sirius.
Hobby looked at him sharply. "Lord Black, sir, has Kreacher behaved inappropriately? Would you prefer the traditional elf behaviour?"
Sirius sensed a minor trap here, for some reason. Playing safe, he said "no, that's not it. Just that I'm not used to it yet."
"Anyway", Hobby said, "my master has said that his next target is someone called Greyback, and he had a message for you, Lord Black sir. The message is 'when are you going to contact Mooney?', but he would not tell me what or who this Mooney is".
Sirius looked at Penny. "Ah, I suppose Greyback is the second one, after Bella, that he is happy to eliminate without any provocation?"
Penny nodded.
"You said this Phantom is a seer of sorts?", asked Sirius.
"That, or he has access to one; we are not quite sure".
"Hmm". Turning to Hobby, he said "Hobby, Mooney is an old friend of mine and James Potter's. He is a werewolf, but don't judge him by that - he is one of the kindest and gentlest people you will ever see.
I have been looking for him, but he seems to have disappeared - considering the prejudice against werewolves, it is quite likely that he has moved to the muggle world, though because of his problem he will find it hard to hold down a job. I need to find him, and soon - I cannot imagine he is having an easy time of it, and I am sure he will need my help, even if he is too proud to take charity".
Hobby agreed with him. He would never forget his first glimpse of Mooney, which was on the train at the start of his third year. Threadbare clothes, a weary, tired, expression, not sick but not quite in the pink of health either, and on the whole as if life has been a struggle.
"My master knows how to search for people in the muggle world too, Lord Black sir! But it helps to know which city or county he may be in, to narrow down the search."
"I don't know that either, Hobby, I am sorry to say. I'm trying to remember old conversations but nothing is coming to mind about where his home may be".
"Why not ask Prof McGonagall?", asked Hobby.
Blank stare.
"Hogwarts would certainly have his address in their records, wouldn't it? Even if he is not there now, it's a place to start, isn't it?"
Shocked blank stare.
A slow turn to Penny and Nick.
"Alright, tell me, who did you transfigure into elf form and how long is this prank going to be kept up?"
Nick fell off his chair laughing. Penny would have, too, but she was a lady, and ladies do not guffaw and roll about like... well, like men!
Once she had gotten back some control of her amusement, she told Sirius a half-truth. "Hobby is indeed a house-elf, but we've already told you the Phantom's influence on him. And what makes you think house-elves are not inherently so smart? Maybe they're all as smart, but are forced to hide it because their behaviour is expected to be completely subservient?"
Sirius stared at her in shock, while she continued. "You may not be very familiar with the muggle world, but even your elf, Kreacher, is slowly becoming closer to how the muggle nobility's human servants are. Many muggle nobles treat their servants as friends and confidants, you know, although I admit it is not universally so".
Maybe I should give him a few Wodehouses, she thought. Naah; they're more comedy than reality. But it would shake him up a bit, she laughed to herself.
Anyway, they finally floo-called Prof McGonagall, who - after a brief search - reported that Mooney had been raised in a small town called Bolton, near Manchester. Having obtained that information from McGonagall, Sirius told Hobby, who said he would pass it on to his master. Hobby would then come back with whatever his master found. A lot would depend on whether Mooney stuck near his childhood haunts or went very far out, though of course his master would search London also.
1986-07-30 11:30 UTC, muggle Manchester
In the form of a normal muggle, Hobby searched for and found a library in Manchester. He picked up a bunch of phone books - one for Manchester city and one each for all the neighbouring towns, including Bolton, and sat down to find Mooney.
Really, a name like Remus Lupin - it's not exactly 'John Smith'!, he thought.
(And for the n-th time he wondered about Remus's name. The family's last name was already one letter away from meaning "wolf-like", so how prescient, as well as cruel, could his parents be to chose a first name that also had "wolf" associations, years before he was actually bitten! It was almost as if some too-clever-by-half author had picked that name! Thank God she didn't also give him a brother called Romulus!)
He knew the chances of finding Remus in a big city were about fifty-fifty. Sure, a big city was great for anonymity - you could pretty much disappear if you wished to, especially from the magicals.
But once a month, he would need something really solid to feel comfortable staying within the city. A gentle person like Remus would never risk the lives of all the normal people there, should his wolf form ever get out of whatever confinement he chose.
Still, he started with the big phone book for Manchester.
And hit pay dirt at once!
There was only one Lupin, with an address in Epping Street, a bit less than a mile west of Manchester University. A very intriguing entry!
Hobby went back to the reference desk and asked for the Yellow Pages for Manchester city. Quickly scanning the categories for what he wanted, he found the listing. He stared at it in shock for a few moments, then chuckled to himself.
Well, it shouldn't be a surprise. Mooney was supposed to be almost as smart as his (Harry's) mother, plus he was muggle-raised, so what would someone with such unique talents do when the magical world held only painful memories and prejudice for him? Sure he could do what he and Sirius thought he was doing - live like a pauper, needing but refusing to accept charity or other help, with threadbare clothes and a hungry, underfed, look about him...
...or he could do this:
LUPIN INVESTIGATIONS
All kinds of investigative work. Discretion guaranteed.
Specialists with excellent track record in surveillance, counter-surveillance, and short-term close protection. Good track record in related activities such as hostage negotiation and extraction. Side interest in investigating and debunking claims of paranormal activity - we charge less for interesting cases.
References available on request - we have helped peers of the realm, diplomats, and Square Mile high-flyers, as well as indigent scholars with unusual problems (sorry we can't say more!).
The more dangerous it is, the more you'll want us looking into it.
(Sorry, we do not undertake routine cases such as marital infidelity or similar.)
Of course, there was the same Epping Street address here, and the same phone number.
Hobby was impressed. This was the perfect job for a smart wizard who had been cursed to be a werewolf. Stay mostly away from the magical world, set his own hours, be his own boss, and use magic discreetly when needed (he had no illusions that Mooney was not doing so; some of the items on the list pretty much guaranteed that!)
And the last line lifted him from the stereotypical low-grade private eye category - brilliant!
On an impulse, Hobby decided to visit Epping Street and look up Mooney before he went back and reported to Sirius.
1986-07-30 09:30 UTC, Epping Street, Manchester
Lupin Investigations was not hard to find, once you came to Epping Street. It occupied a suite of four rooms on the second floor of a simple, four-storey, office building, about half-way down the street.
Hobby entered quietly and invisibly, and quickly found Mooney in what looked like a mini conference room. What he saw, at first, pleased him greatly - it made him feel good.
Mooney was smartly dressed, looked healthy and affluent, and definitely happy. He was giving some instructions to what Hobby could only assume was his "team", and it was clear that his team liked him and respected him, and that they all shared a very friendly, informal, relationship.
"Marcy, you should take charge of the Highgate case; we need to know what the man's secretary is hiding, and who he is dealing with when he gets off the clock. Danny, you can start doing the prep work for the Whatley matter - skirt around the edges until you get to grips with all the players. There are some there who can make all of us disappear if they really get annoyed!"
"Yes boss, don't worry. You're new at this, but I've been doing this longer than you, don't forget", said a young man.
"Yeah right, all of two months more than me!", laughed Mooney.
Hobby suddenly thought of something that made him very worried, and he stopped listening to their discussion to think better. The worry was this: although it was great to find Mooney so happy and healthy, there were two glaring points that didn't fit.
First, why was the Mooney in his third year so diametrically opposite to this one in health and wealth. His arrival back in time was not supposed to change anything before he arrived, so this must have been what his Mooney was like too, at least in his 1986. What had happened between then and 1993 to turn him into that indigent man with all those scars and an under-nourished look about him?
And second, why did this Mooney appear to be actually happy - after all he had basically lost all his friends just under five years ago. Was five years long enough to get out of that funk? Even if he did not expect Mooney to suffer hunger and poverty, he had expected him to have a fair bit of residual sadness in his overall demeanour. This one was positively euphoric.
In any case, he needed to get Sirius here, have him re-establish contact with Mooney, get Mooney over to the Flamels, and start discussing Greyback. Time enough to ponder the mystery of Mooney while this was happening, and who knows, he may get some answers in due course.
1986-07-30 16:30 UTC, Epping Street, Manchester
Sirius turned out not to be so ignorant of muggle clothing styles and general deportment as Hobby was fearing. When Hobby went back shortly after lunch and told him what his master had found, he wanted to just rush off. However, Harry was asleep, and Sirius hated to go anywhere without telling Harry where he was going and when he would be back.
When Harry woke up around 4pm, he listened to Sirius talk about "Remus", and didn't react. But at some point Sirius said "Mooney", and Harry caught it. "Mooey? I 'member Mooey, I want to come too." And nothing any of the four people (well, three people and an elf-man anyway) could do or say would dissuade him.
On balance, Sirius thought this was probably all to the good. Mooney had clearly chosen to get well away from the magical world, so he may not know Sirius was innocent. Having a happy, healthy, five year-old Harry with him would go a long way to helping Mooney calm down and reassure him he, Sirius, was not the bad guy here.
And so Harry and Sirius, with Hobby invisibly accompanying them (I really must go visit Malfoy Manor once in a while - I'm supposed to be working there! Oh well, Nolly would have told me if he had had problems covering for me. But I owe him big-time!), entered the reception room of Lupin Investigations.
Sirius was in his element. He put on his most charming smile, and said, "Hello, young lady! I don't have an appointment, but I need to see Mr Lupin urgently on a personal matter. Is he in?"
Before she could reply, Mooney walked out of one of the two doors behind the reception desk, and greeted Sirius warmly with a heartfelt hug. Including Harry in the hug. Sirius was shocked! He had expected at least some fireworks, long explanations, and having to prove - somehow - that he was innocent. Yet here was Mooney behaving as if all that was done.
Harry was thrilled. He simply held out his arms to Mooney, and Mooney picked him up and swung him around, laughing. Harry squealed "Unca Mooey, stop!", but he was clearly enjoying it.
Hobby had tears in his eyes. To be honest, he could not remember remembering "Pafoo" and "Mooey". Perhaps the Dursleys had beaten even those few memories out of him by the time he was of Hogwarts age. Or perhaps, he thought angrily, Dumbledore had something to do with both my memories as well as Remus going downhill.
Close on that painful thought was an epiphany. It was not how many death-eaters he eliminated, it was not how many horcruxes he destroyed, or anything like that. It was how much of the one year-old Harry he could preserve, that he needed to measure his success with. And Harry remembering "Pafoo" and "Mooey" was definitely very high on the list.
Eventually, they all calmed down. Mooney gave his staff the rest of the day off ("yeah right, it's almost closing time anyway", grumbled someone called Terry, but it was clear he was only teasing Mooney!), and they all went to a small, quiet, restaurant that Mooney knew, to catch up.
"I was really expecting to have a gun shoved in my face, you know", said Sirius. "I thought you'd left the wizarding world and would not have known. I guess you're still in touch with people there?"
"Nope. Not a one. I made one attempt - I'll tell you about that later - but after that, nothing. However, I did buy a wizarding radio so I could listen to the news every day. Every day, once a day, without fail for all these years. And the absolute best news I ever heard was on February 27th!", grinned Mooney. "Well, March 11 was pretty good too - Dumbledore losing two of his three positions was brilliant!"
Aha, that explains his happiness, thought Harry. It is very likely that before Sirius's exoneration he was at least somewhat depressed. But not too much - you can't really run a business, and that too one so obviously successful as this - if you were too depressed.
"Yeah me too, mate, me too!", said Sirius. "By the way, you seem to be doing pretty well - I was worried you would be..." - here he tailed off, not knowing how to say what he was thinking.
"You thought I would be in whatever shape the wizarding world allows werewolves to be in". There was no need to elaborate.
Then he continued. "And you would have been right. But something happened early on. I was in that situation for the first few weeks after... well you know". He took a sip of his water. "But then I decided that I would at least be a part of Harry's life, I owed him that much, so I went to see Dumbledore".
"Let me guess. He gave you a long spiel about Harry's safety and basically told you to make like a shepherd and get the flock out of there?"
"Pretty much. He laid a huge guilt trip on me, but in the end refused to even tell me where Harry was. He said, 'he is safe in the muggle world, and I have laid charms so that no wizard can get near his home without my knowing about it'."
"And that just made me much more miserable", he continued. "The one little thing that could have saved me was gone, and I was indeed all set to basically become a drunk werewolf, with all the charm, grace, cleanliness, and affluence that implies!", he laughed.
"So how did you escape that?"
"Anger. I was more angry at Dumbledore - especially the guilt trip he laid on me, you know I hate that! - then I was depressed at the turn of events. And then I played back what he said in my mind."
"Hmm?", said Sirius, but Hobby had got it. Oh man Mooney deserved some sort of award for pulling himself out of his funk and doing this!
"Harry was safe in the muggle world, and no wizard can get near him. I needed to do two things: find him, and entice some muggles to get him out of there."
Sirius was slack-jawed. He was finally, finally, connecting the dots. The private investigator business. Hostage extraction. Surveillance and counter-surveillance. Building up and leading a team of muggles who could do all that. WOW!, he thought.
Unknowingly mirroring Hobby's thoughts, he said, "Oh man, you are awesome. You are truly the best marauder! I hope James and Lily are watching from up there! How far did you get?"
"My first year and a bit were spent learning the craft from someone I had helped out of a tight spot unexpectedly - saved his life actually. He also helped me get licensed, and mentored me until I had a few cases down. Of course he didn't know I was a wizard, so he was terribly impressed by how a couple of them had been handled.
The next couple of years were spent building up a team, and then I could really get into it. Within a few months - the beginning of last year, really - I had found him, but did not dare to approach too closely. I have been building up a dossier on Dursley - investigating Grunnings and his job there - in order to find some leverage. Speaking of Dursley, how did you get rid of him?"
"I just threw money at the problem and sent him off to America! As I said, you are truly the best marauder!", grinned Sirius. "You know, I almost think it would have been worth a few more years in Azkaban to see that old ba- ahem! - goat's face if you had pulled off a muggle extraction! He would have been completely and utterly clueless. Unlike now, when he at least knows where Harry is!"
(Hobby wasn't so sure of that, knowing that things hadn't panned out this way earlier. Perhaps Mooney had managed to make contact, but Dumbledore had surely found out somehow, and taken some really drastic steps, including a serious amount of memory modification, on both himself and Mooney. Again, there was no easy way to prove it any more, but he was pretty sure that was the explanation.)
The two friends and their godson/nephew spent the evening pleasantly. Hobby left after some time. He was worried that he would start becoming jealous of this Harry if he stayed too long (I'm only human!, he thought. Then oops, not really!). More importantly, he had found the answer to the second question - why Mooney was so happy - but he had no clue what had happened between 1986 and 1993 in his timeline. I guess we will never know, now. Oh well..., and he silently popped away.
Meanwhile, Mooney accepted an invite to Penny and Nick's place. Tomorrow evening they would discuss weightier matters.