clxvi. domesticity
Remus never believed a life like this could belong to him.
It was the kind of life where he woke on a comfortable bed to the distant, muffled noise of London traffic, sunlight peeking through the bedroom curtains. He rose, washed, dressed, and went downstairs to begin breakfast. It was the kind of life where he roused sleepy teenagers under his care from their beds, tutted over his ex-partner's hangover, and tried to tempt the house ghoul down to the table. Severus always refused—violently—but that didn't stop Remus from trying. Kill them with kindness, as his mother used to say.
It was the kind of life where he kept his own desk in the office on the third floor and sometimes got visited by a curious Kneazle. He could spend the morning perusing books in the library for his summer research projects. In the afternoon, he helped the girls with their holiday assignments, answered their questions about magic, and worried about what mischief they meant to unleash. He healed Harriet's scraped knees when she crashed her Firebolt into the bushes, reminded Elara to take her potions, and fixed Hermione's hair after she managed to burn a chunk of it off with a misbehaving spell.
Some afternoons, he found himself staring at Harriet's league boots left by the door in the foyer, at the random books Hermione forgot in various rooms, or listening to muted strains of Elara practicing the piano in the music room. Sirius worked on repairs to the house with begrudging roughness, and chores got completed with typical teenage complaining—but the dishes were always washed, the floors swept, and beds made.
Sometimes, Harriet whispered in empty rooms with nobody there. Sometimes, startling nightmares from across the corridor woke Remus in the dead of night, and he'd fall back asleep listening to the pacing in the room next door like a grim metronome ticking down the midnight hour. Sometimes, Elara couldn't stand a friendly touch, and Hermione clammed up as if she could feel the hand of Jamie Ingham pressing on her throat again. A pall of doom would weigh upon the house, and they'd eat dinner in dead silence.
But, the morning would come and shed its greetings of warm, humid light upon them, and the girls would laugh over their breakfast and make new plans for the new day. Whatever darkness gripped them slipped away into the dawn.
And when Remus returned after the full moon, he'd step through the Floo to find a fresh cup of coffee waiting for him and a heap of crispy bacon.
It was…domestic. It was an existence Remus never thought he'd have or deserve.
Every day, different visitors and minders stopped by, including an alchemist older than the printing press and the Headmaster himself. Flamel, Remus firmly believed, loved Harriet like his own flesh and blood, to the point where Remus thought it odd he hadn't taken Harriet and Elara into his own home at his earliest convenience. He commented on this to Minerva, who made vague references to Flamel's supposedly busy schedule.
Each time the alchemist departed, he did so after embracing Harriet tightly, a fond kiss placed on her red cheek, and effusive French reminders given to keep her manners, stay out of trouble, and remember to write.
He acted as if he did not know when, or if, he would return.
The Headmaster always arrived in the guise of Order business. It was never in an official capacity—no meetings called, no summons given, and the information imparted by the older wizard always erred on the side of equivocal and thus summarily unimportant. Frankly, Remus came to assume Dumbledore went to Grimmauld Place to escape Slytherin's pernicious presence in the castle and to put breathing space between himself and his responsibilities.
Remus could scarcely comprehend how the issues handled by Headmaster daily hadn't crushed him years ago. Even wizards like Albus Dumbledore were human, after all.
His presence made for some interesting conversations over tea, as did the motley assortment of minders who passed through the house. The echoes of teenage laughter echoed in the narrow corridors, accompanied by the occasional pop of spellfire.
One afternoon in mid-August, Remus poured Earl Grey for himself, McGonagall, Snape, and Dumbledore, who gave a blithe comment on a communal staffing issue that further proved Remus' assertion that the Headmaster used any excuse he could to absent the castle during the summer holidays. Snape flicked his eyes toward McGonagall in shared thought, and Remus wondered if they'd come to the same conclusion as him.
"How are things, Remus?" Dumbledore asked as he doctored his cup to his preference, the sugar and cream moving with only a negligent wave of his hand. "Is Miss Granger settling in well?"
"Yes, I believe so," he replied as he resumed his seat. "Having her friends with her has made any potential issues of awkwardness a moot point. Although, I've recently decided Hermione is not, in fact, the level-headed member of their group."
"Oh?"
"Not after their most recent experiment." Remus sipped his tea and glanced upward, a smile playing over his mouth. "I couldn't get a straight answer on what exactly they were attempting to do with that cauldron, only that it had been Hermione's idea and the resulting mess ate a hole in Harriet's floor."
From his armchair across the table, Snape scoffed into his cup. "They were attempting to embolize it," he explained with his usual curt aplomb. "I could smell the burning zinc and foxweed upstairs."
"I'm sorry, I don't know what that is."
"It's most commonly seen in alchemy," Albus explained when Snape failed to do so. He wore a thoughtful expression as he fiddled with a ring on his thumb. "To embolize a cauldron, typically those made of cast iron or solid gold, is to grant it the property of embolizing potions or elements brewed within it."
"What would be the purpose of that?"
"Embolized elements or potions retain their magic within their own field. It makes certain ingredients or mixtures that are usually either too conductive or reactive more amenable to exposure or combination to different substances." He stopped fiddling with the ring. "I believe Severus uses such a cauldron when experimenting with new potion recipes."
Snape neither denied nor confirmed that allegation. "It is more often used in dubious crowds to hide magical artifacts." His brow gave a condescending jerk upward. "But they couldn't possibly be doing something illegal. Not Potter."
"I sense a bit of skepticism in your tone, Severus."
"Me? Never."
McGonagall leaned forward to take one of the ginger biscuits left on the coffee table by Mably. "I don't suppose you'd relinquish your death grip on one of your own cauldrons so further attempts won't burn the house down around our ears?"
"Perhaps it has escaped your notice, but I am not a pawnbroker."
Remus watched Minerva and Snape bicker. Dumbledore, content to let the pair snipe at one another, fixed himself another cup of overly sweet tea and had a biscuit. "I must confess that I'm surprised Nicolas hasn't given them one. They must not have asked yet."
"Listen here, Albus," McGonagall said with a finger pointed at the man. "Severus lending them a cauldron is one thing. That impossible man involving himself is another. Don't go encouraging him to support their mischief."
"A fair bit of mischief builds character."
"A fair bit of mischief breaks bones," she retorted, wiping biscuit crumbs on her napkin. "And gives me gray hairs."
"Then perhaps Severus could be convinced to lend his equipment to spare us Nicolas' more creative interventions."
The look on Severus' dour face could have struck a lesser man dead, but Dumbledore only smiled. Snape dropped his cup on the table. "Of course, Headmaster," he said, his baritone like cold silk, dripping disdain. "You know I am always so keen to lend you a hand."
McGonagall sputtered into her tea. "Severus!"
Dumbledore—unaffected by the remark—chuckled, his eyes sparkling with delight. "Oh, thank you, Severus." He blew on his tea and had a sip. "Ah. I can always trust you to keep an eye out for me."
"Albus!" McGonagall cried. "Of all the things to say—!"
Snape continued his sullen consumption of his afternoon tea, scowling at the Headmaster. Remus put his head in his hands, unsure if he wanted to laugh or cry.
xXx
In the last week of August, Remus stood in his office, unpacking a box of books and trinkets onto a barren shelf while Sirius lounged on the dusty settee.
Their topic of conversation caught Remus off-guard.
"The World Cup?" he said with an incredulous tilt of his head. "I couldn't imagine they have tickets for sale still. It's only two days off!"
Sirius shifted in his seat, a sure sign of his nerves, as was the occasional picking at his shirt's aging logo. The words 'The Swooning Sirens' were barely legible. "Well," he said, clearing his throat. "A bit of prodding at the Ministry here and there, some whispers of discontent over my arrest, and suddenly a tidy amount of tickets popped up for sale out of some bloke's pocket in the Department of Games."
Remus set down his bookend shaped like a geode. "A likely story, I'm sure."
Sirius laughed. "Bagman's always been a greedy blowhard, even when he played for the Wasps. Imagine my surprise when I learned he's working for the bloody Ministry now." Sirius rolled his eyes. "Information had a way of making its rounds in Azkaban. I heard a rumor that ol' Ludo had been selling information to Rookwood for years before the war ended. Of course, nothing came of that. Merlin forbid they arrest someone famous."
Sirius continued to grumble under his breath, sweeping a negligible hand over the window. He eyed the dust and wiped it on his jeans. "It's good you're sprucing the place up now, though you really should let the elves come up here and clean."
"I prefer to do it myself," Remus replied. "And I didn't have anything to bring with me before. Nothing worth setting out in an office, at any rate." He thought of the sad bunch of rags and beaten textbooks that had been the sum of his worldly possessions before Albus offered him this job. He shook his head. "You do know Elara and Hermione don't like Quidditch, correct?"
Sirius nodded with an absentminded wave of his hand. "There's a lot more to do at a World Cup than just watching the game, and I think they'll like visiting all the vendors and seeing the folks from abroad. James and I went to the one in Cork back in seventy-three." He hesitated and cleared his throat again, eyes on the floor. "I would have gotten a ticket for you, but I—."
"But it's the morning after my monthly, I know," Remus replied, placing the last of his books on the shelves. It'd be more physically demanding than he'd be able to handle so fresh off the full moon, and he'd be needed at Hogwarts to prepare for the term's beginning. "Have you spoken about it to the Headmaster? Has he approved of them going?"
Sirius' face took on a pinched mien as it always did when Albus' oversight got brought into a conversation. He understood why Dumbledore—and the Order, by extension—needed to be informed of Harriet's whereabouts, but the extent of the consequences never seemed to sink in fully.
Remus didn't blame him. Sirius had spent twelve years with an utter lack of intellectual stimulation. Feeding on Death Eater gossip shouted or screamed down a crude corridor didn't much count in Remus' opinion. Twelve years without anything to challenge or shape his perceptions had arrested his development, steeping him in the very worst parts of his younger psyche.
"He said it was fine," Sirius admitted, sour. "Security will be tight enough with foreigners around. Don't even have to take Snivellus with us, thank Merlin."
Remus turned to face him fully. "You have to stop calling him that."
"What, you too? It was fine to call him that before, but now it's a great dirty sin? Rubbish."
"It was never all right to say it," Remus admitted, the guilt burning holes in his gut as he recalled all the times he'd maligned the gawky Slytherin in his youth. He'd known it was wrong as a boy, had felt that accusing lurch in his chest whenever he'd joined in on the mockery, but he'd been lonely and gullible and afraid of losing his only friends. He didn't have that excuse now.
"He isn't a pleasant man, nor someone I would ever count as a friend, but the juvenile sniping does nothing but make the rest of us miserable. Can't you see that the girls respect Severus? It makes them uncomfortable to hear you drag out old business like yesterday's laundry."
Sirius' face grew darker as Remus spoke, his teeth grinding. "I know," he said, voice sharp and unpleasant. "I know, but I can't help it. Every time I see the sneaky git, it's like I'm sixteen again and he's about to hex me with something nasty on the way back from the loo." He scowled at the far wall. "He shattered every bone in my right foot, but I couldn't prove a thing, so he didn't see a day of detention for it."
Remus remembered the incident. "A week before that, we strung him up by the ankles and stripped him naked in front of half the school down by the lake. I think he was a bit angry, Sirius."
"He called Lily a Mudblood."
"And that was business between Snape and Lily," Remus retorted, a measure of ashamed heat infusing his tone. Merlin knew he'd been furious when he heard what Snape had said, but why had he let James and Sirius carry on like that? He had been a Prefect, and he did nothing. "It's old business, mate. You're not sixteen anymore."
"I know." Sirius fidgeted with his hands and said nothing more, so Remus moved on to the next box, and from it, he pulled out new frames with new photographs. There were only three—one of Elara and her rare happy smile, one of Harriet and Hermione, and one of Remus and Sirius—but the three frames made Remus' heart feel very full. He set each one out with a gentle touch.
"It irritates me that Dumbledore won't give me more to do," Sirius said into the easy quiet. "Everything went to shite while I was away, but he won't let me help with anything, won't even let me look after the girls on my own. It's frustrating."
"It's very…delicate, you understand? The situation isn't like it was before, in eighty-one. It's changed. Albus doesn't give me much to do either, beyond teaching and watching the girls." And you, he amended in his head. "We have to trust the Headmaster knows what he needs of us and simply do our best."
Sirius grunted. "I could do more at the Ministry," he argued. "In the Wizengamot. The House of Black controls a total of thirty votes, but Dumbledore's cautioned me against doing anything with them. Do you know how hard it is to see these rubbish laws being passed and wondering if my votes could have tossed them in the bin?"
"He doesn't want you to make yourself a target. The Wizengamot is overwhelmingly pro-Gaunt at the moment if you haven't noticed. Even thirty votes wouldn't do much, but it'd be enough to aggravate certain parties into taking action."
"Perhaps they deserve to be aggravated."
"Sirius, be—." He almost said serious and caught himself. "Reasonable. Godric's ghost, don't you remember what happened before? All the Lords who went missing from their homes in the dead of night?"
"I probably remember better than you do, Moony." Sirius sighed, rolled his head on his shoulders to rid his neck of any stiffness. "I helped James in trying to find them, and usually we only came back with…pieces."
"Exactly. You can't go about making enemies to prove a point. You have three children dependent on you now." Remus came out from around his desk and laid a hand on Sirius' shoulder. The other man reached up to touch it, fingers folding around Remus'. "That's more important than the Wizengamot or anything else."
The fingers tightened on his, running over old scars and calluses. "Speaking of," Sirius said with a wry grin, sadness still lurking in his pale eyes. "The girls are probably ready to start supper. We should get home."
"Who did you leave them with this afternoon?"
"Andromeda. The witch wouldn't know a pan from a skillet."
"A trait that runs in the family, I see."
An elbow prodded Remus' ribs as he went about locking his office and his classroom, and they set off on foot by unspoken agreement. They made for an odd pair—Remus, in his academic robes, Sirius dressed down in a t-shirt and jeans dragged out of an old wardrobe. The Animagus looped an arm through his, and Remus let him stay like that for half of their journey.
There was something beautifully haunted about Hogwarts at the end of summer with evening sunlight dying at the windows. It felt expectant, like a child marking calendar days with little crosses through the dates. Hopeful in the face of slow, simmering melancholy. It lingered with them as they walked.
Their footsteps echoed in the empty hall, joined by the muffled chatter of idle portraits and the occasional groan of shifting stone. They had only just made it down the main marble steps to the entrance hall when the hollow susurration of a moving door caught Remus' attention. He paused, and his gaze flicked toward the Great Hall.
Professor Slytherin stood in the open doorway, his face cast mostly into shadow from the sunlight pouring through the Great Hall's high windows at his back. "Good evening, Professor Lupin," he said in that snide monotone he favored when speaking with those he deemed lesser. His eyes flared like garnets. "And Lord Black. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
Remus had the sudden image of Sirius doing something incredibly stupid and started to pray—but Sirius merely inclined his head, his expression flat and empty. He kept his hands balled into fists inside his pockets.
"Slytherin, right?"
"Yes. Professor Slytherin. The Head of Slytherin House—both inside this school and without." He smiled, dimples appearing in his young, charming face, though nothing but contempt lined his cold, unmoving stare. "Your daughter is my House. And you goddaughter. And your new ward. How very curious."
"Not really," Sirius said with his own fake smile. "It's the House of the cunning and clever, innit? My girls are very clever."
"Hmm. That they are." Slytherin tilted his head, his hands folded before himself. "But let's hope they aren't too clever for their own good."
"Oh, I don't think that's possible." Sirius chuckled. "Perhaps too clever for your own good."
A cold thrill went down Remus' spine as Slytherin's false smile dropped. "Sirius," he said, soft and urgent, touching the other wizard's arm. "We really do need to get going. Please excuse us, Professor."
"Of course, Lupin." Slytherin inclined his head and took one soundless step backward into the Great Hall. "Until our next meeting, Lord Black."
"Can't wait for it."
Remus and Sirius went on their way, conscious of the eyes that remained on their backs until the castle's main doors snapped closed at their heels. Sirius refrained from commenting until they'd almost reached the waiting gates.
"I can see what you mean by things being delicate. I don't know how you make it through the day without punching that tosser."
Remus only sighed.
