Chapter 28: See your friends tonight
After the Dnharganfod exercise, Sirius had the three eleven-year-olds gather their siblings and other relatives in the sitting room on the first floor. Grandfather Arcturus was nowhere to be seen – which meant he was either in the secret basement or up in the lord's quarters – but Grandmother Melania was there with Fania in her arms once again.
Sirius didn't bother explaining anything, shutting the curtains to stifle out the little light that came through the heavy rain and turning off the two floor lamps by the doors with a flick of his wand.
"What is..."
The boy who'd just talked – Alastor, or maybe Harfang, Sirius couldn't yet tell them apart from their voices alone – trailed off: white glowing lines were tracing themselves in Sirius' handwriting across the room, illuminating the kids just enough to guess at their expressions.
The children stared at their names glowing on various parts of clothing – or, for Varsha, right on her left cheek, and Shivansh didn't even look sorry about it – while Sirius turned around the group of Black kids – and Juliet, who looked a tiny bit pleased at being included.
"Hmm, yes, no cheaters and no one left out. Aldebaran, Shivansh, Orion, you did good, I think you got a good grasp of this tracking spell. Try to keep it in mind, just in case... And you all can keep your bead, if you want. Might be useful one day."
Someone hummed from behind him, and Sirius turned around to watch Marianne carefully picking at what he knew to be cool brown robes.
"...Is th at going to wash off?"
Her name was stamped upside down by her left hip.
"It won't even last that long, don't worry. Invisible stickers crumble down after one hour or so."
The girl looked pensive for a moment.
"Maybe we could try that on purpose, though? On t-shirts, maybe, and with something that would last. I... We could each write our own name, and put it just the right way, something we'd all have in common? I like the idea of making something together..."
Elizabeth perked up at the idea:
"Or we could all get a cloak with the same glow-in-the-dark drawing, and the t-shirts would be our individual names! I'm sure I saw long-lasting stickers at Wandwavin' when Holly took us out to Diagon Alley the other week. They weren't for fabric, but..."
Before Sirius could ask if this was about Holly Harker – hit witch, colleague – Harfang added:
"I doubt it's very complex magic, so even if there aren't any stickers for clothes we could still try and figure out how to alter them to get what we want. It might take a bit longer, but..."
Melania shook her head and switched the lamps back on – but left the curtains closed, apparently unconvinced that the creeping evening and the rain outside would allow for enough light to be worth letting it in.
"Alright, alright, kids. You all have good ideas but we're going to do this logically. Everyone takes a seat and we're going to actually plan ahead. Here, Dana, if you would..."
Fania's older sister took the baby from the old witch, who then got up and headed for a cabinet to fetch paper and a quill with a round black crystal on the finger tube – then she told her grandson:
"You could use a break, I think. Go and see your friends tonight, I'll handle the rest of this."
The young man didn't answer right away, his eyes drifting to the children – who were shuffling armchairs and settees around, picking up a low table to put in the middle of the vaguely oval-shaped circle of seats they'd just created – for a moment. Melania sighed and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Sirius, you will need to be there for all of them. If you don't take the time when you can..."
"...Are you sure you'll manage?"
Melania almost laughed.
"I'm nearly four times your age, Sirius, don't worry about me. Take a few hours for yourself, don't stay out too late, you have to work tomorrow and your shift is at an atrocious hour..."
"It could be worse, I'm not on the three-am-to-noon shift."
"...That sounds like there isn't even a point to going to sleep. Anyway, don't come back too late."
Sirius made a face – the boy didn't yet know what having children meant, his grandmother mused, it had only been a few days – and passed a hand in his hair. Melania was starting to see what her husband meant when he'd said the young man could use a ribbon.
"I could at least stay for dinner..."
"And leave around eight to be back at ten? Go, we are here, Arcturus and I, the children are hardly alone. I have Sterhn to help, too, he'll just handle dinner alone tonight, it's fine. You've spent the entire day with the kids already, it's not like you're trying to avoid them."
Melania checked the inkwell on the middle shelf – it was still half-full and would do its job wonderfully, filling her inkgemed quill from across the room without her needing to move it over – and answered Nashira's call. The older witch went to sit with the children around the low table, leaving Sirius with no choice but to go, a pointed eyebrow raised at him while the kids were busy.
The young man huffed – he could, potentially, commander another seat and join the craft planning, but it wasn't like they needed him – and surrendered, nodding with a small smile at the glance Varsha threw him before he could leave the sitting room.
It wasn't as if he didn't want to see his friends, after all. A detour by his bedroom – leather jacket, check – and Sirius mirror-called James to make sure they weren't on a last-minute Order mission.
His best friend's image stared at him after a handful of seconds – the whistled tune of a mirror call – looking only vaguely surprised.
"Sirius! How was your day off?"
"Rainy."
James blinked and looked outside – but he and Lily lived in Devonshire, and of course the weather wasn't the same there.
"Oh. Well, I hope you still found something to do with the kids. Did you need something? Maybe we can arrange to meet the kids, uh, Wednesday, my day off? Or Thursday, your next day off..."
Sirius grimaced and shook his head.
"Wednesday is the family reunion, sadly. Thursday might be possible, if Lily can handle twenty-or-so visitors on such short notice. I'd rather do this out of the manor, not have them stuck here all week, and besides I'd have to ask my grandparents to let you in and it might be a bit... early for that. Especially right after a reunion."
James opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it.
"I was going to ask why, but I only have one first cousin left and Charlesh is thirty years older than me, I don't know what it's like to have a big family."
"And don't forget, the Blacks are nothing like the Potters or the Fortescues. Black family reunions are, by default, a hissing trap..."
"...Caleb would have gotten it, I think. But... Anyway. Thursday, I'll ask Lily."
Caleb Potter was – had been – James' other first cousin, who'd died alongside his parents two years ago, trapped in a Death Eater attack on a wizarding restaurant in Exeter. He'd been twenty years older than James, too – and more importantly here, his mother had been Dorea Black. Caleb had never been invited to the Black reunions – he belonged to the House of Potter and therefore couldn't be a Black by Blood – but Dorea had been one of Grandfather Pollux's sisters.
This meant Caleb Potter and Sirius' mother were cousins, so of course Caleb had understood what kind of problem the Black family reunions were.
...Walburga hadn't been happy when the other branch of the Potters had become collateral damage of a terror strike, from the conversation he'd overheard between Regulus and his friends. A conversation that had somehow turned into them saying Death Eaters ought to be more careful with their targets, not into realizing that maybe there was something deeply fucked up with their crusade.
Sirius didn't want to dwell on that overheard conversation and his best friend didn't look very happy thinking about Caleb's death, so maybe it was time to derail the whole discussion back to its original purpose.
"Actually, James, my grandmother is ushering me out of the manor, saying I should go and spend time with my friends this evening. Are you two staying home?"
James perked up in an instant.
"Of course, just use the floo! Or, well, wait a few minutes, I'll try to call Peter and Remus first, see if they want to hang out. I..."
Someone said something outside of the mirror and James looked away for an instant. Lily, probably.
"You're right and I love you!"
Definitely Lily.
"Lily says you should drop by Diagon Alley, pick up enough buns for five people and two servings of candied chestnuts if we're all eating here."
Sirius squinted at his best friend.
"And what if Remus or Peter or both can't stop by?"
James shrugged.
"More for me, then."
Sirius rolled his eyes and agreed – they both knew the extra serving was actually for Remus to take back home, especially since he'd insisted on renting a flat despite his poor financial situation instead of staying at his parents' house. Not that Sirius would comment on that, he was hardly in a position to judge Remus' choices – teen runaway, too much money to know what to do with it...
He used the public chimney in Carkitt Market and picked up the candied chestnuts – you could barely see the face of the old witch at the stall, ready to jump into her cart at the first sign of trouble – and an assortment at the Witchiest Buns, right by the record shop he often wandered in.
The result was that, when he finally flooed to the Potters' fifteen minutes later, both Remus and Peter had gotten there before him.
"You brought the food!"
Sirius put down his parcels on the low table: as any responsible adults, they always ate takeout by the couch, Lily and James sharing with Remus – who, unlike Sirius and Peter, was able to survive the disgusting lovesick atmosphere – while Sirius dragged a chair from the dining table and Peter simply sat on the floor.
"I missed you too, Peter."
The smaller boy – man, they were all adults now, but it was just weird not to think of Peter as a boy; he was still as chubby as before, for Godric's sake... – didn't bother with an apologetic look.
"I barely got out of work and I didn't have the time for lunch today."
"Forgiven, then. Hey, Remus. You got anything this week?"
The wizard looked tired, but no more than usual – which wasn't bad, considering. The full moon wasn't for another ten days, too.
Remus shrugged.
"...Enough. I picked up a manuscript on healing potions from Obscurus Books on Wednesday, so I should be able to pay rent this month."
It was difficult for the werewolf to keep a full job: there was always a day he couldn't make it – or three, the worst months – and absences he couldn't justify, not without saying the truth. They'd graduated barely a year ago and Remus had gone through three different jobs already.
Now that they'd gotten involved with the Order of the Phoenix, though, their bookish friend had given up on a full-time job and decided to stick with short-lived missions of proofreading for various editors: something he had the patience for and could actually do even when he wasn't feeling well. It also left him enough time to go on missions for the Order, so Remus could still feel useful on that side of his life.
The money was correct, if not stellar – the issue laid more in availability: the editors usually had a proofreader employed full-time and only reached out to their external list when there was too much work for only one person or for a second reread. From there, it was "first come, first served". It was the kind of side jobs Academe students took to earn a few galleons between two classes.
Which would be a good thing for Remus, if only he could pay for the – relatively affordable but still complicated for him – annual inscription fee. Theoretically, the aspiring student could scrounge up enough money with his proofreading to pay the thirty galleons inscription fee – and an additional ten galleons for each course attended – before September but that would mean not having enough left for rent, food, and whatever else he might need. Not really an option.
As it was, Sirius had conveniently forgotten Remus' birthday in March, and that meant he should find a better, sorry-I'm-late gift before the end of summer. Sadly and at this point, he could only envision paying the fee while dragging Remus to an admission interview in mid-August – such a terrible friend, really, how could he forget about Remus' birthday, look at the consequences now!
But Sirius hadn't made the rules – that, at the very least, was true: the sorry-I'm-late gift was one of James' inventions, dating back to their second year at Hogwarts – so paying the yearly fee it was.
How awfully convenient.
Lily appeared from the corridor about then:
"What about you, Sirius? I've heard from James, of course, but I must admit he was a bit too focused on trying to set you up with my cousin Rose to be very informative."
Everyone turned to stare at her husband – Peter and Remus looking particularly confused, mouthing "Rose?" to each other – while she sat on the couch. Sirius quirked an eyebrow at his best friend:
"...You are useless."
James scoffed and handed everyone their drink:
"Take your sprite water and shut up, you abstinent... monk. No alcohol, no relationships, and he calls himself a troublemaker!"
They were now all sitting around the low table, ready to get into the food – with additional blue tomato toasts, courtesy of Geoffrey Pettigrew's garden – and there was no avoiding the obvious subject to come: Sirius' family.
Even that last comment was a throwback to that particular problem, in the end.
Sirius' answer was more of a grumble than anything else:
"Everyone is always drinking at those high society parties, you should know that, James. I've seen more than enough drunk assholes sneering down their noses not to want to be one. And Uncle Alphard had to have a reason why he drank so damn much that it killed him right before his fifties. I thought it was a tasteless April Fools', when I got the letter at school..."
His friends winced and Lily cautiously asked:
"It was after you left your parents', right? In sixth year?"
Sirius moodily stared at his sprite water.
"April first, 1977. He'd died during the night and I got the news for breakfast. Almost didn't, too, because Mother thought an ungrateful runaway shouldn't get to know about her brother's death, after all, wasn't that why I'd left to begin with? Dad didn't listen to her, for once, and anyway I was on my uncle's will so it would have remained a secret only until the Notts did their job..."
Peter awkwardly cleared his throat.
"Right, uh, your... family. I've seen the article in the Daily Prophet two days ago, and James did say the kids were real, but did you really go back to them?"
Sirius rarely told them anything about his family – any of them, bad or good – so it was difficult to know what the wizard truly thought on the matter. That said, they'd seen how his brother treated him at school, and teenagers didn't just run away from home, so of course they'd guessed some.
Peter, James and Remus didn't quite get it: their families liked them and they had no idea what having a sibling was actually like. Most of the time, they didn't know how far to pry into Sirius' familial situation – which had often meant they'd back off easily. This time, however, Peter was fairly certain the children his friend had accidentally acquired didn't come with hurtful associations, and he felt he did have the right to worry about the rest of the situation.
Sirius, to his relief, didn't hesitate in his answer:
"My grandparents are alright, mostly. I'm a bit wary about my grandfather, and all this means I will have to deal with the rest of the family at some point, but... I can deal. And if I really have to, I'll leave and take the kids, but that could get messy and I don't want to do that unless I need to. It's not... It's not like I have to go back to my parents'."
Peter shared a look with Remus, who let out a quiet "if you're sure about that..."
"It'll be alright."
Peter bit his lower lip and put down his chicken bun for a moment.
"I... Sirius, you know... Just, if you need help..."
He trailed off, unsure of what to offer. Sirius had more money than all four of them put together – and James counted for most of those funds, so even if their friend suddenly had a problem with money, Peter wouldn't be the one able to help. Sirius was also the only one who owned his place, since Remus rented a very small flat in Horizont Alley, Peter still lived with his parents, and James and Lily's small house belonged to the Potter family – it used to belong to James' cousin Caleb, before he'd died, and the couple took care of the house until they were settled enough to get one for themselves, fit for the family they hoped to build one day.
Truthfully, Peter didn't know what he could do to help, should Sirius need it. It didn't matter that he wanted to: it had always been the other way around and he didn't know what to do to change that.
"Thanks, Peter. I'll keep it in mind, don't worry, and even if nothing goes wrong... I'm sure we'll find something. There's bound to be something you can bond over with the children."
Peter would have felt relieved with that reassurance, except he'd never been very good with younger children – or with anyone who wasn't his age in general. It was like he just forgot how it felt to be younger than he was now and couldn't relate anymore.
James, fortunately, intervened then:
"Right, on that matter, if you're all coming over Thursday evening... Peter, Remus, can you make it too? It would be an opportunity to meet the kids! What do you think, Sirius?"
The wizard shrugged, unbothered. He might have thought he'd introduce each of them separately – well, James-and-Lily counted as one – but realistically, they were nineteen children and thus had to be entertained adequately for an entire evening: five people were probably better than three.
Peter hesitated before nodding carefully.
"...I guess. If there isn't an emergency with the Order, I should be free."
Remus, however, shook his head:
"Not me, sorry. Alice and I are supposed to keep an eye on a woman who's been making the rounds of the few werewolves with a known address, and she only goes out on Thursday nights."
"Damn... We'll find another opportunity for you, I guess. On that matter, Sirius..."
The little assembly of friends started asking him more details about the children themselves, the situation, on what he expected to do with them. When Lily asked about school and Sirius said they'd contacted Dumbledore to have the kids pass some sort of exams, Remus frowned and asked:
"...Didn't you say one of the girls never had a wand before? Won't it be a problem?"
Sirius froze for a moment – then passed a hand on his neck, glanced over and nodded to himself.
"You've got a very good point. I didn't think of that, but Nashira's magical knowledge is obviously not the same as ours. The theory, maybe, but she doesn't have any practice..."
A calculating look at both Remus and Lily, then:
"You two are the more likely to manage to teach anyone anything, I think. I mean, I get the theory but I don't really know how to get around a problem when the other person just doesn't get it... James... Let's not talk about James, he has zero patience. Peter is a decent study buddy, but, don't take it badly, you said yourself you weren't good with kids..."
"Yeah, no, you're right, Sirius. I'd make a terrible teacher, I'm sure."
Sirius continued on:
"So, I was thinking: how about I pay you for a few lessons, maybe an assessment of what Nashira knows and can do first, and then if the theory holds up you'd be teaching her wand magic?"
Remus almost said something, but Lily beat him to him – and from the look in her eyes, she knew exactly what she was doing:
"I can handle the theory, if you want. I enjoy the minutiae of analyzing what makes magic work or not, that's why I've been looking into spell crafting. Remus can do the practical lessons, I know he likes showing people how to do things. How about one galleon an hour? Sounds reasonable."
Seeing that Lily had already accepted, Remus couldn't very well dispute what he felt sounded almost like charity – so he only sighed.
"Sure. Choose a day for Lily, and when she's done with her part we'll talk about me."
Peter nudged the werewolf playfully:
"Come on, don't look so disheartened! I thought you wanted to be a teacher one day."
Remus shook his head, didn't answer – but a small smile was back on his face, and when Lily and Sirius settled for next Tuesday in the afternoon, he didn't mind going back to banter and small talk.