Wednesday 20th January 1982

The Burrow, 15:30

"Tell the twins to stay away from Scabbers!" Percy shouted.

Peter was still cowering under his bed though thankfully his torturers fled at the sound of shouting. Was it bad to call four-year-olds torturers? Or nearly four-year-olds or whatever. He still wasn't too sure of everyone's ages in this house. In his defence, there were a lot of people. And they all basically looked the same to him. But still, was it bad to refer to very small children as torturers? It probably was. But Peter didn't care because if the shoe fits!

"We didn't touch him!" Bellowed one of the twins

"You did!"

"Nuh uh! The stick did!"

"Fredrick Gideon and George Fabian Weasley just what were you doing with your brother's rat?"

They were torturing him, that's what they were doing? Couldn't the loud woman see that? Well, of course she didn't because she had so many children and couldn't watch them all the time.

"They were torturing him!"

Yes! You tell her, Percy. Maybe the boy was good for something other than good and warmth after all. Though, he really had to do a better job of keeping him safe, honestly.

"We weren't!" One of the twins said, Peter neither knew nor cared which one it was.

"Yeah!" The other one added. "We wanted to see if he could do tricks!"

"Rats are supposed to be smart!"

"Charlie said so!"

"So, we wanted to see if he could!"

"But Scabbers doesn't seem to be that smart," they finally finished.

"Scabbers is very smart!" Percy told them.

"But he doesn't do tricks!"

"He doesn't have to do tricks!"

"That's stupid."

"You're stupid!"

"Mummy! Percy called us stupid!"

"Percy Weasley! What have I told you about calling your brothers stupid?"

"But Mummy!"

"No, I won't be having it. Leave your brothers alone!"

And with that, she hustled away. Probably to cool or something. The twins both stuck their tongues out at Percy, did they always do everything together?

"Ha, ha!"

"Perfect Percy-"

"-in trouble!" They both finished.

He suddenly felt himself getting picked up again. Had he mentioned how much he despised being picked up? No one besides Percy did it gently.

"Ron! No!"

Ron? Who was Ron again? Which one was he? The oldest was in Hogwarts, he knew that much, forgot the oldest boy's name or maybe there was more in Hogwarts. He didn't know. There were an awful lot of Weasleys, in his defence. But it didn't matter who Ron was, it mattered that he was being lifted into the air against his will in a too tight grip.

Peter let out a squeak (he still couldn't get over how pathetic that sounded) and tried to thrash around but the grip was too tight.

"Nice rat."

"Ron, put him down!"

The boy stopped moving and Peter let out a sigh of relief. Sure, he was still in mid-air in a too tight grip but he felt a little bit steadier. That only lasted for a split second before he was moving again.

"Ron!"

"Ron!"

A mouth! He was going towards a mouth! Was he going to be eaten alive? Bitten? What was going on? He squeaked and struggled harder, twisting and turning but he couldn't even do that anymore. He was getting desperate and he flung his head back. That didn't work.

"Ron!"

"You're hurting him!

There were more hands now. Too many hands. All trying to pull and tug at him. Ow! Someone got his tail! Voices, voices, voices. Too many voices. He couldn't even make out faces now. No one was paying any attention to his squeaks. One thing led to another and-

"Ow!"

"Bad Scabbers!"

"Wah!"

"What the hell?"

"Language!"

"That hurts!"

Yes, he bit them. He had to; it was the only thing he could think of. There were too many hands around him so he had to make them go away.

The thing was, that he didn't exactly think this through. Because no hands around him when he was up in the air like he was wasn't exactly a good idea. And now he was falling! Is this how things were going to end?

Peter closed his eyes and braced himself. He didn't want to see it happen.

And then he stopped. But it wasn't because he hit the floor. Hands were around him again.

"Nice catch, Charlie!" Molly said in this impressed tone.

"Give him here!" Percy demanded.

A finger was rubbed down his back and if he could purr, he would have. That was really nice.

"Only if you be careful with him."

"He's my pet, Charlie and I'm always careful with him!"

"You almost let Ron eat him!"

"That wasn't my fault!"

And the two of them were bickering. Great. Did the Weasley know how to do nothing else? Peter sighed as the argument continued above him and no one did anything about it.

At least he wasn't in someone's mouth.

Sunday 24th January 1982

Marauder Flat, 16:00

"I'm moving to a smaller apartment," Marlene announced suddenly.

She tried to pick u0 her fork again to continue eating but the chaos that ensued kind of prevented that

Dora, who had been trying to get Teddy to use his spoon for his rice promptly dropped said spoon. Of course, it was loaded with rice which meant that that ended up all over the floor. Chryssie had been trying to squeeze whatever was left in the strange bottle that she bought in the muggle world. Tomato sauce, apparently, though Marlene wasn't convinced. Anyway, her little announcement caused Chryssie to apply too much pressure to the bottle and it shot out of her hands. Thank Merlin for Remus' quick reflexes or else he would have been hit straight in the forehead. Of course, the last of the sauce decided that it wanted to join everyone and sprayed on the table like some sort of parody of blood. Cassie decided that she ought to add to this chaos and dump her whole plate onto the floor. Because, you know, there wasn't enough mess.

"Oopsy!" She declared, looking around happily.

Marlene sighed heavily and resisted the sudden urge to laugh. You weren't supposed to laugh at the naughty things your children did. That would just encourage them. Her mother had told her that. Said that it was hard but you had to do it. She hadn't wanted to know what sort of chaos Marlene and her siblings would cause if they knew she though they were funny.

"Sorry!" Chryssie apologised, ineffectively wiping at the mess with a bit of kitchen roll.

Remus carefully put the bottle on the counter, out of reach of a very curious Teddy, who pouted when his dad wouldn't give it to him, hair turning red. Thankfully, a tantrum was averted by Dora waving a carrot in front of him. That boy loved his carrots.

It still amazed her that they could kind of squish everyone into this apartment and eat like this. Were they half in the kitchen half in the living room? Yes. But they all had space with elbowing each other too much. It was easier now when there were fewer people to sit.

"Were you being serious?" Dora asked once all the chaos was cleaned up. "About the flat?"

"Yes."

"But this is the Marauder Flat," Chryssie managed to get out, waving her fork around.

No one seemed to want to go back to their dinner. Instead, they were all looking at her with varying looks of dismay.

"Yeah, and there's no Marauders left living here, are there?" She gestured around the table.

Everyone looked at each other and then shrugged.

Marlene continued, pointing at each in turn, starting with Severus, "Never lived here,"

"Because I'm sane."

He was promptly ignored in favour of Remus, "Moved out with girlfriend, partner, whatever you want to call each other," both Dora and Remus opened their mouths to argue but she swept on, waving a hand at Cassie's room (Well, the room with all her stuff in it), where James used to sleep, "Got," she swallowed heavily, blinking tears away, "Got married."

She didn't bother adding anything else to that, she didn't need to and she definitely didn't want to.

"And the last one..." another heavy swallow. "Gone."

Peter was sometimes the hardest to think about. What had happened to him? How did it involve Sirius? What had they both done? Was it an accident? On purpose? The uncertainty was unbearable.

"It's too big for just me." She said with a tone of finality, not wanting to think about it anymore.

"Four bedrooms," Dora said unnecessarily.

"Exactly. And there's," she swallowed heavily. "There's only me and Cassie now."

And Cassie slept in her room. In her cot but still, in the same room. Marlene couldn't bear the thought about being alone in that room anymore and had moved her cot back. Another person breathing near her was weirdly comforting. Even if it did make her sound a bit like a psychopath.

The silence was deafening. She had never really understood that phrase until now. Noise, noise could be deafening because, you know, noise was noise. And could het loud. Silence couldn't get loud. Except that it could. Especially when the silence was paired with everyone looking at each other except for her. It was uncomfortable. She didn't like it.

"I need something smaller." She said, trying to break the silence.

Something different was left unsaid. But definitely that too. She couldn't stay here. Not anymore. Not with all the memories and the echoes and the evidence of everyone here and the ghosts. Not ghosts in the literal sense, of course. Thankfully.

Still, no one said anything, though she was getting more sympathetic looks now. Not that she thought that as much of an improvement.

Thursday 28th January 1981

Solicitor's Office, 11:00

Over the next few days, they went one by one to talk to this solicitor that Andromeda found. Benjamin Banbridge was his name. He was a half-blood who was extremely successful in what he did but he never dealt with high profile things like this had the possibility to be because, he was a half-blood. Because that was just how their world worked, unfortunately. Half-bloods and law rarely meant great accolades.

But, no matter, none of them cared about such a thing and, more importantly, Andromeda recommended him which was more than good enough for any of them. So, they went to see him. Telling him everything they knew and suspected. And all of their research. Well, it had mainly been Remus' and Severus' research. The rest of them had just helped considering their hectic work hours. And Marlene hadn't exactly been in the best frame of mind to do a lot of research. She still wasn't and Remus was worried about her. She was bottling things up and that was never good. He knew that from experience. And, yes, he was being more than a bit hypocritical. But he was fine. Marlene very obviously wasn't.

He was worried about this impulsive decision of hers to move. It didn't sit right with him. There simply couldn't be no one in the Marauder Flat anymore. There couldn't. It was for Marauders. Marauders should be there. Or at least Marauder adjacent people. Like Marlene. And Sirius' child. And it was all paid for. She didn't have to pay rent just for utilities like the floo connection and obviously food and stuff like that. Why move from such a good thing?

"Mr Lupin?"

Remus shook his head to clear his thoughts and stood up. The receptionist smiled at him, setting the phone back in its place. Wait, a phone? In a wizard's office? How had he not noticed that before? How did that even work?"

"Mr Banbridge will see you now," his thoughts were interrupted.

"Uh, yes, thank you," he managed to get out before stepping through the indicated door.

The man was scratching something down on a piece of parchment as he entered, the light reflecting off the bald spot-on top of his head. As soon as he heard the door open, he looked up and offered his hand over a very cluttered desk.

"You have a phone," Remus couldn't help but say as they shook hands.

It thankfully got him a chuckle as he chided himself for his poor manners. He was better than that. And what a way to greet someone. Honestly, that was something James would have done. He always seemed to say the first, impulsive thought that came into his head.

"I do indeed. I find it incredibly useful," Banbridge said. "And, I'll be honest, growing up with one, it would be very strange to not have one of my own."

"And it works?" Remus said on amazement.

Banbridge's eyes lit up, like he was excited that someone was interested in it.

"It does! Of course, it wouldn't if my office was located in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade or the like, far too much ambient magic." He then added with a self-deprecating chuckle, "there are some positives to being a half-blood solicitor, it turns out. The lights are even electric, did you notice?"

"I did! Fascinating. And there's nothing awkward about having them at all?"

"Surprisingly no, except that the bulbs seem to burn out quicker and some puzzled glances from purebloods. They do seem to like flicking the switch on and off, though."

Remus couldn't help but smile. He could imagine. Sirius had been the same when he discovered electric lights. But his mind didn't dwell on that for too long (he didn't let his mind do that too much when it came to Sirius these days), instead wondering of there was any correlation between magic and electric bulbs burning through. It seemed like there would be, didn't there? But how would that work?

"But you didn't come here to talk about my eccentricities with electricity, did you?"

Remus shook his head. As interesting as it was, that was definitely not the reason why they were both here.

"Well, then we better get started."

And for the next hour, Banbridge asked Remus to recount everything he could remember from that night and the nights leading up to it. He then started asking questions about each of them, the Marauders and their significant others and how their friendship worked. Fairly easy questions, Remus thought. Nothing like what he had been expecting. But then what was he supposed to expect? An immediate solution? Talk about impossible thinking, never mind wishful.

He hadn't even realised that he'd been speaking for an hour until a chime went off and a very apologetic receptionist came through the door, informing Banbridge about his next appointment that he was now late for.

Apologies and goodbyes were made and pretty quickly Remus found himself out of the office and in the reception area, feeling vaguely bewildered. He wasn't sure of this was a good start or not.

Auror Department, 13:00

Kingsley couldn't help but feel uneasy as he was called to Crouch's Office. You couldn't exactly blame him; the man was the Head of the DMLE. And being called to his office wouldn't mean anything good. Sure, it wouldn't? Because you only go called to talk to your superiors if something had gone wrong. You were rarely commended if you got something right. Unless it was something really amazing and incredible and deserved an award or something but only a few actions fell under that category and he definitely hadn't done any of those. Which meant that it had to be something bad. Very bad because Crouch wasn't just head of the Aurors but the entire DMLE.

It felt like getting to his office both took forever but also took far too little time. Kingsley wasn't sure which one he had actually wanted. But that didn't matter because he was here now. In front of the door. Which was big and brown and intimidating. Even though it was like every single other door. But this one had a plaque that said 'Crouch' on it which made it intimidating.

He paused for a moment, took a deep breath and knock on the door. It seemed to echo down the corridor.

Almost before he let his knuckles leave the door, a voice called out, "Enter!"

It made him jump. Which didn't help his nerves at all.

Very brief pleasantries were exchanged, the usual with Crouch - the man didn't mince his words - before they got right to the point.

"Marlene McKinnon will be returning to work on a somewhat probationary basis and it has been decided that you will be her partner," he was told all matter-of-factly.

Kingsley blinked at him and opened his mouth to say, well, he didn't know what he was going to say. Was this a good thing? Was Marlene, okay? What about everything to do with Sirius? Could she be trusted? Wait, no, that was a stupid thought. Of course, she could be trusted or else he wouldn't be here having this conversation that wasn't really a conversation but-

"Did you have something to say, Auror Shacklebolt?"

The man seemed like he wanted him out of the office as quickly as possible. Like he was distracted or late of something else. Which was a possibility considering everything that the man oversaw. And there were some weird whisperings going around the office about him. That he was preoccupied or something but that was none of Kingsley's business. It wasn't. Even though he had heard something about his son... nope. No gossip. No. He wasn't going to go there. Especially when he had to focus around the man. He didn't want to be caught unawares or anything.

"No, sir."

Which wasn't a lie. He didn't even know how to put his thoughts into coherent sentences.

"Good," Crouch said shortly. "She'll begin in three days' time."