This has got to be the most self-indulgent chapter yet. It doesn't even feature Tonks, just a wistful, very Welsh Lupin, and Sirius in Padfoot form which I always love. Also some gratuitous Welsh at the end, because I was taken with the idea of the phrase "a man and his dog" being applied to Lupin and Sirius, but for some reason the character saying it insisted on speaking in Welsh in my imagination!
Lupin/Tonks semi-awkwardly flirting (and more) back in the next chapter.
An old man leaned on the low stone wall in front of his cottage and followed the figures roaming the hills on the horizon with his failing eyes. A young man and his dog was all that the old hillman could make out from this distance, and he watched them with the good-natured envy of the old. They were backlit by a bright late winter sky, beginning to show the tints of pink that heraleded the setting of the sun and another bright day tomorrow.
The man could have been any age, really. His body was vigorous and lean like a very young man's, but there was something weary in his gait which suggested he was older. The dog was either very young or else it hadn't had a decent walk for a long time, because it bounded around madly, running wide loops around the man and up and down crags and steep slopes. Sometimes it disappeared altogether and the man stopped with practiced patience, getting a small book out of his coat pocket, to wait for the dog to dart out from an unexpected direction. At this point it would leap up at the man, putting its large front paws on his chest, and the man would push it off, but the old man watching could see from the way that he moved that he was laughing.
The walk went on and on, neither man nor dog seeming to tire. Eventually the man called to the dog and jerked his head towards a rocky path down into a crevice on the hillside that gave into a little cleft on the hills, a secluded spot guarded on every side from view by the hills rising up around it. The dog looped back and set off in the direction that the man had indicated. They disappeared out of view, both nimble and surefooted on the steep scree path. The old man waited idly for them to reappear - there was no way out from that crevice other than the one visible from his cottage, and nothing to do in the crevice once you'd got there. He was sure they'd reappear in a minute.
Down in the crevice, howrver, the dog was gone. Instead a handsome, disheveled black-haired man was sitting on the tussocky ground next to the book-reading man, sharing a large bar of chocolate.
"Gods, that was good," Sirius said, stretching deliciously. "I feel like I've breathed deeply for the first time in a very long time. I haven't felt so hungry for ages, either. Will you go to the chippy for tea when we get back?"
"I was going to make lentil stew," Remus replied, mildly.
"As I said, will you go to the chippy for tea when we get back?" Sirius repeated, deadpan, and Remus laughed softly and shrugged.
"It's not that I don't appreciate your cooking, Moony, but I never knew it was possible to eat so many lentils." Sirius raised his face to the pale winter sky, relishing the feeling of the sun, dying winter sun as it was, on his face.
"Cheapest way to stay somewhat nourished," Remus said, simply. "It's what I know how to cook. Come on, we need to get back."
"I know, I know. We shouldn't have left HQ all day, given that I'm supposed to never bloody leave the place. What if Dung suddenly remembered something that's due to fall off the back of a lorry somewhere and leaves it unattended, yada yada... Just five more minutes?" Sirius looked at Remus with the pleading dark eyes that he'd hardly ever been able to say no to, even before their resemblance to Sirius's cousin's had added an extra voltage to their effect.
"Never thought I'd make a lover of the countryside out of you," chuckled Remus. "All right, then, five minutes. It is lovely." Hemmed in by darkening hills, all they could see clearly was the sky spreading soft pink streaks across the icy blue. "The colour of this sky is probably my favourite colour in the world," he added, and he realised as he spoke that it was true, though he'd never thought much about pink one way or the other until the past year.
Sirius may have followed the train of thought of which Remus was only half-conscious, because in reply he said, "Hey, Moony, d'you know what day is coming up this week?"
Remus thought. "Pancake day?" he asked.
"Is it?" Sirius asked.
"I don't know, Sirius, it was your question." Remus was only half listening, his thoughts still lost in the beauty of the sky and the aching tenderness he felt for the Welsh hills of his youth.
"It's Valentine's Day on Thursday." There was a sly, laughing note to Sirius's voice as he said this.
"I suppose it is," Remus agreed, absently. "So?"
"So this is the first Valentine's Day that I can ever remember you having a serious - I dunno, what are you two calling it now? Girlfriend? Lover? Winners of the most weirdly intense gazes in London awards?"
"I don't think we've put a name on it," Remus replied, a bit awkwardly. "I mean, it's wonderful, beyond my wildest dreams. I never thought I would experience anything like it. And not just because of my FLP, I mean. I don't think many people do. But there's no future in it, we both know that," he finished, hating himself because he knew that somehow, despite how chronically careful he thought he had been, Tonks did not know that. Or rather, she steadfastly refused to believe it.
"There's probably not a lot of future for any of us," Sirius shrugged, although his words didn't quite ring true. Even cooped up inside the darkest of dark houses, Sirius was so very much alive, it was hard to imagine that he could ever be anything else.
"That's it," Remus said, almost excitedly, as if relieved that Sirius saw things from his point of view. "There may well be none, for me, anyway, and it's not like she can really see anybody else at the moment - anyone outside the Order, I mean - so there's no harm in - well, what we're doing."
"I don't want to go on another guilt trip with you about it. It's between you two, whether you'll let yourself be happy with her. Which you are, by the way. You sing in the shower on the mornings when she's stayed over. It's absolutely ridiculous," Sirius added mockingly, and Remus reflected, not for the first time, that he sometimes preferred Sirius as a dog. Then Sirius continued.
"What I was going to say was, let me give you some money to take her out. Do whatever it is people do on Valentine's Day these days."
"Sirius, you know I -"
"Come on, Remus." It was rare for Sirius to use Remus's name and Remus knew it meant that he was serious. "What am I going to spend it on other than booze and fags? Just let me do one good thing this miserable sodding winter, won't you?"
Remus turned his eyes from the sky towards his best friend.
"All right. Thank you."
There was a pause. Then he added, doubtfully, "But I don't think Tonks is really a Valentine's Day sort of person."
"Depends how you celebrate it," Sirius reflected. "It's true that I can hardly see her in that ghastly tea-room place in Hogsmeade all the girls used to want to go to."
"Madam Puddifoot's," Remus laughed softly. "They still do, and it hasn't changed. To be fair, they do a lovely lapsang souchong. But no, not the place for Tonks. Not least because of all that china."
Sirius guffawed at the mental image. "Not that, then. But a nice meal? Or I always used to have a good time taking dates to the muggle cinema. Nice and dark."
Remus rolled his eyes. "I remember the tales. And the time that you got thrown out." He looked thoughtful. "I may have an idea, actually. For Friday, rather than Valentines day itself. The difficulty is making sure she gets the night off both her work and her Order duties."
"I suggest that you have a quiet word with Kingsley about the one, and the person who, despite despising and being appallingly bad at all matters administrative, has been put in charge of the Order rotas for the simple reason that there's sod all else he can do to help, about the other. Now, who was that again?"
"All right. I'll consider it done." Remus's laugh turned into a sigh as he stood up reluctantly. "Come on, the sun's almost set. We really should get back."
"Fair enough. It's pretty cold without my fur anyway. Thanks for bringing me here," Sirius said casually, as he stood up and got ready to apparate back to Grimmauld Place in four stages. He knew that Remus, reserved even when they'd been in their teens, was now almost painfully hesitant to share with anyone parts of his life and his heart. The trip out to these hills, the backdrop of his early childhood, had been about more than just a safe place for Sirius to transform and breathe in some fresh air at last.
"Of course," Remus replied, taking a last, loving look around the darkening landscape. Sirius watched him thoughtfully.
"You know, there's one thing about you, Moony. Almost everything that's happened to you in your life has been utter shit, but you've got it in you to be happy. Really happy, I mean. Don't mess it up, mate. Just - don't."
Remus stared at him in surprise. Genuine, heartfelt emotion was not a language that they spoke together, not unless it was heavily laden with mockery and hedged about so that it could always be claimed as irony. Their separate sufferings of the past 13 years had created both a bond and a distance between them. Sirius gave Remus a brief one-armed hug and then grimaced and said, "All right. Let's go and see how much of the Black family silver Dung's stolen." The two men disappeared very nearly in unison, and the crevice was silent and deserted once more.
The old man at his cottage had stayed outside despite the coming chill and the fading light, watching, waiting, wondering what the man and the dog could be doing. If he hadn't rheumatic legs, he'd have walked down himself to check that all was well with them. But as it was, it was much too far for him, even with his stick. Well, he decided, both the man and dog had been the picture of health, it was foolish to assume that anything bad could have happened to them. Perhaps they were going to have a campfire, although he hadn't noticed the man carrying anything.
"Beth sy'n bod, Hefin? Mae'r swper yn barod." The man's wife appeared at the door
"Dim byd, Alys. Dim ond dyn a'i gi." The man turned and went slowly back into the cottage as the sun dripped finally out of sight below the horizon and darkness reclaimed the hills.
[English translation of the Welsh: What's wrong, Hefin? Supper's ready".
"Nothing, Alys. Just a man and his dog."]