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“Provided they haven't succeeded in disinheriting me, of course,” adds Sirius, balancing on the rear legs of his chair, the way he always used to do when they were young. To Remus' relief, he's grinning. Almost at once, everyone turns to Dumbledore, who's sitting at the other end of Remus' dining table – this new iteration of the Order feels very much like being in the audience at a tennis match, thinks Remus, amused.“There are ways of checking, of course,” says Dumbledore, who looks cautiously pleased with Sirius' offer. “Are there any house elves left?”**“Are you sure about this whole house thing?”Sirius shrugs.“Yeah,” he says, flicking Remus' wand to light a fire under the kettle. “Besides, what else do I have to offer?”Remus smirks.“I don't know,” he says, with studious indifference. “Why don't we ask the women? That pretty witch who Moody brought along can't take her eyes off you. Not blaming her, mind you.”Sirius looks up from the trayful of china he's arranging, baffled.“Who, Dora?”Remus grins.“Dora, is she? I thought she said her name was Tonks, but I suppos-”“Moony,” interrupts Sirius, rolling his eyes. “She's my cousin. Andromeda's daughter.”“Oh,” says Remus, surprised. “Oh. Well, I guess then she isn't staring at you with the same intentions as me, is she?”“I would hope not,” agrees Sirius, sounding pleased. “But do tell me everything about your intentions, please. I want to know how quickly this meeting needs to be wrapped up.”**The house is a nightmare, gloomy and filthy.“Honestly, the Doxy infestation is sort of an improvement,” jokes Sirius, leading the way upstairs. “Oh, and guess what? My old wand is here! I'm surprised my mother didn't chuck it into the fire years ago. Well, here we are.”Sirius' old bedroom, at last, thinks Remus, hesitating on the threshold, suitcase in hand.“Better late than never, eh?” says Sirius, reading Remus' face correctly.Remus nods.“Bit of a surreal experience.”Sirius smiles. There are lines on his brow that Remus is pretty sure he didn't have when they said goodbye before Remus' mission, but he seems to be holding his own decently enough.“It's good to have you here,” he says, earnestly. His eyes are shiny. Remus nods, slightly embarassed all of a sudden.“Yeah,” he mumbles, looking away. “I've missed you too. I'm glad to be back.”**Andromeda and her husband, Ted, come over for dinner. Ted is a big, blond fellow, whose aggressively cheerful manner makes the house seem even gloomier by contrast. Remus, tired and irritable from a long day of cleaning, moves his food around the plate without eating much.“You wouldn't believe the sort of things we've been finding,” says Sirius, loudly, and he pours Andromeda another drink. “Honestly, it's almost entertaining. My parents were crazy, I tell you. You couldn't pay me enough to go through their nightstands.”'We', he says, thinks Remus, resentment threatening to spill over as Ted's booming laughter aggravates his incipient headache. Sirius spent most of the last few days shut in his mother's old room, ostensibly tending to Buckbeak, effectively leaving all the work to Remus.You wouldn't want to do it either, in his shoes, says a resonable voice inside Remus' head – one that owes a lot to his late mother’s admonishments. You know how hard it must be. Don't make a big deal of it.“Hippogriff got your bloody tongue, Moony? You haven't said a thing all evening.”Sirius' cheeks are splotchy from drinking. The look in his eyes, Remus decides, is almost taunting.“I'm going to bed,” he snaps, pushing his chair away from the table. The sudden movement startles Andromeda, and Ted glares at him. “I'm feeling poorly. By all means, you carry on.”**The screaming from behind the closed door is horrible. Remus wants to go inside, to see if he can do anything to help the woman – save her – anything – but it's like he's glued to the spot. He's standing in the corridor outside Sirius' mother's old bedroom, he realizes all of a sudden.The screaming stops. A moment of silence, unexpected, unnerving – and then something different begins. Soft, mewling sounds. Crying. Shuffling steps. The door creaks open.“Mum?” says Remus, baffled, as she emerges from the bedroom, a bundle of fabric held carefully in her arms, looking exactly the same as she did when... “Mum, but you're-”dead you're dead mum you'reHis mother smiles up at him.“Remus, look,” she says, and Remus realizes that he had forgotten her voice almost entirely. Her hands are covered in blood. “He's got your eyes, he's perfect.”He looks.**Remus wakes up with a start and at first he can't remember where he is, or why he's drenched in sweat, his heart thumping madly in his panting chest. The room is dark and stuffy, oppressive. He's lying on top of the sheets, still fully clothed.“Just a nightmare,” he murmurs, staring at the faint outline of Sirius' old dresser. The other half of the bed is empty. “Just a nightmare,” he repeats, a bit louder, his voice croaky and strange. He's still filled with dread, despite the fact that he can't remember anything about the dream he was having, except for part about the dark corridor, and the screaming woman who was...
Tonks
The realization hits him like a strike of lightning, and he feels himself blanch. Just a nightmare, he insists, running clammy fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. Nothing you can possibly control.But it's too late, of course, he remembers everything: the birth – for that's what it was, the reason why he was waiting in the corridor – the sudden silence, the blood on his mother's hands, the baby, crying softly, and still the horrible, horrible silence from behind the door...I killed her, he thinks, and it's no use reasoning that he's never even touched her, let alone done anything that could cause her to die in childbirth. He feels repugnant, tainted. He wishes for Sirius' comforting presence, and then the thought of him – emaciated, feral, a startling contrast with Tonks' youthful prettiness – makes shame creep up inside him, dark and caustic like bile.“Sirius?” he calls. “Sirius, where are you?”No answer.**He finds the picture on the third floor landing, barely visible against the dirty carpet. He picks it up to examine closely and his heart skips a beat.
This can't possibly...
The young woman in the picture beams at the camera, forever frozen in the stillness of a black and white Muggle photograph; her chubby baby, cocooned in a vast amount of knitted clothing, stares grumpily off to the side. Remus turns the picture over, tears prickling in his eyes.
Remus, aged 9 months, destined for greatness.
Remus sniffles and he turns the picture once more.Mum, he thinks, tracing his mother's lovely face with his trembling finger. Mum, what would you say if you saw me now?**Remus finds Sirius sitting in the hallway, a few feet away from Mrs. Black's portrait.“The old hag was having another of her fits,” he explains, without looking up. “It took me a while to shut her up.”“I'm sorry about storming out.”Sirius shrugs.“Are you feeling better now?”“Yeah. Sort of. I slept a while.”“Good.”An uncomfortable silence. Remus stares at the wall and runs his fingers over the picture in his pocket.
I'm saving all of these for you, Remus, for when you'll have your own babies.
The memory comes as a flash, the scene as clear as if he'd just seen it happen: his mother showing him a box full of tiny clothes – he couldn't have been more than four or five years old, it was definitely before the bite – her warm voice, the scent of her perfume, the texture of her jumper...Sirius looks up, startled.“Moony, are you ok?”Remus nods, stifles a sob, wipes the tears away from his eyes with the back of his hand.“It's nothing,” he says, sliding down the wall until he's sitting next to Sirius. “Nothing at all.”Sirius hangs his head.“I know,” he says, his voice husky, and he takes Remus' hand. “I know, love. I'm so sorry about everything.”**By the light of day, the whole situation seems significantly less dire.“Well, maybe we shouldn't have fallen asleep down here,” says Sirius, stretching his neck carefully. “My back feels like I've been trampled by wild hippogriffs.”“Not one of our best ideas, no”, agrees Remus, holding out his hand for Sirius to help him up. “Do you want some breakfast?”Sirius doesn't answer.“Remus,” he says eventually, his face impassive, Remus' hand still held in his. “I want you to know that you can leave whenever you want.”“I don–”“I just want you to know.”“Sirius, I love you.”Sirius smiles faintly.“I know that. But we never thought it was going to be like this, did we?”Remus considers his options.“No,” he says eventually, shaking his head softly. “But here we are.”“Everything here reminds me of her,” says Sirius, and Remus doesn't need to ask who he's referring to. “Sometimes I wish I'd just burned the whole place down.”“Let's. Seriously, let's do it now, who cares.”Sirius laughs.“We can't, we promised,” he says, squeezing Remus' hand affectionately. “Besides, aren't you supposed to be my voice of reason? Remus Lupin, arsonist. Who knew.”Remus refuses to be talked down.“Let's tear down the portrait, at least.”Sirius' smile fades.“I tried,” he says. “The bloody thing is stuck. Anyway, it wouldn't change much. I can hear her screaming at me just from looking at her old things. It's all inside my head. That's where she lives now.”Remus swallows.“I've been having nightmares about my mother, too,” he says, quietly. “Must be the place.”Sirius raises an eyebrow, puzzled.“Your mother? But she was nice, wasn't she?”Remus nods.“She was,” he agrees. “But like you said, she lives inside my head now, and I don't think it suits her.”Sirius sighs.“Like I said, maybe you shouldn't stay– ”“The oddest thing happened last night, though,” says Remus, talking over Sirius. “I was looking for you and I found a picture on the floor.”“Er, what sort of picture?”“A picture of me as a baby,” says Remus, producing it from his pocket. “For the life of me, I can't imagine how it got here. I hadn't seen it in twenty years.”Sirius takes the picture, a grin spreading across his face as he studies it.“What's funny?” asks Remus, vaguely annoyed by his reaction.“Nothing,” says Sirius, looking up with an impish look in his beautiful eyes. “It's just that I thought I'd gotten away with it, after all this time.”“What?”“I stole it,” explains Sirius, still grinning broadly. “The first time I came to visit, in the summer between our third and fourth years. I took it from your mother's desk and hid it in my History of Magic book.”“Why... why would you do that?” says Remus, completely baffled.“Well,” says Sirius, and he holds up the picture so that the back of it is facing Remus. “I happened to agree with the caption, dear.”
Remus, aged 9 months, destined for greatness