#sirius black lives
so much fluff coming your way. spoiler alert: EVERYONE lives
who said he never lived past forty?
March 10th, 2000.
“Oh come on you old thing—” Harry muttered at the ancient bike squeaking its way up the hill— why did they have to live on a hill? At least, Harry thought, the weather was nice. It was a glorious March day, the sun finally starting to grace England amidst the spring buds just about to bloom.
Panting as he jumped off the bike at the front porch, Harry wasted no time in starting to pound their front door, “Sirius! Sirius get out of here— if we don’t go get the cake by noon we’ll have to put Fred and George on Teddy duty and they’ve threatened to feed him the—”
The door opened with Remus looking exasperatedly bemused.
Harry gaped at him with one fist still raised in the air, “Remus! Ugh— hi!” he said intelligently, “aren’t you— supposed to be at Hogwarts? It’s a Friday.”
“For sure, I was just about to floo up. Harry, is everything alright?”
Darn it, Harry thought, Remus had been back living with Sirius ever since Teddy was born. It’s been two bloody years, how could he have forgotten? “Um, yeah. Everything’s great.”
“Did I hear something about Teddy and a cake?”
“No! Nothing of the sort.” Harry tried an oblivious look, which only turned into a shit-eating kind of grin at Remus’ raised eyebrow.
“Hmm. Try to keep your dad and Sirius in check, won’t you? Merlin forbid they strain themselves at this age.”
“Hey, I heard that—” Sirius called groggily from inside the house.
Remus sighed, fond and exasperated (in Harry’s memory Remus constantly seemed to be exasperated), and said “Do you want to come in?” and when Harry moved forward, unblocking the bike from Remus’ view, “Harry, is that— that bike on the ground used to belong to my mother!” he said laughingly.
“No offence to Nana Hope but Remus, that bike is now a pile of junk.”
-
“A very good morning to you, Prongslet,” Sirius’ hand, even after so many years, magnetically veered towards ruffling Harry’s hair in greeting.
“Ay stop it.” Harry half heartedly tried batting his hand away, “is Teddy still sleeping?”
“Mhm. I’ll just check on him before I go.” Remus said, making his way towards the stairs.
“Sirius—” Harry started whispering aggressively, the moment Remus moved out of earshot, “we’re on cake duty, turns out Nana Hope’s train got cancelled— fucking British trains— now Mum has to go pick her up, so we’ll also have to find someone to babysit Teddy, because no, the twins are not an option—”
“We could leave him with Molly?”
“No! This is Teddy, Molly can’t keep up!” Harry followed Sirius as he walked through to the kitchen, flicking on kettles and hobs, taking his wand out of his hair (let it be said that this never got old) to send breakfast ingredients flying across the air. He added a single sugar to a hot cup of tea, and sent the mug sailing out to find Remus.
“Eggs, Harry?”
“Oh yes, and have you got one of those blueberry muffins— oh hell yeah! Cheers, Sirius.”
“Anything for you, pup. Now what about Ginny, shouldn’t she be free?”
“Godric’s sake, Sirius. You were the one who kept telling me about having to stop Dad from throwing me around like a quaffle. We don’t trust toddlers with professional chasers.”
Sirius laughed, “You’re right, you’re right. Well, Ron and Hermione?”
“Have you even been paying attention? Ron and Hermione are setting up the—”
Remus appeared at the kitchen door, and smiled, indulgently suspicious, eyes narrowed just, at the way Harry had abruptly cut himself off. Sirius, completely unfazed, chuckled to himself.
“Thank you for the tea, love,” Remus said, setting his mug down on the counter.
Sirius immediately made his way across, and they shared a short kiss. “You’re heading off?”
“Yeah.”
“Well go on,” they share a honey-wine kind of smile, mellowed by three decades of life together, “go blow some children away.”
“I’ll see you both tonight? At Lily and James’?” Remus said on the threshold of the fireplace.
Harry turned to Sirius. They shared an identical grin.
“Hey Remus,” Harry called out. Remus raised a single eyebrow. “Happy birthday.”
Remus breathed a laugh like he’s finally heard the stone he’d been waiting to drop. “Thank you Harry. But I’ll have you know, these two words have somehow filled me with so much fear.” he said, before stepping away into the green flames.
-
As Remus sat down at the head table next to Regulus, he pushed towards him a book-shaped package, neatly wrapped in parchment.
“Happy birthday, old man.” Regulus said between sips of tea, eyes not leaving the Prophet page.
“Regulus— thank you.” Remus said heartily, “What book is it this year?”
“A niche thing about pseudo-reactive potions in identifying dark artefacts. I think you’ll appreciate it.”
Remus laughed, “One of these days you’ll quit trying to get me into potions.”
“One of these days you’ll quit pretending you don’t enjoy them.”
“Oh, it’s a day for baring our hearts, is it?”
“If there ever was one.”
“You know, Reg. You might need to admit how much thought you’ve put into the gift, and I’ll admit how much I appreciate it.”
Regulus chuckled, “Keep talking and you’ll sound like Dumbledore.”
Remus shook his head, “Could I ever.”
As they spent breakfast in each other’s comfortable companionship, familiar sharp banter, Remus allowed himself just one moment of sentimentally feeling his age. His eyes scanned the hall-full of children and marvelled. Seven years he’s been here now. He’d watched most of his friends’ children grow into brilliant young people, been witness to all the wonderful little moments of their growth, and not just through their letters on parchment. Inadvertently, embarrassingly, he’d been right there for Harry’s first detention, first crush, first break-up; picked up on too many quarrels between Ron and Hermione or the Weasley siblings; laughed his way through every time one of them slipped up during a practical lesson and called him Moony or Remus. (He always thought those occasions were more of an embarrassment for the children than himself, though Regulus thought otherwise. He heard about how he went livid the time Harry slipped up and called him Uncle Reg.)
Now, every child in the seats below Remus had known since they were eleven— the thought filled him with inexplicable warmth. This, this was worth all of it. It was worth every day of wrestling with teenagers, worth the grey lining his hair. Really, he couldn’t believe his luck. His younger self— sitting in this same hall at a much darker time— would never have fathomed being this happy, being loved and accepted in this big a place as Hogwarts, despite his lycanthropy. Would he have imagined even living to see this age?
“You know,” Regulus said suddenly, breaking him from his thoughts, “I overheard the Wilkins talking about certain— plans. I think you can look forward to an eventful day.”
“Oh dear,” Remus groaned, “I was hoping they’d forgotten now that the last Weasley’s gone.”
“Their influences stretch far and wide, that hoard of yours.”
“Mine? You mean ours, dear brother in law?”
“Oh please, imagine. The sole heir of the house of black, consorting with blood traitors and half-breeds.” He mocked, with a completely straight face.
Remus laughed in surprise, at Regulus’ accent deliberately turned up about five notches. The posh roundness was wearing thinner by the day, so it never failed to throw him back a decade or two hearing it again, even if their voices were now lower and rougher with age.
“So,” Remus asked, “you’ve any idea what that lot are up to?”
“I have no idea who you mean by that.”
A snort, “our one and only family, of course.”
Regulus smiled then, rare and soft. “For sure. Though no, you know I’m not lying when I tell you I don’t know what they’re up to. I just leave it up to them.”
“You don’t deny they’re up to something?”
Regulus put down his teacup, turned to look at him, “Remus. They’ve always been up to something. Every single day since they turned eleven.”
-
