23Disclaimer: See Prologue
A/N: I was going to alter this one significantly less. The first Sirius chapter of "Where Dwell the Brave at Heart" was about that slightly awkward start of a friendship with Lupin, and I was going to fix it, but you can find the re-written version of that in "Where Dwell the Brave at Heart - the Outtakes"; it's chapter 47.
And the second is his leaving Grimmauld Place to live with the Potters, which can be found in both the aforementioned story, chapter 65, and The Final Act.
So I'm not re-writing either for fear it bore some people.
A/N: Also, to everyone I have not already replied to, thank you so much for a response I was certainly not expecting to the last chapter. I hugely appreciated it.
"I'm not…" Harry trails off, staring at the sudden glance, almost an inside joke, between Peter and his sixteen-year-old godfather. "Who was Nott?"
"We grew up together," Sirius explains. "We were taught the same things before going to Hogwarts. Until we were about nine, we were only allowed to communicate in French. His sister…I was fond of his sister."
Lupin briefly catches Harry's eye and Harry's eyebrows rocket skywards, hidden beneath his untidy fringe. It's not that it's so hard to imagine Sirius with a girlfriend, it's just that he's never so much as thought about it before. Harry eyes the teenage Sirius one last time - tall, angular, strikingly, disarmingly, attractive. No, it's not hard to imagine a small army of girlfriends.
What is difficult to comprehend is his affection for anyone who grew up having been taught the same sort of thing. "And the sister…Electra, was it?"
Sirius nods.
"Right. So was she…well, like you?"
Sirius laughs genuinely. "No. No, not at all. Electra Nott was the child I think my mother wished I was; sent to Slytherin, made a Prefect, made the right sort of friends, knuckled down, passed with a complete set of Os."
"Right sort of friends?"
"Oh, come on. You know what Slytherin's like; who it's full of." Sirius reaches for the pile of Polaroid photographs and flicks through them until he finds what he's been searching for. "But look at her; she was broom-stoppingly good looking, and she wasn't quite the fascist her brother was."
"I think it's probably more to do with her short skirt and sailor vocabulary," Lupin adds, dryly.
"I'm not going to deny they may have been factored into the equation."
There are two girls in the photograph, but Harry does not have to have Nott pointed out to him. She is infinitely taller than the other, slimmer, a little more muscular. Her cropped raven hair is pushed out of her face by a headband. Her cheekbones are chiseled and her eyes are a somewhat unsettling shade of electric blue; almost inhuman. But he can't deny that she is beautiful.
Despite her making the "right sort of friends", the other girl, whom Electra's arm is wrapped around, wears a Gryffindor scarf.
"Who's that?"
Sirius takes the photograph from him. "I've told you, we'll get to Mulciber." He smirks across at Lupin whose responding smile is grim.
"Can't wait," he mutters darkly.
Harry, now deeply intrigued, risks a brief glance in Lupin's direction. He's sitting cross-legged, leaning back in his chair, throwing Sirius a half-hearted glare, but there's something in his dark eyes, something that turns them jet black.
Sirius, oblivious to it, encourages Harry to rifle through the pile. "Hold onto that one," he says, nodding toward the photograph of Electra and her friend. "I do want to talk about it and that's probably the best photograph I've got of her."
"If you mean Mulciber, I will do the talking," is all that Lupin offers on the subject.
Harry offers cursory glances to several photographs; four boys covered in cake mix, his father's head disappearing into a sink while Sirius nonchalantly holds his hair with one hand and talks animatedly with the other, his father, Sirius, and Lupin in the Charms Corridor, the door that had concealed Fluffy in the background. It means nothing to them, but Harry lets out a small, breathy, almost sigh.
About to shift the next photograph to the back of the pile as he has done the others, Harry starts at the image of his father and Sirius, suspended twenty feet in the air, swinging from a mechanical arm. Beneath them, tarmac, then an expanse of water, then tarmac. The very sight of it induces a clenching of Harry's stomach muscles. He flips it, wondering how anyone can look at such a precarious instrument and laugh.
"I was born in the South Hams," Lupin explains. "By the time I went to Hogwarts, my parents and I were living in a place called Hope Cove. It's about five miles away from Kingsbridge, which is, well, sort of a hub; an actual town where all the twisting lanes lead to. Hope Cove had a corner shop, three pubs, and a beach, which is all very well if all you need is a pint and some tinned ham, but should you require anything useful, you have to go into town. I had to go to Kingsbridge every day to even go to school when I was a child."
Harry's eyes flit down to the photograph before meeting Lupin's gaze. "So this, this is in Kingsbridge?"
Lupin nods. "Fair Week, third week of July. That must have been at the end of our second year. I'd invited the boys, I did every year, and your father and Sirius spotted The Fly Trap as soon as we'd got out of my mother's car, and being your father and Sirius, decided they were going to go on it. A dirty look could have brought the whole thing down."
July 24th 1973. Hope Cove, Devon.
They arrived in dribs and drabs; James and Sirius taking the Saturday morning train from Paddington to Kingsbridge, and Peter side-along Apparating into the front garden the following Tuesday.
Having spent a week in Spain with his mother and half-sister, Peter's skin was a much darker shade than anyone else's, with the exception of Mrs. Lupin whose Italian heritage gave Remus his almost beige colouring and inability to burn in the sun.
James' mother bequeathed to him no such gift and his skin was already beginning to peel. Seemingly giving an excellent performance as a radish, James continued to apply Mrs. Lupin's moisturiser in place of after-sun.
"You smell beautiful," Sirius assured him over breakfast on Thursday.
"Shut it."
"That's a nasty burn on your back," said Mrs. Lupin, placing a plate laden with extra bacon in front of him as though to compensate. "If you'd had an accident, we'd have you sorted. We've got everything under the sun for cuts, infections, bruises, fractures, torn ligaments. You could have been hit by a bus and I'd be better prepared to look after you. I don't know what your mother will think of me."
"It's what she'll think of me that I'm worried about," James muttered darkly. "I'm going to have hell when I get home."
"Why?" asked Peter, his mouth full of scrambled eggs.
"Because she packed me sun cream, but I looked like an idiot."
Mrs. Lupin clicked her tongue. "I should have made sure you were all wearing hats."
Sirius laughed. "Hats? We'd have looked seven."
"The fair will take your mind off it," said Lupin, spreading marmalade thickly across his toast.
"Easy on the marmalade, Remus." His father did not have to look up from the paper. "You're going to look like an orange."
Lupin slowly licked the laden spoon in defiance.
"Four down," said John Lupin, tapping a pencil idly against the table. "Six letters. Occupant of Remus' bedroom if he keeps on. Oh, that's right! Lodger."
Even Lupin laughed. He took a bite of toast and turned to his mother. "But I can go? We can go?"
Mrs. Lupin nodded. "I'll drive you in. Wait 'til your dad gets home and we can all go together."
John glanced up from the crossword. "I think I might still be banned."
"Stop it, you." But she leaned down to kiss his cheek. "Are you nearly finished?"
"I am never finished with an uneaten bacon sandwich," he replied, filling in the last spaces of the crossword.
"Well get a wiggle on, it's ten to nine."
It was half past by the time the boys had eaten the Lupins out of house and home and, without her husband to take care of the breakfast things, Mrs. Lupin was elbow-deep in dishwaster by the time James was slathering himself in cocoa butter in order to leave the house without chafing.
"I don't know where you're going or what you're doing," she warned, "but I don't want to hear of any trouble."
"Trouble, Mum?" said Lupin in a manner befitting 'Et tu, Brute?' "Us? You must have misheard."
Their laughter rang out long after they had slammed the front door behind them.
July 24th 1973. Kingsbridge, Devon.
The air tasted of salt, the estuary being filled with sea water at high tide, and somewhere close by, someone was frying battered fish.
Having squeezed into the battered red Volkswagon and careered down the narrow lanes at speeds Sirius had no idea Muggle contraptions could reach, he was sufficiently hyped up. All six of them had heard the screams, the laughter, the music since the last turn-off and every excited nudge from Sirius made James wince as his friend's elbow made contact with what remained of his skin.
"Look at that." Sirius whistled as he slammed the car door with unnecessary force. "Up for it, Jim?"
James followed Sirius' gaze. It wasn't difficult to spot the object of such unbridled awe. Amongst the waltzers and the dodgems, and the cage that spun almost vertically, stood a tower of what looked like scrap-metal painted neon yellow. The Fly Trap had been spelled out with flickering light bulbs at its base. Its arm swung back and forth, claw-like, each 'finger' a seat. The five riders made no noise as they were hurled through the air, seemingly paralysed with fear. Their mouths were wrenched open in screams, but the only sound from the ride appeared to be the slow creak of the claw.
"Absolutely."
John Lupin laughed. "Get on it quick. The chip shop shuts in half an hour and I'm not paying for your dinner to end up in the estuary."
Though James and Sirius waited, no queue formed behind them. It made James distinctly uneasy. The seat swung beneath him as he climbed into it and he clutched the metal bar that would soon stand between him and annihilation.
If James was feeling queasy, Sirius was in his element, grinning broadly as he handed over the Muggle money Mrs. Lupin had counted out for him.
"Isn't this brilliant?"
James, not trusting himself to speak, nodded briskly.
Slowly, the arm rose into the air, low enough to make out the Lupins and Peter waving, but high enough to induce genuine panic. With a sudden jolt, the machine flung them across the tarmac and over the water.
Sirius laughed. "Do you think this is what getting hit by a Bludger feels like?"
Twenty feet below them, Lupin pressed the shutter-release.
"I think this what getting a period feels like, Sirius." The mechanical arm creaked as it swung on its hinges. "And I also think this is the dodgiest fair I have ever been to."
"It's Loopy country," Sirius shot back. "What were you expecting?" He let go of the bar and held out his arms as though flying without a broom. "Seriously. Let go. It gets better."
"Better?" James snapped.
"James, believe me, you are in no fucking danger. Even if the bar falls off, you won't. All that bloody moisturiser will make you stick to the seat."
"How was it?" Lupin asked, showing Sirius the photograph as they ate vinegar soaked chips beside the quay.
"I thought I was going to die. It was fucking brilliant."