Song Of Songs

by Mad Martha

Book II: Grimmauld Place

Part 4

Unfortunately, in order to reach the following morning one has to pass through the night.

The writing was on the wall, Remus realised later, when Sirius became anxious and jumpy during dinner.  He enjoyed preparing the cottage for their stay - the domesticity of pulling dustcovers off the furniture and putting sheets on the bed was so far outside his recent experience that he enjoyed them far more than at any other time in Remus's memory.  He liked helping Remus to cook the dinner as well, but by this time the evening was growing dark.  They ate, but Sirius was already restless before the dishes were on the kitchen table and his eyes kept flicking to the uncurtained window as he toyed with his meal.

Remus wanted to ask him if he wasn't hungry, but resisted the impulse; he strongly suspected that the answer - almost certainly that Sirius had grown accustomed to smaller portions in prison - would involve extra details that he didn't really want to hear about.  Nor was this simple cowardice on his part.  He doubted Sirius needed to talk about those things just yet, not when he was clearly on edge.

Instead he said, "You're safe here, you know."

Sirius's eyes flicked to him.  "I know."

Remus put his fork down, feigning a calm he didn't entirely feel.  "You can go outside whenever you want to."

"I'm all right."

"Of course.  Finished?"  At Sirius's mechanical nod, he gathered up the plates and went to put them in the sink.  "Fancy an apple and a cup of tea to finish off?  We can take it outside if you like, there's a bench around the side of the cottage and even a lamp, I think."

"Moony, I'm all right."

But Sirius was noticeably calmer once they were sitting outside.  The breeze had a decided nip to it now, but Remus would have borne far greater hardships in order to see his partner relax.  And in the dim light and multitude of shadows created by the lamp, it was almost possible to fool himself for a short while that the past twelve years had been a horrible nightmare that he had miraculously woken up from.  The light was kind to Sirius's face, briefly erasing the hollows and making him young again.

Not that either of us is old, but there's more than one kind of aging.  Remus hoped it would be possible to reverse the worst of the damage done in Azkaban.  He had no idea how to begin, but his earlier optimism hadn't left him yet.  Patience, he counselled himself.  A way to move forward would present itself; he believed this because he had learned long ago that there was never any way but forward in life.

Settling into bed gave the first inkling that it was going to be a rough night.  Sirius was fine while he was washing, brushing his teeth and dubiously pulling on a pair of pyjamas, but when it came to climbing between the sheets he became very tense.

"Want me to leave a light on?" Remus asked him, then wondered irritably if it was possible to say anything in this situation that wouldn't sound like an innuendo.  The last thing he wanted to do was put any kind of pressure on Sirius, even unintentionally.  He had no expectations of this night but sleep.  He hoped he didn't need to spell that out.

"I'm fine," Sirius muttered, and he crawled slowly into bed.

Curiously, he took the side he'd always taken when they lived together; Remus wondered if this was pure coincidence.  He got into bed on the other side as matter-of-factly as he could and settled himself, thumping the pillow into shape.  Part of him was waiting for Sirius to grab his own pillow from under his head and throw it to the end of the bed, then join Remus on his, as he would have done when they were young.  It didn't happen.  Sirius lay down on his back, head on the pillow, every muscle stiff with anxiety that Remus's werewolf nose could literally smell.  He was holding the covers tight to his chest like -

- like a Victorian virgin, James Potter's cheerful voice obligingly supplied inside Remus's head.  Silently cursing his late, lamented friend and his sense of humour, Remus reached out and dimmed the lamp, although he decided to leave a hint of light, just in case.  Then he resolutely turned onto his side to face Sirius and reached out to squeeze his arm gently.

"You're safe here, Pads," he said, pretending he didn't feel the flinch under his hand.

"I know."  His eyes were squeezed shut and the muscles of his jaw bunched tight, though.

Remus wished there was something he could do to ease the situation, but nothing came to mind.  The best he could do was try to relax and sleep himself, and hope that it would encourage Sirius to do the same.

If only sleep would come.

~~~

"The sheets are too clean … it all smells wrong …"

"It's going to take time to get used to things being normal again.  Lie down, Padfoot.  Please."

"I can't."

And yet he did.  Not for the first time, nor yet the second or even the third.

Remus buried his frustration deep and held the covers open for him.  Sirius slid between them, no longer tense with anxiety but with a kind of restless, wordless, undirected anger.  His movements were snappy and sharp with it and when he lay down again and pulled the covers over himself, there was an air about him as though he was defying something by doing it.  Perhaps he was defying himself; Remus didn't know.  All he knew was that Sirius hadn't been able to lie still for more than fifteen minutes so far.  First it had been the light to set him off; then it was the lack of it.  Next the lack of noise - although what noise he was expecting to hear Remus didn't know and didn't want to know.  Now it was the cleanliness of the sheets.  He was expecting Sirius to admit that actually it was the bed or him in it next.

It was no good.  For both their sakes he had to air that last option now, rather than wait for Sirius to say it.  He didn't want Sirius to upset himself more by having to say it, for there was no doubt in Remus's mind that he would be upset if he did.

"Would it be easier if I slept somewhere else tonight?"

"No," Sirius said at once, and every muscle in his body seemed to lock up tight.

"Are you sure?  Pads, it's all right if you can't handle this just yet.  You've slept alone for twelve years - "

"Don't leave me alone.  Oh God, Moony, don't leave me alone!"

"All right, all right, I'm not going to leave you.  I just had to ask.  We'll do this whatever way is best for you, okay?  Whatever you need.  I'm not going anywhere if you don't want me to."

"I just … it's all so different …"

Had it been this way for him while he was in Auror custody, during the trial?  Dear God, had he rested at all?  But perhaps the locked door and Spartan conditions had been enough.  He was accustomed to imprisonment, after all, to bars on the windows, locks on the doors and guards in the passage outside.

"You will get used to being free again," Remus said gently.

"It wasn't like this when I was on the run."

Of course not, he'd been out in the open air then, not to mention driven by the all-consuming need to save Harry.  But he couldn't sleep out on the beach now, even for one night; practical considerations aside, it wouldn't solve anything, only delay the inevitable.

"You'll be fine.  Just give it time."  If his muscles got any tighter he'd break a bone.  "Try to breathe, Pads."

"I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologise for," Remus said firmly.

It seemed to take hours but eventually, utterly exhausted, Sirius did manage to fall asleep.  And that was when the nightmares started.

~~~

The worst of it, Remus thought the following morning, as he drank his tea standing in the doorway and blearily watched the waves, was only hearing part of the story.  There was a good chance he would never know anything more; certainly he wasn't about to ask.

Sirius was asleep now - proper, deep sleep, undisturbed by the horrors of the past twelve years.  Remus had left him curled up in a vaguely doglike manner under the covers.  Twice during the night he'd even spontaneously changed shape, as though that was the only way he could rid himself of his dreams, but he was a man again now and towards dawn he had calmed enough to rest.

Remus wasn't fooled.  The dreams would be back at some point.  Probably sooner rather than later; it would take more than one night of safety to rid Sirius of his demons.

Some of it had been predictable.  Sirius had wept bitterly for James and Lily at one point, sobbing his childhood friend's name with such grief that Remus had wept himself even as he tried to comfort him.  But there had also been anger - for Pettigrew and others - and frantic muttering as he worked out his fears for Harry. 

And then there had been the rest of it.

Remus had always known, somewhere at the back of his mind, that Sirius didn't actually hate his family.  He might throw the word around, but his feelings towards them were far more complicated than that.  Amid the anger and resentment was a lot of grief and bewilderment and hurt, and nowhere was that complexity of feeling expressed more than towards his younger brother, Regulus.  Regulus, the 'loyal' son, the Slytherin, the one who had done everything their parents had wished, who had joined the Death Eaters and been sent to Azkaban where he later died.

There had been a rumour in the Order of the Phoenix quite late in the war, mere weeks before the deaths of James and Lily Potter, that Regulus Black was looking for a way to escape the Death Eaters.  Sirius had pooh-poohed it, as Remus recalled, although he had also agreed quite readily to act as a contact point for his brother if the rumour turned out to have substance to it.  After Sirius's arrest and Regulus's own capture by the Aurors, Remus hadn't known what to think.  The two things had happened fairly closely together, although Regulus had been kept in custody and sentenced a week or two after his brother due to the brouhaha over the Potters and the Longbottoms.  The general opinion of those left of the Order was that as a secret Death Eater himself, Sirius had lured his brother into a trap.  While this didn't fit the facts (the Aurors had caught him almost by accident, with no intervention from Sirius at all, and in any case the usual punishment for a traitor to Voldemort's cause was death), it had certainly raised some questions about Sirius's role in the matter.

It had come as a surprise when Sirius told him and Dumbledore that Regulus had been put in the cell next to his own in Azkaban, but Remus now knew that the positioning of the cells had allowed them to see each other and talk.  Sirius had spent part of his dreams pleading with his sibling to talk to him and not hurt himself.

He shouted for a few days, before he realised that'd just make the Dementors pay special attention to him, he'd said to Remus and Dumbledore.  Those words, together with the things Sirius had said in his sleep, provided a sinister glimpse of what must have become of Regulus Black.

Remus stared into his mug for a moment, remembering him; a slender, dark, good-looking boy, a blurred copy of his older brother.  He'd been the Seeker on the Slytherin Quidditch team.  Good at Potions; not so good at Transfiguration.  Played a mean game of Gobstones.

It wasn't much of an epitaph.

Remus sighed and went back indoors.

~~~

Sirius got up around noon and they spent the rest of the day quietly.  Remus could remember a time when going for a stroll along the beach would not have been active enough for Sirius; there would inevitably have been frenetic activity of some sort - swimming, playing fetch as Padfoot, building sandcastles, having sand-fights.

Now he seemed content to walk and enjoy the fresh air, and while he was reluctant to talk about his own past ("There's nothing to say.  It was prison."), he was interested in Remus's.  Remus struggled a little with what to tell him, and how much.  Some of it he preferred not to think about too much anyway, and there was no point in agitating his partner with stories of the hardships he'd suffered under various changes to the werewolf legislation, or the sporadic harassment from both Ministry officials and MLEs.  In the end he mostly talked about the time he'd spent among Muggles (until that too had been made illegal for werewolves), which was amusing and varied enough to keep Sirius's attention.

Then Sirius turned back to the subject of Harry, wanting to know everything Remus knew about the boy.

"Is he much like James?" he asked again, and Remus struggled once more with an answer.

"I don't think so," he said, unable to be anything but honest about it.  "He seems quieter to me, a lot more self-reliant.  I don't think he's found it easy to make friends at school.  His reputation preceded him, of course, and things have happened to him in a very short space of time that have probably made his life more difficult.  There was the Quirrell incident, for example, and then that business with the Chamber of Secrets - "

"What business?" Sirius demanded, startled.  "Chamber of Secrets - I thought that was just a legend!  Moony?"

So Remus told him the bare bones of the two stories - which admittedly was all he knew himself.  "It seems to me that Harry is destined to be followed by trouble, whether he actively seeks it out or not," he commented at the end of the narrative.  "I wouldn't like to speculate on whether this year tops finding a basilisk or not, but it definitely adds to his notoriety, I'm afraid."

"Give it a rest!  Facing a basilisk and winning at twelve years old?  How brilliant is that?  James would be as pleased as punch!"  Sirius was grinning, utterly delighted by his godson's exploits, but Remus could only wonder if Harry shared that delight.  Impossible to tell, but in order to enjoy such a 'success' at that age a boy needed friends to appreciate his achievements.  He hadn't observed Harry hobnobbing with any intimates during the school year, and he'd been watching the boy as closely as he could.

"The notoriety is the issue, Sirius," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that people didn't take well to the idea of him being a Slytherin," Remus said.

Sirius snorted.  "I'm not surprised!  How in the name of Merlin's great frilly bloomers did that happen?  Harry's no more a Slytherin than I am!  In all the history of the Potter family I don't believe there's been a Slytherin among them."

"You'd know more about that than me, I'm sure," Remus said dryly, "but it seems a little unlikely that even the Potters were a hundred percent Gryffindor."

"All the recent ones were, I'm sure."  Sirius grimaced.  "So much for the insight of the Sorting Hat.  He must be like a phoenix in a fish-tank in Slytherin."

Remus decided not to give an opinion on this.  "Anyway … people didn't take to the idea.  There was a lot of interest in him when he first started school - not surprising given that he effectively disappeared after Lily and James died.  Dumbledore's right on that point, no one would ever think to look for him while he lived with the Dursleys."

Sirius scowled.  "I still can't believe he's living with Petunia Evans and that horklump she married.  Surely there must have been better options?  What about his trustees?  I know he has them; James showed me the documents after his father died."

"Dumbledore, old Pettifer and Mo MacDuff."  Remus sighed.  "I haven't heard from Mo in years.  As for Pettifer - he was at your trial, but that's the first time I've seen him since Henry Potter's funeral.  People like me don't rub shoulders with the patresfamilia.  Dumbledore took the matter into his own hands, Sirius, and by the time they'd taken you away and I fully understood everything that had happened, it was too late.  Harry was already with the Dursleys and when I tried to protest the Ministry pointed out - none too kindly - that I didn't have a leg to stand on legally, and Dumbledore told me it was all for the best anyway."

"Christ …"

"Let it go.  We were talking about Harry's notoriety."

"Why do you keep getting that note of doom in your voice whenever you say the word?"

"Because I think he's suffered for it."  Remus grimaced.  "You didn't see the newspaper articles last year.  At the first hint of trouble, Lucius Malfoy was whipping up the press and school governors, and the stuff that was coming directly out of the school - "

"Someone inside the school talking the press?" Sirius demanded.  "Let me guess - Snivellus?"

"No.  Be fair, Sirius - he had nothing to gain from it.  No, Minerva McGonagall told me on the quiet that she believed Malfoy's son was the source, which makes sense because he shares a dormitory with Harry."  He glanced at Sirius questioningly.  "You do remember that Malfoy and your cousin Narcissa had a boy a month or so before Harry was born?"

"Slippet mentioned it when they were drafting my will."  Sirius's lip curled and he kicked at a tussock of tough sand grass moodily.  "Marvellous - Harry sharing a room with the son of snakes.  How wonderfully safe that must make him."

"If you were to believe the Daily Prophet, it was the other boys who were at risk from Harry."  Remus took a breath, for Sirius's words had reminded him of something about Harry and he had no idea how Sirius would take the news.  "Harry's a Parselmouth, by the way."

"He's what?"  Sirius was stunned.  "Moony, that's …"

"The ability to speak to snakes, I know."

"Where the hell did he get that?" Sirius demanded.  "He can't have got it from Lils, she was Muggleborn, and I never heard of any Potter having it!  The gift of Salazar Slytherin himself - "

"Dumbledore thinks he got it from Voldemort," Remus said, more to stem the tide of Sirius's outrage than anything else.  Unfortunately this piece of evidence proved to be a bit of an own goal; Sirius only grew more agitated.

"How?"

"You should discuss that with Dumbledore," Remus said.  Decidedly this was too much information for his partner to deal with in one conversation.  Time to rein back.  "Which reminds me - I must go up to the school in the next few days and discuss what's to be done about my position there.  Will you come with me?"

"Of course."  Sirius remained tense though.  "Obviously I need to have a chat with Dumbledore myself.  And I need to see Harry."

Remus badly wanted to warn that Sirius should be careful in how he approached Harry … but now was not the time to have that particular conversation, not when he was so wound up.  He tried to think of something else to say, and remembered one of Sirius's remarks just before they left the Ministry.

"You were going to speak to Ron Weasley as well, weren't you?"

Sirius relaxed, diverted.  "Yes - I should replace his rat.  He shouldn't have to lose out just because his pet turned out to be … not a rat.  You must know a bit about him.  Would he want another rodent, or should I get him something else?"

That was interesting.  Was that rather obvious omission of Peter's name deliberate, and if so what did it mean?  Perhaps nothing.  Remus let it pass.  "I can't claim to know nearly enough about Ron to guess at what he'd like, but I know he'll appreciate the gesture, whatever you do.  The Weasleys have never been well-off and he lives in the shadow of his older brothers."

"I'd better see if I can have a word with him too, then.  Perhaps he'd like a cat for a change.  They're useful and intelligent animals."

Remus smiled.  "His friend Hermione already has one that's been driving him mad for much of the year - although now we know why I suppose.  He was after Ron's rat for a good reason."

Sirius raised a brow.  "That big, ugly ginger tom called Crookshanks?  He's more of a kneazle, that one.  I swear the only reason he didn't actually talk to me was because he thought I'd be too stupid in dog shape to understand him."

They both chuckled and to his relief Remus could feel the atmosphere lightening a little.

"Come on," he said, tucking his hand into the crook of Sirius's elbow.  "It's getting nippy again out here.  Let's turn back and get a hot drink."

~~~

An owl was waiting for them when they returned to the cottage, and it bore two letters.  One was from Andromeda Tonks, briefly saying that the family solicitors had arranged to send mail to Sirius care of her for the time being until he let them know otherwise.  She hoped that they were both all right and reminded them that they were welcome at her house at any time.  The second, much thicker, letter was enclosed with this, and was from Shoester and Slippet.  It contained a copy of Sirius's official pardon from the Ministry, along with an explanation of the wording which Remus immediately sat down to read through from beginning to end, twice.  He only looked up from the document when Sirius held out a mug.

"Why, thank you, Padfoot!" he said archly, raising his brows in mock-surprise, and Sirius wrinkled his nose at him; a painfully familiar and much-missed expression.

"I haven't forgotten how to boil a kettle, Moony!" he said.

Remus chuckled, but accepted the mug gratefully.  Then the smell hit his nose.  "I know I didn't buy coffee yesterday."

"There was a bag at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards."  Sirius sat down next to him on the couch and took a sip from his own mug.  "Ah - nectar of the gods!"

"I doubt it," Remus said.  "If it was already in the cupboard, then it could have been there since my brother's last visit."  He took a wary sip.  "Fortunately, I don't have a taste for coffee - it all tastes equally bitter to me."

"And I haven't tasted it in twelve years, so I'm not complaining."  Sirius sighed.  "I could live off the smell alone - this is civilisation for me."

Once again, Remus resisted the urge to ask questions about Azkaban.  One day he might be able to, but for now he felt it was better to let Sirius talk about it when he chose.  Instead he said, "Oh yes, I haven't forgotten Sirius Black's personal standard of civilisation - or the gold you used to blow on it!  Why anyone would pay those prices for something which was ground up from a bean that had passed through the intestines of a civet cat, I'll never know."

"You would if you'd bother to waste the kind of attention on coffee that you give to tea," Sirius retorted.  He caught the look in Remus's eye.  "Not that there's anything wrong with tea.  I like tea as well.  It's just that coffee is on a different level."

"Different.  Not better!"

"Finish your reading!"

"I have, actually."  Remus folded up the papers and handed them back.  "Put in words of one syllable - you're a free man.  Completely and unconditionally.  Admittedly, it's couched as a pardon - which annoys me, because you were wrongfully and falsely imprisoned without so much as a trial - but according to your solicitors' notes, there's no other legal mechanism for this situation because the Ministry has no statutory appeal process and no formal means of admitting fault in these circumstances."  Bitterly, he noted, "That says a lot about our wonderfully superior form of civilisation, doesn't it?  The Ministry has no legal method of admitting that it's wrong or has made a mistake once a sentence has been pronounced.  So instead of being discharged without a stain on your character, you get a pardon that's worded in such a way as to grant you the favour of being set free on the grounds that you didn't do anything wrong in the first place.  Your solicitors note, however, that they wrangled an extra paragraph which also ensures that the pardon can't be retracted in the future.  If, at some point, the Ministry or its agents have reason to believe that you are, in fact, guilty of the crimes you have been pardoned for, they'll have to present sufficient evidence to the Wizengamot and try you all over again."

"Which means the Ministry would have issued the pardon without that paragraph, if old Shoester hadn't insisted on it.  They could have retracted it at any time."

"It sounds like it."

Sirius grunted his disgust and drank down his coffee.

"What did the covering letter say?" Remus asked after a moment.

"They've begun looking into recovering my family's property and in the meantime they await my further instructions."  Sirius handed the sheet of parchment over.  "I'll write them a list of things, starting with Harry and my Gringotts vault.  I'm going to need the gold in that vault."

"Good thinking."  Remus tapped the copy of the pardon.  "I know they've kept the original of this, but you might want to stash this copy, with the explanations, in your vault when you can.  Insurance, just in case something happens."

Sirius raised a brow.  "Something unforeseen like - oh, I don't know - a fire in the Ministry records office?  Or a fire at Shoester and Slippet's offices?  Or both, even?"

"Something like that.  Now tell me I'm paranoid."

"It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you, Moony."

Remus shrugged.  "I have a nasty, suspicious mind.  It comes of being a dangerous, dark creature, you know."

"I'm not surprised when …"  Sirius stopped, looking uneasy.

"Padfoot?"

"I …"  He put his mug down and sat back, suddenly looking rather pale.  He pressed a hand cautiously to his stomach, then rapidly transferred it to his mouth.  "I think I'm going to throw up," he muttered indistinctly and bolted for the back door.

Remus followed more slowly, but when he found Sirius around the corner of the house he was bent over, retching miserably.  From the look of things, it was mostly the coffee that had made a reappearance; he used a scouring charm to clean up the mess.

"Here, Pads, wipe your face."  He passed his partner a damp cloth and Sirius straightened up, applying it to his face with shaking hands.  "Looks like the coffee wasn't a good idea."  Sirius made a distressed sound, as though just the mention of it made his stomach turn over again.  "Sorry - here, sit down on the bench and I'll get you a glass of water."

"I should have thought of that," Remus said, when he returned.  "I suppose there are things your stomach isn't used to and you'll need to be careful for a while."

"Could have been the cheese on toast for lunch," Sirius muttered, leaning his head back against the wall.

"That was several hours ago.  Unless it's food poisoning, you'd know by now."

"Damn it."

Remus resisted the urge to grin at his peevish tone.  As a young man Sirius had often seemed to live on nothing but coffee, cigarettes and fresh air.  Twelve years of deprivation had surely broken the addiction to nicotine, but apparently caffeine's allure was as strong as ever.

Sirius was clearly thinking along very similar lines.  "Got a fag, mate?"

Remus laughed aloud.  "Not a chance!  Too expensive a habit for a penniless werewolf, I'm afraid!"

"Great," Sirius grumbled, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

Remus rummaged in his pocket and found a slightly linty packet of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum.  "Gum?"

"Thanks, but I'll pass."

"Probably just as well.  Mango flavour."  Remus tucked it away again.  "I won't ask you what you fancy for dinner, hm?"

"You don't have to rub it in, you lousy, no-good, tea-drinking pervert!"

"Coffee's bad for you anyway."

"Blasphemy!"

"And so's smoking."

"Anything else?" Sirius asked dryly.  "Sex maybe?"

"I'm out of practice for that," Remus noted, smiling, although he was a little surprised that Sirius had brought it up.

"So am I, oddly enough.  They haven't slapped a public health warning on it while I've been gone, have they?"

"Several, no doubt, but I assure you I've been faithful - "

"I know you have."  Sirius's voice was suddenly constricted and he stared out across the beach.  "God knows why.  I don't deserve it."

"I'm not sure I get the logic behind that," Remus said.  He reached out, clasping Sirius's hand.  "You didn't do anything wrong, Padfoot."

"But you didn't know that."

Remus was at a loss for a moment.  "My lover is a murderer and Death Eater and spending the rest of his life in Azkaban, so I might as well screw around?" he asked incredulously.  "It doesn't work like that - I don't work like that.  It's all part of the werewolf bond, I'm afraid.  We cleave to one mate and one mate only."

"Moony - "

"They watched me for several years, you know," Remus interrupted.  "Aurors, MLEs and some other individuals - whoever they were working for.  They made sure I knew they were watching, too, just in case I got ideas about trying to break you out of prison.  It did cross my mind once or twice, irrational as that might seem.  The fact that you betrayed James and Lily and murdered Peter, not to mention all those Muggles, didn't mean a lot to the wolf.  You were in there and I was out here, and that was an unnatural state of affairs which all my instincts tried to tell me I should be setting right."

It was Sirius's turn to look lost for words.  "Would have been suicide to try …" he managed.

"I know.  That seemed like a good idea a few times, too," Remus mused.  "I got over it though - another thing I have the wolf to thank for, I think.  Not many werewolves commit suicide, you know, despite the horror of the condition.  The wolf's instinct is to survive."  He smiled a little.  "And look!  Here we are."

"Here we are," Sirius echoed.  He sagged a little where he sat, his expression bleak.  "Twelve years older and not much to show for it."

"Twelve years wiser," Remus said firmly, determined not to let Sirius's mood slip into depression if he could help it.  It wasn't a dominant aspect of his character, but he was capable of rare fits of very trying pessimism, and the only way to deal with it was to refuse to allow him to wallow.  "And I like to think that having you here with me is something to show for it."

But Sirius suddenly seemed overwhelmed by it all.  "Christ, Moony, everything's such a mess.  What are we going to do?"

"Well, I thought I'd peel a few spuds for dinner," Remus said, "and weren't you going to do a note to Shoester and Slippet?  Get it done before Andromeda's owl decides to head for home and he can deliver it for you on the way."  He stood up briskly; Sirius remained where he was.  But Remus was still holding his hand and after a moment he gave a gentle tug on it.  "Come on, Padfoot.  One step at a time."

Sirius got up and followed him into the cottage.

~~~

The next few days were an interesting combination of sleep deprivation, mundane everyday tasks, and strange encounters with the rest of humanity.

Although he relaxed a little when he went to bed, Sirius continued to suffer nightmares and sleep disturbance.  Remus had forgotten his teenaged propensity to sleepwalk when stressed; there was nothing particularly difficult about this, for Sirius could be steered back to bed without even waking, but broken sleep was broken sleep, and combined with the bad dreams in the early part of the night, it made for two very tired men during the day.

Remus made no complaint, clinging to the conviction that Sirius would get over it in time; they just needed to be patient.  In the meantime, life had to go on and on the third morning they paid a visit to Shoester and Slippet's offices in Diagon Alley to discuss such matters as money, godsons and wills.  Sirius's solicitors were ready for him by now and the key to his Gringotts vault was waiting for him - which was just as well, because Remus was starting to worry that they didn't have enough clean clothes between the two of them to last more than a day or two.  Sirius needed to replace his entire wardrobe.  Better news was that the vault was well-stocked, the Ministry having failed to confiscate the contents which had then, over twelve years, accumulated quite a bit of interest.  They would be able to clothe and feed themselves and put a roof over their heads, at least for the foreseeable future.  A draft of Sirius's new Will was also ready for inspection.

The question of Harry was, on the surface of things, less complicated than Remus had feared.  Sirius's solicitors had approached Blight, Blunt and Skinnards, the Potter family's solicitors, and both legally and magically the matter was cut and dried; under wizard law godparents had an obligation towards their godchildren in the event of close family members being rendered unavailable - and as Harry was a member of a First Family, his Muggle relatives were not included in the definition of 'close family'.  In any event, his father's Will (and grandfather's for that matter) clearly specified how Harry's affairs should be managed.  Sirius and Remus were designated his legal guardians, and he had three trustees to manage his inheritance until he came of age; Professor Dumbledore, his grandfather's closest friend Petuarius Pettifer, and Lily Potter's best friend Morag MacDuff.

Interestingly, Blight, Blunt and Skinnards had professed themselves quite comfortable with the proposition that Sirius should take on Harry's guardianship.  It was impossible to say precisely how the representatives of that venerable and dignified legal firm had expressed themselves, but Shoester and Slippet's interpretation was that the Potters' solicitors were not comfortable with the idea of an unknown quantity like a Muggle aunt having control of their young client.  So the fly in the ointment was likely to be Dumbledore, who had made all the decisions for Harry in the wake of his parents' deaths.  The solicitors had spoken to him as soon as Sirius had made it clear that he was prepared to take on his responsibilities to the boy, but the headmaster had made it equally clear that he didn't agree.

"He has significant concerns over the arrangements for young Mr. Potter's safety," Barnabas Shoester explained.  "While he was not particularly forthcoming about the details, I understand that the current arrangement with the, er, Muggle aunt provides certain conditions of security for the boy which cannot be met elsewhere."

"I find that hard to believe," Sirius said flatly.

"Sirius, we both know Dumbledore," Remus said.  "He doesn't say these things for the sake of it."

"I feel I must agree," Shoester said, eyeing his client warily.  He had many decades of experience of the Black temper.  "While it does seem rather unlikely that a Muggle household could hold any advantages over a wizard home, I feel it would bear fruit to discuss the situation with Professor Dumbledore before taking the matter further."

"We did say we would talk to him about it," Remus added softly.  "He's expecting us to go up to Hogwarts at the first opportunity."

For a moment it was impossible to say which way Sirius would go; his jaw was clenched in the most unpromising fashion.  Then abruptly he relaxed and nodded.  "All right.  We'll talk to Dumbledore."

Remus offered up a silent prayer of thanks and the two solicitors visibly relaxed too.

"In that case, Mr. Black, I'll set the file concerning Mr. Potter to one side for the moment, but keep it in readiness for your instructions," Shoester said.

"Now sir," Aloysius Slippet said, taking over.  "With regard to the Black estate, there has been some progress.  As we expected, the Ministry have declined to discuss the confiscations on the grounds that your brother inherited everything upon your father's death.  Of course, this was not the case.  As you were never formally disinherited, you were the de facto heir and consequently everything must be returned to you now that you have been formally pardoned.  In the case of your bank vault, this was your own property, not part of the family estate, and as Gringotts contested the right of the Ministry to confiscate the contents - they always do - it has been returned to you immediately and the Head Goblin has furnished you with a new key.  Unfortunately, however, we will have to serve formal papers on the Ministry for the return of everything else.  The liquid assets will be the most problematic, I suspect.  While the Ministry has been unable to compel Gringotts to surrender the keys so far, they have successfully blocked access to the vaults by anyone else.  This will take some time to reverse."

Sirius gave him a rather twisted smile.  "Not keen to give up vaults full of gold if they can help it, eh?"

"Just so, sir."  Slippet was a rather dried-up-looking prune of a man and his expression seemed to grow more sour as he contemplated the subject at hand.  "Not that the gold was ever theirs to take, but you may be sure they will argue that point.  I believe we may be able to put some pressure on them with regard to the properties involved, though, especially number 12 Grimmauld Place.  As you pointed out at our first meeting, the house belonged to your mother rather than the Black estate, and as she was still alive when your brother was imprisoned and died, it passed directly to you.  The Ministry was unable to serve formal notice of confiscation upon the property in any case, as your parents' protections upon it rendered it invisible to them."

Sirius's smile widened a little at this, although it still wasn't a cheerful expression.  "Well, that'll be useful if we get desperate for somewhere to live.  We'd have to be desperate though.  I'm amazed it hasn't fallen down from neglect by now."

"I believe there is still a house-elf in residence, if it hasn't died in the meantime," Shoester noted.

Sirius twitched.  "Ah yes - Kreacher."

His tone made Remus nervous.  "Sirius?"

"Kreacher's the house-elf at Grimmauld Place.  He never leaves there - it's his job to look after the place when we go to the Manor for the summer and Christmas."  Sirius grimaced.  "I supposed I've inherited him too, along with the house."

"It would seem so, sir."  Slippet rustled some papers rather unnecessarily.  "As regards the Manor, formal notice wasn't served there either as, once again, the protections on them prevented any of their agents finding the house.  I predict that the Ministry will agree to surrender both properties without much argument, but we shall see.  We expect to hear from them within the next ten days regarding these matters and we will, of course, update you regularly with our progress."

~~~

"Where to next?" Sirius said, when they were standing in the lobby of the solicitors' offices.  "Hogwarts?"

"Gringotts," Remus said firmly.  "I hate to be crass, but we need money and I don't have more than a Sickle or two left to my name."