Song Of Songs

by Mad Martha

Part 6

Perhaps it was the confrontation in Hogsmeade that caused it, or perhaps it was because they spent the evening nostalgically listening to records on Remus's old gramophone (which had arrived with the rest of his belongings from Hogwarts), but Sirius's nightmares were particularly bad that night.  They were both bleary-eyed and drained at breakfast the next day, and therefore unprepared for the owl that arrived as they were listlessly picking at tea and toast.

Sirius accepted the letter, paid the owl, and broke the professional-looking seal on the folded parchment.  It was clearly quite a brief missive for he scanned in it less than a minute and tossed it to one side, rubbing his eyes.  There were taut lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, Remus noticed.

"Trouble?"

Sirius waggled his fingers in a help yourself gesture, so Remus picked the letter up and read it.  It was a short note from Shoester and Slippet to inform Sirius that the Ministry had relinquished its claim on number 12 Grimmauld Place.  He was free to take possession of the house as soon as he chose.  Black Manor, they added, was still being discussed but they believed it too would shortly be handed back.  Remus wondered why the Ministry even bothered arguing the matter when they didn't have a hope of finding either property without Sirius's assistance.

A tiny niggle of doubt at the back of his mind made him wonder if Sirius would be able to find and gain entry to the properties.  Sirius's opinion of his mother's abilities and ingenuity had been fairly rambling and unflattering when he was a teenager, but James, who had known the Black family reasonably well, had been equally pungent in his descriptions of her, albeit in somewhat milder language, and it was harder to discount the things he had said.  Remus couldn't help wondering if the embittered old lady had managed to set up the protections on the two houses so that they excluded her discarded heir as well as everyone else.

Well, there was no point in wondering about that.  Either they could access the buildings or they couldn't; they would find out soon enough, he supposed.

"So we have a house now, in theory at least," he commented lightly, folding the letter up again.

"Moony, nothing on this earth could persuade me to live in that heap of ... old clinkers."  Sirius didn't say this with any heat; rather with a weary look that brought back all the lines on his face.  This was more disturbing to Remus than anger, outrage or ranting would have been.  "I'll sleep in a ditch again first."

"That too can be arranged, but let's hope we won't have to go that far."

"We could rent somewhere, right?"

"We could," Remus agreed, "but remember that if we want our godson to live with us, we have to convince Dumbledore that the place is secure enough to satisfy his very stringent definitions of the word.  In my experience, most rental properties limit the type and extent of personal wards the resident can use.  I'm willing to bet Dumbledore won't be remotely content with that."

"Not a bet I'm going to take."  Sirius sighed and rubbed his eyes again.  "Well, despite appearances my pile of gold isn't infinite.  We could probably buy somewhere outright, but I wouldn't have enough to feed us all for long afterwards, and I don't suppose Gringotts would grant me a mortgage unless one of us has a decent, stable job - they can't have changed that much in twelve years."

In spite of his negative tone, these words gave Remus a perverse twinge of relief.  He had guessed all of this already, of course, but he hadn't wanted to be the one to raise the subject.  The fact that Sirius was working this out on his own - however gloomily - was reassuring, because it held out hope that he was already beginning to make the difficult adjustments to being a free man.

"Look at it this way," Remus suggested now, keeping a calmly positive tone.  "Yesterday, you had your gold and nothing else.  That would have been a problem.  Today, you have money and a house, however unappealing it might be, so you're in a much better position."

"You haven't seen it," Sirius pointed out, grimly humorous.  "You wouldn't talk about better positions if you knew the place the way I do."

"I'll take your word for that, but consider this - whatever else you decide, you need to look at the house and see what state it's in.  You said it's not included in the family entail, am I right?"

"Mother inherited it from her side of the family.  She was a Black too, but Grimmauld Place was bought by an uncle in the collateral line for his family's use - it was never 'family' property, if you know what I mean."

"So it belongs to you now, to do with as you wish," Remus said, raising his brows.  "It's a disposable asset."

Sirius's brows went up too, surprised.  "You know, I never thought of that."

Remus shrugged, smiling slightly.  "Of course not.  You've been brought up all your life hearing about how it was passed down from father to son, and so on and so forth, until your mother inherited it.  I'm sure the idea of selling it never crossed her mind either.  But if you don't want it yourself and you need to acquire somewhere else to live, then why not sell it?  Pointless having it hanging around empty when the money could be useful."

"It'll be a big enough burden having the Manor on our hands, if the Ministry gives it back," Sirius agreed.  "All right - we'd better take a look."  He still looked distinctly less than enthusiastic.  "Want to go take a look in a while?  I suppose we should get it over with.  Oh, and I got the key to the lock-up from Hagrid yesterday, so we should probably take at look at that too."

Remus hesitated.  "Ye-e-es ... all right.  But don't forget that I need to sort out somewhere secure for tomorrow night."

"We could probably use the lock-up in a pinch," Sirius suggested.  "Clean it up, slap on a load of wards and silencing charms."

"Sounds like we're going to have a busy day," Remus observed.

~~~

They went to the lock-up first.  It had been rented on a fifteen-year lease from the brother of their former landlord, and in theory it should still be exactly as Sirius had left it the night he took his motorbike out and drove to Godric's Hollow to check on James and Lily Potter.  It wasn't much of a building - literally one garage-like unit in a block of five sturdy brick buildings behind Diagon Alley - but it had been useful for storing the bike and other belongings that they didn't have room for in their little flat, including a small second-hand printing press Remus's father had given to him when he left home.  Had the MLE and Aurors known about it when Sirius was arrested the contents would have been seized, but no one had asked the right questions and Remus certainly hadn't felt it incumbent upon him to tell them about it.

The block of lock-ups was still there in the back alley when they arrived, a little shabbier and more daubed with graffiti, but otherwise much the same as they remembered it.

"You didn't come back here, then?" Sirius asked, bouncing the key on his palm nervously as they approached it.

"I thought you had the keys," Remus replied.  "I couldn't have got in without them."

"Okay.  Let's see what we've got."

The wooden doors of all five lock-ups had received abuse over the years.  The others showed signs of repair and repainting, but theirs was definitely showing its age, with faded, peeling paint and a lot of mixed graffiti scratched or sprayed over it.  Remus's eyes had no trouble picking out the names of four friends carved carefully into the thicker wood by the lock and now darkened with age; Sirius, he thought, was trying not to look at them.  Then the key grated heavily in the lock and the wards lifted.

"Lock and hinges are a bit rusty," Sirius remarked.  He grasped the handles of the doors and pulled them open, and the hinges screeched, making Remus wince.  His hearing was considerably more acute so close to the full moon.

Dust arose and with it came the sour smell of old motor oil.  Everything was as they had left it twelve years previously.

"If the wards have held, then my press should still be in working order," Remus commented.  He took a couple of steps into the dim interior and looked around.  "There are our school trunks - they'll be useful to stash our gear in until we find a new place."

"We've still got nearly eighteen months left on the lease by my reckoning," Sirius said.  "Hagrid's got my bike - I could bring it back here for now.  Here's the sidecar ... and my toolkit.  What's in that crate there?"

Remus was less interested in the contents of the lock-up than its doors, though.  "Reparo," he said, tapping the hinges.  Some rust flaked off, but it didn't make much difference when he gave the door a cautious push.  What was interesting was that most of the hinges showed the kind of scratches on them, both recent and older, that suggested someone had made sporadic attempts to break in, but in this neighbourhood that was probably to be expected.  "I don't think we can risk using this place tomorrow night," he said, disappointed.  "The doors aren't nearly strong enough if I have a rough change and try to break out."

"Damn.  In that case we need to start thinking about places where we could run loose if need be, because I'm out of ideas for secure confinement." 

"Padfoot," Remus said, suddenly alert.  "We have company ..."

A short wizard in smart blue robes was approaching them, his round face flushed and his manner a mixture of self-righteousness and nerves.

"This smells like trouble," Sirius said sourly.  "How did he catch up with us so quickly?  Was he lying in wait or something?"

"He's not the landlord, is he?  I remember him being a much older chap, taller, skinnier, with a dodgy leg ..."

The wizard puffed his way up to them.  "Sirius Black?" he demanded in an agitated tone.

"That's me," Sirius said warily.

The man reached inside his robes and pulled out a couple of folded sheets of parchment, which he presented to Sirius with a hand that shook despite his obvious efforts to control it.  Sirius reluctantly accepted them, and as soon as he did so the wizard turned on his heel, clearly intending to beat a swift retreat.  He reckoned without Remus, however, who expected something like this and moved to intercept him.

"Hang on a minute," he said mildly, and he managed not to flinch at their visitor's visible recoil.  Apparently he knew who - and what - Remus was.

Sirius was quickly reading through the documents.  "We're served with a week's notice to quit," he said grimly, passing the notice to his partner.  He gave the wizard a cool look.  "You're the new owner of the lock-ups, I take it?  What happened to old Nailer?"

"Sold up and moved to Dublin after the war."  The man tried to get around Remus, failed and shuffled closer to Sirius whom he presumably viewed as the less dangerous prospect.  "All perfectly legal!" he complained, his eyes shifting between them nervously.  "You've been a sitting tenant since 1981!"

"So?  You've been accepting the payments from my bank vault each month, haven't you?  If you had a problem with the lease, why didn't you instruct Gringotts to return the rent and get an injunction to reclaim the lock-up?  It's not like you don't know who I am."

Remus watched with interest as the landlord's face reddened.  "If he did that, the Aurors would have been notified and they could have moved in to investigate it.  He could have lost months' worth of rent while they took their time checking and confiscating everything."  He tilted his head on one side, regarding the spluttering man before him.  "I'm guessing you left it alone, because that way you still got the rent and you could try to get around the wards at your leisure.  I thought the doors looked a bit rough, even after all this time!  How many times did you try to break in?"

The wizard's face turned an even deeper shade of red, verging on purple.  "This is outrageous!  I have a right to reclaim my property!  Seven days, Mr. Black, if you're not out in seven days I'll have the law on you!"

"Good luck," Sirius said.  He fished inside his old robe and extracted a small square of cardboard.  "My solicitors' details.  They'll be delighted to argue the toss over it with you."

The card was snatched from his fingers and Remus stepped aside to let their unwelcome visitor make his escape.

"That upped the ante a little," he commented, hoping he didn't sound as dismayed as he felt.  Where were they going to find storage for all their things in just seven days?

Sirius snorted.  "I'll send a note to Shoester later.  Let's see what's in here and take anything we need - the rest can wait a day or two."

"We could rent somewhere else for a while, I suppose," Remus said doubtfully, following him back into the lock-up.

"Let's wait and see what the solicitors can do.  He obviously couldn't break our wards, so he'll have to actually evict us and hire a securiwizard to open it up.  That'll take a while."

~~~

The next stop was Grimmauld Place.

"Not exactly a high-end area, is it?" Remus said, surveying the dilapidated square with its run-down buildings and much-abused central grassed square.  "Somehow I always pictured your family living somewhere more … prosperous."

"I think it must have been at some point," Sirius admitted, looking around.  "It was starting to go downhill a bit when I was a kid, though."

"Was it always a Muggle area?"

"No idea.  I doubt it - I can't imagine any of my family willingly buying a house in a Muggle area.  The magical community was larger in the past though, with more pureblood families living in places like this."  Sirius sighed.  "Okay, let's see if we can get inside the house."

They crossed the square together, but when they reached the pavement on the opposite side Sirius had to take Remus's wrist and lead him, as he kept having the most absurd and irresistible urges to wander off in random directions whenever they approached the row of houses.

"It's here.  I can see the house, no problem," Sirius told him.  "You should be okay too when we reach the steps."

"Well that's something," Remus said, annoyed with the way his brain kept trying to tell him that there was something he needed to see or do that was ooh! shiny! if only he would turn around and walk in another direction.  "How the devil do the people who live next door manage to get in and out with this going on?"

"I think it might only affect people who are actually looking for number 12.  Probably a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea."

"Marvellous.  Do you need a key to get inside?"

"No - the door should recognise me when I touch it."  Sirius hesitated on the steps though, and gave Remus a grim smile.  "You know, I half-expected not to be able to find the place.  That maybe she'd warded it against me."

"Are you surprised that she didn't?" Remus asked.  He didn't have to ask who "she" was."

"I don't know," Sirius admitted.  "Let's see if we can get inside first."

"Are there likely to be any dark creature protections?" Remus asked him warily.  "Your mother knew what I was, didn't she?"

"Ye-e-s, but it's only an alarm and I should be able to shut that up straight away."

Remus hoped Sirius was right.  He'd encountered a few dark creature wards over the years and he didn't like any of them.  Most were set to 'stun' at their lowest setting, but one had put him in St. Mungo's for a week with an acutely painful 'sunburn'.

Sirius took a breath and tapped the door knocker lightly with his wand.  There was a soft clunk and the door swung open, revealing a gloomy entrance hall festooned with cobwebs and thick with dust.  A familiar smell of mildew met Remus's nostrils and he grimaced.

"I think your house-elf must have died," he commented quietly.

"Good."  Sirius paused on the threshold.  "The ward plate is underneath the mosaic directly before the door," he said, pointing to a spot on the floor barely two feet in front of him.  Remus could just see the shadow of the mosaic decal under the dust.  "Don't step on it if you can help it - the wards will still trigger if you step over or around it, but they won't be so aggressive."

Not the most reassuring thing he could say, but Remus had to trust him on this.  They stepped over the decal and almost at once Remus felt something trigger, just as the door shut itself quietly behind him.  The hair came up on the back of his neck as a weird soft wailing sound, like the cry of a siamese cat, echoed somewhere deep in the house.  Sirius waved his wand and it cut off at once.

"That's the family ward and the dark creature alarm," he said, sounding relieved.  "The ward recognised me, so we should be okay now - "

"Kreacher, who is there?"

At the sound of the thin, nasal old woman's voice Sirius turned white, but before Remus could react there was a loud crack and the oldest, most decrepit-looking house-elf he'd ever seen appeared in the hallway before them.  His skin hung in loose wrinkled folds from his limbs, tufts of yellowing white hair stuck out of his bat-like ears, and huge watery eyes peered at them over a hooked nose.  He wore nothing but a kind of filthy loin-cloth made, if Remus was any judge, from an old duster.

"Who comes to the most noble and ancient house of Black?" he croaked, staring at them.  His eyes ran over Remus uncomprehendingly, but then he took a closer look at Sirius - and started, recoiling.  "You!" he hissed.

On the wall beside the front door, opposite a staircase leading to the upper storeys, was a large picture frame covered by a set of moth-eaten velvet curtains.  Remus had barely had time to notice it, but the curtains suddenly flew open to reveal a life-sized and horribly realistic portrait of an old woman in a black widow's cap.  Her skin was sallow, her eyes haggard, and her thin mouth screwed up with bitterness.  A more unattractive image Remus couldn't imagine.

Then she clapped eyes on Sirius and her whole face contorted into a rolling-eyed, drooling mask of freakish rage.

And she screamed.

The sound brought Remus to his knees with his hands clamped to his head, his moon-sensitive ears unable to bear the thin, nails-on-a-slate pitch of her shrieking.

"YOU!  BLOOD-TRAITOR!  ABOMINATION!  SHAME OF MY FLESH!  HOW DARE YOU COME BACK HERE TO THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS - "

Remus couldn't help it; he let out a cry of pain and the sound galvanised Sirius into violent action.

"Sirius, no!"

Too late - Sirius's wand had flicked already out.  Remus had no idea which curse he used, but the flash of yellow light streaked toward the portrait.  Mrs. Black's shrieks ratcheted up to an almost impossible pitch, the house-elf howled, and the curse bounced off the portrait as though hitting an invisible sheet of glass.  Remus had just enough wits about him to leap at his partner and bringing him crashing to the floor before the curse ricocheted.  It whistled over their heads and hit the tarnished brass filigree decorations of a clock on the other side of the hall, ricocheted again, and this time hit an ugly umbrella stand shaped like a troll's foot.  The whole thing exploded, raining stinking and smouldering fragments down on their heads.

Silence fell.  Even Mrs. Black was surprised into shutting up.

Remus got to his feet slowly, brushing bits of troll's foot off his clothes.  He turned to look at Mrs. Black's portrait; staring back at him, her eyes began to bulge again and she opened her mouth -

"Silencio!"  He could see her mouth working, but apparently the silencing charm worked.  "Interesting - looks like the protections on it only work against curses and hexes."  He turned around.  "Sirius, are you all right?"

Sirius was sitting up slowly, looking decidedly green and shaken.  "Sorry, Moony," he muttered.

"Don't be daft - anyone would have reacted badly to that."  His ears were still ringing as he offered Sirius a hand up.  "Has that picture always been there?"

"No - it wasn't there when I left, anyway, and she never looked like - like that before - "

"You dare not speak about my mistress!"

They both jumped and jerked around to see the elf actually stamping his feet on the floor, his claw-like hands balled into fists and his face screwed up fiercely.

"Nasty, disagreeable brat who broke my mistress's heart!  How dare you come back here?  Not wanted!  Not wanted!  Get out - out - OUT!"

"Shut up!" Sirius snapped, and to everyone's surprise the house-elf fell silent, his mouth working as futilely as Mrs. Black's behind the silencing charm.

"I take it back, Sirius," Remus said dryly after a moment.  "I don't think your house-elf is dead after all."

"More's the pity," Sirius said bitterly.

With a loud rattle of chains and weights and a sharp splintering of wood, the old grandfather clock against the far wall burst its case, firing springs, bolts and cogs in every direction as the two men ducked for cover.

~~~

The house was in an appalling state, clearly untouched since the day Mrs. Black died.  Every room mirrored the decay of the hallway, with dust, cobwebs and mildew lying everywhere.

"I wonder who buried her?" Remus mused at one point.

"Christ knows," Sirius replied curtly.  "Snape or more likely the Malfoys, I should think.  Which means they probably have access to this house."

"That can be remedied, can't it?"

"I think so."

"Then perhaps that should be our first job.  We don't need any of them popping in unexpectedly."

"I'll have to lift the ward plate," Sirius said, so they went back out to the front hall.

Mrs. Black's curtains were closed once more, but Remus cast another silencing charm on her, just in case, and they crouched down beside the mosaic on the floor which, now that the dust had lifted a little, could be seen to be a representation of the Black family crest.  The decal was set into a kind of metal frame which could be seen glinting between the marble tiles of the mosaic and the wooden parquet of the rest of the floor.

Sirius put the tip of his wand against this frame and muttered a levitating charm.  It took three attempts to get the decal to lift out.

"I really need to get another wand," he muttered as they caught the heavy decal between them and set it to one side.

Underneath was a smooth piece of slate that fit into the gap tightly.  Remus could see runes written on it in a variety of substances and he could feel the magic radiating off it.

"Padfoot, be careful - there are wards set into this that are hundreds of years old.  They could react very badly if you tamper with them."

"I'm not going to touch most of them - just the most recent adjustments.  See the blood along the outer edge there?  That's the close family members.  I'll probably need to erase the last couple of generations, then I can add myself back and put you on ..."

It took a while.  In principle all Sirius needed to do was to erase any living members of the family barring himself and Andromeda, but magic could be a funny thing where blood was concerned.  Erasing the last two or three generations would ensure that the wards didn't accidentally 'recognise' someone still living with a distant blood claim on the family (of which there were probably many, given how interbred the First Families were), or, worse, continue to recognise Narcissa Malfoy or her son.  Sirius also had to check for people with 'privileged' status - people outside of the family who had been given blood access to the house anyway.  Unsurprisingly, this number was small but significant; Lucius Malfoy, Severus Snape, Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange, Augustus Rookwood, Walden Mcnair ...

"A stunning collection of Death Eaters," Remus commented.

"Are you surprised?  Malfoy and Lestrange are family by marriage, Snape's family at a remove, and Rookwood and Mcnair were in Slytherin with Regulus."  Sirius began to remove them with short, savage jabs of his wand.  When he was done, he muttered a couple of cleansing spells over the space on the slate for good measure, then held his finger over it and made a tiny nick, spilling just a single drop of blood.  It glistened against the matt surface for a moment, then dried to a brown-ish spot.  "Okay, Moony, pick a digit."

"Can you nick a knuckle?" Remus asked, offering his left hand.  "If I change tomorrow night with a cut on a fingertip, I'll have a cut on one of my pads and it could make me grumpy.  Or more grumpy than usual, I should say."

"Noted."  Sirius made a tiny cut on the knuckle of his little finger, and as soon as it had bled he performed a simple healing charm over the cut.  "Okay?"

Remus flexed his fingers.  "That should be fine."

Sirius made a couple more passes over the slate and finally nodded.  "Okay, I think that's set.  Let's put it all back."

"Will my blood have neutralised the dark creature wards?" Remus asked suddenly, as they settled the decal back into place.

Sirius shook his head.  "I doubt it, they're in a different set of nested wards.  In fact, you may have to shut off the alarm any time you come here without me, but we'll see what happens.  It's not like we're planning to be here much, after all."

Remus decided to hold his tongue on that subject.  While he had every sympathy with Sirius's feelings about this house, he had a strong suspicion that their circumstances might render it the only solution to their accommodation problems, at least in the short term.  There was no point in saying that to Sirius though.

"In that case, I suggest we take a look at the vital facilities," he said instead.  "Kitchen, bathrooms, water supplies, etc. ...  And take stock of the damage, I suppose.  If you've got any rotten floorboards, leaks or chizpurfle infestations, you need to find out about it now, not when a prospective buyer's looking over the house."

It could not be said that Sirius was remotely happy about this, but he reluctantly agreed and they began a long and tedious recce of the building, starting at the attics and working down.  The roof, at least, was sound - indeed, as they worked through the house, it became clear that the fabric of the building generally was sound - and the attics surprisingly neat, if inches deep in undisturbed dust.  Great trunks, some bearing ancient and faded Hogwarts crests, were stacked up tidily alongside tea-chests, hat boxes, dressing cases and portmanteaux.  Wrapped and snoring paintings rested in twos and threes against the walls that divided number 12 from the houses on either side.  An immense wardrobe loomed over everything from a corner; in another was a covered full-length mirror and a tall hat-stand with some minor damage.

They disturbed none of these relics.  In a house like number 12 Grimmauld Place it simply wasn't worth the risk.  Having satisfied themselves that the roof needed no repairs, they retreated to the floor below where they encountered Kreacher loitering before one of two bedroom doors.  Judging by Kreacher's twitchy behaviour, he was lurking before one particular door deliberately; Remus peered over the elf's head and saw a neatly hand-written, rather obnoxious sign precisely placed in the centre panel.

Do Not Enter

Without the Express Permission of

Regulus Arcturus Black

"Do we need to look inside your brother's room?" he asked, eyeing the elf warily.  The poor old thing was pathetic, hunching defensively before the door and hitching up his filthy loincloth, bloodshot eyes rolling as he muttered to himself in a deranged manner.

"No," Sirius said curtly, barely glancing at it before he turned to the second door.

Kreacher's cackle brought him up short.  Apparently the order to be silent had worn off.

"He dares not touch the true master's things!  Nasty little blood-traitor, never was he Master Regulus's equal.  Not at games, not at his lessons, not - "

Remus had to seize Sirius's arm in an iron grip to prevent him turning on the elf.

"Actually," he said to the elf himself, and speaking in a mildly conversational tone, "that's not true.  Sirius was always in the top five scholars in his classes, while Regulus struggled to be in the top ten.  I was there, you see.  I know."  He smiled amiably at Kreacher, although he felt far from amiable inside.  There was something nasty in the house-elf's manner, even if he was only parroting things said by Sirius's family; Remus didn't like the baiting nature of his tone.  "On second thought, I think we'll take a look at the second son's room."

Kreacher actually tried to bar the way by stretching himself across the doorway.  "You shall not touch his things!  Beast!  Monster!  How dare you defile the House of Black with your presence!"

"Step aside," Sirius said in a deadly tone.

Kreacher dithered about it for several seconds, visibly struggling against the powerful impulse to obey the only surviving heir of the Black family, but servitude to the family prevailed and he all but crawled to one side of the door, where he sat on the floor and snivelled while Remus tried the door handle.  It resisted his first attempt, but an Alohomora charm unlocked it easily enough.  The door clicked and swung open without protest, leaving Remus on the threshold peering at the faded grandeur.

He couldn't imagine Sirius inhabiting a room like this.  It was a museum to Slytherin fervour, the bed and windows draped in green and silver velvet and the walls covered with green and silver paper.  The large ebony four poster bed had the Black family crest painted on the headboard and the tarnished silvered fittings on the dresser drawers and wardrobe were shaped like snakes.

There was a corkboard hanging beside the bed with a collection of newspaper cuttings and photographs pinned to it.  Remus walked over, feeling his nose itch at the puffs of dust rising from the carpet, and examined them.  There was a surprising number of early cuttings about Lord Voldemort, some of them dating back from the early years of his rise to power, long before the war, which had to have been culled from back issues of the Daily Prophet and other newspapers.  The photographs were eerier.  Remus encountered the hostile teenaged stares of Severus Snape, Walden Mcnair, the Carrows, and Bellatrix Lestrange; an informal photo taken at the wedding of Sirius's cousin Narcissa to Lucius Malfoy was pinned a little more neatly to one side along with a tastefully decorated (and now somewhat yellowed) invitation.  A framed photograph of the Slytherin Quidditch Team stood on the bedside table below the corkboard; Remus picked it up and at once met the aloof gaze of Regulus Black from the Seeker's position in the front row.

He couldn't help feeling a twinge of sadness, which was only intensified when he put the frame down and something tucked into the back of it slipped out.  Remus picked up the stiff piece of paper and turned it over to find another photograph - this one of two boys, both preadolescents, standing side by side in formal robes, trying - and clearly failing - to keep the suitably solemn and haughty expressions normally demanded of proper, high-ranking purebloods.  They tried to hide grins as they jostled each other in front of the camera … two boys with black hair, grey eyes, fine features and an indisputable air of wealth and privilege. 

Remus turned around and found that Sirius was still standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched as he stared around at his brother's things.  His hair, rather remarkably considering his time in Azkaban, was almost untouched by grey and the same eyes of the taller boy in the photograph stared out of his face.  But Remus was shocked to see how old his posture and expression made him look in that unguarded moment.

He had been intending to show Sirius the photograph, but not now.  Sirius might deny any kind of regret or grief over his family, but everything in his body-language right now said otherwise.  Once again, Remus was reminded that there was a great deal of family history, disappointment and hurt in Sirius's past, most of which he had simply not dealt with, and this house encapsulated the full measure of that history for him.

Now was not the time to remind him that once upon a time he had loved, and been loved by, his younger brother.

~~~

Examining the house took several hours, time which Remus was conscious they didn't really have.  Full moon tension was already beginning to build inside him, a natural instinct that he had little control over and which made his temper uncertain.  His biggest concern was having somewhere secure to spend the full moon, and every minute they wasted inside number 12 Grimmauld Place meant less time to find that place. 

So when they finally reached the kitchen and discovered that it had a secure cellar with a sturdy door and no second exit, Remus's mind was made up on the spot and it was simply too bad if Sirius wasn't happy about it - this was the best arrangement he'd seen in over six months, trumping the Shrieking Shack and mausoleum by a wide margin.

"So, what now?" Sirius was saying, as Remus tested and re-tested the locks on the cellar door.  "Want to get something to eat, then drop in at Andromeda's and ask her if she knows any decent estate agents?  We can ask them about somewhere for us and getting rid of this dump - "

"We could," Remus agreed amiably enough, "but we're not getting rid of this place just yet."

Sirius squinted at him, taken off guard.  "What?"

"We need this house until we can find somewhere better," he said firmly, "and we're going to be staying here tomorrow night."  He indicated the cellar door.

Even in the rather uneven light of the kitchen lamps, Sirius seemed to lose some of his colour.  "Moony … no …"

"Sirius, it's the best we can possibly do under the circumstances.  We have nowhere else to go.  The wards on the house mean no one can drop in unexpectedly, this cellar is clean, dry and secure, and it won't be a disaster if, by some mischance, I do escape it."  When Sirius was silent, he added, "At this stage I can't see us finding anywhere a fraction as suitable - can you?  And I refuse to use the Ministry facilities.  They were dreadful the last time I went there, overcrowded and very poorly managed, and that was years ago.  The Ministry has cracked down quite a bit on werewolves since then and there's a bunch of sadists working for the Beasts' Division now - your brother's friend Mcnair being one of them."

There was a long silence, then Sirius muttered something barely audible.

Remus touched his arm gently.  "What was that?"

"I swore I'd never spend another night under this roof," Sirius said in a low voice, and his shoulders hunched up again.

"I don't blame you.  But Padfoot, we have to be practical.  It's for one night."

Sirius sighed.  "All right.  But we're not living here.  You understand?  Nothing on God's earth will make me move into this place even for a short time.  We're going to find somewhere else for the next full moon."

"Understood."  Remus hesitated, then added, "Thank you.  I hate putting you through this, but Sirius - just as much as you hate this house, I hate the idea of being a risk to anyone."

"You don't have to tell me that," Sirius said with a weary half-smile.  "How long have we known each other?  I know how you feel about putting people at risk of your condition, all right?  We'll do it your way."  He sighed and looked around at the kitchen, which was as unappealing as the rest of the house.  "We'd better clean this place up, in that case.  We'll need to get here a bit before sundown and eat dinner beforehand."

"We can come back tomorrow afternoon to sort that out," Remus said.  "Let's start by setting up some wards and sorting out how we're going to do this."

~~~

When they returned the following day, the approaching full moon was almost at full burn in Remus's blood.  He was short-tempered and full of restless energy, and in the end Sirius let him get on with cleaning the kitchen to his liking while he returned to the cottage on the coast to collect supplies. 

One thing he recalled quite vividly from the old days was how little Remus wanted to eat on the evening of the moon, yet how ravenous he was when offered food and how much more settled he was after the change if he had a full stomach.  When they'd run loose in the Forbidden Forest as youths, Padfoot and Moony had hunted rabbits to slake the bloodlust; that wasn't an option this time, so he'd have to coax Remus to eat and the best way to do that was to offer him some nice rare steak.  The wolf wanted meat even if the man didn't.

When he returned, Remus had made the kitchen range and table useable and put numerous candlesticks about the room to supplement the poor lighting.  In the flickering candlelight his eyes were a feral amber that gave even Sirius a tiny pause.

"Took your time," he said curtly, and that was definitely the wolf speaking.  Sirius let it pass.

"I brought some meat for supper," he said, putting a waxed paper parcel on the table that contained every last bit of the steak, pork and liver they'd bought to last them the rest of the week.  It didn't matter, they could buy more, especially as Remus was unlikely to be strong enough to eat much the following day.

"I'm not hungry."

"I am."  He wasn't, but he knew he would need the protein to get him through the night too.

Sirius tossed his robe over the end of the table and pulled a cast iron frying pan down off a hook.  The range lit after a couple of pokes with his wand, and he set the pan on it to heat while he unwrapped the meat.  He hadn't bothered with any vegetables or bread; Padfoot wouldn't need more than the meat to keep his strength up and Moony certainly wouldn't want anything else.

Minutes later the kitchen began to smell of frying steak and it was all Sirius could do to fend Remus off while he made sure the first of the steaks was at least seared on each side.  He wasn't keen on 'blue' steak himself, but refusing to let Remus have it for the time it would take to at least call the thing rare was probably more than his life was worth.  He did persuade him to put it on a plate, and having spent twelve years eating with his fingers he wasn't about to complain about someone else's manners.

In less than fifteen minutes the meat was largely gone, and Sirius gave in and permitted himself a threatening growl when Remus showed signs of trying to steal the last of the liver from him.  This too was nothing new.  The odd thing was that the wolf would share with Padfoot if he was suitably submissive.  But Remus just before the change?  Not likely.  It had been an eye-opener for their friends more than once, and James had been frankly uneasy around him in the final hours before the moon rose.

"I know he'd never hurt me, but it's like he can smell venison on me," he'd complained once, when Remus had been more than ordinarily watchful of him at dinner.

Sirius had laughed about it until Remus stole and ate all of the sausages off his plate and most of Peter's too.  He'd had the nerve to complain that they were overcooked, too.

A full stomach calmed Remus down nicely and he slumped at the table, sated but still watchful, while Sirius washed the plates and cleaned the pan.

"What happened to Kreacher?" Sirius asked him, as he put the frying pan up on its hook and made sure the range was out.

"No idea.  He was here, muttering about this, that and the other while you were gone, but he disappeared upstairs when I snapped at him."

"Let's hope he stays there."  Sirius sighed.  "Come on, then.  We'd better go down into the cellar."

He turned all but one of the kitchen lights out with a flick of his wand and unbolted the cellar door.  These outer bolts he warded open (mostly to prevent Kreacher tampering with them while they were inside).  When he closed the door behind them, he secured the matching three bolts with a charm and swung across a sturdy bar Remus had installed the previous day.  Neither of them could work magic while they were changed fortunately; at this point the only way to get the door open again, short of battering it down with brute force, was for Sirius to open it with his wand, and for that he would have to be in human form.

The cellar wasn't big.  In fact, it was roughly the same size and shape as the cell Sirius had occupied in Azkaban, with much the same characteristics, which had given him the cold shivers the day before.  (Remus had offered to undergo the change alone because of this, but Sirius had refused to entertain the suggestion.)  They'd put warming charms on the space and found a pile of ragged old blankets in case Moony was calm enough after the change to lie down.  Two dusty old wine racks had been removed, along with assorted barrels and crates, leaving nothing but a high shelf to put their clothes and wands on, and a brass lamp hanging from the centre of the ceiling.  There was no window, only a small ventilation grill high up on the wall behind the shelf.

They undressed in silence, Remus shivering a little in spite of the charms.  Strictly speaking, Sirius didn't need to as the magic of the Animagus transformation incorporated anything on the wizard's body during the change, including wands, but he wasn't about to stay fully clothed while Remus was naked.  That done, he spread the blankets out in a corner and sat down crossed-legged to wait.

Remus couldn't.  He paced restlessly, shivering and hugging himself - not that Sirius could blame him.  For two Knuts he'd have done the same, the enclosure making him feel trapped and sick to his stomach, but there wasn't much room and he didn't want to provoke Remus's temper.  In the end he wrapped his arms around his knees and concentrated on his breathing while they waited out the last minutes before moonrise.

Fortunately, they didn't have long to wait.  Abruptly Remus stopped, pressing one hand against the wall, and seemed to be listening to something inside himself.  Then he gasped softly and his head dropped.

"Lumos minimus," Sirius said softly and the light from the lamp dimmed to a point where it wouldn't irritate canine eyes.

Remus's limbs were shaking and he had both hands on the wall now, panting for breath as he slipped to his knees.  His back arched slowly, not a stretching motion but something that looked much more painful, and Sirius could see him clenching his jaws and stiffening in futile revolt against it.  Hands curled into a parody of claws against the chilly stone floor.  Joints jerked and twisted against themselves.  Eyeballs rolled under tightly squeezed eyelids.  Panting, labouring breaths turned to harsh grunts of pain, until the first hoarse scream was ripped from his throat as both shoulders dislocated themselves simultaneously.

When his body began to shrink, change shape and grow fur, first along the spine, feet and hands, then more rapidly over elongating limbs, Sirius changed shape himself and retreated to a corner, hunching down and keeping low and inconspicuous.

It was a wise move, for the wolf began to snarl savagely as soon as it had the vocal cords to do so.  This was not like the changes Sirius remembered from when they were teenagers, where there had been a brief period of grace while Moony whimpered and had to find his feet after the trauma of the change from man to wolf.  This time a very large adult wolf emerged, jumping to its feet almost immediately - and enraged, as though the confinement of the past few months under the Wolfsbane Potion had bottled up all its most savage instincts.  It shook its pelt comprehensively as soon as the change was complete and bent its head to sniff the air suspiciously.

And it howled, a protracted, spine-chilling sound that brought Padfoot's hackles up even as his ears flattened in alarm and he tried to back even further into his corner.  The movement attracted the wolf's attention and it wheeled on him at once, yellow eyes narrowed and snout wrinkling in a snarl.  Padfoot whined just once, grovelling, and the wolf was on him in a bound, bowling him over.

The violence of the move shook him.  He'd barely scrambled to his paws again before Moony seized him once more, powerful jaws grabbing the thick scruff of fur at the back of his neck and shaking him viciously.  He was released, only for a swipe of a heavy paw to knock him over again.  He was rolled onto his back and the wolf pinned him, jaws at his throat, snarling in an open threat.

Every canine instinct demanded that Padfoot fight back,