Breathe out Anger

Breathe out Anger

At James and Lily’s funeral, Remus couldn’t listen to the eulogy; he didn’t want to remember a word that was said. The pub across from the churchyard filled up afterwards, and he walked between the tables heading blindly for a back corner.

He was stopped by a group of Lily’s friends from school who settled him at their table and fussed over him. It was all right for a while, especially since they bought him drinks, and then it was suddenly unbearable. He got up abruptly and went out into the alley behind the pub and was sick and then walked home because he didn’t trust himself to Apparate.

When he read in the Prophet that Sirius had been sentenced to Azkaban, he crumpled the paper into a ball and went to bed and cried until he had to stop long enough to breathe. Eventually he also had to get out of bed and eat something and as he was spreading butter on toast he decided he wasn’t ever crying again for that vile traitorous bastard. When Dumbledore came (a bit late in the morning, he thought) to tell him the news, he was shaking but dry-eyed and said in a clear tight voice that he’d always been sure justice would prevail.

At Peter’s funeral, he tried to listen to the eulogy and still didn’t remember a word afterwards; he could have said much better himself, but he hadn’t trusted his voice. There was round two in the pub, and this time Remus stuck close to the bar, sipping his pints methodically so as not to end the evening throwing up in an alley again.

After a while he recognized the young man who stood at the bar next to him doing shots of vodka as a Slytherin he’d never talked to when they were in school. He had washed-out hair and a leather jacket, and had obviously been crying, and was obviously now drunk. He looked Remus up and down and licked his lips deliberately. Remus thought he ought to be shocked, but couldn’t quite remember why.

They went back to his flat and drunkenly had each other off. It was the most grateful Remus had ever felt for the most terrible sex. He woke in the morning to the sound of someone dressing. It was awkward, and they were both glad when the door shut between them, but it occurred to Remus that he didn’t actually hate everyone left in the world.

Dumbledore sent round an owl to announce the final meeting of the Order of the Phoenix. Remus crumpled up the letter and spent the evening quietly at home, making himself dinner and eating it in front of the fire. He heard later that Dumbledore had made what everyone agreed was a quite good speech and that people had been in tears even before the drinks went round; he was just as glad to have missed it.

He had multiple visits from Dumbledore over the next weeks, bringing him some of James’s school things, which he put unhappily in a box under the bed and wished were still rattling around Hogwarts. It took him a week to get them out, and he nearly shoved them right back under the bed when the first thing he pulled out was James's invisibility cloak, pouring through his fingers like water.

It was, he thought, a useful gift. That is, it would have been if he could have borne to put it on, which he couldn't, both because it smelled like James and because he knew perfectly well that James had left it to Sirius. But you couldn't inherit if you were a murderer. Which left it to him by default. He bunched it up and shoved it back under the bed.

It was also expensive, a small awful voice whispered in the back of his head. No.

Remus tried hard to forget about the cloak, and opened what turned out to be a box of old school papers. Some of them were actually his, and he chuckled over his attempts at composition for a while. He came upon a clump of pages at the back of a notebook in familiar spiky handwriting, and spent some time methodically tearing them out and throwing them into the fire.

Dumbledore finally went away but took to sending him owls at regular intervals, and made it clear that he expected a response. When Remus realized that the old man was afraid he was going to commit suicide, he was quietly furious, and sent one terse note saying he would be traveling in Tibet starting immediately and didn’t expect to be reachable by owl post for some time.

He couldn’t think of anything reasonable to actually do instead, so he put his things in boxes in his parents’ attic and went trekking in Tibet. Meeting a yeti was frankly disappointing but he enjoyed the mountains, with golden morning light that seemed to spill so slowly down the hillsides you could chase and catch it if you tried. He kept a Portkey set for the house and came back three times at the full moon.

The fourth time he’d fallen down a snowy hillside and broken his leg, losing the Portkey along with his wand and one (rather expensive) boot. Stuck in a small Sherpa village with the local witch muttering over his leg and filling the air with foul-smelling smoke, he’d had no choice but to explain his problem when the moon swelled to a blot on the sky. For all he knew the local custom was to kill werewolves on sight, but instead they tied him up in a shed, which worked well enough.

It didn’t do his leg any good, though, and he found their hospitality somewhat the worse for wear afterwards, so that by the time help arrived, summoned by goose post, he really felt that he was done with Tibet. He was also dead broke again, having sold everything he could already, short of body parts.

He taped up the boxes of James’s things and sent them back to Dumbledore with a note saying that he appreciated the attempt to help, more than he had a year ago, but that he would exchange it if possible for a set of Muggle identification, or advice on how to make one. Dumbledore sent back clear if idiosyncratic instructions for forgery (Remus worked out later that the ink didn’t have to be pink). He also sent back the boxes.

A year later Remus was washing dishes in an Italian restaurant. It was better than waiting tables, since it didn’t involve being professionally cheerful, which he thought was a bit much to ask. It paid for the rent on a one-room flat and for groceries, or at least bread and sandwich paste. The phone and the heat didn’t work most of the time, but he got along quite well without them.

It had surprised him at first that the owner had neither seemed to believe his identification was genuine (some of the pink still showed at the edges) or seemed to care. Remus understood after a while that people thought he was an illegal alien, which he supposed also had something to do with his noncommittal answers to questions about his school years. He considered adopting an accent, but couldn’t decide from where.

He began to see the catch when he ran out of sick time. He went to ask for a night off every month, not having many other options.

“Should have known,” the owner said. “You tell me why I hire these kids who want to be rock stars.”

Remus argued for a while about whether he ought to get time off to be in a nonexistent band, which he decided was punk and should probably have an amusing and ironic name. He didn’t win. The last straw was either the fact that he called in sick again the next full moon or that he dragged himself in six hours after moonset with red eyes and shaking hands, head swimming, and dropped his second glass when the world grayed out for a minute at not quite nine o’clock.

“No drugs,” the owner said, as Remus scribbled down the address to send his last check without looking up at him. “You wreck your life that way.”

“It doesn’t really need it,” Remus said, a little more wildly than he meant to. “Thank you. Good night.”

He walked home. He wanted to sit up and brood, but as always after the full moon his body demanded sleep. He woke up at four and put on a robe instead of Muggle clothes. It wasn’t as if he had a reason to pretend. He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his head on them.

He got up and rummaged around until he found the bottle of firewhisky he’d bought on his last trip to Diagon Alley and decided to solve his problems with alcohol. He thought that was probably all right if you understood that it was stupid.

After a while he remembered that he never had been able to think of a good name for the band. Sirius had been better at that kind of thing then he was. He ought to ask him now. Why not. He got out quill and parchment and wrote:

To: Sirius Black

c/o Azkaban Prison

Dear Sirius,

What do you think is a good name for a Muggle band?

Yours faithfully,

Remus

In the morning the one thing he was grateful for was that he hadn’t sent it. He owled his mother instead and asked for money, which she couldn’t very well spare. She sent him a note anyway, and he changed it at Gringotts for pounds and lived on toast and tea with milk until he got another job.

She died the next year. He was living with Alan Pratchett by then, who’d been two years behind him in Ravenclaw. Alan thought the Muggle job went with the denim jacket and the cigarettes as a form of rebellion, and liked it. He wrote poetry and read it to Remus in bed, passing a cigarette back and forth. Remus made it clear that he’d come and go as he pleased, and was careful to stay out nights at random.

Remus went down alone for the funeral and walked around his mother’s house afterwards, picking things up and putting them down. He was furious at his own relief that now he had somewhere to live if he had to. He could always have gone home if he wanted to.

“I just never liked being mourned prematurely,” he murmured to the teacup in his hands.

He stayed through the full moon and had a flaming row with Alan when he got back into town, who said they might as well call it quits if Remus didn’t want him around anyone else in his life. Remus finally won the argument by offering to owl all his living relatives as detailed a summary of their relationship as he’d like.

He actually composed the letter, and showed it to Alan when they’d gotten tired of fighting and opened a couple of bottles of beer.

Dear Uncle Mortimer,

Just wanted you to know I am in love with Alan Pratchett. Yes, that’s a man. No, I probably don’t deserve him. Thank you for mentioning it. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.

Love,

Remus

He knew he faced a small but significant danger of actually having to send it, but thought whatever response he got, it wouldn’t be likely to include “And by the way, Alan, did you know Remus is a werewolf?” Instead Alan died laughing and began adding increasingly graphic postscripts to the letter until Remus wouldn’t have shown it to anyone he knew, and couldn’t read it himself without turning red.

It was a creative enough apology that he never did have to explain why he hadn’t wanted Alan at the funeral. It may also have helped that the word love had never really come up before. Alan wrote poems about him, including one Remus rather liked and kept folded under a teacup on the kitchen shelf.

Six months later he told Alan he was a werewolf, and Alan walked out on him. In the apocalyptically awful few minutes before he did, Remus found himself glad when Alan started saying things like “I let you touch me” instead of “I trusted you, I loved you, I loved you,” which had almost made him break his resolve not to cry.

Alan came by once after that, and said he was sorry, stiffly, which Remus wasn’t sure he was, and that it wasn’t Remus’s fault that he was a werewolf.

“I’m well aware of that,” Remus said.

“I wonder—it might be a while, I’ll be busy, it’s hard this week, I wonder can I just get those things I left Saturday night . . ”

It had to do for goodbye.

Later that winter he dragged out the box of old homework assignments and Arithmancy textbooks. He wasn’t sure why, or what he was looking for, but he humored himself, reading James’s awkward explanations of broomstick maintenance and how to transfigure swords into plowshares.

A couple of essays were clearly copies of his own. He’d only let James do it when he’d missed studying because of the moon. Remus wrote his early when he knew he’d have to, but he didn’t have Quidditch practice eating up his time. Even in James’s handwriting, Remus recognized his own tortured sentences and adolescent affair with semicolons. It was a wonder McGonagall hadn’t.

It took him most of the morning to find the right scroll. It was on History of Magic, but from the familiar green handwriting, McGonagall had been helping Binns mark compositions.

Why the Witch Trials Were Pointless

by James Potter, second year

The witch trials of Europe were really stupid. Anyone who was really a witch got away, and a lot of Muggles got killed. They hadn’t done anything, but it didn’t matter. So it was better to be a witch or wizard even when they were burning them, because at least then people were after you for something you’d really done.

(In McGonagall’s handwriting, in green ink: This is really too much use of really.)

If I were a witch or wizard then (I’d have to be a wizard, wouldn’t I? Or do we get to do that in Transfiguration?)

(McGonagall: No cheek from you, Mr. Potter.)

I wouldn’t get caught, but if I did get caught I wouldn’t just let myself get burned, even with a charm so it just tickled, because it would just encourage those Muggles to burn some more people, and what if they weren’t all wizards, that wouldn’t be fair.

(McGonagall: Now we’re stuck on just.)

I’d get someone to help me daringly escape at the last minute and then curse everyone who’d tried to burn me, not with the Unforgivable Curses because that’s stopping to their level but just so that frogs came out of their mouths when they tried to talk, and if they tried to say anything bad about witches it would be worse. Or wizards.

(McGonagall: That is not a sentence.)

That way they’d learn not to mess about with us anymore, and maybe if they’d learned that then there wouldn’t be so much trouble with people not liking Muggles now. And it’d make them stop burning Muggles, too. You can’t just leave people to burn.

That’s what I would have done, but apparently that’s not what really happened. They don’t seem to have had much imagination in those days, do they?

(McGonagall: Thank you, Mr. Potter. While containing some admirable sentiments, this has strayed considerably from the point. May I suggest you revise after actually reading last week’s assigned chapters.)

Remus read it again. Even if he’d wanted to believe it was James’s own work, the spelling was too good. And he was pretty sure he remembered his own essay, which had began “The witch trials in Europe were not as good an idea as many people seemed to think.”

He read it again.

Remus flattened out the parchment, found a quill and ink, and wrote on the back of it,

Headmaster . . .

. . . did he ever tell anyone why?

—Remus Lupin

He sent it to Dumbledore and put everything else away neatly. The owl arrived back that evening, with a new piece of parchment.

Dear Remus,

I’m afraid not. And yes, I would tell you if I knew.

—Albus Dumbledore

Remus went to the Ministry offices early the next week, dressed in his best robes. He paced the office while he waited and ignored the offered chair when he was finally ushered in.

“I want to speak with a prisoner being held in Azkaban,” he said. “Sirius Black.”

The clerk looked world-weary. He thumbed through a drawer and pulled out a file. He read it.

“No, you don’t,” he said when he finished.

“Yes, I do,” Remus said. “I want him to tell me something.”

“No visitors,” the clerk said. “Besides, I know who you are.”

“Who am I?” Remus said, rather dangerously.

“You’re not human,” the clerk said. “That means you’re not allowed. I don’t make the rules.”

He wasn’t particularly surprised when they said no. He went back to the house and got out his wand and the bottle of pink ink. He had to hunt for it under the bed, and his hand touched dusty cardboard. He had a moment's temptation, and then thought better of it. The Dementors would hardly be so easily fooled.

Remus spread out his supplies on the kitchen table and set to work. By the time he was finished, the visitor’s pass looked good to him. Not obviously pink, anyway.

The pair of Aurors stopped him as he was leaving the train platform, his cloak wrapped tightly around him to keep out the chill. He could see the prison on the hill above, black against the sky.

“Lupin?” one of them said, a sad-faced man old enough to be Remus’s father.

His heart sank.

“I have a pass,” he said, holding it out. The man shook his head.

“I wouldn’t go showing that to anyone. Forgery’s a crime, especially when it involves the Ministry. We arrest criminals. That’s our job.”

"At least let me speak to the warden," Remus said without much hope. "At least let me explain." He wasn't sure what he'd say, but he couldn't just turn around and wait for the train in the cold with empty hands.

The Aurors glanced at each other. The younger one shrugged, looking bored. His eyes didn't really focus on Remus.

"As you like," the older man said, to Remus's surprise. "But I'll have to have your wand. And I'd better take this." He slipped the pass out of Remus's hand. "Just in case you get any ideas about showing it to anyone else."

He turned without another word and began to walk up the path to the prison, and after a pause the length of a few breaths Remus followed him. He felt the prickle of defensive spells as he crossed the threshold, and was glad he hadn't brought the cloak. He didn't think the man in front of him had a sense of humor about that kind of thing.

Later he could only remember bits and pieces of the walk through Azkaban; mainly he tried to forget. At one point he found himself stopped, looking through the bars of a cell where a young man--a boy, really--was sprawled in the straw, one upturned hand lying by the bars.

The boy's eyes were open. A spider was crawling across the palm of his hand.

Remus couldn't move. He wanted to kneel in the straw, to kiss the boy's dirty palm, to crush the spider beneath his heel. Anything but this paralyzed immobility.

"What are you playing at?" the Auror snapped. "Come on."

It wasn't Sirius. It was too young to be Sirius, younger than Sirius had been when he'd been convicted. There were freckles on the boy's wrist. The spider crawled off one side and into the straw.

Remus raised his head and saw it, hovering at the end of the corridor, a floating shape of rags and shadows. It wasn't really wearing clothes, they didn't really wear clothes, they were nothing you could touch, and Remus knew that, and he also knew it was wearing James's robes, one of the ones he'd thrown away because no one could bear to wear them, only it had been rotting. He closed his eyes and waited for the smell to hit.

"Clear off," the Auror said. "I mean it."

Remus realized that he could open his eyes if he wanted to. He did. The Dementor was drifting off down the passageway. In the distance, a woman started to cry, a loud, unpleasant sound. Remus started shivering, and though he told himself sternly to get a hold of himself, it wouldn't stop. He followed the Auror away from the corridor the Dementor had gone down, and didn't look back.

"It's always cold in here," the Auror said, without looking back either. "Fires don't help. You stay here long enough, you've got to watch that you don't put your hands straight into the fire trying to get warm."

It was an explanation for the shivering, and he accepted it gratefully. Of course it was cold. They passed door after door, until finally the Auror opened a door and it led not to another dark passageway but to a small, brightly lit room with a fire blazing. There was a man standing over a pile of papers spread out on the table, and with a dull shock Remus realized it was Alastor Moody.

Remus hadn't seen him since the last Order meeting before the end of the war. He had a new scar, a hard pink line running down the length of his cheek. Remus remembered him before most of the scars, and before the glass eye in its puckered socket. It still turned his stomach a little to see it swivel around toward him before Moody turned his head.

"Lupin?" Moody's tone was flat. He looked as though he were going to say something, and then looked up at the Auror instead.

"A visitor," the Auror said. "Says he wants to see the warden."

Moody let out a quick breath, somewhere between irritation and relief.

"He's gone off to London," he said. "He'll be halfway down to the train by now. I was just finishing up this report while I could. No sense in going home where I'll have to use my own parchment and ink."

"I want to see Sirius Black," Remus said. His voice was unsteady, but clear enough. "I'll wait all night if I have to."

"You don't want to be here at night," Moody said. "And you'll be let in to see Black when hell freezes over, so there's no point in putting yourself through it."

"You don't understand."

Moody snorted.

"No, I don't. And I'm not sure I want to. But I'll tell you what. I'm just getting out of this god-forsaken place. Come along and tell me all about it, and if you still want to get back in the morning I'll get you in."

"I've got work in the morning," Remus said.

Moody looked skeptical.

"Some Muggle job, isn't it? How much do you really care?"

"Not much," Remus said, which was true, although he'd probably care at the end of the month when the rent came due.

"Well, then. Go on, Finch. I'll deal with our guest." The door shut behind the other Auror, and there was a moment of silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire. "It isn't like you to be stupid," Moody said finally. "Let's get out of here."

He pulled out his hip flask and held it out to Remus, who frowned at it.

"Will that help?"

"Not a bit," Moody said. "But this will." He thumbed aside the monogram on the front of the flask to reveal a single bronze Knut hammered into the pewter. "Portkey," he said. "Count of three."

Remus reached out and touched cold metal, and then he was in a small kitchen, where a bright flame promptly went on under a kettle on the stove. The door to the back lane was painted cheerful yellow, but seemed to sag under the weight of at least seven different kinds of locks. Moody shook his head as he slipped the flask back into his pocket, making his glass eye revolve alarmingly before it fixed itself on Remus.

"I don't much like using it, and it's against regulations. But you looked like something I'd throw back for dead. What the hell were you playing at?" He reached up in a cupboard and tossed something at Remus, which turned out to be a square of chocolate. Remus put it in his mouth and chewed, although it had all the taste of wax.

"Can you get me in to see Sirius?"

Moody regarded him steadily.

"Why do you want me to?"

"I have to look in his eyes. I have to know why he did it. I can't--I can't keep living this way. Not knowing. It's killing me."

"You don't know what it's like in Azkaban."

"Yes, I do."

Moody shook his head.

"You haven't seen the ones that have been there for years. What it does to them--he won't be answering any questions. Lucky if he remembers his own name, much less why he did it. It's too late."

"No," Remus said. He wasn't ever going to accept that.

"Yes. And you know it. It's not answers you want. I'm not going to let you go in there and kill him."

"He killed James and Lily."

"He's paying for it," Moody said. "The only way that's sure. Little Pettigrew tried dueling him, and you see where that got him."

"He doesn't have a wand in Azkaban," Remus said.

Moody shook his head, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Well, at least you're thinking right. But I still can't let you do it. They'd put you right where he was, or worse. Even try it, and they'd have your wand."

"I've got to," Remus said, knowing he was breathing hard, knowing he was saying too much and still not wanting to stop. "I've got to--I can't--it's got to go somewhere, do you see," he said, taking a step toward Moody. His voice one he didn't recognize, high and wild.. "I want blood, and if it can't be his, it doesn't really matter who--"

When Remus next opened his eyes, he found that he was propped up uncomfortably on his knees against the edge of the sofa with his wrists pressed together behind him. He tried to move his hands, and couldn't. There was something damp and cold against the back of his neck.

"Constant vigilance," Moody said from somewhere behind him. "Feeling better now?"

Remus thought about it. "I'm not sure."

"When you're sure, then."

Remus thought about it a bit more. His shoulders were beginning to cramp. "I'm better," he said finally. "You can let me up."

Moody came over and lifted what turned out to be a tea towel off Remus's neck, and did something with his wand behind Remus's back that let him move his hands again. Remus got to his feet, bracing himself on the sofa.

"Tea's ready," Moody said. "Want some?"

Remus came into the kitchen, feeling that any apology he could make was inadequate and hard to force out in the face of a steaming cup of tea.

"Do you think I'm a monster?" he asked instead.

Moody shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe you're just angry."

"I'm not sure there's much of a difference," Remus said.

"So you're a monster," Moody said. "Feel better now?"

"You don't seem alarmed."

"I get to look at monsters every day," Moody said. "In the mirror, too. "

"They're only scars," Remus said.

"I don't mean the scars."

At the harsh tone in Moody's voice, Remus had the urge to cover Moody's hand on the table with his own, but he didn't feel like being Stunned again. His head already hurt. Moody shrugged after a minute, and the dark look left his face. His glass eye rolled madly.

"We are what we are," he said. "The question is what we're going to do with it."

"I don't know what to do," Remus said, and for the first time he realized that he didn't really mean about Sirius or about James but about me.

"Getting tired of wasting your life?" Moody asked, not unkindly. "You weren't bad at Defense Against the Dark Arts, you know. Not bad at all."

"I can't be an Auror," Remus said.

"Lots of Dark Arts around, aren't there?"

Moody let Remus out into the lane--Remus wouldn't have touched his door for any amount of money--and Remus Apparated home. It was just after dark, and there was still a blue haze in the west. Remus sat out on the step and had a cigarette and watched the smoke curl up toward the fading blue sky, and then went inside to owl Dumbledore.

Headmaster,

The war isn't over, is it?

--Remus Lupin

He suspected there wasn't much point in going to bed, and in fact the return owl appeared while he was finishing laying a fire in the grate. He let the bird in and brought it over in front of the hearth to get warm.

Dear Remus,

Of course not.

--Albus Dumbledore

Attached was a letter of reference to the reading room three stories beneath the British Museum, which Remus vaguely remembered had one of the best collections of books on the Dark Arts in England. He'd have to argue with them, he was sure, even armed with the letter. They wouldn't like letting a werewolf in.

It was tempting to say to hell with it and go back to Tibet, or into the deep forests of Eastern Europe. But that was for later. When he'd learned enough to be dangerous. The books, first, and then the woods, and if he got back in one piece then he'd track down Moody and grill him about all the tricks he'd kept secret in the war. And then . . .

He turned over the scrap of parchment and wrote:

Headmaster . . .

What are we waiting for?

--Remus

Late that night, with the fire dying and the last inch of hot cocoa going cold in his mug, Remus was considering giving up for the night, when there was a scratching at the window. He let the owl in, shivering at the draft. The night had turned cold.

He pulled out the parchment and unrolled it. He looked at the words for a long time, and finally folded it up and threw it in the fire, because that seemed safest. He wouldn't forget the words, black against the parchment:

The Boy Who Lived

Harry? Harry was just a baby, Remus thought, and then realized that he wasn't. Harry would be five this summer. His hand drifted to his shoulder, brushing the line of a faded scar. Remus had been five that fall. All the years from five to eleven ran together in his memory now. The hours had been long, he remembered, but the years had gone so fast.

Remus sent the owl away, and went into the bedroom and pulled two very dusty boxes out from under the bed, one heavy and one light. He dusted them off, and bound them up tightly with Spell-O-Tape. He labeled them both "Harry James Potter, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry" in bold letters, and then smiled and added "Gryffindor House;" he supposed they'd be delivered even if he was wrong.

He went down to Diagon Alley to send them, feeling a little awkward in the press of robed figures in his trousers and old jacket. He hadn't realized just how little time he'd spent in the wizarding world lately. How attractive the idea of just walking away had begun to sound.

And he still could. He could go home and spend more afternoons selling old books to Muggle university students with spiked hair. The boxes would gather dust under his bed, and the robes would be eaten by moths. Now and then he'd tell someone in a bar that he was a werewolf, and they'd laugh, and it might even get him laid. And maybe no one would remind him of Sirius or James or even Peter, not for years and years.

Instead he went into the post office, and tucked in the notes he'd added as a postscript; on the box containing the cloak, "This isn't mine," and on the box of papers, "In case I don't make it six more years."

He went off and had an overpriced cup of tea at Florean's and watched the crowd for a while. A little girl was chasing her pet bat through the crowd, the bat fluttering aimlessly around the street in the daylight and finally lurking in the shadows under a sign while the girl tried to tempt it down with flies made out of licorice. A young witch was doing her marketing in a flurry, with three red-haired children in tow; she looked familiar, although Remus couldn't place her. A teenage boy was carrying a new broom wrapped in brown paper down the street like it was made of glass. Remus wondered which house he'd be playing for next fall.

It was where he belonged, and he didn't suppose there was much he could do about that. The crowds in Muggle London might not remind him of Sirius and James, but they'd remind him of this. And it wasn't a bad afternoon, all in all, sipping the cooling tea and moving his chair to stay in the sun as the shadows moved.

Remus finally stuck his head in at the post office again when the afternoon started getting chilly. He thought he'd made himself clear, but he wasn't entirely surprised when the postmaster handed him two scraps of parchment and a single familiar box. He knew if he picked it up he'd feel the familiar weight of memories crammed into notebooks and stacked in sheaves.

He picked up the scraps of parchment instead, and read first one:

Dear Remus,

I'll keep the cloak for Harry, then . . .

and then the other:

. . . but I do believe you will.

---