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When Euphemia and Fleamont had been on their deathbeds, they had asked Lily and James to move into Potter Manor and make it their own. Of course they had agreed; it was a wonderful home, where James had spent the majority of his life, and would be a brilliant place to raise Harry.
“Just promise me one thing, Lily,” Euphemia had said, her voice frail due to the illness ravishing her body. She reached out for Lily’s hand, which Lily took, squeezing gently. “Make the home a safe place for all your friends when they need you,”
Lily had agreed immediately; that was why Sirius still had a bedroom at Potter Manor, the same bedroom he had had since he was banished from Grimmauld Place at age sixteen. The room next door had been Remus’s when he had come to stay with the Potters, and over the years, the wall between them seemed to vanish and the two rooms seemed to have become just one big room. Potter Manor could be intuitive like that sometimes. It was still known as Sirius’s room though.
Tuesday 1st February 1994
“Okay, I’ve had enough of this. You’re not doing this anymore!” Lily snapped with a little stomp of her foot.
She had been baking in the kitchen; Sirius was moving into his new flat today, she wanted to make him a housewarming gift and had decided on parkin; gingerbread was always a good shout, especially this time of year. She had just poured the batter into the pan when she heard a loud thud upstairs.
Grabbing her wand, Lily ran upstairs and found Remus falling out of the fireplace in Sirius’s bedroom, blind drunk… again. The wall had returned over the last couple of months, separating the space from “Sirius’s room” back to “Sirius’s room” and “Remus’s room”.
“I need to see him, Lils!” Remus whined, hiccuping slightly.
“I’ve already told you Remus, he’s not staying here with us. He’s with Regulus,”
“Regulus set the wards at Grimmauld Place to attack me if I came too close,”
When Lily looked at him, she could see fresh boils down the side of his neck. If it was the same curse Regulus had put on the howler, there was no point in her trying to heal them for him, she would only make the situation worse if she tried.
“I’m not surprised. You cheated on Sirius,”
Remus flinched back at her words, like she had physically struck him.
“I need to explain to him!” Remus said. He was sounding more desperate and deranged with every day that passed.
Lily sighed, rubbing her face a little. This was getting ridiculous; Remus was meant to be teaching at Hogwarts, not getting hammered and coming into her house like this. She could smell the fire whiskey from here… She hoped Harry wasn’t seeing him like this.
“You’re going to lose your job at the rate Remus,” she said.
“Please, let me explain everything,”
Remus looked absolutely pathetic, clinging to Lily slightly. She took a deep, grounding breath before nodding and holding out her hands to help Remus back on to his feet.
“Alright, come downstairs. James will be home from training shortly. We’ll have a cup of tea while we wait for him, and then you can explain everything to us. Then, James and I will talk to Regulus and see if we can get him to drop the wards for you to talk to Sirius,” she said. “Or maybe in a neutral space with witnesses,” she said, frowning slightly. The Black family were infamous for their anger and although she was angry with Remus about all this, she wouldn’t want to see him actually hurt. They all knew the boils were childsplay.
Remus nodded, following Lily out of Sirius’s bedroom and back downstairs to the kitchen. She had to admit, she had never seen her friend look so lost; like a little puppy who had lost it’s owner. He clearly wasn't’ doing well without Sirius.
Once she had the tea made and instructed Guggle on looking after the parkin, she led Remus through to the main living room. Lily had set the tea tray down, taking the sofa opposite Remus’s armchair when the floo lit up.
“Accio James’s teacup,” she muttered, a third cup landing neatly next to the teapot.
“Sorry I’m late, Adrianna is still getting to grips with being in this team. I had to have a chat with her about team synergy,” James said as he stepped out of the hearth, hanging his travelling cloak on the nearby coat stand. “I don’t think she really got it though. I really don’t want to cut her from the team,”
“Hello, James,”
James looked up and gave a small smile. Not his usual greeting for his friends by any stretch, but then these weren’t usual times between him and his friends.
“Hi Moony, how are you doing?”
“I-” Remus started to say, trying to think of a lie to tell; about how he was doing just fine. “Actually, I’m doing quite shit,” he finally settled with.
Nodding, James sat down next to Lily, lifting the teapot to pour his own cup of tea before kissing Lily on the cheek.
“Listen mate, you’ll always be my friend, but I’ve got to say, you deserve to be doing shit for a while… What you’ve done is just… You don’t do that to people you love. You don’t even do that to people you don’t love!”
James was loyal to a fault, everyone knew that, and honestly, Remus was shocked when James hadn’t dropped him as a friend. Everyone knew he was loyal to Lily and Harry first, and Sirius second. He never imagined that James would still be loyal to him.
“I do love him!” Remus insisted quickly. “I’ve always loved Sirius. It’s not like I stopped loving him just because of all this,”
“Then for Merlin’s sake why did you fuck around with his cousin?!”
“Because I love her too,”
James let out an incredulous noise as Remus stared down at his lap forlornly. Lily placed a hand on her husband’s knee, squeezing gently. This wasn’t going to go well if Remus spiralled straight into a pity party.
“Come on James, I promised we’d hear him out. He wants a chance to explain to Sirius too,” Lily said gently, making James scoff.
“Yeah, you’re not going to get past Reg easily. He’s got like a hundred curses set up to target you and no one else,”
“I’m aware,” Remus sighed, rubbing his neck where the boils were.
“At least they’re only on your neck,” Lily said, trying to find a silver lining.
“They’re not just on my neck…” Remus shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, making James wince. Nobody needed boils there.
“Merlin, Regulus really can be a sadistic little shit when he wants to be, can’t he?”
“I deserve it…”
“Yeah, you do a bit, mate,” James agreed.
Remus took a deep breath, drinking a bit of his tea as he tried to find the words to explain himself.
“Sirius has always been too good for me. I mean just look at him. He’s not just the most beautiful member of the House of Black, he’s the most beautiful person to grace this planet. I’ve never understood why he’s been with me. Honestly, he’s so out of my league he shouldn’t have even been able to perceive me. He could have literally anyone he wanted,” he said.
“He did have exactly who he wanted, Remus. He had you,” Lily pointed out gently.
Remus shifted again on the sofa and Lily wasn’t sure if it was because her comment had made him uncomfortable or because of the boils.
“I could never understand why he wanted me though. It’s not just how he looks, he’s a completely different pedigree to me. Why would he want to be with some commoner like me when he’s practically wizarding royalty,” he said, continuing before either of them could start their usual spiel about how Sirius didn’t care about class divides. “And we were never perfect. We have always fought like cats and dogs,”. Well, like wolves and dogs, he thought.
“Don’t we know it… I still remember that fight in the common room when you didn’t say straight away that he looked good in Marlene’s skirt,” Lily grimaced. “I thought he was going to curse your bollocks off for sure,” James added with a snort.
“That wasn’t even a bad fight; our fights were worse when none of you were around to witness them… We used to fight a lot about his lack of direction in life,”
“He has direction in his life!” James huffed. He never tired of defending his best friend, especially on this particular topic. “He did those university courses at Oxford! The one in that secret part of the school that wizards can attend,” he said.
Remus rolled his eyes at that and huffed. “He only went because I wanted to do the muggle courses on education and earth sciences,”
“Yeah, and he did education and transfiguration!”
“Yeah but he’s not exactly done anything with them in the last fifteen years,”
“Says he who only just got his teaching job at Hog-”
“Alright!” Lily said, holding up her hands. Both men stopped talking immediately; Lily wasn’t one to be messed with when she got that particular look on her face.
“Remus; you’re not going to slander Sirius here, he isn’t here to defend himself and James; you’re not going to defend Sirius like he smells of roses. We all have our faults, Sirius included,” she said.
Both James and Remus grumbled, but nodded in agreement. Relaxing back into her seat, Lily waved her hand indicating Remus could continue talking.
“It’s just…I was always working towards becoming a teacher; as you both know, the muggle schools I’ve worked at haven’t exactly been receptive to me disappearing around the full moon, even with the ones where wizards were part of the staff and they’ve known about my furry little problem,” he sighed. He stopped and rubbed his face. Remus looked tired, like all the stress of life was catching up with him at once. Both James and Lily gave him sympathetic looks; being a werewolf can’t have been easy for Remus’s working life.
“Sirius always looked so happy and I was struggling with everything. I couldn’t understand - still can’t really - how he filled his days, how he stopped himself from going insane with boredom. That’s when I started to think that he was cheating on me,”
“Oh Remus,” Lily said, staring at Remus with disbelief on her face. This couldn’t be why Remus had cheated on Sirius. Out of some stupid idea like that?! Ignoring her look, Remus continued.
“I…I was convinced it was someone from the sacred twenty eight…I don’t know why I thought it was, but I did. At first I thought he was going to the hospital to meet with Eustace Burke, but he never really talked about him, just Regulus. So I think he was just going to see his brother, and you of course Lily,” Remus said his face flushed with embarrassment.
James was now staring at him with the same disbelieving look that Lily was still sporting. “Of course he was going to see Regulus and Lily!” he said.
“Well then I thought maybe he was seeing Frank; but Frank and Alice have always been so in love, and they have Neville as well of course,” he mumbled. “Then I thought maybe it was Amycus Carrow… But I think they only saw each other at sacred twenty eight balls when Sirius was a kid. And that’s when I convinced myself Sirius was having an affair with Barty,”
“Barty?” Lily said, confused. “Who’s Barty?” she asked.
“Hang on, do you mean Regulus’s friend? They used to be glued to each other at school along with that other guy, Evan, I think,” James said with a frown. “But he’s in Azkaban,” he said “He’s in the cell next to Pete,”.
“Yes, well. It turns out that Sirius goes with Regulus to Azkaban quite frequently to see Barty. Sirius said he wanted to go with him to make sure Pete hadn’t escaped…But I got it in my head that he was going to see Barty too,”
Lily and James of course knew that Sirius attended Azkaban frequently. He and James had been concerned that Peter would be able to escape his cell due to his animagus form. Sirius had spoken to Regulus, who had spoken from his seat on the Wizengamot and had had special protections placed on Peter’s cell to stop him using his form. James didn’t want to see Pete again, so Sirius agreed to check periodically that the rat hadn’t managed to escape.
Remus at least had the decency to look ashamed of himself. James couldn’t wrap his head around the insanity of it all; he leaned back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling for a long moment as he tried to compose himself enough to respond to these revelations.
“So just to clarify. When Sirius was doing Lily and I a favour by checking up on Pete, you believed Sirius was going to Azkaban with his brother to what, fuck Regulus’s imprisoned friend while Regulus watched?” James asked. Lily shot James a look and not so subtly kicked him in the shin.
“Remus, you know that Sirius has never cheated on you right? He’s always been faithful to you,” Lily said delicately, like she was dealing with a bomb rather than her friend.
“Yes, well, I know that now,” Remus said sullenly. “When I thought Sirius was cheating, that’s when I started drinking big time. It’s not like I was thinking clearly,”
Lily bit her lip. She remembered when Remus had first started drinking; the hushed conversations she had had with James when Harry wasn’t around; the times Sirius had appeared in tears because he’d found all of Remus’s empties hidden under the kitchen sink. When they had all finally had enough and sat Remus down to talk to him about what was going on.
“I know I told you it was caused by the stress of everything that happened with Pete when you held that intervention for me… But, well, I was just too wrapped up in the idea of Sirius being wrapped up with Barty,” Remus said, sipping some more tea. “I was utterly convinced he was cheating on me,”.
Remus put the teacup back down on the table, his hands shaking enough that the china clinked against the wood.
“And that’s around the time Sirius and I had probably our biggest argument; about the wedding this time, and about Sirius not having a job and still having more money than me,” he said. “That’s when I stormed out, found that bar in Soho and met Dora properly for the first time,”
“Who the fuck is Dora?” James asked with a frown.
Lily rolled her eyes and slapped James in the chest gently. “Dora is Nymphadora. Andromeda's kid, Jamie. Keep up,” she said as Remus nodded.
“She looked so much like Sirius that night, except she wasn’t shouting at me. She was just so beautiful, and before I knew it we had a fling, that turned into an affair and then I realised that I’d fallen in love with her,”
Before anyone could say anything else, Remus burst into deep sobs again, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Lily stood, moving to sit next to Remus and wrap her arms around his shoulders.
“It’s alright Remus,” she said softly, as he cried himself out.
“Yeah Moony, look on the bright side, you’ve still got a partner that loves you,” James added, making Lily glare at him, mouthing shut up.
“Andromeda and I had words yesterday,” Remus said once he had calmed down again. James frowned at that. “What do you mean you had words?”
Lily summoned a box of tissues, letting Remus wipe his face and properly collect himself.
“She said I had torn her family apart, which, she’s not wrong I suppose. But she said I had to prove my commitment to Dora or leave by the end of the week so I didn’t break Dora’s heart like I did with Sirius. She thinks I have commitment issues,”
“And water’s wet,” James muttered, hissing suddenly when Lily sent a stinging hex his way.
“So what’s your plan Remus,” Lily asked gently.
“Well…I was going to leave… but before I got the chance to talk to Dora, she,” he started to say before taking a gulp of air, like he’d forgotten how to breathe. “She told me she was pregnant,”
“WHAT?! Lily and James both shouted at the same time.
Remus slid a piece of card onto the coffee table.
You are cordially invited to the wedding of Nymphadora Tonls and Remus John Lupin
Details to follow shortly
—
Monday 7th February 1994
Andromeda Tonks had always been a formidable figure, even gliding through Diagon Alley she cut a stunning image.
The bell above the door tinkled and Nick looked up, smiling softly.
“Hello Andromeda, long time no see,” he said.
“If you don’t call me Andy, I’m going to start calling you Nicholai again,” she huffed. Nick laughed and kissed his cousin’s cheeks in greeting.
“How can I help you today Andy? New dress robes?” he asked.
“No; my daughter is due to be married. I would like you to make her dress,”
“Of course! Who is she marrying? Regulus normally announces family engagements,” he frowned.
“Who she’s marrying is not of importance. Can you make her a dress with House of Black protection charms built into it?” she asked.
Nick’s frown deepened a little. “I can…But it will only be low level protection, only Regulus can perform full protections. He is the head of the House of Black after all,”
“Your level of protection will be sufficient, Nick. Can you add expanding charms on the dress as well please?”
His eyebrows raised in shock, but he didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t be the first time the family had had to have a shotgun wedding. He assumed Regulus wasn’t aware of the couples match, and it wouldn’t be his place to say anything to the patriarch.
“Yes, I’ll make her dress Andy. I’ll make her betrothed’s robes too if you wish?”
“I’ll have him come see you closer to the time,” she nodded.
If Sirius had had the forethought to actually give Nick names when telling him of Remus’s betrayal, Nick might’ve realised who Dora was marrying, and he wouldn’t have agreed to make the dress in the first place…At least not without curses instead of protections.