Кассандра Клэр - Draco Sinister

"Oh, I know. Every night it's Wizard Jeopardy followed by reading all your back issues of Arithmancerś Weekly, and a cup of hot cocoa…"

"I am a werewolf, Sirius."

"And I´m a Gemini. We all have our cross to bear."

"You just want me in the same boat with you, oh About-To-Get-Married One. Which is going to happen when, anyway?"

"Narcissa had it scheduled for the fifteenth of August."

"What do you mean, the fifteenth of August?"

"What I said. The fifteenth of August. Is that a problem?" Sirius turned and smiled at his friend, pushing back the dark hair the wind had whipped across his eyes. "Have you got plans? Or is it…"

Sirius´ voice suddenly trailed off, his eyes widening. "Itś not…"

"The full moon," said Lupin flatly. "I can´t believe you scheduled your wedding for the full moon."

"Moony," exclaimed Sirius, stopping dead in his tracks in the middle of the road that led away from the High Street and up the hill towards the Potters´ house. He looked like couldn´t decide whether to laugh or look abashed. "I stopped keeping track of full moons after Hogwarts…you can still go to the wedding you know…"

"No," interrupted Lupin self-righteously, starting to walk again.

Sirius scurried after him. "I think I´ll stay home and, oh, not eat the wedding party."

"I meant we would change the date." Sirius sounded aggrieved. "Itś not like thereś a wedding without you, I mean you´re meant to be the best man. Moony, don´t sulk."

"I´m not sulking."

"You are."

"I´m not."

"You are. I can tell."

"Maybe," conceded Lupin, stopping dead in his tracks and turning, his hands in his pockets. "But it took your mind off where we were going, didn´t it? We´re here, by the way."

Sirius stopped too, all his nervous motion suddenly quelled into stillness as he looked past his friendś shoulder at the ruins just over the rise of the hill.

It had been burned to the foundations the last time Lupin had seen it and it had never been built back up. He doubted it could be seen by those who didn´t already know it was there. It would look simply like a ruined or overgrown patch of ground: unpleasant and inhospitable. That was the way this kind of magic worked.

They went forward, Sirius first, and Lupin behind him, watching Siriusśhoulders stiffen as he took in the sight out of the ruined house — really just a grid of stones now, running along the earth, showing where the walls had been, the stone front steps, the door where he had last seen James and Lily standing, waving goodbye…

The cold wind picked up and whipped Lupinś hair into his eyes. He brushed it back, shivering, and raised the hood of his travelling cloak. He looked sideways at Sirius.

Sirius was staring at the house, well, not quite at it, but past it, towards the rising gray hills in the distance. The look of controlled disquiet was gone from his face and his eyes were filled with memory and pain.

"Sirius…you all right?"

"I´m fine." Sirius pulled his cloak tighter around him, and started off towards the house. Lupin followed, curiosity tempered with concern for Sirius. This, he knew, would be harder on his friend than it was on him. He knew James´ house from the years after Lily and James were married, but Sirius knew it from summer holidays spent there in between Hogwarts terms; when Sirius had nowhere else to go, the Potters took him in. He had told Lupin once, not that long ago, that he had been glad that James´ parents had died when he was twenty, that they had never lived to believe that he, Sirius Black, who they had treated as a son, had betrayed their every act of kindness in the worst of all possible ways.

They were standing now in what had been the Potters´ back yard. It was not as overgrown as one might have expected: the spell that kept the house hidden had the side effect of keeping the property in a partial kind of stasis. The grass was long, reaching nearly to Lupinś knees as he trudged after Sirius, who was heading with some purpose towards a corner of the yard. He stopped at the base of a very tall evergreen tree, and stared at it.

Lupin came up behind him, shuffling his feet through the grass. The wind made a whispering sound through the leaves. He looked at the tree, which was quite ordinary-looking, although obviously hollow: there was a dark hole in the trunk about half a foot over his head.

"Itś a tree, Sirius."

"I know that."

"Does this tree have meaning for you, or is this just some kind of burgeoning interest in horticulture in general?"

In answer, Sirius took out his wand and pointed it at the opening in the trunk of the tree. "Accio," he said, and, like birds flying out of a dovecote, objects began hurtling out of the tree — small, irregularly shaped objects. Lupin ducked as a small box whizzed by his right ear, and turned to look inquiringly at Sirius.

"What the…?"

Sirius stood looking thoughtful as the last object flew towards him, and he caught it in his hand. "James and I used to use this tree as a sort of…treasure chest. To keep things that we didn´t want his parents to see. He once told me that this tree has been here for hundreds of years, and generations of Potters have used it as a hiding place. I thought…" his voice trailed off as he knelt down in the grass, and Lupin knelt down with him, to examine the pile that had collected at his feet.

Some of the objects were familiar. Lupin recognized, with a pang, the box of Zonkoś Magical Reality Pencils "Make your sketches come to life!" that had been used to draw the Marauderś Map. A stack of letters. He hadn´t seen them before, but he recognized Lilyś handwriting. Sirius brushed a hand over those, and set them aside. A bag of Bertie BottsÉvery Flavor Beans emblazoned with rainbows. "Flower Power Flavors!" said the side of the bag. Sirius picked that up and grinned. "I remember these. You weren´t supposed to eat the purple ones because they were hallucinogenic, of course that was just a rumor…"

"Yes, and you and James tested the rumor by sneaking three of the purple ones into Snapeś oatmeal at breakfast. That was the day he nearly drowned in the lake because he thought it was a magical gateway to the Land of the Candy People."

"Yeah, that was pretty funny," Sirius grinned. Then quickly sobered.

"No it wasn´t. It was very insensitive of us."

Lupin looked at him in disbelief. "Sirius, did you sneak a purple bean while I wasn´t looking?"

Sirius grinned again and threw the beans aside. He picked up a wooden box and flipped back the lid. Lupin looked inside, and felt his heart skip a beat. A yellow-bound book. So You Want To Be A Wolverine: How To Become an Animagus in Twelve Difficult Steps.

Stacks of parchment notecards, written all over in Jamesćareful, boyish handwriting. Ingredients We Will Need: powdered snakeskin, dragonś blood, shredded boomslang skin, spine of newt…Note: ask Lily for key to Charms classroom so we can work in there…should be almost complete with the process by next full moon…

And Lupin had to shut his eyes because of the clarity of the image of James that flared up like lightning against his inner lids; James standing in the Forbidden Forest, waiting to change, face raised to the night sky, eyes full of wilderness and stars. Time compressed like an accordion, and he heard James laughing — Sirius had always laughed the longest, but James was the one who laughed first; he was, unlike Sirius, always ready to be happy, to be pleased. Lupin had always thought that that was because of the difference between Siriusćhildhood and James´ but then Harry, Harry with his awful childhood and his years spent locked under the stairs, still managed to be like James in that respect: he did not need much beyond his friends to make him happy. Whereas Draco was more like Sirius, in that it was hard to tell if happy was a word that could ever be appropriately applied to either one of them.