Lupin paused in the middle of the street and looked at his friend with deep suspicion. 'Are you trying to set me up, Sirius?'
'What? No,' said Sirius, looking indescribably shifty. 'Never…'
'Sirius…'
Sirius abandoned all effort at pretense. 'Oh, come on, Moony. You need to get out more. Meet someone. I always thought I would be the last bachelor, but you…well, aren?t you bored?'
Lupin growled. ' For your information, I lead a rich and varied social life.'
'Oh, I know. Every night it's Wizard Jeopardy followed by reading all your back issues of Arithmancers 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. 'Its 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. 'Its not like theres 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 friends 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 Siriusshoulders 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 Lupins 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 Lupins 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.
'Its 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.
