The dog’s person holds a leash. He smells of comfort and of home and of the darkest parts of a forest.
“Behave,” he says. The dog gets over excited. Over cautious. Snaps its teeth at strange-too close-unknown.
“Behave,” the dog’s person says at the House. The House was never home but it’s something else entirely now. There are people, each room occupied. A woman with a brood of children, a muggleborn with her nose stuck in some book. The stag’s son.
The dog can’t see green but it knows, somewhere in the human parts of its hindbrain, that the stag’s son has eyes like the summer’s grass.
“Come on, Padfoot,” says the stag’s son, beckoning the dog to the garden, “let’s get you out for a minute.”
Like his father, that one, but more like his mother. Sees the dog’s limits. Doesn’t push to cross them. Endless caring. A new kind of love.
A hand pets through the dog’s fur. Fingers gently untangling where it’s not been kept well.
“I’ll miss you,” the stag’s son says. “It’s not fair.”
The dog puts his head down onto a bony knee. Too thin. Always too thin after summers.
They go to the train station, the dog allowed under conditions. “Behave,” the dog’s person says.
The dog gets over excited. Chases pigeons. (The stag’s son laughs.) Chases the train. (The stag’s son leaves.)
“Behave,” Remus says when they get back to Grimmauld Place, when Sirius gets an ancient bottle of firewhiskey out of the cellar and forgoes the tumbler.
“Or what,” Sirius snaps back, over-protective of his soft spots. “Molly is gone. The kids are gone. Harry is gone. There’s no one here to pretend for any more.”
“I’m here,” Remus says. It’s quiet and hurt and small.
Sirius has always been good at hurting those he wants to protect.
“I know,” he answers just as quietly. “I’m sorry.”
But he doesn’t put the bottle away.
Later, he lays himself out on the chaise lounge in the drawing room. The shadows move across the ceiling. The ceiling spins and tilts and he watches, half sick half transfixed. Once upon a time, he got a nasty hex for laying like this: legs on the embroidered cushions, head half off the armrest.
It’s strange, remembering it now. Sirius knows he’s in his thirties but still thinks he’s twenty and here, now, in this house, feels fifteen again.
