The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

CII: I Found Us a House!

Remus stood on the porch of a derelict old house, nested between the trees, yards from the ocean. Sirius had snuffed it out, running through the trees in his animagus form, searching for some place that they could spend the night. When he'd found the old house in the middle of the trees, he'd been positively delighted and rushed back to where Remus waited with Buckbeak.

"Remus, Remus! I found us a house!" Sirius had exclaimed when he got back to where he'd left his husband and the hippogriff, turning back into a man and positively flinging himself across the beach sand so that his feet slid and he tripped and nearly fell multiple times. He landed with a fwump in the sand beside the blanket that Remus was laying on, sunglasses on his face, his shirt off at last and balled up under his head like a pillow. His scars made him as striped as a pink-and-skin tone zebra, and Sirius positively loved it.

"What do you mean you found us a house?" Remus had asked, skeptically, lifting his sunglasses up. They pushed the greying curls off his forehead.

Sirius murmured, "I've forgotten everything I've ever known - my mind has been turned to mushy peas by the mere sight of your grandeur - forget the house, forget a bed, we'll just stay right here and --"

Remus caught Sirius's face with his palm before he could descend on him and Sirius laughed into Remus's hand. "What do you mean you found us a house?" Remus repeated.

Sirius grinned, his mouth visible under the heel of Rermus's palm. "I mean that I have found us a house," he repeated with feeling.

He'd dragged Remus off on Buckbeak's back the distance he'd run as a dog and they landed on the edge of the woods along a span of empty beach. The sand there was dotted with bits of rubbish - old bottles and a broken beach chair, crusty towels and bits of rotted old wood, some rope and netting, and loads of clumps of seaweed. A crab scuttled through the seaweed, disappearing in the uneven sand. "This way," Sirius said, and he waved for Remus to follow him through the trees, Buckbeak stopping at the edge of the tree line to snap at some of the branches hungrily.

"Sirius," Remus said as they moved through the branches, "What are you on abou--" he stopped mid-word because they'd stepped through some brush and Sirius pushed back a large branch and they were in a clearing and in the center of the clearing was the derelict old house. Remus stared in surprise at it. He hadn't expected there to be an actual house. "There's - there's an actual bloody house."

Sirius grinned, turning as he walked, arms out wide as he spun about, "Look at it, Moony, it's abso-fucking-lutely disgusting, isn't it?"

"Yes actually," Remus said, looking at the broken shutters, overrun weeds and grasses, broken windows...

"C'mon, come have a look inside," Sirius was up the steps and onto the porch, delicately stepping 'round broken glass with his flip-flop covered feet. 

"You're going to step on something and get some kind of disease."

Sirius laughed loudly, then jiggled the rusty doorknob, paused, then drew his wand. "Alohamora," he said and the knob clicked unlocked. The door was still stuck however so he gripped his fists together and gave it a good shove with his elbow. The door gave way and a great burst of dust flurried up and Sirius sneezed as he stepped in through the door frame.

"Bloody hell," Remus hissed and he hurried after Sirius, taking the steps of the porch gingerly, half expecting to fall through them. He paused at the top of the steps. "Sirius, don't go in there, you don't know what's in there, there could be anything and honestly this is somebody's place, isn't it? It didn't just spontaneously appear here and you're technically trespassing and --"

Sirius laughed. "Where is your sense of adventure, Moony?"

"I've been maxed out, I'm afraid," Remus answered.