The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|84| Closure

And then, abruptly as it had begun, the spinning stopped. I opened my eyes to find that I was looking up out of the kitchen fireplace at the long, wooden table, where a man sat poring over a piece of parchment.

"Sirius?" Harry said.

The man jumped and looked around. It was not Sirius, but Lupin.

"Harry— Maisey!" he said, looking thoroughly shocked. "What are you— what's happened, is everything all right?"

"Yeah," said Harry. "I just wondered— I mean, we just fancied a— a chat with Sirius."

"I'll call him," said Lupin, getting to his feet, still looking perplexed. "He went upstairs to look for Kreacher, he seems to be hiding in the attic again..."

Lupin returned with Sirius at his heels moments later.

"What is it?" said Sirius urgently, sweeping his long dark hair out of his eyes and dropping to the ground in front of the fire, so that he was on a level with us; Lupin knelt down too, looking very concerned. "Are you all right? Do you need help?"

"No," said Harry, "it's nothing like that... I just— we wanted to talk... about our dad..."

Harry looked uncomfortable when they exchanged a look of great surprise, whether it be that or the fact that our knees were falling asleep, but regardless Fred and George only promised us twenty minutes— it's been five. Without hesitation, I immediately plunged into the story of what we'd seen in the Pensieve.

When I had finished, neither Sirius nor Lupin spoke for a moment. Then Lupin said quietly, "I wouldn't like you to judge your father on what you saw there. He was only fifteen—"

"We're fifteen!" said Harry heatedly.

"Look, Harry," said Sirius placatingly turning to him, "James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each other, it was just one of those things, you can understand that, can't you? I think James was everything Snape wanted to be— he was popular, he was good at Quidditch, good at pretty much everything. And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts and James— whatever else he may have appeared to you— always hated the Dark Arts."

"Yeah," I said, "but he just attacked Snape for no good reason, just because— well, just because you said you were bored," I finished with a slightly apologetic note in my voice.

"I'm not proud of it," said Sirius quickly.

Lupin looked sideways at Sirius and then said, "Look, both of you, what you've got to understand is that your father and Sirius were the best in the school at whatever they did— everyone thought they were the height of cool— if they sometimes got a bit carried away—"

"If we were sometimes arrogant little berks, you mean," said Sirius.

Lupin smiled nostalgically.

"He kept messing up his hair," said Harry in a pained voice.

Sirius and Lupin laughed.

"I'd forgotten he used to do that," said Sirius affectionately.

"Was he playing with the Snitch?" said Lupin eagerly.

"Yeah," I said, watching uncomprehendingly as Sirius and Lupin beamed reminiscently. "Well... I thought he was a bit of an idiot, truthfully."

"Of course, he was a bit of an idiot!" said Sirius bracingly. "We were all idiots! Well, not Moony so much... Maisey that's why you're so studious," he said fairly, looking at Lupin, but Lupin shook his head.