"Moony, I have a present for you."
It was the day before the full moon, the day after the Prewett twins' funeral, and Remus was completely unable to move from the couch, his head in such pain that even the light filtering through the curtains was too much and near to blinding him.
"Hm?" he groaned, a cold wash cloth over his eyes, as well as a pillow.
Peter looked up from where he was sitting on the floor next to the couch, keeping Remus silent company, playing with his divination tools, flicking through tarot cards and rune stones.
Sirius had just come in the front door, carrying a large box on his hip, his eyes joyful. He hurried across the room and knelt down next to Remus, putting the box up on the coffee table. "How are you feeling, Moony?"
"Like utter rubbish," Remus murmured.
Sirius opened the box and Peter gasped, seeing it's contents. "Well, this will make you feel better."
"Unless it's a silver bullet, I very much doubt that," Remus said.
"Well, not exactly a silver bullet..." Sirius said, grinning, "But it is wolfsbane."
Remus slid the pillow and wash cloth away from his eyes, opening them up and staring at the little vial that hung from Sirius's pinched fingers. "Sirius," Remus's words were very slow, almost hushed and nervous. "Where did you get that?"
"Bought it," Sirius answered.
"From who?"
"Doesn't matter," Sirius answered.
"With what money?"
"My money," Sirius answered.
"Sirius, we have to pay rent this week," Remus was squinting painfully against the light that seemed to be specifically coming for his retinas without mercy. He spoke through clenched teeth, the pain in his jaw tight.
"I already paid it," Sirius answered.
Remus stared at him. "With what money?"
"My money," Sirius answered again.
Remus shook his head, regretted the movement, and said, "Sirius, where are you suddenly getting loads of money from? Are you begging off James again? He doesn't need to be paying our way through life, I know he offers but if you borrowed a large sum, we need to pay him back and --"
"No, no, I didn't!" Sirius argued.
"Then Sirius --"
"I work, don't I? Every other day I go all the way out to Cardiff and bust my arse selling records, do I not? Isn't it possible I've earned my money?" Sirius said with an imperial air.
"Spillers does not pay you enough for --" Remus's eyes fell on the box on the table. It was full of vials identical to the one in Sirius's hand. Easily a year's worth of wolfsbane potion - possibly more - the bottles all neatly separated by protective wrapping. "Sirius!" Remus gasped. Despite the incredible pain he was in, Remus pushed himself up from the couch, took the vial roughly out of Sirius's hand and pushed it back into the empty spot it had come from in the box. He closed the lid on the box and looked about as though someone might have looked in the windows of their first level flat and seen what was most definitely being looked upon as contraband. "Where did you get this?" Remus hissed.
"Told you, I bought it."
"Sirius there's not enough of this stuff to go around to the werewolves. This stuff is extremely valuable. It does not go for a couple pence at the Tesco. Now where did you get it?"
"Horace Slughorn."
Remus stared at Sirius.
"He named a price and I paid it, so he brewed it. Completely above board, completely legal, fully paid."
"How many of your organs did you sell off?" Remus demanded.
"None."
"Your kidneys? A lung?"
"Darling Moony, I have ALL my body parts and they are still precisely where you expect them to be."
Remus looked unsure.
"Moony," Sirius rolled his eyes. He reached over, opened the box, and took out one of the vials, holding it out. "I didn't do anything heinous, illegal, or otherwise compromising to my bodily composition. Please, just take a dose of the 'bane so you can feel a bit better. Please. The moon is at 97% luminescence today and I refuse to watch you lay here like a salted slug all day."
Remus hesitated, then took the vial from Sirius's fingers. He turned the little bottle over in his palm, then pulled the cork out of the top of the vial and drank it straight out of the bottle. It tasted horribly, like chewing on straight aconite leaves but so much stronger than the tea ever had tasted and much more bitter. He gagged and coughed but managed to get it all down in two swigs, opening and closing his mouth as the dirty mint taste lingered on his tongue and lips. He could feel it burning down his innards and into his belly and he breathed uneasily for a moment or two until it had settled.
"Good boy," Sirius murmured. He took the vial and dropped the empty bottle onto the coffee table.
"It looks nasty, Remus," Peter spoke up, "Is it nasty?"
"Oh gods it's so, so nasty," Remus answered, nodding.
"Would some chocolate help?"
Remus answered, "It couldn't hurt."
Peter scrambled to his feet and disappeared down the hall.
Sirius inched closer. "You've been through so much Moony... I just wanted you to feel better." He paused. "Do you feel better?"
"It takes time to get to work, I'll reckon," Remus murmured, but even as he said it he realized he'd stopped clenching his teeth and he released the hinges of his jaw, moving it side to side like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz realizing he could move after being oiled for the first time in years. Remus turned to Sirius, "God I don't care how you got it, Sirius. Thank you." He wrapped his arms around Sirius's neck and pressed his face against the spot on Sirius's shoulder that was home, where his freckles aligned with the tattooed constellation on Sirius's skin.
Sirius grinned and he hugged Remus close.
Uncle Alphard's vault at Gringott's had been lined with an absolutely ungodly amount of gold, silver, and bronze coins. The walls had been stacked high with it and Sirius had stood inside the vault that afternoon, utterly breathless, staring 'round at it all. He'd shaken as he'd stepped closer and, gingerly, afraid of what had happened last time he'd touched something in a vault at Gringott's, he'd plucked one bronze knut off the pile and held it in his palm. The money stayed still and whole in his hand and he breathed a sigh of relief as he stared at it. "This is all mine," he whispered, staring about, and a shiver went down his spine. "Uncle Alphard gave me - this."
He suddenly remembered a faint echo in the back of his mind. Alphard, telling Orion and Cygnus and Abraxas that he was about to make a great investment that he really believed in... and it had been him, Sirius. Sirius was the investment that Alphard has believed in.
"I'm taking it all," Sirius had told the little goblin that had brought him down, "I'm emptying the vault."
"What?" the goblin had looked at him with a bit of incredulity. "All of it? It would take carts and carts --"
"I just need bags enough," Sirius answered, and he'd grinned, "I have deep pockets."
But if Sirius thought he was going to be finished with mysteries left to him by Alphard, he was wrong, because there was a new one all the more mysterious than the tiny coin-cog mystery he'd carried for so many years....
For in the very back of the vault, behind the stacks and stacks of gold, silver, and copper that Alphard had left him, was an old cigar style box, and when Sirius had opened the box he'd found inside a torn piece of an envelope with an address on it but no name, spello taped to a notecard with a crest - a variation of the crest of the Noble House of Black which Sirius had never seen before - and on the note, the words: "Visit Only When The Time Is Right."
Sirius stared at it, turning it over in his hand, confused, and put the bit of envelope back into the cigar box. "Weird," he muttered. But regardless of whether he understood the significance of it or not, Sirius brought the cigar box back to the flat with him, rather than putting it into the new, permanent account vault that he transferred the majority of the gold, silver, and bronze to. He brought home several bags for immediate use.
After all, a boy doesn't strike it rich and not have a little bit of fun, yeah?
So it was that Remus had been gifted with no less than two new sweaters, a new brown tweed suit, and a few books Sirius knew he'd been wanting - as well as the case of Wolfsbane Potion.
Peter came skidding back into the living room in the flat, carrying the chocolate in his hand. Sirius and Remus broke apart from their hug as he returned and broke the bar of chocolate he'd brought back with him into thirds. Sirius turned his down so Remus could have two shares and he smiled as Remus marveled at the powerful effects of the Wolfsbane, how his jaw didn't even hurt anymore, how he barely felt queasy, how he hadn't felt so well on a Moontide Eve in ages as he did right then.
It didn't matter to Sirius that he'd spent near to a thousand galleons on the potion.
"And what else are family fortunes good for if not to squander?" Sirius heard Uncle Alphard's voice in his mind, could see his flamboyant motions and wide-toothy grin. "Squander the living daylights out of every last bronze knut you get, Little Man."
Moony's smile was worth every knut.