We & I & We ~Part 1~
Author: la_elefantita 
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Rating: G
Warning: AU
Summary: Remus is alive and well the March after Voldemort's defeat. Harry pays him and Teddy a visit.
Feedback: I'd love to hear comments from all of you, especially copy-editing and Brit picking.
Author's Notes: Originally intended as a standalone piece, and it could still work as one for the most part. I do want to write more in this universe so I have purposefully left some things unresolved.

Harry stared blankly down into the garden at the Burrow out of an upstairs window. It was a breezy March morning about a year after the defeat of Voldemort, and Harry was still living with the Weasleys.

It might have been pleasant, living there indefinitely, except that Ron and Hermione were getting married in June. While there wasn’t quite the same level of irritation as there was with the Phlegm situation, Harry found himself extremely lonely. Ron and Hermione were almost never around because she had insisted that he help with the wedding preparations, and for good reason. The wizard ceremony was to be held in the backyard at the Burrow, and Hermione didn’t want to have to deal with Mrs. Weasley alone. As for the Muggle ceremony, Hermione wanted Ron to know as much about it as possible so he didn’t appear demented in front of her Muggle friends and family. Even when they were all able to spend time together all Ron and Hermione seemed to want to talk about was how they didn’t want to talk about the wedding anymore.

It was getting to the point where Harry didn’t even want to hear the word “wedding” again. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like if Hermione was going to have a baby!

Babies made him think of Remus Lupin who had just moved into a new flat with his two-year-old son Teddy. Harry hadn’t been to the new place yet, and he hadn’t seen Remus since Christmas. He decided to send him a quick note asking if they could do tea sometime. Pigwidgeon was jumpy and ridiculous as usual, and Harry suddenly missed Hedwig very much.

Right before lunch Remus’s reply arrived, written in tidy script on the back of his own letter.

Dear Harry,

You are always welcome in my home. If you would like to come over this afternoon for tea I would love to have you. Just as a warning though, I’m not on the Floo Network yet. Last I heard you didn’t have an Apparation license, so I’ve drawn you a little map that should help you fly there.

Yours,
Remus

Harry looked at the map drawn below the message. It showed a square section of southern England. There was currently an arrow with its tail at the Burrow that pointed west, the direction he was facing. He tore a small piece with no writing off and wrote, “See you soon then!” and sent the owl off again.

Mrs. Weasley called out that it was lunchtime so he stuffed the letter in his pocket and made his way to the kitchen. She had recently discovered curry on an excursion into Muggle London with Hermione’s parents and had cooked nothing but since. Until she made some for him, Harry had never had anything like it before. The Dursleys didn’t want to have anything to do with “Paki food,” and it had never been served it at Hogwarts. According to Hermione, Mrs. Weasley’s attempt was fairly faithful. Harry didn’t particularly care how faithful it was because it was delicious.

While Mrs. Weasley cleared the table Harry told everyone that he was going over to Remus’s new place for tea and that he would be home for dinner.

“Oh that sounds nice, Harry,” Mrs. Weasley said, “I don’t think I’ve seen him and Teddy since Christmas. He ought to have a little house warming party, don’t you think?”

“Oh, that would be nice!” Hermione said, “I would like to see him again soon.”

“You give him our love when you see him, Harry. Feel free to use the Floo powder. You know where it is,” Mrs. Weasley said.

“He’s not on the Floo Network yet,” Harry said, “So I’m flying.”

Mrs. Weasley looked concerned, “Oh I wish you could Apparate. We’ll have to work on getting you a license after the wedding. How about you just side-along with me, and Remus can side-along back with you?”

It was on the tip of tongue to say that Dumbledore had always flown when he traveled, but he thought it would be a bit big-headed to compare himself to the greatest wizard of their time. Instead he said, “Oh I really don’t mind. I haven’t really been on a nice long fly in a long time. It will be nice.”

“Mum, Harry’s one of the greatest flyers to ever play at Hogwarts,” Ron said, “Let’s go talk about the umm, napkin rings.”

“You know I was just thinking this morning that those color changing ones that are popular right now just won’t do. How is a table full of strangers supposed to break the ice if you can tell by the color of the napkin ring whether they’re with the bride or the groom?” Mrs. Weasley continued prattling as she, Hermione, and Ron made their way to the living room.

What a friend Harry had in Ron! Distracting his own mother with mundane wedding details so that he could break away for a nice quiet tea.

He walked up to his room to change clothes. Remus lived in a Muggle neighborhood so he needed to lose the robes. He picked out a clean pair of jeans and a nice warm jumper, hand-knit by Mrs. Weasley. It took a few minutes to find his cloak because it was hanging up nicely in the closet instead of being wadded up in a corner of his truck like it usually was.

Once he retrieved his broom from the shed he threw the cloak on and flew straight up until he could see the whole village underneath him. He looked at the map to make sure he was headed in the right direction before zooming off.

As he got closer to London the area the map covered grew smaller and smaller. He began to be able to see streets and roads in detail. When he was about halfway there he took a break in a field of sheep to drink some water and breath the delightfully oxygen-rich air. Once he was back in the air it wasn’t long before he could see London on the horizon. The rest of the ride passed fairly uneventfully.

He flew right up to the breezeway outside of Remus’s flat and looking around to make sure no one was watching before removing his cloak. He rapped a few times quickly on the door, and Remus answered, smiling.

“Harry, it’s good to see you! Please come in.”

“Thank you for having me over, Remus. I don’t know if we’ve had tea together like this since you were my professor during third year,” Harry said.

“Oh what a year that was,” Remus said as he motioned Harry to sit at the table on the far side of the room where he had everything set out for tea, “You’re in luck, I just bought fresh biscuits this morning. If you’d come yesterday the ginger newts Minerva gave me when the Order was still at Grimauld Place would have had to suffice. Perhaps I should just chuck those,” he said. He didn’t do any chucking, and Harry had a feeling that those ginger newts had actually been chucked soon after being received.

“You’re flat seems very nice,” Harry said while Remus poured tea for them. In truth, the flat seemed much nicer than anything he had expected Remus to have.

“I think it’s fabulous, personally. I’ll give you the grand tour once we’re done eating,” Remus said as he placed his napkin in his lap, “Now tell me, how is life at the Burrow?”

“It’s quite… nuptial.”

“Ah yes, it’s been a few decades but I can remember the atmosphere before the marriage of two of my best friends, one Muggle-born and one pure-blood. A wedding is probably the most stressful party you’ll ever throw.”

“I couldn’t be at your wedding, but I heard it was fairly simple. Was it still as frustrating to plan as a big one?”

“That was stressful for other reasons,” Remus said with a frown.

“You must miss her an awful lot,” Harry said.

“I’ve lost a lot of people to war. I find it best to push forward. Speaking of pushing forward, have you thought about what you want to do when you finish your NEWTS?” Harry took his abrupt change of subject to mean, ‘yes, I miss her so much that I can’t even talk about it.’

“Well, even though I’m out of practice there have been rumors circulating that a couple of teams might be looking to draft me. If that doesn’t work out I’m sure I’ll be able to get something at the Ministry.”

“You know Harry, I know there’s a big push for you to go get a job and a house and a wife and a dog and all that as soon as you have graduated, but there’s nothing wrong with taking things slow. You have lots of people who are more than happy to help you out for a while. Not people who feel obligated to because they are your family or because you defeated Voldemort, but people who love you and want you to be happy.”

No one had said anything like this to Harry before. Everyone in the wizarding world seemed to assume that once he and Ginny were done with school they would get engaged and he would get some job as an athlete or a politician or something else to make him a prominent public figure. Maybe he would even move back to Godric’s Hollow.

The whole job and house and wife and dog thing was exactly what all of his friends were doing. There were going to be at least six weddings in the next summer just of people who had been in his year at Hogwarts.

“I guess my parents fell into the job and house and whatever pattern, didn’t they?”

“Well, that’s what most people were doing. You came from a sort of wizard baby boom. Most of the wizard-born kids your age and a few years older have young parents. People were scared during the war and clung to any kind of normalcy they could find. The same thing happened in the last couple of years. But now that the war is over, and this time it’s really over, you have your whole future ahead of you. You can take things at whatever pace suits you.”

“Do you think my parents should have waited to get married?”

“Not necessarily. For the short time they were married they brought each other a lot of joy. Luckily they were very compatible partners, but they didn’t know that before they got married really. I think under different circumstances they would have waited, but they wouldn’t have necessarily been better off, just more confident.”

Harry tried to think of adult wizards he knew had never married. Well, there was Sirius who spent a large portion of his adult life in prison. There was Dumbledore. He lived a long time and did lots of great things without ever getting married.

“Elphias Dodge said that he and Dumbledore had planned to take a long trip when they came of age. Do people still do that?”

“You know, it’s been a long time since I heard of someone doing that. It’s a very old tradition though. Sirius and James and P… all of us talked about doing that when we graduated, but we didn’t really have the time once we joined the Order. Is that something you’d want to do?”

“Well, the most I’ve ever traveled was going to the World Cup in Ireland. I would love to see more of the wizarding world. Ron’s brothers worked in exotic places like Romania and Egypt. I never even though about getting to do stuff like that.”

Remus smiled warmly and took a sip of tea. Just as he was grabbing a biscuit a child’s voice shouted, “Daddy!”

“Oh, looks like Teddy is awake from his nap. I’ll bring him in here.”

Remus disappeared down a hallway and appeared a few minutes later with a bright-eyed, green-haired toddler.

“Teddy, do you remember Uncle Harry?” Remus asked in a gentle voice. Teddy seemed a bit shy, so Remus just sat back down at the table and pulled the boy onto his lap, “He’s not used to strangers. We don’t really get a lot of visitors.” He ran his fingers through the boy’s hair, which promptly turned carrot orange with blue stripes.

“Can a read him a story or something?” Harry asked.

“Oh sure, there’s a shelf full of books in his nursery. I guess I’ll be giving you that grand tour now.”

They poked their heads into the kitchen, which was a little messy so Remus made that a short visit. Next they went into a hallway. There was a bathroom and a small bedroom being used as a study at the front end. Toward the back were Remus’s bedroom and the nursery. The nursery was a nice little room with the walls painted a sunny yellow. There were also little puppies painted on the wall that would run around and sniff things and do other such cute puppy things. There was an unmade child’s bed in one corner and several shelves fill with books and toys.

“I guess I really should stop calling it a nursery,” Remus said, “Teddy’s not sleeping in a crib or wearing diapers anymore. Anyway, feel free to pick out a book. I’ve got some Muggle and some wizard ones.”

Harry picked a wizard one about a Quidditch player and the three of them went back into the living room. Teddy sat on Remus’s lap on the sofa and Harry sat on the armchair, reading the story and showing the pictures. Teddy seemed to really like it, and he even climbed up into Harry’s lap so he could see it better. When the book was over Teddy wanted him to read another.

“Do you want to, Harry?” Remus asked.

“Sure, I don’t mind at all.”

“You know, I feel like the worst host to ask this, but would you mind terribly if I went into the kitchen and cleaned a bit while you read?”

Harry chuckled, “That’s more than fine. I was half expected you to ask for a nap.”

Remus brought him in a couple of books and then disappeared into the kitchen. A few books later he emerged looking sweaty, but happy.

“Well, now that I have a clean kitchen, what would you say to staying over for dinner?”

“Of course! I need to tell the Weasleys though. Do you have an owl?”

Remus gave him a quill and some parchment and brought the owl in from his bedroom.

“What sounds good for dinner?” Remus asked.

“Can you make curry?” Harry asked.

Remus blinked quickly a few times and then smiled, “Yes actually, I love curry. Would you like to help?”

Harry was very excited to help, so Remus grabbed an armful of vegetables from the pantry and set him to chopping them up before digging around for a good pot to make it in. Teddy “helped” by being given some toy foods and knife. The knife would only slice through the play food, not little fingers, and the foods would become whole again at the wave of a wand.

“Do most wizards chop their own vegetables or use it magic to do it?” Harry asked. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Mrs. Weasley using a knife to cut vegetables.

Remus laughed, “I guess you’ve never seen magical cooking done by anyone but Molly. The answer is that most wizards do it by hand. It’s actually quite a tricky little charm.”

After all the chopping and slicing and julienne-ing was through Harry watched as Remus added little pinches of this and that from his spice rack and various liquids from tins and bottles. It seemed fairly complicated, but Remus was doing it from memory.

“How do you remember what all goes in?” Harry asked.

“I don’t. I just play it by ear. There are a few basic things that need to go in and after that you just add the flavors that are missing until it’s perfect.”

Harry thought back to Mrs. Weasley staring at clippings from Witches Weekly or methodically measuring out ingredients from her memorized recipe repertoire. He began to worry that this playing by ear thing sounded dangerous.

His fears were subdued when took a bite.

“This is delicious! And really spicy,” Harry said. He looked over at Teddy messily eating out of a much smaller bowl, “Is it okay for him to eat something this spicy?”

Remus smiled, “I took some of the kick out of his. One of the joys of magical cooking is that it’s easy to adjust things like that.
 
During dinner Remus told Harry a story about the Marauders the summer before their seventh year. They had eaten at every curry house in London looking for the perfect curry, and much hilarity had ensued.

“Did you ever find your perfect curry?”

“No, so our plan was to open our own restaurant in Diagon Alley and make the perfect one ourselves.”

Harry began thinking of all the fun and terrific and entertaining and fulfilling things that his mother and father and Sirius and Remus and even Peter could have done if it wasn’t for that stupid war. He was suddenly hated Voldemort more deeply than he ever had before.

“Remus, you should do some of those things that you wanted to do when you were young but couldn’t.”

“But Harry, I have. I’m doing one of the things I thought I would never in all my life get to do: be a father.”

They both looked at Teddy, who looked back with a sauce-covered grin. With the glossy black hair he was sporting and that smile Harry thought he looked strikingly like Sirius.

Remus had a strange expression on his face as he ran his fingers through Teddy’s hair, which turned to a pretty lilac shade.

When they finished eating Harry helped Remus clear the table and put away the leftovers. When they were finished Teddy ran to grab his trainers and sat expectantly on the sofa with them.

“Oh, we usually go on a walk after dinner,” Remus said, “If you don’t want to walk with us we can stay in. Or I suppose it is getting late, so you might be thinking of heading home. Whatever you wa...”

Harry cut him off, “I’d love to take a walk with you.”

They all put their shoes and jackets on and headed out the door. Remus took Harry down the commercial street of their neighborhood. There were restaurants full of happy people eating and talking and laughing. There was a grocery store with oranges and lemons and kale in big crates outside. The butcher shop was closed, but in the window there was a curtain of sausages of every imaginable kind. At the end of the road there was a bakery that smelled absolutely divine.

“Would you like a sweet?” Remus asked.

“Yes!” Teddy shouted.

“Well I know you do,” Remus said, “My treat, Harry.”

They went inside the little bakery. The woman at the front counter smiled, “Hello, Remus, nice to see you again. We still have a loaf of honey sesame bread left.”

Remus’s eyebrows shot up, “Oh yes, I’ll take it please. Thanks!” he turned to Harry, “You’ll have to have a piece of this bread. It’s sliced bliss, I swear. But you should also try a lemon bar. Or a macaroon. Or an éclair. Or a petit four. Oh, they’re all good.”

The clerk laughed, “You’re leaving out the strawberry cake with chocolate ganache that there’s only two slices of left.” Harry and Remus looked over to where the cakes were but saw nothing fitting that description. “I took the liberty and went ahead and plated them for you,” she said.

So they left the bakery with a loaf of bread, two slices of cake, and, for Teddy, a macaroon.

“It may not be as flashy in there as a wizard bakery, but those Muggles know how to cook,” Remus said.

Just as they finished their treats and were turning onto the street Remus lived on they heard thunder rumbling loudly and noticed that the sky was dark with clouds and there was lightning in the distance. Remus picked Teddy up and he and Harry ran back to the flat, only getting hit by a few drops. By the time the door was unlocked the rain was pouring down like a waterfall.

When they arrived the owl was waiting for them with a note. It was from Mrs. Weasley.

Harry,

Please be careful when you fly back. It’s supposed to rain this evening.

Love,
Molly

Harry laughed, “That would have been nice to know a couple of ours ago. This isn’t going to be any fun to fly back in.

“It wouldn’t be, but do you really think I’m going to make you? I would offer to Apparate you, but I’m not allowed to Apparate after sundown.” Harry almost asked why, but he was pretty sure he knew the answer. “Why don’t you stay here tonight?”

“Oh, I don’t want to wear out my welcome. I’ll just wait until the rain has lightened up a bit.”

“Harry, when I told you that you’re always welcome in my home, I wasn’t exaggerating. It’s really not a bother. You can sleep in my bed and I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

Harry eventually gave in, and he sent another note to the Weasleys informing them of his plan. The owl was not happy to go out into the rain, but it left after just a few punishing nips at Remus.

They had a pleasant evening together in the living room. Remus lit the fireplace, and Harry and Teddy played with some toys in front of it. Harry might have been more amused by them than Teddy was. He’d never really had toys when he was a child, let alone toys like these! He made a mental note to go into the toy store on Diagon Alley on his next visit.

Remus sat on the sofa and knitted and told Harry some stories about his time at Hogwarts. Harry told him stories about his own school days and about his year on the run and about life with the Dursleys.

Teddy got sleepy around 9, so Remus put him to bed and left a music box playing for him. Harry suggested a game of wizarding chess, so they played on ancient set that Remus owned. Neither of them was particularly good, but they enjoyed it. They played Exploding Snap for a while, and then Remus taught Harry some Muggle card games. They stayed up drinking tea and playing and talking and laughing until their eyelids began to get heavy.

Remus found a clean pair of pajamas and an unused toothbrush for Harry and directed him to the bathroom. When Harry returned, Remus had put on pajamas and changed the sheets and was digging in his wardrobe for a blanket.

“Sleep well, Harry,” he said, “I’ll make you some breakfast in the morning.”

“Good night, Remus,” Harry said.

Harry stretched and turned down the covers. The sheets were soft and warm and he felt instantly comfortable. Harry wondered if they were charmed.

As he lay in the strange and comfortable bed he thought about the things he had talked about with Remus that day. He thought about Ron and Hermione getting married and moving into their own place. Would he still be welcome to live at the Burrow after Ron had moved out? Oh, he was too sleepy to think about such serious things. The last thing he thought before he falling asleep was how strange it was that Remus had a photograph of Sirius by his bed but none of Tonks.