2/6

P.s. Although you didn't ask, Moony is doing quite well. I'm going to see him this afternoon and will give him your best wishes.'

He smiled before penning the envelope and sealing it with his crest. He placed it on the tables and slowly slid it towards Hedwig, who lashed out with her beak when his hand came too close. He snatched his fingers back in time and chuckled at the fickle bird.

"Go on, back to Harry." He smiled, opening the window back up. "You know, if you were nicer to me, I might tell Kreacher to prepare some nice mice for you to eat."

Hedwig hooted at him before flying out, ignoring his offer, apparently.

Sirius was looking forward to seeing Harry again, of course, but he would have to keep his visit brief to keep the Ministry from complaining about undocumented contact. This way, he could still claim it was nothing more than a consequence.

More than the restricted and crowded visit he would get on Wednesday, he could not wait for his chance to take Harry school supply shopping at the end of the month.

He was supposed to be taking Gaara too…

Before he could be tempted into drinking those thoughts away, or perhaps raiding his potions cabinet for something more entertaining or numbing, he got dressed and headed over to St Mungo's to see and talk to Remus. It occurred to him, as he was locking the door behind him, that Gaara might have wanted to come and check on Remus, but Sirius quashed that thought, as he did with everything regarding Gaara at the moment, and continued onwards.

The door was heavily bolted when he arrived at Remus' room, which he resented. Clearly Care of Magical Creatures had managed to misinform an entire generation about the affliction of lycanthropy, particularly regarding the days and nights other than the night of the full moon and the danger a sufferer posed then. Rubeus could do a lot of good if only he were allowed to teach about werewolves, although apparently that was now the job of the Defence Against the Dark Arts curriculum. Dark "creatures" that needed to be fought and perhaps killed did not need "care."

Ridiculous.

He looked down on Remus, sat up in bed with a novel in his lap.

"Grandma, what an awfully big nose you have." Sirius smiled.

Remus sighed. He had heard all of the fairy tale jokes a hundred times by now, especially ones about Little Red Riding Hood. Sirius needed new material.

Sirius pulled out his little silver device and checked for bugs again and then came forward and flopped into the bedside chair.

"How are you doing?" Remus asked, trying to hide his disappointment that Sirius hadn't brought him any grapes.

"I think I'm supposed to ask you that." Sirius smirked, groaning. He needed to stop sleeping in his armchair. Did horrors to his suddenly thirty-year-old neck. "I'm fine." He lied. "How are you? They're feeding you, right?"

"Yes, they've been bringing my meals around like clockwork." Remus lied back. "I still feel like you look, but I'll be fine. At least I will be well enough to change tomorrow."

"Good. Harry sends his love. Still calls you Professor Lupin, you know." Sirius laughed.

"He'll get over it soon enough. In two weeks he'll have a new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor."

"Hopefully one that doesn't skive off work so often." Sirius smirked.

"I thought Gaara might come with you today. Did he not want to come?"

Sirius frowned. "Maybe… he probably didn't want to."

"You didn't ask him."

"He's been holed up in his room. I've been sending his food up to him."

"So you haven't talked to him?" Remus sounded alarmed.

"He's probably fine. I haven't been… I can't just talk to him like he didn't say anything yesterday. You heard what he said. He killed children. I can't just ignore that!" Sirius clutched his head.

"He is a child, Sirius. He needs help. He needs us to support him."

"You heard how he spoke. I care about Gaara, you know I do. I still worry about him, but the way he talked yesterday… it's too much. His burden, that demon or whatever, it's too dangerous. I don't know what to do. I'm just trying not to make him worse, you know?"

Remus coughed and then beckoned Sirius closer to his bed.

Sirius leaned in close to his ill friend, trying to make out what Remus was about to say to him. Remus turned to his best friend and punched him as hard as he could in the face, sending him sprawling onto the floor.

Sirius clutched his cheek, looking up at Remus, who was breathing hard from the minor exertion and clutching his jostled injury.

"You're being an idiot, Sirius. What's worse is that you know it, too. He's a boy that needs guidance; you can't just hide from him and get drunk like you're a teenager as well."

"I know that, but can you honestly say you would have done it any differently, Remus? What he told us he did, and what he is…"

Remus paused. "I'm ashamed to admit this, but to be honest, I was a little comforted by it. Don't tell Gaara this, but hearing that he possessed a monster inside of him too struck a chord. As far as I know, I've never killed or turned a human as Moony, but there are a few full moons I don't remember when I might well have. There's nothing I can do about those, but I know the feeling of housing something that might kill people."

"But he remembers it all, Remus!"

"I know that, and that's why he needs your help. I'd probably be a vegetarian if I remembered half the animals I had caught as a wolf. But I don't remember, and I only killed animals, and I had my mother and my father and then my friends at school to help me. Gaara remembers every person he's killed, and as he describes it, it sounds like his father not only failed to help but gave him the curse in the first place. You can't turn your back on him now, Sirius."

"I know that, but I don't know how to help him!" Sirius confessed. "He's a child, just like Harry, but he acts like a veteran half the time. Reminds me of Alastor, actually."

"That's because he is a veteran. He's fought in wars and killed."

"But he said he killed civilians, people who weren't fighters. I don't blame him, of course I don't, but how can I help him with that. I can't even imagine what goes on in his head and I'm supposed to be the one to make it alright for him, right?" Sirius looked closer to tears than Remus had seen him since his escape.

"Just continue to look after him like you have. Show him how a teenager is supposed to act. You're practically a teenager yourself, you're perfect for the job. His world was full of demons and warriors and war, but here he can just be a boy."

Sirius finally got back off of the floor and settled into the chair again.

"Are you saying I should just ignore his past and pretend he is just another normal teenage boy?"

"Do you really think that would work?" Remus smiled, "Gaara isn't a normal boy. He's not. There's no getting around that fact, Sirius. You can't treat him like a boy who was raised in a normal home. Treat Gaara like Gaara, like a boy who has seen and done things even you or I haven't seen."

"And the demon?" Sirius asked.

Remus sighed, "The same way you treated me. Treat him like you otherwise would and just be careful of when it acts up."

"How come you got to be the wise one?" Sirius griped.

"I had to balance you out." Remus laughed until he coughed. "You're going to need to be more careful than ever around the Ministry. If they found out about Gaara, about his burden and about him being a so-called 'human weapon', they won't stop. It won't be investigations or interviews, they will take him and use him by force. You know that."

"Yeah. I've no doubt. Still, we've managed to go this long without them knowing anything. They'll lose interest in Gaara eventually, even if it takes a few years."

"Only if he stops drawing attention to himself."

"I want to say he can have a quiet year this year, without a convict bothering him every couple of days, but what Harry told me has me concerned."

"What did Harry say?"

"Oh, of course, I haven't told you yet. Sorry, I forgot. With all of that's happened with Gaara, I suppose it's the only reason I could overlook something like this. Harry had a dream the over night, the night before the World Cup finals, and apparently he dreamed he saw You-Know-Who and some of his followers making plans."

"Plans?" Remus sat up in his bed.

"Plans to kidnap Harry and to plant a spy in the Ministry."

"But it was just a dream, just his imagination." The way Remus said it made it sound like a question to Sirius' ears.

"I'm not sure. Probably. Hopefully. I'm going to contact Dumbledore and let him know. If anybody has any answers, it's him. It was just the way Harry described it, he doesn't believe it was a dream. It probably is nothing but it's hard not to worry. Thought of another war starting, another generation being ruined…"

"I'm sure you're right, it's probably nothing." Remus agreed, neither sounding as convinced as they would like. Even a decade after Voldemort's downfall, he still had the people who battled against him spooked.

Downfall because Dumbledore had always maintained that his dissapearance did not equal death.

The pair took a while to mull over the two topics. Sirius continued, recounting as much detail of the dream as he could remember. They discussed it a little more, but it did not amount to much as they were both still resolute that it had to have been a dream and nothing more.

"What should I say to Gaara?" Sirius asked out of the blue when the conversation lagged.

"Huh?" Remus was caught off guard and had to consider it. "I don't know. You just need to remember that Gaara needs more than a bed or a place to stay, he needs someone to care for him."

Sirius felt unsure he could be that person to Gaara. As much as anything, Gaara needed a father, a family, and Sirius had about as much experience with those two things as Gaara did. Both Harry and Gaara needed help and needed a family and Sirius had grown up with Walburga and Orion and Regulus as his family exemplar.

"Just go and talk to him. I'm sure you'll say something that will piss Gaara off and break the tension in less than a minute." Remus smiled.

Sirius tried to mimic the expression, "Yeah, I'll talk to him."

Sirius went back to Grimmauld Place. As he walked in the door, he took five steps towards the stairs, intent on confronting Gaara and airing the problems before he chickened out and slumped into his chair again. He hoped Remus didn't punch him in the face again because of this.

His staircase seemed so much steeper right now, knowing the problems that were at the top of it. He knew he was supposed to go and confront them, talk to Gaara and help him through what was surely a difficult time, but the more he thought about it, the less he felt like he could.

He sighed, called himself a weakling and picked up his motorbike magazine. He was supposed to be getting it back from Hagrid soon so he had been looking up spare parts since he knew the half-giant would not have properly maintained it these past twelve or thirteen years.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

As Sirius awoke on Sunday morning with yet another hangover, two things occurred to him: that he might be developing that drinking problem he had been worried about, and that he hadn't actually seen Gaara since Friday morning. He would have been forced to investigate, to make sure that Gaara had not run off, but for the occasional stirring, toilet flushes and the reports from Kreacher which gave satisfactory proof that he could continue ignoring the issue.

He spent a couple hours killing time, even resorted to cleaning a little, before returning to St. Mungo's to collect Remus. Like the day before, the door was locked tight and Remus hadn't been brought any breakfast. Not that he would want to eat anything, the state he was in. Sirius hadn't seen Remus this sickly looking in a long time. The lycanthropy and the new curse still raging away inside of his shoulder clashing together to make the man miserable.

"You look like shit, Remus."

"Not all of us can afford the luxury of ivory moustache combs." Remus wheezed, trying to sit up.

"I switched back to the whalebone one, actually. Works better with the beard oils." Sirius smiled, twirling his moustache a little.

"I've already had my temporary discharge form slid under the door so we don't need to be waiting around." Remus continued his aching movements.

Sirius rushed over to him and helped bring him to his unsteady feet.

"In all seriousness, will you be okay tonight?"

"Don't have much choice either way, do I? If I could have a night off every once in a while, I don't imagine this whole 'werewolf' thing would be such a big deal."

Sirius snagged a wheelchair since one wasn't provided, and tried to ignore the blatant looks of fear and derision directed towards Remus as they slowly ambled out of the hospital. Sirius was dillydallying since he knew he would be on the receiving end of some scorn himself when they arrived. As far as Remus knew, everything was going swimmingly back at the house.

Sirius had called for a taxi earlier so it was waiting for them outside. He had foreseen that Remus would be too weak to apparate, and driving through London was a nightmare even on a Sunday, so he loaded Remus into the cab and also folded the wheelchair up and snagged it too.

He dumped Remus into the unpacked, stolen wheelchair and paid the cabby. When he was sure there was nobody watching, he levitated Remus' chair and Remus up the steps since carrying his ill friend did not seem like fun.

As he was opening the door, he turned back to Remus with a strained smile and said, "Oh, before I forget to mention, I didn't quite get around to talking to Gaara yesterday."

Remus' eyes shot wide but he bit his tongue when he noticed Sirius had timed the confession to come as they were near Walburga's portrait. If Remus tried having a go at Sirius now, the portrait would drown it out anyway, and the last thing his headache needed was the addition of that shrill woman's voice screaming on top of it.

Sirius dragged his angry friend to the drawing room and transferred him to a plush chair and poured him a drink. As Remus started up on the guilt-tripping, Sirius began to remember that time after graduation, when three of the Marauders had voted it would be a good idea to get Remus (the fourth and excluded Marauder from said vote) so drunk on the day of the full moon that Moony would still be drunk after transforming. Unforeseeably, it turned out to be a bad idea since drunk werewolves tended to be surly.

Funny in retrospect, but as a result they hadn't gone through with their other plans to have Remus smoke or take certain other substances before transforming.

Sirius shared this reminiscence and Remus scowled and remarked that Sirius had insisted for months after that they continue the experiment over the others' objections.

"Oh, right, now I remember. I still have some stuff that might be fun to try, you know…"

"Stop trying to distract me." Remus refused to laugh at his friend's antics. "Go and get Gaara. Evidently I can't trust you to do this on your own like an adult, so I will supervise."

"Fine." Sirius accurately mimicked a teenager and stomped out of the room.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Gaara had been reading the only book on his fourth year reading list the Black family library contained when he heard a great bellow, "Gaara!" come from downstairs. He was embarrassed to have dropped his book, having flinched so hard at the sudden exclamation of his name after two days of total silence and isolation.

Apparently it was time to face Sirius' wrath and judgement.

He was feeling stiff so walking downstairs for the first time in days was dizzying. He found both Sirius and Remus, who must have been sprung from the hospital for the night, sitting in the lounge, both looking rather grim.

Sirius stood as soon as he entered and as he walked towards him, Gaara guessed Sirius was about to hit him. He had his sand armour on so it would not hurt him.

Sirius walked right up to Gaara, watching him tense up, and pulled him into a hug. He knew Gaara didn't like close bodily contact but occasionally an embrace was the most powerful thing a person could say. Gaara's wide eyes indicated one message or another was coming through loud and clear.

"I'm sorry for being a rubbish guardian the last couple of days, Gaara. I should have come and talked to you but… I'm a coward." All while saying this, he hadn't let go of Gaara, suddenly wondering how long it would take for the tiny redhead to get too uncomfortable and try to escape.

Answer: 15 more seconds.

Noticing the squirming, Sirius wondered what Gaara would do. He had forgotten that Gaara, despite being so much smaller than him, was incredibly strong. Gaara pushed his way out of the awkward hug and stepped back, glaring at him.

"Under a minute to act like an ass. You've outdone yourself." Remus remarked.

"Come and sit down, Gaara." Sirius gestured towards the sofa while he sat back on his chair.

"I should go. If you will release the wards, I will leave. I will not cause anybody anymore trouble."

"What? Leave? Where are you going?" Sirius asked.

"Wards?! Sirius, did you set up wards around the house?" Remus was cross with him.

"No! I just put up a simple barrier on the door. Figured Gaara wouldn't try a window after that." Sirius said.

Gaara felt a little foolish, having fallen for the trick. He looked back the way he had come, intending to leave immediately through a window once he had collected his things.

"You're not going anywhere, Gaara. Well, not until you go to Hogwarts, and then you're coming back for Christmas. There are still some things we need to talk about," Sirius said, "but you're a Marauder now, our friend, and short of betraying us, you're a member for life."

"There's no escaping it, I assure you. I tried once or twice in the early days." Remus pretended to bemoan.

Gaara's breath hitched, despite no tears forming in his eyes, and simply nodded his head, unsure what words he could say to respond to this display of trust.

"Tonight, why don't you join us, Gaara? This might be your last change under a full moon. About time you experienced a Marauder full moon, right, Padfoot?"

"Right you are, Moony, my good man!" Sirius cheered. "So, it's decided, we'll all go to the woods tonight."

"Decided?" Gaara questioned, unable to keep up with the conversation.

"I think it's about lunchtime. Any chance you can eat anything without chundering it right back up?" Sirius asked crudely.

"Something dry, I would ask." Remus politely responded.

"Kreacher!" Sirius called.

The house elf appeared and looked very upset to be in the company of Gaara again. "Yes, Master." He simpered.

"Bring us some lunch. Something dry and easy for Remus, and something big for Gaara and I."

Kreacher bowed and disappeared.

"So, now that the hard part's out of the way, we can move onto more interesting subjects." Remus said cheerily.

"Tell us more about your brother and your sister." Sirius said.

"Temari and Kankuro?" Gaara had expected them to want to know about any number of things from his home world, like the nature of the demons, his past, the history of his world's conflicts, the political structure of his village, anything but his siblings.

"Yeah. You said they were kind to you, I want to know more about them."

Gaara mulled this over. How best to describe his brother and sister? "Kankuro wears makeup and dresses as a cat, and Temari is quite angry and tries to tell me what to do."

"Wait, I thought Kankuro was your brother?" Sirius said, worrying that he had forgotten which was which already.

"He is, but he wears war paint."

"And the cat thing?"

"A stage costume, in black. He's a puppeteer and it helps him hide."

"Hold on, so your brother is a puppeteer rather than a warrior like you?" Remus added.

"No, he is a warrior but he uses a life-sized puppet to fight. It is a specialty of my village."

"So, you use sand and he uses puppets to fight." Remus said, trying to imagine such a thing. "Dare I ask what your sister uses?"

"A large fan to produce wind." Gaara stated.

"What about at home, though? Surely you all must get some time off every now and then. What do you like doing?"

"Temari likes flowers and training. Kankuro likes his puppets. He talks to them sometimes." Gaara would be the first to admit he did not spend very much time with his siblings outside of training or missions. "We sometimes eat together."

Sirius and Remus smiled at that.

"You've mentioned that you had a friend that helped you, who was he?" Sirius asked.

"He is like you," Gaara said, nodding to Sirius, "and like Fred Weasley and George Weasley. Energetic and annoying, and liked to play pranks."

Remus had always thought Gaara and Sirius' acquaintance was the result of pure chance but it seemed that Gaara was drawn to annoying pranksters.

Never the most loquacious member of their group, Gaara failed to keep the conversation moving so it fell to Sirius once again to talk like a radio host. It was peculiar for Gaara, going from pariah and soon-to-be-exiled, to being right back in the middle of one of Sirius' stories about an ill-conceived practical joke or attempts to woo some lost love.

Gaara lost some interest in the latter type of stories and his eyes started to wander. As they had a number of times before, they landed on the Black family tree, filled with a millennium of Blacks all over the walls. It was a remarkable history, albeit futile apparently. There was only one Black left now, that Gaara had found, and he had been blasted off of the tree.

"I counted all of the disowned ones once." Sirius said out of the blue. "About fifteen, including yours truly. Although, I'd wager I am the only one to ever take up as head of the family afterwards." He smiled. It was a point of great satisfaction that Sirius was in charge of the nearly extinct family while actively supporting every cause his parents and ancestors reviled.

"You always said you were going to try and track down some of the disinherited and illegitimate lines one day." Remus said.

"Never got around to it." Sirius admitted. "I suppose I could do that now. I suspected, when I was younger, that my father hired somebody to go and kill the branches. Fanatical man."

"And did he?" Remus asked.

"Probably not. Blacks stopped having bastards years ago. Fertility rates and all that. A blessing for a bona fide lothario like me."

Gaara was unsure with what Sirius just said. Not just about the fertility rates, which did not seem like something that was supposed to be celebrated, but also about Sirius' boasted playboy persona. As far as Gaara had seen since he had taken up residence with the man, Sirius had not attempted much less succeeded in finding a woman to copulate with. Gaara suspected this was another side effect of his imprisonment and long-term exposure to the dementors in Azkaban.

It was probably for the best, judging by the misadventures pursuing females Sirius like to relay.

"I was surprised that your mother never formally disinherited you." Remus added.

"Oh, she tried. If I weren't the last Black left, I wouldn't have seen a penny from her. After Regulus got himself killed following You-Know-Who, no matter what that banshee wanted, the estate was to pass on to me. Old pureblood law." He snorted into his drink.

Gaara had never been able to find out much about Regulus, as he was a sensitive subject for Sirius even now. One thing Sirius had said, though, a while back, was that he had always been disappointed in his brother's choice to follow Voldemort. "I thought at one time that Regulus might even make it into Gryffindor like I did. My parents would have thrown themselves off a bridge if he had. Two Gryffindor sons. Regulus was a nice enough lad, when we were young, but he wanted to please our parents too much. It would have been perfect, though. You see, Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation Leo, the lion. Instead he was just another in a very long line of Black Slytherins, who followed a Dark Lord and got himself killed doing something evil."

Gaara never saw fit to ask any more after that disclosure.

The three of them talked for hours longer. Sirius bemoaning his parents, Remus complaining about a new ache or pain, and describing one of the many jobs he had failed to hold down in the twelve years he had been on his own, and occasionally after prompting Gaara had piped up, divulging some small fact about his family or friend or some observation of his home.

At one point, Gaara admitted he had been disinherited by his father as a final parting shot. Kankuro and Temari had simply re-divided what Rasa had left them to include Gaara.

Sirius had tried to propose a toast to disappointing or hated sons but Gaara knew it was just a ruse to get him to drink alcohol.