Chapter Sixty Nine: Departure

31 January, 1983

Anastasia has locked herself in her room.

The situation at the Bailey household was rather tense and awkward, with Elizabeth, puffy eyed, trying her best to help the wizards and Remus as much as possible as they prepared to set off into the unknown. She checked their bags again and again, making sure they had packed everything, and have taken all the food she had prepared for them. Robbie thanked her profusely, although he seemed pretty distracted, looking up at the stairs every now and then, as though expecting Anastasia to come out any moment. Sirius gave her a brief hug, and Remus smiled and thanked her for letting him stay and taking care of him. They were ready to depart.

But Robbie lingered.

Sirius could see he was reluctant to leave yet, without saying goodbye to Anastasia. He checked and rechecked his bags for no reason, and finally asked Elizabeth to see if her sister was going to come out at all. With a defeated sigh, she headed upstairs.

"You can visit her later, you know?" said Remus softly, clapping him lightly on the shoulder.

He shook his head morosely. "I don't know. I'll be in hiding, Merlin knows where. And it will be too dangerous to come back."

He kept rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, glancing up the stairs every few seconds. The tension radiating off him was pronounced, almost palpable. Sirius felt sorry for him. He knew why he was acting like this. In times of war, you never know which moment with a loved one might be your last.

Elizabeth came down a few minutes later. Alone. Robbie's face fell as he saw her descending the stairs with a miserable, pitiful look on her face. Without another word, he gave her a swift hug and followed Sirius and Remus out of the house.

The biting air whipped at them the moment they stepped out of the threshold. Each of them had their respective backpack/rucksack on their shoulders; the bags of food have been shrunk with a spell and stowed inside their backpacks. They pulled their cloaks tightly around themselves, and set off southwards.

Sirius glanced sideways at Remus. His hair was longer than usual, brushing his shoulders, and was straw brown colour. More hair of the same shade covered the lower half of his face. He would hardly be recognisable to anyone who didn't know him.

Sirius suppressed a smile; he looked highly ridiculous in his new look.

Sirius had felt that disguising themselves was unnecessary, for they wouldn't have to walk long before disapparating to their destination. But upon Elizabeth's insistence, they had resorted to alter their appearance slightly, not enough to make them completely different, but enough to keep any death eater happening to pass by from glancing suspiciously at them. Sirius was sporting a toothbrush mustache, which made him feel oddly conscious about himself, and Robbie had turned his hair a bright ginger.

They walked silently for a few miles, before Robbie broke the silence.

"I hate leaving like this," he muttered. Both Remus and Sirius glanced at him. "The last time I saw my wife, we were fighting. She had been growing more and more irritated by me because I was going crazy about the war, I hardly spoke to them the little time I was home. My son, he was - he was scared of me. He had witnessed me yelling at his mother once, and he never voluntarily came to me after that day. The night they - the night death eaters attacked them, I had left home after a blazing row with my wife and had stormed off. Two hours later, I got news of an attack. Two deaths. A woman and her son. I was blind with fear, praying that please let it not be them, please let it not be them. Looking back, I still shudder at how I was praying for the death of another seven year old kid."

Sirius shivered under his cloak. Remus noticed it perhaps, for he stepped closer to him and linked their arms together. He rested his head on his shoulder as he let Robbie's low whispers wash over him.

"I hated myself afterwards. So much. It was loathing I had never felt before. Many a night I had pointed my wand at my chest, begging myself to utter the words that would instantly cause my death. But a part of me convinced myself that that would be too quick and easy. I didn't deserve that. I deserved pain. I tried the Cruciatus curse." He shook his head miserably. "It didn't work. Maybe I didn't mean it, maybe I didn't hate myself enough to inflict such pain upon me."

He stopped talking. They had reached the bottom of the hill from which they would be parting ways. Robbie, hands stuffed in his pockets, stared off into the distance. There was an awkward pause.

"Well, I'll be off then," he said, holding out a hand casually. Sirius shook it, and then Remus. "Sorry for the little rant there. It just … came out. But as I was saying, I didn't want to leave Anastasia like that. Goodness knows when I'll meet her, if I'll ever meet her."

"You will meet her, Robbie," said Remus firmly. Sirius looked at him in surprise.

Robbie smiled. He didn't seem like he had believed him. "Well, goodbye."

With that, he turned on the spot and disappeared with a sharp crack.

Sirius stared at the spot where he had disappeared for a minute. His hand was still in Remus's; he didn't want to let go. He looked up at him and involuntarily let out a bark of laughter. In answer to Remus's questioning look, he said, "I'm sorry, but you look absolutely ridiculous."

He pulled out his wand and pointed it at his head, muttering a spell that would remove the disguise. Then he did the same to himself.

"Why did you say that?" he asked all of a sudden.

"Say what?" asked Remus, rubbing his chin which was hairy just a moment ago.

"You will meet her. You sounded so confident."

Remus smiled a little. "When my mum fell sick, Dad used to say such things to me everyday. She will get better. Don't worry. Things will go back to normal. She will be able to play games with you once again. I seldom believed him; I knew there was no way she would recover. But those words really helped me get through the days. I knew there was no hope, but a small, unconscious part of me held on to those words, and soon I was able to go back to my normal ways, and it made Mum really happy, seeing me not holed up in my room all day."

Sirius didn't say anything. He watched Remus as he gazed up at the grey sky, clouds fleeting across the vast emptiness. He wanted to stay here forever, forget about the war and start a new life. But when Remus looked down at him and smiled, the fantasies vanished. He remembered what they were here to do, and wrenched himself away from his grip.

"Well, let's go then."

"Where are we going?" asked Remus.

"You'll see," Sirius said mysteriously. "We're disapparating, so hold on to your guts; don't puke."

Remus scowled. "You know -"

But before he could finish, Sirius had wrapped his arms around him and performed the magic. The surroundings immediately vanished around them, he could vaguely see the terrified and shocked look on Remus's face, before, within a second, they appeared in completely different surroundings. There was no hill, but around them stretched miles and miles of barren land covered with several inches of snow.

Remus dropped to his knees, retching. Cursing under his breath, Sirius kneeled down beside him, rubbing his back awkwardly, not really knowing what should be done when someone is about to vomit. But Remus didn't vomit after all; he retched a few times and fell back on the ground, breathing heavily.

"I did warn you," Sirius said innocently, to which Remus shot him a nasty look.

"Warning wouldn't really work to stop me puking."

"Sorry," Sirius said sheepishly. "Aguamenti."

A narrow jet of water shot out of the tip of his wand, which he held in front of Remus's mouth, allowing him to drink. When he was done, he sat back, looking around.

"Nathan and Marlene live somewhere over here," he finally answered Remus's question. "We can't see their house right now, but it should appear in five minutes."

Remus frowned at him, evidently confused. "They're living in an invisible house?"

"Sort of."

He didn't elaborate further, and Remus didn't question.

Sirius's stomach lurched every time he thought of where they would be going. He hadn't felt this nervous about the future when he had left home at the age of fifteen, nor when he had abandoned everything behind after the death of his friends. He had left everything to chance, allowing the universe to care for him. And the universe had, hadn't it? James's parents had taken him in, and by chance he had arrived at the shelter where Remus worked.

He hardly ever worried about himself.

Now, the situation was different. He wasn't alone. He had someone else to look after. Any decision he made would directly or indirectly affect him. He couldn't rush into situations without thinking first. He couldn't risk it anymore.

He sighed and buried his face into his hands. There was a shuffling sound beside him; Remus had moved closer to him. He wanted to look up into his eyes and ask for comfort, ask for the same false hopes that he had given Robbie, the same ones his father used to give him. But he couldn't look, he couldn't face him. He was dragging Remus into a terribly uncertain and dangerous future, and if anything happened to Remus, he would never forgive himself.

A soft whirring sound brought him back to his senses, and they both looked up, whipping their heads around to find the source of the noise. And there, about ten feet to their left, the air began to shimmer. Colours erupted in midair, moving in circles and twists, before they aligned and began to form a solid object.

About a minute later, the solid object was fully formed, and Sirius grinned broadly at the look of pure astonishment on Remus's face. It was a house. Wooden and rickety, not a big one. It was obvious that it was held upright by magic, and had he not known this little fact, he would've been scared that the little house would collapse at any moment, given the ferocity of the wind around them.

The door opened, and out came a wizard and a witch, both blond, both wearing shabby robes, and both with the same long nose. Their wands were held aloft.

"What business do you have here?" demanded Nathan, although he was grinning.

Sirius got to his feet, pulling a still very astonished Remus up with him. "That's very careless of you, Nathan," he said playfully. "Materialising like that without ensuring that it's really us. I could kill you right now, you know?"

Marlene exchanged a glance with her brother, before turning to Sirius. "You can try."

Sirius held up his hands. "I'd rather not. I'm Sirius Black and this here is Remus Lupin, a muggle I'm in love with." He heard a sharp intake of breath beside him but he ignored it. "In sixth year, I had the sudden urge to get a tattoo, but stupid as I am, I tried to get it done myself and … uhm … it wasn't a good idea."

Marlene too, was grinning now. "Why wasn't it a good idea?"

He sighed. "I mixed up a few spells, and for the next few weeks, my skin sang terribly embarrassing songs whenever I was feeling sad."

Marlene smirked and raised her wand. A spark of light erupted from the tip of her wand, shot towards them but was blocked midway as though by an invisible barrier. Moments later, the outline of a door materialised in thin air. The door opened.

Sirius glanced at Remus and took his arm. "Shall we proceed?" He was extremely pleased to see the deep crimson on his face - Remus had definitely been taken aback by his sudden declaration of love - and he grinned broadly as the colour deepened even more after he placed a deliberately sloppy kiss on his cheek.

❇

i got the routine for my exam so i panicked and wrote another chapter