Contrariwise, Part 2
Over the next few days, everyone in the house tried, and failed, to get used to the new Sirius. His cheerfulness was unrelenting, his uninvited advice and critical commentary were virtually intolerable, his recently acquired habit of gasping in terror if he saw a spider made everyone feel like weeping, and his new penchant for spouting "inspiring" aphorisms at the slightest provocation drove everyone mad. In Sirius' new unremittingly optimistic world view, he had embarked on a quest to win them all over, no matter how much opposition he encountered nor how long it might take.
They all took to skulking through the hallways and sneaking about the house as quietly as possible, trying to avoid Sirius and his endless determination to make them see how much better and more likable he now was. No one spoke above a whisper, or stayed in any one place long, or laughed or smiled at all. Number 12 Grimmauld had become like a plague-house, a home stricken by the gravest tragedy, far gloomier and more forbidding than it had ever seemed before.
Harry refused to come out of his bedroom at all, and Buckbeak would not touch any of the ferrets and other plump, juicy rodents Fred and George would bring to try to tempt him. Crookshanks stopped hunting beetles entirely, and Kreacher would not come out of his hiding place under the boiler. Hermione had owled Dumbledore for advice, but he had seemed unavailable for comment, at least so far. Remus appeared to be fading away into a pale, unremarkable shadow of his former self, so nondescript it sometimes seemed difficult to see him at all, and he took to spending hours at a time staring at his shoes.
Molly Weasley blamed herself completely for the entire disaster, and though she had genuinely not meant any harm or anything more malicious than a new recipe for dinner, she was tortured by vivid memories of every critical thing she had ever said about Sirius and every uncharitable thought she'd ever had concerning him. She took it upon herself to continue to feed the household, but since she could no longer bear to enter the kitchen or even think about cooking, the Order soon found itself dining on fish and chips and take-away curries every night. Meals were now being served, haphazard buffet style, in the drawing room, since, like Molly, no one seemed to much enjoy being in the kitchen anymore.
One evening, Molly was returning to the house at dinnertime with a large bag of American-style hamburgers, and found that she was able to open the front door and walk right in after all her knocking went unanswered. In the general malaise that had gripped the household, even the most basic security measures had gone lax; the House itself seemed depressed. It was the third time this week that the door had been left unlocked and unwarded. Even the portrait of Mrs. Black had stopped responding to noises in the hallway, since its subject, Walburga, had taken to leaving her frame empty while she attempted to avoid her son and his incessant attempts to engage her in therapeutic encounters.
So Molly was really quite surprised, on this night, to hear a very low pssst sound issuing from the portrait as she passed.
"I beg your pardon?" Molly said to the drapes that covered the portrait, feeling silly.
The curtains slid open, very quietly, and Walburga Black appeared, peering around past the edges of her frame before she went on.
"You," she whispered. "Blood traitor. I wish to speak to you."
Molly stiffened. "But I'm not at all certain that I wish to speak to you," she replied, a bit hotly.
"Shhhh!" hissed Walburga, craning her neck to look past her frame once more. "He'll hear you, you awful woman. You sound like a fishwife. Keep your voice down."
"And I'm quite certain," Molly went on, not lowering her voice by a jot, "that I do not care to stand about in this hallway being insulted by a few daubs of badly executed paint!"
"Idiot woman! This is important! And I am not in any way badly executed! I expect the subtlety of my color scheme and ideal spatial relations simply don't register in your woefully uneducated aesthetic."
"Nonsense! Your brushwork is so bad it's childish and you're out of drawing in three different places. Plus you're an unpleasant, mad old cow with the filthiest house I've ever had the misfortune to encounter. I'm surprised you have the nerve to show your face around here, frankly. Surely you know that bats are roosting in your parlor chimney and the entire place is infested with insects?"
"Unlike you," Mrs. Black sneered. "I am somewhat above rooting about in the rubbish bins with the house-elves and concerning myself with vulgar housekeeping issues."
"Clearly," Molly sneered back and turned away from the portrait. "Good day … Walburga."
The portrait seethed for a moment as Molly started to walk away, because, in life, Mrs. Black had always detested being called by her somewhat less-than-mellifluous given name and everyone knew it. Then she called out to Molly.
"Oh, drat it all, wait - just wait a bit, can't you?" she cried softly. "I need to talk to you about something important, I tell you. Important to us all. It's about my … son."
Molly turned around and came a few steps closer to the portrait. "About Sirius? What about him?"
The portrait of Mrs. Black appeared to wince a bit at the mention of her oldest son's name, but she closed her eyes for a moment and went on. "I understand -" she said. "I understand that you all think my son's… unfortunate… recent personality changes are the result of a dose of Contrariwise?"
"I'm afraid there's no doubt of that," Molly answered, unhappily. "Snape and Lupin determined the cause precisely. Sirius has been dosed. I apparently brewed the filthy stuff myself, inadvertently. I was … I was just making a pot of borscht - in your disgusting kitchen, incidentally."
"'Borscht'? What an awful word. What is 'borscht'?" Mrs. Black asked.
"Oh, do shut up," Molly replied with some weariness. "Get to the point, won't you?"
"Very well," Walburga went on. "I also understand that you are all under the mistaken impression that Contrariwise has no antidote?"
Molly blinked, and stared at the portrait, hard.
"What do you mean - 'mistaken impression'?" she asked slowly.
"Just as I say - mistaken. You are a married woman, like me. I shall speak to you frankly, and I know you'll take my meaning. In our youth, my late husband, Orion, was a particularly lustful creature. He expected me to fulfill my…wifely duties… incessantly, as it were. His libido was insatiable. After the birth of our first son, I determined that I was under no further obligation to tolerate his continual vile pawing and prying at my person. It was both undignified and inconvenient for me, to say the least. Men are such beasts."
Molly raised her shoulders stiffly. "It's true enough that we're both married women, dearie," she said. "But I guarantee, I am nothing like you. I quite like men, and my Arthur is the best of them all."
"Just the sort of mindlessly lascivious attitude I might expect from the mother of seven," Walburga replied, equally stiffly. "I myself preferred, however, that my life should amount to a bit more than an endless round of rutting and indiscriminate breeding."
"Yes, yes, yes," Molly said. "You don't like sex. Understood. Orion was rubbish in the kip. Whatever. Do you actually have a point here, or is this just more of your everlasting loony raving?"
"Yes, I do have a point, and despite your nauseating vulgarity and offensive manner, I am not deterred. When I'd had enough of Orion pestering me all the damn time I decided to do something about it. I brewed a draught of Contrariwise to reverse his … natural inclinations."
Molly gasped. "You? Brewed Contrariwise? On purpose?"
"Indeed I did. All those absurd myths about its notorious effects on the brewer are just so much simple-minded rubbish. I'm the living proof."
"Hmm…" Molly murmured, gazing thoughtfully at Walburga in her picture frame. "That would… certainly explain a lot."
"Nonsense. Silly superstition. I am not and was not weak minded enough to put any stock in all the scare-stories. I brewed the potion, put it in my husband's morning celery tonic, and the results exceeded even my expectations. He went from insatiable satyr to virtual eunuch overnight. Other than his sudden development of an unforeseen obsession with locks, obscuring spells and household security, he was perfect. The potion was a complete success."
"But not completely complete," Molly said, counting on her fingers. "If I recall correctly, you had a second son two or three years later."
The portrait appeared to acquire a very faint blush for a moment. It looked particularly hideous with her normally sallow skin tones. "Oh, well, my mother Irma had suggested to me that having only one male heir and no spare to fall back on in case of emergency was not a sound dynastic policy. And my son… and Sirius… even as a toddler, he was already showing early signs of having the unmanageable temperament that would eventually make him the abominable, unspeakable, ghastly, vile, loathsome -"
Molly interrupted her. "You do realize that you're drooling, don't you, Walburga?"
Mrs. Black made a face and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "In any case," she continued. "I became convinced that Orion and I must produce a second son. And that’s where what I have to tell you becomes pertinent to the current position."
"How's that?" Molly asked.
"The Contrariwise Potion, I told you, worked perfectly. My husband had no further physical interest in me whatsoever. In truth, he appeared to have as little sexual desire toward anything as a nine-years-dead Inferi, if not less. Though this was, in my opinion, far more conducive to a happy marriage than his previous state, it did put the question of further procreation in some doubt. In short, if I wanted another heir, I must invent an antidote to the potion."
"You're joking!" Molly insisted, thunderstruck. "It's impossible! I absolutely refuse to believe that a mad old bitch like you not only brewed the fourth batch of Contrariwise in five hundred years, but that you also even invented an antidote to the most infamous potion in history! And all because - because what? Because you didn't feel like sleeping with your husband?"
"You wouldn't be so incredulous if you'd ever slept with him, believe me. Be that as it may, every word I've said is true. I know how to brew the one and only antidote to Contrariwise there has ever been, and now I'll show you how to brew it."
"But - but - how do we know your antidote even works?" Molly said, still struggling to take in all that Mrs. Black had just told her.
"This is what comes of disorganized breeding practices," Walburga sniffed. "Congenital idiocy. You'd know perfectly well that my antidote worked if you'd ever taken the time to look at our family tapestry. Regulus was born less than twelve months after I'd given his father the antidote! Heaven help me if he'd been a girl!"
Molly shrugged. "That's assuming, of course, that Orion was the father…"
Walburga went white and drew herself up in her canvas. "You atrocious slattern! How dare you!"
Molly smiled sweetly. "Oh, that's right, I forgot. You don't like sex. So sorry."
The two women glared at one another momentarily, neither willing to back down an inch. In time, they both had to relax a bit, however, if their conversation was ever to yield any productive result.
Finally, Walburga sighed. "This is pointless," she said. "Do you want the antidote or not?"
Molly sighed too. "How can I ever trust you? Why would tell me all this?"
"I chose you, Molly Weasley, because, though you are a blood-traitor of the first order and not fit even to scour the toilets in the house of my fathers, in some ways, we are not totally dissimilar. We are both mothers. We are both wives. I too once stood where you stand now, and made this house a home. In the end, in view of the rest of the band of mutants and mudbloods and lowlife scum currently infesting this place, I find that you are really the only one I can trust to get it right."
"Now I know you're mad," Molly objected. "Don’t you realize this is all my fault? I brewed the stupid Contrariwise in the first place!"
"Just so," replied Walburga. "Given that, the antidote should be a snap for you. It's a much simpler formula."
Molly grimaced at this startling new variety of logic, but didn't argue the point. "Besides," she said. "I didn't actually mean why would you tell me. I meant why would you ever want to put Sirius back the way he was?"
Walburga grimaced herself. "When my son was the same old shame of my flesh I was accustomed to loathing, he was just barely tolerable. But, now…" She broke off and shuddered, and it took her a moment to gain the composure to go on. "But, now - he's - simply impossible to tolerate at all. Something must be done."
Molly realized that any further debate was moot. Even if she had to trust Walburga Black, even if she had to risk whatever effects brewing such a potion might have on her, she must do it. Though it had come from the most unexpected of quarters, she was being offered a chance beyond hope to set things right. And she knew she was more than willing to take any risk or make any allegiance or do anything at all, really, to seize that chance.
"All right," Molly said to the portrait. "I'll brew your antidote. When do we start?"
"I'll meet you in the kitchen at midnight tonight. Look for me in that small painting of Blinky the house-elf over the stove."
So, on the stroke of midnight, Molly Weasley and Walburga Black met in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place and began to brew the antidote to Contrariwise that they both hoped would restore Sirius to his natural state. Walburga squeezed into the small portrait of Blinky the House-elf, the most accomplished baker the House of Black had ever seen, and Molly set a fresh cauldron on the hob in the kitchen fireplace. Blinky did allow her former Mistress to shoulder her aside to make enough room in her small, plain frame, but she could not refrain from peeking at the proceedings from the lower left-hand corner of the picture, and occasionally offering baking suggestions as the potion took shape.
Just as Walburga had promised, the antidote was a much simpler potion to brew than Contrariwise itself. The number of ingredients needed was far less, for one thing, and one of the chief constituents, oddly enough, was the popular Muggle indigestion remedy, spearmint-flavored Rennie tablets. Molly was forced to spirit a twelve-pack tube out of Hermione's cosmetics case. Other than that, the assembling of the ingredients and the brewing went fairly smoothly, and Molly's fears of being driven as mad as Walburga by the attempt to brew the antidote did not materialize. Apparently, brewing Contrariwise was one thing, but brewing its solution was quite another matter.
All told, it only took them about six or seven hours to complete their potion, and they were able to decant a draught of the variegated liquid into a glass pickle jar just as the sun was rising outside.
"Is this it?" Molly asked Walburga, glancing into the frame above the stove and holding up the jar. "Is it supposed to be all different colors like this?"
"Well, I is still thinking leaving out the almond extract was a serious mistake," Blinky put in.
"Oh, yes, that's the correct appearance," Walburga said, shoving Blinky's head down and out of sight below the frame. "It's a reactive potion, after all. Meant to correct whatever effects it might encounter. Hence the neither-one-thing-nor-the-other quality."
"But will it really work?" Molly mused, staring into the multi-colored depths of the glass jar.
"Only one way to find out," Walburga answered. "We must act with subtlety, though. If Sirius were to find out what we're up to before-hand, he might well refuse to drink the antidote. He seems to think he's…much improved."
Molly, thinking of the many times Sirius had already lectured anyone he could corner on all his new sterling qualities and how wrong they all were not to appreciate those qualities, had to agree.
"Good point," Molly said. "I'll let everyone know there's a secret meeting here in the kitchen, first. And then … then we'll see what's to be done from there…"
~
Half an hour later, the entire household save one was assembled in the kitchen, grumpy and confused at being roused out of bed so early, and all for some sort of ridiculous secret meeting in the now-shunned kitchen. Harry especially was vexed at being dragged out of his bedroom, and objected quite loudly. And when Molly suggested that Professor Snape must be sent for before they could begin, Harry barked and growled pretty much continuously until the Potions master, grumpy and out of sorts himself, arrived.
Harry's objections were soon stilled, however, as Walburga and Molly recounted their story to one and all, and then produced the jar of potion they had made.
"I…just…don't…believe…this," Remus remarked, when Molly and Walburga were finished talking.
Snape was handling the jar of antidote, staring intently at its swirling colors. "You monstrous harridan," he said to Walburga. "How could you keep knowledge as significant as this a secret for so long?"
Walburga shrugged in her small frame and pushed Blinky out of the way once more. "My domestic affairs are hardly a matter for public consumption, nor are you qualified to criticize me, you grubby little social-climbing swine. The point is - you have the antidote now."
Arthur Weasley had been eyeing his wife anxiously throughout the whole recital. "And… and… you're quite sure, Mollywobbles dear, that you don't feel at all… funny, after brewing that stuff?"
"I'm right as rain, Arthur. Brewing the potion may drive one mad as a March hare, but the antidote is nothing. I've had more trouble cooking up a pot of furniture polish."
"So, do we know if there are any side-effects?" Hermione asked. "Obviously there's no literature available regarding this potion…"
George snickered. "Side effects? How much worse can things be than they are now? Frankly, I couldn't care less if it makes Sirius break out in feathers, if it does the job."
"Or makes him speak in riddles or makes him think he's an Erumpent, for that matter," Fred added. "Or even if it-"
Harry once again rose from the table and brought his fist down like a gavel. "WHAT'S ALL THIS TALK, TALK, TALK?" he asked. "IS THAT ALL YOU PEOPLE CAN DO? YOU ARE ALL DRIVING ME OUT OF MY MIND! WE NEED TO JUST GIVE THE STUFF TO SIRIUS AND QUIT FAFFING ABOUT! WE NEED TO GIVE IT TO HIM RIGHT NOW!"
Harry had spoken. Molly quickly made up a pot of porridge and dished out a special bowl of the stuff, a special bowl with a chip on one side. Everyone watched as she poured the contents of the jar into the bowl, stirred it into the porridge so that it could not be seen, and set the bowl aside. Then she gave everyone else a bowl of porridge, so Sirius would not suspect anything when he came in.
"Seems a shame to deceive him like this," Mundungus muttered as he took his porridge.
"Oh, shut it, Dung!" exclaimed Moody, Tonks, and Ron in unison.
When the stage was at last set, Molly went upstairs to call Sirius down for "breakfast".
When he came bouncing cheerfully into the kitchen about ten minutes later, chipper as a young terrier, everyone stared at him as though he actually had broken out in feathers. He took a seat at the table and looked around.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Why are you all staring at me? Do I have something on my teeth?"
"No, no, mate, not at all," Mundungus said, after a pause in which everyone in the kitchen rapidly found something other than Sirius to stare at. "It's just… I mean, it's just that…"
Tonks stepped in to counter Dung's floundering. "It's just that new hairstyle," she said quickly. "Quite a change…"
Sirius on Contrariwise had taken to slicking all his hair back off his face neatly with Sleekeazy and containing it in a tight tail, with a ruler straight part on the side. It looked hideous.
"Suits you, it does," Ginny lied stoutly.
"Here you are, Sirius, dear," Molly said, and set the bowl with the chip in its side before Sirius. "Have some … porridge."
The old Sirius normally hated porridge, and wouldn't touch the stuff on a bet. Remus had a bad moment or two, but anti-Sirius soon put his fears to rest.
"Ah, wonderful!" he said heartily. "My favorite! Do we have any sugar substitute?"
"I've already put a bit of organic apple juice in," Molly told him. "Better give it a try before you add anything."
"Oh, what a good idea," he chirped, and took up his spoon. Then he set it down again. Everyone tried not to groan.
"Aren't you having any?" he asked Molly. "It looks delicious!"
"Oh - oh, yes - of course I am, dear," Molly said, flustered, and dished a bowl out for herself. She took a seat at the table too. "We're all having some! Aren't we?"
Everyone at the table took her point immediately. A general chorus of oohs and ahhs and slightly hysterical testaments to the supreme excellence of the porridge broke out round the table.
"It's … why, it's fabulous!" Dung cried, and almost choked on an overlarge spoonful. "Best porridge I ever ate!"
"Wicked!" the twins declared in unison. "This porridge is just …wicked!"
"Oh - oh - oh my God - I've never had such exquisite porridge!" Remus cried, stuffing his face with it mechanically.
Sirius watched them all go into paroxysms of delight over the porridge for a time, looking mildly baffled. Then he picked up his spoon once more and filled it with porridge.
He didn't notice that they all were holding their breaths.
Sirius put the spoon in his mouth and swallowed the porridge.
Everyone in the room leaned forward in their chairs and gripped the table, watching him intently.
After a moment, Sirius' shoulders hunched inward and his eyes crossed. The onlookers breathed a soft mass ahhhhhh.
His skin began to coruscate with multiple colors and then the waves of color migrated into the strands of his hair and the beds of his fingernails.
Ooooooh, breathed the onlookers all at once.
All the assorted colors drained out of his skin and hair and fingernails as quickly as they'd appeared, leaving him paper-white. His eyes rolled up in his head.
"That’s it…" Harry whispered. "You can do it…"
His head drooped down onto the table with a small thunk and a wet, rattling sound issued out of his throat.
Harry rose from his seat and went around the table to stand beside Sirius. He put a shaking hand on his godfather's back.
"Sirius?" Harry whispered.
Sirius raised his head from the table. His face had returned to its usual color. He looked up at Harry, hovering at his shoulder, and then around the room at all the others staring at him, rapt.
He looked down at the table and the chipped bowl before him.
"What's this stuff?" he said, sounding grumpy. "Porridge?"
Remus too rose and came to Sirius' side. He stood across from Harry, at Sirius' other shoulder.
"Yes, Sirius," he said intently. "It's your breakfast. It's a bowl of porridge…"
Sirius made a horrible face. "But I hate porridge!" he complained.
Harry screamed in sheer joy and threw his arms around Sirius and hugged him so tight he almost strangled him. Remus leapt into his lap and kissed him silly. Everyone else sent up a rousing cheer and fell to embracing one another and shaking hands and pounding Molly on the back. Molly, for her part, burst into tears and sank back in her seat, limp with relief.
"I don't especially like breakfast either," Sirius continued to complain as best he could between Remus' frantic snogging and Harry's tearful squeezing. "What time is it, anyway? What are we all doing up so early? What's gotten into you all? I don't see why anyone would want to throw a party just because I don't like porridge!"
In fact, Sirius never stopped complaining and making marvelously tactless remarks until Severus Snape came to join the growing knot of well-wishers who were hugging, kissing and otherwise petting Sirius like he was the world's cutest and fluffiest angora puppy.
"Welcome back, Black," Severus said gravely, and stunned Sirius into silence by voluntarily shaking his hand.
"Snivellus?" Sirius said, bewildered. "Do you feel quite all right?"
As if that wasn't enough to thoroughly confuse the newly recovered Sirius, his own mother called to him from the picture of Blinky over the stove.
"Oh, shame of my flesh?" she called. "Abomination? Humiliation of my loins?"
"Mother?" Sirius asked, barely able to speak between kisses and hugs. "What are you doing in Blinky's picture? I've haven't seen you in the kitchen in thirty years!"
Mrs. Black laughed, a bit madly. "Just remember that I love you, son, traitorous biological freak of nature that you are! See you in the corridor!" She disappeared from the picture of Blinky.
Sirius had little space in which to contemplate the mystery of his mother actually telling him that she loved him. He was still inundated by the various members of the Order and all his other houseguests, who all seemed determined to hug him or shake his hand or kiss him or otherwise touch him in some way.
"Get off me, will you all?" he finally grumbled to all his admirers. "You're crushing me and I can't breathe for all this snogging."
They all sighed with delight and joy to hear this rather surly comment and promptly redoubled all their frenzied hugging and kissing and back-clapping. It took Sirius a full ten minutes to wriggle out from under the mass demonstration of affection.
Once he'd managed to struggle to his feet and out of the tight grips of Harry and Remus and out of the reach of the others, he stood for a moment at the door, gazing at them all with profound puzzlement.
"You've all gone quite mad, haven't you?" he asked, sharply.
"You don't know the half of it, Padfoot," Remus replied, with a huge grin that did indeed look quite maniacal.
"Mad as hatters," Harry agreed, and quickly grabbed Sirius once again before he could escape. He stood on his tiptoes and kissed his godfather on his forehead, one more time. "Every one of us. Don't ever change, all right? We like you just as you are."
Sirius looked down at Harry for a moment, and a small smile brightened his face. Even his formerly horribly neat hairstyle looked comfortably mussed once more.
"And you're the very maddest of the lot, aren't you?" he said fondly to Harry.
"Absolutely!" Harry agreed, laughing. "Though Professor Lupin there is certainly stiff competition."
Remus brought forth another huge, daffy smile in response.
"Well, then, that's settled," Sirius announced. "There's only one thing left to do."
"What's that, Sirius dear?" Molly asked, sounding sweeter and far more approving than Sirius had ever heard her that he could remember.
"It's far too early for breakfast," Sirius answered, yawning. "I'm going back to bed."
~
It had been a very good day at 12 Grimmauld, at least for everyone except Sirius. Though he'd tried to go back to bed that morning after being roused so early and baffled so completely, he had not been able to get much sleep. Remus, for one, hadn't really been of a mind to let Sirius sleep very much, and then later Crookshanks kept entering the bedroom at intervals, often meowing urgently at the door when he found it closed. When Sirius finally gave it up as a bad job and decided to get up after all, he found that no fewer than thirteen beetles, five roaches and one praying mantis had been left under his pillow as presents.
Later, he was annoyed by the way everyone in the house insisted on following him around everywhere, shivering with delight every time he yelled at anyone, looked depressed, had a shouting match with his mother, or made rude comments about Severus Snape, the Ministry, or the Death Eaters. When he'd finally had enough of all the non-stop adulation and tried hiding out in Buckbeak's room, Fred and George stood on the staircase outside and shouted out in tandem: "Oooo! Come and look, everyone! He's sulking and brooding up here with Buckbeak again!"
Life in a loony bin - as Sirius had put it acidly, when people kept popping into Beaky's room to bring him cups of tea, shots of Old Ogden's, and pieces of chicken - was no picnic. Except for all the food and drink, of course.
Though the day had perhaps been no picnic for Sirius, for Harry, it had been almost perfect. As he lay in bed late that night, listening to Ron's contented snoring and reviewing the day in his mind, he considered that it had been one of the finest days he could ever remember enjoying - and yet, somehow, he had the nagging feeling that there was still some small something missing. Some final issue unresolved or some small task left undone. He examined the question for a time, turning it this way and that way in his mind's eye, and eventually the answer came to him. He rose from his bed, put on his bathrobe, and slipped out of the bedroom.
The house was dark and quiet as Harry made his way down the stairs; everyone in it seemed to be sleeping peacefully. But when Harry reached the door of the kitchen, he found that a dim light was shining out under the kitchen door. He opened the door and stepped inside.
He saw Remus Lupin sitting by the fireplace, in which a small fire was burning merrily. He was tending the fire and pouring boiling water out of the kettle and into a teapot.
"Professor Lupin," Harry said. "I didn't know you were still up. I'm surprised to see you."
"Good evening, Harry," Remus said amiably. "How strange. I'm not surprised to see you at all. Actually, I'd had an idea I might run into you down here at some point tonight."
Harry grabbed a stool near the table and brought it over to the fire. He sat down. "Did you? That's peculiar. I didn't know I was coming down myself until a few minutes ago. I only just realized there was one more little thing I needed to do."
"In some ways, I find," Remus said, "you and I think alike, Harry. Tea?"
"Yes, thanks," Harry said, and took the cup of tea Remus poured for him. "So… are you saying you think you might have guessed what my… mission is tonight?"
"Oh, I think I might have a clue," Remus answered. He was busying himself with what looked to Harry like a pair of skewers. "Toasting fork?" he asked.
"Er… um… yes, thanks," Harry answered and took the toasting fork Remus handed him. "Well, then, seeing as how you already seem to have guessed, no sense beating around the bush, is there? Where is it?"
Remus was opening a small plastic bag with a picture of fluffy clouds on it. "Molly's cookbook, you mean?" he asked mildly. "Marshmallow?"
"Gastronomy Gilderoy Style," Harry confirmed, taking a marshmallow out of the bag Remus had offered him. He watched as Remus impaled a marshmallow on his toasting fork, and the faint glimmerings of an idea began to take shape in Harry's mind.
Harry watched as Remus brought his marshmallow to a suitable roasting angle to the fire, and then gazed at Harry, eyebrows raised.
Harry grinned. "Maybe we do think alike, Professor Lupin," Harry said, and began roasting his own marshmallow. "When did you start burning the filthy thing, anyway? It's almost all gone, except for that bit of binding on the hearth, there."
"Oh, about fifteen minutes ago. I would have waited if I'd been just a little more certain you were coming. I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all," Harry said, still grinning. "The important thing was getting the job done, after all."
The two of them continued to drink tea and roast marshmallows over the flames of Gastronomy Gilderoy Style in companionable silence for a time. Then, Remus sighed and turned to Harry.
"In retrospect, I do wonder if I may have been a bit hasty," he said, and waved at the burning remains of Molly's cookbook in the fireplace.
Harry put another marshmallow on his toasting fork. "Oh, I doubt it," he said to Remus. "Why would you think so?"
"Well, it's just that I had a little look through the book before I set it alight."
"Did you? And..?" Harry asked, dipping his newly roasted marshmallow into his tea. He took a big bite and then waved his hands over his lips to dissipate some of the heat.
"Well, little as I like to admit it, there was quite an intriguing recipe in the 'My Dinners 'Round the World' section," Remus said. He also popped a perfectly roasted marshmallow into his mouth. "A moshsmllo ressuhpee, mmphoodly enough."
"Whassssat?" Harry asked, his mouth also full. "Muushmellow?"
Remus took a drink of his tea and swallowed.
"A marshmallow recipe, that is," Remus answered. "Something called 'S'mores'."
Harry thought about that for a moment. "Sounds horrible," he pronounced at last. "What kind of a name for a recipe is 'S'mores'? No, I'm sure you did the right thing. After all, look who wrote the book - couldn't be any good recipes in there, considering that."
"Well, perhaps," Remus agreed.
"But at least now we know Lockhart's book is good for something," Harry added.
"Oh, yes?" Remus asked, spearing yet another marshmallow.
"Um-hmm," Harry answered, preparing another marshmallow of his own for roasting. "It does make a brilliant fire. These are the best damn roasted marshmallows I've ever had!"
The End