Severus leant against the door, breathing deeply to calm himself, waiting for his heart rate to drop to something approaching normal, before he looked down at the baby in the crook of his arm.

For one mad moment he had almost walked out. When Black was making his ridiculous display of pretending to be so incompetent that he hoped that he would just take the boy from him and be done with it, Snape had almost walked away; it was what Black had been angling for since he’d come in. And why should he be lumbered with someone else’s brat, he had begun to think sourly. He’d known for a while that they were going to have a child dumped on them at some time in the future; he had always intended to make himself scarce about then, perhaps strike out on his own and try to find Regulus. That would have cast him adrift from Black though and although Severus didn’t care to admit it to himself, he didn’t much fancy that idea. Quite apart from that was the glaring fact that he would then be homeless. Grimmauld Place was bad enough without the thought of returning to Spinner’s End. Of course Malfoy Manor was always an option, but that would involve meeting Lucius occasionally, a pleasure he could quite happily forego unless it was absolutely necessary.

He stifled the boy to his chest; he had almost walked out, almost walked away from the only part of James that still lived on this earth. He sent a silent prayer of thanks to Merlin and began to climb the stairs. There was life after death after all; you just had to know where to find it, or be there when it fell into your lap.

*****

Sirius stared at the door as it closed, straining his acute canine hearing to see if the front door opened. Instead he was eventually rewarded by the sound of a creak as Snape stood on the loose floorboard halfway up what had once been the grand staircase at Grimmauld Place. He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, wondering if he should follow or bide his time.

He caught sight of the elf as he tried to slink back under the sink, muttering to himself about the infestation of half-blood paupers that had taken up residence in the once proud house and stumbled to his feet to grab the filthy tea towel he wore before Kreacher could scuttle beyond his reach. ‘The only infestation you have to worry about, you little shitebag, is the infestation of doxies upstairs,’ he snarled, as he shook the elf to demonstrate his point, ‘and any other nasty creeping things that are here without my invitation.’

The elf turned his baleful eyes on him, filled with contempt and other horrible things; Sirius could almost hear him wondering if that included Snape. ‘Kreacher will ask his mistress what to do about the doxies when she wakes from her rest.’

‘She’s not going to wake up,’ Sirius snapped. ‘She’s dead.’

The elf began to howl the lament that he always took up when Sirius made any attempt to clarify Mrs Black’s status. Huge tears poured down his face to join the river of clear slime leaking from his nose, and Sirius dropped the tea towel in disgust. He didn’t miss the quick look of triumph as the tears miraculously stopped, but instead of letting the elf escape as he usually did, he grabbed the relative safety of the scruff of his neck. ‘You heard, Severus,’ he hissed into his ear, the way Snape had done. ‘Get cleaning.’

‘Yes, Master.’ Kreacher prostrated himself with such insincerity that it took all of Sirius’s willpower not to shove him back under the sink again. He had decided to tough it out though; Kreacher was in for a culture shock … he suspected they all were.

*****

It was some three hours later when Sirius’s head snapped up from the half-doze he was in as he heard the sharp rap of the front door knocker. He wasn’t expecting anyone and number twelve, Grimmauld Place wasn’t exactly accessible to the general public. He wondered for a moment if Snape had gone out and handed Harry back after all. He pulled the door open and his mother screeched about yet another half-blood come to dilute the purity of her Noble House, as he tried to take in the mountain of parcels standing gasping on the doorstep, and the two warm amber-brown eyes peeping from a space between the packages.

‘Did I miss Christmas?’ Sirius asked as the parcels began to tumble from Lupin’s arms into his own and spill onto the floor.

‘You ordered it,’ Lupin said breathlessly as he followed Sirius into the kitchen and stopped short. ‘Have I come to the right house?’

‘I didn’t order anything,’ Sirius replied as he made yet another trip from the hall to the kitchen with the rest of Lupin’s purchases.

‘Have you been cleaning?’ Lupin looked around again in suspicion.

‘Just peeling off the first layer,’ Sirius said as he shot a look at the elf, which had taken the opportunity to down tools. ‘Get cracking, shitebag, you’ve got a long way to go,’ he said and turned his attention to Lupin again. ‘I didn’t order anything.’

‘Snape did,’ Lupin replied. ‘He sent me an owl a couple of hours ago. He said you were paying for this lot and no expense had to be spared.’ He held out an invoice addressed to the master of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black from Wendy Wonderful’s Wee Witch and Wizard Emporium.

‘Ah,’ Sirius said, trying not to wince at the total at the bottom, to kindly be remitted within three days, or the goods would return themselves to the seller and the amount of the bill would remain outstanding, increasing by the amount of five per centum per day until it was paid, when the said goods would still remain the property of the seller.

‘Where are they?’ Lupin asked. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing the boy, Sirius. I only saw him the once before Minerva whisked him away from Godric’s Hollow. I always wondered why she didn’t just give him to Severus straight after the trial. I suppose she thought he needed some time to settle down somewhere.’ He laughed his self-effacing laugh. ‘I bet she had second thoughts when she heard where he’d settled though.’ He trailed off as he caught Sirius’s hard look.

‘Actually, Albus gave the boy to my care,’ Sirius replied defensively.

Lupin looked around again. ‘Don’t be ridiculous; you can’t even look after yourself.’ He nodded over to the door as it opened to spill a redressed Severus Snape into the kitchen; he seemed to have left the baby elsewhere.

‘Ah, Lupin,’ he said coolly in greeting, checking quickly to see that he hadn’t brought Lucius with him. ‘Do I presume these are the items I requested?’ He turned to where Sirius had begun to feel like a spectator. ‘I thought I told you to get that thing to clean up,’ he said as he nodded to the elf, who was now casting dark looks from Lupin to Snape as though wondering which was worthy of most contempt.

‘The boy,’ Lupin pressed, before Sirius and Snape started a long and tedious sniping match about nothing. ‘Harry? Where is he?’

Sirius noticed that he addressed Snape, rightly assuming that Sirius would have no clue to his exact whereabouts. He sighed to himself. It would be just as well for him to admit that Albus’s gift had indeed been intended for Snape; he was just the message boy.

‘He is asleep, Lupin,’ Snape replied, as though that were an end to the matter, and began to send the parcels up the stairs to some destination Sirius wasn’t at all sure of.

‘Don’t you want to clean wherever that stuff is going first?’ Sirius suggested, hooking a finger into Kreacher’s tea towel as the last parcel levitated itself up the staircase.

‘Do you imagine for one instant that I would allow that thing anywhere near the boy or his rooms?’ Snape asked in some degree of what looked like genuine surprise.

‘Can I see him?’ Lupin asked again before they started again. ‘I won’t wake him, I promise.’

*****

Snape touched the door next to the room he had at one time intended to convert into his own private library, but had never quite got around to, and the bedroom he had sometimes hoped he would share with Sirius; he had never quite got around to that either.

‘Are these men permitted to enter?’ the Charm on the door whispered in enquiry.

‘Yes, they are permitted,’ Snape replied.

‘Just this once or for all time?’

Snape barely hesitated. ‘For all time.’

‘Always accompanied by yourself?’

Snape could feel Sirius’s wonder turn to impatience. ‘They may come alone or together, but not with others unless permitted by me.’

‘They may pass unhindered from this time on,’ the Charm sighed as the door swung soundlessly open.

*****

If Sirius hadn’t known that he hadn’t gone out he would never have known this room was in the Ancient and Most Ugly House of Black. It had certainly never existed in this form; in fact, he couldn’t even recall what it had been.

‘It was a cupboard,’ Snape answered his unasked question.

Sirius couldn’t really help the grin that spread across his face. ‘I’ll just leave you in charge of the refurbishment of the rest of this dump then, shall I?’ he asked as he tried to take everything in, including the pleasure Severus was doing his utmost to hide.

The room was black and red for the best part, but where that might have been harsh or even frightening it was soft and warm and mysterious instead, like Santa’s Grotto might appear to a small child. A black-painted shelf ran the full length of all of the walls at the height of the door, and from it peeped a myriad of small animals. They looked almost like baby badgers, or nearly like small squirrels, and not quite like kittens. Some of them had spots, and some were striped or brindled in reds and oranges and yellows and autumn colours Sirius wasn’t even sure had names. They whispered and chuckled to one another, sometimes running along the shelf to speak to further away animals, and the sound they created was a soft murmur, rising and falling at the rate of the heartbeat of the boy sleeping below them. Sirius knew instinctively that they would have other sounds in their repertoire, waking sounds and feeding sounds and soothing sounds and playing sounds, but for now they were a muted sleepy hum.

The walls were a soft matt red, dotted here and there with pictures and tiny shelves with strange ornaments which moved and clicked and whirred, and would be magnets to curious little fingers. Below the red curtains, which had been drawn against the night, sat a small tightly-packed bookcase and an ebony wood chest. He took in as much as he could in the few moments his attention was distracted from where the baby slept blissfully on his back with his arms stretched above his head, ending in chubby loose little fists. His black hair had been brushed off his forehead, and Sirius felt a twinge of pain as he looked at the ugly red scar the Dark Lord had made on the perfect landscape. Above him a mobile of brightly dressed fairies on tiny swings slumbered over their charge, moving backwards and forwards, in time with the gentle rise and fall of the baby’s breast.

‘It’s perfect,’ Sirius whispered; there wasn’t really anything else to say.

*****

‘Well?’ Lucius asked, raising his silver eyebrow in amusement.

Lupin slouched into the corner of the settee opposite Malfoy. ‘Very well, I would say,’ he replied.

‘I sense a ‘but’, Lupin. You might as well tell me what it is.’ Lucius watched the man opposite him, wondering again what it was about Lupin that had made him accept his presence in the manor so quickly and easily. It was as though he’d slipped effortlessly into a ready-made role. Sometimes it was as if he’d taken up the slack that Narcissa had left in her wake; perhaps that was what it was. Lucius had not shared a bedroom with Narcissa and he did not share one with Lupin. Severus had warned him very early on that the werewolf would not welcome his attentions in that direction; it hadn’t stopped him making one quickly aborted attempt.

He knew Lupin had few expectations. Lucius knew he accepted his prejudices and moods, his hostilities and his slavish duty to “the Malfoy way”, with dry amusement and few comments. Lupin never left the manor without him unless Andromeda was there, and where Lucius would have felt stifled by anyone else, he felt comforted by Lupin. He could present the case to himself that it had something to do with the werewolf’s pleasing manners, his outward diffidence, his careful blend of civility without any hint of the servility Lucius would have loathed; whatever poverty Lupin had been brought up in, his parents had certainly taught him how to behave like a gentlemen. But he knew it was more than that; it was more than the fact that he felt secure with Lupin here. Lucius had begun to regard him as one of the only things he had never really had before; that one thing he could not buy. Remus Lupin was his friend, one to whom no strings attached themselves, no price tag dangled in his wake but that of Lucius’s making; he was all the more precious for that.

‘I just hope that his initial frenzy of activity doesn’t become obsession,’ Lupin said as he sipped at a glass of wine he’d just poured.

‘I hope not. He can be a bit intense when he tries.’ Lucius made a face. ‘Did you happen to find out if they had … renewed acquaintance with one another?’

Lupin laughed. ‘No, I didn’t. Why don’t you ask him yourself?’

‘Why don’t you just think up a way to find out?’ Lucius replied with a pained expression. ‘I am finding it somewhat inconvenient to entertain Black whenever he finds himself at a loose end for a few hours.’

Lupin raised his eyebrow lazily, much the same way he did everything. ‘Have you someone else I don’t know about?’ he asked suspiciously.

Lucius looked away. No he didn’t have anyone, his remark about Black had been a red herring; he had just wanted to know if Severus was still at a loose end. He rarely saw him at all now and he was missing his company and everything it brought with it. He wanted to change the subject now. ‘Why don’t you go and get changed, and we can go out for dinner?’

Lupin looked at the Versailles clock on the mantelpiece and shook his head. ‘Maybe tomorrow, it’s too late tonight.’

*****

Sirius crept up the stairs again, leaving Snape sitting at the fire reading and drinking whisky; it was the fifth time he’d sneaked up to see Harry this evening. He listened for the Charm to whisper to him and went in to look down on the baby boy. He’d been here just over two days now and Sirius was already sure he would fit perfectly into their lives. He had slept all night last night again, and apart from waking up for a few hours to coo a bit and have his bottles and get changed and look around with startled interest at the animals on the shelves and a bath that had left Sirius little drier than the baby, he had just slept all day again.

And this evening he’d only woken once since they had brought him upstairs. Severus had changed him quickly and competently, using more in the way of magic than Sirius would have expected. Snape had even let Sirius feed him again; just a little half-bottle to get him back to sleep, it hadn’t been much, surely he would be hungry again, or need to be changed. He let his hand reach to the tiny arm; just a little shake should be enough, he was sure it couldn’t be good for a baby to sleep so long. His fingers were almost there when he felt a grip like a vice on his wrist.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Snape hissed at him.

‘I was only checking,’ Sirius said, rubbing his wrist where it tingled from the burn of Snape’s grasp and something else he wasn’t quite sure he could identify, not until he saw Severus rub his fingers on the palm of his other hand, as though he had felt it too.

Had they not touched one another at all in the months since Snape had been back? Had they each been going about the day-to-day business of living in the same house without once having let their bodies come into contact, however innocuously, with one another? Sirius knew the answer; it came from the warmth he felt spreading from the pit of his stomach in all directions.

‘How long d’you think he will sleep for?’ he asked.

‘Quite a while, I should imagine,’ Snape replied. ‘He will not wake until he is ready to do so … unless someone pokes him.’ He nodded to where the fairies dangled on their swings, moving softly back and forward, like the pendulum of an ancient clock. ‘They will let me know when he wakes; the same way as they will let me know if you should happen to be tempted to help him along.’ He looked back at Sirius, his mouth slightly open in cautious invitation. ‘Are you going to stand there forever, Black?’

Sirius had just begun to close the gap when the nursery door flew open to reveal Lupin’s Patronus. It raised its head and howled silently at the two men.

*****

It had been a pleasant evening. They had gone to one of Lucius’s favourite London restaurants, the one he’d met Sirius at, a few short months before. At a casual glance they looked like two immaculately but slightly oddly dressed men, as though they were perhaps going to an Edwardian fancy-dress party later and had come out for dinner first: old acquaintances, perhaps lovers, who were comfortable in one another’s company. Lupin always cast Charms about him; he did not want to risk being seen socialising with Malfoy even though they normally dined out in the Muggle world. He hardly noticed his disguises any longer, content to enjoy the soft comfortable cut of the expensive clothes Lucius bought for him, and the luxury of the undemanding attention.

In his own way Malfoy was very open-handed. Of course Lupin knew it suited him to be seen with someone fittingly attired to accompany him, but there were other smaller generosities, unnecessary ones that touched him. Just because he’d always been poor it didn’t mean that he didn’t enjoy the pleasure of owning nice things and not having to steal cigarettes. And then there was the unexpected bonus of his little music school; Lucius had made sure it had every type of instrument known to the wizarding world. He had even purchased a huge harp from some chateau in France which had fallen on hard times, ignoring Lupin’s protests that no child would be able to reach the strings properly without the aid of a ladder. The school had worked very well; it had given Malfoy the comfort of knowing he had the perfect excuse for Lupin to be there. He was seen to be courting Dumbledore by allowing the school to be set up, and it gave Lupin something to do.

As he and Lucius shed their cloaks to one of Malfoy’s elves Lupin could see the drawing room door was open and the fire was lit. ‘Go upstairs, Lucius,’ he whispered. ‘Do not come back down until either Severus or I come for you. I think we have a visitor.’

He was just in time; Malfoy had given him an anxious look and begun to climb the main staircase when a second elf left the drawing room, leaving the door ajar.

‘Master, you have a visitor, Master,’ it called to his back.

‘A visitor?’ Lucius retorted loudly enough for his voice to carry to the open door, in more control of himself than Lupin would have given him credit for. ‘At this time of night? Tell them I shall be down shortly. I need to see my son; I shall not be long.’ He gave Lupin a look of appeal as the werewolf turned towards the back of the manor.

*****

‘Do not leave this house for anything,’ Snape ordered as he tipped the Polyjuice he always kept ready to his mouth. He had already changed quickly into the clothes belonging to Lucius that he kept at Grimmauld Place for such an occasion. ‘In fact, stay in this room. No one can come in here except Lupin, you or me.’

He waited only until the planes of his face began to change and his body bulked before turning and following in the wake of Lupin’s Patronus, leaving Sirius clutching the sleeping boy to his chest.

Lupin was waiting at the back door of the manor. He led Snape through the familiar maze of servants’ corridors to the elves’ stairs, talking rapidly to bring him up to date. Snape ran up the scrubbed wooden steps and then walked slowly back down the grand staircase, taking the time to compose his thoughts. He clipped along the mahogany-floored hall to the drawing room as Lupin went to sit where Lucius was in the nursery with his own son clutched to his chest. It had taken barely ten minutes, from the moment Lupin had sent Lucius upstairs, for Snape to reach the drawing room door disguised as Malfoy. They knew that without timing it; they had practiced it to a fine art.

‘Regulus?’ Snape asked, feigning some degree of surprise. ‘I had assumed, my sister-in-law,’ he said. ‘I … I would not have kept you waiting so long.’

‘Not at all, Lucius, not at all.’ Regulus smiled and stood, holding out his hand in greeting. ‘I have not been here long. Did you have a pleasant evening?’

‘Perfectly pleasant, thank you,’ Snape replied without elaborating. He had his story ready if he needed it, but only if he needed it. ‘Have you been offered refreshment?’

‘Nothing, thank you,’ Regulus replied. ‘I shan’t take much of your time.’

Snape let a frown crease Lucius’s forehead. ‘To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’

‘I was hoping you could give me information actually.’

‘On what?’

‘I was wondering if you knew why I am unable to gain access to my family home?’ Regulus asked and sat back, watching him carefully.

‘I’m sure you mean more than having mislaid the co-ordinates?’ Snape blinked, and assumed one of Lucius’s more vapid expressions. ‘I confess to being at a loss as to what you actually do mean.’

‘I would not care to find out that you know more than you are pretending to know, Lucius. That would be very unwise,’ Regulus replied and Snape thought that he had become more menacing in his three-month absence. He must have been practising; it was an uncomfortable confirmation of what he had suspected.

‘And I think you would be wise to tell me straight just what you are asking me,’ Snape said with a little heat. ‘Because I am completely in the dark.’ He took stock of Regulus’s self-assurance. It seemed that the obsequiousness he had perhaps been receiving in other quarters had bolstered his youthfully dangerous confidence to something quite different, something more threatening. And yet this very confidence was a weakness; it had been the same with Voldemort, which was hardly surprising, a self-belief based on the fawning of those too weak to resist, or those of such naturally evil bent that their very slavishness to him would mean nothing when the final die was cast. They were men without honour, attracted by what was in it for them, and like the rats they were, they would dessert his ship if it ever threatened to sink, as they had before. And sink you shall, Regulus Black, Snape promised himself, and turned his attention the matter in hand.

‘Perhaps you are at that.’ Regulus nodded and looked around the room. ‘I believe the werewolf has set up home here. Why is that?’

Snape bridled as though in distaste. ‘It was your idea for me to kowtow to Dumbledore,’ he said testily. ‘He wanted me to allow Lupin to set up a ridiculous music school in one of the outbuildings, for pre-Hogwarts children. I saw no harm; in fact I thought there may even be a way to use it to our advantage in the future.’

Regulus nodded again, seemingly satisfied.

Snape had an uncomfortable notion that he knew all about the school; he reminded himself to have a look at the names of the pupils. He thought it was safe now to return to the question of the family home; it was difficult always to work out what a surprised mind would do. ‘What do you mean about Grimmauld Place?’ he asked, managing to gasp only inwardly as he realised he should not even have known the address. What a stupid mistake he’d made; he would have been as well to let Lucius fluff his way through this … he couldn’t have done any worse. But then Lucius wasn’t Legilimens; he would not have seen what Severus had seen, that the Voldemort-ish superiority wasn’t even Regulus’s own. The Dark Lord was reclaiming his territory from the Young Pretender.

‘Where?’ Regulus asked lightly.

‘Grimmauld Place, your family home,’ Snape repeated and felt the first tiny telltale push on his mind, a push he knew could not have come from Regulus Black. ‘Come now, Regulus, do not be coy. Surely you know that Snape has had access to your family home for quite some time now. He killed Pettigrew there after all.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Regulus replied. ‘I confess I had thought Severus would have been more discreet though. Did you have the opportunity yet to put the little suggestion I made to him?’

Snape could see he had wrong-footed him. He hadn’t intended that; the last thing he had wanted to do was to have Regulus thinking about things he didn’t want him to worry about. He was glad he had asked about himself though; he was on safer ground here. He looked away uneasily for a moment. ‘He refused to listen to me. He said if you had anything to say, you could say it to his face; he didn’t deal with messenger boys,’ he said, drawing himself up the way Lucius would have done at the affront to his dignity.

Regulus laughed and Snape suspected he was only now beginning to accept what he said. He went back to the question of Grimmauld Place. ‘Why can’t you find the house anyway? You’re family.’

‘I would like you to find that out for me, Lucius,’ Regulus said in an even voice. ‘Perhaps the werewolf can take you.’ He began to stand up. ‘I shall be back in touch in two or three weeks. By that time I would like two things done. The first one is that you find out for me as much as you can about whatever Charm has been put on my house.’

‘And the second?’ Snape asked, quite sure that he would tell him to have Lupin move out.

‘Dispose of my brother.’

Snape didn’t have to feign his surprise. ‘You mean kill him?’ he asked.

‘Of course I mean kill him.’ Regulus was pulling on his cloak. He began to walk to the door, leaving the man he assumed to be Lucius sitting in front of the drawing room fire. ‘Oh, one other thing,’ he said over his shoulder, like an afterthought, as he opened the door to the hallway. ‘Find out where Dumbledore has taken the Potter brat. His uncle got in touch with me to say that someone had called for the boy the day before yesterday … and had forgotten to bring him back.’

Snape nodded, a little reluctantly, with an uncomfortable suspicion that this had been what had precipitated the meeting. ‘How do I get in touch with you?’ he asked. ‘By owl?’

‘I shall get in touch with you.’

Snape nodded and looked down as though he was considering something. When he looked back at Regulus he had allowed Lucius’s features to harden to the cold aloofness that was the Malfoy trademark. ‘I have one more thing of my own, Regulus,’ he said quietly, enjoying his moment. ‘Do not presume to order me about. If I aid you in any way, I am doing so of my own accord and for my own reasons.’

Regulus was caught unaware, off guard; he made an attempt at a formal little bow, a supposed slight that Snape could see he knew had failed of its mark. ‘Of course, Lucius,’ he said with a smile. ‘I presume no such thing.’

*****