A Master Criminal
by Am-Chau Yarkona.
For he's the master criminal who can defy the law.
(T.S. Eliot, Macavity.)
Remus was beginning to suspect that he wasn't alone in Number Twelve, Grimwald Place. On a prosaic level, this was the simple truth: members of the Order came and went most days, and Buckbeak was always there.
But a Hippogriff is hardly company, and a few visitors don't count: Remus should have been living there alone, but he didn't feel like he was.
At first, it was nothing dramatic: a chill in the air now and then, a comforting sense of presence; once or twice, the weight of an invisible hand on his shoulder when he couldn't keep busy any longer and let himself think of Sirius.
Then one day Buckbeak gave a squawk of greeting while Remus was in the kitchen.
He raced upstairs, thinking that one of the Order had been forced to Apparate back unexpectedly: Buckbeak wouldn't greet someone he didn't know, he'd attack.
There was nobody there.
"Macavity visit you?" Remus enquired of Buckbeak, who squawked. Remus threw him a dead ferret and went back to his tea-making with a puzzled frown.
"Sounds like you've got a ghost," Moody diagnosed when Remus told him about it. "Some Black or other causing trouble, I dare say. If you see him, tell him 'constant vigilence'."
Remus nodded, and tried to stay alert to what was happening in the house.
It wasn't easy; every corner seemed to be a place he'd spoken to Sirius, every room and corridor the site of a kiss or a conversation. The memories dragged him down, oppressively, and when he tried to pursuade Dumbledore that he could be of more use elsewhere, Dumbledore simply told him that they needed someone to guard their headquarters.
He began to imagine that he saw Sirius from the corner of his eye, that echoes of his voice, his laugh, still hung in the empty rooms.
The boggart he found in the attic turned into a moon as usual, but before he could cast Riddikulus it changed its mind and became Sirius, large as life and grinning as if nothing had ever happened.
Remus locked the attic door on the thing and asked Moody to deal with it, which Moody gladly did, though not without a questioning frown.
"Something wrong with you?" he asked.
Remus tried to shrug it off. "Wrong time of the month," he said, lightly, but he could tell that Moody hadn't bought it.
"Eat something," Molly said, and watched him until he did. She seemed to think he wasn't eating enough.
Two nights after the boggart incident, Remus was still trying to work out what it meant. To be scared of Sirius' return made no sense; he'd thought that was what he was wishing for in the depths of his heart, impossible as it was.
He tossed restlessly in the bed, wrinkling the sheets and almost throwing the blankets to the floor before hauling them up again. Try as he might, he couldn't get the boggart-image out of his head.
He'd been living with it etched behind his eyes for long enough that when he rolled over and stared into Sirius' dimly lit face it was a long moment before he registered that it wasn't just in his imagination. "Sirius?"
"Shh…" Sirius said. "It's me, Moony. I'm…"
"You're dead," Remus managed, and sat up. "You're a ghost. I ought to banish you…"
"Don't be daft," Sirius said, fondly. "Yeah, I'm a ghost. To be honest with you, it's rather dull. I could use some company."
Remus nodded. "You've come to—"
"Not you," Sirius said. "Not yet. You've got work to do, I just wanted to make sure you knew I was here."
"I'd guessed," Remus said, and lay back onto the cooling pillow. "Padfoot—why did the boggart turn into you?"
"It hadn't heard the news about me being innocent?" Sirius suggested, grinning.
"Seriously."
"I hope that wasn't trying to be a pun," Sirius said, then stop joking. "Because I won't be a ghost forever, all soul and no body. There's a plan—I can't tell you what, you know the way Dumbledore is—but things have to get worse before they can get better, as usual."
"That makes sense," Remus said, and closed his eyes so that he didn't have to be reminded that this was Sirius, dead Sirius, he was speaking to, because that still didn't quite make sense.
"You'll be okay, Remus. I'll be here," Sirius told him. Remus noted the use of his proper name, but sleep was starting to creep up, and he heard no more.
In the morning, the house was empty and quiet as always, but Remus didn't start when he heard Buckbeak squawk a friendly greeting. There'd be nothing to see, though he no longer doubted that Buckbeak was squawking for a reason.