#cornish house

@wolfstarmicrofic December 4, word count 458

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He stumbled into the house. It was one of his favourites, but his mother hadn’t liked it much, so they’d rarely come here in his youth.

The lamps flickered to life as he shut the front door, and he spotted his favourite scarf hanging on the coat rack. 

“I’ve been looking for this!” he exclaimed as he fumbled to get it around his neck. “So soft,” he moaned, rubbing the silky yarn across his face. 

“We should let Regulus know where we are,” Remus said as he followed Sirius upstairs. Sirius turned around on the stairs, almost losing his footing, and gave Remus a funny look. 

“Yeah, maybe,” he answered once he’d thought it over. He pushed back past Remus and went into the study to the French writing desk. Sirius sat down and began pulling open the little drawers in front of him until he spotted the familiar scarlet paper. He dipped his quill into the inkpot and began to write. 

‘Oi, knobhead,

Remus and I are in Kernow. Too pissed to travel. See you tomorrow. 

The Better Black Brother 

Sirius Orion Black the Third.’

Sirius stuffed the paper into the accompanying envelope and tapped it with his wand to set the magic. He took the sealed howler to the fireplace. He lit a small fire and threw some Floo powder into it. “Grimmauld Place,” he spoke clearly into the emerald flames before throwing the howler into the fireplace. The scarlet envelope drifted briefly before it zipped through the blaze, vanishing. 

“Why would you send him a Howler?” Remus groaned from the doorway. 

“I like to keep him on his toes,” Sirius grinned mischievously. They tried a second time to get upstairs, and this time succeeded. 

Sirius and Remus had just got comfortable in the enormous bed in the master suite when a return howler burst into the room and began shrieking in Regulus’s voice above their pillows. 

‘You’re a total twat! It’s three in the morning! What about ‘do not wake me up’ is not getting through your thick skull? I expected more from you, Remus.

Sleep well, the pair of you. Tonight will be the last good sleep you get for a while.’ 

The Superior Black Brother

Lord Regulus Arcturus Black

P.S. I shagged Barty in that bed and didn’t change the sheets.’

Sirius jumped out of bed, shuddering at the thought of his brother and his ex together. Remus did not seem bothered, and they stripped and remade the bed together, but Sirius insisted on casting scourgify on the mattress a dozen times until he was certain he had erased all traces of his brother’s tryst. 

They got back under the clean sheets and quickly fell asleep, curled up in each other’s arms. 

@wolfstarmicrofic December 3, word count 414

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Sirius might have partaken of a tad too much drink. He glowered at Remus as he sipped at his pint. Stupid werewolf metabolism. He’d forgotten that alcohol didn’t affect Remus as it did him. 

“I don’t think I can apparate,” he slurred, the edges of his eyes blurring. Remus put down his glass and nodded. 

“We’ll have to get a room here.” He went to stand up, but Sirius’s hand shot out and held him back. 

“We can stay at my place, it’s not that far.”

“I didn’t know you had a place in Cornwall,” Remus said, downing the dregs of his drink and picking up the empties between his fingers to take back to the bar. 

“The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black has many properties in its portfolio, I’ll have you know,” Sirius snorted as he got to his wobbly legs. 

It took a lot longer to walk to the edge of the village and towards the coast than the last time Sirius had visited. 

“Why did you drink so much?” Remus grunted as he held Sirius up. 

“Forgot you were a werewolf,” he replied louder than he’d meant to. 

“Shhh, for fuck sake, Padfoot, you’ll have the villagers out with their pitchforks,” 

“Sorry, Moony,” Sirius snuffled. His jaw began to tremble, and it took Remus telling him he wasn’t mad and that he was sure that none of the villagers had heard him shouting to calm Sirius down again. 

The house came into view, nestled amongst the rocks. To passing Muggles, it looked like a sheer cliff with sharp jagged rocks at the bottom, but to him, it was a beautiful whitewashed house with a rolling bank in front of it that led all the way down to the water. “There it is!” He waved his arm towards the house. 

“What a death cliff?” Remus asked, cocking his head at the house. 

“Huh? Oh, shit, it’s protected by blood magic, hang on,” Sirius pulled away from Remus and walked up to the little wooden gate. He brought his thumb down on the sticking-out nail, cutting his skin and drew a symbol on the gate. “I need your blood,” he told Remus, holding out his hand. Remus crossed the distance between them and let Sirius take his hand. 

“Ouch!” He yelped as Sirius used the nail to cut his thumb open as well. He pushed the bleeding digit against the gate and heard Remus gasp as the house came into view. 

@wolfstarmicrofic December 5, word count 460

Previous part First part

Sirius woke up with a nasty hangover and wished he hadn’t been quite as much of a prick to Regulus the previous night because there was no way he’d give him a hangover cure when they got home. 

It took him a few minutes to realise Remus was no longer in the bed. He was pretty sure they’d fallen asleep together again. But the other side of the bed was cold; that’s when the smell of cooking bacon hit his nostrils. He gagged and scrambled to untangle himself from the twisted covers so he could make a run for the bathroom. He got there just in time to retch over the toilet bowl. Thankfully, his stomach was empty, and nothing came up, but he still felt rather pathetic. 

“Oops, I should have woken you earlier.” 

“S’OK,” Sirius groaned as his stomach flipped again. He heard the tap run beside him and then, mercifully, a cool, damp cloth was pressed to his forehead. 

When he was done, leaning over the toilet seat again, Remus held out a small vial with familiar, neat handwriting on it. “How the fuck did you get this off him?” He asked weakly as he unstoppered the vial and upturned the contents into his mouth and leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed. 

“I just took it. What’s he going to do, curse me?” Remus scoffed. 

“Probably,” Sirius said, his voice little more than a whisper. He could feel the potion working. He was feeling less nauseous, but a skull-cracking headache had taken over, and even the sound of his own voice made it feel as though his head was about to split in two. It would pass soon, but damn, it hurt. 

Ten minutes later, Sirius was showered, dressed and bounding down the stairs for the fry-up Remus had cooked for him. 

“We should probably start thinking about where these other Horcruxes might be,” Remus said as he began to clear the plates. Sirius quickly jumped up and took them off him. 

“You cooked, I’ll clean,” he said. Remus begrudgingly sat back down as Sirius carried the plates back into the kitchen and set them to wash themselves in the sink. “We don’t actually know enough about him to guess where they might be hidden.” We know he went to Hogwarts, so we could start there.” Sirius shrugged as he came back into the dining room. 

“That cave where you got the locket from, why that particular cave do you think?”

“I don’t know, but I bet we can find out.” Sirius stopped what he was saying and grasped his forearm at the same time that Remus did. They were being summoned, and by the intensity of it, the Dark Lord was not happy.