They might not have been planning to hang out today, they hadn’t really owled each other to set anything up, but Sirius had now a small habit of showing up at random times to the other man’s house to chat with him, experiment on vehicles and read muggle magazines without invitation, so this was really not that unexpected, surely. 

The young man aparated to the hill nearby after dinnertime, walking the rest of the way there to avoid scaring the living daylights out of Molly, as she had once asked him to please never aparate into her porch like that again. With a cigarette between his lips, he sauntered all the way to the front door, passing through the garden and seeing some of Molly’s flowers starting to bloom. He smiled and knocked once he got there, exhaling a cloud of smoke to the side as he heard the creak of floorboards indicate someone coming his way. 

This was new.

She’d arrived by Knight Bus, her mother taking her to the Weasley’s before promptly disappearing; ‘Don’t want to spoil your... fun,’ she’d said. Ophelia stood, ready to disappoint - after all, their first impression of her was running into a wall - but instead was ushered inside as though already a part of the family. Molly had been quick to decide she was too skinny, and sat her down at the table. There was a bustle to this home like she’d never known, being an only child.

At the head of the table sat Arthur, the man who had helped her up at King’s Cross Station and made sure she was alright before getting her on the train. And she had been eternally grateful when Charlie Weasley had invited her at end of year to visit. A break from the routine of bickering parents and splitting her holidays.

“Hello again, Mr. Weasley.” A plate of food was set before her and she mentally did a tally of calories before berating herself with a silent This isn’t Mum’s house. “It’s lovely to see you again.”

“HER!” Sirius was walking toward the shed that Arthur had made his own little space holding an classic motorcycle that had certainly seen better years, smiling almost as if he was a proud father presenting his daughter. “My perfect bike. Look at her, she’s everything I wanted.” An old, classic model that needed a little love and more than a little repairing, so that Sirius could feed both his obsession with the antique and his love for bikes, and learn while he was at it. It was his perfect project, and who better to share it with than the only other man he knew with an obsession for muggle things. “I got her just now from an old bearded man, he looked like Dumbledore, if Dumbledore wore leather jackets.”

Cressida Byron Madigan