tartanfics

Title: Cold
Rating: PG
Prompt: # 24 at

barefootboys
Word Count: 360
Summary: “You know they call this ‘the place God made last and the devil will take first’?”

August 24^th, 1982

“My mother took me here once,” Remus says. He stands at the tip of Morte Point, the wind whipping his hair back from his face. Were he not dressed in shabby Muggle clothes, he might have the appearance of a sorcerer out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

“It’s cold,” Sirius murmurs. He doesn’t quite feel it, having grown used to being cold in Azkaban, but he thinks it ought to be said, because Remus must be cold and Sirius knows he won’t do anything about it. Remus is stubborn about things like that. Always has been.

“I know it is.”

Things have been…difficult. Luck has not been on their side. “Excuse me madam, but would you happen to own a pet rat?” And a little girl, with blonde pigtails, running out and tugging at Remus’ coat. “Did you find him, did you find him?” Padfoot, at Remus’ heels, growling low in his throat. Remus kneels, facing the little girl.

“He was missing a toe, wasn’t he? He only had four toes on his left front paw.” The little girl nods. “You lost him? He ran away?” She nods again. Remus swallows uneasily. He stands up and nods to the little girl’s mother. “Thank you.”

“Do you think he knew we were coming?” Sirius asks, his hand on Remus’ shoulder. Several seagulls hop along the rocks below, calling loudly. Sirius glares at them, for lack of anything else to glare at.

“I’m sure he knew we were coming.”

“Well, where the bloody hell do you think he went, then?”

“I don’t know, Sirius.”

Remus sits down on a bit of rock and stares out to sea. It is a lovely view, though Sirius isn’t really in the mood to appreciate it. “Are you going to sit here all day, then?”

“You know they call this ‘the place God made last and the devil will take first’?” Remus says, his words almost carried away across the cliffs by the wind. Sirius doesn’t answer.

“Do you know why we came to Devon, Sirius?”

“No. Why?” Sirius has been curious about this, but Remus insisted, and wouldn’t say why.

“I don’t know.”

(Day Twenty-Five)