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The Serpent's Gaze, Book Four: Betting On Blood	By : DictionaryWrites Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male Views: 3021 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter and the characters therein belong to JK Rowling; I'm playing in the sandbox, as it were, whilst claiming no ownership and making no money.

Chapter List
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"Now," Remus says, and Harry walks quicker.
"Shut up," he retorts before the werewolf can say anything more. Sirius is almost running to keep up with Harry's brisk power walk and Remus' long, wolf-like lope: Harry does not care. They're taking ages, and he does not care. The key in his hand is dusty and slightly cold, and he clutches it so tightly between his fingers that the key's teeth leave little imprints in his skin.
"I'm just saying," Remus says, and he's not even out of breath, "you shouldn't get your hopes up too high. It may not-" Harry all but skids to a stop behind the faded blue of the huge, metal door. It's like a little garage, and he drops onto his knees, shoving the key into the padlock. He half expected it to be rusted and difficult to turn, but they must replace the locks whenever they're too old: this one is pretty new, after all, and definitely hasn't been there for twenty years. Closing his eyes and taking in a big lungful of air, Harry throws up the door of the storage locker. He listens to the metallic click, click, click of the door's folding frame as it slides up towards the ceiling, and grins as the locker's contents are bared to the early morning sun.
"Oh, my God," Harry says.
"Fuck," Remus says.
"Merlin's saggy ballsack," Sirius says.
The storage locker is fairly large, and around the sides of the room, neatly laid out on shelves in flowery wooden boxes are sheafs of paper, photographs and postcards, folded clothes in plastic bags, but parked in the very centre is a shining red Beetle. There's not a single speck of dust in the place, and Harry narrows his eyes as he steps over the threshold, but as soon as he does, he feels the magic in the air.
"There she is," Sirius murmurs, and he reaches out, pressing his palm to the car bonnet, just above the right headlight. He has a small smile on his face as he looks down at it, and Remus looks relieved, as if he'd been expecting something much, much worse. "I thought Lily'd given it to your aunt, you see, when she and James went out to Godric's Hollow. It never occured to me to ask."
"I thought she'd sold it," Remus admits, shrugging his shoulders, and Harry glances between them before looking back to the car. It's from the sixties, he thinks, though he doesn't know anything about cars. There are plastic decals stuck to the front of the car: little bright flowers, lilies and petunias and roses. "We didn't want to mention it." A part of Harry is annoyed, irritated that neither Sirius or Remus ever mentioned that his mum had had a car, but the rest of him is glad they didn't get his hopes up. "We didn't know about this, Harry, I promise you."
"I believe you," he says quietly. He reaches out, thumbing over the plastic sticker of a bright, white rose, and drags his finger over the shining paintjob before leaning through one of the open windows of the car. There's a key in the ignition with two keyrings on it - one is an old hippie peace sign, and the other is a pink, fuzzy dice. Harry has the feeling it wasn't his mum who bought them. The seats are fine, tan-coloured leather, and he strokes them absently before he lets himself consider the rest of the room.
The boxes are made of painted wood, decorated with painted flowers or birds or stripes, and they're kept in insane order: they each have their own part of a shelf to occupy, and have black-painted labels in numerical order on them: "Photos #1", "Winter #1", "James #1", "Mum #1", "Dad #1"... Harry walks slowly forwards, and kneels down, pulling out a box from the shelf that is marked simply as "Misc #3", and he looks inside. Ordered by colour are a stack of perfectly tied ribbons, a stack of business cards, three snowglobes and a poster folded into eight. He picks out the poster, unfolding it to look at it, and he frowns at it.
"Did Mum like Abba?" he asks. Glancing back, he sees that Sirius is sprawled over the bonnet of the Beetle, paging fondly through its manual. Remus is stood just behind Harry, his hands in his pockets and his expression solemn. He leans forwards slightly, almost teetering, and Harry says, "You can look, Remus. If she left these things, if she saved them, they weren't just for me."
"Yes," Remus says. He doesn't give any indication whether it's an answer to the question or a response to Harry's statement. He just stands there, looking down at Harry with a quietly pained expression on his face. "Everything she did was like this, you know. Her notes were in sheafs tied with ribbons and with numbers on every page, and she kept her letters in boxes just like these..." He trails off, and then continues in an impossibly quiet voice, "In these boxes, actually. They're probably here somewhere."
"She had a Filofax," Sirius says, leaning off the car and letting his head hang down. He meets Harry's gaze. "You know what that is? It's like a little wheel for addresses and stuff. All the girls used to think she was mad." Remus lets out a sort of choking sound, and Harry watches his back as he walks out of the locker, his hands in his pockets and his head down. He's so excited to look through everything in the locker, everything there is, and a car! His mum's old car!
But Remus is crying, and Harry can't help but feel guilty.
Sirius gets off the bonnet of the car, dropping the Beetle's manual on the car's front seat and sitting down on the ground beside Harry. He puts his arm around Harry's shoulder, and for a second Harry lets himself lean into the half-hug as Sirius presses a kiss to the top of his head. "She was mad, you know," he says quietly. It's so fond and so sad that it makes Harry's eyes burn for a second, until he blinks away the want to cry. "Her Mum and Dad, they got her and Petunia both cars, when Lily was 17. Both of them were secondhand, obviously, but it meant a lot to them that they could both drive themselves around. I think your aunt sold hers when she got married."
"I bet," Harry mutters. "She get a Beetle too?"
"Nah," Sirius says. "I don't remember what it was, but it was a square, more serious car. It was grey." He looks like he's thinking hard about something, and after a long pause, he says, "She used to drive us all out together. She'd usually have Remus or James in the front with her, and the rest of us would be in the back, and if one of her girlfriends came alone - say it was us lot and Marlene McKinnon, I used to have to sit in James' lap, or I'd shove myself into the seat with Marlene in the front."
Harry laughs, shaking his head, and he pushes the box back onto the shelf.
"That's so stupid," he says. "And really dangerous."
"That's what Lily used to say," Sirius replies. He pats Harry on the back, and then he stands, leaving the locker and going out, Harry guesses, to find Remus. Harry is left cross-legged on the locker floor, surrounded by neatly ordered memories, and wondering where to start first.
---
Much as Harry wishes his mother had left him some fantastic vault of wonders, or left him a special letter telling him what she'd left for him specifically, or something, the locker's contents are kind of dull. All the locker is, it seems like, is somewhere his mum decided to put things in as her and Dad had gone to Godric's Hollow. The reason it had been paid so far in advance, according to the documents Harry finds on the subject, is that his dad had actually sorted out the locker's payment, and had apparently got a bit confused about Galleon to Sterling transer rates.
There is nothing here saved specially for him.
It's contracts, documents, manuals and instructions, for the most part. There are stacks and stacks of old photographs, half of them Muggle and half of them magical, and then there are the old clothes. Harry picks out an old cardigan from one of the bags: it's a thick jacket of sailor's wool with a Nordic design knitted into it, and he finds it's only a little too big for him.
"I bought that for James the year before you were born," Remus tells him, and Harry doesn't know if he's happy or sad.
The box that excites Harry most is a box of neatly ordered diaries, but when Harry looks inside, there's no traditional daily entry telling him exactly how and why and what his mother thought about this or that. There are just doodles and idle notes, shopping lists and half-hearted stanzas. For a minute or two, he feels angry at this distant, foreign woman, Lily Potter, for getting his hopes up, and then all he feels is guilt for having been angry at the woman who loved him more than anything else.
He takes the photos home, and the clothes, and he leaves everything else. He'll get back to the rest in time.
---
For the next few days, Harry doesn't really mention the storage locker. He, Remus and Sirius work on the map of Hogwarts for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, and at night, Harry goes through some of the old photographs. Most of them are Muggle ones from when his mother was a child - family photos of people Harry has never seen before, or of his mum and his aunt, or of his grandparents. A few are of his mum playing in a playground with an odd-looking kid that actually reminds Harry a lot of Snape - it makes him smile a little to think of it as he goes through the photographs.
He knows Snape is at least a half-blood, but the idea of him maybe growing up alongside Harry's own mum still makes him laugh: he still can't really think of him as a teenager, let alone as a little child. And especially not like this one. He has pale skin like Snape's, and awkward, black hair, but he's dressed in baggy grey clothes that don't fit him or the season, and he doesn't have the same posture or strength that Snape has - he's tiny and gangly at the same time, and he's ugly in a way that Snape just isn't.
The Snape-like boy in the photo reminds him of himself, before he got his Hogwarts letter.
"You ready to go back tomorrow?" Remus asks. Harry notices the way his gaze flicks down to the cardigan Harry's wearing, his father's cardigan. He nods his head, dropping the photographs back into the box beside him.
"Guess I have to be," Harry says.
"We could always take you out," Remus offers mildly. "Enroll you in some American school." Harry laughs. Remus smiles at him, looking tired, and then says, "You wanted there to be more in the locker. I'm sorry there wasn't. It wasn't- she never mentioned it to either of us, and I knew it wasn't something intended for you. It was just somewhere to put all of her Muggle things." Remus sounds so apologetic, and Harry meets his gaze as he looks up at him. Remus looks overwrought, and Harry wishes the full moon wasn't tomorrow. He wishes the full moon was decades away.
"I know," he says. "Thank you, Remus. Thanks. Where's Sirius?"
"Asleep on the sofa," Remus murmurs. "I was listening to that show on the radio, Herbologist's Hour, and he insisted he listen with me."
"How long did he last?"
"Six minutes. I timed him." Harry laughs, leaning back on his pillows. "Good night, Harry," Remus says, and he flicks out the light.
"Night, Remus," Harry replies, and he doesn't take off the cardigan when he lies down on the bed. He huddles in it, and when he breathes in, he imagines he can smell what his father smelled like - a cocoa-scented cologne, a scent of something like a stag, something vaguely fruity. It's stupid to think of, but it doesn't stop himself from pressing his nose right to the woolen fabric and going to sleep with those scents in his mind.
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The Serpent's Gaze, Book Four: Betting On Blood