‘Sirius?’

‘Sirius?’

The man jumped and looked around. It was not Sirius, but Lupin.

‘Harry!’ he said, looking thoroughly shocked. ‘What are you—what's happened, is everything all right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘I just wondered—I mean, I just fancied a—a chat with Sirius.’

‘I'll call him,’ said Lupin, getting to his feet, still looking perplexed, ‘he went upstairs to look for Kreacher, he seems to be hiding in the attic again ...’

And Harry saw Lupin hurry out of the kitchen. Now he was left with nothing to look at but the chair and table legs. He wondered why Sirius had never mentioned how very uncomfortable it was to speak out of the fire; his knees were already objecting painfully to their prolonged contact with Umbridge's hard stone floor.

Lupin returned with Sirius at his heels moments later.

‘What is it?’ said Sirius urgently, sweeping his long dark hair out of his eyes and dropping to the ground in front of the fire, so that he and Harry were on a level. Lupin knelt down too, looking very concerned. ‘Are you all right? Do you need help?’

‘No,’ said Harry, ‘it's nothing like that ... I just wanted to talk ... about my dad.’

They exchanged a look of great surprise, but Harry did not have time to feel awkward or embarrassed; his knees were becoming sorer by the second and he guessed five minutes had already passed from the start of the diversion; George had only guaranteed him twenty. He therefore plunged immediately into the story of what he had seen in the Pensieve.

When he had finished, neither Sirius nor Lupin spoke for a moment. Then Lupin said quietly, ‘I wouldn't like you to judge your father on what you saw there, Harry. He was only fifteen—’

‘I'm fifteen,’ said Harry heatedly.

‘Look, Harry’ said Sirius placatingly, ‘James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each other, it was just one of those things, you can understand that, can't you? I think James was everything Snape wanted to be—he was popular, he was good at Quidditch—good at pretty much everything. And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts, and James—whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry—always hated the Dark Arts.’

‘Yeah,’ said Harry, ‘but he just attacked Snape for no good reason, just because—well, just because you said you were bored,’ he finished, with a slightly apologetic note in his voice.

‘I ‘m not proud of it,’ said Sirius quickly.

Lupin looked sideways at Sirius, then said, ‘Look, Harry, what you've got to understand is that your father and Sirius were the best in the school at whatever they did— everyone thought they were the height of cool—if they sometimes got a bit carried away—’

‘If we were sometimes arrogant little berks, you mean,’ said Sirius.

Lupin smiled.

‘He kept messing up his hair,’ said Harry in a pained voice.

Sirius and Lupin laughed.

‘I'd forgotten he used to do that,’ said Sirius affectionately.

‘Was he playing with the Snitch?’ said Lupin eagerly.

‘Yeah,’ said Harry, watching uncomprehendingly as Sirius and Lupin beamed reminiscently. ‘Well ... I thought he was a bit of an idiot.’

‘Of course he was a bit of an idiot!’ said Sirius bracingly, ‘we were all idiots! Well— not Moony so much,’ he said fairly, looking at Lupin.

But Lupin shook his head. ‘Did I ever tell you to lay off Snape?’ he said. ‘Did I ever have the guts to tell you I thought you were out of order?’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Sirius, ‘you made us feel ashamed of ourselves sometimes ... that was something ...’

‘And,’ said Harry doggedly, determined to say everything that was on his mind now he was here, ‘he kept looking over at the girls by the lake, hoping they were watching him!’

‘Oh, well, he always made a fool of himself whenever Lily was around,’ said Sirius, shrugging, ‘he couldn't stop himself showing off whenever he got near her.’

‘How come she married him?’ Harry asked miserably. ‘She hated him!’

‘Nah, she didn't,’ said Sirius.

‘She started going out with him in seventh year,’ said Lupin.

‘Once James had deflated his head a bit,’ said Sirius.

‘And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,’ said Lupin.

‘Even Snape?’ said Harry.

‘Well,’ said Lupin slowly, ‘Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James so you couldn't really expect James to take that lying down, could you?’

‘And my mum was OK with that?’

‘She didn't know too much about it, to tell you the truth,’ said Sirius. ‘I mean, James didn't take Snape on dates with her and jinx him in front of her, did he?’

Sirius frowned at Harry, who was still looking unconvinced.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘your father was the best friend I ever had and he was a good person. A lot of people are idiots at the age of fifteen. He grew out of it.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ said Harry heavily. ‘I just never thought I'd feel sorry for Snape.’

‘Now you mention it,’ said Lupin, a faint crease between his eyebrows, ‘how did Snape react when he found you'd seen all this?’

‘He told me he'd never teach me Occlumency again,’ said Harry indifferently, ‘like that's a big disappoint—’

‘He WHAT?’ shouted Sirius, causing Harry to jump and inhale a mouthful of ashes.

‘Are you serious, Harry?’ said Lupin quickly. ‘He's stopped giving you lessons?’