Entwined lives

Harry, Draco, Ron and Avril spent the next three days deknomeing the garden. They were little fuckers this year who took great delight in fighting the quartet. As the four sat down to dinner on the third day battered, bitten and bruised an owl landed on the dinner table, sending Ron' s goblet of pumpkin juice flying, much to Avril's amusement. He whipped at her with his napkin, laughing with her. Ron had realised now that they had both given each other just what they had needed. Avril had gotten her physical satisfaction and Ron had found a way to move on from his past. Harry opened the letter as Ron exited to the kitchen to get a new goblet.

"Oh boy." Harry sighed as Ron returned to his seat. The others looked at him curiously.

"What's up, they want you to do another public appearence or something? What is it this time, a hospital opening?" Draco joked as he tucked into his pasta.

"No, Uncle Remus is coming to stay. He's arriving tomorrow morning by floo network at eight am. He doesn't say how long he'll be here."

Draco and Ron looked at each other. "Does he know?" Ron asked.

"Yeah, that's why he's coming. He wants to meet her."

Avril looked at her plate and avoided looking at her companions.

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Eight am dawned bright and early and Remus Lupin stepped out of the fireplace in the living room of the Burrow. He dusted himself off and looked around the room. Nothing had changed since his last visit at christmas. "Harry!" He exclaimed, embracing the young man the way he knew Harry wished Sirius still could. "How are you?"

"A lot better than I was. You?"

"Well. Ron, good to see you. And you Draco." Remus looked around the room expectantly and then looked at Harry. "Where is she?"

"I'll go get her." Draco said and retreated upstairs.

"Tea?" Ron asked as they all moved into the kitchen. Ron boiled the water and then made the tea as he, Harry and their favorite 'Uncle' caught up. Draco walked into the kitchen alone. He beconned to Harry and the brunnette followed him into the living room.

"Where is she?" Harry asked worriedly.

"Upstairs. She won't come down. She says there's no need for her to meet him and she can't understand why he would want to meet her. There's nothing any of us can say to make her come down."

Harry looked down heartened. He wanted her to meet Remus. "Maybe I could try and talk to her?" Remus said from behind them.

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"I don't want to come down and meet this Uncle who isn't really an Uncle." Avril called from the place where she sat on her bed, the bed covered in paints and canvases and paintings she had already completed.

"You may not want to meet me but I really do want to meet you." She looked up to see an older man standing there. "I am Remus Lupin and I am assuming you are Avril?"

"Yeah. Listen I really don't want to do the whole nice-to-meet-you-you-look-so-much-like-your-mother thing. In case you hadn't gathered, I'm not really a people person."

"And quite a bit of a bitch, if I might add, but you do have quite a talent there. Mind if I join you?"

She looked at him suspiciously and shrugged. He crossed the room and sat down on the double bed opposite her. He picked up a canvas and a paint brush and began to paint. He did it as a child would. She sat there trying not to watch his hack job of a painting bacome some abstract blob. And then she lost her patience. "Here, you hold it like this. It's not a broomstick. It needs to be handled delicately but with authority. Remember, paint what you see, not what you think you see." She taught as she adjusted his grip around the brush and returned to her own painting.

Remus smiled inwardly to himself at just how much she was like Lily.

Four hours later they still sat there, painting without talking.

"Don't you have any questions? I mean, Harry had pleanty." She said without looking up.

"No. I have curiosities but the way I see it you will tell me what you want to tell me when you are ready. Do you have any questions for me?" She looked at him in disbelief.

"No one has ever invited me to ask anything. Will you answer anything I ask?"

"Yes. Fire away."

"What.....what were the reasons as to why my parents never came looking for me?"

"They wanted to but we were all persuaded that even if you were still alive there was no way in hell we would ever get anywhere near you. After he was defeated we came trying to find you. But there was no way to find you. Do you realise how well hidden he kept you?"

"I lived in it, of course I knew. I just wondered. What was he like?"

"Your father?"

"No. Sirius. Draco told me last night that you and he were close before he died."

"Ah, Draco told you about mine and Sirius's intimate relationship. Sirius was....well, he was the most amazing man I've ever known. He was willing to stand up for anything and anyone he believed was a good enough cause. He had such faith in those around him that he never questioned them. He was loyal and fierce. He believed his friends to be the family he had constructed for himself. He had specific roles in his little family for us. James was his brother and Lily his sister in law. Mr and Mrs Potter were the mother and father. Peter Pettigrew, of course you know him, was the friend, maybe a distant cousin of somesort. And me. I was the lover who's bed he crawled into to hide away from the war raging around us. I have to admit it was a lot easier to sleep with him beside me. I used to love watching him sleep. He looked like a child when he slept, even after he started to grow the beard."

"You miss him very much don't you? He loved you. Must be nice to have memories of being loved without there being an ulterior motive behind their affections."

"Yes I miss him. I miss him so much that sometimes I wake in the middle of the night crying out for him only to loose him all over again, to have him die again when I realise he's not there. To loose the one person you love more than life itself is like loosing half of yourself. He died and it was like my heart went with him." He sighed and blinked away the tears that Avril choose not to see. "You'll have to build those memories that you want from the people around you. Because I guarantee you there are no bribes or death threats made upon those who wish to know you now."

"Let's just say I have trust issues."

"I'll bet. I do have one question though."

"Only one? Ok, fire away."

"Did you know that the first person you saw was Sirius? Yes he was the first person you saw. James was busy with Lily, she was in a state. And I was taking care of Harry. Sirius just sat there in awe of you for, oh, it must have been at least fifteen if not twenty minutes. You just sat there, the two of you, staring at each other. Sirius was the kind of young man who never was still, even when asleep. Yet he sat there perfectly calm and still with you in his arms. You were born at home in Godrics Hollow. When the mediwitches came to take the three of you to Merlin's Hospital for Magical Mothers he was still sitting there. James got to hold Harry before they came but he didn't have the heart to dislodge the happy pair of you two. Sirius was devastated when you were taken. He never got over it. See, you were loved. You were worshipped. Without motive."

"I didn't know that. I didn't know that the dream I've always had of a mans face hovering over me was more than a dream. Isn't it funny what you remember?"

"Very." Remus said, confident that he had the basis of a relationship with the girl that would have been Sirius's goddaughter.

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Harry sat there in the dark of the night thinking about how his life had changed in the last week. He took a swig of his firewhisky as Remus sat down opposite him. "Can you answer a question for me now Uncle Remus? I know you've spent all day and all dinner and all evening answering Avril's questions but do you think I could have one answered now?" Harry said as he passed Remus the bottle.

"Of course Harry."

"You've spent the last four years watching me trying to find her. Yet you never said anything about her. You never told me what happened, just let me listen to to bullshit about her being adopted after our parents died. You let me go on a wild goose chase. All I want to know is why."

Remus took a deep breath. "I was decided by everyone involved that you shouldn't be told. There were two possiblities with Avril. One. She was dead. And two. She was a fully paid up member of the You-Know-Who fan club. Either way you weren't going to like what you found. So we decided your mental state would do better with a lie that spared you that pain."

"You never entertained the idea that she could be something other than what you expected? And who is this 'we'? Who was involved?"

"The remaining members of the Order. No, we never entertained that idea."

"Not even with the knowlege of Sirius turning out the way he did with the family he had?"

"Sirius was exposed to good magic. She has never been around that. Maybe you're putting a little too much trust in her too soon, Harry. Maybe you should let her earn that trust."

"Maybe. But I don't care. She's my family. She's the only family I have left." Harry said as he returned to looking into the fire and consuming more alcohol. Truth was that in his head, his thoughts weren't of the shaky new relationship he had with his sister, but of the complicated one he now had with Draco.