the_debt_of_time

"Oh." She frowned as she turned around to face him once more, taking her eyes
off of the curtain-covered painting on the wall. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."
"Nothing to be sorry about. I didn't get along well with my folks, obvious reasons,
of course," he said, gesturing to the house. "So I left one day."
His eyes briefly flickered to the other room—a room he now kept purposely closed
and had yet to go inside since returning to Grimmauld Place. The one request that he had
before moving back to his childhood home was that before he arrived, Moody, Kingsley,
and Tonks were to make sure that a certain stained Persian rug was nowhere to be seen.
"I moved in with the Potters and closed the book on this part of my life." Sirius
stared at the girl as she moved through the hall, glancing at a few of the other portraits on
the wall that were left uncovered. "But the past has a way of coming back to haunt me."
"'If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the
future,'" Hermione said with a soft smile.
Sirius raised a brow. "What?"
"Winston Churchill." Remus stepped around Sirius, a bright smile on his face.
"Muggle."
Hermione's smile intensified, clearly having not seen him before then. "Professor
Lupin!"
Sirius scowled at his best friend. "Aren't you popular."
Remus chuckled and ignored Sirius, walking forward to give Hermione a polite hug
from the side. "I've not been your professor for over a year, Hermione. You may call me
Remus if you'd like."
Hermione laughed and shook her head. "You'll always be Professor Lupin to me."
Sirius snorted at the brief look of anxiousness on Remus's face. "Let's hope not."
"Sirius," Remus warned.
"Would you like a tour?" Sirius offered.
Hermione looked to be interested until Molly Weasley's voice boomed from below,
echoing inside the walls: "Ginny! Hermione! Can you girls come and help me set everything
up in the kitchen downstairs?"
Taking a pre-emptive measure against his mother, Sirius held the black curtains in
front of her portrait shut.