"Remus, I have died and this is Heaven."

Remus walked behind Sirius slowly, rubbing his nose, the dusty scent of vinyl records that had barely been moved filling his nose. They were in stacks and bins and on shelves and in racks that lined the walls and formed aisles in the tiny, cramped space. Sirius moved between them, fingers twitching and dancing over the plastic sleeve-encased records with a glee that only true aficionados could appreciate. He was practically glowing, his eyes wide with excitement that was so palpable that Remus's keen nose could actually smell the blood in Sirius's veins, could sense it moving faster through his body in a weird way that usually was reserved only for -- well, a different sort of excitement.

"You're literally getting turned on by records," whispered Remus, stepping closer to Sirius. "Ought I to be jealous?"

"You knew when you married me that music was my mistress, Moony," Sirius breathed back.

"A mistress and a harem. What was I thinking?"

"Don't worry, Moony, you're still my number one-oohhh oh oh!" Sirius scrambled 'round Remus, pressing into one of the bins and sliding up to a turnstile. He plucked a record from the spinner and turned around, holding it up for Remus to look at. "Remus. Remus. Remus look."

"Queen Live Killers," Remus read the front of it.

Siris had it turned over, reading the back, and he let out a high pitched noise something like a squeal and a shriek. "Oh. My. Fuck. Moony. Do you know what this is?"

"A Queen record."

Sirius looked up. "It's not just a Queen record. It's a record of our concert. Of my concert. Of the night Freddy Mercury and I -- " he gasped, "Breathed the same air. So help me Merlin, Remus. I have to have this." He clutched the record in his hands, shaking.

"Blimey, how much is it?" Remus asked, already digging for the coin purse he had muggle quid in. He flicked through the coins, then looked at the sticker as Sirius hugged the record. £2.90 He had two quid. "Shit," Remus muttered.

"What?"

"I'm shy."

"Don't be shy, Moony, you have every reason to have full and utter confidence."

"I mean on quid, I'm short on quid. We're ninety pence under."

Sirius hugged the record as though his entire life depended on it belonging to him. He grabbed Remus's coin purse. "Well I'm sure a fuck not shy." He marched to the counter. 

Remus bit his lips, then charged after Sirius, "I'm guessing that a muggle shop like this doesn't work on the bartering system, Sirius, that's why they've put price tags on everything, they expect to be paid properly! Ninety-quid is nearly a third of the asking price and we can come back later and --"

But there wasn't any stopping the determined Sirius, who marched right up to the counter, put the record down, laid out his British pounds and said, "Would you consider accepting my two quid for this record?" Sirius asked boldly.

The guy at the counter had a cigarette hanging from his mouth and he was flicking through a magazine, feet up on the counter, wearing a leather vest over a tank-top, and dark eyeliner that was twice as thick as Sirius's. He had a nose piercing and a mohawk. He stared at Sirius. "Bugger off, man, I can't accept that. We ain't hagglers 'round here."

Sirius cleared his throat, "No but see, this is all I've got and I simply have to have this record."

The guy stared at Sirius for a long moment benignly. "Well, see, I have to have two pound ninety. Come back when you got the quid for it." As if to emphasize his point, he slid the two coins back across the counter at Sirius.

Sirius paused, looking at the quid, then pushed them back toward the guy. "How about I earn the extra ninety pence with a good story?"

Remus hissed, "Sirius."

"I don't pay for stories, man."

"Okay but listen - this is a good one, alright? For my birthday back in November - November the third, mind you - my mate James gave me tickets to a Queen show. All the way in Lyons, France. The show took place February 17th. We went to France - beau pay, la France est - and we stood in line half the damn day and finally make it to our seats and... Bloody hell if I didn't breathe the same air as Freddy Mercury that night."

The guy was staring at Sirius with an expression lurking somewhere between annoyance and indifference.

"Then, after the show, I get separated from my mates and I'm jostled and carried off 'round back the place and I'm having a smoke and a door opens up and claquer! I'm nearly defaced by a door slamming opened right in my fucking face. I fall to the ground, scrape my damn hand all open on the cement of the parking lot. Bloody and scraped up, I'm in pain, agony even, and then I hear the voice - the voice of a god damned angel." Sirius paused, studying the guy, waiting for a reaction, but when one did not come he continued on, "It was Freddy - fucking - Mercury. Live. In the flesh. Offering me a hand up. For sure and for true, mate, it was him, I'll swear on my living mother's grave that it's the truth."

To Sirius's delight, this made the guy's brows come together. 

"So Freddy - he says he's sorry, alright, says at least I've got a great story to tell about how he knocked me over in a parking lot and I told him he could knock me over anytime."

The guy's eyebrow raised.

"He was brilliant, Freddy was. Positively brilliant. He gave me one of the roses from the end of the show, the roses he gives out." Sirius paused, then lifted the record up and flipped it over. He pointed. "See that there? I saw that. Saw him do that live, with my own two eyes." Sirius looked up at the man. "This, you must understand, is the single most monumental moment of my life."

Remus cleared his throat.

"Apart from the moment I got married," Sirius added hurriedly. "But not counting major life events like birth and marriage, this is the single most important moment of my life and honestly I am willing to just put it over my birth in ranking. I was reborn that night. So you understand why, for the love of all of the holy things - for the love of the Clash, Bob Dylan, Elton John, The Police, Sex Pistols, Blondie, Joy Division, Deep Purple, Stiff Fingers, and any other artist who you wish to add to the list - for the love of all of them combined. Please... please accept two quid for this record."

The guy stared at Sirius for a long moment, took a drag off his cigarette, and plucked the record up off the counter.

Sirius sighed. 

"It was a good try at it, Padfoot," Remus said, reaching for the two pound coins.

Sirius sighed, staring across at where the record lay.

A woman walked up to the counter, then, asked Remus if he was waiting to check out and Remus shook his head, ducking to one side and putting his hand on Sirius's shoulder. "C'mon." 

"s'cuse me," the woman called and the man turned back 'round to pay her attention. "Lookin' fer a record, it's for me grandson, but I ain't sure what to get'im. Have you any suggestions?"

"What's he like?" the shop man asked.

"Well I don't know exactly the ti'le of it," the woman sighed, "But it goes a bit like --" and she hummed a few bars.

The shop man looked confused.

"That's The Damned, Don't Cry Wolf," Sirius piped up, looking over. "It's no good for you kids, being told what to do, there's a lot of change for you if you find something new - you don't have to listen to what your parents say, they don't understand us, they're laws we don't obey. You can wear what you want, there ain't no uniform, go where you want to go, don't stay locked at home - Don't be a fool, don't cry wolf - don't be a fool don't cry wolf --"

"Yes that's it, I do believe that's it!" she said, clicking her fingers.

"They've a new record coming out in November," Sirius said. "You can try your grandson on Johnny Moped - their album Cycledelic. Captain Sensible - he's in The Damned - he was on with Johnny Moped when they recorded Cycledelic. They've broken up now, but they had some great songs on that record... It was absolute madness, but a solid record."

The guy raised his eyebrow. 

The woman looked at Sirius, then turned back to the guy behind the counter. "What he's said!" she requested.

The guy nodded, glancing at Sirius, then turned and went to go pluck the Johnny Moped record from the bin where it was stored up. 

"How do you store all that information in your head?" Remus demanded as he and Sirius started toward the shop door.

"Dunno," Sirius shrugged. "Guess only the important shit stays in my brain."

Remus mouthed the words only the important shit and shook his head.

They were outside and walking across the square, Remus carrying Newt Scamander's suitcase and looking for a place where he could open it up and call Bradley out to get some lunch with them, when they heard the shop keeper's voice from across the square.

"Oi. You. Queen-guy."

Sirius looked up.

"Yeah you. C'mere."

Sirius looked at Remus, then hurried back across the square.

"Here." The guy held out the Queen Live Killers record and taped to the top of it was a sheet of paper.

"What's that?" Sirius asked.

"Job application," the guy answered. Then, grudgingly, "It was a good story."

Bradley was merrily eating a cheese toastie from the Hayes Island Snack Bar, clutching his half toastie in a paper wrapper as he walked 'round the girth of a huge tree behind the snack bar, running his fingers over the deep texture of the old bark as he moved, staring up at the thick branches and humming as he chewed. Remus and Sirius sat in plastic chairs at a plastic table a couple feet away, Sirius bent over the application, filling it out, biting his tongue as he used the quill he'd pulled out of his leather jacket's pocket. The record sat propped against the pole of the large umbrella that hung over their heads, directly at Sirius's elbow as he worked.

It had taken an actual whispered debate to keep Sirius from whipping out his record player there in the middle of the square to play the record and only the reminder that muggle record players didn't typically operate without eleckytricity kept him from doing it.

Remus had his sketchbook out on the table in front of himself and was sketching the snack bar itself, eyes sliding over the old parcel tram building that the bar was housed in, drawing it out in short strokes of his charcoal pencil, dust getting all over his wrist as he worked, glancing up now and again as he drew out the details in the sign. He squinted at the lettering, carefully matching their curve on the page.

"Aren't you going to give that girl a face?" Sirius asked, looking up from his work on the application. 

Remus had drawn the girl working inside the bar, but left the face of her blank, rather than filling in the details of her features. He flushed. "I'm shit at drawing people," he confessed. "I don't know what it is about the detail of a person that's so bloody hard to capture..."

"You did the portrait of Regulus so well he's coming to life," argued Sirius. "You're not shit."

"I got lucky with that one," Remus sighed. "I reckon I was just so... impassioned... it just sort of came out. But I can't seem to do those details on command, like right now." He stared at the girl as she leaned out the window to give a boy an ice lolly. Remus looked down at the feature-less figure on his parchment, then used his pencil to retrace her hair several times, darkening it, drawing in individual strands, including some that hung over her forehead, her low ponytail falling out of the clip in the back.

"Better'n I would do," Sirius muttered. 

Remus couldn't argue so he didn't.

Bradley came over and sat down on the chair he'd abandoned to go play 'round the tree, his half toastie gone, lifting up several crisps and munching them down before taking a long swig of juice. He knelt on the chair and wriggled as he ate, looking over Remus's drawing. "That's really cool," he said.

"Thanks," Remus murmured.

"How come you accept praise from the kid but not your husband?" Sirius demanded.

Remus laughed, "Because Bradley isn't just trying to get --" Remus stopped, leaving off the last word. He paused, looked at Bradley, who looked up at Remus in confusion. "-- anything," Remus finished lamely.

Sirius snickered and grinned, leaning back in his seat. 

Remus returned his focus to the drawing.

Sirius's eyes twinkled with mischief.

Bradley chewed on his crisps, looking from one of them to the other, then shrugged and turned back to watching Remus draw.

Sirius studied his application, nodded, pleased with it, and he pushed himself up from the table. "I'll be right back, just gonna pop over and turn this in."

"Alright," Remus answered, distractedly squinting at the sign again, trying at getting the lettering from up top just right.

"Watch over my record."

"Uh huh," Remus murmured.

"I will," Bradley offered.

"Very good. Just don't touch it with your greasy-crisp-covered fingers."

"I won't," Bradley promised.

Sirius ruffled Bradley's hair, then carried his application across the square, Don't Cry Wolf still stuck in his head as he made his way between a couple small cart-kiosks in the middle of the square and across to Spiller's Records again. There was a shout from the far end of the square - a woman greeting a friend was all - which distracted Sirius a moment and he turned his head and walked smack into someone just coming out of the record shop - their chests banging together and Sirius stumbled backward, then looked up and his eyes widened.

It was Ace Dante.