Oliver Kent's portkey to the Quidditch World Cup was laying in a box on his dining room table. He didn't depart until nearly 11 in the morning, and by then his campsite would be already set up, and the big lunch he had planned would be nearly ready, guests arrived, and he could walk right in, the star of the moment, and bask in the glow of everyone's attention.

Oliver puttered about his house in Devon, spending his long morning hours taking care of some of the more mundane elements of his life, like feeding the fat brown cows that lived in the fields behind his house and the cats that crowded his barn. By 10, he was writing back to some of the kids who had written him letters of admiration - the thirteen-and-unders being the only fan mail he paid much mind to these days. He most especially avoided witches with propositions of all sorts, which never failed to unsettle him. Oliver had honestly seen it all when it came to his fan mail. He paused seeing one that made him chuckle - a boy from Hogwarts called Colin, who had written telling Oliver all about his entire life story and enclosing several Polaroid photographs documenting the castle and the corridors, as though he, Oliver, had never been in the school.

My best mate at Hogwarts is Harry Potter! Surely you've heard of him, right? He's the kindest, most greatest person I know. Saved my life and all in my first year! I imagine Harry Potter and you would be best mates too. Perhaps you could come and visit Hogwarts and we'll all have lunch together sometime maybe? On a Hogsmeade weekend? Would love to meet you, Mr. Kent, I think you're brilliant! And I'll bet Harry Potter would, too, and it would be such a lot of fun to talk about Quidditch with you both, the best two Seekers in England!

Oliver stared at this letter. Normally he'd just send the kid a signed photograph and thank him for writing him and call it a day but Colin's letter caught Oliver's attention with the mention of Harry Potter.

Potter was a name he hadn't thought about in nearly 13 years - a name he had purposefully avoided in news papers and anywhere else it might come up as much as he possibly could. Sometimes there had been no way to avoid it, of course.

He, like every one else alive in the magical community, knew exactly who Harry Potter was, sure he had watched Harry grow up on the covers of wizarding papers and magazines in the inevitable way that the British watched the royals enact their familial drama about the world's stage, splashed across tellys and tabloids, as though it were for all the world to know what Harry Potter had gone as for Halloween tricks or treats that year or what color bicycle he was riding about that little neighborhood in Surrey...

This though, this was more. This was more because for the first time, it forced into perspective how much time really had passed. Harry Potter was at Hogwarts? He did some quick math and bloody Hell if be was remembering right, and he was certain he was, then Harry Potter was to be going into his fourth year just next week, on 1 September. Blimey! Impossible, bloody unthinkable, that James had been gone so long as all that!

Oliver stared blankly at the letter as he thought all this through, then glanced across the room at a large framed photograph on his wall of accolades, among all the awards and newspaper articles he'd kept and displayed. The photo was taken by a muggle camera, so it did not move, but he'd had it blown up and converted to black and white. It was in a silver frame and hung in the center of his wall of successes. It was a picture of himself and his first trainer - James Potter.

Oliver thought for a moment about writing Colin Creevey back and telling him he would indeed meet up with him and Harry Potter in Hogsmeade (would it be wrong to underline "but only if you bring Harry Potter for sure?") but thought better of it. There had to be a hundred thousand people vying for Harry's attention, just like there was always crowding around Oliver, and he knew from personal experience that sometimes you just wanted to be left alone and feel normal for a bit. Ultimately, what was Oliver Kent going to offer to Harry Potter that some myriad other of witches and wizards hadn't already offered? Another ragtag story of James and Lily when they'd been alive, another person's memory to cloud up the mind, more meaningless words that only reminded him that he didn't have his own memories of his parents?

Oliver knew only too well what that was like on so many levels.

The best gift he could give to Harry Potter was to leave him be.

Oliver took one of the photos he kept for such occasions and he signed it quickly, his signature flourishing over the orange robes he wore in the image. To Colin, he wrote above his signature, Never Stop Seeking. 

He paused, then on a whim wrote out a second one. To Harry --

None of his little catch phrases would do.

Thanks.

He paused again. 

Ollie

For that's what he'd been called mostly when he knew James and somehow that just felt right to do.

He set the two photos into an envelope and handed them off to his owl, a great brown thing with beautiful markings that everyone always complimented on whenever they saw her, and he sent her off to deliver the letter. 

There was no amount of thank yous that he ever could've given to Harry Potter to make up for the stuff James had done for him, so that would have to do, he decided. At least for now. Maybe someday he'd feel different about everything.

But thinking of James Potter and that entire time of his life - those years between childhood and becoming an adult - he thought of someone else, too.

He hesitated and looked at the clock. He still had another hour before his port key would leave for the World Cup. So he got up, plucked his general transportation broomstick from the closet by the door, and stepped outside to go visit Wally.

Sirius was caught up looking at another spinner of postcards, turning the rack 'round and 'round and looking at all the pictures. He wished he could send one of them to Harry. He reckoned Harry would enjoy some of these lovely pictures, and there was even a funny one shaped like a parrot and he thought about what a hoot (a hoot, get it?) it would be to send that off to him - a bird carrying a card shaped like another bird... all sent by a dog.

"You and those damned postcards," Remus said, coming up behind Sirius. "I swear, if I'm ever missing you in a large city, all I need to do is locate the nearest kitschy tourist shop and look for the spinner of postcards."

Sirius grinned.

"What is it about them?"

"It's the best part of anybody going on a trip, isn't it? Getting the post from them?"

"They usually just write a bunch of nonsense on them, though," Remus complained. "Wish you were here, the weather's miserable, the food's good though, how's things back home?"

Sirius said, "It's not nonsense, though. It's a reminder that even though they're off doing better things than you are, they've put a pause in their fun and exciting time to think of you, however briefly, and even if they're liars and don't give a damn if you're there or how things are back home, they still took the time to write to you." Sirius had scooped up about twelve postcards by now and held them in his fist.

"What are you going to do with those? You can't send them to anyone, they might find out where we are if you do. The Ministry monitors owls, don't forget."

Sirius said, "Then I'll write to myself."

Remus followed as Sirius trotted through the gift shop to the counter. "And with what money are you buying these postcards?" he asked, "We spent the last dime of my money ages ago."

Sirius reached into his pocket and withdrew his coin purse. "Will you relax? Padfoots got it all taken care of."

Remus watched, incredulous, as Sirius went on and paid with local muggle money like he was any other - normal - tourist. He watched as Sirius took the handful of postcards and thanked the woman at the counter, when very smugly led the way out onto the street.

"Sirius --"

"I got funding out of my bank account at Gringott's, Moony darling, before we left," Sirius explained. "Or should I say -- Mother's vault."

Remus stared at him. "Wait. You mean - even though you were in jail - you still --"

"Inherited the lot? By law, yes." Sirius smirked. "And the moment I'm free and able to go back to London, I intend to go 'round and set a blaze to Number 12 Grimmauld Place and watch that fucking shit hole burn to the ground." He paused. "I'll probably call the house elf out first, of course."

Remus stared at Sirius, dumbfounded.

"What?" Sirius asked.

"You've had an actual fortune in your pocket this whole time we've been eating bloody rabbits and berries and - and whatever else we managed to scrounge up - and we could've been eating - real food?"

Sirius blinked. 

"Shit, that was an option, wasn't it?"

"You absolute idiot."

"I AM AN ABSOLUTE IDIOT!"

"LET'S GO EAT!"

"YES LET'S GO EAT!"

"I SWEAR I SMELLED CHORREADAS BACK THERE?"

"YES CHORREADAS! AND TAMALES!"

"YES TAMALES!"

"AND CHIFRIJO!"

"YES!"

They were practically running as they made their way to the main road, where they'd passed the restaurant they were both thinking of. They hurried inside and were jostling to get into the seats at the table the waitress showed them to. Sirius grabbed the menu and started looking it over, "Dunno what I'm bloody looking at this thing for, we're ordering the lot."

"Two of everything on the menu."

"At least."

"I can't believe we've been starving and you've got a bleeding bank in your back pocket."

"I'm sorry I'm such an idiot."

"I'll forgive you once I'm a few chorreadas in."

"Alright."

They ordered a plate of chifrijo each and plates of tamales and chorreadas to share and waited anxiously for the food to come out, making jokes about the various kinds of animals they were so hungry that they could eat ("I'm so hungry I could eat a horse", "a hippo", "an African elephant", "a T-Rex!"). When their plates finally came out, steaming and smelling delicious, they both leaped for their silverware and dug in.

"Oh my bloody hell," groaned Remus, taking in the first heavenly bite of the chorreadas. "Whoever thought that what amounts to a corn pancake could be so incredibly, mind numbingly good? Like, seriously --"

"I don't know. I literally don't know." Sirius scooped some of his chifrijo onto the chorreadas like a taco and took a wholloping bite, melting around it, his eyes crossing. "Fuudddd," he groaned, "Ihmb hahrry buh ihmb lwuhhvung ouhh fuhh dib huuud."

"What?"

Sirius swallowed, "I'm sorry, but I'm leaving you for this food."

Remus laughed. "You said that to me the day after our wedding."

"Did I?"

Remus nodded, "You did."

"I can't believe I left you so early."

"I know, but there really wasn't much I could do about it. You ran away with the chifrijo and I ran away with the chorreadas..." Remus shook his head.

"Was this before or after we had our little rendezvous on the beach?"

"Unfortunately after, which is why, fifteen years later, I'm still picking bloody beach sand out of unspeakable places from that very excursion," Remus laughed.

Sirius lowered his chifrijo-chorreadas taco to his plate and stared at Remus.

"Whud?" Remus asked around a mouthful of food.

"Fifteen years."

Sirius's grey eyes met Remus's - midway between green and brown, certainly a lot closer to chocolate than they'd been in a good long while, something like earth and grass and trees and leaves all mingled together in them.

"Can you believe it's been so long as all that?" Sirius breathed.

Remus chewed slowly as the words hung between them, bright and shiny and big sounding. "Well, two, really... two and a half if you count the past year's... erm... encounters..." he murmured.

"I never paused in loving you for even a moment all that time, Remus."

Their eyes met.

"It's okay," Sirius said, seeing the look of slight panic in Remus Lupin's eyes, "You don't have to say it back. I know there was doubts..." He reached across the table and took Remus's hands in his. "But you kept on our ring."

Remus's eyes went to the band on the ring finger of his left hand, which Sirius was holding up.

"So you never completely gave up on me, did you?"

"I promised to love you for the rest of our lives... until a death parts us..." Remus whispered, "Death, Sirius, not prison."

 "And bloody hell if the walls of Azkaban could keep my love in."

"Of course they couldn't. Those walls couldn't even keep you in."

Sirius grinned, then lifted Remus's hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles, eyes rolled up to look Remus in the eyes as he did it. Remus inhaled sharply.

"God, Sirius, how do you do that?" he asked, voice tremulous. "How do you do the smallest thing and completely decimate every single nerve ending in me?"

Sirius shrugged, casual, and lowered Remus's hand from his mouth. "Read it in a book once or something, most likely."

"A book, huh?"

"Yeah. Big thick one. Lots of pages."

"Yes, well, you're rather exceptional at it."

"Everyone has to be good at something."