Disclaimer: These characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is meant.
Rating: PG-13/T
Spoilers/Timeline: Written after HPB. Starts immediately after GoF.
A/N: Do read and review. This is another one of my writing exercises, just to get myself in shape for a longer story with some semblance of an original plot. I'm just exploring Nyphadora's psyche; excuse me while I frolic in her pink world a while.

Chapter 6: The Scent of Newsprint

"What do you have there?"

Remus passes him the classifieds silently.

"Are you looking for a job? Now? What about your…" Sirius' voice trails off, and he looks at Remus expectantly. Remus just smiles enigmatically, and pours some more tea into his mug.

"I'm ON my mission. You're holding it."

Sirius looks confused, and coupled with his early morning bed-hair, looks remarkably close to the "deliciously scrummy" visage that Remus remembers the Hogwarts girls swooning over. He suppresses a wry grin, and bends over to snatch the classifieds away from Sirius.

"The classified section is my mission for the next few days."

"Oh, that explains a whole lot. The classified section, right, your mission. Which is what exactly? Becoming a copywriter for this... this…" Sirius waves the Daily Prophet in Remus' face. "This utter, complete… piece of shite?"

"No, you idiot, I'm doing research into werewolf culture."

"Oh, again, that clears things up. Doing research into werewolf culture by reading the classified ads. Wow!"

"Padfoot, are you reaching your sarcasm quota for the day? Because you seem to be spending a lot of it on me now, and it's only ten in the morning. You sure you don't want to save some for later?"

"Oh, there's plenty more where that came from."

"Git."

"Moron."

As Sirius gets up to get his toast and tea, Remus wonders what is it about Sirius which makes him feel like a teenager again. He never behaves like this when he's with company – such as Arthur or Charlie or Bill, or – Merlin forbid! – Harry and Ron and Hermione. He turns and looks at Sirius with a faint smile playing about his lips, then bent his head and applied himself to the classified section again.

Greyback was smart, Remus thought. Smarter than anyone ever gave him credit for. Hiding messages in coded classified ads wasn't the most original of ideas in the muggle world, but in the wizarding world, it was practically Auror-worthy. Who would imagine that in the age of the owl post, to looks for messages which were hidden in plain sight?

"Now, Siriusly speaking," Sirius takes a moment to pose with his mug in a pseudo-heroic pose, then dropped it. "Seriously speaking mate, wotcher up to?"

"Wotcher?" Remus raises his eyebrows at his choice of expression. "You're spending too much time with Nymphadora."

"It's 'Tonks' before she hexes your balls off, and you're spending too much time avoiding my question." Sirius waggles his teaspoon in Remus' face. "Don't think I haven't caught on to how good you are at evading questions – remember second year? When we were bugging your nuts off about why you were sick all the time?"

Remus smiled at the memories. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… the age of wisdom being poured between our ears, it was the age of our youthful foolishness. The epoch of belief for me, the epoch of incredulity that there were such friends in the world to be had. It was my season of the Darkness of lies, and later it dawned the season of Light in my life: friends. It was my winter of despair, and then came the Maurader spring of hope. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

"Hello? Bloody hell, have you gone asleep there? Moony? Hello?"

Remus shakes himself out of his quick trot down memory lane, and sighs.

"You know, I hate it when you do that."

"Do what?"

"Just… drift away, like you're a cloud or something. Daffodils!"

"Okay, okay, I apologise. I managed to get some intelligence that Greyback was communicating the next mass transformation location each moon through the press. Assuming that he's smart enough – " Sirius snorts with derision at this, and Remus eyeballs him. "Assuming that he's smart enough, it has to be a paper which all werewolves would have access to, and are readily available in most of Great Britain, if not in all of UK."

Sirius sipped his tea and nodded sagely. "No wonder this house seems to be full of old papers all the time. I was starting to wonder if I should start lighting some of them on fire."

Remus ignores his comment, and continues. "England's Prophet doesn't seem to have anything of note, and the only other paper with surprisingly high circulation is the Welsh edition."

"Why?"

"Seems like there's something about Wales that werewolves like," Remus said with a short bark of a laugh.

"Maybe it makes for good litter-box lining?"

Remus rolls his eyes, kicks Sirius' chair for good measure, and returns to the paper – but not before pulling out the crossword page and transfiguring a fork into a pencil (with attached eraser) for Sirius.

The next hour is quiet as Tonks takes an (extraordinarily long, Remus thought to himself in an odd moment) bath, Sirius grumbling under his breath as he attempts to finish the crossword puzzle, and while Remus runs through the Welsh papers.

As he pores through yet another page of classified ads (which have letter sizes so small Remus wonders how the ink doesn't all merge into one giant blob when it gets printed), something tickles his brain, and he knows that he's close to finding something. He's been seeing strange, undecipherable classifieds (more undecipherable than the average, at least), along with some which don't seem to be written in English or Welsh. The pages have been laid neatly aside, with Sirius' bare foot propped on the table as a makeshift paperweight.

"Done!" Sirius slams the crossword page and pencil on the table and crows his victory. Remus smiles and glances down at the page, nearly (almost instinctively) transfiguring the nearest pencil to a red one.

"Done done done! Done!" Sirius does a maniac jig in the middle of the kitchen as he makes another pot of tea. Remus laughs out loud at his awkward wriggles, and moves to set aside the crossword page when he notices something.

"Sirius, you just filled in nonsense words."

"So?"

Well, there's certainly no arguing with logic like that, Remus thinks as he arches his eyebrow and sets the paper aside on the "finished and nothing inside" pile of newspapers.

"Here, take a look and tell me if you can spot anything." Remus pushes the pile of newspapers towards Sirius. "I've circled them in red."

"How typical." Sirius' tone is droll, but he dutifully looks over them carefully as he sips from his mug. After five minutes, he shrugs. "Maybe they're in code. Pass me a paper and pencil, mate."

Ten minutes of frantic scribbling by Sirius, and Remus has finished looking through the rest of the papers. Deciding to take a break before he also got started on breaking the code, he looks over Sirius' shoulder as he pours himself a cup of tea.

All he sees on Sirius' papers are the alphabet, and their corresponding number in the alphabet.

"So A is 1 and B is 2, and so on, but what are you trying to prove?"

"Maybe the messages are numbers to call on those voice-floos that muggles have."

"Telephones."

"Yeah, tellytones, or fellytones, or whatever."

Remus has to admit that it is a bright idea, albeit far-fetched. Greyback would be living out in the woods, which doesn't offer much in the form of communicative services. Nonetheless, he picks up one of the papers with Sirius' scribbles to take a closer look.

"But the numbers are too many," he muses aloud.

A sudden pounding on the steps announces Tonks' arrival, and she flounces into the kitchen in dark blue PJs.

"I'm staying here tonight," she announces, and drops bonelessly into a chair. She grabs Sirius' mug of tea and takes a swig, then immediately makes a face.

"There's no sugar in this!" she accuses her cousin, who shrugs innocently.

"It's not your mug, cuz,"

She sticks out her tongue at the cup, and makes a gagging noise. "Yetch."

Remus pours a cup for her and shoves the sugar bowl towards her. Nodding her thanks towards Remus, she pulls the pile of suspect ads towards herself and looks at the first one he circled.

"Cool, backward secret messages! Are you writing to your lover in Wales, Remus?"

Two eyes swivel toward her and goggle.

Tonks looks up at the silence, then looks down on her shirt self-consciously.

"I didn't spill any on myself, did I?" She looks up at Remus in surprise. "Or do you really have a bird in Cardiff?"

A/N: Sorry about the huuuuge enormous humongous lag time. Uni term papers and exams. I would love to keep writing all day long, but life just gets in the way! Don't you just hate that happening?  Please review; it really, really, really helps to keep me motivated!