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Chapter Text

“Hey,” Sirius says quietly to Harry. “You okay?”

The house is empty, other than the two of them. Everyone is either visiting Arthur at St. Mungo’s or on some Order mission, leaving just him and Harry and the huge silence between them. Sure, they’ve talked , but only in the barest sense of the word. It feels like they haven’t had a real conversation, the way they used to before Voldemort’s dramatic return and the Ministry essentially deciding to screw up Harry’s entire life, since Sirius had to make one of the dumbest decisions of his life and tell Harry, You’re less like your father than I’d thought.

Jesus. As if Harry doesn’t have enough to be stressed about already without adding the non-existent expectations of dead parents to the mix.

Sirius has already formulated at least half a dozen apologies in his head, but somehow they always end up caught in his throat and never leave his mouth. He isn’t good with emotions, never has been, would rather stuff them in the metaphorical freezer where it is highly unlikely they will ever resurface.

Harry looks up abruptly from where he’s been staring at his tea for the better part of half an hour, as if the secrets of the universe will be unveiled to him if he just strains his eyes enough. “What?” he says, his voice hoarse. “Oh, um, yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be honest with you, it did kind of suck to have Voldemort pushing buttons in my brain and seeing my best friend’s dad almost bleed to death, but other than that, I’m completely fine.”

Okay. Dumb question. Sirius deserved that.

“Ooh, snarky,” Sirius says, leaning against the kitchen counter. “But I’m serious. Are you still having bad dreams?”

Harry had told him about his nightmares once, back in the beginning of summer before his letters had dwindled down to two-word answers that let them know he was still alive and breathing but not much else. About seeing Cedric, every single night, his blank eyes and limp arms and open mouth, all because of a bolt of green light--

Sirius stops himself. This line of thought always leads him back to that one night in Godric’s Hollow, the night he came to find his best friends dead and his life unraveling by the seams, and there’s no use in going down that memory lane now.

Harry looks at him with no small amount of suspicion. “What makes you say that?”

Sirius makes a vague gesture towards him. “No offense, Harry, but you look terrible. You’re pale, the shadows under your eyes are deeper than Remus’s--and I don’t think he’s had a single good night’s sleep in his entire life--, and you sound like you’ve been crying. I’m worried about you.”

Harry looks like he’s about to say something before thinking better of it. “Everything’s fine. Really.”

Okay. They’re going for the long way round, then.

“Harry, look,” Sirius says, trying to make his voice empathetic while not letting on that he’s practiced this in front of the mirror at least ten times before gathering the courage to start the conversation, “I’ve had plenty of nightmares. Even before Azkaban, whole nights where I was too afraid to sleep. And I know they make you--well, not you specifically, I mean people in general--feel dumb and out-of-control, because you should be able to control what happens in your mind but you clearly can’t, right? So if you feel embarrassed, or anything like that...you can always talk to me. I know what it’s like, I won’t judge you, I promise.”

Harry hesitates, fingers tapping out an erratic pattern on the table. He seems to make a split-second decision, his face settling into determination. “I’ve never had another dream like the one where I saw the snake attack Mr. Weasley,” he says slowly, as if testing out every word to make sure it won’t explode. Sirius waits. “And the dreams about Cedric have stopped, for the most part. It’s just…”

“Yeah?” Sirius prods gently.

“I’m just having these weird dreams lately. I’m going down long hallways, again and again, every night, and they never seem to end or lead to anything…”

Sirius’s heart jumps, kickstarts, begins to pound. “Hallways?” he repeats in as calm of a voice as he can. “What kind of hallways?”

Harry looks at him curiously. “These sort of black hallways, made of marble, I think? And I feel like I should know them from somewhere, but I can’t remember where. It’s more like a maze, and I keep making random turns--Sirius, are you okay?”

Sirius forces some breath into his lungs. “Yeah, perfectly fine, you were saying?”

“Uh, okay...And I guess I should be grateful that I’m not seeing Cedric anymore, because the hallways aren’t nearly as bad, but it feels like I’m not getting any rest, you know? Even when I’m sleeping. My subconscious, for whatever stupid reason, is obsessing over these hallways every night, and I just...I’m so tired of them.”

Shit. This is not good. 

Harry’s dreaming about the Department of Mysteries. He has to be. The marble hallways, the maze-like structure…And the reason it feels so familiar to him is because he went there once, for his trial back in summer. 

Which means that Voldemort, consciously or not, has been impressing his fascination with the Department of Mysteries and the Prophecy onto Harry. And if Dumbledore is right about Voldemort now being aware of their super special bond or whatever, Harry has just become infinitely more susceptible to being lured there.

“Sirius,” Harry says, “not to be rude, but you literally look ten minutes away from a seizure. Do you, like, need a doctor?”

Sirius blinks away the dark spots from his vision. He needs to keep it together for Harry. He’ll have plenty of time for a mental breakdown later. “No, no, I’m good,” he lies. “It’s great that you’re telling me this, Harry. So, when did these dreams start?”

Harry is still looking at him slightly warily. “Um, just at the beginning of the school year, I guess. Why?” He straightens, sharpens, narrows his eyes. “They have something to do with Voldemort, don’t they?”

Well. He caught on surprisingly fast. 

Sirius briefly considers lying, then chases the thought out of his head. Harry’s been lied to more than enough this past year, and after dealing with the dreams for just as long-- I’m just so tired of them --he deserves the truth.

Sirius lets out a long, slow exhale. “Uh, yeah. As a matter of fact, it does.”

“How?”

“Well...Voldemort’s after something. In the Department of Mysteries. And no,” he says, raising his hands as soon as Harry opens his mouth, “I can’t tell you what it is without the risk of Dumbledore crucifying me, so don’t ask. There’s a lot of weird stuff in there, and all I can tell you is that Voldemort is after one of them. He’s obsessed with it, really. Constantly trying to figure out a way to break in--”

“Is that why the snake was there?” Harry asks quickly. “His snake? When she bit Mr. Weasley? Was she trying to find a way in?”

“Well, obviously we don’t know for certain, but we think so, yeah,” Sirius says. “And his obsession...well, my best bet is that it’s sort of...imprinting itself on you? It’s no secret that you two have a connection, right? So since he’s thinking about it so much, probably staying up all night trying to hatch a scheme, you start unwittingly thinking about it too.”

A beat. “The connection,” Harry says, his voice turning hesitant, starting to drum his fingers on the table again, “is it like...possession?”

“Possession?” Sirius echoes. “Oh, no, I doubt it. Obviously you and Voldemort’s connection isn’t standard by any means, but possession is on a whole other level. It takes loads of concentration and opportunity and most of all time to even begin to push your way into someone’s head, and Voldemort’s a bit distracted with trying to stay hidden while still doing all his big, bad, evil things.” He pauses. “And being possessed isn’t something you can exactly keep on the downlow. Voldemort doesn’t know you very well, he’d never be able to pull off acting like you. We would have noticed.”

“Oh,” Harry says, leaning back in his chair, and Sirius doesn’t think he’s imagining how relieved he looks, “that’s actually...really comforting. Thanks.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Sirius answers, trying and failing not to feel too proud of himself. “Just...now that you know the reason behind your dreams, don’t let yourself get lured to the Department of Mysteries out of...curiosity or anything, okay? Bad idea.”

The front door opens and slams back closed, feet pound on the floors, and a chatter of voices that are followed closely by Walburga’s wailing snake up to the kitchen. Sirius winces. Time to put a wrap on the conversation.

“Alright,” Harry agrees, though it doesn’t sound terribly authentic to Sirius’s ears. “And...could you please not tell Dumbledore about my dreams?”

“What? Why?”

Harry chews on his lip, something dark passing over his eyes. “It’s just...he’s barely said a word to me since Voldemort came back. He doesn’t even look me in the eyes. It’s like he doesn’t trust me anymore. It feels weird to tell him about my dreams. They seem personal.”

Sirius considers. It’s fair to say he’s not spectacularly pleased with Dumbledore’s decision to keep Harry in the dark, and he’s fully aware that he’s the only reason Harry was told even a thing concerning Voldemort. It’s understandable that Harry doesn’t want to enlighten Dumbledore after Dumbledore failed to enlighten him on anything.

Besides, something about Dumbledore makes Sirius uneasy--the way his cards are always held disturbingly close to his chest, his insistence on doing things for the greater good , his subtle but masterful manipulation. It was the reason James and Lily never made him the Secret Keeper. And he still hasn’t completely bought Dumbledore’s excuses that there was nothing he could do to give Sirius a fair trial back when he was first accused, despite all his sacrifices for the Order.

“Alright,” Sirius agrees. “What Dumbledore doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

A relieved smile stretches across Harry’s face, and God, Sirius would keep a thousand secrets for Harry to look like he wasn’t in a constant state of stress for even a second. 

Harry heaves himself out of his chair as he hears someone’s footsteps, probably Ron’s, pounding up the stairs. On his way out of the kitchen, he calls, “Thanks, Dad.”

It’s been a good five minutes since Harry left the room, and Sirius is still staring at the door, stunned silent, bones turned stiff. He’s half-convinced this is all some crazy dream, that he’ll wake up surrounded by empty beer bottles and Remus sighing over him, exasperated.

Because there is not a single alternate reality that would reasonably lead up to Harry calling him Dad . It’s illogical. It’s mind-blowing. It’s...Sirius isn’t quite sure what, exactly, it is.

He stares at the counter, the table, the wooden cabinets, drinking in every scrape and cut and chip like he’s done hundreds of times before. He waits to wake up, perhaps with a heavy feeling of disappointment in his chest, but wake up nonetheless. He can’t deny that this is a nice dream, especially compared to the flashbacks of an empty house and dead faces he usually has, but he thinks it would be better, all things considered, to return to reality as soon as he can. If only so he doesn’t give himself unrealistic expectations.

The seconds fall, one after another, blurring into minutes. Sirius can vaguely hear the clock from the next room ticking. Voices float in from other hallways and staircases, the loudest of them all being Hermione, yelling at everyone to shut up so she can read. Everything is almost infuriatingly normal and realistic and so not dreamlike. 

He’s not waking up. Sirius pinches himself, just to be sure, but he stays rooted in his body and his mind and his situation.

Shit.

It feels like water is filling up Sirius’s lungs. This might be real, but it shouldn’t be. This isn’t how things were supposed to end up.

He stretches out the memory in his mind, rehashing every moment. There wasn’t the slightest trace of mockery in Harry’s tone, nothing to imply that he was joking. Thanks, Dad . It was sweet, and earnest, and not much else, and Sirius wants to scream.

Was it a reflex? But no, Harry hasn’t called anyone Dad for almost his entire life. James died so early. Harry refers to his uncle as Uncle Vernon , nothing else, and from what he’s heard about the man, Sirius heavily doubts he deserves to be thought of as a father. 

So, not instinct, or any sort of meaningless accident. Which means Harry truly does see Sirius as a father figure.

Sirius stumbles over to a cabinet, hands shaking as he jerks it open. He reaches for the wine bottle he keeps in the back, pulling it out ungracefully, nearly dropping it on the floor. He grabs the cup nearest to him and pulls out the cork stopper of the bottle with his teeth. It’s only when the bottle is touching the rim of the cup, moments from being poured in, does Sirius freeze.

He can’t get drunk. Not now. Not when Harry, apparently, has made one of the worst decisions of his life and decided Sirius is a suitable father figure.

Sirius isn’t pissed about it. God, of course not. He remembers last year, sending letter after letter to Harry, wishing more than anything that he could play a bigger role in his life. But he hadn’t, could never have, expected it to come this far.

Because, obviously, Sirius is not Harry’s father. James is, and he always will be.

Dammit. Why is James the dead one? Why is Sirius still here, with working lungs and a pounding heart, when James could have put his life to so much more use? James could fight Voldemort and raise a family. It takes everything in Sirius just to get out of bed each morning.

“God, James,” Sirius whispers, squeezing his eyes shut. The tears don’t stay in, of course. They never do anymore. He feels them snaking their way down his cheeks, but he doesn’t bother to wipe them away. There will always be more, no matter what he does. “I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.”

Sorry for what ? Sirius can almost feel James, his best friend, his brother, standing over his shoulder. Arms crossed, face twisted in anger. He’s my son, Sirius. Not yours. Never yours.

“I know,” Sirius says. “I know, and I’m so sorry.” I’m sorry you were never able to watch him grow up. I’m sorry you were never able to find out what his favorite foods are, what his favorite Quidditch team is, what kinds of books he likes. I’m sorry you never saw him fly on a broom. I’m sorry he never asked you for advice about girls. I’m sorry you’re dead.

Sorry doesn’t cut it, James says, and he just sounds sad now. You’re the reason I’m dead, the reason Lily’s dead, the reason Harry almost died. You took so much from me. Don’t take my son, too.

Grief and guilt stings through Sirius, more powerful than any amount of alcohol, and somehow this is what reconnects him to the real world. James disappears, blowing away into little more than broken memories.

Sirius slides the cup away from himself, then corks the wine bottle and shoves it back into the cupboard. Maybe he’ll get rid of it later. Probably. He leans against the counter and blows out a long breath.

Yes, he’s undoubtedly the reason James and Lily are dead--but that’s the point, they’re dead . For fourteen years, even though it feels like it happened only a few minutes ago in his nightmares. James is a rotting body, six feet under the ground, with a nice gravestone that’s been standing for more than a decade and will stand for many more.

He’s gone , and Harry deserves a father in his place. 

But Sirius ? Why, of all the goddamn people in the world, him ? 

Sirius is a mess. He’s barely able to be there when Harry needs him, and when he is, he screws everything up. He literally told Harry, You’re less like your father than I thought .

Sirius rubs a hand down his face, chokes down a sob. Is he going to turn out just like Orion, holding Harry to an impossible level, never quite satisfied with him? Is he going to always compare him to a man long since dead, a man Harry has no memory of ever meeting? Is Harry going to turn out the way Sirius was at his age, more terrified of his father than anything else?

Harry doesn’t seem to think so, but that’s not much of a comfort. The fact that Harry’s found a father figure in Sirius is just a testament to how screwed up his life is at the moment, how many people either hate him or want to use him. 

How the hell is Sirius supposed to take care of Harry? He can barely take care of himself. He’s trapped in his own goddamn house, and more than that, he’s trapped in his mind. He swears he can feel the walls closing in on him with every passing day, and his mind is foggy with memories of his mother’s shrieking and of his father’s stinging slaps, memories he never thought he’d have to relive again. And underneath it all, he feels so afraid, every single minute, as if he’s a thirteen-year-old boy hiding from his parents all over again. His muscles are tense each second of the day, he jumps at any small noise, and Kreacher’s every taunt feels like a knife digging into his ribs, reminding of his own unwantedness and unworthiness. He locks his door at night out of instinct, even when there’s no one else in the house, but it doesn’t keep the monsters out, not the real ones. 

He drinks to forget, then is furious about it, because James and Lily didn’t sacrifice their lives so Sirius could sit, wasted, in a safehole while a war is fought and blood is shed. And then he drinks some more to forget the anger, and wakes up on the floor, nursing a monstrous hangover. His life has become the clink of wine glasses and bottles of beer, and he’s so tired of it but what motivation does he have to stop? His existence is pointless.

Except now he has motivation. Harry. If Harry really is looking up to Sirius, then stumbling down to breakfast with a raging hangover every day isn’t going to set a spectacular example.

Sirius stares at the counter for a long moment, gently fingering the edges, then goes to find Remus.

“This is horrible,” Harry moans, finishing his fifth chip bag in twice as many minutes. Hermione eyes it like she’s considering tearing it out of his hands.

“No, it isn’t,” Ron says comfortingly.

“I’m going to die,” Harry continues, letting the chips bag fall out of his hands and crumble on the floor. “I’m going to turn to ash from embarrassment right here. Good-bye, both of you. It was nice being friends while it lasted.”

The three of them are in Harry and Ron’s bedroom, with Harry slumped on the floor, surrounded by empty chip bags, Ron awkwardly hovering next to him like he isn’t sure whether he should hug Harry or not, and Hermione sitting precariously on the edge of a bed. For people who have just had Harry’s heart spilled to them, Hermione and Ron are being awfully unsympathetic.

“Stop overreacting,” Hermione says, rolling her eyes. “Yes, you called Sirius Dad , but that does not mean it’s the end of the world--”

Harry grabs a pillow to hug close to his chest. He regrets even telling them about what must be the dumbest thing he’s ever done (and considering him, that’s saying something). “Not for you, maybe. But for me? I’ll never be able to leave this room again. At least, not until we go to Hogwarts. At which point I will climb out of the window in order to avoid all chances of contact with Sirius. You two will have to bring me food and water everyday. If anyone starts asking questions, protect my reputation. Say I have chickenpox or tuberculosis or something.”

“I don’t see how that’s better,” Ron says.

“Harry, shut up,” Hermione says. “You cannot go all Rapunzel on us--”

“Isn’t rapunzel a plant?” Ron asks, sounding bewildered. “What has that got to do with--”

“You have to face Sirius at some point,” Hermione plows on. “This isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to go away if you ignore it for long enough.”

“Isn’t it, though?” Harry argues.“You’re really smart, Hermione. You could probably figure out how to erase memories.”

Hermione stares at him. “I’m not going to erase Sirius’s memories.”

“But think of me , Hermione,” Harry says. “Think of how awful I feel right now. How embarrassed. And then think of all the trauma you’d be sparing me from if you opened one of your very thick books and figured out how to undo this.”

“ Or ,” Ron says pointedly, “you can just talk it out with Sirius. You know, like regular people do.”

Harry turns to him, frowning. “Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?”

“I am,” Ron says, “which is why I’m trying to get you to talk. I get that you’re embarrassed, but erasing memories is not a healthy way of dealing with emotions. So unless you mumbled when you said Thanks, Dad and we can pass it off as dang, my bad or something--”

“I doubt we can,” Harry sighs, staring mournfully at the ceiling.

“--or Sirius miraculously developed hearing problems--”

“Probably not.”

“--then you need to face Sirius at some point.”

Harry crosses his arms.

“You know I hate to say this,” Hermione says, “but Ron has a point. Harry, I don’t get what the big deal is. You called Sirius Dad , okay. You had a slip-up, okay. And now the only thing to do is deal with it, right?”

Harry rubs a hand across his face. How can they not understand how jarring, how out-of-place, all of this is? “And, what, then we’ll go on with our merry little lives?”

“Yes,” Ron and Hermione chorus.

“You really think so?” Harry says. “Sirius didn’t ask to be my dad. Sirius doesn’t want to be my dad. So what’s he going to say? ‘ Oh, yeah, Harry, I’m your new dad now! Super happy about this!’ ? ” He pauses. “Actually, he probably will say that, because he’s nice. But that sure as hell doesn’t mean he’ll be thinking it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry sees Ron and Hermione exchange exasperated glances, as if they really can’t believe the idiocy in front of them. Needless to say, it wounds Harry’s ego.

“What?” Harry demands. It comes out more snappish than he intended. “What are you two thinking about with all that mysterious eye contact?”

Hermione sighs. “Harry, are you really convinced that Sirius doesn’t want to be your...well, dad? He asked you to live with him, back in third year, didn’t he? You told us he did.”

Harry rolls over so that he’s lying on his stomach. A sixth bag of chips lies tantalizingly just out of his reach, but he doesn’t have the energy to stretch for it. He feels deeply, bone-wearily exhausted. Nothing sounds better right now than going to sleep and not waking up for a good few months. “Yeah, because he’s legally obligated to. As my godfather. And he thought he was going to be freed of all his charges, so he must have been feeling very generous and all that.”

Ron and Hermione look at each other again.

“And after that?” Ron presses. “When Pettigrew disappeared and Sirius was forced to skedaddle and everything got all depressing in the Triwizard Tournament? Sirius kept sending you letters, didn’t he? He sounded really concerned in all of them. Dare I say, parent-level concerned .”

“Oh, that’s an understatement. Harry wouldn’t stop whining.” Hermione’s voice gets significantly higher. “ Oh, Sirius doesn’t trust me at all. Sirius keeps telling me to watch my back. Sirius keeps trying to give me tips on how to stay alive . Sirius this. Sirius that .”

“I do not sound like that.” Harry scowls half-heartedly. “This counts as bullying. Have I not gone through enough in my short life without my best friends staging a complete mutiny on me?”

“It’s not a mutiny,” Ron says, unfazed. “We’d back off if you’d just tell us why you’re so opposed to thinking Sirius, God forbid, likes you.”

“I know he likes me.” God, he’d give anything to escape this conversation and the sick feeling it puts in the pit of his stomach. “But that just doesn’t feel like enough. I don’t know, I just feel like...he only bothers to help me out because of my parents. I mean, it’s pretty obvious to anyone with working eyes that he blames their deaths on himself, isn’t it? So maybe he does all this--sends letters, shows up in the goddamn fire--because he wants to pay off the debt.”

You’re less like your father than I thought. The words echo in his mind, and Harry has to swallow a sudden, bitter feeling in his mouth. No use in being angry now.

“Isn’t that what you were saying, anyway?” Harry continues, vaguely gesturing to Hermione. “That he saw me as a replacement for my dad?”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you,” Hermione says, crossing her arms, and she sounds distinctly impatient now. “That might have been the first reason he wanted to meet you, but everyone can see now that he really loves you . Or, everyone can see it except you, apparently. Why is it that hard to understand?”

And Harry doesn’t know why, but for some reason it’s like something snaps inside of him, some hidden string that was pulled too tightly for too long. His exhaustion shakes, crumbles, turns to ash, and in its place is a hot, fiery feeling of anger, so familiar it’s comforting.

“Yes, why do I have trouble understanding that someone loves me?” Harry snaps, irony and cynicism sharpening his words. “Hmm, let’s see. Maybe because no one’s ever loved me before? I mean, my mum and dad clearly did, but look where they are! In a grave. The Dursleys don’t, or did Ron forget about the bars they put on my window to stop me from acting up? I thought the Wizarding World loved me, after I, you know, saved them multiple times , but clearly not.” The words are like dominoes--when one falls out of his mouth, others follow. “Excuse me for having doubts that someone loves me, just me, and not the Boy-Who-Lived or whatever goddamn thing everyone calls me when they’re pleased with me.”

A long stretch of silence, accompanied only by the shrill ringing in Harry’s ears. Ron’s mouth parts into a small o . Hermione blanches. The quiet nagging at him, Harry grabs the chip bag, rips it open with no small amount of savageness, then tosses it back on the floor just as quickly. He can’t eat now. 

“ I love you, Harry,” Ron whispers, uncharacteristically soft. “We’re--we’re family . Not just because you’re the Boy-Who-Lived or anything, but because you’re funny and caring and loyal and probably a bit too sarcastic, but that’s all part of the charm. You’re not unlovable.”

“Yeah, what Ron said,” Hermione says, looking stricken. “I’m so sorry I said that, Harry, I shouldn’t have--I should have thought more before--I’m sorry. You’re right, you probably need time to think over everything, I shouldn’t have been short with you--but Ron’s right. We’re family, Harry. We love you.”

Harry rolls over, burying his face in the crook of his arm. A reluctant warmth is slowly seeping through him, similar and yet completely different from the hot flames of anger before. “Yeah--thanks, guys. I, um, love you both too. For the record.” He clears his throat awkwardly. God, there have been too many love confessions in one day.

“Yes, thanks, I’ll write that down.” Ron’s tone is light, and so Harry lifts his face, hoping that they can forget about the Calling-Sirius-Dad debacle and leave Harry to deal with it himself, but Ron is still staring at him in a way that makes it  clear that he’s not going to drop this subject anytime soon. “But don’t you see, Harry? Sirius loves you too. It was always clear, even back in the Shrieking Shack--”

“In the Shrieking Shack ?”

“Yeah, didn’t you notice--”

“Well, no, sorry, I was too busy thinking Sirius betrayed my parents and trying to figure out how to exact my revenge on him--”

“I noticed, too,” Hermione cuts in quietly. “It was like--he was manic, trying to get to Pettigrew to kill him, and he only calmed down when Lupin said your name, saying he owed you the whole story. And we could tell he was protective of you--he wasn’t just angry with Pettigrew for killing his best friend, he was furious at him for killing your parents and screwing up your life. No offense.”

“None taken,” Harry says hoarsely. “That’s pretty accurate, all things considered.”

“Ouch. But besides, like we said--he invited you to live with him, he sent you a bunch of letters, and you should have seen him after the Dementor attack on you, Harry,” Ron says. “He was goddamn terrifying. Kept threatening under his breath to eviscerate Mundungus for abandoning you. He doesn’t just take an interest in your life because he’s bored. He cares about you.”

Harry frantically blinks back tears. His chest feels heavy, like he’s wading through a murky fog. Something’s been staring him in the face for a very long time, but he’s only beginning to realize what it is. “But...you heard what he said in the fire. You’re less like your father than I thought . I don’t know, I just...can’t get past the idea that he sees me as a replacement for my dad, nothing else.”

“He made a mistake, Harry,” Hermione says reassuringly. “Was it right for him to say that? No. Was it fair to you? No. But does he have enough mental health issues to play bingo with? Yes. He’s stuck in the past a bit, and no one can really blame him. But he still loves you, and it would be a goddamn shame if you two let one sentence get in the way of your relationship.”

“Or embarrassment,” Ron adds. “Sulk for a bit, stare melodramatically out the window if you want, but please, I’m literally begging you, talk to him about it eventually. About how you called him Dad, about what Hermione said, anything. If you let everything deteriorate now, I’m going to die.”

And that’s the thing. Harry really doesn’t want it to deteriorate. Sure, he wants Sirius to forget that he called him Dad, and he wants to erase this entire day from existence, but he doesn’t want to shut Sirius out entirely. This year was absolute hell, yeah, and has no hope of brightening up any time soon, but it’s been strangely reassuring to know that someone had his back, that if he’s ever chased out of Hogwarts by a mob of disgruntled students, there’s someone who would give him a place to crash. Someone who understands what it’s like to be hated for absolutely no reason other than the fancies of a few Ministry officials.

Harry remembers, in almost painstaking detail, how badly he had begged Sirius, before his trial at the Ministry, to let him live at Grimmauld Place if he was expelled from Hogwarts. 

Sirius understands him in a way barely anyone else does, and doesn’t Harry deserve this? Doesn’t he deserve someone he can vent to via long, cathartic letters after everything the Ministry has put him through? Doesn’t he deserve a goddamn parent , after having only the Dursleys for years? Harry feels stifled all of a sudden--by his hoodie, by the room, by the house, by his entire situation. 

Sirius might not want to be Harry’s parent. Damn, Harry probably wouldn’t want to be his own parent if he was in Sirius’s position. But the conversation they had today--the dreams, possession, Sirius promising to keep Harry’s secrets from Dumbledore--makes him think that there might be a chance.

“Okay,” Harry says. The words feel gummy and unfamiliar in his mouth, like even his tongue knows he’s turning over a new leaf in his life, drawing a new line. “Fine. I will. Give me a few days to mope and get over my mortal embarrassment, but eventually I’ll talk to him.”

Hermione and Ron glance at each other, grinning victoriously, and Harry rolls his eyes.

When Sirius barrels into Remus’s room, Remus, predictably, has his nose buried in the depths of a frighteningly thick book and doesn’t even look up as Sirius, breathing heavily, slams the door shut.

“Remus,” Sirius gasps, “I need help.”

“Hello to you too,” Remus says absently, turning a page.

“Pay attention to me, Remus,” Sirius says, voice coming dangerously close to a whine. “Something either unbelievably amazing or unbelievably disastrous has just happened, and I need your help in figuring out which it is.”

Remus hums.

“It has to do with Harry.”

This finally seems to snap a chord with Remus, and he looks up from his book, eyes narrowed. Suspicions and worry are running high ever since the Harry-Dreaming-About-The-Snake Incident (thought of in capital letters now, because the results have been that catastrophic). “What happened?”

“So, we were casually talking, y’know, about possession and Voldemort and nightmares, all the things fifteen-year-olds usually concern themselves with--”

“Yes, his situation is quite unique--”

“--and I started comforting him, like any remotely responsible adult would do, because he was really working himself up, which is understandable, given the incredibly disturbing events of the last few months--”

“Well, I would never have considered the word responsible in any sort of relation to you, but yes, I suppose you have been responsible--”

“--shut up, and anyway, I was telling him that no, he wasn’t possessed, and no, he wasn’t about to go on a murder spree as per Voldemort’s whims and whatnot, and then all of you returned from St. Mungo’s and we had to pack up the conversation--”

“Okay, so everything seems to have worked out fine, I don’t know why you’re throwing a dramatic fit--”

“--but then as he was leaving the room, he just called over his shoulder, Thanks, Dad .” Sirius throws his hands up in a way that he hopes will convey the gravity of the situation. “Like--no explanation, or preamble, or anything. He didn’t even sound like he was being sarcastic or something like that, it was an honestly genuine statement.”

Remus blinks, then blinks again, then blinks a third time. He snaps his book shut, the ancient, yellowed pages rustling so severely that Sirius would honestly be concerned that they’ll dissolve into ashes if he wasn’t sweating out at least three pints of water while waiting for Remus’s reaction.

True, they both have generally been very supportive of each other lately--an unspoken agreement after the Shrieking Shack that if they let arguments and spite from a decade ago drive a rift between them, they would both be truly alone in the world. But Remus also has Harry’s best interests at heart, and if he doesn’t think Sirius will be able to raise Harry without traumatizing him for life, he’ll make his beliefs known.

He’ll do so in a very mild and pleasant way, but in the end he will do so.

Finally, Remus sighs, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Sirius bounces his leg up and down. “Well, I can’t say I didn’t expect this at some point.”

All the air is knocked out of Sirius’s lungs.

He gapes. Opens his mouth to speak before quickly clamping it shut. Gapes some more. Finally, Sirius finds his voice: “You--you expected this?”

Remus glances at him. “I’m not the only one. The entire Order has a bet behind your back about when either Harry calls you Dad or you call him son .”

No. This is not possible. Sirius was right along, he really is dreaming. Or perhaps hallucinating. Because there’s no way reality spans this far.

“You’re joking,” he informs Remus flatly. 

“I most certainly am not.” Remus sets his book aside. “By the way, if you don’t mind doing me a favor, please refrain from telling anyone else about this until March. That’s when I bet that it would happen. Or else Tonks is going to win, and I’m going to owe her a dozen chocolate frogs.”

“ You ?” Sirius demands. “You’re in the bet too?”

“Clearly.”

Sirius shakes his head. “I thought I had faced the worst of betrayal with Peter. As of now, however, I realize that that never even scratched the surface.”

“Too soon.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.” Sirius pauses. “When did the bet start, anyway?”

“After the Dementor attack on Harry, when I had to actively talk you down from murdering Mundungus. Remember?”

“Not especially. Those few days were a bit of a blur.”

“I suppose they were.” Remus hums. “But you’re trying to distract yourself from the real matter at hand. How did Harry react after he called you Dad ?”

“That’s the thing ,” Sirius says, crossing his arms and leaning against the door. “He didn’t even notice. Just said it--on accident, I think--, walked out, and didn’t look back. Which gives me absolutely no idea about how he actually feels about all this. So, being me, I have already formulated a few dozen possible scenarios.”

“Do they all end in tragedy?” Remus asks.

“They do, indeed, all end in tragedy,” Sirius affirms.

Remus sighs.

“You can’t honestly believe I’d be a good father, though,” Sirius says, somewhat desperately. “I’m not cut out for it! I spent twelve years in Azkaban! I’m a raging alcoholic! I’ll accidentally destroy Harry’s entire life!”

“On the contrary,” Remus says steadyingly, “I think there’s really nothing you can do to Harry’s life but improve it.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sirius asks dourly. “How do you figure that?”

“Well, it all began last summer, when I finally had the opportunity to go up to him and apologize for,” Remus pales a few shades, “--for, well, attacking him in my--my werewolf form when he was thirteen.”

“That was really not your fault,” Sirius says, “but I’m curious to see how that leads to our current predicament, so go on.”

Remus cuts him a quick glare. “Don’t interrupt. Anyway, I apologized, as I said. And he didn’t even blink, just looked at me with a disturbingly dead gaze, said ‘ That didn’t even register on my list of trauma,’ downed an entire cup of black coffee in one swallow, and then walked right away.”

There’s a long, long silence.

“Is this,” Sirius says, “Remus, is this supposed to make me feel better ?”

“Yes, actually,” Remus says. “Not to gossip, but--”

“--we have literally been gossiping this entire time--”

“-- but , Harry’s life has clearly reached quite a low. I thought my school years were stressful enough, but Harry’s are really something else.” He shrugs. “There’s really nowhere Harry’s life could go but up. Don’t you think he deserves that to happen? Don’t you think he deserves a parental figure?”

“I do ,” Sirius says, frustration bleeding into his tone. “You know I’m the last person to argue that. But choosing me to be one? I’m the dictionary definition of a mess. Couldn’t he have chosen anyone else?” He makes a vague gesture. “Couldn’t he have chosen you ?”

“Despite appearances,” Remus says, “I am as much of a mess as you, Sirius. Werewolf, remember?”

“No, I forgot.” Sirius closes his eyes and opens them again. “Still, though. The point stands. Is there a shortage of people over the age of thirty or something?”

When Remus looks at him, it’s with slight pity. "I can assure you that there is not. Harry called you Dad for a reason, subconscious or not.” He hesitates. “Anyone can see how big of a part in his life you already have--all the letters and whatnot, and don’t think your stupid stints with the Floo Network and the Gryffindor fireplace go unnoticed. If anything, you’ve already been his dad for a while. So, what’s prompted this existential crisis?”

Sirius flounders for a few seconds, sifting through word after word in his head, looking for something to describe the warring emotions inside of him. Finally, he says, “After the Shrieking Shack and everything, when Harry and I started sending letters to each other, I never expected for him to consider me a father, you know? I thought I’d be the cool uncle or something, the one who you go to for mildly debatable advice and can curse at without repercussions. The one who you accept probably hasn’t made the best life choices, all things considered.”

Remus watches him carefully. “So you don’t want to be Harry’s father?”

Sirius suddenly feels like ashes are getting sucked down his throat.  “I didn’t say that.” He starts bouncing his leg again, up and down and up and down and up and down. “It’s just…I never expected him to think of me as that. I didn’t think I’d be responsible or even remotely adult-like enough.  I mean, I’m a horrible influence, aren’t I? You say it, Molly says it, everyone says it. So I thought it would be...I don’t know, for the best if Harry didn’t think of me as one.”

“But he clearly has.”

“Yes. He clearly has.” 

“And you’re worried you’re going to, somehow, traumatize Harry for life.”

Sirius purses his lips, his throat flooding with a sour taste. “It’s unavoidable, isn’t it? Just look .” He gestures absently to the velvet-lines walls.

He doesn’t have the words to describe it, the way every bit of the house is practically bursting with memories of his mother and father, how every sculpture and trinket and painting seems to exist for the sole purpose of pushing memories of hours-long fights and yelling that rattled the cabinets right into Sirius’s face. 

Remus, though, thankfully understands, something clicking in his eyes. He doesn’t know the finer points of Sirius’s tragic younger years, not the way James did, but he’s aware of enough of the basics to put two and two together. “You’re afraid you’re going to become like Orion,” he announces, no judgement in his tone, just him stating an undeniable truth.

Sirius cringes, because it does sound ridiculous when someone else says it out loud. After all, it’s hard not to notice how he hates Orion more than anything, how he would gladly burn this whole place and all the memories of him to the ground if not for the unfortunate fact that Sirius is on the run and has a very limited number of places he can stay.

But he’s surrounded by ghosts of Orion every hour of every day, and he doesn’t know if he’s imagining how they sink their claws into him and twist everything that makes Sirius Sirius . 

“Yeah,” Sirius says, even though Remus wasn’t asking a question.

There’s another lengthy silence. Remus’s face is carefully impassive, but Sirius gets the impression that he’s thinking very quickly about what he wants to say next. 

Finally, Remus speaks, looking at Sirius with so much faith that he can’t help but think it’s misplaced. “What you need to understand is that you’re not , Sirius.”

“Yeah?” Sirius snorts. “And how, exactly, can you be so sure of that?”

“Really?” Remus says. “You hate your father more than anything, Sirius. And you really think you’re going to become like him? Willingly?”

“Why not? I mean, you remember how he was an alcoholic, right? Always surrounded by beer or vodka or whatever--”

“Well, that doesn’t mean--”

Sirius speaks over him. “And I’m going right down that path too. What if alcohol is just the first step?”

“That’s not true.”

“And, I ask again, how do you know that?”

“I know that,” Remus says loudly, words testy and sharp, “because of how worried you are. Do you think Orion, for a single moment in his life, questioned himself? Wondered if maybe he was making all the wrong decisions and going down all the wrong paths? The fact that you’re actually concerned about that happening pretty much already sets you as a thousand times better than him.”

Sirius pauses, pursing his lips. “Okay. Alright. I get your point. But my doubts about it are going to mean absolutely nothing if I really do become like Orion. I’ve been sitting inside this hidey-hole for half a year, contributing absolutely nothing--”

“You’ve contributed a safe house ,” Remus interrupts. “And don’t you see how different that makes you from your parents? You’ve essentially given the house to people who would love nothing more than to see Voldemort toppled and defeated--”

“I should be doing more , but instead, I’m drinking my ass off every night--”

“You have no choice ! You’re a wanted man in every single country Fudge has managed to win onto his side, and every second you spend outside is a real chance that you’re going to be carted back off to Azkaban. I’m not saying you should be spending your free time destroying your liver, but you have to stay inside. It isn’t anywhere close to your fault, so I really don’t see why you’re blaming yourself for it.”

“I just--” Sirius stops, flounders, tries to realign his thoughts. “It just really, really seems like the kind of thing my parents would do, doesn’t it? Sending Regulus off to play Voldemort’s little soldier, while they throw parties in the house. And I know it’s not nearly the same thing as what I do, I know that we’re on completely opposite sides of the war, but sometimes it really does feel that way.”

“It shouldn’t,” Remus says firmly. “They didn’t have prices over their heads, the rest of us don’t have prices over our heads--well, except Mundungus, but his is barely anything. You can’t blame yourself for just trying to survive. You tried your best to help the Order, and that’s all anyone could ever ask for.”

“I don’t know, Remus,” Sirius says, and is promptly embarrassed by how his voice cracks. “What you’re saying is really nice and all, but I honestly don’t think I’m cut out to be Harry’s parent. Like, just a few months ago, I was talking to him with the Floo Network, and I was already frustrated and angry at sitting still in the house, and then he told me I shouldn’t meet him at Hogsmeade because it would be dangerous, and you know what I said?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me no matter how I respond.”

“I said he wasn’t as much like James as I thought. I said that, Remus. To the face of a teenager who had no memory of meeting his father in his entire life.”

“What--really, Sirius?” Remus says. “You actually said that?”

Sirius looks up at him desperately. “I know, I know, it makes me a horrible person--I’ve tried to make it up to him, giving him advice and whatnot, but--”

“See?” Remus bursts out suddenly, pointing at Sirius. “This-- this is what I’m talking about. You know you’ve done bad things, you know you’ve screwed up a few times, but you--you really try to learn from them. You try to be better. From the first day you came to Hogwarts, when you threw yourself into outgrowing every single superstition and prejudice your parents taught you. You--you became an Animagus , Sirius, for me, for a werewolf , and you were almost Lily’s best friend.

“So, Sirius, I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but you are not going to become like Orion, alright? You’re never going to come close to that. Yes, saying that to Harry was an absolutely dickish move, but that doesn’t mean you’re a monster. You can apologize, and Harry’s understanding, don’t think he won’t forgive you.” Remus fixes a steely gaze on Sirius. “I know you’re going to try to outgrow the type of person Orion would want you to be, and that’s what’s going to set a world of differences between you two.”

Sirius gulps, swallowing down the fresh sting of tears. “I know, it’s just--I don’t want to risk it, you know? Harry deserves the best.”

“He doesn’t need the best, Sirius,” Remus says, and he looks slightly sad now. “He just needs someone who he knows cares about him--the real him, not just the Boy-Who-Lived--and you’re one of the few people who does. Don’t throw that away.”

Sirius breathes deeply, trying to keep his heartbeat under control. The worst and best part about the conversation is how logical it is--it’s almost infuriating to realize how paranoid he had been, how much of his fears had been fueled by fear and loneliness and his own spiraling self-worth.

Because Remus is right--he’s not Orion, and, if he has even a shred of self-awareness or willpower left, he’s not going to be. Orion had years upon years to make up for his own stupidity, but he’d never done it, not even on his deathbed. Meanwhile, Sirius--Sirius had made up his mind to be better than that when he was goddamn eleven , and while sometimes he feels like he’s losing that game, he’s not. He’s better than Orion, had sacrificed blood for the Order when he was twenty, sacrificed his freedom to pursue vengeance for the death of a blood-traitor. 

His alcoholism is a frankly huge and alarming problem, but Sirius is going to face that. He’s going to fix it, if it’s the last thing he does. Because Remus is right--Harry deserves someone who cares about him, and Sirius will be damned if he lets overpriced wine get in the way of that.

He’s not the perfect father. Never will be. But the way Harry looked at him a few hours ago, when they were talking about his dreams--like if Sirius said it was going to be alright, it was going to be alright--makes him think that he can come as close as possible to it in the messed up world they live in.

“Don’t worry,” Sirius says, and his words sound distant to his own ears, “I won’t throw it away.” 

“Good,” Remus says, smiling slightly. “That’s really good, Sirius.”

Chapter Text

And Sirius means what he says. He really does. No sooner does Remus leave than Sirius begins meticulously planning out every single detail in his hypothetical conversation from Harry, ranging from where they should do it to how Sirius should start it to how many sorry s are necessary about the whole You’re-Less-Like-Your-Father Thing without going overboard to whether he should offer Harry hot chocolate or something to smooth things over.

The fact that he doesn’t actually know whether Harry likes hot chocolate or not now seems like a critical oversight. 

Harry has to like hot chocolate, right? He’s not a psychopath.

Whatever.

After Sirius goes back to his own room, he turns right back around and stares at the door for at least thirty minutes, wondering if maybe he’s dealing with everything wrong and if the right thing to do is talk it out as soon as possible. But some sort of awkwardness stills him, stops him from immediately hunting Harry down--because even though he’d been filled with ten different kinds of conviction after talking to Remus, there’s still plenty of room for self-doubt and uncertainty, and if Sirius doesn’t take at least a few hours to mull things over properly, he’s going to end up vomiting out words in an order that won’t make even a modicum of sense. And yeah, Remus is right, maybe he and Harry have been acting like father and son for at least a year--he still can’t believe he completely missed the fact that there was a bet going on right under his nose, he’s supposed to be better than this--but putting an official label on it makes everything feel so new and raw and untested. 

Besides, if Sirius is having a hard enough time with this, he can’t imagine how Harry’s going to react. At least Sirius lived with his actual biological father, is familiar with the concept--meanwhile, Harry is in entirely uncharted territory. He probably needs time to think about it. To digest. To meditate. Or whatever.

Sirius’s chest tightens uncomfortably, and he feels hyper aware of the fact that, despite everything, he’s still terrified that once Harry’s realized what he said, he’s going to outright reject Sirius. After all, it’s not as if Sirius is perfect parental material or hasn’t had his fair share of dickish moments, and despite what Remus seems to think, Sirius doubts Harry’s going to completely let go of them all that easily. 

All in all, Sirius deems it best to keep to himself for the time being. To give Harry the space he undoubtedly needs. To let their relationship progress naturally. After all, to force change is to kill it, right? He’s 90% sure Remus told him that once.

And so Sirius does that. He grabs food from the kitchen before Molly even begins the tedious process of cooking for a good two dozen people and holes himself up in his room. He watches the wall and tries to start on a book before giving up two pages in and then stares at the wall some more. At some point, the overwhelming urge to bust open a bottle of beer overcomes him, but he shakes it off the best he can, presses his hands down on his legs and keeps his eyes far away from the secret stash of alcohol in his cupboard. And, through it all, he splays out sentences in his head, crossing out words, then readding them, then crossing them out again, trying to mold the perfect confrontation.

So. Sirius thinks he managed not to overreact too badly. He thinks he managed to give Harry the space and privacy he needs.

Well, for approximately eighteen hours. 

But then Sirius spends one (1) sleepless night tossing and turning, imagining all the horrible scenarios that are possible, and by the time the sun rises, his curiosity has ultimately trumped any awkwardness or fear screeching in his mind. 

He waits until he’s confident that Harry’s preoccupied--after all, it’s not like Sirius has abandoned any prospect of giving Harry privacy--with helping Fred and George on their Next Grand Prank, then hunts down Ron, thinking that if Harry did realize that he called Sirius Dad , the first person he would go to is his best friend.

“Hello,” Sirius says, walking into Harry and Ron’s room a millisecond after knocking, “how are--oh my god, what are there so many chip bags?”

Ron, from where he’s been violently trying to polish a stain off his broomstick, freezes like a deer caught in headlights, arm caught mid-polish. “Chip bags?” he repeats innocently. 

“Yes.” Sirius gestures at what must be at least a dozen chip bags littered across the floor. All of their edges are slightly jagged, as though someone ripped them apart in a great fit of gusto or anger. “The chip bags. We only bought them, like, two days ago--you know what, never mind. That’s not what I came here to ask.”

“Oh,” Ron says, slowly lowering his broom to the ground. Sirius can read the tension in the rigid line of his shoulders, the tightness of his muscles. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit?”

Sirius stares at him, considering. Ron might understand what Sirius is going to ask him about, but then again, he also might not. “Have you and Harry...talked about anything recently?”

Not his smoothest transition or insinuation by any means, and Sirius knows if Remus were here, he’d be visibly cringing, but Sirius thinks it’s quite understandable considering all the pressure he’s working under. 

Ron, though, thankfully seems to understand. “You want to talk about Harry calling you Dad.”

Sirius winces. “Oh, so...he did notice.”

“Yep. A few minutes too late, but he got there eventually.”

“Oh,” Sirius says again, slightly dizzy. “And...how’s he dealing with all that?”

Ron shrugs, chewing on his lip. “He’s doing pretty good, all things considered. I mean, yeah, he did stress eat his way through a dozen bags of chips--” he makes a vague, sweeping gesture towards the abandoned chip bags “--and he, me, and Hermione had this whole impromptu therapy session, but he’s not traumatized for life or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”

A knot in Sirius’s chest unravels, and he inhales deeply.

“Wonderful,” he says, trying desperately to blink back the tears. “That’s exactly what I was asking, actually.”

“Great,” Ron says, looking pleased and slightly awkward. “So, is that all you came to ask, or…?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, about that.” Sirius leans back against the wall. “Do you...do you think I should give Harry some space? Or should I talk to him about it right away? Originally I wanted to give him space, let him come to terms with his feelings on his own and all that jazz, but you’re his best friend and probably know him better than I do, so...do you think that’s what I should do?”

There’s a stretch of silence. Ron frowns.

“Honestly?” he says finally. “I agree with you, I think you should give him space. He’s...pretty embarrassed. And you know how the Dursleys don’t really treat him as family?”

There’s an uncomfortable lurch in Sirius’s stomach. “Yeah, I know, yeah.”

“So he just needs a while to deal with his feelings. But he’s going to talk to you eventually, he said he would.” Ron cringes. “Just...you probably have to be the one to initiate the conversation, or Harry’s going to procrastinate it to the point that you two will only start to talk about it on your deathbed.”

It startles a laugh out of Sirius. “That’s good advice, I’ll take that.” God, he feels so light all of a sudden. He doesn’t remember feeling this hopeful in years. “Thanks, Ron. I’m glad Harry has you as a friend.”

Ron grins, turning red. “Um. Thanks. I’m glad he has you too. He really loves you, just saying. If he avoids you, and he probably will...it’s just emotional awkwardness. It’s not that he hates you or anything.”

“Great. That’s--that’s good to know.” For a moment, Sirius deliberates asking Ron what Harry thinks about the whole You’re-Less-Like-Your-Father Fiasco, then thinks better of it. He doesn’t want to intrude on Harry’s life too much, and this seems like the kind of thing that needs to be settled between the two of them.

Besides, he got what he came here to learn. Harry doesn’t utterly hate this entire situation. He isn’t completely horrified by his mistake, if Ron is to be believed. All Sirius needs to do is stay out of the way for a couple of days and then confront Harry before he heads back to Hogwarts. 

Sirius leaves the room, trying to remember the last time he felt so relieved. 

Staying out of Harry’s way, however, is easier said than done. Not only because they literally live in the same house, but also because after his conversation with Ron, it feels like a switch has been flipped in Sirius’s mind as he goes from wanting to lock himself in his room to feeling the inescapable urge to talk to Harry as soon as possible. 

It’s a bit terrifying, actually, how big of a part Harry has come to have in Sirius’s life--he hadn’t even noticed how much until now. The letters between him and Harry had been the one bright light in a haze of foggy depression and hatred--hatred towards himself, hatred towards Voldemort, even hatred towards Dumbledore for keeping him locked in here--and his stints in the Gryffindor fireplace are some of his only fond memories of this year. And he vividly remembers the amount of pride that had burned through him when he heard that Harry was forming a Defense Against the Dark Arts group right under Umbridge and Fudge’s noses.

So, yeah, Sirius is a bit eager.

It helps that it’s almost painstaking, the way Sirius and Harry are practically pulling out all the stops to avoid interacting with each other for more than a few seconds at a time. They sit apart from each other at meals, but not apart enough that people notice something is up. When they’re in the kitchen together, helping Molly with dinner, their conversation is friendly, but devoid of any jokes or wisecracks. When they pass each other in the halls, absolutely no eye contact is initiated.

Sirius sometimes notices Remus glancing between them speculatively, but he seems to have decided to stay out of the matter entirely. Sirius doesn’t blame him--he knows that this full moon is especially bad, and the stress from Arthur’s hospitalization and extra patrols for the Order isn’t exactly a breeze.

So, to take his mind off things, Sirius throws himself into decorating. His parents had never been particularly fond of Christmas, which is mainly why Sirius feels a burst of savage satisfaction with every overly gaudy wreath he nails to the wall. Grimmauld Place gets cleaned up faster than it did all last summer, until it looks less like a haunted house and more like a mildly acceptable household. 

He’s doing pretty good with the alcohol, too--he only slipped up once, when everyone had gone to see Arthur at St. Mungo’s again, even Harry, and the empty hallways and shrill silence had reminded Sirius too much of the months of dreary monotony. Sirius had busted open a bottle and started drinking it before he fully realized what he was doing, but the moment he did, he threw the rest down the drain.

Sirius stops his quest to cover every single House-Elf head in the ugliest Santa hat imaginable to breathe everything in for a moment--the frankly alarmingly strong freshener Tonks had insisted on spraying every room with, the distant sounds of pots and pans clanging together in the kitchen, the vague sounds of something exploding in the twins’ room. Everything feels so alive , and he never thought, back in the four gray walls of Azkaban cell, that he’d be able to experience this again.

And before he knows it, it’s Christmas Eve, and Sirius is wrapping Harry’s present after spending about half an hour deliberating, despite himself, on which wrapping paper to use. He’s gotten a series of books pertaining to Defense Against the Dark Arts, and he’s trying very hard not to stress about whether Harry’s going to like it or not. After all, he has to like it, right? Harry’s literally risking his education to start a little Defense Against the Dark Arts club.

Needless to say, Sirius will be unspeakably devastated if Harry does not, in fact, like it.

But he’s not thinking about it. Absolutely not. He’s thinking about everything but that.

Surprisingly, Sirius manages to get a fairly decent night’s sleep, after he gets over the flashbacks, so vivid in color and detail that it feels like a knife is being wedged into his lungs, of when he would spend Christmas with James, both of them trying to out-prank the other.

It’s Christmas morning when it finally happens.

Arthur’s back, following his disastrous experiment with trying to stitch up the snake wounds, and everyone’s distracted with clapping for him and welcoming him back. Sirius is clapping too, until a gentle tap on his shoulder makes him turn.

“Um, hi,” Harry says when Sirius faces him, eyes darting around, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here. 

“Hi,” Sirius replies, an odd swooping feeling taking over his stomach.

Harry fixes his gaze on the ground, staring at it with such intensity that Sirius can only guess that he’s frantically willing it to open and swallow him up. “I just want to say...thanks for the gift. The books. I really liked them.”

A pressure Sirius was fervently trying to ignore is suddenly lifted off of his chest. “Good to know,” he says lightly. “You’re welcome, Harry.”

“Yep,” Harry says. “Cool. Okay. I’m going to...go now. Say hi to Mr. Weasley and stuff. Okay. Bye.” And with that, he promptly flees to Arthur’s side.

Sirius waits for a few moments, counting the thuds of his heart.

“Well,” he whispers to himself when he reaches ten, “that didn’t go as badly as it could have.”

When he receives a Patronus from Dumbledore the next night, telling Sirius to meet him in one of the rooms at Grimmauld Place, Sirius’s immediate instinct is to think that Dumbledore somehow found out about his trips to the Gryffindor fireplace. If Remus is to be believed, pretty much everyone else in the Order already knows about them, but due to the absence of a thirty minute lecture on responsibility and abiding by the rules, Sirius had guessed that Dumbledore didn’t have a clue.

But that doesn’t explain why the meeting is happening at midnight.

Not that Sirius is sleeping or anything, because his sleep schedule has really gone down the drain lately, but it’s rather suspicious.

Sirius skulks into the room Dumbledore mentioned, and is immediately slapped in the face with the sight of Snivellus, slumped in a chair next to a desk, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here. And sitting behind the desk is Dumbledore, staring at Sirius with those penetratingly blue eyes, like he’s trying to drill deep into Sirius’s very soul.

Sirius tries to tamp down the very large wave of displeasure he feels. Yes, there’s always going to be a part of him clinging to the anger, the hatred, of Dumbledore not even trying to get him a trial, but there’s no reason for what could be a perfectly cordial conversation dissolving into a shouting match that could wake the whole house.

Dumbledore waves his wand, summoning a chair, and gestures at Sirius to sit.

After a moment of hesitation, Sirius complies. “What do you want?”

Snivellus snorts.

Dumbledore raises an eyebrow, just slightly. “Who says I want anything?”

“You show up in my house, pretty much unannounced, at midnight,” Sirius says. “I doubt this is a social call.”

“Well, you’re right, it isn’t,” Dumbledore says. “But I don’t want anything. I’m here simply to inform you of something that concerns Harry.”

Snivellus twitches, just slightly, like even the mention of Harry irritates him.

Sirius leans back in his chair slowly. This midnight meeting makes much more sense now. Dumbledore’s been careful to avoid Harry all damn year, showing up in inane hours of the night last summer simply so Harry didn’t catch a glimpse of him, and now that Harry’s back in the house, the habit has resurfaced.

Part of him hates Dumbledore for keeping such a distance, for pushing Harry away when, more than anything, Harry needs answers and comfort, but another part of him is relieved. Because he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t waiting for Dumbledore to screw Harry over the way he screwed over Sirius, by accident or not.

“I was distracted,” Dumbledore continues, “by Arthur being bitten, but now that it is ensured that he is healthy, I can move onto another, perhaps more pressing, matter: Harry’s dreams.”

Sirius’s heart misses a beat, then thuds awkwardly. His lungs hitch a few times.

He hates how he forgot about the dreams and the possession--well, not forgot entirely, but sort of pushed them into the back of his mind--while stressing over the entire Harry-Calling-Him-Dad matter. But now the familiar worry is back, strong as ever, blinding him with the light and intensity of a dying star.

“Alright,” Sirius says slowly, “what about them?”

“I believe he needs Occlumency lessons,” Dumbledore says, cutting straight to the point, “in order to block them from his mind.”

Sirius tenses almost immediately, a firm no balancing on his lips. He knows what Occlumency is, had received a few lessons on it when he was a child, and he remembers loathing absolutely everything about it. The way it was cold and visceral and unnatural, how it felt like some gnarly hand was reaching into his mind and dissembling it into its barest pieces, the way he had puked and puked afterwards, feeling like he would never be clean, never be himself, ever again. He would wish it on barely anyone, and never Harry.

But then he remembers the barely contained fear in Harry’s eyes when he talked about the dream with Voldemort’s snake, remembers the dreams of the Department of Mysteries. And he knows, in a sudden epiphany that feels like freezing water being poured down his spine, that Occlumency lessons are the lesser of two evils. Because if Harry gets lured to the Department of Mysteries and is captured, death would be considered a mercy--Sirius has seen the aftermaths of torture at the hands of Death Eaters, and it’s far from pretty.

Sirius breathes in slowly, trying to calm himself. “Alright,” he says again. “Occlumency lessons, okay. Who’s going to be teaching him?”

Dumbledore blinks, eyes widening just slightly, as if he hadn’t expected Sirius to agree so readily. He tilts his head towards Snivellus. “Severus will.”

And Sirius probably should have guessed this simply based on the fact that Snivellus is in the room at all, but it still feels like someone punched him in the gut. He didn’t really think Dumbledore would sink this low, would be so dead-set on avoiding Harry like the plague that he would put his subconscious in the hands of the one person who might loathe Harry more than Voldemort does.

“No,” he says immediately. “Um, no, absolutely not. I’m not letting Severus go into Harry’s mind. Sorry, come up with a different plan, thank you.”

“I’m not asking for permission, Sirius,” Dumbledore says, looking unperturbed. “I’m simply informing you of this, since you’re so close to Harry. But I’m not asking.”

“Believe me, Black,” Snivellus says in a soft voice from beside Sirius, “if there was a way out of this, I would have taken it. I am no more thrilled about this arrangement than you are. But the Headmaster is insistent.”

“And why are you insistent?” Sirius demands, narrowing his eyes at Dumbledore. “Why can’t you teach Harry instead? I mean, clearly Severus doesn’t want to.” True, Sirius trusts Dumbledore just about as far as he can throw him and not much more, but he’s better than Snivellus.

“I’m rather busy,” Dumbledore says evenly, “with handling the Order and attempting to fend off Fudge. I simply don’t have time.”

“Really?” Sirius snaps. “Because I’m pretty sure it’ll take about two hours of your time every week, and I think you can spare that much. Don’t pretend. You’re just, for whatever reason, afraid of what will happen if you have to spend more than a few seconds with Harry in the same room.”

Dumbledore stares at him for a long moment, then sighs. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Sirius. I’ve made my decision. I thought it would be best for me to tell you this face-to-face, but I didn’t come for your arguments.”

“Don’t deflect,” Sirius says savagely. “What are you so afraid of happening? Why can’t you even look Harry in the eyes? Why are you so insistent on keeping him in the dark about every damn thing? Why aren’t you telling him about the Prophecy?”

Snivellus’s eyes are darting between them, slightly expectantly, as if waiting for a duel to break out.

Something cold flashes in Dumbledore’s eyes. “You know why I don’t want to tell Harry about the Prophecy, Sirius. He’s a child.”

“No, he isn’t ,” Sirius says. “He stopped being a child the moment he came out of the Maze in the Triwizard Tournament, after his friend died right in front of him and he saw his parents’ murderer come back to life. He deserves answers, especially about the Prophecy, which, in case you have forgotten, is all about him . You can’t keep it under wraps forever, Dumbledore. He’s going to find out eventually.”

“I know what I’m doing, Sirius,” Dumbledore says quietly. “And I know that he’s too young for that now.”

No, Sirius thinks. There’s something else going on here. There’s another reason Dumbledore’s so hesitant to talk to Harry. 

But he has no idea what it is, and he doesn’t exactly have time to think about that right now.

“If you’re not even going to tell Harry about something he has every right to know, then at least spare him from Severus’s Occlumency lessons,” Sirius says through gritted teeth. “There are other people who know Occlumency, I don’t care if you have to sneak Harry out of Hogwarts to do it.”

“Careful, Black,” Snivellus says. “I’m beginning to think you don’t like me.”

“ No , Sirius,” Dumbledore says, a note of clanging finality in his tone. “I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but my decision has been made , and you cannot change it.”

Sirius wonders, for a second, if he should tell Dumbledore about Harry's dreams concerning the Department of Mysteries. If that would maybe, just maybe, prove that they’re a big enough problem for Dumbledore to want to handle himself.

But he can’t. Harry trusted Sirius when he promised not to tell, and god dammit, Sirius isn't going to go breaking that promise now, when their relationship is so fragile and liable to shatter.

“Fine,” Sirius says finally, the words turning into acid on his tongue, feeling like he’s walking right into one of the biggest mistakes in his entire life. “Fine. Sure. You may proceed with torturing Harry as you see fit.”

“Thank you.” Dumbledore stands up. “You and Severus can tell Harry tomorrow. He most likely won’t be very pleased about it.”

“Yeah,” Sirius says, “there might be a reason for that.”

Dumbledore ignores him. “Sirius, Severus,” he concedes with a nod at each of them, and then Disapparates on the spot.

Sirius and Snivellus look at each other for a long moment. 

Sirius is about to speak when Snivellus Disapparates too, leaving Sirius alone, clutching the edge of the desk, wondering when everything started to go so very wrong.

“Harry, dear,” Mrs. Weasley says, poking her head through the doorway of Harry and Ron’s room with a rather harried expression on her face, “could you come down to the kitchen? Professor Snape would like a word with you.”

Harry doesn’t immediately register what she says--he’s in a heated chess match with Ron, and his rook is being absolutely useless at beating up Ron’s pawn, much to Hermione and Ginny’s amusement--, but when he does, it feels like an egg has been cracked on top of his head, the cold yolk making its way down his spine. “Snape?” he echoes. “What? Why?”

“ Professor Snape, dear,” Mrs. Weasley says reprovingly, already withdrawing from the room. “And I don’t know why. But come along, now, I do know that he can’t stay for long.” 

Harry exchanges a series of horrified glances with Ron, Hermione, and Ginny before numbly picking himself off of the floor and heading down to the kitchen. He wonders if this is what it feels like to have an out-of-body experience. 

Harry can’t imagine a single reason why Snape would insist on meeting him--the most plausible explanation he can come up with is that he got a T on his last assignment, but he can’t fathom why Snape would want to talk to him privately when he could, just as easily, goad him in front of the entire class when school starts again in a week.

And then he pushes open the kitchen door to see both Snape and Sirius sitting across from each other at the table, glaring at each other with such force Harry’s mildly afraid someone’s going to explode, and he knows that he’s well and truly screwed.

It’s not that he’s entirely displeased to see Sirius, but things have been painstakingly awkward between them lately, and Harry’s stuttering disaster on Christmas didn’t do a fantastic job of breaking the ice. And he knows that he promised he would try to get over his paralyzing awkwardness enough to someday, sometime, talk it out with Sirius, but it feels like everytime he comes close, a wave of paranoia seizes him and refuses to let go, no matter how much he tries to shake it off.

If Ron and Hermione are to be believed, there’s a very large chance it won’t end catastrophically, but you never know. It’s easier to hope for the best instead of finding out if the best is actually possible.

“Er,” Harry says in order to announce his presence.

Snape peels his eyes off Sirius to glare at Harry. “Sit down, Potter.”

“You know,” Sirius says loudly, narrowing his eyes, “as this is my house, I’d much prefer it if you didn’t give any orders, Snape.”

Snape flushes slightly, but otherwise doesn’t rise to the bait. “The Headmaster has sent me to tell you, Potter,” he says, as if Sirius never said anything at all, “that it is his wish for you to study Occlumency this term.”

There’s a beat.

“Study what?” Harry says blankly.

“Occlumency, Potter,” Snape repeats, with the impatient air of one being forced to explain something excruciatingly simple to a very small, very dim child. “The magical defense of the mind against external penetration. An obscure branch of magic, but a highly useful one all the same.”

Harry’s heart speeds up, blood thundering in his ears. He was so confident that he wasn’t possessed--his conversation with Sirius had mostly put that to rest, and he hasn’t paid much mind to the idea since. But maybe, he thinks as the room’s temperature seems to lower by at least ten degrees, Dumbledore doesn’t see it that way. 

Instinctively, Harry cuts a glance at Sirius. He’s leaning back in his chair now, not looking at Harry, but the tense line of his shoulders and the whiteness of his clenched fist that tells Harry that Sirius is just as displeased with this as he is.

“Because the Headmaster thinks it is a good idea,” Snape answers smoothly. “You will receive private lessons once a week, but you are not to tell anybody what you are doing, least of all Dolores Umbridge. Do you understand?”

No . “Yes,” Harry says. “Who’s going to be teaching me?”

Sirius flinches slightly as Snape raises an eyebrow. “I am.”

Harry’s insides bottom out, and he has the peculiar sensation of a rug being pulled from underneath him. “Why? Why can’t--I don’t fucking know--why can’t Dumbledore do it?”

“Oh, believe me,” Sirius says, his voice terse and tight, “I asked the same thing, but apparently he’s much too busy to take two hours off a week.”

“I know that it is difficult,” Snape says silkily, “to understand, when one spends so much of their time wasting away in a safehole, Black, that other people really do have busy schedules, but I can assure you that Dumbledore does not have the time to handle children while he is planning a war.” He gets to his feet. “Potter, I will expect you at six o'clock on Monday evening, no later, no earlier. My office. If anybody asks, you are taking Remedial Potions. Anyone who has seen you in my class won’t deny you need them.”

And with that, he turns to leave, his black cloak sweeping across the floor.

“Wait a moment,” Sirius says suddenly, standing up.

Snape stops and turns back around, a sneer on the edge of his lips. “I am in rather a hurry, Black...unlike you, I do not have unlimited leisure time…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick.” He slips his hand into his pocket, where Harry knows his wand is. Snape follows suit, and Harry idly wonders if he’s really going to watch a full-on duel erupt. “If I hear you’re using these Occlumency lessons to give Harry a hard time, you’ll have me to answer to.”

A sudden warmth blooms through Harry, chasing away some of the chill from before.

“How touching,” Snape says, lip curling, something cold flashing in his eyes. “But surely you have noticed that Potter is very like his father?”

“Yes,” Sirius says, pride in his voice, “I have.”

“Well, then, you’ll know that he’s so arrogant that criticism simply rolls off him.”

In one fluid action, Sirius kicks his chair far behind him and jerks his wand out of his pocket; Snape does the same, until they’re both pointing them at each other’s throats. The probability of Harry being able to watch a duel is skyrocketing.

“Sirius!” Harry exclaims loudly. “Wait--stop, no !”

“Do it,” Snape hisses, eyes narrowed, a smile curling on his lips. “Do it, Black, attack me, see if it makes you feel any braver or any better about playing hide-and-seek in your house while the rest of us risk our lives.”

For a moment, Harry really thinks Sirius really is going to do it, really thinks that he’s going to let a hex fly from his wand. But then he glances at Harry, who guesses that he must look pitifully panicked, because Sirius shakes his head and lowers his wand--slowly and only slightly, as if it pains him to do so.

“Weren’t you just saying how busy you were, Severus?” Sirius says. “Well--don’t let me keep you. Go on. Have a nice day.”

An ugly snarl coats Snape’s face for a second, but then he returns, just as quickly, to his usual expressionless manner. Not putting his wand back in his pocket, he turns and finally sweeps out of the kitchen, the door thudding closed behind him.

There’s a long silence. Everything in the room seems to vibrate with some sort of wary anticipation.

Harry, who’s gone through all five stages of grief in the last ten minutes, says, “This is hell. I’ve died and--and gone to hell. This is the only explanation.”

Sirius snorts, though there’s still something hard in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Harry. I tried to get Dumbledore to teach you, but--”

“Yeah, no, I get it,” Harry says quickly. “It’s okay.”

“Alright. Great.” Something uncertain flickers across Sirius’s face for a second, and he seems to come to a split-second decision. “By the way, Harry, I’ve been thinking, and I think we need to talk--”

And oh, god, Harry knows that a conversation is probably overdue, but the idea of having to spend one-on-one time with Snape regularly is putting a strident pressure on his chest that’s squeezing his lungs, making it hard to breathe, to think, and he’s not going to be able to focus on anything else until he can somehow get it to ease.

“Um,” Harry interrupts, trying to ignore how the room starts to spin, round and round, like it’s taunting him, “actually, I should probably go and tell Ron and Hermione what happened--they were curious when I left, they’re probably wondering what’s taking so long--yeah, I should definitely go.”

Hurt crosses Sirius’s face. “Yeah, you should probably get on that, alright--”

Harry flees before Sirius even finishes his sentence. 

Chapter Text

--the wall blasted open into a gaping hole, pieces of wooden debris littering the ground--

--hallways, twisting and full of rubble--

--James’s dead body, eyes open and hollow, glasses askew on his face, hands stretched towards his wand on the ground, just a few inches from grasping it--

--a baby’s cries, erratic and panicked, floating through the house--

--and Lily is dead too, splayed out on the ground, her red hair fanned out like a pool of blood, eyes just as hollow as James’s, laying spread-eagle, as if she died trying to protect, to shield, the baby behind her--

--who is still sobbing in his crib, tears rolling down his face, and Sirius barely has time to wonder how he survived when thousands didn’t before he lifts him up, cradles him to his chest, tries to shush him, all while wondering how life could have flipped and turned and gotten twisted so very badly--

Sirius gasps himself awake, lurching out of bed, sloppily shoving the covers away from himself. It’s dark, but he swears there’s something moving in the shadows: James, maybe, or Lily, or his father, or his mother, coming to remind him of every single way he has failed every single person in his life--

Sirius sucks in a huge breath. His head feels light and distant, but he squeezes his eyes shut and focuses, trying to ground it, to bring it back to reality. It takes a while, but when he finally opens his eyes and his vision fades back in, the shadows are gone and the darkness seems plain, normal, expected.

He slowly lowers himself back on the bed, but it only takes five minutes of staring at the wall for him to know that trying to sleep again is fruitless. Letting out a muffled curse, he heaves himself out of the bed and makes his way down to the kitchen, thinking that if he has to stay awake for the rest of the night, he might as well do it with a nice snack.

But as soon as he walks through the doors, he freezes.

Harry’s already there, a mug of butterbeer in hand, though he isn’t drinking it--in fact, he seems to have forgotten about its existence, instead opting to stare emptily at the wall, something heavy in his eyes.

Sirius is beginning to think that the kitchen is just bad luck, plain and simple. First the Dad Incident, and then the Occlumency Disaster, and now this. Maybe he should just lock the doors and never let anybody go in ever again.

“Hi,” Sirius says, his voice echoing slightly.

“Hi.” Harry doesn’t take his eyes off of the one specific portion of the wall he’s staring at.

“Whatcha doing in the kitchen at,” Sirius checks his watch, “two A.M.?”

“I was thirsty.”

“Mm-hm. As evidenced by your entirely undrinken mug of butterbeer.”

“Well, then, what are you doing in the kitchen at two A.M.?”

Sirius shrugs. “I had a nightmare. Couldn’t go back to sleep. Come on, your turn to be honest now.”

A beat. 

“I had a nightmare too.” Harry tears his gaze away from the wall to look down at his butterbeer. He blinks, as if he forgot it was ever in his hand.

“Were you seeing the Department of Mysteries again?” Sirius asks gently.

Harry’s eyes darken. “No.” He swallows. “I saw--I saw Cedric. Again. While he was dying.”

“Oh.” Sirius leans carefully against the counter. “Do you...blame yourself? For his death?”

It’s something that’s been bothering him for a few months, the possibility of Harry blaming himself the way Sirius blames himself for James and Lily’s deaths, but there had never been a right moment to ask that wouldn't just result in Harry lying and saying he's fine. Until now.

“Yes,” Harry says simply. “Why?”

Sirius’s heart begins to pump faster. “You know you shouldn’t, right?” he tells him. “You know that it wasn’t your fault? You had absolutely no way of knowing that the Cup was a Portkey--hell, the dozens of highly-trained adults responsible for the Tournament had absolutely no clue.”

“I know,” Harry says, and his voice shakes slightly. “But I can’t stop thinking about it. I just--replay the moment when I asked Cedric to take the Cup with me over and over in my mind. What if I had been more selfish and taken the Cup for myself? What if I had gone by the damn rules and told Cedric to suck it, I was the one getting the Cup?” He shakes his head, as if to get some twisted thought out of his head. “He’d still be alive.”

“ Hey ,” Sirius says. “You tried your best. You were trying to be a good person, and for that, I’m so proud of you. You were fourteen years old, it wasn’t your job to uncover the entire plot Voldemort wove around you. It was a thousand other people’s jobs, and they all failed miserably.”

“I know that, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that Cedric’s gone. It doesn’t change the fact that his family’s grieving. And it doesn’t change the fact that it could all have been avoided.”

“I’m going to tell you something, alright?” Sirius says. “Bad things happen. Bad things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. It’s a part of life, and you can’t stop it, no matter how hard you try. The only thing you can do is try not to do horrible things on your own free will and conscience, the way Voldemort does, and try to beat the people who do that.” He pauses. “Trust me, Harry, there are worse things in this world than a teenager who just tried to help his friend out.”

Silence.

“I know it’s not going to be easy to move past it, and maybe you’ll feel guilty for your entire life,” Sirius continues. “But I hope not, because it’s not your fault . The sooner you accept that knowing you’re not responsible for every bad thing to ever happen doesn’t make you a terrible person, the happier you’ll be. You--”

“Do you still blame yourself for their deaths?” Harry blurts out. “My parents’?”

Sirius’s heart stills in his chest, and he’s vividly aware of the seemingly rising temperature of the room. Damn it. They’re really getting into emotional territory now. “Yes,” he says carefully, “I do.”

Harry meets his gaze, something testy in his eyes. “So, are you really in a place to be giving me that advice? About moving past guilt and all?”

“I am trying to move past the guilt, Harry.”

There’s a beat.

“No, you’re not.”

“No,” Sirius agrees, swallowing down the acidic taste in his mouth, “I’m not.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “My point stands.”

“But that’s how I know what you’re doing is a frankly horrible idea,” Sirius says, somewhat desperately. “Feeling guilty--it doesn’t accomplish anything. It doesn’t bring the dead back, doesn’t help them in any way. But realizing that you’re not to blame for everything--that way, you can at least help you .” He worries his lip. “Besides, our situations are entirely different. You had no idea there was anything even remotely bad going on. You were just trying to be a good person. I, meanwhile, knew exactly what kind of danger Lily and James were in, and I decided to make Peter the Secret-Keeper anyway.”

“That’s not your fault,” Harry says, looking up to the ceiling, and Sirius gets the impression that he’s trying very hard to avoid rolling his eyes again. “You were just trying to be a good person too, like you said before. You didn’t know Pettigrew was going to betray you. You were just trying to keep my parents safe.”

Sirius’s breath hitches, because goddamn , he never thought he’d hear those words from Harry himself, whose entire life has been screwed up because Sirius had to fuck up on massive proportions. Remus has said it hundreds of times before, but it hits so much closer to home now, with Harry acting like Sirius is an idiot for ever thinking about feeling guilty. 

“Okay, how about this,” Sirius says, trying furiously to keep the tears at bay. “I’ll try my best to stop--to stop blaming myself for Lily and James’s deaths, and in return, you try to stop blaming yourself for Cedric’s. Let’s both accept that it wasn’t our fault.” Technically, Lily and James still indirectly died because of Sirius, but he doesn’t want to kill the mood. “We both get something. Two birds with one stone. Okay?”

Harry stares at the ceiling for a few more seconds, then smiles slightly. “Okay,” he says.

There’s another silence, heavy with things unsaid, with things hovering on the edge of Sirius’s tongue. He’s just about to speak when Harry says, “Hey, want a butterbeer?”

Sirius swallows down the words. “Yeah. That would be great.”

Harry sets his own butterbeer down and is making his way over to the pantry when Sirius blurts, “Are you okay with me being your dad?”

Harry stills.

Sirius fumbles to backtrack. “I mean--you don’t have to be. I’m not trying to guilt trip you or anything. We don’t even have to talk about it right now if you don’t want to.”

“Uh, no,” Harry says, eyes wide, looking rather shell-shocked. “I mean--yeah, we should talk about it. I think. Or we’re never going to, and then I’ll be at Hogwarts, and I’ll torture myself by wondering. So, yeah. We should do it now.”

“Okay,” Sirius says carefully. Is this a win? It certainly feels like a win. “That sounds good. So...tell me. How are you feeling?”

God, he’s horrible at this. Any respectable therapist would wince.

Harry licks his lips nervously, eyeing the door, like he’s considering sprinting out and never coming back. But then some sort of hesitant resolve seems to come over him, tightening his features slightly, and he turns to face Sirius, giving a little half-shrug. “To be completely honest with you? I have--uh, I have absolutely no clue. None. I mean, yeah, don’t get me wrong, the idea of it is sort of...I don’t know, comforting? Nice? But also…”

He trails off. Sirius waits.

“But also...I’ve never had a family before. Not that I remember. Yeah, there are the Dursleys, but there are a thousand and one words in the dictionary I would use to describe them before even thinking about using family .” Harry runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “Like--they used to make me sleep in the cupboard, you know? And--”

“I’m sorry,” Sirius interrupts, voice tight, “they made you sleep where ?”

Harry blinks, his face crumbling. “Oh--shit, I should not have said that. Please ignore me, thank you--”

“I’m not going to--I’m not going to just ignore this,” Sirius says. “They made you sleep in the cupboard? Really?”

It takes Harry a few seconds to start talking again. “Uh, yeah. They really--like, really --hated magic and anything even remotely connected to it, so they hated me. Thought I was a, um, a freak. I guess they thought that if they acted rude enough to me--they would make me do a lot of chores--and kept me out of the way, they would be able to stomp it out of me.” He takes in a shuddering sort of breath. “Or maybe they just hated me. Who knows?”

Hatred, so strong and fiery that Sirius hasn’t felt the likes of it since he first found out Peter betrayed them, begins to course through him. He’d known the Dursleys were bad, but he hadn’t known the specifics, not until now. Sirius’s childhood had sucked, but at least he’d had a fucking bedroom--his parents had never forced him into a goddamn cupboard .

I’m going to kill them .

“Uh, please don’t,” Harry says, and Sirius belatedly realizes that he said that last bit out loud. “Because, you know, the police will start investigating, and you’ll be in trouble, and the Ministry will be suspicious. Also, I’m not one hundred percent sure I want them dead. Out of my life, definitely, but not dead .”

A beat.

Sirius is still trying to quell the fury that’s making its way through his every vein and nerve like lightning when Harry continues, “So...I’m just really afraid that, I don’t know, I’m going to mess up? And I know that you might think so too, since you said I’m less like my dad than I thought--”

“Okay. No. I’m stopping you right there.” Sirius pushes the thoughts of the Dursleys out of his mind--he can focus on them later, but right now, there’s something more important. “Look, when I said that-- you weren’t messing up at all, okay? I was messing up. I was the one who looked at you and did the most dickish thing possible by telling you that you had to...live up the absolutely non-existent expectations of a man you don’t remember ever meeting. You were being the rational one by saying I shouldn’t go to Hogsmeade, and I was just so frustrated about being locked in this stupid house for months that I wasn’t thinking straight.

“And I’m not saying that to justify what I did. I just want you to know that I didn’t mean it, not at all.” He sucks in a huge breath. “And you know what? James would be--he would be so, so damn proud of you, Harry. For surviving everything you went through. For being able to get through every day, no matter how hard they are. Don’t think this would somehow...break his opinion of you.”

Harry seems to relax, something in his eyes softening, the corners of his lips curving up slightly. “Thanks,” he says, voice rough. “That...means a lot to me. You have no idea.”

Sirius feels another pang of guilt. “Don’t thank me, kid. It’s the truth.” He clears his throat, reigning his mind back to the matter at hand. “Anyway, Harry...I know what it’s like to come from a family who doesn’t love you. A family who isn’t a family.” He hates talking about his mother and father; it always feels like drinking poison, but right now, that’s what he has to do. “Remember how I told you that they hated me for not living up to their pureblood image, for being a Gryffindor? Well, it ran a lot deeper than just disapproval. They would...hit me. Cast a curse or a jinx at me, sometimes. One time, my dear old father even used the Cruciatus Curse on me.”

“The Cruciatus Curse ?” Harry echoes, sounding horrified. 

“Yeah.” Sirius takes in a steadying breath. It feels like he’s reaching some sort of climax, and he can’t shake the notion that if he doesn’t get every word exactly right, he’s going to ruin the rest of the story. “So, what I’m trying to say is...I don’t know what it’s like to be a proper family either. I’m not any better at this than you are. But I really do think that if we...talk, and communicate properly, we can become a family. It won’t be perfect, but that’s not what either of us need right now. We just need to know that there’s someone else who loves us, who supports us.”

Harry’s staring at him with a strangely penetrating gaze. Too many emotions for Sirius to properly read cross his face.

“And, besides...we’ve already been acting like a family for a while, don’t you think? Apparently, there’s a bet about--”

“About when I call you Dad , yeah,” Harry finishes, settling on an expression of slight mortification. “Hermione told me about it. Even she knows. I can’t believe I missed that.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I did too.” Sirius pauses. “So...you don’t need to worry about messing up, or whatever. If you want to be a family, if you want me to be your father, we can do that.”

“I...I do want that.” Hesitation is sharp in Harry’s tone, but there’s a hopeful lilt at the end, too. “But what about you? Do you want that? Because...I can be a handful. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

A smile splits across Sirius’s face, warmth flooding through him. “Yeah,” he says, tears welling in his eyes. “I would want that. More than anything.”

Sirius isn’t sure who moves first, but no later has he finished his sentence than he and Harry are hugging. 

It’s perfect. Beyond perfect. Maybe not in their actions, because both of them are clinging onto each other a bit desperately, neither accustomed to something like this. But Harry lays his head on Sirius’s shoulder, and Sirius presses a tentative kiss to Harry’s forehead, and in that moment what they have seems unbeatable.

Four years ago, trapped in a dingy cell in Azkaban, Sirius would never have believed that he would end up here, with Harry, with his son, hope and love sparking in his chest. He’d thought that any possibility of family had died the night James had.

He was wrong, and he’s so happy he was. 

“If you ever want to talk about the Dursleys,” Sirius says, voice muffled, “or Voldemort, or anything at all, pretty much, even which Quidditch team has the best chance of making it to the World Cup, I’m right here, alright? You can talk to me.”

“Yeah,” Harry says after a moment, “I will. Well, probably not talk , exactly, but, you know--send a letter.”

“Actually,” Sirius starts, gently disengaging himself from the hug, though he places his hands on Harry’s shoulder in what he greatly hopes is a comforting gesture, “there’s something else that we can use. I’ve been meaning to give it to you for a while now, but in between Arthur nearly dying and our own emotionally constipated experiences, there was never the time.”

“Yeah?” 

“When James and I were younger, we had these twin pieces of a mirror, and when I tapped my piece, I would be able to see and talk with him through his piece. I think we stole it from Filch or something, I don’t really remember, but they came in quite handy during especially boring detentions. I still have them. Both pieces. I can give you one of them, if you want, and we can communicate. It doesn’t even just have to be for ranting or therapy. We can call to check up on each other.”

Harry stays still for a while, and then a smile spreads slowly across his face. It occurs to Sirius, not for the first time, how lonely these past few months must have been for him, with everyone either thinking of him as a liar, as delusional, or both. “I’d like that. A lot.”

Sirius grins back, then squeezes Harry’s shoulders slightly. “And, hey--don’t be afraid to use it, okay? Especially if Snape gives you a hard time. You’re taking those goddamn Occlumency lessons with him, remember?”

“No, I make a habit of forgetting momentously hellish things in my life,” Harry says.

Sirius snorts. “Don’t be snarky. I’m trying to have a heart-to-heart with you, you can’t ruin it. Now, needless to say, I don’t trust Snape at all, so be sure to keep me updated. If only for the sake of my frail sanity.”

“Why, what are you gonna do if he hurts me? Storm Hogwarts and beat him up?”

That’s actually extremely close to what Sirius is planning on doing, but Harry doesn’t have to know that. “Oh, I have my ways,” he says airily. “I could send him, I don’t know, a box full of a thousand bats. That would give his office a nice, cozy aura.”

Harry scoffs. “Uncreative, but effective, I guess.”

“Excuse me,” Sirius says, “ uncreative ? In what way?”

“It’s been done, like, a thousand times before. Mostly by Fred and George. Never a thousand, but every Halloween there are at least a dozen bats that get stuck in Snape’s office. Their shrieking during class is really distracting.”

“Traitor,” Sirius says. “But, anyway, you should go back to bed and try to get some sleep. Never too late.”

“What about you?” Harry asks.

“Well, I never did get that butterbeer I asked for.”

“I never finished mine, either," Harry points out. 

“Well, that’s your problem. You had it for thirty minutes now, it’s probably all cold and disgusting. Come on. Bedtime.”

Harry smirks as he makes his way out of the kitchen. Just past the doorway, he falters for a brief moment.

“Goodnight, Dad,” he says.

“Goodnight,” Sirius calls after him. 

He lets the smile linger on his lips for a good five minutes, long after Harry is gone.

The next day, when the kids are supposed to leave for Hogwarts, is chaotic from the very start, and Sirius is privy to the singularly unique experiences of three fully-packed trunks tumbling down the stairs in a span of five minutes, Hermione nearly tearing the entire house apart to look for her missing textbook, Fred and George finding comfort in the chaos and rigging multiple contraptions to make people trip in various hallways, and Hedwig escaping from her cage and wreaking absolute havoc, accompanied by Harry using carefully chosen words that Sirius is sure even Kreacher does not know. 

“Are you going to help?” Remus asks pointedly, covered in feathers and scratches from trying to usher a very furious Hedwig back into her cage.

“No,” Sirius says shortly, sipping his butterbeer. “I am here for nothing more than to watch the chaos unfold. Consider me a spectator.”

“You’re so unbelievably funny.” Remus looks around to make sure that the sounds of Molly screaming because of another one of Fred and George’s pranks is loud enough to stop them from being overheard. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask--how is everything going with Harry?”

“Everything is going great,” Sirius assures him.

Remus looks at him slightly doubtfully. “Are you sure? I can’t tell if you’re being sincere or not. Is everything actually fine, or is that code for Help, Remus, I really screwed everything up and I need you to clean it up .”

“Everything,” Sirius repeats, affronted, “is actually going great, thank you very much. We had a very nice conversation last night--or maybe it was this morning, I don’t know, it was at one of those weird times after midnight. And we talked things out, we even hugged, and now everything is better than ever between us.”

Remus smiles, looking satisfied, as if everything worked out only because of him. (Which is pretty true, Sirius supposes, because Remus was the one to talk him out of a full-on mental spiral.) “It’s great to hear that, Sirius. Really great. I’m so happy about--oh, no, Ginny, don’t try to carry that entire thing yourself!”

And with that, he hurries away. 

It takes Sirius a while to find some time alone with Harry, but he finally manages it, about ten minutes before everyone is set to depart.

“I’ve got the mirror,” he says lowly, extracting it from his pocket. It’s wrapped in brown packaging paper, and it looks wholly inconspicuous. “Talk to me, okay? Don’t forget.”

Harry takes it from him almost reverently, leaning down and carefully placing it in his trunk. “Thanks, Sirius. Yeah, I’ll use it. I promise I won’t abandon you.”

“You’re not funny.” Sirius places a hand on his shoulder and turns Harry to face him. “But seriously--I’m here for you, alright? I know going back to Hogwarts isn’t going to be easy, especially now that you don’t have Quidditch to take your mind off things. It’s gonna suck, but maybe I can make it suck a little less.”

“That is--that’s the most touching thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Harry says, a smile on his lips, but Sirius can tell he means every word. “Yeah, I’ll call. Or whatever it’s called when you use the mirror. Thanks again.”

“No problem.”

“We’re leaving!” Molly yells from the front door, followed closely by Walburga’s curtain flying open and profanities filling the air. “Everyone! Come on!”

“Are you coming?” Harry asks. “In your Animagus form?”

“Nah,” Sirius replies regretfully. “Dumbledore said I shouldn’t. That I should keep a low profile for a while, like he’s said all year.” He shakes himself slightly, trying to shed the thoughts. “Bye, Harry. Have a good time.”

Before he’s even fully thought about it, he pulls Harry into a hug. Harry returns it almost immediately.

Sirius hates that Harry’s being forced to go back--he doesn’t deserve the lies the Daily Prophet is still set on printing at every single available opportunity, or Umbridge, or the new Occlumency lessons. But what’s Sirius supposed to do? Lock Harry in Grimmauld Place forever?

Moody yells for everyone to hurry up, and Harry and Sirius let go of each other. 

“Bye, Sirius,” Harry says after a moment, swallowing roughly. “I’m going to miss you. Sorry I was too busy avoiding you all Christmas to, like--talk to you.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it,” Sirius says. “Bye, Harry. I’m wishing you luck. Hoping you don’t die. Or combust from stress.”

Harry snorts. “Let’s hope for realistic things.” And with that, he picks up his trunk and is hastily trundled out the door by an exasperated-looking Moody.

It’s strange, Sirius thinks the next day. He thought he’d be miserable with Harry gone again, and he is, at least a little--but everything feels right in a way it hasn’t all year, like a story has neared the happy ending it promised. Yeah, his urges to get wildly drunk aren’t anywhere close to completely gone, and maybe they never will be, but he’s doing better. And yeah, he still jumps a little when he rounds the corner sometimes, waiting for Orion’s ghost to lunge at him, but he’s not letting it get to him, letting it dominate his mind, like he did before. 

With a faint smile, Sirius takes the mirror piece out of his pocket and taps it twice.