He's At Hogwarts

He's at Hogwarts. The leaves have just started to change, and a few float where they have fallen on the surface of the lake, untroubled today by the tentacular frolicking of the giant squid. He is lying on the grass with a book in one hand, and Moony's lying there, too, his head propped against Sirius's leg.

James swaggers over--Lily Evans must have made eye contact, otherwise he'd restrain himself to a saunter--and examines Sirius's book.

"Is that," he asks distastefully, "Confronting the Faceless, Part Two?"

Sirius turns the book over and checks. "Guess so."

"And you, Mr. Moony," James says, moving on to Remus and his equally offensive reading matter, "have you fallen prey to the irresistible charms of--"

Remus holds up his copy of The Standard Book of Spells Grade Seven and says, "Charms?"

"Prongs," says Sirius. "Do you even know how to spell NEWTs?" Sirius's stomach twists as he realizes he doesn't know how to spell NEWTs, and he finds himself looking right at Peter.

Who must have, not swaggered, not sauntered, but sidled up beside James when nobody was looking.

"Never trust a man," Peter says with a nervous laugh, "who's pretending to study."

"Mischief to be managed, lads," says James. "Day is young, so are we, all that."

"NEWTs," says Remus sternly, and for some reason Sirius suddenly knows how to spell them again.

"Why would you want to spend the afternoon reading this rubbish," James asks reasonably, "when we just spent the entire day listening to Flitwick talk about it?"

Sirius has no idea.

He hears the baby crying and considers Transforming. Harry always liked Padfoot; once, after a particularly satisfying yank on Padfoot's ear, Harry even made a gurgly little noise resembling a laugh, causing Lily to very nearly lose her mind with delight and James to do so unreservedly.

Yes. He is a mad brilliant godfather, and he will stop the brat's squalling in the instant it takes to Transform, earning slobbery caresses from said brat and tears of gratitude from its parents.

He leaves his motorbike running in the garden. "James! Lily!" he calls as he enters the house through an already broken window. The sitting room is unrecognizable. Even James's Quidditch trophies are blown to bits. "Prongs!" He makes for the nursery, levitating still-smoking fragments of the Potters' house out of the way.

Someone, definitely not Lily, definitely not Prongs, is already at Harry's side, lifting him out of his crib. "It's goin' to be alrigh'. I've got yeh."

Sirius has to step over Lily's body to do it--he'll help her up in a minute, she'd have his head if he didn't check on Harry first--but he rushes to Hagrid and looks down at the crying baby in his arms. Hagrid brushes some ash from Harry's forehead to reveal a nasty gash.

"Disinfectum." Sirius remembers to cast a diluted version of the spell just like it said to in Lily's copy of Happy Babies, Healthy Wizards.

"Oi, that's better now, isn' it?" Hagrid says, giving Harry an awkward bounce. A huge crash as the Potters' house moves closer to total collapse makes the baby start to cry even harder.

"Best help me get young Harry outta here safe," says Hagrid.

Sirius levitates some just-fallen wreckage to clear a path out of the nursery. He sees James on the floor and has to steady himself on Harry's crib.

"Easy there, Sirius," says Hagrid. "We've got ter help Harry now."

Sirius and Hagrid pick their way out of the house, carefully shielding Harry from falling debris. Harry continues to wail even after they make it to the safety of the garden.

Sirius opens his mouth to tell Hagrid he's going back in to help Lily and James. He ends up saying, "Give Harry to me, Hagrid, I'm his godfather," instead.

Hagrid shakes his head. "I'm sorry."

"I'll look after him."

"I know yeh would, Sirius. Yer a mad brillian' godfather, everyone knows tha'." And Hagrid is saying something soothing about how Dumbledore's got a plan, Muggles in Surrey, everything's going to be safer now that You-Know-Who is gone, but Sirius is laughing uncontrollably because what Hagrid doesn't know is that Harry's face has just contorted in exactly the grimace that means he's about to spit up. The Little Bubotuber, Remus called it once.

Harry spits up. Hagrid is horrified.

Sirius helps Hagrid charm away the spit-up. "Maybe," Sirius says, hiccupping from his laughing jag as he tucks Harry's blanket snugly into the neck of his baby-shirt, "when this is all over, he can come and live with me."

"Maybe," Hagrid says gently.

"Maybe if the Muggles don't want him." Sirius feels the possibility is unlikely. Who wouldn't want Harry? He's the coolest baby ever--he can even put his feet in his mouth.

Hagrid nods. Harry smacks his lips sleepily.

"Apparition, babies--you know," Sirius says hoarsely. "Take the bike."

"Yeh mean tha'?" asks Hagrid. "I know how yeh love that motorbike."

"I won't need it anymore." Sirius doesn't mean to say it, but the instant he does, he knows it's true. He watches the engine, charmed to emit iridescent silver smoke stars, kick in, then he watches the headlights get smaller and smaller as Hagrid, his godson, and his very favorite thing in the world, his breathtakingly illegal motorbike, disappear into the night sky.

Sirius disappears.

Finds himself in Diagon Alley, cackling. Before he remembers what could possibly be so bloody funny, he finds himself surrounded by twenty Aurors, who, for some reason, seem to be rather afraid of him. The queasy look on their faces does nothing to stop his laughter, so they coax him away, calling him "son," promising he'll get to see his friends soon, and for one wild moment he thinks they mean James and Lily. His wand is already in pieces by the time he catches sight of a rat scurrying away into the gutter.

Sirius stopped the influx of memory by sheer force of will. He was shaking so hard he made the newspaper rustle audibly. Laughing again--Sirius's penchant for laughing like a maniac when most people would break down and sob has proved an effective means to confuse the Dementors--he saw a red-headed boy in a photo holding a sleeping rat. He's at Hogwarts.

Sirius loped to the shore's edge, wiping away his pawprints behind him with his tail. He peered down into the steel gray surface of the North Sea and saw The Grim staring back at him. Padfoot no longer had the shaggy, playful look of an overgrown puppy. Azkaban had turned him into the kind of fire-eyed monster that haunts children's stories and, some people believe, augurs the death of anyone who sees it. He closed his eyes, unsettled by his first glimpse of himself in twelve years, and jumped in.

It was a chilly night for August, and the houses in Magnolia Crescent all had their lights on. They were nice houses, though they all looked the same, and there was a playground on the end of the street. It struck Sirius as a good place to grow up, if a far cry from the Potters' cottage in Godric's Hollow. There was no one out but Sirius, not even another dog. Everyone was safe inside with their cozy Muggle gadgets.

Except for one person. Sirius darted into a dark alley as a boy in Muggle clothes, exactly the right age, sat down wearily on a low wall. Glasses. Untidy hair. Sirius took a step closer, using the last of his strength to stop himself from wagging his tail and barking.

Harry angrily threw open his trunk and rummaged through his things. Sirius realized Harry had his huge regulation Hogwarts trunk, a broomstick (a nice one, too, didn't make them like that in Sirius's day), and an owl in its cage. Harry was running away.

Really, it wasn't the trunk and the broomstick that tipped Sirius off. It was the way Harry's hands shook as he searched through his belongings, the way he kept looking over his shoulder, half afraid he'll be caught, half hoping someone will come help him. Sirius remembered the night he'd left home as a teenager and gone to stay with the Potters. He knew exactly how alone Harry felt at this moment and wished Harry knew he had his godfather right behind him.

Harry looked up, wand in hand. "Lumos," he said and stepped towards the alley. His eyes widened when he saw Sirius.

There must, Sirius thought, be some part of Harry that remembers the big black dog that used to let him play with its tail. There was a flicker of something in Harry's eyes, and it could very well have been recognition.

No. It was fear. Harry cried out and fell backwards into the street. There was a loud crack as the Knight Bus arrived, and Sirius heard Harry tell the conductor what had frightened him--"a big black thing." Harry boarded the bus, looking back for signs of the Grim he now thought was haunting him, and, for once, Sirius did not feel like laughing.