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Halloween was always going to be rather rough for Sirius. He never really loved it, but he hates it even more knowing that it is the same day that he lost James and Lily and Harry was left alone on the Dursley’s doorstep. Not to mention that he would make the biggest mistake he'd ever done and land himself in Azkaban.
It was hard for him to be alone on a day like today especially knowing that he could be with his kid and he could be visiting their graves and telling him about them and instead he's all alone in this stupid house that he hates with no way to even make things up to Harry or them. He hates it and he hates it even more knowing that Harry doesn’t even know where his parents’ graves are. No, instead, Harry is likely going to the feast and like everyone else, completely ignoring this day. Not that it’s his fault, their world always celebrates Halloween and ignores their deaths just like they ignored Harry’s needs the night of Halloween and every day after when they left him in the abusive household and in the care of the Dursleys.
For years, he hadn’t been able to grieve and now, he sits here alone, in the worst place he could be (aside from Azkaban, of course) wishing he wasn’t alone. Wishing he was with his kid. Wishing he could be with James and Lily.
It bothers him that none of the Order members even appear to care about how he might be feeling on a day like today, but then again, they only put up with him for Harry’s sake. Unlike certain others, as he’s constantly reminded, he’s not useful to the Order, so his feelings, his opinions, they don’t matter.
“Pads!” His mirror goes off, surprising him.
“Harry, Kid, I thought you were going to be busy… isn’t the feast tonight?”
Harry shrugs. “Truthfully, I’ve been thinking about mum and dad a lot and that night all those years ago and despite the fact that I’ve always attended, now that I’m not distracted with all the craziness that usually happens on Halloween, I kind of just wanted to – I don’t know- acknowledge them, mourn them?” He looks uncertain. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not,” Sirius smiles, slightly. “I was just thinking about how I wish that I was with you – mourning with you, taking you to their graves, spending the day however you want to do, in case you don’t want to talk about them…”
“No, I – er – actually do. I mean, we haven’t talked about them much and I know so little, you know? No one ever talks about them really and –”
Sirius nods. “I understand. People don’t really want to talk about them because they think that it’s not appropriate or something, but I’m more than happy to talk about them with you. Have you at least gotten some food?”
“Er – no? I kind of got into an argument with Hermione when she said the feast was Mandatory (even though we didn’t attend second year due to Nearly Headless Nick’s Death Day Party) and she said something about it looking bad as if I care and I finally burst out that I had been distracted the last few years since learning the truth about the day they died and this year I didn’t have any distractions and I can finally mourn them. Then, I stormed off.” He grimaces, “Unfortunately, there were a lot of people around and Cho was with us, and I probably look like a lunatic and considering what happened last year with the article, I’m sure people will make fun of me tomorrow, but honestly, I don’t give a damn anymore.”
Surprised, Sirius says, “I’m sorry that you had to deal with that on top of just everything else today brings and I hope that no one mocks you about it but given last year… those professors of yours really have a lot to answer for, allowing you to go through all that.”
“Yeah, that whole welcome speech about houses being like families and how they don’t allow this or that is utter bollocks, unless she actually meant like the Dursleys, in which case, spot on.”
“Aw, Kid.” Sirius feels so bad that he can’t do anything for him. “You should still get some food, ask that crazy elf of yours for it.”
“Dobby? He’s a Free Elf.”
“Yes, a free elf that seems obsessed with helping you in particular and always answers your call.”
Harry rolls his eyes and calls for Dobby, who brings him all of his favorite foods. “Thanks, Dobby.”
“Would the great Harry Potter be needing anything else?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Dobby bows and pops away, leaving Harry to laughingly admit, “OKAY, maybe he is sort of mine.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Anyway, how’re things? How come Lupin isn’t at least with you?”
Sirius shrugs, “He’s busy. Most of the Order are.”
“Yeah, but today? I can see why people aren’t thinking about it for me, but for you…”
Sirius shrugs, again, trying to make it seem like he doesn’t care that much (even if he does) because he doesn’t want to cause Harry to think poorly of the Order on his behalf. “It’s not a big deal. I’d prefer being alone to pity anyway.”
Harry is giving him a look like he doesn’t believe him, “Anyway, I figure maybe it’d be easier if you do most of the sharing tonight.”
Sirius smiles, “I’d love to.”
***
Sirius and Harry spent the better part of the night discussing his favorite memories that didn’t involve the different relationship with James that Sirius had since their fifth year. He just wasn’t sure how Harry would react to learning that his father was technically dating and involved with two people that he loved deeply.
Overall, a great night, and he hadn’t expected to wake up groggily the next morning to an over eager elf who pops into his bedroom yelling, “The Great Harry Potter has asked for Dobby too give his Paddy this basket!”
Sirius shakes his head, groaning as he sees the strangest looking elf standing there with a basket full of chocolate frogs and assorted other sweets. “Uh, hi?”
“The Great Harry Potter asked Dobby to give you this,” Dobby states, gesturing at the basket and lifting up a letter.
Sirius sits up and accepts it from the letter from the elf.
Dear Pads,
It's so weird, but this morning Cho showed up with a basket of sweets because apparently my little outburst about my parents and Halloween was overheard and well, I guess the other students (at least the ones that somewhat care) decided to give me sweets to make me feel better? I'm not exactly sure why, but now I have a whole bunch of sweets and I couldn’t possibly eat them all and I figured with you, you know, stuck in a gloomy house, you might need them more – to cheer you up. Dobby offered to take some of them to you. So... enjoy.
Talk to you later.
Love, Harry
Sirius may be a bit surprised by the random sweets, but he can appreciate the effort to make him feel better. He’ll thank Harry for them later.
***
On his birthday, Harry sends Dobby again, this time with a gift of a model of a miniature motorbike (since he couldn’t have his own), a build it yourself mini motorbike, and framed photo of Harry because there weren’t many of the two of them, something he’ll fix at Christmas. He also called as soon as he woke up that morning and promised to call him later.
Sirius is only mildly surprised that no one in the Order bothers to visit him on Halloween or his birthday, so he settles in to wait for his kid to call him. He’s surprised when he hears the sounds of someone yelling up the stairs and even more surprised to find that it’s Remus when he appears in the doorway of Sirius’ bedroom. “What are you doing here?” he asks, subtly turning the mirror over and hoping that Harry doesn’t call until Remus disappears.
“It’s your birthday, I figured I'd visit.”
“I hate my birthday – always have. Why wouldn’t you have come on Halloween?”
“I - I just wasn’t … sure. I had a mission for the Order and – and I wasn’t sure what you’d want to do …"
“What I wanted was to visit their graves with my kid and let him grieve his parents for the first time instead of being forced to go to yet another celebration for Halloween and pretend that it doesn’t hurt having to go to that feast every year. I wanted to spend the time talking about his parents and making sure he knows that they loved him and let him get to know them through our stories.”
The fact that he did get to do a few of those things was something he wouldn’t be sharing with Remus, but he is relieved, once again, that he opted to give Harry the mirror before school started.
“I’m sorry, honestly,” Remus states. “I meant to be here for you because I knew you couldn’t leave, but I figured someone from the order would stop by...”
“No one did. No one cares about me, Remus, I’m just giving them headquarters. I’m a nuisance to them – someone close to Harry that they think is the worst and will apparently make him more reckless and stupid.”
“That’s not -”
“True? Yes, it is. You hear the way they talk to me, the way that they look at me like I'm nothing or worse like I actually am a criminal,” Sirius states. “Frankly, it was better that I was alone because then I don’t have to deal with suspicious looks or snide comments. I can only imagine what a few of them might say on that day. Especially considering the way they throw Azkaban in my face whenever I try to do what’s right for Harry.”
“I don’t think you’re being fair – it takes time to wrap your head around certain beliefs that are the opposite than what you’ve been thinking for over a decade.”
Sirius frowns, “So, I’m unfair for expecting them to hear the truth and not treat the innocent man who spent 12 years in Azkaban as a criminal?”
“That’s not – I didn’t –”
“You did,” Sirius states. “You just said that it was unfair to expect them to treat me like a human being because ‘it’s difficult to wrap their heads around it’.”
Remus shakes his head, “I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just… you spend over a decade thinking one thing and suddenly…”
“So, even you – you’re still struggling…”
“I saw it with my own eyes, that’s why I’m not struggling.”
“But you don’t defend me – you don’t stand up for me,” Sirius argues. “And why?”
Remus sighs, “You really want to talk about this on your birthday?”
“Yes, I want to know – why?”
Remus isn’t looking at him as he speaks, instead he’s looking at one of Sirius’ old photos of them on the wall. “I haven’t trusted you since the incident with Snape and the Willow – I know, I never let you explain (because I don’t want to hear whatever bullshit reason you came up with), I pretended like it was fine, but it wasn’t. I ‘forgave’ you because I didn’t have a choice – James would’ve chosen you over me and Peter would’ve followed. I would’ve been all alone again, and we both know it.” He turns around, “I tried to convince James that you were the traitor – not because it made sense because it doesn’t now that I think about it…”
“But because you wanted to get rid of me,” Sirius finishes. “You didn’t think I was trustworthy, and you never cared about me because of some stupid mistake that you wouldn’t – still, won’t – let me explain or apologize for when I was sixteen?”
“There was always darkness in you – you had a whole family on the other side of that war, was I really supposed to believe that you had walked away from all of it?”
“Yes! Because I did! I was always different. I always knew that I didn’t want to have anything to do with the dark arts – did I struggle? Yes, but I always knew who I was and that I had to work twice as hard to get people to believe that I wasn’t like them – all those times we were caught, and I was punished worse? I knew I was fighting against some misconceived notion, but I thought that you and James understood that I wasn’t like my family. To find out that I did nothing to earn you thinking that I was the spy, and it was all my last name… I can’t even look at you.”
He turns away, focusing on his photos and letters trying his damnest to focus on the happy memories instead of the feelings of utter rage he’s feeling right now. The idea that a simple mistake brought on by Snape, who knew that Remus was a werewolf and was only missing the key and found Sirius’ trigger that would cause him to explode angrily about said key pissed him off to no end. Snape wasn’t an innocent, he wasn’t nearly murdered, and as soon as Sirius knew what was going to happen (and able to tell him – the body bind kept him frozen for far too long) he’d called James on the mirror and James had rescued him.
“You could’ve gotten me executed.”
“He knew what he was going to see – he even had most of the entrance figured out, he had a plan that night and triggered me into telling him about the entrance, but you didn’t give a damn about that. You told me that you forgave me and all along you were holding onto it – trying to separate me from the one person that loved me for me.”
“I was trying to protect him! I thought it was obvious that it was you – between your name and the darkness, there was the fact that you were in love with him, and I thought you might do anything to get him, when the prophecy was about Harry, it was the perfect setup – besides you suspected me, too!”
“Except I didn’t,” Sirius states, angrily. He’s so pissed that he never actually considered Remus the spy, he’d been as delusional as James, they just couldn’t get ahold of him since he was always gone, and he didn’t trust Sirius, so Peter was the obvious answer. Sirius’ plan only involved switching keepers and telling no one for safety and Remus would’ve known if he’d been around. He’s pissed that Remus knew about his feelings for James and somehow thought Sirius would arrange to get Lily and Harry killed. How could he? Opting to ignore that bit, he expands, “I never believed you were the spy.”
“What? You said –”
“No, you said. I just asked you to forgive me because it was a slap in the face that anyone would believe me to be the spy – to think that I would ever betray James. I didn’t want to admit that it wasn’t reciprocated because it makes me look like a fool. I knew you suspected me, so I just claimed the same – I wanted you to feel the way I felt. That devastating feeling that someone you trusted with your life, someone you broke the law for, would ever think you could betray the others. But it’s not like it mattered – you were never around, anyway.”
Remus frowns, “I am sorry I wasn’t around – that James told you I suspected you…”
“Did you honestly expect that he wouldn’t?”
“No, but I was hoping,” Remus states.
“Well, he never would’ve kept anything from me – and you wanna know why? Because he was the love of my life, and I was his – you said you thought I would do anything to get James to myself, but I didn’t need Lily out of the way to have James because Lily and I shared him, and we knew everything about each other – we supported and loved each other for years – he was never just my best friend, and I was never just his,” Sirius confesses. “We were so much more than that. I didn’t need to get rid of Lily to have James at all, he was already mine and I would never do anything to hurt James or Harry – besides, do you really think he’d give me the time of day if he was a widow and he learned I was involved?”
“No, that’s not true – you – he would’ve told me.”
“We didn’t tell you because we didn’t tell anyone – I didn’t want to risk the extra attention on James, when we first started, and later both of them and Harry. We were at war; I was a big target for being against most of my family in a way that was against Lily and everyone like her – we couldn’t afford extra attention.”
Remus opens his mouth to argue further, but clearly decides otherwise, as he shakes his head. “We’re getting off track – I’m sorry that I suspected you, that I never forgave you for Snape, and that I haven’t been defending you to the Order.”
“If you really mean that then I expect that you will support me and Harry from now on. My kid deserves certain information and I deserve to be taken seriously when it comes to him.”
Remus looks away again, “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think Dumbledore knows best and –”
“Bullshit!” Sirius shouts. “Harry needs to be aware of what’s going on so that he can be prepared – after the hell he went through in the graveyard, he’s not a kid anymore, he needs to be prepared, he needs to know, and honestly, he also needs to guidance. Not told to ‘keep his head down’ when Umbridge has him in detention every night for weeks passed midnight cutting his hand open with a blood quill. He needs support right now and all he’s getting is being stalked by undercover Order members and having no privacy. He deserves better than that.”
Remus shrugs, “I trust Dumbledore and he says that it’s better that Harry just focuses on school rather than fighting the war – he’s only fifteen.”
“That’s funny because he was only fourteen when he was put in a deadly tournament for adults with no support and spent months fearing for his life.” Sirius shakes his head, “You know what – leave. I don’t want to have this conversation anymore and I just want to be alone.”
“Sirius –”
“Now, Remus.”
Remus leaves, no longer protesting. He knows that he won’t win and its technically Sirius’ house and room, so he leaves.
Sirius finds himself looking down mournfully. He’d always known that there had been more to it than ‘there’s a spy close to the Potters’ as the reason that Remus had thought he was the spy. To know that it was his last name or Snape and the Willow or his feelings for James (which weren’t as well hidden as he thought – apparently James was better at hiding it than he was) had been the reason why Remus had suspected him, the reason that Remus had tried to break them apart, and the reason that he hadn’t done anything to support him in the last fourteen years. Even though he understands (in a way because he knows that they – James and Sirius – had suspected that Snape would do the same thing Remus had accused Sirius of because of his obsession for lily (which they couldn’t prove)), but at the same time, it infuriates him. Had Remus even known him at all? Or was he just blinded by Sirius’ name as everyone else?
He wished that he knew, but he wouldn’t get the truth now.
“Pads!”
Clearing his throat, he brushes aside his anger to smile at his kid, “Hey, Kid!”
“Hey – happy birthday, again – did you like your present?”
Sirius smiles, “Yes, of course. I’ve never had to build a model before, but it’ll be interesting.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” He pauses and gives him a look, “What’s wrong, you look upset?”
Touched by Harry’s caring about him, he still says, “It’s not a big deal – I had an unpleasant visitor, that’s all, but I’m happy to see you instead.”
Harry grins. “I’m glad I make you happy, but who’s the unpleasant visitor on your birthday? Is it Snape because you shouldn’t have to deal with him on your birthday?”
Sirius laughs, “No, it wasn’t – thank Merlin –, but it just started off as a good visit and went downhill fast. Still, I’d rather focus on you, and not me getting older.”
“Are you sure? It’s usually customary for the birthday boy to be the center of attention and focusing on them…” he lowers his voice and mutters something about how at least that was how it was for Dudley.
“That’s true, but my birthday’s haven’t been great – I’d rather my spend my birthday talking about yours.”
Harry’s smile fades. “There’s nothing to say – they sucked, too.”
“You just said that you know the typical custom for the birthday boy to be the center of attention?” Sirius asks, narrowing his eyes.
“Well, that’s Dudley, it was – different – for me.” Before Sirius could question more, Harry adds, “It’s really not something I want to talk about – I want to talk about you or dad or… just not me or my birthdays. Please.”
Sirius sighs, he wants to probe further, but knows that it’s likely best that he doesn’t. “Okay, then, I’ll tell you all about the good birthdays instead.”
“Great!”
And he does – spending his best birthday since he turned twenty-two talking to his kid and feeling much better since Remus had left.