Archive of Our Own

December—1995

Harry sat on the dust covered ground, surrounded on all sides by towering stacks of boxes and crates.  His knees had begun to ache from his weight, and his skin felt grimy from the touch of the air and the imagined touch of years of filth.  Still, he didn’t move.

Perhaps he couldn’t.  Harry felt petrified, like Hermione in second year, or the way he’d been struck silent and dumb in the forbidden forest at eleven, facing Lord Voldemort’s specter for the first time in his memory.

Or last June, in the graveyard.

He blinked once, then again when he found his eyes dry and irritated.  He coughed to clear his throat, although he still couldn’t tear himself away from the object in his hands.

He’d come looking for Christmas decorations at Sirius’ behest.  He and Harry and the Weasleys had all been decorating for the upcoming holiday and trying to take their minds off of the situation with Mr. Weasley’s current health.  Harry had hoped to find glass baubles or wooden figurines, anything besides the taxidermied reptiles, petrified spider ornaments, or garland and twine wrapped skeletons of magical creatures that the Blacks had apparently favored, which Harry and Sirius had found in a downstairs closet.

Instead, he’d been surprised to stumble across a small, innocuous chest, engraved with the letters R.A.B., which Harry recognized from the Black family tapestry as Sirius’ little brother, Regulus Arcturus Black.

Harry remembered, from recent conversations with his godfather, that Sirius’ little brother had been a Slytherin, prone to fits of haughtiness and secrecy and, perhaps most importantly, a Death Eater.  To be honest, he didn’t know much more than that, which wasn’t very much at all.  Perhaps the only other thing he’d learned, which wasn’t precisely said, but which he could guess, was that Regulus had been, at one point, the favorite.

As someone who’d grown up unloved in the shadow of his parental figures’ golden child, Harry knew a thing or two about being compared with someone and found wanting or having to compete for any scrap of attention.  He didn’t think the situation was quite the same for Sirius, but it was close enough to be both uncomfortable and also comforting.  Sirius understood, in a way that Hermione or Ron simply couldn’t.

It had been mostly curiosity that had made him open the chest.  He could kick himself for that, but honestly, it was already too late.

Reg—

Only half-joking, I suppose.  It feels like I’m the one that’s always chasing after you.  I don’t mind, necessarily, but it’d be nice to feel like you want me as desperately as I want you.

Because I do, you know.  All the time.

James

There were dozens of them, all carefully placed and pressed flat, a length of satin green ribbon atop the first half, keeping them held together in a neat bundle.  The pages were yellowed and clearly often-read, judging by the thick creases which nearly obscured the writing in some places.

And still, Harry had been curious, had slipped his nail under the ribbon and tugged, surprised to see it come loose so easily.  He’d picked a note at random, this one a bare scrap of parchment folded into an intricate little box that had nearly made him smile.  One corner was dog-eared, as if bookmarked for its owner to come back to, again and again.  Yet, when he’d opened it…

“…it’d be nice to feel like you want me as desperately as I want you.”

Something about the phrasing, or perhaps the handwriting, felt familiar.  A half-remembered memory told to him second-hand by his godfather, or Lupin perhaps.  And that signature.

Harry was almost certain that this letter, that all of these letters were from his father.

But what had his father been doing writing letters to Regulus Black?

A part of him wanted to believe that these were letters to his mother, that somehow they’d ended up here, in the attic of number 12, Grimmauld Place, because Sirius had been holding onto them for Harry, or perhaps because Regulus had stolen them, somehow.  Except that that clearly wasn’t the case.  He had all the proof he needed, right there in the scrawled handwriting of his father.  “Reg.”

A nickname, one even Sirius hadn’t used.  He’d been ‘Regulus’, every time Sirius had mentioned his younger brother.

Harry could barely move for all of the thoughts swirling chaotically through his head, could barely hold onto one of them long enough to focus on anything beyond why, why, why?

He had to talk to someone about this.  But who?  Sirius got so upset about his brother, and Lupin hadn’t been back at headquarters since the break started.  Ron and Hermione might listen, but what would they know about his father?

No, no.  It had to be Sirius.  With a burst of adrenaline, Harry shoved the neat pile of letters back in the box, carefully placing the ribbon beneath them to separate the ones which hadn’t been bundled.  The only one remaining outside of the box was the one he’d read first.

He closed the lid.  His energy had all but left him in the face of going downstairs and having to ask.  He was desperate to know, but he knew that if he opened this pandora’s box, he might not like what he found…

Harry squared his shoulders.  He had to find out.  Even if what he found out was horrible, he’d rather know.

It wasn’t as though there was a dearth of horrible things in his life.

He picked up the chest, a bit confused at how heavy it felt in his arms.  As he made his way to the door leading down the stairs from the attic, he could have sworn he felt eyes on the back of his neck.  Which was silly, because there was no one else up here.

Sirius was in the ground floor parlor, opposite the dining room from the front hall.  Bedecked with green and red and gold garland with silver and gold icicles in his hair, he had a huge grin on his face and a mug of cider in hand.  He and the Weasley twins had a box of what looked to be family heirlooms, and they were transfiguring them into lametta and gewgaws to hang on the giant tree in the corner, or else be mounted upon the walls.

Some of them, Harry noticed, Sirius had either missed or simply ignored, as the twins were wearing very gleeful grins and seemed excited when they first discovered the Blacks’ taste in more… esoteric Christmas decorations.

Overall, the place looked as though it had been half decorated from an op shop, all mismatched fabrics and cozy warmth, and half as though directly removed from someone’s Victorian-esque gothic nightmares.  Harry supposed it was only to be expected with these two particular wizarding families.

“Hey, pup!” Sirius cried upon spotting Harry, lingering in the doorway and observing the merriment.  Fred or possibly George took his moment of distraction to remove from the box between them a small pile of what looked like bones, which he then propped on a side table and tapped with his wand.  The pile of what did indeed seem to be bird bones, stood up of their own accord and turned wide, empty eye sockets to hoo at them, before flapping awkwardly over to perch on a brass stand lamp.

“Sirius, could I talk to you?  Please?”

It was becoming a familiar request.  First to talk about Sirius’ past with this house, and then to talk about his dream, which he still didn’t really believe was only a dream.  Sirius easily followed him from the room and upstairs to the first-floor drawing room, where Harry placed the chest on the desk which had at one point contained a boggart.  Sirius closed the door behind them and, after checking for lingering Weasleys or Hermione, cast a silencing charm for a spot of privacy.

Sirius sank into the armchair closest to the desk, depositing his mug on the tabletop, while Harry hovered awkwardly nearby, unsure of how to ask what he wanted to.

“What have you got there, then?” Sirius asked him curiously, eyeing the chest.  Relieved, Harry pushed it closer to him, eagerly awaiting his reaction.

“I found it in the attic.”

Sirius’ finger rubbed over the engraved R.A.B on the front clasp for a moment before he flipped it open and quirked a brow at the contents.  “Letters?” he asked.  Harry only nodded.

Sirius reached in and removed a handful from the top of the lot which had been bound by ribbon.  He set down his handful on the desk excepting the first, which he removed from its clean, if slightly aged, envelope.

A bark of laughter escaped his lips.  “Oh, I’d nearly forgotten this.  These must be his correspondence from when he was at Hogwarts.  It was my brother’s you see, that’s why you brought it down, right?  Did I ever tell you about the time we convinced Regulus to pretend to date your father?”

Harry’s eyebrows lifted straight into his hair.  That certainly wasn’t the impression he’d gotten from the letter he’d read—which, he realized, was still clutched tight in his hand.

“No, you didn’t.”  he said, sinking down into an adjacent armchair.  “Why would you do something like that?”

Sirius smiled with not a small amount of melancholy.  “I’d done something… well, unwise you could say.  At any rate, I’d gotten into trouble with Minnie and Dumbledore, this was at the beginning of fifth year, see.”  Sirius scuffed a hand against the fur at his jaw, as if conflicted.  His eyebrows drew together as he thought back to that time.

“Ah hells, but your grandmother tore me a new arsehole after she found out what I’d been up to.  Her and your grandfather, and of course they both had a go at James for being involved, as well.”

Sirius dropped his hand to the arm of the chair, still holding the letter he’d opened pinched between thumb and forefinger.  He looked up to the ceiling, as if he was no longer telling Harry the story, but more simply reminiscing aloud.

“House biases were mentioned.”  Sirius winced.  “Your father had this idea that if we could convince his parents that we were friends with at least one Slytherin, they’d stop being so disappointed and angry.

“So, we came up with the idea to bring a Slytherin back to his parents’ place for the Christmas hols, all friendly like.  Of course, the only Slytherin we could put up with for any length of time was Reggie, and even that was a stretch.

“James wanted to just ask, but your mum was the one who said we had to think more like Slytherins if we wanted help from one.  In the end, we had this whole tale.  James’ parents were trying to marry him off, James needed to show them he was already in a relationship, and of course he wouldn’t have told them he was dating a boy from Slytherin house.  Then I told James to tell Reggie that I’d hate it if they were together, and of course he’d want to do it just to piss me off.”

Harry noted the slip into ‘Reggie’ but kept quiet.  Sirius seemed happy to talk about this now, but he was a bit mercurial, so there was no telling how long his willingness to chat about his brother might last.

“Of course, we figured that Reggie might try to sabotage our plans, which was actually perfect because we didn’t really want Effie and Fleamont thinking they were dating.  Didn’t turn out that way, though.  Reggie was the perfect little son-in-law for those two weeks.”  Sirius was quiet for a moment, then he said, “It was almost like having my brother back, for a while.”

And again, Harry couldn’t help but feel that he’d missed something, somewhere.  The note had been so tender and earnest.  As desperately as I want you, he’d written.  His father had written that, to Regulus Black.  If that was… If that was just a prank, then…

But then, he realized.  Two weeks.  Harry unfolded the ornate little note in his hand, smoothed the creases, and took in the date written in the top right-hand corner, off-hand, like he might write the date on any piece of parchment for homework or essays.  May 18, 1976.

“Sirius,” Harry began, tentatively, not looking up at his godfather.  “Are you sure that’s how it happened?”

He wasn’t trying to accuse Sirius of anything, nor was he saying that Sirius had somehow forgotten his best friend and younger brother dating for, seemingly, several months.  He wasn’t sure what he was asking, exactly, only that what Sirius had said and what he had in his hand weren’t the same story.

Sirius sounded rightly confused when he said, “Yeah, ‘course.  We came back to Hogwarts right after, and Regulus went back to being a prat.  I stopped coming back here after that, just stayed at the Potters for breaks, like I told you.”  Harry finally looked up to catch his godfather’s concerned stare.  “Why?”

Harry mutely handed him the letter in his hand.

Sirius took it, still frowning at Harry.  He glanced down at it, then back to Harry, and then whipped his entire face down to read it again so quickly that Harry was momentarily concerned for the state of his neck.  Sirius appeared to read and reread the note several times before slumping back into his chair and looking at Harry with an expression that quite plainly asked what in the actual fuck?

Harry grimaced, assuming that meant that his godfather also had no idea what to make of this revelation.  “I don’t think that box is just Regulus’ correspondence, Sirius.”

There was quiet between them for a few moments, with neither of them exactly sure how to verbalize what they were feeling.  Eventually, Harry asked, “Should we read them?”

What he meant to ask was something along the lines of Do we even want to know?

“He’s not going to care from beyond the grave.  Might as well,” replied Sirius, eyes slightly unfocused and hand reaching almost clumsily for his mug of cider.  “Kreacher!” Sirius barked.  He waited, but Kreacher did not appear.  “Blast that elf.”

Harry reached for the pile of letters that Sirius had removed from the chest, not yet daring to reach for the one he’d given up.  The first few on the top were all neatly sealed in thick, pristine envelopes.  Regulus Black was written on the outside of each in a neat hand, the tail of the ‘g’ looping elegantly beneath the ‘e’ in a show of penmanship that Harry himself had never mastered.

“’Regulus,’” Harry said.  He glanced uncertainly at his godfather, who did not move.  Harry continued reading.  “’I really need to speak to you, and I promise you’ll want to hear what I have to say.  Please meet me in the same place as last time, tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock.  And don’t lie, I know you’re always up that early, anyhow.  James Potter.’”

Harry studied the differences between this one and the one he’d first read.  The signature, for one thing.  James Potter versus the more familiar James.  And, of course, the address.  Regulus, not Reg.

This letter felt more like it was from the James in Sirius’ story, who’d lied to Regulus Black and his parents to get out of a scolding.  Honestly, that would make more sense with Harry’s view of his father, the man who’d loved his wife and son so much that he’d died for them, who had lived every moment of his life causing mischief, than the man who’d so baldly professed his feelings to another boy.

Could his father have been leading Regulus on for months?  Or did he truly love Regulus Black and had somehow ended up with Harry’s mum regardless?  Merlin, why did he have to have found this stupid chest?

Sirius finally, broodingly, sat up straight.  “’Regulus,’” he began, reading from the next letter in the stack.  “’This is getting ridiculous.  I’ve charmed this letter against fire, water, slime, and acid—'”

At this, Sirius broke into a grin.  His eyes flicked up to meet Harry’s over the edge of the parchment.  “Yeah, I remember this.  James must have written half a dozen letters, all trying to get Regulus to meet up and listen to the plan.”  He surveyed the pile at his elbow, then beckoned for Harry to hand over the letter in his hand.  “We can probably ignore these for now—all the ones with his good stationary.”

Harry waited for Sirius to gather and set aside the four or so letters he was referring to before he picked up the next, less polished-looking letter.  This envelope looked like less fine quality, a bit thinner and without the textured face of the last few.  There was no wax seal and no embellishments on the simple R that graced its front.

“’Reg,’” Harry read.  “’I wanted to say thanks again, for coming with me.  I still can’t believe you knew what was going on the entire time, but I guess that’s why you’re in Slytherin, eh?  Sneaky, crafty little snake.’”

A glance at Sirius showed wide, surprised eyes, but no anger.  Harry continued.

“’Siri and Rem seem to be talking again.  I think they might finally do something about the—'”

Harry stopped and swallowed hard.  He was almost afraid to look at Sirius.  He coughed to clear his throat and repeated, “’I think they might finally do something about the sexual tension.  Honestly, you wouldn’t believe how awful it is to share a dorm with the two of them.’”

Harry paused, but Sirius didn’t say anything.  Harry didn’t quite feel brave enough to ask about that, so he read on.  “’I was wondering—would you go to Hogsmede with me next weekend?  I figure we could grab some butterbeers and go hang out by the Shrieking Shack.  Let me know what you think, or if you’d rather do something else.  I don’t mind’—there’s something scratched out here.  It looks like… Erm.”

As long as we’re together.

“Anyway, the last line just says, ‘Whatever you’d like, James.’”

Harry carefully folded the letter back into the envelope and set it with the skipped letters from earlier.  He finally dared a glance up at Sirius to find him staring into space.  He wanted to ask, but honestly, what could he say?  ‘So, you like men?’ or ‘You and Lupin?  Really?’

Although now that he thought about it, the two of them often did this weird thing where they’d gravitate toward each other when in the same room, leaning into each other’s spaces like it was natural, like they hardly even noticed.  Was that what his dad had meant?

He’d thought Sirius liked women, judging by the muggle-style posters of half-naked girls on his walls, but maybe he liked both?  Harry was pretty sure that was a thing, one of those groups of people Uncle Vernon liked to rant about whenever the news did an opinion piece on civil rights for homosexuals or raising salaries for public school teachers.

And, actually, maybe that was what his dad was as well?  Not just playing a long, cruel prank on a friend’s younger brother, not stuck in an unloving marriage, just… in love with two people at different times?

Sirius, cheeks ruddy with embarrassment, or possibly shame, stood abruptly.  “I need a drink,” he said, and hurriedly dispelled the charm on the door before he took his leave.  He left his empty mug on the desk.

“Harry?” a voice called from the door.  He turned to the doorway, surprised to see Hermione standing there, an expression of concern on her face.  She looked comfy in her soft cream sweater and blue jeans, and her face was still a source of comfort for him.  Hermione hadn’t looked at him like he was secretly a murderer even once. 

He was surprised to see her, especially sans Weasleys, although they were probably still downstairs decorating.  He flicked a glance at the old-fashioned clock in the corner, its face partially obscured by dust and grime.  He was surprised.  Harry had apparently sat alone in the drawing room for a long time without really meaning to, staring distractedly out the window, wondering what he should do next.

“Hey,” he said, standing and stretching his legs.  His back twinged in protest.  He was beginning to feel like an old man.  “All done in the parlor?”

Hermione shook her head, her voluminous hair swaying independently of the rest of her.  “We’re taking a break for tea and snacks.  Molly sent me up to ask if you wanted a sandwich.  Are you feeling alright?”

He smiled weakly.  He’d had a few too many world-changing realizations to really be alright, but he wasn’t sinking back into the despairing fog he’d been in before she’d arrived, which was what she was really asking.

“I’m alright—just have a few things I needed to think about.”

Her concerned expression eased a bit, and she turned to begin leading the way downstairs.  He followed easily.  “Let me know if you need to talk about anything, Harry.”

“Actually,” he stopped.  Hermione paused on the step below him.  There was no one else around, but he really had too much to say and no idea how to say it.  Not to mention not wanting anyone to overhear.

At least some of that must have shown on his face, because Hermione’s head tilted to the right and the set of her lips firmed.  “Let’s go to your room after lunch, alright?”

Harry nodded, grateful.

Lunch was mostly uneventful.  Ginny sent him a few of the same sort of concerned looks as Hermione, although after a few exchanged glances, she seemed to think he was as fine as he was going to be and left off.

The twins were exuberant in their retelling of all of the strange things they’d found in the Black home, including several black bats and ravens that cawed as people walked by, candlesticks in silver stands that gave off varying scents of mistletoe and peppermint and cinnamon once lit, bits of evergreen tied into bundles and little shrunken skulls that, when placed into arranged patterns, would sing carols in low, unearthly voices.

Ron had been traumatized by a series of framed ornaments containing artist depictions of various insects and handwritten descriptions of them.  A particularly large spider had lunged at him, writhing in something like laughter when he’d immediately dropped the frame and run screaming from the room.  Harry felt sorry for him—something about this house seemed determined to throw spiders at poor Ron.

If he didn’t know any better, he might think it was the result of a curse.

Harry’s attention drifted from conversation to conversation.  Molly scolded, “Put that down!  Just because you can use magic, doesn’t mean you should be levitating plates off the table!  We are eating!”

Fred, or maybe George, made a face but put the plate down.  The other twin stuck his hands in his pockets, which Harry could see were wriggling like something inside was trying to escape.

“Pass me another, ‘Mione,” Ron said, to grumbled complaints about her name and Ron’s table manners and a number of other things which made Ginny snicker and Ron’s ears turn red.  She passed him another sandwich.

Sirius did not come in to eat.

When Harry had finished picking at his two ham and cheese and mayo sandwiches, he and Hermione stood and made their way upstairs.  At the second landing, Hermione gave him a look, because Ron and Ginny had both followed them, and he had intended not to tell anyone. 

He normally would, of course.  It just seemed a bit awful to be worrying about his father’s past when their father was in the hospital after being attacked.  At their room, he grabbed Hermione’s sleeve.  “I’ve got to go back to the drawing room.”

They left the Weasleys on the landing.

Back in the drawing room, Harry found himself drawn to the writing desk, his father’s letters spilling out of the chest and over onto the table.  Had Sirius been going through them?

“What is all of this, Harry?”  Hermione asked.  He pulled out his wand and cast a silencing charm on the door for privacy, sinking into the armchair he’d been in earlier and meeting her gaze as she sat opposite him.

“I’m not entirely sure, I mean, I haven’t read all of them, but these are letters to Regulus Black from my father.”  Her eyes jerked back to him from where she’d started to inspect the various scraps of parchment.  “It seems like they were secretly dating.”

“Harry…” she started, but it didn’t seem like she knew what to say to that statement any more than he did.  “What did Sirius say?” she asked, although she had to have noticed his disappearance.

“He didn’t know anything about it.  And the last letter… I dunno, it sounded like he and Lupin might’ve been together, or wanted to be together, at some point.”

Hermione frowned and tipped her head to the side.  “Professor Lupin?  I knew they were friends, but I never would have guessed…”  She glanced at the tabletop’s disarray, reaching out a tentative hand to brush parchment.  Her gaze flicked up to his in question, and he gestured for her to go on.

She picked up the topmost letter.

“’Reg. No, sorry, I cannot let this rest.  You, Regulus Black, are wrong, and I intend to prove it.  This weekend—meet me on the sixth floor, near the tapestry with the giants sunbathing.  I’ve got a few of Bowie’s records in my trunk.  You’ll love him, I know it.’  

“They certainly sound like friends, at least.  Has Sirius read these?” she asked.

Harry shrugged.  “They weren’t this messy when we went to eat.”

She hummed in concession.  “I suppose that makes sense.”  She shook the letter in her hand for emphasis.  “’Are you sure we can’t tell Sirius about this?  He’s your brother, Reg.  He loves you.’”

Harry winced.  He looked around but didn’t see any telltale shimmers in the corners of the room.  “After he read the one earlier, he said he needed a drink.”

Hermione also winced.  “Oh, Harry.  It sounds like you’re right.  But, I mean, you know that sometimes people can like people of both genders, and—”

“Hermione—”

“Of course, it’s normal in the wizarding world to end up marrying your high school sweetheart but, I mean, we were both raised in the muggle world, so you have to know that sometimes people date in high school and break up and meet other people—”

“Please, stop.”

She did.  Hermione bit her lip, taking a deep breath and then sort of collapsing into a slow slump in her chair.  “Sorry.  But you do know that, right?”

He nodded.  “I’m not an expert, but yeah, I figured all of that out.  It’s… weird.  And yeah, it threw me off at first, the idea of my dad dating some bloke, and Sirius’ Death Eater brother specifically, but I mean…  It doesn’t really change anything, does it?”

He stared hard at his clasped hands, picking at a hangnail with his thumb.  “They’re both dead.”

Harry counted the ticks of the clock in the otherwise silent room, not sure whether he was expecting recrimination or words of comfort.  Truthfully, he was also unsure which he would have preferred.

“Are you going to read the rest of them?” she asked, and he bit his lip.

“I dunno.  I mean, I’m curious, but it’s not really my business.”  Hermione huffed, reaching out to smooth some of the letters.  “They were in order earlier, but I don’t think they are anymore.”  He reached out and picked up the ribbon which had held this stack together, noticing that the other stack had remained in the bottom of the chest.  He wondered what the difference was, but he didn’t reach for them.

“I think if anyone deserves to know what happened between them, it’s probably you, Harry.  Maybe Sirius too, but, I mean, I don’t think your father would mind, and if… Regulus, kept your father’s letters like this… Well, maybe he would have wanted you to have them, too.”

Harry frowned, but he couldn’t bring himself to argue.  He deserved to know, didn’t he?  According to Hermione, yes, but.  Did he want to know?  He still wasn’t sure.

“Alright,” Hermione said, standing and holding out a hand.  “You think about it.  In the meantime, let’s go work on decorating and cleaning.  Maybe we can take your mind off of it.”

Harry laughed.  “Yeah, alright.”

Indeed, the Weasleys were split between the kitchen and parlor.  Fred and George seemed to have absconded with a number of potentially useful and interesting-looking items to experiment with and were sat in a corner conversing in hushed tones and sharing a quill between each other.  Harry and Hermione shared a look, before they left the twins to their mischief and went to check in on the rest.

They stepped inside right as Molly was pulling cookies out of the oven, the sweet scents of chocolate and caramel and pumpkin filling the air as she pulled sheet after sheet from the inconceivably large space.  “Oh, there you two are!  Come, come!  Ron, Ginny, help me move these to the table?  Thank you, dears.”

Harry eyed the various cauldrons of icing and spatulas and candies.  What was all of this for?  Moreover, where had it come from?

Harry picked up a small tool, similar to the turkey baster he’d used at Aunt Petunia’s house when she’d left him in charge of the Christmas duck, instructing him that he’d better not let it get dry, or else.  This one was small, maybe the length of his finger, with a smooth bulb at one end and a clear glass tube.

He squeezed the bulbed end, expecting a puff of air, and was shocked instead at the burst of glitter that travelled improbably fast to coat and tint Hermione’s curly brown hair.  His mouth dropped open and he looked back at the tube, perfectly normal looking and with no hint of glittery remains.

“Hermione!  I’m so sorry.”  His own hair was a haphazard mess at the best of times, and he really hadn’t meant to mess with hers.

Even he knew that glitter was harder to get rid of than Lord Voldemort.

Hermione pinched one curl between her thumb and forefinger, pulling it taut away from her face to examine it in the faint light.  “It’s alright, Harry,” she said, pitched over Ron’s honking laughter.  “I need to wash it, anyway.”

Ginny, grinning, proffered another of the tubes to Hermione.  “It’s edible glitter, so it should just come off in water.”

Hermione waved away the offer of revenge but said, “That’s good.  See, Harry?  No harm, no foul.”

Harry still carefully placed the glitter tube on the table where he’d found it and looked around at the array of cookies in front of him.

“What’s going on?”

Ron’s laughter finally trailed off and he clapped Harry’s shoulder, shuffling over to drop into a seat at the crowded table.  Ginny and Hermione joined them on the opposite side.  “Mum goes all out with the holiday baking every year.  We get fudge, of course, and she usually sends the cookies to St. Mungo’s, or to the Ministry for dad’s department.”

He picked up a cookie and frowned at it consideringly.  “Last year I was home, we mostly just made plain colors, but we could do shapes or something?”

Ginny leaned over, a streak of gold paint on her temple.  “Mum and I did candy canes and stars last year.  We could do bells and mistletoe again?”

Ron wrinkled his nose at her.  Harry still had no idea what was going on.

“We should do Gryffindor colors.  That means no green.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and picked up a cookie that looked a bit lumpy which, on closer inspection, appeared to be oatmeal raisin.  “Plants are green, Ronald, don’t be difficult.”

Ron scowled fiercely, but he didn’t protest further. 

Ginny picked up a cauldron of paint and gave it a stir.  It looked the same as the color she’d gotten on her face.  She glanced around the table and picked up a couple of cookies to place on the plate in front of her.  Hermione grabbed a cauldron with green paint, and Ron sulkily grabbed a third with red.  Harry still had no clue what was going on.

“What’s wrong, Harry?”  Hermione asked, dipping a paintbrush into her cauldron.  Ginny had sneakily grabbed another cookie and eaten a bite of it while everyone else had been focusing on their own tasks.

Harry shook his head, pulling a cauldron full of silver paint closer to himself and picking up a sugar cookie to place on his plate.  Ron, to his left, had already begun lobbing scoops of paint onto his cookie, his mouth covered in crumbs from where he had also been taking sneaky bites.

Ginny’s cookie was now covered in gold paint, a trail of black and brown Bertie Bott’s Beans making an outline for the vaguely bell-like blob she’d created.

And still, Harry had no clue why they were doing this.  Obviously, this was something that Ginny and Ron were used to, and something that Hermione found familiar enough to not question.  It was probably strange, in that case, that he’d never seen anyone sit down like this to decorate cookies of all things.

It was perhaps even stranger that they weren’t using magic, and that Mrs. Weasley didn’t seem to be paying very much attention to their efforts at all.

Harry obediently got to work tracing out the shape of a handbell, like the ones he’d seen at the muggle church Petunia and Vernon sometimes went to on Christmas and Easter.  He’d only been twice in the ten years he’d lived at the Dursleys before he’d come to Hogwarts, but he clearly remembered them both.  How could he not?  He’d gotten a full meal on both occasions, and a brand-new Dudley-pre-owned outfit to wear.

It was surprisingly nice, he discovered, to sit and munch on sweet biscuits with his friends, doing something so uncomplicated as drawing misshapen blobs with icing and candy and poking fun at each other’s efforts.

Ginny seemed to get more icing on herself than the cookies in front of her, while Ron used very few candy pieces in proportion to what he’d picked out, and Hermione’s cookies seemed to take twice as long as anyone else’s, though in the end they looked much better as well.

By the time that Mrs. Weasley was shooing them from the kitchen so that she could start on dinner preparations, Harry found that he’d forgotten all about Sirius’ strange avoidance, the mystery of his father’s love life, and even, to some extent, the direness of Mr. Weasley’s current stay in St. Mungo’s.

Harry felt, for possibly the first time since the break started, truly and fully relaxed.

That sense of peace and relaxation continued through the rest of the evening—through several rounds of exploding snap before dinner and the arrival of Bill and Charlie, who’d been visiting Mr. Weasley for most of the day.

Harry only briefly considered going upstairs to seclude himself with his father’s letters, or else to search out his godfather, but he didn’t in the end.  He’d had so few opportunities to destress and hang out with his friends since last June, that he really couldn’t force himself to.  Besides, Sirius was the adult in this situation.  If he wanted to talk, he could come find Harry himself.

That resolution lasted all the way through the night and into the next morning at breakfast, when Hermione finally snapped at him.  “Oh, Harry, would you please stop sulking and just talk to him?”

She and Harry were the only two people left in the kitchen as Ginny and the twins were with their older brothers and Ron was still upstairs sleeping, last Harry saw.  It was the relative seclusion that let him admit, “I don’t know what to say to him.”

She sighed, her shoulders slumping.  “You can’t keep avoiding each other for the rest of the break.”

Harry wrinkled his nose.  He wasn’t the one avoiding anyone.  Or at least, not for the last day or so.

He set the thought aside as he scraped some egg across his plate.  “Alright, well, any ideas?”

Hermione bit her lip, wrinkling her nose in thought.  “You could ask Professor Lupin to talk to him?”

Harry blinked.  He hadn’t thought about Professor Lupin even being an option, as he hadn’t seen him since the start of term.  Lupin was one of his father’s best friends, and he probably would have known Regulus Black.  He’d be the perfect person to ask about the whole thing.

“I could send him an owl…” Harry mused.

So, he did.  He went upstairs to the room he was sharing with Ron to dig around in his trunk for parchment and quill before he wrote out a quick note to Lupin giving him the basic facts that he’d learned something surprising about his father and that Sirius was now avoiding him because of it.  He hoped for a letter back with advice or possibly even his own version of events.

Hedwig seemed happy for the excuse to fly, cooped up as she’d been in the room with Pigwidgeon.  The dresser in the corner was hardly a suitable perch for either of them, but they’d all been making due.

Either the opening of the window or Hedwig’s exit woke Ron, who sat up with a start and a mumbled, “Whazzat?  Harry?”

“Morning,” Harry said, tugging on the red and gold fluffy socks Mrs. Weasley had presented him with last night.  He’d almost turned them down, except that all of the Weasleys and Hermione had also each gotten a pair, so he’d figured that she hadn’t gone too out of her way to make them for him.

Ron rolled out of his bed, grumbling incoherently and rubbing his eyes, although Harry did catch a muttered complaint of, “Too bloody cold.”  He was presumably heading for the loo, so Harry went back downstairs to see what everyone else was up to.

As with the evening before, Harry walked into something of a spectacle.  It was as if a stationary shop had exploded onto a toy shop and the result had been magically transported into the parlor of Grimmauld Place.  In short, absolute chaos.

“Harry!” cried Fred, or possibly George.  Possibly George beckoned him over to where the two sat next to Bill, who had a book he wasn’t reading in his lap and a large, steaming mug of something sweet in his hands.

“Hiya, Harry,” Bill said with a handsome grin.  The fang in his ear had been charmed to wear a little Father Christmas hat and his long red hair had been pulled back at the sides and braided into an elaborate tail which hung down over his shoulder.  Harry thought he seemed much more cheery than when they’d last run into each other.

“Hey, Bill,” Harry grinned back, settling down into the mess of papers and packages between the twins.  “What’s all this, then?”

Fred laughed.  “It’s Christmas, Harry!”

Harry rolled his eyes.  “Thanks, I hadn’t realized.”

“Watch out, Bill, bit of a sharp tongue, this one!” George laughed.  Harry tried to glare, but he had the feeling it didn’t look especially fierce.

“It’s a bit of a tradition,” Bill explained as Ginny poked Harry in the side.  She passed him a plate of biscuits with suspiciously gold blobs of icing and a mug of tea before returning to her corner of the sofa with Hermione.  “We’ve got such a big family, and that’s not even including all of our extended relatives.  It’s just easier to get all the wrapping done at once, see?”

Harry looked around again with new eyes.  Honestly, he usually just paid extra to have the shops pre-wrap anything he bought for his friends.  He’d never had to wrap presents for the Dursleys, because they hadn’t expected anything, and he hadn’t had any spending money to shop for them besides.  Not that he would have if he could.

The turntable in the corner came on with a click, and Harry turned to see Mrs. Weasley holding the cover of a luridly purple Celestina Warbeck album.  She sighed gustily as the first notes were played, and Harry turned away from her melancholic expression, feeling a twinge of guilt in his gut.

Hermione would tell him it was misplaced.  Ginny would punch him in the arm and tell him to get over himself.

At around mid-morning, Harry stood from his place among the sea of red hair and ribbon and headed for the door.  “Just going to go make myself a cuppa,” he said, although really, the noise and cheer had begun to grow too much for him, and he instead took the stairs up to the first-floor drawing room.

The letters were where he’d left them.  Even though they’d caused him so much grief the day before, it was a relief to seem them still sitting there so innocently.  Proof that everything he’d learned had been real, at least.

He sat down at the desk, looking at the semi-organized mess.  He honestly wasn’t sure, but he thought they might have been moved around since yesterday.  Had Sirius been reading more of them?

Harry picked up a scrap of parchment which could hardly be called a letter.

R—

You alright?  You seemed a bit quiet at breakfast, today.  Want to go stargazing again?

J

He couldn’t help the smile as he thought about his dad’s infamous rulebreaking.  It was one of the first things Harry had learned about him, point of fact.  His dad had: loved his mum, played Quidditch, and was always getting up to mischief.

Reg—

I heard that your cousin announced her engagement to that Malfoy prat.  I know she’s your favorite, so I won’t say much more than that.

Mostly I just wanted to talk to you.  It’s been days, Reg.  I miss having you next to me.  I’ll reiterate that I wouldn’t have to miss you so much if Sirius knew about us, but I’ll let you fill in the rest of my arguments, as I’m sure you know them by heart by now.

When can I see you again?

James

This one was dated February 1976.  It was reassuring, for some reason, to hear his father refer to Lucius Malfoy as a prat.  Like reassurance that his father was still the same person while apparently dating Regulus Black.  Like he hadn’t somehow changed with Harry’s new knowledge.

Not to mention that this was the second instance Harry had read of his dad trying to convince Regulus to let Sirius in on their secret.  Sirius had implied that he and his brother had been at odds while Regulus was alive, but he’d also said that having Regulus at the Potters’ had been like having his brother back.  Harry had to wonder what had made them drift apart in the first place.

R—

Meet me in the astronomy tower at midnight.  Leave your books, this time.

J

Harry blushed and hurriedly put that letter back down.  Of course, his father was a teenager doing teenager things, but that didn’t mean Harry wanted to read about it!

He also had to wonder what his father would have to say about Harry’s only kiss being the disastrous moment with Cho Chang in the Room of Requirement.

Reg—

Happy Valentine’s Day, sweetheart.  Enjoy the chocolate.  Hopefully it’s as good as what you’re used to, what with you being of the most esteemed and high-hatted family of Black.  I’m sure you’ve grown up showered with the finest of chocolates from the four corners of the globe, but I’m afraid you’re just going to have to make do with Honeyduke’s finest today.  Just you wait—once we’re clear of Hogwarts, I’ll be spoiling you to your heart’s content.

Only a few more years, yeah?

J

Harry’s eyes lingered on the last line for a long time.  James Potter had obviously been planning on a future with Regulus Black.  Hermione’s words from yesterday came back to him, then.  “It’s normal in the wizarding world to end up marrying your high school sweetheart…”

Was Regulus also planning on a future together after they’d left Hogwarts?  There was nothing in these letters so far to indicate that they’d had any sort of problems in their relationship, so then, why had they ended things?

It could have been the war, Harry supposed.  From Sirius’ story, Regulus had died a Death Eater.  Of course, his parents had died at twenty, which would have made Regulus…

Harry blinked.  He didn’t actually know how old Regulus Black had been, or even when he’d died.  He’d been younger than Sirius, right?

He stood and walked over to the tapestry on the far wall that they had been unable to remove, despite Sirius’ best efforts.  Regulus’ Black’s name was easy to find, surrounded as it was by the scorch marks of Sirius and Andromeda.  Unlike pictures and portraits, the faces on the tapestry did not move.  The face that looked back at Harry was angular and narrow, though not as pointy as Draco Malfoy.  His dark hair framed his fair face in an elegant sweep, his blue-grey eyes looking demurely just to the left, no matter how Harry positioned his face.

He eyed the dates beneath Regulus Black’s face and frowned.  Born June of 1961, died June of 1979.  He’d died at seventeen, missing his birthday by three days.

That meant that he’d taken the mark while he was in school.  Harry straightened up, glancing consideringly between the letters on the desk and the tapestry on the wall.  If his dad had been writing love letters to Regulus Black in 1976, he was probably still unaligned with Voldemort, unless his father had been severely fooled.  He did the math in his head.  Regulus would have been in his fourth year and James his fifth.  The same as Harry.

He shook off that odd coincidence and continued his train of thought.  Somewhere between February of 1976 and June of 1979, Regulus Black had joined the Death Eaters and died.

Harry had been born in July of 1981.  One of the pictures in the album that Hagrid had given him in first-year had James and Lily’s wedding in the Spring of 1979.

Harry’s head was starting to hurt.  Hadn’t Lupin and Sirius told Harry that James had been in love with Lily since they’d met on the train?  That he’d spent years trying to get her attention, and that they’d only started dating in seventh-year because she’d finally given him a chance?

“Harry?” Ron asked from the doorway.  “You alright, mate?”

Harry turned and grimaced.  “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.  What’s up?”

Ron’s face settled into something conflicted, but he shrugged and jerked his head toward the hallway.  “Mum says lunch is ready.  Why don’t you come down?”

Harry looked around the drawing room and felt tired.  “Yeah, alright,” he said to Ron, a bit of relief edging his tone.  He hadn’t quite realized how long he’d been standing there, running his mind in circles, and he could do with some of Mrs. Weasley’s good food and the company of his friends.

“Any news from your dad?” he asked as they clomped down the stairs to the basement.

“Not yet,” Ron frowned.  “Bill said Charlie should be back soon, and then he’s going to head to the hospital to sit with him instead.”

Lunch and, indeed, the rest of the day were equally chaotic as the morning had been, with everyone seeming just a bit lighter than they had with Christmas Day so near.  Sirius still hadn’t shown himself by the evening, but the house hadn’t felt as gloomy and sullen as when he’d shrunk into himself at the thought of being alone last Fall.

Harry couldn’t quite put a finger on why, but it almost felt as though the whole house reflected Sirius’ mood, which was definitely something that a house shouldn’t do but regardless did.

In the evening, the lot of them were piled into the parlor watching Bill and Ron play a few very intense rounds of chess, mugs of hot cocoa in each of their hands.  Fred and George shouted bits of bad advice to either Ron or Bill and laughed uproariously as Bill’s misaimed hex accidentally caused Charlie’s lips to zip shut as he was trying to take a sip of his drink.

“Hello all,” interrupted a voice from the suddenly opened door.  They’d had to keep it closed with a silencing charm to prevent the portrait of Walburga Black from waking up and shouting the house down around them.

Professor Lupin stood there, his coat shabby and patched as always, his face pale and drawn but still smiling.

“Professor!” Hermione and Ginny called.  Harry grinned and stood to meet him.

Lupin waved at the girls but focused his attention on Harry immediately after.  Harry found a warm, large palm cupping his shoulder.  “Hello, Harry,” he said.  “Could we chat?”

“I didn’t expect you to come here,” Harry said, fingers cradling his warm mug.  “Are you—I mean, did you come back because of…”

Lupin smiled down at him.  “I was hoping you could show me these letters.”

Harry nodded.  “Sure.  They’re upstairs.”

Lupin waved to the rest of the room and closed the door behind them.  Immediately the house felt too quiet and too empty.  “In the drawing room,” Harry said, climbing the stairs.

“How have you been, Harry?”  Lupin murmured as they reached the landing.

Harry shrugged, eyes on his hands.  “Fine,” he said, because what else could he say?  Besides, as confusing as the last two days had been, they’d also been uncommonly relaxing and warm.

“Good,” said Lupin awkwardly.  “That’s good.”  They sat at the desk.

“I, er, haven’t read all of them,” Harry said as Lupin picked up a few from the top of the pile. 

Lupin looked at the letters in his hand, then up at Harry.  “May I?” he asked, which Harry thought was a bit odd, but he nodded regardless.  “’My light, my heart, my shining star—’ Well, it certainly sounds like James!”  Remus laughed.

Harry hadn’t read any other letters that started like that.  “What do you mean?” he asked.

Lupin’s face looked much younger when he smiled like that.  “He was always throwing himself into everything, Harry.  Becoming an Animagus, marrying your mother, becoming a father.  He was certainly never afraid to say what he was thinking or feeling.”  Lupin frowned.

“It’s part of why I was so concerned when you said you’d found letters he’d secretly written to Regulus Black.  It just seemed so odd, but—” He stopped, lifting a hand to brush the skin under his eye.  “It certainly looks like his writing.”

“So, you didn’t know about this either?”  Harry had been half-hoping that Lupin would have been able to tell him the full story, but it seemed that wasn’t the case.

Lupin shook his head.  “No.  I knew about Regulus coming for Christmas break in fifth year—I was there for a while too, we all were, except Peter.  I didn’t know James had kept writing to him…”

He looked back at the letter.  A huff of laughter seemed to burst from him all of a sudden.  “’Have I told you how much you make my every day more complete?  Truly, not a day passes when I do not thank magic itself for bringing you into my life and me into yours.’” Remus’ laughing eyes met Harry’s.  “You’re father gave me that same speech in our fourth year, when he needed my help passing our finals after he’d spent all his time on the pitch.”

Harry laughed at the image.  He had to admit that it was nice to hear all of these little anecdotes from his father’s friends.

Lupin continued to read, a wide grin stretching his lips.  “’Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, do not bake anything for my birthday.  If you care about me even a little bit.’”  Lupin paused there, and even though they were both still laughing, the moment felt a bit sadder.  “’Do not bake anything. J’”

There were two more letters in Lupin’s hand, but he didn’t move to read them.  Instead, he sank back into his armchair and Harry mirrored him.

“I’d hoped I could set your mind at ease, but now I’m not sure that I can.”

Harry frowned.  “What can you tell me?”

Remus considered that.  “I didn’t know Regulus very well.  Sirius wrote to him often in our first year, but he didn’t receive more than a few letters in return.  I remember that he rode the train to Hogwarts with us in his first year, but then when he still Sorted Slytherin, well.  He and Sirius stopped speaking as much, and then at all.  By our fifth year, the two of them acted like strangers more than brothers.

“I’m sure you’ve heard, but James and his family practically adopted Sirius.”  Lupin paused.  “I always got the feeling that Regulus hated James for stealing Sirius, so I never would have suspected… this.”  His gesture encompassed all of the letters, the chest, and the green satin ribbon.

“Could I ask…” Harry began, eyes firmly away from Lupin.  “I mean, it’s none of my business—forget I said anything.”

“Harry,” Lupin said, leaning forward.  “You can ask me anything.”

Harry screwed up his face to demonstrate what he thought of that, but he grasped his Gryffindor courage anyway and asked, “Were you and Sirius dating in fifth year?”

Lupin choked.

“What?!” he asked, the surprise clear in his tone and Harry’s shoulders automatically hunched in.  He looked up at Lupin who wasn’t angry, precisely, but definitely shocked by the question.  Or at least, by the audacity Harry had to ask it.

Harry nodded toward the stack of letters.  “The last one Sirius and I read together was just after Christmas break.  My dad was saying that the two of you were talking again, and… some other things.  I was just wondering, but you don’t have to tell me.”

Lupin closed his eyes, thumb and forefinger of his free hand reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose.  Finally, he looked at Harry again, relaxing back into his chair.  “No, Harry, we weren’t dating.  Things were… Well, it was complicated…”

Lupin winced.  “I suppose it doesn’t hurt to tell you now.  You may have noticed that Sirius has quite a few hangups about his family?”  Harry nodded.  “Yes, well, so did I.  I thought that was just how families were, until I met James.

“Regardless, Sirius and I were friends for a long time.  I spent a long time loving him, and we did date, for a short while…”

Lupin cleared his throat, looking off to the far side of the room, although Harry suspected that he was really just looking for something to rest his eyes on that wasn’t Harry himself.

“Fifth year was… difficult.  Sirius broke my trust in a very big way, and it took a long time for the two of us to heal our friendship to the point where we could trust each other in a romantic relationship.  So, yes, we dated, but it wasn’t until much later.”

Harry frowned.  “What made you stop?”

Lupin met his gaze with a bittersweet smile.

“Your parents died.  Sirius went to Azkaban.  Looking back, it’s easy to see where things went wrong, but back then… it felt as though I’d been betrayed all over again.”

Lupin looked away again.  “I suppose that in the end I just didn’t have enough faith in him.”

Harry leaned forward in his seat, his brow creased in thought.  “Well, you were betrayed by your friend, and, I mean, you’re only human.  You didn’t have all of the facts—it’s not your fault that you didn’t see it coming.”

Lupin’s face looked as though Harry had smacked him and he blinked emphatically before finally smiling a little and turning back to the letters in his hands.  “Thank you, Harry, but I’m not sure he sees it that way.”  He cleared his throat and looked up, his gaze catching on something behind Harry’s back.

Sirius was standing in the doorway, his face blank with surprise and staring at Lupin with a mixture of hope and longing.  Harry glanced back to Lupin to see him sporting a similar look, laced with a bit of fond exasperation around the edges.

“Harry,” Lupin asked, “Could you please let us talk?  We’ll speak more tomorrow.”

Harry shrugged and stood, edging past Sirius who didn’t even seem to notice him leaving.  It was late, so Harry headed back to his room, glad to see the window shut but Hedwig back on the dresser.  He had a lot to think about from his conversation with Lupin, but he was instead surprised to sink into sleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

Harry was therefore only half-surprised the next morning when Sirius pulled him aside for a private chat on the way to breakfast.

“Remus talked some sense into me last night.  I’ve been a bit of a berk these past few days, haven’t I?” Sirius asked, once they were safely tucked behind the silenced doors of the drawing room.

“A bit, yeah,” Harry said, although he wasn’t as annoyed as he was relieved.  He didn’t want to be angry with Sirius.

Sirius winced.  “Right.  Look, I’m sorry.  I was frustrated and confused, but I wasn’t angry with you, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you like I did.”

Was it wrong to say that he hadn’t actually expected an apology, even with Lupin’s apparent haranguing?  He’d honestly expected Sirius to maybe acknowledge that he was feeling better and then just pick up where they’d left off.

But then, what did he know of healthy family dynamics?  He’d grown up with the Dursleys, who could never be conceivably considered ‘healthy’ in any way.  There were the Weasleys, who all seemed to cherish and resent their place in their large family in an odd ‘Only I can be a prat to my family’ sort of way.

Sirius was the closest thing to family that Harry had ever really had.  He stepped forward into his godfather’s arms, immediately surrounded in the warmest of hugs.  “Thanks.”  Sirius just squeezed him tighter.

After a minute of standing in silence, things began to feel a bit awkward, so Harry reluctantly eased out of his godfather’s hold and reached up to scratch an imaginary itch on his face.

“So,” Sirius said, “Have you got through them all?”  He jerked his head to the writing desk.

“No,” Harry replied, moving to ruffle his hair as he sighed.  “I’ve only read a few of them, really.”  He glanced at Sirius, waiting to see how he was going to react.  “Have you?”

Sirius heaved a great sigh.  “No, me neither.  It’s difficult.  Reading his letters makes it feel less like he’s gone, you know?  Like he’ll just walk in any second.”

Harry considered that.  He’d never really known his father, so even though he’d felt closer to him through reading the letters, he’d never had the experience of James Potter in the flesh.  Was this what people meant when they said, ‘Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all’?  Harry, who’d never had James to begin with, and Sirius, who’d had him for only a short while in the span of things.

“Would it be easier to read them together?” he asked, instead of saying any of that.

Sirius grimaced.  “Who’s to say.”  He perked up then.  “But hey, we’re Gryffindors!  Bravery is in our blood, hey?  What do you say we sit down after breakfast and work our way through this lot?”

Harry grinned.  “Sounds good to me.”  Sirius cast a finite on the door as they left the drawing room, heading down to the basement kitchen.  Harry lowered his voice, conscious of disturbing Sirius’ mum as he asked, “Did Lupin leave again?  Or is he still here?”

Sirius rolled his eyes.  “You can call him Remus, Harry.  You make a man feel old, talking like that.”  Sirius pushed open the door to the basement kitchen, revealing a surprising lack of red hair.  Lupin himself sat at the kitchen table, a book in his hands and a mug at his elbow.  He looked up at their entry and greeted them with a smile.

“Morning.  Mrs. Weasley took the other kids out shopping, and Bill and Charlie went to Mungo’s.  If you want breakfast, you’ll have to make it yourselves.”

Sirius grinned, a sudden unexpected pep in his step as he strode to the pantry, calling out, “Alright, then!  What do you think, Harry?  Shall we have the works?”

“Erm, alright,” said Harry, bemused.

“All he knows how to make are bacon and pancakes.  You don’t want to know why he’s not allowed to make eggs,” Lupin said in a conspiratorial aside to Harry, who laughed.

“I heard that!” Sirius rebuked as he reemerged, arms full of flour and eggs and other sundry staples.

Harry had never cooked in a magical kitchen before, but it turned out to be not dissimilar to cooking in the Dursleys’ kitchen, at least in principle.

“I can make eggs,” said Harry.  “I don’t mind.”  Sirius waved to the spare burner that didn’t have anything on it.  “Is scrambled, okay?  I can do omelets, as well.”

Two murmurs of assent greeted his query and he set to work, absently adding salt and pepper as he watched Sirius work.  His godfather flicked on the gas stove with a tap of his wand, then set to mixing the pancake batter while the oil heated.  That done, he pulled out a tomato and set it to slicing itself.  “Do we want toast?”

“Stick with the pancakes, I think.”

Sirius nodded and twirled around, flipping bacon and testing the pancakes.  Remus pulled out his wand and flicked it at the kettle on the hob, sending it whistling to the sink to refill itself before coming back to be heated.

Within half an hour, they were all seated with full plates, just the three of them at the huge table that had previously felt too small and crowded with the visiting Order or simply stuffed with Weasleys.

“So,” Lupin stated, pouring an absurd amount of syrup onto his towering stack of pancakes.  “What are we doing today?”

“Letters,” Sirius said through his mouthful, saving Harry the trouble.  He’d used his pancake like a wrap and stuffed it with bacon, egg, tomato, and syrup.  The result looked kind of gross but also kind of brilliant.

Harry looked at his plate consideringly, shrugged, and then started piling portions onto his biggest pancake.

Lupin, watching the two of them, looked pained as he sipped his tea.

“Would you join us?” Harry asked, without really thinking about it.  It had felt comforting to have him there, last night, and Harry was half-sure that Sirius would find it easier to have him there as well.

Lupin looked surprised, but he nodded and smiled.  “Of course, Harry.”

“Find anything useful on your trip?” Sirius asked Lupin, leaning closer over the corner of the table separating them.

“Not really,” Lupin sighed.  “It’s worse than the last time, Sirius.  Dumbledore promised them so much in the first war that the Ministry never delivered on.  In some ways, things are worse now than they were back then.  Even getting the pack leaders to meet with me is a struggle.”

Sirius grimaced, then seemed to notice Harry’s look of confusion.  “Remus has been trying to meet with the werewolf packs, convince them to be on our side, like.”

Remus frowned.  “Many of them sided with You-Know-Who in the first war, because he promised them freedoms that they’ve never had under the ministry.  I hate to say it, but I understand their reasoning.”

Sirius huffed.  “It would be easier to change the laws if we didn’t have to deal with Bloody Voldemort and his bloody daft Death Eaters popping up and mucking about.”

Lupin and Harry both blinked at Sirius, surprised, and then burst into simultaneous bouts of laughter.  Sirius grinned, pleased with their reaction.

“Right, and I can just see you in politics.  You’d punch Lucius Malfoy your first day in office and never get anything done.” Harry guffawed.

Lupin, grinning, wiped at his eyes and shook his head.  “Sirius would technically be allowed a seat on the Wizengamot, as the last Black, if his name were ever cleared.  But you’re probably right about the punching.”

Sirius huffed.  “The git would deserve it.”

“I’m not disagreeing,” Lupin said, shifting in his seat so that his shoulders were angled more fully to Sirius.  Harry didn’t think he was trying to exclude him, nor did he really think that Lupin even noticed.

It was the same behavior he’d noticed in them before, that he’d never really paid attention to until his dad’s letter.  He smiled to himself as he watched them banter and poke at each other over their breakfast, and reflected that if they ever got together, then it might be like he had two godfathers, or two father-figures, anyhow.

When the food was gone and their dishes were cleaning themselves in the sink, the three of them headed back upstairs to the drawing room.

Sitting around the little desk, however, Harry found himself hesitant to actually start.  Sirius seemed to be in the same boat.  Noticing this, Lupin sat forward in his chair.  “Shall I?” he asked, and, at their nods, he picked up a letter.

Harry saw the now familiar ‘R’ on the front of this envelope, creased like it had been folded and carried around often.  Cherished.

“It’s dated September of 1976,” Lupin said, eyebrows beginning to furrow.

“Our sixth year?” Sirius asked, surprised.

Lupin hummed, then he began, “’R—Saw you out flying from my dorm window, yesterday.  Sneaky that.  I’m a little upset you didn’t invite me, but I know you like to be up in the air when you’re thinking about things.  What’s on your mind, love?’

“I think I remember this, actually.  I kept waking up early to find him sitting in the window.  He told me he was writing poetry.”  Lupin huffed.  “I thought he was joking, but this makes just as much sense, I suppose.”

“Sap,” said Sirius fondly.  “That’s something the two of them had in common, though, I think.  Merlin, it’s still so bloody weird to picture the two of them together.”  Sirius met Harry’s eyes.  “Your father was an amazing flyer, you know?  You’ve probably heard that before, but it’s true.  Watching him fly was like rediscovering magic.  And Regulus, well…”

Sirius bit his lip, bobbing his head to the side.  “About the only time I ever heard him say anything nice about James, except for those two weeks we stayed with the Potters, was back in his first year.

“I hadn’t really thought about it in years, but I remember he asked me about whether James was trying out for Quidditch, because he was ‘so cool on a broom’.”

Lupin smiled.  His hand came to rest on Sirius’ shoulder, and Sirius slouched to the side, leaning into the contact.  “Was that in our second year, then?”

Sirius hummed, looking up at the ceiling.  “Yeah, about a week after the feast.  I hardly remember it, except that was the night before Narcissa kindly ‘asked’ me to stop influencing him with my bad behavior.”

Harry had never actually met Mrs. Malfoy, but if she was anything like her husband or son, Harry wasn’t sure he ever wanted to.  Sirius certainly didn’t seem to have any affection for her.

“Should I keep going?”  Lupin asked.

Sirius closed his eyes and nodded firmly.

“There’s only one more line here.  It says—oh.”  Lupin read the line to himself, lips moving silently, then glanced over at the table.  “It says, ‘The ribbon is for your hair.  It reminded me of you, and I think it will look nice.  You’ll wear it for me, won’t you? J.’”

Harry reached forward and picked up the green ribbon.  It was still as satiny as the first time he’d held it, but now he noticed the delicate embroidery edging the length.  It was a darker green, and the design was so small that he almost couldn’t see it, even with it pressed close to his glasses, but…

“Are these antlers?” he asked.

Sirius blinked, then held out his hand for the ribbon.  He peered closely at a section of it, then let out a bark of laughter.  “They are!  Merlin, where would he have found something like this?”

Sirius passed the ribbon to Lupin, who looked at it closely and then passed it back to Harry.  He almost wanted to keep the ribbon, hold onto it possessively, but what would he do with it?

For now, he placed it back on the table and picked up a letter.

“Another September 1976,” he said.  “’R—You take my breath away.  Look into my eyes and’—oh!”  Harry felt his face heat up as he blushed furiously.  “Erm, let me find a different one.”

Lupin’s brow flew up into his hairline.  “May I?  I can skim through for anything not salacious.”

Harry passed him the letter, struggling to control his flushing cheeks.  Sirius was grinning at him.  “It’s alright to be embarrassed, pup, but it’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

Harry wrinkled his nose at the same time Lupin laughed.  “’Look into my eyes and you’ll see I’m the only one.  You’ve captured my love, stolen my heart, changed my life.’”

Here, Sirius took in a barely audible breath, then lunged for Lupin.  “Alright, stop, that’s enough!”

Lupin only laughed and dodged his reaching hands.  “’Every time you make a move, you destroy my mind, and the way you touch—I lose control and shiver deep inside.’”

Sirius’s face was just as red as Harry’s now, and Harry couldn’t help but laugh at the frantic way that Sirius tried to get Lupin to stop reading, even as he sat covering his face, wishing he didn’t have to hear his father writing—that kind of letter.

“’Darling, you take my breath away.’”  Lupin laughed so hard that his next words came out breathy.  “’Now, tell me again that Queen doesn’t make you feel anything. J’.”

Harry looked up through his fingers as Lupin finally put the letter down.  Sirius had frozen mid-lunge, and he looked as though he’d been betrayed.  After a moment or two of silence, he finally burst.  “You’re telling me he was quoting Queen the whole time?!”

Lupin laughed at the look on his face, and Harry joined in.  He was still embarrassed, but it was the embarrassment of knowing he’d fallen for his father’s prank just as much as Sirius and, presumably, Regulus had.

Lupin finally calmed down enough to pat Sirius’ shoulder again, slipping his fingers around to rub the back of his neck.

“I can’t believe you’d do this to me!  And James!  From the beyond!  With my own brother!”

Lupin scoffed, but it seemed full of fond exasperation more than anything else.  “I seem to recall someone else in our dorm serenading the lot of us with You and I for an entire year.”

Sirius’ blush reignited with those words, and he finally snatched the letter out of Remus’ hand, stuffing it back into its envelope and setting it to the side.  “Next!” he said and picked up another.

“’R—’” he began, and then he stopped.  For several long minutes, it looked as if he wouldn’t continue at all.  When he did, his voice was strained, and he did not pause at all until he finished.  “’Darling, you don’t have to be your parents.  Just like I don’t have to be mine.  Although, if you’ll pardon me saying, I don’t think mine are too bad.  Maybe a tad embarrassing, but overall, I’m pretty happy with them.

“’All that to say, if we ever have kids, however we have them, we can choose how we want to raise them.  And it won’t be with a million expectations and torture curses, I can tell you right now.  Why are you so worried about this, anyway? J.’”

Sirius slid the letter back into the envelope, stone-faced, and sank back into his chair.  Harry wasn’t really sure what to say to any of that.  His dad had already been thinking about kids?  And—torture curses?  Harry knew that Sirius’ childhood hadn’t been the best, but…

He recognized that Sirius was in no mood to talk about what he’d just read, and he could only be grateful that his godfather hadn’t stormed off again.  He gathered his courage and picked up another letter.

“’R—I’m glad you liked it, love.  Liking tragedy isn’t a character flaw, I just think it’s a bit odd.  Isn’t life sad enough?  Now me, I prefer a good comedy, or an adventure, maybe.’”

A soft sound drew his attention to Sirius, whose eyes had been closed as he hunched into himself a bit.  Harry looked to Lupin, concerned, but Lupin only smiled and gestured for him to continue.  Harry hesitated a moment, but he continued to read.

“’Don’t you live in London?  I bet there are ten bookshops within walking distance of your family home.  Lily said’—hang on.  My mum knew about them?”

Harry frowned up at Lupin and Sirius, who looked equally confused.  “I can’t imagine why she would have?  I mean, I imagine that James told her after they got together, but they were only barely friends in our sixth year.”  Lupin looked to Sirius, who shrugged.

Harry made a face but continued to read the last line.  “’Lily said this was a library book, so read it fast, alright?  I haven’t told her I’m loaning it to you. J.’”

“Well, there you have it, then.”  Sirius said.  “She didn’t know.”

Lupin frowned.  “Just because she didn’t know that’s where her book went doesn’t mean she didn’t know they were together.  And actually, was that the book she said was stolen on the train?”

Sirius looked like he was trying to remember some obscure fact he’d learned in History of Magic.  “I don’t remember a book.”

Lupin frowned.  “There’s no title, is there, Harry?”

Harry shook his head.  “It might be in one of the other letters, but no, this one doesn’t say.”

Lupin made a soft sound.  “I know Lily lost a few books that year.  She swore that someone was stealing from her, but she never figured out who.  I know she put an anti-theft charm on her trunk for second term, and the problem stopped.”

“So… my dad was stealing books from my mum to give to his—boyfriend?”  The word felt strange to use in the context of his father, but really, what else would he call them?

Sirius dropped an elbow onto the arm of his chair, propping his head up on his raised fist.  “That doesn’t make sense, though—James would have returned them after Reggie was through reading them, which he definitely would have because he never would have been caught dead with muggle books in this house.”

From the look on his face, Harry thought that, in this case, ‘caught dead in this house’ wasn’t just a turn of phrase.

Lupin hummed, but his eyes seemed to catch on the chest.  “It seems like your brother ended up being very good at hiding things from your parents, however.”  He gestured at the expanse of letters.  “Exhibit A.”

Harry frowned.  “That chest was really heavy when I brought it downstairs.”

Sirius perked up at this.  “Well, what else is in there?”

Lupin reached into the chest and pulled out the second stack of letters that Harry had originally noticed.  These were written with very expensive looking stationery, but what caught his eye when Lupin held them up was the name on the front of them.

James.

These were—letters from Regulus?

The three of them sat silent for a moment.  Sirius and Lupin shared a glance.  Harry asked, “Should we…?”

Lupin set the letters down.  On the very top was a scrap of parchment, wrinkled and folded.  Lupin opened it and pressed it flat against the table.  Even before he read it aloud, Harry could clearly see what it said.

James,

I’m sorry

“Perhaps I should read the next one?” Lupin said, folding the note back up and setting it to the side in a new stack.

The next letter was encased in a thick vellum envelope, discolored with age but otherwise crisp.  The handwriting on the front was spikey and beautifully calligraphed.  Instead of a seal keeping it closed, the end flap was tucked into the body next to the parchment it held.

“This one is dated March of 1977—so the end of our sixth year.  ‘James—Happy Birthday.  I wish you wouldn’t look so miserable every time I mistakenly glance over at you in the Great Hall.  Don’t you know that I never would have given you up if I thought you could not be happy without me in your life?’”

Remus’ brows furrowed as he looked up at them.  “I suppose these are letters he wrote after they ended things?”  Neither Sirius nor Harry had an answer to this, and in fact, his supposition was confirmed only a moment later.  “’We have no future together.  I hate that truth but hating it won’t change anything.  Would that I could change wizard-kind, I would choose to love you, James Potter, every time.

“’But I can’t, and this is for the best.  So, cheer up, won’t you? Regulus’.”

Sirius scoffed.  “Merlin, Reggie.  Alright, give me the next one.”

Remus passed him an identical letter and he opened it with little fanfare.  “’James—After all the times you told me that the two of you were friends?  Sure, I never had anything to worry about from the boy who professed his love to one witch every day for five years…’

“I remember this!  It’s dated October 1977, right after your mum and dad got together, Harry.”

“Well, right after they started letting people know, anyway.”  Lupin interjected.

“Right, yeah, that.  Let’s see… ‘What am I saying?  I want you to be happy, and you do look so much happier with her at your side.’”  Sirius barked a laugh.  “’But why did it have to be her?  Of all people, James.’”

Sirius looked up at Harry, grinning the way Fred or George might with the opportunity to take the piss out of Ron.  “Here I thought he hexed me so much that year because he was mad that I’d left home.”

Lupin frowned.  “I’d still like to know why they broke up.  Keep reading.”

“’I miss you so much, you know?’”  Sirius paused.  He took a deep breath before he continued.  “’Sometimes I think I hate you.  In some ways, that’s easier, but it’s also worse.  When I remember how much I love you, I end up hating myself.’”

Lupin swallowed.  “I felt much the same way in fifth year.  And again, after the war.”

He and Sirius shared a brief, longing look, before they each looked away.  Lupin’s hand slipped back to Sirius’ shoulder.

“’I still have the ring’—wait, what?”  Sirius leaned forward in his seat, bringing the letter up closer to his face as if to pay closer attention to the words written there.  Finally, he read, “’I still have the ring you gave me when you said you wanted to give me the rest of your life.  I thought about sending it back to you, but I couldn’t even entertain the thought for more than a breath.

“’It’s the last piece of you that I have, you know?  Forgive me.  Regulus’.”

“It must be in the chest, right?” Harry asked.  It only made sense.

Remus, sitting closest to the chest, tugged it a bit closer and tipped it toward him.  With his face scrunched up, he waved his wand at the chest’s interior.  Harry didn’t see any change, but Lupin’s expression eased.  He set his wand down to the side and reached his arm inside.  When he brought it back out, his hand was clenched around a bundle of soft maroon fabric.

It looked like wool or cashmere—warm and soft. 

“Is that…?”  Sirius asked quietly.

Remus gulped.  He pulled the fabric apart until it revealed itself to be a jumper.  After checking the inside collar, he said, “It’s James’.”

“Damn,” said Sirius, looking as though he had been coming to grips with everything up until this very moment, when someone had pulled the carpet from under him.  “Do you see anything else in there?”

Lupin again reached his hand inside the trunk and brought it out clutching the wide cardboard covers of three muggle records.

“Ha!” Sirius exclaimed.  “That little twerp!  I can’t believe he managed to hide those in this house without anyone ever finding them!”

Lupin was interestedly examining the covers, so Harry stood and leaned over the table, reaching his hand into the chest and rummaging around.  He could feel the shapes of things.  Some sharp corners and smooth edges turned out to be several novels—likely the library books from his mum.  Harry noted The Birds on the Trees and Bury Him Among Kings as he set them off to the side of the much too crowded desk.

On his second pass, Harry emerged clutching what he thought would be a ring, but which turned out to be a cloak pin, in the shape of a stag.  Subtle, his dad had apparently not been.  He placed it atop the books and went back into the chest for another attempt.

This time, his hand closed around soft, silken fabric.  He was tempted to leave it in the chest, but wondered if it might have anything interesting inside of it.

When he pulled it out of the chest, he found that he’d been holding a dressing gown, the kind that rich aristocrats wore in period dramas that he’d only ever gotten to glimpse over Dudley’s shoulder as he ran the vacuum over the sitting room rug at the Dursleys’.

The robe was white and silky and it billowed dramatically as it came out into the open air.  It must have startled Remus, because he flinched and his elbow knocked into the stack of letters to his right.  They went flying across the floor, sliding under the chairs and mixing together randomly.

“Well, shit.”

The comment caught Harry off guard and he snorted.  “Sorry.”  Remus and Sirius both bent to retrieve the fallen letters, setting the records atop the library books.  Harry stuck his hands into the robe pockets and grinned when his fist closed around a ring.

The band was a twisted coil of gold that resembled the roots of a tree, the stone a glittering ruby that glinted crimson in the candlelight.  He passed it to Sirius when he sat up again.

His godfather rubbed the band with his thumb.  “It’s funny.  I always considered James my brother, but I never would have guessed that he might have actually become my brother, you know?  Now, finding all of this out…”  He wrinkled his nose.  “I’m not sure what to think, to be honest.”

Remus inclined his head to the chest.  “Was that all, Harry?”

Harry stuck his face into the opening of the chest and peered inside.  It was a bit dark, but—“I think so.”

“Good,” Remus said.  “Let’s continue, shall we?”

He picked a letter at random, which would have been true regardless, but he hardly seemed to look before he grasped its corner.  “August 1978…  It says, ‘James—Term begins next week.  This will be the first year that I attend Hogwarts without you to look forward to seeing in the halls, and I am conflicted.  In my heart, I know that looking upon your face would weaken my resolve, but I also know that I cannot afford any missteps.’”

Sirius’ face wrinkled up, and Harry thought it might have been because Regulus didn’t mention that it was also his first year without Sirius at school, but Sirius didn’t interrupt so neither did Harry.

“’I killed someone today.’”

Harry’s gaze snapped to Remus.  Of course, he’d known that as a Death Eater, Regulus would have been involved in the killing and violence perpetuated by that lot, but to hear the words so baldly after spending the morning reading about how much he’d been in love with Harry’s dad was…

Shocking?  Uncomfortable?  Jarring, at the very least.

Remus swallowed hard, glanced at Sirius, and then looked back at the parchment in his hands.  “’I wish I were not such a coward that I could have killed myself when I first learned the truth.  I deserve nothing less.  It does no good to dwell on such missed opportunities.  It won’t be too much longer.  Regulus.’”

Harry had the thought that if Regulus was going to feel so bad about killing people and being awful and evil, then he maybe shouldn’t have become a Death Eater in the first place.

Immediately after, he felt a little bad about thinking it.  Regulus had clearly felt regret about his decisions and Harry very obviously didn’t have the full story.

That in mind, Harry reached for the pile at Sirius’ elbow.

“December 1978.  ‘James—I spent the evening with Severus Snape today.  He told me that you and Lily are planning to wed in the Spring.  I had to stop drinking because I was afraid that I would curse him and then myself.

“’I’m glad that you have found your happiness, after all.  Even without me.  Regulus.’”

Sirius wordlessly opened another letter, cleared his throat, and began to read.  “James—You were right.  Oh Merlin, you were both right—’  Wait, does he mean…?”

Sirius trailed off as he read the words to himself.  He scowled, then passed the letter to Remus.  Remus took the letter with a concerned frown which Sirius ignored to lean back in his chair and cover his face with his palm.

“’Trixie was so excited,’” Remus continued.  “’I thought we’d drink and dance and have a few laughs, and they did, but oh—’ Oh.  I see.  Perhaps we should skip this one; you don’t need to hear this, Harry.”

Harry scowled.  He’d thought they were done hiding things from him for the moment.  It had seemed that way, at least since they’d come here for the break.  “I want to know.  I’ll read it if you don’t want to.”

Remus’ eyebrows knit together, but in the end he simply sighed and continued to read.  “’The smell, James.  I nearly sicked up all over myself from the smell alone.  Only the knowledge of what they’d do to me if I did stopped me.

“’It was Trixie and her new husband Rodolphus—you know him?  His little brother Rabastan and Barty Crouch the younger came along as well, although neither yet have the Mark.’”

Here, Remus paused, expression going tense and sorrowful.  “’Is there something wrong with me that I didn’t enjoy it like they did?  Surely if this is what’s best for our kind, I should at least be able to put up with it?’”

“That little idiot!” Sirius snarled as he leaped from his chair and began pacing.

“Sirius—” Remus began, but Sirius was not in any mood to listen.

“We told him!  I told him!  He didn’t listen, and even then, at the end, with them shoving his face in the truth, he still refused to just leave!”  Sirius’ voice broke harshly, and he brought his hand up to his face, even as he turned away.  “Why wouldn’t he just leave?”

They were all quiet for a moment, before Sirius turned in a blur of motion.  And suddenly, instead of two men and a boy, they were a man, a boy, and a dog.

Padfoot came back to the desk, laying his big, shaggy head across Remus’ thigh and leaning his not inconsiderable weight against his legs.  Remus’ hand stroked through the fur on his head, but he didn’t say anything about the change as Mrs. Weasley or some of the other adults in the Order might have.

“Was that the end?” Harry asked quietly.

Lupin placed his hand on Padfoot’s neck and said, “’I wish you were here.  I’m glad you aren’t.’  That’s the end of the letter.”

“Should I…?” Harry asked, not wanting to make his godfather more upset, but also not quite ready to be done.  His curiosity had gotten him into trickier situations before.  If worse came to worse, he could always come back here alone.

“Go on,” Remus said, so Harry did.

“James—I’m about to do something very Gryffindorish.  I think you would be very proud of me, if you knew what I was planning.  At least, I’d like to think you would be.

“’Kreacher has been ordered to complete a task for me.  Should you ever find these letters—my heart is torn whether I want you to or not—could you make sure that he has accomplished it?  I trust him to do his best and to not tell anyone else, but I fear that what I have asked of him may be too much burden for any one soul.

“’Please be kind to him.  He has been my confidant these last, lonely years.  If you hold any remaining affection for me, please…

“’I go to my death tomorrow.  I’m not sure whether it would be a comfort or a burden for you, but if you must take anything from these letters, know that my heart remains, until my last breath, yours.  Regulus Black’.”

The three of them were quiet for a long moment after Harry finished reading.  Finally, ponderously, Padfoot sat up and transformed back into Sirius.  “What was the date on that?” he asked.

“June 1979,” Harry answered.  His eyes flicked over to the tapestry, though he couldn’t read the words.  He still knew they were there.  Regulus’ date of death.

“Oh Reggie,” Sirius muttered, dropping his forehead against Remus’ thigh again.

“He killed himself…”  Harry couldn’t quite wrap his head around the why of it all, although he was still in a better state than Sirius.  Regulus had obviously still been in love with Harry’s dad, and he’d regretted becoming a Death Eater, but would that be enough to make him end his life?  Surely there were alternatives?

“What was the task?” he asked aloud.  At Remus’ quirked eyebrow, he clarified, “The task that Regulus set for Kreacher.  It sounded important.”

Remus frowned.  “We’d have to ask him.  Actually, where is he?  I haven’t seen him since I arrived.”

Harry shrugged.  “He was here the night we got in, but I haven’t seen him since.”  Harry tipped his head to the side.  “That is a little weird, isn’t it?  You don’t think he died, do you?”

The elf was old, and even though he was sure the twins had been joking about it, Harry couldn’t help the shiver that ran up his back at the thought of the old thing going off and dying somewhere in this house and none of them having noticed.

Remus gently petted Sirius’ dark hair.  “He’d come if you called him,” he said.  It sounded like an offer.  Keep searching for answers or drop the subject?

“Kreacher!  I command you to come here now!” Sirius bellowed the words, voice strained by emotion and authority hampered by the way he still hadn’t lifted his face.

“Bad Master Sirius calls Kreacher.  Defiler of my mistress’ house, friend to werewolves and mudbloods in these sacred halls—”

Kreacher cut off his stream of words of his own accord, for once.  His eyes were caught on the table, an expression of sheer rage overtaking his features as he took in Regulus’ belongings set into haphazard piles and clearly having been gone through.

Harry remembered Regulus’ words—He has been my confidant in these last, lonely years.  If you hold any remaining affection for me… Please be kind to him.

“Kreacher,” Harry began, tone tentative but as friendly as he could manage.  Kreacher had never been kind to him, but Harry could still make an effort.

“This letter that Regulus wrote to my father—he asked him to check and make sure you were able to complete a task he’d set you.  Could you tell me about that?”

Kreacher’s eyes widened in shock.  Then, without warning, he burst into loud, wailing sobs which threatened to break the silencing charm on the door.

“Master—Master Regulus!”

Harry stared, flabbergasted, at the crying, snivelling elf, as he suddenly dropped to his hands and knees and began to bash his head against the grimy parquet floors.  He leaped to his feet, lifting Kreacher by the armpits and shouting at him to stop!

Surprisingly, Kreacher listened.  He still sniffled and cried, but he’d stopped wailing and he did not struggle at all in Harry’s grip.

Gently, Harry set Kreacher back onto his feet and stepped around him so that they were face to face.

“Please tell us what happened to Regulus, Kreacher,” Remus said quietly.

The elf sneered at him, lifting his upper lip to bare his teeth with an ugly look.  “Nasty halfblood dares to speak to Kreacher—”

“Answer him!” Sirius snapped.

Kreacher glared, but then he began to talk.  It took a long while to get through the story.   Between heaving breaths and broken sobs, Kreacher told them all about how Regulus had been excited to join the Death Eaters and how proud he was to serve, how he’d come to Kreacher with a request to serve the Dark Lord and how honored Kreacher had felt.  He told them of the cave and the poison and the locket.  Then, he told them of how they’d gone back, and, in not so many words, what Regulus had done.

“He never told you what it was?” asked Harry.  “The locket?”  He thought it was probably a good thing to destroy anything Voldemort was guarding that closely, but he also couldn’t imagine why it would be so important.  Surely though, it couldn’t be just a normal locket.

Kreacher shook his bald head.  Between the sagging skin of his face and the shivering white tuffs of hair sprouting from his ears, Harry was left with the impression of something small and pathetic.

“Did you destroy it?” he asked then, expecting Kreacher to answer that he had.  Instead, Kreacher burst into renewed hysterics.

“Kreacher failed!  Kreacher failed in his task!  Bad Kreacher!”

Harry again lunged forward to stop Kreacher from banging his head against the floor, but Sirius’ sharp voice cut between them.  “Kreacher, stop that.  Where is the locket now?”

The elf froze.  Harry held his breath, but of course Kreacher couldn’t ignore a direct question like that.  He hung his head and answered, “Kreacher saved it from the nasty children throwing away all of Mistress’ belongings, Kreacher did…”

Sirius rolled his eyes.  “Fetch it here.”

Kreacher scowled, his mouth quivering, but he obediently disappeared with a quiet pop, reappearing in front of them again with very little time.  Sirius beckoned with a hand, “Let’s see it, then?”

Kreacher passed the heavy looking gold locket to Sirius, who passed it to Remus.  Harry noticed the large, stylized S on the front face.  Remus wrinkled his nose and took out his wand.  “It’s definitely dark magic.  Strong, too—I can practically smell it even without the diagnostic charm.”

He frowned.  “I can’t tell what it’s purpose is, however.”  Remus looked to Sirius, who had finally sat up, although he hadn’t moved from his place on the floor.  “If elf magic couldn’t destroy it, I can’t think of very many things that would.”

Sirius scowled.  “Kreacher!” he barked.  “Are the potions cupboards still fully stocked?”  Kreacher nodded mutely.  “Well, that’s something.  Go and fetch a vial of basilisk venom.  Whatever this thing is, I doubt it’ll be impervious to that.”

Kreacher’s eyes went wide, and he disappeared again.  “Basilisk venom?” Harry asked with a gulp, remembering the way it had felt like his very blood had been set aflame the last time he’d dealt with a basilisk’s anything.

“Kills almost anything,” Sirius stated nonchalantly.  Harry wasn’t sure whether or not Sirius even knew what had happened second-year, but he decided not to mention it.

Kreacher came back then, the vial of venom placed inside an unpolished silver bowl, carefully cupped between Kreacher’s shaking hands.

Sirius took both and stood, pushing the detritus they’d pulled from the chest onto one side of the desk and setting the bowl on the corner.  He took the locket back from Remus, and Harry leaned forward to get a closer look as Sirius unstoppered the vial and began to drizzle the contents across the gold finish.

Immediately, a piercing shriek deafened them all, howling with pain and rage and a sense of pure, unadulterated evil.

The locket opened.

Wisps of black, noxious smoke emerged as the scream choked, fading off just as the black vapors did.  The quiet afterward rang with echoes of that scream for a long while.

Harry glanced at Sirius from the corner of his eye, watching as his godfather teared up and reached out to grasp Remus’ hand.  “That little bugger,” he said.  He moved as though to wipe his face clear but seemed to remember halfway through that he was still holding an unstoppered vial of incredibly deadly poison in his hand.

“He was very brave, at the end,” said Remus quietly.

Honestly, Harry had been half-forming two separate images in his head this whole time—Regulus, his dad’s secondary school boyfriend, and Regulus, the Death Eater.  The first looked a lot like Sirius in the pictures Harry had of him in his youth—carefree smiles and handsome, aristocratic features.  The second looked a lot more like Draco Malfoy, eager to kneel at the feet of the Dark Lord, cruel, a bully, spineless…

But Regulus hadn’t been either, in the end.  Some amalgamation of the two, maybe, but now, well, he doubted he’d ever know.

“Thank you!”  Kreacher’s bullfrog croak caught all of their attention and Harry turned to see him staring up at them all with wide, sincere eyes.  He seemed to be caught between lingering hatred and newfound gratitude for Sirius, and although he mostly ignored Remus, when he looked at Harry, he saw the same kind of look Dobby always had.

Sirius released Remus’ hand and stoppered the vial, sliding it into the gap of the bowl’s handle.  He slumped into the open armchair.  He didn’t respond to Kreacher in that whole process, and Harry thought he might not at all, but then he finally asked, “Is Reggie’s portrait still in the attic, Kreacher?”

Kreacher’s eyes, which Harry had previously thought widened as far as they could possibly go, seemed now ready to pop free of his skull.  “Master Regulus’ portrait remains in the attic, yes…” he croaked.  His glance shifted between the three of them, hopeful.

Sirius sighed.  “We’ll bring it downstairs.  I’d put it in the front hall, except that I can’t imagine he’d want to be next to Dear Old Mum, so… His old room, maybe?”

Kreacher dropped to the floor and started bashing his head against the floor again.  Sirius looked on, bewildered at the sudden action.  “Kreacher!  Stop hurting yourself!” Harry shouted.

Strangely, Kreacher did.  He sat, kneeling on the floor, eyes watery and cheek bruised.

“Kreacher,” Sirius said, his face darkening.  “What did you do?”

They all waited for an answer that, miraculously, didn’t seem to be coming.  Kreacher didn’t look at any of them, but his body was still turned toward Harry, so he leaned forward in his chair, as close to eye level as he could get without fully sitting on the dusty floor.

“Kreacher, tell us what happened?” he asked quietly.  Kreacher looked up at him, then at Sirius and then back to Harry.

“Master Sirius ordered Kreacher away, so away Kreacher went, and Kreacher told Miss Cissa and Miss Bella about Master Sirius and Master Sirius’ friends and Master Harry Potter’s True Dreams.

“Miss Cissa told the Dark Lord what Kreacher had said, and He promised to kill Master Sirius if Kreacher fulfilled his duty, he did. And Miss Bella ordered Kreacher not to tell Master Sirius about what had happened…”

Harry was horrified.  Sirius made to stand and, likely, strike Kreacher down, but Lupin caught him and pulled him close.  Harry swallowed.  “Thanks for telling me that, Kreacher.  Do you know what he’s planning?”

Kreacher shook his head.  “Kreacher has always hated bad Master Sirius for breaking Master Regulus’ heart.  Kreacher thought that if Master Sirius were dead then at least Mistress would be happier...”

Harry shook his head.  “I don’t understand you, Kreacher.  Voldemort nearly killed you, he’s the reason that Regulus is dead, and still you’d turn to him?”

Kreacher looked at Harry with confusion.  “Kreacher serves the house of Black.  Master Sirius is the last Black, but Master Sirius does not consider himself of the House.  Master Sirius has never been Kreacher’s friend.”

Harry couldn’t exactly argue with that, because it had been clear that Sirius and Kreacher hated each other from Harry’s very first day in Grimmauld Place.  He glanced back at his godfather, who had tucked his face into Remus’ shoulder and seemed to be doing his best to disappear there.

He made eye contact with Remus, instead, whose expression was concerned but determined.  “We have the upper hand now, at least.  We know to be cautious, and we know that Kreacher may have orders from either Narcissa or Bellatrix that we’ll need to watch out for.”  He sighed.  “We should speak to Dumbledore about this.”

Harry scowled, reminded that Dumbledore hadn’t spoken to Harry very much at all since last June, with no explanation as to why.

At the darkening expression on Harry’s face, Remus brought up a forestalling hand.  “It’s about time for lunch, so the Weasleys should be back.  Let’s go eat.  We can all talk more about this later.”

He turned to Kreacher.  “Could you take this venom back to the potions stores?”

Kreacher scowled, hesitated, but finally moved to take the venom and disappeared with a pop.

“Not even a single insult,” he said, impressed.  Sirius huffed a laugh.  Harry hid a grin as he led the three of them from the room.

As Remus had guessed, most of the Weasleys and Hermione, minus Bill and Charlie, were downstairs.

“Oh good,” Molly smiled as they came into the parlor, “I was just about to send someone up to get you.  Lunch will be ready in just a ‘mo.”

“Thanks, Molly,” Remus said.  He and Sirius were no longer holding hands, and in fact Sirius had gone over to the sideboard to pour himself a glass of brandy.

“Hiya, Harry!” Fred called near his ear, throwing an arm around his shoulders.  “Found something interesting upstairs, did you?”

George’s arm joined Fred’s in weighing him down.  “Only you’re looking a little more stressed than you were before we left you alone.”

Harry laughed, but it wasn’t as happy as he’d meant it to sound.  “I’m fine,” he said, “Just… a lot happening.”

Fred and George shared a glance over his head, which was just rude.

“Alright, well, in our professional opinion—”

“And we are professionals, never you fear—”

“You’re in need of some cheering up!”

“And that’s our specialty!”

With that, the two of them dragged him over to the table set up in the corner, upon which Ginny, Hermione, and Ron appeared to be working on a puzzle.  They dragged a sixth chair over and shoved him into it, leaving him crammed between George and Ginny.

“Hiya, Harry!” she smiled brightly at him as he sat down.  “Glad you’re here, come put those Seeker’s eyes to use.”  She shoved a piece into his hands, and he looked down to see a light blue bit with a small black dot zooming up and down along one edge.

“This one’s a thousand pieces,” Hermione explained.  “The picture’s just there, for reference.”  She pointed to the corner of the table, where a picture displayed two Seekers, one in red and blue, the other in black and white, diving for the snitch.

“This looks impossible.”

The twins, Ron, and Ginny all laughed.  Hermione only rolled her eyes and smiled.  “That’s what makes it fun!”

Spread on the table were several groupings of pieces, each with no more than three pairs.  They’d found the four corners, and around half of the border.

Harry set down the piece Ginny had given him and reached for a pile of black and white, figuring that at least that gave him more to work with.

“We’re going back to Mungo’s tomorrow, Harry.  You’re coming, aren’t you?” Ginny asked him as the twins began arguing over whether or not the two pieces in their hands were meant to be a match.

“If you want me to,” Harry said.  Mr. Weasley’s attack wasn’t his fault, he now knew, but it would still be good to see him alive and well.

“Of course, we do.”  Ginny rolled her eyes at him and then squinted at the piece in her hand.  “I think this is part of the goalposts?  It’s not moving…”  She frowned and set it to the side.  “Oh, Tonks wanted to say hello to you, earlier.”

“I didn’t know she was here.”  Harry did a little fist bump as he finally got two pieces to fit together.

“She played bodyguard while we were shopping.”

“Oh, nice.”

The six of them continued on in that vein until lunch was ready.  At the table, his friends continued to keep him distracted from his thoughts, and he couldn’t help but sink back into that warm feeling that had gotten its grip into him the night before.

Watching Ginny laugh at Fred and George poking fun at Ron, watching Hermione scold the twins for being rude, watching Sirius and Remus and Mrs. Weasley smile easily and every one of them turning to him with a smile or a friendly look in their eyes to include him in the conversation.

It was strange, Harry thought, that his childhood Christmases could contrast so starkly to now.  He had family now, Harry realized with a start.  Sure, he was related to the Dursleys, but he’d never actually considered them family, and he knew they felt the same.  If given the opportunity, they would have handed him over to someone else’s custody without a fuss.

The Weasleys, though, had always gone out of their way to include him, even when they didn’t have much to give, they still tried.  Ron and Hermione had gone through so much with and because of Harry, and they didn’t seem to begrudge him at all.

Then Sirius and Remus, his dad’s best friends, and, honestly, the closest he’d ever come to a real-life father.

He might’ve burst into tears if not for how embarrassing that would have been.  Harry’s family was absolutely huge, and he loved every one of them.

They spent the rest of the afternoon working on the puzzle, taking occasional breaks to fiddle with the radio or greet members of the Order stopping by to drop things off and mingle.  Bill and Charlie came back for dinner and to cheer them all up with the news that Mr. Weasley was doing much better and could come home very soon.

Harry gained a second wind, then.  That was the best news he’d heard all year!

Mrs. Weasley made steak and kidney pie for dinner with treacle tart for dessert.  Harry had a sneaking suspicion she’d chosen that dish because it was his favorite, but he wasn’t going to complain about that.  Sitting around the kitchen table with mugs of hot cocoa and plates of tart would probably be a happy enough memory to let him create a Patronus.

It was Bill who suggested that everyone go to bed early.  They had a busy day tomorrow, after all, and the sooner they were in bed, the sooner they could open presents.

Harry still had a full mug of cocoa when people started to leave and head upstairs.  Sirius caught his eye and jerked his chin, inviting Harry to come and sit with him.  He scooted down the table, and everyone else wished them a good night as they left the room.

“How are you feeling, pup?” Sirius asked.  Harry bit his lip and focused on his drink as he considered the question.  How was he feeling?  Finally, he shrugged and took a sip.  Sirius huffed a laugh and raised his mug.  “Cheers to that.”

Sirius slurped his drink and smacked his lips ridiculously.  “I never had hot chocolate like this growing up, you know.”

Harry frowned.  Could he ask?  He was curious about Sirius’ childhood, but sometimes asking got him fewer answers than just staying silent and listening.

His godfather kept talking into Harry’s silence.  “Reggie and I used to get apple cider at Christmas parties and the like, and of course it was different at Hogwarts…”

“Me neither,” Harry said, when the quiet had dragged on uncomfortably long.

“’You neither’, what?”

Harry took a deep breath.  “I never got hot cocoa before Hogwarts either.  Or cider, really.  All of the stuff we’ve been doing over the last few days—the carol singing, the cookie decorating, playing games with everyone and wrapping presents.  I’ve never done any of it.”

Sirius was quiet for a moment and Harry didn’t dare look up at him.  Finally, he said, “You know, I think I hate your relatives.”

Harry laughed, startled.  “Me too,” he grinned, finally meeting Sirius’ grinning gaze.

His godfather sobered after a moment.  “Harry, about your dad…”

Harry bit his lip again.  His cocoa was turning lukewarm, the ceramic of the mug was smooth against his fingertips.  The fireplace offered the only light in the room as all of the candles had gone out, draping everything in shadow.

“What about him?”

Sirius sighed.  “Despite everything we learned this week, you have to remember that your father loved you and your mum.  He was a great man, and it’s the worst tragedy in the world that you’ll never get to meet him.”

Harry shrugged, but his eyes felt prickly as he looked away again.  “It’s alright,” he said, even though it wasn’t really.

“I wish I’d known about him and Regulus, though.  I would’ve… Well.”  Sirius grimaced.  “I was going to say ‘I would’ve been fine with it’, but the truth is that Reggie and I had drifted so far apart by that point, I don’t know if I would have trusted him with James.”

Harry remembered my heart remains, until my last breath, yours and thought about how he’d compared a younger Regulus Black to Draco Malfoy.

“Could you tell me more about them?  My dad, obviously, but…  Regulus, too.”

Sirius was smiling again when Harry looked up, although this one was smaller and softer, tinged with regret at the edges but full of happiness, too.

“I will, pup.  But for now, I think it’s time for bed.  We’d best be heading up.”

Harry hummed.  “I think I’m going to stay up a bit longer, but I’ll head to bed soon.”

Sirius dropped a hand into his already messy hair and agitated it some more.  “Alright.  Sweet dreams, then.  I love you, Harry.”

Harry blinked, surprised for some reason.  Sirius’ face still held that soft smile, although the sadness had been edged out by affection.  Harry felt his own face break into a mirroring smile as he said, “I love you too, Sirius.”

Sirius’ fingers dropped to his shoulder, squeezed, and then left entirely.

Harry found himself alone for the first time in hours.

Even with all of the introspection and, frankly, the drama this break had held, Harry thought this might have been the best Christmas he’d ever had.  All of his family, under one roof, interspersed with the memory of the ones who were no longer physically there.

Still, Harry had learned something new about his father, he’d saved his godfather from a plot on his life, he’d gotten to spend time doing innocuous, even pleasant things with the Weasleys.

He wondered at his own Christmas traditions—he didn’t really have any, except for the usual present opening first thing which, again, the Weasleys had been an integral part of the founding of that one.  The rest of his Christmas he usually just spent with his loved ones.

It only now occurred to him that maybe that was what the Weasleys’ traditions were all about, as well—spending time with family and loved ones.

Had his parents had Christmas traditions?  They’d only been married for two years when they’d been killed, but maybe they’d started a few of their own?

That was something he could ask Sirius, he realized.  Remus, too, maybe.  When had he started calling him that, anyway? 

Harry broke into a yawn, at which point he decided it was past time he was in bed.  He took his mug to the sink and left it with the other dirty mugs waiting to be charmed and cleaned.

On the first-floor landing, he heard a noise.  He might have thought it was coming from Hermione and Ginny’s room, except that it was on the opposite side of the hall.

He considered leaving it be, but then, why shouldn’t he investigate?  He stepped onto the landing, carefully keeping to the outer, less noisy edges as he inched over to the drawing room door.  As he got closer, he realized that what he was hearing was a record turned down so low that it was nearly indiscernible.  Celestina Warbeck crooned about cauldrons and hot, steamy love.

In the middle of the room, Harry’s eyes caught on Sirius and Remus.  The two of them were holding each other close wrapped so tightly together that their silhouette in the faint light could have passed for one being.

One of Remus’ hands had slipped beneath the edge of Sirius shirt to rest on his lower back, over his spine, while the other had tangled into Sirius’ hair in a tight fist, lifting and tilting his face up to receive his kiss.  Sirius’ hands, meanwhile, had grasped onto Remus’ shoulders, seemingly both excited to touch and in an effort to stay grounded.

Harry finally processed what he was seeing and ducked back around the corner, blushing furiously.  He had to grin though.  As he crept back to the stairs and up to the second floor, he reflected that Sirius and Remus’ relationship seemed to be doing just fine.

Guess you were right, Dad.  Harry thought, after he’d changed into sleep-clothes and laid down in his bed.  And Merry Christmas.