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The holidays continued in much of the same way, Sirius and Harry spent their days talking about Harry’s childhood or Sirius’ favorite stories about James and Lily. Most of the Order continued to be wary, but Molly seemed to be trying to leave to their bonding time by themselves, often intervening with the other kids that seemed to want to be in on their private conversations.
It was very thoughtful of her.
Of course, Sirius couldn’t forget all of the times that she had intervened in their relationship over the summer, but it’s nice to have that support now. He’s been a lot better than he was over the summer and her wariness probably made sense back then.
On Christmas Eve, Sirius decides to play the piano that he had moved to the sitting room. Harry sits beside him, smiling even as he misses the keys. “I’m so bad at this.”
Sirius chuckles. “It takes time to learn – I wouldn’t expect you to be able to learn in an afternoon.”
“I learned flying in an afternoon,” Harry counters.
“That’s natural talent, general speaking it takes time to hone a new skill.”
“Yeah, I suppose.” Harry looks very disappointed and unhappy to be playing the piano with Sirius.
Sirius frowns, “If you don’t want to learn it – that’s okay.”
Harry shrugs, “You said that it was something you did when you were younger – so I am fine learning.”
“Kid, if you don’t want to learn – we don’t have to do it,” Sirius repeats. The last thing he wants to do is force something on Harry.
“But you want to teach me,” Harry replies, his eyes big and curious.
“I want to do something that we both enjoy,” Sirius counters. Harry’s making a face that tells him that he’s not exactly comfortable with the idea of voicing anything against what Sirius may want, so Sirius takes the initiative. “How ‘bout this? We can talk about the map and how it all works like I told you I would when we have the time.”
Harry lights up, evidently excited about learning more about his and James’ talents and efforts. “I’d like that.”
“Why don’t you go get it?” Sirius asks, and Harry doesn’t even hesitate to rush up the stairs to go get it.
“Er – Sirius,” George asks, hesitantly. “Why would you know anything about the map?”
“Because he’s Padfoot, obviously,” Harry says, back in record time. “That’s why I call him, ‘Pads’.”
“What did you do? Fly up and down the stairs?”
“I was excited,” Harry replies, looking a little sheepish.
Sirius is sure he just summoned the map since he knows his magic won’t register but doesn’t want to get into trouble. “Alright, kid.”
Sirius turns to the twins and grins at the stunned look on the twins faces as Harry says the password and lays it out on the floor. They move to sit around it, including the twins, Ron, Ginny and Hermione.
“You never said –” George starts.
“It’s not my fault, you didn’t notice,” Harry states, stiffly. “I mean, Lupin and Pads haven’t exactly hidden it either – Lupin regularly calls him ‘Padfoot’ and Pads regularly calls him ‘Moony’.”
“Someone called?” Remus asks appearing in the doorway. “Is that the map? Why is it out now?”
“Harry has been curious about the map for some time, and I thought I’d explain a bit about what we did with it. How it came to be,” Sirius offers. “Why don’t you join us?”
“On the floor?” Remus questions, looking quite like he’d rather not sit on the floor. “I’m a little too old for that.”
Sirius gives him a look. “I’m older than you.”
Remus rolls his eyes, playfully, but still sits, smiling. “Only by a few months. Always reminding us that you’re the oldest.”
“And yet, I wasn’t the first name on the map,” Sirius jokes. He had spent months arguing that because he’s the oldest that he should get to have his name first on the map.
“If we had gone in birth order, it wouldn’t have sounded as well. It works better in the order it’s in,” Remus retorts.
“You’re just saying that because you’re first,” Sirius laughs. It was such a familiar argument that he could almost imagine being in the dormitory arguing the first time.
“No, Padfoot, Wormtail, Moony and Prongs just doesn’t roll off the tongue the way that Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs does,” Remus states. “It’s just a bonus that it means that I get to be first.”
They both laugh, before Sirius turns to the kids, particularly his kid. “So! First, we should probably start with why we created the map…”
“... it has nothing to do with the fact that we are nosy gits,” Remus finishes, trying to say it with a straight face and utterly failing.
They burst out laughing, before Sirius clears his throat. “We didn’t use the map for that, it was more that we just wanted to sneak around more confidently.”
Particularly he and James, who wanted to get away with some of their more interesting fun that he would definitely not be talking about to the kids.
“Anyway,” Sirius coughs. “It wasn’t hard to find a big enough parchment, but it’s incredibly hard to get all of the details of Hogwarts and it’s moving parts, so we had to spend a lot of time drawing and sneaking around to get everything in detail.”
“So this is all hand drawn?” Harry asks, looking at the extreme details.
Sirius nods. “Once we had a section that was accurate and verified, we’d transfer it onto the map and make it come alive if need be.”
“We spent months researching what spells would work,” Remus offers. “The whole thing took years to do.”
“Moony was in charge of research since the rest of us were busy …”
“Being nosy gits?” Harry teases.
“Oi!” Sirius says, playfully offended. The kids laugh. “No, working on the Animagus transformation.”
“Yes. They were busy making those strides while I looked up the spells. The map was a long term project for me since I couldn’t join them in the Animagus project,” Remus explains.
“Of course we all did our part. Moony got the spells research, but we each had to learn and apply them. It takes a little of all of our magic imbedded in the map to power it, so we needed all of us to place the spells on it, but that came last.”
“Right, the spells were applied last, so the next steps after determining the spells we needed, we had to map out the whole castle.”
Sirius grins, “We had so much fun. Sneaking around the school in James’ cloak. Plotting ways to get into the professor’s quarters and the common rooms we didn’t have access to.”
“It wasn’t that hard, all you had to do was find a Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Ravenclaw and stalk them under the cloak and listen for their password and then use it when no one was around,” Remus counters. “Instead, you came up with elaborate plans just because you could.”
“Yeah, that’s too easy. We wanted to make it more fun.” Sirius notices Harry, Ron and Hermione sharing looks. “What? We like fun, elaborate plans. Why make it easy?”
Unfortunately, it seems like something else is going on because Hermione puts her face in her hands and is muttering about a month with a cat face for no reason.
He and Remus share a look. “Someone want to explain?”
He’s giving Harry a look, hoping that he’ll be honest with him.
Harry grimaces. “Ron and I might have used Polyjuice potion in second year to sneak into Slytherin and interrogate Malfoy on the heir of Slytherin and the Chamber of Secrets stuff.”
“Except he knew nothing, and Hermione spent a month with a cat face because she accidentally used cat hair,” Ron adds.
“And it was all for nothing because we could’ve just used the cloak,” Hermione groans.
Sirius isn’t sure how to react to this explanation, but Remus appears to be curious.
“How did you get Polyjuice?”
“We made it ourselves. Tricked Lockhart so we could get the book with the recipe,” Harry states looking uncertainly at Sirius.
“Yeah, wasn’t that hard. The git signs anything you put in front of him,” Ron jokes.
“We made it in Moaning Myrtles bathroom,” Hermione says. “Rarely anyone goes in there.”
“But that was a good thing because it turns out to hold the entrance to the chamber,” Harry finishes.
That one statement was enough to piece together some unfortunate pieces that Harry was somehow pulled into the vaguely mentioned chamber of secrets incident that no one has given him the explicit details of and honestly, he’s rather freaked out.
He almost can’t breathe at the thought of Harry battling some unknown monster at twelve. He looks at Harry, who’s clearly worried about him, and he chokes out, “Need a minute” before rushing out of the room. He’s not sure where to go – but as he changes into Padfoot, he finds himself rushing up the stairs to be with Buckbeak. The hippogriff would help calm him down just by his presence.
He transforms into himself to enter the room and bows to Buckbeak, who bows back. Then, he transforms into Padfoot. He didn’t need to talk… just escape.
How had his kid ended up in the Chamber of Secrets? How had he ended up in deadly situations year after year? What was he going to do with his kid? This kid that’s going to give him a heart attack someday?
All he knows is that he has got to get himself together. His reaction has probably freaked out Harry, and no doubt, Harry might second guess telling him things now.
In fact, he’s probably worried about Sirius going off the deep end and getting himself in trouble.
“Oh good, you’re in here. I was worried for a second,” Harry says, confirming Sirius’ thoughts. He enters the room, bows to Buckbeak, who bows back, and then sits down beside Sirius as Padfoot. “I’m sorry that I haven’t told you about some of the things that have happened to me.”
Sirius gives him a look, unsure if he should transform.
“But you probably want to hear at least some of what happened… since Padfoot helps, maybe I could tell you now?”
Sirius gives him a nod. He’s not sure that he wants to know, but if Harry’s willing to confess, maybe he wants to talk about it.
Harry smiles, nervously. “Well, I’ll start with first year, most of it was good, but…”
Harry details his Hogwarts letters and his magical incidents before he knew, confessing about the cupboard which has Sirius growling. He tells Sirius not to worry about it that it’s over now and someday they’ll get what’s coming to them. Then he talks about Hagrid, everything in Diagon Alley, the incident with the train, meeting everyone.
“The number of people that thought it was okay or a good idea to claim that they already know me was appalling. I hate it so much; I can’t even explain. Anyway…”
He details school life, his awful professors not doing anything for him, the incident with the Remembrall and getting on the quidditch team.
Sirius is actually really proud of that. He’s sure James was screaming excitedly in the afterlife the same way he would’ve been had he’d seen it.
Then, he goes into the midnight duel, the mess at Halloween – saving Hermione, the attack on him during the quidditch game, the Christmas holidays (poor kid), finding Flamel, and Hagrid’s baby dragon mess (the reaction to the whole story of the hatching, arranging transport, getting caught, the sheer absurdity of the points and detention in the out of bound forbidden forest, plus the students’ reaction).
“It wasn’t too bad,” Harry assures. “I’ve now dealt with worse. It was hard at the time – I seriously wanted to quit quidditch it was so bad. Can’t imagine what life would’ve been like without it, now, but I really just wasn’t happy – being unwanted and treated like that was something I’m used to at the Dursleys, but to suddenly have that at school by my own teammates and housemates – it sucked.”
Sirius whines. He hated thinking of his kid suffering so much that he wanted to quit his favorite sport.
“Anyway, we thought Snape was going to steal the stone because of the incident during Detention and what I’d seen between him and Quirrell. We tried to go to Dumbledore but he was flying to the Ministry and so we told McGonagall. She dismissed us.”
Harry pauses, “You’re going to be pretty mad at this next bit, but I just want to remind you that I am alive.”
Sirius gives him a look. That statement doesn’t make him any less angry at what he suspects happened. If Harry went after the stone because McGonagall decided to dismiss him, and nearly died, someone’s getting bitched at.
Harry goes on anyway, explaining about the situation with sneaking out and down the trapdoor. Sirius is suspicious of the situation with how it easy it was for the kids to do it. By the time he gets to Quirrell and the mirror, Sirius is furious. It was some sort of setup; a test of sorts and he’s pissed. He’s growling throughout the explanation, which barely lessons when Harry wakes up in the hospital three days later. Three days. The thought that his kid was unconscious, in the hospital, for three days has him so furious – even as Padfoot – that he knows he’s going to rage for hours against Dumbledore the next time he sees him.
Harry’s looking at him, worriedly. He stops growling and rubs his head against Harry’s hand, hoping that he’ll start petting again and continue.
Harry sighs and finishes out the year. Sirius is genuinely upset that all of a sudden people like Harry again. That he had to save the day to get treated right. It makes him furious.
Harry doesn’t stop, launching into second year and how boring the Dursleys before stopping, “What kicks off the whole Chamber of Secrets mess starts at the Dursleys, and I need you to promise that you won’t go kill them.”
Sirius snorts. If he was going to kill the Dursleys, he would’ve done it already. Unfortunately, he’s painfully clear that no matter how many people hurt his kid, he can’t do anything, yet. Nothing legal anyway.
Harry takes that as the promise.
“Alright, well, Dobby was aware of a plan to give a special object to Hogwarts and start the whole nonsense because he was a Malfoy elf, and he knew what Malfoy was up to… so he tried to stop me from going to Hogwarts to protect ‘the great Harry Potter’, blah, blah, blah….”
Sirius snorts, again. That elf certainly has a thing for his kid.
Harry continues, clearly not bothered by Sirius’ snort. He talks about being excited for Vernon’s proclamation at breakfast and thinking it meant he remembered Harry’s birthday and detailing what was expected of him. Sirius starts growling, again, angry that Harry spent his twelfth birthday all alone, doing chores, being barely fed and then, spending the evening pretending he didn’t exist.
Only that wasn’t the worst bit.
Dobby had nearly cost Harry his life when he deliberately caused issues for Harry. Obviously, Harry is alive and fine, but even with him glossing over everything that happened when Dobby ruined the Dursleys’ night, Sirius can’t help imagining his twelve-year-old kid locked in a room, slowing starving to death, just because of some house elf that shouldn’t even have been able to find him if Dumbledore’s blood protection was to be believed.
Dobby might’ve been a boon in recent months, but he’s quite angry that he could’ve gotten Harry killed. Then again, he’s furious that Dumbledore’s so-called protection – the one that kept Harry at the Dursleys for a month over the summer – obviously didn’t hold up well at all. Of course, he suspected given the guard on Harry over the summer. A guard that somehow didn’t notice Harry’s clear abuse.
Suddenly, he realizes that Harry’s still talking about the twins and Ron saving him by breaking him out, the rest of the summer (no wonder he’s angry that the Weasleys claim that he’s like a son given he almost died, and they still didn’t offer a home), the mess at the floo and bookstore, Dobby’s blocking the barrier and flying a car to school.
Sirius would be laughing his arse off at that, but right now, he’s just confused. He has plenty of questions, but it appears that Harry’s too busy talking and petting him to bother checking Sirius for a response. Sirius wonders if Harry ever told anyone these stories before. Clearly, now that he’s started, he just wants to let it all out.
Maybe Sirius should’ve turned into Padfoot over the summer to bond with Harry.
Harry continues talking about the ridiculousness of Colin Creevey being the worst fanboy ever, at least Ginny didn’t follow him around and talk his ear off. He talks about Lockhart, quidditch (Wood is something else), Snape’s assholery behavior, and the detention. He talks about everyone knowing everything about him and the weird situation of voices in the walls.
Then, he got to the specifics: The Death Day party (cruel thing to do to his kid who was orphaned that day), the message on the wall, the instant suspicion on Harry (that makes no sense), Dobby and the quidditch game (another thing to be annoyed with Dobby about – downright furious at Wood’s callous words), and Colin’s attack.
“There was a dueling club – Malfoy sent a snake at me in front of everyone and I spoke to it – that’s how I found out about my parseltongue ability.”
Here, Harry looks down at him uncertainly. Sirius nods and rubs his head against Harry’s hand to show that he doesn’t think any differently of Harry for his ability. He’s surprised that Harry didn’t know that Sirius had already been aware of his ability. Harry smiles and goes on.
“Dealing with the suspicion was awful. But it did encourage me to try and figure out who was doing it – hence the Polyjuice potion to sneak into the Slytherin dorms on Christmas…”
He details the second holidays, their plot with the Polyjuice, issues with Myrtle (who had – has – a crush on Harry), and their crazy plan only somewhat working. The dead-end had been disappointing, but they continued on with investigating as more attacks happen and Harry keeps somehow ending up at every scene. Poor kid.
“And then, just when I thought Lockhart couldn’t get any dumber, he decides to ‘celebrate’ the situation by having dwarf cupids running around giving out singing valentines. Sheer chaos. He also told us to ask Snape about whipping up a love potion and seriously, he looked like he’d kill anyone who’d ask for something like that.” Harry laughs, “And of course, despite everyone thinking I was setting a monster about the castle, I got a few valentines. There’s this one that was so embarrassing, I tried to run and dwarf tackled me – it was in front of so many people – including Malfoy, of course…”
Sirius is surprised when Harry actually sings it:
His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad
His hair as dark as a blackboard
I wish he was mine, he’s really Devine,
The hero who conquered the Dark Lord
“I tried to laugh it off, but it was so embarrassing and of course the twins spent the evening singing it out loud to me all night – I know it wasn’t them though, in case you’re wondering.”
Of course, Sirius knows that. He’s betting it was Ginny, but the Creevey kid is a possibility.
“Anyway, the only good thing was that I figured out how the diary worked…”
Of course, he continues to poke around and finds the diary, which he didn’t know was so special, but had some weird interest in. He details talking to the diary, which talked back, causing major concern for Sirius. A diary like that was serious dark magic. He would’ve been yelling if he could when Harry detailed the diary showing him scenes from 1946. Something wasn’t right, but with Harry petting him, he couldn’t change back, probably for the best – his anger could scare Harry off from finishing the story.
Harry continues, “I really didn’t want to ask Hagrid about his potential involvement, so we kind of pushed it off, even after the original borrower of the diary ransacked my stuff to get it back. Especially since things were fine until there was another attack… this time on Hermione right before the quidditch game.”
Sirius whines. He feels bad that the situation had returned and this time so close to home. It must have been devastating for Harry and Ron. However, the attack made most students realize that it wasn’t him.
Harry explains about the resolve to sneak away and discuss with Hagrid only for Fudge and a Lucius Malfoy to show up. He mentions Fudge and his corrupt ways with the arrest of Hagrid and Dumbledore’s sacking. Sirius agrees with the latter but disagrees with the former – at least the Azkaban part. Since Hagrid was seemingly involved the first time (and those attacks stopped with his expulsion), it makes sense to remove him from the school, but not arrest him without proof.
He explains about Hagrid’s ‘follow the spiders’ message and now, Sirius has a new thing to be angry with Hagrid about. Sirius is growling throughout the whole story of his and Ron’s adventure into the nest of man eating spiders. He couldn’t imagine what he’d do if he had watched Harry’s adventures without knowing that he survives.
“So we learned a few things, the security was tight, so we barely got the opportunity to visit Hermione, who had ripped out a page regarding the snake in the Chamber. Once the announcement about Ginny was made, we went back to the common room only to eventually decide that we needed to tell Lockhart what we knew so he’d be prepared. Unfortunately, the man was a fraud…”
He details the entire events from visiting Lockhart to the return and telling Dumbledore the story. Sirius had whined and growled at very places, only having Harry present, alive, and petting him had managed to keep him from completely losing mind. Everything he’d gone through – almost dying – would’ve had Sirius flipping out. Hogwarts was obviously not safe for his kid and as happy as he is for the Weasleys, he’s very upset that Harry had to save the day. And even more pissed at Percy for his letter now.
“Now, I know you know about some stuff from third and fourth year, but I figure I could give you some details about the things you missed, like blowing up Aunt Marge…”
Although Sirius was angry at the Dursleys for allowing the situation, listening to his kid talking about standing up for his parents and ballooning Vernon’s sister was a delight, too bad she wouldn’t remember it. Sirius is furious at the Ministry for wanting to send him back after that, but Harry continues on. He gets through third year much faster than first and second, only getting into the details for things he wants to complain about (like Trelawney and not going to Hogsmeade), things he enjoyed, or things that were fun troublemaking or funny to him (like how he got the map in the first place or the maps reaction to Snape and winning the quidditch cup). He skips entirely over the events of that night except to explain why they were at Hagrid’s and the time turner. Overall, somehow a better year.
“And you know most of fourth year, but there’s some details I didn’t tell you, yet, so…”
Sirius could tell that Harry just wants someone to listen and that he’s actually feeling better just talking about everything. Just like he’d said way back when Sirius gave him the mirror, he never really had someone want to know everything or got to talk about it much. Hence reveling in the chance to tell Sirius the details of his life.
Even the embarrassing ones.
“Okay, obviously, I was under a lot of stress, but I’m kind of amazed that Cho still fancied me after that,” Harry adds when he details the events leading up to the first task and snapping on Cho, not realizing it was her. “And of course, I should’ve asked her sooner, but I didn’t know about the ball and honestly, I was disaster with girls last year…”
At this, Sirius gives him a look.
“Oi! I’ve gotten tons better this year.” A snort by Sirius and Harry says, “I have! Just let me tell you how bad I was at the ball…”
Sirius would’ve been laughing so hard that he couldn’t breathe at Harry’s explanation of the ball, but couldn’t as Padfoot, instead he plots ways to embarrass Harry once he can talk while continuing to listen to Harry’s mess up. He’s right, Harry has gotten loads better with dating since the previous year.
Eventually though, he gets back to more serious things like the Hagrid mess and figuring out the egg clue. It’s just when he gets though Myrtle showing up in his bath when they hear:
“WHAT DO YOU LOT THINK YOU’RE DOING?”
Jarring them from their comfortable spot and looking at the door where Sirius just happens to spy the extendable ear pop away. Sirius glances at Harry, who looks devastated that everything he told Sirius could have been overheard by his friends. Clearly, he wouldn’t want them to know and now they do.
“Why don’t you go up to your room and I’ll take care of this?” Sirius offers immediately turning back into himself.
Harry gives him a grateful look and takes off upstairs, while Sirius heads downstairs. He reaches the landing with the drawing room, where Molly is yelling at the remaining kids and Tonks.
“What the hell is going on here?” Sirius thunders, angrily. Based off the disappearing extendable ear and Molly’s tirade that he’s heard the beginnings of that mentioned privacy and eavesdropping, he’s sure that he already knows.
“Oh, Sirius, I’m so sorry. I thought I had a handle on their eavesdropping – somehow, they must’ve created more of those ridiculous ears. I don’t know how long they were listening or how much they heard, but rest assured they will be punished for the rest of the holiday – so busy cleaning or other chores that they won’t have time to bother you or Harry again as soon as I’m done yelling at them,” Molly says. “Unless you’d like to yell at them?”
He’s tempted but they (minus Hermione and Tonks) are her kids, she should discipline them.
He clears his throat. “If I started yelling, I’d probably say something we’d all regret. So, I’ll leave the punishing to you. I just need to know: how long?”
He’s staining at the kids, who are not looking at him. All of them looking down in shame.
“Answer him,” Molly says, sternly.
There’s a cough, and Fred answers, “The beginning. Lupin went to get tea when Harry went after you and…. we couldn’t help ourselves.”
Sirius gives an angry snort, and figures nothing more needs to be said as he turns and takes off up the stairs.
He’s got a kid to console.