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“Harry, watch the flame!” Sirius yelped.
Harry giggled delightedly. “Sirius, I’ve been cooking for nearly two years,” he said amusedly, “Maybe not bhaji or idlis but they’re not too different.” He frowned. “Well, the idlis are. Steaming them in the cooker is a bit. . .”
Sirius let Harry ramble on, feeling the wave of self-loathing he did every time he heard even a hint of Harry’s time at the Dursleys’. Harry was only seven. That meant Petunia had had him cooking for those ungrateful sods from age five.
He shook himself out of it. Harry was here now, with him. He would never have to see them again if he didn’t want to.
“I’ll roast the pav now,” he said, taking liberal amounts of ghee. They both needed the fattening up. “Lily used to like having it plain, without any bhaji or vada. It drove James nuts; he insisted it took all the flavour and pleasure out. Plain pav was just bread, he used to say.”
Harry’s eyes were wide with eagerness and wistfulness, as they were any time he heard something about Lily or James, small bits of them that proved that they had once lived. “Was Dad very particular about stuff like that?”
“Not about most things,” Sirius said, taking a surreptitious taste of the tomato chutney. It was delicious. “But when it came to Indian things? Oh yeah. Our ties could be tied around the head or go to hell for all he cared, but when the dupatta of the sherwani was placed even an inch off-center—” he shook his head in mock despair.
Harry blinked Lily’s eyes up at him. “What’s a sherwani?”
Sirius experienced another of the waves. Harry shouldn’t have been denied his culture for so long. “It’s a dress Indian men wear for special occasions like weddings and stuff. Your granddad took me shopping when I started living with them,” he added longingly. Talking about Effie and Monty was always hard.
Harry’d never asked about it – his running away to the Potters, that is. The kid had an uncanny way of sensing when people didn’t want to talk about something, probably due to his own rather terrible upbringing. He bit his lips now, clearly trying to concentrate on cooking.
“What would I have called my granddad?” Harry asked suddenly. “Like, in Indian language?”
“Hindi, you mean,” Sirius corrected gently. “I’m not sure. James always called him dad, but he called his mother Ma.”
“Ma means mother?” Harry asked.
“That’s right. So I guess you would’ve called her dadi?” He speculated. “That’s paternal grandmother.”
“Aunt Petunia told Dudley once that our grandfather had died when she was still in school?” Harry asked tentatively, still scared of asking questions. The habit had apparently been discouraged at the Dursleys’ house. Sirius wanted to go and discourage them from living every time he thought about them, so it was probably best to stop.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he replied. “Lily and I weren’t exactly friends in fourth year, and that’s when it happened, so I don’t know much about it. She would’ve told Prongs more, I bet,” he muttered under his breath. Another thing he could never ask them.
It was hard, sometimes, to remember that it had been six years since they’d been killed and he’d been thrown in Azkaban. Those years blurred for Sirius, long periods of staring at the walls hopelessly and trying to breathe. The Dementors coming every half an hour and bringing up the feelings of his mother yelling at him, of Reg dismissing him, of Remus spitting he was nothing more than a Black, of James’ parents’ funeral, of Lily’s coma after a particularly bad fight, of finding the ruins of the McKinnon house, of cradling James’ body.
Whenever he thought back to those days, though, now, he always only had to look at Harry, the child who was dependent on him, who was so wary and so hesitant and yet so loving, and the pain – well, it didn’t stop, but … it paused.
Harry was his world. The mind healer – therapist, Harry called them – didn’t think it was healthy, but considered it better than other potential coping mechanisms.
“I think it’s done!” Harry said delightedly, consulting Effie and James’ cookbook.
“Great!” Sirius said, pleased. “Why don’t you go set the table and I’ll bring everything out?” He levitated the jug of strawberry smoothie and the kadai of bhaji. “Something wrong?” He asked as Harry didn’t move even when he came back for the rest of it. “I mean, you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to,” he backtracked uneasily. He’d been unsure of how many chores he should give Harry to do – if anything at all, but both Remus and Molly Weasley had assured him that a few were healthy. He’d talked to Harry’s therapist about what the boy could do.
“No, no, I’ll do it.” Harry assured him. “It’s just – Sirius,” he said solemnly.
“Yes, Harry?” He prompted gently.
“Are you sure you can manage taking the idlis out without tearing them to pieces?” He asked cheekily, earnest expression dropping halfway through to Lily’s sly smile.
“You little brat—” Sirius laughed.
“It’s just you couldn’t– it’s actually pretty hard— even I’d take them out with my hand rather than a spoon--” Harry tried to justify, but he was laughing too.
Sirius ruffled his godson’s hair. “I assure you, I’ll manage. Prongs and I did do it a couple times when we were living with your grandparents.”
Harry grinned brightly, a smile that was all his own. “Alright. I’ll set the table.” He grabbed two plates, two serving spoons, a couple smaller spoons, and four bowls and set them and the napkins down carefully. “Should I bring the forks and knives out too?”
“Nah, no need,” Sirius called back. “Get the post, though. We should’ve checked it ages ago.”
As he served chutney and bhaji into the bowls and set two pav each on Harry’s and his own plate, the boy came strolling in, looking through the letters they’d gotten.
“There’s the Daily Prophet and World Wizarding News,” he said, setting the newspapers down on the sofa and coming to the table. “There’s one from Remus,” he handed it over. “One from Ron.” He set it down by his plate. “One from Mr. Lynwood, and one I don’t recognize.” He gave both those to Sirius too, and sat down, tearing open the envelope of his best friend’s letter.
Sirius decided to keep the solicitor’s for later, and opened Remus’. “He’s reminding me of the visit to the eye healer tomorrow. Thanks for the faith Moony,” he muttered sarcastically.
Harry sipped at his smoothie and looked up from his letter. “To be fair, we did miss the WCS inspection.”
“That was once,” he complained, already reaching for the next letter. He recognized the seal of the Patils’ business. “Interesting.”
“What?”
“The Patils are inviting us to their Dussehra celebration,” he replied interestedly, leafing through the printed invitation.
“The Patils,” Harry repeated. “The neutral business, right? Supplying the Conservatives, the Moderates and the Liberals?”
“That’s right.” Sirius replied. As much as he hated it, Harry was famous in addition to already being rich and a Wizengamot heir. He needed to know the lay of the land when it came to politics. Sirius just had to make sure it didn’t take over his life and Harry got to be a regular seven year old.
Well, a regular seven-year-old wizard who happened to be the Boy-Who-Lived.
“Susan told me their daughters are friends with the Parkinsons’ daughter.” Harry said, now putting Ron’s letter away.
His lip curled at the thought of Julius Parkinson, but he didn’t want to bias Harry against anyone, so he kept his withering comments on the Parkinsons to himself. “Susan would know,” he said instead. “And yes. That probably means at least the daughter – I think Pansy? – will be there.”
Harry frowned at his plate. “But aren’t the Parkinsons . . . Conservative? Blood purists? And the Patils are half-bloods?”
“Yeah, but Parkinson isn’t a big name Twenty-Eight,” Sirius explained, leaning back. “Not like Malfoy or Black or Ollivander. He can’t afford to alienate huge businesses based on the owners marrying muggle-borns. The friendship, I reckon, was more involuntary. Brought the daughter over to socialize and make himself a more appealing client, she managed to strike up a true friendship. I wouldn’t like it if you made friends with the Nott or the Runcorn kid, but I’d still support it,” he reflected.
“You would?” Harry asked in surprise, apparently still surprised at basic decency guardians ought to show.
Sirius fixed a smile and hoped he hadn’t given his godson any ideas. “’Course, kiddo.”
“Are we going for this, then?” He asked, changing the topic.
Sirius shrugged. “Why not. Might be good to stretch our social wings, so to speak, and Dussehra celebrations are always interesting.”
“That’s the festival where Rama killed the ten-headed demon, right?”
“That’s right. Ravana. Remus always liked the symbolism that people associate with it – each of his heads once represented the four Vedas and six Shastras and later on as he got corrupted, deadly sins: Lust, anger, greed, envy, obsession, pride, ego, intellect, fear and hate. I think. I’m not really sure, you’ll have to ask him.”
“Aren’t a couple of those the same thing?” Harry asked puzzledly.
“Like I said, I’m very vague on it. You can ask Remus,” he offered, hoping he wasn’t disappointing the boy.
Harry just shrugged. “K. Did my dad like Dus-Dushera?” He stammered over the word.
Sirius considered the question. That hadn’t exactly been one of the burning things he’d known about James, but he tried to think about how his best friend had acted at that festival and others. “He liked it well enough I guess, especially the effigy burning part. He said it was loads better than Guy Fawkes Day, which is also something you burn an effigy for. But I think he liked Holi better. Oh, or Makar Sankranti. He loved Makar Sankranti.”
He remembered lounging on the Potter property grounds during Christmas holidays, flying kites enchanted to do all sorts of random things, with Sirius and Remus running and grumbling about it and James holding the unspooling thread and …. Peter actually doing the flying bit. Sirius had to smile even as he felt the stinging sensation in his eyes.
Remembering could be very bittersweet.
Harry, like he usually did, noticed he was being melancholy. “Wow, this is amazing,” he enthused, picking up a pav. “Mum was right, this is good even plain!”
“Harry, your father just rolled over in his grave.”
But both of them laughed, and began to tuck in.