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Chapter Text

         Petunia Evans was not sure what she had done in a past life to deserve this, but it must have been bad . How else could she explain the absolute circus Lily had dragged into their quiet suburban home? First, it was James Potter, obnoxious grin and wild hair, like he'd just rolled out of bed after dreaming about himself. Petunia had tolerated him. Barely. But then he'd brought his dog . 

         The shaggy, black mutt bounded into the house like it owned the place, sniffing at everything and brushing against her knees, leaving a trail of fur and chaos in its wake. "James," she hissed, "you brought a dog into the house? Really ? Who does that?"  

Lily, looking mortified, had opened her mouth to explain, but James waved her off with a grin. "Oh, don’t worry, Petunia. He’s house-trained."  

        Her father was scratching the dog behind the ears. “Friendly chap, isn’t he?” her dad said, oblivious to the fact that Petunia’s jaw was tightening with every wag of the dog’s tail.

         "That’s not the point!" Petunia snapped.

        “It’s not his dog,” Lily muttered, looking at the floor.

        “Then whose is it?” Petunia demanded.

         Before Lily could answer, the dog barked once and then - Petunia blinked, her jaw dropping as the fur shimmered and melted away. In its place stood a man.

         A man.

         In her parents’ living room.

         Petunia screamed. 

         "Bloody hell!" she shrieked, backing up so fast she ran into James. "You brought a werewolf here? Are you insane?"

        The dog-man crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe like he did this sort of thing every day. "That," James said, clearly amused, "is Sirius Black. My best mate. Thought it’d be nice for you to meet him."

        “Not a werewolf,” the dog… man… Sirius barked a laugh - no - just barked.

        “Don’t worry, Petunia,” James added, waving her off. “We’ll save the werewolf for next time.”

        Sirius grinned. “Remus will be so pleased.”

        She hated him immediately.

========

        The arguments started immediately. Sirius had an uncanny knack for setting her off. It was like he’d made it his mission to find all the tiny cracks in her carefully built composure and wedge himself in there.

        Over the next several months, Sirius became a recurring annoyance in Petunia’s life. He showed up with James, occasionally as a dog and occasionally not, and always had a quip ready.

        “You’re insufferable,” Petunia hissed one evening, after Sirius made some offhand comment about her perfectly arranged collection of china teacups.

        He shrugged with infuriating nonchalance. “Yeah.”

        It infuriated her how much her parents liked him. Her father found his antics amusing, and her mother was charmed by the stories of his "escapades" at Hogwarts - thinly-veiled euphemisms for rule-breaking, no doubt.

        And when he started calling her “Tuna,” she swore she was going to throttle him.

        “Tuna,” he said one afternoon, sprawled out on her parents’ sofa like he owned it. “Where’s that delightful cake your mum makes? Don’t tell me you’ve eaten it all.”

        "Don’t call me that!"

        “Tunafish,” he amended, looking up at her with mock innocence. “Happy now?”

        Her glare could have melted steel. "Dumb mutt."

        He grinned. “That’s Mr. Dumb Mutt to you, thanks.”

        When her parents came in later and saw Petunia standing over Sirius with a vase raised like a weapon, they didn’t ask. They’d grown used to the constant war.

========

        “Why don’t you smile more, Tuna?”’

========

        “Having fun reading that, Tuna? Doesn’t look like your kind of book.”

========

        “What’s wrong, Tunafish? Miss me?”

========

        The first time Sirius came by the Evans house without James or Lily in tow, Petunia opened the door and stared at him suspiciously.

        “What do you want?” she demanded.

        “Came to annoy you,” Sirius replied, utterly unapologetic. He stepped past her into the house, calling out. “ Evening, Mr. Evans! Don’t worry - I’m just here to make your daughter miserable!”

        “Mission accomplished,” Petunia muttered, crossing her arms.

        Petunia’s father - the traitor that he was - had laughed and waved Sirius toward the sitting room, apparently unfazed by his gall. Petunia had followed, fuming, and spent the next hour arguing with him over everything from music to politics to the correct way to make tea. He left with a victorious grin, and Petunia swore to herself it wouldn’t happen again.

        It did. Repeatedly.

========

        Over time, Sirius found more creative ways to get under her skin.

        One evening, he strolled into the Evans home and gave Petunia a mock bow when she stomped into the hall.

        “Go away,” she snapped, arms crossed.

        “Charming as ever, Tuna,” he said with a grin. “Miss me?”

        “Not remotely," she fumed. "You’re arrogant. You’re scruffy. You look like a crook . Honestly, you should have bars tattooed across your forehead." 

        The next time Sirius came over, he banged on the door and shouted, "Oi, Evanses! Hide the valuables!" 

        Petunia opened the door with a glare. "What are you even doing here?" 

        "Just wanted to see my favorite fish," he said with a grin.

        "Don’t you have anything better to do than infest other people’s homes?" she asked.

        "No," Sirius said cheerfully. "This one’s my favorite infestation. Better snacks."

        "Go away."

        "Can’t," he said, stepping inside. "Got plans to ruin your day."

========

        He had a knack for showing up at the worst possible times, like the afternoon Vernon Dursley was supposed to come over to meet her parents.

        Vernon, her boyfriend at the time, was a plodding, no-nonsense sort of man who hated “funny business” and looked down his nose at anyone who didn’t live in a semi-detached house with a perfectly mowed lawn. He was a few years older than her, already situated with a good job and even better prospects. Sirius, on the other hand, was Sirius.

        Sirius had taken one look at Vernon - stiff tie, carefully polished shoes, and the faint, smug curl of his upper lip - and immediately decided he didn't like him. 

        "Who's the walrus?" Sirius had asked loudly, earning a scandalized gasp from Petunia. 

        "He's my boyfriend," she hissed. 

        "Really?" Sirius tilted his head, giving Vernon an exaggerated once-over. "I thought you had standards." 

        Vernon, to his credit, had managed to ignore Sirius entirely during dinner, though his face grew progressively redder with each passing comment. When Vernon finally stood to leave, his voice was clipped. "It’s clear I’ve overstayed my welcome." 

        "Don’t worry, mate," Sirius said cheerfully as he leaned against the doorframe. "Happens to the best of us." 

        That was the last time Vernon Dursley ever set foot in the Evans’ home. He broke things off with Petunia a week later.

========

        Petunia had cried, furious and humiliated.

        “You ruined everything!” she’d shouted the next time he showed up at her house, climbing in through her window with a bottle of firewhisky.

        “Aw, come on, Tuna.” His grin widened. “Don’t tell me you’re still mad. He wasn’t good enough for you anyway. Didn’t even have the decency to punch me when I insulted his tie.”

        “He called me ‘unruly,’ by the way,” Sirius said an hour later, after she had chugged enough of the beverage to literally belch fire. “What kind of insult is that?”

        “An accurate one,” Petunia muttered into her glass.

========

        The letters started arriving a week after term started.

        The post arrived with Lily’s owl while Petunia was setting the table for dinner. She recognized the spiky scrawl immediately and froze, her hand tightening on the plate. Her parents looked up, concerned. 

        “You alright, love?” her father asked. 

        Petunia ignored him, yanking the letter off the bird’s leg and retreating to her room. 

        She stared at the envelope for ten minutes before tearing it open. 

Tuna, 

        Since I’m not around to make your life miserable in person, I thought I’d give you the pleasure of reading my nonsense instead. Generous of me, I know. 

        Hogwarts is boring this year. James is busy being head boy, Remus is pretending to study, and Peter’s eaten all the snacks, which means I have nothing to do but write to you. Lucky you.

        How’s the walrus? Kidding, I know he’s long gone. Bet you’re relieved. You deserve better, Tuna. Even if you are a pain in my arse. 

        Anyway, give my regards to your parents. I’ll be back soon enough to keep you miserable. 

        Miss me yet? 

 -Sirius 

       Petunia stared at the letter, equal parts furious and flustered. “Pain in my arse,” indeed. Who wrote things like that? She tore it up and tossed it in the bin.

        After that, they were sporadic. One, smudged with ink, had read:

Tuna, 

        Snape’s robes turned pink today. I’m innocent. Officially. Hope you’re not still sulking about the walrus - seriously, you’re better off. No man with a tie that ugly deserves you.

        Miss me yet?

-Sirius 

        They kept coming. Some were short - scribbled notes with obnoxious doodles in the margins - while others were long-winded stories about whatever mayhem Sirius and the “Marauders” had caused at Hogwarts that week. Every one of them ended with some variation of, “Miss me yet?”

        She never wrote back.

        But when the owl landed on her windowsill one rainy evening, soaked and looking thoroughly miserable, she opened the window to let it in. She untied the letter, ignoring the way the bird pecked at her sleeve like it was offended on Sirius’s behalf.

Tuna,

        I miss your mum’s fruitcake. It isn’t the same when the elves make it. Tell her I said so.

-Sirius

        P.S. James says hi.

        P.P.S. You miss me. Admit it.

        She scowled at the letter, and at the smug-looking owl.

        “I don’t,” she muttered to herself. But she didn’t crumple that one.

========

        The day after Sirius graduated from Hogwarts, he showed up on the Evans’ doorstep with a rucksack slung over one shoulder and a sheepish grin that didn’t suit him at all.

        “What do you want?” Petunia demanded, eyeing him suspiciously.

        “I need a place to stay,” he said. And then, after a beat, “And maybe a wife.”

        She slammed the door in his face.

        Two months later, they eloped.

Chapter Text

        Petunia woke with the faint hope that Sirius Black, like a bad dream, would be gone by morning. She stretched, glanced toward the door, and took a deep breath. It was a lovely day, perfect for her morning walk. A walk she fully intended to enjoy in silence. Alone. The morning light filtered through the curtains, soft and golden, as she pulled on her trainers and grabbed her cardigan.
        She opened the front door, hesitating as the fresh air filled her lungs, only to freeze when she heard a soft snore.

        There, sprawled across the welcome mat in all his shaggy glory, was Sirius. Not the man, of course, but the dog: big, black, and somehow managing to look both regal and utterly ridiculous at the same time. He was lying in a position that suggested he had either fallen dramatically asleep or staged himself for maximum inconvenience.
        For a fleeting moment, she wondered if he’d slept there all night. Then she rolled her eyes. Of course, he had. Sirius never did anything halfway.

        Petunia’s first instinct was to close the door and pretend she hadn’t seen him. But she refused to let him ruin her routine.
        His shaggy black fur rose and fell with each slow breath. His tail twitched once, his paws jerking in whatever dream he was having. She stared, willing him to wake up, realize how absurd this all was, and leave.

        No such luck.

        Maybe she could sneak past him, step over his ridiculous paws, and have her morning walk in peace. 
        She gritted her teeth, carefully eased the door open, and stepped over him. For one blissful moment, she thought she might get away with it. Her foot touched the porch step. Freedom was - 

        A single grey eye cracked open.

        She froze, glaring down at him. "Go back to sleep," she hissed under her breath, as if reasoning with him was a possibility.
        Instead, Sirius stretched luxuriously, yawning, tongue lolling out lazily, and heaved himself to his feet. Before Petunia could react, he gave a full-body shake - fur flying everywhere - and padded forward to nudge her leg with his wet nose, his tail wagging.

        "No," she whispered sharply, pointing a finger at him. “You are not coming with me. Go back to sleep or…or run off somewhere. I don’t care.  Shoo."
        Sirius didn’t budge. Instead, he wagged his tail harder and padded along beside her as she stepped onto the path. Petunia let out a frustrated groan but decided to ignore him. Maybe if she pretended he wasn’t there, he’d get bored and leave.

        The morning air was cool, and Petunia walked briskly, ignoring the sound of Sirius’s paws padding along beside her. She ignored him as best she could, determined to enjoy her morning walk, even if it was accompanied by the world’s most infuriating dog. To his credit, he didn’t make much of a fuss. He kept to her side, occasionally sniffing at the ground but not causing the chaos she’d expected. 
        It was almost peaceful.

        Until he bolted.  

        “Sirius!" she shouted, but he was already gone, vanishing into the hedges on the side of the street. “Oh, for heaven’s sake."
        He didn’t respond, disappearing around the corner with a speed that left her wondering if she should be worried. She glanced around nervously. The last thing she needed was a neighbor complaining about a dog tearing up their yard.
        She stood there, hands on her hips, debating whether to wait or leave him to his own devices. He’d find his way back eventually. Probably. Before she could make up her mind, he returned, his gait jaunty and triumphant, trotting toward her with something clutched in his mouth. She squinted, trying to make sense of it, and then froze in horror. 

        Flowers. He had flowers in his mouth.

        Specifically, petunias.

        She didn’t even wait for him to get close before she started hissing at him again. “Where did you get those? Tell me you didn’t -" She broke off as he dropped the slightly crumpled bouquet at her feet, looking up at her with an expression so shamelessly pleased she almost couldn’t believe it. "You did not."
        He wagged his tail, cocking his head, as if to say, Of course I did.

        “Sirius, I swear, if you stole those -"
        The wagging intensified. Petunia glared. “Whose garden did you steal these from?"
Sirius tilted his head, as if he didn’t understand the question. She swore he was playing dumb on purpose. 
        “I’m serious -" She groaned. “I mean it, Sirius. Who did you rob?"

        Sirius lowered himself onto his belly, resting his chin on the flowers and looking up at her. It was the closest thing to pleading she’d ever seen from him - tail thumping softly against the ground, ears perked. She wouldn’t have thought Sirius Black capable of the “puppy-dog eyes" look, but apparently, being an actual dog gave him a considerable advantage.
        “Don’t give me that look. You can’t just - oh, stop it! I’m not taking them."
        He whimpered, nudging the flowers toward her with his nose.

        “No," she said firmly. “I don’t want them." 

        Another whine, louder this time.

        She scowled, crossing her arms. “Stop that. It’s pathetic."

        Sirius gave her the saddest, most pitiful look she’d ever seen. She cursed under her breath. 
“Fine!" she snapped, snatching the flowers from the ground. “But only because I don’t want to leave them lying around for someone to find."
        He barked, leaping to his feet and wagging his tail so hard his entire body wiggled. She glared at him, flowers clutched in her hand, and turned sharply on her heel.
        As she kept walking, she didn’t know what irritated her more: the fact that Sirius was still here, or the fact that the flowers were, admittedly, rather pretty.

        "Dumb mutt."

Chapter Text

        It was the kind of pink that could burn your retinas if you stared too long. The walls were bubblegum bright, the curtains a pastel confection. The rug on the floor looked like someone had skinned a flamingo, and the bedspread? An explosion of roses and lace. Lily’s childhood room was frozen in time, as though the younger Evans sister had grown up in a fairytale and then abandoned it for reality.
        And in the middle of it all sat Sirius Black, lounging on the pink bedspread like a king holding court. His long legs stretched out, one arm tucked lazily behind his head, and a self-satisfied grin spread across his face. Somehow, he managed to make the room look even more ridiculous.
        Petunia had come to accept that Sirius Black was like a storm - chaotic, disruptive, and impossible to ignore. After a few days of him fully settling into her family’s house, she decided it was more accurate to say he was like glitter: equally chaotic and impossible to get rid of.

        Yet, for all his antics, he hadn't mentioned it once. Three days ago, Sirius Black had proposed marriage to her. Casually. Effortlessly. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. And then he hadn't brought it up again. Not once. Not a hint, not a teasing remark, not even a knowing smirk in her direction.
        Had he been serious? Was it just another one of his ridiculous jokes? The thought nagged at her in moments of silence, in the space between his relentless teasing and her automatic irritation. It would have been just like him to say something so outrageous and move on without a second thought. But what if he had meant it?

        “Morning, Tuna,” he said, propping himself up on one elbow. “Come to admire the view?”

        She didn’t dignify that with a response.

        “I’m not sure what’s worse,” Petunia muttered, her voice cutting through the silence. “The fact that you’ve taken over Lily’s room or the fact that you actually look comfortable in it.”
        Sirius cracked one eye open, clearly amused. “Comfortable? Tuna, I’m thriving.” He sat up, gesturing dramatically to the room around him. “This is a haven of luxury. It’s like living in a strawberry shortcake.”
        “You look ridiculous,” she snapped, though there was no real bite to her words.
        “Ridiculously fabulous,” Sirius corrected, flashing her a grin. “Honestly, I think this color suits me. Don’t you?” He leaned back, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “Makes me feel like a pretty princess.”
        Petunia snorted. “You look like a delinquent trespassing in a little girl’s bedroom.”
        Sirius gasped, clutching his chest as if mortally wounded. “How dare you. I’ll have you know I make a very convincing princess.”
        He reached over to grab a pillow - pink, naturally - and, with a dramatic flourish, pulled out his wand. A quick flick and the pillow shimmered, reshaping itself into an equally pink tiara, complete with tiny, glittering hearts. He settled it onto his head with great ceremony, adjusting it as if making sure it sat at the perfect royal angle. “Behold! Princess Padfoot of the Kingdom of Fabulousness.”

        Petunia rolled her eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t get stuck.

        “Why are you still here?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
        “Because I live here now, Tunafish,” Sirius replied breezily, swinging his legs off the bed with a flourish. “Admit it. You’re thrilled.”
        She ignored him, stepping into the room to yank the curtains open. Sunlight flooded in, washing over the pink explosion and making it even harder to take seriously. “The only thing thrilling about this situation is imagining how long it’ll take for you to wear out your welcome.”

        “Joke’s on you,” Sirius said cheerfully. “I pay rent now. I practically had to arm-wrestle your dad to make him take it, but I’m officially a contributing member of the Evans household.”
        Petunia muttered under her breath, something about “traitorous parents,” and turned to face him. “How did you even convince him to take your money? He hates charity.”
        “It wasn’t charity,” Sirius said with a grin. “I told him I’d start eating all his biscuits and drinking his tea if he didn’t take it.”

        Petunia pinched the bridge of her nose.

        “We’re practically best mates now. He even asked me to help him fix the garden gate yesterday.” Sirius gave her a smug look. “And your mum? She’s already promised to teach me how to make that roast dinner you love so much. I’m winning them over.”

        It was true, not that he hadn't started that a long time ago. She had already caught him in the kitchen that morning, comfortably seated at the table, sipping tea with her mother like he’d always belonged there. The worst part was how easily he fit in. Her father treated him like some charming new addition to the family, and her mother had wasted no time in adopting him like an extra son.
        Worse still, he wasn’t just lounging about. He actually helped. Fixed the shed, unclogged a sink, even had the audacity to reorganize a kitchen cabinet when her mother offhandedly mentioned it was a mess. Just this morning, she had walked into the kitchen to find Sirius peeling potatoes at the sink while her mother fussed over him, talking about how nice it was to have a young man around the house who actually helps.

        As if this wasn’t some temporary arrangement. As if he intended to stay.

        As if he meant it.

        Instead of responding, she turned on her heel and stomped down the hall.

        "Love you, Tuna," he called after her.

Chapter Text

        The kitchen smelled of onions and garlic sautéing in butter, the kind of aroma that usually made Petunia feel a tiny spark of joy after a long day. But that spark was currently dimmed by the sight of Sirius Black bumbling around her mother’s kitchen like a particularly excitable toddler. She watched from the doorway, arms crossed, as he held a spoon awkwardly in one hand, staring at the pot in front of him like it might bite him.

        "Stir it, Sirius, don’t interrogate it," her mum said, gently nudging him aside to check the sauce herself.
        "Yes, ma’am," Sirius replied with mock solemnity, twirling the spoon like a baton before giving the sauce an exaggerated stir. He shot a glance at Petunia as he did it, grinning like he’d just invented cooking. She rolled her eyes.
        "Do you even know what you’re doing?" Petunia muttered, stepping into the kitchen.
        Sirius turned to her, brandishing the spoon like a wand. "I’ll have you know I’m an excellent assistant. I’ve mastered the fine art of stirring under strict supervision."
        "Strict supervision is right," her mum chimed in, though there was no mistaking the fondness in her voice. "But he’s a quick learner."

        Sirius grinned, throwing a glance over his shoulder at Petunia. "See? I’m teachable. You can teach an old dog new tricks."
        Petunia’s lips twitched in annoyance. "You’re not that old."
        "I’m ancient," he replied dramatically, as if confessing a great truth. "Eighteen whole years on this earth. The wear and tear. You wouldn’t believe it."
        Mum chuckled, handing Sirius a chopping board. "Here, why don’t you focus on this? We need the carrots diced."

        "Finally," Sirius said, sounding relieved. "Something I actually know how to do."
        "Oh, this I have to see," Petunia said, stepping closer. "What could you possibly know about chopping vegetables?"

        Sirius retrieved the carrots with an arc of his wand, flashing her a grin. "Cooking is basically just like Potions," he said, moving on to the next one. "Lots of chopping, stirring, and pretending you know what you’re doing."
        Petunia raised an eyebrow. "You failed Potions."
        Sirius shot her a mock-offended look. "I didn’t fail it. I almost failed it."
        "That’s not much of a defense."

        "While I wasn’t exactly top of the class," he shrugged, positioning the first carrot. "James always trusted me with ingredient prep. It's an art form, really. They used to call me the Chopmaster back at Hogwarts."
        Petunia raised an eyebrow. "No, they didn’t."
        "Fine," he conceded. "They didn’t. But they should have. I was the best damn ingredient prepper in the Potions room. James always made me chop everything because, well..." He gestured vaguely toward the stove. "He didn’t trust me with fire - something about ‘explosive tendencies.’"

        Mum raised an eyebrow. "Explosive tendencies?"

        "It’s a long story," Sirius said with a grin. "But cutting things? That, I mastered. Observe."
        He began slicing the carrot with precision, the pieces falling into perfectly even discs. "Julienne," he announced, demonstrating the technique. "Batonnet." Another quick shift of the knife, and the carrot turned into cubes. "And if you’re feeling dramatic-" He sliced diagonally, creating elegant, angular pieces. "Chiffonade."

        Petunia's mum peeked over his shoulder, nodding approvingly. "You’ve got a good technique, I’ll give you that."

        Sirius grinned, clearly enjoying himself. "Thank you. Years of being James Potter’s personal ingredient monkey. And honestly, I’m not bad with a mortar and pestle either. Crushing beetles? Top-notch."
        Petunia wrinkled her nose. "That’s disgusting."
        "It’s Potions," Sirius said, shrugging. "You can’t make them without a little bug juice. Well, unless you’re Slughorn, but he cheats."

        Petunia crossed her arms, watching as Sirius continued slicing with ease, humming some nameless tune under his breath. His hands, she noticed, were deft, almost careless in their confidence. It was annoyingly unfair - how someone so reckless could also be so precise. She had half a mind to say something snide about it when he suddenly twirled the knife between his fingers like a showman before setting it down with a triumphant grin.

        "See that?" he said, cocky as ever. "Flawless."
        Petunia rolled her eyes. "You’re one kitchen fire away from a disaster."
        "Please, I’m a man of many talents," Sirius declared, flipping a stray carrot cube into his mouth. "It’s not my fault I was never allowed to reach my full culinary potential."
        "I think it might be," she muttered.

        Petunia’s mother laughed again, shaking her head as she moved to check on the stove. "You two could be a comedy act."
        "Or a tragedy," Petunia muttered under her breath.
        Sirius caught it, of course, and his grin widened. "I prefer ‘romantic epic.’ Starring me as the dashing hero."
        "You’re a side character at best," Petunia shot back, turning her attention to the pot so Sirius wouldn’t see the treasonous heat creeping up her neck.
        "Oh, but I’m the scene-stealer," Sirius countered, chopping away with dramatic flair.

        Petunia said nothing, watching as he went back to chopping with exaggerated precision, regaling her mother with tales of his supposed culinary expertise. Her mother laughed, and even Petunia had to stifle a smile when Sirius attempted a ridiculous French accent while talking about "ze art of ze brunoise." Despite her best efforts, Petunia found herself lingering just a little longer than she’d planned.

        "You’re stirring too fast," she said at one point, when he returned to the pot.
        "Maybe the pot’s just too slow," Sirius shot back.
        "Don’t splash the sauce."
        "I’m aerating it."
        "That’s not even-" Petunia sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Chapter Text

        Sirius Black had many talents. Grocery shopping was not one of them.

        Petunia realized this almost immediately upon stepping into the store. Sirius stood at the entrance, staring at the aisles like an explorer encountering an uncharted jungle. His grey eyes darted from shelf to shelf, taking in the overhead fluorescent lights, the towering rows of canned goods, and the checkout lanes with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.  

        "You’re blocking the entrance," Petunia muttered, nudging him forward with her elbow.  

        "I’m just- " he made a sweeping gesture toward the entire store, as if the existence of supermarkets was a personal affront to him, " - taking it all in. This is madness."  

        "It’s a Tesco," Petunia deadpanned.

        Sirius frowned as he stepped forward, glancing at a nearby shopping cart before turning to her. "What’s this for?"  

        Petunia sighed, already regretting everything. "For the food. You put it in there. You push it. You pay for it."  

        Sirius gave her a slow, appraising look, then turned back to the cart with newfound determination. He gripped the handle with both hands and gave it an experimental push. It rolled forward a few inches. He gave it another, harder shove, watching as it wobbled toward a display of neatly stacked apples.  

        Petunia caught it just before it made impact, glaring at him.  

        "Right," Sirius said, nodding sagely. "I see how this works now."  

        She exhaled slowly, counting to five. Then, with a patience she did not possess, she moved on. "Just - follow me, and try not to look so confused about basic produce. You’re embarrassing yourself."  

        "I thought I was embarrassing you ," Sirius said, falling into step beside her.

        "That too," she muttered.

        He trailed behind her, occasionally plucking random items off the shelves and dropping them into the cart with zero regard for necessity. She caught him adding a jar of golden syrup, a tin of custard powder, and a box of instant pudding.  

        "You don’t even know what half of this is," she accused.  

        "True," he said cheerfully, "but I have a feeling I’ll enjoy it."  

        She glared and started removing them.  

        He clutched the tin of custard to his chest like a scandalized Victorian maiden. "No, not the custard! I was going to make something for you."  

        "Oh, really?" Petunia folded her arms. "And what exactly were you planning to make?"  

        Sirius opened his mouth. Closed it. Squinted at the tin. "...A surprise."  

        Petunia exhaled sharply and shoved it back into the cart.  

        Sirius beamed.  

        "How do you people decide on anything?" he asked, looking between the sixteen different brands of cereal like they had personally offended him.

        "You pick one and move on," Petunia muttered, snatching the cheapest box and dropping it into the cart.

        "But look at it! This is magnificent! It’s a kingdom of options. Choices upon choices! We’ve got… Frosted Flakes? That sounds aggressive. And Lucky Charms! Wait, that’s a crime. Charms are magic. This is fraud."  

        She pushed the cart forward.

        He lagged behind for a moment, reaching for a box. "What’s this one? Fruit Loops. Liar. Fruit aren’t loops. And what the hell is a ‘Count Chocula’- "  

        "You know," he said thoughtfully as they passed a wall of potatoes, "this is very inefficient."  

        Petunia blinked. "How - how is it inefficient ?"  

        Sirius gestured vaguely. "All of this stuff - packaged, stacked, sorted. How do you know what’s fresh? How do you know what’s actually good?" He pointed at a particularly sad-looking head of lettuce. "That thing’s half-dead."  

        Petunia rubbed her temples. "That’s why people check things before they buy them."  

        Sirius frowned, watching a woman inspect tomatoes, pressing them one by one with expert fingers. He looked at Petunia, then back at the woman, then at the tomatoes.  

Then, with great determination, he reached for one and squeezed it so hard it burst in his hand.  

        Petunia gasped. "Sirius - oh my god- "   

        Sirius stared down at the red mess in his palm, horrified. Then he turned his wide, guilty eyes to Petunia.  

        She pinched the bridge of her nose. "You - what is wrong with you? "

        "I - I was testing it!"  

        "You do not - good god, put it back!"  

        "I am not putting it back!" he hissed, wiping his hand on his trousers. "What kind of barbarian do you think I am? Do not answer that."  

        Sirius looked around to make sure no one was looking. Then, with a swift and incredibly suspicious-looking movement, he slipped his wand from his sleeve and erased his fruit crime from existence. He reached for another vine of tomatoes, and dropped it into the trolley as though nothing had happened.  

        Petunia stared.  

        "That was not smooth," she said flatly.  

        "I have no idea what you’re talking about."  

        She hated that she almost laughed. Instead, she grabbed his wrist, yanked him forward, and marched him to the next aisle before someone could call security.  

        Sirius, to his credit, at least pretended to be repentant. "That was not my fault," he said after a moment. "Who knew tomatoes were that delicate?"  

        "Everyone."  

        "I think I’m being unfairly blamed here." 

        They moved through the store with great difficulty. Sirius was fascinated by everything, pausing to examine cheese, cereal, prepackaged meals, as if he were an archaeologist uncovering the mysteries of an ancient civilization.  

        At one point, he picked up a can of soup, turned it over, and squinted at the ingredients list.  

        "...What’s a ‘monosodium glutamate’?"

        "Something you don’t need to worry about," Petunia muttered, snatching the can from his hands and setting it back onto the shelf.  

        But despite the endless questions, the tomato incident, and the general chaos that was taking him anywhere in public, Petunia found herself... not entirely miserable.

        There was something deeply, profoundly funny about seeing Sirius Black utterly undone by a Tesco.  

        She cleared her throat, shaking it off. "Come on," she said. "We’re almost done."

        Still, as she dragged him along, she felt the weight of his eyes lingering on her.

        "You’re staring," she said, glancing back at him.  

        "Yeah," he replied.  

        Petunia turned away, focusing far too intently on the shelf in front of her.

        The rest of the trip went about as she expected. Sirius was insufferable about it all, from loudly commenting on the sheer injustice of pre-packaged produce ( "What if I want exactly four and not a pre-packaged dictatorship of five?" ) to taking his sweet time choosing a loaf of bread like it was a sacred rite.  

        But somehow they made it to checkout without him causing a scene.  

        As she placed the items on the belt, Sirius reached into the cart, plucking something from its depths.  

        A bouquet of flowers.  

        Petunia froze.  

        She hadn’t put that there.  

        Sirius, utterly casual, placed it onto the conveyor belt. "For you," he said simply.  

        She opened her mouth, then closed it. "I- "  

        Her stomach twisted in a way that made her grip the edge of the cart a little tighter.  

        "They match your scowl," Sirius added, because of course he had to ruin the moment.  

        She exhaled sharply, shaking her head. "Dumb mutt."

Chapter Text

        Petunia wasn’t sure what Sirius had made.
        There had been custard involved, of that much she was certain. There had also been an alarming amount of sugar, a handful of hastily chopped fruit, and a highly suspicious moment where he muttered "Trust the process" like a lunatic.
        By all accounts, it should have been a disaster. But somehow - she hated to admit it - it had been good.

        The skillet sizzled faintly under the tap as Sirius scrubbed at it with exaggerated care, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back with one of Lily’s old hairbands.

        It was strange, seeing him like this.

        Sirius Black, who had once stolen petunias from a stranger’s garden with zero remorse. Sirius Black, who spun shopping carts like battle chariots. Sirius Black, who could turn an entire dinner into a performance of dramatics and questionable culinary experiments, now quietly washing dishes in her mother’s kitchen.

        He rinsed the pan, holding it up to inspect it, as if waiting for some cosmic approval. "You know," he mused, "if I’d known baking involved this much effort, I’d have prepared myself accordingly."

        Petunia raised an eyebrow. "And how exactly would you have done that?"
        "By not baking at all," He grinned at her, then turned back to the sink with a resigned shake of his head. "Merlin’s beard, this thing won’t come clean."
        Petunia pushed off the counter and took the skillet from his hands, inspecting it herself. "You didn’t soak it first."
        "I figured sheer willpower would do the job."
        She sighed, turning the tap on and filling the skillet with hot water. "This is why you failed Potions."
        Sirius placed a dramatic hand over his heart. "Nearly, Tuna. Nearly failed. That’s an important distinction."

        "Critical, I'm sure," she muttered, setting the skillet down.

        "See, this is the problem with Muggle kitchens," he mused, rinsing his hands. "Too much work. A spell could’ve handled this in ten seconds." 
        "Then why didn’t you?" 
        He shrugged, grabbing a towel. "Thought I’d try it the Muggle way. Show off my many talents." 
        She crossed her arms. "Cleaning a pan is a talent now?" 
        "Absolutely." He grinned. "Most wizards would have set this entire kitchen on fire by now." 
        Petunia considered that. It was probably true. Still. "Congratulations," she said dryly. "Your ability to scrub a skillet without burning the house down is truly a gift to humanity."

        "Obliged."

        She watched as he leaned against the counter, smug and satisfied. "What was that supposed to be, anyway? What you made?"
        Sirius leaned against the counter. "Great art defies classification, Tunafish."
        She shot him a flat look.
        "Alright, fine," he admitted. "It was meant to be custard tartlets, but I got bored halfway through and just threw it all in the pan and hoped for the best."
        Petunia blinked. "You - what?"
        "I improvised. And look, it turned out fine."
        She hesitated, folding her arms. "It was barely tolerable." 
        "Right, right. It was so terrible, so absolutely inedible, that you suffered through two entire bowls. Tragic, really."

        She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t keep the snort from escaping. He had the audacity to glance over his shoulder at her, flashing one of those obnoxiously charming grins that she refused to admit she found at all effective.
        Sirius tossed the tea towel over his shoulder like a bartender in a noir film. "You know, I really could’ve made a career out of this."
        Petunia blinked. "Ruining desserts?"
        "Improvising." He gestured broadly to the kitchen like he was center stage. "Creating something out of nothing. Dazzling an audience. Feeding the masses. I’m a professional, Tuna."
        "Professional what? Disaster?"
        "Careful," he said, waggling a finger at her. "Mock me all you like, but I’ll have you know I’m very good at what I do."

        "And what is that, exactly?" She tilted her head, folding her arms again. "You’re paying Dad rent, aren’t you? You never said what you do for work."
        "Ah, yes," Sirius said, lips twitching. "My secret life as a professional dog walker. Very lucrative."
        "I'm serious," Petunia huffed.
        "That’s funny. I thought I was Sirius."
        "Why do I even..."

        "If you must know," he announced, "I’m waiting on a letter from the Auror Academy. I’ve got the NEWTs for it."
        Her nose wrinkled. "Newts? Like the slimy little amphibians?"
        Sirius froze for a moment, then barked a laugh. "Merlin, Lily really didn’t explain anything to you, did she?"
        "She’s not exactly forthcoming," Petunia said stiffly. "So no, she didn’t tell me about your... amphibian tests."
        "They’re not amphibians," Sirius said, shaking his head. "They’re exams. NEWTs. Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests."
        "Nastily Exhausting?" she repeated slowly. "What kind of ridiculous name is that?"
        "Apt one," he said with a shrug. "Anyway, I’ve got the grades. Just waiting for them to let me in."

        "And what’s an Auror?" Petunia asked, though the word vaguely reminded her of something Lily had mentioned in passing years ago.
        "Wizarding law enforcement," Sirius said simply, scrubbing at the skillet again. "You know, catching dark wizards and all that."
        "So...what happens if you don’t get into this Auror Academy?"
        "I’ll get in," Sirius said confidently, but there was no arrogance in it - just certainty. "I passed all the right NEWTs, and I’ve got the skills. It’s just a matter of waiting."

        She studied him for a moment. "And until then? Where’s the money coming from?"
        Sirius hesitated, a rare thing. "Well...I’ve got savings."
        "Daddy’s money, then?" she asked, arching a brow.

        "No," he said softly. "Not my father’s money." He folded the towel again, more slowly this time, smoothing each edge like it gave him something to do. "It was my uncle’s. Alphard. He left me everything when he passed. Two years ago."
        Petunia frowned. He’d never talked about his family before, not really. When her parents had asked, he’d shrugged off their questions with jokes or dramatic tales that felt more like fiction than fact.
        "What about your parents? Don’t they-"

        "They disowned me," The words came sharp and fast, his eyes fixed on the sink. "When I was sixteen. My father burned me off the family tapestry himself. Real dramatic. My mother threw a fit, naturally. Said I was a disgrace."
        "Oh," she said, caught off guard. "That’s... unfortunate."

        Sirius froze. His spine straightened slowly, tension tightening across his shoulders. When he turned to look at her, his gray eyes were dark. 
        "Unfortunate?" he repeated, the word cold in his mouth. "That’s the word you’re going with?"
        Petunia took an instinctive step back, unsettled by the sudden shift in his demeanor. "I didn’t mean-"

        "No, it’s fine." His voice stayed low, but it had the brittle edge of something sharp about to snap. "It’s unfortunate that my parents disowned me. It’s unfortunate that they spent my childhood trying to beat me into their idea of acceptable. It’s unfortunate that the only real family I’ve ever had are people who are barely related to me. Because being rejected by the people who are supposed to love you is just bad luck."
        It was the first time she’d seen him genuinely angry. Not the playful annoyance he usually directed at her, but real, visceral anger. The air seemed to grow heavier, pressing down on her chest.

        "Do you have any idea what it’s like," he continued, his voice sharp and controlled, "to grow up in a house where love is something you have to earn? Where every second of every day you’re being measured against some impossible standard, and no matter what you do, it’s never enough?"
        Petunia didn’t know what to say. She wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

        "‘Unfortunate,’" he hissed, the word raw and jagged. "That’s a lovely way to put it, isn’t it?"

        "But I got out," Sirius said, his voice rising. "I got out, and they didn’t care. Not for one second. But Alphard? He cared. More than they ever did. More than-"

        He was breathing hard now, like his words had run him ragged. His hands curled around the tea towel in tight fists.

        The grinning fool who stole flowers and gawked at everything like a tourist from another planet - he wasn’t here. This was someone else. Someone sharp-edged and angry and wounded.

        She took a cautious step forward, unsure what she meant to do - reach for him, maybe. But Sirius moved first.
        He snatched up his wand, muttered "Scourgify" and the skillet gleamed in the sink, spotless.

        He didn’t look at her.

        He didn’t say another word.

        He turned on his heel and strode out of the kitchen, footsteps heavy on the linoleum.
        "Sirius," he called, quick on her feet as she followed. She caught his arm. "Wait-"

        "I’m not mad at you, Petu - Tuna," he said without looking at her. "I... I just... I need to go break something."
        "Break - what do you mean, break something?" she demanded, her grip tightening on his arm. "Sirius-"
        Sirius didn’t answer. He pulled free of her grasp.

        And then, with a crack, he was gone.

Chapter Text

        Petunia hadn’t slept properly in three days.

        Not for lack of trying. She’d tried tea - every variety in the cupboard, from chamomile to some herbal blend her mum swore worked like a charm. She’d tried reading, cleaning, even ironing the same blouse twice. But every time her head hit the pillow, her mind kicked into motion with relentless precision, stitching together regrets and half-formed fears into a tight, suffocating pattern.
        She drifted in and out - thirty minutes here, a fevered nap there - but the moment her body stilled, her mind started moving, pacing circles around the same handful of thoughts. The way his voice had cracked. The way the light had gone out of his eyes like someone had flipped a switch. The way he hadn’t looked back. The sound of the crack that meant he was gone.

        He was gone. Really gone. She had checked.
        Under the porch. Around the shed. She’d wandered her neighborhood like some deranged bloodhound, eyes scanning every hedge, every alley, every sun-dappled corner. She kept an ear out, too, in case someone mentioned a stray dog - big, black, probably too smug for his own good.
        Once, she even interrupted a pair of children discussing a "big black dog" that had knocked over a bin. Her heart had leapt - until she found out it was just old Mrs. Cartwright’s Labrador. The disappointment had been irrational and bottomless.
        No one had seen him. Not in town. Not on the street. Not even a shadow.

        She hadn’t realized how thoroughly he’d woven himself into the rhythm of their home. Not until the absence settled in like fog. The mornings were too still. The kitchen too neat. No chaotic humming. No clatter of mugs or off-key renditions of wizarding songs that made no sense. No one arguing with the toaster. It didn’t help that everything in the house remembered him: the mug he used for tea (which he insisted was his "official cup now"), the cushion he always stole from the sitting room, the pink tiara that still sat crookedly atop Lily’s childhood vanity.

        Three days. No word. No owl had come for her. And she didn’t have one of her own. Of course not. Of all the things magic could give, it hadn’t given her a way to speak to him.
        And it was her fault.
        If she’d just let it go - if she hadn’t asked about his family, hadn’t prodded the wound, hadn’t dismissed it with that stupid word, "unfortunate" - maybe he’d still be here. Maybe he’d be in the kitchen with her mother, making an abomination of dessert again. Maybe he’d be lounging in his horrifically pink bedroom - because she couldn't think of it as Lily's anymore - or playing cards with her dad and cheating outrageously.
        And she missed him.

        God help her, she missed him.

        It had taken her almost the full three days to admit it - to herself, if no one else. The first day, she’d told herself he needed time. The second, she’d convinced herself she didn’t care. The third? She stopped pretending. She missed the sound of his voice floating in from the kitchen, ridiculous and too loud. She missed finding sugar in the salt jar and hand-drawn cartoons of herself taped to the fridge. She missed the flicker of his grin across the dinner table, the way he flopped onto furniture like he was born to ruin upholstery, the impossible chaos he brought to every room and how, somehow, it always felt warmer for it.
        The house had fallen quiet again. The wrong kind of quiet. Not the peaceful kind, but the sort that echoed.

        Her parents noticed.
        Her father had gently inquired over tea that morning, voice careful: "Haven’t seen Sirius about lately. He alright?" 
        Petunia hadn’t known how to answer. She’d made a vague noise and stirred her cup faster. Her mother had frowned at her in that quiet, observant way that mothers do, but hadn’t pressed. It made her feel worse.

        Now it was Saturday night. Outside, the sun had just started to set, smearing the sky with streaks of orange and plum. Saturday night. Lily was bringing James over for dinner, like she always did when she visited. Petunia hadn’t changed out of her sweater, hadn’t brushed her hair properly. Her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness. She didn’t care.
        The front door creaked open just past seven.
        Lily chatted cheerfully with Mum, laughing like this was any other dinner, while James attempted to engage her father in a conversation about Quidditch strategy, which was met with an indulgent but confused smile.
        Petunia just sat there, pushing peas around her plate, waiting for the moment when she couldn’t take it anymore.

        It came sometime around dessert.

        "Have you heard from him?" she asked, voice too sudden, too sharp. James blinked at her, startled mid-bite of treacle tart.
        "Hm? Sirius?"
        She tried to keep her tone level. "Yes."
        James sat back in his chair, expression tightening. "Not in a few days," he admitted. "Did something happen?"

        "No," she lied. Then, quieter, "Yes. I said something. Asked about his family. He didn’t like it."
        James leaned back in his chair, exhaling through his nose. "That’d do it," he said. Not unkindly. "He doesn’t talk about them. Not unless you’re Remus. And even then, only barely."

        "I didn’t mean to hurt him," Petunia said, and the words surprised her even as they came out.
        James nodded again. "I know. And... he probably knows too. But Sirius doesn’t always think clearly when it comes to that stuff. He bottles it up until it explodes." He paused. "But he’ll come back."
        "Yeah," she murmured. "Sure."

        Petunia stood abruptly, gathering plates before anyone could stop her.

Chapter Text

        Petunia lay up in bed, blanket tangled around her knees, eyes wide open. She hadn’t been asleep, though she tried. She was just lying there, as she had for days, listening to the silence.
        She rolled onto her side, dragging the blanket up to her shoulders, when a faint scrape and thump echoed softly through the wall.
        For a brief moment, she thought it might be a burglar. Then she heard a familiar voice, muffled and slurred: "Bloody sash windows, stupid knobs... who invented this - ow."

        She was out of bed before she could think better of it. Her bare feet hit the floor. The hallway was cool underfoot as she crept to the door next to hers. His room.
        She hesitated, fingers hovering over the doorknob, heart tapping out an uncertain rhythm in her chest. Then, slowly, she pushed it open.
        Streetlamp light sliced the room into pale stripes. The window was up, night air drifting in. And there he was.

        Sirius.

        Half-inside the window, one leg flailing as he tried to hoist himself over the sill. His coat caught on the latch, and he gave a quiet grunt of annoyance, finally stumbling inside and landing with a soft thump on the carpet before pushing himself to his feet.

        For a long, weightless moment, they just looked at each other.

        His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, the skin beneath them bruised with exhaustion. His hair was a tangled mess tied back with what might have been a shoelace, and his clothes hung a little looser than before. There was a bottle-shaped lump in his coat pocket, and she could smell the firewhisky on him from across the room.
        "Petunia," he rasped, voice hoarse and eroded. "I-"

        She shook her head once, cutting him off gently. Her throat felt tight, her palms suddenly aware of themselves.
        He swallowed visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he struggled for composure. "I'm sorry," he managed, not louder than a breath.

        She didn’t answer. Her fingers tightened around the doorknob and then let it go.

        "You don’t have to-" he tried again, softer, the edges of the consonants fraying. "I shouldn’t have left like that. I just -  I didn’t know what to do. And I was angry. Not at you. Just..."
        His hand fluttered vaguely, trembling slightly.
        Sirius looked up at her then, eyes painfully open and vulnerable, stripped of any mask or façade. "And you were right there, and you said exactly what I was afraid to hear, because I’m afraid it's true. ‘Unfortunate.’ Like I’m just some unlucky sod. Like it was...fate." He laughed again, hollow and broken. "And maybe it was."

        He worried a loose thread on his coat. "I thought leaving home meant leaving all of it behind. But it's all still there, in my head. And sometimes it gets too loud, and I - I don't know how to quiet it."

        "I’ve been with Wormtail," he murmured, head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed. "Peter. He lives in Knockturn Alley now. Not as dodgy as it sounds. Mostly. He’s got a flat above this bakery. Poor bloke put up with me crying all over his sofa for three days."
        He sighed. "Pete’s... Pete’s quiet. Doesn’t ask questions. Just...just lets you get pissed until you stop feeling anything. Good old Peter."
        "I thought I could shake it. You know? Just... drink and talk shite and forget about everything for a few days. Thought maybe if I just didn’t say it out loud, it’d stop hurting."
        He pulled the bottle out of his pocket, looked at it like it had wronged him personally, and set it carefully on the nightstand.

        His mouth made a helpless shape. "I was going to move back in with James’s parents after graduation," Sirius went on. "They’re good people. Bloody saints, really. Mother hated them, which tells you everything. But they’ve got dragon pox now. Whole house is under lockdown. Couldn’t go back. And being alone..." He ran a thumb along the window’s flaking paint, flurries of white dust gathering beneath the nail. "Being alone is the worst thing. I can’t. Because when it’s quiet I start thinking. About them. About what I could’ve been if I’d just shut up and played along. All I can hear - all I can think about - is every horrible thing my parents ever said. Every ugly word. So I stayed. Here."
        Petunia stayed quiet, watching as Sirius rubbed a weary hand over his face, clearly struggling to gather his scattered thoughts. His voice dropped lower, rougher around the edges. "They’re kind. But they always treat me like a guest. Your family didn’t. Your parents...they’re bloody amazing, you know that?"

        He glanced around the room - the sugar-pink curtains, the tiara on the vanity - then back to her.

        "Your mum makes me tea like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I knock the wash over and she calls me ‘love’ and puts me to work folding trousers. They don’t look at me like I’m something that needs fixing. They made this place feel - well, like home. I've never had a home before."
        He rubbed his fingers together, as though checking for flour.

        "I don’t know what to do with that."

        A hand dragged through his hair. It trembled, visibly, before he dropped it again.
        "I know I’m a pain in the ass. I know I talk too much and I drink too much and I push when I shouldn’t. But I don’t... I don’t know how else to be. If I stop moving, I fall apart."
        Then he swallowed hard, his voice rough as gravel. "I’m-"

        But she didn’t let him finish.

        The hug came out of nowhere. Even to her. One moment she was standing stiffly, arms crossed without meaning to, and the next she was crossing the room and wrapping her arms around him so fast and so tightly it surprised them both.

        He flinched, breath snagging, then went still against her. His arms hovered uncertainly for a second before they folded around her shoulders, tight and desperate.

Chapter Text

        Sunday morning found the house already awake.

        Sirius hovered at the bottom of the stairs with the posture of a man about to be judged by a tribunal. The night had sanded his edges down - hair tied back properly this time, coat hung on the peg by the door like he meant to stay. Petunia saw the tiny ways he braced: shoulders squared, hands empty, eyes guarded. He straightened when her mother turned from the stove, and Petunia caught a bracing twitch of his jaw that said he was ready to be told to leave.

        "Tea, love?" her mother said, same as always, already reaching for Sirius' official cup. 

        Sirius blinked. Once. Twice.

        "Yes, ma’am," he murmured, entirely too obedient, which made Petunia want to smile and roll her eyes and shake him by the shoulders all at once.
        Petunia, who’d spent three sleepless nights and one spectacular hug learning how much noise could live inside the quiet, felt energy like a live wire under her skin. "Come on," she said briskly, brushing past him on the way to the kitchen. "If you hover there any longer you’ll wear a groove in the floor."
        He huffed a laugh - small, grateful - and followed.

        After breakfast her father tapped the back window with two fingers like a starting bell. "Come on then, lad. Garden won’t cut itself."
        The grass was high enough to wag in the breeze. The shed lock, long-temperamental, yielded to a judicious whack from her dad and a muttered alohomora from no one at all, because nothing magical ever happened in the Evans garden, certainly not while the neighbor was trimming roses.
        Petunia leaned against the doorframe with her arms folded while the tutorial began. "This is the choke," her father said.
        Sirius nodded solemnly. "Choke. Sounds violent."
        Her father chuckled and went on with his instructions.

        Sirius knelt to peer at the carburetor. He pulled the cord once, twice, three times, each attempt a little more theatrical than the last, until the engine coughed to life with a shuddering roar. He startled, laughed at himself, then grinned at her father like a boy handed the keys to a new car.

        He pushed in a crooked line, arms a little too long, gait a little too jaunty, her father calling, "Overlap your rows!"

        When the mower coughed and stalled, Sirius crouched and frowned at it as though it had personally betrayed him. "It's temperamental," he told her father. 
        "It's out of petrol," her father replied, handing him the can. 
        Petunia stood at the path’s edge pretending to deadhead the roses and absolutely not watching the way Sirius’s sleeves stuck to his forearms in the sun.

        He got the hang of it - of course he did - and by the last pass he cut clean, overlapping like a proper adult, and her father clapped his shoulder in that easy way men have when they approve of each other. Sirius squared his shoulders a fraction at the touch and looked, for a heartbeat, twelve and starved for it.

        By late morning her mother drafted him into the kitchen and Petunia followed because she could, because why should her mother get all the entertainment. Her mother set out bread and eggs and a cucumber and then, unaccountably, the custard Sirius had gotten from Tesco, and that was all the invitation Sirius needed. He tied on one of her mother’s aprons (blue gingham, bow too big) with unearned confidence and began "assisting".

        "What," Petunia asked, "is all of this?"
        "Trust the process," he said. 

        The process, as far as she could tell, involved: eggs whisked with an absurd quantity of chopped herbs; bacon done two ways "for science"; tomatoes blistered in a pan and then finished with a drizzle of honey; potatoes parboiled, smashed, and roasted; toast rubbed with garlic and a morally wrong amount of butter; a bowl of cucumber sliced so thin it qualified as air, tossed with vinegar, dill, black pepper, and a waterfall of lemon zest; and three separate sauces of dubious origin.

        Her mother prodded it with a spoon. "What do you call this?"
        Sirius considered. "Jacob."

        Jacob should not have worked. It did.

        "You’re a menace," Petunia told him, fond.
         "I’m a visionary," he corrected.

        Petunia said nothing. He looked smug enough to float.

        The afternoon blurred into errands and domestic smallness. He fixed the stubborn catch on the back door without magic and only minimal swearing. He carried the shopping in from the boot without being asked; she docked points for the dramatic groan as he set the bags down, then gave one back when he remembered to put the milk in first.
        They folded washing at the table, Sirius murdering the fitted sheet with operatic despair until Petunia snatched it, flicked and tucked and tamed it into compliance under his stunned gaze.
         "Are you sure you're not a witch?" he breathed.

        In the garden, she handed him the pegs and he failed spectacularly at hanging a wet sheet, winding himself and the linen into a chrysalis. "Help," he said, muffled.
         "No," she said, and then she did.

        Every so often she’d bump his shoulder with hers and he’d bump back.

        By evening the sky had gone indigo and the living room lamps made shallow pools on the carpet.
        The Radio Times lay open on the arm of the sofa, and when the clock clicked past ten she said, far too casually, "BBC Two is showing Running Scared," and then, heart thumping, "I’m watching in the sitting room."

        Her mother glanced up from her knitting, a puzzled smile lifting one corner of her mouth. Petunia didn’t look.

        "Sirius," she called, and he turned from the doorway as if she’d tugged a string. "Come watch with me."

Chapter Text

        The garden agreed with the calendar - it was most definitely nearing August. Sun pressed warm palms against Petunia’s shoulders; the air hummed with bees and the faint click of the neighbor’s shears. The Evans roses threw themselves at the sky as if height were a moral virtue. The patch of petunias - of course - spilled over their brick border in a way that made Petunia narrow her eyes and reach for the secateurs.

        Sirius arrived already grass-stained, which was impressive considering there was no fresh grass to stain oneself with.

        "You’re late," she said, even though he wasn’t.

        "I brought an offering," he said, producing from behind his back a coil of green hose. "Behold: The Sword of Gryffindor."

        "That’s a hose."

        "A hose of Gryffindor."

        "It has a leak," Petunia noted dryly, eyeing the small silvered patch near the coupling.

        He grinned. "Don’t we all."

        She chose not to dignify that.

        They worked for a comfortable while, conversation idling in the sun like an old car that never overheated. Petunia showed him the right way to tease soil away from a new seedling without snapping any important roots; he offered running color commentary on every worm they encountered - Sir Crawls-a-Lot, Madame Elastic, Lord Wiggleton - until she threatened him with the trowel.

        "What about those?" He pointed toward the herb bed. "The little spikes. Are they friendly?"

        "Leeks. Yes."

        He considered. "I could name a child Leek."

        "No, you could not."

        "Leek Black," he mused, ignoring her. "Strong name. Verdant."

        "Absolutely not."

        "Fine. Middle name, then."

        She sighed and moved along the border. He went with her, obedient as a shadow, and handed over the right tool without needing to be told - hand fork, secateurs, twine.

        "What’s this one?" He asked, though she knew he knew the answer.

        "Lavender."

        "And this?"

        "Thyme."

        "Uh," he glanced through the window. "Three twenty-three."

        She stared at him.

        He broke, laughing, and the sound ran along the fence.

        She knelt beside the herb bed, fingers sinking into warm soil. "You’re hovering. Either help or stop casting a shadow."

        "I’m deciding how best to contribute," he said, shifting his weight. "I could sing to them. I’ve heard plants love music."

        "Plants love not being stepped on. Move your foot."

        He moved it. "What about compliments? ‘You’re doing so well, little basil. I’m proud of you.’"

        "The basil and I request you never speak to it again."

        They paused for tea on the back step, knees almost touching, backs against sun-warmed brick. The steam smudged the air between them. Somewhere, a neighbor’s radio floated a chorus into the blue.

        "You missed a bit," she said, watching him peel mud from his palm.

        "Where?"

        She reached without thinking and brushed the smear from his wrist with her thumb. The little hollow between his bones jumped. He glanced at her. She looked away first.

        "Tell me a secret," he said lightly, because he always filled a silence.

        "I don’t have secrets."

        "Everyone has secrets."

        She considered her thumbnail and the rim of her cup. "Fine. When I was nine, I told Lily that if she kept reading under the covers she’d go cross-eyed. She cried. I felt dreadful."

        "Monstrous," he said. "Irredeemable."

        "Your turn."

        He tipped his head back against the brick, the sunlight turning the loose strands at his nape into a halo he did not deserve. "I am," he said, "astonishingly bad at hanging sheets."

        "That’s not a secret."

        "It was, until last week."

        "Another."

        He thought. "When I was little," he said eventually, not looking at her, "I used to feed the garden gnomes so they’d defend me when mother sent the house elf after me. Hate that elf."

        Petunia took a breath that went somewhere unfamiliar and sipped her tea.

        They finished their mugs and rose in a mutual clatter and continued tending the garden. The sun slid a fraction. Her mother opened the kitchen window and the clink of crockery drifted out. Petunia topped the can from the outside spigot.

        Sirius, who had been suspiciously quiet for almost thirty seconds, sidled closer with the guileless expression of a boy planning something.

        "Don’t," she said, without looking.

        "I haven’t done anything," he said, instantly guilty.

        "You’re thinking about doing something."

        "I’m offended you’d assume - " He paused. "Hypothetically, if I were to do something, what would you do?"

        "Bury you under the dahlias."

        He considered the dahlias, then her, then the hose, which had somehow migrated back into his hand.

        "Sirius," she warned.

        "Yes, Tuna?"

        She turned - exactly as the world went cold.

        A bright fan of water arced, catching her across the front and spangling the air. She gasped, stumbled, blinked into sparkling droplets.

        "SIRIUS!" she screamed, and she was laughing despite herself as he danced backward across the lawn.

        He beamed, entirely unrepentant as he squeezed the trigger again. "Hydration is important, Tunafish!"

        "Sirius Orion Black!" she cried, still laughing, water slicking her cheeks, her cardigan clinging to her skin. She swiped at her fringe and advanced with terrible dignity. She lunged for the nozzle, turning it on him, and he backed away in delighted terror.

        "Cease fire!" he spluttered. "Truce! Diplomatic immunity!"

Chapter Text

        The day began with the carpet rushing up at her.

        Petunia made it to the loo on instinct, knees bruising on cold tile as her stomach revolted against dinner, breakfast, tea, air - everything. The sink taps wobbled in her vision like ships in a storm. She thought dimly that she ought to plait her hair, then bent forward and lost that thought completely.
        Sirius arrived as if summoned.
        "Hey, hey," he murmured, already on the floor behind her, one knee hitting tile, the other hooking out to brace them both. His hands were sure: one palm at the nape of her neck, the other sweeping her hair into a rope and lifting it clear. He smelled faintly of tea and bergamot and morning dew. "That’s it. Breathe. I’ve got you."

        Back in her room, the air felt too thick. He’d pulled the curtains to the side and propped the window open just enough for a line of morning air to slice through. Petunia lay propped against a small mountain of pillows, hair damp at the temples, skin hot even with the window cracked. A basin sat discreetly within reach.

        Sirius didn't leave.

        He moved around the room with a gentle, fidgeting competence, a man who needed to do - fetching, wringing, cooling, tidying. Every thirty minutes the bedside table grew an extra thing: a glass of water that hadn't existed before, a bucket repositioned to optimal proximity, a basin scourgified, a small mountain of tissues.
        "Tea," he said now, arriving with a mug and a steam she could smell before she could properly see. "Mint this time. I bullied your mother into surrendering the rose honey."
        "You didn’t bully her," Petunia managed, voice scuffed to sand. "You looked pathetic until she gave up."
        "Sit up for me?"
        She tried. Her head swam. He was already there, one arm behind her shoulders, the other flattening the pillow, the whole thing gentle enough that she could believe it had always been this way. He tipped the cup, he watched her mouth like he could move the tea with his eyes. She took two careful swallows and then a third, and when she grimaced he set the cup down.

        "Temperature," he said softly, like a stage direction, and shook the thermometer.
        "I hate you," she croaked.
        "Excellent," he murmured. "I accept your hatred and will now put this under your tongue."

        She opened her mouth with put-upon dignity, then promptly closed it to swallow. The wave rose - unmistakable, awful - and she lurched forward, the room lunging with her. "Basin - "
        Sirius was already there, the basin in one hand, the other sliding to gather her hair and twist it up, gentle fingers at the nape. He rubbed small circles between her shoulder blades, murmuring something that might have been nothing at all, just sound, steady as a metronome: all right, all right, all right.
        When it passed, he wiped her mouth with a cool cloth, and a matter-of-fact tenderness. "Better?"
        "No," she whispered, and then, "A bit."
        He checked the watch again. "Now. Tongue."
        "You’re enjoying this far too much."
        "Absolutely. Say ‘ah.’"
        She glared. He slid the thermometer under her tongue and sat back on the chair he had conjured, forearms on his thighs, watching the seconds crawl.
        The beep came. He frowned at the numbers, then smoothed his face into a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. "Down a touch. That’s good."

        An hour blurred into another. The room learned the rhythm of it: the alarm on his watch muttering every sixty minutes; the soft incantation of the water glass being refilled; the whisper of sheets tugged smooth; the click of the spoon against porcelain.
        "Do I have to?" she asked when he propped her against pillows and produced a bowl of broth.
        "Absolutely," he said. "Two spoonfuls."
        She scowled. He waited. The spoon hovered. He raised a brow. She opened her mouth like a petulant child and accepted the first. It went down. She made a face. He offered the second. He fed her six spoonfuls, and then seven, counting them quietly in a voice that had been known to narrate the epic saga of Sir Crawls-a-Lot but which now only said, "Five. Good. Six. Good. Seven"
        When she sagged back, he nudged the bucket closer again and set a fresh glass within reach. The cold pack had gone tepid; he tapped it with his wand and it went cold again.

        "You’re going to get sick," she said suddenly, eyes on the underside of the lampshade. "You’re -  you’re an idiot."
        He flashed a grin. "I am indeed an idiot. But I won’t get sick."
        "You don’t know that."
        "I do," he said, and this time the smile was easy. "Wizards - our magic - does… a thing." He waggled his fingers, searching for a Muggle word and coming up with none. "I'm not great at explaining it, but we don’t catch Muggle colds. Or flus. Or whatever fresh horror this is. They try to set up shop and the magic says, ‘Absolutely not, this table is reserved.’"
        She stared. "That’s not how tables work."
        "It is in my metaphor." He topped up the glass. "I can catch wizard things - dragon pox, spattergroit - but your garden-variety lurgy? No."
        "Spattergroit sounds made up."
        "It probably was made up at some point, by some ancient alchemist." He shrugged.
        "That’s not fair," she scowled, letting her head tip back against the pillows. "You should have to suffer like the rest of us."
        "Oh, I suffer plenty," he said gravely. "I stub my toe twice as often as a normal man. I am constitutionally incapable of following a recipe. And I’m currently being slandered."
        She closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see the smile trying to climb up her face. "Don’t make me laugh. It hurts."

        When the fifth hour crested, she woke out of a thin, slippery doze and found his head tipped back against the chair, mouth parted in a not-quite-snore, fingers still wrapped around the handle of the basin as if he’d fallen asleep standing guard. He opened his eyes when she moved and pushed himself upright with a small, guilty scrub at his face.
        "Hi," he said, voice sanded by the near-nap. "How’s the plague?"
        She laughed, and then groaned.

        He waited.

        "Tell me something," she said at last.
        "What should it be?" His voice was careful. "Weather? Quidditch trivia?"
        "Tell me a story," she said, surprising herself. Her voice came thin as thread.
        One corner of his mouth lifted. He reached for the mug, checked the temperature with a wizard’s carelessness and a nurse’s caution, and set it back down when she shook her head.
        "All right," he said. "But I should warn you: this is a wizarding children’s story. We hear it when we’re little. It’s older than the language I’m using to tell it."

        "That sounds ominous."

        A smile ghosted his mouth. "It’s called the Tale of the Three Brothers."

Chapter Text

        There would be breakfast out.

        Petunia decided this between the second hand clicking past the twelve and the kettle beginning to screech. Her father was off with the photography club, and her mother had a book club, which meant there would be no one to referee Sirius’s usual morning pageant. Fine. She would remove the stage.

        "We’re going out," she announced, already in her cardigan.

        "For?" Sirius asked warily, like she’d said, We’re storming the beaches of Normandy.

        "Breakfast," she answered, already turning.

        He grinned. "Am I being kidnapped? Blink twice for yes."

        They walked into town with the kind of cool morning that promised heat later, past the newsagent and the florist and the charity shop with a window of orphaned teacups that Petunia had to physically restrain herself from rescuing. The diner squatted on the corner with chrome edges and red vinyl that tried too hard to be American. A bell over the door did its best to sound cheerful when they went in.

        Petunia slid into a booth and set her handbag against the wall. Sirius sat opposite, glanced around with open curiosity, and reached out to fiddle with the sugar caddy.

        The waitress arrived with a pencil tucked behind one ear and a name tag that read FELICITY. Blond ponytail, bright lipstick, and a smile that had been practiced in the mirror. Her eyes flicked over Petunia once, bounced, and caught on Sirius as if he’d been designed for catching. They lingered there.

        Petunia felt something unfamiliar reach up from her ribs and pull taut.

        "Morning, love," Felicity chirped - to Sirius, unmistakably, though the plural was implied. "What can I get you?"

        "Full breakfast," Petunia ordered, before Sirius could decide what a menu was. "Eggs over easy, grilled tomatoes, bacon - extra crisp - toast, white, and tea. Please." She handed the menu back.

        The waitress wrote without looking away from Sirius. "And for you, handsome?"

        "I - " Sirius blinked, looked down at the menu like it might translate itself, then up again with a warm, open smile that was - Petunia told herself sternly - his default setting for everyone. She disliked the way something in the woman’s face moved in response. "This is… comprehensive."

        "Pick one," Petunia said.

        "I could… study the pancakes further," he mused. "Tell you what - coffee to begin?" He glanced at Petunia, seeking some kind of Muggle protocol approval. "While I make a decision of great national importance."

        "You got it." Felicity wrote, but her eyes were on him, not the pad. "Love your hair, by the way."

        "Thank you," he said sincerely.

        Petunia’s smile turned knife-thin. "And can the tea be very hot," she added, clipped. "Piping."

        "Course it can," Felicity said, not looking at her. "Back in a tick."

        She swanned away, leaving the scent of floral perfume and the faintest impression of a flounce. Petunia watched the sway of the ponytail, then the blouse, and registered with crisp irritation that there had been four buttons fastened at the hostess stand and there were three now. She pretended to study the condiments.

        The coffee arrived first. Felicity set it down with both hands and a lean that was wholly unnecessary for a cup on a table, and breathed, "Here you are, love," to Sirius. He gave her that same warm, unguarded smile and said, "Thank you," with a sincerity that made Petunia want to throw the sugar shaker at the wall. 

        Sirius ordered exactly what Petunia had. When the waitress straightened and turned away, Petunia’s jaw clenched, She glanced at the blouse again - one less button - and felt certain there was a conspiracy afoot.

        Sirius sniffed the coffee suspiciously.

        Petunia watched him watching it. "Have you ever had coffee before?" she asked finally.

        His eyes flicked up, sheepish, bright. "No," he admitted. "But I’ve heard it’s very official."

        "Mm."

        He lifted the cup, inhaled as though bracing himself, and took a brave, significant swallow.

        It was impressive how quickly his confidence collapsed. His eyes went very wide - deer-in-headlights wide - his shoulders rose, and a spectacular array of expressions crossed his face: betrayal, regret, the dawning realization that he had made a terrible mistake. He made a small, strangled sound, swallowed against his better judgment, and then - gagging - let the coffee fall back into the cup with a tragic splash.

        "That’s foul," he croaked, eyes watering. 

        Petunia composed her mouth into the strict line of a woman who had not, in fact, warned him. "Sugar?" she offered magnanimously.

        "It needs an exorcist," he said hoarsely.

        She tried not to grin. She did not entirely succeed.

        He coughed delicately, fanning his tongue with one hand. "People drink this on purpose? For pleasure?" He peered into the cup as if some creature might swim up and apologize.

        "Some do." She nudged the sugar towards him.

        He tried a dash, then two. He took another experimental sip and shook his head, wounded.

        Felicity returned with the tea and set in front of Petunia.

        "Food’s coming right up," she said, leaning far enough across the table that Petunia could see exactly where the blouse planned to end.

        Petunia did not take her eyes off Felicity until the woman had retreated behind the counter and was safely hidden behind a stack of plates. Then she looked back at Sirius, who was busy negotiating the correct ratio of sugar to coffee.

        The food arrived with a clatter of plates. Felicity leaned, again, more than any physics teacher would recommend, setting down bacon and eggs and tomatoes with a flourish. Another button had somehow undone itself. Petunia had never before in her life considered buttoning a stranger, but she found herself drafting the motion in her head.

        The waitress' voice came honey-soft. "Anything else you need, sweetheart?"

        Sirius, who had just rescued a grilled tomato from falling off his plate, looked up politely. "No, thank you. I’ll let you know if something comes up."

        Petunia tracked the waitress all the way back to the counter with a gaze that could cut tile. The woman glanced once over her shoulder, caught Petunia’s expression, and found urgent business with the coffee machine.

        "Muggle waitresses are much friendlier than ones in Diagon Alley," Sirius observed. "Last time I ate there, the witch behind the counter told me she hoped my broom got woodworm."

        Petunia stared at him. "Sirius."

        He gave her his attention.

        "She was… friendly."

        "Yes," he squinted, genuinely baffled. "I just said that."

        She met his eyes and - because she was not an idiot - watched carefully. She saw it. The innocence of the comment. The absence of calculation. He hadn’t paid the waitress any mind beyond the toast and the tomatoes. He’d been looking at the food. At her. At the catastrophic coffee. But not at the blouse, not at the smile. Not at the buttons. The warm regard he’d offered had been of the sort he gave the postman and Mrs. Cartwright and a skittish dog: standard-issue Sirius.

        Something in her back loosened a fraction.

        She reached across the table. He paused, puzzled, and let her straighten the collar of his shirt where it had gone slightly askew. Her fingertips brushed the warm line of his neck. He looked at her, confused and attentive.

        "Crumb," she lied, plucking an imaginary one away. "You had a crumb."

Chapter Text

        Wednesdays in their house had a specific gravity. Midweek meant errands and mending. The gutter over the kitchen window had been re-secured. The bathroom tap no longer screamed when turned left. Somewhere out front, the loose bit of paving stone that used to wobble like a loose tooth had been set proper.
        Sirius had been on ladders and under sinks and once, briefly, inside the airing cupboard muttering to a coat hook. He’d vanished for an hour or two in the hottest part of the day, and Petunia, following the half-formed worry as far as the porch, had found a large black dog asleep in the sliver of shade under the steps, paws twitching as if chasing something worth catching. She had not said his name. She had put down a saucer of water. The dog had opened a single grey eye, as if to say cheers, then gone back to sleep.
        By four o’clock, the kitchen smelled like onions and Worcestershire and the honest promise of shepherd’s pie. The radio muttered about a cricket score. A bee insisted on head-butting the sitting-room window. The cat from two doors down had decided their steps were sovereign territory again.

        The pie had gone into the oven at five sharp. Mum had peeled potatoes with the radio on. Dad, who worked mornings, had taken his paper out to the back step and was tutting at a crossword clue.
        Sirius came in through the back door at half-past five with grass on his knees and a twig caught in his hair. He dropped a handful of bent nails into the jar on the windowsill - his magpie hoard of useful metal - touched Petunia’s shoulder in passing as if to prove he had not evaporated.
        The timer on the cooker blinked four minutes, the potatoes on top of the pie browned to exactly the right color. The oven mitts, naturally, were not on their peg. She remembered suddenly that her mother had run them through with the tea towels that morning and left them to dry over the laundry rack. If she moved quickly, she could get them out and back before the top browned too fast.

        Sirius was there.

        He had the look of someone who had not expected to be observed: hair damp at the temples, sleeves shoved to the elbow, shirt untucked, one foot braced against the skirting. A shirt hung from the rack’s end by a clothespin, and his wand raised in his right hand. His lips were moving.
        He didn’t notice her. "C’mon then," he said to the shirt, "don’t be bloody difficult-"

        The flannel was mustard yellow.

        Petunia stopped on the threshold, hand round the doorframe. She had never seen this one before. She had seen green, red, and blue - if you could call what he wore "seen," given that none of them ever appeared in the closet and she suspected the rucksack he parked at the end of the bed was bigger on the inside and functionally a wardrobe - with room for a canoe. Mustard was new.

        Petunia stepped around him - there was very little room not to - and reached for the drying rack where the mitts lay folded like obedient loaves. She hip-checked him as she stretched; he startled so hard he yelped, and his wand hand twitched. The flannel convulsed with color: mustard to orange to a violent pink, through an oddly principled indigo, a horrid green, a regrettable purple, a mellow blue, before it landed, chest heaving (if shirts could heave), on a sensible red.

        "Good lord," Petunia said, oven mitts in hand. "What did you do to it?"
        Sirius looked down at the shirt in his hands as if it might answer for him, then up. "Tuna," he said, tone pitched guileless, which meant he was about to lie or be very honest. "I - ah." He glanced at the door, then the window, as if either would supply a plausible cover story. "Laundry," he tried, feebly. "I was… laundering."
        Her eyes drifted to the clothespin, the clean hem, and then back to the wand. "Laundering."
        He floundered for a second, mouth making three shapes before choosing the least ridiculous. "Changing the color of my flannel."
        "Why," she inquired, "are you changing the color of your flannel?"
        He looked at the floor, at the ceiling, at the window, at the shirt, and then at her, helplessly charming in the way of a boy caught painting racing stripes on a perfectly good bicycle. "Because," he said, pulling the word like taffy, "I only have the one."
        Air shifted in the room. "The one what?"
        "Flannel," he said, as if this were obvious. "Just the one. Shirt. Flannel shirt, I mean. Muggle flannel shirt."

        Petunia blinked at him, and then at the red shirt, which she was absolutely certain had been green last Tuesday and blue the week before that, and something like red on Sunday when he was on the floor arguing with the radio about the existence of Scottish weather. "You’ve been wearing the same shirt," she said carefully, "and changing the color."
        "Only when it’s a flannel day," he said, as if this were an established meteorological category. "The other days are for - well - jumpers. I’ve got one of those. And a… Henley?"
        Petunia’s jaw parted and did not immediately find its way back. She felt a brief and unhelpful desire to sit down on the washing machine and count to one hundred. "How many shirts do you have?"
        "Four," he said in a rush. "Proper ones. Muggle ones, I mean. If you don’t count - well, you shouldn’t count the Bent-Winged Snitches tee because it says ‘The Bent-Winged Snitches’ across the front and apparently that invites inquiry. And only one flannel. This flannel." He shook the red-plaid garment at her as if to introduce it. "So I’ve been… when I wear it… I just… change the color. So you don’t think I only own one shirt."
        "You’ve been-" She blinked, once, and then again. "You’ve been wearing the same flannel and simply… repainting it."
        "Not repainting," he said, automatically defensive and therefore ridiculous. "Colovaria. Color-Change."

        "You have four shirts."
        "Yes."
        "And one flannel."
        "Yes."
        "And the rucksack is-"

        "Bigger on the inside," he admitted, because of course he knew what she was thinking. "But it’s mostly tools. And an emergency blanket. And a book I keep meaning to read to look clever in case anyone asks me what I’m reading." He paused. "No one ever asks me what I’m reading."
        She tried very hard not to imagine the interior of his bag arranged like a boy’s idea of preparedness: bits of metal, a heavy torch, a handful of screws sorted into jam jars, a jumper, a book in case of being required to appear thoughtful. She tried, and failed. The image was too clear, and unreasonably fond.

        "You can’t-" She ran out of sentence and let the oven occupy her. "I have to take the pie out."
        "Right. Yes. Of course." He stepped back so fast he nearly stepped into the laundry basket. He tucked the wand behind his ear and looked instantly, infuriatingly attractive, even with bits of grass still in his hair.
        She shouldered past him, mitts on, and rescued dinner from the oven. Shepherd’s pie came out golden at the edges. She set it on the trivet.

        Behind her, the doorway made a small, guilty throat-clearing noise that sounded like Sirius.

        "So," he said. "Hypothetically. Is it worse to have one shirt one color, or one shirt in three colors?"
        She turned, leaned one hip against the counter, and folded the mitts into themselves.
        "How long," she asked, because he would tell her. He always told her, if she asked.
        "Since June," he said. "Blue on Mondays. Green if I’m going somewhere. Red if I need… courage." He smiled, bare and quick. "You like the red. You look at the red."

        She refused to confirm that.

        "And the mustard," she said, to be perverse.
        He winced. "That was an experiment. For-" He cut himself off. The look crossed his face. He smoothed it away without help from her. "It was an experiment. I thought perhaps if I - never mind."
        She could feel the moment tilting toward sentiment, and she put a hand out to steady it, palm down, as if to stop a wobbling plate.
        "You have four Muggle shirts," she said, deliberately practical. "And you have been using magic on them because you do not - what - even own a second flannel?"
        He nodded, abashed, boyish. "I have a very nice set of dress robes," he offered, uselessly. "Dark grey."

        "No," she said.

        His head tilted. "No?"
        She looked down at the mitts in her hands, then at him. "You are not," she said, choosing each word with surgical care, "going to transfigure your clothes because you own one flannel."
        "It's a charm."
        "You will absolutely n-" She cut herself off, surprised at her own heat. The mitts twisted in her hands.

        Because here was the thing: the image of him moving through the world with three shirts and a charmed fourth, pretending to be a man who did not repeat, was suddenly intolerable in a way that had nothing to do with fashion. It was about the lie of sufficiency. It was about him making do and then pretending the making do was a choice.
        It was about the fact that he had fixed the gate and the fence and the gutter and the tap and had not once thought to fix the quiet, ordinary indignity of his own wardrobe because he’d been busy making her life easier.

        He watched her face, attuned now to the minute weathers that crossed it, and opened his mouth as if to preempt a lecture.
        She stepped forward, took the flannel out of his hands, and held it up between them, eyeing the seams with the air of a judge at a county fair.

        "Absolutely not."

Chapter Text

        The next morning the Cortina coughed to life, and Petunia - hair plaited, mouth set - pointed it toward London. Sirius watched her drive like it was a magic trick, long legs knotted in the passenger footwell, hands trying and failing not to fidget.

        "Stop staring," she said, eyes on the road.
        "Sorry," he said, not sorry at all. "It’s very attractive, is all."
        She adjusted the mirror and pretended she wasn't blushing.

        He continued to gape at her for most of the drive - the indicator, the way she downshifted before a roundabout, the mysterious ceremony of parallel parking - as if she were a particularly competent dragon. He only lost focus for three seconds when a biker gang thundered past in gleaming formation; he watched them with all the aching, unrequited longing of a boy outside a sweetshop.
        "I want one."
        "No."
        "Two?"
        "Sirius."
        He slouched in his seat, chastened for eleven seconds.

        They parked under Knightsbridge, and three minutes later the doorman at Harrods had his composure tested by a black-haired man who greeted him as if he were entering a cathedral. Petunia took a breath, squared her shoulders, and marched Sirius into Menswear.

        What followed, by mutual and unspoken agreement, was a montage.

        Petunia discovered, quickly, that Harrods had a room for every possible version of Sirius: denim-Sirius, linen-Sirius, knitwear-Sirius, "God save us" velvet-Sirius. He vanished behind a curtain with an armful of clothes and emerged again and again to be judged by a tribunal of one.

        "No," she said to an offensively deep V-neck.
        "But it breathes," he protested.
        "How about - " He stepped out in a navy Henley and charcoal trousers that fit like a glove. She blinked. He blushed, pleased and startled at once. "I don’t hate this," she said, like a person granting asylum.

        He bowed.

        There was tweed that made him look like he’d inherited a library and might lend you a first edition copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A camel overcoat and charcoal trousers, which made him look indecently handsome and faintly bored of Parliament. A navy jumper and white oxford, a neat young man one would trust with a bank deposit. A black turtleneck and jeans that reduced three passing shopgirls to quiet ruin.

        Then he emerged in his favorite.

        Bright red bell-bottoms that could have flagged down aircraft, a green pinstripe blazer over a yellow hoodie, the whole thing an assault on the retina. He stood there, proud as a rooster, and did a little turn.

        Petunia stared, expression smoothing into that exquisite, lethal blankness she reserved for door-to-door salesmen. "No."
        "These colors," he announced, turning to admire himself and nearly knocking a display off its stand, "are the height of fashion."
        "Perhaps at the circus."
        "It’s bold. It’s - "
        "It’s a violation of the Geneva Conventions," she said. "Back in."
        "I don't even know what those are." He pouted at her; she returned a stare of arctic neutrality. He vanished back into the cubicle in a rustle of fabric and wounded pride.
        A helpful woman coughed politely into a fist and said, "We do have… less exuberant options."

        "Please," Petunia murmured.

        Between catastrophes he found more things she grudgingly approved of: dark denim that fit, a crisp white shirt that made him stand up straighter, a soft green jumper that did unfair things to his eyes.
        By the time they reached the ground floor again, they had acquired a stack of boxes and bags that made Sirius insist he was a pack mule and then demonstrate by braying at her until she told him to stop being an idiot.

        They were nearly to the doors when Petunia stopped dead.
        Petunia did not see it first; she saw a smear of cream and veil in a window and then him, and the bottom dropped out of her day.

        Vernon.

        Her blood drained from her face. She pivoted on instinct, any direction but this one. "Come on," she said, brisk, trying to steer Sirius away.

        It might have worked if the universe had ever, even once, loved Petunia Evans enough to grant her a wish. Vernon turned. Saw her. Smirked.
        "Petunia," he boomed, in the tone of a principal greeting a late student. "Simon. It's good to see you again." He held out a hand. Sirius did not take it.

        "Walrus," Sirius said, cordial as tea.

        Vernon’s color deepened an alarming shade before he remembered he was in public and pressed it back under his skin. Petunia said nothing.
        "I didn’t expect to see you here," Vernon went on, oozing pleasantry. "But what a pleasant surprise." He raised his voice, eyes still on Petunia. "Valerie! Come meet Petunia and Simon!"

        The woman who stepped out from behind a froth of veils was, objectively, stunning. Stunning the way supermodels wish they were - glossed mouth, sculpted cheekbones, auburn hair like a shampoo advert. Petunia felt her blood stand up and leave. The world narrowed to valves opening and closing in Petunia’s throat and the crackle of a thousand insecurities waking up and stretching.

        Vernon drew the introductions out like taffy. "This is Valerie," he said, catching Petunia’s eye and holding it as he added, "my fiancée."

        Sirius blinked, looked left, looked right, and then peered around Valerie as though expecting someone to step out from behind her. "Where is she?"
        Vernon stared. "Who?"

        "Valerie," Sirius said, and if Petunia hadn't lived with him for two months, she would have been sure he was completely bewildered. "You said - "
        Vernon’s smile curdled. "She’s right in front of you, you daft sod."
        "Terribly sorry, I can’t quite - ah!" Sirius’s gaze finally landed on Valerie. His mouth made a small, apologetic shape. "My apologies. I couldn’t see her past all of that makeup."

        Three things happened at once. Petunia’s mouth detached from her brain and gaped. Valerie’s eyes went wide and then narrow, color rising deliciously under the foundation. Vernon went the color of badly-cured ham.
        Valerie drew herself up, affront and powder rising together. "Well, I never!"
        "I can see why," Sirius murmured.
        Vernon’s jowls began to tremble again, this time with kinetic promise. He loomed, the way men do when they very much want someone smaller to notice, and found to his irritation that Sirius did not get smaller.
        "Now see here," Vernon began.

        Sirius sighed - a theatrical, sorrowing thing - then, astonishingly, straightened into an older version of himself Petunia had never seen. His shoulders settled. His face emptied of mischief. When he spoke next, his voice did a strange and marvelous thing: it went cut-glass, Eton-and-ancestral-silver, so proper it made the Queen sound like she’d been raised behind the pub.

        "Mr. Dursley," he said, with icy courtesy, "do forgive the interruption to your very public rehearsal of autofellatio, but permit me the indulgence of frankness, couched as politely as I can muster. Your manners are boorish, your memory conveniently infirm, and your taste - both in wardrobe and in company - suggests a man tragically over-enamored of gloss and indifferent to substance. Do us all the kindness of remembering that courtesy is not condescension, and that a smirk is a poor substitute for a soul. I must entreat you to remove your person, your opinions, and your regrettable neckwear from our vicinity with all possible haste. Kindly conserve your puffed self-regard for those unfortunate enough to be impressed by it. In short, good day, you absolute piece of shit."

        It was almost beautiful. There was a split second in which the world held its breath. Vernon’s face did something remarkable. Then his fist did something predictable.
        Sirius didn’t, strictly speaking, duck. The fist caught him on the cheekbone. Gasps. Someone squeaked. Sirius rocked back a step, blinked, and smiled with all his teeth.

        "Security!" someone yelped.

        Security materialized. The words "assault," and "police" drifted past. There was a small, dignified scene in which Vernon blustered, Valerie sputtered, and Sirius - hand to his face, eyes bright with delighted offence - said, "Oh, marvelous right hook."
        Two very determined men in suits extracted both Vernon and his fiancée - who was vowing litigation between indignant gasps - and escorted them through the revolving doors.

        Silence fell in their wake, brittle and ringing. Petunia’s heart was somewhere near her throat. Sirius, one hand cupped over his eye, began to laugh. Not a chuckle. Not even a proper laugh. Howling. He folded at the waist, wiped at his eye with the heel of his hand, and laughed as though the whole world had finally told a joke worth hearing.
        "Did you - did you see his face?"
        She nodded, because words were not currently available.
        He laughed all the way to the carpark, one hand pressed to his eye, the other balancing the ridiculous tower of bags like a circus act. He laughed in the lift, head tipped back, so delighted with himself that a child in the corner started giggling in helpless sympathy.

        Petunia did not laugh.

        She moved like a person holding a full glass in a crowd, careful, careful, as if jostling might spill something she couldn’t mop up. Her hands were white on the bag handles. She was breathing with great precision.

        "Tuna?" Sirius said, the laugh thinning. He straightened, sobered at once. "Hey." He lowered his hand from the bruise - a perfect, ridiculous blackening already peeking through - and saw how stiff she’d gone, how she was looking not at him but at nothing, as if focusing on air could anchor her.
        He set the bags down.

        "Petunia." Softer. No jokes in it. "We can go. Now. Or sit. Or I can shut up for the next year. Just tell me which."

Chapter Text

        The house was doing that thing where it pretended to sleep.

        Pipes ticked in the walls. Somewhere downstairs the settling wood sighed, as if relieved to be off its feet. The streetlamp cleaved her curtains into two pale ribs of light, and Petunia sat between them at her vanity.
        She did not check the clock.
        Mum had gone to bed with a hand on Petunia’s shoulder and a look that said eat something tomorrow. Dad had finished his crossword with an exasperated sound at fourteen-down and followed. Sirius, who could sit up whispering to the radio at indecent hours, had been marched to bed by Mum after she’d seen the bruise bloom and threaten half his face. He had lifted his wand and erased it in a few careless strokes, but Mum made him promise rest, and - miracle of miracles - he obeyed.

        Petunia sat and stewed. In the what-ifs. In the small, stale truths. She didn’t think she loved Vernon. She had thought that once - thought it with great effort - but time had sanded the lie smooth enough. The truth was uglier.

        The truth, she thought to the mirror, is that I am pitiful.

        The truth was that she’d seen her baby sister with a handsome man - rich, and handsome, and the sort who had a manor - and no one had ever chosen Petunia before. Why would they? Lily was impossible and bright and beautiful. Petunia was just…
        So she’d leapt at the first sign that someone wanted her. That someone had been Vernon. And she’d taken comfort in the belief that Vernon was as mediocre as she was, that he was settling for her as much as she was settling for him. That he could do no better.
        But now… Valerie. He’d gone and found a woman with a shampoo advert’s hair and a mouth you could thread pearls on and Petunia had felt very suddenly, very thoroughly, like a smudge.

        She stood from the chair at her vanity, ignoring the tears slicking her reflection. She let her gaze slip to her china teacups and for one long, treacherous second she wanted to throw one at the wall and watch it die. Her hand tightened on the back of the chair. The urge ebbed. The ache didn’t. She barely managed not to break down sobbing.
        She wanted to drown it out. All of it. But how? She didn’t have…
        There was, she remembered, half a bottle of firewhisky in Sirius’s dresser; he’d waved it about with Peter’s name on his tongue and then had the sense to put the rest away. If she were careful, the floor would not creak. She could... borrow it, not wake him up, not make a fuss. Tiptoe in, tiptoe out. That was the plan.

        She slid down the hall. Her hand hovered for the knob when the door opened of its own accord. Sirius stood there, hair sleep-mussed, t-shirt skewed, eyes clear in the thin light like he’d been listening for her.

        "I - I didn’t mean to bother you," she blurted, mortified, already half turned to flee.
        He shook his head once and folded her into him.

        The first breath hitched and the second broke. His shirt bunched in her fingers at his shoulder blades, her face pressed to the warm, clean line where his neck became his collarbone. He was all bergamot and laundry soap and a stitch of aftershave. He kept a hand on the back of her head and let the sobs do their stupid, necessary work.
        When the worst of it had passed, he let her go only enough to steer her to the edge of his bed and sit her down. The room was dim and ordinary, the pink of the curtains sapped by night, the flannel he’d failed at hanging from the chair.
        He opened the drawer of his dresser, and pulled out the firewhisky before looking at her. "I’m guessing you came for this," he said softly.

        She nodded, reluctant and furious with herself.

        His mouth folded, sorry. He turned his wrist; the wand slid into his hand like a coin into a palm. "I am going to do something profoundly unpopular," he warned, and flicked. The bottle unmade itself neatly.
        "Hey - " she started.
        "I know." He winced a little. "I know. It helps. Until it doesn’t. And then it helps again. And then it takes." He looked at the place in the air where it had been. "You don’t need it tonight. If you want, I’ll go downstairs and bring you water and we can pretend it’s something more poisonous."
        Petunia fell in on herself, the plan deflating with a small, embarrassing hiss. Sirius only watched her. There was something about the way he watched her that got her to start talking.

        "Fine," she said, brittle. "Do you want to know why I’m pathetic or would you like to guess?"
        "Tell me," he said.
        "It’s stupid."
        "Tell me anyway."
        "I feel - " she began, then laughed once, brittle. "No. I am ridiculous. I know that. It’s just - " She rubbed her thumb over the hem of her sleeve. "Valerie was so… much. And I looked at her and I felt like I was fourteen again and my hair wouldn’t behave and my skirt sat wrong and all I had were good marks and a face no one noticed."

        He opened his mouth to interrupt, but she lifted a hand. "Let me say it. Please."
        He nodded.
        She stared at her knees. "I feel… less-than. All the time. Like if there’s a room of people, I’m the one your eye skips. I don’t think anyone would ever pick me if they had another option. They pick Lily. They pick Valerie. They pick shiny. I’m not very pretty."

        "Petunia - "

        "I know that’s shallow, but it’s true. My nose, for one. It’s… sharp. And my chin - God, my chin. And it’s not just my face. It’s the way I am. Small. Fussy. Ordinary. Vernon - " She swallowed. 

        "Stop," he said softly.

        She kept going, words tumbling faster. "Vernon wanted me because I was easy. Easy to keep. That’s what I thought I deserved. And today just… proved it. He can do better. Of course he can do better. Look at her. And I - " She let out a ragged breath. "I am ridiculous for minding. I didn’t love him. I don’t. But I liked… being chosen. Even if it was a lie."

        "Petunia." He leaned in, bafflement plain and unfeigned. "None of that is true."
        She snorted, wetly. "You don’t have to lie to make me feel better."
        "I’m not lying," he said, voice sharpening.
        "Sirius - "
        "No," he cut in, hands spread as if stopping traffic. "You don’t get to talk about you like that. Not in my hearing. Not ever."
        She opened her mouth. He barreled on, lifting a finger like a conductor about to cue the horns.

        "First: less than who? Your sister? She’s astonishing and I adore her but she’s not more than you. Different is not more."
        She blinked.
        "You are beautiful," he said, and the word wasn’t fancy. It landed like a fact. "I don’t mean in spite of anything. I mean full stop. Your nose? It’s elegant. It says you’re decisive. It points exactly where you’re going and dares anyone to get in your way. Your mouth does this small, stubborn line when you’re thinking, and then it tilts when you’ve decided and the tilt kills me. And your hair - " He reached, stopped himself, flushed, tried again. "Your hair smells like summer, and when you plait it I have to remind myself we are in public."

        Her mouth tried not to smile. It lost, a little.

        "And your neck," he said, and then his voice tripped. Heat climbed the edges of his ears. "Your neck is - well. It’s very good. It is… eminently… I’m probably going to regret this word but I’ve started the sentence now - kissable."
        "Sirius." Horrified and not, both at once.
        He stared back, blushing like a schoolboy. "I said what I said."
        She made a helpless sound.

        He forged on. "You’re not like me, and that is a very good thing. You are clever. You see systems. You make order out of nothing. You are brave in the ways that matter; you tell the truth when it costs you. You are kind without announcing it. You" - he glanced at the chair where the flannel draped like a sulk - "do not allow a man to charm his only shirt into five colors and call it a wardrobe."
        He scratched at his clean-shaven face, then dropped his hand, earnest again. "None of what you said about yourself is true. You are - " He spread his hands, searching for a word big enough and failing. "You undo me."

        She shook her head, the protest automatic, but he lifted a hand and she stopped.

        "And because honesty is a debt," he continued, quieter now, "I should say… when I first met you, I had stupid reasons for coming back. Selfish ones. My parents - " His mouth tilted, not a smile. "They hate Muggles. I thought - idiot that I am - that if they ever found out I was spending my time in a tidy Muggle house… it would make them furious. I thought it would be… fun to be the kind of disappointment I was born for."
        Her stomach went cold. He saw it and lifted a palm.
        "That lasted about five minutes," he said, firm. "Because then I got to know you. And you were not a rebellion." He swallowed. "I used to date just to feel anything. On again, off again with a witch named Marlene - " He grimaced. "I’m fairly sure she hates me now. I came back for seventh year and wouldn’t even look at her."

        "Why?"

        "Because Marlene isn’t you," he said simply. "She doesn’t come close to measuring up to you. Not on your worst day with your hair trying to fight you and your mouth going thin and your chin leading the charge."
        "That’s ridiculous," she whispered.

        "It’s accurate," he stated. "You said no one would choose you if they had another option. I have options. I choose you."
        "Why?" It came out small. Childlike.

        "Because I love you."

        She stared at him. The room went very quiet around the sentence.

        "You love me."

        "Yes."

        She wet her lips. "When you proposed - in the stupidest hallway proposal in the history of proposals - did you mean it? I thought you were doing it to annoy me. To wind me up. Do you - would you actually want to marry me?" She pointed at him, sharp as a warning. "Don't you dare say you’re ‘Sirius’."
        He opened his mouth, paused, and for one taut heartbeat she hated him for it. Then he dug into his pocket and produced a small, battered book. He flipped it open and started riffling.

        "What is that?" she demanded, incredulous.
        "A thesaurus."
        "Why do you have a thesaurus?"
        "I always have a thesaurus," he answered, as if this were obvious. At her squint, he added, "Using big words made my essays longer."
        "Of course it did."

        "Ah," he said, brightening. "Here it is."
        He cleared his throat as if addressing Parliament. "When I asked you that day, I was and remain" - he looked up to check she was listening; she was - "adamant. Committed. Dead set. Determined. Devoted. Earnest. Intent. Resolute. Sincere. Steadfast. Unwavering. Wholehearted." His mouth softened. "Utterly gone on you."
        She exhaled a sound that wasn’t a laugh and wasn’t a sob and did a fair impression of both.
        "And," he went on, closing the book around a finger, "if you told me right now to climb out that window and run away with you, I would. Happily."
        She stared at him. The room tilted in a way that felt like standing up too fast and discovering you’re taller than you were yesterday.

        "Then why don’t you?" she asked.

        He did.