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Dorothy stares at the wallpaper, the world around her in a static, afternoon lull.
There’s not much to do today – Steve’s got a meeting till dinner, and David’s fast asleep in the cot next to her. The TV stopped working too, although Mr. Kleezak might drop by a little later to take a look at it for her.
She gets up, folding the piece of cloth in her hand as she approaches the door. Maybe she’ll go look at her garden for a while, take in the ‘sweet suburban scenery’, which is, in short, the one house next to her – house no. 4 on Privet Drive, the biggest on the lane. Home to one of the most reclusive couples she’s seen in her married life of about 5 years – she knows their last name, Dursley, and she knows that the Mister works with some sort of construction firm, and she knows that the Missus has got a rather long neck, which she’s used to pry on her a precious few times, but times enough.
She’s looking now, admiring the gleaming brick overlay of the garden side of the house, the perfectly maintained bed of tulips. Back when she was new in the neighbourhood, under the delusion that perhaps someone would be nice to her, she’d given the woman a bouquet of freshly cut lilies, and been promptly scowled out of their property.
Her attention snaps to the road when she notices a vehicle appear in existence. It’s a gorgeous, black car, with a distinct emblem on the front. If she didn’t know any better, she would’ve said it was the spirit of ecstasy, but it’s got letters instead. S.O.B., in gold colouring.
It smooths to a stop in front of House no. 4, and no sooner is the steam clearing out that a man steps out. His hair is long, almost a mane, and she can spot a rather handsome face under his thick sunglasses.
He’s wearing some kind of suit – it’s incredibly fashionable, at least by Dorothy’s senses, and she’s done a Central Saint Martins fashion course. It’s very well tailored and has a gold pinstripe on black, double breasted, and the pants are unusually tight around the legs before they flare off into an impeccably structured bell bottom, complemented by the shiniest shoe heels she’s ever seen in her life.
There is a man wearing a bell bottom suit and shoe heels in front of the house of the most orthodox people Dorothy has met since her own Mormon grandmother. She is not going to miss this.
She rushes back into her house, grabbing yesterday’s newspaper and a comfortable stool and hurrying back outside, setting the stool in her garden with a perfect view of the scene. The man has only moved a few quick strides to the house. He’s covering the distance fast, and stands at their doorstep in no time.
He raises a well manicured hand to press the front door, black nail polish shining in the sunlight.
Approximately a minute later, girl Dursley opens the door. And promptly screams.
“Hello, Pet. How are you?” The man declares loudly, “Sirius Orion Black. I’m here for my godson, Harry?”
Dorothy watches as the Dursleys freeze in place, Petunia clutching her (very cheap, store bought) pearls, Vernon going the exact shade of a boiled beet. A boy that Dorothy has never seen emerges from the house, a tiny little thing with an absolute mess of black hair, and doesn’t look even remotely related to the stupid, fat and long dursleys.
Sirius, for all his aura, softens the second he lays eyes on the child. His entire posture shifts, the sharpness melting away like butter left in the sun.
"Merlin’s beard," he breathes, as if Harry were some long-lost treasure finally uncovered. He lifts his sunglasses onto his head, revealing striking grey eyes that seem to take in every inch of the scrawny boy before him. His voice, when he speaks next, is almost reverent.
“Look at you, kiddo,” Sirius murmurs, a slow grin spreading across his face. "You look just like James. But your eyes... Just like Lily's.”
Harry blinks up at him, unsure, disbelieving. “You knew my parents?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.
“Knew them?” Sirius lets out something between a laugh and a sigh, filled with both joy and sorrow. “I was their best mate. And I’m your godfather, which means—” He suddenly claps his hands together, startling the Dursleys and making Dorothy stifle a laugh. “—I’m here to get you out of this absolute nightmare of a house.”
Vernon, momentarily stunned into silence, regains his shrill voice. “Now listen here, you hippie! This boy is our responsibility, and we won’t have some queer-suit-clad hooligan—”
Sirius turns to him with the sort of slow precision that makes Dorothy’s skin prickle. The warmth from moments ago is gone.
“Oh, is that so?” Sirius muses. He steps forward, and Vernon instinctively stumbles back, and Sirius towers over him with an entire head, “You mean to tell me that keeping a child in a cupboard counts as responsibility?”
Dorothy sees the little boy flinch at the mention of the cupboard.
Petunia gasps. “How do you—”
“Oh, I know plenty, Pet.” Sirius tilts his head, voice dangerously smooth. “I know about the chores. The hand-me-downs from your whale of a son.” he goes out of his way to glare into the house, where Dorothy presumes their actual son is, “The way you treat him like a second-class citizen in his own home.” He leans in, lowering his voice just enough that Dorothy has to strain to hear. “And I know what would happen if, say, certain authorities were to find out. Or much worse, if I were so inclined to, ah, handle things my way.”
He snaps his fingers, and suddenly, every single light bulb in the house bursts at once, and Petunia's pearls turn a sick black and crumble into ashes into the ground. The Dursleys flinch, Petunia shrieking as sparks rain down.
“That was just a warm-up,” Sirius says pleasantly, brushing dust from his sleeve. “So unless you’d like a demonstration of what happens when I’m actually angry, I’d suggest you go get Harry’s things. Now.”
There’s a beat of silence. Then Vernon bolts up into the house, nearly tripping over himself in his rush.
Dorothy watches, enthralled. This is better than any drama on television.
Then, Sirius turns back to Harry. His face softens again, and he kneels, suddenly eye-level with the boy.
“I’m sorry it took me so long, kiddo,” he murmurs, voice thick with something heavy. “But I’m here now. And I’m not leaving without you.”
Harry looks at him—really looks at him—and something in his small, guarded face shifts. He nods.
“Kay.”
Dorothy watches as the black car—sleek, polished, powerful—purrs to life. Harry is in the passenger seat, glancing out the window with an expression that is half disbelief, half awe. Sirius, one hand on the wheel, the other tapping rhythmically against the leather, is humming something that sounds suspiciously like an old rock ballad.
The air still feels electric, thrumming with something that makes the fine hairs on her arms stand on end.
And then—
A crack. Sharp and sudden, like a thunderclap without the storm.
Dorothy startles, looking back toward the Dursleys’ house. The front door is still open, Vernon and Petunia frozen on the threshold, but now—now, there is another man.
He wasn’t there a second ago.
He stands tall, draped in deep, silvery-blue robes embroidered with faintly shimmering gold thread. His beard is long, his hair the color of starlight, and half-moon glasses sit on the bridge of his crooked nose. His eyes, piercing and ancient, sweep the street like he’s seeing everything and nothing at once.
Dorothy doesn’t know who he is, but she knows power when she sees it. She was an electrician, sometime ago.
Sirius knows too.
The car jerks to a halt before it can roll forward an inch. With a fluidity that suggests both ease and readiness, Sirius opens the door and steps out, adjusting his cuffs and looking at his nails without a care in the world.
“Dumblydore.” He says the name like a challenge, with a biting edge of humour, like he’s already braced for a fight.
Dorothy glances at Harry—his fingers are curled around the door handle, uncertain, as if half-afraid this might all be ripped away.
“Ah, Sirius,” the man—Dumbledore—says, voice soft but carrying. “I wondered if I might find you here.”
Sirius scoffs. “Mr. Black for you, Dumbly. I suppose you might end your wondering now, then. I was just on my way, if you please.”
Dumbledore’s gaze doesn’t waver. “I came as soon as I sensed magic.”
“Ah, yes, that famous,” Sirius made some kind of dramatic motion with his finger, waving in the air, “magic-sensing thing that you do,” Sirius drawls, stepping forward. “Shame it didn’t go off, say, a lovely five years ago, when you left my godson on a ruddy, dirty little doorstep in the middle of the bloody night, Dumbly.”
Dorothy sucks in a breath.
Dumbledore’s expression remains unreadable. “I did what I believed was best for Harry’s protection.”
Sirius laughs, sharp and humorless. “Oh, don’t you talk about ‘best’, Dumbly-boy. I’ll tell you what you did. You threw me in jail, believing me powerless, and then put your latest chess pawn, my godson, on the doorstep of one of the most vile, evil and unimportant creatures I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet,” He gestures toward the Dursleys without looking, but Dorothy sees Vernon flinch anyway. “So now, Dumbly, I’m doing what I think is best, and I have it on good authority that it is, actually and in fact, the best.”
Dumbledore, a little more riled up now, asks, “And whose authority might that be, Si– Mr. Black?”
Sirius rolled his eyes in feigned fondness, putting a casual hand on Dumbledore’s shoulder, “Why, it’s my authority, Dumby.”
Dumbledore closes his eyes briefly, as if absorbing the words like a blow.
Dorothy, who has been holding very, very still, dares to glance at Harry. His fingers have gone white around the door handle. His mouth is a thin line.
When Dumbledore opens his eyes again, there is something heavier in them—something older, sadder. “I must admit, I did not expect such behaviour from you, my boy.”
“Damn right you didn’t,” Sirius growls. “Thought I’d just have a little picnic in Azkaban while you used my godson for your sick, evil little schemes?”
Dumbledore doesn’t argue, which somehow confirms what Sirius is saying.
Finally, he sighs. “Mr. Black, you must tell me what you will be doing now, for Harry’s saftey.”
Sirius’s expression shifts, just slightly, when he glances back at Harry. The anger doesn’t vanish, but it softens around the edges, replaced with something far stronger.
“I think that best thing for Harry's safety,” he says simply. “Is doing the exact opposite. You’re out, Dumbly. Hell, if you’re still the goddamn headmaster, he isn’t gracing the halls of Hogwarts – god knows what you’d do to him. He isn’t your chosen one, or your boy-who-lived, or whatever you’ve made up – he’s the son of a marauder, and the godson of Sirius Black, and you’re just a crockpot who teaches children how to make frogspawn, Dumbly.”
Dorothy lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
Dumbledore is quiet for a long time. Then, with a small nod, he steps back. “Take care of him, Sirius.”
Sirius snorts. “You shut your mouth, Dumbo. I’ll do whatever is best for him, and you aren’t going to say a single stupidly accented word about it.”
Dumbledore looks visibly offended, but he just gormlessly stares.
Without another word, he strides back to the car, sliding into the driver’s seat like he belongs there. With one last threatening glance at Dumbledore, he puts the car in gear.
Harry looks at Dumbledore, something unreadable in his eyes. Then, very deliberately, he turns away.
And then they are gone.
Dorothy, still rooted to the spot, exhales sharply and mutters, “Bloody hell.”
For the first time in her life, she thinks she might put her seven NEWTS to use, now.