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When he was younger, Sirius lived in Muggle London, and loved every second of it. London — well, the Muggle parts, anyway — is bustling and exciting and alive in a way that he’s sure nowhere else is. And part of it, he can’t lie, was about sticking it to his parents, who — well, he tries not to dwell too much on them, especially now. Merlin knows he had enough time to think about them over the past twelve years.
He’s always vowed to do better than them.
Now, he has the chance.
It isn’t how he thought it would be when he was younger. Then again, when he was younger, he didn’t trust himself to parent. He knew James wanted children, of course, just like he knew James would be a good dad when he did. For his part, Sirius thought being a fun uncle (or “uncle”) would be much preferable.
Life works out in strange ways.
What he knows now is that he has to be there for Harry. Maybe he won’t be a parent, per se, but he’s going to be a guardian, and that comes with all of the same responsibilities — maybe even more. After all, he wants to ensure that Harry knows his parents as best he can, and from what Sirius has heard, he’s barely heard anything.
(And what little he has heard has mostly revolved around James and Lily as war heroes, which Sirius supposes they were, but they were so much more than that; they were human, and while Harry can never meet them properly, Sirius can ensure that he knows as much about them as possible; to make them as real as possible for Harry.)
Maybe if James and Lily were still alive, Sirius might return to Muggle London.
But they’re not, and Sirius’s main priority is Harry.
He knows that Harry’s best friend (or one of them) lives outside of Ottery St. Catchpole. Sirius would be lying if he said he weren’t still the slightest bit pleased at the idea of how his parents would react to this plan of his, but even rationally, he thinks a small village that’s a good mix of Muggles and witches and wizards is the best idea for Harry.
They can even have a back garden with enough room to fly (under charms and wards that prevent Muggle neighbours from seeing, of course, but still).
When he brings the idea up to Harry — because this has to be a discussion; too much of Harry’s life has been dictated for him — Harry is thrilled.
Well, he’s still got that lingering uncertainty that he’ll be allowed to have nice things. It makes Sirius want to confront those awful Muggle relatives of his (who had been nearly as awful to Lily, too), but Remus reminds Sirius that he should focus on doing the best he can going forward.
And, well, Sirius can’t really argue that.
So he and Harry visit a few houses while they’re staying together at the Leaky Cauldron, and, once they find one that Harry genuinely loves, Sirius orders the withdrawal from his family vault (no one is around to stop him, after all, and yes, he feels a rush of pleasure at spending his family’s money on a house that was once owned by a Muggle family), and takes Harry shopping for household things.
Remus has to go with them, mostly because Sirius keeps having to bite back pointed remarks about Petunia and her even worse husband, and Harry doesn’t deserve reminders of the awful “family” he’s leaving behind.
Instead, Sirius talks to him about James and Lily — how James became his family, too (Sirius does not talk about Regulus, not yet; that’s a conversation for another day, once Harry is more settled.)
Harry asks him once about his family, and Sirius manages to maintain his relatively cheerful demeanour to say, “Oh, my family was awful. Trust me: you don’t want to hear about them.”
Fortunately, Harry accepts it. For now, anyway. Sirius knows they’ll have to have this discussion sooner or later, and he’s very much not looking forward to it.
What he is looking forward to is seeing all of the furniture and bedding and curtains and everything Harry picks out. Some of it comes from a Muggle department store, but others come from shops in Diagon Alley, or even right in Ottery St. Catchpole itself.
While Sirius expected to see a lot of James in the boy, he’s a bit surprised by how much like Lily he is. It’s interesting to consider how he’s ended up such a perfect blend of his parents without knowing them (because, no, Sirius cannot imagine that Harry remembers enough to know them), but Sirius tries not to dwell on that.
What he does dwell on is Harry’s smile, or the way he gesticulates sometimes (pure Lily), or the way he furrows his brows slightly when he’s confused.
It fills Sirius with something like regret that Harry will never know his parents. Sirius absolutely regrets that he couldn’t save them, even though Remus assures him that he’s being morbid, and his lapse in judgment was something that anyone could have done; that no one could have known about Peter.
It’s not the truth, but it makes Sirius feel a bit better, anyway.
Besides, he knows that he can’t dwell on the past. He has to be here, in the present, for Harry. Harry deserves the world (and he would even if he hadn’t gone through the hell he has), and Sirius wants to make sure that he gets it.
He wants to watch Harry grow up. He wants to see Harry fall in love — will it be hard and fast, like it was for James? Or slow and subtle, like it was for Lily? — to find someone who loves him just as much in return. He wants Harry to have all of the good things in life.
He can’t make up for the horrors Harry has already endured, but he can do his best to make sure Harry is happy and healthy going forward.
Speaking of healthy, they both need to eat more, Remus declares. He doesn’t properly move in with them (Sirius knows without asking that he’s terrified of feeling like a burden, and nothing Sirius say will convince him otherwise), but he’s there all the time.
And, yeah, Sirius has to admit that he’s a better cook than Sirius ever has been himself, and yes, he can definitely benefit from regular meals. More than that, Harry needs them.
Sirius wants to make sure Harry has everything he could ever need or want.
So, yeah, maybe he is already doing better at this whole parent (or guardian) thing than he thought.
On their first night all settled in together in the house, Harry shows Sirius how to set up the Muggle telly (something Sirius has seen before, at least) and something called a vee cee arr, which Harry swears can show films and things.
Sirius’s experience with films to this point has been at the cinema, which he always found cool. So he has no objection to this strange vee cee arr contraption, especially since Harry seems to know how it works.
Sirius trusts him not to accidentally burn the house down.
He lets Harry select the film, which is some sort of comedy about hunting ghosts, except the ghosts aren’t anything like real ghosts. Sirius supposes this is some Muggle invention. After all, Muggles don’t actually know anything about ghosts: only witches and wizards can become ghosts, and Muggles aren’t meant to know anything about the wizarding world.
(Sirius has found that a bit dumb for ages, but he knows it’s not up to him.)
He can’t quite suspend his disbelief as much as Harry can, so more than anything, he spends most of the time watching Harry and his reactions.
He hopes Harry is happy. He seems happy now, but Sirius knows better than most that this may be temporary — that he’ll likely have a difficult period of adjustment, just like Sirius himself did when he left his parents’ house for the Potters.
Sometimes he sees bits of his younger self in Harry, and he doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like what it means.
Sirius tries his best not to think about what might have happened if he’d managed to take Harry from Hagrid all those years ago; if Hagrid hadn’t been so insistent that Harry be delivered elsewhere. Would he have still been taken to Azkaban? Would he have still gone after Peter?
He doesn’t know the answer.
Remus tells him it’s best not to dwell on these things, so he tries not to, but sometimes he truly can’t help it. He’s not sure he’ll ever truly be over it; ever truly free of regret. He knows it’s not productive. Remus is right.
So he tries to focus on the positives.
Harry is here. He’s safe. He’s loved. He’s happy. He’s laughing while watching this ridiculous film, and he’s comfortable. He’ll never go hungry again, and he has the run of the house, and he can go out and fly whenever he wants. He’s already talking about walking down to see Ron and the other Weasleys.
(Sirius isn’t sure whether or not he’s meant to meet Molly and Arthur again — he only met them once or twice before, and he doesn’t think Molly was particularly fond of him even then.)
They have a lot they still need to discuss, really, but for now…
For now, Sirius is content. And, more importantly: so is Harry.
That’s really all he can ask for.