Chapter 70: Verity
"Bloody hell!"
The shout rang out, forcing him to crack his eyes open enough to see the ginger standing between the curtains. "If you don't like it, don't look."
"Bloody hell," the ginger said again. "I mean, just... bloody hell!"
"Ron, what do you want?" Harry groaned, shifting in the bed to blink owlishly at the intruder.
"Well, it's quidditch tryouts today," the boy stammered, eyes darting, huge and terrified, between the two boys in the bed, to Harry's bare chest and Sirius's hand placed low on the boy's belly. "I... I wanted to..."
"No, I will not let you try out alone," he said. "When you make the team, you'll have to play in front of the entire school, Ron. You need to try out with an audience, too."
"Oh," the boy said, dejected. For a moment, he stood shame-faced and awkward, then he cleared his throat. "Uh, Harry... Did you fall asleep studying together? I mean, is that why you're in bed with another bloke? 'Cause if that's the case, you need to be more careful or people will think you're, you know, gay." He whispered the last word, as if saying it too loudly might make it true or possibly contagious.
Sirius scowled at the ginger but readied himself to support whatever lie Harry decided to hide behind. He remembered how the boy had railed against the idea of liking Sirius, insisted that he had only ever liked girls before. It was the truth everyone in this time knew. He didn't expect the boy to shout it from the top of the North Tower that he and Sirius liked to fondle one another, but, as always, Harry surprised him.
"I am gay," Harry said.
"Wha—?" the ginger gaped, his mouth falling open before he'd even finished saying the word.
"This is Sirius. I fancy him."
The boy's mouth flapped and his face flushed to so deep a red Sirius had to wonder if there was any blood left in the remainder of his lanky body. To his credit, the boy didn't move, not even an involuntary step away in subconscious repulsion, though he did look as if he might vomit. "I'll have to start changing in the washroom."
"Why?" Harry questioned, face screwed up in confusion.
"Well, if you fancy blokes, I don't want you looking at me."
He snorted and threw a pillow at him. "Never going to happen."
"What? Why not? I'm perfectly fanciable!"
"Not to me," Harry said and turned to him with a questioning eye. "Sirius?"
"Not my type," he offered.
"Gits." The ginger cursed under his breath as he marched to the nearest bed and woke the occupant awake by shouting, "Oi! Neville, if you were gay, would you fancy me?"
"What? No!" the boy cried. "Harry, Ron's been in the mushroom patch again!"
"Have not!" Ron shouted. "You lot do not appreciate how handsome I am." He tore from the room, no doubt to wake every available Gryffindor to find the one blind oaf that would own up to liking him if they swung the other way.
In the confused silence that followed the boy's departure, the others occupants of the room poked their heads from behind their curtains to see what had set him off. Three sets of eyes stared at them. He recognised the boy with the Herbology book from the previous night; the others he didn't know, but neither were looking their way with malice or disgust. The only thing he could read in their curious faces was exasperation.
"Facking hell, Harry," sighed the boy with a face scattered with freckles, his voice heavy with sleep and brogue, "you're back five days and you're already making trouble?"
The other boy chimed in. "Do you think you could keep Ron distracted with your gayness for a while longer? I don't want him freaking out that Ginny and I are dating."
"Just pretend you fancy him," Freckles suggested with a smirk. "He'll be so happy, he'll wet himself. Once he realises what he's done, he'll hand you his sister to make you piss off."
"Worth a try," he shrugged and turned back to Harry. "Please remember that silencing charms are as much for our benefit as yours. I don't care if you're gay, but I don't want to hear you at it any more than I do Seamus."
"Agreed!" the freckled Seamus cried and disappeared behind the curtain of his bed. The others followed, leaving Harry and Sirius in relative seclusion.
"So those are your friends," Sirius said slowly, savouring the flavour of the room. "They'll do."
"Gee thank, ya poof."
"Shut it, Seamus! I may fancy blokes, but I'm still Captain of the team you would give your left testicle to play for!" Harry shouted.
The boy offered a string of colourful curses behind his curtain that likely would have continued if Harry didn't throw a silencing spell around their bed.
"So you fancy blokes, do you?" Sirius grinned.
It was a comment playfully meant, little more than an ever-so-casual means of getting Harry to finally vocalise his feelings, and the kind of thing that always fell from his mouth – pithy, sly, blasé, meaningless. Harry, however, took a moment to really consider the question.
"No, not really," Harry replied carefully. "When I thought you were gone, I tried to figure out what that made me. I always thought I liked girls, but after you they didn't make me feel anything. I tried thinking about boys instead, but that didn't do anything either. I don't fancy blokes. I fancy you. Is that normal?"
"Perfectly normal. Loads of people fancy me." A fist to his arm had him biting his tongue to keep from automatically apologising.
Harry scowled at him. "I'm not joking. You've had experience with this before, you know about this gay thing."
He fell back on the bed, throwing the curtain closed as he did. "I really don't."
"But, you've dated boys before."
"I dated that one boy second year just to keep him away from James. I didn't fancy him, certainly didn't shag him. Then it was nothing but girls until you came along."
Harry stared at him, eyes narrowing and lines forming around his already downturned mouth. "But that day outside Healing, all that stuff you said to Hermione about finding your soul mate in different places. Was that was just taking the piss?"
"No, meant every word. Doesn't mean I'd done it, though," he countered, pulling the other boy down so he could look him in the eye. This was a speech he'd been practicing for days while stuck down in the boy's trunk; he wanted it to be right. "Harry, I dated a lot of girls, never for very long. I did it because that's what I thought I was supposed to do. They were nice, but like you said they didn't make me feel anything. Same with that Ravenclaw boy. No one I looked at made me feel anything. I thought there was something wrong with me, that maybe I'd had love beaten out of me before I even knew what it was. Then I met you. I don't know what it means or what it makes me. I just know that I love you, and I want to stay with you no matter what."
"Why did you risk it?" he asked, putting a palm to the newly acquired scars. "I pushed you away."
"Well, I love you, don't I?" he replied as if it were obvious. "I wasn't going to let you leave with half my heart. I would've been a useless, crying wreck for the rest of my life, and I couldn't have that, now could I? I have a reputation to maintain."
"But I pushed you away," the boy repeated stubbornly. "I never said I loved you. I never even admitted that I fancied you. You risked your life, abandoned your whole world in the hopes that I would want you. That wasn't very bright."
"Oi! I am more than bright; I'm brilliant as a fucking star, and you know it, Potter." He jabbed the boy with his knee for his commentary.
"What if it didn't work? What if I didn't want you?"
"Bollocks. I knew what you were doing, knew you were trying to make things easier on yourself. How did that work for you, by the way?" He offered a saccharine grin. "If you want to talk about plans backfiring..."
He slapped the boy's arm. "Shut it. I'm the one who had to deal with you dying twice."
"And I'm the one who, quite literally, ripped himself in two three times to keep you from dealing with that, so I do believe I win this argument. And every argument from here until the end of time. Whenever you are cross with me, I shall remind you of the excruciating physical pain I put myself through to make our relationship possible. I shall remind you of all the things I sacrificed to be here for you. My friends, girls, family – fuck that, it would have been a sacrifice to stay with them." He paused as a thought hit him before looking back at Harry with huge, hope-filled eyes. "Is my mother dead? Please tell me she's dead."
Harry breathed a laugh. "Yeah, she's dead. You are the proud inheritor of the noble and ancient Black estate."
"Wait, my mother is dead, and I'm still rich? This is the best plan I have ever had," he grinned and kissed the boy. "And I get to play Quidditch."
"Says who?"
"Says you. You're Captain. You've seen me play. I'm brilliant, make me a Beater."
Shaking his head, Harry disagreed. "Can't. You don't even have a house."
"I'm a Gryffindor."
"You were a Gryffindor. The hat might put you somewhere else, if Dumbledore doesn't try to send you home and put you back together instead."
His heart began a frantic, frightened rhythm in his chest. Would Dumbledore try to undo all his hard work? Send him back? Leave Harry alone? "No, Dumbles wouldn't do that."
"A lot's changed, Sirius." Harry was up and dressing before he could question exactly what the boy meant. The bleak tone implied volumes. He knew the boy had been withholding secrets. He had known that from almost as soon as they'd met. More than just being from another time, being James' son and knowing when and how Sirius would die, Harry was carrying the weight of twenty years of history on his shoulders. Under the influence of Veritaserum, he had divulged only enough to satisfy the questions put to him. That was a miniscule portion of the years Sirius had skipped over.
Inside Hogwarts, it was virtually impossible to discern the difference. The posters on the walls were the only clues that he had travelled anywhere. Everything else was exactly as he had left it. So it was in the common room and corridors, too. The braziers and sconces, the portraits and tapestries, the rugs and even the questionable stain on the fourth stair tread of the second moving staircase were all precisely as he had left them. But, outside the castle walls, he knew things had changed. He wasn't sure how, but Harry's tone made it clear that he ought to expect some truly jarring differences.
"So, what have I missed?" he asked, trying to sound casual. When Harry didn't answer, he tried again. "Where's James got to then? Lazing about at home all day or did he manage a job?"
His face turned haunted and pale as he had all those months ago. Behind his glasses, the boy's eyes began to shine. "James, Lily – my parents – they died."
He staggered to a halt, the air flying from his lungs as violently as if Harry had dealt him a physical blow. "That isn't funny."
"Fifteen years ago," insisted Harry.
"But—they – I just saw them – You just saw them. You didn't say anything. You didn't say a bloody thing," he shouted as a stone fell to the pit of his stomach.
"I couldn't warn them. We weren't supposed to interfere, no matter how much we wanted to. And even if I had, they wouldn't have believed me."
"You should have fucking tried!"
"Language, Mr Black! Five points from Gryff..." The woman's voice faded into nothing as Professor McGonagall realised who she was scolding. "Sirius?"
"Minnie," he greeted her gruffly, still glaring at the boy who had let his best mate die.
"What? How is this possible?" the woman cried, a hand reaching out and touching his shoulder. "Mr Potter, explain."
"He did something stupid," Harry offered.
"Says the boy who left the past without bothering to mention to his own fucking parents that they were going to die in five years. You could have saved them!" he shouted and cursed, lashing out at the nearest table with a ferocious kick and not caring a jot that a professor was two feet from him.
Harry, it seemed, was equally oblivious to the woman's presence and authority. "I couldn't do anything to stop it! Voldemort wanted them dead!"
An involuntary shiver ran through him at the name. "You-Know-Who? Why would he care about them?"
"Because of me. Remember that 'very bad man' who gave me this?" He lifted his fringe, revealing the scar on his forehead. "That was Voldemort. He tried to kill me when I was a year old. He's still trying. Has tried nearly every year since I started school here. The year I met you was the exception. That was the year I learned Peter handed my parents to Voldemort on a plate."
"Pete wouldn't—"
"He did," the boy spat. "And I had to sit at the table with him, knowing what he'd do. Pretending nothing was wrong. He was the coward who gave me this." He tore at his sleeve to show the gouge in his arm.
Despite the anger burning in him, he wanted to reach out and touch the wound, to sooth the pain. His hand fell limply by his side as words failed him. He remembered Harry's first morning, the way he had gripped the knife and stared Wormtail down as if he had wanted to kill the boy. Hermione had offered a vague excuse about Peter looking like someone who had hurt him. He hadn't realised how deep that hurt was. Peter was a traitor, a servant of the Dark Lord. James was dead. He truly had travelled to a different world.
"What about Remus? When did he die?"
"He didn't," Harry said.
Sirius couldn't help the cold laugh that pulled up from his lungs. "Poor bastard. He never thought he'd live past thirty-five, and he's managed to outlive us all. That's got to hurt."