"Mr. Potter!"
A frustrated-looking Emelia Bones hurried along the corridor, catching up with Harry alongside whom, moments before, she had been walking. Harry tried to calm himself, slowly allowing her point of view into his broiling psyche.
Azkaban was a convoluted prison, physically. Originally built before the employ of Dementors, the fortress itself was formidable and well-conceived in regards to making it as difficult as possible for prisoners to escape — no easy feat against the desperate, magical prisoners held within. With so many prisoners present, and with the constant presence of Dementors interfering with the usual magical connections, Harry had not felt Sirius Black's presence until he and Madam Bones had been escorted into Sirius's cell block. The moment Harry had captured Sirius's presence, he had abandoned any rational thought, and dashed forward, casting multiple Patronuses as he zeroed-in on his godfather's cell.
The sight and feeling of the emaciated form of Sirius Black had sent Harry into a rage, which he had needed to work quickly to channel into the exact opposite emotion necessary in order to cast the Patronus that would, hopefully, be the last ever needed to protect Sirius from Dementors. Thinking about the moment Harry had realized that Potter Manor would be his new home forever, and how Sirius would soon be able to feel the same sense of freedom, Harry had cast the powerful lion Patronus, which now stood between him and Sirius within the cell recently ripped open by Harry's magic.
Madam Bones arrived next to Harry, giving him a look of utter frustration before taking a breath to compose herself before addressing the hallway at-large.
"Mr. Black," she eventually began, "after new evidence has been presented in regards to your case involving the Dark Wizard Voldemort in the matter of the death of Lily and James Potter, the Wizengamot has voted unanimously to throw-out your conviction, finding that it was erroneous. You are hereby released into the custody of your heir and ward, Harry Potter who, though emancipated as an adult wizard, still maintains the legal ties to your guardianship as dictated by his biological parents. You are free to go."
Harry watched as Sirius attempted to process this information, not at all surprised at the bewilderment playing across his features.
"Sirius," Harry said, stepping forward. "You're free now."
Harry held out his hand. For a while, Sirius showed no response other than breathing heavily, his brow furrowed in confusion. Harry reached out with his magic, thinking he could perhaps connect with Sirius in that way, to show him that he was safe, even after years of having the opposite be true. After far longer than Harry had anticipated, he seemed to make progress. Sirius blinked several times, then shook himself, spinning around and looking at his surroundings as if he had never seen them before. Finally, his jerky movements slowly ebbing away, his eyes rested upon Harry, finally still.
"You look so much like James," Sirius said somewhat incredulously, his voice dry and raspy. He cleared it, and when he spoke again, he sounded much more composed. "But your eyes…" he breathed a heavy laugh, which seemed perhaps more like a sob as Harry watched him. "You really have Lily's eyes."
Harry fought back the immediately tears these words brought to his eyes, trying to push down his own emotions for the time being so that he could serve as a source of stability for Sirius. He stayed close to him from then on, feeling very much like a Patronus himself through the process of Sirius's release from Azkaban and his admission to St. Mungo's, where he was now being treated for the long-term effects that his imprisonment had taken.
"No," Harry stated emphatically after the mediwizard treating Sirius had stated that he should spend the next week in hospital to remain observed. "I know he's malnourished, emotionally drained, and that his mental state is on edge, but the last thing he needs right now is to be any further imprisoned. I'm taking him home."
He handed the mediwizard a scroll of parchment.
"I've contracted a team of private caregivers who are going to monitor and care for him. You'll see all the paperwork there so that you can share with them any pertinent information about Sirius's current state and treatment thus far."
The mediwizard looked over the parchment, but it did not seem to do much to persuade him that this was a good idea. He looked at Harry, but then shifted his gaze to Madam Bones. Harry tried not to be annoyed. Technically, she was the only one in the room who had the authority to manage Sirius's freedom, but because Sirius had been made Harry's legal guardian all those years ago, there were now rights Harry had, as a legal adult, as to Sirius's well-being, just as there would be if he were caring for his natural parents. In addition to that, Harry was aware of the energy radiating off of him, which had increased in intensity the longer he watched Sirius being tended to. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Madam Bones nodded her approval.
Harry took a moment, breathing. He was usually better at controlling himself, but as he thought about the impulsiveness of his actions today, it made him pause. Despite this self-awareness, he still acted on impulse, reaching out to take Sirius's arm.
"Thank you," he did make a point of saying to Madam Bones, meaning it. She nodded again, and Harry activated the Lord Ring.
For two weeks, Sirius recovered. Harry escorted the team of specialists to and from the manor, at first each day but as time progressed, less and less, until finally they all agreed that Sirius no longer needed the care. After arranging a retainer for each of them for the foreseeable future, just in case Sirius had any kind of relapse, Harry saw them off for the last time.
Sirius had spent much of the two weeks resting, which everyone agreed was perfectly normal for prisoners released from Azkaban. Harry spent a good deal of time wondering what it was like for the average prisoner who could not transform into an animal to escape the effect of the Dementors, if it was this bad for Sirius, and how society could justify such a punishment system.
The completion of his care had more than just a physical effect on Sirius, causing a dramatic lift in his spirits. He came down to the kitchen the next morning with a spring in his step, patting Zeely on the head while accepting the mug of coffee she had somehow poured and prepared with perfect timing.
"You always did make great coffee," Sirius told her, sitting down and taking the pages of the Daily Prophet that Harry had already read.
Harry lowered the sports section and peered at Sirius over the top of it. Sirius chuckled when he caught Harry's eye. It was the first time Harry had heard him laugh, and his smile — sincere rather than the small, fleeting smiles of politeness Harry had seen from him so far — suited him. Regardless, Harry still cocked his head at him, curious about what had prompted the laugh. Sirius shook his head, but still smiled, looking down at his mug.
"Your whole demeanour," he said, gesturing to Harry across the table, "reminded me very much of your grandfather. I'm usually an early riser, even more so back in the day. Occasionally I'd come down for coffee and he'd look at me just as you did over the paper. It was sometimes how he found out I was even staying here."
Harry put down the paper, giving his own smile. While he and Sirius had not had many opportunities to talk while Sirius recovered, Harry did enjoy each time Sirius reminisced about his time spent at the manor, where he had all but been adopted by Harry's grandparents. Harry had been quite glad to find that the guest suite he had selected for Sirius had been the very one he had always stayed in whenever he had needed to get away from his own family, who had been staunch supporters of Voldemort, politically and financially.
"It's mad that I'm…" Sirius trailed off, staring into the air, then let out a series of laughs, ending with a sigh and a shake of his head. "I've found myself yet again being taken in at Potter Manor. I can't decide if it's serendipitous, or just pathetic."
"It's not pathetic," Harry said at once. "Needing a place to go was never any fault of your own. I'm glad my family made this a safe place for you, and it will always be from now on. I'll be adding you to the wards — I just have to use some of your blood, so I wanted to wait until you were fully recovered."
There was a small raise of Sirius's eyebrows, but other than that, he did not respond at first, picking the paper back up, looking it over as he continued the conversation with a somewhat forced casual tone.
"I feel like we maybe have some catching up to do," he said.
Harry snorted. "Yeah, maybe just a bit."
Sirius nodded, turning the page. "Your birthday is coming up."
Harry nodded. His birthday was two weeks away, but he had put any plans for that on hold so he could focus on helping Sirius.
"You're turning thirteen, although I'd swear you were older, from the look of you. Have you always been big for your age?"
Harry said nothing, and let the silence stretch on until finally responding. "You know, based on everything I remember about you — I have an eidetic memory so I do remember some of my baby days, believe it or not —"
"I remember your parents talking about your memory," Sirius recalled, dropping the paper. "But you were so little…"
"Right, but based on that, and what I read about you in my father's journal —"
"Oh good! You found that!" Sirius interrupted yet again.
"Yes, and based on all of that," Harry said quickly before Sirius could cut him off again, "I would have thought you to be better at subterfuge."
Sirius looked at him for a few seconds, then folded his hands on the table and changed his posture, his face shifting so that he looked genuinely careless in a charming sort of way. Harry felt like he was now seeing exactly the kind of high-quality cunning Sirius was known for.
"Harry, I don't know what you mean," he said in a paternal tone, with just the slightest hint of disappointment.
It was the perfect delivery for the situation. So much so that Harry almost believed him—almost. He let the look on his face communicate the awe he felt at how convincing Sirius was, and Sirius smiled and relaxed, sitting back in his chair.
"All right, fine. Sorry, Harry, but this is unusual," he admitted, gesturing at Harry and now sounding totally sincere. "Also, remember I basically used to live here, so I know how to use the library. I searched the Daily Prophet archives you added, for any mention of you during the past twelve years."
Harry waited, wondering where Sirius was going with this.
"You're clearly a remarkable wizard — a savant, some might even say, with magic. You won the duelling championship — as a child! Won the UWC, stopped Voldemort yet again, did this…"
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a clipping from the Prophet—the photo of Harry with the slain basilisk.
"Hey!" Harry admonished. "That's — you do understand the purpose of an archive, right?"
"Are you kidding?" Sirius said looking at the photo. "I'm definitely keeping this, and I'm not sorry about taking it, but my point is, while these accomplishments are great they're also… unusual. Maybe it's none of my business, but I am your godfather, so if there's anything I should know…"
Harry looked at him for a while, thinking. He was fortunate enough to know that he could trust Sirius fully based on what he had felt from his visions, but he just wasn't sure he was ready to confide fully in him… yet.
Harry shrugged. "Yeah, I mean, when I think about it I guess you're right. It's unusual, but that's kind of always been my theme, and when I put forth the effort to try and get good at something, I usually do. The memory helps, for sure."
Sirius looked at Harry, thoughtful and quiet for a few moments.
"All right," he said, clearly not convinced, but resigning himself to move on. "So then how about you tell me how on earth you managed to find this place?" He held his arms wide to indicate that he was talking about the manor.
For a while, Harry filled him in on his life with the Dursleys, feeling guilty for the details he purposefully omitted and sometimes lied about. By the time he got to meeting with Beatrice and going to Gringotts where he received the Lord Ring, he thought Sirius had started to look tired again. After he had finished telling Sirius about his first encounter with Toory and Zeely, he knew Sirius was looking paler.
"I think you should lie down," Harry told him. He saw Sirius's shoulders slump, but he nodded and stood up.
"I shouldn't complain," he said. "That bed is the most comfortable I've ever slept in… although maybe I just feel that way because of the respite it's always represented…"
"I think maybe you should really test the notion, stay in there for a good, long while," Harry said, gently pushing Sirius ahead of him towards the staircase. "You can call Toory or Zeely if you need anything, or to have them to come and get me if you wake up and want to talk some more but don't want to get out of bed."
"We'll see," Sirius said somewhat doubtfully. "I wonder if my family's house is still standing. I suppose I'll have to go there eventually and check it out. If it is, you can… we can… unless you'd rather… I suppose you are an adult, technically…"
He was rambling a bit, and his footsteps seemed to be slowing down. Harry took his elbow and Apparated them to the guest suite, basically having to catch Sirius at their arrival.
"Sorry," he said, helping Sirius get to the bed. "It just seemed like faster would be better right now."
Sirius waved him off, falling into the bed with a satisfied groan. "No worries," he said, his eyes already closed. "I wonder if all my stuff is still there… we could really use the two-way mirrors right about now."
Harry looked at him, concerned at first for how tired he had become, but then fully absorbing what he had said. "Two-way mirrors?"
"Hm? Oh. Yeah. Your father and I came up with those as a way to be able to talk to one another while serving separate detentions. We always were inventing…"
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Harry said, stunned.
Sirius laughed, and opened his eyes to give Harry an amused look. "That's a… strong response!" he quipped.
"I have been trying to manage that — that exact thing — for years," Harry said, the volume of his voice growing with each word. "And you're telling me you figured it out before I was even born?"
Sirius chuckled, but kept his eyes closed. "Just like James," he said. "He too was usually good at whatever he put his mind to, so whenever there was a problem he couldn't quickly solve, it drove him up the wall."
"I am miles up the wall," Harry said. "It's been making me crazy, because from everything I could see, I knew it should be possible but I just couldn't manage it. Do you have any idea how much research and experimentation I've done on this? If you weren't about to fall asleep, we would be going down into my workshop right now and you'd —"
Having been pacing the floor during this rant, Harry finally looked back to Sirius, only to see that he was already asleep, looking peaceful. Harry dropped the arms he had been gesticulating madly with and took a breath to calm himself, eventually shaking his head, a smile escaping his lips at both his rather strong reaction and the knowledge that he may finally be able to accomplish what he had been trying to manage with the Wireless Walls.
In the short time it took for him to tiptoe from the room, his mood shifted severely as he thought about the idea, coming to the realization that it could very well be the mere act of using a mirror rather than plain glass that would have made what Harry was already trying successful. He was of a divided mind as he made his way to his workshop, knowing it would be fantastic if this idea worked, but also knowing how infuriating it would be if something so pathetically simple was all that he had needed this whole time.
He got to work, deciding to use the 137th of the 208 methods he had so far attempted, thinking it likely to be the most compatible with this new information. He conjured two small mirrors and carefully performed the magic he had been trying to get to work thus far.
"Activate," he said, looking at the first mirror. There was a slight purple glow, which had always been expected but had never occurred when he was using plain glass, but then the mirror returned to looking like a regular mirror. He tried and failed to ignore the look of raw anticipation staring back at him from his reflection, placing the mirror on his workbench so that it faced the miniature model of the solar system Beatrice had gifted him for Christmas. Once he was sure the mirror was facing the moving model, he took the second mirror and walked across the room.
He pushed away the thoughts of how disappointed he was going to be if this didn't work, and pressed on, knowing there was no reason to draw the moment out.
"Activate," he said again to the second mirror. This time, Harry had tapped his glasses and detected the ultraviolet wavelengths normally invisible to the human eye that were being used, which continued to glow from the mirror until he tapped his glasses again, making it yet again seem like just another ordinary mirror.
"Connect to HP1," he said into the mirror.
At once, the mirror he had left on the bench gave the slightest buzz — one no one else probably would have even detected, but it might as well have been an explosion for how it made Harry feel.
"Toory!" he called, and the house elf appeared a few seconds later.
"Toory, I think I got it — with Sirius's help," he said, handing him the mirror and bounding across the room. "Let's see if it works!" He knew he did not need to explain further, as Toory and Zeely were well aware of his efforts thus far, which made Harry think… "Zeely!"
She appeared almost immediately.
"Master Harry?"
"I think we did it," he explained again. "Stand with Toory and let's find out!"
Zeely bounced over to Toory and stood next to him, both of their faces alight with anticipation. Harry moved to the bench and picked up the first mirror, which now showed in purple lettering, "HP2" glowing in and out. He tapped on the letters, and the faces of Toory and Zeely came into focus in front of him. He embraced the intense feeling of victory that swept over him, immediately laughing.
"So, how are you two doing today?" he said into the mirror.
"We is very glad to see you so happy!" Zeely's voice squeaked in reply from Harry's mirror, as well as from across the room, looking back and forth from the mirror to the real Harry.
Harry laughed again, then took his wand from the bench and tapped the top right corner of the mirror. As with a standard Wireless Wall, information was displayed regarding the device's connection to the WWN, reading a perfect connection. Something new was the inclusion of information regarding the added magic paralleling the function of an Omnicorder. Everything was working exactly as it should. The mirrors were not transmitting directly to one another, but were utilizing the Network, meaning that any two people who were using a mirror could connect to one another at any time without having to perform any added magic between the devices.
As he and the house elves continued a rather giddy conversation completely needlessly over the network, Harry recognized a cascade of emotions regarding this success — elation, excited anticipation for what this would mean for wizarding society, anger at himself for not finding the solution sooner, a deep appreciation for Sirius's guidance, and a hopefulness that there could be more that he could learn from his godfather.
"I should have just gotten you a Firebolt."
Harry looked up at Sirius, and patted his godfather on the shoulder consolingly. They were standing on a patch of unkempt grass in the middle of a small square, looking up at the grimy fronts of the surrounding houses, which were not welcoming; some of them had broken windows, glimmering dully in the light from the streetlamps, paint was peeling from many of the doors, and heaps of rubbish lay outside several sets of front steps. Their gaze was focused on number twelve, Grimmauld Place, home to the Black family, and an obvious source of heavy emotions from the remaining member of the immediate family.
"If you really mean that, I won't hold you to this," Harry said earnestly. "A Firebolt would be pretty cool."
Today was Harry's birthday. After much discussion regarding what Sirius could possibly offer as a gift to make up for twelve years of missed presents (which Harry vehemently argued against as making any kind of sense), Harry had suggested that they visit Sirius's childhood home, which Sirius had made mention of at least once a day for the past two weeks. It was clear to Harry that Sirius wanted to come here, but was understandably reluctant. Harry hoped that his encouragement to do so today would not end up being a negative experience for his godfather.
Sirius sighed. "No, it's fine. Let's just get this over with."
They crossed the lane and walked up the worn stone steps to a shabby and scratched door, painted black. The silver door knocker was in the form of a twisted serpent. There was no keyhole or letterbox.
Sirius pulled out his wand, recently returned by the Ministry, and tapped the door once. Harry heard many loud, metallic clicks and what sounded like the clatter of a chain. The door creaked open. Sirius hesitated, and Harry could feel his… pain.
"Hey," he said, this time grasping Sirius's arm. "We don't have to, but if we do, I'm right here." He was unsure of what more to say, as he had tried to imagine himself in Sirius's place. If they were visiting Harry's childhood home in the village of Godric's Hallow, he imagined he would be having similar trepidations.
Whatever he was thinking or feeling, Sirius opened the door and walked through. Harry followed him, stepping over the threshold into the almost total darkness of the hall. He could smell damp, dust, and a sweetish, rotting smell; the place had the feeling of a derelict building. When Harry closed the door behind him, the darkness in the hall became complete.
"Hang on," Sirius said, and a moment later, Harry heard a soft hissing noise and then old-fashioned gas lamps along the walls sputtered into life all along the walls, casting a flickering insubstantial light over the peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpet of a long, gloomy hallway, where a cobwebby chandelier glimmered overhead and age-blackened portraits hung crooked on the walls. Harry heard something scuttling behind the baseboard. Both the chandelier and the candelabra on a rickety table nearby were shaped like serpents.
"Wow," Harry remarked, earning a laugh from Sirius.
"Yeah," he said, shaking his head and leading Harry past a pair of long, moth-eaten curtains, behind which Harry supposed there must be another door, and after skirting a large umbrella stand that looked as though it had been made from a severed troll's leg, they started up the dark staircase, passing a row of shrunken heads mounted on plaques on the wall. A closer look showed Harry that the heads belonged to house-elves. All of them had the same rather snout like nose.
Harry's bewilderment deepened with every step he took. Sirius had told him about his family's sordid history, but he had never imagined that their political ideologies would be so visibly obvious from nothing more than their home's décor. Sirius led him down a set of steps.
"You may have actually undersold things," Harry said as they entered the drawing room, a long, high-ceilinged room on the first floor with olive-green walls covered in dirty tapestries. The carpet exhaled little clouds of dust every time one of them put their foot on it and the long, moss-green velvet curtains were buzzing as though swarming with invisible bees.
"Well, that's the role of a responsible guardian, isn't it?" Sirius said, again shaking his head, which Harry imagined was an involuntary response. He took a moment, then looked at Harry, regret playing across his face. "I… we used to have a house elf," he said, sounding regretful. "I don't know if he's here anymore. Hell, I don't know if he's even still alive…"
This was the first Harry had heard of this, but it lifted his spirits. If the Black family had a house elf, that ought to be a source of positivity and acceptance that would be heartening for Sirius.
"Call him," Harry suggested.
Sirius looked at Harry with a somewhat wild expression on his face. He looked down at the floor, back to Harry, back to the floor, and back to Harry.
"…Okay," he eventually said. "Kreacher?"
A house elf appeared in front of them. Except for the filthy rag tied like a loincloth around its middle, it was completely naked. It looked very old. Its skin seemed to be several times too big for it, and though it was bald like all house-elves, there was a quantity of white hair growing out of its large, bat like ears. Its eyes were a bloodshot and watery grey, and its fleshy nose was large and rather snout like.
"… Blood traitor returning as if nothing is wrong, oh my poor Mistress, if she knew, what would she say to old Kreacher, oh the shame of it. Poor old Kreacher, what can he do? And a boy. Kreacher doesn't know this one…"
It was as if the house elf did not realize he was verbalizing his thoughts aloud. When he looked more closely at Harry, he inevitably saw the lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead.
"No! Not the false prophet, bringing shame to my Mistress's house and the name of wizard!"
"Shut up, Kreacher!" Sirius commanded, and the house elf clamped his mouth shut, his hands slapping to his face to keep it from moving.
Harry watched the battle taking place within Kreacher. The house elf was clearly fighting his personal motivations against his inherit motivation to advance his family's focus. In the end, it was an inevitable certainty that he obey a command, and the elf shut down, silent.
For a few seconds, Sirius paused, staring into space. Eventually, he spoke.
"Kreacher, disappear into whatever crevices you favour, and do not do one single thing unless I command it."
Kreacher considered the order, then lowered his head in a compliant bow and Disapparated.
Sirius took a breath, then said dryly, "Well, he's still alive. We're so lucky."
"Why… was he always like that?" Harry asked. He had sensed from Kreacher a concerning instability. The house elf's mind felt… almost tortured, and Harry had a difficult time seeing how he could have served the highbrow Black family in such a state.
"He… it's hard to say," Sirius replied, and Harry followed him back out of the drawing room. "Like I implied — he's old, but he's also been cooped up in this house for… I guess since my mother died — she died while I was in Azkaban and no, you don't have to say you're sorry, and in fact I might disown you if you do."
Harry thought of a couple of quips he could respond with, but decided it was not his place to try to make light of things, even is Sirius was.
"Since then he must have been alone this whole time, I suppose. I don't really understand how that's possible, for a house elf, or why none of the rest of my extended family tried to take ownership of him."
Harry was wondering those same things, but their answer came after Sirius absently picked up a dust-covered shoe and tossed it down the stairs into the entrance hall.
A horrible, ear-splitting, bloodcurdling screech pierced the air. Acting on instinct, Harry leapt down the stairs, drawing his wand, tucking into a ball to roll down the last few steps before springing up again to assess the cause of the sound.
The moth-eaten velvet curtains Harry had passed earlier had flown apart, but there was no door behind them. For a split second, Harry thought he was looking through a window, a window behind which an old woman in a black cap was screaming and screaming as though she was being tortured — then he realized it was simply a life-size portrait, but the most realistic, and the most unpleasant, he had ever seen in his life.
The old woman was drooling, her eyes were rolling, the yellowing skin of her face stretched taut as she screamed, and all along the hall behind them, the other portraits awoke and began to yell too so that, even after dulling his hearing back to normal, Harry actually screwed up his eyes at the noise and clapped his hands over his ears.
Harry darted forward and tried to tug the curtains shut over the old woman, but they would not close, and she screeched louder than ever, brandishing clawed hands as though trying to tear at Harry's face. He was hesitant to put his full strength into the effort, worried that he would tear the curtains off of the wall entirely.
"Filth! Scum! False prophet! Begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers —"
Sirius came charging down the stairs behind Harry.
"What the hell? No! No!" he roared.
The old woman's face blanched.
"Yoooou!" she howled, her eyes popping at the sight of her son. "Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!"
"Shut up! Shut up!" roared Sirius. "You're dead! You're dead!"
With their combined effort, they managed to force the curtains closed again. The old woman's screeches died, and an echoing silence fell.
Panting slightly and sweeping his long dark hair out of his eyes, Sirius took some time before he could look up at Harry, who couldn't blame him. Once again, Sirius's life had been shown to have been much worse than Harry had thought, if this is what his mother had thought of him.
"And now, I think perhaps you understand why I spent so much time at Potter Manor."
Harry nodded, but while Sirius's breathing was calming down, Harry's was ramping up. He felt himself grow more and more furious, all of his feelings about the bigotry in wizarding society boiling up after getting his real first-hand demonstration of the long term effects it could have on a person — a good person like Sirius.
"I guess she must have had this made shortly before her death, from the look of her," Sirius said far too calmly. "I can't believe she's still here. I thought it would be my house… Now we know why Kreacher stayed all this time. He was obsessed with serving my mother — even more so than normal for a house elf. I doubt there's a witch or wizard alive who could have removed him from this place. Same is probably true for the portrait, I'm afraid. Knowing her, she put a Permanent Sticking Charm on it so the portrait could never be removed from the wall —"
That was just what Harry needed to hear. Releasing just a hint of the pent-up magical energy fighting to escape him, he pushed Sirius several feet down the hallway, sliding on his feet, bewildered. Then, Harry reached out with both hands and focused his magic out of him. When he clenched his hands into fists, there was a sound far worse than Mrs. Black's screeches as the entire length of wall on which the portrait hung cracked, split, and tore away from the rest of the wall, bits of brick, wood, and plaster exploding in a great cloud. The curtains fell away, revealing Mrs. Black again, who this time was shocked speechless.
Harry tilted the portrait down so he was face to face with her, and smiled cruelly. He was about to punch a hole straight through the heart of her portrait, when he got a better idea. He looked to Sirius over his shoulder.
"I'll be right back," he said, then Disapparated with the portrait.
He appeared on a high hill not far from Gemma's house, where she and Harry had once flown together as she showed him around one day when he was visiting. From here, he could see the ocean, about a kilometre away. He did not waste any time, tapping the frame of the portrait so that it now had ten times the mass than it had before. He looked into Mrs. Black's eyes, very glad to see the terror in her face.
"We are going to rent your house out to foreign, vacationing Muggle tourists," he said spitefully, then reared his arm back, holding the portrait as a discus thrower would, spun in a circle in the same form, and launched Mrs. Black high into the air, his scream of rage splitting the air and echoing all around him.
He watched as the portrait flew in a high arc, hearing Mrs. Black's scream of terror decreasing in tone and volume as she reached the pinnacle of her journey and began falling towards the ocean, where she impacted the surface and vanished with a tremendous lack of fanfare and was just… gone.
Knowing that her persona would stay active for years to come, imprisoned under the water with just barely enough light to see — trapped, terrified, and alone, sparked a bright fire of satisfaction within Harry, which he let warm him. He let out a happy sigh, then Apparated back to Grimmauld Place.
"No you didn't," Sirius said once Harry had told him what he had said to Mrs. Black before casting her into the sea.
"No, I really did," Harry promised.
Sirius laughed heartily, to the point where he had to grab onto Harry's shoulder to stead himself. After several seconds, Harry saw the tears mixed in with the laughs.
"I hope… it was an okay thing for me to do," he said. "I just couldn't stand… that she was still… here, basically haunting you. I… I couldn't let that go on a second longer.
Sirius stopped laughing, looking back and forth between Harry's eyes, the tears flowing freely now. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but was having a hard time finding the words. And so, he abandoned the effort and instead pulled Harry into a hug, clapping him on the back and, after a few seconds, squeezing him one last time before pulling away and walking towards the gaping hole in the wall, wiping at his eyes.
He was quiet for a moment, but gazing at the now vacant wall seemed to remind him again of what Harry had done, and he burst into laughter once more, this time with no tears. He turned to look at Harry, shaking his head and smiling.
"Renting it to foreign Muggle tourists. It was just the perfect thing to say."
Harry grinned.
The rest of their day went much better after that. Granted, it was overwhelming to not be able to take a single step without finding a new thing needing to be cleaned, but Sirius suggested they concentrate not on cleaning, but more on the purpose for coming here today, which was to see if any of Sirius's possessions remained. Surprisingly, his childhood bedroom seemed to have been untouched, feeling like a museum exhibit presenting a window into the past. When Sirius located the two-way mirrors, it reminded Harry of something he had not yet told him.
"Oh, I credited you and my father in the creation of the magic that helped develop the Message Mirror," he told Sirius. They were still in the very early stages of development, production and licensing, but Harry thought it was looking strong that the item was going to be a big success. "In the official paperwork, I mean, so that you'll receive half the profits from our end."
"What? No!" Sirius protested. "Half? I… I don't deserve half!"
"Well, if you'd rather, I can just transfer… I don't know, a billion Galleons into your Gringotts account? I have full access to it, you know."
Sirius looked like he wanted to protest, but could not think of any valid argument. He knew of Harry's wealth, and while his kneejerk reaction to not want to take money from his godson was earnest, he seemed to realize that there was no rational reason to feel that way in this situation. He sighed.
"Okay, fine, but I want a say in the final design. James and I used regular-looking mirrors to avoid suspicion, but it ought to be far more attractive to hold, if it's going to be in everyone's pockets. We could even offer different styles, for that matter — just a few Galleons more for an MM with a dragonhide-back. Or a lightning bolt etched into it," he added, pointing at Harry's forehead. "No, wait a minute… they all need to have the lightning bolt!"
He was getting more and more excited as he spoke, and Harry was amazed at his energy and enthusiasm.
"A brand Harry! …The Lightning! The Lightning MM, The Lightning Wireless Wall, The Lightning whatever else we haven't come up with yet!"
It was barely midday, but the happiness and just… fun radiating from Sirius had already made this Harry's best birthday ever.
Harry awoke from a dream, feeling troubled. He always dreamed when he slept, as if his mind was making up for all of the lost time. He had once watched a Muggle television program claiming that a person would go crazy if they suddenly stopped dreaming, and while Harry did not put much stock in the accuracy of the program, it was a possibility. Regardless, he found dreaming rather fascinating. It was the only aspect of his life that he was unable to recall perfectly. In fact, there were times when he would wake up from a dream and the memory of it would wash away so that he would be left only with a feeling, or a sense of what it had been about.
Such was the case this morning. Pettigrew's trial was set to begin in a week, and while Peter had thus far refused to answer any questions, the Wizengamot had ordered the use of Veritaserum during the trial itself. It was not until the dream that Harry made the connections with the visions he had Seen of Sirius, and the repercussions that might come about from Peter's questioning.
He sent Hedwig with a note to Sirius, who had begun spending a few nights a week at Grimmauld Place. A good amount of the house had been cleaned, and in fact Dumbledore himself had helped with that. It had been quite a shock when Harry had stopped by one day to find the headmaster sitting on the floor with his back to a wall, conversing with Kreacher while the pair of them polished silverware.
After that, Harry always wrote first, or called on the two-way mirror before coming over. While the Message Mirrors were getting closer and closer to production, there was still much to work out, and Harry was glad to have the originals to use with Sirius in the meantime. Today, he chose to use Hedwig to give her some exercise and purpose, and because Sirius always enjoyed seeing her. Besides, he was not in a rush, yet, especially because it was still four in the morning.
Hedwig returned shortly after breakfast. Harry had asked if they could talk in person about something, and Sirius had written back, suggesting that he come to the manor to do so, as he had recently discovered a crystallized Stinksap tendril under the kitchen floor, which must have grown slowly into the house over many years and then been cut away from the original plant. While he and Kreacher had been able to dispense of it, they had accidentally split a part open, and the house still stank. Sirius was even interested in brining Kreacher with him this time — a first.
Luckily, Kreacher seemed to be progressing towards stability at the same pace as the house was towards cleanliness, and was now quite tolerable to be around and sometimes downright pleasant. Still, the dynamic between him and Harry's house elves might prove… interesting.
As Kreacher had not yet been added to the wards, Harry needed to bring him to the manor, deciding to do so himself so that Toory and Zeely could have a more gradual introduction. He met them in an empty Muggle garage not far from Sirius's house. He could detect just the slightest of Stinksap odor from them, but only if he really tried.
"Ready?" he asked, noting that Kreacher seemed a little nervous, holding onto Sirius's robes.
"Definitely," Sirius answered, and Harry wasted no time, taking each of their hands and using the Lord Ring to transport the three of them to a small garden off one of the back doors, near the greenhouse.
He led them to the door, which opened to a mud room just off of the house elves' kitchen. When they walked in, Zeely was standing on her tiptoes atop a stool, stirring a large pot. She hastily put the spoon down and smoothed out her makeshift apron once she realized they were there.
"Oh! Toory!" she called, and Toory came out of the pantry, holding a bag of rice.
"Master Harry, Master Sirius," Toory said, nodding to each of them.
"W-welcome back, Masters!" Zeely said somewhat distractedly, trying to get a look at Kreacher, who was now hiding fully behind Sirius.
Noticing this, Sirius looked to Harry, then back to Kreacher. Harry knew he was wondering if he should order Kreacher to say hello, but seemed to think the better of it.
"Toory, Zeely," he started instead. "I would like to introduce Kreacher, who has served the Noble House of Black for many, many years."
Harry shook his head ever so slightly at Sirius for the quip, even if he was sure he was the only one who noticed. Sirius flashed a wry smile at him before turning to speak to Kreacher.
"Kreacher, this is Toory and Zeely," he said, shifting his feet and holding his arm out in gesture.
Kreacher allowed himself to be revealed, and peeked towards Toory and Zeely, shier than Harry would have predicted. But then, once he saw them, his demeanour changed, as if little sparks were going off inside his mind and body as he watched the elves continue doing a bit of work as they smiled at him.
"Kre — Kreacher would be honoured if he may be permitted to assist the most noble house elves of the Potter family in their preparations," he managed. He looked very eager.
Harry turned to Toory and Zeely, expecting them to look to him for approval but, to his shock, they did not, instead sharing a look between the pair of them. When they turned back, Toory spoke.
"The House of Potter is honoured by the offering of assistance, and accepts."
With that, Kreacher bound forward, his uncertainty vanished. Toory and Zeely began giving him a list of tasks to accomplish as if they had been waiting all day to do as much, which Harry now wondered if they indeed had been. He and Sirius shared the same look of pleasant surprise, and left the kitchen without another word, as the house elves seemed to have everything under control.
"Well that worked out a lot better than I expected," Sirius said as he and Harry moved to the game room on something of an autopilot. They spent a lot of their time together in here, sometimes in competition, and sometimes cheering each other on while trying to beat a high score. Today, Sirius went to the air hockey table and turned it on. Harry stood at the other end, and they started to play — a very casual game as they sometimes would play to have something to do while they talked. "So, what's up?"
"I had a dream the other night," Harry started. "I couldn't remember much about it, but I think had something to do with the Fidelius Charm."
Sirius's face fell, and Harry hit a goal in easily. He knew the topic triggered a lot of anguish for Sirius, but Harry had other concerns, and pressed on.
"And then… I think it had to with… I'm concerned for Remus Lupin's well-being."
This time, Sirius's face grew hard, and he let out a scoff, slamming the puck into Harry's goal very much outside the level of play they usually used for these types of games. At Harry's raised eyebrows, he seemed to realize his response, and checked himself.
"Sorry," he said. "Things were strained between Remus and me before… before your parents went into hiding, and then when I was… imprisoned… and he never came to visit… I was eventually able to realize that I would have done the same thing if our roles were reversed. In fact, for a while there I had suspected Remus of being the one delivering secrets to Voldemort." He shook his head. "And he me, I reckon, so when all the signs pointed to my guilt… how could I really blame him?"
They played in silence for a minute.
"So, what's your concern?" Sirius eventually went on.
"They're going to use Veritaserum at the trial," Harry said.
"Yes," Sirius replied. He knew all of this, of course.
"And they're going to ask questions about my parents, and the Fidelius Charm."
"Right," Sirius said, a hint of impatience in his voice.
Harry decided to get right to his point. "So what if they ask him something that somehow leads to Peter revealing that Remus is a werewolf?"
As far as Harry knew, there were only a small handful of people who had knowledge of Lupin's Lycanthropy. He was required by law to reveal his condition to any potential employers, but other than that, his condition was secret. If Pettigrew said it under the influence of Veritaserum, everyone would know that it was true, and Lupin's life would essentially be ruined. He had never met the man, or even heard from him, but if he had been a friend of his parents, then Harry wanted to protect him, if he could. He could not shake the feeling from his dream that he at least had to try.
His brown furrowed, Harry looked up at Sirius and did a double take. Sirius had the wryest of smiles on his face. He kept his gaze on the game, but replied, "I supposed he could, but if he does, he'll fall dead, right on the spot."
A few reasons why Sirius would say this played across Harry's mind, but he waited to hear which of them it was, nearly missing the block to a nice wall-bouncing shot from Sirius.
"Sixth year, all three of us — your father, Peter, and I, made Unbreakable Vows to never divulge the fact that Remus was a werewolf. We were all about protecting each other, those days. It's like with the map — we made it so that our own locations on it would only be visible if one of us had activated it."
"I thought it must be something like that," Harry said, "since I never saw Peter Pettigrew on it."
"That would have been quite the shock, seeing him lying in bed with your friend Ron."
"He should go to Azkaban just for that," Harry said. "But so… okay, so Remus is fine."
Sirius shrugged. "I don't know about that," he said. "He could be dead by now, for all I know."
"He's not," Harry said, and Sirius looked up at him. "Not that I've spoken to him, or even know where he is, but I, uh… may have taken a little detour one day while visiting the Ministry and taken a peek at the Werewolf Register. At least according to that, he's still alive."
"Hm," Sirius grunted. "Well, I guess we'll see how it goes. Maybe… we'll reconnect someday."
Not knowing all of the complexities of their relationship, Harry decided not to press any further. Sirius and Kreacher spent the night, and Harry several times caught merry moments between the three house elves as they moved about the manor tending to any little thing, chatting away and swapping stories — all of them having to do with work. Always, though, the dynamic was clear that Toory and Zeely were in charge, and Kreacher was the assistant — an incredibly grateful and happy assistant.
Harry considered that he ought to see if Kreacher would like to have them at Sirius's house sometime. A month ago, Harry would never have thought it possible that Kreacher would have come around so strongly. As he thought about that, bounding up the stairs as many at a time as he could manage, the thoughts led him to a realization that he regretfully knew was correct. He stopped on a landing, looking out over the moonlit grounds. Yes, it was probably due time for him to pay another visit to Privet Drive.