A/N: I don't own Harry Potter.
Chapter One
Everyone tells Dorea that once a person had been in Azkaban for a few months, they become unrecognizable. And so she is unprepared for just how painfully familiar Sirius looks when the aurors drag him in to the room and push him roughly in to the seat opposite them, wrenching his arms behind the back of the chair and cuffing them there. She recognises the way he flinches, the way he keeps his head lowered so that his hair falls around his face like a curtain, keeping everyone else out. She recognises the look in his grey eyes when the auror yanks a handful of his hair and jerks his head upright, forcing him to look at her. It's a look of shame and desperation, a look which pleads for help but doesn't expect to receive anything more than a slap in the face. The young man facing her in a visiting cell in Azkaban is very much the boy who sat at her kitchen table the night he ran away from home, apologizing for waking the whole house up and eventually admitting- with a great deal of coaxing- that his mother had used the cruciatus curse on him. The Sirius sitting opposite her now is still the same Sirius she welcomed in to her family five years ago- only this Sirius is shivering violently in thin prison robes, not in a soaked-through school uniform, and this Sirius has killed her son, and Lily, and Peter Pettigrew and twelve muggles- only the Sirius from five years ago hadn't been a killer, and he seemed so much like the same person. So lost. So afraid.
"Let go of his hair." She says quietly to the auror. "He can hide behind it if he wants, if he's really so ashamed to face me." The auror lets go, and Sirius' head stays level for a moment, two moments...then he flinches away and lets his chin drop to his chest. The curtain of hair falls back in to place, but that doesn't mean he's guilty. He had hidden the whole time he had been forced to explain which curses had made the various bruises and cuts that Charlus had insisted Sirius let him heal.
Dorea waits. The name Potter, already influential, has doubled in importance since her son and his wife were killed, and her grandson became 'the boy who lived'. She has all the time she wants with Sirius, and so she can afford to spend minuets in silence.
Eventually, Sirius speaks.
His voice is low and rasping, like the sound of dry leaves rustling in the wind. She doesn't know much about care in Azkaban, but she has no doubts that its prisoners are left to go thirsty, and have no one to talk to except themselves. He asks, shoulders tense as if he's expecting a blow: "Is Harry alright?"
He glances up at her through his hair, anxious, and Dorea's heart lifts a little. Because if he had told Voldemort how to get to Harry, he surely wouldn't be asking about the boy's welfare. "Harry is well," she told him.
"Are you sure?" Sirius' voice is quick and nervous, like he still isn't sure he's supposed to speak. "Hagrid...Hagrid said Dumbledore said he had to go to Lily's sister. And I would have taken him but it was Dumbledore's orders, and I- I wondered- if Lily had sent Dumbledore an instruction telling him that if anything happened to her and James Harry had to go and live with her sister, only I'm pretty sure her sister hates her-"
"Harry is with us." Dorea says firmly. "Dumbledore did take him to the muggles- but Minerva McGonagall sent me a heads up and Charlus went straight to the minister to complain. Harry is our grandson and we'll raise him, thank you very much." She pauses. "Once he realised Lily and James weren't coming for him, he started saying "Paf't, Paf't', over and over again, with the occasional 'Mooey' thrown in. I knew if Lily and James were dead, something had to have happened to you...and then the news came in that you had been arrested. For murder. For killing twelve muggles. For the death of Peter Pettigrew. For the betrayal of my son and daughter in law to Voldemort. How on earth was I supposed to explain that to a one year old? Merlin knows, I couldn't explain it to myself. Tell me they're wrong, Sirius. Tell me this has all been a terrible, terrible mistake and I can bring you home again."
Sirius shakes his head. "They're not wrong. Not..not exactly... I...I let down Lily and James. I killed those muggles..." and then, so quiet she could scarcely hear. "I'm sorry, Dorea, I'm so sorry..."
"What happened?" Dorea asks.
Sirius looks up at her, eyes full of guilt. "I was arrogant." He whispered. "I was arrogant enough to believe that I could get the better of Voldemort. If I hadn't switched...If I hadn't persuaded James to change the plan...but it seemed so foolproof. Voldemort would take me, would torture me would kill me and he would gain nothing..."
Dorea feels a shiver run down her spine. "Sirius..." she whispers."Are you telling me that you weren't the secret keeper?"
