"Ow! Sirius!" Harry slapped his godfather's hand away.

The dark-haired man winced. Sirius lifted the comb to eye level and gingerly removed some of the hair he had inadvertently ripped off of his godson's head.

"Sorry about that." Sirius apologized, trying to discretely get rid of the incriminating evidence without Harry noticing. Sirius dropped the hairs in the bin and went back to his task of attempting to untangle his godson's hair. He came to a particularly bad tangle, and immediately began to attack it with the comb.

"Moony would love this," Sirius muttered, ignoring Harry's protests as he picked up a pair of scissors to cut out a small, yet stubborn, chunk of hair. Sirius put the scissors down and picked up the comb again.

Noting this, Harry slowly inched his hand forward until his fingers closed over scissors. He grinned triumphantly and quickly hid them in his pocket.

"Harry, put those back." Sirius tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to untangle the comb once more and sighed.

Harry, who was usually very mature for his age, was pouting in a way reminiscent of a sulking child. "You're cutting my hair!"

"Quit whining. You needed a haircut, in any case."

"It's not like it makes a difference. It always grows back."

"Then why are you complaining?" Sirius asked, taking the comb and playfully whacking Harry over the head with it.

"Hey!" Harry turned, snatched the comb away, and returned the favor. Repeatedly, and not so playfully.

"Hey! You can't hurt an unarmed man!" Sirius yelled, picking up a toothbrush to use as a defense weapon.

Sirius parried a few of Harry's blows with his dental hygiene tool, and then switched to an offensive strategy, moving forward to poke Harry in the arm. Harry ducked at the last minute and the toothbrush went right over his head and got stuck in the hopeless tangle Harry called hair. Unaware of the damage, Harry then tried to stand up straight, but Sirius was still holding the toothbrush. It was too late; Harry had stood up far too quickly and could do nothing more than let out a loud yelp as another small clump of hair was ripped of his head.

" You may as well shave my head if you just want to see me bald!" Harry picked up the clump of hair from the floor and threw it in the garbage bin, scowling at Sirius, who seemed to be trying his best not to laugh. And failing.

"Sit down, Harry, you're not making this any easier."

"You're acting like this is my fault." Harry muttered, sitting back down.

"Because it is! I'm not the one with some unidentified sticky substance in my hair."

It seemed Harry could not think of an answer to that because he remained quiet. The bathroom was silent for a few minutes, the only sound being the occasional mutter of protest or pained groan from Harry. "Are you sure this stuff's not dangerous?" Harry asked finally.

"Yes," Sirius answered calmly. "But really, Harry, If I thought it was dangerous, don't you think I would have done something by now?"

"You mean other than ripping my hair out?" Harry did not attempt to keep the sarcasm out of his voice in the least. He suspected that Hermione might have been able to better help him save his hair, had she not volunteered since early morning to help Mrs. Weasley put order to what the Black family had called a library.

Sirius rolled his eyes. "How did you even get that stuff in there, Harry? Were you trying to get it to lie flat or something?" Sirius asked, attacking another stubborn tangle.

Harry scowled. "I don't know what happened. I dropped the rag I was using to clean, and then a bottle of the stuff just fell on me when I leaned down to pick it up."

Sirius looked unconvinced. "It really got in there. Like you were trying to build a bird's nest or something."

As luck would have it, Ron and Harry had been paired together in the drawing room and it had been the former that suggested that Harry just try to comb the muck out, which had only made the problem worse. "Err… I tried to take care of it myself at first," Harry admitted.

Sirius thought for a second. "It must have been Kreacher. I was cleaning out my mother's bedroom, he probably wanted to create a distraction and lure me away so he can sneak half of it off to his little cupboard."

Harry whirled around to look up at his godfather. "He sleeps in a cupboard?"

"No, I suppose he just uses it to hide all the things he's trying to save from me."

"Good." Harry answered, turning away from Sirius, who had raised an eyebrow.

"Since when are you a member of Hermione's spew thing?"

"When she first came up with it we thought she would get off the subject if we joined."

"I assume it didn't work?"

"I don't think she understands that some house elves can be happy as long as their masters aren't complete gits."

"So if you don't share her views then why are you so glad Kreacher doesn't live in a cupboard?"

"There's spiders in cupboards," Harry answered simply.

Sirius's expression darkened and he added a new entry to his mental list of questions to ask Dumbledore next time he saw him. He also added a hex to the mental list he had prepared for the Dursleys.

Sirius sighed and ran the comb through Harry's hair several times. "Okay, that's it. You're set."

Harry stood up and looked at himself in the mirror. "Ugh... my hair. It's all uneven."

"I can try to cut it all evenly," Sirius offered helpfully.

Harry gave him a reproachful look. "Thanks, I think it's best if we minimize the damage and leave it for now."

"Don't worry," Sirius answered, sticking the comb and scissors back in a drawer, "it'll grow back by tomorrow."

"And I'm supposed to walk around like this all day?" Harry asked with a frown, trying to look at his near-bald spots in the mirror.

Sirius laughed. "No one will notice. Unless maybe if they're taller than you."

"Which is just about everyone in this house. Maybe I can borrow some of Hermione's hair potions and slick it back?" Harry asked hopefully.

"You know very well that all the hair potions in the world couldn't help you." Sirius answered with a grin.

"Think I can stay in my room all day, then?"

"You know, that's a great idea. Let's just stay in here until dinner. I'm tired of cleaning. Maybe your hair will be better by then."

"Oh, yes," Harry snorted, "I can feel it growing already."