Saving You To Save Me

By: Abby Ebon

Summary: a Harry Potter, Sirius, using a time turner to save them, prompt, from comment_fic.


Sirius is staring across the street at Peter – no, not Peter, he's Pettigrew, the coward who killed Lily and James and left Harry an orphan. He shakes and trembles and breaths, and doesn't move until he can see past the blood pounding through his head, he's furious and wants nothing more then to throttle Peter into the dirt, and see him buried into Azkaban's foundations.

But, damn-it, he is Sirius Black, Auror, with a plan. He's going to fix this, make it right, so even as it makes the skin at the back of his neck crawl, Sirius turns his back on Pettigrew, so the other – the traitor – does not see Sirius Black on a crowded London street, and Sirius makes his way to the Ministry of Magic, gets on the elevator, and goes to Level Nine, Department of Mysteries, where Time Turners are.

He keeps in mind, as the sands spin and roll like dice, that he's fixing a mistake that never should have been, and they can take care of the Dark Lord without Lily and James dying – without leaving Harry Potter an orphan in a broken world. Sirius looks up in time to see Dumbledore come into the room, a panicked look on his face, and when he catches sight of Sirius, the black haired man with the heart of a child, only smirks and winks before golden sand roars in his ears like a storm.

It isn't the usual thing that happens when one uses a Time Turner, but then this isn't the usual case – once Sirius does what he wants; there will be no reversing it – no going home. Sirius can think of nothing he wants more then to pretend it all never happened.

-----

"You'll need a secret keeper," Dumbledore says, and his blue eyes measure the man before him, "no one would suspect Peter." James tosses his shoulders and shakes his head, lips pressing into a firm line. For once in his life, he is keeping a secret from Dumbledore, and it's Sirius – his best friend, but not – because this Sirius is wild eyed and measured in a way his Sirius is not, and James fully intends to keep it this way. His best friend will not become a broken man.

"Peter is weak. Sirius is what people would expect me to choose, so they would not go looking for him, sure that I would know they would suspect him." Dumbledore presses his lips into a disapprovingly thin line, but James does not break – this is his life, and Lily's, and their Harry, and Sirius's too.

"If you are sure?" Dumbledore trails off, hinting and luring, but James does not bend. Dumbledore is his mentor and headmaster of Hogwarts, he means the best, but he is only a wizard and mortal and makes his mistakes like the rest of them. James will not let this become a mistake, not for his Sirius, and not for the Sirius that hovers over Harry as a black grim, ominous and protective.

"I am." James assures, and Dumbledore sighs, but gives in, handing over a little vial that contains the charm. Its drinker will be their secret keeper.

"Then give this to him." James does, but it's too the Sirius with broken blue eyes, who never leaves Harry's side. Maybe he needs to know they have faith in him, and James can't convince himself he was wrong when it's ten years later and Harry Potter enters Hogwarts with a black dog at his side, for all the world, this Sirius is the grim of nightmare, but it's Harry who will always be saved.