AN: I don't own the wonderfulness that is Harry Potter, no stealing ideas intended. There will be more soon I swear, but chronology is detracting. I know its confusing now but it gets better I swear. The way chapters are set out is not chronological at the moment, the year is in brackets, still working on the whole order thing, sorry.
P.S. Reviews would be quite nice, thanks.

Paint the town Black

He was free, sort of. Stretching his leash, so to speak. He had stayed to the back alleys and side streets, covered himself in shadows and took every precaution just for this fleeting glimpse of freedom. The house was stifling, like a hot wet blanket, he constantly had a bad taste in his mouth and a scowl on his face. But tonight he was free, the moonlight danced on his face and his scowl almost disappeared. He had to avoid so many places; London had so many dangerous areas, where he might run into... He shivered, though they didn't scare him, not anymore, he didn't fancy running into them. Ever. So he avoided those places, the warm fire lit places that he could never go back to. They were burned out of his mental map, but there was always Camden.

A dingy pub just off the main road, good enough, he thought. The possibility of being recognized was so low; he guessed it was worth the risk. He pushed on the old wood door, it was soft with age. Inside the pub smelt of dust, varnish and beer. It was quite loud, the low sort of raw of many conversations and clinking glasses. He felt nostalgic, that called for a drink. He pulled out some of the currency, confusing as it was, pushed it across the damp bar at the disheveled barman with the strawberry botched nose.

"A pint of Guinness" His words were soft, but they held some presence in the room. The barman obliged, didn't care enough to make eye contact. The man at the bar, leant nonchalantly against it, elbows on the bar. He surveyed his surroundings, he saw all the exits, but that was habitual. It was more than a minute before he caught sight of the pretty brunette in the corner, nursing a G&T. He cocked his head, studied her. She had shoulder length chestnut hair, large green eyes and a good collection of curves. She could have been beautiful but there was something about the air of messiness that surrounded her that detracted from that. But she was good enough, he thought, good enough for a night of freedom.

He picked up his drink, took a large gulp. His face contorted for a fraction of a second, muggle beer was really not that great. Composing himself, squaring his leather jacketed shoulders he turned towards the brunette's table. As he walked across the small noisy room no romantic music played, no harps, nothing. She looked up, took in the handsome stranger with haunted eyes, she didn't move.

"Is this seat taken?"

He could never sleep for long; the madness that always sat in his mind was not nice enough to let him have more than an hour at a time. He lay in her bed in her small flat in Camden and stared at the peeling wallpaper in the far corner of the room. He sighed, he should be getting back, back to the house, back to bedlam. He carefully detached himself from her, her name was Natalia. He looked at the alarm clock with its accusatory red numbers, it read 3:17. He slipped out of the bed, careful not to wake her. He ruffled his hair absentmindedly as he dressed.

Before he left he took one last look at her. There were very few pretty things left in his life, but she wasn't in his life. He stood in the doorway of her bedroom, hand on the door frame watching sadly. She was everything he could never have, normal. He never realised how much he wanted things to be normal until this nothing woman, this perfectly ordinary, brilliantly unremarkable woman. But nothing had been normal for over 16 years and there was no chance of it now. Shaking his head tiredly the Merauder left the small flat in Camden and crept out into the early morning London.

Sirius Black never met his daughter; he never knew he had one. He died just two weeks after meeting the 'perfectly ordinary' Natalia Vessance.
As he floated up through the arch, in his final moments, his thoughts were not of children, not his own at least.
His final thought in the fragment of time before he passed was "He looks just like James".
And that, was it...

AN: This is the prologue so really you don't have to read it, but later on it may help for you to know about the background.
Please R&R