A woman was sitting at a table, writing furiously. A novel, a story, birthday invitations—who knew what? She paused for a moment to push up her wire frame glasses and push her reddish hair out of her face.

"Hello, Anne," a voice suddenly interrupted the silence, as another woman sat down at the table across from her.

"LB, you startled me!" Anne said, pushing her paper away from her. "What are you doing here?"

"I have a proposition," LB responded. "Can we get everyone else here?"

Alex Slytherin appeared out of thin air, right next to Anne. "Your daughter is napping," he stated wearily, as Maura Gryffindor and Adam Hufflepuff walked into the room. After a moment's wait, LB was surrounded by the Founders of Hogwarts and Anne.

"What is your proposition?" Godric Gryffindor asked.

LB pulled out a piece of paper. "In the main Dangerverse universe Hermione Granger-Lupin once said, 'If Wormtail hadn't been able to change forms, that would have changed everything. Maybe he wouldn't have been so good of friends with them after that, so he wouldn't have joined the Order or been a spy. Then your parents would have used somebody else for Secret-Keeper.' Well, I want to claim that universe and write that story."

"Let us consider this a moment," Helga Hufflepuff said, and LB suddenly found herself in what appeared to be a silent bubble as everyone else spoke. Abruptly she found herself able to hear again.

"We're curious about this story," Rowena Ravenclaw stated, "so we are granting this request. Is there anything you need us to do?"

LB nodded, and Brenna Ravenclaw pulled out a long list. "Those two, and those two. We need to add three. And that one doesn't end in this timeline."

Brenna looked curious, but just nodded and made the needed adjustments.

"Good luck then," Paul Gryffindor said. "You have our attention."

-------------------------------------------

Gertrude Granger knew that something wasn't right about the day. Everything was dreary, ugly and cold. She stifled a shudder, and glanced back into the backseat of the car, making sure her baby sister was safe. Fear threatened to engulf her, fear that something was wrong with the three people she loved. She could see the one behind her was safe, but the fear pushed her onward, driving faster and faster to get to the house. She arrived just in time to see two people wearing long black clothes look at the car and suddenly disappear into thin air. She was so distracted that she didn't even notice the green symbol hovering in the sky above her house.

She left her sister in the car and rushed into the house, terrified about what she would see. She couldn't say that she was surprised by what she saw, since she had known that something was wrong, but she was shocked. Her parents lay in the living room, looking as though they had been literally scared to death. Emotions raging inside of her, she began to scream, and barely noticed that as she screamed, every glass object in the house shattered, except for the glass around the only photograph of the four of them.

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Sirius Black sat in his flat, unmoving in misery. He looked as though he hadn't eaten or slept in weeks.

This time last year, I had friends. I had what amounted to a family. I had work – it was dangerous, sure, but what isn't? I had a purpose in life.

And then, in the space of four days – gone. All of it. Two people I loved dead. Two more tortured into insanity. Another one a traitor and locked up forever. And the last one hidden away where no one will find him.

No one including me.

His misery was interrupted by a gruff voice coming from his fireplace. "Black, I have an assignment for you." Sirius looked up to glare at Alastor Moody, angry that he interrupted his deep grief. "It'll do you some good, give you something to do."

Sirius immediately turned his raging emotions towards his boss. "Something to do? You know what I need to do? I need to be with my Godson! Instead he was taken from me, given to someone else who can't possibly love him as much as I do! For 'his own protection' they claim. They say I'd be incapable to take care of him while dealing with my own grief. If I had Harry, half of my own grief would be gone. That's what I should be doing."

Moody just nodded; he'd heard Sirius's rant quite a few times in the past months. Maybe if he'd stop the rant they'd actually consider him fit for parenting. But Moody understood that the hurt was too deep. That's why he decided to send him out. "I'm sending you out with a small squad. The Dark Mark was spotted above a Muggle residence." Months after the Dark Lord's fall there were still so many things to clean up and fix.

Sirius glared at Moody, but accepted the folder with the information he needed. He nodded, and quickly Apparated to the address in Surrey, the world constricting and spinning around him. He stopped jarringly to a surprising sight. A woman with bushy brown hair stood in the doorway of a house, screaming. She had one shaky hand raised and pointed at the six dementors that were approaching her.

Sirius' instincts immediately kicked in, "Patronuses, now!" he yelled, and the squad behind him reacted. He noted absently that there were numerous clouds of silver mist, one corporeal eagle, and one person who couldn't produce any hint of a Patronus.

Sirius darted forward, towards the woman, whose screams were getting quieter as the dementors started to back off. He threw his arms around her, and initiated a side-along apparition to get her away from the scene. As soon as they landed in the Auror office, she broke down in sobs.

"What were they?" she choked out between sobs.

"They were dementors," Sirius answered. "Ma'am, are you a Squib?" Sirius couldn't understand how someone could see the dementors, but never have known what they were.

She looked up at him, her sobs turning into hysterical laughter as the tears continued to stream down her face. "A squid? Of course I'm not a squid!"

Sirius sighed, not even bothering to correct her. "Then how were you able to see the dementors? Have you seen them before? They're creeping around everywhere right now. We haven't been able to catch them yet."

"There were none of those anywhere that I've been, until today. I was driving home, and I just knew that something was wrong, so I drove faster and faster. When I was driving up to the house I saw two people in the yard wearing black just disappear. When I got inside the house I saw my parents' bodies and I started to scream. I heard something behind me, like twenty asthmatics trying to breath. I turned, and I saw them all around me and I was so scared…Neenie!" She shot straight up in her seat, forgetting even to cry.

"Neenie?" Sirius was as perplexed by this word as she had been by 'squib.'

"My baby sister…where are we?" She was looking around for the first time since she'd arrived.

Sirius paused, "Um, the Ministry…" of Magic, he added silently, not wanted to add any more to the shock she was dealing with.

"Look, do that thing you did and get me back there to my sister, she needs me," she said, standing up and looking him in the eye.

Sirius heart sank. "Look, lady, there's nothing you can do for your family. It's too late, they've been…killed." Sirius felt his own pain for his losses surge back upwards, but he shoved them down for this woman's sake.

"Not Neenie," she said emphatically. "I left her in the car. Get me back there now,Sirius." Her tone was forceful, and Sirius automatically reacted to the authority voiced there before he even had time to think. He grabbed her again, and they disappeared with a pop.

As soon as her feet were firmly on the ground she tore herself away from him and ran to the car, ripping open a back door. Sirius was surprised to see her snatch up a living baby. He had been sure that the shock of the incident had caused her brain to snap under the pressure and she was trying to believe that the baby had survived. But then again, why was that so hard to believe? Harry had survived an attack directly from Voldemort. The Longbottom boy had survived the attack on his parents. Even Peter's kid had survived an attack. Maybe the Death Eaters were losing their appetite for killing small children.

An MLE approached Sirius. "The bodies were taken to the nearest morgue, and we were able to persuade the coroner to believe that they died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Do we need to perform a memory charm on the girl? We already took care of the neighbors who saw the mark."

"No, I'll take care of it," Sirius said. "Go ahead and get back. I need to question her. She saw two people Disapparate, so I'm going to see if I can find anything out." But there was something else nagging him.

"Ma'am, can we step inside please?" he asked, approaching the woman. The child looked a lot like her, and was eyeing her nervously from her perch in her sister's arms. Sirius walked into the house and was numbly followed. "What is your name?"

"Gertrude Granger, but I'm called Danger," she replied automatically. The name seemed to strike at a distant memory, but Sirius pushed it aside. Why would he know a Muggle?

"How did you know my name?" he asked instead.

"What?" Danger looked up from her sister towards him, confusion clear on his face.

"At the Ministry, you said 'Get me there now, Sirius.' How'd you know that was my name?" he pressed her.

"Oh, um, I was saying seriously, but got cut off of course." But she wouldn't meet his eyes, and she was blushing a little bit.

"The truth now," Sirius said with a sigh. "Do you know someone who knows me, and you recognized me from the description?"

Danger sighed, setting Neenie down to play as she started to squirm. "Not exactly. I mean—I think you know someone that I knew once, but that's not important. I know you—from my dreams."

"I'm honored, I think, but there's someone else so—" Sirius wasn't expecting the playful slap from her, but somehow it seemed to break the tension between the two of them.

"Not like that, well, not you at least." Danger started to blush. "I'd thought that they were just crazy dreams, until I saw you… can you really turn into a dog?"

Sirius' heart skipped a beat. The only people who knew that were dead, crazy, or in prison. How did this complete stranger know one of his biggest secrets? But something told him that there was no keeping this secret from her, so instead he stood and took a deep breath before transforming for the first time in front of someone who wasn't a Marauder.

"Doggie!" Neenie squealed, having missed the transformation while she was playing. She toddled over to where Sirius was sitting, and grabbed onto his fur to keep from falling. She giggled as Sirius licked her face. Danger pulled her away so that Sirius could transform back to into his human form. Neenie let out a surprised squeal and eyed him curiously.

Danger sighed. "So if that's true, then everything else is too…"

"Everything else?" Sirius pressed onward, curious in spite of himself.

"You playing with Harry… he seemed so happy with you, not like now."

Sirius paled visibly. "Harry?"

Danger nodded. "The little boy I baby-sit. You must know him. As far as I can tell all the dreams are things that have already happened. Well, except one…"

"You baby-sit for Harry?" Sirius ignored the rest of the nonsense that the woman had said. The ministry was keeping him from his godson, but this stranger got to see him?

"Yes, I took Neenie to the park one day, and a fat boy about the same age as Neenie was picking on a scrawny little boy with black hair. Neenie's usually shy, but she knows when something isn't right. She went over there and started screaming at the fat boy. Her screaming gave Harry the courage to stand up to him. Then the fat kid ran off to his mother and complained, and Harry was about to be punished when I intervened, offering to help take care of Harry if he and her son didn't get along very well. Harry and Neenie were fast friends. It's really rather cute."

Sirius was having trouble following this, who had a fat kid who'd be taking care of Harry? Come to think of it, who besides him would be taking care of Harry? "Who does Harry live with?"

"His Aunt," Danger said sourly. "And I try to get him out of there as often as I can, poor thing."

Something slid into place. James had had no siblings, and his parents had died during the war. But Lily had had a sister. Sirius searched his mind for the time he'd met Lily's family. She'd had wonderful, accepting parents, but her sister had been an envious, unattractive woman who had labeled Lily and her friends "freaks" just because she was not able to do what they could do. Harry was living with someone who thought that wizards and witches were freaks. The implications of this started to sink in. "What do they do with him?" he asked, scared to hear the answer.

Danger rose from her seat, "Come with me." He was confused as she led him to a hallway and opened up a cupboard under the stairs. "All these houses in the area are about the same. In the Dursleys' house, their cupboard under the stairs isn't used as a cupboard; it's where Harry is kept. Harry doesn't cry much. I think he was hit some when he made noise, so he learned to stop. But because he doesn't cry much, they forget about him, and forget to feed him."

Sirius felt like he couldn't breathe as he stared at the hole that Harry was locked up in. He barely heard the question that Danger asked. "Harry's parents didn't really die in a car crash, did they?"

"No," Sirius replied absently, trying to return his focus to Danger. "They were murdered. Betrayed by a friend and killed by a lunatic."

"And his mother threw herself in front of him, to save him," Danger murmured as if to herself. "A flash of green light and a rushing sound like death on invisible wings..."

"How…" Sirius trailed off.

"It was in my dream too. I saw it."

Sirius settled back down. "I think I need to hear more about these dreams of yours."

The dreams are always similar, if not exactly the same," Danger said without preamble, starting back to the living room. "Cacophony, madness. Blurs of color and sound. But I can get bits and pieces here and there. Lots of orange, but always associated with the word red. That confuses me a lot. When is orange red?"

Sirius made a mental note of that. When is orange red?

"Along with the orange, or the red, or whatever, flashes of black and flashes of brown and flashes of yellow. And then it's as if someone shouts a couplet in my ear.

"Black to red and red to brown

Shall truly bring the darkness down."

"But I don't know what it means," she finished in frustration, lightly pounding the arm of the couch as she sat down. "Then I start getting actual pictures. Four boys. One of them is you. Then one with dark hair – he looks like Harry – and one kind of mousy-looking one, and another with brown hair."

"My best friends at school," Sirius said. "We called ourselves the Marauders. The boy who looks like Harry is his father, James, the mousy boy is Peter Pettigrew, and the other one is Remus Lupin."

"Thank you," Danger said in relief. "Having names makes everything easier. I see James, then, with a red-haired girl, flashes of dates, a wedding, a baby – Harry – and you and Lupin and Pettigrew around them, along with girlfriends I think. You're with a black girl who looks familiar…"

"Letha," Sirius murmured, wondering absently where she was, how she was dealing with her grief.

Danger barely acknowledged that he'd spoken. "And Peter's with a girl with brown hair."

"Evanie," Sirius continued to supply the names, unsure of whether she was actually listening to him or not.

"And Lupin's with a blonde."

"Melanie," Sirius finished. "The good old days, before everything blew up."

"And then it all goes awful." Danger shuddered. "One of you goes over to the Dark. To some horrid scary guy who looks like a snake gone wrong."

"Remus," Sirius said bitterly.

"No. Melanie."

"What?" Sirius jerked his head up to stare at her.

"That's what I see," Danger said. "It's definitely Melanie talking with the nasty one. Melanie telling him where to find them. Melanie turning into a mouse. Can she do that?"

Sirius almost didn't want to believe her, but her last comment clinched it. No one besides himself had known about that. Melanie had seen Sirius transform once when he wasn't being as cautious as he should, and had blackmailed him into helping her learn the process.

And if she's telling the truth about that, what about the rest?

"Yes. She can."

"She did it the day everyone thinks she died," Danger said, her eyes almost closed. "I always see it in slow motion. She shouts something at Lupin, she pulls out this little stick from behind her back," she shuddered, "Cuts off her own finger with it – I don't know how, or why –"

"A finger was the most they ever found of her," Sirius said in a deadly quiet voice. Too much was making sense all of a sudden.

"And then the street behind her just explodes, and she shrinks down to mouse size and shape and runs away while the smoke is clearing. And Lupin looks at the place where she was, and he starts laughing. A quiet little laugh, but that made it all the more scary for the people watching I think. And then I drift into a kind of foggy place, and I hear a poem, repeated over and over again until I wake up with it drumming in my head."

She clutched her hair melodramatically, then smiled apologetically. "I always thought that was just an expression, until I started dreaming like this. I finally wrote it down, and then it left me alone. I think you should see it."

"I think I should too," Sirius said grimly. Several loose parts of his world were starting to fall into place. Specifically, the "Remus would never betray Lily and James" part.

"Here it is," Danger said, handing him a sheet of paper, half-covered with lines of neat handwriting. "I did a clean copy once I was sure I had it right. If you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to cry now." And she sat down on the couch, head in her arms, and began to sob. Sirius belatedly remembered the events of less than an hour ago, although so much seemed different now.

Neenie tottered over to her sister. "Don't cy, Dayger," she said, patting her sister on the head.

Sirius moved away from them, trying to give them some time alone to mourn, and decipher the poem in front of him.

Black to red and red to brown

Shall surely bring the darkness down.

The lion brought down by a mouse

Will be found in the rodent house.

The dark one's freedom was costly bought

With framed lover in jail to rot.

The brightest star will see him through

After the truth returns to you.

The wolf that runs in brightest dark

Of fear in danger strikes no spark,

For she is maid of warrior soul

And by her touch his mind is whole.

Take lion's son and sister too,

For they truly belong to you.

When they who saved the savior twine

The freshest blood with founder's line,

Then has the age of hope begun,

And peace comes to the man who won.

Danger's sobs died down, and she picked up Neenie as she walked over towards Sirius. Her mourning was not done; it was just pushed aside right now. Something about the poem screamed urgency at her, more so than mourning parents that she knew were in a better place. Later she would mourn, for Neenie never growing to know her parents, for the years of love that were torn from her. But now, there was something else to do.

"That couplet from before, that's repeated in here," Sirius said, looking up at her.

Danger nodded. "I know. It must be important somehow."

"But we don't understand it at the moment, so let's look at the first quatrain, after the couplet."

"Sounds good."

The somewhat unlikely pair bent over their work.