Somewhere green and safe
7 July, 1995

Dear Harry,

Sorry for taking so long to reply, I'm afraid I gave Hedwig quite a hard time as she tried to bring me your last letter. I left Hogsmeade on Buckbeak, but part of my travellings since then had to be made on foot--well... paws, actually--and by Floo Powder, and some Apparating. (And if you're in for some godfatherly advice: when you're old enough to Apparate, never EVER perform the spell with a borrowed wand, especially if you hadn't had any practice for almost fourteen years. I learned this lesson the hard way. Nothing too serious, I didn't really splinch myself, only my right hand Apparated slightly off its place, so I have a dislocated wrist. It'll be fine in a few days and I'm left-handed anyway, it's no big deal. If only Moony would get that into his head... I swear, for a wolf, he can be quite a hen sometimes.)

As I was saying, Hedwig probably went through a lot of flying back and forth and around until she could find me. (Good news is: if your clever owl had trouble tracking me down, our dear friends the Dementors won't stand a chance!) She looks awfully tired, was not entirely gentle as she nibbled my finger when I thanked her, and right now she's glowering at me as I write this letter, as if daring me to put her to work again so soon. She reminds me a bit of McGonagall when she caught me transfiguring her spectacles into soap bubbles, back in my fourth year at Hogwarts.

Relax, girl! I have to make up to my godson for my lateness in replying and for all the one-liners I've been sending him lately, not to mention all the twelve years I wasn't there for him at all. So enjoy your mouse dinner (sorry, if I don't join you, but I got fed up with rats) and get your well-deserved beauty sleep, because this letter here will be pretty long.

I'm glad to learn you got back to your aunt and uncle safely, I was worried about you. Now that you're in one of the few places Voldemort doesn't have a hope to put his feet--paws?--, no matter how powerful he is, I can breathe freely again. I've talked to Dumbledore by fire this morning, and we're setting a few plans to improve the castle security for your next term.

I know you're upset. So am I. So is Dumbledore, I suspect; the realisation that he had Voldemort's most faithful servant right under his nose teaching the students for nine months seems to have hit him hard. That's not what any of us would expect of a place reputed as one of the safest in the wizard world, after all.

On the other hand, the blunder has apparently filled our old Headmaster with some tireless energy and unbreakable will to make sure such a fiasco will never happen again. And I assure you, Harry, he's not acting out of fear for his job or public image, like a certain Minister of Magic whose name I'd rather not mention.

Not that Dumbledore's reputation seems to be at stake right now. Contrary to my expectations, the community isn't out for Dumbledore's blood, and Hogwarts governors won't even bring up the subject of Cedric Diggory's death.

Moony reminded me the other day--somehow I hadn't made the connection--Diggory was that Seeker that won the game for Hufflepuff when the Dementors came into Hogwarts grounds and caused you to fall from your broom, wasn't he? I didn't see him catch the Snitch--too busy running away from the Dementors myself. Didn't pay much attention to him either, I'm afraid--too busy gasping at how beautifully you fly and how much you resemble your father (the rain was also a big problem for James until he learned about that Impervius charm). He seemed to be a fine lad though. Remus had only good things to say about him from the year he spent teaching there--even if he (Remus) was noticeably too busy paying attention to you too--and Dumbledore mentioned he'd have been made Head Boy for sure this year. God-damned Voldemort, always goes for the best ones, doesn't he?

I realise with some apprehension that Diggory was more a rival than a friend to you, and if there's one thing I learned from meeting Snape again after all these years is that the death of a rival can hit you just as hard but in so much more complicated ways. I wish I could have stayed with you longer after the Tournament. Damn, I wish I could have stayed with you, period. What happened wasn't your fault, Harry, so don't blame yourself. If you ever want to talk about Diggory--or about anything else, for that matter--, I'm here to listen. Always.

I'm finally done with my task--contacting some old mates, mostly. The majority of them weren't too happy to see me, but a word in advance from Dumbledore kept most from hexing me into oblivion right on sight. Old Mundungus Fletcher wouldn't listen to me until I had him tied down to a chair and gagged with one of his socks--a manoeuvre that almost turned me into a real murderer (if you ever wondered whether something besides Snape's hair could stink bad enough to kill, now you know).

I suppose that kind of reaction was to be expected, considering my current popularity level. Thankfully things aren't nearly as tense as they were a decade and half ago. No "curse first, ask later" attitude, thank Merlin.

No warm welcomes either though. Except for when I got to Moony's.

I reckon I'll have to spend the rest of my days grovelling at Remus Lupin's feet--or paws, once every twenty-eight nights--, prostrated in endless gratitude for his friendship and everything he has done for me. His place was the first stopover in my journey--to let him know you're okay, leave Buckbeak under his care and borrow his late father's wand--and now is my shelter for the next couple of months. Oh, and I'm not worried about writing this in a letter; Remus has a knack for finding the most secluded places to make his den (you understand why), and if the Dementors manage to locate this spot they sure deserve to catch me.

He found some really old photos of me somewhere in his attic--I'm surprised he didn't burn them all after I was sent to Azkaban. He picked a particularly ghastly one to pin on the big mirror in the hall: I'm about nineteen, wearing some khaki shorts and a Don Iniquitous and Band tee-shirt (ever went to one of their concerts?), leaning over my old motorbike (gosh, I miss her!), smoking a clove cigarette (that was before Lily got pregnant; she said I couldn't be your godfather if I didn't quit) and needing desperately to shave my sideburns. Remus actually told the mirror to nag me into eating and walking under the sunshine until I recover the looks from that photo. Which means I'll have it teasing and yelling at me till Doomsday, since not all the food and sunshine of a lifetime will bring back the fresh vigour and shape of my late teen years. Nothing short of a miracle or a de-ageing potion can do it, and I'm allergic to the brook paspalum used in ageing and de-ageing potions (another lesson I had to learn the hard way).

I remember from my Muggle Studies classes that muggle mirrors are very polite and considerate, refraining from commenting on our appearance, no matter how bad we look. Sometimes Muggles are a lot wiser than we are.

But it's not like I can complain much. (Well, I can, and I do, but just because Moony wouldn't recognise me if I didn't.) As remote and inaccessible a location as only a werewolf could find, this place is amazing! Can't give you much of a description, for that would be dangerous in case Hedwig is intercepted on her way back (and I was never much of a poet anyway), but I can tell you it's no sacrifice at all to stroll and jog around these stunning landscapes. I've been swimming a lot too, and dear Merlin, fishing!!! in this pond, lake, lagoon, whatever it's called. I never had the patience to wait for a cake to bake properly, I'd always finger half the raw dough into my mouth and drive the house-elves nuts, and now I'm fishing! With a rod and hook and worms and NO MAGIC!

Sometimes even I don't recognise myself.

Anyway, with all the sunshine and fresh air, I'm sort of developing a "summer look". Nothing like the cool tan of that photo, but at least my skin doesn't seem to be made of dirty, melted wax anymore. This morning, after roaring the usual reproaches about my dishevelment, the mirror admitted that I finally look alive now. Quite an improvement, don't you think?

Remus' cooking has a lot to do with it too. I swear, Harry, his roasts can put Hogwarts Christmas turkey to shame. I never figured how a brilliant cook like him could be so disastrous around potion caldrons. I've always thought cooking and potion-brewing required more or less the same skills--skills I clearly don't have, since I suck at both--, but Remus tells me it's not like that at all. Not that he obliges me with any explanation on the subject; he just says it's different and won't elaborate. Which tells me that he doesn't know the difference either, or he wouldn't skip the opportunity to get all professorial and explain it to me. (He was always like that, since we were kids, and Wormtail would have flunked half his classes if it weren't for Moony's innate professorial tendencies.) But he's probably right, it is different. After all, Snape might have become a talented potions master, but I wouldn't eat a slice of toast made by that ugly git.

On second thought, I wouldn't drink a potion brewed by him either. Don't know where Moony finds the guts to do it. Or the stomach to survive it.

Can he teach at all, Harry? (Snape, I mean. Well, you can tell me what you thought of Professor Moony too. I won't tell him.) It's appalling to think of that greasy snob that once cursed Prongs into losing all his fingernails two hours before a Quidditch match against Ravenclaw (it wasn't even Slytherin, for crying out loud!) becoming a supposedly respectable professor at Hogwarts, passing his... knowledge(?) on to the next generation.

It's painfully ironic too. James never got to teach you to fly a broom--not that you seem to have needed much help in that department. Lily never got to teach you to charm windows into refracting the sunlight as if they were made of moving stained-glass--not sure you'd want to do that, but she'd have taught you all the same, it was her favourite charm. And I never got to teach you to transfigure hats into large neon-pink lacy bows--not much of a prankster in you, Moony tells me, but it's always a nice trick to know when a Slytherin decides to challenge you in the Great Hall.

But Snape? Oh, HE gets to teach you to brew the Purgatio Kseron, prepare Foruncho Urtica infusions and boil an Anurie Insuffatio cocktail. Oh my, I can almost hear him, with his deep-down-from-his-coffin voice, gloating about your high marks...

But hey, don't take my muttering as an encouragement not to study. Be a good boy, don't play with your food, wash behind your ears, study hard. I want to see some top-grade OWLs before next June. That's what I should be telling you, as your supposedly responsible godfather.

I reckon Prongs expected me to grow into one while helping him and Lily to raise you. Now I guess I'll have to manage with just a crash course. So be patient with this old dog, okay? I'll get the hang of it. Eventually.

My father used to say that you notice you're getting old when you start bragging about your kid's exploits instead of your own. Maybe it's time Remus and I buy some walking sticks then. It's funny how the two of us, with all the stuff we've done together and all the years we were apart, won't find any conversation topic more interesting than talking about you. I got him telling me everything about the year he spent near you, he got me telling him everything about the year I spent almost near you. I'm jealous of him because of that "almost", he's jealous of me because I've got letters from you. (As if it were my fault that he's too bloody shy to owl anyone without prior permission to do so, preferably in a formal ten-paged document, countersigned by the National Bureau of Bird-Delivered Communications and by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, plus the personal stamp of the Almighty Minister himself.)

We've also been talking about all the awesome things the three of us will do as soon as my name is cleared and I'm reinstated as your legal guardian. We're working on a list of all the rides we'd like to take you, places to show you, stuff to teach you, people to introduce you to... In only three days we've got a list long enough to keep you busy until your grandchildren graduate from Hogwarts. ('Where will Harry find the time to have grandchildren with all we have planned for him?' Moony asked me. 'That's his problem, not ours,' I told him.)

However, every now and then Remus will urge me to be more realistic about my expectations towards you. To tell the truth, I don't even know if you'll even want to spend any amount of time with me. Despite what Snape or Moony might tell you (unfortunately they tend to agree upon some of their opinions on me), I'm not completely daft. About fifteen minutes before you accepted my offer to live with me, you had your wand raised and ready and pointed to my heart, and I was pretty sure that would be the last thing I'd ever see, my final punishment for trusting Peter... And I'm sure you didn't change your mind so quickly out of admiration for my unrivalled elegance and sense of humour at the time. You see, I need no screaming mirror to tell me I looked half-dead and a hundred percent psychotic that night.

That you would jump at the idea of moving in with a half-dead psychotic is positively a disturbing thought. I don't think your mother ever had a kind word to say about her sister and brother-in-law, but are they really that horrible? Are you really all right, Harry? Are they treating you well enough? You do know you can call me if anything happens, don't you? And you do know that I will turn up and turn them all into bats if you ask me to, right?

And you do understand that I won't be angry if you ever change your mind about staying with the Dursleys, I hope. I'd be sad, of course, but not angry. I don't want to push you into a decision you might regret later. After all, they have raised you since you were one year old, you're used to them, while you barely know me.

Perhaps that's the point Moony and I are most confused about. We were there when you were born (trying to keep Prongs from swallowing his tongue). We were there when Lily changed your diapers (although we'd make a quick exit if she asked us to help her, but that's beside the point). We were there to hear you babble your first words (you used to call me "Pah-foo", you knew? Oh, but you could say "Moony" right. Bloody werewolf always boasted about that). We were there to freak out and panic when you caught the flu for the first time (although Moony swears to this day that the only ones panicking were James and I). We were there the day you crawled under the sofa and found an earring your mother had lost six months earlier (well, I was; it was a full moon night). We were there when you managed to stand on your tiny feet for the very first time (no, sadly, we weren't; but James described it with so much detailing that it feels like we were there ourselves).

And believe it or not, you were never away from our thoughts during the twelve years we were separated. You can take Remus' word for that: he keeps dozens of photos of baby-you around, not to mention a scrapbook with every single article the newspapers have published about you. Unfortunately, the Dementors would distort my own memories into such a chaotic turmoil, I have only hazy recollections of what I thought about while alone in my cell. But I know I thought and dreamed of you a lot.

And there're all the similarities with James and Lily... Being around you feels so familiar (in all senses), because either you remind us of our friends or of the way you were since your first days. So I guess we tend to think of you as someone who is really close and that we know very well. But in fact, we don't. Not really. Not that well. Not yet.

And Merlin knows what you think about us! I suspect Remus counted on your parents to get you used to the idea of having a werewolf around without being wary of him. And I certainly counted on you being used to your father's weird antics -- mine are just slightly weirder.

So how shocking was it, Harry, to have met the remaining Marauders without any preparation for it? How disturbing are we, making crazy plans for your future without any legal or moral right to it? Any chance you can put up with us? With me?

Somehow this letter didn't go where I intended it. Did I really write all this? Either it's an Azkaban side-effect or I'm too sleepy to think straight and Moony tricked me into using a Quick-Quotes Quill. He did that once in our sixth year at Hogwarts. It was such a pain to convince Professor Sprout that I wasn't responsible for the inclusion of that vivid description of the notorious Ghoulianic Orgy in the middle of my report on the growing of Devil's Snare. Especially since I had written a similar piece to an essay about the Sepdillyn Wars the year before. (Yet another godfatherly advice: Binns might never get your name right, but he does read your homework.)

Look at this! Two rolls of parchment! Hedwig is going to bite my hand off when I tell her tomorrow. I've got to remember to use my right hand to tie it to her leg--no use losing my only good hand now, is there?

Please let me know if you're really all right, and if your uncle and aunt are being nice and supportive, and if you need anything. Keep me posted on everything that happens. I'll write to you again before your birthday.

Take care,

Sirius

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written by Morgan D.
October 27th, 2002

Based on characters and events created by J.K.Rowling in her "Harry Potter" novel series published by Bloomsbury, and also on the fanfiction timeline developed by Iniga -- particularly on two astounding fanfics called "Darkness Dying" and "Interim", which can be found at Fanfiction.net (user ID 49515).

This letter is part of the Hogwarts Letters project: http: // destinystruth.net / hogwarts (Eliminate the space between the characters.)