A/N: In which Sirius and Heather meet. I intend for things to really pick up in the next chapter – this is mainly just getting to grips with her relationship with her bandmates and setting a bit of a foundation.

"You have an admirer," Scott commented at Heather's side.

"He can join all of the others," she gestured to the empty space in front of their table.

Heather didn't bother to look up to see whoever their guitarist was referring to. He had a habit of teasing her much like an older brother would, and tonight she wasn't in the mood for it. Nobody had bought any merch the night before - well, that's what Darren, their charming lead singer, had claimed. She'd been dumb enough to let the others convince her to let him man the stand alone that night, and she was pretty certain he'd deemed it unnecessary to share the earnings afterwards and that his 'no sales' alibi was a pile of BS. No earnings meant no food - and, less importantly (or more importantly, depending on her mood), no buzz. Four pills remained, her fingertips tracing them idly through her jeans pocket every so often. She was saving them for an emergency. For when the low moods or the panic set in - whichever chose to appear first.

"No, really, I think he's in love," Scott snickered.

Knowing she'd find no peace until she gave in, Heather heaved a sigh and followed Scott's line of vision. Then she groaned.

"Oh come on you sick bastard, he's like twelve," she rolled her eyes "Is he even old enough to be in here?"

In truth, he was definitely older than twelve, but that was how they referred to anybody even slightly younger than themselves. The boy was standing to the side of the room, doing his very best to pretend he wasn't looking at them. He had a mop of messy black hair, and glasses that made her wonder if he was a John Lennon fan, but what struck her most was how ill at ease he looked. When he noticed her returning his gaze he froze like a deer in headlights, but the look on his face wasn't quite embarrassment. If he were a bit older, or if he seemed like more of an ass, she might have raised an eyebrow at him, or simply ignored him. Instead she gave a slightly confused yet polite smile. He didn't return it, but continued to watch her with great curiosity. Heather broke the eye contact first when she noticed a man shoving through the crowd towards the boy.

"Ooooh somebody got busted," Scott said in regard to the spectacle.

His meaning was clear the moment the boy noticed his pursuer - it was the universal look of a teenager who had been caught doing something they shouldn't. To her surprise, however, he didn't seem to make any effort to appear contrite. If anything, he straightened up and gave a defiant look to the man who approached him - his father, maybe? The man had his back to Heather as, instead of unleashing some sort of parental fury, he placed a hand on the boy's shoulder and began talking to him intently, but calmly.

Quickly losing interest, and feeling robbed of the potential entertainment of a big scene, she returned her attention back to the notebook in hand. Sensing that she was in no mood for his jokes that night, Scott returned to the task of replacing the strings on his guitar, although she felt his gaze flicker to her every now and then. Heather felt a small amount of guilt streak through her chest, along with pure gratitude. Nights like tonight reminded her why Scott was her favourite of her bandmates, and certainly her closest friend of the three. If it were their drummer, Quinn, at her side he'd be grumbling and taking mood personally. And if it were Darren...Well. Heather preferred not to think about Darren at all, whenever possible.

Trying to force her sour mood to brighten, she turned to Scott with a sigh, tapping her pen against the paper "Any good rhymes for 'rapid'?"

It was an olive branch – a silent apology for her mood – which he accepted.

"Vapid?"

"Darren won't sing words he doesn't know the meaning of," she muttered, earning a snort of agreement.

Not that he'd sing many of her songs at all, really. If it wasn't an opportunity to do his best Axl Rose impression, he had little interest in singing it. It was a point of great tension between them - Heather didn't want to spend her life playing cover songs. What was the point of that?

"Acid?" she suggested.

"Too obvious," Scott shook his head.

"Blasted?"

They both looked up at the new voice and its suggestion, Heather blinking in surprise to see the kid from earlier standing across the table. He appeared sheepish - almost shy, even - but he did a good job at hiding it, except for how he fidgeted, fingertips pulling on the cuffs of his worn grey hoodie.

"Blasted…" she considered before nodding with a smile "That works. Thanks! I can't promise you any royalties, though."

The boy blinked.

"Y'know, when we make it big," she gestured between herself and Scott.

"Oh," he nodded and gave a small laugh, snapping out of whatever confusion he'd been in "That's alright - I'll manage without."

Forcing herself into her best customer service persona (which probably wasn't a particularly good one), she snapped the notepad shut and reached under her chair for the cash box they kept.

"How can I help? You want a CD or do you just need directions to the bathroom?"

She was only half-joking on that one - sometimes it felt like they gave directions more than they made sales. Heather always did her best to push their music, though. It was one of three things they offered, along with t-shirts and signed prints. The t-shirts she didn't mind so much, but she cringed at the sight of the prints every time. Surely it was in poor taste to charge money for such a thing before they'd even earned much success? The idea in general of selling photographs of herself just seemed odd. Of course, it had been Darren's idea. It seemed "lead singer syndrome" was a real thing, and he'd suffered from early onset. At least the photo itself wasn't terrible - she stood in the back of the shot, appearing even paler in black and white, head tilted with a wry grin on her face. To her left stood Scott and Quinn looking various degrees of apathetic while Darren flipped off the camera with his face screwed up in his best Sid Vicious impersonation.

The boy picked up one and she did her best not to look disappointed.

"How much are these?" he asked.

Ignoring Scott's smug smirk, as he was no doubt taking this as evidence of his claims that the kid had a crush on her, she glanced around to make sure Darren himself was nowhere near. She didn't spot him, but she did notice the man who she'd assumed to be the boy's father watching them like a hawk. Satisfied that their singer was nowhere to be found, she shook her head.

"Just take it," she waved a hand.

She may have been in sore need of money, but she refused to stoop to the depths of extorting it from a teenager. Especially one who, for whatever reason, was looking at her like she was capable of crapping solid gold. In the back of her mind she almost dared to hope that maybe they were getting to the point of gaining a dedicated fan-base.

"Are you sure?" he blinked, hand still hovering over his pocket.

"Positive," she replied, squashing down the part of her that was shouting at her to accept the money "Honestly, it's no big deal. Take it."

"Thank you," he nodded, holding it to his chest.

Heather was expecting him to turn and leave then, but instead he glanced back at the man he was with before turning back to her. The man still watched them intently, but there was more interest on his face than parental disapproval.

"That your dad waiting for you?" she asked, if only to prevent the silence between them from becoming awkward.

"No - godfather," the boy shook his head, revealing a lightning shaped scar on his forehead as he did so.

Heather almost commented on it, but in the end decided it might be best not to. The last thing she wanted to do was to give the kid a complex. For a moment it looked like he might say more on the matter before he seemed to change his mind, and instead introduced himself.

"I'm Harry," he leaned across the table, holding his hand out.

"Heather," she shook his hand, leaning forward "This is Scott."

Scott mimicked her action, nodding at him but saying nothing.

"I...I should probably go," he said, casting a reluctant glance back to his godfather "Will you be here again?"

He addressed her more than he did Scott.

"Most weeknights, some Saturdays if we're lucky," Scott answered for her, plucking one of their flyers with their dates from the wall to hand to him "All the way up 'til September."

Their little "residency" had been courtesy of Darren's father - the owner of the club, and the reason Heather found herself feeling obligated to hold her tongue against his bullshit. The last thing she wanted, or needed, was to be blacklisted by every venue in the city due to his family's long list of contacts.

With a final nod and a muttered goodbye, Harry was gone.

"That was adorable," Scott teased once he was out of earshot.

"Piss off," Heather snorted, shaking her head.

"Maybe it's the dad who has the hots for you," he speculated "He keeps looking at you, you know. Do people really still use their kids to pick up girls?"

Heather didn't bother to correct him by pointing out the man wasn't his father, nor did she dignify his teasing by checking to see if he really was looking at her. It was only when he twisted one of the tuning pegs on his guitar far more harshly and dramatically than he knew he should of that she looked up, unsurprised when the string broke and narrowly missed his eye.

"Mother of fuck," he groaned dramtically before turning to her "I'll give you a twenty if you do it for me?"

"As if you don't know how to re-string a guitar," she sighed, knowing full well what he was up to.

"Not as good as you do," he batted his eyelashes - a move which, frankly, looked ridiculous on a man of his size "Please?"

After fixing him with an unamused look for no less than a full minute, Heather sighed and accepted the guitar from him. He'd just slip a twenty in her bag when she wasn't looking, if not. At least this way it felt more like money earned than pure charity - and it meant she could happily kiss sobriety goodbye for another couple of weeks.

A week passed with no appearance from Harry, and the boy was all but forgotten to Heather. Even Scott had ceased his teasing for her good deed in not charging the kid anything for the print. Darren, however, never ceased his teasing - if it could even be called that - and it was wearing incredibly thin for Heather.

All four of them were at the booth that night - for Heather manned it most nights, and when Darren was there she'd beg Scott to join them as a sort of buffer. Quinn would then join them solely for the purpose of not feeling left out.

"We still need to work out the set-list for next week," Heather reminded, opening her notebook to a fresh page.

"Nothing wrong with the one we've got," Darren shrugged, foot kicking rhythmically on the leg of her chair "Is there?"

"There wouldn't be if we were Guns n' Roses, but as it is, we're mostly playing their songs - hell, even most of the ones that aren't theirs aren't ours either. We have two original songs on the list so far. Two."

Heather did her best not to get annoyed, but it was a conversation they'd had so many times that she could already feel her ire rising.

"Nobody wants to hear original songs," he waved a hand dismissively "Not those ones, at least."

Scott sighed and hung his head back, well versed in what was to follow.

"And nobody wants to sign a band that only does covers," Heather retorted, practically going off of a script due to how many times they'd had this discussion.

This time, however, she attempted to go on the charm offensive and stroke his ego "Darren, we all know you can sing a stellar cover of Mr. Brownstone, but Axl didn't get to where he is today by singing AC/DC, did he?"

"She wrote some really good stuff last week, man, you should take a look," Scott added and she sent him a grateful look.

"No, no, if we're going to talk about what could be done differently, let's talk about you," Darren sauntered around her and sat on the table in front of her, leaning forward "You have to start dressing better for the stage, H."

Heather pushed her chair back to put some distance between them "Are you going to start telling Quinn what to wear now, too?"

"Quinn can wear whatever he wants," a nasty smirk spread over his thin lips - the smirk that always had her feeling sick to her stomach "He's indispensable to this band. But you? Anyone can play bass. Not anyone can play a bass and have a rack like yours. How much more shit do you think we'd sell if you'd show it a little?"

"Darren," Scott sighed as Heather glared.

"C'mon, man," their singer snorted, leaning back on his hands "We both know there's only one reason anyone wants to see a woman on a stage - and music's got nothing to do with it."

"Fuck this," Heather breathed, shaking her head "We'll play the same one as last week, then. And the week after that. And after that. Then when we're fifty and still playing this shithole, don't come crying to me."

Standing up, she kicked her chair backwards and made to leave the booth in the direction of the bar. She flinched when a hand closed around her wrist. Darren was looking down at her, face all perfect innocence even as he snorted at her attempts to pull herself from his grasp.

"Come on, Heather," he said softly, leaning in close "We both know...that I know...that you have a great body. Seems a shame not to let it benefit us. How many guys do you think you could lure over here if you'd just shake your-"

"Get. The fuck. Off of me," she bit out, unable to look at him as she stared hard at the bar.

Two things seemed to happen at once then - Scott growled Darren's name, and the blond gave a yelp and pulled his hand back as though burned. Without turning to see what had happened, but knowing full well Scott hadn't done a thing to cause it, Heather tore away from the group and didn't stop until she was at the bar, heart still pounding in her chest and nausea thrumming throughout her body.

"Jesus Christ, I need a drink," she grumbled to herself "Or ten."

"I can help you with that," a voice sounded to her side.

Whipping round, she blinked in surprise to see a man standing at her side. It took her a moment to calm herself enough to take him in. He was handsome. It wasn't a word she'd normally use - it seemed antiquated and cliché, belonging to an age of black and white movie stars. Certainly not this place. Here, there were 'hot guys', not 'handsome men'. However, the term fit him. Sure, there was something about him that looked just slightly run down (his hair looked like it saw a brush about as often and she saw a good meal), but that was almost a requirement to even get into this place. His features were aristocratic, and the air of casual grace in which he held himself seemed to come to him with incredible ease. He wore an old worn Led Zeppelin t-shirt, but still looked out of place standing there in front of her. It couldn't have been his age - as he had to have been at least ten years her senior - for the club attracted all ages, but there was just something...different about him.

Maybe it was the look on his face. Usually one of two types approached her here - sleazebags who'd talk more to her cleavage than to her face (the type Darren was desperate for her to appease), or music aficionados who were simply desperate for an easy target to talk with about influences, styles, and how far bands of today were going downhill. None of the latter seemed to grasp the irony of talking about this with a person in a "band of today". The man in front of her seemed to fit into neither of these categories neatly - at least, she hadn't noticed his eyes venture southwards from her face as of yet.

In any other circumstance her response might have been standoffish, or gruff at the very least. However, there was something familiar about him. With a furrowed brow, she regarded the man fully before the lightbulb went off.

"You're that kid's dad, right? What was it - Harry? From the other night?"

At first his eyes widened almost imperceptibly, as if he was surprised at the fact that she'd addressed him. But how could that be, considering he had approached her? Whatever caused the odd look that crossed his face, it passed quickly and he returned her smile.

"Godfather," he corrected, his voice quieting a little so she had to strain to hear him over the music.

"Right, my bad, he said that," she remembered, nodding slowly "He, uh, seemed like a good kid."

It was probably painfully obvious that she had no idea what would constitute as a 'good kid', but it was something to fill the silence with. If the man thought the same he didn't show it, instead giving a wide smile "He is. Padfoot."

It was only when he stuck out his hand that she stopped staring in confusion, realising Padfoot was a name, of all things.

"Is that a nickname or did your parents just really hate you?" she asked before she could think better of it, shaking his hand.

Anxiety from her encounter with Darren still thrummed through her, taking the energy she would normally use to filter her words and using it simply to keep her coherent.

He gave a bark of laughter before grinning with a shake of his head "Both, really."

Unable to help it, she returned his smile "Heather."

"What are you drinking?" he asked.

"No, it's okay-"

"I insist," he said warmly, waving over the bartender with the grace and ease that one would summon a waiter at a fancy restaurant with.

Soon she had a triple vodka and coke in her hand, and was doing her very best not to give him a strange look when he paid for it with an entire twenty pound note. Either he was rich, or drunk. Perhaps both. However, the agreement not to give each other strange looks didn't seem to be a mutual one - he had his godson's habit of watching her as if she was about to do something amazing. Heather settled for taking a sip of her drink.

"So, you're a musician?" he asked, tilting his head.

"I try to be. Bass isn't my first choice, but the band needed a bassist when I met them so…"

"What else do you play?" he asked, genuine interest showing on his face.

"Anything I can get my hands on, really," she admitted "Give me a stage and a bucket and I'll give you an opera."

He chuckled at this - either laughter came easily to him or he was just in a particularly merry mood "I'd like to see that."

"Guitar was always my first choice, but nobody can beat Scott when it comes to that," she said "I've always wanted to give singing a go - if Bob Dylan could do it, anybody can - but...Anyway, I do well on bass."

"You do," he agreed, earning a smile from her.

"What about you? Do you play anything?"

"Only the fool," he gave a lopsided smile.

Laughing, she relaxed back against the bar. In truth, she'd come over here to be alone (as alone as she could get in this place), and had been a little annoyed at having her solitude taken from her by a stranger. Now she was grateful. He held none of the awkwardness that people usually did during first conversations, instead talking to her as if he'd known her for years. Heather decided that she rather liked Padfoot - so far, at least. If nothing else he'd proved a great distraction, her heart no longer pounding in her chest and her breathing returning to normal.

"Do you-"

He was about to ask her another question when a hand fell on his shoulder and they both turned to the newcomer in surprise - although Heather didn't miss the way his hand flew to the inside of his jacket in his surprise. It seemed she wasn't the only one on edge that night. But her jumpiness was due to Darren. What was this Padfoot's excuse? Evidently, however, this newcomer was a friend of his.

"Moony," Padfoot greeted, clapping a hand on his arm as Heather did her best not to stare at the scars on his face "This is-"

"What are you doing?" 'Moony' asked so lowly that she almost couldn't hear him at all.

"Oh come on," he sighed, rolling his eyes "I'm just-"

"This is not why we're here, Si-Padfoot," he ground out, not looking at her at all "You cannot just-"

Watching the confrontation, Heather could already feel a small amount of the calm she'd gained begin to seep away as the tension built and she became increasingly uncomfortable.

"I'll just leave you two to it," she cut in, already taking a step backwards "Thanks for the drink."

When the one Padfoot had referred to as Moony finally did look at her, his face surprised her. It held no judgement or annoyance, as she'd expected, just a sad kind of weariness and regret. Taken aback by such a look, she blinked in surprise before remembering herself. With a final nod to Padfoot, and a curious look towards his friend, she made her exit and did her best not to hear the argument between the two that ensued.

"What were you thinking?" Remus hissed, watching as Heather made her retreat.

Sirius frowned when he noticed that his efforts to lighten her mood seemed to have been wasted, as her shoulders hunched the moment she returned to her friends.

"I was talking to her, what about that is so terrible?" Sirius snapped, annoyed at having the conversation cut short "Harry spoke to her last week! She remembered him, you know!"

"Which is precisely why Molly now watches him like a hawk, so he can't follow us here again!" Remus pointed out "Our orders are to-"

"Our orders are ridiculous," Sirius dismissed "When and if the time comes that we need her to come with us - to trust us - surely that will be better achieved if she already knows us? If we're not perfect strangers?"

"Or she'll feel betrayed and feel that you lied to her in not telling her who you really are and start us all off on the wrong foot," Remus reasoned.

"It was one conversation," Sirius scoffed.

"One conversation too many," Remus sighed, although he seemed to relax a little "It's difficult for me too, but we can't just do whatever we like! If the others knew that you'd spoken to her-"

"They won't find out though - will they, Moony?"

Under Sirius' stern glare, Remus deflated a little, shaking his head tiredly and running a hand through his prematurely greying hair "Not from me, no."

At this, Sirius relaxed, allowing some of his own annoyance to falter as he spoke more quietly now "It's for the best. Who will she listen to - who will she trust - should the time come and we need to get her out of here quickly? The one who actually spoke to her, or the one who acted like she was the plague itself?"

Whether he agreed with this or not, Remus gave no sign of responding, instead turning his gaze back to Heather, now sitting quietly at her booth and resolutely ignoring the blond who chatted away at her. Neither of the men could know that the time when they'd need her to trust them was to come a lot sooner than they had ever anticipated.

A/N: A note on how I'm figuring out what muggle music Sirius might be aware of – seeing as he had a tricked out motorbike, I figure it wouldn't be a great leap to assume he'd at least be aware of some muggle rock music (if only to be rebellious and piss off his family, at the very least). He was imprisoned in 1981, meaning he'd miss out on the 80s part of classic rock (such as Motley Crue and Guns n' Roses, who formed in '81 and '85, respectively) and seeing as his first move when escaping Azkaban probably wasn't to catch up on what muggle music he'd missed, this leaves older bands who would have been around during his Hogwarts years, like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Aerosmith etc. etc.