A/N: So, here's the first pre-Hogwarts one-shot. Regulus in my verse is alive, with a wife and a child, and his relationship with Sirius is markedly better than it was in canon when they were teenagers. Alya, his daughter, is a year younger than Harry, and would be in the same Hogwarts class as Ginny and Luna.


September 1987
A Spot of Fun with Some Sort-Of Family

At seven years of age, Harry, like most other wizarding children, didn't attend a primary school. Instead, Remus tutored him several hours each day in the basics of the English language, maths, social and natural sciences, as well as the basic introduction to magic and its numerous branches. Wizarding children weren't allowed a wand before starting Hogwarts at age eleven, but that didn't mean they couldn't be taught not only theory behind transfiguration or potioneering or defence, but also casting techniques. That was Harry's favourite part of his lessons, really; he hated having to sit at his sums and letters, but he loved watching Remus perform spells for him and learning why it was important to get the pronunciation right and the wand movement just so, cause it meant he'd get to do magic properly as soon as he was allowed a wand.

He was at the desk in the corner of the study room, where Remus and he always had their lessons, resting his head sloppily on his propped up arm and scribbling in his notebook a text about the history lesson he'd had that morning about Vikings and what sorts of magic they'd preferred, and how they'd gone raiding and even came to the British Isles – it was very interesting to listen to Remus talk about it, but not very interesting to write, and Remus always cared more about his spelling than the story and Harry was rubbish at spelling – when he heard the tell-tale sound of the fireplace flaring up in the sitting room right through the door.

It was a good enough cause to abandon the stupid writing and go see who was coming through, Harry decided. He played Auror for a bit and snuck as quietly as he could to the door, pretending that there were burglars and he was going to catch them, but it only turned out to be Uncle Reggie, and he was no burglar, he had an even bigger house than Harry and Sirius lived in, even if it gave Harry a bit of the willies the couple of times he'd gone to it in the last year (he'd only gotten to go there after Sirius' mum died, because Sirius hadn't liked his mum at all and always told Harry that she was a nasty person who always yelled, so Harry hadn't minded).

But then Harry noticed that it wasn't only Uncle Reggie; Alya was with him, too.

Alya was Harry's sort-of cousin. Sirius wasn't his real father, he was Harry's godfather, so that meant that Uncle Reggie wasn't really Harry's uncle. Except Harry had always called him that, because Sirius was sort of his da, in his head, a bit, so it was okay. And Alya was his daughter, so that made her Harry's cousin, only not really. Alya was little, only six, and she was small and quiet and Harry thought she might be afraid of him. He wasn't sure why, exactly, but she never wanted to play with Harry very much, so Harry didn't want to play much with her right back.

Still, between Alya and the spelling, Harry had his priorities straight.

Abandoning his hiding position, Harry ran into the room to hug his uncle around the legs, yelling: "Uncle Reggie!" as he did so.

"Hello, Harry," Uncle Reggie said, giving him his smiley-eyes. Uncle Reggie didn't really smile with his mouth, so you had to know what to look for, and Harry did. His eyes were the same as Sirius', only Sirius smiled with his mouth and his eyes. But it wasn't hard to notice, if you knew how Sirius smiled, and Harry, of course, did. "How are you, then?"

"Bored!" Harry declared, nodding his head. "I have to write a story about Vikings."

"You don't think Vikings are interesting?"

"But it's writing, Uncle Reg!" he exclaimed, eyes momentarily sticking to a stain on his robes he hadn't noticed before. "That's boring, and Remus never cares about my story."

"I'm sure he does."

"Well, he cares more about stupid spelling."

"Spelling is important," Alya volunteered with her serious face and Harry rolled his eyes at her dramatically, though he made sure to smile, too. She was always saying that these days, ever since she'd learned to read and write, but Harry thoroughly disagreed.

"Hi, Ally Ally Axen Free."

Alya wrinkled her nose and looked up at Uncle Reggie, who lifted one of his eyebrows at her.

"What does that mean?"

"I dunno; it's just what I heard on the telly one time," Harry admitted.

"Harry, it's polite to ask someone if they mind the nickname before putting it into use," Remus said, walking into the room and giving Harry a look. Harry shrugged and turned to Alya.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"No," Alya said quietly, then buried her face in her father's leg. Uncle Reggie rubbed little circles on her back.

"That's not true, is it, Alya?" Remus asked in that voice he used when Harry was upset, and after a moment, Alya shook her head, just a bit. Harry frowned.

"You must stand up for what you want, Alya," Uncle Reggie said, pulling her away from his leg a bit. "You are a Black, and Blacks are never afraid of demanding their due. We do not cower and we do not let people put us down, do you understand? Now tell Harry how you really feel."

Alya looked up at Uncle Reggie with big eyes, and Uncle Reggie looked down at her and he looked like Remus when Harry wanted something and knew he wasn't going to get it from Moony. Curious, Harry waited to see what Alya would do, and after a moment, she turned to Harry, biting her lip a bit and looking down at his feet.

"Eye contact," Uncle Reggie reminded her, and Alya looked up to meet Harry's eyes. She had interesting eyes, really, sort of grey, but with this really blue blue circle around the black. Harry quite liked it when she looked at him, so that he could study them, cause his were just the one colour and that was boring.

"I don't like that name, Harry. Please don't use it anymore?" She snuck a look up at her father, then turned back and sort of became a bit bigger, but not really. "Please don't use it anymore," she repeated, but this time it sounded like a demand instead of a question. Then she glanced up at Uncle Reggie again, who nodded approvingly.

Harry shrugged, thinking instead that he was going to have to think of something else, because he and Sirius always gave people nicknames, and Alya should have a good one. "But I can still call you Ally, right?" he made sure to check.

"Yes."

"Okay!" Harry declared brightly, offering her a big smile. It was his first attempt at something different, anyway. He was sure he'd do better next time, he just needed time. "Wanna go play?"

"Harry, did you finish your writing practice?" Remus asked, and Harry's shoulders drooped.

"But Alya and Uncle Reggie are here! I can't do it now! I'll do it later." He made that face that always made Sirius give in.

"Those eyes may work on your godfather, but they certainly never have on me, and they aren't about to start now," Remus said sternly. "Regulus is here to meet up with Sirius, they have more than a bit of business, so Alya will stay the whole afternoon, you'll have plenty of time to play after you've finished."

"But won't Alya be bored?"

"No, she has her own assignments to complete," Uncle Reggie said, handing Alya a blue book bag. "Now, off you go, and you will both finish your tasks before any playing whatsoever. And if Remus informs me differently, I will be very cross with the both of you, is that understood?"

"Yes, Father," Alya said, but she smiled at her dad, and then followed Harry back to his study room. "May I use the other desk?"

"Sure, that's Remus' desk but he won't mind."

Then, with an almighty sigh, Harry clambered back into his chair and went back to writing his text, swinging his legs back and forth all the time. It wasn't running, but it was better than nothing, and it helped him concentrate.

The shuffling and scratching sounds Alya made were a bit annoying at first, but after a while Harry found that it actually helped him focus. Or maybe that was just the promise of more fun things to come.


"Are those Muggle pencils?" Harry asked Alya, leaning over the back of his chair to look at what she was drawing on the desk.

Alya apparently liked to sit all nice, unlike Harry. He thought that must be boring, but Alya was usually a bit boring, always very proper. She had proper robes and dresses, and her hair was always very properly tied, and she always talked very properly, too. It always made him want to make her be more improper.

It was like a little challenge, and Harry always took challenges very Sirius-ly (Remus called that 'a pun', but Sirius said that 'puns were the lowest form of humour and you want to be original, Prongslet, so don't use them'; Harry still found it funny and it was true, too, so in his head, he liked to use it).

"Yes. My friend Evan gave them to me for my birthday," Alya explained.

"They look dead useful," Harry declared, rolling on his chair to lean over to look at the drawing. It was a very good drawing, too. He could tell immediately that it was two house-elves in the picture. "Who's that?"

"That's Kreacher and Wilty. They are our house-elves."

"Oh, Sirius mentions Kreacher sometime; he doesn't like him very much, though."

"Kreacher doesn't like Uncle Sirius, either."

"We only have Milby. She used to belong to Sirius' favourite uncle, but then he died, so now she's ours. I think maybe there are more at the Potter Estate, that was my father's before he died, but I've never been there. Milby goes there all the time, though, and she sometimes mentions someone named Lonny, who takes care of everything."

Alya looked at him with a frown.

"You don't know? But you are the only Potter left."

Harry shrugged. "It's boring, and Sirius says I don't have to think about it until I'm all growed up. I asked once, and Sirius said something about people having weddings there now."

Alya was quiet for a bit, and just when Harry thought she wouldn't say anything, she responded: "We had more than just Kreacher and Wilty, but only because Grandmother insisted. Father says we don't need more than two, because I won't have any brothers or sisters, and a lot of people in the family have died."

"Did you like your grandmother?" Harry asked, her curious. "Only, Sirius says she was always shouty and nasty."

Alya looked back at her drawing and rubbed the tip of her finger on a pencil. "Not really. I always had to be very polite to her or else she yelled."

Leaning closer, Harry lowered his voice, knowing that he wasn't supposed to know this. "I heard Sirius say one time that she used to hit him, and use spells on him. I asked Remus about it, and he said that if anyone ever tried to do that to me, I should come and tell him immediately, that grown-ups aren't allowed to do it."

Alya looked back at him, only not exactly straight at him, but a bit off from the side.

"She used a spell on me once," she whispered, so quietly Harry had to lean forward to hear her. "It hurt, and I cried, and she yelled at me for it, and then Mummy came in and took me away. And Daddy yelled at her really, really loudly, and after that I wasn't to be alone with her anymore, even Grandpapa Arcturus agreed and he's very old-fashioned, Father says."

"Well, then she was as horrible as Sirius says, and I'm glad she died so you don't have to be afraid anymore."

"Mum fixed up the house. We used to have the heads of old house-elves mounted on the walls, and it was horrible," Alya confided softly. The thought made Harry wrinkle his nose in disgust. "Dad was upset when she died, but it's much better now. Do you think it's bad that I'm glad she's gone?"

Harry bit at his lip a bit. Alya sounded upset, and he wasn't sure what to do to make her not be upset anymore. He opted for the truth.

"No. She was horrible to you, so you get to be glad." He thought about saying something else, and in the end settled for: "You draw really good, way better than I do."

Alya's cheeks got all pink, but she smiled, so Harry counted it as a win. He was rubbish at this comforting thing, but he supposed he'd done well enough this time.

"Thank you."

"Whaddaya wanna do, then? We can go play outside with Snitch." Snitch being Harry's golden retriever of four years, whom Harry adored, even though he always had to walk him with Sirius or Remus, or sometimes Andy, when she came to look after him if Sirius and Remus were both so busy that they would be gone for more than one night and he couldn't stay with just Milby.

"I'd rather not."

"Why? Is it cause you don't want to get dirt on your clothes? Cause you can have some of mine, I get mine dirty all the time and it all comes out in the wash, although Remus always says that I have to have special play clothes, they're Muggle, and they're never nice like my robes are."

Alya wrinkled her nose at him.

"I'd really rather not."

"Oh, come on!" Harry insisted. "You'll see, Snitch is loads of fun to play with. Oh, I know! I bet we could ask Remus to take us to the park, we can fly brooms there and Snitch can chase us around." Maybe it was the hair? Alya had lots of hair, and it was really nice, too, black like Harry's but not so crazy. Sometimes, when she wasn't paying attention, he liked to tug on it a bit, just to see what it felt like in his fingers. And he also liked to make her stop being so quiet and shy, too, and when he touched her hair, she forgot to be like that.

Grinning to himself, he snapped his hand forward off the back of the chair and tried to rub furiously at the hair on the top of her head, just like Sirius always did to him. Alya squawked in surprise – hilarious sound! – and pulled away, and then Harry felt a bit of a horrible swooping of his stomach and shouted out in surprise himself, and then his whole body jarred and the fingers of his other hand started really, really hurting, in a sharp, stabby pain, and he jerked his hand back, feeling out of breath and the pain made him cry and the lack of breath made him sob.

"Harry! Daddy! Uncle Siri, Mr Remus! Harry, are you all right? Where does it hurt? Daddy!"

Harry tried to stop himself from sobbing a bit, but it was really hard, and his fingers hurt. Hands pulled him up a bit and tried to take his wrist, but he jerked back because it hurthurthurt.

"Come on, Prongslet, you have to let me see. Come on, now."

It was Remus, so Harry did what he was told. He heard an incantation and then there was a rush of nothing instead of pain, and he sobbed a bit more, just out of relief, just because Remus fixed it. Someone pulled on his side and he went, and the embrace felt familiar and comforting, even though it smushed his glasses to his eyelids.

"There you go, Prongslet, shhh, you're all right now," Sirius sounded a bit weird with Harry's ear pressed to his chest, but it was nice, it was always nice, and Sirius even kissed his head, which he only did sometimes, and Harry stopped crying. His hand didn't hurt anymore.

"Harry is perfectly all right," Uncle Reggie said, to the side, and Harry blinked the tears out of his eyes to see – not that it was easy, with his glasses all dirty from the tears. Uncle Reggie was hugging Alya, who looked a bit silly, pale and with wide eyes and with her hair all mussed up. "Now, what happened?"

"Harry was messing my hair, and then, and then the chair went woosh and he fell, and, and I think his fingers hit my chair, the metal thing with the wheels, and that's why they hurt so much."

"You were leaning the chair over, weren't you?" Remus asked him with a raised eyebrow. Biting his lip, Harry nodded, letting him wipe the tears off Harry's cheeks.

"Well, no permanent harm done, and a lesson learned," Sirius declared, putting his fingers through Harry's hair like Harry had done with Alya. "Nothing magic can't fix."

"It hurt," Harry informed Sirius. "It hurt lots."

"Tends to happen when you knock your chair over by leaning on it too much, I'm afraid. You cracked a bone, and pinched a few others," Remus explained. "We should splinter the fingers for a day or two, just until we're sure there won't be any swelling. Then we can all go out for ice cream. Is that all right with you, Regulus?"

"Certainly."

"Daddy, could we go to the park? Harry wanted to fly on his broom and play with Snitch," Alya asked her father. Uncle Reggie looked at Harry for a bit and then nodded.

"All right; Remus will have to take you, Sirius and I aren't done yet. And you'll need some other clothes, I suppose, there's bound to be puddles from the rain this morning. I'll fire-call your mother and have her send your broom through, though as to the clothes..."

"Oh, don't tell me she doesn't have a single set of play clothes to get muddy in, Reggie!" Sirius exclaimed, rolling his eyes. "You really should get her some Muggle tights and tees."

"She can have some of mine," Harry offered, looking at Alya, and felt immensely better when she gave him a tentative, shy smile. He could have done without the hurt fingers, but in the end, he'd gotten her to agree to his master plan and she didn't look upset about her mussed hair, either. He was going to enjoy it, he decided as Remus tended to his hand. He was actually going to get Alya to have proper fun with him for once!


"All right, then, you two; I'm going to sit at that bench, and you'll keep where I can see both of you."

Harry nodded and settled himself on his broomstick, and beside him, Alya did the same. After Aunt Dahlia had sent her broom over, Remus had given her some of Harry's play clothes and Uncle Reggie had braided her hair back, and she looked much more interesting this way, Harry thought, because the clothes were a bit big on her and he'd never seen Alya when she wasn't in some sort of robes, and when her hair was all pulled back her face looked different, too, so he decided that hurt fingers were worth it, because now she was more like Ron's sister Ginny, except Ginny was weird and Alya wasn't, and Harry was actually looking forward to flying around with her.

Because Alya was wicked good on a broom. They both had those child brooms, so that they couldn't fly very fast and very high, and there were sticking charms so they wouldn't fall easily (Harry hated the sticking magic, because he could never do things he wanted on the broom because of them, but Sirius had promised to get him a grownups broom when he turned nine, which was in two whole years, and Harry was going to die from waiting for it, but Sirius never went back on his word, so he at least knew he'd be getting it eventually), but it was still fun to have someone his age to fly with. Ron's brothers could fly brooms, but they all thought that Harry was too small, because Ron wasn't allowed on a broom (just like Ginny wasn't, either), so they never wanted to fly with him.

So, Harry and Alya settled on their brooms, and when Harry looked over at his cousin, the girl gave him this look and Harry grinned widely, because this was going to be awesome. Alya was a Black, and Sirius always said that Blacks didn't like to lose, so he knew that Alya wasn't going to be all girl about this at all, which meant that he didn't have to be all nice to her, either. When Remus was sure they were ready, he unclipped the lead from Snitch's collar and then they were all tearing away, Harry and Alya racing each other and Snitch letting out a happy bark before he chased after them.

They flew in a straight line until they reached the other side of the clearing where the special wards were so that Muggles couldn't see them (this park was the best because of them, Harry loved coming here, knew just where all the borders and wards were, and he'd explained it all to Alya while they'd eaten their ice creams and walked to the park with Remus keeping hold of Snitch). Then Harry, who was slightly in the lead, pulled up and around, going as high as his broom would let him before turning to go in a new direction. When he looked to his left, Alya was huddled on her broom, hot in pursuit, keeping to the same height as he did. He pushed the broom to its limit, but Alya still managed to pull up next to him, and then she banked and Harry had to bank to avoid her, so he ended up flying down very low to the grass, and he barely fixed his direction when Snitch jumped towards him. Harry managed to avoid the retriever and, swooping with laughter, circled back to Alya, who was hovering to watch him. She grinned widely at him, looking almost a spitting image of Andy except for the black hair (Andy was Sirius' cousin who looked after Harry sometimes and whose daughter could change her face and hair and everything just like that), and sped up, this time the one in the lead while Harry chased after her.

They made a wide circle around the clearing, waved at Remus who was sitting on a bench, and then Harry pushed his broom to the limit of its speed, caught up with the end of Alya's, and tugged as hard as he could on the bristles. Alya wobbled, exclaiming in surprise, and pulled sharply up at a right angle to the ground, smacking Harry with the bristles lightly on the back. Harry lost his balance and this time failed to avoid Snitch, who barrelled into him so that they both toppled onto the ground and rolled in the grass, landing with Harry on his back and Snitch wildly licking his face.

Laughing as he pushed his dog away, Harry sat up, just in time to see Alya land and dismount, looking a bit worried.

"You didn't hurt yourself?" she asked hesitantly.

"Nah, it was fun!" Harry almost shouted, tugging his sleeve to wipe all the gooey drool Snitch had slobbered onto his face and not worried at all about the green patches and wet mud on his clothes. "But Snitch needs a break, he's panting, see? That means we should give him some water." He picked up his broom and the three of them started walking back to Remus' bench. "We'll let him rest a bit, and instead chase my dad's Snitch. The ball, I mean. It usually likes to fly near my head, but Remus can put a charm on it to make it go away. Sirius says I'll be a great Seeker!"

"My father was a Seeker," Alya offered with a small, shy smile. She looked nice, too, much better than normal, because her cheeks were all ruddy from flying around and her hair was sort of wind-blown, so she didn't look as pale as she usually did. Harry was liking this Alya much better than how she usually was, and decided that he was gonna have to find a way to make her come flying with him again, because he'd finally found something she liked to do with him, and Ron was a great playmate (and Neville wasn't too bad, either, since he came to live with Harry and Sirius for a while long, long ago when they were four, though he was usually pretty boring and too clumsy to do stuff like play Aurors and go flying), but sometimes Harry wished he had more than just Ron to play with – even if it was a girl. "Maybe I will be as well, and then we will meet on the Quidditch field."

"Well, I'll be Gryffindor and you'll be Slytherin, of course, so we can't be together on the team. But that's good, or else we couldn't do it."

"Perhaps I will try for another position," Alya suggested. "I'd like to be a Chaser."

"Oh, oh! We have a Quaffle at home, too! You know what we should do? We should get Uncle Reggie and Sirius to be goalies, and we'll play two-on-two up in our attic, wouldn't that be fun?"

"What would be fun?" Remus asked. He already had Snitch's water bowl set up on the ground, and the retriever went to lap at it noisily.

"If me an' Sirius played against Ally and Uncle Reggie."

Remus smirked. "Yes, that would be something to see. Your father was an excellent Seeker, did you know, Alya? I remember, one match between Slytherin and Gryffindor in our, hm, must have been sixth or seventh year, there was the flu going all around, and half of the Slytherin team was in bed with it. Gryffindor scored nineteen hoops to Slytherin's one by the first Snitch sighting, half of them were James', and after that, your father spotted the Snitch three more times, and every time he kept our Seeker away from it, until his team managed to bring the score down to hundred-fifty points difference, and only then did he catch the Snitch, all while neck-and-neck with our Seeker, to finish the game to a tie. James was furious, of course, but it was an amazing game to watch, and your father was just that good, that he was confident he'd be able to catch the Snitch right when he teem needed him to."

"How come he didn't wait for one more hoop, then they would have won?" Harry asked, leaning on her broom a bit in interest.

"Oh, if he had, they'd have lost for sure. Even that one hoop that tied the game was more of a fluke, really; our Keeper wobbled on the broom some and, well, he didn't exactly drop the Quaffle into the hoop because he never had a good grip on it in the first place, but it was almost like that. There was simply no way for them to have been able to score one more before James pulled the advantage to our side. Regulus saw Slytherin's one chance and he took it – and that year we had a very good Seeker, too."

"Was Uncle Siri also on the team?" Alya asked, and Remus shook his head with a wry smile.

"No, Sirius didn't have much of an interest for it. He tried out and was reserve for one year, but he found the rigorous training schedule to be too limiting for him, so he quit. He preferred to be loud and disruptive in the stands instead."

"Will he do that when I play, too?" Harry asked, grinning, because it was a funny thought. Sirius was usually pretty funny, when he wasn't in one of his gloomy moods (Harry hated those times, because they frightened him – they always made him think of his mum and dad, and what he'd do if Sirius died, too, and he didn't like to think about that very much, it made him want to cry).

"I dare say he will. What'll be interesting will be to see what he does when it's Gryffindor versus Slytherin and the both of you are playing," Remus answered, still smiling.

"He will cheer for Harry, of course," Alya said, as if that was how it would be, of course. Harry frowned.

"He'll cheer for you too, Ally," he told her loyally, because it was true. "You're 'our Black Princess'," (he imitated Sirius' very important voice to the best of his abilities, the one he found secretly funny) "so he has to."

"But you're more important to him," the girl pointed out. "It's all right, Harry. Daddy will cheer for me, and Uncle Sirius will cheer for you, and when we play against each other, they can sit together in the stands and then it'll be like they're both cheering for the both of us."

Harry conceded that this would be acceptable.

They played Seeker for a while, though they had to wear gloves or else the Snitch would have just flown around their heads, and in the end Harry won their game by three catches. But Alya didn't get upset about it, and then when Remus made glowing circles in the air and they raced through them, Alya won two times more than Harry did, so Harry decided it was fair that he wouldn't be upset, either. Snitch the Retriever ran around a bit more, and they threw a stick for him to bring to them, and Remus only insisted they went home when it started to get dark.

Sirius and Uncle Reggie were sitting in the living room and talking when they all came in, and Harry actually got to race Alya to tell then what all they'd done, which was pretty fun, because Harry loved it when it was loud and confusing and the best thing of all was that Alya wasn't being all shy. She still didn't argue with him when he made up some things to tell her dad and his, and she was much quieter and sort of not all hand-wavy like Harry, but that was all right, because she was talking and smiling and therefore Harry knew she'd had fun too, which was the most important thing when playing with someone else, Remus always said so.

"So, you had more fun than usual with Alya this time around?" Sirius asked when Uncle Reggie and Alya and Remus all left so that they could have dinner.

"Uh-huh."

"See, I told you, kiddo; our Black Princess isn't so bad at all, is she?"

Harry thought a moment before nodding. "She's wicked good on the broom."

That was certainly the highest of praise in his book. Yeah, Harry decided, thinking a bit more. Alya was definitely okay.


A/N: For those who may not know, Walburga (Sirius and Regulus' mother) died in 1985 according to Word-of-God, which I'm taking as given in this case, and additionally, Sirius and Regulus' paternal grandfather Arcturus(-bought-Order-of-Merlin-First-Class-)Black III lived until 1992. Given that he would have de iure been the Head of the family even before Sirius' father (Orion was actually the de facto Head), he would have lived at Grimmauld Place. Therefore, both Arcturus and Walburga would have continued to live there from the end of the FWW to their deaths even after Regulus brought in a wife and daughter and took over the Head position from his late father.