Chronicles

by Mariann's

Sequel to A Year In Switzerland The ongoing lives of Remus, Sirius and their chosen family / Pairings RL/SB HP/HG JP/LP and many others

6. Unsettling Memories

A/N: From now on there will be lots of flashbacks – all such memories are formatted in italic

Chapter 6 – Unsettling Memories

Friday, 18.12.1998 / Sirius

Yay, all the Christmas shopping and planning done, we're ready to apparate to the Sunnegg as soon as classes are over at noon. The students are let off to their Christmas vacation at noon today, so we don't even have to linger for lunch. I have only four lessons while Remus has five, so I'm packing what we want to take back to Switzerland and I'm getting Seraina and Denny ready for the trip home. School will resume on January fourth, so we have a good sized Christmas vacation of more than two weeks. I need it, badly, to be honest, because I'm quite exhausted. I can't wait for the school year to end and then change to Transfiguration for only the fifth, sixth and seventh years. I haven't heard if they have found the second set of teachers yet, but I'm not in a hurry and I'll see when the time comes…

I've packed all the clothes we need from here into a suitcase and prepare my briefcase as well as Remus' laptop computer. Now I'm shrinking all the Christmas gifts and carefully put them in an extra bag. The twins are on the carpet, both starting to crawl, which tires them out and nicely distracts them from teething! It's just too much fun to watch them right now, they are amusing us with their competition of who's getting on the easiest and the fastest. If we help them, they already start to pull themselves up. Grabbing my fingers, Denny easily pulls himself into a sitting and then a standing position. He's so cute. His eyes are more blue than grey, but otherwise everyone thinks he's my spitting image. His hair is now fully black and has grown out a bit. He pulls on my fingers.

"Aren't you the big boy, Denny! Do you want to stand?" I ask.

He gurgles something and looks up to me, then smiles and finally, when I lift my hands a bit and he follows, he laughs, because he's standing on his little feet. A squeal tells me of his pride that he's managed that step. He still holds on to my fingers.

"You don't let go quite yet, little one, you're still much too small!" I warn him.

He drops back on his little nappy clad bum and turns around to crawl to his sister who has watched with her head tilted a bit.

"Hey, Seraina! What about you, my love? Are you going to do the same little trick or will you let Denny get away with it on his own?"

I'm getting a flash of a smile from her, then she squeals, turns from her sitting position and crawls to me quickly. She's just so charming with that lovely smile of hers! If Denny is my spitting image then the charm certainly helped that Seraina is Remus' copy. She has a lot of little light brown ringlets that start to grow into curls all around her head and her eyes are a beautiful hazel, mostly brown, but with those moss green flecks inside that give them so much depth. Her mouth is finely curved, just like her Papa's, and the little nose starts to look a lot like Remus', too. She grabs onto my robes and pulls herself up, holding on to the fabric with her tiny hands. She smiles at me again.

At that moment, Remus enters the flat. She turns her head in his direction and squeals in delight. She drops back onto the carpet and starts to crawl to Remus, who looks down and coos:

"Who have we got here then? A little creepy-crawly? A little Seraina girl? Come to Papa, love! – You're doing that very nicely, Seraina! Here you are!"

Remus has dropped his briefcase and lifts Seraina up to kiss her. Denny is already on his way to Remus as well and wails to be lifted up also. Remus quickly plants a few more kisses on Seraina's cheeks, then sets her down to greet Denny as well.

"Are we going back home with you two?" Remus asks, setting Denny back on the carpet next to his sister.

"Their first Christmas, love! I'm looking forward to it so much!"

"Me too. Let's get ready and go."

"We are ready, only waiting for you, sweetheart. I've packed all the gifts in that bag and our suitcases are ready, too. Everything made small, of course…"

"Good. Just let me pick up my own stuff…"

While Remus prepares a bag with his own things he wants to take along I dress the twins in warm clothes, then each of us takes one of the twins in the sling. The slings are still the most practical form of travel for us when we're apparating, because we have body contact with them. If we need to carry them for longer periods of time we have carriers for the back, in which they can sit. We pick up our brooms and start for the Entrance Hall and the main door. Many of the students pass and greet us and we wish them all Merry Christmas.

A short broom ride later we reach the gates and apparate back home. We're greeted by a living room that's already been decorated very festively. The gang has done everything but the tree. Rails have been surrounded by fir branches, fixed with red, green and gold ribbons. There are more fir branches on all flat surfaces, with much golden tinsel and there are candles everywhere. James, Lily, Hermione, Morag and Nicole sit at the table, busily cutting out pieces of coloured foil to make little angels, which Hermione decorates with long white hair.

"Wow, you've all done lovely work!"

Hermione comes around the corner from the kitchen and grins.

"And of course it's all charmed not to loose needles and not to wither before we throw it out! Nicole was tempted to ask us to do the same thing for her. We couldn't, of course, and she knows."

"Well, it would have been nice, but I suppose my sister would have started to wonder," Nicole admits.

Saturday, 19.12.1998 / Hermione

We did have a load of fun decorating the house. All the rooms smell nicely of the fresh potpourri we've spread in them and the fresh pine branches that we used just about everywhere. Ginny, Ernie and Blaise have brought a few extra decoration spells back from university. Seems like their professor is a Flitwick type of teacher who likes to pass on some fun, too. It's great to have most of the family together. We all reserved Christmas Eve for the celebration with the gang and most of us will be visiting our families at home for Christmas day. I suppose that's a format we'll keep for a long while, because we like celebrating together.

Dobby and Winky are happily working together in the kitchen to clear everything from lunch. I'm going over to look for a book in Remus' collection when I see a roll of parchment on the living room table. I pick it up and notice it has to be a series of notes for the beginning of Remus' memoirs. For a moment I hold myself back, but then I'm really curious, so I sit down and read it. If he wanted it to remain a secret then he wouldn't have left it on the coffee table in the living room.

I was born on the 5th September 1959 as a very normal child of very normal parents. My mother worked as a healer and my father was an official working for the Ministry. There was nothing unusual about me, unless one counts my curiosity for anything that contained information, my ability to read at the very early age of three. Nothing unusual at all until one summer evening before my fifth birthday.

It was a warm, clear summer evening and around our house, which lay at the edge of a forest there were the typical sounds of a country summer evening, birds were chirping, insects humming, all seemed to be perfect around our home. Because it was still so warm I had the permission of my parents to go outside after dinner. Later I heard them calling me inside but I didn't react. I just didn't feel like going to bed yet. Soon the sun set and the moon would be rising and I wanted to see it there hanging round and bright in the sky. I hid in the high grass on the edge of the forest, not very far from our house and heard the calls of my parents. My parents had stopped calling me for a while, but were now on their way to find me. Just when I was ready to get up and show myself I heard a growl behind me. I looked around and I could see that there was a huge predator, which pounced, attacked me, bit me and all I remember is that I screamed when the sharp teeth buried themselves in my flesh. Everything went so fast that later I couldn't even say what had happened.

I was told just what it was that bit me when I finally woke up again. My father was sitting next to my bed and I felt pain throughout my body, but worst of all in my left shoulder. As tenderly as he could my father explained to me that I had been attacked by a wolf. Not a common wolf – a werewolf! I had only heard about those monsters once or twice before. And then I learned that this attack on me meant that I had been cursed to be a werewolf myself. I probably cried for days when I was told I would be transforming into such a wolf on the full moon night every month for the rest of my life.

I changed. Quickly. I had always been a shy, but cheerful child, my parents told me later that I had been humming and smiling all day long. That was all gone from the moment I felt the wolf inside. I could not accept it. I didn't want to believe it, but I felt it inside of me immediately. It made me angry, impatient, grumpy most of the time. I withdrew completely; no more playing with friends from the village further away down the road. They were magical folk and had heard what had happened to me and so they didn't want to play with a werewolf.

Other changes involved my senses. On the very day I had awoken in St. Mungo's I had been able to smell much more intensively, my hearing seemed to have been enhanced, because even whispered words reached my ears perfectly understandable from some distance away, and at night I started to see much better.

Then the first full moon night after the attack came. My father had prepared a room in the cellar for me to be locked safely inside. He didn't know what to expect, but for a few days while the moon was waxing to full they held me on their laps, told me it would not be nice and that I would be very ill, but that I had to be strong, because they had nothing at all to help me while it lasted but that they would always love me, no matter what I was.

I did not want to cry and make them sadder than they already were. When they said that it was time I held my head up and went into that room. My father locked it after me, added a strong beam across the door to make sure that the wolf would be unable to tear the door down. I heard them murmur soothing words, assuring me of their love. When the pain came I lost my mind and soon I knew nothing anymore. In fact, I knew nothing anymore for two days, during which my mother healed all my broken bones and the gashes from my teeth and claws. I didn't understand what had happened, but I soon learned, that every month I would be in pain like this for almost a few days.

Two months later we had moved. Another little house, neat and friendly, but this time it was a house further away from a village again close to a forest. My mother stopped working full time to stay with me. She taught me at home, trained me and conditioned me to become an overly controlled child. I learned to keep the wolf at bay and she told me I was only allowed to let it out on the night of the full moon. And I followed, I never let it gain the upper hand and kept it on a very short leash.

Both my parents did everything in their power to heal me. They researched, travelled and tried to find a cure, but there was nothing to be found. The first year after the attack they took me to countless healers, druids or sometimes even charlatans, followed the slightest trail, all with the faint hope that there would be something that could help me. Only once one of those 'healers' almost killed me they gave up.

In the new house there was another cellar. My father did his very best to make it bearable, it was warm, he used cushioning charms on every wall, the floor and even the ceiling, but the wolf was so terribly strong. Every full moon night I would throw myself against the walls, the doors, I'd bite and scratch myself because there was no other human around that I could attack. Because I tore all my clothes I wore to shreds when I transformed my parents asked me to undress before the transformation started to spare my clothes, but that only meant they took me out of the pool of blood naked.

The only bright memories I have of those years right after I was bitten were the times we spent in my mother's home country, Switzerland. It seems that werewolf prejudices there were reserved for a much smaller group of people and the fairly numerous family on my mother's side didn't hold their noses up, they took me the way I was. Except for short summer vacations we lived there so I could attend Muggle school. To cover up my monthly absences they told the school authorities that I suffered from a recurring disease which came with the full moon and that I would therefore miss some classes. It was quite amazing how easily that was bought. Every month I stayed home for the full moon night and returned to school after two days when Mum would have healed all my wounds and glamoured the bruises that would possibly still be visible. I started school a year early for Switzerland, with six, but I had not been sent to the nursery school there and the school's doctor checked me and declared I was fit enough to attend. My parents were happy that I was allowed to go to school and I was thrilled. I actually went there with two cousins who were around the same age. One cousin was a year older than I and started school at the same time, the other was a year younger. Both would go to Beauxbatons later on like most of my mother's family had. My mother, as well as her siblings and cousins, had been allowed to choose their schools and mum for some reason wanted to go to Hogwarts where she met my father.

I loved to go to school. Maybe that came with my mother teaching me for the year before I was starting. I had been so lonely without any friends. Now I had friends at school who were clueless, except for my cousin Céline and she wouldn't tell anyone. Of course I stayed closest to her and later on to Yves who didn't care for the werewolf. So I wasn't as lonely as before, but going home from school meant going back to most of my isolation. I consoled myself with excessive reading. My father was working in the Department of Mysteries and did a lot of research. His library was therefore very eclectic with books covering a multitude of subjects. Many of them of course treated things that were mysterious, even for the wizarding world. My mother as a healer had a large amount of books about healing, about the human body in general. I had read many of those books long before I went to Hogwarts. Both my parents like me loved to read novels, too, which led to them having an additional large collection of novels and more common text books. They also gave me a lot of them for every occasion.

For years I only knew that I transformed into a raging monster through the tales of my parents. But in the late summer before I was turning ten I finally learned what it meant to be a wolf. We were in our house in England. I had been late to come back inside and my parents were frantic, but then I felt the pull of the moon and they had to lock themselves inside and pray that I would not find my way into the village.

They had reconstructed my nightly adventure the next day, when they found me deep in the forest. I could actually remember the running and how it felt to run on four legs.

Luckily we were in England for that full moon, where we had much more space and the huge forest. Had we been in Switzerland I would have been within the next settlement within minutes! But the young wolf must have been afraid of the village and even though it most probably had the scent of the humans in its nose it stayed in the woods where it ran for hours. Much to my parents' relief no one had taken notice of the werewolf in their neighbourhood. Every discovery would mean that we would have to move somewhere else again.

But this first full moon night spent outside had woken a more conscious realisation of the wolf in me. I had felt the power of the muscles and the easiness to run for hours and many miles. It became clear to me that the beast needed its freedom to exhaust itself, but I knew immediately that it was impossible and that I couldn't have it.

Mum and dad were amazed to find me in the late morning, quite naked, deep inside of the forest, but clear of wounds save a few scratches from the brambles. They both realised the same thing I had very quickly and thought that the little wolf would have to be shut in an hour earlier rather than later and it was with even more sadness that they took care I was inside the next full moon.

Many people would tell my parents to have me 'put down' in the course of the years. My parents would have none of it though. Patiently my mother continued to home school me in English and the magical disciplines in addition to the Muggle school and before I was ten I was reading most of the time. To keep the wolf down I had learned to meditate and had been trained in yoga, so that I could calm myself when I felt the wolf lift its head up too high inside of me. They even taught me relaxation through self-hypnosis. I loathed this beast and I hated the knowledge of what it could do. I knew what the people talked about werewolves early on, some of them had treated me like I had been a killer even as a small child. It seemed that apart from my parents who loved me no one would want to see my efforts to keep the wolf locked up and to be as human as I could be with this affliction. In the best case I was mocked, in the worst people chased me away throwing stones after me.

All this time I knew that the curse was to be blamed. I was cursed so I deserved their distrust. It made me incredibly sad. I never understood why it had to be me, what I had done to deserve this. To be treated so badly by the humans and to have to go through that unbearable amount of pain every time the full moon rose over the horizon.

Only after I left Hogwarts my parents told me who it was that had bitten me. My father actually even knew the man. His name was Fenrir Greyback and when I went to look for any available information about him I was disgusted to learn that he had made it a point to bite as many children as he could. I wondered where all those children went to school – if they even went to school or what happened to them. It was soon clear to me that I was the only one who actually was allowed to go to Hogwarts.

Because my father had been able to stun Greyback and take him to Ministry custody he had been awarded and the old werewolf had been sentenced to Azkaban and guarded in a cell with no bars but a very secure door. I found out he had died after eight years in there.

My parents both loved me, but they where realists and carefully started to prepare me for a very lonesome life. They taught me but they let me know that I would probably not, like all other magical children, be allowed a magical education, that they could only teach me at home where my education would certainly not be of the same quality as at Hogwarts. They even warned me that I might not even be allowed my own wand legally when I grew up. I believed them easily. We had been shunned and chased away once too often to not see it. I distrusted anyone but my parents. Especially when we were in England I was afraid of the other children, and I was deathly scared of other adults. Even in Switzerland I didn't get close with my schoolmates. My only consolation were my books and the forest. When I roamed the forests during the day I felt at home and safe from everything.

And then came a day in the early summer before my twelfth birthday. We were in our house in England. When I got home for tea I found a visitor in the parlour talking with my mother. Instantly I was shy and withdrew, but Mum called me inside and put her hands firmly on my shoulders.

"This is Remus, Professor Dumbledore."

The Professor Dumbledore looked down on me and I saw smiling eyes that looked me over with interest over half-moon glasses. He was a very old man with long grey hair and a long beard which covered most of his face but not his smile. He seemed to be tall, even seated. His outfit was colourful, but even I could easily see that he must have been a very powerful wizard.

"So you are Remus. I'm pleased to meet you, young Mr. Lupin!"

I held out my hand and said:

"I'm pleased to meet you, Professor."

"And what a polite young gentlemen you are. – You are certainly wondering who this old codger is, aren't you?"

"I don't know…"

I felt very insecure, no one had ever talked to me in a way he did, but Mum was smiling and she still held on to my shoulders, so I wasn't afraid. He then proceeded to tell me that he was the headmaster of Hogwarts. Of course I knew about Hogwarts, even if I had been warned that I might never see it. So what did the old man want here?

"Would you like to start your education at Hogwarts this fall?" he asked.

I was shocked to the marrow of my bones. I looked at Mum, unable to say anything, with my mouth open and when she nodded I finally nodded eagerly myself.

"But… but I'm a werewolf…" I finally stammered.

"Yes, Remus, I know about your affliction, but we have already been thinking about something that will keep your schoolmates and teachers safe when you have to transform. Apart from that our school nurse, Madam Pomfrey, will be taking care of you. All the teachers will know about you, but no student will be informed unless the ones you trust with your secret. I heard you have an excellent mind, young Remus, and I'd think it would be a waste for such talent if it wasn't educated. Do you not agree?"

Again there was that twinkle in his eyes. I looked from him to Mum and finally she said:

"If you want to go to Hogwarts, Remus, then you shall go!"

Of course I wanted to go. In the next weeks my parents started to tell me all about Hogwarts they had kept for themselves because they had believed I would never be admitted. They hadn't told me those stories to not add to my sadness, when I knew that I would not be allowed to have the same. For the first time in my life I was taken to the Diagon Alley to buy my school equipment and my wand. I got fitted with the school robes and a winter cloak. A wizard's hat was placed on my head. Madam Malkin stood in front of me and saw how happy I seemed to be.

"You are going to be a very handsome schoolboy, Remus!" she said kindly.

Never before had I been treated so nice by wizarding folk in England. In the bookshop they were friendly, too. But nothing came close to what happened at Ollivander's. This was probably the most impressive event in my life after the bite.

Stepping into the dark little shop and being greeted by a very creepy old Mr. Ollivander made me feel very little. A shop that looked so tiny but didn't seem to have an end on top. Or maybe it was because I was still so small. In any case from the way Mr. Ollivander looked me over I felt that he knew what I was and might not agree that a Dark Creature should be entrusted with a wand of its own. But if he did he let nothing on. I was welcomed warmly, measured and fussed over. Then I got wand after wand to try and none responded. I was beginning to be deathly afraid that there would be no wand for me. But all the wands I had been given had contained either phoenix feathers or dragon heartstrings. After about an hour or two Mr. Ollivander turned from them and gave me several wands with unicorn hairs. It took a dozen of them until the right one was finally found. A beech wand with a unicorn hair brought forth a shower of sparks. I was probably not the only one who was relieved, but I'll never forget what Mr. Ollivander had to say as a comment:

"Curious, curious! Innocence is not reserved for humans alone. You must be meant for good deeds, my boy, because the hair in your wand comes from a unicorn that was a day old foal. The wand chooses the wizard and if this wand has chosen you, I can only expect you to bring innocence and friendship to those who will cross your path. This is a wand that gains its power from the pureness of the forest and its most innocent inhabitant. They can both be ruthless if they see no other way, so anyone who shall become your enemy must beware themselves."

It looks like an early draft, but wow, good beginning. I'm putting the roll down and advance to the study, where I find the book I'm looking for soon after. When I'm leaving the study, Remus comes in. He has Denny on his arm and picks up the scroll. I nod at it and admit:

"I've allowed myself to read it, Remus."

"Oh. That's okay, I've let it lie around and there's nothing secret in there… And?"

"You'll always be an innocent, you know! It's nice."

He smiles.

"Not so sure about that anymore, not since I became a Marauder, but it was certainly true when I was such a young child. I need to flesh the whole thing out still. It's just a quick overview about my childhood before Hogwarts, but I know I have some bits to fill in about lots of things. I can't just treat ten years in a few pages in the book. There will be lots about how I felt when I first transformed, especially after the transformations. Lots about my family and the likes…"

"I thought it was pretty good for a draft. It could certainly get better if there were more details."

"Oh, certainly. We'll start going through our memories by putting them into the Pensieve to better describe them. I'm afraid of writing about some of those though. Also I've left out most of my Swiss relations yet. There will be some more about that, and at least that part is a bit less dreary."

"I'm looking forward to the book. I'm sure I'll read it with great interest once it's going to be published."

"If ever! It seems to be such a long task. But it's going to be great, because we'll have so much more time next year. Right now we have 37 lessons each week. No wonder we're both very tired. Next year it will be reduced to 18. One double and one single lesson per class and still two houses together. We switch to Gryffindor/Ravenclaw and Slytherin/Hufflepuff next year."

"That's your workload reduced by a half! Sounds reasonable though," I say.

"Oh, it's going to be almost like working with you guys here! Much better! Sirius will be glad, he's almost breaking down right now. He'll be very happy when June comes around!"

Remus lets Denny down on the carpet, and the little one pulls himself up on Remus' robes immediately. That's new to me!

"Hey, he can get up! Wow!"

Remus grins.

"They're getting up, yes. We have to take everything out of their reach now, so when they're around, put anything dangerous out of their reach, that's anything with a point, that cuts, wands especially etc. Take his hands and see what else he does!"

I do so, offer Denny my fingers and he grabs them and shows me how he can make his first guided steps. He beams, too, the little man! It's such a great progress since I've seen him last week. I lift him on my arms and kiss his cheeks.

"Well done, junior! You're growing so fast!" I commend my godson.

Remus

They certainly do grow fast. They're eight months old now and both start to crawl, if we hold them by their hands they can walk a few steps. But there are new things to observe every day. The teething still takes place, but the worst seems over and they cry a bit less because of their teeth. It's fun to compare their progress with Andy's when we come to the Sunnegg. Andy of course profits from his older sister, who plays with him a lot.

I watch Hermione flirt with her baby godson and think of Sirius back with Harry. He used to cuddle with Harry so often and they both loved it. So did I of course. We were both very sentimental over it actually. Blame our homosexuality for that maudlin part in us. But I do notice that we're both a lot more pragmatic with Denny and Seraina. I wonder if the difference lies in the fact that they're our own children? Oh we love cuddling with them just like we did with Harry, only we have to do all the 'work' and there's that parental bit, so all in all we have to stay with both feet firmly on the ground. I'm amazed that this is not too difficult and came completely naturally. The responsibilities that come with the parentage are no heavy burdens. We know that some of our interaction with our growing children will be hard, we'll have to say 'no' fairly often and it already starts! The difficulties will probably begin when they start to react to our 'no' and not obey. We're already starting to develop 'strategies' for those situations. How far can we go to keep our promise to never punish them physically? So far we've come up with sleep charms for extreme cases and just basically sending them for a 'time-out' to their rooms for lesser offences.

I know that Sirius is a bit scared about that part. He's been subjected to so much domestic violence and ridicule, so much verbal abuse and he was exposed to such a cold family. He loves the children, but he fears his reactions when they start to irritate him. He's working hard on that though. It's so difficult to be a good parent when you didn't have a good example in your own childhood. Sirius had the worst possible example! Having been put under an Unforgivable for the first time by the age of eight years does not make for a good basis. So he'll probably struggle a bit, but he does it consciously, he knows where the problems are and he asks for advice and help.

Just one more reason why I love him so much.

Wednesday, 23.12.1998 / James

We've saved the tree to do it all together. That's even more fun, because now we have Lizzie, Andy and the twins running and crawling around on the carpet making those huge big eyes at all that glimmering stuff and the activity. Children add so much to the festivity of Christmas! Some more of the gang have come in and everyone is around the big tree to help place ornaments, baubles, candle holders and tinsel. I've found some chocolate ornaments, which we'll also spread around the tree, but those only on Christmas evening when we light the candles.

Of course being the 'big' one Lizzie is already familiar with the procedure of decorating the tree together. By now I can let her help a bit and hold her to hang up the odd ornament or place some tinsel over the branches. At two and a half she really starts to speak in fuller sentences now and what's really cute is that she does it in two languages, because we still speak a lot of Swiss German with the little ones. This way the children have two languages from the beginning.

Remus and Sirius are thoroughly happy about the break. I expected Sirius to be the one to be more tired, but Remus looks just as exhausted.

"I have no idea how the teachers at Hogwarts have lived with that load of work for so many years. On the other hand it seems that there were never as many children at the school as we have now. Looks like there was one hell of a baby boom in the ten years after Voldemort's first downfall," Remus tells us.

"More purebloods?" I ask curiously.

"Less. The pure-blooded families, at least those who sided with Voldemort, were actually quite depleted after the war. They're even more so now. If you so want, then they have done themselves the biggest disservice in following Voldemort. In fact, like Blaise, there is quite a good number of orphans. The Ministry has reopened the orphanage that had been closed after the last big war. Andromeda and Ted Tonks have taken over to manage it, by the way."

"Wow, what good news! I'm sure they'll do a grand job!"

"I'd even bet they will. Andy has always wanted more children, just never got any more after Nymphadora. She'll adore having a bunch of kids to look after," Sirius confirms.

Friday, 25.12.1998 / Sirius

Suddenly the house is huge! Everyone left to spend Christmas with their families. Ginny, Ron, Ernie and Justin have left for the Burrow. They will have a huge party there. Arthur and Molly have invited us, too, but we've excused ourselves. This is the first Christmas with our children and we want to spend it with them alone. We've had the gifts with the gang yesterday, but we'll light the candles on the tree again tonight.

Parvati, Padma, Blaise and Draco have gone to the Patils. Mandy spends Christmas with Jason, Morag is at her parents' house, Hermione and Harry have apparated to Helen and George.

We spend the day in the front room and the small living room. Only James and Lily are still with us. It's wonderfully cosy and there's lots of cuddling going on between Remus and I – and all four children. Seraina and Dennis are really cute now, alert babies, always turning around and looking for those who are around them. They smile and laugh a lot. They crawl around for a bit, but they still tire pretty quickly. And with regularity they bump into something, which changes their smiles to wails fairly fast. But this is part of growing and we can only console them by picking them up and giving them a comforting hug. As soon as they stop wailing they usually want to return and continue exploring. Tears forgotten in seconds flat! It's fun to see how they are trying to pull themselves up in a standing position on anything they can latch on to. They can drop back on their little arses for a dozen times, but they're so determined to continue! We encourage that determination to build up their confidence. We do want strong children after all. Andy has profited from his big sister Lizzie and there are some things he can already do better than Denny and Seraina.

Moony and I have both brought our Pensieve. We've set it down on one of the higher shelves in the study. And the door to the study remains mostly closed these days, because there are a lot of books on the lowest shelves. We would like to have some peace and not hear our children crawling in there and pulling out book after book. We've started to remove everything we have in reachable distance and put things higher up. They have their toys to pick up and grab and that will have to do for the moment. But of course we have already gathered quite the little collection of baby and children's books and we have already started to show them the picture books. At the Sunnegg Lily and James have already done all that when Lizzie was in this age and it stayed that way because we expected there to be more little ones.

Saturday, 26.12.1998 / Sirius

I have the Pensieve out and I'm trying the spell again to pick memories randomly and from my subconscious. I know that's where I've hidden most of the bad things. I watch as the Pensieve is filled with strand after strand of my dark times. I'm thinking back on my life. I'm 39 now, and out of these 39 years I've had roughly thirteen that could really be called a 'life'. The rest was starting out with abuse, then followed war, then prison, then being on the run.

"Does it only appear to me or is what's in there darker than dark?" Lily asks all of a sudden.

She's come into the study silently opening and closing the door. I have closed the door, because I need to keep this far away from my children. I look up to her and say:

"Probably. Should I dare to look at it?"

"I think you shouldn't go in there alone, Sirius! Do you know what you caught?"

I shake my head.

"It's out of my subconscious. It can be anything from my childhood or from Azkaban, on the run, Hogwarts… I have no idea."

"I'm coming with you, Sirius."

"Thanks, Lily! But I think I need Remus as well, he needs to pull me out, just in case."

"I'll call him!"

Once Remus is there, too, James comes in as well. The children are all napping and he's asked Winky to be on the lookout for them when they wake up. The four of us look at the dark grey mass swirling in the Pensieve. Finally we all touch it and find ourselves in my memories. Will I recognise them? Remus holds my hand tightly and James and Lily frame us both.

Azkaban. A random day, but I recognise it as one of those in the early years when I felt the Dementors the worst. The cell is about three times two metres. There's a cot, but it's only covered with straw and a thin blanket. A window with a grid of bars that barely leaves enough space to push a hand through. View outside to the barren island. Everlasting clouds and fogs around it. The window is small and lets in very little light. Everlasting half darkness as there's no additional light in the cell. It's icy cold. Seeing the memory I'm freezing again. It's the cold that never left my body in all of the almost twelve years I've spent there. I can see myself in the corner that was the least cold, next to the door. My clothes are still the ones I wore when they took me here about two years earlier. They have started to disintegrate though and I can see that the robes are threadbare. My warm winter cloak had been taken away.

Lily

The image in front of us could have been a Muggle photo, one of those black and white ones with a few colours added by hand, nothing moved. Sirius is sitting in the shadow, occasionally throwing a glance out of the tiny hole high up in the wall. But from the floor he can't see anything but the clouds. There's a sigh, then he swallows and finally he lifts a wrist to his mouth and starts chewing. It makes my skin crawl when I realise he's trying to commit suicide by opening his veins. He actually gets the blood to flow, but he's so cold it doesn't seem to really spill. Another bite, then the other hand, and ten minutes later the door opens and two Dementors glide inside and heal the wrists. Sirius slumps on the floor, shaking and crying. I feel my own tears welling and try to imagine what it must have been like in there, day after day, for almost twelve years!

The Sirius in the cell finally crawls to the cot and breaks down, still silently weeping. He looks appalling: the clothes hang around his emaciated body in rags. His hair hangs in long greasy strands, a tangled mass of filth. There's nothing he can do. All he does is sitting and crawling around. Then he starts to tremble and shake and we guess it's the time when the Dementors are coming. Finally he morphs from Sirius into Padfoot, who stops weeping, but whines pitifully in a very low voice. Gods, it's too painful to watch.

Just when I think I can't stand it any longer the memory shifts. All of a sudden we're back at Hogwarts, but it's still dark, in fact it's night and Peter and Sirius follow James out of the common room. It seems to be winter, because all three wear thick winter clothes and cloaks. They are leaving the castle and go down to the Whomping Willow. The moon above tells me it must be one of the full moon nights they spent with Remus in their Animagus forms. Peter stills the tree and all three climb inside of the passage. They follow the long passage already in their animal forms. Padfoot is able to push open the door to let Prongs and Wormtail inside. Remus has not fully transformed yet. I've never seen it before and it hurts just to watch! I glance over to Remus and see him closing his eyes. It's hard for himself to watch, too. But once the wolf is up on his legs he joins the 'pack', sniffs them all and establishes the fact that they're indeed his pack. After a while they leave the shack through the passage, again Peter stills the Willow to let his friends out. Prongs and Padfoot nudge Moony in the direction of the Forbidden Forest. They race there and then they race inside the forest, wrestling, howling and playing madly under the moon.

Another shift to another memory. Azkaban again. Sirius is looking a bit better in this one, though already quite shaken by the year he must have been inside the prison. Chains are to be heard, a creaking door and then the mad screams of a woman, guided inside by three Dementors. Sirius looks up and goes to the heavy wooden door with the small barred window to see what is happening. He recognises the woman who seems to be a new prisoner. A dry laugh escapes his lips. Bellatrix! His cousin Bellatrix Lestrange and three more new prisoners. I recognise her husband Rodolphus and his younger brother Rabastan. The fourth I have more difficulties to recognise. He looks so young! Then I remember the proud young Ravenclaw and his name comes back to me: Bartemius Crouch. What! Barty Crouch's son! A Death Eater?

I look at Sirius who just shrugs. 'Later', he mouths. I nod.

Bellatrix recognises Sirius standing there, as calmly as he can in the presence of the Dementors and shrieks:

"HA! There you are, cousin! Not so haughty anymore, eh?"

Sirius doesn't reply. He just stares after his cousin and watches as she's dragged into a cell about four doors down the corridor on the other side. The three other prisoners are all spread over more cells, outside of Sirius' view. He sighs and returns to the cot, where he sits down and transforms, obviously glad that there are no cells opposite each other that would allow anyone to look inside of his cell. The memory fades.

James

When I think that I can't bear anymore, the memory fades and another one comes up. It's just as painful, even though it's one of Sirius' childhood memories. A very early one, he certainly wouldn't remember it consciously anymore, because he can't have been older than three.

Three children are playing in the Drawing Room at No 12, Grimmauld Place. It's Sirius and his cousins Bellatrix and Narcissa, who's two years older than the others and seems to have taken the lead in their games. Sirius grins and hops on his baby broom to get out of the room, Bellatrix following behind him. Narcissa gives a shriek and shouts at them:

"You're not supposed to fly in here! Just you wait until Auntie comes in and sees you!"

Which happens just five minutes later, but Bellatrix manages to be on the ground and make a straight face, knowing full well that her sister wouldn't give her away. Sirius tries to hop off the broom in time, but misses the timing and soon has to endure his mother's wrath. He's sent to his room without his broom. We watch him slink up the staircase to his floor and then into his room, which is quite big but dark. He grumbles and starts to play with something else. The memory fades again.

All of a sudden we're at Hogwarts. I can see the four of us walking down the last set of stairs to the Entrance Hall. We're all in fifth year, just after we've managed the initial transformation. It's after the Christmas vacation, after Remus and Sirius had fixed their friendship. I know that by that time Sirius was already deeply in love with Remus. They had talked things through, too, but both had kept their love for the other a secret, for the obvious reason that Sirius' parents would have been outraged. I remember that incident now. In just a moment, Regulus would turn up. Two years younger than Sirius and in Slytherin, he was almost as bad as Snivellus in following us around so he could inform his mother with the next letter of anything Sirius had done again. There he is. Looking us over with disgust. Immediately he starts to taunt Sirius:

"Hope you've had a good shag with your boyfriend, Sirius! How about I tell mum and dad about your little fuck buddy? They should be so pleased that you intend to give them no heir!"

Remus and I hold Sirius back. There's nothing like that going on between them, even though they would probably both love to do it, but they still haven't even admitted their love to each other. Sirius almost jumps out of his clothes to get a go at his brother. Remus just tells him:

"Forget the little pest, Sirius, he's not worth it! He's just jealous, because you're the older one!"

That calms Sirius a bit and we can let him go. But he has his wand out and mutters a little curse, which sends his brother slipping and falling hard onto the marble floor, banging his head on the railing in the process. Sirius just walks by, stops and looks down. Says nothing and all four of us go into the Great Hall for dinner.

I look at my friend. He shakes his head and has a glint in his eyes, the one I like most, then he says:

"Well, I have one over that slimy little git now – I did present the family with an heir. Decided to start a whole new line of Blacks, should be good, don't you think? They've finally extinct themselves, the Slytherin Blacks. The few who are left are only remotely related anymore."

"I certainly hope for little Denny not to land in that house," I say.

"By the time he'll go to Hogwarts he'll know well enough that the hat listens to requests!" he replies with a grin.

"Good one, Sirius… does it?" I really wouldn't know, I had hardly put it on my head when it shouted Gryffindor.

"Just ask your son. The hat thought he'd do well in Slytherin, but all Harry thought was 'not Slytherin', so the hat put him into Gryffindor."

"Oh…"

Now there's a surprise. My son possibly in Slytherin? Yuck! I'm glad, Harry was reasonable enough to ask not to be sorted there.

"He had little ideas about the houses, just what Ron had told him on the train, but even though Ron was very biased against Slytherin he already knew he didn't particularly like Draco, who expected to be in Slytherin. Then he saw the people at the Slytherin table and thought that they didn't look like a pleasant lot. After the Dursleys he wasn't too keen on the kind," Sirius goes on and his eyes dance with mirth as he tells me that.

"Very good, that will give your children an easier time."

There's more in the Pensieve. We turn and find ourselves back in Grimmauld Place, but this time Sirius is there during the summer vacation after fifth year. Sirius comes back into his home together with his mother and Regulus. Regulus looks pretty smug about something and Sirius throws a suspicious glance at him. No sooner than the door has closed behind them, Regulus turns to his mother and says:

"Mum, there's something you ought to know about Sirius."

Sirius looks daggers at Regulus, but his brother doesn't feel threatened in any way. Mrs Black turns to Regulus and asks:

"What is it, dear?"

While Regulus starts to tell her, Sirius moves back to the door, his trunk still in his hand.

"He's got a… boyfriend, Mum! He's a bloody poof!"

"What? – Sirius!" she shrieks, turns to him and starts off:

"Is that true? Is it not enough that you surround yourself with lowlife scum and Muggle-loving riff-raff? Must you go and shame us with becoming an unnatural abomination on top of everything?"

Sirius lets the handle of the door go. He stands up straight and tells her:

"I'm gay, mother, so? Yes, I do have a boyfriend. I love him more than my life. If you don't like it – I don't care, you know!"

She looks like she doesn't know what to say for a moment, but then draws her wand and hits Sirius with a curse. I don't know what it is, but it must have hurt him, because his arms go around his stomach and he goes down on his knees. Another blow and he's on the floor. Not one sound comes out of his mouth. He must have expected something and there's nothing he can do as he's not allowed to use his wand. Regulus stands there, with a smug grin on his face and calmly picks up his trunk to go up to his room. Mrs Black continues to curse Sirius, until he's out cold on the floor. The memory shifts again.

Back at Hogwarts. I think it must have been seventh year. In any case it's the morning after a full moon night. One which Sirius couldn't spend with Moony and since Peter and I were unable to keep the wolf in check alone we hadn't been with him either. As always when Moony had to be alone he had been very lonely and punished himself with some really ugly wounds. Poppy Pomfrey had brought him back to the hospital wing and had to heal the wounds. Sirius slinks down the hall and inside of the ward. He finds Remus in his usual room and sits down on the edge of the bed. He quietly picks up his lover's hand to hold it. Poppy never throws him out anymore, she knows they're a couple now and how much Sirius cares about Remus. She just comes in to check on the boy and, seeing Sirius there, she says:

"Good morning, Sirius. He really was not well this morning. I don't understand it at all, he's been so well for almost two years now, and last night he's done this to himself. He'll be out of it until tomorrow I'm afraid."

They both look down on Remus and sigh. Sirius caresses his cheek and bends down to kiss him on the forehead.

"Get well real quick, love, I have to go to classes now. I love you, sweetheart."

Then he slowly gets up and with a last glance at Remus, leaves the room. The memory continues with him coming into the Great Hall, where he gets around the corner to walk to the Gryffindor table. A voice we all hate asks him:

"So, is your little weakling boyfriend sick again? What happened, Black, did you beat him up? I bet he's in the hospital wing. Or did he have to leave for another funeral in his family? He must have run out of relatives to die by now?"

Sirius for once doesn't even turn, but stands even more erect while going on to the Gryffindor table. I see him joining my younger self at the table. But right then I see something that I certainly haven't noticed back then. Dumbledore has been almost behind Snape and has heard him. Dumbledore takes ten points from Slytherin for this. Sirius looks satisfied and tells us that Remus isn't well.

The memory fades, but returns to what seems to be the next morning, Sirius sits at Remus' bed again. Remus moves and finally wakes from his sleep. His wounds have healed by now, but he's still very tired. I remember that this was a Friday and that Poppy didn't let Remus out until the afternoon. He was freed from the hospital wing but told to go directly to the dorm and stay there for the rest of the day. But this is the morning and when Remus finally wakes up, Sirius bends down to kiss him on the lips. He wraps his arms around his boyfriend and whispers loving words into his neck. I can see Remus returning the embrace and he starts to smile.

"You've been out of it for twenty-four hours, love," Sirius tells him, looking up and into Remus' eyes.

Gosh, the two of them were just sickeningly sweet! As a teenager I wasn't keen on watching them, now it doesn't disturb me at all anymore. I just love to see them happy, even if that means watching their public displays of affection. Tolerating that means that I don't need to hold back with Lily either.

Sirius

I know what follows that memory. Remus may have been out of it for a day and a night, but when I got back from my lessons that day he expected me in the dormitory and highly discouraged Peter and James to turn up before the dinner was over and asked them to bring us some food back up. Now I really hope that this part of the memory doesn't come up…

Lily

Another memory moves over the last one. When I see Sirius again he still wears the same clothes and looks the same. Hours later?

Sirius walks up the stairs to the dormitory with James and Peter at his heels. He barges them up rather and rushes inside of the dorm to see how Remus does. Remus is awake and tells James and Peter:

"Can you two please leave us room until after dinner? And would you kindly bring us something to eat when you return? Mustn't be too early either!"

Sirius sits there, stares at his boyfriend and grins sheepishly. James and Peter make a hasty retreat after picking the books they'd need to do their homework. James opens the door and looks back, saying:

"Three times History of Magic homework for that favour, Lupin! At least!"

Then he and Peter vanish, leaving a grinning Sirius and a smiling Remus behind in the dorm. Sirius starts to shed his clothes immediately, telling Remus about the lessons that day on the way. Wow! What a body! He looks absolutely great. By that time he's already 18, almost fully grown, almost two metres tall and his long hair hanging just below his shoulder blades. Remus sits up and pushes the blankets down, showing now that he's already been naked and waiting for Sirius.

I wonder if I should escape discretely. Watching them having sex, I'll probably feel like a voyeur. All three men who are with me in the memory look at me and I see Sirius grin.

"Just watch, Lily, I don't mind. Moony might, but it was to be expected that there would be one or the other memory like that inside here… I don't consciously remember every time we made love!"

I look at Remus who shrugs his shoulder.

"Sorry. You want out?" he asks.

I shake my head. To be honest I'm much too curious about it all. Ever since I've carried the twins for them we've also become much closer on a physical basis, so I'm really looking forward to see how they do it.

Sirius needs no extra invitation. He hops on the bed, cock already sticking out and starts caressing Remus' pale, but beautiful body. Not for the first time I can see Remus' numerous scars, scattered all over his front. When he turns and pins Sirius to the bed I can see that his back is practically free from them, as the wolf can't reach himself there. The glowing afternoon sun coats both their bodies with a golden sheen. They continue to kiss and caress each other, then Remus starts to suck Sirius' nipples and strokes his cock. The Animagus moans and holds Remus close. After a while he pushes his lover gently down. The blond boy looks up, smiles and calmly bends over the erect organ to pull it into his mouth. What follows must be a perfect blow-job, because Sirius looks like complete and utter bliss. His head tilts back on the pillow and he moans loudly. He has his left hand on Remus' back, caressing him and pressing his finger into the spine occasionally. I can see Remus twitch and shoot glances up at his lover.

Besides sucking Sirius off Remus starts inserting a finger into Sirius' opening, then a second and finally even a third. He pushes them inside and that seems to unhinge Sirius, because he starts to scream! Cries out Remus' name and in the next moment I can see him convulse and explode, he must have come right into Remus' mouth. Remus quickly swallows the seed. He lets go of Sirius' cock for the moment, but moves around and places himself between Sirius' widely stretched legs. Sirius pulls them up and places them over Remus' shoulders. I watch as Remus whispers a quick spell, then smears some lubricant on his cock and massages some into Siri's opening. And with one fairly swift movement he pushes inside, pulling Sirius' arse a bit up, then starts to thrust inside. It doesn't take very long, I can see him reaching his climax and releasing himself into Sirius who pulls him down for a kiss.

I've never actually seen a homosexual sex act, but I have to say if it's always more or less like that it looks as appealing as the usual way. I'm not exactly a prude, so while I feel like a voyeur I don't really mind it, because I have a feeling that the two of them don't mind it that much either. And this was at least a wonderful memory in the midst of all those depressing ones.

But I have to brace myself, this is a long trip and we are seemingly not spared anything, as we watch them for the next hour going through various positions and recovering periods. By the time James dares coming back into the dorm they must have been through it for about four times. They've pulled the blankets up and closed the bed curtains now. We're of course inside the bed, as we're in Sirius' memory. Remus smiles at his lover and it's that wonderful smile he's always had only for his Sirius.

In those days I had started to spend more time with James. His three friends were an unavoidable accessory but I began to see that they were more than annoying idiots. I knew about Remus' affliction. I was amazed at the tenderness Sirius had for his friend long before I got together with James. Then I learned they were a couple and much of Sirius' behaviour made sense. Remus was a fellow prefect and we had been friends long before I had begun to think the other Marauders worth my time. Of course I was with James in the first place, but I soon noticed that Sirius had it very hard at home and that he had just barely escaped from being pressed to become a Death Eater.

Remus

I knew it would be hard to watch those memories. I didn't expect a single good one. It's of course a bit embarrassing to have Lily and James with us watching us making love in every detail, but after five minutes I just try to forget about them and dig in my own memories of our lovemaking back then. Watching this brings a smile to my face and an even bigger one to Siri's. Gods, we've been so unencumbered back then. Nothing more to worry about than NEWTS and to keep up my cover or to win the next Quidditch match. Seventh year and I think it was November, when Sirius landed himself in a detention on the night of the full moon. He was frantic about it, because usually he took great care not to provoke anything of the likes around that time of the month.

When we finally come out of the Pensieve we notice that we have spent several hours in there. It's close to dinner time and a worried Dobby comes in to tell us that he's got it ready in the kitchen. We're all alone, so we have decided to eat in the kitchen again. We've reduced the table and bench by about half to gain some space in there, which our little ones will certainly enjoy as a playing area when they get bigger. Sirius and I pick up one of the twins each and place them in their high chairs while James and Lily look after Lizzie and Andy. They have already been fed by Dobby and Winky, but we want to have them with us during meal times, to get the babies curious for our food. Once they will be about a year old we'll start them on our foods. Until then we give them mostly vegetables or fish, some fruit and bread. Their food is cooked with little to no salt and we give it to them in small cubes that they can pick up with their little hands. They seem to like this method, because they usually empty their plates and eat with gusto. For us it has the great advantage that they are busy and we don't need to spoon feed them. Normally they get their food when we eat, but we've been out for so long today that they were hungry before we could start on our own dinner.

We don't discuss the memories much. Sirius looks quite shaken from some of them. I'm quite glad that at least one of them was a happy memory. I remark:

"These memories are spread over too much time, Siri, we ought to study the book to see if we can't give the spell a time frame, so it would be easier to organise them in smaller steps of time and you could then record them easier and organise them. We could also put them down chronologically."

"I'll really have to study the Pensieve's information book. I thought about the same thing actually."

We do that right after dinner and find the method to gain access to a smaller portion of the subconscious. Sirius empties his Pensieve completely after that, uses the spell and starts adding new memories. According to the information parchment the memories plucked from the brain are not transferred, they are copied, so we can just wipe the Pensieve clear, which will speed up that process considerably.

Sunday, 27.12.1998 / Sirius

In the morning Remus and I return to the Pensieve again. We are going to do this more systematically, which means we'll take notes about the things we've seen. I've placed all the memories in the Pensieve that I got out of my subconscious between my birth and my first birthday. There are very few of them and I don't know at all what to expect. But as there are about ten strings that now swim in the Pensieve, there were things that my subconscious has picked up. So let's look at them. We go in together.

I see my father holding up a baby, which must be me, to the family and presenting it:

"This is Sirius Orion Black, my dear relatives and friends. I proudly present to you the heir of the noble and most ancient house of Blacks!"

There is a content murmur all around the gathering. I recognise my uncle Rigel and his pregnant wife Augusta, their youngest daughter, my cousin Narcissa, two years old, another cousin from a sister of my father's with her parents, Lucius Malfoy's parents, and a lot of distant relatives. It seems to be on the day of my birth, which is why Andromeda is absent – she was in Hogwarts. Obviously they've all come to find out if the child born to my parents is a son or only a daughter. To (almost) everyone's visible relief the baby on my father's arms is a boy.

Remus and I return and I quickly record the contents of the memory on a roll of parchment with a dictaquill. Then we touch the surface of the Pensieve again.

The next memory is of a brightly lit nursery, but apart from the baby, me again, no one is in the room. I watch myself starting to wail and in half a minute a house-elf is there to see what's amiss, then the baby is fed, nappy changed and put back into the cot. It's a cot already, not a cradle anymore, so I must have been a couple of months old. The memory is almost like a photo, nothing moves much. Then the door opens, my mother and my father come inside to look into the cot. There's no smile, no cooing, no touching at all. They just make sure that the baby is taken care of, then they turn and vanish out of the room. After that there is another memory of this kind. We stay on to memorise the surrounding, the atmosphere. Then the next memory comes up, the room changes and I recognise that I've now been moved out of the nursery and into my room. It's a floor up from my parent's master bedroom. There is nothing bright in here. I'm lying in thehuge four poster bed and a spell hinders me from falling or climbing out. There is now a nanny, a young witch, whose name I don't even remember, I think, it was Kate, who is taking care of me in place of the house-elves. When the memory starts she's coming inside of the room, closes the door and comes to the bed, taking off the spell that holds me inside.

"Let's see if you're still clean, brat!" she says and picks the baby out of the bed.

I soon notice that she doesn't care at all for the baby. If the name calling is any indication she's a cold bitch just barely doing what she's paid for. She drops the baby on the changing cushion and undresses it with a spell, then takes away the nappy, again with a spell and cleans the boy. For all of the undressing, cleaning and dressing again she hasn't touched the child once. She picks it up and puts it in a high chair, then she calls a house-elf who feeds the baby. After that she picks the baby up again and takes it out of the room, down the gloomy halls and stairs with the dreadful decoration to the drawing room, where my parents sit and look the baby over. My father then takes the baby from the witch and goes to the wall where the tapestry with the family tree hangs.

"Look at this, Sirius, and remember it well! These are all your ancestors and your relatives, dead and alive. They are of the purest blood in the wizarding world and you are their heir! Remember that always, you are the heir of the house of Black! You will never mingle with anyone below your station."

The baby stares at the wall, but I think I can't have seen or recognised much as it has to have taken place before my first birthday. My father repeats his words once again, then I'm placed again in the hands of the young witch who carries me back to my room.

When we leave the Pensieve we both roll our eyes simultaneously. Then we grin and I say:

"Isn't that just typical? Have they never said anything else to me? That's practically all I've heard through my first years! I hardly saw my parents in these years, they were so busy going about with their social lives that they never took care of me or Regulus themselves."

"All I can say is that your family name suits them…" Remus comments.

"Oh, absolutely. What's worst is that they were all bloody proud of it."

I pick up Seraina and hold her close. I suppose my parents were never aware of what they missed or they didn't care that they missed anything at all. After all they had not married for anything like love, what they had was a convenience marriage for the sake of the pure blood. Mother had come from another ancient wizarding family of pure blood and she looked it. Though she was devilishly intelligent, she was dead ugly. She had a number of very ugly illnesses and all of them were the product of repeated inbreeding. Besides that she was quite mad. But she did her duty and gave birth to the heir and the spare. After Regulus was born they didn't even hold up the image of a married couple anymore. They were a community of interest, formed to produce an heir and after having made two of them they returned to their own rooms, my father looking for his amusement on his own and my mother probably did the same, being as discreet as her position in society demanded.

So I can only wonder what such a cold life must be like. Or not, because I don't even want to imagine. They wouldn't have been able to understand love for anything, but they wouldn't even have wanted to understand. I'm sure even their little amusements would never have given them a tiny bit of what bonds me with Remus, what bonds every loving couple. Most probably they would have been absolutely disgusted by the mere thought of such a sentiment. Love was something so unreal for them, they thought it was common and only for the peasants. People were there to fulfil a purpose in life, not to be happy. Happiness had absolutely no space in their philosophy of life. They only thought they'd had a good life. In reality they were thoroughly dissatisfied and angry at everything and everyone.

I laugh dryly and kiss Seraina on her soft little cheek. I'm overjoyed to have what I have every day of my life now. Every time I feel my daughter or my son in any way I'm close to crying of happiness, even after all those months and after the many nights we've been up to console the twins. Yes, I do think of my son as my heir, but I'm starting a whole new legacy of the Black family with him. He's to grow up the way I would never have been allowed to. In the care of parents who cherish and love him and encourage him to show love whenever he wants to. We want to be there as reliable adults who give him love, but also protection and lead him to become a responsible person.

"I think I'll have Grimmauld Place destroyed, Remus," I say suddenly.

"Nah, don't do that, just let it rot, Siri. You don't need to break it down, it probably will by itself sooner or later."

He's right as usual of course. I let Seraina go and dictate the memory to the dictaquill. Then he takes my hand and we return to the Pensieve.

The next two or three memories contain practically the same. Only by the different clothes and the growth can I see that time has actually passed. My room now contains wizarding baby toys and a playpen on the carpet. I'm mostly just sitting in there and by the third memory I'm pushing myself up on the bars of the playpen. I'm babbling something and the young witch comes inside and gives me a toy I have dropped outside of the playpen. She doesn't smile, doesn't speak, just mechanically hands me back toys.

I feel Remus' hand squeezing mine. He shakes his head and wonders:

"How did you learn to speak?"

"Don't ask me, I have no idea."

The last memory is of my first birthday. I'm handed a handful of gifts, with which I know not really what to do, so they're opened for me. I wear beautiful tiny robes and my black hair is already shiny, people pat my head, don't smile, but say what a handsome child I am and then the young witch takes me back to my room.

I'm quickly through dictating that to the quill. We clear the Pensieve and set the next time frame. After my first birthday to my second. This time we've set the spell to pick all my memories from that time frame and I can quickly see that there are a lot more. Going in we look at the first memory.

Remus

Sirius is trained to follow every order blindly. But he's a bright child, and if I see this smiling, cooing baby there in the playpen my heart goes out to him. Never is he encouraged to do anything, when he smiles he meets scowls. It seems that the family tries everything to make him as dull, dank and dark like they are. All except for one uncle. It's Uncle Alphard of course, when he comes to the house, he comes up the stairs and heads for his little nephew's room. He picks the boy up and holds him on his arm to give him a bit of the warmth a small child needs to grow up well.

"Let those bastards try and make another pure-blooded stupid Black of you, Sirius, I'm here to protect you and tell you about the bright sides of life! You will mark a change in the history of the Blacks if I can help it in any way! You'll bring the family to the light, as bright as your namesake star shines in the night sky. I will help you and if you should need me, I'll be there for you! If you grow up to be what I think you can become then you shall one day be free from them! If they never tell you anything like that, know that I love you, really love you, because you're light and hope for me. If you become a curious, courageous kid I'll keep loving you."

The child is hard to recognise after that. There's a bright spark in those grey eyes and he holds his arms out for his uncle. There are about three more memories like that, and every time Uncle Alphard goes to see his nephew and keeps him company, plays with the toddler for a while and encourages Sirius to babble and tell him stories in his baby talk. So that's how he learned to speak, I think. Sirius himself smiles now and looks over to me.

"Now I know how I could come out the way I did in the middle of those bastards. They didn't ever count, Remus, only Uncle Alphard did. They noticed much too late how much of an influence he had on me. Once I went to Hogwarts they forbade him to see me, but of course we corresponded when I was at Hogwarts as you know."

The next memory is again of the young witch, who still only uses spells to undress and change Sirius. He is even levitated into the bathtub where she washes him quickly and roughly. He gets fed and is put to bed, still with the spell that keeps him inside. In a further memory I see the little boy waking up at night and when he starts to cry for someone no one turns up. He finally screws his eyes shut and tries to stifle the wailing himself.

It's hard to look at this when I know that our own children are just next to us, with James and Lily and Dobby and Winky taking loving care of them while we're going through those awful memories. All I can do is take Sirius in my arms and remind him, that this is all in the past, a past that goes back farther and farther with every day that passes by. And I keep reminding him of the love that surrounds him now.

When we see his parents in one of the next memories we can see his mother is pregnant with Regulus. She's even quite far gone already. I know that Regulus is two years and a month younger than Sirius, so it must already be close to his second birthday.

Sirius records the memories, with a dull voice and James and Lily listen with their eyes wide open. They join us for the next round of memories, which we still spread over a year. Many of them are just everyday sort of things, seen from Sirius' two years old mind, the silent young witch is still there and still treats him with a disdainful demeanour, cold and distant. For fairness' sake I have to say that she doesn't treat Regulus any better!

We are in the drawing room of the house again and there's a photographer to take a family picture, Mr. Black standing behind his wife who holds their second son Regulus, while Sirius leans on his mother's knee. The Blacks wear exclusive dress robes, Sirius has one, too, a stiff affair of silver brocade. His smile for the camera is real, while his parents' smiles look terribly frozen. What a beautiful child Sirius was. Two years old, silky black hair, a hint of the future charm flashes in his stormy grey eyes, a lovely face with the cutest nose. His mouth is pulled in a friendly grin and he waves in the camera, but his mother puts his hand down. The grin vanishes immediately.

There is a bit more interaction with his parents now. Sirius is brought to dinner with them and he hears them preaching about the family all the time.

"Always remember to set a good example for your brother, Sirius! He needs you to show him what a true Black is to be like!" his father keeps saying.

Finally we see a memory where he's being taken outside of the house and for a walk in the park. The young witch has a tight reign on him though and when he tries to play with children around the park he's pulled away immediately. He is not allowed to mingle with them.

"You are not playing with them, Sirius, they are scum, Muggles, useless dirt!" she hisses.

And after that he's taken home immediately. I can see tears in his eyes. And in the next memory with his parents we hear his mother say:

"We have decided that you need playmates of your age, Sirius. We have asked your aunt and uncle to bring Bellatrix over so the two of you can play together. There will be other children from good wizarding families you can play with."

And soon after that there is almost an invasion of children in Sirius' room. I can see Bellatrix and Severus and Sirius tells me who the others are:

"That's little Rodolphus Lestrange. Bastard, even then! Then there's Nestroy Avery. Anna Beth Wilson. Anna Beth never saw Hogwarts. In fact she didn't live past eleven, because she turned out to be a squib. Allegedly she died of a 'rare' illness. In my opinion that illness was much rather a case of murder."

I shudder. Anna Beth looks like a very nice little girl, blond ringlets and dark blue eyes, a smile on her face like an angel. I don't even want to think of such a destiny. It really makes me sick to think that parents could actually kill a child of theirs. Though knowing of the fate of others of my kind who were 'put down' after the bite I'm aware that I have been extremely lucky. Makes me miss my parents even more.

I watch the children playing, but I notice that Sirius soon holds back. He doesn't really mingle with them, not even with Bellatrix, whom he knows best of them all. Severus accidentally breaks one of Sirius' toys and they start to fight, but the young witch, Sirius still doesn't remember her name, separates them immediately.

We see several such memories. Never is the playing time peaceful and many times the boys pick on Anna Beth who just crumbles and hides as much as she can. She doesn't seem to be the only one, but Sirius and Anna Beth don't find together either. It all looks very awkward. Then there's a memory with Sirius and Regulus. Sirius just looks at the baby. When he tries to touch it he's being taken away.

The memories continue this way until shortly before his sixth birthday.

The young witch is still there, Sirius still can't remember her name, and takes the boys to the park, where she keeps an eye over them so they do not even try to play with Muggle children. It's summer and Sirius runs around on the grass delightedly, happy to be in the sun. His uncle Alphard turns up and Sirius runs to him, even more happy to see the only friend in his family. He's being scooped up and swung around.

"Hello, my little friend! Are you enjoying yourself?"

"Yes, Uncle Alphard! It's so dark inside and I'm not allowed out on my own at all!" Sirius says with his bright, but saddened voice.

"I know, poor kid that you are. Shall I tell you a story?"

"Oh yes, please, Uncle Alphard!"

Sirius, back on the ground, seizes his uncle's hand and pulls him to a free park bench. Alphard sits down and pulls a book out of his pocket. He looks over and asks Regulus if he wants to come and listen, too, but Regulus shakes his head and sticks to the young witch. I watch how he looks down on his feet, not wanting anything to do with the uncle that his parents declared to be a bad Black. The young witch does not dare to come too close. She knows that Alphard is regarded as a bad influence on the Black heirs, and he is strongly discouraged to come to his parental home, but he often sees Sirius in the park and Sirius is obviously very attached to the man. She doesn't dare to go too close and pry Sirius from his uncle, because the first – and last – time she has tried this she's been hit with a confounding curse that he only lifted hours later when he felt Sirius had been refilled with positive energy. She's well aware that she should stop it, but she fears Alphard, who is much more powerful than her boss.

They both sit down next to each other and Alphard begins to read to Sirius, who cannot yet read and write at all. Something which his uncle notices with much disappointment, but Sirius tells him:

"I'm not allowed to, Uncle Alphard! They tell me I go to school soon and that I would learn it early enough."

"They are not doing you a favour, Sirius, but there you go. So, I'll just read the story to you, okay?"

"Yes, please, Uncle Alphard. No one ever reads stories to me, only you. Is it a Muggle story?"

"Actually this one is!"

Alphard starts reading Tom Sawyer to Sirius who listens without ever interrupting for about three or four chapters. Sirius' face shows his bliss at being allowed to hear something that lets him slip into another world, a world of fantasy, of adventure and thrill. He asks a few questions and his uncle explains some things to him, but most of the time Sirius just listens. That must have been one of the rare moments when his inquisitive mind was really woken, when he discovered that there were things to learn out there. After a while, Alphard puts the book back in his pocket and says:

"That's enough for today, Sirius! I'll read some more for you another time. You'll be going to school in September, so you'll learn to read yourself, finally, and I'll make sure that your birthday presents will always contain books. Some of them you might want to hide though, because they will be books like this one. I'll certainly cover them with something wizarding, but you'll know when you should not let them lie around."

Sirius' eyes gleam with mirth. He loves this uncle who is the only one in his family who can laugh and smiles at him. He embraces the boy and says:

"You are a bright child, Sirius! You will enjoy school, believe me, even if it is a wizarding primary school. You'll meet other wizarding children there which will do you an awful lot of good. Many of them might not have that purity of blood your parents so crave, but you might find friends with a better sense of fun than the kids you currently see. I don't think much of the lot that your parents deem good enough for you to play with."

"They're always fighting, Uncle Alphard! I really don't like them. Severus has kicked me a whole lot of times he was there the last time and then he's had the nerve to run to Mum and tell her that I kicked him! And she punished me for it! She didn't even ask me if it was true!"

Alphard rolls his eyes.

"I'm so sorry to hear that, Sirius. There's not much I can do because they wouldn't let me see you at all if I interfered. I believe, they're just waiting for me to try, so they can completely stop me from seeing you. As it is they think I'm corrupting you, and they're perfectly right, that's exactly what I'm doing. But I don't want to see your wonderful soul being turned into what they are! Hold on to it, Sirius, and whenever they do something like this, think of me and that I love you. Okay?"

"Okay. Do you have to go already?"

"Yes, dear, it's time for me to go, and you need to go back for tea."

Sirius sighs, then hugs his uncle by standing up on the bench. He hops down, waves again and races to where the young witch and Regulus are impatiently waiting for him. The witch has glared at Alphard for a good long while already, so he covertly hits her with a small obliviating spell. Sirius' mood and his facial expression change within a few seconds. He shows them an indifferent face, falls into step next to them and follows them back to his dreary home.

Again the memory shifts. Sirius is taken to Diagon Alley for the first time in his life. His mother pulls him rather roughly from shop to shop so he doesn't have any time to take in the views of the magical alley. The books are bought, whatever equipment he needs from parchment to quills, all the material for the primary school he will visit soon. Mrs Black hurries along, pulling Sirius not by his hand, but by his wrist. She only stops briefly when she meets someone whom she deems worthy of her attention. In every shop they step she gets first class treatment, but Sirius clearly sees the dislike in the eyes of many shop assistants. On the other hand I notice that some of those shopkeepers recognise the apology in Sirius' facial expression. The last stop is at Madam Malkin's robe shop where Sirius gets his first school robes, which are blue. Mrs Malkin is very friendly and competent, but her eyes only show warmth when Sirius flashes her a true smile. Then she pulls the robes over him with great care and warm words:

"Here you are, dear, let me just quickly fit that. Are you looking forward to go to school?"

"Oh yes! I can't wait to go!" Sirius says eagerly.

"Don't talk with subordinates, Sirius!" his mother commands with a hiss.

Immediately the spark in Sirius' eyes vanishes. But Madam Malkin has seen it and has already noted that this young Black might be a bit different from most of the rest. He looks up at her and shrugs his shoulders a little helplessly. Madam Malkin gives him a quick smile, one that his mother doesn't see because she has her back turned to Mrs Black, and winks understandingly.

Again the memory shifts. We see more and more scenes of a home life that is never peaceful for Sirius. He finds himself constantly between his parents and Regulus. Then there's the first day at school. His mother takes him by the wrist again and pulls him in front of the Floo fireplace as soon as breakfast is over. She hands him the Floo powder and says, checking that he has everything with him, wears the proper clothing and has his hair nicely combed:

"Say 'Hogsmeade Primary', Sirius. You go first, I'll come after you."

Sirius throws the powder into the fire and steps inside, saying the proper name and vanishes. He comes out in the hall of the school, big and friendly, and his mother apparates next to him only moments later. She cleans Sirius from the soot he's picked up and they move to the school's entrance hall. Many other children are there already and Mrs Black joins her sister-in-law with her daughters Bellatrix and Narcissa. Narcissa is the older one, so she soon says her goodbyes to join her classmates. The two Black mothers take their children to the first year classrooms they have been assigned to. Much to the dismay of the mothers Sirius and Bellatrix have been put in different classes. Sirius doesn't mind at all, as his cousin is a rather mean girl, who pinches and bites whenever she gets a chance to do so. And since she's a girl and two months younger than Sirius he isn't allowed to fight with her or he gets punished. So he's rather relieved to find out that he doesn't have to share the classroom with her. But to his dismay Severus has been put in his class.

There are some thirty-eight children, spread over two classes. Sirius sees some faces he knows, but they are only the select few his parents have allowed to play with him. As soon as the children are inside of the classroom, the parents who have brought them are asked to leave to make it easier for the teachers to deal with the children. Sirius immediately leaves the group of children he dislikes and for a moment he stands alone until another black haired boy, who had observed his flight, steps up to him.

"Hi! I'm James Potter, who are you?"

Sirius looks at the boy who is next to him. His hazel eyes look through round glasses, his short black hair sticks up in funny angles and he has a big grin on his face. Sirius grins right back and holds out his hand as he's been taught:

"Sirius Black. – Are you a pureblood? My parents won't allow me to play with anyone that's not. Not that I really care…"

"From the Blacks? Wow. Yeah, I am. A pureblood, I mean. Mostly anyway, there's always been the odd Muggle or Muggle-born in the family. And my family probably stays far away from yours. We like the Muggles, you know."

"Yeah, that would be a good enough reason for mine to say yours are scum and blood traitors!"

"Do you still want to be friends? It's only that I saw you move away from Severus as soon as your Mum left."

Sirius grins.

"Sure! I hate that kid! He comes to our house and he treats me horribly! Said if he'd had a wand himself he'd curse me. I would really like to know why. It's not like I did anything to him, or almost nothing anyway…"

"Oh, we'll play a few pranks on him and he'll stop!" James promises.

"Don't know – he'd probably tell my Mum and then there'd be hell to pay."

James looks at Sirius with wide eyes.

"You think so?"

But before Sirius can reply the teacher calls them up and asks them to sit down at the tables in the room. Sirius and James take a seat next to each other and look at the teacher.

"Hello everyone! I'm Miss Ferguson and I'll be your teacher for the next year. That's what you will call me, too. Now I'd like to go through the list of your names so I will remember who you are. Alright?"

The children actually pay attention and answer her call. She looks at them all and places a little name plaque in front of them with a wave of her wand.

"I might need the help of the plaques for a few days. Please take it home with you and place it in front of you on the table every morning. Now – who among you can already read a bit?"

About half of the children lift their hands, Severus among them, much to Sirius' visible dismay. He turns to James, who seems to be able to read, too and says:

"I so wanted to learn, but they wouldn't allow me to. Can you believe it?"

The memory shifts again and from now on we float through many memories of Sirius' first school days. He learns to read in a matter of weeks. Writing follows quickly afterwards and whatever the teacher brings up, Sirius is like a sponge and licks it all up. Finally his mind gets occupied with some knowledge other than the arrogance his parents have tried to plant into him. He seems to never even have to think about memorising things, he hears them and there they are. He's active and replies to Miss Ferguson's questions often. From on his first tests his marks are in the top three at all times.

But in one of the next memories we find that there are drawbacks. His parents soon find out that Sirius hasn't joined his 'friends', but James Potter. Of course James' family is as old as the Blacks, but still regarded as inferior, because neither James' parents nor his grandparents follow the pureblood doctrine of the Blacks. Of course Sirius is not allowed to see James outside of school, but the two enjoy being friends inside of it. When Sirius comes home he storms up to his room to get his homework done. Then he usually looks for something to read, because he's not allowed outside of the house alone. His uncle Alphard regularly supplies him with a book or two. Sirius is usually only seen at dinner when he is questioned by his parents about his day at school.

Then there's the day that Sirius and James pull their first prank on Severus. The boy is in a close-knit group of friends from his circles, Rodolphus Lestrange and Nestroy Avery are among them.

Then Sirius gestures to another two boys in the group and says:

"Evan Rosier. Ryan Wilkes."

Now I remember them both. So young I wouldn't have recognised them. But I remember that Alastor lost his nose in his fight with Rosier and that he had to kill him.

I've already seen them trying to bully some of the more timid children in earlier memories, but I've also seen Sirius and James stand up and telling them off. To give them a bit of their minds James has brought an invisible sliding potion, which he got from an older cousin who's left school already on the chairs of the three future Slytherins. There's not a trace of the potion to see. But as soon as the boys try to sit down they slip off. The teacher gets really annoyed with them and when they claim their chairs were slippery, she checks the chairs, but nothing is visible.

"Sit down and behave now or you will all serve a detention!" she threatens them.

Of course they all keep falling off their chairs and promptly get decked with a detention and a low mark for bad behaviour and they're sent out of the classroom for the rest of the lesson. Sirius and James exercise their straight face with that very first prank and after the lesson is over they walk out of the room and high-five each other. They use the hustle and bustle of the class leaving the room to clean the chairs from the potion.

The harmless prank has consequences. In one of the next memories we see how Mr. and Mrs Black confront Sirius after hearing of the prank through the Snapes and Rosiers who have expressed their suspicion that Sirius, of course led by that ordinary Potter boy, might have had something to do with it, and we witness the repercussions for Sirius. Asked if he'd done it, he admits it freely. So far he's been treated with cold distance, but we've never seen him disciplined other than being sent to his room. But now his father pulls out his wand and coolly curses Sirius with a boxing hex, which is immediately followed by three more. Sirius slumps on the floor of the drawing room and looks up at his father with frightened eyes.

"That will hopefully teach you not to treat your friends like this! Go back to your room, Sirius, you will not come down here before you go to school tomorrow!" his father tells him in a cold voice.

Sirius follows the order, but once in his room there are tears in his eyes. The young witch is now only in charge of Regulus, so he really is all alone until the morning. A house-elf brings him something to eat, just a plate of soup and a slice of bread.

From now on every second or third memory contains some kind of a punishment. Sirius sticks up for the weaker kids at school, gets great marks, is loved by most everyone but his family and his supposed to be friends. Even little Regulus starts to pull away from him slowly. The fine crack between Sirius and his family has opened up and in the course of his school years it becomes a huge gap.

These are all things I've never known about my loved one. Sirius has kept them well hidden because like me and like most people he detests being pitied.

Monday, 28.12.1998 / Remus

Sirius has spent last night dictating the memories to the dictaquill. He is just writing down what he sees and does not put it in any form yet, he just notes down the facts and some descriptions. This morning we go to the last year before he came to Hogwarts. We separate it into three blocks because by now the memories are flowing much easier. Because this is an age where he started to keep the memories consciously we use the spell to pluck them in a chronological order from both his subconscious and conscious.

The first memory is from getting the school books for the last year of primary school. Sirius is taken by his mother. Regulus is with them and both boys aren't allowed one step away from their mother the entire time. They return to Grimmauld Place and Sirius is left to his own devices as long as he stays in the house.

The next day school starts again and Sirius floos to Hogsmeade, Regulus following him immediately. Sirius is already seeing to it that he's gone before his brother arrives. He meets up with James and other friends before heading on to their classroom.

The next memory is of a dinner where Sirius is silent and Regulus tells his parents of everything that has happened at school.

This pattern is what we get to see for a couple of times. Regulus tells his parents everything. He turns out to be quite the evil sneak. He especially likes to put Sirius down for what Regulus regards as Sirius' treason, for his cheerfulness, his joy in playing pranks on others, but mainly his high standing with all of the other students, the ones the Blacks do not regard as proper company. With this he causes trouble for Sirius time and again.

Sometimes we wonder how Regulus gets to know these things, but Sirius himself shrugs his shoulders and says:

"He's had it from both, Severus and Evan, who gladly told him everything, truth and lies and Regulus told our parents. When he told them lies there was no use to deny anything, because they believed every word he said."

It's a miracle that Sirius is still allowed to attend school. A few memories are filled with the way his mother and father punish him with all sorts of curses. There are weeks he doesn't get away one single day. About once every fifth time Regulus tells his parents about something James and Sirius actually did to Severus. Sirius has given up protesting. He sometimes tries to stay in his room right after school, but he's being dragged out and punished nevertheless. And he never says one word to James. He tells his friend everything but the way his parents treat him. It will take years until he finally lets James know how exactly his home life had looked like. He never wanted me to know about it.

Regarding Severus I have the impression that the more lies Regulus tells his parents about Sirius' treatment of the boy the more Sirius hates Severus. Most probably Severus and Evan have fed Regulus with a lot of those lies and he's taken them at face value. But sometimes we have seen the boy look at Sirius with a sly expression while he made up the stories. Sirius was always punished in front of Regulus, and I'm pretty sure that he regaled this to the other boys with glee.

Lily is shocked to the bones as she sees all this. I believe, she now understands Sirius a lot better, and regards him with completely different eyes. We can clearly see from where this deep rooted aggression for Severus comes. Sirius has never forgotten those terrifying first years at school and I actually think he never made it up to Severus completely in all those years at Hogwarts.

James

So that's what it really was like for Padfoot. Gods my heart is bleeding for him. What if we hadn't become friends when we did? Would he have had the strength to ask the Sorting Hat to place him anywhere but in Slytherin? We come out of the Pensieve for a break, Sirius notes down a few details, Lily watching him, still in shock about all that she saw. She even starts to apologise for all the times she's been hard on him, but he brushes it away:

"Don't Lily, just don't! By the time I came to Hogwarts I was already being used to be treated that way. You do remember the howler I got after the Sorting, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. Who wouldn't? But I thought later that now I knew from where you had your arrogance. I probably thought you had wanted to be in Slytherin, but hadn't got in. At least for a while. You made it pretty clear pretty soon what you thought about the Slytherins, but I still thought you were arrogant."

"I was brought up to be arrogant. Anyone below our circles was being treated with snide remarks and put down in front of me and I was to do the same. I rarely did, but I did do it with the house-elves who actually admired my mother. They would go and tell her everything I did and there was no way to get out of her clutches at home. Of course I couldn't suppress all of that at school."

"Which is why we learned the spell to turn something into a Portkey. We had to go through the Restricted Section for that, but for all eventualities we wanted Sirius to be able to get out of the house," I say.

"And that was about four or five months before I really needed it," Sirius says with a very low voice.

Remus puts his arm around Siri and pulls him close. Sirius just lays his head on Remus' shoulder and says quietly:

"I don't know if I'd be able to look at all of this without you guys! But I know I have to go through it to find closure. I have to be able to put this aside and really move on."

He's right of course. Oh, Padfoot, whoever is responsible for this should really roast in hell forever! No child deserves anything like that. It's not that he was the only one punished, as we've seen in the memories. The Blacks have repeatedly mistreated both the boys for 'prophylactic' reasons. What his parents were trying to achieve with that method is a mystery to me, but I do wonder if other children in those families went through similar things. I think, I may have to visit Andromeda once to find out!

Sirius braces himself and we return inside of the Pensieve. I don't know how much I can still stand, but the worst of Sirius' home life before Hogwarts is still to come.

The Hogwarts letter arrives and Sirius is happy to know that he'll get out of the house for most of the years to come. At dinner his parents discuss the letter and wonder if he also gets in invitation to Durmstrang. The shock in Sirius' eyes is visible. Then his mother says:

"Madeline Snape has told me that Severus will be going to Hogwarts, and so will Evan, Nestroy, Ryan and Bellatrix, so I think we can send Sirius there."

"Yes, you are right, it would look strange if our friends send their children to Hogwarts and we'd be the only ones to send ours somewhere else. We've all been Slytherins after all."

The relief in Sirius' eyes would have been visible, too, had his parents cared to look. So the memory shifts and once again it's Diagon Alley with another trip to fit new robes, black this time, to buy books and school supplies of the magical kind now and finally a wand. It doesn't take too long. Sirius' eyes gleam when he gets his own wand finally in his hand. Everything is put away with his new school trunk and as a pet he gets his first owl.

He calls the owl Tom, but his parents don't know it's for Tom Sawyer, the first ever Muggle book Sirius has read all by himself. The first trip Tom is sent on is to take a letter first to myself, then to Alphard. A means of communication beyond the fireplace, which is in a very public area of the house, so Sirius had no way of contacting his real friends privately until now. I remember that first letter in his typical scrawl, all excited and looking forward to get out of the house, but full of worries about the house he'd be sorted into.

The next memory seems to be a few days before the school year starts. Sirius' parents comment on the nasty way they have to go to take him to King's Cross Station and that they will be forced to walk through all those Muggles.

"Not to speak of all the Mudbloods who will be there, because that fool Dumbledore welcomes them with open arms. I've been shocked to the bones when I heard that he was the one who strongly recommended it twenty-five years ago after he brought down Grindelwald. Now we again have half of the wizarding community run over by the scum," Sirius' father says.

"That was a shame in the first place! After all, Grindelwald was on the right track," Mrs Black comments.

"Oh, certainly, but that wouldn't stop the Muggle-loving fool. But I've heard that there's someone who will guide us to better times again. Called Lord Voldemort and I know that Mark Wilkes is already one of his followers."

Sirius can't hold his mouth.

"You're not talking about the nutter who goes out and kills people randomly, just because they're half-bloods or Muggle-born?" he asks.

Wrong thing to say, Padfoot.

"You will never speak with such foul language and disrespect about the new Dark Lord, Sirius! He was a loyal follower of Grindelwald's and he should lead us into a bright future!" his father shouts with a thundering voice.

Sirius only cowers for a moment, then he speaks his mind.

"But that is wrong. It is wrong to kill anyone!"

His father is up from his chair in a moment and the next thing I see is a whip in his hand. He pulls Sirius away from the table and starts whipping him over the back until the robes he wears are torn to shreds and Sirius' back is covered with bloody marks from the whip.

Both, Remus and I watch in horror.

The boy is down on the earth and when the whip vanishes, a house-elf is called to levitate Sirius to his room, where he's unceremoniously dropped on the floor. After the first strike with the whip Sirius has gritted his teeth and there was not a sound out of his mouth. Now he weeps, silently, because he knows if they hear him it will only get worse. He's left lying there presumably the whole night. Because the memory shifts and in the morning his mother comes in and he's still there, the way he fell to the floor, unable to move. She waves her wand and the shreds are replaced by clean clothes, otherwise nothing gets done.

Sirius closes his eyes.

"Took three days until I could move. The night before the term was to start she healed what was left of the whip marks and the blood. I could hardly walk, because I was so weak from not having eaten at all since that evening," he whispers.

We all bite our lower lips and don't know what to say. We take him out of the Pensieve and Remus says softly:

"We'll take a break, Sirius."

Sirius seems to be ready for that. Lily dictates all the details of the last memory to the quill while Remus leads Sirius out of the room and takes him to their bedroom. Half an hour later he comes back down. It's time to take the children to bed and he asks Winky to help him with one of them.

"I'll stay with Siri afterwards…"

"Yes, Remus, that's fine! I hope he can sleep," I confirm.

Then I hear nothing of them anymore for the rest of the evening. Lily reads over the parchment roll. She's gone all the way to the start and reads over it, shaking her head and wondering:

"Will it be a chance for the wizarding world to get better now that the old pureblood families are so decimated and only the ones remain that were not so tainted by the Dark Arts?"

"I'm not sure, but I sincerely hope so, Lily. Especially since the biggest leaders of the old families, the Black and Malfoy heirs have switched to the light side. I don't expect them to return to the old ways anytime soon. Though there will certainly be new 'Dark Lords' they will probably have a harder time to find followers."

Tuesday, 29.12.1998 / Sirius

I've slept through the night and haven't noticed any dreams! I definitely expected nightmares, but Remus has been holding me and the dreams stayed in my subconscious. I don't know if that's good or bad and I don't know what happens when I have to sleep alone, but I'm not bothering to think about that right now. I return to my task of going through my childhood memories. There's a lot together already, which I'll flesh out a bit still, because the pure facts alone are just too bloody dreary.

The next series of memories we gather from around the time I went to Hogwarts. Meeting James on the train…

I see myself being led through the barrier at King's Cross for the first time. I can almost feel my excitement again. For two years at least I'll be out of the clutches of my family for most of the year.

James

Sirius is coming through the barrier. I see myself standing on the platform with my parents, who are laughing and wishing me all the best for a good start of the term. By that time I've never seen Sirius' parents, only his mother once for a short time when she brought Sirius to school on the first day, and I was shocked to see how they looked. Sirius is a miniature of his father. Mr. Black is very tall, slender, has sleek black hair and grey eyes which are ice cold. Sirius looks exactly the same, only much smaller and the look out of his grey eyes is warm. Then I see his mother. She's about the ugliest woman I've ever seen, to be honest and even then, at only eleven years old I feel so thankful that Sirius looks so much like his father it's uncanny. First of all she looks old. Her hair is wispy and seems to be all around her head, her eyes are dark violet and her mouth is pressed into a thin line. Both grown up Blacks look around with an air of superiority that tells everyone what they think of themselves.

Sirius doesn't even look at me directly, but he's already sent me a warning with Tom, that he'll have to act like he doesn't know me, just to make sure that they don't change their decision to send him to Hogwarts in the last moment.

Next to his mother there's the little pain in the ass Regulus. Her hand rests on Regulus' shoulder and he looks very smug about something. I hear them giving him last orders for the trip and the term, to look up to Lucius Malfoy, if he needs help or guidance. My younger self looks shocked at the way Sirius' face is expressionless, how he holds back any biting comments, that would be out in seconds flat if anyone at school would have talked to him this way. Before the train leaves his family returns through the barrier, leaving him to fend alone with his trunk.

But Sirius looks rather relieved about this fact and before the Slytherins or future Slytherins his parents want for his company can grab for him he pushes his trolley with his trunk and the cage containing Tom to me and says brightly:

"Hi, James! Ready to go?"

"Hi, Sirius! Of course. These are my parents, Sirius. Mum, dad, this is Sirius Black…"

"Ah, your friend who was not allowed to come and visit us? Hello Sirius! I'm pleased to meet you!" my father says.

Sirius blinks, holds out his hand and shakes my dad's, then my Mum's.

"Don't worry, Sirius, I know your parents, they aren't very fond of me, that's true, but you have to grow up to become your own person, not a pawn in their hand. If you can manage that you'll always find a second home with us!" my Mum tells Sirius.

"Thank you, sir… madam…" Sirius is a bit embarrassed, he's really not used to adults who are kind with him. Except for most of the teachers at the primary school and his uncle he's never been treated kindly.

"So – let's give you a hand with that trunk of yours, Sirius! That looks heavy!"

"It is. Thank you, Mr. Potter."

My dad helps us bring our trunks inside of the train, then waits with us until it's time to go inside. We have found an empty compartment, open the window and wave goodbye to my parents.

"Have a good term, you two! And remember to have some fun between studying!" dad orders us.

"We will, daddy! Bye Mum!" I call while the train leaves.

The memory shifts to a couple of hours later, when the door opens and Bellatrix, Severus and the whole bunch of them come into our compartment. We have a hard time to get them back out again and Severus tries to hex Sirius and then my younger self, but they get chased out by a prefect passing through the carriage.

"What's this here? You're first years, aren't you? Do you wish to lose house points before you are even sorted? Off to your own carriage you go or you'll be in detention for the whole first week!" the boy says, his hands firmly on his hips.

Bellatrix looks him up and down, then says haughtily:

"And who are you to command us around?"

"Don't try to mouth back, girl, you can see very well that I'm a prefect. And that's now ten points from whatever house you'll be in and that detention I've threatened you with. What's your name?"

"I don't need to tell you that! You're not in Slytherin and I won't listen to you anyway!" she says.

Sirius turns to the prefect and says:

"Her name is Bellatrix Black."

"Ah! Now I understand. Now listen here, Bellatrix: you will have to follow every prefect's orders, not only those of the house in which you'll probably land yourself. With an attitude like yours you will be very much disliked by anyone, now off you go!"

She just laughs, but finally leaves our compartment. The boys look like they still want to hang around, but the prefect looks at them sternly and says, tapping with his feet:

"And? Do you want a detention, too?"

Finally they leave. Sirius looks up to the prefect and says:

"Thanks for the help. It's not that we're stupid or can't stand up for ourselves, but there were seven of them…"

"Frank Longbottom. That's okay, kid, if there's one thing I can't stand it's that kind of ganging up on someone. You're first years, too, eh?"

"Yes."

"Well, good luck for the sorting then! I'll see you tonight!"

With that, Frank leaves the compartment and goes on, checking that the ghastly group has settled down in their own compartment again. The rest of the trip is uneventful and the memory shifts to the gathering on the platform at Hogsmeade. We know it well enough, having been here at school for the last six years. A huge man is waiting for all the first years and gathers us at one end of the platform. He counts us, makes sure we're all the first years and then explains:

"Well, now I'll take ye across the lake to the castle. Ye'll be expected to be sorted after that. I'm Rubeus Hagrid by the way, keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. You can call me Hagrid, everyone does. Now come on!"

While we march off I can hear Ryan say to Severus:

"What an oaf! Looks like a half-giant."

"Worst of every side they get. Looks like he's rather stupid, too."

They giggle about that. I remember that I balled my fists overhearing this. Sirius turns and just glares at them. Severus glares right back and warns Sirius:

"Just wait until tonight when we'll be in our dorm! You won't have much to laugh and your low class friends won't be there!"

Finally we all climb into the little boats. Luckily, none of the gits tries to get into ours, but they're not far away and Sirius aims a stone at Severus, who actually falls into the lake. Hagrid is there to fish him out and chides him for being clumsy. My younger self and Sirius hide our giggles.

A dripping wet Severus and the dry rest of the first years are gathered in the Entrance Hall and then guided into the Great Hall. We get into a line, Severus still rather moist, and stand in front of the teachers' table, then we get called to the hat. Sirius is the third to go. As was expected of her, his cousin has been sorted into Slytherin. Sirius looks like he's being led to the scaffold. It doesn't even take very long, and I remember how my heart went light the moment I heard the hat shout Gryffindor! Everyone among the teachers and all the Slytherins looked so bloody perplexed it was too funny, but even then I understood that something very extraordinary must have happened. Even Dumbledore looked very astonished. Much later he would tell me that he was completely and utterly surprised. He had known that two Black children would start Hogwarts that year and was most flabbergasted that one of them went to the most unlikely house any Black could ever go.

The memory shifts again, this time to the moment Remus sat on the stool to put the hat on his head. This took a long time. I remember that I had tried to keep the name, but had forgotten it immediately. But I saw that Dumbledore watched with baited breath and when the hat screamed Gryffindor he had a relieved smile on his face. I think it really had to be fate. Then it was the turn of another boy to be sorted into Gryffindor and right after that it was my turn. The last thing I saw before the hat covered me was that Remus and Sirius were already talking with each other. And the next thing I heard was the hat who just said:

"I know what to do with you, my child! Gryffindor!"

I watch as little James walks over to the Gryffindor table, introducing himself to everyone else. Then he asks Sirius:

"How did you avoid getting sorted into Slytherin, you sly thing?"

"I still don't really know, James! But I kind of thought to the hat to get it over and done with and shove me into the snake house if it had to be. And it said it'd most certainly wouldn't sort me into a house I obviously didn't want to go or really fit!"

"Wow!" said Peter. "You thought you'd be sorted into Slytherin? Why?"

"Because all my family has always been there. You have no idea how relieved I am not to be there!"

There are then a lot of memories of our first school days. Most outstanding of course was the next morning with the howler from Sirius' mother, which, after I'd first seen her, didn't astonish me at all.

When the morning owls arrive, there's Sirius' family owl with a blood red envelope in its beak. A Howler from his mother who has already learned that Sirius isn't in Slytherin. I watch Dumbledore destroying it before it was only halfway through, but enough evil things had already come out of it. Sirius probably wanted to vanish into the earth or something. It was actually Remus, who lifted his spirits. He hadn't talked much after my arrival at the table the night before, but he'd listened with great care, so now he said in a low but determined voice:

"Don't think anything of it, Sirius, the best thing to do is to hold up your head high and not react to anything anyone says!"

Sirius swallows and looks at this new dorm-mate, then replies:

"Thanks for that, Remus."

In the course of the next few memories we relive how Remus and Sirius hit off from the beginning. Remus is still very small, almost tiny compared to Sirius and I. Sirius is easily the tallest among us. Peter is barely taller than Remus, but a lot rounder. He doesn't only look like a baby he acts much more like a baby than any of us. He is the only one among us who has difficulties at the start and misses his family too much. He is the youngest of three brothers and the others are both out of school already. Since no one else shares our dorm we take him under our wings. Again, Remus is the driving force, claiming that no one should be lonely in a crowd.

The first Potions class with the Slytherins comes around and of course that won't be pleasant. The Professor is older than sin and my father has told me beforehand he was the head of Slytherin house, but a very complacent character. Just how complacent he hasn't told me. The man must have been deaf and blind! His name is Slughorn and for a former Slytherin he's really nice.

It made for good lessons though and we learned quite well with him. It also meant that we didn't get treated badly, but he never saw the most obvious things the Slytherins played on us. I do have to admit of course that he almost never saw what we did to the Slytherins either. He mostly considered anything that went awry to be an accident.

I'm waiting for something to come up among Sirius' memories and there it is. The first time we dare pulling a prank in Potions on the Slytherins. Sirius and my younger self sit together right behind Remus and Peter and since it's a practical lesson, the two of them drop a wrong ingredient into Wilkes' and Rosier's cauldron as those two sit closest. Instead of a potion that heals them the two of them get a potion that causes bruises, so when it runs over the cauldron they get both hit. Professor Slughorn thinks it's an accident and sends them both to Madam Pomfrey. He does ask them to kindly read and follow the list of instructions a bit more carefully the next time. I hear the four soon to be Marauders snicker, the other Slytherins, mainly Snape, seethe and another new Gryffindor, a girl with auburn hair and green eyes looks around to the four boys and makes an angry face.

After filing out of the classroom she rounds the four boys up and hisses:

"Are you aware that the potion could have exploded? What did you add in there?"

"Stop worrying, Evans, if you had looked two pages back you'd have found the potion, which causes bruises. We just added the two ingredients that do just that," James says coolly.

"That's cruel!" she insists and rushes away with her friends.

That was the moment the long lasting feud between myself and my future wife started and the moment we started calling her Saint Evans. She hated it!

Lily

They used to call me Saint Evans. Well, mainly James and Peter did. Sirius called me Tiger-Lily, which was almost worse. It took quite a lot not to hex them on the spot, but to stick my nose in the air and pass them with my head turned.

I don't know if I would have treated Sirius differently had I known about his home life. But I learned to know him as the member of one of the oldest and proudest wizarding families and to my view he acted it. He was so arrogant! Barely any better than Severus and his gang of Slytherins. Different arrogant than James, but just as bad. Both were not arrogant of their blood lines, but of their ability to just suck up everything, to act like nothing concerned them and still hand in tests and homework that got top marks. I was jealous and it irked me so much I tried to defy them in every subject. We fought a mostly silent war in the next six years.

But it's fascinating to watch all that from Sirius' memories. It's especially nice to see from a distance how Remus and Sirius hit off right from the start. They were too cute for words those two and I'm sure the basis for their love was laid down right at the beginning. I had come to the Gryffindor table as the second new first year, introduced myself to Sirius and whoever sat nearby, sat myself on the other side of Sirius, then Remus came next. He sat down next to Sirius and looked around with those amazing amber eyes. They were more brown than gold actually, but with the light of all those candles they got that golden sheen perfectly. Sirius looked into them quite intently even then. They started talking and only when James joined us at the table, sitting down on Remus' other side, did Sirius turn to James more. They told us that they had gone to primary school together, which was why they knew each other. I soon found out that Remus, while from an all wizarding family, didn't know any of the other wizarding children. He explained it away that he had grown up abroad for the most part. One of the three girls who were sorted into Gryffindor was a half-blood, the other two were wizarding children, but they had gone to Muggle primary schools. I was the only one who was from an all Muggle family.

Hermione and Harry are coming home after having spent a few days at Hermione's parents. They find us in the small living room poring over the Pensieve.

"Hello, everyone!" Harry calls.

Then he starts and notices what's going on. We come out of the Pensieve. Sirius grins and we all greet the young people.

"What's the topic in there?" Harry asks.

Since we all grin he knows it can't be anything too bad. Sirius confirms it:

"First year at Hogwarts."

"Oh, are we allowed in?" Hermione asks immediately.

"Sure, if you want to see this…"

The two hasten to take off their coats and put their bags on an armchair in the front room, then they join us. We plunge into another memory