A/N: This is set During chapter 12 of James Potter and the Shrieking Shack, although the majority is a flashback to 1967-68.

On Fathers

Sirius was seven years old when he first saw Walter Sawicki through his bedroom window, riding a device whose like Sirius had never seen. The towheaded boy was around Sirius' own age, with a gap in his teeth and a cleft chin, and he hummed to himself as he rode up and down the street. Sirius looked on in fascination, not entirely sure what to make of the odd, twisted metal frame or the dizzying whirl of the wheels or the pumping motion of the boy's legs, which to Sirius looked like an utter waste of energy when a broom could move faster with less unnecessary flailing.

But Sirius was too young to have his own broom, and his parents didn't like to fly, if they could help it. (Not that there was anywhere to fly, here in the middle of London.) He watched curiously as the other boy rode lazy circles in the road and decided that, as long as he couldn't fly, riding the wheeled gizmo might be some consolation.

Ever since Sirius could remember, his parents had impressed upon him the importance of staying inside the house, where privacy charms and ancient wards protected them from prying eyes and unwanted visitors. "Time was, this neighborhood was all magical," his father had often said, a wistful look in his gray eyes as he strode down corridors thick with portraits of Black Ancestors who had lived in Number Twelve years and years ago. "Then the muggles overran the place. Can't hardly step outside now, without their taint getting all over you."

Sirius wasn't sure what, exactly, made someone a muggle, but he knew they were bad people who would take away his magic if he spent too much time with them. At least, that was what Walburga said, and all her friends agreed with her. They all told Sirius that he wasn't to speak to muggles, or play with them, or go anywhere near them, if he could help it. And since everyone else who lived on Grimmauld Place was a muggle, that meant it was dangerous to even go outside.

But Sirius was a curious boy – he always had been – and at any rate, there was nothing for him to do inside the house that summer's evening. Orion was working late, Regulus had taken ill, and Walburga was in Diagon Alley buying a potion to help Regulus feel better. Kreacher was to remain at Regulus' side until she returned, and Sirius was to stay away so as not to fall ill himself.

For a short while, Sirius watched from the window, but his boredom soon got the better of him, and he crept downstairs as quietly as he could, slipped on his trainers, and darted out through the front doors.

Although the sun rode low in the sky, the heat of the day lingered in the air, and Sirius was grateful that Walburga had been too busy tending to Regulus to notice he had foregone his stifling wizard robes in favor of shorts. The day-clothes he owned were not quite the same as the clothes Sirius had seen muggles wearing, but Sirius still preferred them to his robes.

Sirius lingered in the long shadow of Number Twelve, watching the graceful gliding of the boy across the street; he had stopped pumping his legs momentarily, and the smooth motion reminded Sirius more keenly than ever of a broomstick.

"What're you doing?" Sirius called, stepping outside the protective wards so the other boy could see him. He did not yet approach the boy, however, for he was almost certainly a muggle, and Sirius didn't want to lose the magic he'd only had for a year.

The boy stopped his metal thing and put a foot down as he turned to stare at Sirius. "I'm riding my bike."

Sirius nodded his head slowly. So the metal thing was called a bike.

"D'you wanna try?" the boy asked. "If you pretend real hard, it's almost like flying!"

Sirius perked up at that. If this boy knew about flying, he wondered, did that mean he wasn't a muggle, after all? If he wasn't, then Sirius could think of no reason not to play with him. Grinning, he sprinted across the street. "Alright! My name's Sirius!"

"I'm Walter," said the boy, hopping to the ground and holding the bike out to Sirius. "Here!"

Climbing on was harder than it seemed, and Sirius wasn't sure whether he liked the oddly–shaped seat he had to sit on, but he eventually settled in and kicked against the ground to get the bike moving. It shot forward, and Sirius scrambled to get his feet up onto the things Walter called "petals" (Sirius didn't have a clue why; they didn't look a thing like flowers to him). For a few heartbeats, Sirius sailed along, eyes closed happily as the wind ran through his hair. If flying was anything like this, then Sirius thought he might well live on a broom as soon as he was allowed one.

Then the bike began to wobble, and Sirius' eyes flew open in alarm. Before he could figure out how to stop, the bike toppled over, sending Sirius crashing to the ground, his knee banging hard against the pavement.

"Are you alright?" Walter called nervously, running to Sirius' side.

Sniffling just a little, Sirius nodded, though he quickly wrapped his hands around his stinging knee. "'m fine."

But Walter had already turned around and begun to run toward Number Ten. "Mum!" he hollered. "Mu-um!"

Sirius scrubbed hastily at his teary eyes and pushed himself to his feet, noticing with some dismay that it wasn't just his knee he'd hurt. His hands were smarting, and a scrape on his elbow oozed blood. But the pain was nothing compared to the panic rising in Sirius' chest. Walter was a muggle, after all, if he lived at Number Ten. Sirius had to get home.

But within a few seconds, Walter had returned, a dark-haired woman in tow. She crossed at once to Sirius and wrapped an arm around him.

"Are your parents around?" she asked, scanning the street.

Sirius timidly shook his head.

"That's alright, love. This way," she said gently, and Sirius was alarmed to see that she was trying to lead him toward her house. "Let's get you inside."

Sirius tried to protest – they were gonna take his magic away! – but Walter's mother only rubbed his back and told him she'd have him right as rain in no time. Sirius spluttered excuses and shot longing glances toward the door of Number Twelve, but Walter's mother kept him moving swiftly toward Number Ten.

The inside of the muggles' house was nothing like what Sirius had expected. There were no chandeliers, no silver goblets, no house elves. The pictures on the wall didn't move and looked slightly woolly. Instead of torches, yellow globes on the ceiling gave light to the room, and Sirius spotted bizarre muggle devices here and there in the house. He wondered if they were used to steal magic from witches and wizards who, like Sirius, were too stupid to keep away.

"Into the kitchen," said Walter's mother. "Set yourself down now, while I get the peroxide."

The questions that rose in Sirius' thoughts – mainly, what peroxide was, and whether it would take his magic away – vanished as he caught sight of a glowing box in the corner. There were people in that box! Actual people (albeit coloured in shades of gray), moving around and having conversations!

Sirius' first thought was that the muggles had somehow trapped those people in the box, and he nearly bolted out the front door for fear of joining them in the tiny, glowing prison. But it soon became apparent that the box contained far more than a few trapped wizards. There was an entire world in there – and other worlds, besides! Even as Sirius watched, fascinated, it became apparent that the people in the box had traveled to another planet, where strange metal beings threatened to exterminate the whole of Earth.

It was then that Sirius realized that the people in the box couldn't have been wizards, for even the most powerful wizards couldn't apparate to another planet. And now the people in the box were talking about going to another universe – another universe! It was almost too incredible to believe.

Walter's mother cleaned the scrapes on Sirius' elbow and knee with a cold liquid that make the wounds burn, but Sirius hardly noticed.

"What's that?" he asked Walter once Walter's mother had finished her work and shooed the boys into the room with the glowing box.

Walter followed his gaze. "It's my mum's favourite programme. She watches it every week."

Sirius thought of the programmes his mother listened to on their wireless – mostly news reports that Sirius found exceedingly dull. This strange muggle programme was more interesting by far than anything on the Wizarding Wireless Network: the metal creatures had begun to fight each other, and small explosions filled the air.

"But what is it?" Sirius asked. "That… box…"

Walter gaped at him. "Hasn't your family got a telly?"

"What's a telly?"

"A television," said Walter. "We've had ours for ages! As long as I can remember. I thought everyone had one."

"Not us," said Sirius. They said nothing more for a long while, or at least Sirius didn't hear anything Walter said to him. He was so mesmerized by the programme that he hardly noticed how much time was passing until the strange metal creatures had been defeated and triumphant music blared from the "telly."

Walter stood and stretched. "What'd you think?"

Grinning, Sirius leaped to his feet. "That was brilliant! Will it be on again?"

"Every week!"

"Can I come back, then?"

"Course you can! And when it's not on, we can ride my bike some more."

Sirius wasn't so sure about the bike, but he nodded anyway before saying goodbye and hurrying home. Night had fallen while Sirius was inside Number Ten, and it was with some trepidation that Sirius eased open the door to Number Twelve and slipped back inside. Maybe he would be lucky, and his parents hadn't come home yet. Or maybe they were too busy with Regulus to notice Sirius' absence.

As though Sirius would be so fortunate.

"SIRIUS ORION BLACK!"

The scream came from the parlour door, making Sirius jump as Walburga emerged, red-faced and shaking with fury.

"Where have you been?" she demanded, eyeing him as though looking for any trace of mud or muggle filth he might be tracking into the house.

Sirius cringed, trying to think of some story that could excuse his long absence.

But Walburga had no intention of letting him explain. "OUTSIDE!" she shrieked, gesticulating wildly toward the dark street visible through the open door. "With the muggles!"

With that, she was off, lost in her own anger, ranting and raving about the dangers of the non-magical world, about everything the muggles would do to him, about how she had told him time and again not to go near them. It was the same drivel that, until that day, had terrified Sirius into remaining indoors.

Now, however, he didn't care to listen. Curious, he thought, how he'd met two muggles, entered their home, and spent the better part of an hour with them… and yet his magic hadn't left him. In fact, when he finally stumped up the stairs to his bedroom, after enduring half an hour of Walburga's screaming, his magic kindly slammed the door shut behind him.

Magic-stealing muggles, indeed. Maybe he ought to have been born a muggle. At the very least, he liked the muggles much better than any witch or wizard he'd ever met.

-.-.-

Sirius was, of course, forbidden to leave the house without his parents again, or to have anything more to do with the muggles. After Walburga had screamed herself hoarse on the matter, Sirius' father had come in to have a long talk with him about how dangerous and irresponsible his actions had been.

Sirius didn't care. For the rest of the summer, he snuck off at every opportunity to play with Walter or to watch the programme about the mad Doctor and his friends. He was caught, more often than not, by his father, or Walburga, or Kreacher, and after Walburga's inevitable, deafening lecture, he was sent to his room without supper, or made to sit in the library for an hour or so. Even Regulus, who sneaked in as usual to see Sirius the moment their father left, seemed alarmed by Sirius' behaviour and begged him not to let the muggles hurt him.

None of this deterred Sirius in the least. He had fun with Walter, far more fun than he otherwise would have had. Regulus was fine, for a kid brother, but he whined a lot, or went places with Walburga, or played with Kreacher, and Sirius rather liked the idea of having a friend of his own. And anyway, once he dared to give the bike another chance, he'd quickly mastered the skill of not falling down. As long as he couldn't have a broom to fly, he ought to at least be allowed to ride the bike whenever he wanted.

Walburga and Orion were quickly running out of punishments to correct their wayward son, and Sirius was rather pleased with himself for besting them. For all their stubborn pride and hot tempers, they had the creativity of a pair of quaffles. All Walburga ever did was scream at him or, on bad days, take the cane to him. And Sirius knew his father would never do anything more than shut him in the library for an hour or two to 'think about what he'd done' – then leave a less-than-vigilant Kreacher to stand guard, allowing Regulus easy access.

Yes, Sirius was confident that he'd endured the worst his parents could throw at him. They could no more stop him playing with Walter than Walter could steal away his magic.

What he didn't realize was that his father – who held the last shreds of peace within Number Twelve, who kept Walburga from leaving Sirius on the curb during one of her trips to Diagon Alley, who kept Sirius from running off into the night after particularly nasty rows – was not infinitely patient. And Sirius was quickly approaching Orion's limit.

-.-.-

"It's appalling is what it is," said Mr. Rosier, punctuating this statement with a jab of his glowing cigar. Sirius caught a whiff of the smoke and coughed. Walburga shot him a glare.

Ignoring her, Sirius pretended to be interested in the game he was playing in the corner with Regulus and the Rosiers' son, Evan. Mr. Rosier worked with Sirius' father, and so the Rosiers often came over for tea. Neither Sirius nor Regulus much cared for Evan, but they put up with him because Walburga was even less patient than normal when she had company. Even Sirius tried not to cross her during her social calls.

"Couldn't agree more, Edwin," said Orion, ignoring his son entirely. "A mudblooded Department Head! Next thing you know, one of them will be Minister!"

Sirius glanced up curiously. Ever since meeting Walter, he'd listened with bemused fascination to his parents' conversations about muggles and mudbloods – who were, as far as Sirius could tell, muggles with magic. So far, he had heard nothing from Orion, Walburga, or any of their friends concerning muggles that fit with his knowledge of the Sawickis. He'd begun to wonder whether his parents had ever met a muggle, or whether muggles, for wizards, were something like the ghosts featured in Walter's muggle ghost stories: figures from the legends they told because they liked scaring themselves.

Mr. Rosier took a puff on his cigar. "The whole Ministry is far too friendly toward muggles nowadays. It will be the ruin of us all, you mark my words."

"I've got a muggle friend," said Sirius with feigned innocence. "His name's Walter."

The four adults turned at once to frown at Sirius, who gave a vague smile. Walburga had gone slightly bug-eyed with the effort of not screeching her disapproval; Mrs. Rosier looked mildly ill and quickly dropped her gaze. Mr. Rosier did his best to mask his surprise and displeasure, but Sirius saw that the looks directed at Orion were now laced with contempt.

And Orion… Sirius had never seen his father look so livid. His face was an ugly puce, the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching. Even when Mrs. Rosier forcibly redirected the conversation onto neutral topics, Orion continued to shoot Sirius furious glares.

Sirius ignored the adults for the rest of tea, content to laugh to himself as he thought about how easily he'd knocked the adults out of their reckoning. This was even better than Walter's reaction when Sirius told him he'd be going to a school full of ghosts in a few years' time.

After the Rosiers left, however, Sirius' amusement faded as Walburga, predictably, began to rage.

"YOU FOUL LITTLE URCHIN!" she shrieked, summoning the cane at once. "HOW DARE YOU!"

Sirius frowned and eyed Walburga warily. In all the years Sirius had been inciting her wrath, she'd never gone for the cane so soon. It only ever came out if her fury outlasted her voice. Suddenly, Sirius wondered whether he was out of his depth. He hadn't thought his comment had been so horrid. All he'd said was that he was friends with a muggle!

"Mum?" Regulus asked, eyes wide, as Walburga raised the cane over her head.

Orion grabbed Walburga's wrist to halt the blow, and Sirius breathed a sigh of relief. If his father was stepping in, Sirius might yet come through this unscathed.

Walburga sneered at her husband. "Don't stop me, Orion. He—"

"I know." Orion's voice was as steely as his gaze, which slid to Sirius and made the boy shiver. "I'll deal with it."

With a sniff, Walburga whirled and stalked out of the parlour, Kreacher scampering along behind her.

Orion smiled thinly at Regulus. "Run along now, Regulus. Your brother and I have some things to discuss."

Regulus was only too eager to comply, and within moments, Sirius found himself alone in the parlour with his father.

Sirius snorted. "It was only a bit of fun."

"A bit of fun?" Orion snapped, grabbing Sirius around the elbow and dragging him out into the corridor. "Do you have any idea what you've done? What you've cost me?" They'd reached the stairs, and Orion hauled Sirius down – away from both the library and Sirius' bedroom. Orion's grip tightened with each step until Sirius could feel the bruises forming under the man's bony fingers. "Edwin Rosier works under me at the Ministry. He respects me as a champion of the old ways. And now—" Orion gave Sirius a vicious shake as they turned at the landing— "he thinks I let my son, my heir, consort with muggles."

"So?" Sirius spat, tripping over his feet as he struggled to keep up with his father's rapid footsteps.

Orion flung open the door to the cellar and shoved Sirius inside. "Everything you do reflects on me, Sirius. Every mistake you make paints me the fool, discredits me in the eyes of those to whom we owe our power, both within the Ministry and outside it. For you to make nice with a muggle, the lowest of the low, is—" Orion shook his head. "It will take me months – years – to undo the damage."

Flashing a cheeky grin, Sirius shoved his hands into his pockets. "You're welcome, Father."

For a moment, Sirius thought his father was going to strike him. Then, with a visible effort, Orion turned his back on Sirius and strode to the cellar door. "I'll be here. Call me when you're ready to apologize."

The door thudded shut behind Orion.

"'Call when you're ready to apologize,'" Sirius mimicked, kicking the heavy wooden door. "So, never, then." Scowling, he turned to prowl the room Orion had locked him in. The house at Grimmauld Place was large enough that, although Sirius liked to explore and to find places where his parents weren't likely to bother him, there remained a few rooms he rarely visited.

This cellar was one such room. There was nothing remarkable about it; his parents mainly used it to store furniture and antiques they hadn't yet bothered to move to Gringott's, or were planning to display in the near future, and it was lit by a single lamp burning low near the door. Wardrobes, tea tables, china, and portraits filled the rest of the large, dark space, all immaculate and carefully organized. Kreacher must have spent ages in this room.

All the more reason for me to stay away, Sirius thought with disgust as he peered at a silver-handled dagger. He wondered if it had been used to kill someone – a muggle, like as not.

Wrinkling his nose, Sirius moved on. There was nothing interesting to see in the room, and even less to do, and he resigned himself to a long wait. It was unusual that his father hadn't told him how long he was to remain in the cellar, but Sirius had never seen his father this angry before. Surely in a couple of hours, once the fury had died down, he would return and give Sirius a long, dull speech about how his actions had been wrong, and his parents were very disappointed in him, and he ought to think twice before he did it again.

It didn't take hours, however, for Sirius to hear the rattle of a wooden door. Only a few minutes into his punishment, the sound arose – not, as Sirius had first thought, from the door through which his father had disappeared, but from the sea of furniture. Frowning, Sirius stood to search for the source.

After some minutes of wading through stacks of chairs and mounds of silver cutlery and rows of heavy boudoirs, Sirius finally found it: an old writing desk with a cabinet beside the leg-space. The cabinet door shook, as though something inside was trying to get out.

Sirius was so used to Regulus' pathetic warnings during his stays in the library that he could practically hear his brother now, telling Sirius to let it alone. Always cautious, always obedient, always well-mannered, Regulus did not like to meddle in matters that didn't concern him. Then again, neither did Sirius. They just had very different notions of what concerned them. Like this desk. Regulus would say that it didn't belong to Sirius, so he should just ignore it. Sirius reckoned that since his father had shut him up in this dingy room for who-knew-how-long, anything inside was fair game for entertainment.

Sirius eagerly flung open the cabinet door.

At once a chill fell over the room. Sirius felt as though he had swallowed a snitch, which now fluttered about in his stomach as waves of icy dread crashed down on him. The light of the lamp seemed to dim, and Sirius sank to the floor, a heaviness settling in his chest. He felt suddenly as though he would never leave this rotten room, as though he were doomed to be miserable for the rest of his life.

A shadow emerged from the cabinet and glided across the floor toward Sirius, who watched with growing dread. Images began to flash through his mind – nightmares he'd had long ago, in which cold hands dragged him into darkness and monsters chased him through unfamiliar streets.

"No…" Sirius whimpered, dragging himself backwards, away from the shadow.

The sharp, stinging bite of Walburga's cane as she punished him for sneaking out to meet Walter.

"Stop it… Stop it!"

Panic that made his heart race as he ran through a thick crowd, screaming for his parents, whom he'd lost in the chaos of Diagon Alley.

"No…" Sirius fetched up against the cellar door and clawed at the handle. "Please…"

The images kept coming, sometimes sharp, sometimes hazy. Fear and sadness and pain and loneliness. So much loneliness. Why was he always so alone?

"Help!" he sobbed, shuddering with cold as the shadow continued its slow advance. He could no longer tell what was real, whether he was lost in Diagon Alley or lying awake in a thunderstorm or locked in the cellar with a monster.

"Are you ready to apologize?"

The voice was quiet and muffled, all but lost in the endless despair that flowed from the cold shadow.

"Yes!" Sirius cried, trembling now so badly he gave up on turning the handle and merely pounded against the rough, damp wood. He huddled against the wall, tears flowing freely. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please…" His breath hitched, and he pounded once more, feebly, on the door, beyond which his father stood, nonplussed. "I'm sorry…"

But the world was fading, and Sirius didn't know whether anyone was coming to save him. The cold stole over him, and the darkness with it, and Sirius knew no more.

-.-.-

It would be years before Sirius learned that the monster he'd faced in the cellar was a boggart taking the form of a Dementor. At eight years old, he'd never seen a Dementor, although he'd heard stories of them, of the terror and despair they spread wherever they went. All he knew was that he'd had nightmares for weeks after the experience. More than once, he'd sat up all night, terrified of the darkness and the dreams but afraid to call to his parents. He wouldn't have called for Walburga, of course, even before that night in the cellar, but back then he had still sometimes found comfort in his father's arms.

But Orion was no longer his father. Not after he'd locked him in with the boggart.

He couldn't say for sure that Orion had known what Sirius would find in the cellar, although he had his suspicions, but it didn't much matter one way or the other. Hardly a week after the incident in the cellar, Sirius and Regulus had had a row. Orion had sent Regulus to the library for one hour, while Sirius found himself in a study on the second floor. Hardly had he stepped through the door when a rattling caught his attention. There, on the far wall, stood the writing desk in which the boggart lived.

Sirius, too scared to move, had spent the hour staring at the desk, waiting for the boggart-Dementor to emerge and attack him.

The writing desk still waited in the study, the boggart rattling about in its cabinet. Sirius privately suspected that Orion and Walburga lacked the skill to exterminate the creature, its one weakness being laughter, but he wouldn't doubt that they'd kept it solely to torment him.

Not that the threat was enough to frighten Sirius into submission. They only let it out when they caught him playing with Walter, so Sirius simply learned not to get caught.

But the boggart punishment wasn't entirely without consequence. If there was one thing Sirius knew beyond a doubt, it was that a real father wouldn't subject his son to that, wouldn't stand on the other side of a door as his son screamed in terror, wouldn't remind him of it every chance he got. After that day, Sirius could never again think of Orion as his father. Sirius was a Black in name only, a stranger in that dark house who couldn't wait until he came of age and was able to leave Grimmauld Place behind him forever.

He hardly even thought about Orion anymore. He would think about Walburga on occasion. They got into rows often enough that Sirius occasionally pondered how best to humiliate her when he finally left home (and every day until then, of course.) But Sirius preferred to act as though Orion didn't exist.

Until today. Orion hadn't crossed Sirius' mind since the boy had returned to Hogwarts in September, but now Sirius couldn't stop thinking about his so-called father. All because he'd found out that Remus' own father was a good-for-nothing bastard who had walked out on his wife and son. No doubt Mr. Lupin thought he had his reasons for leaving, just as Orion had thought he had his reasons for siccing a boggart on his son, but Sirius was sure those reasons were all too selfish and stupid to count for anything. Nothing could excuse that kind of behavior from someone who was supposed to be a father.

"People can be such arses sometimes," Sirius spat to the empty hallway, remembering too late that James had joined him in waiting for Peter to finish the study session with Lynx.

At Sirius' outburst, however, James looked up, bafflement written on his face. "Er… I agree?" he said slowly. "Mind elaborating?"

"Just trying to figure out why Remus' dad would run off on him," said Sirius, avoiding James' questioning gaze. "How a parent could ever be such a complete bastard to his own son." Perhaps he put more venom into this last statement than the situation with Remus and Mr. Lupin warranted. He couldn't help it. All the rage and bitterness he felt toward Orion had been simmering over the past hour, until it finally became too much to keep inside.

But if James noticed Sirius' tone, he was kind enough not to point it out. The two boys lapsed back into silence as the evening drew on, and Sirius slowly pushed thoughts of his family aside. His home life was rubbish; that was nothing new, and he'd long since realized that he'd found something infinitely better at Hogwarts in James and the others. He didn't know if Remus felt the same way, or if his father's betrayal still ate at him, but Sirius figured that between him and James and Peter, they would be able to help Remus move forward.

After all, that was what family did.