Chapter 7

Life with Sirius was something altogether different from anything else Harry'd known. There was an unpredictability that permeated every moment of the day, an energy about the place as if Sirius could pick up and head off on a month-long journey around Egypt without notice. Compared to the dreary routine at the Dursleys and the carefully planned existence in the forest, Harry found himself strangely excited.

That, in combination with his complete immersion into magic, was why weeks passed in a flash, and Harry found himself only days away from the start of term at Hogwarts. During that time, he'd been inundated with countless stories from Sirius about his father's misdeeds at Hogwarts, the marvellous four Marauders and of Lily's tolerance of their antics.

Sirius tended to stray away from the time after Hogwarts, but Harry pieced together enough to know of the key events from books and old newspaper clippings.

He held The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts in his lap.

"Can you imagine," he said to Sy, "having your whole life outlined in some book?"

*The Boy Who Lived.*

The chapter title was immediately proceeded by a moving colour image of Neville, aged six, hands held tight in that of his Gran's with tear streaks down his face. They stood, surrounded by people in celebration, in front of a large brick building named 'St. Mungos.'

"No wonder he's complaining of all the reporters. He's bloody famous!"

Sy flicked out her tongue. "You sound like you might be jealous."

Harry snorted, and then felt bad. "Me? No. I wouldn't want the world's attention on me like that. And besides, Neville's parents had to die."

"Your parents died too."

"Yes, but when I was one. I didn't really know them to miss them, you know? It's alright, being with Sirius now. He tells stories, and I'm glad to hear it, but it's a far away sort of glad you know? I know I'd love them, Lily and James, if I knew them." Harry shrugged. He'd often pictured life with his parents, away from the Dursleys, but he'd never really put faces and personalities to the parents in his imagination.

"It's a little unbelievable, isn't it? That a baby could defeat the Dark Lord? I wonder what happened."

"Doesn't that book tell you?"

Harry shook his head. He found the section in question and traced the words it as he read. "In the evening of May thirteenth, You-Know-Who breached the Fidelius charm of the Longbottom household on his relentless campaign to extinguish all wizarding children born in the latter half of July. Five years after he began, You-Know-Who had brought ruin to many great wizarding families, including the Talleys, the Wincesters, the Prouds, and the Potters, along with numerous unfortunate muggleborns and half-bloods. It is unknown what transpired when he sought out the Longbottoms, only that before the night fell, You-Know-Who's presence was struck from the world, leaving only a mark the shape of a lightning bolt on young Neville Longbottom's chest, hence known by all as the Boy-Who-Lived."

It was strange, too, that the Potters also appeared in the book. It didn't feel like they were referring to his family, to his parents. Harry had found another mention of his name, in passing, at the beginning of the Dark Lord's crusade to off everyone born in late July. The Potters were one of the first families attacked.

The more he lingered on the thought, the more the reality sank in. Harry shivered and rubbed his arms to warm them. By all accounts, he should be dead. They all thought he was dead, and though Sirius had been working non-stop to find out why, no answers yet came.

A knock came at his door. Harry put the book away and picked Sy up from his shoulders and plated her an the table. "You sure you don't want to come?"

"If it means going through that falling chamber, then no. Never again."

Harry grinned. "But what if I need your protection? Or what if you get hungry?"

Sy rose up, regal. "Contrary to what you believe, I am perfectly able to hunt for myself. I did have a life before you turned up in my nest, you know? And aren't you supposed to be a big, powerful wizard? Protect yourself!"

"Oh don't still be angry at me! It's been ages, and I've only been giving you the juiciest crickets."

"Hmph."

"Hey kiddo, ready to go?" Sirius poked his head in, saw the books on his desk and wrinkled his nose. "Reading up before even starting class?"

Harry shrugged and concentrated on enunciating his words slowly. "I don't think I've even a little bit caught up. I should know all this already." He was getting better at English. He still sounded like he was a little dull in the head, but it was better than having to carry around a load of parchment and ink.

The feeling that he was left behind was a pervasive one. Ever since landing in front of Neville all those weeks ago, Harry felt like he'd been pulled along like a leaf in the wind, unable to even resist. He was only just able to reached the beach under the rolling waves.

Sirius rubbed the back of his head. "Well, I should be the one showing you everything."

Harry rubbed Sy's head as goodbye and hurriedly squeezed past his godfather. "Come on, let's go get my wand." He tried to not let Sirius dwell. The man had a talent for dwelling, and sank into moods that lasted for days. Harry much preferred the other version of his godfather.

He couldn't stop a grin from growing. He'd been waiting for this day for a week. The regular essentials, books, cauldrons, robes, had all been acquired by Sirius and presented to him in a rather off-handed manner. They saved the wand for last, though. Harry could tell it was something special, and he could hardly conceal his excitement. So he couldn't bring Sy along, but that was the only thing that threatened to mar a perfect day.

Sirius laughed and led the way down the stairs in a bounding leap. "Peter's going to be coming along as well. You haven't met Peter yet, have you?"

Harry shook his head. He'd heard enough of him, though usually through the moniker of Wormtail. He hadn't thought it too complimentary a name, but Sirius assured him that Peter picked it out himself. Harry hadn't quite believed him at first. It was an ugly name, easy to invoke pity, diminishing the namesake. Who would want a name like that?

The man himself was sitting on one of the couches, sipping tea from one of Sirius' old porcelain set. Dressed in plain black robes, he was shorter than average, with a bit of a beer gut. The man was entirely unassuming, apart from the leather wand holster displayed prominently on his right forearm, and the Auror's badge of office pinned to his chest.

Peter stood, nearly knocking over his tea, pale as he stared at Harry.

Harry tried for a grin. He hated causing that reaction to everyone. He wasn't a ghost, so they should stop looking as if they'd seen one.

Sirius cleared his throat. "Well, Peter, meet Harry, my godson, returned from the dead and newest member of the Marauders. Harry, meet Peter, Wormtail, stealth extraordinaire, chocoholic, and Auror of the fourth division."

Peter wiped his hands on his trousers, and held it out. Harry shook it, and it was a clammy sort of handshake.

"Newest member of the Marauders, eh?" Peter said. "We've been down on numbers for a few years, it's good to have some new blood. Well, have you decided on a name for yourself, Harry?"

"A name?" Harry shrugged. "I thought you all got your names when you became Animagus. Animagi?" The word sat strangely on his tongue.

Sirius laughed. "That's not going to be for a few years yet. Maybe not even until you're all grown up. We rushed things, we did. People wiser than us go through years of study before they make the change."

Harry grinned, taking that as a challenge. "Then I just have to start early."

"Well, name or not, I'm glad to see you," Peter said. "James was a great man. Lily too. They both loved you very much."

"Now, Peter, being the big bad Auror that he is, will be providing back up for us. If there's bad wizards around, he'll take them out, one-two splat."

"Sirius! There's not going to be trouble. We're only going to Diagon Alley." Peter grinned at Harry. "I only need to pick up some supplies, is all. And besides, there are plenty Aurors already stationed there should they be needed. We can't be acting as guards for any old family that wants us."

Sirius snorted. "Sure, call it whatever you like. Badass body guard or shopping for supplies. I don't know what I was thinking. Course you'd say the second."

And with that comment, Harry's easy going grin faltered.

Peter smacked Sirius on the arm.

"What? It is just like you."

Peter sighed and finished his tea. "Well. Maybe. But I am just getting supplies, Sirius." He stood, patted down his robes, and made for the fireplace. "See you on the other side, then. Diagon Alley!"

Sirius huffed, disgruntled. "I'm just getting supplies, Sirius," he said, miming Peter's voice. "Still went first through the Floo, didn't you? Checking out the other side for baddies?"

"Do you really think there'll be trouble Sirius?"

Harry's godfather looked down on him.

"I'm not going to lie to you, kiddo. You-Know-Who might be gone, but his followers are still out there. You got caught up with that attack at the Longbottoms, and although the rest of the wizarding world seems to think they're safe in their little homes, they're ignoring the constant work the Aurors are putting in to make sure that's the case. We've had a lot of near misses, and I have a bad feeling that's not going to last."

Harry nodded. Sirius wasn't often… serious, but when he was, Harry had a feeling that people listened.

"But don't look so grim. We're alright, so long as you're careful and stick close. Don't wander into Knockturn Alley and don't touch any strange skulls and artefacts. We're getting you a wand and it's meant to be a pretty awesome occasion."

The grin returned, and Sirius all but pushed Harry into the fireplace.

"Want to do the honours?" He held out the pouch of Floo powder. Harry grabbed a handful.

"Diagon Alley!"


Getting him a wand turned out to be a tricky affair. They were in Olivanders, a dark, quiet shop that was something of a relief after the hullaballoo in the alley itself. Harry didn't think he'd taken in a quarter of what was going on. Owls, bats, and cats for sale, cauldrons bubbling with samples, stores manned by goblins, what he thought was a hag, and curiouser of all, he'd been attracted to a window set displaying a trio of flying broomsticks. Peter broke off at the potions store, while Sirius and Harry made a beeline to the wand shop.

The old man, Olivander, handed him another wand.

"Oak and unicorn hair, twelve inches."

Harry gave it a swish, though he was more distracted by the variety of minds he sensed in the shop. The place was infested, with insects more densely spread than the forest. A hundred, a thousand little minds were crawling about the place, clustered around the wand boxes, some more than others. Harry tried to take control, but attempts to move them more than a couple centimetres was met with increasing resistance. There were even some buzzing around the wand Olivander handed him, though he couldn't see or feel anything.

What he could feel from his outer awareness, was the light tingling that he'd come to associate with magic. He'd first noticed it with Dumbledore, then realised that while the sensation was weaker around Sirius, it was still present. He'd gone around Grimmauld Place, hovering over items and cataloguing which were magical and which weren't. As he found, there were very little in a wizard's house that didn't contain some form of magic. Whether active charms and enchantments, or leftovers from the making process, from the bed stools to the enchanted portraits, a wave of magic surrounded everything.

This effect was only magnified in Olivander's wand shop. The wands emitted an aura of their own, nearly stronger than that coming from wizards. If Harry concentrated, he found he was able to feel where Olivander kept his own wand, up his sleeve.

It helped that there were the little invisible bugs clustered around it.

"Try this one. Spruce and gargoyle horn, eleven and a half inches."

Harry tried the new wand. Light in colour and in heft, it felt a little too springy as he moved it through the air. Olivander took it from him as if sensing his thoughts, and presented him with another, already waiting.

"Yew and dragon scale."

"Mahogany and hippogriff feather."

"Birch and rainmaker fur."

Sirius took a seat as the line of tried and discarded wands grew. Olivander, on the other hand, seemed to grow more animated. Harry didn't even get a chance to swish the wand he was handed before it was snatched away. He shifted on his feet, suddenly uncertain if he was a wizard after all.

The wand chose the wizard, as Olivander had said. What did it mean that none of the wands he'd tried chose him? Was there something wrong with him?

But then, Olivander picked out a wand made of dark wood. The outside of the box was clustered with the little minds Harry felt, though the wand itself was strangely dull to his outer sense. It had the feel of static electricity compared to a high-voltage jolt he'd gotten from some of the other wands he tried.

"How about this? Redwood heart, with a core of acromantula venom. A strong wand, but finicky and unwieldy in the wrong hands. Eleven inches. Well versed for transfiguration and summoning."

Harry closed his fingers, feeling the sturdy wood handle, the swirls of the wood polished smooth. The sensation of magic was still dull, but the moment he touched it, there was a pulse, almost like a greeting. A slumbering bear waking for spring. A warm wind rushed upwards, rustling his clothes and hair.

"And there we have it. That'll be fifteen galleons, young Mister Potter."

Sirius clapped his hands and handed over the golden coins. "That was a bit of a struggle, eh? I think you've got a bit of a queue outside, Olivander."

Harry lifted his wand up to the light. So this was his wand, was it? He flicked it again, and a twinge of static made his fingers twitch, but there was nothing more. Olivander placed it in its wand box and with a wink, handed it back.

"No magic until September first, remember. Now off you go. Mister Black is correct indeed. I have more customers to attend to."

Sirius opened the shop door, and Harry blinked to readjust to the light outside. A small crowd had gathered, all children with their parents, all of his age.

"Finally!" a boy with curly brown hair said. "I thought you'd never come out!"

"Dean, don't point." The woman, who Harry assumed to be Dean's mother, looked exceedingly ordinary in her jeans and t-shirt in the middle of Diagon alley. Indeed, others stared at her as they walked past, as if she was the stranger that stood out. In the wizarding world, Harry supposed she was. Even he himself had black robes on over his normal clothes.

Even if he hadn't gotten the hint from her clothes, as Harry walked past her, he felt none of the fuzziness that his second sense knew to be magic. She must've been a muggle. The other parents were mostly witch and wizard. Harry passed a dark skinned boy with arms crossed and a girl who was dressed immaculately with silver ribbons around the hem of her robes.

Olivander called for the next customer in. Dean and his mother took their turn inside, as the others continued to wait.

"Mister Black. I hadn't known you'd taken on a ward."

A tall man, dressed in pressed silver robes approached Sirius. He was followed by the ribboned girl who stared at Harry with a curious tilt of her head. She was pale-skinned, but not in the unhealthy way people got when they spent too much time indoors. As she neared, Harry sensed a magical tingling from her wrist.

"Greengrass. No, that would be correct. This is my godson, Harry Potter." Sirius clasped a hand on Harry's shoulder.

The Greengrass man lifted his eyebrows in interest. "Ah yes, I should have realised. You bear quite a striking resemblance to your father," he said. "I hope you'll show as much promise as your parents. Daphne, why don't you introduce yourself?"

The girl stared Harry up and down, and he got the distinct impression that she wasn't impressed.

"I'm Daphne Greengrass. Good to meet you."

Yes, definitely unimpressed. The man sighed.

"She's shy, I'm afraid. It's good to see you, Black. And you too, young Potter. We'll not keep you. It seems we'll be here for a little while longer before my daughter receives her first wand."

Sirius nodded goodbye and lead him back to the Floo network.

"We're not waiting for Peter?" Harry asked.

Sirius shook his head. "He had to leave on urgent business. I received word while you were checking out the wands. Called off to Ashford for an alleged case of muggle baiting."

They stepped into the communal fireplace and with a pinch of powder, they were back in Grimmauld place.

Sirius hurried off to the kitchenette and cleared the table with a sweep of his wand. He beckoned Harry over, and pulled out a chair.

"Now, I'd hoped Peter would be here for this, but it sounded like he wasn't going to be free for a while. That's how Aurors are, always running this here and everywhere. Now, you remember what I've told you about the Marauder's Map?"

Harry nodded, then his eyes widened. "But it was confiscated."

"Well, yes, but did you really think that we would just settle with our first creation? Oh no. We made several versions more, after the first. With you going to Hogwarts and beginning your own adventures, I think it's suited that I hand over our greatest creation to you. Can't have a Marauder without his map, eh?"

Sirius whipped out a copy of the Daily Telegraph and thunked it onto the table. The headline, as it had been this morning, read 'Fudge denies accusations of centaur discrimination,' and underneath was a black-and-white moving photograph of the Minister of Magic awkwardly shaking hands with a stern looking centaur.

It didn't look anything like a map. It was, however, intensely magical. Much more so than the regular newspapers, which held themselves only a sliver of magic.

"Ha! I bet I know what you're thinking. Where's the map, Sirius? Why are you showing me an obviously normal copy of today's paper?"

Harry grinned. "Well, I suppose you'd like me to throw it away. You've always said the Telegraph is garbage."

"What? No, no. And stop that smiling."

Sirius tapped the paper with his wand, and looked out at Harry with an air of drama.

"This, newest and youngest of Marauders, is what I'd like to call-" Sirius took a deep breath. "-the Marauders Map mark two."

Harry let his shoulders slump. " Mark two?" With all the buildup, he'd been expecting an awesome name. Like the Marvelous Marauder's Mistake… Mender. Or something.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

As if it had caught fire, the ink melted off the pages which started to fuse, shrinking until it was the size of a palm card, and no thicker than a piece of card board. Sirius picked it up, *unfolded it* and stretched it out and laid the map on the table.

It was a mess. Marvelous Marauder's Mess? Harry couldn't make out any meaning in the jumble of lines and structures. He could tell the basics, that it was a blueprint. He could guess that it was of Hogwarts. But it was so much more complex than he'd imagined. It didn't help that with all other wizarding creations, the pieces on the map moved.

Sirius tapped. "Simplify."

Lines erased themselves, labels disappeared. They were left with something more comprehensible. Harry could make out halls and corridors, and doors leading into smaller rooms.

"People."

And suddenly dots appeared with names floating beside them, moving about or staying still. Harry saw one, Argus Filtch moving at a leisurely pace down a short hallway before passing through a doorway.

"Creatures."

A dot appeared beside Argus, labelled Mrs Norris. They left the room and promptly disappeared.

Sirius, who had been following Harry's gaze, chuckled. "A problem with displaying a map of Hogwarts on a flat surface. The original map was heavily stylised. We had to break up each section of the castle into separate layers. For this map, we could simply do this. Expand."

As ordered, the map… expanded. Lines rose from the surface, peeling away and floated up into a three dimensional latticework. Harry found Filtch again, and realised that the small room was instead the entrance to a set of stairs. A stair way that moved. Harry backed away, and tried to take in the map in its entirety.

It was, as he found, an impossible feat. He was able to make out broad separations, when a tower merged with the castle whole, the central great hall, the sprawling dungeons beneath ground, but there were just too many rooms to wrap his head around.

"Woah," he breathed.

"Isn't it just?"

"Hogwarts is huge!" He'd gotten a sense of scale from Sirius' stories, but not to this degree. It was stupendously huge, stuffed full with corridors Harry could imagine getting lost and not being able to find his way out for weeks. It wasn't like an ordinary muggle building, with structures, with layers. He imagined it wasn't even like most wizarding buildings.

"And all yours to explore." Sirius tapped the map again. "Mischief managed. With this, you'll not have to worry about losing your way."

The map collapsed back down, ink disappearing into the paper, before reforming itself as an exceedingly plain cookbook. Harry picked it up, fingers tingling at the magic, and peaked inside.

"One hundred and one ways to roast a duck," he read.

Sirius snorted. "I wouldn't follow those instructions. Purely for show, but you'll not have other people realising what you've got if you don't want to show them. Marauder's secret."

Harry tucked the book into his robe pockets. "Thanks Sirius."

"No thanks needed. Only promise to bring the Marauder name back to the halls of Hogwarts once more."


AN: So yeah, I know that Peter's portrayed as a coward and a traitor in the books. I'm guessing he defected to Voldemort because he was tired of being treated like he wasn't a proper member of the Marauders. And maybe a death eater grabbed him and he was blackmailed or threatened. Anyway, that didn't happen in this story, so he's turned out differently.

Btw, I've skipped over the paperwork and registration and stuff that would be required for Harry to be recognised as alive after all those years. Bit boring, and stuff, so I just moved on. His reappearance will be regarded as a minor curiosity, but nothing worthy of fame. People are known to hide away for years and magic is able to allow them.

How'd you all like the new map? Not too big a stretch from canon, right? Didn't manage to get to the Hogwarts Express this chap. I'm fairly sure what house Harry's getting into, but I'd be interested to hear what you guys think. Reviews are always welcome. If you liked this so much you faved or followed, I'd appreciate a short comment too! It's a little disheartening to wake up to a bunch of people following but no feedback. I'll write regardless, but it's a nice gesture.

Anyway, thanks for reading,

L. Thatcher

Edit: I know it's a bit frustrating not knowing why people thought Harry was dead. Sirius in particular is getting a lot of grief. I do have answers and some of them are coming next chap, but no one living knows the whole story. Harry is going to have to piece parts together himself. Again, I didn't mean for this aspect of the story to take over, it was meant to be a little mystery that gets explained later on.