Chapter Eight


Groaning, Sirius Black turned over carefully. He opened his eyes slowly and gazed upon the faces of Samantha and Harry. After accidently waking Harry last night, Sirius brought him into the room and into their bed. Samantha slept peacefully on her side, her arms around the child. With a kiss each on to their cheeks, he slipped out of the bed and headed into the master shower. Discarding his boxers and muscle shirt, he walked into the shower stall and under the hot spray.

"Bloody hell," he groaned with pleasure. "One of the best showers in my life. . ."

Samantha woke to the sound of the shower. She yawned and tightened her hold on Harry. Looking over at the clock, she closed her eyes. It was eight in the morning on Christmas day.

Christmas Day!

She snapped up immediately into a sitting position, taking Harry with her and waking him.

"Gah," he protested grumpily.

Samantha stood from the bed and took Harry with her snuggling him to her. "Oh, don't be a little Scrooge, Harry, baby. Not today, anyway. There's gonna be presents and candy with Uncle Remus and Uncle Sirius and me."

"Pe'sants?" he asked, sticking a few fingers into his mouth and looking up at her with a wide-eyed expression.

After pulling on her silk robe expertly while holding Harry in her arms, she walked him into the living room. The Christmas tree stood tall and wide, the ornaments bright and festive. Presents of every size and color imaginable to her were stuffed, rather looking unceremoniously, under it. Harry squealed in delight and clapped his hands, wriggling in her arms. She set him down and he padded over to the presents, grabbed the closest, smallest box he could hold and shook it.

"Good morning," Remus said groggily as he walked into the living room. "Good morning, Hen-er, Harry."

Samantha smiled widely and plopped a kiss onto his scratchy cheek . "Good morning, Remus."

"Oi," Sirius walked into the room with a bounce in his step. "Trying to steal my woman, Moony? I hope you know that you stand no chance against me."

Trays of their Christmas breakfast appeared onto the coffee table before them. Sirius reached for his tea as Remus replied to him, smiling wryly.

"Please, Padfoot. You never stood a chance. Once she finds out the perks of being a Werewolf, such as my stamina, she'll most certainly throw your mangy self out with the garbage."

Sirius spit his tea over the covered (thankfully) trays, and Samantha hooted loudly. The animagus set his tea down and wiped his face calmly with a cloth napkin before he gave a war cry, startling them all, and threw himself toward Remus. Harry laughed as the two men fell from the couch onto the floor. Samantha shook her head and moved to sit in front of the tree. She grabbed the closest wrapped box with Harry's name on it.

"Come on, baby," she said to the toddler, who scampered over," Open this one, this is from me."

Samantha helped him rip the wrapping off and open the box. She smiled brightly as he squealed with delight as a stuffed Prongs poked it's head out of the box, followed by a stuffed black dog and a stuffed silver wolf. The black dog was plucked out of the box by a much larger hand.

Sirius let out a barking laugh. "This is fantastic! Where did you get these toys?"

"There's a toy shop in Diagon Alley," Samantha said to them, "they take requests, so I made three specific ones."

"Phinneus Phikle's Toy Shop, I presume?" Remus asked, looking amused as he watched the stuffed wolf trying to get it's way out of the box and falling over onto the floor. "You remember Phikle, don't you Sirius?"

Sitting onto the floor beside Harry, Sirius looked thoughtful. "Wasn't he some bloke in Hufflepuff a few years above us?"

"Sirius," said Remus, thoroughly surprised, "You surprise me. I thought you were scatter-brained!" He slung an arm over Sirius shoulders.

Samantha swatted his arm. "Trying to steal my man, Remus?"

Both Sirius chortled and Remus struggled to keep his face passive. "You stand no chance, woman."

Sirius and Samantha roared with laughter while Remus chortled. The rest of the morning was devoted to the presents and Harry. Sirius was surprised that he received a present. Granted it was a package of clean under wear from Samantha.

"Well, excuse me for thinking that an escaped convict on the run needs a new pair of underwear! I certainly doubt you had spare time while you were on the run to stop at a laundry mat and wash your underwear. . ."

All three males had received an incredible amount of clothing. Harry had fallen back into slumber amidst the strewn empty boxes and wrapping paper.

It was the late afternoon and all three adults sat on the couch, Samantha inbetween the men, sipping wine and sampling the cheese and assorted sweets she had purchased the day before. They drank and ate in comfortable silence.

Surprisingly, it was Sirius who spoke up. "Is it just me, or are we avoiding the important questions?"

"What do you mean?" Remus asked, grabbing another chocolate.

Sirius refilled his glass. "Questions such as, where did you two meet?"

They discussed the meeting of Remus and Samantha, and the job offering. Sirius had been confused at the job offering, but his it quickly when Samantha had whispered in his ear, "I'll explain later."

Sam explained to them how she visited Harry and when she had decided to take him away from the Dursley's.

"That's what I meant," said the werewolf, "when I said that I had found out and not told Dumbledore. I found out about Harry. You really need to work on those appearance charms, Sam."

Samantha blushed, but continued her explanation. She told nothing of coming from another world to Remus and was surprised that Sirius did not bring it up either. She smiled when he in turn whispered in her ear, quite huskily, "later."

It was later in the evening that Remus had elected to take Harry to his room for the night. He wanted some personal time with his best friend's son. In their bedroom, Sirius and Samantha spoke softly with each other.

"This is the other thing I wanted to show you," Samantha said to the man laying next to her. She handed him the letter that Abigail Linney had written to her.

She watched his face, wanting to see his emotions while he read the letter. It was when she noticed something. Sirius looked different. Younger and more carefree.

"Did you get a face lift while you were on the run?" she asked him with a chuckle.

Sirius was confused. "A face lift? Is that some kind of muggle thing?"

"It's what rich muggle house wives get when they start to get all wrinkly and old."

Sirius frowned.

" -- Er, not that you were wrinkly and old or anything. . . I just mucked it didn't I."

He ignored her.

"Are you even paying attention . . ?"

Sirius sat up in the bed, running a hand through his hair and then rubbing the back of his neck. "This letter is so. . . Just WOW! Kind of weird, too, in a way. You know, when I met you I never even thought of the pureblood American Warren's. Merlin's nipple ring and she's a Linney, too."

He turned to look at her. "Do you know that the Linney's and Warren's Galleons added together can be BILLIONS."

Samantha rolled her eyes. "Like I care about the money, er, Galleons that Abigail passed on to me. What I want to know is WHY she gave it all to ME."

Sirius sat back against the pillows and shrugged. "Well . . . She did think of you as a daughter and I doubt she could have exchanged all that Galleons here and would have been able to take it all to your world. Physically impossible. She probably exchanged a few million and shrunk it. Left the rest in this world."

"But ME."

Sirius rolled his eyes, imitating her. "She thought of you as a her daughter, Samantha. She loved you. And who else was she going to leave it to. Everyone else she knew in this world was probably untrustworthy to her. Not to mention you decided to come into this world, which I will say is terrible coincidentle."

"But --"

The animagus put a hand over the woman's mouth. "Just accept that the Galleons are yours. You can't exactly go back into the veil and argue your way out of it."

He pulled her closer to him, with a flick of his wand extinguishing the lights. Samantha snuggled into him, sighing.

"What are we going to do about your. . . situation? And Pettigrew."

"For now," his voice was muffled in her hair, "lets just leave him be. It's not as if he knows what the heck is happening. . . Well, he probably does know about my break-out, but at least we know where he is. If he didn't think to run in Harry's third year, he's not going to run now. The Horcrux shit can wait, too. Let's just live . . . er, normal."

"And Remus?"

"He can wait for now, too. Let's just live normal. Like the way we were living in you world."


A/N: Second chapter! Review, review, review! -- JMMendiola