A/N: Hi guysssss! Here we are - chapter 10! How exciting! Thanks to those who reviewed last time, hope you all enjoy this one!

One by One.

by Flaignhan.

"I was young, she was fierce," he says, staring at the ceiling.

Harry is lying on the sofa opposite him in the drawing room, also staring upwards. There is a faint smile curving his lips, tinged with sadness.

"I'd be lying if I said it was love at first sight," Sirius says, fingering his whiskey glass absentmindedly. "It's what I told her though, but of course," he pauses to smirk, "she saw straight through me."

"Did you look after her?" Harry's voice is quiet. It's been quiet ever since the night of the battle. The events have somehow reduced him to a shadow of his former self. It won't last forever. He'll recover, and he'll do a better job of it than most people.

If Harry Potter is used to one thing, it is recovering.

"I tried. We moved in together after we left school. She got a job, I was working full time for Dumbledore..."

"Doing what?"

"The Order."

"Did you get married?"

Sirius pauses, and Harry twists on the sofa to look at him, his bright eyes curious.

"We thought we had forever."

They are quiet for a few minutes, and then Harry voices a question which Sirius can tell has been on his mind for a long long time.

"D'you think she ever considered saving my mum and dad? I mean...she must have been close to them if she was their bridesmaid..."

Sirius sighs deeply. "I think she thought about it everyday. But Dumbledore was always very firm about changing things. There are consequences to messing with time."

"They're not all bad though," Harry argues, his eyes still on the ceiling. "We saved you in third year, and Buckbeak, and Hermione saved you, you reckon. And, you saved Remus during the battle. He told me. What if you hadn't been there?"

Sirius doesn't like to think about such things. Thinking about them makes her death seem like a reasonable exchange of life.

He was at the battle, and he killed nine people. Perhaps the blonde kid would have ended up dead, were it not for the curse that Rodolphus had dodged. And if he hadn't saved Remus, who would have been there to keep Tonks out of harm's way while Sirius duelled Bella?

He wonders if Hermione knew the full extent of what she was doing. Knew that by taking that hit, she would set off a chain of events that would save the people she cared most about, one by one.

They're making a go at being a proper family.

Slowly, as the wizarding world gets back on its feet, so do Sirius and Harry.

It's not uncommon for Sirius to wander downstairs, on one of those nights where he can't get a wink of sleep because his head is filled with memories of her, to find Harry sitting at the kitchen table, his face chalky white, his eyes swirling with something that makes Sirius' stomach turn over. Harry brushes it off and tells Sirius that it's just a bad dream, but Sirius knows better. After what Harry's been through, bad dreams are a walk in the park - it's the memories that affect you the most.

It's probably not a good idea to get his godson into the habit of drinking Firewhiskey when he's finding it tough to cope with the world, but it seems rude for him to have a glass himself and not offer one to Harry, and so they sit in silence and drink as the sun begins to creep over the horizon.

Ginny is an angel of course. She spends half her time at Grimmauld Place these days, and Harry spends a sizeable portion of his own at the Burrow. Something about her presence helps Harry to heal. She knows when he wants to talk and when he doesn't, knows when to push him and when to not, and knows better than anyone when he wants to be left alone.

She's taken to checking up on Sirius as well, which he finds highly amusing. There is something very Molly-ish in her hawkish stare when he avoids answering her questions, and the way she raises her eyebrow when he assures her that he's been eating just fine makes him feel sorry for her future children. She's as fiery as her blazing red hair, and she's just what Harry needs.

In a way, it's almost like she and Harry are married already. She feels very much like he imagines a daughter in law would. He knows that even if they were married it wouldn't actually make her his daughter in law, but Harry is the closest thing he has to a son, so Ginny will be family as far as he's concerned, when eventually the two of them tie the knot.

He has a small box of things that are special to him. Stored carefully in it are photographs, the cufflinks he wore to Lily and James' wedding (which Hermione had chosen), his graduation certificate, and hers, for that matter, are rolled up neatly at the bottom. There are notes, and he spends a bittersweet hour or so trying to decipher them.

KL?

Kitchens later?

SOTHT. WA? B? C?

Sneaking out to Hogsmeade tonight. Want anything? Butterbeer? Chocolate?

FMT. HR?

Full moon tonight. How's Remus?

"What're you up to?"

Harry's voice jerks him out of his reverie, and he looks up. He's still not used to just how much the eighteen year old in front of him resembles James. Part of him hurts, every time he sees him, but another part of him is healed.

James isn't really gone. And nor is Lily.

"We used to write notes," Sirius says, gesturing to the scraps of parchment littered over the bedspread. "Used the first letter of each word so no one else could work it out. Of course, used to take us a while to work them out sometimes too, but we got there in the end."

Harry sits down on the edge of the bed, and moves his hand towards one of the pieces of parchment.

"Can I -?"

"Yeah."

He picks it up gently and looks at it closely.

"I'd almost forgotten what her writing looks like," he murmurs.

"Me too." He looks through the box for more notes, but then he comes across a square of thin paper with black print, almost faded. On one side is a small portion of advertisement spiel. Then he turns it over.

PADFOOT.

IMY. ILY. HPIS. SYS.

"Oh she was brilliant..." he whispers. Harry looks up from the note, distracted, and Sirius shows him the piece of paper.

"Where's it from?"

"The Prophet. The same issue that Ron and his family were in when they won that money. The same issue that Fudge gave to me because I told him I missed doing the crossword. How she remembered the date I don't know...but she was so so brilliant."

"What does it say?" Harry asks, carefully taking the cutting from Sirius so he can look at it up close. He, like Sirius, seems to be trying to absorb her through the things she's touched, or done, because neither of them can quite cope with the reality that is her death.

"I miss you," Sirius says, trying to keep his voice from breaking. "I love you. HP, that's you, is safe. See you soon."

"And nobody guessed? Nobody realised she was trying to contact you?"

"I doubt the person in charge of the classifieds at the Prophet knew I was nicknamed Padfoot. And even if they'd been at Hogwarts the same time as me and overheard one of the others calling me it, they'd had more than twelve years to forget it."

"That's brilliant," Harry says, grinning. "She's a genius."

"She was," Sirius says. "She really was."

"Silly wuss!"

Remus snorts, stroking his son's hair, which today is half red and half yellow.

"You can call me Padfoot," Sirius tells the toddler.

Teddy folds his arms and shakes his head defiantly, his hair flopping all over the place. "Silly wuss."

Remus breaks into a fit of suppressed laughter, and Teddy looks between him and Sirius with a satisfied grin on his face. He's as pleased as punch, though Sirius is quite sure that Teddy hasn't the faintest clue as to why his father is laughing so much.

"Why did we never think of that?" Remus asks at last, his lips still twisting as he tries to quell his giggles. "Silly wuss is a much better name than Padfoot."

Sirius ignores him and sits back on the sofa, twiddling a lock of his hair around his finger. While he is happy for Remus, while he wishes him the best for everything in the whole wide world, his heart is searing with jealousy, and he finds it difficult to visit him these days.

He has a wife. Not only that, but he has a son.

He has a proper family.

The difference in him is astonishing. Kingsley has given him a job at the Ministry, and his life has turned around completely. Nobody deserves it more than him, Sirius knows that, he feels that. But it's difficult, when you've lost everything, when your godson is growing up and talking about moving in with his girlfriend, to not wish that you could have an ounce of what Remus has.

He often finds himself wondering what would have happened if he and Hermione had done a James and Lily, got married within a year of leaving school, had a child a year or two after that...

Maybe he would never have gone looking for Peter if he had a wife and child at home. Maybe the child would have been enough for him to start caring about what he still had left, rather than what he had lost.

He's grown up a lot since he lost Hermione, and it is clear to him, that what potentially could have been the best years of his life were spent rotting in a six foot square prison cell, with dementors sucking out every last happy memory of her.