Hello! Bit of an Interlude, I'm afraid. This chapter sort of developed a mind on its own. I hadn't planned on publishing it but I enjoyed writing it too much to keep it to myself and it also explains a little about Real Harry. Keep in mind that my Sirius is a bit off his rockers, which is why his thoughts tend to wander when he's not concentrating on something, such as a conversation. Enjoy!

The days at Grimmauld Place passed slowly and each time the morning sun lit the dusty, grey rooms felt like the breath taken by a man dying a painful death. Sirius couldn't remember being poetic before his time in Azkaban although he did suppose being a living tragedy would have that effect on people. Twelve years spent in the most horrible place on earth for a murder he never committed certainly qualified him for the title of the living tragedy by itself, even without all the other crap that went on around him added to it.

It was a reprieve, almost, to have the Order of the Phoenix reinstituted toward the end of June, after his godson, Harry, saw Voldemort resurrected at the hands of Wormtail, that sniveling little rat he once called friend. The Weasleys moved in pretty much right away, the whole lot of them with the exception of the three eldest boys. There were still plenty of them, of course, breeding rabbits they were, but he was glad for them. They kept the house moving and forced him to get out of bed every morning. The twins, Fred and George, weren't too bad, all things considered. They were fun, not unlike himself when he was their age, before he'd lost everything. They were carefree and pranksters and they were exactly what he thought Harry would grow up to be. A tiny James, a boy that was his father's son.

Harry was his father's son. Sort of. He looked almost exactly like James, right down to that little mark on his right arm that had annoyed James because when someone looked at it with their eyes squinted almost closed and with their head tilted to the left at the perfect angle, it looked like the snake that adorned the Slytherin crest. Harry had that too but he didn't seem too bothered, probably because he couldn't get the angle right.

Everything else about him was purely Lily, though. Well, almost. Enough of him was Lily. He was basically Lily's soul trapped in James' body with a tiny sprinkle of Harry in there that made him unique even to his parents.

He could play Quidditch. Sirius didn't know a whole lot of his godson beside the things Moony had told him but Sirius knew that Harry was a natural on a broom, like James. Granted, he played Seeker and not Chaser but the Seeker was essentially the most important player in a game so that was alright. Better than Keeper because those were pretty useless when paired with competent Chasers. Harry was a Seeker, not a Keeper, and that was quite swell, as James would sometimes say in a posh accent, imitating an old lady drinking tea with her pinky raised.

So, all in all, Harry was doing a pretty good job at being his parent's son. Except, he wasn't. He couldn't be his parent's son considering that he wasn't their son. That one had died a long time ago, before this Harry was even born. Or, well, at least the day before this Harry was born. This Harry, or Eoin or whatever his name was these days, wasn't their real son, even though he did a really good job acting the part, and Sirius had known right from the beginning.

As such, it didn't surprise him at all when Ron Weasley, the youngest boy of Molly's extensive brood, came back from the Ministry in hysterics, proclaiming for everyone to hear that Harry was actually a Malfoy and that they needed to save him.

He didn't need saving, of course. He was Cousin Cissy's son and Cousin Cissy always cared heaps about family but the Weasleys wouldn't know that. Although he did suppose Harry didn't really get along with the Malfoy boy. Harry was, after all, a Gryffindor and Gryffindors, as a ground rule, couldn't stand Slytherins. There were exceptions, certainly, but not many. Sirius himself had only ever found himself liking three Slytherins in all his years. His little brother, Regulus, was one of them but he had stopped liking the kid when he turned evil on him. He died the year before real Harry's birth, doing who knows what.

Cousin Andy was his favorite Slytherin. She was nice and funny and proper family. At first, he had assumed she would be like Cousin Bella, wicked witch she was, but Andy was better, way better. Shortly after she left Hogwarts, she married a Muggleborn wizard called Ted Tonks, lovely fellow, and now they had a Hufflepuff daughter that was quite extraordinary indeed.

Cousin Cissy was the third Slytherin he'd ever liked, although that was probably not really liking so much as tolerating. Cissy was nice enough until she hit puberty, which is when girls, as a rule, became quite unbearable if they were family. When she married the younger Malfoy boy, Lucius, Sirius knew she was a goner. All in all, however, she wasn't nearly as bad as her oldest sister, Bella, but not nearly as good as Andy either. She was the balance that had kept the three Black sisters together for so long, before Andy and Bella finally mutually decided that they couldn't call each other sister anymore.

The best thing Cissy had ever done, by far, was giving birth to Harry- well, this Harry. Eoin. Jamie, as they'd called him back in the days after Harry died. Whatever, Cissy had given birth to him and Sirius thought, in his humble, unbiased way, that it was pretty much the best thing she had ever done. Her son, Lily and James' second chance, had brought so much hope back into their lives after Harry died. He had given them a reason to keep fighting and had kept Sirius alive for twelve years in that horrid prison. Had that boy not been, he doubted he would've ever found the courage, the spirit, to escape and might've simply succumbed to the Dementor's torture.

"Padfoot," Moony sat down beside him, the Evening Prophet clutched in his hands. "You alright?"

Moony had known too, of course. They hadn't told him, had actually thought him a traitor for a while, but he had still known, Sirius was sure of that. Werewolf senses and all, he would've smelt that Harry and Jamie weren't the same person.

He glanced up at Moony to find him staring back at him in concern and Sirius, rather startled, realized that he was still waiting for an answer.

"Yes," he said. "I'm fine."

"I was just-" Moony broke off to flatten the paper in front of him. The headline, in bold, catching letters, read Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived and Nathan Longbottom- Lost Malfoy Twins. "Did you know?"

He nodded. The picture that was underneath the headline showed Lucius and Cissy, standing tall and proud. Between them and a bit more into the shadows were two young boys. One of them was his godson but Sirius couldn't tell which one. Both had wavy blond hair that framed their faces and covered their foreheads and slim faces. Their eyes were different, one with specks of green in them and the other more blue. They were at a similar height and both almost ridiculously thin, as Malfoys tended to be, and pale skin that made them look almost sick. Neither resembled Harry and yet, one of them was the boy he loved as his own and on a logical level, Sirius knew that that was how the boy was supposed to look like.
He didn't know Nathan Longbottom, though he could imagine he was a distant relative of his, given that the Longbottoms were connected to the Black family tree through some third cousin or something.

Moony nodded. "Yes, I thought you did. When did he…When did Harry go?"

"The day before his birthday," Sirius traced the pattern of the table. "We'd hoped he'd at least make it one more day but that morning…he was just gone."

Lily had sobbed her heart out that day and even James' tears seemed to never end. Sirius himself had found himself hugging his knees in a corner more than once, his godson's green eyes haunting him, never blinking as they stared at him from a cold, pale face.

They hadn't snapped out of it until two days later, Dumbledore had turned up at their house in Godric's Hollow to hand them a baby that looked just like Harry but wasn't him.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"We thought you were the traitor."

They had been wrong, so wrong, and had taken away Moony's chance to say goodbye to Harry. Granted, they hadn't told Wormtail either, because he just couldn't keep a secret, but they should've told Moony. But they hadn't, Sirius thought as he watched the two brothers' weary eyes wander through the crowd, and he was the only one left to regret that decision.

"And Wormtail?"

He laughed a barking laughter. "Don't be silly, Moony."

"I'm not being silly," he said, frowning. "Are you alright with this? You hate everything Malfoy."

"Not Harry."

Never Harry.

"And Eoin?"

He shrugged. "Eoin, Harry, it doesn't matter. His name doesn't change anything."

"What if it does change him? What if he gets angry at you for not telling him?"

"He'll calm down. James always-"

"But Harry isn't James," Moony said. "He isn't even James' son. How can you know how he'll react? All I'm saying," he raised his hands in surrender at Sirius' glare. "is that you shouldn't take it for granted that Harry will be fine with what happened all those years ago. He might be very upset and we can't have you making it worse by insisting you know him because you knew James."

Moony stood up and walked away. Sirius repressed the urge to follow him, instead gazing off to listlessly stare at Molly's back as she pretended not to have listened in on their conversation. Nosy woman she was, she could never just close her ears when she heard certain words be used. Harry was certainly one of those words, though Sirius suspected she would've listened in anyways. She didn't like him much and the feeling was very mutual. She was overbearing. He was thirty-three years old and, by Merlin, he really didn't need a mother. His hung out there in the hallway under the thickest pair of curtains available in the world and she still annoyed the hell out of him. Typical. He thought he was rid of her when she died four years into his extended stay at Azkaban but no. The very first thing he heard upon entering his childhood home- not out of his own free will, mind- was the screeching, unforgettable sound of his mother's voice as she screamed her painted, fat head off about blood traitors and filth and probably something to do with disgraces.

His old man, now, he was too good a person for his hag of a mother. Not that any man should have to stoop so low as to marry her but really, his father could've done better- not to mention he could've, and should've, married someone who wasn't his own cousin. No wonder poor Reg turned out so horrid in the end. All that potential gone to waste. Course, Sirius himself was bit of a loony too, if he were honest with himself. Twelve years in Azkaban did that to a man, same as turning him into a poet. Poets and loonies were sort of the same thing anyhow. Anyone who thought speaking in rhymes and comparing things to other things to make them sound nice must be a loony because when Sirius tried to do that to swoon the beautiful Marlene McKinnon, all he got was a nice right hook to the chin. No sane man objected himself to such treatment on a daily basis, not even for all the money in the world. It was a nice right hook, though. Nicely placed, hurt like a bitch and left a good sized bruise. They hadn't hooked up, in the end. Her choice, not his. They did become friends, eventually, once Lily and James started seeing each other in Seventh Year. Mi Casa es su Casa or something like that, although Sirius thought the casa bit had to be replaced with whatever word meant 'friend' in Spanish. And also…

He slithered down an empty corridor. There were no windows or doors, safe for a wooden one at the end of the hall. He didn't know that hallway, nor that door, but Harry knew, from the depth of his gut, that he needed to get inside that room. A strange hissing sound, a whisper of sorts, reached his ears. It came from behind that door, there was no doubt. He looked around, yet there was no one else. No one in the hall, no one to hear the whisper but himself. Harry slithered closer, trying to peek through the gap underneath the door but it wasn't big enough for him to see anything other than blackness. The whisper grew louder, yet even more indistinguishable. That door, that room. They meant something. The whisper, it was trying to tell him something. Something important, something that would change everything. Harry knew it. He knew it. The door stayed firmly closed and Harry couldn't open it. He hissed at it, willing it to open, but it stayed shut and refused him entry. Still hissing, he retreated and-

Harry shot up in his bed, sweat covered and breathing heavily. The door. It meant something. He needed to find it.