Sirius stood at the party for Hermione and Ron, and it didn't escape his notice that Harry seemed more than a little sullen. Before he had a chance to go over and reassure Harry, though, Matty grabbed his arm and hissed in his ear, "So I hear you've promised our daughters broomsticks."
He winced.
"I was going to talk with you about that-"
"I bet you were."
"I didn't promise them," he sighed. "I said I'd have to talk to you, but that there was a pretty good chance, darling. You know I wouldn't get them something like that without asking you."
She smirked up at him, kissing his cheek.
"Well, I suppose you'll want to buy them the biggest and best thing on the market, then? Firebolts, one each?"
He didn't answer. He just grinned at her.
The one thing he was quickly learning would never get him in trouble with Matty was spoiling the girls. If he did something because he loved them, it couldn't be the wrong thing because for some reason she threw all her good sense out of the window when he was being paternal.
"All right, then," she sighed, cuddling close to his chest. "Firebolts it is."
One of the girls asked, in all the excitement of learning that Tonks was too troublesome to be a prefect, whether Sirius or Matty had been a prefect in school.
"Oh, no," Sirius laughed. "We were too troublesome, spent too much time in detention with James. Mooney was the good boy; he got the badge."
"Didn't do a very good job with it, though," Remus said with a frown. "I never managed to keep you lot out of trouble."
"That's not entirely true," Sirius argued. "You got Matty out of trouble plenty of times."
Sirius was grimly satisfied to see a slight blush on both Matty and Remus's cheeks.
Attention shifted several times and Sirius found himself in a few different conversations before he noticed Mad-Eye showing something to Harry, something that looked like it was making Harry feel rather sick to his stomach.
"What have you got over here?" he asked, pressing in on Mad-Eye to take a look at the thing in question, which turned out to be a picture of the original Order of the Phoenix. Sirius smiled down at all the smiling, familiar faces for a moment, but then he saw Caradoc. "You've not shown this to Matty yet, have you?"
"Shown me what?" her laughing voice said from behind him, and Sirius didn't even have time to attempt to hide it from her before she came around to his side and grabbed the photograph out of his hand, frowning down at it. "Oh, Sirius, look how young we all were! Remus, you have to see this!"
Remus came over and looked over Matty's shoulder at the faces of themselves as youths.
"This is everybody, isn't it?" he asked, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Yes, there's Dorcas, she was dead not long after this if I recall right."
The casual manner in which Remus said those words made Sirius's stomach churn uncomfortably.
But it hadn't bothered him so much to think of it that way in his youth, Sirius recalled. He'd been desensitized fairly quickly into the fighting. The things he'd seen, the horrors he'd witnessed... He'd never told Matty about most of it, wanting to protect her from the worst of the war. Sure she'd fought, but not as he and James had. Even Remus hardly saw some of the things James and Sirius had, fighting in the front lines all the time, not that they'd have had it any other way.
Harry had disappeared somewhere, maybe up to his room, when Sirius had sat down with Matty, showing off the picture to the girls, who were curious about who all the people were with their parents and Uncle Remus. They'd barely started pointing out people when they heard the commotion from upstairs.
Remus, Matty, and Sirius exchanged nervous looks and they hurried upstairs, Sirius and Remus with wands in hand, Matty clutching at her pocket for a moment before she remembered that she'd let Merryn take her wand to Sirius. When they reached the sounds, however, they found something disturbing.
Harry was standing in the doorway looking distressed and Molly was standing with her wand out, sobbing over Harry's dead, bloody body.
Sirius blinked, looked from Harry to Harry, and decided that Harry must be alive, that Molly must have tried to take on the boggart herself and was having a bit of a rough go of it. People were saying things around him, but Sirius wasn't hearing them, simply looking down at the boggart of Harry's dead body lying there on the floor. It looked so real, so much like James's body, except with blood all over him, that Sirius could almost expect to see Lily sprawled out in front of a crib.
"Sirius," Matty whispered, and he realized they were the only two left standing there, "are you okay?"
No, he thought to himself. No, he wasn't okay. Because about a second after he had his almost-flashback from that terrible night, he was picturing his own little girls sprawled out on the floor, bloodied and pale with death, or even Matty.
And all he wanted to do was vomit.
"I'm fine," he lied. "Just a bit shocked, I guess. He looked like James like that... He..."
Sirius choked down the rest of his sentence.
Matty just nodded, as if she could know what he'd seen in place of Harry on that floor, but she couldn't know, she couldn't possibly understand how terrified he felt, staring at that blank expanse of floor, making sure that Matty and Merryn and Maëlle weren't there, that they were safe and good and not dead.
They weren't dead, he reminded himself, hugging Matty tightly as they made their way back downstairs.
Sirius tucked the girls in that night and kissed them, hugging them tighter than ever before.
They weren't going to die. He wasn't going to let them die.
Sirius woke up the following morning and swallowed hard, refusing to let tears fall.
The children were going back to Hogwarts. It was September first, and Sirius wouldn't see his sweet girls again until December, which seemed so far away as Sirius lay in bed with his arms around Matty, trying not to cry.
She stirred, her eyes blinking open, and she smiled sadly at him after a moment.
Matty had remembered, too, what day it was.
"Did Remus ever say if I was allowed to take the girls to the station?" she whispered.
Sirius shook his head. Remus and Mad-Eye had expressly said that she wasn't allowed, but Sirius didn't want to be the one to tell her that. It was for her own safety, but Sirius didn't want to remind her of that, because he had a plan of his own.
"C'mon, love," he finally groaned. "We've got to be up and dressed or we'll miss all the action lying in bed."
"What action?" she yawned.
"You've never been around when a bunch of boys were scrambling to get ready to go to Hogwarts, have you?" he mused, realizing that she'd never spent the latter part of the summer at Potter Manor with them.
She shook her head, and instead of telling her what to expect, he just laughed, climbing out of bed, pulling her to her feet, and then pulling off his clothes, searching for something to wear.
Before he had a chance to find a shirt to go with the trousers he'd selected, Matty came up behind him and ran her nails down his back.
"I think I've got the best view in London," she teased, kissing his neck.
"What, just London?" he quipped back cheekily. "You used to say that I was the most attractive male in the entire world."
"You've aged a bit, love," she pointed out fairly, although with a slight blow to his ego. At least it was slight. Matty wasn't her usual brand of cruel that morning, so he knew she was upset that they weren't able to take the girls to school like a normal family. He decided not to throw out a witty and biting comeback. He wanted her not to be upset with him just then, especially when he enacted his own plan, because she would be upset with him later.
"I suppose you're right," he said fairly. "Now, come on, let's get you all dressed up and ready, okay, darling? The girls are going to be bouncing off the walls by now, if they're anything like me at all."
"They're everything like you," she said with only a slight hint of bitterness in her voice. "Anyway, you're right, let's get dressed."
They didn't speak again until after Sirius took her hand in his, walked her out of their room and down the hall, down the stairs, to where the chaos was going on.
Molly was yelling at her twins, his own twins were chasing each other around after what looked like a pair of socks, and everyone else was just trying not to get in anybody's way. Sirius rushed over to round up his daughters.
"Are you all packed, then?" he asked, when he'd caught one under each arm.
"I would be," Maëlle pouted, "if Merryn would give me my socks."
"They're not yours," Merryn said, obviously lying.
"Give her the socks, love," Sirius sighed. "You can straighten out all this when you get to school. Please try not to make this too crazy. It's bad enough with so many of you all."
The agreed, begrudgingly, and Merryn handed the socks back to her sister, which probably belonged with her, anyway. Sirius then shifted into his Animagus form, following his daughters up to their room as they finished putting away the last of their things, and then following them eagerly down the stairs as they dragged their trunks behind them. Harry was at the front door with his own trunk, and Sirius nuzzled Harry's hand with his snout, trying to ignore the overpoweringly wonderful scent of Matty, which was coming down the stairs.
"Please tell me he's not about to do what I think he's doing," Matty groaned, looking down at him from the stairwell. He whimpered slightly under her stern gaze, nuzzling Merryn for pity, who always petted him if he did so. Naturally, probably more out of habit, than anything else, she began to pet Sirius's head, scratching behind his ears until his tail was wagging fiercely.
She was too good at that.
"Sirius, I don't think this is a good idea," Remus said sternly.
He whimpered again.
Remus always sided with Matty unless he thought that doing so would put her in danger, and that fact was not escaping Sirius as he continued to appeal to his daughters for a right to see them off.
"Please, Uncle Remus?" the girls began to plead, and they maintained their begging as Molly and Remus both expressed their dislike of the whole affair. Harry stayed out of it, standing to the side looking amused as the girls plead their father's case.
They got all of nowhere until Maëlle dropped to the floor, clutching Sirius's fur and burying her face in it, weeping by the sounds of things, although he felt not a single tear drop onto his coat.
Apparently, she was just as devious as her mother when it suited her.
"Oh, Remus, just let him go," Matty finally sighed. "The girls will never forgive us if we try to keep him here. No one will know it's him if he's smart about it."
Sirius barked happily, licking Maëlle's face enthusiastically as Remus reluctantly gave in to the verdict their mother had set.
"Fine," he said gruffly, "but you'd better behave yourself, Sirius, or I'm going to sentence you to hard labor for at least a month. You're not to put the girls in danger, do you understand me?"
Sirius had barked his agreement, and he followed happily at Merryn and Maëlle's heels the whole way, basking in the sun, in the feel of real wind through his fur. It had been too long since he'd breathed real air, even if it was London air. Anything was better than that stuffy old house that smelled terribly of oppression and memories better forgot.
When they reached King's Cross he mused that it had been here that he'd first seen his beautiful girls, and they'd still been quite little girls then, although they'd grown so fast in the two short years since.
"Merryn!" called the voice of Tien Vo. "Elle!"
He could see the knowing look in her eye as she spotted him, coming over and petting his head.
"Hi, puppy!" she cooed. "Is he coming on the platform with us?"
"Can he, please?" the twins cooed in unison, and Remus just sighed and shook his head in resignation.
Sirius went through the barrier between platforms nine and ten for the first time since his own seventh year of Hogwarts, that time with his hand in Matty's, now as a dog at the heels of their daughters. It felt more than a little bit surreal.
"Oh, look, there's Creevey," Tien said, pointing at a boy was waving eagerly at the trio of girls. The girls giggled and waved back. "He wrote me all summer. Did he write you guys, too?"
Sirius's ears pricked up. Their daughters were discussing a boy who looked to be much closer to their age than the Weasley twins. This was important information, in case he had to break the boy's kneecaps. The boy didn't look like he'd put up much of a fight, but still.
"Yeah, he did," Merryn said with a smile. "Twice a week, most of the time."
Tien's eyes bulged incredulously.
"No!" she said excitedly. "Who was he writing, you or Elle?"
"Merryn," Maëlle said teasingly, and Sirius decided that he didn't like this Creevey character one bit.
For he had heard that same teasing tone when he was not much older than his girls, from Mary MacDonald.
"Where have you been?" Evans asked incredulously. "I looked all up and down the train for you."
Sirius stayed out of sight under the invisibility cloak, trying hard not to snigger at the prefect's exasperation. What did James see in her?
"She was with Sirius," Mary said teasingly, and it was all Sirius could do not to make a sound. He closed his eyes as he saw Matty begin to blush, thinking about the time they'd spent in a stall in the girl's toilet, her back pressed to the locked door of the stall, his hands in her shirt, her mouth on his mouth, his hips grinding against hers. The feel and taste of her had driven him wild, but she hadn't wanted to shag in the stall, not on the train, not when anyone could walk in.
"Everyone will know it's us," she'd whined, and although he was sure she was wrong, he eventually gave in and pulled the cloak on, following her back to the compartment.
The look on Evan's face was sour.
"I don't know why you bother with that boy, Matty," she sniffed. "You're worth five of him."
"Lily," Mary said warningly.
Sirius and Mary had never been friends, but they'd always been friendly, and Mary didn't like the lack of civility between Lily and the Marauders.
"I love him," Matty said softly, as though just realizing it herself. "I love Sirius Black."
It had been the first Sirius had heard of it, so perhaps that really had been when she'd first realized it, but Sirius rewarded her for the words twice over that night when they met in the prefect's bath.
It wasn't a bad memory, certainly, but the memory did fuel his dislike of this Creevey, whatever anyone said about the boy.
While Sirius was coming to his conclusions, all three girls knelt to the floor and hugged him tightly, kissing his fur. The twins told him how much they would miss their sweet puppy, and Tien told him to be good in the cute way that girls ordered boys around when they were playing at being important.
Sirius licked his daughters' faces before they rushed off, and then he bounded toward Harry, got up on his hind legs and put his front paws on Harry's shoulders in a way of parting, licking his face happily, before Remus and Mad-Eye hissed at him to behave more like a dog. He returned to four legs.
They were gone too quickly. How had Matty managed to watch the twins leave her the year before, especially it being their first year away from her? Sirius wanted to run after them, to bring them home again with him.
But he was an obedient dog, generally, and he watched anxiously as they sat on the train, waving out at him and Remus, watching and barking after the train after it was out of sight. Then he followed Remus home again, his good mood over getting out of the house gone.
His daughters were gone.
Sure, they would be back at Christmas, but there were months until Christmas, and they were growing so fast. They would practically be women by Christmas.
He followed Remus up the stairs of Number 12, through the door, and transformed as he followed him down to the kitchen where Matty was already starting on drinking them out of firewhiskey.
"How was it?" Matty said bitterly as he sat down beside her.
"It was okay," he said honestly. "There's... there's a boy, Matty."
"There are lots of boys," she said with shrug, not grasping his point. "Harry's a boy. The Weasley's have a boatload of boys."
"No, there's a boy," Sirius snapped. "He... This boy was writing our Merryn all summer and... and the way Elle talked about it-"
"What was the name?" she sighed.
"Creevey."
"Don't worry about it, then," she said casually.
"How can you possibly say that?" he asked, horrified.
"Because," she teased. "It's not Potter or Black, so I reckon her virtue's safe. If you're so worried, though, why don't you write to Harry about him?"
Sirius was a bit upset that she wasn't taking things as seriously as he, but he told her that he'd do just that, and went off to write to Harry immediately.