Ah, so that's how it'd start.

Others known to the heir of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black would've had their own different perceptions of the coming clash. A certain wizard having as many titles as his beard was long would surely be most comfortable at viewing his participation in something like this as the beginning of a subtle battle of wits. Another faculty member at Hogwarts (of which the man sitting in the airport lounge had far fonder memories, given how Professor Flitwick always treated him decently, while sharing fascinating stories of being a professional duelist on the wizarding circuit) would've compared the current situation to the opening spells of a match of one wand against the other.

However, Sirius Black was a Marauder. This Azkaban escapee was going to pull off a supreme prank tonight. Which meant Padfoot now needed to maintain the capability of improvising on the spot, be ready for anything coming his way, and to flawlessly lie through his teeth with an absolutely straight face. Still, he'd already been doing that for years anyway, even well before Hogwarts, all unknowingly preparing for this very moment. A sense of calm confidence settled upon him, and Sirius then drawled in his snobbiest tone, "Quite right, madam. I was James' best man."

Before his listener could react to this, Sirius leaned forward a fraction, while also barely tilting his head to regard the woman across the table. Somehow, this presented to Petunia an aristocratic look of supreme disapproval culminating in the younger man looking down his nose at her, as he superciliously went on, "I don't seem to remember you and your rather…noticeable husband there, though."

A dull flush appeared upon Petunia's features, with this woman abruptly looking down at her teacup still gripped in her hands. Continuing to avoid Sirius' inquiring gaze, Harry's aunt mumbled, "Er, we weren't able to come. There was a, a problem with getting a sitter for Dudley!" These last words came out in an actual rush, with Petunia then lifting her head to defiantly stare back at Sirius.

Keeping his own face blank, Sirius shortly responded with a single word, "Quite."

That might've been taken to mean anything in his flat voice. Inwardly, the wizard smothered a flicker of rage at a long-ago memory of coming upon Lily before the wedding, who was crying at learning her sister had heatedly rejected an invitation to the ceremony, despite their parents' urging for the older sibling to attend. Nevertheless, this was no time to become furious over past slights to one of his dearest friends. After all, angry people made mistakes…which hopefully Petunia Dursley would now prove.

Putting a hand inside his suit front to pluck from an inner pocket several sheets of folded paper there, a solemn Sirius offered this document across the table to a startled Petunia. Confusedly accepting the papers, the woman then heard from her company, with this delivered most deliberately, "I believe you should read this, madam. Given the situation we've found ourselves in tonight, I'm beginning to suspect someone else might be answerable for the greater part of the blame. Please, look at it."

Unthinkingly obeying, Petunia unfolded the papers, and she began to study these with evident puzzlement. As she did so, Sirius was sending a mental snarl of vicious satisfaction towards an unaware wizard peacefully going around his affairs thousands of miles away at Hogwarts. All without Dumbledore ever knowing his shadowy foe was now about to gloatingly capitalize upon the Headmaster's serious error. But then, that senile bastard might've simply never realized the Potters had given Sirius Black a copy of their will during the magical ceremony which had made Harry into their close friend's godson.

It was entirely possible Dumbledore had taken this into account during his schemes, though. That old wizard should never be underestimated. Yet, even if he'd foreseen there being another will out there in which James and Lily confirmed Sirius was to be their child's primary guardian, the Headmaster surely remained confident about the Confundus spell he'd laid upon the Potter's original will concealed in the Ministry of Magic during the uproar surrounding this couple's deaths. One clever effect of the spell to make people overlook this legal document did in fact exist also made all other copies of that record share this same forgetful result, wherever they might be. Including the will placed in Sirius' vault at Gringotts.

Except…there was the minor point in that if someone took this magically altered will far away from where the spell had first affected it, the Confundus charm's power would end, and the will would revert back to its capacity of being read once more by anyone. True, the original will, as previously hidden away in the records department of the Ministry by Cassiopeia Black weeks earlier, would still be affected by the Confundus, but that was a problem for later. In the meantime, just before entering the airport lounge, Sirius had made a last-minute check of the papers tucked away in his suit, and he'd gleefully noted the entire width of the Atlantic Ocean now rendered the legal wishes of James and Lily Potter absolutely unambiguous-

Ah, that outraged gasp from Mrs. Dursley meant she'd finally gotten around to that exact section of the will. Glancing up in a livid mood, no doubt due to the truly blunt language she'd just read putting Harry James Potter in the care of his aunt only as a very last resort, Petunia forgot herself to shout at the young man seated opposite with a truly bland expression on his face, "How dare she! If Lily were here, I'd give her a piece of my mind! Why'd she write this, choosing other people I've never heard of over me and Vernon in such an insulting manner?"

In his most condescending tone, Sirius pointed out to the simmering aunt, "It is our custom for ourselves, those in the wizarding world. The Potters are one of the oldest families there, like mine, and we're used to keeping our kin among our own. Magic belongs with magic, not with muggles." With those last disdainful words, Sirius carefully watched how Petunia's face abruptly turned white with red splotches on her cheeks, and he wondered if that concluding disparagement would do the trick after all-

Indeed, Mount Petunia immediately erupted.

A woman at long last giving into the grudges she'd nursed for years now ranted, without care or concern of any possible cost to her, at an impassive listener. "Magic! That word makes me sick, and always did! Everyone was so delighted when Lily did her magic tricks, with mum and dad showering attention on her! Then, she went off to learn at a magical castle, and she came home with all those wonderful stories! I was overlooked in all this, me, plain ordinary Petunia! This went on for years! Not even when I sent a letter to that…that…Dumblydon man, begging to come there with Lily changed this! All I got back from him was an offhand letter saying since I didn't have any magic, it was impossible, and I should be content with this!"

Sirius just managed not to react at this last unexpected piece of news. He'd never known about it from Lily, so she must've either kept it a family secret or-

At that point, Petunia had taken a necessary deep breath, and then she let fly again. "Well, if nobody cared about me, I wasn't going to care about them, either! And that definitely included sweet, perfect Lily, too! I totally ignored her when she spent her hols at home, and after enough rows, she and mum and dad learned to live with it! If I was going to be ordinary, it'd be my ordinary life, and no one else's! I did it, too! I went to school, found a good man, married him, brought a house, had a lovely baby boy, and I did it all without magic! Not like Lily, you, and all those other freaks!"

Around the corner table in the detainee lounge, the room's atmosphere actually became frigid at this nasty slur. Throwing caution to the wind while looking full into Sirius' thunderous face, Petunia sneered, "So, you don't care for being called that? Well, too bad! Lily's wonderful wizarding world, with all its magic and castles and spells and dragons and charms, it managed to murder her! I'll still bloody well think of her killers, and all the rest of you wizards and witches who didn't stop them, as freaks!"

Panting in her sheer rage, Petunia once more started when she was able, all while ignoring the shamed fury in Sirius' gaze. "To top it off, the biggest freak of them all barged into my home, right after! He came in and started off by telling us Lily was dead and now we had to take care of her son, who lived when she didn't! Oh, he said there'd be magic to protect us and keep us hidden, but it all happened so fast! Vernon and I didn't have a chance to ask things like, if Lily and her wizard husband could be magically murdered, how could us with no magic ever be safe? Instead, my family were put in danger, just to bring up Lily's brat, who's also got magic! So, tell me, exactly why should I have any reason to like or be impressed by magic at all?"

Quiet once more fell in the lounge, with Sirius and Petunia coldly watching each other. Vernon and Dudley were still fast asleep together on their couch, and Bernard Ackroyd, the lawyer from Flint, Gannet, and Lochwell was seated at the lounge's other table, discreetly ignoring all he'd heard from over there.

At last, Petunia lifted the crumpled will she'd crushed in her fingers, to angrily shake it at the scowling younger man across from her. "This says you should've had custody of Harry, come to think of it! Why wasn't he turned over to you in the first place?"

In a tight voice showing he was barely keeping his temper under control, Sirius snapped, "I was looking for the man who betrayed James and Lily, showing the Death Eaters where they and Harry were hiding, which resulted in my friends' death! Dumbledore was supposed to take care of Harry and everything else during all that, so I left him to it in my search for the traitor." A very ugly expression flashed across Sirius' face at this, causing Petunia to flinch in fear, as he went on in an unemotional tone, "I know just where he'll turn up, and soon I'll lay my hands on him. He'll pay for once and all for what he did."

Petunia shuddered further at his dispassionate promise of ultimate vengeance, before observing Sirius' set face and hearing him speak again, "I went back to Dumbledore, and then I found out he'd acted completely on his own, by sending Harry to you as his guardian, instead of the Longbottoms or anyone else mentioned in James' will!"

Caught up in Sirius' narration, a frowning Petunia asked, "Why'd he do that, then?"

Throwing up his hands in complete exasperation, Sirius irritably responded, "I haven't any idea! From the sound of it, Dumbledore told you more than I ever learned from him! He kept insisting Harry was safe and in good hands, but that was as far as it went. The Headmaster not only refused to tell me where my godson was, but worse of all, he actually forbade me to look for him or even talk about it with anyone else who might know where to find Harry! Apparently, I was to just walk away and forget about the whole damned thing!"

It was Sirius' turn now to become incandescent with rage over his own unpleasant memories. The Black heir fixed Petunia with a glittering eye, while growling, "That wasn't going to work with me. I told Dumbledore just where he could stick it, and left. I went around, trying to find Harry on my own, but with no luck. Until I checked my copy of James' will he gave me after the ceremony where he and Lily made me Harry's godfather and guardian, and read in there your name."

"Oh," managed Petunia. She then risked, "So, that was how you found us here in America?"

Sirius grimaced, before admitting, "Not right away. Simply put, there was some kind of magic which made it almost impossible to locate Harry or you."

The aunt of this sought-after boy stared in disbelief at the other person across the table, to then blurt out, "You mean, the old wizard really did it? He set up some kind of spell to hide us?"

"I think so," shrugged Sirius, absently adding, "Not that I could hardly ask Dumbledore about this, after our tremendous row. Luckily, my own family's got centuries of experience with our world's magic, so we worked on other spells to overcome what Dumbledore cast. In the end, after far too long and my patience running out, we finally found your house yesterday. Only, it was completely empty of the Dursley family and Harry. I didn't take that news very well, I'm afraid, what with me threatening to skin alive an interfering old coot with a beard down to his ankles."

Petunia boggled at the wry expression upon Sirius' sardonic face, as she exclaimed, "What, you thought this Dumbledore had taken us away? No, no. Vernon got a job offer from Grunnings, his employers, to work in Los Angeles, so we leapt at the chance to move as far away as we could from all those fr- Wizards and witches," hastily corrected Petunia at Sirius' icy stare over what she'd nearly said.

"Hmph," grunted the obviously wealthy aristocrat, who then irascibly pointed out, "Well, I didn't know this. Instead, I used again the spell which found you, and got from it that your family was flying to America. There was just enough time to use my family's government connections to make sure you'd be held up at customs until I got here. Which brings up a delicate point for you, madam: exactly what happens now?"

Sirius watched Petunia turn a bit pale, and then this woman glanced sideways at where her husband and son still slumbered peacefully together on their couch. Continuing to watch her loved ones, Petunia's face developed a look of worried deliberation, as she obviously started to think hard. For the nonce, her table companion was ignored.

This was totally fine with Padfoot. Sirius took his own opportunity to inwardly review the events of the last few minutes, and he had to feel things had gone as well as they could've. The most dodgy likelihood thankfully never occurred, given how Petunia hadn't run away screaming with terror at being confronted up close and personal with Sirius Black, mass murderer and betrayer of James and Lily Potter.

It appeared once again the right way to bet on was having Albus Dumbledore forever keeping his bloody mouth shut, even when there wasn't any actual need to refrain from explaining things. While preparing for his upcoming discussion with the Dursley aunt, Sirius always had to consider the possibility that after turning Harry over to Lily's sister, the Headmaster had also warned her and Vernon about the Azkaban-sentenced traitor, just to further put them under his wrinkled thumb.

Well, much to Sirius' relief, this hadn't come to pass. It seemed things had remained the same as in another time and dimension, when a Harry Potter who'd now never exist had gleefully written to his godfather after coming back to Privet Drive at the end of his Hogwarts third year. On the run with Buckbeak then, Padfoot had laughed himself sick over the glorious news the Marauder style had obviously passed onto Harry from James. How else to explain that teenage boy blackmailing the Dursleys into good behavior with the threat of his murderous godfather showing up unannounced at their home, if this savage killer ever thought Harry needed him? Judging by his uncle's horrified reaction to that little bit of disquieting news, neither Vernon nor Petunia had ever been told about someone named Sirius Black, by the only wizarding person who could've done this, a certain lemon-drop addict.

All right, then, time to start things again…

At that point, Petunia was diverted from her frantic thoughts by a throat being politely cleared across the lounge table. Harry's aunt looked over at Lord Black's face bearing a somewhat bemused expression, followed by, "Mrs. Dursley, you mentioned something earlier in our conversation. What'd you mean, getting away from magic?"

Not sure just what she'd been asked, Petunia answered as plainly as she could, without actually being insulting all over again. "We - Vernon and I - agreed to move to his new job without telling anyone, so we'd leave behind everything in your weird world, including magic."

Now sending a frankly baffled look towards his wary audience, Sirius pointed out doubtfully, "Ah, didn't it ever occur to you there might be some problems with that? For one, it's not like magic stops right at Land's End in Cornwall. There's plenty of other witches and wizards here, in America. Such as Mr. Ackroyd over there," (Sirius nodded in the direction of where this lawyer was still patiently sitting at his own table) "and Ms. Davis the medi-witch who went off with Harry, since they're both natives. Just like back home, there are lots of people living here in their own magical communities, but since this country's a lot bigger than England, there are much more of them living and working in this place. Including, I'm afraid, wherever you might reside at your new home. You wouldn't ordinarily notice them, since they have their own version of the Statute of Secrecy, except for my other point."

Staring at Sirius in her growing panic, Petunia next heard from him, "You brought Harry here along with your family. Sooner or later, he'd show off his magic-"

Petunia indignantly interrupted, "He's too young for this! It started for Lily when she was about eight or nine-"

This time, it was Sirius' turn to override Petunia. "Lily was the muggleborn child of a non-magical couple. For those children, that's about the normal age when they first experience their accidental magic. But in wizarding families like mine or James', we can do it as early as our first birthday, though that's rare. I didn't see it, but James later boasted to me that Harry demonstrated his magic by floating some baby toys above his crib when he was six months old, which is practically unheard of."

With real terror in her voice, Petunia blurted out, "Dumbledore never mentioned that!"

"He might not have known," allowed Sirius. Studying a shaken woman, the Black heir went on earnestly, "In any event, as I said, Harry would in due time be detected by the local wizarding authorities, who'd then contact you. There wouldn't be any choice, not when magic has to be kept secret from the muggles at large. Because you're still British citizens, the Americans would next notify the ICW - the International Confederation of Wizards - which is the worldwide organization for magical folk. Unfortunately, the current head of the ICW is one Albus Dumbledore."

Watching how Petunia's face went white at this news, Sirius grimly nodded, and he then moved in for the kill. "Furthermore, the British Wizengamot - our magical high court - is also overseen by him too, as Chief Warlock. Merlin only knows how he finds the time for everything."

Huddled in the lounge chair, Harry's aunt felt all her hopes come crashing down around her ears. She'd been so thankful at successfully escaping that horrible world which had estranged a young girl from her magical sister, and then finally killed Lily Evans.

Petunia listened in her increasing numbness to the aristocrat across the table continuing, "Once he finds out you've taken Harry to America, Dumbledore will move heaven and earth to get him back. He's got tremendous power, and I don't just mean magical. All his political influence will be used to return your family to England, and he won't even bother listening to your objections to this. It'll probably wind up with you, your husband, your son, and Harry all together again in that house at, where was it…?"

"Privet Drive," whispered an appalled Petunia through ashy lips. She stared with complete despair at the somber young man gazing back at herself, just before appealing to him in a genuine wail, "Can't you do anything?"

Sadly shaking his head, Sirius informed the unhappy lady there, "The fact is, through Dumbledore's meddling, you're presently Harry's guardian in the magical world, despite being a muggle. It means where Harry goes now, you have to go with him. It'd be totally different, if it wasn't for my fault in not making sure James' will was carried out as he and Lily intended. In our society, wills are sacrosanct. Just for disregarding the Potter will, Dumbledore would be in serious trouble if the news of what he did ever came out, no matter his position or the reason for this. Combined with how prominent the Black family is, we could without question fight off any other attempts for that old berk to get his wizened fingers on Harry. But, that'd only work if Harry was in my sole custody as his godfather."

After those last words were spoken, Sirius Black and Petunia Dursley steadily regarded each other in total silence for some time. Their locked gazes lasted until one of the pair eventually glanced down, at…Sirius' hands set upon the tabletop?

Following Petunia's thoughtful stare at his fingers possessing solely the Black signet ring worn there, a mystified Sirius couldn't understand what was so interesting about this specific part of his body. At least, not until a woman's intent voice sharply asked him, "Are you married?"

"What?" yelped Sirius, who certainly hadn't expected that, as honestly shown by his next exclamation, "NO!"

"Why not?" demanded a merciless Petunia.

Padfoot's mouth dropped open at such an intrusion upon his personal privacy. This gape persisted, with Sirius barely restraining himself from coming out with the first things which came to mind. Which turned out to be wise, since Petunia certainly wouldn't have appreciated such comments as "Haven't finished tomcatting around yet" or "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

Still gazing slack-jawed in pure disbelief at the expectantly waiting lady, Sirius instead breathed from his very core something which he hand't intended or even realized, until this escaped: "I never found anyone like Lily."

Now, it was Petunia's turn to be taken utterly aback. Incredulously regarding the younger man there having his own expression of supreme surprise, the oldest Evans sister was unable to keep from requesting more, "You were in love with her?"

Lost in his memories of a beautiful, spirited redhead, Sirius slowly admitted, "Yes, just like James, and I would've tried to make her mine, if she hadn't become devoted only to him. But, they made me part of their family in the end, by trusting me with their child."

Petunia's eyes abruptly brimmed with tears at the heartfelt emotion she'd now heard from Lord Black. However, there was one more thing…

"Swear it again, what you just said. Swear it on your magic!" imperiously commanded the woman responsible for a little boy.

Inwardly reeling from this last unanticipated challenge, Sirius had to ask, "How did-"

Petunia shortly explained, "I overheard Lily tell Mum about it, a few years before she graduated. How none of you would do that, except for the most important things ever."

"You're right, we don't. In their entire lifetime, a witch or wizard might never swear on their magic," acknowledged Sirius. Smiling faintly at Petunia, he reached for his wand tucked inside his right shirtsleeve. Pulling this out to hold it at head level, the aristocrat dressed in a very expensive Savile Row suit paused for several moments while he sought for the right words.

Taking a deep breath, Sirius then forcefully intoned, "I, Sirius Orion Black, do hereby swear by all that I am - my magic, my honor, my soul - to never again fail as I did before, in caring for, protecting, and cherishing Harry James Potter! So mote it be!"

With those final fervent words, a large globe of pure white light burst into existence in the lounge. Not merely around Sirius, but also enveloping Petunia in her chair. The blood relative of a toddler having the potential for immense wizarding power now felt for the first time in her life the actual touch of magic, and she gasped in sheer awe at this unequivocal vow passed along to her by a lonely man.

An instant later, the bright illumination faded from view, leaving Sirius still holding his wand. With a flick of his wrist, the wizard conjured up several sparks from the tip of this wooden stick, proving that magic itself had found him to be absolutely sincere in his pledge.

Looking across the table at where Petunia was quietly crying, Sirius now heard from her a soft whisper, "Like you said, magic belongs with magic. Bring the lawyer here; I'm sure he has some papers for me to sign."