Sirius and Lily headed down the corridor together.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. "D'you often come to the Ministry?"
"No, hardly ever," she admitted. "But I couldn't stop thinking about you."
He grinned. "Nothing too inappropriate, I hope. I wouldn't want you getting distracted from your work."
"Oh, shut up." She rolled her eyes. "I only meant, I was thinking about you, and I wanted to know how you were getting on. And I thought, why shouldn't we have lunch together? But then, I knew someone would see me if I came to the Ministry, so I had to think of a reason for being here. I thought coming to see Dad would be a reasonable one. I was actually just about to try and talk to him about you and me, only you interrupted."
"You were?" Sirius looked disconcerted. "Oh. Is his office really the best place to have that conversation?"
"No, probably not." She sighed. "I wasn't going to say anything, only then, when I was talking to him... Well, I don't often get a chance to talk to Dad by himself these days, he's so busy. It just seemed like a good opportunity. We were talking about you anyway, because I asked how you were getting on. How are you getting on, by the way?"
"Great!" Sirius' eyes lit up. "I mean, I'm hoping I'll get some real stuff to do fairly soon. I'm not supposed to be a trainee. But that lecture I just went to was a hell of a lot more interesting than anything they taught us at school. Of course, they're a bit stricter on rules, and doing things the 'right' way than I'm used to; we never bothered much with Ministry guidelines in the Order. But I suppose I'll get used to it. Or else they'll get used to me. Or both. They seem to have a lot more time for unorthodoxy and new ideas than the Ministry ever did in my time, so that's something."
They found themselves in the bustling Ministry café, and spotted Rose, sitting at a table with two of her fellow Auror trainees and David Lewis. Rose looked up curiously as they approached.
"Hey, Lil! Davy's just told us you were here. What did you want to see Uncle Harry about?"
"Oh, it wasn't anything much," Lily said. "Just something to do with what happened last weekend."
Rose gave her a sharp glance, and her eyes flicked to Sirius for a second, and then back to Lily, but she said nothing.
"Well," she said to David instead, "this is Sirius Black. Sirius, this is David Lewis. He's Uncle Harry's secretary, but he was also at school with us all, and his parents know ours, so we've known him forever."
Sirius stared at the young man for a moment, an odd expression on his face, then he grinned broadly and held out his hand.
"Nice to meet you."
He and Lily sat down and joined the general conversation. Lily was puzzled at Sirius's behaviour. He kept looking at David, and then looking as if he was trying not to laugh. When David got up for a moment to go and get a drink, Lily leaned over to Sirius.
"What's the matter with you?" she hissed.
He looked at her, his eyes dancing. "David Lewis? As in your first kiss?"
She closed her eyes and groaned softly. "Oh, hell. I'd forgotten I'd told you about that. Just... don't you dare say anything, okay?"
He grinned teasingly at her. "Don't know what you saw in him. He can't compare to me..."
But at that point, Rose interrupted them, and Lily had no chance to retort.
Rose watched them whispering and giggling with each other, and sighed. If only Lily wasn't Lily and Sirius wasn't Sirius, she'd be thinking it might be the start of something promising. The trouble was that Lily was like that with any good-looking man, and Sirius... well, Sirius appeared to be involved with a girl called Helen Ashby. Rose doubted that that was serious; at any rate, neither of them had seemed very keen for her father to find out.
When Helen had walked in a few minutes after Joe had shown them the photographs, her expression at seeing Sirius in her lounge had been one of blank shock. Joe had introduced her, and said that she worked in a café in town. When he had introduced her to Sirius, she had said "We've met," and then Sirius had been in a great rush to get them out of the house and away.
But of course, that had been enough for Rose to guess who she was, and while she hadn't said anything in front of Lily, she intended to confront Sirius on the matter as soon as she got a chance. She wasn't sure how far Lily's feelings had gone, but she was worried. It was true that Lily flirted with everyone, but sometimes Rose thought she saw something unusual, and mildly worrying, in Lily's eyes. Sirius, on the other hand... Well, all the signs were that he was involved with Helen Ashby, even it was just a casual thing.
In which case, it was bloody unfair of him to flirt with Lily in that way, Rose thought angrily, and she'd tell him that as soon as she could get him by himself. No, but she couldn't, could she? Because that would be telling him that Lily liked him as more than a friend, and that was even more unfair on her cousin. Rose didn't like all this interference at all. She wasn't Hugo, who thought it was fun to poke around in other people's love lives. She certainly couldn't be part of this insane plan to try and set Lily and Sirius up.
But could she, on the other hand, really continue to try to put a wedge between them and stop them getting together?
Harry Potter ate his lunch in his own office that day. He should have been getting on with some work while he did so, but instead he stared into space, so deep in thought that he hardly noticed what he was eating.
He liked to think of himself as a good father. He had been determined to give his children the childhood he had never had, and on the whole, he thought he and Ginny between them had done a pretty good job. Of course, James had gone a bit off the rails at school, but he'd settled down quite well now, and Harry was very proud of his oldest son's achievements on the Quidditch pitch. Albus had never been any sort of problem, and was doing extremely well in his chosen field. Harry was proud of him to.
Then there was Lily. Harry had never thought that there had been any real problems with Lily either. She had never been quite as talented as James at Quidditch (although she wasn't at all bad), or as academic as Albus, but she had her own talents and qualities. Harry had been able to read between the lines well enough to know that she had been very popular with the boys since her schooldays, but that didn't bother him as much as it would have bothered, say, Ron, whom Harry had always considered to be slightly overprotective of Rose (not that it had ever bothered Rosie, who had always done exactly as she liked). It wasn't that Harry hadn't worried about Lily sometimes, but he trusted her not to get herself into any really silly situations, because she wasn't stupid, for all she was lacking in a certain amount of common sense.
But she had seemed to be sorting herself out recently. Getting the job with Roxy had been good for her, and she was living with Molly, who was a sensible type. Her relationships never seemed to last, but there was plenty of time for that.
The main thing, though, was that until recently, she had seemed happy, and that had been enough for Harry.
Then had come that bizarre accident last summer, which had knocked her considerably more than it should have done. He understood fairly well what it had done to her; he knew what guilt at failing to save somebody felt like. It was something he would have liked to shield her from, and he noted the irony in that with a sad smile. He couldn't allow himself to start feeling guilty again, as though he should somehow have stopped that happening to his daughter.
And then, of course, Sirius had arrived, which seemed to be the direct result of Lily's own actions while she was in the past. Harry was still trying to come to terms with the thought that perhaps the Sirius he had known had not been the Sirius he had thought he had known. That, in fact, Sirius had lied to him all those years ago. Of course, he couldn't blame him; he could hardly have told everyone the truth. But it still wasn't a very pleasant thought.
But Lily had naturally had a shock when Sirius had appeared in this time, and Harry didn't feel as though his daughter had quite got over that shock yet. She certainly hadn't been behaving normally, and that conversation today had been extremely bizarre.
He wasn't at all convinced by her reasons for coming to see him. It had been the thinnest of excuses. Which meant that she must have had another motive, a motive that for some reason she did not want to tell him.
And what had she been trying to talk to him about? Was that, perhaps, the thing she had really come to say? But why on earth had she come to the office? Why not come and talk to him at home? She had definitely been about to say something important, before Sirius had walked in through the door.
Sirius. It all came back to Sirius.
A sudden horrible suspicion came over Harry. No. It couldn't be. Lily wouldn't... couldn't...
He thought over everything he knew. Lily's lasting depression after she had come back from 1980. Her stunned reaction to Sirius's appearance in 2028. That moment Harry had witnessed under the cherry trees, when a similar suspicion had assailed him for a moment. Her recent behaviour. Her frequent visits home, even passing up party invitations to be there. The latest break up with Rick Hartley, which had happened very quick on the heels of Sirius's appearance. Her attempt to tell Harry something today. Something he wasn't expecting, that he might not like...
Harry put his head in his hands and groaned.
That was how Hermione found him a few moments later, when she came to see why he was apparently still in his office at lunchtime.
"Harry?" Her startled voice broke in on his confused thoughts. "Are you all right?"
He lifted his head. "Oh. Hello, Hermione."
She closed the door firmly behind her, pulled up a chair and sat down in front of him.
"What's happened, Harry?"
He pressed his hands to his temples. "I've just had an unpleasant epiphany," he admitted. "And I think I might have been blind."
Her lips twitched despite themselves. "Well, it wouldn't be the first time," she pointed out. "Why aren't you jumping up to go and do something about it, the way you usually do?"
"Because I don't know what to do about it." He passed a hand in front of his eyes. "It's Lily. Hermione, I've been an Auror for more years than I like to remember. When it comes to the Dark Arts, I always know exactly what to do and how to respond. But when it's my own daughter, I haven't a clue. What kind of father am I?"
"A very good one," said Hermione firmly. "But are you actually going to tell me what you think you've realised? What's the matter with Lily? Although whatever it is, I'm quite sure it's not your fault."
"Oh, it's not my fault." Harry laughed hollowly. "At least, I hope not. But I've just had Lily in here. And I think... Oh hell, I think she and Sirius..."
"What?" Hermione demanded, as he trailed off. "You think that she and Sirius what?"
He did not reply immediately, but she looked at him and read the answer in his eyes.
"Oh, no. No, no, no," she said wildly. "She wouldn't..."
"She's just been here," he said, "which is odd for a start, because she never comes to the office. She started rambling about what happened at the Sickle Moon last weekend, as if that was why she'd come. But that doesn't make sense. She wouldn't come all the way here just to tell me... well, absolutely nothing useful, to be honest. Then she asked about Sirius and how he was getting on..."
"It's his first day, isn't it?" Hermione asked.
"Yes. And then she finally started to tell me something else, something she said she thought I might not like, that she was worried about telling me. But before she could, Sirius himself interrupted us." Harry laughed grimly. "I'm not an idiot. I saw the way she reacted. And it explains a lot of Lily's behaviour recently. Coming home all the time, breaking up with that boy she was seeing, coming to the Ministry just to find out how Sirius is getting on. And it explains Sirius's behaviour too, come to think of it."
Hermione had stared at him throughout this speech, and he could see her mind working the situation out.
"Well, you may be right," she said slowly, as if trying to hold on to a piece of rationality. "It doesn't sound as though you're misreading things. And you know her pretty well. But this is Lily, remember? Her things don't last."
"Lily's 'things,' as you delicately put it, don't last because she never cares enough about them in the first place," Harry said bluntly. "I don't know if Lily's ever had real feelings for anyone in that way. I've certainly never seen her look at anyone like that before."
Hermione was silent for a moment, looking dazed. "And..." She hesitated. "Did you get the impression that Sirius feels the same way, or not?"
"I've no idea," Harry admitted. "But I did wonder. Well, you know as well as I do what Lily's been like for the last eight months. She was just beginning to pull herself out of it, getting that job and moving out, and then Sirius turned up, and before we knew it, she was moping around looking miserable again – except when she was with Sirius, when she seemed to cheer up."
"But you were saying yesterday that she'd seemed a lot more cheerful this last week," Hermione said. "You said she seemed almost back to normal. Back to how she was before last summer, I mean."
"Yes, exactly," Harry said. "Now I'm wondering what might have happened in the last week to make her that way."
Hermione sighed. "Well, this is a mess. Have you talked to Ginny about it all?"
"No. Although we were just saying last night that Sirius seemed like he's getting a bit happier too, the last few days. I assumed it was because of starting this job. But maybe that isn't all."
Hermione was looking slightly horrified, as the reality of what Harry was suggesting sank in.
"Merlin, Harry! This is... well, you know how Sirius is! He's..."
"A notorious playboy," Harry finished for her. "Yes, that's true. But that's not all he is. Don't forget the Sirius Black we knew when we were kids, Hermione. He may be a bit of a young idiot just now, but we were all that once. The man we knew is in there too; he's part of who Sirius is, and who he'll become. And the Sirius we knew was a good man with a strict sense of honour, a loyal friend, and the best godfather he could have been under the circumstances."
There was a slight pause while Hermione frowned.
"That's true," she acknowledged. "But I don't quite understand. What are you saying? Are you saying that Sirius's sense of honour, and his loyalty to you and your father, would mean that he wouldn't get involved with your daughter? Or are you saying that he's a decent person, so you wouldn't mind if he did?"
Helen Ashby frowned as she saw who was coming in through the café door, and then she saw that he had the prettier of the two red-haired girls with him, and relaxed a bit. She couldn't remember the girl's name – it had been a flower, she remembered, because they had both been flowers. She had thought they might be sisters, but apparently they were cousins.
It had been a bit of a shock when she had walked into the house to find them in the sitting room. Sirius (she hadn't believed in his name at first) had just been a good-looking customer, who had started flirting with her last week. He had been in a few times, but she hadn't seen him since the previous weekend and, she had to admit, hadn't really thought about him either. To be sure, he was nice-looking and fun, but he wasn't her type at all. There was a wild, reckless undercurrent to him, underneath the smooth words, which made alarm bells go off in her mind.
Then he had turned out to be some old friend of Dad's, which was weird, because he was only a couple of years older than she was, at the most. Dad hadn't lived anywhere but Barnstaple since before she had been born, but the young man didn't sound like a local, and she'd never seen him around before. If Dad had known him somehow, why hadn't she met him herself? It had all been very strange, and nobody had explained properly at all; he and the girls had seemed in a great hurry to leave after she had got there.
She thought now that perhaps his keenness to leave had had something to do with the fact that he had been flirting so much with her last week, considering that he was now holding hands with the red-haired girl, and was therefore presumably going out with her. She wondered if they had been going out long. If so, he'd been behaving very badly with Helen, and had a lot of cheek bringing his girlfriend in here.
But she was the only waitress working, so she went over to their table. Yes, definitely a couple, and probably a new one, she conceded. Their hands were touching lightly over the table, and they were looking at each other with the expression that only new couples wore.
They looked up and smiled at her with recognition as she approached, so she smiled back in a friendly way as she pulled out her pad.
"Hey!" He grinned at her, seeming much more at ease than he had done when they had met in her own sitting room.
"Hello," she replied. "What can I get you?"
She knew what he would have; he always ordered the same thing, but asking if he wanted 'the usual' seemed a little tactless in front of his girlfriend.
"A tea for me, please." He leaned back in his chair. "Strong, black, three sugars."
The girl wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, really, Sirius?" She smiled at Helen, looking a little bit nervous. "I'll have a white coffee please."
"Anything to eat?" Helen asked.
They glanced at each other, and she thought that there was a hidden communication going on.
"No thanks," the girl said at last, with another smile up at her.
Helen fetched their drinks, wondering why, of all places, they had decided to come here. At nearly closing time too, she thought, looking at her watch. She hoped they wouldn't be too long. She wanted to go home.
She carried their mugs over to them. Sirius glanced around the café. They were the only customers, other than an elderly couple by the window, who already had what they had ordered and were taking no notice of them.
"So, how long have you worked here?" the girl – was it Lily? - asked Helen as she put the mugs on the table.
Crap. She wanted to be friendly.
"Um, about a year," Helen told her.
"Look." Sirius leaned forward. "Have you got a minute, Helen?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "I'm working..."
"Yeah, but there are no customers waiting for you." He grinned at her, looking, she though, a bit shifty. "We wanted to talk to you."
"Oh...?" Helen looked helplessly at him. What the hell was he playing at?
"Listen." He looked worried suddenly. "That stuff last week; you knew it didn't mean anything, right? It was just a bit of fun..."
She stared at him, shocked, and then looked in horror at the girl, who was smiling wryly.
"It's okay," the red-head commented wryly. "Sirius explained. We... weren't going out then."
"Oh," Helen said again, extremely disconcerted. She wasn't sure that she would have been so laid back about it, if the positions had been reversed.
"Well... don't worry," she told Sirius, feeling very awkward, but hoping he could see that she was telling the truth. "You haven't broken my heart or anything. It wasn't a big deal, honestly. Was that what you wanted to say?"
If it was, she thought, he could at least have had the decency to say it without his girlfriend sitting across the table. Not that Helen could care less about the two of them – she wished them luck – but hell, at least it wouldn't have been quite so bloody embarrassing.
"No, no," he said hurriedly. "It was something else."
"I've told him this is a bad idea," the girl broke in, still with that wry expression. "But he wouldn't let go of it. To really understand, you'd have to have met my family."
"Your family?" Helen repeated blankly.
"Well, my brother and my cousins," the girl amended. "You met Rose the other day. She's one of them."
"But look," Sirius said earnestly, "we'll explain it all. But we wanted to ask you a huge favour."
His eyes were sparkling with a light that made her nervous – with that expression, he looked capable of anything. But they had certainly made her curious now. She looked over her shoulder again. The elderly couple had finished their tea, and were looking over at her, a little irritated.
"Look, I have to go," she said quickly. "But we're closing in ten minutes. I have to help clean up, but then I'm free. If you want to wait for me, you can tell me about it then."
"What are we going to do?" Hugo demanded wildly, looking around him. "Are you sure, Rosie?"
"Of course I'm sure," his sister snapped. "She came and met him when we finished work."
"But I thought she was a Muggle?" Roxy said, puzzled.
"She is a Muggle," Rose replied. "She met him outside the Ministry entrance. But anyway, Muggle or not, her father knows that Sirius is an Animagus at least, and that he's a time traveller. Sirius didn't seem to think that was an issue at all. For all I know, the idiot's told her everything anyway."
"I don't know what you're sounding so pissed off about, Rosie," Louis put in, sounding vaguely amused. "I thought you'd betted that it'd never happen."
Rose hesitated. "Yeah, well, I'm beginning to think I was wrong."
"What? Would you mind repeating that, so I can write it down?" Hugo demanded, momentarily distracted.
She glared at him. "Oh, shut up. I still think it would be stupid, and I still think it probably wouldn't last, but I'm beginning to think Lily's a bit more emotionally involved than I realised. She denied it when I asked her, but I got a different impression when I was with them on Saturday. And the whole reason I thought it would be stupid, and the reason I thought this betting was a bad idea, was because I didn't want Lily to get hurt."
The slight smile disappeared off Louis's face at that. None of them had planned on Lily getting hurt.
"But I don't get it." Fred sounded confused. "James, I thought he told you..."
They turned to the one person who had remained silent so far. There was a heavy scowl on his face, and he looked furious.
"He did," James said shortly, standing up. "And I'm going to kill him when I get hold of him."
For once, nobody tried to dissuade him.