Sirius couched low, letting the bolt of light that came at him pass over his head, then sprang to his feet and fired one back before he was fully upright again. His opponent also dodged and, quicker than he had thought was possible, shot another at him. He felt it graze past his shoulder as he twisted out of the way.

He was out of breath and a sweat had broken out on his forehead. Shit. How many weeks did it take to regain the sort of fitness he'd enjoyed before Azkaban? He'd thought he wasn't doing badly, but this was taking it out of him already. And she, damn her, looked almost at ease.

"Okay, okay!" he called, angry that he had had to be the one to call it off.

Rose Weasley smiled at him. "Tired already?"

He pushed his hair out of his eyes. "I'm out of practice," he said. "I used to be able to do that for hours. And what the hell was that about? You were using real hexes! You almost got me!"

Her smile disappeared. "Yeah well, better me than James," she said.

"What?" He stared at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She sighed impatiently. "Sirius, what do you think you're playing at? You told James you like Lily. You said you were going to ask her out, for Merlin's sake! James thought you two were going to make a go of it. And he was convinced that Lily wanted to as well. And now you're waltzing round with that Helen girl. How d'you think people are going to react?"

"Oh." He stood and looked at her, wand hanging slackly by his side. "That's what this is all about?"

She looked angrily at him. "What's going on, Sirius? Are you just confused, or is this the way you always treat girls? Because messing Lily around isn't going to go down well with anyone."

He examined her carefully. His short acquaintance with Rose Weasley had already taught him that she was not somebody to be taken lightly. Lily had warned him that this might happen, but it had seemed like too good a chance to miss. Sirius believed in acting on impulse and sorting things out as you went along. Admittedly, the policy had backfired in the past. He considered his options.

He could lie. There were any number of lies he could pull. He could do the sadly confused act, and pretend he didn't know what he wanted from life any more. That would probably work, but it wasn't very appealing. Or he could say that Helen meant nothing, and it was Lily all the way. But that would ruin the whole point of the deception, and probably wouldn't pacify her much. He could pretend that he didn't know what she was talking about, and that he hadn't told James anything at all, and pretend to be crazy about Helen, but he doubted she would buy that.

Alternatively, he could cut his losses and tell the truth. He took a deep breath.

"Okay. I'll come clean."

She smiled tightly. "Good decision."

So he he told her, although not quite the whole truth. He left out the fact that he and Lily were actually together, and said only that they had found out that James and the others were betting on them, and had decided to give them something to bet on.

When he had finished this explanation, she looked at him in silence for a few minutes. He waited for the anger. It didn't come. Instead, a reluctant smile broke out on her face, and she started to laugh.

"So you do plan on asking Lily out?" she said eventually, once she was serious again.

"Oh." He shifted uncomfortably, acting as well as he could. "Well, maybe. I mean, I doubt if she..." He let his voice trail off, wondering what Rose would say.

"Hm," she said. "And it didn't occur to you that this plan was likely to bring James in breathing fire - not to mention the rest of the family?"

He shrugged, a smile beginning to appear on his face.

"It seemed worth the risk."

"Oh, really?" she asked. "I hope you still feel like that after you've seen Jamie. On the other hand, you could probably beat him in a duel with your hands tied behind your back. Doesn't it make it a bit complicated between you and Lily, though?" she went on. "I mean, you're both there, knowing that James is betting on the two of you getting together. Doesn't that get a bit awkward?"

He shrugged again, leaving her to form her own conclusions. She hadn't mentioned her own bet, he noticed.

She looked hard at him for a moment. Then she too shrugged.

"Oh well. Nothing to do with me." She grinned at him. "It was a pretty good plan, I have to admit. Even if I do think it was a bit stupid, given what you know of this family. It's on your own head, though. I'm not getting involved." She drew her wand again. "Ready to start again?"

Harry found them there few minutes later, when he wandered into the practise room they had set up for the purpose. He watched them for a moment, unnoticed, noting where their strengths and weaknesses lay.

Rose was good. He had always known that. She'd decided that she wanted to be an Auror back in her fifth year at Hogwarts. She had always been a skilled dueller, and excellent at all the important subjects, and more than that, she had the necessary temperament; the fire, the drive, but also the cool-headed, calculating side, and she could think fast and well in a crisis. She had had to learn to reign in her temper – as he had himself, he though wryly – but she had done well on that. He was proud of his niece, and knew that Ron and Hermione were as well. She would make a good Auror, once she had a bit of proper experience under her belt.

Sirius, on the other hand, already was a good Auror. He was a bit rough around the edges, and at the moment he wasn't as fit, and therefore not quite as quick as Rose. But that would come, and he had the edge of experience. The edge that Harry and Ron and the others had had when they had joined the department after the war. The moves were as natural to him as breathing, because he had had to use them repeatedly in a life or death situation. His body moved without his head having to think about it.

And he had Rose beaten. Harry smiled, seeing what was going to happen a second before it did. Sirius feinted, allowing his ankle to buckle beneath, a sign that he was tiring. Rose, knowing that he would tire before she did, checked for a moment, and Sirius moved like lightening. Rose realised her mistake and reacted, but a split second too late. She was already disarmed.

Sirius picked up her wand, smirking, and instantly found himself minus both wands. He looked round indignantly, then grinned as he saw Harry.

Harry looked at his niece. "Don't assume that other people are going to play by the rules, Rosie. It was a trick; it wasn't proper duelling, but it worked. That's all that matters in a real combat situation."

He handed her wand back and she sighed. Rose knew her own weaknesses.

Harry turned to Sirius and held out his wand. "But Sirius, that wouldn't have worked in a real combat situation. A real enemy isn't going to hesitate because you show signs of weakness. They're going to strike, fast."

"I know." Sirius refused to be daunted. "But it worked there, didn't it? And like you said, that's all that mattered. Adaptability. Isn't that in the Auror manual? 'Adapt your methods to suit your situation.' That's what I did."

Harry's lips twitched despite himself. "You did. Good job anyway, both of you. Carry on if you want."

"Oh." Rose eyed her uncle doubtfully. "Didn't you want anything?"

"It can wait," he told her casually. He had come down looking for Sirius, but hadn't expected to find him with Rose. There were things to be said, but certainly not in front of Rosie, and to send her away seemed a little pointed.

"Mr Potter!" a voice called

They all turned. Natalie Kennet, a Senior Auror, was striding towards them.

"What's the matter?" Harry asked.

"Sir!" Her face was alight with something like excitement. "We've just had word - they've got a location for Number Eight! Tracked him to a house, and they've got it watched, but they've called for back-up."

"Number Eight? Really?" Harry banished thoughts of more personal issues. This was big news. "Where?"

"Wales, sir." She glanced at Rose and Sirius, then back at Harry, her face grim. "The old Pritchard house."

"The Pritchard house? I thought that place wasn't being used?"

"Well, so did we, until right now. Hewitt's already on the spot with some of her team, but they're not sure what they're dealing with."

"Right." Harry made up his mind quickly. "I assume you'll want to go yourself, Natalie. I'll come with you, and we'll take Jefferson too." He looked round. "Want to come, Sirius?"

Sirius's eyes lit up. "Yeah, definitely, if you want me."

"What about me?" Rose demanded.

Harry sighed. "Rose, I know you're nearly qualified, but you're not there yet. And this could be dangerous. I'm sorry - we can't take you this time."

"I know, I know. You're a lucky bastard, Sirius," Rose grumbled, but grinned reluctantly when Sirius raised his eyebrows at her. "Good luck. Go and kick them where it hurts."

Sirius found himself hurrying after Harry along a corridor.

"So, what exactly are we doing?" he asked. "I thought you didn't usually take on field missions these days."

"I don't." Harry looked at him, eyes bright and grim. "But in this case, it's a matter of getting my hands on the man who tried to kidnap my daughter. I'm not handing it over to anyone else."

Sirius stopped for a moment, shocked, and then hurried to catch up.

"This Number Eight...?" he said eagerly. "This is the man who attacked Lily in the Sickle Moon?"

"No," Harry replied. "But he was there, and we believe that he may have co-ordinated the attack. We don't know where Lily's attacker is, but if anyone can lead us to him, Number Eight can. We've been watching him for some time."

"Oh," Sirius said quietly.

Harry stopped suddenly, and turned to face him.

"Sirius," he said gently but firmly. "It was not your fault that that man escaped."

Sirius frowned. "It was. I knocked him out. I should have made sure of him, but..."

"But you were in the middle of making sure that Lily was all right, and then fighting a battle. You caught all but two of them between you; you did well. Better than anyone could have expected under the circumstances. Anyway, we've got another chance at the other two today."

He started walking again, and Sirius followed him.

"What's the plan?" Sirius asked.

"We'll see when we get there. We'll fit in with the team that's already there. They've been tracking this guy for a while"

Sirius nodded. "How are we getting there?"

"Apparition," said Harry. "Natalie's got the Apparition co-ordinates."

"Oh." Sirius frowned, suddenly worried. "Now would be the time to tell you, wouldn't it? I don't have my Apparition license." Would Harry tell him he couldn't come after all? He hoped not.

Harry glanced over at him, his brow creasing.

"Oh. Well, I'll overlook it this once. We'll get you sorted with one when we get back from this..."

"No, I mean, I tried to get it. I never passed. I can't Apparate."

Harry looked amused. "Sirius, are you telling me that someone with your talent has failed to learn to Apparate? That's nonsense; you're perfectly capable of the magic involved. You've got the hang of far more complicated things. You were an Animagus before the age of sixteen, for Merlin's sake! If you can manage that, you can certainly manage this. And talking of that, that's another thing you should really get yourself a license for; Hermione's already been on at me about it."

Sirius was feeling increasingly apprehensive.

"Yeah, but seriously. If I Apparate, I always splinch myself."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "You do know that more than half of the trick of Apparition lies in focusing your mind properly on where you actually want to go, and on getting the whole of you there, don't you?"

"Yeah, yeah," Sirius said impatiently. "'Destination, Determination and Deliberation.' They drilled it into us at school. James and Remus got it after a few attempts. I... didn't."

"Well, I find that slightly surprising," said Harry. "Not that I found it that easy myself, but I got it in the end. Maybe you didn't care enough. Or maybe you fell down on the Deliberation. You have to concentrate hard on getting the whole of yourself to where you want to go. And you have to be very determined to get there. The mistake I made at first was that I didn't care enough about getting out of those damn circles they drew on the ground. I was thinking 'I want to Apparate,' not 'I want to be out of this circle, on that spot of floor there.' Once you get the hang of that, there's nothing to it."

"Yes, so Rose keeps telling me," Sirius said tersely.

Harry grinned briefly. "I bet she does. Rose is sometimes more like her mother than she likes to imagine. But never mind just now. We can use Side-Along Apparition. The important thing just now is to get there in time."

There were three soft pops, and four figures appeared suddenly in a field, behind an overgrown hedge. Nobody saw them except a couple of startled sheep, who scrambled to their feet and bobbed away, calling to their half-grown lambs. It was raining.

Sirius looked around himself. They were standing on a flat grassy area between the hedge and a river. On the other side of the hedge was a road, but the hedge was dense and they'd be invisible to anyone driving a car along it.

"I thought it was supposed to be a town?" he said.

"The town's there." Kennet pointed down the road, to where the grey houses were visible, a church spire sticking up amongst them. "But the house is up in the woods over the river - this is just a convenient Apparition spot."

"And one of our colleagues should be joining us here..." Harry looked down at his watch. "...around about now."

As he spoke, there was another pop, and a woman appeared. She must have been about Harry's age, although any grey in her hair had been entirely covered by dark brown dye. Her eyes were bright with focused concentration, and her lips pressed grimly together.

"Afternoon, Lavender," Harry greeted her. "Sorry, must just check. What was the name of the rabbit you owned as a child?"

"Binky." The woman's mouth relaxed into a brief smile. "What was the first thing I told you when you arrived at Hogwarts before the battle?"

"Something about why the Room of Requirement might provide a bathroom when there were girls living in it, wasn't it?" Harry sounded amused. "And now we've got that out of the way, Sirius, this is Lavender Hewitt, an old school friend of mine and one of the original Aurors taken on after the war. I think you might have met her daughter; she's a friend of Lily's. Lavender, this is..."

"Sirius Black," the woman said. "Yes, I've read the papers, even if I have been a bit busy recently. I also got the memo you sent about the fact that he was joining the department. Good to meet you, Sirius." She turned back to Harry. "Now, we should get going. We may not have long. We'll have to walk; we've got anti-Apparition spells up round the area, which is why I brought you here. It's as close as we'll get."

They followed the woman, who did not lead them towards the town at all, but down towards the river, where there was a footbridge over it. On the other side of it, the ground sloped steeply uphill into dense trees. There was no obvious path, and it was hard going through the woods. The ground was soft, wet and mossy, and the trees grew close together. However, after a silent scramble of five minutes or so, Lavender Hewitt held up a hand to stop them. Just above them, though the trees, the ground levelled out, and Sirius peered through the branches at the large building beyond.

It looked as though it had once been a large, grand house, built of great slabs of grey slate, with huge bow windows either side of the front door. The paint on the window frames had peeled so much that there was hardly any of it left, the windows were grimy and cracked, and a trickle of water from the broken guttering had been there long enough that green slime had developed on the stone and large ferns sprouted from the cracks. What had probably once been a lawn, sloping downhill from the house, had been encroached on again by the forest, and was a tangle of trees and thorns.

"So what are we dealing with exactly?" the other Auror, Jefferson, asked.

"Well, we're not entirely sure," Lavender Hewitt murmured. "Natalie checked this place out months ago, and it was empty."

"And had been for a long time, as far as we could tell," Kennet agreed. "But we put Detection Wards around it, which should have alerted us if anyone came past them. Are you sure...?"

"Fraid so," Hewitt said. "It looks like they've managed to disable the Wards, which means we're dealing with at least one very skilled person. And it also means they may have been using the place for some time. From what we've seen since we got here, there are several other people inside, as well as our Number Eight."

"Who is this Number Eight?" Sirius asked.

Hewitt sighed. "We don't know his real name, but he's working pretty high up in the League, and he's dangerous; we think he's connected to at least one murder. He goes by several aliases, some of whom are real people with perfectly legitimate backstories. He's a very convincing conman, and he's also a Metamorphmagus. It took us a long time to work out that he was only one person."

"And several entirely innocent people fell under suspicion, because he was using their names," said Harry, grimly. "He had us running up all sorts of garden paths before we worked out that he could change his face."

"Doesn't knowing that narrow down who he could be by quite a lot?" Sirius asked. "Given how rare it is?"

"Well, not that much." Hewitt said. "It helps, but being a Metamorphmagus isn't like being an Animagus; you don't have to be on a register. There are three options really. Either he's somebody who didn't go to Hogwarts, and is therefore unknown to most of British Wizarding society, or he's somebody who, for whatever reason, has successfully hidden what they are from most of their acquaintances, or..." She hesitated and glanced at Harry. "Or he's one of the few known Metamorphmagi."

"Which includes my godson," Harry said. "Who, before you ask Sirius, is not a suspect, no. At least, not as far as I'm concerned. Although I imagine that he has been thoroughly investigated, along with the others. It's all right, Lavender; I wouldn't have expected or wanted you to do anything else."

"Well, you don't need to worry," Hewitt said. "Teddy Lupin has perfectly good alibis, and is not on any of my lists any more. Not that we expected to find anything else."

"So what's the plan?" Jefferson asked.

Harry looked at Hewitt. "You know the situation, Lavender. We'll take our orders."

She nodded. "I've got Nicolson up on that big bit of rock, see it? Up behind the house. You won't spot her - she's Disillusioned. We could do with another couple up on the hillside there; there's plenty of cover, and it gives a good vantage over the house. Natalie, Derek, can you take that? I've got Jarvis and Roper watching the outhouse over there, in case there's a secret passage linking the two. I'm going to go round to the side door and join McLaughlin there. Harry, can you and Sirius cover the front of the house? Once everyone's in position, I'll give a general signal, and those of us down on this level will all move in together. The people on the hillside'll provide cover, and pick up anyone you spot trying to escape. Okay?"

Harry nodded. "Sounds like you've got everything covered. We'll wait for your signal."

Sirius found himself huddled under a bush with Harry, Disillusioned, watching an apparently empty and deserted house.

"I usually use my invisibility cloak for things like this," Harry murmured. "But when there are as many people as this on a mission, only one of us being invisible wouldn't do much good."

The shock of this revelation made Sirius almost forget where they were, and he twisted around to stare at Harry - or rather, at the faint shape of a person where he knew Harry must be.

"You mean the cloak?"

Harry chuckled quietly. "I forgot you'd know all about that."

Sirius grinned, although he knew that Harry couldn't see him.

"We did use it occasionally. Did you have it at school?"

Harry laughed again. "I did. It came in very handy."

"What about your kids? Did they get it too?"

"No." Harry still sounded amused. "They would have liked it. At least, Jamie would. But it's a fairly useful thing for an Auror to have as well, and I used to use it all the time, when I still came on field missions regularly. So I kept it."

There was silence for a moment.

"And talking of my children," Harry said, slightly awkwardly. "You, um, you're getting on with them all right, are you?"

Sirius paused a moment before answering. Was the question loaded, or was it just his paranoia?

"Yeah, they're great," he said neutrally.

He found that his heart was beating slightly fast, and it had nothing to do with the mission they were currently on. This was the moment he should say something. Of course, in some ways, it was completely the wrong moment, because they were lying under a bush in shaggy wet grass, waiting to be interrupted by Auror Hewitt's signal. But sometimes, you had to take the opportunities presented to you. And he knew that Lily had already tried to talk to her father about it just the other day.

"Thing is, Harry, there's something I need to talk to you about," he said, trying for a casual tone.

"Well, I did say that if you ever needed to, I was here." Harry's voice gave nothing away. "But I'm not sure I was imagining quite this setting."

Sirius laughed softly. "No, well, if I don't say this now I probably never will. Plus you can't murder me here, because it would give us away and you'd be a man down."

"Am I likely to want to murder you?" Harry asked.

"Well, you're not going to happy," Sirius said. "The thing is... when you asked how I was getting on with your kids... What I said was true. They're great. But, well, there's something you ought to know..."

"This is about Lily, isn't it?" Harry said resignedly.

There was dead silence.

"You... you know?" Sirius asked at last, keeping his voice low only by a supreme effort.

"I don't know anything," said Harry. "But I'm hoping you're about to tell me."

"Right." Sirius forced himself to sound calm, although his mind was racing. "But you, um, sort of guessed?"

"Sort of," Harry agreed. "But I have no idea how far it's gone. Or how far it's likely to go. Or what 'it' is. So why don't you tell me? Because I think you might have interrupted Lily when she was about to tell me the other day."

"Well, um, yeah, okay. I... never actually planned what to say to you. It would probably be better coming from Lily..."

Harry sighed. "Sirius, you're not getting away with not telling me now. Anyway, essentially, you've just told me. This is something mutual, then?"

"Um, yeah," Sirius said. This was the moment of truth. "You... you're not angry?"

"No, I'm not angry," Harry said, sounding tired. "Lily's old enough to make her own decisions about life. And I got over the worst of the shock when I realised things the other day. I'm not sure what I think of it, mind. It's not exactly what I expected when I told you that you had a home and a family with us. And now I'm going to sound ridiculously old-fashioned, and ask you what exactly this is with you and Lily. Because if you're planning on this being a casual fling, I don't like it, and I won't pretend to. If it makes you feel any better, I'll be saying this to her as well."

"I can't answer that," Sirius said quietly, after a pause. "Because I don't know. I don't have a clue what this is with Lily, because it's not something that's ever happened before. But I tell you what it's not, and that's a casual fling. Not as far as I'm concerned, and according to what she's told me, not as far as Lily's concerned either."

"Well, I suppose I'm going to have to accept that, and get used to it, aren't I? And deal with the complications as they come. Just..."

Harry stopped, and the pause was so long that Sirius glanced at him again.

"What?"

"Just try not to hurt each other, will you?"

"Well, we'll try not to." Sirius found himself smiling, a little hesitantly, although he knew Harry couldn't see his expression.

Harry hesitated. "Sirius, I know that this is going to be difficult for you to think about, when you've only been seeing each other for... well, I don't know how long for, but it can't have been long, so thinking into the future must seem a bit premature. But in twelve years you're going to have to go back to 1993, and, well..."

He didn't say it, but Sirius knew what the end of that sentence was. You're not going to be coming back. It was an unpleasant and vaguely eerie thought, even though it didn't seem quite real. He couldn't really believe that his fate was already set out like that. And anyway, he'd come up with a plan, which was quite likely not to work, but at least it was a plan. It was something he could try to do about it, rather than just sit back and accept things.

"We've actually talked about that," he said. "Like you said, twelve years ahead is a long way into the future when we're only just feeling our way, but the situation isn't exactly a normal one. So we've talked about it. And I had a thought."

"Oh, really? What thought?" Harry broke off as a device he wore around his wrist glowed suddenly silver. "That's Lavender. We're ready to go. Tell me later."