Author's Note: I re-vamped the chapter structure on July 15, 2020, to go from 11 enormous chapters to 25 reasonably sized ones. I didn't change or add anything, except fixing some typos or grammatical things, so there is no need to re-read.

Apologies if you got a message and though there was an update to the sequel. There will be one in the next day or two!

His first night at Bellatrix and Rodolphus's house was relaxing and fun, full of laughter and games and silly discussions. Rodolphus disappeared before Sirius got up the next morning and only returned as Sirius and Bellatrix were sitting down to dinner, but he and Bellatrix spent the day having dueling practice and just generally spending quality time together for the first time since Sirius had started Hogwarts, so they didn't miss Rodolphus's company.

On his second night staying with the newlyweds, he found himself alone in the cozy library fairly early in the evening. His cousin and her husband had retired to their bedroom almost as soon as they'd eaten dinner (Gross! he thought.), and he'd considered it safer to stay downstairs for a few hours. He was perusing Rodolphus's self-annotated copy of Offensive Defensive Magic for the Advanced Dueler when he heard a curse and a crash from the small entryway.

He'd leapt to his feet and drawn his wand into his hand before his brain caught up with his body, but then his heart started pounding. He carefully poked his head around the door, being as silent as possible, and saw a large figure in the shadows near the front door.

"Stupefy," he whispered.

He couldn't wait until he learned to cast spells nonverbally, but for now he just had to hope that the intruder wouldn't hear him and defend himself.

As it turned out, his spell hit the mark. The man toppled over, his head striking the umbrella stand before he slumped motionless to the floor. A wave of Sirius's wand lit the sconces along the walls, and when he finally got a good look at the intruder he couldn't help but cry out in surprise.

"Rabastan! Shit!"

He bounded across the entryway to kneel down next to his friend, only belatedly thinking to cast the counter-spell. Rabastan immediately moaned in pain. He struggled to sit up, and without thinking Sirius reached around the larger boy's back to help him.

"Shit, Rab!" he repeated. "I'm so sorry!"

Rabastan leaned forward with his forehead resting against Sirius's shoulder and then seemed unable to go any further.

"Shh, it's okay," he shushed. Then, with a pained chuckle, added, "Nice shot."

Sirius wrapped his arms more securely around his friend to keep him from keeling over again, which he seemed about to do at any given moment. "What are you even doing here?"

"I live here!" retorted Rabastan. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm visiting! Why do you live here? Doesn't your family have a big manor up in Yorkshire?"

Rabastan fidgeted in discomfort for a moment, pressing his hand against his side.

"My parents thought it would be best if I left. I was making everybody uncomfortable and all," he said absently as he brought his hand up to his face to investigate it.

But Sirius wasn't really paying attention to his words, as he was distracted by the blood on his hand. He looked down Rabastan's body to his torso, which was covered in shredded robes and blood.

"Did I…?" he asked in a small voice, one of his hands going automatically towards the wound.

Rabastan froze for a moment when his hand made contact, then he huffed out a pained breath and said, "No, no, it wasn't you." He pulled Sirius's hand away from his body. "C'mon, love, I'm fine. I'll be okay. Help me up and we'll fix it, yeah?"

Mutely, Sirius rose to his feet and leaned down to help his friend up. He tried to be as gentle as possible, but as Rabastan was so large—at least six inches taller and, it seemed to Sirius, at least double Sirius's weight—it wasn't the easiest thing to accomplish. In the end, between the two of them and with the help of the wall, they managed to get him upright with only a handful of profanities uttered. "I don't want to bother Roddy and Bellatrix with this," Rabastan insisted when asked. He leaned heavily against Sirius, his arm wrapped around Sirius's shoulders and Sirius's arm wrapped low around his hips so as to avoid the injury, and directed Sirius to the makeshift potions lab Rodolphus had set up in a room at the back of the cottage.

After he had been settled onto a low stool, Rabastan motioned with his chin towards a large cabinet that took up almost an entire wall. "The dittany is over there, on the third shelf from the top."

By the time Sirius had located the rather large vial—surely larger than any he'd ever seen before, which made him wonder if this sort of thing happened often—Rabastan had peeled the remains of his clothing up to reveal a nasty gash running diagonally across his ribcage.

"Fucking hell, Rabastan!" Sirius cried, unable to help himself. "What happened?"

Rabastan looked up from where he was delicately prodding the edges of the wound with his fingers and met Sirius's worried eyes, his own sapphire gaze sparkling in amusement through his discomfort.

"It was just a basic Severing Charm. You should see the other guy." He paused for a moment, a dark expression passing over his face. "Well, what's left of him anyway."

Sirius watched with his arms crossed over his chest and a disapproving scowl on his face as his friend generously applied essence of dittany to his cut. A green billow of smoke later and the previously nasty gash was scabbed over and appeared to be several days old. Rabastan examined the results for a few moments longer before he finally removed the remains of his tattered robes and the shirt underneath. He still hissed a bit at the flex of his muscles, and when he looked back up he was met by the stalk of a green, leafy plant inches from his face.

"Aw, come on, Sirius," he whined. "I'm okay; I don't need it."

Sirius leveled an impressively flat glare on him. "Eat it. Or I'll go get Bellatrix."

Rabastan looked for a second as if he would argue, but then a brief smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "You're a right little dictator. Fine."

And amid all the grimaces and complaints he could manage, he chewed the raw dittany and gagged it down. Sirius was almost tempted to order him to open his mouth so that he could look and make sure his patient had really swallowed it, and he couldn't stop the smile that spread over his face at the thought of demanding Rabastan Lestrange to lift up his tongue for an inspection.

"Salazar but that's nasty," Rabastan informed him.

"It'll make you heal more quickly," answered Sirius with a shrug.

They were silent as Rabastan carefully cleaned the blood and remaining essence of dittany off of himself and Vanished his ruined clothing. Sirius wanted to ask again what had happened, but he sensed that he wouldn't get a better answer than the one he'd already received. So he kept his questions to himself and took the opportunity to eye the tattoo he'd noticed before on Rabastan's arm, now revealed in its entirety along with the rest of the older boy's bare upper body. It was probably the ugliest tattoo Sirius had ever seen, a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth. He wondered what on earth had possessed his friend to get it.

His thoughts were interrupted when Rabastan looked up and inquired, "So, we know why I got kicked out of my house. Why did you get kicked out of yours?"

Sirius had no idea why Rabastan had got kicked out of his house, unless he'd been referring to the fight he'd had with his sister seemingly all of the previous school year. And Sirius still wasn't one hundred percent sure what that had been about. However, he was too embarrassed to admit any such thing, so he nodded absently as he replaced the vial of dittany in the cabinet.

"My grandfather blames the supposedly weak blood on my mother's side of the family for Andromeda's… defection. He went on and on about it until I finally reminded him that anything he said about my mother applies to me, too, and I… might have… well… I told him to fuck off."

Full lips parted in surprise. "You did not!"

Sirius nodded again in confirmation. "He's been avoiding me as much as possible since then, and my father thought it would be a good idea for me to get out from underfoot for a few days."

"Sirius… I… Fucking hell!"

"I had thought to myself that at least you would probably be willing to hide me in your bedroom and keep me alive if I got kicked out, but it looks like that won't be necessary."

Rabastan, who was still shaking his head in apparent disbelief, allowed a chuckle to escape his throat. "Well, you can still live in my bedroom if you want, but I've been told that I kick in my sleep."

"And I steal all of the covers, so we'd make a miserable pair. I think I'll have to pass."

"Ah, well, the offer's always open," said Rabastan, with an odd expression passing over his face that Sirius couldn't quite read.

The next morning, Sirius found all three of the other occupants of the house already sitting around the breakfast table when he came downstairs. They abruptly stopped talking when they noticed him, which he found rather odd. He was used to it from all of the adults in his life, of course, but he had never placed these three in that category in his mind.

"Morning, Siri," chirped Bellatrix. "I hope you don't mind that Rabastan's staying here, too."

"We already talked last night," he told her as he settled into his chair and surveyed the breakfast offerings.

Breakfast was a subdued, nearly silent affair until their morning owls arrived. Sirius had more mail than anyone else, which prompted the others at the table to tease him about his popularity. The baby pink envelope in particular caused all sorts of uproar.

"An admirer?" asked Rodolphus between laughs.

Sirius rolled his eyes in exasperation. "My girlfriend. She's a bit… much."

"Girlfriend?" echoed the elder man, his quizzical eyes traveling to his brother and then back to Sirius.

"Say, Bellatrix," interjected Rabastan, who Sirius was astonished to see had just the slightest flush creeping up his neck, "do you think we might be able to get Dolohov to include Sirius in my lessons, too? You know, a two-for-one sort of thing, so Sirius doesn't have to miss his dueling lessons while he's here. And maybe he'll even have a chance to beat me and redeem himself after Gryffindor's disastrous loss to Slytherin in the House Cup…."

That was the best thing Sirius had heard in weeks, and it was more than sufficient to distract him from the rest of the weirdness going on around him.

Sirius was able to return home the next weekend, although relations were still tense between him and his grandfather. He sincerely wanted to leave again, at least for a little while, but he didn't want to impose any more on the newlyweds and he knew that there weren't really any better options. His parents would never let him go to Peter's—not that he'd want to go stay with Peter's Mudblood mother—and it was probably too early for him to broach the subject of staying with the Potters after the drama of the past two years.

James had written him a lengthy letter pleading for him to come to Godric's Hollow, where his family lived. I'm so bored I could die, he'd written. There aren't any other kids here our age, and Remus's parents won't let him go stay anywhere even if it isn't that time of the month. Plus I have some ideas I probably shouldn't put in writing, and I really want to talk to you about them.

It was incredibly tempting, because Sirius was incredibly curious what new schemes Potter had cooked up. (He imagined it was probably some cruelly creative new way to torture Snivellus.) Still, he figured that he'd stirred up enough trouble with his parents and grandfather to last him the whole summer and at least partially into Christmas holidays, so he wrote back that he wouldn't be able to visit and resigned himself to a miserable rest of the summer.

Over breakfast one morning, Arcturus flicked the top of his newspaper down to interrupt an otherwise perfectly normal conversation between Orion and Sirius about their visit to Diagon Alley later that day.

"Son, you had better stop into Bingham's when you're out today."

Sirius watched as Orion's newspaper landed in his empty plate. "Father, he's just completed his second year!"

"Yes, and by the time he goes back to Hogwarts he'll be nearly fourteen. We don't want to leave these things up to chance. Best to get it all out in the open sooner rather than later."

Orion shot Sirius a nervous glance. "Fourteen, Father? Do you really think this is necessary? You didn't take me until I was nearly fifteen."

"Well, we have already established that Sirius takes after me, not you," the elder replied with just a hint of humor in his voice. He and Sirius glanced at one another, but they both looked away quickly, still uncomfortable in each other's presence. Arcturus flicked his newspaper back up into place. "As I said, we don't want to leave these things up to chance."

"Father!" exclaimed his son, who was staring at the back of the paper with a horrified expression, as if it were Arcturus's face.

The voice that replied from behind the Daily Prophet was full of amusement, and Sirius wondered if his grandfather was actually smiling behind his barrier. "Orion, if you do not want to hear these things about your father, I suggest that you simply take his word as law and refrain from questioning him."

Orion stared a moment longer before a rueful smile flickered across his lips. "Well, if His Holiness will give us leave, I believe that it's time my son and I head out. Sirius, are you finished?"

Arcturus sent them off with an imperious wave from behind his Prophet.

Knockturn Alley was much the same as ever, although Sirius had never been inside the apothecary. The inside was substantially larger and less cramped than the apothecary in Diagon Alley, and the proprietor, Mr. Bingham, was behind the counter tending several cauldrons. A bell chimed when they stepped through the door, but the man did not look up from whatever he was working on. Orion did not seem bothered by this. He led Sirius directly to the third aisle, where he briskly walked about two-thirds of the way down and bent low to peruse one of the shelves near the floor.

Sirius leaned around to get a look at the vial of clear orange liquid his father had plucked from the shelf. "What is it?"

His father's face remained impassive, but his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously. He looked around and held out a hand to quiet Sirius's impending question so that he could listen for other voices in the shop. Once he was satisfied—and by that time Sirius's curiosity had him on the verge of exploding all over the aisle—Orion answered.

"It's a contraceptive potion," he explained in a clipped tone that would have gone a long way towards masking his embarrassment if he'd been talking to someone who didn't know him as well. At his son's horrified look, he took a breath and then rushed forward as if getting it out quickly would lessen their mutual embarrassment. "It's probably better to explain it here, since at Grimmauld Place there's always your mother and brother or my father hovering about. Son, this potion will protect you when you decide to—Um, Sirius, you do know about the, er... the birds and the bees?"

Sirius's expression had by this time screwed up into one of disgust, if only to hide his acute embarrassment. "Are you really trying to talk to me about sex?"

His son's reaction had managed to make the elder Black relax enough that he was able to chuckle. "Yes, I'm trying to talk to you about sex. What do you know about how children are made?"

He looked at Sirius so expectantly that Sirius felt there was no hope of escaping this conversation. He blushed and turned to give the vials lining the shelf nearest him a thorough examination so that he wouldn't have to look at his father as he spoke.

He managed to bite out, "I know what goes where and that children are made when the man... you know... in the woman. You've no need to explain it to me." At that possibility, he paled beneath his scarlet blush. "Please don't explain it to me."

"Have you started, ah... you knowing, by yourself?"

"Father!" Sirius hissed. He was so aghast that he nearly knocked down the shelf he'd been looking at, and his face felt very hot.

Orion had the grace to look sorry he'd asked, if his son had actually been able to look at him and see it. On second thought, Orion supposed that he was not actually ready to hear about his son's sex life, such as it may be. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"I was just asking because, well, you can do that, you know, instead of rushing to do it with a girl. Just in case you didn't know, not that I want to hear about it if you did know..." He trailed off and swallowed again, then seemed to gather himself up enough to take one more stab at the subject.

"Right, well, in any case, once you decide to start with girls, this potion will prevent you from making any children with them. The Ministry regulates these potions and will only allow a week-long dose to be sold legally, for some reason—It's probably to increase the Half-blood population, if you ask me. Half-bloods and Mudbloods breed like rats.—but this version will last you a month. They don't have a very long shelf life, so we'll have to set you up with an annual owl delivery. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Sirius managed to grind out between clenched teeth.

"There's a potion for girls too, of course, but you don't want to leave something like this up to the girl. Why, if it were up to your mother alone, there have been several times we might have given you another little brother or sister!"

"Ew! Father!"

Orion blushed just a bit. "Right. Er, good talk."

Sirius glared at him. "Fantastic."

"Well, I'm glad we cleared that up," Orion declared with a decisive nod of his head.

He turned and started walking back down the aisle, his pace a bit faster than absolutely necessary, as if he could escape their joint mortification by leaving the scene of the crime. Sirius followed at a more sedate pace. He was sure that he needed several moments alone to compose himself before he could face his father again.

By the time he reached the front of the store, his father was waiting impatiently by the door. Neither of them dared to look the other in the eye as they headed back out among the dim views and dodgy denizens of Knockturn Alley. In fact, they barely spoke two words to each other for the rest of the morning as they flitted in and out of various shops completing their shopping lists and errands with a diligent, silent concentration theretofore unseen in either of them. By the time they sat down for lunch in the brightly lit café across from Twilfitt and Tattings, in the high-end section of Diagon Alley, both of them were feeling recovered enough from their earlier ordeal to look each other in the face again, although they were not feeling brave enough to venture more than the safest of subjects, such as Quidditch and the new electives Sirius would begin taking during the upcoming school term.

If Sirius had already been anxiously waiting to leave for Hogwarts before this incident, he was doubly—No, triply! Quadruply, even!—waiting for it now.