The conversation with Dobby made Harry feel upset, in a way that sort of simmered away in the background.

It wasn't like the vague feeling that it would be really nice if his friends knew what it felt like to fly on their own wings, or the melancholy sadness of not knowing his parents. He'd known that some people had a worse time than him, but this was something completely different… and something where he had no idea how to fix it.

Harry felt like it was the sort of thing that adults should solve, and he did write a letter to Sirius about it, but he couldn't really put his talon on what should be done to fix it. Based on some of the books he'd read, the appropriate thing to do might be to storm into the house of whoever Dobby's master was and free him, but that didn't seem like it would be legal (or polite, if it wasn't in a book)… and he still didn't know who Dobby's master was.

It was sort of like he imagined it was different for someone like Frodo or Merry. They'd sort of been aware of Mordor, and other unpleasant things like that, but meeting people who'd been put in awful situations sort of made it more… real?

Harry much preferred it when everyone was basically okay, and that made him think a bit about the books he read. It seemed like something he hadn't really realized when he was reading things like the Belgariad was that it was the bits between the books – or after them – that were the nicest times to live in. A big exciting battle was much more interesting to read about, but if you thought about it it was probably much nicer living in Riva five years after the end of the books.

The good news that came about a week into December was that the trial of Peter Pettigrew was finally over. He'd said that a lot of people had been servants of Voldemort, or Tom Riddle, but apparently it was really hard to tell who'd been under mind control and who hadn't. It sounded like anyone who'd been doing evil things after Harry's parents had died had been put in prison, which was part of what happened to Sirius.

The paper said that Pettigrew had been sentenced to Azkaban, and that his cell would be specially made to make sure that even a rat couldn't get out of it.

Harry did sort of hope that was the end of it, though. He liked going to magic school, and while it was nice to do other things as well it did seem like there were a lot of distractions. He wasn't at all sure what the Chamber of Secrets was, for example, even after Hermione had told him that it was meant to be a secret chamber built by Salazar Slytherin a thousand years ago with a monster inside it to rid the castle of Muggleborns.

Admittedly Harry had sort of guessed the bit about the Chamber of Secrets being a secret chamber. And Hogwarts being Hogwarts, it did seem possible there was a room that was hidden so well almost nobody could find it, but that did make him wonder how it was supposed to actually rid the castle of Muggleborns.

He did remember how the argument about whether he was allowed at Hogwarts had let him know what the official definition of "Muggleborn" was, but it did make him wonder about how you could tell without asking someone.

Was Tanisis a Muggleborn? Neither of her parents had been to a wizarding school, because they were both sphinxes, but they'd both been magical. Did that count?

What about people who were Squibs, who didn't have any magic but came from a magical family? Would someone whose grandparents were all Squibs count as muggle-born or pure-blood?

Harry wasn't sure. It seemed a lot like one of those rules that made sense when people thought it up but had sort of difficult bits around the edges.

The next day, Harry was up early. He'd seen the signs of what was about to happen, and wanted to watch.

It was the first snow day of the year, thick and soft, and it lay in drifts all over Hogwarts castle and grounds. Little powder-trails blew from the battlements as the wind stirred snow piles that had fallen overnight, the Quidditch Pitch was covered in at least six feet of snow (so could be used for Quidditch practice the same as always) and the Black Lake was frozen around the edges.

"Ah, Harry," Hagrid said, as Harry landed next to him at one of the postern doors. "Yer just in time."

Harry nodded, furling his wings, and watched as Hagrid opened the small side door.

"Hagrid!" Nora announced brightly, loping forwards in a way that made her tail ripple, and gave him a nuzzle.

Then she noticed the white stuff on the ground, and reached out a tentative paw to touch it.

"Cold?" she asked.

"That's called snow," Harry explained, and Nora slowly put her weight on her forepaw. It made a crunching noise as the snow gave way readily under her weight, until she reached the solid ground underneath.

Nora withdrew her paw, inspecting it on top and then craning her neck to look underneath, then tried eating some of the snow. That made her flinch back and shoot a jet of flame, melting a big patch of the snow, and that seemed to really baffle her.

"It's frozen water," Harry explained, and Nora swung her head around to look at him. "Water that's gone hard?"

He took a pawful of the snow himself, turning it into a snowball, then blew gently on it. Nora watched very closely as the snow slowly lost definition, water dribbling off it until finally there was nothing left at all.

"Snow..." she said, repeating the word Harry had used. "Cold water?"

"That's right," Harry agreed.

Picking some up, Nora licked it – more carefully this time.

Then she let out a roar, and dove at one of the bigger snowdrifts – sending white flakes flying in all directions.

The next day there was a special Astronomy lesson just before midnight for everyone who was still doing Astronomy at all, even the people who'd had it the last night. The astronomy tower was packed, and the moon overhead was faint and red – a total Lunar Eclipse.

In some of the books Harry had read an eclipse was really significant, either because it meant magic was more powerful, or less powerful, or something was disapproving of the world.

That was usually a solar eclipse, though. He asked Professor Sinistra whether there were any magical effects from a lunar eclipse, and she frowned for a long moment before saying it might confuse a few werewolves.

Unlike with his first year, Harry had to seriously think about how he was going to spend his Christmas holiday in second year.

He'd sort of worked out what to get everyone for Christmas, and was flying to Fort William when he got a chance so he could work most of that out, but that was only half of it. He could just stay at Hogwarts like he had the previous year, and like Ron was planning on doing, or he could take up Sirius' offer to come around for the whole Christmas holiday and visit.

Harry wasn't all that sure that he'd do that, because Christmas at Hogwarts was a sight to behold, but Hedwig was kept busy as he discussed it with his new uncle and it really seemed like Sirius liked the idea of spending some time together – so it sounded like it would be a good idea to do at least something.

Eventually, a week or so before the end of term, they had an idea which sounded good for both of them. Sirius suggested that maybe they should have everyone Harry wanted to invite around for a fun Boxing Day, and then after that Harry would stay over until the new year 'if we can stand living in this place for that long'."

Having met Sirius, and had a few letters from him, Harry wasn't quite sure how bad it would be. It could all be jokes and it was a nice place, or it could be that only one room of the house was really habitable and they'd be camping in…

...well, Harry's tent, really.

Since that sounded like a good idea, Harry started asking his friends if they'd be available. Hermione said she'd have to ask her parents – and asked to borrow Hedwig to send them a letter – while Dean shook his head, saying apologetically that it was pretty much usual for his family to go and visit relatives over Christmas so he didn't think he'd be able to come along.

Ron and the other Weasleys (from Percy to Ginny) all sounded enthusiastic about the idea, though, and Neville liked the sound of it, so Harry let Sirius know roughly how many people to expect.

It was an odd and quite nice feeling to be inviting other people around, even if in this case it wasn't to his house. The fact the house he was inviting people to was on a street called 'Grimmauld Place', though, was vaguely worrying.

The Black family had apparently included all sorts of shady people, though. And Draco's mum.

At the final Quidditch practice before the end of term, Harry was sort of anticipating a long and slightly cold series of practice games in the snow which – for all that flying was pretty fun – would be a bit of a slog simply because everyone else would be getting cold and a bit miserable.

Oliver surprised them all, however, by informing everyone that they'd be using the snow to practice falling. That was a bit confusing, and he elaborated that there were some basic levitation spells – they only lifted you up a few feet and stopped working if you were too high up, but you could use them to slow down how hard you hit the ground.

His idea was that if anyone did end up having to hit the ground, they'd hopefully be able to at least sort of "roll" with it.

In the event, it was great fun. The snow was thick enough that everybody could land in it without getting hurt, and the idea of using the levitation spells quickly went away as instead everyone flew low to dive off their brooms and crunch into the thick drifts.

Then an airborne snowball fight started, which quickly became even more confusing when the Smith twins turned out to have been hiding under the snow. Oliver was briefly worried about spying, until Katie pointed out that if the Slytherins were spying on their training they wouldn't get any use of it at least until next year and that the more likely explanation involved the ongoing and increasingly public prank war.

Fred and George won that particular round, largely by using their wands to lift vast amounts of snow and completely plaster the area the Smiths were hiding. Harry wondered if they would turn into foxes to burrow out, but realized that they probably wouldn't let themselves get found out even if they did.

During the last Herbology lesson of the term, Harry asked Justin what his plans were for Christmas.

"Oh, well, I'm not really sure," Justin admitted, trimming the flowers off a Giant Hogweed. One of the flower clusters fell the wrong way, and Harry caught it before it could hit Justin's arm below his gloves. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Harry replied, putting it in the basket they'd been using. "Want me to grab that stalk that's at the back?"

Justin nodded, and Harry pulled the stalk down so Justin could reach it with the secateurs.

"Mother's said that we might be going to visit relatives," Justin clarified. "I'm not entirely sure how that's going to go if it's my cousin once removed, he went to Eton and he was really hoping I'd do the same."

"What have you told him?" Harry asked.

"We've just said it's an exclusive Scots boarding school, which is certainly true," Justin replied. "The trouble is if he wants to know what we learn here..."

Harry nodded. "I can see that," he agreed. "I'm not sure what my Aunt and Uncle would say if they got asked where I go for school… actually, they've probably already been asked."

"Oh, I remember this," Justin mused. "They don't like magic at all?"

"Not at all," Harry nodded, as they finished trimming the Giant Hogweed. "I think they just wanted to be perfectly normal, but I think everybody's a bit odd really."

"All right, everyone!" Professor Sprout called. "If anyone got touched by the Hogweed, please come up here and I can give you the potion that counteracts the poisons!"

It was odd, when Harry thought about it, but the thing he liked about Christmas was not getting presents so much as giving them. Both were new experiences for him, or mostly new experiences – he had got a few presents at Privet Drive – but it was overall more pleasant to see how much people enjoyed what he got them than it was even to get something particularly good.

Maybe it was just because he could buy most things that he wanted – he didn't have any particularly expensive tastes except for books, and even then the spell Hermione had taught him let him stay quite well-supplied. It would probably mean he'd have a very big hoard eventually.

In any case, that meant that – despite the days leading up to Christmas proper leaving Hogwarts festooned in snow outside and decorations inside, with a snow-whatever making contest one day and a snowball fight the next that involved almost the entirety of the remaining student body – Harry was actually impatient for Christmas.

On the night of Christmas Eve, the normal four tables in the Great Hall had all been pushed together into a big rectangle for dinner instead of forming four long lines. June and her entire extended family came to visit, two dozen Wargs all enjoying a slap-up feast with the Hogwarts inhabitants as the snow fell gently outside, and Professor Lockhart turned out to be quite good at casting Charms that sent sparkling bubbles of gold and pearl floating around the Great Hall.

Harry wondered if silver ones would have been vaguely insulting to the Wargs, but that was sort of an idle thing. The rest of the time he was enjoying his food, and listening to a conversation going on a little to the right where June was translating for her father on one side and Professor Kettleburn on the other.

It was interesting that the Wargs didn't have their own language as such, they'd started out speaking English, but the difficulty they had saying the words with their lupine mouths had sort of naturally led to a drift towards a more wolf-like way of speaking.

It did explain why it had been so easy for June to quickly learn English, though.

Christmas morning dawned bright and clear, and Harry yawned and stretched before sitting up on his bed with his tail twitching.

Ron was still asleep, and Harry checked the time. It seemed like it was time for presents as far as he was concerned, and he knew Ron hadn't got to bed too late last night.

He could try shaking Ron awake… or he could try a simple, harmless prank. Nothing like what Fred and George sometimes did, and certainly nothing like Sirius had occasionally mentioned he and the other Marauders had done to people.

But he did kind of like this idea…

Eventually, Ron yawned, rolling over in bed.

"Mrf..." he mumbled. "Not time to get up yet..."

Harry waited, wings slightly furling and unfurling, and then Ron noticed.

"Bloody hell!" he yelped, jumping to his feet. "Aguamenti!"

A spray of water doused his merrily burning bed, and the water didn't do anything to the bright blue flames.

Harry tried not to giggle.

"...prat," Ron muttered, shaking his head, and dispelled Harry's bluebell flames with a muttered Finite. "How long ago did you do that?"

"Twenty minutes," Harry admitted.

"Yeah, okay, that's pretty funny," Ron allowed, tapping his model griffin to wake it up. "What's the time… blimey, I slept in."

"I thought that would wake you up pretty quickly," Harry replied, inspecting Ron's presents to make sure none of them had got wet. "Then I just sort of… waited, because it was funnier to watch."

"I'd probably have done the same thing," Ron admitted. "...I probably will do the same thing. Possibly to Fred and George."

He picked out a present from the pile at the end of his bed. "Blimey, this one's big… wonder who it's from?"

"That's me," Harry answered, opening one of his own presents. It was the one from his Aunt and Uncle, and it was a toothpick.

Harry wondered if they had some sort of unmentioned financial problem.

There was a great tearing noise as Ron tore off the paper from his present, and his griffin dove into the papers and began to make a nest out of them.

Ron was too busy gaping at the box.

"It's some model rockets," Harry explained happily. "Not fireworks – they're more serious than that. I found some that were reusable if you could get the right fuel, and I think we use everything it takes to make them as potions ingredients."

"Cripes," Ron said, turning it around to look at the back. "How high do they go?"

"Not sure," Harry admitted. "I did get the biggest ones I could find, though."

"That makes the thing I got kind of pathetic," Ron replied, sounding a bit gloomy.

"Honestly, I'm just happy to get you something," Harry told his friend, and removed the paper.

It was a book about the Chudley Cannons. Harry was quite pleased by it, telling Ron that of course getting him a book he hadn't read yet was perfectly fine. (He thought it was probably going to be quite funny, but he didn't say that because he wanted to be polite.)

Hermione had got him a sort of reference book about Muggle stories about dragons, which was somewhat understandably called The Book Of The Dragon, and a little note told him that this way it would be A Book Of A Dragon. Then Neville had got something neat as well, an enchanted bookstand which would turn the pages for you if you told it to go forwards or back.

Dean's present for Harry was a stuffed toy – a deer – which Ron snorted at at first until hearing that it was the first time Harry had ever actually owned one, and then he went a bit quiet and opened his own gift from Dean. That was a set of table football characters, repackaged, but because Dean had painted them all in Chudley Cannons vivid orange.

Putting the stuffed toy by his bedside with his other things, Harry was about to move on when Ron coughed.

"What did you get the others?" he asked. "I hope you didn't really splash out just for me..."

"Well, I wasn't sure what to get Hagrid, at first, because the shops in Fort William don't sell exotic creatures and he's a bit big for most Muggle clothes," Harry replied, starting to count off on his talons. "So I got him some chocolates, and I also sent him a Haggis for Nora. Then for Hermione I found something that lets you emboss books with your own little markings, so she can mark books she's got as hers."

He nodded over at two of the empty beds, as Dean, Neville and Seamus had all gone home for the holidays. "I got Dean a West Ham shirt, then I asked Professor Flitwick to charm it so it'll change sizes and always fit him. He was very nice about it… and Neville was kind of tricky, but I found a book in the Ravenclaw library about learning sword fighting."

Ron blinked, tilting his head sightly in a way Harry sort of recognized as one of his own mannerisms. "You gave him a library book?"

"No, I couldn't have done that," Harry replied. "Besides, it was in… I think it was Latin or something? But I talked to Professor Flitwick about it and got permission to take it into Fort William, and I photocopied all the pages with a Muggle machine."

Harry paused, waiting to see if Ron would get it, and after a moment the other boy's eyes widened.

"You made a Muggle book out of it," he realized. "And then you translated it?"

"Yeah, I've got about thirty duff translations lying around my hoard," Harry agreed. "I think one of them is in Quenya. But I got an English one as well, and that's what I sent."

"You don't do this presents thing by halves, do you?" Ron said, shaking his head. "I'm almost afraid to ask what you got your Aunt and Uncle."

"I got them a nice book with pictures of Scottish lakes," Harry replied. "Or Lochs? I'm not sure if English people like us are supposed to say Lochs."

"I really don't get why you're so nice to them," Ron muttered. "They're not very nice to you."

"Well, I've never actually felt like they did anything bad to me," Harry replied, and started thinking about it. "Maybe that's because they couldn't, but still. And there are people who have done worse, like Tom Riddle."

He shrugged. "I just… like to think everybody is nice at first. Maybe that means I'm disappointed sometimes, but it seems nicer to me."

After that slightly odd conversation, Harry opened the rest of his presents.

Sirius hadn't sent him a present, but had told him that he'd be getting his present at Grimmauld Place because that way he could see Harry's reaction. Harry sort of wished he'd thought of that, but what he'd actually got Sirius was several Asterix books because Sirius seemed like he needed a good laugh.

Remus had sent Harry a collection of the old notes the Marauders had had when they were in school, detailing some of the odd things they'd got up to, and apologized for not getting a more traditional present. That made Harry feel quite sad, especially as what he'd got Remus was a kit for taking care of the fur of a dog (with a letter saying he wasn't sure if it was Sirius or Remus who actually needed it more). He'd also thought to mention that it would have helped a lot of First-Years coming to Hogwarts if they'd been able to buy or look at a map that showed the Castle, even if it didn't show any of the properly secret secret passages, and asked if Remus had any ideas about that.

It was one of those times when Harry was quite proud of being a little bit sneaky, because Remus and Sirius could probably make a copy of the Marauder's Map with less abilities, and that way they would have something that they could sell to all the first-year students at Hogwarts.

Rather than a second Weasley jumper, Mrs. Weasley had sent an apology note for not knowing how much Harry had grown over the last year along with a striped red and gold scarf. Harry quite liked the scarf, and wound it around his neck so the fringed ends dangled to his waist.

The last thing Harry got to was a present from Dumbledore, which was a pair of very nicely knitted socks patterned with moving flames that seemed to alternately burn up the entire sock before dying down to embers.

Harry was really quite pleased with how the morning had gone.

The Christmas Feast was just as wonderfully made as it had been last year, with sugary snow drifting gently down from the ceiling and all kinds of unusual foods to try, but on top of everything that Harry had seen last year there were a few new things as well.

There were foods from other parts of the world that brought a little taste of an Egyptian or Greek Christmas (Harry especially liked the odd bread, rice, lamb and garlic soup), then there was an indoors fireworks display by Professors Dumbledore and Flitwick under the warm, dry enchanted snow, and between the main courses and the pudding a dozen students stood up to give the first performance of the Hogwarts Choir.

They did Jingle Bells very well, Harry thought, and Come All Ye Faithful as well. By the time they got to doing Simple Gifts he was actually tearing up a little – this was much more like what he'd imagined music at Hogwarts would be like, compared to the school song.

Then everyone joined in with We Wish You a Merry Christmas, and as that came to an end the puddings appeared.

The next morning, after a night packing his things into his tent and then sleeping in the tent, Harry took the Floo from Professor McGonagall's office to Twelve Grimmauld Place.

Green fire swirled all around him, fireplaces whizzing past in that odd way the Floo did, and then Harry came out all at once and flared his wings – which almost stopped him tripping over and falling to the floor with a crash.

"Harry!" Sirius said, sounding concerned, and Harry shook himself as he got up. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Harry assured him. "I just don't get on very well with the Floo."

"You should have said," Sirius replied. "I could have Apparated to pick you up."

Behind Harry, there was a whoosh as Ginny came through the Floo, and Harry took a moment to look Sirius up and down.

His hair was long, but washed, and had ended up as a sort of shaggy mane. There were a few grey hairs mixed into it, but they didn't look bad really, and he'd also filled out a bit and looked generally healthier. The change was enough that Harrry could see freedom was agreeing with him, and there was a light in his eyes – like he'd been enjoying himself for the first time in years.

"Apparating doesn't work at Hogwarts, Sirius," Remus pointed out.

"And it doesn't work on me, either," Harry added. "Professor Dumbledore and I think it's my magic resistance."

"Fair enough," Sirius said, then stepped back a pace and bowed as Ron arrived. "And welcome to the home of the Most Ancient And Noble House of Black! Welcome to Grimmauld Place!"

He paused. "Just… don't go upstairs. Or downstairs. We've spent the last month clearing out this floor and we think we got everything that might get us first."

Neville arrived about twenty minutes later, just ahead of Hermione. Hermione's parents had taken her by Tube, planning to go into the City for the day, and Neville had just taken the Floo like Harry himself and the Weasleys.

Hermione's arrival led to a quite amazing amount of shouting from a very loud and rude portrait in the hall, which Sirius said was of his terribly unpleasant mother. She called Hermione a 'Mudblood', Sirius a 'wastrel' and Harry a '...what?'

Harry didn't feel like being polite to her, so he just explained that he was a dragon and then pulled the curtain shut.

"I know she's your mother, but that's terribly rude," Hermione said. "I didn't think anyone actually said 'Mudblood', I thought it was only in books. How long has she been like that?"

"All my life. But if you mean the portrait, at least for the last few months," Sirius replied. "I think there's a permanent sticking charm keeping the portrait in place. I've tried everything."

"I caught him trying to use his wand to lever the portrait off the wall," Remus confided. "At that point I think it really is everything."

Hermione frowned. "I think at least people without magic can just ignore their relatives," she said. "It's a lot harder when they're stuck to the wall."

"I'd say I wanted to just ignore all my relatives, but Andy and her family are all right," Sirius shrugged. "Plus, if you look far enough just about everyone in Pureblood society is related to the Blacks somewhere."

"Glad you could make it, Hermione," Neville called. "Did you get the warning about where you can't go yet?"

Hermione looked over at them, and Harry answered first. "Upstairs, I think?"

"Or downstairs," Sirius added. "From what I've been hearing about you, Harry, you might be okay, but I've heard there's Boggarts around and I don't want to see what your worst fear is."

Harry actually wasn't sure what his worst fear would be. Maybe something from a book?

Or did it have to be a real thing?

With Hermione, that was everyone, and once they were out of the hallway Sirius clapped his hands.

"All right, everyone!" he said. "Come to the drawing room!"

Fred and George exchanged looks.

"I thought we were already in the drawing room," Fred said. "Or is the drawing room a room you use for drawing?"

"That sounds more like Dean's thing," Ron interrupted. "Pity he couldn't make it, if so."

"It can't be that, unless the easels are being hidden somewhere," George replied. "He said come to the drawing room. So this is the drawing room."

"I still don't understand why he'd want us to come here," Fred shrugged.

"I think Padfoot might be slipping," George agreed.

"Since you two want to argue," Sirius said, pointing at first one twin and then the other. "You two can go into the kitchen, and then come back into the drawing room."

"We asked for that, Fred," Fred said.

"That we did, George," George confirmed.

Remus started to choke.

"Are you okay, M-Mr. Lupin?" Sirius asked. "Something go down the wrong way?"

"I'm just thinking about Marauder twins," Remus explained, coughing a few more times. "I feel sorry for Professor McGonagall and the rest already."

After the Twins had trooped out to the kitchen and then back in, Sirius waved his wand and lit up the sparkling lights on a big pine tree that looked like it shouldn't have fit through the door.

"Merry Christmas!" he announced. "Now, in case some of you don't know who I am, well done for not reading the Daily Prophet. My name is Sirius Black, and this is my acquaintance Remus Lupin. I used to be in prison, but I got better."

"Do you mean you got let out?" Neville asked, frowning. "I thought it was an illness you got better from."

"Well, being in prison did seem to be contagious," Sirius shrugged, teeth flashing in a grin that made him look years younger. "Everyone I met had it for quite a long time. Anyway, it is my distinct pleasure to have inherited an enormous amount of money from one of the most prominent Dark Families in the country, and to have not one single moment for any of that blood purity nonsense."

He swept his hand around, taking in all the children present from Ginny to Percy. "So if you think your present cost too much, it didn't. It really didn't. Think of it as… as… how long was I in Azkaban, again?"

"Eleven years, give or take," Remus supplied.

"Eleven years' worth of spoiling my godson, spread out across all of you," Sirius summarized. "Now, who wants to go first?"

As it turned out, Sirius had sort of had to guess what people would find interesting, and he'd based it off his own deep knowledge of what teenagers were into. That meant that there were four Nimbus Two Thousand And Ones, which went to Fred, George, Harry and Ron, and after the fourth one was opened Ginny raised her hand.

"Are they all going to be top line brooms?" she asked.

"I'm not that uncreative," Sirius replied, sounding hurt.

"You are that uncreative," Remus said. "You wanted your Marauder name to be Doggy."

"Hey, nobody needs to know that!" Sirius protested. "Anyway, no, that's all the brooms."

"That doesn't seem very fair," Ginny said. "Why do all the brooms go to the boys?"

"Well, I know Harry's in the Gryffindor Quidditch Team," Sirius checked off. "And the same for the Twins. And as for Ron… well… it was that or get him a replacement for Peter, and I couldn't think of a good pet to get him."

Remus snorted.

"Hey, none of that," Sirius told him. "And on another note entirely, this one's yours."

He waved his wand, and the cover came off a small cage. The cage turned out to contain an extremely hyperactive little owl who began chirping as soon as the cover was off, and Ginny did a double-take as the cage floated over to her.

"Hold on," she said, frowning. "You couldn't think of a good pet to get Ron. But you did get a pet for me."

"Yes," Sirius agreed. "That's it exactly."

Hermione tapped Ginny on the shoulder. "At this point I usually find it helpful to huff and say 'boys'," she confided.

"Boys," Ginny huffed. "Wow, thanks, Hermione, that is good!"

"I'll get you a broom next year, when you're actually allowed one?" Sirius suggested. "I am guessing here, I'll be totally honest."

Ginny looked like she was thinking about it, and she opened the cage door to let the little owl out. It immediately began circling her head, making several circuits before finally landing on her knee – where it stayed for about a second before taking off again, hovering more like a hummingbird than an owl.

"Why did you get such a hyper one?" Ron asked, as the owl started hunting around. Harry wondered if it was looking for a letter to deliver.

"I'm sure I had a very good reason," Sirius told him. "Unfortunately, I can't remember for the life of me what it was..."

"He is growing on me," Ginny admitted. "I'll see if I can think of a name."

"What about Snitch?" Ron suggested. "He's about as bouncy as one.

Sirius snapped his fingers. "That's right! It was because it was funny. Forgot about that."

Hermione got a bag that was bigger on the inside, which Sirius said was fitted with shelves, and Percy's present was something that Sirius described as 'chosen by Remus' – an enormous quantity of Muggle-style stationery.

Percy ultimately turned out to have eight reams of high-quality paper, half lined and half unlined, two dozen Muggle pens and forty pencils, a complete set of coloured highlighters, plenty of spare ink, and several ring-binders to keep the whole thing together.

When the while pile was laid out, Ron blinked. "That… uh… not to sound ungrateful on Perce's behalf, or anything, but that seems kind of… dull… to me."

"I think it's great," Percy replied.

He looked around at his astonished brothers – and one sister – then smiled. "I know. It's kind of boring, just what you'd expect. But this is going to make it so much easier to keep everything organized."

A shrug. "Besides, I don't think I'd want a broom. I'm not very good at Quidditch, and the only reason I know as much as I do is because I've spent more than five years in the same dorm room as Oliver Wood."

"He's got a point," Fred said.

"He's got forty of them," George countered, pointing at the pencils.

"No, they're not sharpened yet," Fred replied.

Sirius said he had an idea for what to get Dean, as well, and then asked everyone what they thought of what they had – and whether there was anything they wanted to change.

"I'm afraid you can't really try out the brooms today," he added. "But if any of them turn out to be duff, just let me know and I'll sort it out."

"This is… crazily generous, Mr. Black," Ron said. "I don't even..."

He shook his head, looking at his new Nimbus.

"Well, then," Sirius added. "It sounds like it's time for lunch."

"It's only about eleven in the morning," Remus pointed out.

"It sounds like it's time for brunch," Sirius corrected himself.

Much to Harry's surprise, the food that Remus had got them was not only fundamentally Muggle but what he'd heard referred to as 'party food'.

There were little cut sandwiches, cocktail sausages, little slices of pizza and plates of onion rings, chicken nuggets, sausage rolls and odd little breaded things that turned out to be full of cheese. There were garlic mushrooms, cut pork pies, lamb kebabs, donuts, slices of cake and eclairs, all mixed up together on the same table.

"I thought about trying to put together a big, impressive meal," Sirius said, getting out a dozen silver plates from one of the cupboards. "But then I decided not to, because the whole point of this is to kind of poke my awful family in the eye."

"I'm not sure how long you can keep doing that," Hermione frowned, taking a plate and starting with a mini pasty, three onion rings and some carrots on sticks. "Before it gets boring, I mean… or unhealthy, at least."

"I'm still going through the stages of coping," Sirius told her. "Besides, eating Muggle food like this off the Black Family Silverware is its own reward."

Harry got a box of old motorcycle parts to nibble on – apparently Sirius had been making himself a second flying motorcycle – and then Remus got out an old Wizarding board game about a game of Quidditch.

Interestingly, it was about a specific game of Quidditch – the monumentally foul-ridden Flanders-Transylvania World Cup final of 1473 – and everyone divided into teams to play what was basically a kind of battle game as much as it was about sports.

There wasn't an option to release a live dragon onto the field, though.

The afternoon was a kind of cozy, pleasant experience.

Sirius dug out a wireless which he left on at a low volume, Remus had plenty of other board games to play from a strategy-battle game to one where everyone was trying to build a tower together.

None of them were really all that good at any of the games, which was half the fun, as everyone argued over what they should do on their turn and then it all went horribly wrong anyway. It reminded Harry a bit of the times he'd enjoyed playing games with Dudley, during the times when Dudley hadn't been able to get one of his friends to come around, but with so many more of them and… without Harry being sort of the last choice, anyway.

There was a quiz game, and because it was a Muggle copy of Trivial Pursuit that meant it was essentially a three-way contest between Hermione, Remus and Percy. That was okay, though, because Sirius just put one of them on each team and mixed everyone else up so all the teams had someone who knew something on them.

Then there was one where they were trying to get their explorers through a valley full of dinosaurs and lava, which wasn't quite as interesting until Ron had an idea and animated his little griffin statue. It promptly carried one of his explorers off, which put him out a bit, but soon the game turned into a frantic race for someone to get the treasure before the griffin stole all the pieces.

At about four in the afternoon, just after they'd spent half an hour making up their own much simpler rules for a preposterously complicated Muggle war game and decided that in the battle between "Axis" and "Allies" the winner had been "the griffin again", Sirius cleared his throat.

"All right," he said. "So it's time to talk about the big black dog in the room."

"Is there a big black dog in the room?" Percy asked. "I haven't seen it."

Fred and George gaped at him.

"Perce," Fred began. "Are you being obtuse?"

"Or are you being deadpan?" George followed up.

"Or do you just not know?" Fred finished.

"Know what?" Percy asked.

Sirius turned into Padfoot.

"Oh, that," Percy added. "Yes, actually. Why?"

"I think we've been played, Fred," George said.

Percy adjusted his robes, smiling a little.

Turning back to his human form, Sirius indicated himself. "So. I'm an Animagus. So was Harry's dad, and so was… the one we don't speak about unless there's no alternative."

"So you mean He Who Must Not Be Named?" Ginny asked.

"No, the other one," Sirius told him.

"The names Wizards use for things are a bit confusing," Harry said. "Why can't we just call Tom Riddle Tom Riddle?"

"I think that is a good idea, Harry," Sirius said, pleasingly. "But if we called the rat You Know Who and Tom Riddle Tom Riddle, it might make people think the rat was the person who everyone else thinks of as You Know Who and who we think of as Tom Riddle and they wouldn't know Tom Riddle was He Who Must Not Be Named."

He stopped, and mouthed words to himself for several seconds before shaking his head. "I think that was right."

"Hermione?" Ron checked.

"I think it made sense," Hermione agreed.

"So, anyway!" Sirius resumed. "Here's the thing that I want to discuss."

He pointed at Harry. "Obviously, I'm most concerned for the safety of my godson, but Harry is by all accounts preposterously hard to hurt so I probably shouldn't be. But you're all his friends, in some way, and you're also all Gryffindors so if anyone's likely to run in if he gets in a dangerous situation it's you. And that Dean kid, I haven't forgotten him."

Sirius steepled his fingers together and pushed them away from him, making a little krak sound. "So. Who wants to be an Animagus?"

"That sounds really cool," Ginny blurted, then blushed. "I mean, um..."

"Hey, there's no need to be embarrassed by that reaction," Sirius assured her. "That was about how I reacted when James told me he and Remus had managed to work out the process."

Remus nodded. "I have a disability that means I can't become one," he added. "But there's four main things you need in order to become an Animagus, if you don't have something that prevents you from doing it at all."

He counted on his fingers. "Firstly, you need willpower. That's both something you need to manage the transformation, and something you need for one of the essential components of the process – a mandrake leaf you need to hold in your mouth for an entire month, from full moon to full moon."

He went on to explain the whole process. The mandrake leaf was necessary for a potion which was personalized to the witch or wizard, and the potion then had to wait for a lightning storm. There was a spell to cast twice a day at sunrise and sunset during the waiting period, and then finally during the lightning storm the potion had to be drunk.

There were several things about it that could go wrong, but they were mostly about the last two steps – the spell and actually drinking the potion during the storm. Harry was mostly listening for interest, but he did put up his paw to ask a question.

"Go ahead, Harry," Remus smiled at him. "This isn't a class, I'm not your professor."

"Is this one of those times astronomy matters for magic?" Harry asked. "You mentioned the full moon a few times, and how it had to be a full moon with the moon visible for the potion to work, and then there was that spell at sunrise and sunset."

"It's quite possible," Remus admitted. "Though I'm not sure if it affects anything else. James, Sirius and Peter all became quite different things when they first transformed."

"Any idea what one of us might be?" Fred asked.

"Or two of us, for that matter!" George added. "Would George and I be the same thing?"

"That's a good question," Remus said.

After a long pause, and just when Fred looked like he was about to ask for the answer, Sirius took over. "So! No need to decide on it now, but think about it. Officially, you'd have to register, of course."

"Can you move somewhere else part way through the process?" Hermione said, looking down at some notes she'd taken. "There are places where the weather is really reliably clear – like at Hogwarts, if you use the Astronomy Tower for having the full moon bit – and there are places where there are thunderstorms all the time. I think there's somewhere in Africa where there's a thunderstorm on two out of every three days in the year…"

Sirius pointed at Hermione. "Why didn't we have her when we were doing this? It took two months of waiting to get a thunderstorm!"

"That would be because of time, Sirius," Remus sighed. "She's a bit young to have been at Hogwarts the same time as us."

"Oh, yeah, good point," Sirius agreed.

Everyone thought becoming an Animagus would be at least somewhat neat, but there were risks too and so it didn't seem like a good idea to rush into it. Percy did seem quite contemplative of the idea, though, and Harry remembered that – if they were assuming that Hogwarts would make the process much easier with guaranteed clear full moons – Percy would only have this year and next year to do it unless he came back just for that.

That discussion took them through to dinner, and Remus went out to get it – it turned out that this was another part of the plan Sirius had to be as 'Muggle' as possible, because what he brought in was the first time any of them except Hermione had had Chinese Takeaway.

The dozen or so little foil boxes with cardboard lids contained all sorts of odd foods like special fried rice, sweet and sour chicken and spring rolls, and the three-or-four bags with extra things like prawn toast and onion bhaji all went down very well, everybody trying to have a little bit of everything to find out what they liked best, and it seemed to Harry like Hermione spent half her time telling everyone what everything actually was.

Harry didn't have much at first, trying a bit of things like the bhajis and the prawn toast, and about halfway through the meal Sirius came around to sit next to him.

"Are you okay, Harry?" he asked. "You don't seem to be eating enough. Did I get the wrong thing?"

"No, it's really tasty," Harry assured him, worried that he'd given Sirius the wrong impression. "But I can eat the aluminium foil as well, so I can have any of the boxes that everybody else has already had most of the stuff out of."

Sirius snorted. "We used to joke about Craddock being the House dustbin – that's someone who was a year below us," he clarified. "Fantastic Beater, massive appetite, he kept asking to finish anything someone had put on their plate but hadn't finished. But it sounds like you could eat the plates as well."

"Maybe," Harry replied, thinking about it. "Gold seems like an expensive taste to have, though."

Sirius chuckled.

"I wanted to check, Harry," he went on. "Your friends are going home after dinner, but you're staying for a few days?"

Harry nodded.

"Good," Sirius said, sounding relieved. "I'm… still not very good at this uncle thing."

He snorted slightly. "I was all set to help you learn to walk or give you your first broom flight… not really something you need help with now."

"I actually took a really long time to get to where I could ride a broom properly," Harry confided, spreading his wings a little to indicate them. "I can fly with the wings, I learned that when I was six, but flying with wings and a broom was… a bit harder. Madam Hooch started me off on two brooms."

"Rolanda Hooch is still the flying instructor?" Sirius asked, before snagging a spring roll. "She taught us."

"I think Hogwarts teachers do that," Harry guessed. "Wizards live a long time, and there aren't all that many people who are good enough at a subject to teach it."

"This is really good," Ron said, loudly enough to get Harry's attention. "Hogwarts food is good, too, but this is a different kind of thing. Why can't they do this stuff?"

"Maybe they will if we ask," Fred mused. "I don't imagine house-elves at Hogwarts have much experience with Muggle takeout."

"Well, it's hard to blame them, Fred," George said. "We don't have much experience with Muggle takeout, and we're men of the world."

"Boys," Hermione sighed.

"Boys of the world," George corrected himself.

"The only question is..." Fred began, then trailed off.

George gave him a look.

"Well?" he asked. "I don't know where you were going with that. I can think of at least three questions, and one of them is about how they'd decide how hot to make it."

"I was going to ask how we get them some takeout to experience," Fred said. "Any ideas, anyone?"

"Why can't you just get them some cookbooks?" Ginny asked. "That seems obvious enough to me."

"By Jove, I think she's got it!" George gasped.

"Who's Jove?" Fred replied. "And why do you want to buy him?"

Finally, the time came for everyone to head home. Hermione left out the front door, which prompted another round of shouting from the portrait of Sirius' mother, and the Weasleys filed one by one through the Floo to get back to Hogwarts.

Neville left by the Floo as well, saying goodbye to Harry, and then he and the two Marauders were alone in Grimmauld Place.

"How do you think that went?" Sirius asked, looking hopeful.

"I think it was great," Harry replied, tail flicking a little and occasionally thumping against the floor.

"That's good," Sirius said, relaxing a bit. "That's… yeah, I wasn't sure how it was going to go. I've never done anything like that before, except a couple of boozy meetings after we graduated from Hogwarts."

"That was before I caught Responsibility," Remus contributed, and Sirius laughed.

When he'd mostly stopped – though he did still giggle a bit – he rubbed his hands together. "Okay, Harry! So what do you want to do for the rest of the evening? We've got some sleeping bags, and the sofa's not bad… Remus and I have been doing it, but if you'd rather not we could head back to Remus' place… though that would be pretty crowded as well."

"You could stay with me," Harry suggested, going over to get his tent. "I thought I mentioned that in one of the letters?"

"You probably did," Sirius agreed readily. "My memory's not the best, Henry."

It was a bit of a stupid joke, but Harry found it so funny he nearly snorted flame.

A few minutes later the tent was up, and Sirius and Remus had a good-natured argument about which room each of them was going to sleep in. Harry checked on Hedwig, making sure she'd had enough to eat and drink, then sat down at the kitchen table to write out a letter to Dean about the topics they'd discussed – everything from Animagus things to how Sirius wanted to meet him – and also mentioned Sirius' mother's portrait and how much trouble they were having with it.

Looking over it again, Harry decided that he'd covered what he had to, and blew on the ink to dry it before folding it up for Hedwig.

"Don't forget," he added. "If he's got relatives around or he's not in, don't fly to him and give it to him. That might look suspicious."

Hedwig cuffed him with her wing, making a prek noise, and Harry chuckled.

"Maybe you could put it though the letterbox?" he suggested. His owl nodded, contriving to roll her eyes, and Harry had the distinct sense he was telling her something she already knew.

AN:

Owls can't eyeroll, but that's why Hedwig had to contrive it.

I've seen some complaints about how not much is happening, and at least one sexually explicit review as well. The latter especially is quite upsetting, but in both cases I'd like to point out that Harry is a twelve year old schoolboy.

If Harry was getting involved in serious, dangerous situations it would be because of a general failure on at least some level by the people who are acting in loco parentis.

With that being said, however, events are eventuating...