The elevator bell dinged, startling Sirius out of his reverie, trying to recall exactly how he'd gotten to the bed he'd woken up in about twenty minutes before. He was pretty sure the woman had been called...Jessica? And her boyfriend was... Honestly, Sirius had just been thinking of him as Surfer Dude, pretty much the only things he'd managed to catch about him in the course of the (short) conversation they'd had at the bar before adjourning to the couple's flat were that Surfer Dude was a surfer — er...Jennifer? was an aspiring actress, he thought — and he liked to watch.
Which was absolutely fine with Sirius, he'd never been shy about...anything, really. He vaguely recalled agreeing to let Surfer Dude take pictures, actually. Which was also fine, though if there were going to be photos of his naked arse banging some random muggle chick out there in the world, he kind of wanted copies. Maybe he should have asked for their telephone number, it hadn't occurred to him until he'd gotten halfway home that that was a thing muggles did. In his defense, he hadn't had a hangover potion on him. Which meant yes, his head was pounding at the moment. The sun was far too bright and everyone was so loud and awake. Speaking of which... He threw a spell at the kitchen windows, tinting them obsidian-grey and blocking out a significant part of his headache.
He was acutely aware that he'd gotten old at some point, because before Azkaban, he'd've thought nothing of going straight from a night like that to being on-duty with a Sober-Up and ten minutes' notice. Moody had warned him, back then, that this would happen eventually, all dismissive and condescending, but Sirius had known he'd just been miffed he couldn't party like a twenty-year-old. Well, that and that Sirius didn't have anything like a proper degree of paranoia for a second-year Auror. To which Sirius had always smirked and pointed out that life was nasty and brutish and short, and every night should be lived like they might die tomorrow, because, well, they might.
Gods and Powers, he'd been such a little shite.
He should look Moody up, when he got back to Britain, he decided, heating water for coffee. He thought there was still...
He turned to the cold-box — he was pretty sure that there had been half a bag of ground coffee beans in there — and nearly bowled over Harry. Christ that kid was quiet! He managed to spin out of the way at the last second, albeit rather clumsily, losing his balance and stumbling into the counter. "Morning!"
Fuck, why am I so loud?! Seriously, it shouldn't be possible to be so hung over that his own voice hurt his head. Maybe Zee had a spare hangover potion in her cupboard. He'd been meaning to pick up a few, kept forgetting whenever he was anywhere near the shops. And he certainly wasn't going to apparate like this. Except Zee was probably already gone for the day, and witches didn't tend to like other people going through their personal effects. Bugger. Though Zee had to have been accustomed to Bella going through her things. Both of them, probably. Yes, he decided, if she had one he would help himself, and if she asked him about it he would just blame Little Bella. That seemed like a good plan.
After coffee.
"You look like shite, Sirius," Harry said. Not that he looked much better. Or, well, Sirius wasn't entirely certain what he looked like at the moment, but Harry looked like he hadn't slept in a week, even though he was only wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, and his hair was doing the Potter thing worse than usual, so he couldn't have been awake more than a few minutes.
"I feel like shite, Harry. You don't happen to have a hangover potion on hand, do you?"
"Er...no? Why would I...?"
Right, Harry was one of those boring teenagers who didn't sneak around getting drunk behind the backs of the adults who were nominally in charge of them. Sirius kept forgetting how different the kid was from himself at that age, and James, and...pretty much everyone, honestly, the world had gotten boring while he'd been busy getting old with the dementors. Well, Lily had never been one to sneak around getting drunk or high or whatever, she'd just sneaked around doing dark magic and cavorting with Slytherins. Er...fraternising? Well, cavorting might be right, at least at like, Walpurgis, but that wasn't what he'd meant. Just generally sneaking around with Snivels and designing rituals and shite. Words were hard.
In his defense, he was still hung over.
Very.
"Never mind. You look a bit shite yourself. Nightmares again?" he asked, pouring himself a cup of blessed, wonderful caffeine and pretending to be unconcerned.
After several weeks of constant nagging, Harry had eventually admitted that he was having weird nightmares about His Mouldiness, which Snivellus had supposedly said were nothing to worry about. Which, ignoring that Harry had talked to Snivellus about it before him or Little Bella or anyone but Blaise, was obviously complete dragonshite.
Sirius knew a little about what Lily had been doing, back in Eighty-One. Enough to know that she'd been messing with soul magic rituals. And Harry was a legilimens and a Parselmouth, just like Lord Snakefucker. It didn't take a genius to think maybe something she'd done, or that and Mouldyshorts casting some sort of tynged in a final act of malevolence, had forged a connection between the two of them. Between their souls. How else would Harry have ended up with that ridiculous pair of inherited talents, when no one else in House Potter had had either one for centuries? This theory was especially convincing because the scar from the ritual that night had clearly been hurting him, every time Sirius had seen him in the wake of one of these 'nightmares'.
And if he'd been able to put it together, Snivels definitely had. The only real question was whether Snivellus had lied to Harry and Blaise, or whether Harry and Blaise were lying to everyone else. Sirius was leaning toward the latter. Snivels could be trying to stop Harry dealing with the problem because he was still not-so-secretly an evil Death Eater and also a fucking twat who'd hated Jamie since they were eleven, but he had fucking worshipped Evans, and his precious Dark Lord had killed her, so. He was betting Harry just didn't want to freak the rest of them out. Which was stupid, because he was freaking out anyway, and he wasn't entirely certain Bella was capable of freaking out. Zee...well, it wasn't her problem, was it? So she might be concerned, a little, but not much.
"I don't want to talk about it."
Of course he didn't. Stubborn arse. That was exactly like Jamie. Well, fine. Sirius was in no fit state to bug him about it at the moment. He gave the kid a noncommittal sort of hum before asking, "Where is everyone?"
"Uh...I don't know, actually. I guess Mira's at work, and the Portal's open, so Lyra's probably in Britain. Blaise was gone before I woke up, though, and he—" Harry cut himself off, going very red, probably because he'd just realised he'd implied that Blaise had spent the night in his room. Again. For completely innocent, nightmare-related reasons that had nothing to do with Harry very obviously fancying him.
(Everyone knew. The fact that Harry had yet to do anything about it was completely baffling. James would probably have proposed like six times by now, and Lily would have had her fun with him and moved on months ago. Honestly, the way he was acting was more like Remus than anyone, and he didn't even have the excuse of trying to hide that he was a werewolf.)
Sirius let him stew in his awkwardness, busying himself with toast — he'd prefer something greasier and more filling at the moment, but he wasn't certain he had the energy to actually cook something. Not to mention, he always had been a bit rubbish at cooking. The whole time he and Remus had lived together, they'd survived on muggle takeaway and sandwiches, and whatever the girls kept on the back of the range at Safehouse Four.
After several long seconds, Harry abruptly changed the subject. "I'm making an omelette. Want one?"
"God, yes." He briefly wondered whether Harry was getting good enough at legilimency that he hadn't noticed the kid eavesdropping on him, but then decided that he probably just looked that done in.
Rather than sit around and watch his godson slice ham and dice peppers and half an onion (which, he was really fast, how did he even...?), Sirius decided to excuse himself to the loo. (Whereupon he realised that, yes, he did look as shite as he felt.) And when he came back, there was food. Real food, not just fucking toast. It was almost like having an elf.
Hmm... Maybe Little Bella would let him bring one of the Black elves over here. Not that one (the one who'd kept him in the Nursery at Ancient House, they hadn't got on), but there had to be others around, and that would solve the problem of his not knowing a damn thing about cooking outside of potions. (He might be able to make soup, he realised. Maybe. He'd never tried...)
"You are my hero," he said, completely seriously, tucking in. Oh, God, there was cheese. "This is amazing. Like, fucking ambrosia amazing. Did I know you could cook?"
Harry flushed again. Seriously, the kid spent about half his time red in the face. "Er...probably not. I haven't much since, well... We always go out to dinner, here, and...I dunno... I don't really like it, cooking. But it's just an omelette. They're...not hard? I mean, Aunt Petunia taught me how to do omelettes when I was about four, I think."
Sirius had nothing to say on the topic of Petunia Dursley. He'd asked Little Bella about Harry's foster family, after he had said some things in passing that suggested Petunia would've given Walburga a run for her money in a shite mums contest, and he couldn't believe she'd only broken that bitch's arm. He wasn't sure he would have been able to stop himself killing the lot of them, her and her obnoxious walrus of a husband, and their son he'd never even heard of until Little Bella was explaining the fucking blood wards Dumbledore had put on the family. Even if it wasn't exactly growing up in the House of Black — honestly, Little Bella was hardly even trying anymore — that didn't mean they weren't child-abusing sacks of shite. And apparently Harry didn't want them dead. Which was just...fucking weird. Sirius was pretty sure he'd want them dead, if it was him.
What he didn't want was to get in some weird argument about whether Lily's sister deserved to die a fiery death when he was only feeling marginally human, and he had the best omelette in the history of the world sitting in front of him. So he applied himself to his eggs and coffee and sat there saying nothing as loudly as possible — if Harry wanted to hear what he had to say about the Dursleys, he was welcome to read Sirius's mind for it, but if he did that, he really couldn't complain about hearing it, could he.
Apparently he didn't, because after a few minutes, he spoke up again, on a completely different subject. "Um...Sirius..."
"Hmm?"
"As, um...my godfather, I can...ask you for advice, right?"
"Sure, pup. What about?" he asked, intrigued despite his headache. Harry had never asked him for advice on anything. In fact, he wasn't sure he'd ever heard Harry ask for advice on anything from anyone — Little Bella was as nosey as the original, more than willing to give completely unsolicited advice, and presumably anything Harry cared to ask Blaise he could do privately in their little mind-fucking sessions. Or just whenever, Blaise did tend to use mind magic pretty much all the time. Kind of like having dinner with de Mort, but far less terrifying. (Though de Mort also couldn't complain about things he overheard Sirius thinking loudly to himself. Say, the fact that Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters were the tweest fucking thing he'd ever heard of, for example.)
Harry froze, wide-eyed, as though he hadn't expected to have to follow up with his actual question. Which was just bloody stupid, he couldn't possibly have thought Sirius would say no, could he? He got up to pour himself another cup of coffee while Harry worked through his completely unwarranted shock. Harry, of course, chose to talk as soon as his back was turned.
Jamie used to do that, too, not looking people in the eye when he was talking about something that made him uncomfortable. Though things that Jamie got weird about were, like, Evans channelling the Dark that one time, and Sirius decapitating some Death Eater they ran into on a raid — because how was he supposed to not try out a light decapitation spell, when he had the opportunity? — and talking about life after the War, because Jamie really wanted to believe there would be a life after the war, but he couldn't quite convince himself they'd survive. (It was a cruel irony that Sirius, who had never thought past the next battle, living each night like it could be his last, had made it, but Jamie, who'd been fighting for the future more than anyone, hadn't.)
Harry, on the other hand, seemed to be concerned about, "Ah, well...you know things about, um...relationships, I guess, right?"
Sirius smothered a snigger, turning back to the table to find Harry fiddling with his silverware, looking anywhere but at him. He took pity on the poor kid, hopped up on the counter rather than go back to the seat directly across from him.
"Sure," he said. Granted, mostly from watching other people do 'relationships' — Sirius himself was more comfortable with a level of commitment along the lines of his fun last night with J-girl and Surfer Dude, and never seeing them again. Harry would probably be better off asking Zee about this sort of thing, but he'd gotten the impression over the past few weeks that Blaise was more like he had been at fourteen than Jamie or Remus, so he was pretty sure he could offer something valid. And even if he couldn't, Sirius wasn't about to send Harry away when he was actually talking to him for once, not just being quiet and awkward. Well, okay, he was clearly still being awkward, but talking — talking was progress!
Or, well, it would be, if he'd actually kept talking, instead of chasing a bit of mushroom around his plate and overthinking whatever it was he wanted to talk about. Which, Sirius was pretty sure he could guess. "So, this is about Blaise..." he prompted him, trailing off expectantly.
Harry went red again, nodded, and chased the mushroom around a bit more before exclaiming out of nowhere, "He's— I'm really starting to think he's actually trying to drive me insane!"
God damn it, Sirius, don't laugh! "Oh?" he choked out, barely managing to keep a straight face. Because, well...on the one hand, he was pretty sure Blaise wasn't trying to drive Harry nuts in an actually certifiable sort of way, but he almost certainly was trying to work him up to a point that Harry would do something he'd consider crazy without thinking it through — like giving in and snogging him out of the blue or something — because if he gave himself time to think about it he'd probably chicken out. It was completely obvious, and in Sirius's professional opinion he was doing a hell of a job at it. If Harry managed to hold out until the end of the summer he'd be shocked.
"Okay, he can't possibly not know that I, um..."
"Fancy him," Sirius supplied.
"Er, yes. That. I mean, you obviously know — even Lyra knows — and Blaise has been in my bloody head, okay? He can't possibly not know."
"Oh, he knows," Sirius confirmed.
"Yeah, but he keeps acting like he doesn't! And it's driving me mad! I mean, he keeps showing me memories of snogging other people and acting like he's not doing it on purpose when he definitely is, and just, spending the night in my room because, well, the nightmare thing, and I practically fucking told him that he'd be my first choice to go to that stupid fucking Ball with, and he didn't even say anything, even though I know he knows what I meant!"
"Er...the Yule Ball?" Sirius asked, momentarily distracted. "Isn't he going with Daphne Greengrass?"
"Yes. Did everyone know about that?"
"You mean their betrothal? Er...yes?" According to Little Bella, Zee had briefly suspended talks with the Greengrasses in the hopes that she could snag Bella for Blaise, but she'd made it clear that wasn't going to happen, so the contract with the Greengrasses had to be damn near finalised by now. Which was a bit of a coup for the Zabinis, anyway — it wasn't often that a foreign commoner married the heir of a Noble House. Though Blaise had been raised in Britain, and Zee had been pseudo-attached to the Blacks...pretty much forever, Bella had been bringing her to society events since they were teenagers (because fuck convention). Not to mention, she'd managed to end up Director of Education, which was essentially an honorary ladyship, and accumulated a fortune to rival the Malfoys' when no one was looking. So maybe it didn't quite count, but Walburga had always called the Zabinis foreign commoners anyway, so Sirius assumed anyone who cared about that shite would.
Harry made a frustrated urgh sound, interrupting Sirius's mental wandering. He was doing better now than he had right after escaping from Azkaban, but he'd never been great at keeping on topic. (Ever.) "Whatever. Yes, Blaise is going with Daphne, even though Daphne is dating Tracey, because politics. Not the point. I just— He keeps acting like– like I don't even know. I know he knows I, er, fancy him, but he acts like he doesn't care, except, well, he keeps doing things that he has to know are driving me mad, and— And stop laughing, it's not funny!"
It was. It really, really was. But, okay, he could do this...advice thing. "Sorry, sorry. It's just, have you considered just snogging him?" Harry glared at him, a legilimency probe skimming the very edges of his consciousness. "I'm not fucking with you, kid. This is classic I like you but I want you to make the next move behavior. You very obviously fancy him, yeah? So he's making it clear that he knows this, but still treating you the same to make it clear that he doesn't mind. So if you want him, just go for it."
The kid scoffed at him, rolling his eyes. "He doesn't mind isn't exactly encouraging. How do you know he wants me to do...something? I mean, he hasn't done anything himself, I don't even know if he likes me like that!"
"Er...maybe that wasn't the best way to say that..." It was. It definitely was. "First off, not telling someone as bloody obvious as you to fuck off is tantamount to admitting he's interested—" (Harry glared at him, but didn't debate the point.) "—but...fuck, how should I put this..."
Unless Sirius had completely misread the kid, he was interested in physical relationships, sure, snogging "other people" — the way Harry had put it, it kind of sounded like a lot of other people, so yeah, interested in snogging. Probably sex, too. Sirius had been getting up to all sorts of shite by fourth year, and he hadn't grown up with Mirabella Zabini as his primary example of proper behavior.
Well, no, okay, that wasn't entirely true — Zee had been around pretty much as long as he could remember. Before he'd broken with the Family, when he was a kid, she'd been kind of a ridiculously attractive example of improper behavior, which...might have been a bit of an influence on him, actually, now he came to think of it, especially since he had kind of hated being proper, and being Bella's girlfriend — Bella had been his favourite cousin, once upon a time — and a foreign commoner who didn't give a single shite what the House of Black thought of her had made Zee pretty much the single coolest person he'd ever met, so...
Okay, maybe that actually explained why Blaise reminded Sirius so much of himself as a teenager. Huh.
"Er...Sirius?"
Oh, bugger, he'd gotten distracted again. Whatever, point was, Blaise was a normal horny teenager, but it likely wasn't remotely difficult for him to pull whoever he wanted for a quick 'snog' — even if legilimency wasn't cheating, he was an attractive, confident young...not quite gentleman (which would only make him more attractive to a rather large segment of the teenage population, being a cool semi-outsider), which meant that the physical shite that traditionally went along with relationships probably wasn't much of a priority for him. Well, getting it from Harry specifically wouldn't be. But the emotional shite that went along with relationships... He was pretty sure by that measure they were already a thing, and had been for a while.
"Okay, what exactly do you think makes a couple a couple and not just friends?" he finally asked, deciding to take the same track Marlene had when he'd been begging her for insight on Jamie. From the opposite side, kind of, but more or less.
"Er, well, generally there's more snogging? And, um—" He cut himself off, going red yet again.
It suddenly occurred to Sirius that it was entirely possible no one had ever talked to the kid about sex stuff, like contraceptive spells and how to avoid shite like that AIDS thing the muggles were so concerned about these days. He should...probably do that, at some point. But not right now, he figured he still had a few months at least before Harry worked himself up to actually shagging anyone. "Yeah, okay, so is Blaise dating those other people he's been snogging?"
"Of course not! He's just...snogging them. They don't, I don't know, do anything other than snog."
"Such as...?"
Harry shrugged uncomfortably. "Spending time together and stuff?"
"Right, and how is spending time together and stuff different from just being friends with someone?"
Another shrug. More embarrassed squirming in place. "It just is."
Well, Sirius couldn't say that wasn't a fair answer, he'd never been able to say how just friends and relationship relationships were all that different, either. Though there hadn't really been anything just about his friendships. Marlene had said that was because he loved his friends — his real friends, not the people he was just killing time around or got thrown together with like comrades-in-arms — in a very all-or-nothing way. And, well, he didn't know Blaise was the same way, but the 'friendship' he and Harry had looked a hell of a lot more like his 'friendship' with Jamie than Jamie's friendship with, say, Alice and Frank, for example.
"Okay...so does Blaise spend time together and stuff with you?"
"Well...yeah, I guess. I mean... But he does with Daphne and Theo and Lyra, too, and I'm pretty sure he's not interested in dating any of them, so..."
"Er...I think what you mean to say is, he's not interested in snogging them." Which might or might not be true — Sirius would be willing to bet Blaise would snog any of his friends if they wanted to. (Normal teenage boy, and all that.) In fact, he was pretty sure he had snogged Lyra, she'd mentioned something in passing... Whatever, not the point. "Because what I'm getting here is, you've already got the spending time together and stuff part of being a couple down, you just want to snog him as well."
"Uh...I...guess?"
Sirius was right. He knew he was right. He'd spent far too many years at the centre of teenage drama to be wrong. Granted, Marley would probably have found some softer way to say it, but really, it was a very straightforward problem. And now that Harry knew what the objective actually was, they could get back to the solving part of said problem.
"Okay, well, what I meant, earlier, was that he's basically saying if you decide you want to snog him, fine, go ahead, he's in favour, but if you decide you don't want to, he's fine with that, too. He obviously doesn't care whether he otherwise spends much time with someone he's snogging or not, so he's already getting plenty of that. But you did just say he only has a handful of friends. I'm guessing he thinks that's more important, and doesn't want to fuck it up by doing something you're not entirely sure you're comfortable with and chasing you away."
Harry pouted at him — the same pout that Blaise and Little Bella (and Bella Bella, come to think of it) had stolen from Zee. (Sirius wondered fleetingly whether Harry realised how feminine that expression really was. Probably not. Damn it, Sirius, don't laugh!) "He can read my fucking mind, Sirius, I'm pretty sure he knows what I am and am not comfortable with."
"Do...you know what you are and aren't comfortable with?" Sirius had to ask, because given how incredibly uncomfortable and just awkward Harry was about so many things, he...really didn't think he did.
And apparently that was the end of this conversation, as Harry stared at him uncomprehendingly for a long moment, then pushed back his chair. "Er...thanks, Sirius," he said, sounding far more unnerved than grateful, and brought his plate to the sink. "I'm gonna go..." He trailed off, obviously uncertain what he was going to do, aside from be elsewhere.
Which, okay, that could have gone better. Sirius had just been coming around to the try snogging him point again when they'd gone off-topic. But it could have gone a lot worse, too. It wasn't as though he hadn't already got that bit in earlier, for one thing. (He had actually been pretty much out of advice at Have you tried snogging him? The rest of that conversation had been 1000% dragonshite. Dragonshite based on things Marlene had told him, but still.) And at least Harry hadn't told him to fuck off, which was what he had told Marley when she'd questioned whether he knew what he wanted from James. Of course, he'd actually known what he wanted — everything, and he knew how completely insane that made him sound, which was why he'd told her to fuck off instead of answering.
Harry probably had to think about it. He was a smart kid, Sirius was pretty sure he'd realise his wisest and most fantastic of godfathers was completely right, eventually.
And while he did, Sirius was going to see if there was a hangover potion anywhere in the flat, and take a shower because he smelled like vodka and sex, and then he might take a nap, because fuck this consciousness thing. Vastly overrated.
OMG, Sirius, what is this — maturity? Perish the thought!
Sirius's attitude toward Snape is considerably better than in canon because A) the confrontation at the Shack never happened and B) Snape annoys Lyra. The impact of the latter cannot be overstated. Also, it's not weird at all that he's now fucking Bella's girlfriend. Just, you know, fourteen-year-old Sirius would be SO proud of him, because Zee is the coolest person ever, getting with her might actually balance out the anti-cool-points from getting locked up for a murder he didn't even get to commit.
—Leigha
