Sometime that evening, Harry tentatively knocked on the door of Sirius's office. After hearing a curt "enter," he slowly poked his head through.

"I've said 'enter.' What are you waiting for, Harry?" the older man asked cockily.

"Just wondering if I'm not interrupting. It looks like, uhm, you have your hands full," Harry explained quietly.

He came in, though, closing the door behind him and briefly stopping to study the interior. While most of the castle appeared rough and in need of some decorating, the space looked, well, incredible. It almost brought back memories of Dumbledore's office. If it was more modest, it had the same level of organized chaos and a similar kind of synergy between being warm, inviting, and spine-tingling.

First, he glanced to his left. Two large windowsills looked like Neville's wet dream, occupied by several rare plant species. He had no idea that Sirius even cared about herbology, let alone owned a type of ivy with sparking pink leaves.

Another curious thing about the office was that the furniture had no sharp corners. An uncommonly large walnut desk was leaf-shaped, with a matching set of chairs. Wavy shelves behind the desk were messing with his mind because they were indeed... waving. He decided that it would be wise not to focus on what was happening with the capsule-like cupboards, wishing to avoid a nasty headache.

Besides, Sirius put an end to his brief inspection, bringing him back to the conversation.

"For Merlin's sake, Harry. You are never interrupting. Please stop acting like we don't know each other."

"Hey, I haven't started that," the younger man retorted, putting his hands up defensively.

Sirius pointed at a chair, inviting him to sit. "Right. I'll allow you to badger me about involving Draco any other day, but I may jump from the window if I have to take any more of this today."

Harry chuckled as he was sitting and stretching his legs in front of him.

"Oi, who said that I have a problem with Malfoy being here? I don't. Not that I plan to admit it to anyone else. Reputation to uphold and all that," he half-joked.

Sirius tapped his wand on a large stone ball on his desk, which opened, revealing firewhiskey and glasses. They had a wordless exchange, which included a questioning glance from the older man, followed by a nod of acceptance and appreciation of the practical solution by the younger one.

"Really? How come?" Sirius asked, filling the glasses and casually shoving one in his godson's direction.

"Well, I give it a week until he and Ron kill each other, so why bother," Harry quipped, taking a sip.

"Seriously, though, I'm not sure how he'll fit in here, given... everything. But I've seen him when he was a Death Eater, and I'm positive that he doesn't fit with them," he added, looking at the window to avoid getting mind-boggled by the shelves again.

Sirius picked up on it and muttered a spell to stop them. "Sorry. I was organizing. They don't normally do that."

"Phew! I worried you'd go crazy."

"Only now? Anyway, back to Draco, that's refreshing to hear. Maybe I should've come to you instead of Hermione. Not that I'm not grateful, she made nearly everyone come. But she doesn't seem to be handling it too well," Sirius observed.

He put his legs on the desk, unfussed by the fact that it was cluttered with paperwork. For some reason, seeing his godfather being his regular, nonchalant self made Harry feel better.

"To be fair, she doesn't seem to handle most things too well these days, even if she puts up a brave face," the younger man muttered.

Despite his mood improving, there was a hint of sadness or regret in his voice.

"I didn't know," Sirius admitted, rotating the glass in his hand and staring at the fluid inside.

Harry pouted slightly. "You'd have known. If you told me literally anything at all."

Sirius exhaled loudly before deciding to cut straight to the point, "So, I suppose that's the reason why you've stopped by?"

The younger man put his glass on the desk and corrected his position on the chair. "I guess. Among others."

He could chat with Sirius about random things for hours, pretending everything was alright. They would likely have immense fun. Maybe he'd even partially forget about how he felt with the whole situation, pushing the discomfort into slight denial. After all, he didn't consider himself petty, and it wasn't a huge deal. Still, it was there.

"I'm sorry," Sirius said genuinely.

Then, he realized that his position didn't exactly evoke seriousness and quickly dropped his legs back to the floor.

"It might be a surprise given my track record, but I didn't exactly think the whole thing through before diving head-on into it," he admitted.

"That's reassuring. You've just asked tens of people to leave their jobs and lives and join you," Harry started feeling mildly annoyed, and his tone reflected it accurately, as did his pace of drinking.

Sirius couldn't stop himself from rolling his eyes. "Damn, I don't mean the task force, just how I came about to work with Draco and how the planning jumpstarted from there. The plan is rock-solid. I may not inspire trust in those matters, but you can ask Kingsley."

Harry ran his left hand through his slightly tousled raven hair. He was thankful that the shelves weren't distracting him anymore because he needed to look his godfather directly in the eye.

"That's the thing. I do trust you. I've always had. I've told you stuff before I'd share it with anyone but Ron and Hermione. Only because they were right next to me. And even when people advised me against it," he huffed, moving higher on the irritation scale. Perhaps even venturing into anger.

"Yes, you were practically oversharing in your fifth year," Sirius blurted out a little too quickly, instantly regretting it. "Fuck, sorry, that was uncalled for."

Harry briefly felt a lump in his throat, reminding him of residual guilt around the battle in the Department of Mysteries. He recovered remarkably quickly, though.

"I guess it's fair. But for what it's worth, it had nothing to do with trust. I was worried I'd put you in danger. I'm not sure if you can compare it to randomly deciding to keep a huge part of your life secret for months," he said after a short, moderately uncomfortable silence.

Sirius took a sip of his drink and placed it back on the table, not taking away his hand. The dim candlelight accentuated his sad smile, provoking another heavy feeling in Harry's chest.

"It had everything to do with trust, Harry. You were a child. I was an adult, albeit a messed up one. And you didn't trust that I could take care of myself," the older man replied quietly.

He took a deep breath. "That's okay, though. I'm not saying that you were wrong."

"To be clear, I'm not saying I wasn't. Can we drop it? We've talked, cried, and drunk over it. We don't need to give it another evening and one more bottle of good firewhiskey," Harry offered, gulping down the rest of his drink.

Sirius poured him another glass, thinking that the evening was de facto perfect for heated conversations. The howling wind rattled the old window frames while thick fog seemed ready to creep inside the room. What better time to gush out resentments?

"Right," he conceded. "Let's get back to the other thing, or we won't have anything to get drunk over. Merlin's ass, I'm the perfect role model."

Harry couldn't stop himself from grinning widely. Fine, he didn't even try. "Yes. Merlin's ass indeed."

"Anyway, you've jumped to the conclusion that I randomly decided to keep it from you. You've never asked. Not now, not when I visited you with Hermione," Sirius pointed out, refilling his own glass and instantly taking a large sip.

"So?"

"So, for starters, you deserved a break from saving the world. You had a lot on your plate as it was, and I didn't even know if anything would come out of my idea," the older man explained.

"Didn't it occur to you that I'd prefer to have this on my plate, compared to boring myself to death on the Auror's training?" Harry countered passionately, his body leaning forward slightly, hands firmly placed on his thighs.

"It did, actually. But you also had Ginny. And other responsibilities. I thought it would be better for you to try a semi-normal life, even if I knew it wouldn't last long," Sirius replied calmly.

"And shouldn't that be my decision? If we are talking about trust... I'm an adult too, now," Harry took another quaff of his firewhiskey.

"Now that you mention it, you may have a point," Sirius offered him an apologetic smile, not being the slightest bit interested in defending a questionable choice.

"Thanks. I guess. Now, let's move to the other other thing," Harry proposed.

Grasping the edge of the desk, he moved his chair closer to the table. Then, he crossed his arms and lay them on the desk, all while staring into his godfather's eyes.

"Which is what exactly?" Sirius asked, not breaking the eye contact and also dipping forward to rest his head on his palm.

"Damn, what do you think? Obviously, you'd have told me at some point if Malfoy wasn't involved," Harry snapped, his tone slightly more aggressive than he intended.

He genuinely didn't have an issue with Malfoy getting a shot at redemption even if it meant working in him, which would no doubt be excruciating. But that didn't mean he had no issues with Malfoy at all.

"I would," Sirius stated plainly. "So what?"

Harry groaned exasperatedly. "So quite a lot of things."

"I mean it in the least personal way possible, but at the time, I needed his insight more than I needed yours," the older man knew the answer wasn't what his godson wanted to hear. But it was the truth.

"Oh, believe me, I'm not offended by the fact that I don't have access to Death Eaters' dirty secrets," Harry growled, pouring even more alcohol into his throat.

"Good."

"What is slightly worrying, though, is that you haven't even considered telling anyone. What if he was a double agent for Lucius? It wouldn't be so great to lose you yet another time, to yet another Peter Pettigrew," Harry ranted.

Apparently, no arguments were off the table that evening. Hearing the last one, Sirius was just putting down his glass. He did it too abruptly, making it thump loudly on the desk.

"Maybe I did consider it and ruled it out as unlikely. Or maybe I wanted to avoid being held back by such conversations," he snarled.

Harry rose from his seat, feeling the heat climbing up his spine. "Or, here's another idea. Maybe you could've been more careful and involved him to a lesser extent. He could've still been here."

"Or he could've been dead already," Sirius said with a grimace. "Really, what point does this have? You've said yourself he was a lousy Death Eater."

"But you didn't know that!" Harry exclaimed, pulling up the sleeves of his sweater as he paced around the room in an attempt to vent off some of the frustration.

"Well, you did know. That's no secret. But you couldn't have been sure about him and Lucius," he added, after calming down, if only slightly.

"I had my reasons," Sirius muttered into his drink, which he was inspecting with great attention once again. "But of course, I couldn't know for sure. I took a leap of faith."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"That's pretty fucking dumb."

"I know."

"Great."

"Yeah, great."

They drank some more. Argued more. Laughed. Hugged.

"So, be honest, how terrible was living with Malfoy?" Harry asked, his voice slurring a little.

"You'd be surprised. I think he's grown out of being a Malfoy," Sirius answered genuinely.

He could name a few of Draco's habits that didn't go well with him. But why add fuel to something that is already charged enough to go on for hundreds of years?

"Really? Nothing?" Harry faked the disappointment.

"He may be a little broody for my liking. But aren't we all, these days."

Now the younger man's legs were at the desk. He failed to count how many glasses of firewhiskey passed since he entered his godfather's office. Well, he didn't care too much. But Ginny would.

"What's the deal with you, Ron, and Hermione?" Sirius voiced the question that would have been in newspaper headlines if they had fewer crimes and massacres to report.

Still, it usually landed on the second or third page.

"Not enough firewhiskey," Harry tried to dismiss the topic, even though he'd just finished off another glass.

Sirius raised his eyebrows expectantly, not buying into the lame evasion. When only silence followed, he commented, "That's a shame."

"Even if I wanted, I couldn't explain, alright?" Harry said defensively, his shoulders slumping a little. "Nothing happened. And too much happened."

Sirius chewed on his godson's words for a bit before replying, "Cleverly put. Has a nice ring to it. And doesn't seem like a particularly solid excuse."

Harry's hand collided with an arm pad in an angry gesture. "Who said I needed excuses?"

Sirius shrugged at him smugly. "Okay, okay, I'm backing off. Maybe another time."

"You sure you don't want to stay the night?"

"I'm sure I want to. Who'd want to go back to his girlfriend pissed like a troll? But I can't," Harry replied, leaning on the door to keep his balance.

"I don't think trolls get pissed like that," Sirius observed, rummaging through the potion cupboard located just next to the entrance.

"Shut up. You've probably never even seen a troll," Harry smacked him playfully.

Taken by surprise, Sirius nearly dropped a vial of greenish liquid but managed to catch it with his other hand. Silently appreciating his drunk reflexes, he twisted his upper body to glare at his godson.

"Yeah, yeah. And you've seen everything, smart ass. Do you know you have a very angry demeanor today?"

Harry turned to the door and pretended to bang his head on it. "A very angry demeanor? That's a phrase you come up with after half a night of drinking? That's it. I'm leaving."

Sirius finally found what he was looking for, just as Harry was turning the brazen doorknob. He quickly grabbed the triangular vial, rushed to the door, and pushed the flask into Harry's free hand. "Here, the hangover potion. See you next week?"

"Sure. Dumb as you are, at least you are not useless and boring," Harry shot on his way out.

Sirius snorted, though it might have sounded more like oinking.

Harry stopped mid-way through the door and turned around, tottering slightly.

"I'll try to stop Ron from shitting all over Malfoy each time he opens his mouth. Not that it will work, but I'll try," he made a drunken promise.

There was a nagging half-thought at the back of his mind, telling him that it would come back to bite him.

Sirius beamed at him, "Thanks."

After that, Harry finally found himself out in the corridor. His confidence in going back home plummeted down as he realized that the damn walls were spinning, serving as a reminder of Sirius's shelves.

One foot in front of another. Change the foot. Repeat.

The apparition point was very, very, veeeery far away. Why did he have to renovate his floo now? Also, why did Sirius have a hangover potion but not a sobering up one? Maybe his godfather didn't need to sober up. Or didn't want to.

One foot in front of another. Change the foot. Repeat.

He wouldn't blame him. Keeping a clear mind was getting increasingly unbearable in their world. And, after all, Sirius had to get through living with Malfoy somehow.

One foot in front of another. Change the foot. Repeat.