Chapter 3
"There is little to be done right now. At least I can't really do much, and I'm fairly certain neither do other healers. You could try with the curse breakers, but please be careful - you know they usually work with objects and not people. I doubt they have any real expertise when it comes to curse marks, though they could provide us with more information to work with." Andi's frown lessened as she looked up at Sirius. "Don't worry though, he should be fine for now. It doesn't appear to have any serious effects on him. After the calming draught he probably won't wake till morning."
"Yeah." Sirius said. "I just... I don't know how I will be able to take care of him on my own. When he was born it was a hassle with three people there and now..." Sirius leaned forward and put his head in his hands. "Lily, James..."
"You'll do just fine." Andromeda said putting a hand on his shoulder. "You said you resigned from the aurors?" At his nod she continued. "Then you will have plenty of time for him. I will obviously be happy to help, but..."
"You have your hands full with Nymphie and your job." Sirius said.
"Yeah... ever since Ted passed it has not been easy." she said and though there was still pain in her voice, it was much milder than a year back. "So I'll definitely be able to relate if you have trouble adjusting."
Deciding to just be upfront about it, Sirius pressed the issue on his mind.
"Andi maybe you should move in here for now? We could help each other care for the kids and I would feel better knowing you're here. Dora would not need to stay by herself anymore, the house-elves would love to take care of her. Things are just getting worse and worse out there. The Death Eater activity is at an all-time high and it will probably still be a while before things finally start calming down. I could put your cottage under fidelius and it would be there for you to fall back on. There is no way someone will break through the wards here so quickly you wouldn't be able to escape. I limited the access to myself, and now you." Sirius saw her hesitating and quickly added. "I know no one really knows where your house is, but it may not last. There are spells that can track you through most wards, blood tracking spells coming to mind." He said alluding primarily to Bellatrix.
"Well, I guess it is an option. I'll go back for Dora and we'll stay here with you, at least for a few days." Andi conceded.
"Brill." Sirius grinned and got up. "I'll get the champ here to his room." He took Harry from her and made his way towards his would-be bedroom.
Harry had not actually spent any real length of time here before, so Sirius had to do a bit of creative re-modeling. With a dozen flicks of his wand, the nondescript room changed beyond recognition. He transfigured the full-sized bed into a big crib filled with cushions and plushies. Putting Harry down he looked around and set out to continue transforming the non-descript bedroom to be more child-friendly.
He changed the layout of the room a bit, actually shrinking it a bit, as there was no need for so much space right now, and set out to do a bit of enchanting. Next, taking inspiration from Hogwarts' dining hall, he enchanted the ceiling, walls, and even floor to look like the sky outside, adding an easy switch to easily turn it on and off as needed. As an afterthought, he added a default setting to fall back on in case of storms and such - the last thing he needed was to terrify the boy. With a few tweaks, he was finally satisfied with his charms work.
Looking back at the crib and the sleeping boy he got back to it. First, he enchanted the sheets and cushions to always keep optimal temperature, based on the caster's sensations - if Harry felt too hot they would cool down gently and vice versa. It was actually the hardest piece of spell-work he'd done yet. Next, going a bit further, he enchanted all the plushies to make adequate sounds when touched or even apply very minor cheering or tickling charms on the person touching them. Finally, Sirius also covered all the surfaces with cushioning charms as a safety precaution.
'I think it's more than enough for now.' Sirius slumped his shoulders, feeling the excitement of the day catch up to him. It was a veritable rollercoaster of emotions, from the battle in the ministry to reliving the death of James and Lily and finding himself in the past, altogether it made for an exhausting experience. 'Well, whatever, I will think on it some more tomorrow. As I am right now I am more likely to fuck something up than improve it. '
Looking down at the little boy Sirius felt a wave of nostalgia hit him. Kissing Harry on the forehead, he swore Harry would have the perfect childhood this time around, now that he had the opportunity to take his duties as a godfather seriously. 'Though you could say I've always been serious. I am probably the most Sirius individual one could hope for.' He snickered to himself.
With that done and Harry still peacefully sleeping, Sirius made way for the exit. By the door, he turned around for one last look and, not finding anything the matter, went back downstairs.
"Flopsy! I want one of the Potter elves watching Harry at all times, if he wakes up inform me immediately." Without waiting for an answer he continued. "Ready the rooms for Andromeda and her daughter. And help her move their things if they require it."
"Yes, master Sirius!" The excitable elf popped out to inform the others of the orders.
Sirius thanked the gods for the foresight James and Lily had, making him the Potter Regent in their will. He would be the prime candidate anyway just from being Harry's guardian and godfather, but he would bet his wand hand Dumbledore would at least seriously consider forcing it to court anyway. And Wizengamot, as it was now, would not rule in Sirius's favor, of that much he was sure. The dark faction would vote against him out of scorn, being denounced as a blood traitor by his own family had no doubt ensured that. The light faction ate out of Dumbledore's hand and their distrust of the Blacks would surely extend to Sirius.
There would be no point in entering a political dispute with Dumbledore any time soon. No matter who was in the right, Dumbledore held every advantage. Even if Sirius exhausted all his family resources on bribes and political favors he did not think he had a chance of winning as things were. After all, he was sure Dumbledore was not above doing the same and he had decades as the Headmaster to influence people's perception of him and gather favors. No, he would have to make sure the law was clearly on his side with no room for debate.
He sank into the armchair in the living room. Regardless, everything was going well so far. So well in fact that it just made him more worried. His main concern was Dumbledore pulling out some crazy shit like trying to get the Wizengamot to straight-up take the custody from him in some unprecedented manner. Normally people would be wary of setting a precedent for simply taking people from their rightful guardians, without due cause, but with the war going on people were focused on the here and now, rarely thinking about future consequences. Sirius's imprisonment proved that.
Thinking back to those times made him wonder if it had even been real. Black's were once upon a time known for their seer blood, though those times had long passed. Nonetheless, he did not know what was more likely - going back in time or all of those years being but a vivid premonition.
Sighing, he brought up his occlumency shields. They were refined multiple times during his time in Azkaban. In the first few weeks, they collapsed almost entirely, due to dementors. Fortunately, after he had figured out his animagus transformation lessened their strain considerably, he was able to rebuild them.
He slept as a grim, and every waking hour was dedicated to refining his occlumency. He experimented with different solutions for a while, eventually settling on one. His mind palace resembled a bunch of chaotic lines interconnected in thousands of nodes. Some of the lines were outright blocked, some lead to false memories and traps, and some to real, but decidedly unpleasant memories. Then there were precious few that actually stored his thoughts and relevant memories. And even if you found one it would not lead you to another.
It was not an ideal solution when it came to convenience, making even small changes often took time and effort, and trying to fundamentally change the way it worked now would be harder than starting from scratch, but he considered it the most secure he had come across. With the strength and size of his mind palace, he had confidence it would hold up against almost any form of mind manipulation – from imperius curse to compulsions and mind-based illusions. He would even bet he could stop himself from speaking if given veritaserum, since outright lying was impossible as far as he knew.
Then there was legilimency, another form of recreation he had on that cursed fucking island. It was a bit tricky, since he could only rarely see his fellow inmates, much less look them in the eye. Fortunately, he found out he did not need direct eye contact or sight. It was very hard to establish any sort of stable connection that way, but he quickly realized that all you needed was to be aware of the exact location of someone. His favorite way was to focus on the sound of someone's breathing and establish a connection that way. He was able to fully enter Travers's and Rudolphus's minds, but despite being the closest to Bella's cell, he could not make any sense of hers. He guessed being bat-shit crazy gave her a form of occlumency similar to his own, judging by hundreds of memories he encountered in her mind. He was pretty sure most of these outlandish events did not take place.
Now occlumency was proving its worth. The whole day he kept his occlumency working, which helped him at times when he had to fake or so suppress his emotions. He thought that letting some of them through had been the right choice though. He was hardly a professional actor and he definitely should not seem emotionless after such a traumatizing event taking place. He definitely had not made a habit of using occlumency to control his emotions at this point in his life, despite being quite proficient at it.
He had already concluded that he could not in any way let it slip about what happened to him. To anyone. It was an open secret in higher society that the Department of Mysteries had every right to take people in for questioning. And a suspected time-travel was right up their alley, time magic being considered one of the most dangerous. He did not think being discovered would end well for him, and he had no real reason to risk it.
Besides he wanted to move on with his life, this was something he did not have a chance to experience last time. His life had been effectively cut off at 21. Telling people close to him he was mentally older or what he went through would not be conducive to getting back to any semblance of normalcy. He would have to play it off as a traumatizing event having a profound effect on him. His sudden maturity and change in priorites could be explained as him simply feeling the pressure of responsibility.
Getting his thoughts back on track, he began to think of what his next move should be.
He came to a realization that he needed more political power, no matter how much he wanted to deny it. His main opponent right now was not Voldemort or his Death Eaters, but Dumbledore, who relied on his influence, loopholes, and pure deceit. Politics were never his forte, as he always was a rather straightforward person. It was something he felt was a good characteristic to have despite his entire upbringing telling him otherwise. Maybe that would not be such a bad thing either in a current political climate, things needed to get done and that wasn't really happening. Everyone was looking out for themselves, which to a smaller degree would not have been a problem, but as it was it prevented any form of consensus from being reached.
Yes, Sirius should be able to use it to his advantage. He would try and build a more neutral camp around himself for like-minded individuals, those who did not appreciate the radical mindsets of either light or dark faction, and try to create a middle-ground, promoting ideas that most could get behind.
That was definitely something to consider further. Maybe a trip to Gringotts was in order, despite the late hour.
END
