(Author's Note: This will probably be the last chapter I add for a week or so. I'm going out of town for a few days. Again, I apologize for its being so short. Keep R/Ring and tell me what I should be doing! As always, JKR's characters are hers, Thomas Harris' characters are his, and only the plot and the assumed names are mine. CC)


Sirius' eyes fluttered open slightly, then opened wide when he saw Lucy. Harry couldn't help grinning; Lucy's good looks were such that she could make a dead man sit up and take notice. He knelt by Lucy's side, handing her the water glass.

"Don't try to move, don't try to speak," she urged Sirius, gently pressing her hand against his bony chest. "Just drink some water first."

"What happ--"

"Ah-ah-ahhh," she gently chided. "Drink first, then talk." She took a sip from the glass herself. "See? Not poisoned. It's okay." She placed her free hand under him, cradling his upper body; then she put the glass to his lips, slowly tilting it into his mouth, letting him have only a swallow's worth at first. When he had safely assimilated that, she gave him some more, little by little, until the glass was empty. His face began to regain some color, underneath the grime.

Lucy gently placed Sirius back onto the couch. "Harry, stay here with your godfather. I'm going to heat up some chicken broth for him. That'll be ready faster than the pizza, and I want to see him put at least a pint of chicken soup inside him before we let him tackle the pizza in any event." She stood up and moved briskly into the kitchen.

By now Sirius was strong enough to turn his head to follow her as she went. "You certainly know how to pick your guardians, Harry," he said appreciatively in a low voice, once he felt she was out of earshot. "Chicken soup instead of rats. A man could get used to this."

"How did you know I was here?"

"I overheard the Dursleys arguing about it last night. This morning I visited a public library and looked up Dr. Reader on the Internet. That's how I got the address."

Harry was shocked. "You walked into a library? Like this?"

Sirius gave a short bark of a laugh. "No, I actually had the brains to nick some Muggle clothes to wear, though it was a job, let me tell you." He sat up on the couch, flexing his arms and hands. "Took me two hours just to get the jeans."

A bell sounded in the kitchen; Lucy had evidently used the microwave to heat up the broth. She came into the foyer, carrying both the soup in a mug and a small table. She set the table by Sirius and set the steaming mug on top of it. "Here you go. Drink it up, and in a little while we'll see about solid food for you. In the meantime, Harry will show you where the bathroom is, to freshen up and so forth, if you want to use it after it you're done with the chicken soup. The pizza won't be ready for some time yet." She gave him a friendly smile and bustled back into the kitchen.

Sirius raised the mug to his lips, taking a tentative sip. "Mmmmm," he murmured in sheer pleasure. "She puts onion and garlic in her chicken soup. Delicious." He drained the mug dry, setting it down on the table with a sigh of satisfaction. He then pulled a sleeve up to his arm and sniffed it, wrinkling his nose as he did so.

"Come on, Harry," he said, regaining his feet. "Show me the way to the bathroom. I can take a hint as well as the next man. Nurse Lucy is right, I could do with a good scrubbing."

Harry grinned as he took Sirius' arm. "I'll wash and dry your robe for you while you soak. Follow me."



Sirius spent quite a while in the upstairs bathroom. Harry watched over him most of the time, hovering like a hawk in case he fainted again. The only time Harry wasn't within arm's length of his godfather was when he took Sirius' robes down to the laundry room in the cellar; he used some gentle hand soap to wash Sirius' robes, then put them in the dryer on the "Delicate" cycle.

"You missed Dumbledore by a few hours," Harry informed Sirius as his godfather stepped out of the shower. "He came to visit Dr. Reader this morning."

"Really?", said Sirius, running his fingers through his hair, which still had some matting in it despite the best efforts of the shampoo from the Farmacia di Santa Novella. "What did he do?"

"He came by to talk to Dr. Reader, and ended up taking him away for the day to St. Mungo's, to see if he could treat the Longbottoms."

"Frank and Alice? The couple that the Death Eaters tortured?"

"Yeah. Dumbledore thinks Reader can help them, and Reader thinks so, too. He certainly talked and acted as if he did."

"So Dumbledore trusts your new guardians to that extent," mused Sirius as he toweled off himself. "Amazing."

"That's not the half of it." Harry told Sirius about Lucy's having discovered herself to be a latent witch. "She's not only a witch, she's a very powerful one, though she doesn't have any training as yet. Dumbledore wants to start in on that with her as soon as he can. I think she wants to be an Auror."

Sirius gazed off into space for a moment. "An Auror, eh? That ought to be very interesting," he said, smiling slightly. He pulled on a bathrobe, one of Dr. Reader's, that Harry had handed to him. "Very interesting, indeed."