Thanks hugely to everyone who gave me help with my titles. The amount of thought and effort people put in was humbling. Special shoutout to johan x judai, sweetice, and drainednerves for inspiring what I've ended up choosing for this book, and for the next :D


"You can't possibly be studying on a day like this," Sirius' voice rudely interrupted, and Harry jerked his head up, startled, as the gravelly voice intruded on his language lessons.

"Hä?" he managed, not mangling the pronunciation too badly, but then the words slipped away and he found himself thinking in English again. "Er, was? Wait. Crap."

At the top of the stairs going down into his luggage compartment, Sirius stood haloed by the light behind him. It took Harry's eyes a moment to focus on his godfather's expression: he was grimacing a little and raked a hand through his longish hair.

"Oops?" Sirius tried. "You actually were studying? Sorry, Pup. Uh…how's it going?"

A few feet below his godfather, Harry sat at his desk in the artificial lighting and stared down at his study notes and textbooks with a halfway defeated air.

"I mean, I'm learning," Harry offered. "The memory potions are a cheat that muggles would kill for, I'm not going to lie. But," he changed his tone somewhat before picking up a hefty book and flapping it awkwardly in Sirius' general direction, "Muggle study guides are significantly better than anything the Wizarding World has to offer. Just saying."

Huffing an amused sigh, Sirius stopped playing with his hair and tramped down the stairs to hover over Harry. Harry watched while he did so: despite the legal complexities and public outcry in newspapers throughout Britain and France, Sirius was looking better than Harry had ever seen him. The access to healers, Harry figured, was making all the difference. And possibly the chance to finally, publicly, have his say.

Sirius prowled over towards Harry, shoulders looking lighter than they ever had, and peered down at Harry's study notes with a bemused air.

"You've finished up tons of these things, surely," his godfather queried. "I mean, are you fluent yet, or…?"

"Merlin, no. I mean, if you speak slow enough and mispronounce words the English way, I can probably follow along with what you're saying, and if you gave me a grammar book and an hour, I might be able to write you a letter…"

It was helpful, of course, that he'd previously studied Proto-Germanic for Runes, as the Germanic origin language, and just a pity that Proto-Germanic was as distantly related to German as it was to English. But Sirius didn't seem to know or care.

A strong hand landed on his shoulder, making Harry jump. "But that's magnificent, Pup! Almost every wizard ever is multilingual, I'm so pleased that you've decided to catch up!"

Harry looked up at his godfather's tanned face and traced the fine worry lines with his eyes subtly. Sirius had been hanging out outside as often as he could, although Harry couldn't blame him, and his skin was slightly ruddy. The worry lines were lighter. There was more of a spark in his grey eyes now, too.

"Hey now," Harry protested. "Yes, I finally figured that out for myself, thank you very much, but I didn't notice you pointing the fact out when we met."

Grinning with an ease that had never been there before, Sirius ruffled Harry's hair madly before tweaking his ear in a cheeky manner. "Oi. I had other things on my mind back when we met. Like aurors and soul-sucking demons and a little bit of friendly murder, and whatnot. Your failure to notice that British wizards almost uniformly speak English, and Scots or Scots Gaelic - and often all three - was an embarrassing mistake on your part. Those who don't, tend to speak Irish, obviously."

"...Obviously."

Harry looked down at his extensive German notes, the three grammar books, fat dictionary and the rather heavy book of exercises that he returned to his desk with a thud. "Uh huh, and you didn't tell me about the other languages for the same reason?"

Sirius shrugged, still looking light and happy and teasing. "Almost every wizard who goes through Hogwarts eventually picks up another language out of sheer necessity. Whether you need High German, Latin or Egyptian for Runes, or a language or two from Asia and Africa for similar reasons, if you take History to N.E.W.T level and focus on the development of European governments and international confederations, or if you plan to travel after school - wherever, at least one extra language will be needed then. Especially if you want a career in quidditch, eh? It's practically impossible to miss that happening around you during N.E.W.T years, Pup, although I guess you're a little too young to pick it up so far."

"...Right." Harry resolutely fought back a blush as he considered that, last timeline, he had absolutely not picked up any other language, nor had he noticed that his classmates had done so. Apart from Hermione, but she was a law unto herself.

Then again, of course, perhaps the war dropping into the middle of seventh year had interrupted student plans to travel somewhat too.

He blinked a little as Sirius reached over his shoulder and roughly piled his study books up in a corner of his desk.

"Never mind that for now, Pup. Let's go and enjoy us some good German freedom. Breathe in the foreign air – maybe practice the language with real wizards, what do you say? I've forgotten most of the Ger–, the 'Deutch' I once knew m'self. Not much call for it in Azkaban, obviously. I can still manage 'Hello, pretty girl' though!" Sirius added on brightly, "which is probably all I need! C'mon, kid!"

Harry let himself be cajoled out of his trunk and into the Ministry room in which they were staying.

The German Ministry room, he remembered, as he looked around to see the elaborate angular arched windows and gothic?...style furnishings. There had been a guide introducing the place when Harry first joined Sirius, but a lot of it had gone over his head.

He took a moment to reorient himself within the room.

The morning sun beamed in the tall windows with more cheer than Harry was used to seeing. Outside, the sky was blue-blue-blue like it never seemed to be in London, a deep sky blue that somehow seemed to have intensity to it. Probably due to the fact that they were living in an all-wizard town right now, Harry decided, and well away from muggle pollutants.

They were high in the Harz mountains, the better to hide from the muggles, Harry figured. Before he'd portkeyed over – after the obligatory time in the Dursley's boot cupboard – he'd expected the place to look like Hogsmeade, or possibly the Alley in style.

But it didn't.

Instead Verstecktes Tal was full of brightly coloured, multi-story architecture. The half-timbered buildings varied in colour: a cheerful yellow inn might be right next to a lavender clockmaker's, or a pale indigo bookshop. The rooftops were cheeky angular triangles, the better to cope with the winter snowfall, and altogether the valley was joyous and raucous and enchanting yet utterly unlike Britain.

From the windows in Sirius' room, in their own temporary accommodation, Harry could look out over a rather pretentious public garden to see the squat, pale cream British Embassy sulking on the other side.

Neither Harry nor Sirius had ever been near it, and the British Ambassadors also went out of their way to avoid them too.

Harry stifled a snort.

After Sirius' innocence had been plastered all over the European papers - Germany, France, Spain, et cetera, and of course Britain - Fudge's administration and the eternally incompetent British Ministry of Magic became infamous.

WAR HEROES VILIFIED was one of Rita Skeeter's headlines, as she made the most of her anonymous informer's promised drama. POTTER PERSECUTED. LONE VOICE OF REASON DROWNED. NOBLE AND ANCIENT HOUSES ATTACKED, was a particularly good one that got its more established readers screaming in righteous indignation.

In Germany now, the British Ambassadors took great care never to be caught on the same street as Harry and his godfather. The international media tended to pop up whenever they met, and write more headlines that made Britain look terrible.

"I wonder why," Harry sometimes mused ironically, and Sirius always came back with some kind of pithy response, like, "The Continent has always thought the British to have terrible taste. Just look at their coffee."

Point, Harry agreed, who only drank it from Alfredo, an Italian shopkeep, when he was in Hogsmeade.

But currently Harry didn't mind Britain's embarrassment at all, and Sirius thought the whole scandal was only right and proper. For some reason, though, the ambassadors weren't happy.

And that was why Harry and Sirius were still living in the German Ministry, as some kind of political refugees, blithely maintaining the moral high ground while Britain shook itself to petty little pieces.

Either way, Harry looked out at the squat little British Embassy from Sirius' third-floor window and enjoyed the appropriate political fallout.

"Come on!" Sirius interrupted his musings, and snuck behind Harry to snap shut his luggage shut. "It's a lovely day. We've got no more meetings till four, and Healer Müller says that I should be going out and doing stuff! Let's go, Pup! I wanna show you around!"

Remus was out, probably doing something worthwhile and productive.

Dobby was also keeping himself busy – learning house-elf German, Harry remembered with a snicker – which left Crookshanks' head to rise an inch from where he was resting on Sirius' pillow in the sun. The great half-kneazle flicked a feline ear forward, but declined to come with. Crow, on the other hand, fluttered over from where he'd been basking on the window ledge and landed determinedly on Harry's shoulder.

Harry ducked his head away from the ruffle of feathers and the small puff of bird dander that clouded the air for a moment. He held back a sneeze.

His collapse of last year had made changes. Harry almost always had himself a supervisor these days, and with Kreacher holding down the home front in England, it came down to Crookshanks and Crow to mind Harry in Germany. Currently, Crow was acting like Harry was some kind of very stupid fledgling.

"Hey there," Harry offered the bird, and scratched him behind his skull in that spot the crow liked. "Thanks, bud. I guess we're off then."

Sirius grabbed his elbow with enthusiasm and dragged the small party out the door.


They made it without incident onto the 'Botschaftsstraße' – Harry was pretty sure it could be translated into 'Embassy Road' somewhat accurately – which gave Harry another chance to catalogue the scenery. Across the road from the downstairs foyer was a mint-green building that waved the Spanish flag, and left of that stood a cool blue half-timbered building, on top of which the French flag waved merrily.

Sirius dragged them past quickly though, taking Harry down the stone roadway towards a louder section of the village.

A familiar-looking witch – possibly a Spanish reporter – spotted them as they crossed paths on the road, and waved to the group cheerfully.

Harry nodded politely to the father and his two children just down the way, and Sirius caused a group of obscenely young witches to blush and giggle as he shouted, "Hello pretty ladies," in heavily accented German, without stopping to speak further.

They were both public figures Verstecktes Tal for the moment; Sirius' face had been plastered across all the papers for the last few months, while Harry himself had been cornered in the Ministry and asked for photos and autographs as soon as he'd arrived.

But now that was out of the way, they were free to roam the mountain, and Sirius' enthusiastic pulling soon dragged Harry around a corner.

"Willkommen," Sirius gestured grandly, "to Unmögliches Entzückensstraße!" Then he swore. "Hope I said that right."

The noise was almost deafening.


The little stone street that Harry and Sirius had been walking on opened up around the corner into a wide, rectangular-looking shopping district.

Small stands spotted the middle of it, with cheerful witches and wizards enthusiastically bellowing advertisements for their wares.

It took Harry a moment of confused din before he translated the shouts into calls for "Meatloaf" and "Spicy German Sausage," "Gingerbread Spice," and "Egg noodles."

The scents were equally dizzying: curry and coffee and something sweet like pancakes, alongside the heavy scent of pine and, it took Harry a moment, a heady background of hops.

Colourful shoppers in distinctly German-cut wizarding robes were lined up patiently or meandered around the stalls in chatty gaggles of twos or threes.

Cafe-style tables were set up on one side of the square, and two floors above the busiest eatery was a wrinkly old wizard in the most washed out of robes, rocking on his balcony and singing loudly and offkey, accompanied by his guitar.

As Harry stared upwards, fascinated, the old man winked roguishly at a balcony on the opposite side of the square. It was filled with equally old and wrinkly witches, knitting needles clacking loudly, and they blushed and giggled and cat-called back, causing the old wizard to strum louder and sing more raucously.

A bunch of drinkers down below also saw the exchange, and roared loudly in encouragement, tankards held aloft, and Harry heard Sirius' delighted voice giggle, and his footsteps sped up again.

"Come along, Pup! This is my kind of place, it is. Hot witches, and good food, and loud music; shops galore and money in my pocket! Where do you want to go first, kiddo?"

Crow cocked his head curiously, and Sirius dragged them into the middle of the crowd.

The first thing that Harry wanted to buy, of course, was located in the local bookshop.

Somewhat to Sirius' dismay, Harry took charge of the little group and dragged them over to an orange-coloured building that had bewitched advertisements shouting out book deals.

"Buy two, get the third half price!" a throaty German voice called out, while,

"Textbooks here! Back to School special! This week only!" competed in an eloquent female timbre that stemmed from a huge, calligraphied pine-wood sign.

"Textbooks!" Harry exclaimed delightedly.

"Oh. Textbooks," Sirius echoed in despair. "Harry, Pup. Light of my life, delight of my soul; godson of all godsons…are you sure you're related to Prongs, you say? Why come to Germany and buy textbooks on your holidays?" He slapped one dramatic hand over his forehead. "Moony will be over the moon. Heh heh."

Would he, Harry thought darkly? He'd barely had three sentences from the werewolf since he'd arrived, but he didn't want to dwell on the thought for long.

"Won't it be fascinating to compare the Durmstrang curriculum to the Hogwarts one?" Harry shot over his shoulder, before shouldering through the crowd to browse in excitement.

Sirius scuttled to keep up. "They teach Dark Arts at Durmstrang, Harry."

Which is precisely the point, Harry managed not to say, needing to widen his spellcasting repertoire. Instead, he contented himself with, "And they teach the counters too, I hope," which Sirius couldn't deny.

The huge wooden shelves were a delight, and Harry walked towards them, Crow on his shoulder, with as much enthusiasm as Hermione might show.

"Guten Tag, wie geht's Ihnen?" Harry grinned at the shopkeep, as he passed by the wooden counter scattered with haphazard parchment.

"Gut, gut," the shopkeep grinned back smarmily. "danke der Nachfrage. Womit kann ich helfen?"

It only took Harry half an hour with the help of the German-speaking shop assistant and his library cataloguing spell before he found all the books he wanted and paid for them with a pile of gold.

"Wie viel macht das?"

"Sechseinhalb Gulden," the wizard charged him. "A special rate for Mr Potter."

So Harry merrily shoved the books into his mokeskin pouch and turned to his pouting godfather.

"Alright Sirius, that's me done. Where do you want to go now? It's your call from here on out."

"About time," his cheeky godfather responded faux-sulkily. "You still owe me for that stunt you pulled with the Draught of Living Death. I'm shocked – shocked, I say! – that you haven't proactively gone out of your way to make amends yet. Ooh, I bet you'll like this next stop."

Within the surging crowds, Harry rolled his eyes. They'd been over this, more than once in the past few months, and had a few rousing arguments besides.

"We've discussed this, Sirius," Harry acknowledged with a half-amused sigh. "I haven't forgiven you yet for trying to run off and get yourself killed either. Again. That's what got you locked up in Azkaban the first time, don't forget."

Sirius sidestepped a posse of schoolgirls who caught Harry's eye, and giggled and whispered in their brightly coloured robes and colourful belts.

"Er ist so süß," Harry heard one girl mutter, and he flushed bright red and skipped faster to catch up to Sirius.

"Your father wouldn't have drugged me," Sirius insisted, but after months of this, there was no venom to his words.

"My father would have hexed you much earlier," Harry insisted, and surprised Sirius into a loud bark of laughter.

"Fair enough, fair enough," Sirius added. "Prongs was known to curse me out of idiocy every once in a while."

Harry and Crow followed Sirius obediently for a couple of minutes, sometimes dawdling to wait for a gap in the crowd, sometimes dashing forward to snag one.


Eventually, he and Sirius found themselves standing in the shadow of a tall and elegant building, the terracotta plaster lending the place an air of gravitas while still appearing jaunty and bold.

"So?" Harry turned to his godfather with a shrug, having eyed the building carefully. "It looks…private. What are we here for?"

"This," Sirius replied, again throwing out his arms to gesture grandly at the whole building before them, "is one of the best tailors known to mainland Europe."

Harry shrugged. "What's that got to do with us?"

His godfather's eyes widened comically. "What's it got t—?! I can't believe it! 'What's it got to do with us?' you ask!? We need a new wardrobe, Harry m'lad. I, of course, have been "unfairly incarcerated" and have lacked the chance to maintain my usual living conditions."

"Uh huh?"

"While you, Pup of my life, light in my darkest hour, simply have terrible taste. I made the appointment for us both months ago. While you were still at Hogwarts, in fact, deeply regretting the fact that you'd drugged me."

Harry scratched the back of his neck with the arm that wouldn't disturb Crow, and found all his rebuttals duly denied. You couldn't really argue with someone you'd illegally drugged, confined and kidnapped, he'd found out. Not even if said wizard was mostly forgiving of it.

Sirius blathered on. "I've had the good staff at the Ministry ask around for me, and had your magnificent lawyer run a proper check as well. This place is legit. It's owned, apparently, by a rather well-off wizard of French descent who's left the streets of Paris for a more unique, individual style. The best of both worlds," he enthused, completely missing Harry's lack of excitement. "Clean lines, subtle colours…very fashionable cuts, of course, and they all come with an independent spin to suit each witch or wizard in question. And for you and I, Harry m'lad, it will all be paid for by the British Ministry's gold."

That sounded more like Harry, at any rate. "What, my robes too?"

Sirius waved a blasé hand. "Obviously, I, as your very responsible and mature godfather, should be taking my duty as guardian and caretaker of you very seriously – hah! Seriously, get it? – and therefore it is to be expected that my living costs should be extended to cover your needs too."

Harry raised an eyebrow and raised a hand to shade his eyes from the sun. "Aside from occasionally wanting to run off and kill yourself, of course."

"Of course."

There was a pause, until Sirius bounced a little on his toes and began enthusiastically ascending the small steps to the front door, to the right of which hung a tiny, copper bell. He pulled the rope cheerfully.

"Not to mention, Pup, it's not just robes we're getting for you. You need coats, underthings, socks and leggings, open-front robes and the more traditional style. I thought we could fit you up in some more Hogwart's robes while we're here. You've grown a bit since you bought your last lot, and those skinny ankles of yours don't do you any favours when you display them like that."

"Oi!"

"You can get some damn good breeches over here in Europe – a little edgy still in Britain but the change in fashion is inevitable – eventually, and I'd like you to have a range of linen shirts and waistcoats as well, so you can mix and match and still feel comfy. It's obscene how you've been limited to muggle-wear or school robes, Pup. Absolutely obscene, and your father would be horrified."

The door was answered by a tall, skinny man in what Harry had to admit was a rather fetching navy-blue ensemble, the white linen-shirt open just enough at his neckline to undermine the formality and let his personality shine through.

Harry nodded but was otherwise not required to be involved in the very enthusiastic conversation that followed, as he and Sirius were led into a stylish yellow sitting room and served with macarons and black tea.

While his godfather blathered a mile and minute, and the tailor soon had his assistants ferrying in picture books and picture books of clothing designs, a terrible thought was dawning on Harry.

Sirius was vain.

Oh, he knew that of course. From the stories about him as a teenage boy, to the way Sirius obsessively washed and styled his hair and trimmed his beard every morning. But, this was more than that.

As Sirius dove into the clothing exemplars with a small cry of delight, and assistant number two hurried back into the room with a deep maroon silk sample and a dark gold velvet, Harry felt his heart sink.

Sirius…was a clotheshorse. A fop. A dandy or fashion plate or coxcomb or whatever the going wizarding word was. A slavish follower of fashion.

And Harry had let him loose!

Oh, the horror.

Harry shared a dismayed look with Crow, who cocked his head equally judgementally and then hopped down Harry's arm to perch on the edge of the plate of macarons, apparently dismissing the thought from his mind. If only Harry could too.

Crow hopped forward lightly, eyeing the nicely arranged plate with an evaluative eye and then leapt. Moving rapidly, Crow stabbed a particularly nice-looking macaron with his beak, and then set about chasing the poor thing as it was rolled and thrown around the sitting room. Sirius' excited chattered resounded in the background.

Harry kept his hands clasped to the soft upholstery fabric on the settee beneath him and watched the action while his mind tried to comprehend this terrible thought.

Did anyone in his life care less about fashion than Harry? How had he ended up with this godfather?

There was a polite chuckle to his left, and Harry turned to see the tailor's assistant number one standing there, her flattering chocolate robes highlighted with silver embroidery and edging at the neckline and cuffs.

"A pleasure at meeting you, Mr Potter," she enunciated carefully, before Harry let her know he'd been practising German and she could speak to him that way. "You seem not to like shopping, Mr Potter," she tried again.

"Uh…nein," he had to admit. "I am not…comfortable," he managed carefully. "I know…nothing, uh…how to do it. Shopping." He attempted to 'put himself into her hands', but managed to mangle the translation into, "You carry me," while the witch, who must have been early thirties and was a comforting, motherly brunette, covered her mouth politely and giggled.

"I…help," the lady spoke again in English, and while Sirius and the tailor were busy arguing about fabric type and colour and development of 1980s fashion, Harry and his helper were making a much smaller, more limited list on the side.


It was forty minutes later when Sirius and his companion were finally satisfied with their fabric selections and wardrobe pieces.

When the voices slowed and then stopped, Harry and Klara looked up from where they stood, Klara's magical measuring tape darting around Harry a little too intimately for comfort while she stood by and took notes.

There was a pause in the room while the tailor and Sirius looked over their plans and nodded thoughtfully, seriously, proudly.

"You understand," Sirius broke the silence with a low, intense voice, "it needs to show how fabulous I am: rich, wealthy, stylish, an eligible bachelor in every sense of the phrase…and yet, it needs to show echoes of the late-70s-early-80s, to emphasise how my experience of the world stopped when the Ministry locked me up unfairly. I want British witches and wizards to look at me walking down the street and say, 'There's a fine young man; if only the Ministry hadn't screwed him over so bad…'"

Harry raised his eyebrows. Oh, there was the prankster godfather he'd learned to know and love. A little guilt trip for the Ministry, was it? He could probably get himself some extra galleons that way, if the other Ancient or Noble houses had anything to say about it.

And it would make Sirius happy, which made Harry happy too.