Author's Note: Grateful thanks go to reviewers Elvish Fairy, Child of the Wolves, Occamy, venus4280, Sassy and Morgan Le Faye. We now take our leave of Hogwarts to follow a certain Gryffindor Prefect on a journey that will ultimately change his life forever. Intrigued? Then, pray, read on.


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When Harry pushed through the concealing brush and entered the hidden cave outside Hogsmeade, Sirius moved immediately to throw his arms around him in a crushing hug. This proved a bit awkward, as the only part of Harry that was showing was his head and his right arm. The rest of him was still hidden under the Invisibility Cloak, which he had only just begun to remove. To Sirius' surprise, Harry shrugged out of his godfather's embrace.

"Sorry," Harry grinned, pulling off the Cloak. "But I didn't spend an hour packing this only to have you mash it to a pulp."

With the discarding of the Invisibility Cloak, Harry was revealed to be shouldering a backpack that seemed on the verge of bursting its very seams. Unbuckling the harness, Harry slipped the pack from his shoulders and, in a move that caught Sirius completely by surprise, tossed it toward him like a Quidditch Chaser passing a Quaffle. Sirius instinctively retreated a step, expecting the heavily-laden pack to bowl him over. Instead, the pack floated a few feet above the floor of the cave like a khaki-colored soap bubble. Sirius blinked, then roared with delighted laughter.

"Brilliant, Harry! First-rate Charm work. Lily herself couldn't have done better, and she was a bloody genius at Charms."

Grinning appreciatively at the compliment, Harry pushed the pack to the ground and cancelled the Hover Charm with a wave of his wand. He tugged loose the binding straps and flung open the flap, and Sirius' eyes nearly popped out of his head. The pack was filled to overflowing with food. Harry fully expected Sirius to fall upon the pack ravenously, as he knew his fugitive godfather must be hungry beyond description. But when Sirius pounced, it was not onto the pack, but onto Harry.

Breathless and aching though his godfather's embrace left him, Harry did not want it to end. Though not blood kin, Sirius was the closest thing to family Harry had. Not even his love for Arthur and Molly Weasley, who had all but adopted him as a seventh son, was the equal of his feelings for the man who had been his parents' closest friend and Best Man at their wedding. In a life filled with more disappointments than most people knew in a hundred years, Harry endured on a diet of hope. And his most fervent hope was that, some day in the not too distant future, Sirius' name would be cleared and the two of them would be reunited once and for all, to become in fact what they would ever be in spirit: A family.

Releasing his godson reluctantly, Sirius blinked away the beginnings of tears from the corners of his deep, haunted eyes. "You're becoming quite a wizard, Harry. Your parents would be proud. I know I am. So, how's school? Ron and Hermione okay? Snape still treating you like something that fell out of a hippogriff's backside?"

"Yes to both," Harry wheezed, still trying to breathe properly after Sirius' painful embrace.

"Then all's right with the world," Sirius grinned. "If Snapey ever stops being the vile piece of slime he's always been, then I'll begin to worry."

"Speaking of hippogriffs," Harry said, "where's Buckbeak? Out rooting for worms?"

"I set him free," Sirius said in a casual manner. "Don't need him any more. Now that I'm back to full strength, I can Apparate again."

Looking at Sirius' undernourished frame, Harry seriously doubted that his godfather was "back to full strength." He knew it was compassion for Buckbeak which had prompted Sirius to give the once condemned hippogriff his freedom. It was not in Sirius' nature to deny another that which he himself most craved. It was merely one more reason why Harry loved his godfather as he did. But, reflecting now on Sirius' less than ideal state of health, Harry turned his attention to the primary purpose of his visit.

"Better get at that food," Harry advised, nodding toward the open backpack. "I still haven't mastered the Refrigeration Charm yet, so it won't stay fresh too long. Hermione's helping me with that now. As soon as I've got that down, I can work on expanding the inside of the bag, like Mr. Weasley did with his car. I'll be able to bring a lot more in a single trip then. Even so, from the way it felt before I Charmed it, there must be about 30 pounds there. Enough to last an ordinary man two weeks. Or Sirius Black about three days."

With a hearty laugh, Sirius abandoned all pretense and dived to his feast. His hand caught up a brown paper parcel bound with string. Tearing it open, he stared avidly at an abundance of sliced roast beef. As Sirius unceremoniously stuffed four slices into his mouth, Harry produced a long loaf of hard bread which he had stuffed into his robes like a sword. Sirius' bruising hug had broken the loaf in two, saving Harry the trouble. From a pocket of his robes he drew out a piece of waxed paper bearing a shapeless lump of butter. Another pocket yielded a butter knife. Harry buttered the torn end of the loaf and thrust the whole at Sirius, who accepted it with a grin and began to gnaw on it with unrepressed relish.

"I didn't bring anything to drink," Harry said. "Not enough room. I figured water would do."

Sirius saw that Harry was now holding a tiny object in the palm of his hand. The morning light which struggled through the bushes at the cave mouth struck dull, metallic glints from it. With a smile directed at Sirius, Harry touched the object with his wand and said, "Engorgio." As Sirius watched, the metallic object enlarged until it was revealed to be a large pewter mug. His smile widening, Harry held his wand over the rim of the mug and said, "Aquas." A stream of clear water poured from Harry's wand, quickly filling the vessel to the brim. Sirius accepted the mug gratefully and drained the cool, sweet water in three gulps, smacking his lips before wiping his face with the back of his hand.

"I wish I could make you food that easily," Harry said regretfully as he took the mug back and re-filled it.

"Food magic is very tricky, Harry," Sirius said through another mouthful of beef. "It takes a special skill to do it right. Muck it up even a little, you could poison yourself. That's best left to house-elves. They have a special gift for food magic."

"Molly Weasley's no slouch, either," Harry said, remembering watching Molly preparing food at the Burrow countless times. She did not produce all of her family's meals via magic, but so long as she had her wand in hand, no one at the Burrow would ever go hungry.

When Sirius had eaten his fill (wisely saving some of the food for later), Harry saw his godfather sag slightly. His fugitive status was testing his stamina, Harry knew, and it was anyone's guess when last he had enjoyed a good, restful sleep. Looking around the cave shortly, Harry spotted a sheet of rock which had split away from the cave wall in some unguessed age. With a vigorous wave of his wand, Harry Transfigured the slab of rock into a serviceable mattress. His eyes reflecting his amazement, Sirius sank onto his makeshift bed and sighed deliciously.

When he was properly relaxed, Sirius opened his eyes to see Harry sitting cross-legged on the smooth stone floor an arm's length away. Working his shoulders into the mattress for emphasis, Sirius closed his eyes again and heaved an exaggerated sigh for Harry's benefit. "A lot of your dad in you as well. Transfiguration was always his strong point."

"I know," Harry said, savoring the compliment.

"Oh?" Sirius said, opening one eye. "Did I already tell you about that?"

Harry shook his head. "Mr. Ollivander told me, the day I bought my wand. He said he remembered selling my mum and dad their wands."

"Ah," Sirius nodded. "Yes. Old Ollivander always said he could remember every wand he ever sold, and to whom."

"I wish I could just go and buy you a new wand," Harry sighed as he strolled again in his mind the dusty aisles of Mr. Ollivander's shop in Diagon Alley. He was unaware of the momentary flicker in his emerald eyes, but immediately a hard smile drifted across Sirius' dark features.

"I know what you're thinking, Harry," Sirius said as he regarded his godson with a stare at once tender and steel-hard. "You're thinking that all you'd have to do is pretend to snap your wand, after which you'd give me your old wand while you went to Ollivander's and bought yourself a new one. It's a good thought...one I'd expect from you. Pity it won't work."

"Why not?" Harry said, startled that his most secret thoughts could be divined so easily.

"The Ministry regulates the sale of all wands," Sirius said with a regretful growl, his eyes narrowed sharply. "A record is kept of every wand ever made, and who owns it. Appearances to the contrary, you can't just go and buy a wand whenever you get the notion."

"But when I first met Ron," Harry said, his brow wrinkling in puzzlement, "he was using a hand-me-down wand from his brother, Charlie."

"Yes," Sirius nodded. "But Charlie had to formally and legally relinquish ownership of his wand before it could be transferred to Ron. Only then was he permitted to buy himself a new one from Ollivander's. And you can bet your last Galleon that he had to show Ollivander the transfer document, with the Ministry seal, before he was allowed to buy that new wand."

Harry felt his shoulders droop slightly. But though clearly disappointed that his plan to help his godfather was for nought, he was nevertheless relieved deep inside that he would not have to give up his treasured wand. It had chosen him most definitively on that fateful eleventh birthday when Hagrid had first revealed the truth to Harry about his wizard heritage. And he was equally certain that, if Mr. Ollivander searched every corner of his shop from now until the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, they would find nothing even remotely approaching the inexorable bond linking him to this one wand.

And this thought gave the young wizard even more cause for relief. For Harry's holly-and-phoenix-feather wand was bonded to more than its owner. It was also bonded irresistibly to another wand -- the one belonging to Lord Voldemort. The two wands were brothers, both possessed of a phoenix-feather core which had come from the same source -- Dumbledore's pet phoenix, Fawkes, to be precise. If his wand were forever linked to Voldemort's, then giving Sirius that wand would automatically place his godfather in the unswerving path of Voldemort's wrath. Sirius had quite enough to be getting on with, Harry thought determinedly, without making himself a kind of magical magnet for Voldemort's insane vengeance.

"The Ministry takes no chances with an object as potentially dangerous as a wand," Sirius said with a grim smile, noting the disappointment painted across a face Harry mistakenly assumed to be impassive. "If a wizard could buy any number of wands at will, he could distribute them how and where he pleased. He could give them out to young wizards not yet in school, or to unqualified or expelled wizards, like Hagrid. Or to escaped criminals whose wands have been snapped."

The bitterness in Sirius' voice, though suppressed with obvious effort, remained thick enough to be cut with an executioner's axe. It was, Harry knew, a good and wise law. In the hands of a genuine criminal, a wand could be a devastating weapon, capable of unimagined destruction and death. But Sirius was innocent of the crime for which he had been sentenced to a life term in Azkaban. It was at once fair and unfair.

Harry did not need Hermione's level of intelligence to know that such brooding was not healthy for Sirius, physically or emotionally. In an effort to prevent his godfather from becoming morose, Harry quickly turned the conversation in a new direction.

"You must have been pretty good at Transfiguration yourself," he said, pressing his fingers down on the edge of the mattress with undisguised satisfaction. "The Animagus spell is just another form of Transfiguration, isn't it?"

Harry saw Sirius' eyes soften, and he smiled inwardly, glad that Sirius' mind was now diverted onto a less destructive path.

"In a way," Sirius said thoughtfully. "The transformation itself is a form of Transfiguration. But the whole process involves a series of complicated steps, with various forms of magic brought into play. Charm work plays a big part. The human body wasn't made to adapt into some of the shapes an Animagus can assume. Look at Rita Skeeter -- and Peter -- " Sirius drew and expelled a rumbling breath before he continued in a somewhat tenser voice. "There can be a dramatic difference in the mass of the wizard versus his Animagus form. Where does it go? No one really knows. When I become a dog, I outweigh my wizard form by a good fifty pounds. And when James transformed into a stag, the difference was greater still. Then there's Rita, who changes from a hundred-pound witch to a bug weighing less than an ounce. Even the so-called experts don't fully understand it."

"Professor Lupin said it took you most of three years to master the transformation," Harry said. Sirius nodded.

"Those were the days," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "The best times of our lives. Out in the wizarding world, Voldemort was wreaking havok, playing the very devil with good people's lives. But at Hogwarts, there was no war, no killing, no Dark Lord. Our biggest worry was getting caught at some prank and having to serve a detention. Blimey, but I must have polished those bloody trophies of Filch's a hundred times." Sirius chuckled deeply in the back of his throat, and Harry smiled. "It was a wonderful time for the lot of us, Harry. A life filled with Quidditch games, and pranks played on Snape, and planting dung bombs in the teachers' lounge. And running on four feet through the Forbidden Forest under the full moon. The Marauders...against the world..."

Sirius' voice trailed off, and Harry wondered if the combination of exhaustion and a full stomach had finally caught up with him. But a moment later, Sirius turned to face Harry, a sheepish grin glowing on his normally dark features.

"Bloody hell, I'm too young to be getting so maudlin. Right. Let's hear all about your last few months, beginning with the trip back on the Hogwarts Express last June. You're not leaving until I've heard everything."

Sighing through a broad grin, Harry Transfigured a large rock into a pillow and stuffed it against the small of his back. He knew he was going to miss lunch, and maybe even dinner. But it was worth it.


***


Author's Note: Technically, I did not misrepresent this chapter. I said Harry's visit to Hogsmeade would ULTIMATELY change his life forever. The full impact will not be realized until the last chapter. But in the next chapter, Harry meets someone who will open his eyes to something neither he nor anyone else had ever considered. Another teaser? Of course! Do return, won't you? I promise, the payoff, when it comes, will be sweet. See you next week.