AN: A quick note to my reviewers-thank you! I know I only have six reviews so far, but they all mean a lot to me considering I didn't think I'd get any at all. Hope you enjoy this chapter!

Disclaimer: I own no part of any of the characters or storylines (except this one, of course). That stroke of genius is credited to the lovely J.K. Rowling.

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Sirius. Right there, at the bottom-Sirius.

Was this some sort of cruel joke? No, it couldn't be. Anyone who knew about Harry and his relationship with his godfather was smart enough to know that sending a false missive from Sirius would tear him apart. Unless it was-

Malfoy. Of course! Back on the train to Hogwarts last September, he had alluded to knowing about Sirius and his Animagus transformation. His father was in the inner circle of Death Eaters; of course Malfoy must have been the one-

And as quickly as Harry's accusation had come, it had gone. Malfoy's father was in Azkaban, the wizarding prison; there hadn't been any time for him to be informed of the goings-on inside the Ministry the night his father was arrested. The night that Sirius had…

Harry slowly turned back to the letter, the pages of which now lay strewn upon the floor by his bed. One page had landed on his bed-the first page. Stepping closer to the bed, still unwilling to touch the posthumous post, he saw his name written on the top-in what was unmistakably the hand of his departed godfather. Unable to shake the electric feeling of adrenaline pumping through his veins, Harry decided to read the pages, a flicker of hope already building in his heart. With a slightly unsteady hand, he picked up that first page and read.

Dear Harry,

I sincerely hope that these words never reach your eyes, for if they do, then hopefully I have gone down fighting and not rotting away in this wretched house.

So Hagrid had been right; Sirius had gone the way he'd wanted to. This did little to comfort Harry, though it did ease his worry some to know Sirius had at least gotten something to be the way he wanted it.

I had wanted to give you this gift on your birthday in person, but the important thing is that you get it. Earlier this year you saw a memory of Snape's in that Pensieve, a memory of your father and myself at our best and worst. Yes, our best, I can see the incredulous look on your face now. We really were the best at everything we tried-classes, new spells (legal and illegal alike), Quidditch, looking charming for the girls… I'm losing myself here. The point is that those were only things that we'd tried. There were other things, things that we hadn't tried-giving other people chances to shine, looking past the fronts and seeing people for who they were, realizing we were so arrogant that we started hexing people just because we could. We were terrible at those things.

In the Pensieve you saw James playing with a Golden Snitch. In the attached box you'll find that very Snitch, though it stopped working years ago. James broke it himself the day he realized just how horrible a person he could be to others, no matter how good he was to his friends. He was in seventh year at the time. Lily had just told him off in such a blunt manner that the message that she hated the way he was couldn't help but sink in; but not until after he had crushed and thrown the Snitch against the wall of our dorm. He kept it for the rest of his life because, as he said, it served to remind him to keep his head "on the ground, not flying around". Ever the joker, your father was.

Harry gave a half-smile and opened the tiny box to find it lined with red velvet; inside laid the incapacitated Snitch. He gently pulled it from its resting place and held it in his hand, turning it slowly with his fingers. One of the wings was bent upwards, while the other wrapped itself brokenly around the side of the little golden ball. A portion of one side had been flattened, presumably from his father's heaving of it into the wall. Harry turned back to the letter, aching to learn more about James's turn for the better.

Needless to say, James's road to self-improvement was a rocky one. I think that even he knew that being kind to Snape was an impossible feat, so he settled for ignoring him in front of Lily. But he did start to realize that being the best was not the most important thing about a person. It was that person's humanity-that he could be the best and still remain a real person. Your old teacher Lockhart is a fine example of what happens when you lose yourself in the images you have to keep up.

Harry did indeed remember Gilderoy Lockhart, having seen him in the Spell Damage ward at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries just last Christmas. He was there for treatment for the Memory Charm he'd tried to cast on Harry and Ron in their second year, which had backfired and wiped his memory clean. Lockhart had been a complete fraud and had cast Memory Charms on anyone that threatened to ruin his heroic and perfect image prior to the accident. Harry did not want to become even remotely comparable to that bumbling fool.

And to be human, he thought, is better than being Lockhart, or Voldemort now that he thought about it. Tom Riddle had lost himself in hatred and the Dark Arts and now relished his position as Lord Voldemort.  Harry had told Dumbledore during their meeting after the Department of Mysteries fiasco that he would rather not be human than feel all the pain he had felt that morning. Now, however, he could see the wisdom in his godfather's words.

I want you to keep this Snitch and think of your father when you hold it in your hands. Not as the arrogant, foolish fifth-year you saw in that Pensieve, but as the kind, just man he became. And also remember that it was your mother who helped him to become that man, and never doubt that they loved each other almost as much as they loved you.

Sirius

Thank you, Sirius, thought Harry. He had wondered how on Earth the two people he had seen in Snape's memory could grow to love each other enough to get married and have him later on. Though there was only one gift inside the velvet-lined box, Sirius had given Harry many more with his advice, reassurances, and tales of his parents. Harry put the Snitch back in the box and bent down to start picking up the wrapping paper off the floor, but saw something that made him stop. There, on the floor, lay another page to Sirius's letter. But he had just finished it! He picked up the paper, and was surprised to find it was the first page of another letter from his godfather, written a few weeks after the first. Next to and slightly under the bed lay the other page. He began to read, slightly confused.

Dear Harry,

There is some important information you cannot afford to be without. Since I have passed on, I know that Dumbledore has told you about the prophecy by now. I do not know exactly what it says; only that it involves you and the Dark Lord. Remus knows this as well, as does Snape, who was informed only because he had to teach you Occlumency and had to know what to look for in your head. Lily and James didn't know what it said either, Dumbledore just told them to go into hiding because Voldemort was after them. The Fidelius Charm was recommended, and you know the rest.

The rest of the Order has no idea that the prophecy directly involves you, Harry. Dumbledore told them that it contained the knowledge Voldemort would need to win the war, though it worries me how that could possibly involve you. He justified his having you watched constantly last summer by saying that you were in danger of being possessed by the Dark Lord, to avoid having the Order question why you needed exclusive protection. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that Dumbledore knows exactly what that ruddy prophecy says. Any questions I shoot his way are thoroughly avoided.

Harry knew for a fact that Dumbledore was the only other person aside from himself who knew that prophecy in its entirety. He was glad in a way that Sirius never found out the truth-that Harry would end up in a Life-or-Death battle with Voldemort himself. Sirius would have worried to death over it and would never have allowed him to be in that final battle, even though it was a necessary inevitability.

Anyway, I need to get to my point, as I am running out of paper. I was browsing through the Black library today, one of the rare days when the house was empty, looking for something (anything) to read that wasn't entitled "Worse Than Death: Curses and Countre-Curses" or "Hexes from Hades", when I picked up an extremely thin book with no title, only an intricate, silver compass rose embossed on the leather cover. I barely had time to register this fact before I felt a pull behind my stomach-it had been a Portkey. I had my wand ready as soon as I landed, but no one else was there. I saw a rather large, circular, black room lit only by floating orbs of light. Then, quick as I had been pulled into the room, it felt as though I was shoved out of it just as quickly and back into the library. I had not let go of the book. I opened it up, but the only words in it were on the first page: "Fortunes told in days of old felled the bold and made blood cold. Find the Records, Seek them out, the Seeker will win the Bout."

You need to see that book, Harry. I hope I can show it to you in person, but if you're reading this now then that is obviously not an option… Try to remember the good times we had together, and don't dwell on the dead so long that you forget to live.

Sirius

Now Harry was very confused. He didn't know whether to trust that this second letter was from his godfather or not; he sounded so jumbled and different compared to past letters. But he undeniably wrote parts of the letter-the parts about the prophecy, Dumbledore, and the beginning of his tale of that day in the library. In fact, that was where he started sounding like someone else. What was the deal with that book, and why did it seem so important to Sirius that Harry find it? How was any of this classified as "information he could not afford to live without"? It made no sense at all. Harry wondered if perhaps his godfather's last weeks in Grimmauld Place hadn't finally gotten to his brain.

But those short rhymes; they did get Harry intrigued. What could they be referring to? Were they riddles? If that was the case, he wondered if he should tell Hermione and get her to help, she was brilliant with them. And why did the room "shove" Sirius out and back into the library? What was in that room?

Harry's eyes widened and he tossed the letter onto his bed. What was he doing, thinking about these things? Of course he wouldn't go searching for that book, this letter may not even be real! It could easily have been planted by Death Eaters and made to sound like it was from Sirius; they had Wormtail to reference his writing style, didn't they? They probably wanted to lure him out of safety and into-an empty room? Maybe Harry was just getting to be more paranoid than Mad-Eye Moody. Although four run-ins with the worst Dark Lord in a century will do that to anyone, wouldn't it? Especially when his first had been at the age of one, then the second at eleven…

Harry sighed. He longed to be back in first year, back when the wizarding world was a wonderful place where the next adventure was always just around the corner, back when everything was so new, back when he had become the youngest Seeker in a century for the-

Wait a moment. Harry turned back to the letter on the bed and skimmed down to the book inscription… "The Seeker will win the Bout"…The worst Dark Lord in a century…the youngest Seeker in a century… the prophecy…

Harry suddenly found he could not keep his eyes open. Struggling against what he knew to be an induced sleep, he desperately tried to open his eyes. But it was all in vain; having fallen asleep half-leaning on the bed, he slowly slunk down to the floor and was dreaming before his head even came to a rest. No one was around or awake to see the icy-blue glow his scar was giving off.

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AN: Confused? I hope so; otherwise you may be too intuitive. Well, this chapter's shorter than my last, but I felt this was a good place to stop.

Next time: Harry dreams, connections are made, and fuses blow. Will probably be a long one.

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