Although, I'm not sure this is much of an improvement. --;;

Chapter 2

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"You want me to fix the loo."

"Yes."

"It's a hole in the ground."

"And that way, if you destroy anything, it's no big loss. I just want you to repair the steps. One of us is going to sprain something if we leave it like it is."

"Why are you trying to make me do this?"

"Chores are good for kids. Helps you build character."

"Well, in that case, I've had enough character building to last a couple of centuries."

"Here's a hammer."

"You want me to fix three rotting boards with a hammer."

"Do us both a favor and work off some of that aggression."

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It was obvious, Sirius decided, from the direction that Harry was taking, that the kid had no intention of going anywhere near the loo. Which, kudos to the kid, it didn't seem like a place Sirius would recommend going to unless it was a dire emergency. And actually, it was kind of enlightening in a way, because, for all intents and purposes, Harry had looked like he was going to sit complacently and fix the steps right up until the moment Remus disappeared into the house. In his experience, rebellion was only worthwhile if those you were rebelling against got the message loud and clear. Obviously, it meant something completely different to Harry.

Trotting after the kid, tail wagging but feet never actually seeming to hit the ground, he followed Harry as he went down the hill from the cabin to the fairly rickety dock at the edge of the lake. ::You know, Remus is going to be disappointed when he finds out that you just weaseled out of fixing the step.::

Harry didn't answer. Instead, the kid's brow furrowed as he sat down on the end of the dock and stuck his feet, raggedy shoes and all, into what Sirius was sure was fairly freezing cold water. Sometimes his conversations with Harry went like this.

Surprisingly, Remus talked back most of the time. Of course, Remus had assumed that he was like an imaginary friend or some random neurosis come to life, so that probably explained his closed mouthed old mate's chattiness of late. But Harry? To Harry he was always a dog, and no matter how much talking he did, or how weird it seemed to be to him to be talking in Animagus form, Harry never paid it all that much mind.

Harry curled up against his fictitious body in sleep all the time, yes. As for actual speaking? Well, that was something that Sirius was beginning to suspect that Harry didn't do a lot of with anyone, living or dead. And to be honest, he didn't think he'd realized just how effectively the kid could stonewall until this had happened. Harry had never not tried to tell him the important things. And while he'd known that he was someone special in Harry's life, he'd assumed that there had been other people, too. Other adults. Dumbledore. Remus. Shaklebolt. Tonks. Moody. Hell, he'd even settle for Mrs. Weasley who was just a notch above Snape on his list of favorite, happy people who were a part of the Order.

Watching Harry in the last month had pretty much confirmed the conclusion. And god, of all the ways in the world that he would have wanted James' boy to take after his father and his godfather, this was not one of them.

::You know, maybe if you ask nicely, Remus will let you fix the dock instead. That way you can be cold and wet instead of dry and stinky.:: And that was not going to help the situation any, he knew. Harry only responded when the topics of discussion pushed past acceptable points. Only when Sirius managed to hit a nerve or strike a touchy subject did Harry ever add in his two cents. Sirius had sung him the most annoying song he knew of for two hours straight and all Harry had done was roll over and fall asleep to the sound of his voice. It was interesting, getting a taste of how Harry dealt with most other people he knew. ::Are you just going to go through life pretending that I'm not dead?:: He hated resorting to this.

"Who's pretending?" Harry stared straight out across the lake, his grip tightening on the hammer.

::Oh, I don't know. You? Remus is only trying to help.::

"And how can you be so sure of that?" Harry scowled, transferring the hammer to his left hand.

::Because he's a mate, and that's what mates do.:: At least in theory. He had never really been what he'd call a best mate. Not to James, not to Remus, not even to Harry. In fact, if he was truly honest about it, he was a nightmare to befriend. But that didn't mean that Harry had to share his fate.

"He's not my mate," Harry said softly. "I'm his obligation. I'm everyone's obligation. A charity case, if you will. If you're looking for people that I personally depend on, I'm sorry to say that you've exhausted your last source." What in the hell was the kid talking about?

::Excuse me?::

"This is low, even for you," Harry snorted humorlessly. "Maybe I am only fifteen. Maybe I am just a stupid kid. And yet, I'm still a threat to you. It's incredible really. Can't you find someone your own age to pick on?"

::I'm confused. When exactly did I ever think you a threat, and why would I be picking on you? I mean, other than to get you to talk to Remus?::

"That's just it, isn't it, Tom?" Harry weighed the hammer in his hand, a frown on his face before pulling a wet leg out of the lake and propping it up awkwardly as he turned to the side on the dock, apparently contemplating the old, grey weathered wood it was made from. "Talk to Remus. Make more weaknesses. Hand them to you on a silver platter. You can't just take me head on; you have to find a middle man? Doesn't that strike you as pathetic?"

::Tom? What the hell, Harry. I am not Tom Riddle.::

"You know what, I don't even care," Harry growled. "Be whoever the fuck you want to be, but I'm done with this."

Done with what exactly? Sirius cocked his head to the side, and watched as Harry placed his right hand down flat on a board and hefted the hammer up slightly before drawing back. For a second, Sirius was certain that Harry couldn't possibly be intending to do what it looked like the kid was doing, but a quick look at the kid's contorted face quickly changed that opinion. Panicked, Sirius tried the first thing that came to mind, which was stopping Harry's left hand from pounding the shit out of his right.

His jaws clamped down, and for a second, nothing happened, and then Harry's left hand suspended in midair. They probably would have stayed frozen like that, if it hadn't been for the fact that shortly after, Sirius could taste the metallic tang of blood in his mouth. Harry's blood.

Scooting back abruptly, he almost scooted right off the dock. He'd physically bitten Harry. He'd been able to just bite Harry, and he could actually see the teeth marks that were trickling blood down Harry's arm as the kid stared at it in complete shock.

"Fuck," it was strangled in the back of Harry's throat, and Sirius watched anxiously, as Harry turned away from him, pulling his arm back and then flinging the hammer as far as he could into the lake. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Cradling his head in his hands, Harry sank back down to the dock, and as cautiously as possible, he inched closer. Leave it to him to screw up something that was already totally screwed up. Sirius was beginning to think he just had a knack for it.

::Look, I'm sorry.::

"What do you care? You got your way." Sirius wasn't sure he followed the train of logic there, but okay.

::I never meant to make this worse. I, well, I guess I just wanted to make things right. It's all my fault that you're even here in this position.:: And really, this kind of confirmed what Sirius had always suspected about anything in his life. He had the poisonous touch. He could take anything, any person or situation, and completely ruin it by getting involved. He only ever caused those he loved unspeakable heartache. In protecting those that he cared the most about, he caused them the most damage. Even in death, he'd made things worse just by trying to help. Maybe a smarter person would have quit trying a long time ago.

"Better here than anywhere else. It's all kind of the same after a while." Harry answered softly, pushing down the previously rolled up long sleeves of the red shirt he was wearing under a short sleeved shirt that very well might have fit Hagrid. How very Roman of the kid.

::That's not true. You could be with your friends right now, and Mrs. Weasley could be cramming biscuits down your throat and telling you that you're too young to know what those swear words mean.::

"If you believe that I ever would have left Privet Drive at all this summer without Remus' intervention, then I'll have to admit that yeah, there's a definite possibility that you're not actually Tom," the humorless grin on Harry's face was almost creepy as the kid plopped his feet back in the water. "Because there is no way in any corner of hell that the He-Who-Is-Paranoid would ever be that naïve."

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::Were they ever going to get him out of that, that woman's house before the end of this summer?::

"They were discussing it."

::What the fucking hell is there to discuss?!::

"His safety for one. The safety of the Order for two. Look, I took him away from all that, and I did it with endangering as few people as I could manage. It doesn't matter what they might or might not have done."

::The hell it doesn't. It matters to him.::

"He's fifteen. He'll get over it."

::No, he won't fucking "get over it", Moony. Wake the fuck up, already. You all essentially abandoned him. And that's after lying to him, I might add. How well did you "get over it"?::

"We're not talking about me, and the circumstances are completely different. He's not trained in Occlumency. He doesn't know how to fight off Voldemort from the inside out. That's a lot to ask of anyone, let alone a half grown kid. We don't know if Voldemort can be privy to see what he sees or not. It's possible that as a safe house, Grimmauld Place has already been compromised. If Voldemort read Dumbledore's writing at the same time Harry did, or sifts it out of the kid's memories somehow, he could waltz right in there."

::You got him here.::

"Yes, well, here is on another continent, and he never read the directions my father used for the Fidelus charm because I portkeyed him here."

::And the Order couldn't figure out how to do that in England? They couldn't figure out how to reach out to him at all?::

"Magic isn't an exact science. I'm not even sure we're truly out of Voldemort's grasp here. Maybe he can get past the Fidelus charm just by being able to see the place that's under the charm through Harry's eyes. There aren't exactly a lot of case studies of this type of situation to go off of, you know?"

::Do you care about the kid at all?::

"Yes! Maybe? I don't know. I barely know him. He's James' son, and just for that, I owe him whatever it is that I can do for him. Past that? Would he even care?"

::I think he probably cares more than he'll ever let on. Try to get to know him, for god's sake. He doesn't want to be someone's fucking obligation anymore than you ever wanted to be, moron. And hey, here's a novel idea, why don't you try it out right now?::

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Remus didn't know what to think when Harry came drudging up the hill from the dock, shoulders drooped and hands shoved far down into jeans that were impossibly large on the kid's skinny, half grown frame. The loo was completely in the opposite direction on the other side of the cabin. And granted, he hadn't really been serious about Harry fixing the steps, but would it have killed the kid to have at least acted like maybe that's what he'd been doing instead of brooding?

At the same time, was he just supposed to leave Harry to his own devices? He wasn't an expert or anything, but it just didn't seem right to leave a kid who was so, well, depressed for lack of a better word, by himself for too long. Remus already had too much on his plate to deal with. Having his best mate's child commit suicide on him was just not even going to be an option. Harry was just going to have to learn that the world in general sucked. Remus didn't have any other sage advice to offer or quick fixes in him to give.

"Where's the hammer?" he asked as soon as Harry got close enough. The kid looked startled for a moment, before shrugging apathetically and looking away. "Did you lose it?" How the hell could he have lost the hammer? He'd only been out here on his own for the last fifteen minutes, twenty at the most. Had that been too long? He wasn't going to become the boy's shadow, for fuck's sake. Not only did Harry not need someone holding his hand through everything, he very obviously didn't want it.

"I threw it in the lake."

"You what?"

"I threw it in the lake," this time Harry announced it defensively, and the rational part of him realized that it was probably in reaction to his own growl. But damn it, he'd had it. Get to know the kid? What had he been thinking? Harry wanted to get to know him better like the kid wanted to get to know the plague.

"And you think they grow on trees around here? Look around you, Harry. Do you see a plethora of hammers?" A plethora of hammers? Who the fuck cared about the bleeding hammers? Why the hell had he given and angry, self-destructive, messed-up teenager a hammer in the first place? God, he was not cut out for making these sorts of decisions. Coach a third year through a particularly hard charm? Sure, no problem. Be a sympathetic ear for someone who needed to talk? Absolutely. Tread where he wasn't wanted? Give help unsolicited, force advice on someone who hadn't asked for it? Hell no.

"It wanted to be free."

Remus mentally counted to three and resisted the urge to strangle the smug grin right off the kid's face. "I'm not made of money."

"Well, that would be your problem, now wouldn't it." Harry shrugged carelessly. As if he would let something as inane as this wind him up into losing his temper. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Remus plastered his most polite, most sadly-disappointed-by-the-actions-taken face. Two could play at this game.

"I trusted you with the hammer," he intoned solemnly.

"Trusted me," Harry returned flatly, apparently not buying into the act and not willing to play along. "You trusted me? Like hell you did. What, am I blind? You're not any different than any other person I've ever met in my entire life. Maybe I'm not old enough, or quick enough, or sane enough to be trusted. Maybe I have a psychotic madman living in my head and I can't be trusted to even know my own thoughts. But it doesn't matter anyway because you don't trust anyone. Not me, not the Order, and not Sirius. But you know what, it doesn't matter. Because I don't trust you. And I'm not stupid enough to think that you would ever trust me with anything."

And he'd officially reached his limit for one day. End of discussion. They weren't going to talk about this anymore, and he didn't care if a thousand elephants sounding like Sirius trampled him to death over that fact. He shrugged and sighed, turning slightly and gesturing Harry, who looked a bit put out at his non-response, back into the cabin. The kid was sopping wet from the knees down. And while it was May, it wasn't exactly warm by any stretch of the imagination.

Throwing a rather nasty glare in his direction, Harry plopped down on the first porch step to unlace his shoes, and that was when Remus saw the red smears over the knuckles of his left hand. "Are you bleeding?" How in the hell had the kid managed that? Fifteen fucking minutes alone. It almost boggled the mind.

"What? No." Harry dismissed quickly, trying to wipe his hand discreetly on his jeans, and failing miserably.

"So this isn't blood," Remus said, reaching over to pull back the sleeve of Harry's red shirt to reveal that it had rather nicely hidden what kind of looked like an animal bite of some sort. Most of it was probably surface scratches that had been just deep enough to break skin, but some of them looked like they could at least use some butterfly bandages.

"Oh that," Harry attempted to pull the sleeve down and there was a minor tug of war before Harry finally gave in and let Remus examine farther. "Yeah, that's blood." And either this place had some incredibly violent and bloodthirsty squirrels or Harry had tangled with something a lot larger. Probably a stray cat or dog from the looks of it, and Remus' vote was weighted more towards dog.

Sighing again, Remus let Harry get both shoes off before herding the kid up the stairs and into the fairly rustic cabin. "Let's take care of that, shall we?" Oh what fun would be had tonight trying to pry this story out of Harry. Remus could barely wait for the sharing to begin.

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