The Price of Love

He shook with terror as he walked through the house. Where was Sirius? Was he going to jump out and attack him? Was he safe? He examined the full extent of the damage done to the house. There was a leg broken off of the coffee table that he had crashed into tumbling down the stairs, and a couple of chairs had fallen over the in fray.

If Sirius was going to beat him again, he at least wanted to make sure he didn't have the motives to do it because he thought Harry was destroying his house.

He moved as silently as he could, collecting super glue out of a junk drawer. He recalled Sirius telling him – when he had been sober – that he had actually bought the junk he was putting in it.

He glued the table back together, doing this expertly, as he had put together a lot of things Dudley broke.

He up-righted the chairs and surveyed the room. It didn't look like anything had happened there at all. He then silently climbed the steps and closed the door to Sirius's room, where he noticed him passed out drunk.

He silently closed the door to his room, and locked it.

He couldn't sleep, and he knew he wouldn't. He gathered the covers over his head, and curled up in fear. He managed to stay that way until dawn. What the hell had just happened? He couldn't be sure. Sirius had been drunk, this was obvious to him, but how drunk had he been in order to actually beat him? How could Sirius do this? His godfather?

One thing became painfully obvious to him. Sirius was almost certainly going to feel like shit for what he had done the next day.

He couldn't live here anymore, could he? Sirius and he weren't going to be able to ignore this one. He was going to be sent away to live in some foster home, wasn't he? Or an orphanage? What about Sirius? He was going to be sent to jail because of him! He wouldn't be able to accept that thought!

He had never had the choice of what he wanted to do before, so he didn't want the decision to up to him. What was better for Sirius. What was better for him?

He loved Sirius. He had always tried to do what was best for him. Did this mean his Godfather hated him? If he had beaten him when he was drunk, had he been carrying the unconscious urge to do it all along? 'He thinks I killed my parents. Maybe I did.'

But Sirius probably wouldn't even want him. Seriously, though. It couldn't have been his idea of a joke to beat him like he had.

Why was it that shit like this always happened to him? Not one day after he moved in to his dream-home, and it was being shattered to pieces.

The light that filtered through the curtains got brighter and brighter. He was so lost in thought that he jumped at the quiet sounds of movement coming from down the hallway. He cringed of him bouncing. It wasn't loud, but he was paranoid.

He held his breath with anxiety and – making more noise to his ears then it would be possible to ignore – he threw the covers over his head and huddled with his knees to his chest.

He listened, not daring to breath, and heard the shower turn on. He let out a sigh that he refused to admit sounded like a sob.

What now? He couldn't go anywhere. That was what he was trying to prevent. But wouldn't Sirius's first matter of business be to talk to him rather then to take a shower?

It seemed like no time at all that the water was shut off, and even less that he heard the knock. Not even three seconds past when he heard the door open and his wet-haired Godfather pulled the cover off from over his head.

He yawned and licked his lips as he looked at him through blurry blue eyes. "Jeez, I know I look pretty bad in the morning, but what's this look?"

He must have looked horrified. "Uh- I – uh… sorry, I…" he stuttered horribly.

"Are- are you all right?" He looked concerned. Actually, a suspicious look came over his face.

"Fine." He said, his voice high-pitched. "Just great."

"You sure. Cause you look sick. I've got some medicine in the cupboard downstairs if you're feeling queasy."

"Nope! I'm fine." He sounded a bit out of breath from his pounding hear. "Listen… about last night…"

"Great movie, huh?"

Harry stared at him with confusion relevant throughout his face.

"The movie? The Sixth Sense?" he nodded with acknowledgement. They had seen that movie the previous night. They had rented it.

"Yeah."

"Sort of gave me a bad dream." Sirius muttered.

A dream! It must have been a dream! And he was scared over nothing!

"Come on, let's go have breakfast. I got some of those hot pocket things that I kept seeing on TV." He tugged on his arm only to have pain shoot through it.

No, he had definitely been beaten the previous night.

But, that must mean that Sirius hadn't remembered any of it! He was off the hook. Sirius wasn't going to be sent to jail, and he wouldn't be put into an orphanage. Now, all he had to do was keep the whole thing a secret. No problem.

What if he did it again? He would have to go on acting like nothing happened at all for the rest of the summer. He shook his head. He would deal with those things when he had to. For now, he was off the hook. He had dealt with more then getting a few bruises and cuts every night.

That was how it had happened. The next few nights were difficult as well, as he had to discover tricks to making sure he wasn't beaten too badly the hard way. He never tried to run after that one. He was paranoid almost every morning waking up for the first week that Sirius was going to remember what had happened, but every time, he greeted him with a smile – though slightly smaller on days when he was dealing with a hangover – and they both just had breakfast.

But now he had other problems to deal with.

"Harry, how am I supposed to help you when you won't even talk to me?"

"I told you, Sirius, I don't need help. I need some tape and-"

"Will you forget about it already? I'm not letting you gag yourself!"

"Why oh why did I have to forget to use the tape?" He scolded himself.

"I would have found out anyway."

"Probably not…"

"You're not going to drag me off the subject."

"I wasn't trying to."

"If you aren't going to talk, I could just use truth potion…"

He paled instantly. What mayhem would come about he was chock full of truth potion. What kind of shit could come out of his mouth if he had to drink that?

"Relax, I'm not going to do that, Harry."

He breathed out a sigh of relief.

"You going to talk?"

"I'm still trying to figure out what you want me to talk to you about!"

"I want you to tell me why you think you're having these dreams."

"Well that's easy… it's because I feel guilty about Cedric."

"Why?"

"Because I led him to his death… something like that…"

"This isn't a laughing matter."

"I'm not laughing. I'm not even being sarcastic."

"This is a big deal, Harry. Treat it as such."

"It isn't a big deal."

Harry stuck out his tongue.

"We're not getting very far here."

"Well that's obvious."

"Harry, do you really think that you're the reason that Cedric is dead?"

"Well… yeah." Harry put his bare feet up on the sofa. He looked over at Sirius who was stretched out on the loveseat sitting across from him.

"Why do you feel like you have to take the blame for that? When it was Voldemort who killed him?"

"Wormtail."

"Whoever!"

"Wouldn't have happened if I hadn't insisted he took the cup."

"With that logic, I would be guilty for manslaughter."

"Yeah, I guess you're luck that I wasn't the judge huh?"

"That wasn't funny at all, Harry."

"I know, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

"You know, when Wormtail got the kiss, that was on the list of sentences. Besides killing the twelve muggles, betraying your parents, and being a death eater, he was also charged for killing Digory.

"You're positive?"

"Yeah." He could tell by the look in Sirius's eyes that he was lying. Or at least, that he didn't know.

"It wasn't your fault. No one blames you for it. You're lucky, Harry. You've got everyone who doesn't blame you for it, while your blaming yourself. It's really tough to remember that you didn't do something when everyone in the wizard world accuses you for it, while your blaming yourself too."

There was silence. Harry couldn't help but feel a bubble of laughter in his stomach. Here was Sirius, the person who had screamed insults at him while beating him senseless, telling him that he shouldn't blame himself for his classmate's death.

"Harry, you aren't responsible for any of this."

"You son of a bitch! You kill everyone you meet!"

"It wasn't your fault."

"Sick little piece of shit! You did it on purpose, didn't you?"

"You couldn't have known."

"You're worse then Voldemort!"

"You can't blame yourself for this."

"Murderer!"

"Cedric wouldn't blame you."

"Your parents would roll over in their graves if they knew what you did to him!"

"Harry, are you listening to me?"

"Yeah… sure, Sirius."

"Look. You need to relax and stop impugning yourself for things you couldn't have prevented. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it."

"Are you sure? It's all right if you didn't. It's a lot to take in, I know. I know you aren't going to accept that you aren't responsible for this initially, but over time, you should believe it."

"I guess it wasn't my fault."

"How could you have prevented it?"

"I could have just taken the cup myself." He offered. He had thought about how he could have prevented it so many times before.

"That would have been selfish though."

"It would have saved his life though."

"But everyone would still think you were selfish for it though."

"I would have known what I could have prevented though."

"Tell me something, Harry. Do you blame Remus for the whole affair?"

"What? Why would I blame Remus?"

"If he hadn't quit, then there would have been no spot for Crouch to fill, and he wouldn't have charmed the cup to be a port key."

Harry gaped at the analogy. He slowly nodded, seeing the point. "I know what you mean."

"Good." Sirius got to his feet, getting ready to get drunk as hell. He gave him a strong hug. "I love you, Harry."

Harry started again at the words. It was still a shock hearing those words. "Love you too, Sirius."

"Do you think you'll have another nightmare tonight?" He asked.

"I don't think so." Truth, he wouldn't. He could count on it. He wouldn't be sleeping anyway…

Notes: I started a live journal, so you know. I'll be posting the review responses there. I got quite a few. Not all of them where very nice, but I guess it's a delayed reaction. I knew it was going to happen at some point. So, I know, not a lot happened in this chapter. Next chapter should be pretty interesting, I'm hoping. It might have been short, but this doesn't have any notes at the end, so it's pretty long considering.

I'm really sorry about 'Bitter'. See, I finished the chapter, but what happened was I couldn't get to the reviews, and I don't have that good a memory. I don't know if anyone could email them to me or something, but if I can't get to them, I'm going to have post the chapter with replying to them. I'll see if I can copy them all down in school this week, while trying to catch up on all of the stories I couldn't read because my computer is a complete and total bitch.