I don't know how much Madame Pomfrey guessed when I came in behind Lily, but she said nothing, and only showed her usual briskness. She ordered me to sit down when she saw me stumbling, and turned to Lily. "How did he get here?" she wanted to know.

"Neither of us really know," Lily admitted. "He told me he doesn't remember anything about getting onto the grounds this afternoon."

"Afternoon?" I asked hazily.

Both of the girls ignored me. Typical. Well, I guess Lily did think I might be drunk, and the nurse had a job to do. She turned to me after a little more of this line of talk. "You're memory has blacked out completely?"

"Well. . . . If you mean I can't remember how I got here . . . yes," I admitted, rubbing my temples. Why couldn't she just give me a headache remedy and tell me to get out of here?

"What's the last thing you can remember?" she pressed.

Oh, yes, I could happily tell her that. And what the hell was the reaction to that going to be, pray tell? It would just lead to more uncomfortable questions. I was preparing to lie, but for once in my life the truth actually came out. "I was dueling my cousin."

"And you think you have a hangover?" Madame Pomfrey asked incredulously. At least she didn't ask why I'd been dueling my cousin, though I'd no doubt Lily would at the next opportunity.

"I wish I had a hangover," I muttered.

"Well, who won the duel?" she asked. No accounting for the fact that sounds felt like thunder in my head at the moment. I'd forgive her if she'd actually do something about it soon.

"I think she did. I doubt I'd feel this bad if I'd won. Unless I got drunk afterwards." Of course Bellatrix won. She sent me back in time, after all. I wondered if she'd had any idea what she'd done, and what she'd think about it if she did.

"Then it may be spell damage."

May be? I had no doubt it was spell damage of some sort, and after having lost a fight to Bellatrix I wondered how she could announce it was anything else.

"Or, perhaps, a concussion," she added contemplatively/

Oh. I ignored my first comment. That made sense, too. But whatever it was, it amounted to a headache, both literally and figuratively.

She started poking at me, and I yelped in alarm. Lily was giving me rather an odd look after that, but I didn't worry too much about it. It hurt, and all I wanted was a headache cure and to get out and figure out what else I was going to do about the situation. I doubted I could do much but live the next twenty years over again, but that was going to take more than a little planning to pull off.

She finished after awhile and announced I had a concussion, and therefore it was no small wonder I was a little confused. "Good, now you can fix it and I can get out," I muttered. Lily giggled behind her, and Madame Pomfrey shook her head. It was hard to judge the volume of my voice when even speaking softly sounded like thunder, and apparently I'd misjudged it. "Well, if you're so eager," she told me, "I'll see what I could find."

She disappeared for a moment and Lily turned to me. "Why were you dueling your cousin?"

"Because she was trying to kill me," I mumbled, hoping Madame Pomfrey would return with whatever cure she could find soon. Lily's questioning could only get more uncomfortable from here, and sure enough, she followed that up with another one.

"Why was she trying to kill you?" she demanded. "Doesn't sound much like a family member."

"She's not," I grumbled. "She was trying to kill us because we were trying to stop her and happened to be the one in front of her when she finally started cursing people," I mumbled.

Lily still looked rather confused, but I wasn't sure how much I could really explain to her."And what the hell was she trying to do then?"

"Multiple things," I muttered, burying my head in my hands, any part of my face that might still have been visible hidden by my hair. I considered that a good thing. "It's really difficult to explain."

I felt Lily sit down beside me, and when I chanced a glance in her direction she was staring at me with some worry in her eyes. Whether she was worried about me or my sanity I didn't want to know. "What's so difficult to explain about it?" she asked softly.

"It shouldn't have happened, and even after it did, this shouldn't happened, and there are too many knots in the tangle, and I'm not even sure what happened for sure," I muttered under my breath. It came out faster than I'd expected, and I'd given her every reason but it hadn't really happened yet before I could stop myself.

She shook her head, apparently thinking things over. "So you live down in Hogsmede?" she asked, changing the subject. Thank goodness Lily was always good at picking things like that up.

"Not exactly."

"Were you down there this morning?" she asked.

"I hope to hell so. Otherwise I ended up a long way from where I started, and then I'm not sure I really want to know why or what was going on."

She blinked at that, and shook her head. "So much for tactfully avoiding that point in the conversation," she muttered under her breath.

I smiled weakly at her and lifted my head back up again. "Some things just lead back to it. So, what's been going on around here?"

She seized the opportunity to make me a little more comfortable, and I thanked God Lily was like that. She explained things, particularly an incident in which James and the younger me had turned a desk into a horse in transfiguration which I vaguely remembered and she was quite upset about. She glared at me when I laughed at the memory of how livid McGonagall had been afterwards and snapped at me that it wasn't at all funny.

"It all depends on how you look at it," I told her, and the incredulous look she gave me nearly started me laughing again. Lily would have been irritated.

Finally, Madame Pomfrey came back with a potion. Muttering, I let her grumble about my stupidity and fuss over me some more. Apparently, her great need to do it didn't stop when someone graduated. "There," she announced after what felt like much longer than it probably was. "I'm done. Are you happy now?"

Not really, but I'd live. "I'd seen enough of this wing by the time I got out of here," I muttered to no one in particular.

"Accident prone?" Lily asked.

I outright laughed at that suggestion. "You could say that," I admitted. "You could also say I was a bit more prone to trouble than I was to accidents, too. Well, more than a bit. Think your Potter and Black."

"You would be, Scott," Lily muttered.

"Hey, I got smarter in my old age," I told her with a grin. "Smart enough not to cause hell for the pure fun of it, at any rate. I still cause hell, but I've usually got a reason for it now."

"Usually?" Lily asked slyly.

"Well, I can't say I don't enjoy picking fights," I admitted, shrugging. "If I didn't I wouldn't do it so much, after all, would I?"

"So if you didn't you'd show some actual sense?" Lily asked.

"Yeah," I admitted. "But sometimes you can't be sensible," I muttered, remembering two particular incidents in the past— going after Peter and going after Harry— that I hadn't acted with any brains and had never regretted a moment of it. And probably never would, at any rate. She might not have understood it then, but eventually she would.

Author's Note: (is in absolute shock) How did I get twelve reviews for chapter one? How? I'm in SHOCK. Well, anyway, thank you everyone who reviewed, y'all are awesome! Thank you, too, to Dadaiiro, for pointing out that there's one plot hole I was going to try to get around but can't. I may be a little longer getting the next chapter up due to the necessity of figuring out how to get Sirius employed (preferably near Hogwarts). Ah, well, we do that. I'm also well aware of my negligence in solving mysteries. . . . I will tell you what's what eventually, I promise, but don't expect Sirius to explain everything to his past (I HATE that). As usual, please tell me whatcha think! Cheers! — Loki