Harry Potter and the New Start: Foresight
Thanks so much to all of the reviewers. I've got to start out by saying sorry for my mistake with Tonks. I wasn't quite sure of her age, and I just threw her in there for fun without checking. So, my mistake, my stupidity. Sorry about that. She's too young to have been there.
Special thanks to Alen for my first flame ever!
-------------------------------Emerald's Palace
Harry ran as fast as his legs would carry him. He had to get to Sirius. But he had no idea where his godfather was. All he knew was he had to get there, and he was frightened. Sirius would make that better though, he always did. All Harry had to do was find him. "Siri!" he screamed.
No one answered but his own voice echoing back at him. Where was he? He ran down deserted hallways, ignoring paintings and other doors. The house scared him. It was so old, and so hopelessly dark. "Sirius, please!"
There were no lights in the house, nothing to help him light his way. He kept expecting to trip on his face, but he didn't. The path ahead of him was clear, but he couldn't see, he didn't know the way out.
But Sirius did.
Where was he? Why didn't he come when Harry called for him? Sirius never did that, he never kept him waiting. But that would meant that Sirius wasn't there, and Harry was all alone.
Harry smacked straight into something. There wasn't a wall there, there couldn't be. Not after all that running, and he was so very tired. He looked up, a man stood there, blocking the rest of the hallway. There was light behind him, it looked almost blinding.
"There's no one left to get in the way." The man said. Harry didn't know him, but he looked so familiar.
There wasn't a way around the man, and Harry didn't want to get close. This was bad man, he would hurt Harry the first chance he got. "Sirius!" he screamed, for what felt like the thousandth time. This time, he got a response.
"Where are you, Harry?!" Sirius's voice rang out. But the man didn't hear it, he just kept staring at Harry. He didn't seem to notice it at all. But Harry heard it, he knew that it was real. It was still there, inside his mind.
"Sirius! I'm right here! Please!"
--------------------------------
"Harry! Harry wake up, it's all right!" Sirius yelled, shaking his godson. Harry cracked his eyes open and looked up. Sirius looked like he was as terrified as Harry felt. "Shh, baby, it was only a nightmare."
Harry darted up in bed, wrapping his arms around his godfather's neck. "No, it wasn't! You weren't there, and it was dark…and you weren't there!" Harry finished lamely. He didn't cry, he almost felt beyond it. He wanted to though, he really did.
"Emeralds, it was a nightmare, nothing more. We talked about real life and make-believe." Sirius reminded him, hoping the memory of their talk would calm the child that was shivering in his arms. He'd been sitting in his own room when he'd heard Harry's frantic screams.
He had been afraid of this - that hearing all of the things that the aurors had said against him would have affected Harry more than just a good cry in the woods. But he hadn't quite expected a nightmare to the point that Harry was thrashing in bed and screaming for him. Harry had practically been begging for Sirius to come for him.
"This wasn't make-believe." Harry insisted. He didn't know why, but it just wasn't. He sniffed and buried his head in Sirius's shoulder once more.
Sighing, Sirius shifted them both so they were lying in Harry's bed. He wondered how often it would come to this. On top of that wondering, he was feeling guilty for taking Harry to Diagon Alley. He should have waited until the child was a bit older. Seven, or eight years old maybe. Even nine would work.
"Well, you had a long day. You should really go back to sleep, baby." Sirius said as he started rubbing circles on Harry's back. It was a treatment that usually sent Harry straight to sleep. This time Harry would not be calmed.
Stubbornly, the little boy pushed his head up from Sirius's chest and refused to lie down. "I don't wanna to go back to sleep, you'll go away again." He insisted.
There was nothing Sirius could do but stay the night to reassure Harry that he wasn't going anywhere. "What if I stay with you tonight?" He offered, pulling the protesting child back down. "I won't be going anywhere."
"No apparating?"
"None whatsoever." Sirius promised. He realized that he'd be spending the next few months even having to promise that he would not apparate away while Harry was sleeping. It had been foolish of him to not think of Harry's reaction first. But he had honestly meant for Harry to never know of his brief time away from their home.
For now, Harry seemed content to believe that particular promise. But if he broke it, there was no way of knowing if Harry would so readily accept it again. He had no intention of letting such a thing happen.
"Okay, but I still don't want to sleep. The man will come back." Harry replied, bottom lip making a brief appearance for a pout. Sirius couldn't believe that a nightmare had scared Harry so deeply.
But he knew exactly what to do. "Well then, I think I'll just have to keep us occupied with a story!" he exclaimed sneakily. Harry could not resist stories – especially those of the marauders. It would have to get his mind off of whatever he'd dreamed about. Sirius didn't even notice that Harry had claimed that a man was in his dreams, but even if he had, he'd have suspected the boogeyman.
"Tell me!" Harry cried, letting go of the fear the dream had caused just a tiny bit. "Marauders!"
Sirius laughed, more relieved than he could articulate that Harry was acting more like his normal self. It was rare that Harry had nightmares, but when he did, Sirius found the whole experience to be nerve racking. Especially since he so rarely needed to take care of a frightened child. "All right, Emeralds, what kind of story about the marauders do you want? A prank maybe? Moony, Padfoot and Prongs?"
"Mmm, a prank." Harry requested, knowing it would be funny.
It didn't take long to come up with a good story for Harry. There was quite the catalogue of events to choose from, as the marauders had never managed to go a week without a prank in all their seven years of school.
"Well, Harry, do you remember what the cease-fire treaty we made last year was about? I think it was number twelve." Sirius asked, waiting for the inevitable response. For such a young child, Harry did very well with memorization.
And sure enough, Harry dutifully replied. "There will be no pranks involving toilets in the location of Emerald's Palace unless a prank war's rules clearly state that both parties – Party A, Emeralds and Party B, Padfoot – wish to forgo the treaty for the time period agreed upon for aforementioned prank war."
"Good, baby, very good. Did I ever tell you why I insisted upon that particular treaty?" Sirius asked, knowing full and well that he hadn't ever told Harry about it. He'd known at the time that there were some stories he'd have to save for later emergencies. This counted.
Harry shook his head, just as Sirius knew he would. "Nope, you didn't." he answered, waiting patiently for Sirius to continue.
"All right, you see, I did that because of a particular prank your father, Moony and I did. Not only did it get us a rather unreasonable number of detentions, it also had the entire girl population of Hogwarts against us for almost a month." Sirius reminisced. After a second, he winced. "Your Mum included." He told Harry, remembering the whole scene with then Lily Evans quite well. His hearing was never quite the same after that.
Giggling, Harry could almost imagine what the marauders had done. Wild scenarios danced in his head. Sirius took the laughter as a good sign and continued. "You see, your dad and I had gotten a rather unfair detention of cleaning out the toilets of Hogwarts for an entire week."
"What did you do to get the detentions?" Harry asked. He was old enough to know that there was never anything that his father and Sirius had done it had been enough to warrant a detention.
"Well, that's rather besides the point…" Sirius started, but relented when he remembered the point of the whole thing. "We charmed McGonagalls's to, ah, flirt with her when she sat on it."
This sent Harry into fresh peals of laughter, effectively letting the tension drain from his little body. Exactly what Sirius wanted. Continuing, Sirius started in on the real story. "But enough about that little escapade, okay? Back to the real story." He said, pulling the covers up over Harry and himself. "So, while we were scrubbing toilets, we started getting a bit, well, bitter. Your dad was really the one that started the ball rolling, as he said it would be easier if the toilets just rejected anyone who sat on them…"
Weak laughter followed, which quickly died down. Sirius kept talking, more than aware that a certain little boy's eyes were getting heavier and heavier with each word.
----------------------------Outside Emerald's Palace
The castle ahead of him looked as majestic as he'd imagined. The property around it was hardly something to sneeze at. It was so overwhelmingly Potter to have such a place just lying around. Peter confidently stepped forward, and smiled when his foot landed on the solid ground.
One of these days I've got to write a side story of the day that Sirius and Harry wrote up those treaties and what exactly each one entails. It would be pretty fun.
Please, don't hate me too much for that cliffhanger!
Stars Enchantress