Lost: Young Man, Answers to Harry

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The first transformation was the worst.

For a whole month after they fled the hospital, Sirius had been searching for somewhere in the countryside he could rent a room, but with no luck. He needed somewhere away from other people, muggles or wizards. But he had no muggle money, only a silver watch he had taken from one of the nurses before he had fled St Mungo's. No one would rent a room to a dishevelled-looking man carrying a huge glass bottle and brandishing an unreadable silver pocket watch as payment.

Sirius and Harry had been living wild, in farming sheds, doorways, or on the ground when they had to. And Harry had asked Sirius, time and again, when they would be able to go home, and when he would be able to see Moony again, and why they had had to leave the hospital. And Sirius could not tell him – could not explain, could not think about answers – so he had kept avoiding the questions. The Wolfsbane ran out, and Sirius was terrified Harry would still be too sick to survive without it: but he had already absorbed the last of the werewolf residue and was just happy he did not have to drink the bitter potion any longer.

On the day of the full moon, Harry grew sick and weak, and seemed to find it difficult to breath. Sirius did not know what to do. Lupin never got sick until about an hour before moonrise. He realised that this was something to do with Harry's first transformation. Fearful and desperate, he broke into am unoccupied muggle country house and carried Harry inside. He searched frantically for a room with a sturdy door and a strong lock, but there was nothing, and the child's shudders were growing worse. In the end, he carried his godson upstairs to the master bedroom, shut the door and put a chair under the handle. He had the sense to take Harry's glasses and put them in a drawer just as the moon began to rise. Then the moonlight hit the window and it began.

For Sirius, it was one of the most terrible things he had ever had to watch. Seeing Lupin transform was one thing – Lupin was used to it, Lupin did it gracefully – but Harry did not understand what was happening. As his body changed and twisted, he cried, and yelled for Sirius to help him, and then began to scream for Lily. His back arched and he clawed at the bedspread, tearing great rents in it as his fingers became claws. When Lupin transformed, it had always been sudden and swift, because Lupin knew not to fight it. Harry fought it, and it took forever, and it was agony for him. Worst of all, Sirius could not touch him or help him, because he knew if Harry lunged out and scratched or bit him he would be infected as well. All he could do was sit and watch, talking to Harry for as long as he dared. When at last the small boy grew too weary and gave in, and the werewolf overcame him, Sirius was gone and the great black dog appeared in his place.

The werewolf was small, but all the more monstrous for its child-like size. It leaped off the bed at once, looking from side to side with its teeth bared, and then it saw the great black hound standing before it. Furious, maddened, it hissed and tried to attack the dog. It scratched Sirius across the muzzle, and locked its tiny teeth around his foreleg. Sirius had to hold it down with his weight, and still it struggled and howled. Delirious with rage, it scratched itself in its attempts to wriggle free, hurting its broken arm and inflaming the half-healed cuts on its face and chest. Sirius nuzzled it and howled with it and tried to calm it, but it would not be calmed. The dog remembered the first months of befriending the Lupin werewolf, which at first had not trusted the stag, the dog and the rat that had come into its lair. But it had grown to trust them quickly, and it had never attacked them. How long would it take because the Harry werewolf learned to trust Padfoot?

The night wore on, and the werewolf lay howling and whining. When dawn broke, Sirius found he had dozed, and snuffled awake as the first rays of the sun filled the room. He stood up, shook himself, and then nuzzled the boy sleeping on the carpeted floor, his bandages in tatters and his sling askew. Sirius returned to human form, carried the limp body back to the bed and lay his godson on the torn quilt. Exhausted, he knelt beside him, holding Harry's hand, until Harry stirred and opened his eyes.

"Sirius," Harry began to cry, "where are we? I dreamed I tried to kill you. Oh, my arm…I can't see anything…"

Sirius fumbled for his godson's glasses and lowered them onto the boy's nose. Harry sat up and straightened them, still clinging to his godfather's hand.

"Sirius, how did you get those scratches on your face?" Harry wiped his eyes and looked around, at the slashed sheets, the deep scratches on the floor, and Sirius' bleeding cheek and wrist, where the tiny teeth-marks could very clearly be seen.

And his godfather had to tell him, choking back his own tears, that he was a werewolf and that nothing could cure him or make it easier. Kneeling in front of Harry, Sirius told him that they could never go back to the wizarding world, but had to live by themselves, and take care of themselves from now on. When Sirius finished, Harry was silent. Then he let go of his godfather's hand, reached over and took Sirius' face in his tiny fingers. With his thumb, he wiped away the blood that was clotting on Sirius' cheek.

"It's okay," he said, "I know you'll look after me."

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Sirius did not tell Harry about the Horcruxes, or what Dumbledore had told him they must do before Voldemort could be defeated. He told himself that his godson was still too young, that he was not yet capable of understanding. One day, he'd explain everything. One day, when Harry was old enough. But every year Harry grew a little older, and every year, Sirius put off the day when his godson would be ready to hear the truth.

They lived anywhere they could. With muggles, usually. Elderly muggles were almost always happy to take in a kindly young tramp and his scarred 'son', especially farmers in need of an extra hand to help with the sheep, or to put new fence-posts in. When the moon was nearing its fullness, it was easy to say that Harry seemed a bit off-colour and perhaps Sirius would take him down to the local hospital for the night. He would find a barn or an old cottage in the middle of nowhere, turn into the dog, and the two of them would shoulder on through the night until dawn, when Sirius would return, piggy-backing his exhausted godson. But everyone got suspicious eventually, and then they had to move on.

He tried to use magic as little as possible, partly because he knew the ministry had ways of detecting it and partly because he wanted Harry to get used to a world without magic. Although he tried never to think about it, he knew it was possible Harry might never learn to do magic. He could never attend a wizarding school, and Sirius could teach his godson as best he could, but without a wand, memorising charms and hexes was useless to Harry anyway.

But he wished more than anything he knew spells to cover the scars that had formed on the right side of Harry's face, knotted and dark. He tried to tell himself they were not that bad. It was only three big scars, really, each one worming diagonally across his godson's face. One across the top of Harry's cheek, one cutting through his eyebrow and above his eyelid and causing his right eye to be slightly more closed than his left, and one across his forehead, receding back into his hair. There was another small one on his chin and another on the side of his nose, and, of course, there was the strange lightening-shaped cut that divided his forehead in two, but aside from all that, there really wasn't anything bad at all. Sirius only wished he could wave his wand and the scars would vanish. But he had never been good at illusions, or glamour spells. It took a lot of practise just to make the scars fade a little.

So life went on for Sirius Black and his godson, Harry. And the years went by, and for the first year Harry's birthday passed uncelebrated, with nothing more than a hug from his godfather and a "you're five today, cub". Sirius managed to find a steady job pouring drinks in a pub in a small muggle town, and at last they could rent a house of their own. Harry went to school with muggle children, and found for the first time why his godfather wanted to cover his scars. Children stared at the scars, and pointed, because they were children, and they could not help it. Harry learned to keep his head high and ignore the taunts, and in the end, he made friends and no one noticed any more that he had marks on his face.

But things changed, and muggles got suspicious easily, and the two fugitives never stayed put for much longer than a year. Sometimes Sirius got enough money together to buy Harry a birthday present – new shoes, a block of chocolate, or perhaps a book, which always pleased Harry – and sometimes there just wasn't any money to spare. It was frustrating for Sirius, who knew he had enough money in his vault in Gringotts to buy Harry a whole library of books, not to mention a lifetime's supply of Wolfsbane, if only he could access it. And even more than that, there was Lily and James' fortune buried somewhere below London, all belonging to the last Potter. But he had no owls to send, and anyway, Gringotts did not send galleons by post, let alone muggle currency.

So life went on, tough as it was.

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Sirius picked Harry up from school most days and walked him home to the house they were currently living in. They shared it with a gloomy old lady named Mrs Prot, who owned too many dogs. She thought Sirius was simply the most charming young fellow, and had taken the two of them in because her grandchildren had all gone to Australia and didn't visit her any more.

They had only been living in the small town for three months, and Sirius had yet to find any permanent work. They had left the last village behind after allegations that Sirius was some kind of abusive father, when Harry regularly turned up at school after every full moon with scratches and bruises on his face. The village had turned against them so quickly Sirius had barely understood what was going on, until the muggle authorities had turned up to take Harry to a foster home. Sirius had told them his godson was out at a friend's house and given them the address of some children who lived on the other side of the village, all the while shooting a patronus behind his back to warn Harry to get ready to leave. When the authorities had returned about half an hour later, Sirius and Harry had packed their belongings and vanished.

It was the last day of school for the summer, and Harry would be eleven in less than a month's time. As they walked through the carefully manicured park on the way home, Sirius said to Harry, "I'm going to go to London tomorrow. Can you manage with just Mrs Prot for a couple of days?"

"Why are you going to London?" Harry asked, distracted by a snail he had seen crawling across the path.

"To find us a house," Sirius replied, nodding at the snail, which Harry held out for him to admire.

Harry dropped the snail, which landed in the grass and rolled into a patch of crocuses, "London? We're going to London?"

"Maybe," said Sirius, trying to restrain a smile at the shock on his godson's face, "there's a house there which I haven't seen since before you were born, but it belongs to me now. I haven't been back because the Ministry have been keeping an eye on it since I disappeared, but I think they've forgotten about it now. I'm going there tomorrow to make sure. And, if it's all clear, there's no reason we couldn't live there."

"You mean, we'll have a house of our own? And I can go to school in the city?" Harry's mouth gaped.

"If there's no problems, maybe," his godfather replied.

Harry whooped and threw his arms around Sirius' waist.

"Don't get too excited! I have to make sure everything's safe first," Sirius said as seriously as he could.

Harry bounced up and down, "we're going to live in London! You're going to have a job! And there'll be buses and libraries and neighbours that don't smell of cabbage!"

His godson's joy was too contagious. Sirius let out a whoop of his own, picked Harry up and swung him around. He forgot about his worries about the Ministry, and raced Harry the rest of the way home.

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TBC