Title: Harry Potter and the Werewolf of Azkaban
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, settings or anything else from Harry Potter.
Warnings: AU

Chapter Seven

The end of the week found the Harry, Ron and Hermione, plus the older Weasley brothers and Ginny, on Platform 9¾, stamping their feet to keep away the bitter chill. Sirius wasn't there; must be running late, Harry thought, he'll be here in a minute, but all the same there was heavy dread was in his belly, same as the day when Sirius hadn't come to the Dursleys. That seemed so far away now, although it was only a few months back. So much had changed...

"Harry!" Sirius came bounding through the barrier, grinning broadly, and Harry's heart gave a great thump of pleasure and relief. He let out a sigh he hadn't even realised he'd been holding, and grinned back.

Sirius caught him into a swift, tight hug, obviously not wanting to embarrass his godson in front of his friends, but his eyes were bright and spoke clearly what he didn't show physically. "You okay, mate?" he said softly and affectionately.

"Yeah," Harry said and, for the moment, really felt it. "I'm great."

"You look pale. Big dark circles under your eyes and all. Have you been sleeping properly?"

"Honestly, Sirius, you nag like an old woman," Harry said, in just the tone he knew would placate his godfather.

"And this is the thanks I get," Sirius sighed. "Well, come on then. Hello, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George - in whatever order you actually are - Percy, Ginny. Boys - and girl, sorry Ginny - your Mum's waiting on the other side, and Hermione, your parents are at Grimmauld Place, looking a bit wary, so we'd best get you back quickly." Sirius took control at once, gathering the trio and their luggage and ushering them through the barrier, where Molly was waiting on the other side, looking harassed amid the pre-Christmas crush.

Harry had never been to Grimmauld Place before, although Sirius had mentioned it, usually along with a complaint about how long it had taken to clear the place of his family's Dark magic, or a funny anecdote about this biting teacup or those poisonous candlesticks. Harry wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but the grandness of it took him a little aback: a tall townhouse in central London, and even Harry at thirteen years old knew enough to guess how desirable a place like that would be. He had known that Sirius was rich, of course, but in an abstract sort of way. The reality jarred him oddly.

"Welcome to my humble abode," Sirius joked as he led them into the house. "The most noble and ancient house of Black."

"Wow," said Ron, eloquently. Harry fervently agreed.

Sirius had really gone to town on the decorations, and every surface was thoroughly decked with holly or tinsel that sparkled like the fairy-lights Sirius had hung on the chandeliers. At the end of the hall was an enormous Christmas tree loaded down with every kind of ornament, and with presents strewn underneath in huge mounds. Sirius grinned at their astonished expressions.

"Do you like it? I wanted it to be special. What do you think, Harry?"

Harry said, "Wow."

Sirius slung an arm around his shoulders and laughed, loud and happy. "Oh, we're going to have fun this Christmas, mate."

A house elf slunk into sight, like Dobby but ancient, gnarled, and with malevolence lighting his downcast eyes.

"Kreacher shan't, Kreacher shan't look at him, the filthy traitor," said the elf, resolutely staring at his own feet. "Kreacher shan't."

"Kreacher certainly shall," Sirius said. "Kreacher, take the guests' luggage up to their rooms."

Kreacher fixed on Sirius a hateful glare. "Kreacher hasn't any choice, oh no, but if he did, oh, if he did."

Harry stared, wondering if the elf even knew that he was speaking aloud, and almost felt sorry for it before Kreacher's gaze shifted to Harry himself.

"And is this the Potter boy? Kreacher sees his scar, yes; Kreacher thinks it is the Potter boy. Muggle-lovers, yes, Muggle-lovers all. Kreacher-"

"Didn't I give you an order?" Sirius interrupted. "Off you go. Come on everyone, come into the living room."

Harry had one last glimpse of Kreacher's face twisted with hate and revulsion as he moved to lug the heavy trunks up the grand, sweeping staircase.

"Sorry about that," Sirius explained. "I can't get rid of him; he goes with the house. Believe me," he added darkly, "I've tried."

In the large living room a fire was merrily blazing, and around it were collected Sirius' other guests, including the Grangers, who looked distinctly uncomfortable, and a few other wizards who Harry had never met before. Hermione moved to give her family a hug, and they looked pleased to see her, and a little relieved. Crookshanks yowled at their feet and leapt into Mr Granger's lap, who glanced uneasily down at the ugly creature.

"Wotcha, Harry," came a voice from close by, and Harry turned to see a pretty young woman with screamingly pink hair and purple eyes holding out her hand. Harry shook it.

"Hello, Tonks," said Sirius from Harry's side. "Harry, this is my cousin, Tonks."

"Nymphadora," came another voice, and this time Harry saw an older woman with dark hair and eyes, who reminded him faintly of Sirius. She smiled at Harry. "Her name is Nymphadora, actually. Tonks is our surname."

"Well, wouldn't you go by Tonks?" said Tonks to Harry in a low, conspiratorial tone. Harry grinned.

"I'm Andromeda," said the older woman, carefully ignoring the younger. "Sirius' cousin, and mother to this wretch. It's lovely to meet you at last, Harry." She bent and kissed Harry on the cheek, like family, and then she kissed Sirius on the cheek too. "Sirius, you should have introduced us earlier. I mean, he's practically family."

Family, thought Harry, and felt a warmth suffuse his body. Family.

And it was like he'd always imagined a family Christmas would be. At the Dursleys', Christmas had been dominated by Dudley's present-unwrapping, which sometimes took half the day. After that, they would go to visit Aunt Marge or other relatives, and Harry would be left behind with strict instructions not to touch Dudley's new things. The one time he had been taken along, he had accidentally turned Dudley's grandfather's hair turn purple after the old man had made a remark about James and Lily Potter, the same shade of purple, incidentally, as Vernon Dursley had turned upon seeing it. At Grimmauld Place, lit by warm candle- and fire-light and by Sirius' boundless joy at having them all there, it was as different as it could be. Even the Grangers appeared to be having a good time, Mr Granger loosening up so far as to enter into a long discussion with Mr Weasley about the various everyday minutiae of the Muggle world, although that might have been due to Sirius' liberal applications of Firewhiskey into their tea.

On Christmas morning, for the first time in his life Harry woke with the fluttery thrill of excited anticipation in his belly. He supposed that this was what Ron and the others felt every year, and he grinned into the darkness as across the room Ron shifted and whispered, "Harry? You awake?"

They weren't the only ones awake - on the landing they met the twins and Ginny, and as they were creeping slowly down the grand staircase Hermione's door creaked open too and she joined the procession.

In the living room a fire was blazing and casting flickering shadows over the incredible mountain of presents that were scattered in heaps and piles about the Christmas tree.

"Wow," said Ron, and Harry was about to agree when Sirius came into the room from the kitchen, looking troubled and yet ridiculous in a voluminous tartan dressing gown and slippers, clutching a mug of steaming something. His eyes were dark and distant, but then he looked up and caught sight of the mob at the doorway, and his face split into a grin.

"Morning chaps," he said brightly, dispelling all his former gloom. "Merry Christmas all! If you can restrain yourselves for a few minutes I'll go wake the lazy lot upstairs, and -" He glanced down at himself. "- change into something a little less ridiculous."

He winked at Harry as he went out of the room and upstairs, and Harry grinned back, but with a faint feeling of unease worming its way through his Christmas excitement. Why had Sirius looked so thoughtful? Was it...could it be Lupin?

But all thought of murderous werewolves were driven from his head at the arrival of the grumbling, weary adults who trudged heavily into the room looking dark-eyed and not at all in the Christmas spirit. Even Tonks was subdued, her hair more pale pink that strident purple.

"Right," Sirius said, taking charge of proceedings and now dressed in jeans and a multicoloured Christmas jumper. "Fred, George, these are yours. Ginny, here's yours..." He went through them all, allocating each a pile of presents until there was only Harry left.

"And these, Harry," said Sirius, barely containing his excitement. "These are yours."

Harry couldn't help but notice that his own pile was considerably larger than everyone else's.

"Really?" he asked, wide-eyed.

Sirius laughed delightedly. "Absolutely positively, Harry. They're all yours," he said, and Harry thought his heart would burst.

There were the usual presents: Mrs Weasley's annual Christmas jumper and the gifts from Ron and Hermione, and he noticed packages from Andromeda and Tonks too, but for the majority of his pile he had only Sirius to thank. It was as if he had gone out and bought gifts for every Christmas that he had ever missed when Harry was growing up, with every birthday thrown in for good measure. Everything he had looked at when they were together in Diagon Alley was somewhere in that pile of packages, everything he had ever expressed interest in or admiration for, until he reached the bottom of the heap and there - resplendent in gold paper - was the obvious shape of a broom.

Harry looked up at Sirius in shock, and Sirius grinned so widely that Harry thought he must be in danger of spontaneous combustion from joy. With trembling hands, and with everyone watching him, he pulled back the paper and gasped in awe as it opened to reveal -

"A Firebolt!"

"Wow!"

"A real Firebolt? Wicked!"

"Are you serious?" Harry demanded. "Is this really -?"

"A Firebolt?" Sirius said. "Yep! Best broom in the world. I hear the Irish team are ordering in a set for the World Cup, you know, and if it's good enough for them it's good enough for Gryffindor's youngest seeker in a century, right? You do - you do like it, don't you?"

Harry cast an eye over the broom's polished handle, the neat and perfect twigs, the obvious power in the lines of the thing. "I love it," he said, practically throwing himself at Sirius.

The rest of the day passed in a warm haze of food and constant repetition of the many virtues of the Firebolt. By the evening, Harry could have recited the number of twigs in the broom's tail, he was that intimately acquainted with it, and by the end of the week, even Mr and Mrs Granger could have listed its top speed and braking power, and how long it took to go from 0 to 60.

It was on the last evening of that glorious Christmas week that Harry next thought about Lupin, and what he had decided to talk to Sirius about. Now was his chance: everyone was stuffed in armchairs, dozing in front of the fire, too bloated to move and listening to some witch croon over the wireless, and Sirius was a little way off in the shadows.

Harry got up silently and moved to sit next to his godfather. Sirius smiled as he approached.

"Had a good week?" he asked, as he had asked nearly every day, and Harry answered as usual, "It's been the best week ever."

"I'm glad," Sirius grinned.

Stomach churning, Harry said, "Have you heard anything about Lupin?"

"Not a thing," Sirius replied. "It's like he disappeared. Nobody knows where he is. Don't worry though. We'll get him."

Harry decided to bite the bullet. "Sirius," he began unsteadily, then swallowed and went on, "you knew Lupin, didn't you?

"What?" Sirius affected an air of puzzlement. "Who gave you that idea?"

"Hermione and Ron overheard you in the Three Broomsticks, on the day of the Hogsmeade visit."

"Don't be ridiculous, Harry. Of course-"

"Sirius. Please. I want to know the truth."

Sirius' face darkened. He gave a great sigh and closed his eyes, almost as though he was in pain. When he opened them again, they were too dark and shone in the firelight.

"I knew Remus Lupin. He was one of my best friends. It was me, your dad, Peter Pettigrew, and Remus Lupin. The Marauders, we used to call ourselves." Sirius paused a moment, and Harry thought with a jolt of the Marauder's Map. It had belonged to his father! But there were other things to think of right now.

"Lupin killed my parents, didn't he Sirius?"

Sirius said, "Yes. In a way."

"In a way? He sold them out to Voldemort!"

"Keep your voice down!" Sirius said a bit sharply, as Molly Weasley turned to look over at them. "Sorry, Harry, it's just...I didn't want this to get around so much. I'm - I'm ashamed of what I did back then. Because if it wasn't for me, Remus wouldn't have had a chance to betray your parents."

Harry felt as though someone had thrown cold water over him. He felt it trickle in icy shivers down his spine. "What?"

"Did Hermione tell you about the Fidelius Charm?"

"Yeah, but- "

"Well, your mum and dad asked me to be their Secret-Keeper. But I said that was too obvious, that the first person Voldemort would go after was James' bets friend. So I said they should use Remus, because nobody would ever think that they would trust a werewolf with their secret, not in those dark times."

"But you trusted him, didn't you? Even though he was a werewolf?"

"I would have trusted him with my life. I thought I knew him." Sirius chuckled darkly. "How wrong could I have been? He must have trotted off to Voldemort not five minutes after the Charm. It makes me sick just thinking about it!"

"Sirius, why didn't you tell me? Didn't you think I had a right to know?"

"I wanted to protect you, Harry."

"From what, though? From finding out about what you'd done?" Harry's voice was an angry whisper.

Sirius drew a hand across his eyes, looking weary and defeated. "Harry, Harry please. What I did back then tortures me. Every day I think if only I'd noticed something, if only I'd done this or that differently you parents might still be alive."

Harry swallowed convulsively against the lump that rose in his throat. "Yeah, well, you can't, can you? Bring them back. So it doesn't matter, does it?"

"Please, Harry, don't think too badly of me after this. I should have told you, I know that. But I couldn't. Please understand."

Harry nodded numbly. "I think I'm going to go to bed."

"Alright," Sirius said, voice trembling. "Whatever you want. I'll see you in the morning, yeah?"

"Yeah," Harry said, voice blank, and left the room.

In his room he lay down fully clothed on his bed and almost at once fell into sleep and dark, confused dreams of Lupin and Sirius and his parents, and then a scream and green light and pain in his scar and -

He snapped awake, panting for breath. His watch told him that it was still only ten o'clock, and Ron's bed was empty. He thought of them all downstairs. Was Sirius there too, smiling and laughing and joking as if nothing had happened? Harry rolled over and buried his face in his pillow, head pounding.

After a few minutes, he realised that the pounding in his head was not in his head at all, but coming from the window, where as he raised his head he saw Pigwidgeon banging his small head against the window frame. Harry's heart sank - he was in no mood for Lupin tonight. All the same, though, someone was going to hear that noise before long, so Harry got up and let the tiny owl in. It let out a muffled hoot around the envelope it carried and fluttered its wings. From her cage, Hedwig gave it a disdainful glance and turned her back. Harry took the letter and stole one of Hedwig's treats to give to the exhausted little bird. Hedwig ruffled her feathers angrily but made no audible protest and went back to sleep.

Lupin's handwriting was faint and spidery this time. Harry spared a thought to imagine him now, sleeping rough in the snow and the freezing cold, but the stony anger in his belly would admit no pity. He had half a mind to rip the letter up and throw it out of the window, but the gesture would be lost on a man Merlin-knew-how-many miles away, and besides, behind his anger lurked a glimmer of curiosity. He opened it.

There was a short note in the same weak hand, which read:

Merry Christmas, Harry,

I hope you're happy and well, as I'm sure you are with Sirius there. I just wanted to send you my greetings and a little gift, which is all I have to give you.

Yours,

Remus

This note was wrapped around a photograph. Harry's stomach jolted as he regarded it: his father, young and untidy and smiling, with his arm slung over the shoulders of a short, plump boy with fair curly hair who Harry thought must be Peter Pettigrew. Pettigrew had his arm slung over the shoulders of a young and extremely handsome Sirius, who beamed lazily at the camera and winked lecherously every so often, and his arm was over the shoulder of a thin, pale boy with three scars raked across his face, but who smiled happily nonetheless. Lupin. They all looked so happy. No wonder Sirius had trusted Lupin. They looked like nothing could come between them, the best of friends, friends for life.

There was a sudden knock at his door. Harry started and hastily shoved the picture and letter under his pillow.

"Harry, you awake?" It was Sirius. Harry debated staying silent, but called out instead, "Yes, I'm up." He shooed Pigwidgeon hurriedly back out of the window and shut it firmly.

"Can I come in?"

"Yes."

Sirius opened the door and entered hesitantly; as if afraid that Harry would change his mind and order him to leave. "I wanted to give you something," he said.

Harry shifted and made a space for Sirius to sit next to him on the bed, feeling very conscious of the letter and picture stuffed under beneath the pillow. In his hands, Sirius held a little package, which he gave to Harry.

Harry turned it over a few times. "What is it?"

"Open it," was all Sirius would say.

Harry pulled back the paper and revealed a small, dirty old mirror. He lifted it free of the wrappings and held it up; turning it this way and that to try and find some significance in it, but it just looked like an old square mirror. He looked at Sirius expectantly, and Sirius pulled something from his pocket which, Harry saw, was another little mirror, the very twin of the one Harry held.

"Your dad and me used to use these when we were in separate detentions," Sirius began. "It's a two-way mirror. If you ever need me, just say my name into it and you'll appear in my mirror, and I'll appear in yours. Which is my roundabout, convoluted way of saying Harry, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Lupin, and if there's anything you ever want to ask me ever again, I am always here and I will always answer."

There was another lump in Harry's throat now, but it wasn't from anger. He fingered the little mirror and nodded mutely.

"So, we're okay?" Sirius asked timidly.

"I think we are," said Harry, offering his godfather a watery smile. "Don't you?"

Sirius put an arm around his godson's shoulders in a way that reminded Harry painfully of the hidden photograph. "I think we are, mate. Now, d'you want to come downstairs and sing carols and drink my lovely mulled wine, or do you want to skulk about here in the dark a bit more?"

"Hmm," said Harry. "That's a tough one. I know what you're like with cooking."

"Oi, matey, I'll have you know that I am a veritable gourmet when it comes to alcoholic drinks. That, and Molly did most of it."

Smiling and laughing and teasing, they made their way downstairs.

A/N: Whee, update at last! Hope you enjoyed. As usual, feedback is always given a godd home, and is loved and cherished as my own regardless of content, so if you've any hanging around please feel free to toss it my way.

Also, just to legally save my behind, Sirius' explanation of the mirror is taken almost verbatim from the book. I lay no claim to it whatsoever, it is the property of JK Rowling, as is everything else in this story.