A/N: Eeek, early update, quick-smart, must go now…
Lost: One Godson, Answers to Harry
------------------------------------------
The bright and enduring Sirius whom he had known seemed to have vanished as surely as if he had never existed. Lupin feared that his friend would lock himself away, sink down into despair, and never come back again. Since this was exactly what he himself wished to do, he did not think he was going to be much help in keeping Sirius alive and happy, and dragging him out of mourning – in fact, the only thing that kept Lupin from despair was the thought that Sirius needed him. He couldn't allow himself the luxury of self-pity.
Dumbledore had given Lupin a few weeks leave from his teaching post so that he could help Sirius settle in to the Wizarding world once more, and as neither of them could stand the thought of returning to Grimmauld Place, Lupin rented out the cottage in the countryside and took Sirius to live with him in a small flat in London. He braced himself for several lonely weeks while he tried to find Sirius a job and somewhere to live.
However, to his surprise and utter relief, he was not alone in his task of aiding Sirius' recovery. Friends who had heard that Sirius Black had returned after his long disappearance came from all over Britain to welcome him back. Not being a great socialiser himself, Lupin had never realised there were so many people who had missed Sirius over the years.
It turned out there were more than he could count. Several times in the first week, school friends such as Dedalus Diggle issued out of the fireplace, cheering and in Diggle's case, carrying a keg of butterbeer. Members of the Order of the Phoenix arrived on the doorstep at every hour of the day or night, to shake Sirius's hand and ask when he would be returning to the Order. Letters arrived bearing gifts from Ministry employees who had worked beside Sirius when he had been an Auror. A great number of old girlfriends whom Lupin had never met, but who greeted Sirius with a kiss or a hug, arrived by broomstick or muggle cars. Andromeda Tonks burst into Lupin's house, seized her cousin and embraced him, sobbing that he need only call her if he needed anything at all. Tonks also came once, to talk to Sirius, but she did not stay long, and avoided Lupin's eye. From Romania, Charlie Weasley sent a slightly scorched letter of remorse. Charlie's parents, Molly and Arthur, came to express their condolences and invited Lupin and Sirius to visit whenever they liked. Molly looked very pale a shaken: their son Ron had been one of those taken hostage by the Death Eaters, and Ron had told them everything about Harry and what had happened. There were others as well – Amos Diggory, Rubeus Hagrid, Mundungus Fletcher – and as each of them arrived, Sirius' mood perked up just a little, but just enough to give Lupin hope.
But no one was more help to him in keeping Sirius from sinking into depression than Kingsley Shacklebolt and Hestia Jones, who were in and out of Lupin's flat every day. They had both been close friends with Sirius when he had been as their fellow Auror, and now had rather a lot of time on their hands because neither of them was working as Aurors any more.
Minister Moody had put Kingsley on probation for two months for his role in the bungled arrest of the Death Eaters, and demoted him from the third-highest ranking Auror in the Ministry. Lupin was outraged when he heard this, as Kingsley had done nothing more than tell Minerva McGonagall that Sirius Black was in the castle, something that Moody seemed to consider near-unforgivable treason. But Kingsley waved off Lupin's verbal abuse of the Minister, saying, "It won't last. Alastor will miss my company before too long." He was right – within a month, a very grudging owl arrived from Emmeline Vance asking Kingsley to come in to help with some work, and though it did not officially pardon him, it was obvious his probation was finished.
Hestia Jones, however, was punished rather more severely for her part in the whole matter. There was no question of her remaining an Auror: she had disobeyed direct orders from the Minister of Magic, and utterly ruined a mission that would have apprehended a great number of the Ministry's most wanted Death Eaters. Her actions had indirectly handed two sources of immortality to the Dark Lord. She was in total disgrace.
While she was still recovering in the hospital wing of Hogwarts, a letter arrived informing Hestia that she had been relieved of her post as a Ministry Auror, and her position within the Ministry was terminated immediately. However, the letter did not arrive before Hestia had already sent in her resignation addressed to the Minister personally, in the form of a howler, which burst into flames on his desk and called him a lot of rude names before someone managed to cast a freezing charm to silence it.
Hestia told Sirius this story very proudly while they were still in the Hospital wing together, but Lupin later heard her confiding in Tonks that she had only resigned because she knew she was going to be fired. She was near tears as she told Tonks. "What am I going to do? I've been an Auror since I left school, I don't know how to do anything else!"
Tonks was likewise in disgrace, but someone among the Aurors must have felt that she deserved forgiveness, because she returned to her Auror training with nothing more than a lecture from Emmeline Vance and four weeks of difficult chores to complete around Auror headquarters on top of her study for her second-year trainee exams. These exams were a source of great anxiety to Tonks, but luckily for her, she now had a trio of experienced tutors to help her practise: Kingsley had plenty of free time, and Hestia and Sirius were both determined that even if they could not return to work as Aurors, they would at least have the chance to pass on their knowledge and skills to Tonks.
Weeks passed. Kingsley and Lupin went back to work, Hestia got a job cleaning cages in Eyelops' Owl Emporium, and Sirius ended up with a secretarial position in Gringotts, running errands and typing up accounting reports for Goblins. He kept living in the little London flat, though he refused to let Lupin pay for his rent any longer. The Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher sent him daily letters from Hogwarts, and Kingsley and Hestia visited him every chance they got.
And between the three of them – Hestia, Kingsley and Lupin, with a little help on the side from Tonks, who was still avoiding Lupin's presence – they managed to keep Sirius from falling into gloom and despair. As the weeks turned into months, Sirius began to smile again, and tease them again, and the weight that had seemed to be crushing him lifted and was gone. And sometimes – not often, but sometimes – Sirius would even talk about Harry.
Those were rare moments, but Lupin knew that conversely, while Sirius hardly ever spoke his Godson's name aloud, Harry was all that occupied his thoughts. Both of them had made an unspoken oath that they were never rest until Harry was safe again – and yet saying and doing were two things that were very difficult to unite. When Sirius was not at work or asleep he was in every corner of Britain, hunting down every witch or wizard who might be even vaguely aware of where Death Eaters might take a kidnapped prisoner. Several times, Lupin had to step in to keep Sirius from getting violent in his desperation – but people were more afraid of the Death Eaters than they were of a shaggy wizard with a bad temper. If anyone knew anything about a lost boy named Harry, they weren't telling.
Dumbledore, too, lent his weight to the search. Lupin knew that he was not only searching for Harry, but for all of the Horcruxes of the Dark Lord, and it disturbed him a little that in Dumbledore's mind, Harry might be placed in that latter category. All the same, the Headmaster had sworn he would never allow the boy to come to harm, and Lupin had to trust his word. If Dumbledore found Harry and brought him home, Lupin knew he would never again doubt the Headmaster in any way.
But the weeks kept passing, and still there was nothing, no word, no clue –
It was as if the boy called Harry Potter had never existed.
------------------------------------------
Hermione and Ron stayed in the Hospital wing for only a couple of days before Madame Pomphrey declared them perfectly fit and McGonagall asked them to return to classes. Neither of them wanted to stay cooped up in the Hospital wing anyway, but they had remained there in the hopes of talking to Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, whom they had only glimpsed briefly before a rather pushy woman who claimed to be an Auror had shut the curtains around his bed. This woman, who said her name was Hestia Jones, was like a broody hen, and she chased Hermione and Ron away several times before Sirius left the hospital wing one night and they lost the chance to talk to him.
The two young students returned to their classes, but even Hermione seemed to have come away from the whole incident with her charisma for lessons dulled. They avoided each other whenever they could, even in the common room. Ron hung around with Dean and Seamus and tried to cover his preoccupied thoughts by being as boisterous and loud as possible at all times. Hermione sat by herself, hidden behind her books, alone because her only friend, Neville, had not come back from the Hospital wing. This was a mystery in itself as Neville had not been injured in Gryffindor tower or taken hostage by the Death Eaters: he had, in fact, been in the library during the entire affair, but apparently he had gotten ill in some one (epilepsy, McGonagall told Miss Granger sternly when she asked), and was not well enough to attend class yet.
One afternoon about a week after the Death Eaters invaded Hogwarts and then escaped it, Hermione unintentionally found herself standing opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, and almost against her will, she walked past it three times. The door to the Room of Requirement appeared, and she went in.
It was just as it had been when Harry had been living in it, the shelves of books, the tiny table where she had taught him charm-work, the three chairs where they had sat with Ron and eaten pastries stolen from dinner. The bed was still unmade from when Harry had last slept in it: and to her surprise, someone was sitting on it, staring unhappily at the floor.
Ron jumped to his feet and had pulled out his wand before he realised it was just Hermione standing in the doorway. Both of them had recovered their wands after they had been taken from them, as all of the confiscated wands had been left in the Great Hall after the Death Eaters had Disapparated.
"Oh," Ron said crossly, putting his wand back into his robes. "It's you."
"What are you doing?" Hermione asked, shutting the door behind her.
"What are you doing?"
She shook her head at him and looked away. Ron glared for a moment and then his aggression seemed to leave him and he sagged a little, his shoulders hunched forward. He bent and picked up a silvery bundle sitting on the bed, running the soft material through his hands. It was Harry's invisibility cloak.
"It doesn't belong to us. I sort of thought, maybe we could give it to Lupin," Ron said quietly, folding the cloak up as neatly as he could. "And he could give it to Harry's Godfather. That's who it should belong to now, I suppose."
"But Lupin's still away, Snape's taking his classes," Hermione pointed out.
"Yeah, I know," Ron snapped at her. "Why do you always act like I'm stupid or something?"
"Why do you always act like I'm trying to make you angry?" Hermione fumed, balling her fists. "Stop picking a fight and I'll stop fighting with you!"
For a moment, it looked as if a row was starting up: then they both closed their mouths and glanced at the floor. Hermione sniffed. "He would have told us not to bicker."
"Yeah, he would have," Ron sat down on the bed again, setting the cloak in his lap. His voice barely more than a whisper, he murmured. "Is it our fault? For keeping him a secret?"
This was what had been on both their minds since that awful day when the Death Eaters had broken into Hogwarts: this terrible, choking guilt that maybe, if they had told McGonagall about Harry from the beginning, then he would still be safe. That they had been foolish and selfish to want to keep Harry hidden, and it was because of their selfishness that they had lost him.
"I don't know," Hermione said, unable to meet his eye, feeling her throat close up. "I've – I've got to go…"
Blinking, determined not to cry, she fumbled for the door handle and stumbled out into the corridor, walking away as quickly as she could without breaking into a run. Ron did not follow her.
--------------------------------------
Neville had still not returned to classes the next day, so Hermione went to visit him in the Hospital wing before their first lesson. She slipped into Transfiguration alone before anyone else got there, and sat down in an empty desk at the back of the classroom, pulling out her books without meeting anyone's eye as the rest of the class entered. Ron came in a few minutes later, and headed for the desk where Dean and Seamus were sitting. As he swung his bag onto the ground, he glanced at Hermione, who was bent over her book, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"Hey," he called. Hermione looked up at the sound of his voice and looked at him, brief confusion flickering across her features. Ron indicated the empty seat next him. "Don't sit all by yourself."
"Oh, Ron, come on!" Seamus rolled his eyes. "If you want to be next to the know-it-all, go over there, don't make us sit with her too."
Ron glowered at him for a moment. Then he bent and picked up his bag, and growled, "Fine, then. I will." With that, he strode off to the back of the class to sit beside Hermione.
Dean said something under his breath and Seamus laughed unkindly, but after a moment he stopped and looked away apologetically, knowing he'd gone a little too far. The chatter of the other students died away as Professor McGonagall entered and waved her hand to command silence. She began writing up the day's heading on the black board, calling for Lavender Brown to stop giggling and for everyone to take out their notebooks.
As she had never seen him before in her life, Hermione stared at Ron, who was taking great trouble to remove his battered textbook from his bag in order to avoid looking at her. Then she sat up a little straighter, took out her quill, and began to write.
----------------------------------------
"We only knew him for two weeks," she said to Ron, while she helped correct his Charms homework that evening in the common room. "Does that count? As a friendship, I mean?"
"Only two weeks," Ron shrugged. "I don't care how long that was, I'm not going to just forget about him. Because we're going to see him again, I know we are. Even if we have to find him ourselves."
----------------------------------------
TBC
A/N: First off, let me say, I LOVE YOU GUYS. I was practically singing all of yesterday because of everyone who took a moment to cheer for the arrival of Chapter one. Honestly, it doesn't matter what you said about it, the very fact that you would all let me know what you thought makes me so happy. If you can imagine that I was Lavender Brown crying "Won-Won!" and eating Ron's face – yeah, that's how squidgy-happy I felt yesterday.
So, thank you:
Uchethegirl, The Female Nerd, muggles, CrimsonReality, CannonFodder, Littlecrazy1, Namariqueen, tachc, padfootbadeinblack, Phyre's child13, Cruciatus88, foodisgood, hermione1208, illachi, IritIlan, RiverSogn DreamShadow, EsScaper, sephiroth's sword, maria, Erinne, Elle's Bells
And remember; ask me any questions at all. No question is a stupid question, and it's always possible (and often highly probable) that there's something I've missed which needs fixing in a hurry. Unfortunately, my beta is on hiatus for a time and I have great respect for any beta who can stand to take me on, so I am not going have the impudence and pester her. This means, however, that I am now relying on you to keep me in line.