He brooded, and had little idea of how much time had passed until Bellatrix broke into his dark thoughts with her annoying singsong voice. "You thought it was only me."

"What?" Harry snapped.

"You don't know that somebody else came along too."

"What are you talking about you mad bitch?" Harry said icily as he fingered his wand.

"Somebody else came too, and he is off now maybe dealing with your foolish father, whilst you sit here watching me. How funny it is. "

"Hilarious." Harry agreed savagely. "So this mythical death eater chap, he just left me unconscious on the floor next to you instead of, oh I don't know… killing me?"

Bellatrix giggled, "You just don't know do you? It would be so much fun if he revealed himself and what he'd done just before we went home, though of course, you wouldn't go home, because you wouldn't exist anymore."

Harry abruptly wheeled around and strode out of the door, wincing at the riotous laughter that followed him.

He stood in the hall thinking deeply, he had no more Veritaserum, and it was very probable that Bellatrix had metabolised enough of the dose he had given her that it was no longer effective in forcing her to speak truthfully.

Of course it was completely possible that Bellatrix was goading him to tag along after his teenage parents and the youthful Sirius, in desperate hopes that he would somehow manage to do something awful and jeopardise the future of his own accord, but it wasn't a risk he could take in case there had been some truth in her vicious taunts.

As long as he didn't change anything everything would be fine.

He just wanted to see for himself that Sirius and his parents were okay.

With his conscience quelled and his mind made up Harry set about rendering the room holding Bellatrix as impenetrable as he possibly could.

Twenty minutes later he had performed a brief cleaning spell on his slightly grubby robes, shoved his glasses into his pocket in favour of the contacts he carried, encouraged the light stubble on his jaw to grow into a delicate beard, spelled a shrunken package of pocket luggage to expand, and was checking into a room at the Leaky Cauldron.

xxx

It was getting quite late by the time Harry had found himself an unobtrusive dining table and ordered a meal. He thought he caught a brief glimpse of two youthful black-haired heads close together at the busy bar as he took his seat, but he kept his eyes on the door, ensuring that no known death eaters wandered in and created carnage on his watch.

Presently he realised that he looked rather silly staring at the door and devoted himself to his dinner.

There was an explosion of noise from near the bar, and Harry half-stood up, hand already seeking his wand, but before he made himself look foolish he realised that at least half the volume of the noise was comprised of laughter and applause.

Hardly the sort of reaction a death eater attack would ever receive in the Leaky Cauldron.

Then, as he settled back down he realised that two young men were weaving slowly in his direction.

Harry stared covertly at the pair of teenagers who had just placed a jug of punch and two glasses on the table next to his. Knowing they would be around somewhere was one thing. Seeing them slump into seats at the table next to his was quite another.

They had clearly already been helping themselves to a few generous glassfuls of some of the potent Christmas punch, and were rosy-cheeked and laughing as they sat down, apparently to wait for Lily, who, Harry decided, according to Bellatrix should probably be along within the hour.

Harry briefly wondered what his future mother would say about the drunken state of her boyfriend when she arrived, but the topic of conversation between James and Sirius was of far more interest to him.

"I still can't believe you just snogged Snape!" James was exclaiming, just loudly enough for Harry to hear, with an expression of pure horror in his eyes.

Sirius just shrugged in response and slumped more comfortably into his chair, "Season of goodwill to all men Prongs. Plus there was mistletoe, I just couldn't resist planting one on him."

Harry smothered a smile; hearing Sirius admit to snogging Severus, even if he was in his cups, it wasn't something he would ever have expected. He now had wonderful blackmail material for his lover when he got home.

"But Snape." James argued weakly. "I know Lily doesn't let me say anything too bad against him anymore, but still, Padfoot. Snape?"

Sirius spread his hands and adopted an innocent expression, "Okay, okay. But did you see the look on his face? He thought I was dear old Reggie until I took the Glamour off. It was more than worth it for that alone. That and the fact that I have now demonstrated irrefutably with a single kiss that Gryffindors are far better lovers than slimy Slytherins."

"Conceited prat." James said affectionately as he slopped out another drink for each of them.

xxx

A few minutes later Harry was drifting into his own world, letting the playful banter of Sirius and James wash over him. They were making his job very easy for him by sitting so nearby, so he let himself relax until he heard a faint whistle that sounded as if it came from Sirius.

He stilled briefly before continuing with his meal.

"Hellloooo sexy." He heard Sirius slur quietly.

He could almost feel a pair of eyes prickling over his skin, but surely Sirius didn't mean him?

"Sshhh. He might hear." James muttered. "He looks dangerous, kind of like an auror or something and he might not want to be deemed sexy by you."

"So? I'm going to go and talk to him, Lily will be here any minute and she'll want you all to herself." Sirius announced, and Harry was hard pressed not to look up as he heard the unmistakeable sounds of Sirius being forcibly restrained.

"You drunken idiot." He heard his young father hiss. "Don't show yourself up, he's probably a bit old to be interested in a schoolboy, least of all a sloshed one."

"I'm almost eighteen." He heard Sirius argue belligerently. "That's not too young."

"But eighteen drinks is too many." James persisted good-naturedly.

"Haven't had eighteen." Sirius grumbled sounding so adorably put out that Harry couldn't resist chancing a glance sideways out of the corner of his eye.

Sirius was draped bonelessly in a chair, one elegant leg dangling over the plushly padded arm, his head cocked thoughtfully as he stared at his half-empty glass as if it was about to tell him how may times he had emptied and re-filled it.

Harry felt a wistful smile tug at his lips as he finished eating and pushed his plate away. Those were the days he had never really had. A chance to just sit drinking with Ron, both of them getting silly and enjoying themselves with abandon. At seventeen they had been warriors. Alcohol had been for drowning their sorrows and for finding oblivion.

As he stood up intending to visit the bar he chanced a more direct glance at the occupants of the next table. Sirius was pouting sullenly, his wrist manacled in the determined grip of one James Potter. When he saw Harry's eyes on him however, his face lit up and he flashed Harry a charming smile that Harry found it impossible not to return as he brushed past and headed for the stairs instead.

He found it necessary to remind himself at every step that Sirius was drunk, that Sirius was only seventeen, and most importantly, that he should not be messing with any part of the past, least of all with the whimsical lusts of his godfather, who in any case should be pulling a disappearing act with a newly acquired tall dark lover sometime quite soon.

xxx

Harry paced his room. He needed to go downstairs really, he needed to keep an eye on things, but he didn't entirely trust himself around Sirius, despite the fact that Sirius was probably just drunkenly flirting with any man who seemed to be his type. That hurt to think about though.

He'd loved the older Sirius with all his teenaged heart, and it was an ache that had never entirely faded, a wound that would never truly heal. When Sirius had died he had only been capable of feeling hurt and angry for a long time before the deeper pain and grief eventually began to truly set in. It had taken getting involved with Severus to make him snap out of his deep gloom and start focusing himself again.

He'd known it wasn't what could be deemed particularly healthy for a seventeen-year-old boy to be involved with a man twice his age, let alone one who was his professor, but somehow it had worked out well enough, and they had been together on and off for several years. More off than on though he admitted wryly to himself.

But now - seeing a young, vital, still devastatingly handsome Sirius who seemed more than a little interested in chatting him up was difficult to say the least. It was the sort of occasion that could make him lose his head, as so many things connected to Sirius seemed capable of doing.

But there could be a lot more than his stupid and embarrassing inability to control himself at stake here.

He steeled himself and walked back down the staircase

He stalked back to his table, looking predatorily around him, his cloak swishing as forbiddingly as he could manage and saw a rather subdued looking Sirius sitting alone at his own table, with the remains of what looked like a sobering potion in front of him.

He looked up at Harry's approach, but seemed disappointed at what he saw and looked back down at his hands again before swiftly looking up again with a suspiciously calculating look on his face.

As Harry seated himself again he abruptly felt much less like the hunter and much more like the hunted as Sirius got gracefully to his feet and sauntered towards him, clearly no longer merrily drunk.

Harry arranged his features into polite inquiry as Sirius stopped at his table, and then their eyes locked and latent sexuality was pouring across the table with an almost electrical charge. "May I?" Sirius asked politely, his hand on the back of the chair opposite Harry.

Still rocked by the look of desire Sirius had just directed at him it took Harry a moment too long to find his voice to acquiesce verbally, so he settled for a slow nod, that he hoped looked measuring instead of plain stupid.

Sirius didn't seem to find anything amiss, and slid into the chair with a warm, genuine smile. "I was sitting across from you earlier while you were having dinner," he began a trifle nervously, "I was with a friend then, but he pushed off over the other side of the pub with his girlfriend and I'm free to come and say hello now, so I thought I'd see if you were interested in getting to know me."

Harry had caught the faintly nervous tremor in Sirius's voice, and knew that for all his brash bravado and self-assurance he was still worried about being refused or dismissed.

In that moment, he came to a stunning realisation. That although Sirius was supposed to be with a lover on this night, there was nothing to say that the tall dark man he was seen with and described so vaguely by Bellatrix couldn't be Harry himself.

With his mind made up and thoughts of the future and his own lover pushed to the far recesses of his mind he smiled for Sirius.

"I'd like that very much, but on one condition."

Sirius nodded, looking a little wary.

"Nothing bad," Harry assured him, "It's just that it might be dangerous for me if I tell you who I am, and I prefer not to lie, so my request is for no last names."

For a moment Sirius looked as if he was floundering and Harry's heart constricted and he was tempted to walk away. Because he had never imagined that his godfather would be anything less than perfectly cocksure in such a situation.

But then he smiled. "Okay, I'm just Sirius then. And you?"

Harry smiled and extended a hand in greeting, "Harry."