Harry woke up to the unfamiliar sensation of sinking into a soft, warm bed. He tried to open his eyes, but for some reason his eyelids were heavy. Alarmed, he forced his eyes open despite the warmth and comfort.

Pain crackled through him. The sunlight lanced into his eyes like a hot poker, and he gasped, clamping them shut. Suddenly, his shoulders ached, his back throbbed, everything hurt. He gritted his teeth against the pain and struggled to attain a sitting position, bracing himself for another attempt at vision. What's going on, he thought as his body refused to obey his commands. He felt strangely numb, as though wrapped in cotton-wool, and—

"Steady on, Harry," a rough, friendly voice said. It comforted him, though he was having trouble placing—

"You're all right," said a softer, feminine voice. Its effect on him was strange – like a shower of sparkling dewdrops splashing over his body.

"What happened?" he said, only nothing came out but a sigh. The two voices went on murmuring to him; he could feel that they - completed him somehow, and he was tempted to relax, but the nagging mystery of who they were – it hovered tantalizingly just out of reach – and where he was and why he was there forced him into motion. But motion eluded him, and he struggled with increasing frustration. Why couldn't he move properly?

"All right, all right, take it easy, don't strain yourself."

He had barely attempted to push himself upright when he felt the hands. Soft hands and rough ones, they laid themselves upon his body, gentle and caressing, slipping around his aching shoulders, taking the strain off his sore back, supporting his pounding head, cocooning him in warmth and lifting him into a sitting position, so gently he half-felt he was floating. The love surrounding him was so strong, so utterly unlike anything he had ever experienced, that he wondered if he had died and was now with his parents. "Mum? Dad?" he tried to ask, but no sound came out. Could it be that? Could he be dead? Was this what it felt like to have a mum and dad?

It wasn't until a feminine voice ordered, "Close the curtains, the sunlight's probably hurting his eyes," and a rough hand steadied his temples to slide his glasses onto his face, that he knew who it was.

Ron and Hermione! What are they doing – Embarrassed by the raw emotion he felt emanating from his two friends, he tried to shake himself free, but they only held him tighter. He heard the shrrik of curtains drawing closed, and the painful light battering against his eyelids faded. Eager to make sense of matters, he opened his eyes a crack—

—and remembered.

"Oh, no!" he blurted as it all came crashing back: the humiliating incident at Privet Drive, waking up at the Burrow, Sirius—"Sirius!" The name was on his lips before it was fully formulated in his mind. His eyes snapped fully open, and he had slipped out of his friends' grasp, swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up before they could react. Where he would have gone, he wasn't sure, but it was rendered moot as he felt light-headed and, most embarrassingly, had to sit promptly down on the side of the bed. He was vaguely aware of his friends fluttering round him ineffectually…

"…he's all right! He is! Harry, he's fine, it was a misunderstanding, don't worry…"

A cheerful, almost-amused drawl cut through Hermione's breathless reassurances. "We'd get him on the Floo for you, but we thought you wouldn't want him to see you like this." A mirror was held up in front of him and he peered into it.

"Ron, have you taken leave of your senses? How could you show him the state he's in!"

"Oh, right, leave him to terrorize the neighbourhood like the Hound of the Baskervilles."

"Ha ha. Harry, I'm going to get Mrs. Weasley, all right?" Hermione kissed the top of his head gently and moved briskly out of the room.

But Harry was barely concentrating: he was staring at the mirror, jaw dropping. His eyes were purple and swollen, and his cheeks sported bruises in all colours of the rainbow. He grimaced. That was all he needed to complete the freak image. Skinny wizard gets beaten up by… "Oh no! My wand!"

"Right here," Ron said reassuringly, picking it up from the bedside table and waving it around. "Look, mate, Madam Pomfrey'll be here in a bit and heal all this right up and you can talk to Sirius yourself, or if you can't wait, give us a mo to let Mum put a glamour on you. We just thought him seeing you in that state might make him into a real murderer instead of a pretend one, if you get my drift?"

Harry inhaled and exhaled deeply. Ron was right, of course. He didn't have to like it, but – yeah. Seeing him like that would send Sirius into a fit, a fit he couldn't afford. He slumped onto the side of the bed. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

"He's okay, I swear," Ron repeated earnestly. "They had the wrong man, d'you remember I told you yesterday?"

Yesterday.

Suddenly all his lost memories clicked into place, and relief flooded through Harry. Yes, they had told him yesterday, told him his godfather was free, told him he could speak to him as soon as he was better. Lord, what an idiot to let himself get attacked that way, and have to be rescued. There was something about that memory, too… He looked at Ron for the first time. He looked drawn, with dark smudges under the blue eyes. He remembered something… He peered more closely at Ron's temple. "Yeah, I remember," he finally said, ignoring Ron's sigh of relief. "Did you have a cut or something on your face?" he asked.

Ron's pale skin suddenly burned scarlet. "No," he said a bit too hurriedly. "Why?"

"Oh, nothing," Harry said casually. It wasn't something he could see in his mind's eye, but he could feel it in his bones: pain filtering through barely-conscious awareness, fear and misery, and then the warmth of a body cutting off the blows. Being lifted, carried – arms carrying him and a body shielding him, where had he felt that before, he thought wryly, and then Ron propping him up in bed – God, he'd been useless yesterday. But he remembered this, a clear, stark moment in the haziness: the room had been fuzzy without his glasses, and he'd only been able to see, in startlingly detailed close-up, an ugly, bleeding bruise in the distinctive shape of a belt-buckle cut into Ron's cheek. The memory of that smooth peach-fuzz-covered skin, that should never be hurt, branded with a black-and-blue mark – Harry shuddered.

"You're looking a bit funny there, mate."

His uncle had hit Ron. Whaling on him, Harry, was bad enough, but to lay a hand on Ron, to hurt him—

"Harry? You all right?"

The bolt of rage that surged through him was so sudden that he gasped. The room wavered a moment, then the windowpanes shattered and Ron's Quidditch posters fluttered as though in a strong breeze.

Ron ducked, and then – surprisingly – laughed. "Whoa! Now I know you're all right!" He peered through his fingers at the broken glass. "Can't break things with your mind if you're concussed, I know that much!"

"Ron! What happened?" Hermione gasped, coming in with not only Mrs. Weasley but Madam Pomfrey in tow.

"Oh, right, blame Ron, it's always Ron's fault, isn't it," Ron retorted in a mock-whiny tone.

"Um, sorry, Mrs. Weasley, it was my fault, I think," Harry said uncertainly. He knew Mrs. Weasley would never hit him, but it was always hard owning up to something he'd done if he wasn't at school.

"Oh, poor dear, did you have a nightmare?" the motherly woman said, taking in the shattered glass and the cowering wizards in Ron's portraits. "Reparo!"

"Yeah," Ron cut in, saving Harry the necessity of a lie. That's twice your nose should have grown longer today, Harry thought idly, settling back into bed and reluctantly letting himself be fussed over.

Mrs. Weasley rapidly gave way to Madam Pomfrey – "Oh, splendid, splendid," she enthused approvingly. In no time at all, his back was feeling a hundred times better as she cast a number of spells that banished the pain and most of the injuries. She then did the same with his front, and proudly showed Harry his now-unblemished face in the mirror.

"Oh, thanks, Madam Pomfrey," Harry began, only to be shushed immediately. His thanks, though, were echoed by a delighted-looking Ron and Hermione, who fixed their eyes on him, beaming. There was something about the affection in their gazes that warmed his heart, as though their very stares were filling him with health and strength. He pushed the irrational thought aside and tried to listen to Pomfrey.

"It's you and your friends who should get the credit," the mediwitch said, rather cryptically in Harry's opinion. Smiling, she produced two vials of potion from her robes: one, smelling of rotten eggs, slurped suspiciously about in the container like marsh slime, while the other was the exact colour and smell of dragon dung. "Here, drink these."

Talk about undoing all your good work! "What's in them?" he sputtered.

"Best not to ask," Ron, looking vastly amused, intoned sagely in a manner that reminded Harry of the twins.

"Ron!" scolded Hermione. "It's—"

"Looks a bit like dragon dung, doesn't it, Harry? Only it looks as though the dragon had diarrhoea…"

Balancing a goblet in each hand, Harry glared daggers at Ron. "Want a taste?"

"Oh, wouldn't dream of it, the smell's turning my stomach. Think it might be some kind of sh—"

"Ron!"

But Harry didn't need Hermione's defence; he was already plotting his revenge. Holding his nose, he drained first one goblet, then the other. But then he turned to an approving-looking Madam Pomfrey and whispered into her ear. Smiling, she measured a half-dose of each potion out into a third goblet, and swirled them together to form an even more foul-smelling concoction than each of the previous two had been on its own. Stealing a glance at Ron, Harry raised it to his lips.

"Not another one!" Ron's face twisted in sympathy. Looking at Harry, he added, "Did it really taste like dragon dung?"

"Why don't you see for yourself?" In a flash Harry, with his wiry frame, had leapt out of bed and pounced on Ron, tumbling them both to the floor, and slopped the entire contents over his friend's hair and face and down his robes.

"UGH! Gerroff me!" Ron squirmed out from under Harry, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Ugh, that's disgusting!" Harry just sat back on the floor and laughed as Ron shook the brown sludge and green slime out of his hair, groaning as the glop made its way inside his robes and underneath his clothing. He looked over at Hermione, who was giggling. "Let's see how you like it!" Ron grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down on top of him, rubbing his slimy hair in her face. She squealed in mock-outrage as Ron, getting into the spirit of the thing now, rolled out from under her, wrung some of the mess out of his clothing and smeared it onto a laughing Harry's head. Hermione flung herself on top of Ron, Harry threw himself into the breach, and the three of them rolled around on the floor, shrieking hysterically.

The two adults looked at each other. "Full recovery?" queried Mrs. Weasley.

"Full recovery," replied Madam Pomfrey.

"Hello there!"

All of them jumped as Sirius Black's head appeared in the tiny fireplace. "Hi," he grinned, then his eyes fell upon the three children rolling around and screaming, "looks like Quidditch got a bit messy. Raining, is it?"

Everyone froze, then five pairs of eyes swivelled round to meet his.

"Yeah, Quidditch. And rain. Quidditch in the rain. Raining cats and dogs, it's a flood out there," his godson nodded emphatically. The way nodding seemed to make him dizzy, Sirius would lay odds on Harry's having taken a Bludger to the head.

"Oh, Quidditch, yeah, rain, absolutely," Ronald Weasley nodded too.

"Yes, rainrain, QuidditchQuidditch. Yes, it was. Hi, Snuffles!" smiled Hermione. Why was she blushing?

Mrs. Weasley and Madam Pomfrey seemed to have been afflicted by the mass flusterance too. "Yes, indeed, hello, rain, er, Quidditch, I mean, Mr. Black, shall I get you a cup of tea?" The two women were practically falling over themselves to make him feel welcome. If he found it odd that they sprinted out of the room to get him tea as though the hounds of Hades were after them, he found it even odder when Harry, Ron and Hermione looked at him, smiled in unison and simultaneously all burst out laughing. But all awkwardness was forgotten when he leaned forward and his godson threw himself warmly into his arms.

This, thought Sirius, was how it should be, always.