Chapter 17

Mootatiss Mootandiss (Mutatis Mutandis)

00:22 am 1st September, Room of Requirements, Girl's Chamber.

Sirius Orion Black, the once Heir to the infamous house of Black, and later the brother to James Potter in all but blood stared at his godson, Harry James Potter, son of the two best people he knew and cared about, who was also the only person he cared about more than them, all those years in azkaban he wanted to hear the boy's laughter just once more, during the war it acted as a medicine for his battered spirit far better than any potion Poppy could give him, he thought that the boy would be growing healthy and happy with Andromeda, good ol' Andy was his favorite cousin for obvious reasons, so when he escaped he had a single plan, catch the traitorous rat and kill him.

So he went to one place where the rat was bound to return seeing as he was pretending to be the weasley boy's pet, Hogwarts, once it was their home, now ever since the time he had taken part in the war, it was a lot of nostalgia and embodiment of the good days, though in some dark days their sanctuary too haunted him, appearing in his dreams in a dilapidated state with the bodies of his loved ones scattered around, the deeper he went the more closer the people were to him, in the black lake he would see Hagrid floating, his body mangled beyond recognition, turning from that when he ran into the nearest corridors he could find he would see his friends, Mary Mcdougal, Amos Diggory, Arthur Weasley and others nailed to the walls, when he ran from them, he would encounter in the great hall, the Heads of all the teachers that taught him, including Dumbledore, on a pike.

Turning from that scene he ran to the closest sanctuary he could imagine, the kitchens, he entered the room and sealed the door shut to keep the horrors of his dreamland out, here at first he didn't see anything then as he went near the fireplace to light the room up a bloody hand slithered out of it and grabbed his, slowly a figure emerged from the darkness in the confines of the room, Dromeda, his dear cousin, his beautiful dear cousin whose face was in his direction and body in the other, her neck twisted in ways he couldn't comprehend, proceeded to start laughing maniacally, not unlike Belltrix, and she came close to him in a way that wasn't human, it wasn't simply the fact that her legs were positioned reverse but also the horror that her knees bent on the inside rather than out to move forward, and he started noticing things, details he couldn't believe he was noting given the amount of terror coursing through him and then she grabbed his face and said "SIRIIII WHY DIDN'T YOU SAVE US!" as he tried to run from here he could feel himself being pushed onto Andromeda and when out of his periphery vision he tried to see who it was he saw Ted and Dora, little Dora, sweet Dora, both of whom were now like Andromeda, snapping out of the trance he had slipped into he whipped out his wand and blasted his way out of the kitchens and consecutively tried to blast his way out of the nightmare.

Then he ran towards the one place that had been his little piece of heaven for seven years, but on his way there he happened to peek out of one of the corridor windows which gave him a clear sight of the weeping willow, but more importantly gave him the sight of the werewolf hung by it, using what he noted was silver wire, at last he ventured into the gryffindor dorms the last stop between him and his destination, and then he felt if he died in this horror it would be a mercy as he spotted the bloodied corpse of his fiance Marlene, just like the day he had found her all those months ago before Harry was born, all cut up with blood and semen oozing out of her to form a pool beneath her, he went forward and hugged her body like he had yet again all those months ago and as he was about to let go of her head which had been limp till now snapped in his direction and an unearthly voice emanated from it, "you did this! If it weren't for you she would have been safe, her family was neutral!..." and then shouted unintelligibly, he covered his ears and ran towards the dorms they used for their first year, where it had all begun, where he became a brother, but there too he could find no peace as the man he considered as his brother and his beloved lay dead, again not unlike how he would find them in future not that he knew, but an unimaginable terror tore through him as looked at the crib nearby them and saw the light of their life, the best thing to happen to them in all these years, his godson staring at him his features ashen and his eyes, his emerald orbs that expressed everything were nothing more than obsidian spheres of despair, and his mouth was a gaping maw of an entrance to the abyss as its darkness swallowed everything, and then he would suddenly find himself waking up in his own bed, screaming himself hoarse.

Snapping out of the trance he had slipped into while flashing back to his nightmare, he once again stared at his godson while the young man was busy tending to the young girl who was under his care, he would wave around his wand producing different lights from it and the girl would get excited at seeing them, he had seen them interact a lot, in a fashion similar to how James used to interact with Harry.

Of course there were quite some obvious differences and then even more obscure differences for instance like how Harry ran diagnostic spells at her every time he came to meet her, while he read her books like james - or at least charmed them so that they would vocalize every word in them - the books he felt were more for himself rather than her, they were an easy distraction for the child hence an easy escape where he didn't have to wonder about what she wanted this time, when she wasn't hungry, sleepy, or generally grumpy as all children are, then there was how she interacted with him, how even though he never spoke - something that he didn't know how it came to be as a toddler Harry was a talkative Harry always babbling something or the other which usually made sense only to him - she knew what he wanted of her, and how whenever he came into the room he didn't need to announce his presence to let her know and she could always feel him.

He had met the pair about 10 days ago when Harry had taken her out for a walk around The Shrieking Shack - it isn't a good idea for a child to stay cooped up in a room all the time, and she needed vitamins provided by the natural sunlight and atmosphere for her all round development was the explanation given to him upon his enquiry - at first he hadn't noticed Harry and approached the girl in his Padfoot form, the girl like most children had also taken to his dog form almost instantly getting all touchy with him and trying to get as cuddly as possible, the moment he laid his eyes on his godson he went still as a corpse, he couldn't believe his own eyes, he looked very much like James though quite short for his age a- 13, if his brain hadn't gotten worse from what he'd thought given the black insanity and the all round buggery of it by the dementors - along with ridiculously long hair, and his eyes, emerald green like a killing curse, just like his mothers, he was so shocked by his appearance that he turned back into being his Human form.

When he realized this the first thing he noted was that the boy in front of him hadn't reacted at all, hadn't even blinked - and a small part of his brain, the brain that was one of a celebrated auror from the war noted, now that he thought about it in the short while he had laid his eyes on the boy he hadn't blinked even once, filing that odd bit of information for later, he spoke to his godson, his voice croaky from disuse, "Hello Harry, How are you I'm Sirius, Sirius Black, I mean you must've seen me all over the posters recently, what I meant to say is that, I want to talk to you for a bit if possible i mean, I get it if you wouldn't want to, i mean i killed your parents, or might've as well, it was all my idea after all, and then that art! He'd .. I never thought that he'd have betrayed us, never thought that our friendship meant so little to him, that it was all a lie for him, and that my mistakes would get James killed...:"

Soon as he was done ranting he took note of a few things, the girl who had been cuddling his feet till now was suddenly in Harry's left hand propped against his chest, both of them were looking at him, the girl was looking at him with her ocean blue eyes in what he assumed what curiosity, while Harry stared at him blankly his head cocked towards the right, for a second he dared hope that he would be heard, then Harry let down the girl from his hand and the space around him warped for a few seconds and the dress he had been wearing got replaced by what looked like a blood red colored leather cloak - and again a part of him noted it also smelled like it - full of frills, something Dumbledore would've loved to wear, every last inch was frilled, then Harry once again picked up the girl and approached him and placed a hand on his shoulder, the next thing he knew they were in a big room, quite comfortable looking and from what he could see was most probably the girl's bedroom.

Belatedly he realized he never felt the usual sensations of Apparation or Portkey, which meant it was neither, and then he saw his godson set the girl on the bed, and waving his wand in the general direction of a book shelf that was nearby, quite predictably a book flew out of it and landed near the girl, then as the girl was now distracted by the book he got up and went to the table where a basket was placed, out of it he removed a bowl filled with fruits and placed it by her, and then waved his wand a few more times, at the end Harry approached him with a parchment and quill in his had and wrote to him, "can you start from the beginning? While I managed to understand what you spoke there are many pieces of the story i am not aware of so will you elaborate? If we need to deal with the situation it would be better to know the whole story."

He looked at his godson in a way he didn't believe he could put in words, he had just received one of the few things he had desperately hoped for all these years in azkaban, a chance to explain himself, and it was as if he had been paid for all of his life's misery worth its weight in precious gems, that his judge and jury were not the crooks of wizengamot but the one person whose verdict mattered to him more than anything else. So he began his story, of course he only gave the highlights, bullet points necessary to explain how they had come to the current situation, and when he was done explaining he was panting heavily as he had gotten quite riled up but also satisfied as he believed that he had made his point clear, at least at first, then when he noticed Harry's non reaction reaction to his story, he was about to voice his doubt about his clarity in the story but before he could his godson disappeared from where he stood, and all he could do was stare at the place he had disappeared from.

2 hours, it had been 2 hours since Harry had vanished, for the first fifteen minutes he had been feeling quite lost and utterly despairing, then he felt a tug at his pants and saw that the girl had been the one behind it, he crouched down to her level and saw she held a book up to him, perhaps she wanted him to read it to her or wanted him to read it with her, whatever she wanted he would humor her - all the people who knew Sirius Black closely knew that Sirius might be many things a Jester, an Idiot, showoff, horrible flirt, prankster, not to mention deadly at a moment's notice, was also incredibly soft to children, they were his Achilles heels, the few times he had landed in trouble while fighting with death eaters, any death eater except Voldemort himself, had been not because he was weaker than his opponent but because he had been busy shielding or rescuing a child, he didn't care whose child it was he wouldn't let them get hurt. Period. And so when the baby girl that had been following around his godson the way Harry used to follow James asked him for something, he was putty in her hands in less than a full second.

And finally 3 hours after he had disappeared Harry came back.

Harry once again took him away from the girl whose name he still hadn't heard, this time while laying the girl for a nap and rubbing her back in a clockwise motion, within minutes she was out like a light.

And then Harry made him sit on a sofa and then began writing on a parchment which he followed, and then he read about how Harry had gone to the Weasley home to check for any clues about their current whereabouts, but apparently they had already returned - Arthur had been called back early in the wake of his escape - as such Harry asked the one Weasley he knew - some Ginny Weasley girl - about the rat, he found out that within hours of returning from Egypt the rat had gone missing and now had been missing for a whole three days as of today.

Predictably he didn't take the news well and shouted at the top of his lungs, "That fucking Rat! I'll kill him! I'll choke him to death using his own intestines and then when I'm done I'll

Bring him back and kill him and keep doing that ..."

He stopped mid rant as he noticed the wand pointed towards him, it's tip shining with a jet black colored aura, one he was not a little afraid of.

Then he took in the sight before his eyes, the girl was in hysterics, and Harry had her in his right hand propped against his chest like earlier, and the wand that was pointing towards him belonged to his godson, who he didn't doubt would not hesitate to go to extreme measures for this girl, upto and including hurting his godfather, especially one he didn't know or care about.

So against all of his instincts urging him to do otherwise, he started to relax, started to go through the occlumency exercises he knew, even in the state his shields were they helped him relax, though he also did need some good motivation and right now he had 3 very good ones, in order, The girl crying because of his Hysterics, his quite possibly upset godson - whose face was quite impossible to read - and the wand pointed towards him by the said godson covered in quite a lot of deadly dark magic, and being a Black he knew a thing or two about it.

Then when the wand pointed towards him had been lowered, he took a proper look at his godson and it sent chills down his spine, because whatever he had been about to do was incredibly dangerous, that kind of dark magic was not something he could imagine anyone short of Voldemort - and maybe his cousin Bellatrix - performing, that too with such command at it.

So he took the only option he had available right now, and began brooding for as long as he could.

Soon it had been ten days since he met them, and he made quite a few observations, for one he noted the dynamics of the girls relations with his godson - and thus far he hadn't learned the girls name, perhaps because names held power and Harry didn't want to hand that kind of power on the girl in his hands, he didn't like it but respected it - for another that his godson was an extreme odd, at times he only looked like a thirteen year old that he was, albeit one more mature than most given he was taking care of a child as if he were her parent - and a small part of his brain mused that he actually was given how he acted around her and no label was necessary Biological, Legal or otherwise - but at other times he looked very much like his mother, lost in his thoughts, but there was quite a huge difference, Lily was used to sharing her thoughts with others, Harry on the other hand did not, - or at least he was not one of his confidants - and then there were times when he feared his godson in ways Voldemort and his merry band of Death Munchers never could.

It had taken him three days to piece together why he sometimes felt so uncomfortable around his godson ever since that display of dark magic, his godson was a dark wizard, and one who apparently killed people, it took him another two days to work up the courage to confront him about it - he wasn't afraid of death, but of what he'd hear, about the part his absence played in turning his godson into a dark wizard- and then after he asked his question he didn't got a reply from his for the first two days, on the third he was approached by his godson who then gave him a brief summary about how he had approached the group of international hitwizards to further his skills, and how he had a legal permit to use those kinds of magics at his discretion so long as he never hurt anyone innocent, even then exceptions were made in special circumstances, it allayed some of his concerns, at the same time causing him not a little guilt about what had happened to his precious little boy.

Thus far he hadn't been told about any of his home life, and from what it seemed the boy practically lived here whenever he wasn't out to do whatever it was he did, and he really didn't want to push, to only discover that he had accidentally shoved him and that drove his godson away from him, not to mention possibly get him injured if not killed.

So now here he was again, the day when Hogwarts began it's academic year, watching his godson as he proclaimed "Harry you're insane." while the girl loudly read in the background, a new muggle superhero comic book Harry had gotten for her, "Mootatiss Mootandiss".

A/n : yes now that they've met the story can actually head towards a more meaningful direction, the third year will be quite Sirius centric, the title is because all the changes necessary to develop harry's character have been made, some on screen, some off screen and will be presented in later chapters.

I am sorry if this chapter has any of you confused, because even I feel the presentation wasn't what it looked like in my head, part of why it took so long to post, so I'd also like to announce that I am looking for a beta reader and any help would be appreciated.