Author's Note: Hello, thank you for reading my story. I greatly appreciate HonorverseFan taking the time to edit this chapter. Your friendship and suggestions are a constant source of inspiration.

Congrats to those who guessed correctly! Ceto is the name of a Greek mythological figure, a primordial sea goddess, that some attribute as the mother of Medusa.

I own none of the rights, nor make money, nor gain fame, or anything else from Harry Potter.

Cheers.

Chapter 5: To Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

"Ah, Greengrass. Glad you could make it," Sirius greeted, all genial nobility. The brittle mask worn in good humour. "I expect you are excited to be a Fifth year? My advice for the OWLS? Cheat."

"Greetings," Daphne replied, writing on her board after giving a faux curtsy. "Though, I must say, I prefer you on the back of a Hippogriff to dispensing academic advice in an old suit."

Sirius glanced down at his formal attire with a wry grin. "Yes, well, it seems you can miss even pomp and pinstripes when starving in rags."

A fair point if Harry had ever heard one. Though his gaze narrowed at the following exchange.

"Now if only you can help me get Harry out of his own rags," Daphne teased with a small grin touching her pink lips as she wrote. "He seems adamant to stay in ill-fitting muggle clothes."

He peered down at his baggy secondhand trousers as Sirius laughed. "Er, I didn't know you disliked them," he mumbled, a self-conscious flush flaring to life on the tips of his ears.

She touched his elbow reassuringly, a twinkling light in her yellow-green eyes.

"All the clothes I buy you every Christmas and birthday didn't get the hint across?" Her smile grew into a full-blown grin. "Going to need to step it up if you want to join the Aurors," she replied in Parseltongue.

Sirius let out a small noise of distaste. "That bloody hissing makes my skin crawl."

"Sorry," Daphne wrote with a mortified flourish, "habit."

"Well let's get you situated upstairs with the other ladies-"

Harry interrupted his godfather, "actually, she can't stay." He scrutinized Daphne's face. "She was only able to slip out for the afternoon."

Sirius's face darkened at the subtle reminder of the Greengrass lord and lady. "Ah, right of course." His sour mood matched the curdling within Harry's gut. Neither of the two men were fond of Daphne's parents.

"Regardless," Sirius spoke in an obvious attempt at a lighter tone, "we are glad to have you. Short as it may be." He waved around the entryway with a flippant gesture. "Welcome to my miserable family's abode. Try not to touch anything cursed while you're here."

"The wood is quite old but well maintained," Daphne scrawled with a notably tentative hesitation.

"Ha!" Sirius barked out a short laugh. "Trust a pureblood heiress to find something to be polite about even in an ancient heap such as this." The man kicked the wall with a polished shoe. "Which reminds me, if you see a flea-ridden hunk of wrinkled evil flesh, his name is Kreacher. Pay him no mind." His grey gaze grew thoughtful. "Though, now that I stop to think about it, a pureblood who speaks Parseltongue is probably the most welcome guest he's had in a decade or two."

"Thank you for the warm welcome," Daphne wrote, a genuinely happy expression painted across her face. "It truly is a pleasure to see you again, in better health and circumstances."

Before the man could reply a shout was heard above them from the upper floor. "Daphne? Is that you?" Hermione waved a hand at her friend who looked up late, only responding because Harry mouthed 'Hermione' at her before looking up pointedly.

"Come up here! I have something to show you," the bushy-haired witch called before disappearing in a twirl of brunette hair.

"Excuse me," Daphne's board read before she hastily made her way up the creaking steps. Her frantic excitement at reuniting with a friend was a sight that made Harry's heart beat faster. He grinned.

He began to make his way after her but felt a tug on his robe that pulled him backwards into a small closet space off the side of the entryway.

"Uh, Sirius?" He questioned, quirking an eyebrow at the man dusting cobwebs off his suit and cursing for a light.

A quick lumos later found the two men staring at each other with different measured expressions on their faces. Stumped, Harry could only stare blankly at the odd behaviour.

Finally, the older man broke the silence.

"This isn't exactly comfortable for me," he began awkwardly, "but Moony told me I should speak to you about this so, uh, try not to make this more painful for me than it already is, yeah?"

Harry blinked. "Huh?"

"Alright, just listen." Sirius scratched at his face with a manicured nail. "Remus and I, well, we're glad you found someone. The battle ahead will be bleak enough, you deserve some happiness as well."

Alarm bells went off in his head while Harry fought the conflicting urge to flush and preen. "Uh, no. Sirius, I mean, we aren't - Daphne and I aren't together."

"Huh?"

He scratched the back of his head in a nervous fidget at his godfather's flabbergasted expression. "She and I are just friends."

"But… the Yule Ball? The snake you had me buy, from a very shady merchant I might add. I've seen pictures that boy with the camera takes!"

"Shh," Harry hissed, hearing a footstep above that caused the floorboards to creak.

Sirius gave him an unimpressed look. "Harry, the only person in this house who doesn't already know right now is deaf. Why are you shushing me?"

"It's the principle of the thing."

"Right." An amused glance. "Look, I won't stick my nose where it doesn't belong but… you like her, don't you?"

An uncomfortable cough forced its way out his throat, his palms felt simultaneously sweaty and itchy. "Sure, she's great."

"I never thought I'd see someone more hopeless than James when it came to wooing a woman," Sirius remarked with a small head shake. "At least he could admit his intentions."

"Look," Harry replied with some heat, "regardless of my feelings, it isn't exactly a good time for… uhm, dallying?" He blinked, his irritation dissipating with the words on the tip of his tongue. "Uh, courting?"

Sirius shrugged.

"Whatever. Courting. Considering a Dark Lord just resurrected, I imagine romance should take a back seat."

"Maybe it is precisely because a Dark Lord just resurrected that you should live life by the moment." Grey eyes pierced him. "Your father knew Lily was it for him and grabbed onto her with both hands, even when the world was falling apart. And the happiest days of his life were with her… and you."

"I'm not my father," Harry murmured, guilt swimming in his gut at the shocked look on the man's face. He understood what his godfather was trying to do, appreciated it even, but his father had died along with the woman he had sworn to protect. Walking in his footsteps wasn't a choice Harry wanted to make.

"No," Sirius replied, equally as sombre and quiet. "You aren't." A hand gripped Harry's shoulder, prompting him to look up into the gaze of the only real family he had left. "But, perhaps, that is a good thing."

The words seemed costly to the speaker, whose face aged at the mere admission. "James and I," he continued, "weren't always the best of men. Prideful, arrogant, drunk on youth. You aren't like us." Misty, wandering grey eyes snapped back into focus. "But you inherited the best pieces of your father. Whatever else James was, the man was loyal to the death and loved completely and without reservation. That is what I see when I look at you, Harry."

Those words caused a skittery, heavy feeling to lodge in Harry's chest, plugging up his throat with bound emotion. Before he could even begin to form a response, Sirius continued speaking.

"I envied your father." A sigh and an indulgent, self-deprecating grin. "James was a flirt, like me, but he knew from first sight that Lily was the one and only." He let out a bark of sharp laughter. "Took him ages to realize all his put on airs only repulsed her. Your mother was too smart to fall for anything fake."

Harry smiled, feeling the story of his parents wrap around him like an embrace.

"But, I- I was more foolish than your father. You see, I had been told all my life by miserable excuses for parents how worthless I was. How hopeless and pathetic. And, in the deepest part of me, I think I believed them. Because when I had my shot at happiness, at real love, I let it go. It slipped from between my fingers never to return, because I didn't have the courage to grasp at it with wild desperation. That is one of my two deepest and greatest regrets. Some things are better left unsaid, Harry." Sirius gave him a significant look. "But never love."

A sort of odd melancholy sat upon the older man's face, an expression so different from his typical exuberance that it caused Harry to still.

"Greengrass probably has lived her whole life like me but, incredibly, she didn't give up. Didn't run away or turn to hate. The girl, ridiculous as she is, still loves those specks of dirt she calls parents. Hell, I reckon she has felt as trapped as I did in Azkaban, but at least I was never under the illusion that my jailors were meant to love me."

Recognition dawned in him, Harry glancing upstairs to where Daphne probably was, curled up in the library. "She loves completely and without reservation."

"Just like you. Just like your parents." Sirius shifted, a warmth entering the steel of his stare. "I like the girl, even though she's a pureblood. I even like her for you, if that is your aim. But, Harry," the warmth turned steely, "if you have to choose, choose to be your father. Not me. He was the better man."

"Funny," Harry responded, his heart clenching, "I imagine he'd say the exact same thing about you, if he was the one standing here."

Sirius attempted a roguish grin but it was too slight, too watery. "Well, I never said he was smart. Just loyal and committed."

"Thank you," Harry commented, gratitude lapping against his ribcage like a tide. "I've never really had someone to talk to about stuff like this."

"It should be a crime for me to give romantic advice," Sirius admitted, "but if I can spare you my own regret, then maybe I can live up to the title your parents shoved on me."

"You already have."

A sincere, hopeful expression engulfed the man's face, throwing his expression alight. "I hope so."

"But," Harry pivoted, attempting levity, "let's be honest. You just like her because she tackled Snape."

A dark chuckle. "It takes real moxy to whack your Head of House with a dusty coat rack," Sirius mused with a fond grin. "I'll never forget that as long as I live."

Harry left out the part where she'd only hit Professor Snape, who had them all at wand point in the Shrieking Shack during their third year, with the coat rack and followed it up with a tackle because she'd misread his lips as he mouthed to her 'snake.' He'd hoped she would use her Parseltongue to ask the drowsy adder the group of third years had passed in the passageway underneath the Whomping Willow to lunge at Snape as a distraction.

How he wished he'd understood the snake when he'd heard her warning of the "Ssstrange rat. Sssmell wrong." Instead, he'd believed it was due to the vermin's age and whatever was causing its hair to fall out.

Regardless, Daphne had lunged for Snape instead of using the snake, knocking the potion professor out cold.

He should've let the adder or Crookshanks eat the detestable Pettigrew when he had the chance.

"Don't try and change the topic Harry," Sirius rumbled with a grin. "I'd be ashamed to face James if I didn't push his son to live life to the fullest."

Harry shuffled, tapping his thigh with fingertips numb from the cold. "Right, look," he stated, voice shallow, "I appreciate all this but… even small crushes for me are deadly, Sirius. Any girl I was with, even briefly, would become a target. I can't… I won't do that."

His godfather gazed at him with what Harry thought could be pride. Hoped it could be, even twisted by the melancholic sadness parading across the man's face.

"You don't always have to be the hero, Harry. It's ok to be the boy too."

XXXXXXXX

The funeral hadn't amounted to much. Without a body, the mourners relied on words. None of them were particularly consoling to Harry, who listened numbly. He felt half-awake, half-alive, one foot on each side of a divide so deep its inky blackness yawned up at him like a sentient, malignant creature.

Someone shook his hand. Another patted him on the back. A hug too tight and a motherly kiss on the cheek.

Then, solitude.

The bedroom in Grimmauld Place was too big, too crowded with memories of a mischievous, broken man. It threatened to collapse upon him.

So he retreated, his mind working mechanically, feet shuffling subconsciously to a place that matched his self-worth.

That was where she found him, curled up against the wall in a cupboard under the stairs.

She held him as he cried. Her clutching hands simultaneously fierce and gentle. That touch, so protective and understanding broke bad things in Harry, replacing them with good.

He gasped through the sorrow rising up through his veins, threatening to drown him. The guilt and grief swirling inside made his throat clench and his head pound.

Still, she held on. Silently and sweetly, Daphne rocked him as his heart bled out for a man he failed. For a family forever lost.

"He loved you," she whispered into the shell of his ear. "It wasn't your fault."

Words formed and crumpled under their own weight. Distantly, as though through water, he felt as though he should be uncomfortable, letting Daphne see him so weak, so vulnerable. That piece, muted as it was, caused him to wipe at his tears angrily as he shifted away from her.

Her grip tightened, tiny arms and hands so delicate when compared to his own strained to keep him close. She moved with him, not letting go.

"Harry," her voice a gossamer rebuke, "Don't. Let me be here… for you."

At her determined but gentle insistence, he met her eyes, only to realize she had been crying as well. For the man or the boy, he wasn't sure. But those tears meant more to him than any of those hollow words tossed into an empty grave that morning.

So, he let her keep hold of him. Allowed himself to sink into the warmth of her embrace, at once both unfamiliar and comforting.

As the salt dried onto his cheeks, one thought rose from the ashes of the boy he'd once been to resonate in the mind of the man he was now forced to become.

No one around him was safe. Sirius had died because of him and, no matter what his godfather had urged, he couldn't allow another's life to be put in jeopardy.

For a small moment that he clutched tight, Harry considered a future devoid of Dark Lords and Death Eaters. A future of onyx and jade, one he may never live to see.

For a moment he was happy.

Author's Note: I'll be honest, Sirius is a ridiculously hard character for me to write. He always felt only half there. Trying to write the balance of bitter regret and devoted protector is a hard thing to put to paper. I've always liked the character and I think he has a whole mess of emotional nuance and complexity that could be fleshed out. However, since I enjoy canon events (except for envisioning how different romantic pairings cause ripple effects in character development) he will, unfortunately, never be written as he deserves.