M for Slash, Sexual and Dark Themes.

DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter is property of JK Rowling.

{Home is Where the Harry is}

It was incredibly frustrating, like looking through opaque, blurred, bathroom window glass, hearing noises slip through the drafty crack of the panes, faintly. He remembered receiving the memories of how things would have been – a confrontation in the Shrieking Shack, dementors out of Azkaban from an ill-advised Minister Fudge attempting to protect the students, Sirius's escape – all things that should have come to pass but did not in favour of the man staying in Azkaban another year and keeping correspondence with Harry. He could almost feel his balled up fist pounding angrily at the glass, trying to shatter it, before his fingers slipped under the lower rim and tried with all his might to lift it, barely getting it to budge as a colourful flash of blurred images played behind it. It was dark, and occasionally lit up with green light.

'Dragons…the first task is dragons…!'

'Under water, put the egg under water.'

A few memories slipped out, one of him sitting in the prefect's bath with a golden egg, and dodging searing flames in the skies from a Hungarian Horntail.

'Rescue what you love and miss the most.'

The uncomfortable sensation of water surrounding him was almost suffocating, but he still couldn't lift the window – the veil behind him, and what was perhaps the start of the worst of his memories.

"Let me in!" he wanted to scream, but found his senses overwhelmed, like he was gargling on the water from the Second Task that he'd manage to liberate through the small amount of leeway he'd budged the mental shield.

Finally, something slipped through.

"… Kill the spare."

A snakelike hiss followed, and misery washed over him, before the window slammed down on his fingers, refusing to budge, and a set of bright green eyes darted open, a piercing scream filling the night.

At least he was partially prepared, but a huge piece of him felt like it was missing, and he was terrified of whatever the Third Task might prove to be. His entire body trembled and shook, and Harry let out a long sigh before wrapping them around himself, breathing in and out rhythmically as he tried to soothe his wildly beating heart, before glancing at his battered wristwatch.

He had to try and sleep, if only to look his best when he met Minister Fudge and went to collect the most important person in his life.

"I thought they were cleared to guard their upper levels while we were here, didn't you know Harry Potter would be accompanying me?!" Fudge snapped, it was strange, watching the tubby man whom he had memories of despising, acting like a bird with all of his feathers ruffled on Harry's behalf.

"It's f-ine…"

Fudge's eyebrows drew forward to a scowl, taking in Harry's appearance, though he was a pale boy by nature and Fudge wasn't the most observant man, he could see the healthy pallor had drained utterly, and whenever they halted, Harry's knee would invert against the other, putting up an unsure and frankly unconfident stance as he palmed his scar, trying to cover up his discomfort.

"Nonsense, look at the state of you, no no, I'll have that auror by his bootstraps," Fudge tittered, scowling and feeling the cold breeze of dementor influence even through his thick mink coat, though Harry was shivering much more outright, as though they wanted to be nearer to him. It was disconcerting to Fudge, really. The dementors only followed orders due to a magically binding contract with their entire species, it was hard to communicate with anything so mindless and unrepentantly disgusting.

They belonged in nightmares, but at least in Azkaban, they served a purpose, and the horrible history of the island of which the island was built on, was so thoroughly entrenched in darkness and the unspeakable acts of the dark wizard that once inhabited it, that the dementors felt a good binding to that place. A place with so much sorrow before their presence ever gathered there, but they seemed to be affecting the young wizard much more than Fudge himself.

"It's okay…" he breathed, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand as a dementor a floor above them breezed over where Harry was standing one level below – he actively shuddered, making Fudge look at him more closely.

"I don't…think I respond well to dementors…" he said, bits of memories with them coming to mind again as he felt his heart plummeting into his feet and warmth behind his eyes, like he could cry.

"Of course not, not many do, but they're a little further away – aren't you…? Oh my… don't faint," said Fudge, looking at Harry warily as he grabbed onto Auror Shacklebolt's arm, and surprised everyone by withdrawing his wand from his sleeve.

"Warming charms do no good around those dementors, boy. Best just to put that away," grunted Shacklebolt, unphased by Harry grabbing onto him and offering himself to better support him when he saw what Harry was trying to do.

"E—E…E…" he made noises between his teeth chattering from the sheer unending cold of Azkaban, tensing around the auror's arm.

"What're you trying to do lad? I'm sure myself or Auror Shacklebolt can…you look ready to drop…" Fudge was looking at the wand warily, but Harry was aimed dead ahead, not looking at any of them.

"Expecto Patronum..!"

Auror Shacklebolt tensed up, and Fudge was bowled back as something silvery wisped from the wand, congealing and taking form in the air until it was completely solidified, and a hoofing animal thudded on the grounds of the prison, before charging through the corridor at the dementor breezing past the end of it with its head bowed – ready to skewer the enemy on it's antlers.

It was a stag, a pure, silver, corporeal patronus stag.

"Was that a corporeal patronus?" Auror Shacklebolt was impressed, looking down at Harry who was letting go of using him as a support to move along with Fudge.

"My word, where did you learn that? Are they teaching you this at Hogwarts? Half of the DMLE's aurors can't produce a corporeal one," Fudge was, for once, awed and felt rightfully small against the magic dwelling in the youngest person there, and though Shacklebolt had a vague sense of it, he had no idea of the true breadth of power that they were dealing with until right then.

"I taught myself, Defence Against the Dark Arts is my best subject, but then again, I don't think that surprises anyone here," said Harry dryly, feeling bad for having to lie about Lupin's involvement, but in this world, he already remembered how to cast it, and as Sirius hadn't broken out and Fudge hadn't sent dementors to Hogwarts, there was no need for Lupin to teach it to him while he'd been there, and instead the two merely chatted back and forth about Harry's parents, and focused extracurricular training on other things.

"Well, you are the Boy-Who-Lived, I suppose such things really shouldn't surprise me," Minister Fudge chortled, as though Baby Harry could have burped a patronus in Voldemort's general direction, but Harry didn't say anything to the contrary, and walked forward alongside Fudge, behind Shacklebolt.

"Here's over there,"

Sirius had carefully put his things away, he wasn't sure when anyone would come for him but he wanted personal things – really personal things, like the paper rose and Harry's pictures to be put out the direct line of sight under his pillow, just in case the aurors had any funny ideas about his lack of innocence and felt the need to take some of the precious things that were keeping him sane, away.

It was paranoia, really, that was leading to him squirreling that stuff under his pillow, but he kept the crinkled drawing up all the same, because it almost made him smile a few times.

Then, he saw something silvery, ethereal – a spirit, perhaps? It took a form, a very real form, it was a stag, and it seemed to drive the misery away, at first, he thought he was hallucinating – maybe he really had cracked, after all? But the cold of the dementor presence seemed to dim, and suddenly, a memory clicked.

"Prongs…?" he whispered in abject confusion, shaking his head repeatedly until the silvery creature was out of sight, only to hear the howls of disappointed prisoners who wanted to see more magic, which confirmed it had been there.

"Little shit! You killed our Lord!"

"Come closer, so I can put my hands around your throat and wring it like my neighbour's cat!"

"Ohhh, you're cute, aren't you? Ickle wee hero hiding behind the big bad auror and Fudgey's coat, poor little wee baby, you shouldn't have come here, where all the big bad wolves are,"

The other residents were…restless…like when an auror was coming to do their monthly rounds, Sirius furrowed his brow – didn't they just do those earlier?

One prisoner was throwing themselves into the bars of their cell, Sirius could tell, just from the kind of noise it was making, but he couldn't see from his end, but the prisoner was licking said bar in an effort to be seductive, in a manner that showed he'd well and truly cracked.

"You're smooth….not a hair on you I bet…."

"I bet you could keep me warm in here, couldn't you Green-Eyes?"

Then, an angry, flustered noise cut through Sirius's thoughts.

"Put your tongue back in your mouth, pervert else I'll have Auror Shacklebolt hex it out!"

"Gladly," answered the silky, unamused tone of the vaguely familiar auror.

And then, shadows fell over Sirius's cell, making him squeeze his eyes shut on instinct, awaiting the misery tide that came with the presence of the dark creatures that guarded Azkaban, until he heard a metal creaking noise, and footsteps getting closer.

When he opened his eyes, there was another person in his cell, stooped down on one knee, staring at him, as though trying to assess if he was really there, and neither said anything for a moment, and for the on-looking Minister and Shacklebolt, it was rather intense, until finally…

"…It's time to come home, Padfoot."

The last word jolted the haggard man out of his daze, and he reached out two shaking arms, which could only make Fudge cringe a little, at how hard the exertion of such a small action seemed to make him quiver.

Harry, to everyone's surprise, and Sirius's especially, expecting only a helping hand up to his feet, instead, launched himself into the prisoner, wrapping his arms around his torso – legs and all, doing his best impression of a limpet as he hung there.

Whoever said Fudge was bereft of a heart didn't know the man, he had one, it was just small and relatively hidden, because right then, he rather wished he let a reporter come, if only for a picture of…that.

Warmth. Unfamiliarity. Smouldering green eyes.

He was slow to take in the other presence, he had narrow but not too narrowed features, like Lily's really, but his hair colour, his pallor – that was all James, right down to the wonky smile, but where James's had once been filled with mischief and a touch of sadism in his younger years was absent on the boy in front of him. It was an innocent sort of smile, the sort that made grandmother's coo and even the most tense of men want to relax, like a sweeping calming drought.

His hair was a bit longer than what Sirius remembered, but not by much, just to his chin really, falling in slightly fluffy downward spikes that only Potter hair could compromise on when grown out in an effort to fight its natural pigsty state. Those eyes – those eyes were Lily's for sure, but he was more than Lily's eyes in James's face, that smile was all Harry.

"Harry?" he managed in a scratchy tone, blinking as he felt the wind knocked out of his body and his torso coated in warmth as the small wizard wrapped his arms and legs around him, despite perhaps being too old for that sort of thing.

And in truth, Sirius didn't care, it had been so long since he'd had the presence of another human being and felt such a warmth that seeped through his ragged clothes right into his skin and his bones that he almost never wanted Harry to let go.

Looking over the boy's shoulders out to his open cell door, his dark eyes met with Minister Fudge's chubby face, and Auror Shacklebolt, both of whom were allowing the scene to play out before Shacklebolt cleared his throat.

"Healers are waiting at St Mungo's to assess you, but Mr Potter insisted on being present," he said, with a vague hint of amusement at the Boy-Who-Lived's limpet impression over Sirius Black, who looked like he was waking up out of a long coma, until his dirty nailed hands returned the younger boy's gesture stiffly.

"Auror Shacklebolt is going to get the stuff I sent you out of your cell and we're going to get you to the hospital now, there isn't much need for a full trial now Pettigrew's been apprehended and sentenced to the Kiss now they have his testimony, I wanted to tell you face to face," Sirius then felt the warmth leave a bit as Harry let go, only to plant his hands on his broad shoulders and give him that smile again, not caring for however horrendous Sirius smelt at that moment.

"So when they get there they're just going to take your memories from that night since you're expected to get on healing potions immediately, they don't want you under Veritaserum,"

At that point, Minister Fudge interrupted rather smoothly.

"This was so you'd avoid the impending media circus for a little longer, all Harry's idea of course, and Ms Bones agreed, the most important thing right now is that you recover from this ordeal," he smiled almost gleefully as one could in Azkaban "-I expect you'll be getting a formal apology from Mr Crouch and we can indict him,"

"I can go home…?" said Sirius softly, looking at them like he didn't believe them despite it all, and it hurt Harry to see that forlorn expression on his face, even Minister Fudge glanced away from it.

"Yes yes, after you've got the all clear from St Mungo's, Mr Potter's going to be with you the whole way up until he has to return to Hogwarts of course," said Mr Fudge with a degree of fondness, as though he and Harry were long term friends, which made the prisoner cock an eyebrow, but resist comment. His head was still clouded and he felt awful every time he moved.

"Mobilicorpus," intoned Shacklebolt boredly, making Sirius float off his feet, startling him.

"You don't have the energy for that Mr Black, allow me,"

With that, the three left the terrible island behind them, and boarded a dingy off of Azkaban.

Harry was sat on a white little chair, perched uncomfortably like an owl in a cage, watching the healers intently, trying to push away his discomfort of such a bright and entirely white place, and the smell of the damn healing salves – which were about as nice as the smell that came with muggle hospitals.

He watched them pump him with malnutrition potions, energy potions, cheering potions – and a few he couldn't recognise, and was told to leave until Sirius let out what could only be called a whimper mixed with a whine, until he was allowed to stay, like how a child might pine for their parent in the presence of adults or a scary situation.

"Have you had any thoughts towards self-harm while in Azkaban?"

That thought snapped Harry out of his daze, feeling the dark eyes set upon him again and the slightly less scratchy but very much tired voice sooth him.

"Not anymore,"

He watched them take his memories of the night Peter fled and framed him, and included a few of Peter learning the animagus transformation just for good measure, watching them come out in silvery wisps and held in potion's vials, Harry finally let out a long sigh.

"Harry come here," his voice was timid and almost unconfident, something he wasn't used to seeing from Sirius's mouth – not from the memories he had of him. Harry swallowed a bit, shuffling to his feet and stalking onto the bed, feeling himself get drawn in next to him, searching for that desperate warmth.

"Those healers are too touchy," he complained after a moment of silence, before adding something to break the sombre tension caused by his poor health.

"That mediwizard bloke tried to give me a spongebath," he grumbled.

"Well at least you let them scourgify you," said Harry with a small chuckle, a sound Sirius hadn't heard in twelve years that instantly filled the pit of his stomach with warmth.

"When do you have to go back to Hogwarts?" Sirius asked throatily, almost begging, which again – was slightly uncomfortable.

"The evening, Fudge had a portkey prepared for me so don't worry about it," said Harry, waving off his concern.

"But I don't want you to go," he said feebly, his feeble grip lacking any strength to squeeze Harry to keep him in place, though they had hours still, he raised a brow at the older man's behaviour, which was like that of a whining child, though understandable.

"….Why?" asked Harry, though he regretted it as Sirius's face fell, and his eyes watered.

"Because I'll wake up in Azkaban again," he said, in an uncharacteristically feeble, tiny tone, and instantly found himself drawn into someone much smaller than himself, with tinier hands at his back, rubbing circles repeatedly.

"No, no, no, no, no," Harry found himself saying, as how one might shush a child "-never again okay?"

"Never again, I promise," pointedly ignoring the man who stood in the archway, whose heart had plummeted into his feet at his broken friend.

Remus Lupin was quite at a loss for words at the sight.