Tonks stared for three seconds, then got a hold on her unexpected visitor's arm and hauled him inside the flat. "You're the one who's supposed to be dead," she informed him tartly, shutting the door behind him and flicking on the lights with her wand. "Why aren't you?"

"Because." Sirius Black lowered the hood of his cloak. "A Death Eater is." He spun the wand he was holding between two fingers. "Fellow named Walden Macnair. Sound familiar at all?"

"Yeah, Lucius Malfoy's been rabbiting on about him for months now. Claims we've got him secretly locked up somewhere…" Tonks trailed off, looking Sirius up and down. "He's more right than we thought, isn't he?" she asked, sinking down into her favorite armchair. "Only it's not locked up. It's buried."

"Right first time." Sirius seated himself on the sagging sofa. "Don't ask me why or how, but Macnair got it into his thick head that his Dark Master wanted me killed. So he abused his Ministry clearances to find the current passwords for Azkaban, sneaked onto the island, and broke into my cell in the middle of the night. And if he'd been content to leave it at that, to just kill me without any flourishes, that headline in the Prophet would've been true." He grinned, an echo of the carefree expression Tonks remembered from her childhood. "But he wasn't."

"Woke you up to gloat?" Tonks guessed, and returned the grin at Sirius's snicker. "And you weren't having any."

"No, I was not." Sirius tossed and caught the wand once. "Of course, he wasn't expecting my…special ability, shall we say."

Tonks frowned. "What's that, now?"

"Oh, Moony hasn't told you how we got our nicknames?" Sirius's grin widened. "Funny, I would've thought he'd get around to that by now. Let's just say this isn't my first time in your flat. Love what you've done with the place, by the way."

"What do you mean this isn't your—" Tonks broke off, a suspicion kindling in her mind. "No. Tell me that damn dog of Mal's hasn't been you this entire time."

"You want me to lie to you, little cousin?" Sirius widened his eyes and pressed a hand to his chest. "I'm shocked. Shocked!"

"Your kid does that better," muttered Tonks.

"Don't I know it." Sirius shook off his momentary silliness. "In any case, that's how it went down. I got Macnair's wand off him and killed him, transfigured his body to look like mine, and hauled my arse out of there in dog form. Long swim, but I made it. Once I was back on land, I worked out a set of disguising spells for myself, then headed south to check on Harry…" He shrugged. "And the rest you already know. Remind me to get you a new DictaQuill, by the way."

"So you were the one. I always wondered." Tonks frowned, looking around at the unassuming walls. "Not that it isn't flattering, but why come to me? And why now?"

"Because we have another problem." Sirius lifted the shoulder-slung bag he was wearing into his lap and opened it. "Ever since Hagrid dropped a name he really shouldn't have in front of Harry, I've been keeping an eye on him. Turns out that was a good idea, since somebody's either trying to get him sacked or bribing him to talk about something else he shouldn't. And whichever it is, this is nothing I want him having at Hogwarts."

"Merlin's polka-dotted broomstick." Tonks stared at the forearm-sized black ovoid resting in the bag. "Is that…"

"Sure looks like it." Sirius held his hand above the matte surface. "Feels like it too. I charmed the bag to keep the heat in for now, but it's going to need to get back into a fire before long." He met her eyes. "So that's why you, and why now. Because you're my best line on somebody who knows what to do with a dragon's egg." He shrugged once. "And because we're all going to have to work together if we want this to come out right."

"Yeah. About that." Tonks flattened her hands against the fabric of the chair arms, taking a deep breath. "Mind if I get a couple other people in on this little shindig? Hogwarts professors. I think you know the ones."

Sirius grimaced, flipping shut the flap on the bag. "Should've known that was coming. But you're not wrong. Sure, go for it." His grin reappeared, a little more twisted than before. "I won't run. Even if that might be the smarter play, when it comes to Letha."

Tonks shrugged. "She can't be worse than the dementors, right?"

"See, the dementors I didn't want kissing me," Sirius retorted. "Letha's a little different."

"Noted." Tonks got to her feet and went back into her bedroom, already rehearsing what she ought to say.

Since "your crazy friend who's supposed to be dead turned up in my flat and wants to talk" isn't the greatest lead-off in the world, especially at 3:08 in the morning…

Stepping out of Tonks's fireplace, Remus noted the tension in Aletha's posture where she stood near the end of the unmade bed. Clearly she'd had no trouble understanding Tonks's carefully coded explanation over the Floo.

"He's in there?" she asked, pointing a finger towards Tonks's main room. At Tonks's nod, she strode forward, pushing the door open.

Following in her footsteps, Remus got his first good look at Sirius Black in over ten years. His friend had grown into the strong facial features which had looked unfinished on his younger self, but threads of white now wove through his black hair, and he held himself differently than the brash young wizard Remus recalled, a wary uncertainty haunting his silver eyes.

So strange to see that color on him again, when I'm just now getting used to seeing them on Meghan…

Of course, Remus had to admit, some of Sirius's uncertainty might have been due to the tall, beautiful, and very angry witch currently staring him down. He couldn't remember ever seeing Aletha this furious, and he'd been present when she'd discovered that her father had lied to her about how ill her mother was in the early days of her sixth year at Hogwarts.

"So," said Aletha with cool precision. "Here you are. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I was wrong." Sirius's words fell into a dead silence. "I should have trusted you. You, too," he added with a flick of his eyes towards Remus. "But I didn't. People died because of that. People got hurt. And I can never change any of it, no matter how much I want to. The only thing I can do…" He grimaced. "It's stupid, it's not enough, but what would be? I'm sorry for getting it wrong. More than I can ever tell you. And I can only hope that someday, somehow, you might be able to forgive me."

Aletha sighed, the stiffness bleeding out of her shoulders. "Damn you, Sirius Black," she said wryly. "How dare you know the perfect thing to say." Stepping forward, she laid her head against his shoulder, and Sirius's arms closed around her, hesitantly at first, then tightening his grasp as she showed no signs of moving. One of his hands rose to thread its fingers through her hair, and Sirius closed his eyes, a joy on his face so deep it was almost painful to see.

"If you really want to know what would help me forgive you," Aletha murmured, turning her head so that her voice could be heard, "I have a few ideas." A tiny laugh escaped her. "More like demands, really."

Sirius opened his eyes to look down at her. "I'm listening."

"First off, you're going to marry me." Aletha slid back enough that she could look up and meet Sirius's gaze. "Second, you're going to take responsibility for the tiny chaos demon you left me with. And third, we're going to discuss the possibility of adding another chaos demon to the mix at some point. Maybe even more than one, but we'll leave that open for now." She paused, her face thoughtful. "Plus you have a godson floating around somewhere. I want him too."

"Is that all." Sirius's smile lit his eyes and banished a good half of the ghosts from their depths. "And here I thought demands were supposed to be hard."

"Oh, Sirius." Aletha's voice wavered on his name. "Can you ever forgive me? I ran away like a coward instead of staying and fighting for you. I never questioned anything, just accepted what I'd been told, and all the time…"

"Hey." Sirius tightened his hold on her once, then let her go, though one of his arms remained threaded around her back. "I need you to listen to me now. Both of you," he added in Remus's direction, guiding Aletha to sit down on the sofa with him. Tonks was leaning against the doorway which led to her bedroom, eyes quietly intent on the scene. "We could hang around here all night long and have a mutual deprecation society. Cast blame, point fingers, call names. You didn't do this for me and I didn't do that for you and nobody did the other thing for any of us." His twisted grin made an appearance. "Trouble is, all we'd get out of it is sore throats and a whopping load of guilt. And I don't know about you two, but I can do without those."

"Well, I need to take at least one turn at it." Remus seated himself in the armchair across from the sofa. "Sirius, I'm sorry. I should have asked more questions back then. At least demanded that the Aurors check your wand, to see if you'd even cast any spells that day."

"See, that's the problem." Sirius shook his head. "I did cast one. A pretty nasty curse, too, not the sort of thing nice little wizards are supposed to use. But I was targeting Wormtail specifically, and by the time it got where it was going, he'd already popped into rat form and buggered off. So it fizzled out and never hit anything."

"And that's why nothing showed up on the vector diagram." Remus nodded slowly. "But when your wand was examined…"

"Precisely." Sirius snorted a humorless laugh. "Add that to the whole swapped-Secret-Keeper fiasco, and it's almost impressive how well things worked out for little Peter. And he is still at Hogwarts," he added towards Aletha. "I've been getting whiffs of his scent for months. But it's a big castle. Lots of places for a rat to hide."

"What's he doing there?" asked Tonks, startling everyone, not least herself. "I mean, if you've got a guess. It just seems stupid, hanging around the same place as the only people in the world who know your secret."

"I can't be certain." Sirius scowled. "But I think he's after Harry. I keep picking up traces of him where Harry's just been, or where he's going to be." His expression softened. "Kid's his own best defense. He's pretty much always with his friends, so Wormtail's never had a good chance to catch him off guard."

"What would he want with Harry?" asked Aletha. Then her eyes went wide. "Wait. No. You don't mean—"

"Yeah." Sirius nodded heavily. "Wormtail knows, or at least suspects, that I'm around, or he wouldn't have disappeared the way he did. I must not've done a good enough job disguising myself. Either that or he's just paranoid. In any case, he figures Lord Moldy-snore's the only one who might be able to protect him from me. And since we already knew the Dark Snarker's at Hogwarts too…" He glanced over at Tonks. "You don't look all that surprised."

"There's been speculation around the Office for months about who could've cracked that Gringotts vault." Tonks covered a yawn with one hand. "Official word is 'of course it wasn't You-Know-Who', which usually means that's exactly who it was. Besides, there's been a pool going at the Ministry for ages on how long Harry would make it at school before somebody had a go at him. I went out months ago," she added with a brief scowl. "Had my Galleons on Halloween. Ten-year anniversary and all of that."

"Well, you weren't entirely wrong." Remus looked across at Sirius. "Assuming it was you who stopped Quirrell from doing…whatever he tried to do that night."

"Mountain troll." Sirius grinned. "I was half-hoping he'd think it was Snivellus who—ow!"

"Let's get one thing straight, Sirius Orion Black," said Aletha firmly as Sirius rubbed his arm. "You are not required to like Severus Snape, but you will be civil to him as long as his daughter and our daughter are friends. Which they are."

"Think I need some tea," said Tonks to no one in particular, and pushed off the doorframe. "Any takers?" Three hands went up, and she nodded. "Thought so. Back in a bit."

"Nice girl," Sirius commented when Tonks had disappeared into the kitchen. "Have to see if she's been keeping copies of those fake school reports she and the kids have been writing up for Harry's relations. You two'd love them."

"I look forward to it." Aletha slid a hand into her pocket. "But speaking of reading…"

"That looks familiar." Sirius accepted the slip of parchment she passed across to him, covered with its neat lines of DictaQuill writing. "What about it?"

"Well, I know the first three questions that Remus asked you that day." Aletha touched each answer in turn. "Did you meddle with the Marauder's Map, had you killed Peter, and did you want the children to know who you were. You said no to all of those. But then you also said no to a fourth question, and he wouldn't tell me what it was."

"Ah." Sirius smiled slightly. "I can see why. Bit of a personal thing, that. But it comes back around to something else I needed to say. If you don't mind, Moony?"

"Before you do." Remus met his friend's eyes. "My answer is also no. Not that I think you didn't know that, but some things need to be said out loud."

"Agreed. And thanks." Sirius nodded, then shifted to face Aletha once more. "What he asked me that day," he said quietly to her, "was, 'Do you hate me?' And I had to think about that one for a while, because part of me said one thing and part of me said something else." He laid his fingers on the parchment. "You saw the answer I finally went with. What I didn't write down was why."

His gaze moved back to Remus. "I did my hating. Ten years of it, in Azkaban. And all it ever did was shove me deeper into the same damn hole the dementors were burying me in. That's not how I want to live, now that I have the chance for it again." He reached across to catch Aletha's hand in his. "I want what you want. My family, my friends, the people who matter. Even if one of them is related to Professor Snape—and how do you put up with him, anyway?" he demanded of Remus.

"As you said yourself, it's a big castle." Remus sat back in his chair, feeling a weight slide away that he hadn't realized he was carrying. "Severus and I tend to stay out of each other's way. You might have a harder time, since Meghan and Cassie are hardly ever seen apart these days."

"Well, we have a couple of other problems to solve before that becomes an issue," said Aletha dryly. "Little things like Sirius being legally dead, and also an escaped prisoner."

"If we can deal with the second one, the first one's not too hard to fix," said Sirius as Tonks returned from the kitchen, carrying a steaming teapot in one hand and levitating four cups beside her with her wand. "But that pretty much has to mean rounding up Wormtail. I can't imagine anything else that'd make the Ministry back down. Thanks," he added to Tonks as she handed him the first cup. "Any thoughts from you? You've been in the loop over there a lot more recently than I have."

"Just that you're not wrong." Tonks filled a cup for Aletha, then one for Remus, before taking the last one for herself and Summoning a chair from the kitchen. "It's been driving me up the wall ever since I started at the Office, how often doing good takes a twig seat to looking good. And there's no possible way to make this one look good for them."

"Unless we can hand them the real culprit, that is." Remus cradled his tea between his hands. "I've always wondered what Dumbledore was thinking that night. He wrote that note to send with Hagrid to James and Lily's house, so he must have believed you would be there, Sirius…"

"Thought about that some myself." Sirius blew on his tea. "And I think it was a matter of covering his goal hoops. He didn't know exactly what was going on when he sent Hagrid to Godric's Hollow. Just that the wards on the cottage had failed and James and Lily were dead, but Harry was still alive. That might've meant I'd been captured, in which case I wouldn't be there and the note wouldn't be needed, but it also might've meant Snakeface had found some purely magical way through the Fidelius and I hadn't been involved at all. In which case, I'd most likely be there to check on them, Hagrid would give me the note, and I'd let Harry go to his relatives for a few weeks until we got things under better control."

"Whereas if you were the spy, you'd be likely to let Harry go to his relatives so that you wouldn't be bothered by him while you solidified your position." Aletha tapped her fingernail against her teacup. "Built up your case for 'of course I didn't give my friends away, how could you ever think that, Voldemort must have found some other way around the Fidelius'. And meanwhile, Harry would be out of your hands, and Dumbledore could keep an eye on you and wait for you to make a mistake."

"Which I did. Just not the type everyone thought." Sirius laughed once, then sobered. "All of which is a really long way to say that we're up a cliff without a broomstick if we can't find Wormtail." He sighed, staring into his tea. "I wish we could use the Map for that, but he must've known it'd be dangerous to him as soon as he saw the Weasley twins with it. Bet you anything he sneaked into their dorm late one night and made those changes."

"Don't complain too much." Aletha elbowed him in the side. "How long do you think you'd have lasted as an undercover dog at Hogwarts if he hadn't?"

"Fair point." Sirius shrugged. "Law of unintended consequences, I suppose."

"Still in effect, last I saw." Tonks took a swig from her teacup. "Look, I never met this chap, but you three all knew him pretty well, or thought you did. So try and think like him now. What's he up to? Where might he be hiding? Other than Hogwarts," she added quickly as Sirius grinned. "We know that much already."

"Wait." Remus sat up straighter, a thought tugging at the edge of his mind. "Sirius, you said that you keep picking up Wormtail's scent around Harry. Places he's been, or he's about to be."

"Yeah." Sirius nodded. "Why?"

"Most of this year, Harry's been having problems in Potions." Remus tipped his tea back and forth, watching the ripples criss-cross and die away. "A class which was, until recently, taught by Severus Snape. Someone who doesn't like Harry at all, and who would gladly take advantage of any excuse to give him detention."

Aletha stiffened, and Tonks swore under her breath. Sirius went very still, then carefully set down his teacup on the low table in front of the couch. "That makes more sense than you know, Moony," he said in a tone of controlled fury. "Hagrid let something else slip tonight while he was playing cards. Attacks on unicorns in the Forest, two in the last week alone. And what was always the teachers' first pick for a really nasty detention, the type that'd make you sorry you ever even thought about causing trouble?"

"Sending you out to the Forest at night." Aletha's knuckles went white around the handle of her cup. "That's it, isn't it? Peter's trying to get Harry alone. Someplace he won't have anyone to help him."

Tonks coughed a little, drawing all eyes to her. "This is going to sound absolutely mental," she said slowly. "But if that's what he wants so much…maybe should you let him have it?"

XxXxX

Henry pushed open the door at the top of the stairs, stepping out into the cool early morning air. His dad stood at the edge of Gryffindor Tower's roof, gazing across Hogwarts grounds below. "Always sunrise with you and me, isn't it?" he remarked without turning around.

"I like sunrise." Henry crossed the broad expanse to stand beside Ryan. "It feels like the whole world is asleep except for us. Or like it was just made, and we're the only two people in it."

"That'd get boring if it went on too long. But it's fun for a little while." Ryan ruffled a hand across Henry's hair, then slid an arm around his shoulders. "What were you and Ginny Weasley giggling about all through holidays? You two could hardly be in the same room without setting each other off."

"It's a long story." Henry grimaced as a thought occurred to him. "But I did kind of forget to tell you something important. Something about her, and about Ron."

"Figured you out, did they?" Ryan tightened his grip on Henry in a brief side-hug. "Well, that's not the end of the world. I doubt they'll give you away. And if Professor Dumbledore's to be believed, pretty soon it might not matter anymore."

"I hope it doesn't." Henry leaned into Ryan's side. "Everybody staring and whispering was bad enough in the dreams. I don't want to find out what it's like in real life."

"Speaking of the dreams, though." Ryan's voice was a bit too casual, and Henry glanced up at his dad. "There could be some big changes coming down the pike for your alter ego. A whole new chapter starting in his story." His free hand rose to tap himself gently on the shoulder. "Problem is, the best way anyone can see to get that started…well, it's not exactly safe."

Henry laughed a little. "Somebody told him once, magic's not safe, and neither is anything else worth doing," he said. "If he wanted safe, he should have chucked his Hogwarts letter in the bin and gone to Muggle school like his relatives wanted."

"I believe I detect the tones of my favorite little cousin there." Ryan chuckled. "She always did have a way with words. But I need to be honest with you, Henry." Gray eyes met green, holding firm. "This could be very dangerous. He could get hurt, or even killed. Grownups are supposed to protect their kids, not the other way around, so it feels incredibly wrong to even ask…"

"But it's like you and Aunt Gigi always say about stories," Henry interrupted. "You have to do the most horrible thing, because that's usually the right one. And this will get him what he wants, won't it?" He closed his hand around his dad's and squeezed it. "The thing he hated me for at Christmas, because he thought I had it and he never would?"

"If everything works out, it should." Ryan nodded slowly. "You know he won't be alone for it, either. He might not be able to see them, but they are going to be there."

"I knew they would be." Henry smiled. "And that means neither one of us has to be afraid. Not really." He lifted his head, facing his dad fearlessly. "Yes."

XxXxX

Meghan blinked awake, confused. She'd thought, at the edge of sleep, that she could hear voices from the main room of the suite she shared with her mother, voices that had no business being here.

Well, one of them does. But the other one, not so much. Carefully, she slid out from under the covers and padded on soft feet to the door of her bedroom, noting the early light of sunrise outside her window. Unless…

Pulling open the door, she peered out.

Her mother slept on the couch which sat against one wall of the main room, her head pillowed on the shoulder of a strange man with black hair and pale skin, who had his arm curled possessively around her. Meghan drew in her breath, then tiptoed across the room and sat down on the floor beside the man, laying the side of her face against his leg.

The man reached down and caressed the top of Meghan's head, then gently stroked his fingers along one of the small braids in which she wore her hair. "There's my girl," he murmured sleepily.

"Yes," whispered Meghan, a lump of purest happiness rising in her throat and threatening to choke her. "Yes, I am."

(A/N: And today's prize for unintentional symmetry goes to me. Sirius was reported dead ten chapters into the story, and makes his return ten chapters (or so) from the end. Yes, most of you knew he was Orion, but I'm hoping not everybody figured out how, so let me know what you think of it!

Next time: a number of plans come together, but not all of them have the results their planners were hoping for. Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing, and please stick with me! The best, or worst, is yet to come!)