Chapter 8

-oOoOo-

Sirius Black blinked again. "I'm free to go?"

"Yes, you are, dear," An ex-Auror by the name of Moody winked seductively, "but if you change your mind, you can always come back." His face darkened. "But if you dare do anything naughty again, boy, I'll make goddamned sure you'll be back in a heartbeat. YOU HEAR ME?"

Sirius Black blinked again. This old, weird-looking guy really was moody. But if someone from the Order of Phoenix was here, chances were that Dumbledore was involved to make sure he was to leave Azkaban without complications.

As Sirius stepped out of his cell, a red carpet was laid before him, with disco light flashing and dancing on the corridor along the carpet line, and a very familiar lively song booming from everywhere in the prison.

"Who let the dogs out?"

Sirius couldn't resist. He loved the next line of the song, so he sang, "Woof, woof, woof, woof!"

Moody groaned. He needed a word with Dumbledore soon.

"Who let the dogs out?"

Not surprisingly, Moody chorused with Sirius with a smile of a boy enjoying his first ice-cream, "Woof, woof, woof, woof!"

He was indeed moody.

-oOoOo-

Harry Potter was a busy businessman. Besides running the Potter Enterprise, conducting scientific research, reading everything about the Wizard World, mentoring Madam Malkin and getting prepared to be a Hogwarts student, he needed to set aside a large chunk amount of time for pranks.

He had read about the First Wizarding War, and kinda hacked into Dumbledore's personal library to learn about the Order of Phoenix. He had built an ant-sized robot called Antony, which worked splendidly with 10-foot-tall Robot and his intelligent glasses Jarvis. Antony, Robot and Jarvis were three independent artificial intelligence machines, rather than a centrally controlled A.I. because digital communications were not reliable in the Wizard World and relying on a central command could make his machines dead when he needed them most. Harry didn't want to take this sort of risk.

Having said that, Harry thought a healthy amount of risk was okay. Antony could go anywhere in the Castle without trouble. He could fly, he could crawl up the wall, he could hung from the ceiling, he could record anything with a miniature video camera, and he could report back in real time, making him perfect for stealth, infiltrative missions. Antony learnt about a secret passage way inside the Headmaster's Office, which led to, among other things, Dumbledore's private library. He slipped himself inside Dumbledore's books between pages and scanned everything without opening the books. So Harry was fairly certain that Antony didn't trigger any anti-theft charm, if Dumbledore had any.

Harry had big plans for Antony, one of them being finding out what was stored inside Deatheaters' vaults at Gringotts. While Robot could get into Gringotts without any problem, he was unlikely to be able to go past a vault door without bombing it first. No, Harry couldn't set an alarm to the goblins like that. He needed to know first what was in the vaults before stealing them. This was way more entertaining than his time-travelled lotto victories.

Meanwhile, Harry was learning about Gringotts, Hogwarts and others. He didn't want to be surprised by unknown variables for which he could devise a preparation plan before hand. He wanted his missions to succeed and cost minimal damage. After all, his robots cost Harry a lot of money, time and red cards from Dudley, who suspected that Jarvis helped Harry in chess games more often than not, even in the games he played against himself.

So when Antony learnt about the Order of Phoenix, Harry promptly made a request to Dumbledore for having Moody to escort Sirius to safety (Moody was chosen for comical effects since the lad was so emotionally unstable). What he didn't mention was that he wore the Cloak of Invisibility and followed Moody into Azkaban. Antony did all the work of installing battery-powered disco lights and sitting on Sirius's head while playing music. Robot took care of the red carpet while borrowing Harry's Cloak of Invisibility and Time Tuner. Harry watched the whole scene with amusement and satisfaction. He was really, really tempted to sing along with Sirius, but he needed to remain silent because he also had other wicked, wicked plans.

Harry grinned devilishly, wondering what Sirius's face was like when he found out.

But not for long, his dream shattered. The whole prison was shaking violently, as if hit by an earthquake. Damn, this was probably a real earthquake!

Suddenly a white, blinding flash struck them. Harry, Sirius and Moody screamed and fell into a cold, dark, bottomless abyss.

-oOoOo-

"What the hell?" Sirius yelled. They continued to fall and fall without any sign of stopping.

Harry remarked with amusement. "Funny enough, we seem to fall at a constant speed, like there is no gravity here. So if this black hole does have a bottom or something, we wouldn't hit it with a force that could shatter our bones."

"Who are you, Boy?" Moody asked, irritated, although he could guess who the boy was. "I don't see you."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Of course, you don't see me, stupid, because it's dark in here."

Sirius gulped, tears gathering in his eyes. "H-Harry?"

Before Harry could say anything, they all hit some of mud with a splash.

"Welcome to King Cross version 0.4 beta!" A voice announced happily.

"J-James?" Sirius asked reluctantly, a number of emotions rushing through him – apology, friendship, happiness, sadness, and others. It was undoubtedly James Potter's voice.

"F-father?" Harry asked reluctantly, a number of emotions rushing through him – longing, happiness, sadness, and others.

"P-prat?" Moody asked reluctantly, a number of emotions rushing through him, but that was to be expected of Moody.

The bottom of the pit had no light, but 11-year-old James Potter was illuminating and floating around like a ghost.

"I am so proud of you Harry." James said kindly, with a tint of hoarseness in his voice.

"F-father, I-I.." Harry was speechless for a while, but then he narrowed his eyes, eyeing James suspiciously. "You look like me."

James chuckled. "No, it's YOU who look like me. You got your mother's eyes though."A thought suddenly came to James. "Ask McGonagall to teach you to change your eye colour. I believe you see the implications?" He winked at his son and smirked at Sirius.

Sirius looked horrified.

Moody looked bored, spitting mud from his mouth. "Son of the Mudblood, you'd better get us outta here!"

Nobody took offense from Moody because the guy was driven to emotional insanity by a number of Crucios. He had fought bravely and heroically in the First Wizarding War. Tolerance was the very least thing they could do for him.

James and Sirius exchanged knowing smirks. Each had just got a mud-related prank idea from Moody.

"Jarvis... where am I?" Harry whispered.

Jarvis said, "Three possibilities, Master. (a) Not on Earth, (b) Cannot connect to the GPS system, and (c) the GPS system was shut down."

Harry was not happy with the answer. "Are Robot and Antony here?"

"Robot is not but Antony is here, sir."

"Ask Antony to fly up and report back." Harry paused. "How far can he go without losing communication with us?"

"10 km, sir. By estimate, you had fallen for 2 minutes at the speed of 5 metre per second, so distance should not be a problem."

James asked reluctantly, a concern on his face. "Harry? Who are you talking to?"

"Father, it's a Muggle invention. You can't hear him but I can."

"Yes, I can see, your glasses are special. There are like books that turn pages automatically!"

Harry looked surprised. "You can see me, father? I haven't yet taken off the Cloak of Invisibility!"

Moody crossed his arm, his magical eyes spinning crazily. "What charm are you using, boy? For some weird reason, I can't look at you at all."

"This..." James sighed, "...is the reason we're here."

Sirius sniggered. "But where's here, Prongs? I bet you are not going to tell us?"

James chuckled a bit. With a sigh, he replied, "Already toldcha; this is King Cross version 0.4 beta."

Sirius looked horror-struck. "You are serious!" And after a second, he added. "But you're not Sirius!"

James ignored his best friend. "Harry, your Cloak of Invisibility is supposed to hide you from ANYTHING, even from Death himself. Moody, your Magical Eye of See-Through-Bras is supposed to allow you to see ANYTHING, even those that hide in the deepest corners of the dark."

"Are you saying," Harry said slowly, "that this is a paradox, like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object?"

"Yes, Harry." James replied. "And a paradox like that could lead to all sorts of craziness in the world."

"That doesn't sound too bad." Sirius remarked.

Jarvis reported on Harry's glasses screen as a running text. "Mr. Potter, Antony cannot fly any higher. It was like he was walking on a never-ending staircase. Whenever he reaches the point you appeared in this place, he is teleported back to the bottom of the pit."

Harry nodded grimly. Teleportation was not a technology he could master yet, yet everyone seemed to be mocking him with all these technological advances.

"So we have two choices here. We need to decide whether we should allow Moody's Eye to see through Harry's Cloak. After the decision, you all can.." James said with a bit of sadness. "..go back to Azkaban."

"This is an easy decision, Prat," spat Moody, "An All-seeing Eye would destroy a stealth mission using the Cloak. But a Totally Invisible Cloak, charmed to be Unsummonable, would make the wearer far too dangerous if the Cloak is misused. I'm not accusing you anything, boy." Moody regarded Harry in a wrong direction. "But the Cloak can be stolen. A misused All-seeing Eye is not as bad."

Sirius was surprised to see Moody in a rational mind. But he naturally wanted to side with his God-son. "Let's take a vote on this! And can you take off your Cloak please, Harry? I really want to see your not-so-handsome face so badly!"

Harry giggled. Voting sounded fair unless you were already among your supporters. He cleared his throat before saying the words that he didn't want to say. It was difficult, but he had to do it. "Moody's right, Sirius."

These words seemed to hit Sirius in the right place. Sirius nodded with a rare, serious face, noting that his godson could be more mature than him sometimes.

"That's settled, then." James forced himself to smile. "I'm so happy to see you, Harry... "

"Father!" cried Harry.

"Until we meet again..."

And with that, a white, blinding flash hit three of them, returning them to Azkaban.

-oOoOo-

Antony promptly resumed the music. "Who let the dogs out?"

"Woof, woof, woof, woof!" Harry took off his Cloak and sang and danced happily with his godfather.

Sirius beamed at Harry and rushed to give the boy a warm embrace he'd never received.

Tears were gathering in Harry's eyes, and he believed his happy-teary eyes were more magical than any Magical Eye.

Walking on the red carpet, passing various cells and annoying songs without being a killjoy, the ex-Auror Alastor Moody escorted the ex-prisoner to 12 Grimmauld Place, and gave him back his wand. After all, the man deserved happiness, and Moody was impressed by the feats that the Potter boy had just achieved - following him to Azkaban without alerting him, setting up the prank without his knowledge, and giving up the Cloak's invisibility against his Magical Eye. He was so impressed that he forgot to act moody.

-oOoOo-

A/N: Did you know that the story has reached 12,000 words? If you'd like to say something about this story (I'd love to hear anything - even criticism), now is a good time! Thank you for reading!