Chapter 4
If within the twelve four hours Harry was first with them Remus and Sirius, they had quickly become has favourite people in the world, nothing changed when they showed him they were magic in the figurative as well as the literal sense of the word.
Sirius and Remus were quick to explain they were not the only wizards in the world; in fact Harry was soon to learn there was a huge community of them living in Britain, but he was sure none of them were as magical as the two he lived with.
As they talked to Harry about it, he had become more comfortable on his godfathers lap and he sat there with his head resting against Sirius' chest, his tiny hand covering the much bigger one of the man he was already unconditionally loyal too.
"So, you are both wizards?" he said to Remus who nodded.
"Yes," He nodded as Harry broke down what they had said to him to the bare basics. The cogs in his tiny mind were turning faster than they ever had before.
"And you went to a magic school, and you went to school with my mummy and daddy?"
Sirius and Remus beamed at one another as Harry figured everything out.
"Yes we did."
"So does that mean my daddy and mummy were wizards too?"
Sirius beamed. He was so proud of him.
"Yes, it does – and when two people who are magical have a baby, then the baby is generally magical. Has anything funny ever happened about you Harry? Anything you weren't sure how happened?"
Harry had been very perceptive so far. He had picked up a lot of the answers for himself. He had not had to be told. So he realised what Sirius was insinuating very quickly.
He thought of the things that his uncle and aunt had called him a freak for. He thought of every time he had somehow been safe from Dudley and his gang when there was no explanation. He thought of the time when the bruise from aunts Marge's stick had healed quickly. And his dreams. The flying motorbikes. The way he had known who Sirius was before he had even met him.
And the green light. He knew that was connected to everything he had just heard.
"It means I am a wizard too." He said quietly as it dawned on him.
Harry noticed the way that Sirius was looking at him, once more the proud father. When he had been with his aunt and uncle he had always been taught that to be different was to be bad. He had been out of their grasp for just a few days and his own ideas were forming about that.
If Remus and Sirius were wizards then they had to be good.
They just had to be.
"Yes it does, little man," Remus nodded as he reached over and took Harry's hand as the news sank in.
Harry looked as if he was happy about it but it confused him as well, as it did any muggle born child. Harry may have been born to magical parents, but so far he had lived the life of a muggle born; that ended that day.
"What are you thinking Harry?" asked Remus. He looked at Sirius and he knew his best friend had been hoping for a bit more of a reaction than that. So had he. But then when he looked at Harry and he saw clear confusion on his face, he knew that he was not saying anything not because he was trying to be awkward but because he just did not know what to say.
And he couldn't blame him.
"Well, you what, young man? Why don't you go and set up for the game of snap and me and Sirius can get some drinks to bring through," said Remus with a smile knowing that he had to talk to his best friend.
Harry nodded, jumped off of his godfathers lap and then walked into the living room leaving an exasperated Sirius in his wake.
"I thought he might at least cheer or ask more questions."
"I think given what he has been through over the last few days he had been asking plenty of questions."
Sirius sighed. He wondered twhat had happened to him was going to stop affecting him. When he had thought of Harry when he had been in jail he had thought about the two of them going to Quidditch games and hanging out at Diagon alley and laughing all the time together.
Yet nothing had gone to plan.
"This is going to take a lot of time."
"I know, Moony. I know."
But it felt to Sirius like torture. He had spent so much time apart from Harry that he felt as if all the time when they were together they should be making up for it and having fun together. As much as he knew he was going to support his godson rain or shine, he knew perhaps he was lying to himself when he said he was really ready to cope.
Whether he was or not thought was almost insignificant though. He had too.
Soon, the two men, coffee in hand as well as a orange juice for their young charge, had headed into the living room where the cards had been dealt out into three piles, when a smile crept back on too Sirius' face.
"What if we play snap the magical way Harry?" said Sirius as he knelt down by him and put his arm about him and smiled to put confidence into the boy. But that was the one thing that Harry was seriously lacking.
Now that he knew what he was though, Sirius had to show him. Not only was magic useful, it could be a lot of fun.
With a wave of a wand the muggle cards were gone replaced by the wizarding ones.
That morning was yet another first Sirius witnessed; Harry's first game of exploding snap. He had been there for many before. And he had no doubt there were still many to come. Sirius was going to make sure from that day on he was going to be there for everyone of them.
Despite his nerves, Harry seemed to come out of his shell a little and there was lots of laughing.
Despite the fact it was obvious he loved Remus for the part he had played in freeing him from the hell that had been life with his aunt and uncle, after they had told Harry just who he was, he once again clung to Sirius. Pup seemed to be a rather apt name for him now.
Sirius found he was best with Harry when they were doing things that echod his babyhood when they had last been together. For example, when he and James had got back from the Auror office to the Potters, sometimes, James and Lily had needed to talk and so he had taken over bath time as part of his godfatherly duties. By the time the lad had been six months, it was all in a day's work for Sirius.
And so they had bath time that night, impressively Sirius thought by half eight. Harry was still quiet, despite the fact he had brightened up when they had been playing together.
"You ok buddy?" he said as he carried him back to what he had thought was going to be his room on his first night back from jail. When his boy had got back though, the choice to give it to him had been only too easy. Even if the sofa was not the most comfortable place in the world to bed down for the night it was a lot better than Azkaban.
Harry nodded.
"You know no matter what it is you can ask or tell me? I am never going to be mad at you for telling me something which is worrying you," he told Harry.
He seemed so small in his pyjamas in the big bed.
Harry nodded as his godfather sat next to him on the bed and put his arm about him.
"Padfoot?"
"Yes?"
"Can you tell me about my mummy and daddy?"
Sirius looked at him, knowing he should have been waiting for that question. For the first time since he had been very tiny, Harry was with people who had known his mother and his father very well; people they had loved and been loved by. Sirius had no doubt in his mind that he had no stories of his mother and father from his aunt and uncle.
It was only natural that he wanted to know a lot more than he did about Lily and James.
"Of course I can buddy. Who would you like to hear about first?"
Harry shrugged.
"Well why don't you make your mind up while I go and get you a hot chocolate and bring Moony back with me? He knows some great stories about your mother and father as well."
While he was getting the boy a drink he and Remus briefed one another on what they were going to stick to that night. The lighter pranks they had pulled when they had been at school and how in love Lily and James were and how much they had loved him from the moment they had learned they were having a baby.
No lies, but then they wanted to protect him from what was the harsher side of his parents life. All he had to know for then was that he had always, always been wanted and loved.
"Who first then?" said Sirius as he sat back down, chocolate on the bed side table and Remus lying at Harry's feet, stretched lazily out. Sirius soon had his arm back about Harry scooting him close.
"Daddy."
Sirius smiled. He had to say he had loved Lily as a sister but there was never going to be another James for him that was for sure. Out of the two of them, for him, it was James who was utterly irreplaceable – even by his son.
And when it came to stories about James he knew he was a bottomless well which was what his godson was going to need as he grew up.
"Well, let me think then little man. What can I tell you about your daddy?" he sighed. He wanted to tell him everything all at once. "He was good; and he was brave, and he loved playing practical jokes. And he got in lots and lots of trouble when he was at school."
"A lot of that was admittedly Padfoot's fault though." Said Remus with a wink.
"It was down to the two of us." Sirius conceded. "But he was a great man Harry. And he loved being a dad."
"Did he?" Harry whispered. That was the first thing he had wanted to hear.
Part of him said he shouldn't, because his aunt and his uncle had told him what he was. He was a bad egg. He was not worth it. But when he had thought of his parents, they had always loved to him in his head.
And to hear Sirius say he had been wanted made it real. And ever since he had been at the flat he had felt wanted to. He didn't understand it. Why was it one pair of adults hated him so much and yet he was so loved by another?
"Are you kidding, Harry? Buddy, you were everything to your dad. Absolutely everything, you as well as your mum."
Sirius could only hope that it went unsaid that it went for him too. He knew his godson was feeling all shaken up. But he hoped he was getting to know him a little too.
"Did she want me too?"
"Of course she did. I saw mummy and daddy on the day that she told him that they were going to have you and they were even happier on that day than when they had got married. The loved you and one another very much."
Harry nodded. "Though mummy was a little stricter than daddy was. She got annoyed at him when he pulled pranks."
This second mention of the trouble his father had cause over the years could not fail to sparks Harry's interest.
"Did he pull them on her then?" he asked with a cheeky smile that was so like the one his father had once worn it brook Sirius's heart all over again.
"Yes he did. Whenever he could in fact. She didn't thank him for it but I think deep down it was part of your dad's playfulness that made her love him as much as she did."
For any other six year old the thought of their parents being so deeply in love would have been considered gross. But for Harry his mum and dad were like mystical, almost mythical people. People from long ago.
And they enchanted him thoroughly.
He did not know if it made him happy or sad. Happy because the people he was being told about were the people he had always known in his heart or sad because he had no memories.
"I miss them!" he said quite suddenly. He did not think he had a right too. Not when he was with people who knew and had loved them so dearly. And who remembered them. But it was the truth. He had never known them as they had. Except in his heart and in the most imaginative place in his mind.
But instead of telling him he was wrong to miss them, Remus merely nodded. "I know you do. And so do we. And we can talk about them any time you want to. They are never going to be so far away from you now Harry."
He had known that. It was odd how they were still dead but he felt so much closer to them than he had ever before even though they were still far away from one another.
But the distance had changed.
"I wish it had never happened. I wish they had never died. I want them to be here with us right now." said Harry and for the first time since he had been with his godfather and his new uncle he showed something other than submissiveness. There was a fire in him and an anger that they had been taken from him when he had been so young.
He had seen the other kids with their mum and dad's and he knew he had been bad but he did not think that he was really much worst them some of the others. If he had been then Sirius and Remus would not have come to get him would they?
If he had been bad then they wouldn't have wanted him.
Sirius and Remus exchanged a surprised looked. After all they had been so careful to avoid mentioning the darker side of magic. They had not wanted to freak the little man out. Was it really possible that he had been told something about what had happened to Lily and James already? But then by who? It went without saying that it had been neither of them. Sirius was sure he had not left Dumbledore with the lad long enough for it to have been him. In fact, he did not think Dumbledore and Harry had been alone at all since they had got him out of his aunt and uncles house.
Petunia and Vernon were then the only two logical choices to have been the ones who had told his nephew what had happened to his mother and father… but then they had not struck him to be the type to tell their small nephew that an evil wizard had been the one to take the most loving mother and father in the world away from him. In fact, if they had done it then he was sure they would have done so maliciously in order to hurt Harry.
"So do I kid," said Sirius as he missed him and his eyes met once more with Remus'. There werewolf was the one to ask the question they both had to know the answer to.
"Harry, who told you what happened to mum and dad?" he said gently.
He wished they weren't getting into such territory yet. It had not been part of his or Sirius' plan. The idea was for them to be a lot closer than they were yet when they got about to talking through Lily and James' death. But then they were both quickly learning that things went to plan the way you wanted them to with kids only very rarely. Harry was the one who was setting the agenda for them and they just had to go along with it.
"Aunt Petunia did."
"And what did she say?"
Once more when he was asked this there was a slight fire in Harry's eyes. Sirius knew what had happened and so the young lad did not see why he was bringing it all up again.
"Just that they were in a car crash..."
As soon as the words had come out of Harry's mouth, Remus had though that Sirius was going to go crazy. He was never going to allow such an injustice to happen, to allow the son of his best friend to grow up living with that lie hanging over him.
But Sirius just looked crest fallen t and as if he had no idea what to say back to that though. Remus had been expecting anger but the heart break in Sirius' eyes was so much worst. Of everything that he had so far learnt of the life his godson had been living before he had come to him, this lie had to be the worst.
He did not see how anything could hurt him more than this lie.
Together they had hit rock bottom.
Sirius didn't sleep that night. As much as he had wanted to, for he knew when Harry woke the next day he had to get him breakfast, play with him, get him lunch, play with him, fix dinner, play with him and then bath him before he got him ready for bed, he couldn't. He just couldn't.
He was going to have to go through everything he had been through that day again and even though he was a young man, it was knackering.
But it was not the physical side of caring for the boy he was having a rough time with. He was sure he would be able to play with him endlessly and never get bored. Even though he had been a bachelor (in fact, maybe because of that fact) he was quite a good cook. Making Harry a meal was never going to be a problem.
It wasn't even that he had not known that bringing up Harry was going to take its toll on him emotionally. The fact that he had no parents was always going to meant there were moments of sadness for the two of them. Moments that were going to kill them.
But he had not thought the first few days were going to be as bad as they had been. Maybe he had been fooling himself when he had been in jail. All those times when he had said to himself Lily had been over exaggerating about her sister. He had his hope that Harry was going to be ok. The fact he considered the fact Harry might have wanted to stay with his aunt and uncle proved that.
What he had not prepared himself was the minefield that the last few days had been. It was as if every time he turned about there was something else he should have been able to prevent happening.
Whether it was the fact he had found Harry in a cupboard, the fact that he had been at number four at all or indeed the glass incident, it just seemed to be fate telling him that he was getting everything wrong and he was not up to the massive task he had set himself.
He was not on the verge of giving up though. Not by a long way. He just knew he had to step back and evaluate the way he was going about this. He had come back with the idea he and Harry were going to have so much fun together that soon the days when they had been apart were going to be nothing but a distant memory.
But there were some memories he was beginning to understand that just weren't going to fade for the lad no matter what.
When they had been in the bedroom earlier Remus had been the one who had had to explain what had really happened to Harry, missing the minor details of course. It was as if Sirius had been to frozen by what he had just too been told to speak.
He was letting James and Lily down time and time again. He didn't know when he was making the mistakes so he couldn't stop doing it. He just knew he was.
All this seem to add up in Remus' mind to forcing Sirius to grow up. Even though they had all been the same age when they had been at school, he had been the youngest mentally and he had always looked up to James. They had been twins, but James had been born two minutes earlier so to speak, and had been the big brother as it were. When Sirius got too out of hand he had been the one to rein him back in. He had been the only one who could.
Since he had been home, Remus had already seen Sirius at the kitchen table with a coffee far too many times with a 'why us?' look upon his face. It was as if he was still trying to digest it all, from Voldemort's rise to James's death still.
"You should turn in Padfoot."
"I would if it was going to make the slightest bit of difference. But it wouldn't, I would just lie awake in the dark thinking."
"You're exhausted."
"No Moony. I am just tired – and I'm sad. I'm bloody lost and out of my depth. But my god, I am going to find my way and swim for my life if it kills me."
The next night, as if he had known the two new guardians were in need of a pick me up, Dumbledore went over to the flat with two shrunken trunks.
When he had showed them to Sirius at first he had not seen the relevance of them but by the time that they were done that night, they would prove enough to at least partly to restore Sirius' faith in him.
Once he had enlarged the two trunks, Dumbledore took Remus through to the kitchen for a tea and left Sirius to the contents which turned out to be what he had managed to salvage of Harry's things from Godrics Hollow.
Though the baby grows and the rest of the clothes were obviously far too small, it was the memories they held that made Sirius heart lift. For the first time in five years he held the blue baby grew with teddy's on that had been one of his god son's first outfits. Harry had been in that baby grow when he had got to the hospital on the 31st of July. He had been in it when they had met.
Sirius could only hold it to his heart as he smiled.
Various other bits of clothing came out of the trunk before he got to the toys and the baby blankets and the other bits Lily and James had lovingly picked out for their baby.
The cuddly toys Sirius decided then and there were about to come out of retirement. If Harry needed any more proof that he had been the most beloved son in the world then it was all here in these trunks. He was going to get it.
At the bottom of the first one though, catching Sirius quite off guard was the picture of himself, Remus and the Potters at the christening.
He held Harry and James had his hand on his shoulder. Lily was looking at them both with pride. Both their eyes were saying the same thing to Sirius as they had done that day.
'You can do this. We believe in you.'
Resolved strengthened, Sirius sighed as he went on to the next truck, once more feeling optimist about the life which awaited him and Harry.
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