disclaimer: i do not own laura croft or harry potter... damn.

"Where the hell are you?" Harry spoke calmly into the receiver. His finger was twitching against his pant leg, the only outward sign of his ire, but he figured the phone might crack in half with how tightly he was gripping it.

"Harry, you're too young for abandonment issues," Lara held back the tired sigh as she brushed her bangs away from her face. She was signing her name to the millionth document they'd placed in front of her, and swearing that when she was Queen of the World bureaucracy was the first thing she was going to abolish.

"I'm too young… well maybe I wouldn't have issues as you put them, if you would bloody well show up when you're supposed to!"

"I'll meet you in Warsaw; Bryce is a perfectly fine guardian. I've already called the airport and arranged things."

"You're not yanking my chain?"

"I'll be there an hour after you land. Swear to whichever gods you'd like."

"You better be, or these abandonment issues you were talking about might rear up and-"

"Don't even finish that sentence young man, I don't want to hear it."

"Well I guess I'll see you in Warsaw then."

"Right, and Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"Take care of Bryce, you know how he gets in airports."

"I'll steal his palm pilot until we're through security."

"That might be for the best."

"And I'll make sure that he doesn't have any mech parts in his bag."

"And remember the liquid limit."

"I'll dump his orange juice before the metal detectors."

"All right, did I forget anything?"

"Make sure he's not wearing his computerized tennis shoes."

"Right. If he must bring them, they have to stay in his check bag."

"Right. One hour?"

"I'll be there one hour after you. Promise."

They couldn't release him on her word. It took several hours of Lara out-stubborning the Warden before she could even get Sirius to a part of the Island that didn't have a Dementor influence. Heavily guarded and charmed to be impenetrable to the dark creatures, Sirius had finally stopped shivering. The Warden had heard that Sirius was not affected, or if he was it was a peculiar brand of lunacy, and was shocked to witness that after the first half hour Sirius was holding a very interesting conversation with Lara about what was going on in the world. Political, cultural, you name it, they touched on it. The only thing that was conspicuous in its absence was talk about The-Boy-Who-Lived, and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

When Madame Bones arrived with a pensieve Lara greeted her with a kiss to the cheek.

"Thank you for coming Amelia, I know it was hard for you to help me with this, I couldn't be more grateful."

"Lara, if you're wrong about this…" Susan shook her head, it had taken a long time, many talks, and a lot of blackmail before she could get anyone to admit that there hadn't been a trial… persay… in the strictest sense of the word…

"You know me," Lara smirked.

"Yes, I know, you're never wrong."

Harry was pacing up and down the concourse, every once in a while he'd stand on a chair and look around, then flop down and sigh. Bryce was watching him with wry amusement, whenever he looked up from his laptop.

"Seven more minutes before she's broken her word," he reminded the child. "She'll be here."

"She's never not told me what she was doing Bryce," Harry dug down to what was really bothering him. "Never."

"She didn't tell me either," the computer geek looked down at his screen and tutted in disappointment. He clicked a few keys and refrained from grinning manically. "She's down the hall, see?" he adjusted the screen so that Harry could look, and chuckled at the incredulous blinking that Harry was doing.

"You hacked into the airports security cameras?"

"Yep."

"You know they could arrest you for that."

"Uh-huh," Bryce closed down the programs and waited impatiently for the computer to shut off. "But they have to catch me first."

Harry had to roll his eyes. The short jokes were getting old, and most of them weren't even any good. Lara had gone off to sign them up, Bryce had spotted some snack shack and left to get them "munchies" as he'd put it, and some six foot whatever meat head was telling him that the course wasn't for kiddies.

"You could skin your knee. They don't call time outs for crying to mommy you know." Harry understood that his Polish wasn't the best, but he was conversational enough in it to get pissed.

"It's good you understand that going in, if you have any problems remembering that, I'll remind you." It wasn't the best retort he'd ever come up with, but it wasn't bad.

"Harry!" Lara called over to him, waving her hand to get his attention. Harry smirked at the meat-head and headed over to his aunt.

"What's up?"

"They want to see how high you can jump before they'll let you in. They want to make sure you can get over some of the walls," Lara scoffed and pointed at a seven foot wall behind the sign-up table. "If you can get over that they'll let you play."

"That's bull!" Harry protested, "they don't make anyone else pass a test!"

"If you're scared, shorty…" the ass had followed him.

"Bite me," Harry replied before cracking his neck and letting out a puff of breath. In less than ten seconds he'd run up, jumped halfway, walked up a bit and grasped the ledge with the tips of his fingers, dangling with his shoelaces untied.

"Ha!"

"Again, meat-for-brains, bite me." With that muttered comment he pulled himself up into a handstand and twisted a bit to sit on top of it instead of just flipping over. "Good enough for you?"

He was still in a cell. But he was off the island. Sitting in the last holding cell at the Ministry of Magic, Sirius was finally going to have a trial. He was dressed in clean clothes, he'd been allowed a nice warm shower and a young woman had been in to cut his hair. The black mass curled to his shoulders, he liked the weight of it, the smell of it now that it was finally clean and not gnarled beyond recognition. It was his hair. Funny how something like that could make him feel human again.

Remus loved Wolfsbane potion. He could lock himself in his room and curl up on the window seat, and look up at the moon. His moon, the bane of his existence and the… entity, for lack of a better word, that controlled his body. He used to fear the moon, what it could do to him, what it turned him into.

Lara had changed that though. She'd brought him into their lives, her's, Harry's, Hillary and Bryce, and made him family. It had all happened so fast. Loosing his friends, all of his friends, in less than a week, and tumbling headfirst into this odd arrangement had made him dizzy.

Lara was like Lilly at her most stubborn, but she didn't seem to exude any effort as she pushed everyone around her until it was most convenient for her. And as he watched he realized that almost nobody realized they were being pushed. She somehow had arranged her life so that no one felt slighted or manipulated. She probably wasn't even aware of how hard people would work for her, because she worked herself harder than she ever expected from the rest of them. In fact, probably the only person to ever keep up with her had been Lilly. Lara loved to talk about Lilly, especially around Harry.

Harry knew all the story's by heart now, Remus was sure, there were only a few of them but they were packed. By the time Harry was four he'd started clamouring for more story's of his da, and Remus was more than happy to oblige. But he didn't mention the transformations he would go through, he managed to keep it away from Harry, terrified that the adventurous boy might take it into his head to explore, thinking it wasn't a big deal after all, it's only Remus.

But Remus wasn't Remus on a full moon night. Even with the Wolfsbane potion he wasn't entirely himself, just more conscious of the fact that he wasn't "Wolf". So he would lock the doors in his suite of rooms every full moon, and told Harry that he was just doing boring paperwork, so he should play with Bryce, or help Hilary with dinner and baking cookies, or maybe a training romp with Lara around the grounds before bedtime, I'll see you in the morning. Then, in the morning, he would force himself to appear normal, unaware of how observant young Harry was growing. Of course, he had only himself to blame.

He taught Harry to read as soon as possible and had him reading at a third grade level before nursery school. He taught Harry theory behind magic, as Harry's magical core was still too unstable at his young age to teach him actual spells. He had Harry look up just about everything instead of just telling him the answers, making games out of finding just the right information.

These were right up there with Hogwarts when comparing the happiest time of his life, the only black marks being the deaths of his friends, and the fear the moon still held over him. And Lara was growing impatient with him.

He hadn't known, at first, that Harry was sitting outside the library, listening in on his and Lara's argument. They took pains to never fight in front of him, but that didn't mean they didn't disagree on some things. Remus's lycanthropy being a major issue.

Remus stared up at the moon and remembered the argument that had finally broken that wall.

He'd been depressed, often was before a moon day, and had started a fight with Lara in the library. A few minutes into it he mumbled something about just packing up and leaving them safe when Lara had shoved him into the library chair and crossed her arms with that stubborn scowl on her face. He'd been so fused on his indignation at that point he was shocked he'd recognized the muffled gasp in the hallway. Harry had been curled against the door, his arms around his knees, the five year old crying helplessly into his pants.

"Remus's hurt!" he tried to explain through little gasps of breath and whimpers. "I-I- tried! I couldn't… find anything! And you-you…" he wiped the tears away with the backs of his hands, but that didn't stop new ones from forming and dropping onto chubby little cheeks, green eyes shining brilliantly against the sunlight pouring into the window.

"Harry?" Remus knelt down.

"You can't leave!" he protested and flung his arms around Remus's neck, so tightly that he couldn't be pried away.

"Harry, I could hurt you… I wouldn't mean to, but it could…"

"I don't care! I don't want you to go! You hafta stay! You promised!" Harry curled his fingers into the neck of Remus's shirt and buried his face in his uncle's neck.

"You did promise," Lara reminded him. "You told him that you'd never leave him."

"It's for his own good," he sighed as he tried to pry Harry off his lap. "He doesn't understand, he doesn't really know…"

"You're a werewolf." Harry stated, pulling back and looking calmly into his eyes. "I looked it up."

"And I don't see how leaving now is going to "save" him from you," Lara scoffed. "At this point it's called abandonment."

Remus scowled at her, but held Harry tightly. "Yes Harry, I'm a werewolf. You did a good job on the research."

"But a lot of it is stupid!" Harry protested, well aware of the fact that some books were biased. Remus had to explain to him why some books contradicted others, and luckily Harry was intelligent enough to form his own opinion from observation. "You would never hurt me!"

It was pure shock that made Remus close his mouth.

"Out of the mouth of babes," Lara could only chuckle at the incredulous anxiety that shifted over Remus's face. After all, he locked himself up at every moon, was extra careful to make sure that the walls and doors were magically shielded so there was no way he could break free, he personally picked up silver shot gun shells and pressed them into Lara's hand for any just-in-case emergency. He was so overly precautious he gave paranoid schizophrenics a bad name.

Remus had to admit, they had him beat. Now, almost five years after that argument he was still sitting in the window seat, waiting out the moon. Only now he had something else to worry about.

Sirius.

He suspected that Lara was behind the owl letter he'd received the other day. He had been so shocked he hadn't known what to tell Harry about what his aunt was doing. It was unheard of for a prisoner of Azkaban to get an appeal, but then of course you'd have to have a trial first before getting an appeal. He didn't know that Sirius hadn't had a trial; he just thought that they wouldn't call in a werewolf as a character witness. He'd been more than shocked at the scorn the lawyer had included in the letter. Apparently he was very miffed that his client hadn't been properly able to defend himself. Of course, at the time Sirius had been a little bit more than insane. He hadn't stopped laughing for almost a month, and by that time he was already in Azkaban. He'd trusted Albus when he'd told Remus that Sirius was guilty.

He should have pushed. He should have questioned, like he had ever since Laura started wondering about it. The werewolf scratched behind his ear with his hind paw and stretched out with a large yawn. Life is too complicated, he complained to himself, just look up at that beautiful moon and relax. You'll get your answers soon enough.

With a sigh he settled back down and looked up at the glowing orb. No, he wasn't afraid of the moon anymore. He wondered what it was he was afraid of. What would his boggart be now?

i had the hardest time this chapter remembering that Lara isn't spelled with a "u". if i missed one, let me know, huh?