Still on that roll.
Okay, not quite on the roll anymore. To be honest, more than half of this was penned immediately following the last chapter. Then life happened. Boo. Who needs real life?
Please correct my shit. Beggin' you and all.
Note: (October 4th, 2012): www. fanfiction dot net/ forum /A-Split-in-Time-and-Space/119550/ - forum to discuss things! Yay!
Kaleidoscope
It was a dreary cell, made more dreary by the guards. Once, he had dreamed of escaping, of revolution, of bright and beautiful things, but now all he could think of was the fact that Lily Potter had died with James, that he had left his godson with the worst sort of muggles.
Yet he could still think. The spark of his intelligence burned bright. The Dementors never took your knowledge of the world away from you. They could not touch the revelation, could not harm his resolve. When he left this bleak island and forced nutrition into his body, he would be Sirius Black again. Now, he was just a shell.
He became Padfoot for a moment.
They couldn't touch Padfoot either. Padfoot was a dog, his dog, his best friend in this lonely cell.
Being an Animagus was a blessing like no other, he had decided all those years ago while listening to his mad cousin Bella howl at the walls and seeing her husband's dead eyes through the walls.
One day, he would fulfill his promises. But today, he would be a dog, a dog who dreamed of the past.
Stand Up
Harry stood on a rooftop after managing to successfully teleport himself there and watched the world unfold beneath him. He was in a terrible district of London. There were girls who were fifteen baring their bodies at strangers and men with too many tattoos and piercings who walked around with knifes in hand. Blue-collar workers pointed their chins towards their chests and stepped with haste and urgency to get back home.
It was night - he would not use magic around those who were nonmagical during the day. One policeman with his mind altered beyond recognition was enough collateral damage.
He ran through the themes of magic in his mind. He would be strong if he wanted to be. He could always get stronger. He thought of the pain around him and the glaze slipped over his eyes once more, slowing the world. Nearby the door to a club open, letting out music and lost minds fiending for hits. A butterfly flapped its wings, creating such a slight current of wind it could do nothing. A roach crawled over a dumpster, the same dumpster he had emptied of salvageable foodstuffs.
And one man was looking straight at him.
The man had brown hair and a general sense of unkemptness. He did not take good care of his body, that was apparent. He was dressed in what used to be robes of sorts, but they looked to be rags wrapped about his body now.
As their gazes met, he deliberately pulled out what seemed to be a lighter and clicked it once. There was no spark, but in an instant, it had pulled in the light from a street lamp, stealing it. He clicked it again and again until the only light was the sign of the club.
There was a crack, the sound of a teleportation gone wrong and they stood on the rooftop together.
"Harry."
To say either were alarmed was an understatement. There was a look that was equally searching, determined and broken in the older man's eyes. He wasn't quite shaved, though he certainly didn't smell of anything untoward. Harry thanked the world for small miracles.
"Who are you?" He was a bit more rude than intended, but the man had performed feats of magic he had never seen before and appeared besides him.
The man nodded in resignation. He didn't want to go through this introductory phase, not after chasing Harry for so long, but he didn't want to kidnap the child in front of him. "I am Remus Lupin. I am loosely associated with Professor Dumbledore, from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Harry nodded, feeling slightly more relaxed.
"We have been watching you for several years. Dumbledore says that you seemed to get along just fine with your relatives. Forgive me for asking, but what happened?"
Harry weighed the consequences of telling his fellow wizard about his problems and decided that being short about it would be better than obfuscating.
His eyes glazed over yet again, though he looked away, the strands of Remus Lupin's speech on the edge of his vision. He would be able to elementarily determine whether or not the man was lying to him and judge his responses. The darkness obscured his face as much as the slight turn of his head.
Remus laughed, long and loud. It was a joyful note, with a touch of reminiscence. "Oh, you've certainly got your mother's eyes, then."
Harry frowned, but didn't turn back.
"She used to do the same. She thought it'd scare us, but there are far worse things in the world than oddly colored pupils."
Harry turned to him sharply, the black commas spinning rapidly.
"Yes, an underdeveloped Kaleidoscope. You have been given a gift, Harry."
"You know what it does, don't you?" he asked, fishing for information.
Lupin shook his head. "I was never privy to Lily's secrets. No living man but Professor Dumbledore could tell you more than you know about them already, and I doubt Lily told him much about them herself. She knew how to keep her secrets better than any of us."
"Us?" Harry queried, feeling as though Lupin didn't quite mean 'all of wizardfolk'.
Lupin nodded, his joy blending in full force with the nostalgia. The strands, so very visible on the non-magical, were muted and insulated by his magic, as well as some strange taint that he hadn't noticed earlier. If he were to attempt escape, it would be impossible for him to influence Lupin's thoughts. "Us. We were seven or eight, with Lily at our helm. She was Dumbledore's pupil, and Flitwick's. We each found our own teachers and we taught each other. We were to be the brightest stars of our generation and each of us has given up on the dream or died." The strands were more visible now, bitter.
"Why are you here?" Harry asked.
Lupin shook his head. "I've given you information you desired. It is time for you to tell me why you left the Dursleys." Harry would have protested, but there was a sort of didacticism to his tone that he had never seen before. The man was trying to teach him something about how wizards interacted with one another. Some sort of equivalence in the exchange of information? He thought back to the snakes, who had been guarded with telling him things. Was it because he didn't have anything to give back?
Harry nodded reluctantly. "I got my Hogwarts letter in the morning while cooking breakfast. I hid the letter. Another letter came, by way of owl, and my uncle tried to kill it. He read the second letter and tore up the first after breaking into my room. I got angry and destroyed the room, then left."
"On your own volition?" Lupin asked, troubled.
"Yes. I told myself that I'd never go back."
Lupin took in his breath sharply. "There were wards around your house, making it impossible for anyone to harm you while you were there. You would be safe at Hogwarts, and you would be safe as long as you called that house your home."
Harry frowned. Lupin was telling the truth. "What would try to harm me?"
Instantly, Lupin was guarded. He had clearly said too much. "It isn't my place to tell you. Would you like to journey to Hogwarts with me, Harry?"
Harry nodded. "I would like to meet Professor Dumbledore," he decided.
Lupin nodded. "A wise choice. There is not a living man in this world that can't learn something from Professor Dumbledore. He has born our standard for fifty years and he has never wavered," he said with something akin to pride. There was another touch of bitterness that Harry didn't understand.
"Finally, how did you find me?"
Lupin looked ready to tell him, then shook his head. "That will be a story for when you know me better, Harry. I was very good friends with both your parents," he said, though Harry could see that those statements were quite unrelated.
"Take my arm, Harry."
He did and he was pulled into the vortex of teleportation with a loud crack. Harry blinked and the haze receded from his vision.
"Welcome to Hogsmeade, Harry. We are currently in Scotland," Lupin said. Harry drank in the scene before him. There were stores and shops selling items that he had never heard of. They were currently in front of a ratty old pub which seemed far more atmospheric than it should have been. With a slight shift in vision, Harry could confirm that there were little swirls of magic which wrapped about the pub, possibly put in place to make it seem more inviting.
"Look lively, Harry," Lupin said, pulling him into the pub quickly. He closed the door behind him and they pushed through the crowd to the bar.
"Remus," said a large man with a huge beard.
"Aberforth," Remus greeted. "Tell Albus that I've arrived with only good tidings."
The now-named Aberforth turned his gaze to Harry. There was a sort of raw intelligence and cunning in it that didn't seem to fit with a simple bartender, but he had to be, after all, a wizard.
Remus dragged him out of the pub and they walked up the road in Hogsmeade. Remus was giving a light history lesson on how Hogsmeade was the only wizarding town in England ("Muggles can't see this place, Harry.").
They slowly walked up a long and winding road until, quite suddenly, a sharp turn on the road occurred and a huge castle appeared before them.
Harry stopped for a moment. It was magnificent, with medieval turrets and strong stone walls. It seemed to buzz and vibrate with magic and after the glaze slid over his eyes, he realized that every single stone had been fundamentally changed in some way.
"It's a beautiful castle, isn't it, Harry?" Remus gazed fondly too, but soon began to walk again. "Magic is… quite versatile."
As they stepped through the gates, which had opened for them once they stood in front, Harry took a good look at the lake and the grounds, as well as the large forest that surrounded the area.
"That's the Forbidden Forest, Harry. You're not supposed to go in there, because there are some hostile species. Several students have died in there over the years."
He nodded.
Remus and Harry strode up to the doors of solid oak and the older man knocked twice. The knocks were deceptively strong, the hard sound of his fist striking the wood resonating through the castle.
"Now, before we go in… take care who you show your eyes to. Severus Snape is safe. Professor Dumbledore is safe. But don't let anyone else know about them. They're a very, very powerful gift and you would be in a fair amount of danger if anyone else found out about-"
The door swung open and a stern looking woman in a tartan nightgown greeted Lupin stiffly, then turned her eyes to Harry in surprise.
"Harry Potter!" she all but shouted, then collected herself nearly instantly. "I am Professor McGonagall. I will be teaching you Transfiguration, which is a branch of magic that deals in changing objects into other objects, from their size and shape to their very properties. I'll lead you to Professor Dumbledore now."
They walked through the corridors teeming with curious ghosts and loud paintings who attempted to ask him questions about nearly everything. Harry ignored them after Lupin mumbled something about the ghosts being shadows of their former personalities and the paintings being even more so, but he told himself that he would spend some time questioning them at a later point.
"Chocolate frogs," McGonagall stated quite clearly to a stone griffin who bowed and turned inwards to reveal a spiral staircase in the middle of a hall.
Harry stared at the griffin, attempting to discern the magic without the assistance of his eyes, feeling for the currents and the lines that he knew were there. Not much, he decided, but there was a distinctive spark of something beautiful and subtle behind the functionality of it. It was an old sort of spark, but it lasted, it spoke of strength, of-
"We'll be headed up that staircase now, Harry," Lupin said, pulling on his arm gently. "We'll meet Professor Dumbledore now."