Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was feeling particularly pleased with himself. He knew that he had both Harry Potter and the rest of the Wizarding world exactly where he wanted them. Before the events at the end of the Triwizard Tournament the year before, Harry had already felt a sense of gratitude towards him for providing him a reprieve from his dreadful relatives, and for showing love and affection to a small eleven year old who had never experienced it. He felt that helping him save Sirius at the end of his third year had also been a stroke of genius on his part. Allowing him to be kissed by the Dementors had been his original plan, so that he would finally be out of the way for good, but when he saw how concerned Harry was about him, he decided to allow him to survive for now, making Harry feel even further indebted to him. Now that Voldemort had returned, Harry depended on him even further.

The Wizarding World as a whole did not believe that Voldemort had returned, but this suited Albus just fine. He knew that the moment that it was revealed that he truly was back, the public would depend n him even more than now, giving him advantage over Minister Fudge. And having the public disbelieve him meant that they would not believe Harry too, making him feel even more isolated and alone. In his isolated state, it would be easy to swoop in as the "kind, caring mentor", and I would be easy enough to set him on the path of finding and destroying Voldemort's horcruxes. After all, getting the boy both physically and emotionally involved will cause him to be desperate enough, in the end, to sacrifice himself, leaving the playing field wide open for Albus to stand off against Voldemort and save the day once again.

He only had one wild card in his plan: James Potter. He had thus far been able to fool him from around the world by writing false letters of comfort and companionship from his childhood friends, Remus Lupin and Sirius Black. James had not had the option to permanently move back to Britain because of the magically-binding he had to the school, and it had ben easy, through compulsion charms in the false letters to give him the desire to stay in America to grieve. But now that his contract was up, Albus really wasn't in a position to force him to stay. He had sent a letter to the Headmaster of the other school, asking him to try to rehire James, as it was "good for his mental health to be doing something productive that he loved" and that "the sunshine in California was good for him". He also had sent a letter to James (from himself) requesting that he report to his office before going anywhere else, and even if he hadn't, it wouldn't be too difficult to modify his memory, or the memories of anyone who saw him.

Putting aside his concerns about the eldest Potter, he sent Fawkes with a note to Severus Snape, requesting he stop by his office. About 20 minutes later, there was a stern knock on the door.

"Come in, Severus," he said. Albus waited fro the man to fully enter the room and take a seat in one of the rather garish armchairs he had in front of his deask.

"You requested my presence?" Severus said with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes, I'm going to need a new round of loyalty, compulsion, and detestation draughts."

"Why on earth do you need those?"

"Severus, this is one of those times I must ask you not to question me. You know that everything that I do is for the greater good after all."

"Albus, these are no simple potions. It will take weeks for these to be completed!"

"Take as long as you need, Severus. I can wait."

Sirius Black was not having a good day. Being trapped inside his childhood home with nothing but a demented house-elf and the swirling memories of his nightmarish adolescent years was not good for his psyche.

Sighing, he sluggishly drug himself to his feet and stumbled to the ornate liquor cabinet for another bottle of firewiskey. It had been the same routine since he had returned to London: wake up and drown his memories and sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. Sirius knew that this wasn't really going to solve any of his problems, but he felt so hopeless and lost that firewiskey seemed like the only escape from his own self. He barely even attended Order meetings anymore, despite the fact that they were held in his house.

Suddenly, there was a loud pounding at the door. Knowing that only an Order member could be at the door, Sirius shuffled his way to the door and threw it open. Standing on the stoop was his long-time friend and brother, Remus Lupin.

"Moony! What a pleasant surprise! A marvelous, sublime, wondrous, amazing surprise!"

Remus wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Have you been drinking Sirius? It's still 9 o'clock in the morning!"

"Or course-hic- not! Why would I do that Moonikins?"

Sirius was now giving Remus his best innocent puppy-eye look, but Remus had known him long enough to see right through it. "Come on Sirius, let's get you cleaned up."

Grabbing his upper arm, Remus managed to steer him back into the kitchen to sit at the table that he had previously occupied. With a wave of his wand, Remus cleared all of the debris and empty bottles that ha littered the table. Noting that Sirius had slumped forward and passed out on the table, Remus turned to make a pot of strong coffee. Every time he came back from a mission from the Order it seemed that Sirius only got worse and worse. He wasn't made to be cooped up any more than his large dog animagus form was.

A cup of strong, black coffee and a long shower later, Sirius was mostly sober again, and feeling intensely ashamed of himself, as he usually did when Remus returned and found him so intoxicated. He knew the werewolf would be waiting for him in the large Black family library, no doubt devouring another of the rather large tomes contained within.

Steeling himself to swallow his pride and apologize, he slowly pushed the door open to face his friend. Before he could get any words out, however, there was a large crash from the kitchen.

Both men immediately grabbed their wands and raced to confront whatever had caused the noise, but neither of the men were prepared for what they would find. Picking himself off the floor in front of the fireplace was James Potter- or at least someone who looked just like him.

"You'd think that 35 years would help a bloke become adjusted to the floo, wouldn't you?" He asked with a rueful grin.

Before he could say anything else, however, Remus crossed the room in three long strides and held his wand to his throat. "Who are you, and what do you think you're playing at?" he demanded with a snarl that seemed to reflect his wolfish nature more than his human one.

Eyes scrunched up in confusion, the James look-alike looked up at Remus. "Um, Moony, it's me. I know it's been awhile, but I had rather hoped you hadn't forgotten what I looked like. "

Remus only growled deep in his throat. "Prove it: what is my 'furry little secret', and when did you find out about it?"

James continued to look confused, but answered anyway, "Your secret is that you were bitten by a werewolf when you were very young. We found out about it near the beginning of second year, but we didn't confront you about it until the middle if the year because we didn't like that you felt like you had to lie to us about it."

"I'm afraid that isn't going to be enough," Sirius cut in. "The rat could have easily told you all of that."

Remus seemed to ponder his words for a moment before a large smirk came over his face. "Turn into Prongs. No one could fake that."

To his astonishment, instead of arguing, the man in front of him did just that. Remus dropped to his knees in shock, his mouth gaping in disbelief. As James changed back Sirius launched himself at him with a large sob.

"What in Merlin's name is going on here?"

Sirius suddenly backed away indignantly. "I'm pretty sure you're the one who should be answering that question. Where the hell have you been for the last 14 years?"

As James finally got a close up look at Sirius for the first time, he seemed to almost recoil from the shock of his appearance. "I've been in America under a building and teaching contract. What do you mean where have I been? We've been in constant correspondence the entire time! And what the hell happened to you? And why all of the suspicion when I came in?"

"James," Sirius whispered, "every wizard in Britain believes that you've been dead for 14 years, I'm sorry if we were a bit shocked when you dropped into my kitchen. And I most certainly haven't been in contact with you, or I wouldn't have spent 13 of the last 14 years rotting away in Azkaban!"

"Azkaban? What did you do?"

"Well, according to the charges against me, I sold you out to Voldemort and then I blew up half a street of muggles in order to murder the rat," Sirius said nonchalantly.

"But why were you charged with betraying us? Dumbledore knew you were the secret keeper! And it was also in our final wills as well, just in case. And you didn't really kill anyone, right?"

"Of course not! Although I did mean to kill the rat, of course. He just manage to squeeze his way of the situation, blowing up the street as a distraction, painting me a the guilty one since he disappeared leaving only his finger behind."

"His finger?"

"He cut it off, but that's not important. What is important is the fact that you say Dumbledore knew about the switch? Then why was I sent to Azkaban without a trail?"

"That is just one of many million galleon questions Padfoot."

A/N:

I am so, so, sorry that took me so long to update! My laptop is broken, and so I had to type this out on my iPhone. Add that to the fact that I just started back to college means that this took a lot longer than I anticipated! Also, I apologize for any grammar/spelling mistakes that I didn't catch; it's really hard to see then on this little screen. :)

What did you think of this chapter? Please feel free to tell me exactly what you thought in a review. :)

Oh, and in case it isn't obvious, I'm definitely not JK Rowling, I just like to mess around in her world once in a while. :)