Chapter 47

Sirius' heart dropped to his knees when he heard Harry speak.

"Wha-What? What did you say Harry?" he stuttered. Harry looked over at Sirius and then grinned unexpectedly.

"Just kidding," Harry chuckled.

Sirius stared at Harry for a moment, and then put his head in his hands. Several thoughts ran through his head at once. Little bugger got me good. Too good. Have to get him back now. He took a mock shuddery breath before looking back up at his godson.

"Oh, Harry. I'm so glad you're okay." He lunged forward and hugged Harry tightly for extra emphasis. "I know you're a bit fuzzy right now, but that's what happens after extended comas apparently. Hopefully it should wear off soon. So much has happened the last couple years. But…You're back, and your awake now," Sirius said as he grasped Harry's hand tightly.

"What?" asked Harry, finding himself much more awake suddenly. "Coma? Sirius what's going on? It was just a couple doxy bites."

"Yes, but the anti-venom we had at Grimmauld Place was old, so it reacted badly with the venom and created a poison," Sirius explained.

"But I…What…How…" Harry stammered.

"It's going to be okay, Harry. Don't worry, the side effects from the coma will dissipate over the next few weeks, and you'll be good as new…I promise."

"But Sirius, how long…what hap—?" Harry asked. His eyes were wide and panicky.

Just then the door opened and the two men looked over as Ron walked into the room.

"Ron!" Harry shouted. Ron started and looked at Harry.

"Harry! You're awake! How did that happen?" Ron asked as he ran over. "I was just here a while ago, and you were virtually comatose." Sirius bit back a snigger.

Harry looked from Ron to Sirius and back to Ron who was just sitting down next to the bed. Harry reached over and grabbed Ron's wrist.

"What happened to me?" he asked.

"You were bit by a few doxies. Scared the bleeding hell out of us too. I don't think I've seen Ginny panic quite so badly before. You know for just waking up, you're awfully perky," Ron said. "Here Sirius, mum wanted me to bring you some dinner. She knew you were sitting with Harry for a while tonight." Ron handed Sirius a large container of meatloaf and roast potatoes.

"How long have I been in a coma?" Harry asked quietly. Ron turned to look at him with a surprised look on his face.

"Coma? Blimey Harry, you were only bitten earlier today. Coma…where did you get that idea from?" he asked. Harry however was glaring at Sirius who had dug into the food eagerly, with a huge grin on his face.

"Hmm, I wonder?" Harry said through grinding teeth.

"Sirius, you told him he was in a coma? What for?" Ron asked with a grin.

"Yeah, why would you scare me like that, Godfather?" Harry asked with a scowl.

"Hey you started it, kiddo. I finished it," Sirius said with a mouthful of potato. Ron frowned.

"How long have you been awake, Harry?" he asked.

"A grand total of three minutes I believe," Harry responded.

"Anyway," Ron said with a grin. "We wanted to let you know that we took down the barrier, so you can get home Sirius. Hermione came over for dinner but left early on after the meal. She said she was working on something important in one of her table sized monstrosities she calls a book. Thought I'd come hang out here."

The three guys sat and talked until Harry dozed off.

"I guess I should get going. Mum will wonder where I got off to so late."

"Harry said I didn't have to stay, but I wonder if I should anyway," Sirius said.

"He'll be fine. Besides, if he woke up and found out you'd stayed all night he'd have a litter of kittens," said Ron. The two left for the night and went their separate ways.

When Sirius walked in the door he wandered around his old house.

Over the last few months since the end of the war Harry and Hermione had fixed it up so much that his old house now felt like a real home. Soft pastel watercolours hung on the walls depicting ocean views and sandy beaches or fields and meadows reaching on forever. The walls were lighter shades of the original greens and blues and the floors were actually waxed and shiny again.

He could never get enough of the difference between the old house and the new home; same building, yet so different.

He walked up the stairs and found James and Lily snuggling in the drawing room.

"Ah, young love. C'est la vie! Dois-je vous laisser seul?" he said with bouncing eyebrows.

"What?" said James,

"I didn't know you spoke French, Sirius," said Lily with a smile,

"Ah, only due to the unfortunate mishap of growing up in a Pure-Blood household. All pure bloods need to know another language, preferably French, or Spanish; possibly German depending on your personal line of heritage. I chose French, to woo the ladies," responded the man with a grin. James chuckled and Lily rolled her eyes.

"All the Pure Blood houses? What language did you learn James?" she asked coyly.

"I learned the noble language of Ig-pay Atin-lay. You know…to oo-way the ig-pays," he said with a smile. He winked at Sirius who laughed loudly. Lily chuckled also.

"How's Harry?" she asked.

"He woke up for a little bit. Bugger pranked me too! First thing out of his mouth made me think he had amnesia! Asked me why I wasn't in hiding. Scared the hell out of me," he replied. James roared with laughter, and Lily smiled weakly.

"What did you say back to him, Sirius?" asked James,

"I asked 'What?' and he replied with 'Just kidding.' So, I pranked him back, made him think he'd been in a coma for a few years. Then Ron showed up and blew it for me."

"Oh, Sirius! That's not nice, was he really scared?" asked Lily.

"He was getting a bit panicky when Ron showed up. We sat and talked for about an hour before he dozed off and we decided to leave for the night. Did you two work things out?" he asked sternly. They smiled at him.

"Yes, Moony, we did. Thank you very much," replied James.

"Thank you Sirius. What you said about Harry needing us to accept him and understand him…really hit us hard. We got home and talked and we've decided that Harry has to be our first priority. We can't forget that," Lily said sadly.

"Did he really question if Lily and I loved each other?" asked James.

"Yes. In his fifth year he was taking extra Occlumency lessons with Snape, and the greasy git put several memories in a Pensieve so Harry wouldn't see them if he broke through the dungeon bat's shield. He was whisked away to deal with another student and Harry decided to sneak a peek and just happened to see the day we finished our Defence OWL and what happened afterwards. Remember what happened?" Sirius asked.

"The fight with Snivellus?" said James. Lily slapped his arm lightly.

"How many times do I have to tell you, don't call him that," she scolded.

"Either way, James is right. Harry saw how James lifted Snape in the air, Lily shouting that James was a… what was it? Arrogant, bullying toerag? James saying that the reason he was picking on Snape was because his very existence was an insult. Harry's first real memory of his parents, that wasn't a result of a Dementor, was this memory. It didn't portray you both in very good lights.

"After Harry saw it he risked getting expelled so he could use the only Floo in the school to call me and ask a few questions. Remus and I straightened him out and explained that while it took a while for you, Lily, to come around to liking James, he liked you long before.

"He knows that you had your differences before seventh year, but he really is only meeting you guys and learning about you right now. He only knows what people have told him over the years, and to be honest it isn't a lot. He didn't get to grow up seeing his mum and dad kissing in the morning, or anything cutesy like that.

"When I saw you two arguing over him, it made me mad. I know Harry a bit more than you guys do and you need to know, he has a penchant for carrying around a lot of guilt. If he had heard you two arguing like that, he probably would have blamed himself for getting bitten and worried himself to ulcers about whether or not you both love each other. I know you do, you know you do, now make sure Harry knows you do," Sirius stood up and nodded his head to them before walking out.

James and Lily sat for a long time thinking quietly to themselves.

"Lils, our baby is all grown up," James said sadly. She looked at him and realized, until this moment, he had been seeing Harry as one of the boys, a Marauder, and not as his own child. He had separated the baby Harry from the young man they had been getting to know. The two Harrys weren't the same until their fight.

He had been there for her when she realized it, now it was her turn to be there for him.

"I know James. I may forget some times, but I know," she whispered. He leaned into her and she felt him shake with silent sobs. She rubbed his back for a long time, just letting him cry. He didn't cry for as long as she had, but when he looked up at her he smiled sadly.

"It's so weird. I know he's alive, and…somewhat well, but it's like our baby…died. He's gone, we'll never get to see him, in real life, and do all the things we wanted to do. We got to see his first steps and hear his first few words, we got to see him sit up, roll over…all those little things as precious as they were then, mean almost nothing now. We didn't get to see him off on the train to school, get news of his first detention, first girlfriend and breakup, nothing… We get to view it as a memory… as much as I enjoyed seeing a few of those things, I don't want all my memories of my child to be the dangerous things he did from his point of view. I want the parental memories that go with those things. Sending him a letter congratulating him on making it into Gryffindor, and also for the different Quidditch victories, seeing Dumbledore after Harry's first detention and trying not to grin like a mad man and pretend I'm horribly disappointed while actually wanting to congratulate Harry and slap him on the back for a prank well done… all those things we missed out on," James sighed dramatically.

Lily couldn't contain herself and she snorted. James looked at her horrified.

"What?" he demanded.

"It's just…you wish you could have been there for Harry's first detention?" she giggled.

"Lils, I'm a Marauder! My biggest dream is for my son to follow in my footsteps and be the biggest prankster of the school and cause the most angst for the teachers. Just like his old Da," said James with a goofy grin.

"He may not have been a prankster, but he did cause a lot of angst for the teachers," said Hermione from the hallway.

James and Lily looked over their shoulders and saw her standing awkwardly in the doorway.

"Come on in, Hermione," said Lily.

"My dream come true…my son is a junior marauder!" James said dreamily. "I'm so proud." He wiped away a fake tear.

"Have you heard from Sirius? How's Harry?" asked Hermione.

"Awake, and with enough strength to prank his godfather before going back to sleep," said Lily while rolling her eyes. Hermione smiled.

"Harry pranked Sirius?" she asked. They explained the joke and what Sirius did to Harry and she chuckled softly.

"The last few weeks Harry's really lightened up a lot. He has a sense of humour now. He had one before, but because of Voldemort, he kind of suppressed it. He was very serious the last few years; it's been nice to see him acting his age now," Hermione said with a smile.

James and Lily smiled but the three fell into an awkward silence. After a few minutes Hermione cleared her throat.

"Um, I found a tracking spell to see if Rita's been here in the house lately. It creates blotches of colour where the person or their animal form has rested for several moments and tracks in the animals footprints where they walked. It also gives the prints a luminescent colour, but the colour fades after five minutes. It's not too late, so I thought I'd give it a try. It'll probably take a while, Rita's form is a beetle, so I could use all the help I can get," she said. James and Lily shared a quick look and smiled.

"We can help," said Lily. After Hermione taught them the spell the three of them started casting and searching the drawing room for prints. James colour was lemon yellow, Sirius' was a bright electric blue, but there was no sign of a third colour anywhere in the room. They searched for a couple hours, high and low and in between for a third glowing tint, but nothing showed up. Hermione suggested they check the kitchen, the colours would show up easier with the more muted shade of slate blue instead of the cream of the drawing room so it wouldn't take as long.

After checking the kitchen, Harry's bedroom, and the hallways and finding nothing, Hermione was forced to believe that Rita had never been in the house.

"Well, Hermione, I'm glad to know Harry has a friend as dedicated as you. Knowing he's had you all these years to look out for him eases my mind a bit," Lily said as she flopped into the sofa in the drawing room. It was one in the morning and she was beat.

Hermione smiled sadly and then burst into tears. James and Lily both sat upright and stared at the girl.

"Hermione what's wrong what did I say?" asked Lily.

"It's…okay," Hermione gasped tearfully. "It's not really important."

"I disagree. Whatever has you this upset, I'd like to help," Lily said which caused Hermione to cry harder. The two adults went over to the sofa Hermione was sitting on and Lily gave her a tight hug.

"I think I made a horrible mistake," Hermione whispered.

"What do you mean?" asked James hesitantly taking Hermione's hand in his own and giving a light pat. Harry had obviously inherited his restlessness with crying girls from him.

"I can't really explain what I did. It has to do with something that happened a few months ago, and my unquenchable thirst for answers. All I can say is…it seems like everything is falling out of place for me. My parents hate me for what I did to them to keep them safe, Harry's mad at me for this last problem, and seeing him like that today, laying there unconscious again made me realize that I need to stop and think of others before I try and fix things. I may get the things fixed but I usually do it in a way that alienates me from the people I love the most," she finished quietly.

James and Lily shared a look. They were horribly curious about what Hermione had done, but they knew they couldn't ask. Harry wanted to tell them his story in order of the years, and they needed to comply with that.

"Hermione, I really don't know what to say, but this…I'm sure Harry will come around eventually. You're one of his best friends, he loves you in his own way, and I'm sure he won't let anything come between that. Sure he might be angry now, but it will probably pass," said Lily.

"Yeah but the last time this happened, it took several months for him and Ron to forgive me," she muttered.

"This has happened before?" asked James.

"In our third year, Harry fell off his broom when a swarm of Dementors raided a Quidditch match. It was during a storm too, so the wind carried off his broom into the Whomping Willow. He got a new Firebolt, the best broom there was at the time, for Christmas from some mystery person. That was also the year Sirius escaped from prison and we thought he was coming to kill Harry.

"I thought the broom might be cursed or something, and told McGonagall and she confiscated it. Harry and Ron refused to speak to me for weeks, until he got the broom back. If anyone can hold a grudge it's those two," she chuckled humourlessly.

"All I can say is give it time, dear. And some rest might help also. Tomorrow is another day," said Lily as she stood up. She grabbed Hermione's hand and pulled her up as well and the three headed to their beds.

a/n: Sorry it kind of ends there. It was a weird ending...But I was running late on time...Like I said before, I'm back in school again, so new chapters will be slow coming. Maybe every two weeks. I also have several tests and projects coming up...Keep in mind I write every time i get free time, it's just not very frequent! Thanks to Teufel1987 for betaing! I hope you all are glad I didn't actually give Harry amnesia! lol, after all the awesome reviews I considered changing my plans, but decided to stick with what I had. Please review! I'm quite addicted to them! and thanks for everyone who reviews! I'm almost at 100,000 hits! WOOT WOOT!!! And I've already hit 550 reviews! I love you all!!!!