The crowd in the courtroom was thinning out, a few stragglers of the Wizengamot remained lingering next to Sirius, offering him their sincerest apologies and services should he need any assistance getting back on his feet. The trio watched as their dark eyed friend scanned the room, slowly getting to their feet when his eyes finally met their own.

"Let's go," Lily whispered to James, whose eyes were glued on his best friend, freezing him in his place. She looked eagerly to Remus, whose attention was also turned to James.

Remus placed a supporting hand on his friend's shoulder and slowly pulled him away from his place in the stands and down towards the main court area. James' eyes remained glued on Sirius as he and Remus stumbled down the dark wooden stairs.

The crowd parted ways for Sirius as he made his way over to his fellow marauders.

"Siri-," James began, his voice though was quickly silenced when he was pulled into a tight embrace by his oldest friend.

"I-I failed you, James, f-forgive m-me," Sirius wept into James' shoulder, his voice slightly muffled. He turned to Remus and embraced him in the same manner before stuttering out, "And you, Remus, for-for thinking you were the traitor when I, we, everyone knew that could n-never be possible."

"It was war time, Sirius. I've gotten over all the cruelty I faced because of my condition— I would never hold that against you," Remus said, a grin creeping across his face. "It's good to have you back, Padfoot."

"Besides, Marauders stand together," James added, jokingly slapping a hand on Sirius' back. "You weren't the one that betrayed Lily and I. We have never and will never hold that against you, Paddy."

Sirius hugged James again following Remus, but pulled back quickly.

"Lily! Where's your wife, Prongs?" he said eagerly, looking over both James' and Remus' shoulder for her.

"It's so good to see you, Sirius," Lily said, pulling him into an unexpected hug from behind.

He pulled her in close, lifting her up and spinning her around before finally placing her back down next to his best-mate.

"We're so sorry for not coming to your rescue earlier. Harry…" Lily continued, her eyes unable to meet his.

"Harry!" Sirius exclaimed yet again. "He's not here is he? That little tyke?" He searched around his three friends for the little boy he had marveled at since the day he was born.

"He's at school, Sirius," James chuckled. "It's his first year at Hogwarts."

"It-no-no way, he's only like 5 year's old! Surely no kid of yours is that advanced, sorry Prongs," Sirius said, nudging James jokingly.

"He's half Lily, he could be!" James protested mockingly.

"Sirius, he's really at Hogwarts. He's really eleven— and guess what!?" Remus said in attempt to set his dear friend straight.

"What?" Sirius said, looking eagerly between the three people in front of him. They all laughed a little, which pushed him over the edge. "Well come on, tell me!" he pleaded.

"He was sorted into Gryffindor! My boy's a Gryffindor!" James boasted.

"Is he Marauder material?" Sirius asked, intrigued by the prospects of the sorting.

"Oh no. No, no, no. We are not having this conversation," Lily said fed-up. "My son is not going to be a next generation Marauder— he's better than that! Oh no, don't give me that!"

The three Marauders in front of her were giving her three equal looks of mocked shock at her statement about their school behavior.

"Oh alright," James relented, patting his wife softly on the back. "Well, Sirius, now that you're a free man, what do you want to do?"

Sirius grinned mischievously, clapping his hands together.

"Well first on my agenda of things to do is to wreak havoc on the world so they know that I, Sirius Black am a free man. Then…" Sirius bellowed, his voice echoing of the courtroom walls.

"Woah there Padfoot," Remus chuckled, his hands in his pockets. "One free step at a time. Prongs— your place?"

"Oh, you're going to like this one Padfoot," James said, leading Lily out of the courtroom and towards the golden grates, Remus and Sirius following closely behind.

"Why am I going to like it? What am I going to like? Come on guys! I just got out of Azkaban after 9 years! Let me in on this!" Sirius begged, as his friends stifled their laughter all the way to the Atrium.

They had almost reached the visitor's entrance when James turned on Sirius and looked him up and down.

"Checking me out, are ya Prongs?" Sirius joked. Lily and Remus stood chuckling at the telephone box that was waiting to take them away.

"Never. I just realized— you're still in your Azkaban uniform." James observed. "And as a free man that outfit just won't do."

"It's all about the appearance's with him, I tell you," Remus whispered in Lily's ear.

"I think he cares more about them than I do," she whispered back.

"I heard that," James responded over his shoulder to the two troublemakers. "Anyways, here," he continued pulling out his wand.

"NO!" Sirius yelled. "Absolutely no way in hell am I allowing you to change my appearance. You tried that once and never again will I let that happen. Here," he said, grabbing James' wand from his hand.

Sirius charmed his clothes, changing his stripped cloth coveralls into long black robes with red stitching around the cuffs of the sleeves.

"Uh Sirius," Remus pointed out. "We're uh going into Muggle London."

"Why on earth are we going there?"

"You'll see, just, uh change your clothes a little and then we will get going," James said, smiling cheekily as he made his way towards where Lily and Remus were standing.

Sirius obliged, and traded his robes for a pair of black pants, a deep red, pin striped shirt and a black jacket.

"Better?" he asked, to which the group nodded in agreement.

They all lined up to file into the visitor's box and head back up to street level when Remus stopped them.

"We are not all fitting in again," he said, the first ride still stuck in his mind. "I'll go up with Lils first— you two can follow." He opened the door for Lily, who stepped in immediately. He pulled the door closed behind them, both of them smiling at James and Sirius as the box made it's way up and out of sight.

It came back down a minute later, and the two remaining Marauders stepped in.

"The light, the light— it burns!" Sirius yelled dramatically, the moment the sun made contact with the bright red telephone box. He stumbled out just moments later, falling at the feet of a giggling Remus and Lily. James grabbed him by his collar jacket, and pulled him up straight.

"Forget how to walk?" James joked.

Lily grabbed Sirius' arm and began walking with him towards the bus stop.

"So where exactly are we going?"

"You're kidding me right?" Sirius asked, as they stood in front of James and Lily's home.

"Nope," the three responded simultaneously.

"Prongs— you're practically living at Grimmauld Place!" Sirius yelled.

"It's Trevor Square actually," James remarked, pointing at the sign on the house just a short while away.

"You're hilarious," Sirius said.

"Let's just go in— get some lunch or something," Lily suggested, taking the first steps towards the house, pulling the key out of her pocket and unlocking the door.

Sirius followed behind Remus as they filed into the three story brick home. He looked around him to see a beige room with white wainscoting that continued up the stairs directly across from the door. Along the hall was a bright yellow table that held James' car keys, along with a couple of photos of his favorite family. He slowly moved further into the house, stepping into their family space. The room had light grey walls and dark hardwood floors that had a soft white rug covering half the space. On the rug sat two white sofas with big comfy pillows which sat adjacent from a tv set on the other side of the room. Right across from the entrance was a white bricked fireplace that had a few more family photos on the mantel.

"A lot different from Godric's Hollow," he said quietly, but loud enough for them all to hear.

"We wanted to started fresh," Lily said softly. She looked at James and mouthed something to him before retreating with a smile up the stairs.

Remus and Sirius both turned to question James, but he answered before they could get the words out. "She's setting up your rooms. She's trying to make it a surprise— so act like it when she drags you up there later," he warned them. "Come on, I'll show you the rest of this floor. She'll be back down in moments, I swear."

He brought them back towards the kitchen but Sirius stopped a few steps in.

"Prongs? I thought Lils said you wanted to start fresh?" he said, observing the familiar kitchen around him. The room in front of him was a pale yellow, with white cabinets encircling the left end of it. At the other end was the small table he imagined Harry sat at every morning with his parents. Along the back a row of windows lined the wall, looking out onto the backyard, with a pair of french doors opening out onto the deck just behind the table. "This is just like the kitchen from Godric's Hollow."

"That it is." James responded, his own memories of their old home flooding back. "It had been Lily's second favorite room there— besides Harry's nursery. I couldn't give her that though so I gave her this when we moved in."

"Why not Harry's nursery? He was still a baby when you came here, was he not?" Remus inquired.

"We were giving Harry a muggle life when we came here— no magic. It was our safest bet to raise him away from that world, the fame he was given because of that night. If I recreated the nursery I would have had to have his plush magical creatures he used to love so much. Or the owl mobile that Lily made him when she was pregnant. I couldn't give her half of what she once had."

The three men stood in silence for a moment, caught on the last words that James had muttered.

Sirius soon broke the silence though. "LILS?" he yelled, determined to make his voice reach every inch of this house.

"Yes, Sirius?" she asked, her voice mockingly tired.

"When are you making me my well deserved, out of Azkaban forever, lunch?"

"Ask James to!"

Sirius smiled, turning on his heel to look at his friend who had taken a place next to Remus at the table.

James looked up at Sirius, whose eyes were gleaming in a way that couldn't possibly be mean anything good.

Sirius sauntered over to his friend, poking his shoulder. "Jamesie, old pal, old friend..."

"It's a bad idea, I'm telling you that right now. I'm a horrible cook— Harry would testify to that fact if he were here."

Sirius pouted for a short while before moving on to his next friend. "Remus, my dearest, wisest…"

"HEY!" James started. "I'm wise!"

Sirius gave him a look that said otherwise before continuing on. "As I was saying. Remus, my dearest, wisest, most talented friend— make me lunch."

"Well it started off nice," Remus joked, keeping his gaze on the Daily Prophet from earlier that day.

Laughter chorused around the yard, as Lily, James, Remus and Sirius sat on the deck late that night. Over the hours of the day they caught Sirius up on all he had missed, including all the milestone's of his Godson's life.

"So you're telling me that you didn't tell him anything about magic, Hogwarts, or even us until the night Hagrid came here?" Sirius asked, shocked at the revelation. "How did you survive that, Prongs?"

"You'd be shocked at how accustomed he is to the muggle world, Padfoot," Remus stated, taking another sip of butter-beer.

"It's easier than you think, Sirius. Especially when you have something, or someone to do it for," Lily responded sweetly. "Harry was our concern, is our concern. If it meant giving something up for a while and adapting you do it."

"Prongs?" Sirius asked, convinced to get something out of his friend.

"Alright, alright… it was pretty dead awful at first," James began, looking at Lily who just flung her head back in laughter recalling the first few weeks.

"It was like he was transforming back to being human— no pun intended, Remus," Lily laughed.

"It was easy for you! You are a muggle born— you lived with your family in a non-magical household whenever you were away from school!"

"You're just mad because I knew how to toast toast."

"That was not my fault!"

"James, it was the simplest task I could give you since the first day after we had settled in you nearly blew up Harry's food in the microwave."

"Stupid contraption…"

"Just because you can't work it."

Remus, Lily, and Sirius toasted to that and chugged a little more of their drinks back.

"The moral…" James said loudly, trying to calm them down. "The moral of the story is that I managed to make the adjustment quite successfully, after a few trials and trib— Lils, is that Hedwig?"

Lily rose slowly to her feet, her eyes squinting slightly trying to make out the creature in the dark of the night.

"Where, James?" she said softly. "I don't see her…"

"There," he said, stretching his arm outwards to point at the snowy owl making its way through the trees and over the roof of the house behind theirs.

Hedwig gracefully landed just moments later on the fence that divided their yard from the next— hooting lightly as to ensure that the recipients of her letter had known that she had indeed arrived.

"Hi girl," Lily whispered as she softly stroked the owl's feather's, untying the letter as she did. "Thank-you."

She brought the letter over to the boys, who were eagerly gathering around the porch table waiting to hear what Harry had to say.

"Is this his first letter?" Sirius asked, looking around at the faces around him.

James chuckled. "Yes— the little tyke probably got caught up in the wonder of the place and forgot about us dear old people here in London who not only sent him there, but gave him life."

"Quite the sob story you've written for us, darling," Lily said. "Ok, ready to hear it?"

The Marauder's nodded excitedly and Lily began…

Dear Mum and Dad,

You'll never believe it, I'm still not sure if I do! I mean I didn't know much about it at first, much like everything else. I didn't even know what I was doing but McGonagall saw it all and got Wood! He's taking me out tomorrow to show me everything! Promise to write soon! Love you both!

Harry

"Any clue what he's talking about?" Lily asked James who merely shook his head, grabbing the letter to read it again.

"I think he forgot to actually tell us what happened. Poor guy just wrote down his excitement," James said.

"I was hoping for more," Sirius said, a little put out at the lack of information they had just received.

"Apparently your wish is their command," Remus said, his gaze following another swopping creature that settled itself down next to Hedwig.

Sirius rushed over to the bird, unstrapping the letter and ripping it open. His eyes darted back and forth across the page quite a few times before he finally looked up, with the biggest grin they had ever seen him wear.

He began dancing and chanting around the deck, eventually bouncing off to it and onto the lawn where he continued his happy dance.

"Mind filling us in, Padfoot?" Remus asked, his voice raised a little so he could be sure it would get through to Sirius.

"HE'S A SEEKER! HE'S A SEEKER! MY BLOODY GODSON IS A SEEKER ON THE GRYFFINDOR QUIDDITCH TEAM!" Sirius bellowed, so loudly James was sure he had heard a few neighbors yell out their windows for them to quiet down.

James acted first out of the three remaining there, tearing across the lawn to where Sirius was jumping around repeating his last few sentences over and over again in a little song. He grabbed the letter from Sirius' hand and brought it back to Lily and Remus.

Dear Mum and Dad (again)

I just realized that I never told you what I was so shocked and excited about. Today we had our first flying lesson with the Slytherins (ick!) and Neville Longbottom, another Gryffindor, lost track of his broom and ended up breaking his wrist. When he lost track of his broom though his remembrall dropped out his pocket and was picked up by this boy named Draco Malfoy (he's an odd one he is). Malfoy flew off with it, and before I could really think about it I mounted my broom and took off after him to confront him. He threw the ball, and because I knew it meant a lot to Neville I chased after it and caught it in midair! would you believe it? I just shot across the sky and dived for it— even managed to spin my broom in a cool way to do so! It was amazing— you can't even believe what it was like! Anyways next thing I know Professor McGonagall comes out and calls me inside, and then goes to a classroom and calls for Wood— I thought she was going to hit me for misbehaving. Turns out Wood is the captain of the team.

I'M THE NEW SEEKER FOR THE GRYFFINDOR QUIDDITCH TEAM! Apparently the youngest in over a century, at least that's what she told me! Amazing isn't it? Wood is taking me out soon to teach me about the game— still not entirely sure what it is. Our first match is in a few weeks— will you come? Write soon!

Love, Harry

"MY BOY'S THE YOUNGEST SEEKER IN A CENTURY AFTER THE FIRST TIME ON A BROOM!" James whooped, and began chanting around with Sirius out of excitement.

"I can't believe he did that!" Lily said, astonished— her heart racing at the thought of the dive her son had pulled.

"Lils, he's fine. He's happy— just go with it," James said quietly so only she could hear.

"You're right," she said, smiling and kissing him on the cheek. "Let's go celebrate more inside— I'm afraid we're waking up the neighborhood."

"Right in here," Lily said, opening the door.

"This is James' office is it not?" Remus asked, as the last time he had been around up here the room was definitely set up for business.

"It was," she said playfully, hinting at what they were about to see.

She opened the double doors on the second floor to reveal a good sized room that had undergone a whole renovation within the first few hours of the afternoon. The wall immediately to the right still had floor to ceiling bookcases as it had had before but placed in front of it, made from a dark wood was a double bed with dark red sheets—reminiscent of those that were in Gryffindor tower all those years ago. A small lamp sat on a table next to the bed, with a pair of Remus' pajamas laid out on it. Across the room was a similar bed with bookcases on either side of it as well, a few of the bottom shelves expanded to fulfill the needs of bedside tables for Sirius. A couple quidditch and Hogwarts posters and memories hung on the wall behind the bed. Dark red curtains flared out onto the floor on either side of the double doors that led out onto a small balcony overlooking the back yard, with two dressers beneath the respective windows that were on either side of the doors.

"Lily, you didn't.." Remus began, blushing a little from the gesture of being given a room in the home.

"Please, Remus and Sirius, just, just make yourselves comfortable here. Feel free to add what you need. The closet just down the hall has empty spaces for your robes and such, or just more storage. Especially for you, Remus—I know you have some stuff in your old apartment, but James and I don't want you there. We've missed you both so much—and owe you both more than you know. Please, I'll figure something out so you can have separate rooms later, but I thought that you deserved a nice place to sleep. Harry's room just won't cut it for you Remus—you need a space of your own. Anyways, I'll leave you both to get acquainted with the room, or you can go back down and help James tend to the owls... goodnight."

She slipped out of the room and walked down the hall towards the second floor living area, where the staircase began to head to the third floor.

"Lily?" Sirius said, poking his head out of the door.

"Yes? Oh did I forget to tell you something?"

"No, no. I just wanted to say thank you—for everything. It's great."

She smiled at him brightly before continuing her walk up the stairs. He turned back around but spun to look in the stair's direction again when he heard the soft pounding of her feet coming back down the stairs.

"Sirius?" she whispered loudly.

"Yes?"

"I did forget. The loo is just up here—first door on your right when you come up the stairs. James and I are at the end of the hall up there too, if you need anything."

*Thankyou all for your wonderful support. I hope you continue to enjoy this story just as I do. The next chapter will be up this weekend and again, thanks for everything! Please review, or let me know what you think if you have time- they are more helpful than you know! :)