After this chapter, I will return to working with other characters as well...probably. I'm trying to keep to the plot of psychoticKisshu's story and it's not quite meshing with what I want to do with it but I'm working on it. Sorry for not updating in so long. I just have RL issues, like most of us, and this is the near the end of the busiest part of the year for me. And my computer finally broke down, and it's motherboard is so shot that there is probably a smashed bullet in there somewhere, and this is a temporary replacement with a completely different operating system. I have not forgotten this story, and I hope to post more soon. I've had the first half written for a while, but I accidentally deleted most of it and had to rewrite it anyway.

Chapter 8: A Little Boy

A few days after Sirius's rant, he, Aizen, and Gin had once again all congregated in the spacious Captain's office in the Third Division. It was an ideal place to meet, especially since Kira Izuru, Gin's fukutaicho, had opted to keep a smaller office across the hall in favor of preserving any sort of organization system in Gin's presence. For some reason, as long as the paperwork he did was done in the 'shared' office, it never stayed organized. This was possibly self-induced attempts by infatuation, possibly Gin being playful and messing up the paperwork, once again.

Either way, it got the work done, and Gin only had to do the parts requiring a Captain's signature. It was really a neat system.

It had been a couple hours after Aizen had arrived, and they were past exhausting the subjects that Sirius could comment on, aside from a few probing questions about his godson and his situation in the Living World. The last question they had turned to the subject had provoked a rather extreme reaction for Sirius, leaving him in a rant reminiscent of his just a few days before.

This was just the reaction Aizen had been hoping for. Sirius was generally guarded when he was aware of himself, but when the man got into a snit, he was an open book. It was an odd set of behaviors, and though he didn't have any ideas of what might have caused it, all he needed was to know of it and use it to his advantage.

It might have been easier for them to translate if they knew the specific meaning of the terms Sirius used, but this was Soul Society, and Soul Society was terminally negligent when it came to Living World culture. In truth, their level of sophistication on that scope made the British Wizarding World look current.

"-perfect, because how could he be anything else. He has to be their 'Gryffindor Golden Boy' because what else could he be. He's got to hate all of Slytherin, because 'all Slytherins were evil' and he's Gryffindor and a Golden Boy and popular and a Quidditch player. Fuck, I may have thought that way once, but Harry's a sight smarter than I ever was. He's got to be Dumbledore's weapon, forever under his thumb and accepting of being 'taken out' once a year for some quasi-suicidal stunt. He's a Potter, so he must be entirely Light, because wasn't James? He looks like a smaller version of James, so of course he must act exactly the same way as my dear brother. Voldemort killed his parents, so of course Harry has to hate everything the man stands for! Dumbledore introduced him to the wizarding world, so he must be grateful! It's sickening, absolutely sickening." Sirius stomped around, pacing wildly.

"I mean, I am completely against the guy now, torturing people for no reason and killing everyone, but when the guy was sane, he was actually smart. Of course, even admitting that he, Lord Voldemort, used to have any decent ideals is tantamount to treason. And of course Light is Good and Dark is Evil. I'm a Black, goddamn it, and it doesn't get much Darker than my family line. Merlin and Morgana, the Potters were once nearly as Dark as we were, three or four centuries ago."

Sirius shook his head, clumps of hair whipping around. "I'm heading out to the Eleventh Division to blow some steam. I'll see you sometime, I'm sure." With that parting note, Sirius shunpoed out of the office.

Gin whistled. "Wouldn't wanna be th' poor person who gets in his way."

Aizen looked contemplatively out of the window at where Sirius had gone. "No, he seems more worked up than the last time we spoke on the topic. He could use some work on his temper...Gin, did he tell you what his godson's name was?"

Gin turned his attention to Aizen, who was still looking out the window. "Yeah, Potter Hari, or something like tha'. Raised in England, schooled in Scotland."

"Has he mentioned what the boy looks like?"

"Nah," Gin responded.

"Thank you, Gin," Aizen murmured. "That shouldn't be too difficult, given how taken Sirius-san is with the boy. I would also appreciate if you could glean a more specific location for the boy." His thoughts turned inward to a pair of well-remembered green eyes, strikingly bright green eyes he had only seen once before but was sure he would not forget. Once he had gone and checked in with the British version of Division Four, he had swept the area he had awoken in several times in hope of seeing the person to whom the eyes he remembered belonged. He had failed, but he had since kept an eye out.

The healers over on the other side had said there was recent evidence of a hollow-created would, by the reiatsu still present, but that the actual injury was healed. It had not been bloody, and was likely poison. Given the hollow he had been hunting at the time, that experimental hollow gone wrong, he knew that the beast had had a very poisonous acid as part of its arsenal. He was very sure that whoever the green eyes belonged to had saved his life.

"Ya think he migh' be the owner of those eyes ya remember?" Gin interrupted, curiously opening his eyes a tad. His words brought Aizen back to the real world like a shock of cold water on a sleepy morning.

"It is entirely possible," Aizen replied. "For Sirius-san to mention his eyes specifically, they would have to be a rather memorable trait. It is also possible that he is another boy entirely, but given the society he describes it becomes less and less likely. If it is the same child, I will be able to find out how the child managed the memory block."

"I'll ask abou' tha' godson, then. Gin turned back to his desk, picking up the (unfortunately large) pile of accumulated paperwork that required his signature. In turn, Aizen made an acknowledging noise and turned to leave.

Aizen was far out of sight, having shunpoed away, presumably back to the Fifth Division offices. Gin was absorbed in his mindnumbing paperwork, flashing through it as quickly as he possibly could. Feeling that it was safe, the figure of Sirius Black shimmered back into existence in the shadows of the Third Division's walls.

He was very thankful that he hadn't lost his jacket when he was falling through the Veil. He had very little in the way of personal items, but he had had several sets of extendable ears, among a few other similarly useful things, by chance in his pockets. Having one of the Weasley twins' extendable ears was a great advantage in a place like this. They, and other objects with similar effects, were very foreign to these people. Thus, there was no defense in place to keep him from slapping one end of one onto a windowsill as he went out and listening in on the two conversing about him and his Harry from nearby.

He yanked, pulling the other end free, coiled it, and put the 'prank' back into his pockets. He quickly made his way to a favorite spot of his, a tall tree near the edge of the Eleventh Division training grounds. Crouching in the branches, he contemplated what Harry told him of the man he met. A manipulator, he had warned.

Harry had a few weird powers, which he was sure had something to do with this world. His theory had been that the Killing Curse, which was by nature a curse dealing with souls, specifically separating them from the body, had something to do with it. Sirius was sure that if it was genetic, he would have heard of it from James and Lily. Either way, the 'force' of Harry's powers didn't feel like magic, and it felt like the 'force' he had felt since he came to this place. That was enough for him.

Done thinking, Sirius jumped out of the tree, onto the training grounds. He was going to work out his frustration out on the first decent shinigami he came across. He didn't have brute strength, like much of the squad did, but he acutally had quite a bit of reiryoku to pull upon if he needed it. There was something soothing about simple violence.

There was no place for filigree plans and manipulations in a fight with the Eleventh Division. It was a Slytherin's worst nightmare. Which was exactly why it was so appealing when he felt jumpy like he did just then.

Needless to say, despite knowing something about swordsmanship because of his pureblood upbringing, Sirius still got his ass kicked. Repeatedly. A little while later (he wasn't sure how long; he'd spent some of the intervening time unconscious) he had woken up to the familiar, sharp scent of antiseptic. There was only one kind of place with that sort of scent...hospitals.

He opened his eyes and took stock of his surroundings, determining that he was indeed in the sort of hospital room found in the Fourth Division, it was obvious even if the healing instruments and methods were somewhat foreign to him. It wasn't like it was his first time in one of those rooms. Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he took stock of himself. There were a few twinges from muscle overuse, but it seemed that most of the damage had been healed while he was sleeping. There was nothing really keeping him down, so he made to stand up with no problems.

He decided that discretion was the better part of valor and, instead of trying to find his way out and possibly running into the occasionally scary healer woman, he would find his way out the window.

Thankfully there was a wide window in his room. He pushed back the light curtains and jumped out, landing softly on the grass. He had managed the mechanics of flash-step a while back, and made good use of them to get away from the lingering smells of the hospital and towards the Third. Once he had figured out the general direction in which he had to go (thanks to good use of a Point-Me spell) it did not take long for him to reach his destination.

While the Third Division was not empty, at this hour it was hardly bustling either. Deciding he had had enough of sleep for the time being, Sirius made his way out to a shaded patch of grass he could see from inside his room and lay down under the lone pair of trees. He was in a pensive mood; it was as good a time as any to go over what he had managed to accomplish in the past few days.

Harry had warned him about a man whose profile fit what he had seen of Aizen Sosuke. If there was one person in the world he trusted with anything, it was Harry. This was doubly so when it came to his 'people sense'. It was Harry's 'people sense' saying that he might be a loyal, trustworthy person and that Peter might not be such that had lead his godson to trust in him enough to believe that he was indeed innocent of being the Potters' Secret Keeper who betrayed the secret to Lord Voldemort. There was no reason for him to have done so, especially since he was the only one who had had an inkling of his innocence and it's not exactly believable when a supposed murderer says he's innocent, especially with the emotional ties involved.

It was the boy's parents, after all. Sirius couldn't have blamed Harry for hating him regardless, not when he hated himself as he did.

The facts of the matter were that Harry's fairly reliable 'people sense' had told him that the man he had met, who Sirius believed to be Aizen, was not someone to be trusted. And though Sirius was not exactly reticent of the details of his previous life, he had not meant to give away as much as he had in general and Harry in particular to a man who Harry would not appreciate knowing about him as he had during his little tantrums.

Harry...if there was anyone he missed from before, it was Harry. His precious godson. Merlin only knew the depths to which Harry would go for sake of his overlarge hero complex. It was a quality both of them knew was one Dumbledore was particularly appreciative of, whether or not it was caused by the man's manipulations notwithstanding. Then again, Dumbledore nurtured a host of traits that while appreciative in certain quantities were fit for an unintentional suicide when put together.

In addition to his unconscious hero complex, Harry possessed incredibly little in the direction of self-esteem and self-worth. He was also somewhat incapable of seeing to his own needs especially when there was someone around him that he felt needed something. Someone needed to be aware of him and to take care of him because Merlin knew that his boy was completely inept at taking care of himself and seeing to his own welfare.

Harry also felt that betrayal was something taken harshly and his trust was slow to manifest and even slower to come again if broken. The latter was doubly so when it came to positions of authority. The only adult that had Harry's full trust was probably, as unlikely as it was, Severus Snape. Harry had explained that while the man seemed to hate him for being such a facsimile of his father, he was the only one of the people at school who actually tried to protect him, which was something he had to grudgingly admit to being a good reason for Harry to trust him while being doubly disappointed that Snivellous had more of his godson's trust than he himself did.

While he had to admit that Harry's reasons were sound, he didn't have to like them. Harry had told him straight up that while he trusted him with his secrets (lot of good he'd done at keeping them) but not to put him above destroying Pettigrew, and for that he couldn't entirely trust him.

It was the effects of Sirius's rash decisions that Harry suffered. Had he not gone after the rat that Halloween night and gotten swiftly remanded to Azkaban, he would have been the one to raise Harry, not the Dursleys. It had pained him to find out just how bad that had been and he was grateful to those who Harry had told him had eased his childhood even if Harry had not told him who they were and what exactly they had done.

Growing up, he had been treated like a mistreated house elf might be, like a slave. He had adopted certain behaviors including being quiet and fading into the shadows of any room to help him survive that place. Then he came to Hogwarts, where he had a vastly different mold to fill but still a mold. He was meant to be the Gryffindor Golden Boy in addition to being the Boy Who Lived.

Sirius sympathized with him, empathized even to an extent. Harry had not been allowed any friends while on Privet Drive by the Dursleys. But at Hogwarts, there was an almost instantaneous, tight-knit friendship after their, and by 'their' he meant Harry and Ron's, first meeting. He was fairly sure that Harry didn't really trust either Ron Weasley or Hermione Granger. There were incentives to being the friends of the Boy Who Lived. He wasn't sure how much Harry was aware, but the Weasleys, at least, were enjoying, if not outright basking in them, especially the Weasley females.

So Sirius missed his little Harry. The Harry that looked so much like his father, Sirius's brother in all but blood, as a child until he had opened his eyes. His Harry, who had grown into some of his mother's facial features as he had matured, less obvious as they were. His Harry, with the green eyes that weren't just Lily-flower's lovely bright jade but more somehow, more intense, somehow having more depth. Just by looking into Harry's eyes you knew that there was something special about him, something that set him apart from the masses.

His Harry had never been like other children they had known, like Neville Longbottom and Jeremy Asters (the son of one of Lily's muggle friends she had never lost touch with); he had never cried, much less screamed, unless he desperately needed something. He just watched everything go by with those big, knowing green eyes of his.

Sirius only hoped that someday he would get the chance to see his godson again. And he hoped that Harry would forgive him what he had revealed to a man that Harry had tried to get away from.

A presence made itself known by flicking his shoulder. It was sufficient to shake him out of his musings and back into the real world. He leaned back and looked up into Gin's slitted eyes. "Yes?" He hoped that this wasn't about him skipping town on the Fourth.

"It's time fer dinner, Sirius-san. Didna thin' y'd wanna miss it." With that, Gin smiled, turned, and flash stepped away, presumably to the mess hall. Sirius sighed deeply, cleansing his lungs before pushing himself up and following him. He had things to do before he saw Harry again, and he damn well wasn't going to fail his godson any more than he had already managed to. He didn't think he would forgive himself if he did.