The next day, Saturday afternoon, Sirius came over to the Dursleys' house. It was his idea to look at flat listings in the paper, but unfortunately, Dudley's friends were hanging about. Harry wanted Sirius to scare them away, but Sirius said he couldn't.
"It's okay if Dudley sees me do magic, because he knows about the magical world already," Sirius explained. "But his friends can't. That's why we have to resort to legal action against your relatives and not just curse them."
"Let the justice system take its course," said Harry, quoting something he'd seen on TV, but (even though he hadn't told this to Sirius) he was actually dreading the court date. He wasn't dreading living with Sirius, of course—he was looking forward to that. But still…he had never appeared in court before. The only time he had ever seen a judicial court was on the crime dramas that Uncle Vernon liked to watch (he also enjoyed bellowing to the TV what he in particular thought the criminals' punishments should be). It looked like a very frightening environment. What if the court decided Sirius wasn't a good enough godfather, and they sent Harry back to the Dursleys? Harry wished he could just skip the court date and go straight to living with Sirius.
When Harry was contemplating this, Piers Polkiss tore through the living room, screaming loudly. Dudley lumbered after him, making the living room shake so much that Harry's glasses slipped down his nose.
"How are we going to look at flat listings in this?" Sirius said irritably.
"Well…we could always go to your flat," suggested Harry. "I mean, the one you have now."
"Are you sure?" Sirius asked cautiously. "It's not exactly a five-star hotel. If I knew you were coming I would've cleaned up a bit, but on no notice, it's really a dump…"
"Anywhere is better than here," said Harry. "Besides, who cares how disgusting your flat is? You live there, and that makes it good."
"Thanks," said Sirius, grinning. "You know, you can spend the night if you want. Just get your overnight bag packed and I can carry it in my pocket."
"You—oh, right," said Harry, remembering Sirius's enchanted pockets. As usual when he was about in the Muggle world, Sirius was wearing his biker gear. His leather jacket was old and probably from the seventies. The only indication that he might be a member of the magical community was his dragon-hide boots, and you could really only tell if you were looking for them.
Harry didn't have an overnight bag, so he took his empty schoolbag and stuffed some clothes and his toothbrush into it. When Sirius wasn't looking, Harry packed his Prongs toy as well, since it would be his very first night away from home. Sirius fitted the bag into his pocket, right amongst his wallet and keys, and they headed for the flying motorcycle, which as usual was parked outside the Dursleys' house. Harry was glad they didn't have to Apparate again.
It was always fun riding on the motorcycle, and it never seemed to last long enough for Harry. It was about half-past four in the afternoon when they reached the city Harry now knew to be London. Sirius flew downwards; they were completely invisible, flying just a couple of inches above the cars on the street. Harry knew they would have been jealous; traffic was horrific. Finally, Sirius reached a large apartment complex and touched down in the parking lot, then turned off the Invisibility Booster.
"Here we are," he said grandly. "My designated parking space. I had to pay out my ass for it, but it's impossible to find parking otherwise—and nobody knows how to drive downtown anyway. Do Muggles take several brain cells out of their heads before they get in their cars or something?"
"That's just how it gets when traffic is this thick," said Harry, gesturing to the bumper-to-bumper traffic jam in the city streets. There was an abundance of road rage. Harry didn't like road rage; it was what Uncle Vernon had. So he wanted to get into the flat before he had to hear any more of it.
"This is a Muggle-owned complex, so I can't do any magic until I get to my flat," Sirius explained. "When my parents were still alive—before I inherited my family fortune—I got a fair amount of gold from my Uncle Alphard, and I was able to stretch those Galleons because I prefer to live very frugally. I suppose I don't really need to, but my childhood taught me that gold can't buy happiness. Anyway, I used it to rent a flat here. They put my old junk in storage when I was incarcerated but I recently got the key to the storage unit where they were keeping everything—it's still in there now so we can move the stuff we want to keep into our new flat. That's where I found your Prongs toy and the photo."
The two of them went inside. There was an oddly-shaped white fountain made of cement, but it wasn't spouting any water.
"Is it broken?" Harry asked.
"Yeah, and it has been since 1979," said Sirius.
Sirius checked his mailbox, which was in the front lobby; then they walked to the elevators that took them all the way to the seventh floor, which was where Sirius lived. The hallways reeked of cigarette smoke. Harry coughed and tried not to breathe in; after the "Just Don't" unit in his elementary school class last year, he knew that even second-hand smoke was dangerous.
Finally, they reached the end of a long, smoky hallway. Sirius unlocked the heavy brown door to his flat, and he and Harry stepped inside.
There were three rooms: the kitchen, the small bathroom and a room that looked sort of like a drawing room and a bedroom had a baby together—and then that baby threw up. The furniture consisted of a bookshelf, a nightstand and a small bed, but Sirius's clothes were scattered all over the floor. When Harry walked in the kitchen, the floor was sticky, and there was an unpleasant smell wafting from the sink, where there were loads of dirty dishes and silverware, stacked alarmingly high. The closet was a mess, and the bathroom sink was littered with small hairs from when Sirius had shaved. On the top of the toilet and on the sink, Sirius had piled the sorts of things Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia stowed in cabinets and drawers and behind mirrors—his Old Spice, loads of hair-care potions, Wizarding "Special Effects" bubble bath, foaming hand soap, dental hygiene products, hair gel, razor and the can of shaving cream, which had been haphazardly knocked to the floor. At least Harry liked the wastebasket, which belched up things you threw into it; the shower curtain, which changed colors; and the bathroom mirror, which he could have sworn he heard laughing at him.
"I know it's not much," said Sirius, looking embarrassed that he hadn't known Harry would be coming over and therefore couldn't be bothered to pick up his dirty underwear off the floor.
"Are you kidding? It's great!" Harry flopped back on the bed. "Aunt Petunia would have a heart attack if she ever saw this place!"
Thanks to Aunt Petunia's constant, obsessive cleaning, the Dursleys' house was immaculate enough for a surgical procedure, so the messiness of Sirius's bachelor pad was actually something of a relief for Harry, a welcome change of pace. He felt that if Sirius's flat had been too clean, perhaps he would have felt a little uncomfortable there.
"I only have to withdraw 165 Galleons, 15 Sickles and 20 Knuts per month, then I change it into cash and give it to my landlord." Sirius grinned and took off his leather jacket, which he then automatically tossed onto his nightstand (Harry saw how he could easily lose track of his messy clothes).
"You can use your Gringotts checkbook now, though," said Harry. "When your next payment is due, just write out a check for whatever the rent is. That's how Muggles do it."
"They always give me five C notes for the rent at Gringotts," said Sirius.
"Then write out a check for 500 pounds. It'll be easier for both you and him."
"How about I get us started on some hot chocolate, and then we can look at the listings?" Sirius suggested. "Maybe later I can take you out to dinner."
"I have an even better idea, and a cheaper one, too," said Harry, grinning. "Let's order in."
"Wait, let's order what?" Sirius looked, again, confused.
"Muggles can order food to come to their houses using the telephone," Harry explained. "I know you don't have a phone but I saw a pay phone in the lobby."
"Good thing I always carry Muggle money around," said Sirius, handing Harry a twenty-pound note.
"And yet you haven't got the vaguest idea of how much anything costs in the Muggle world," Harry laughed. "I just need a couple of coins. You can pay the pizza guy with the rest."
Sirius handed Harry the change he had (although he had a bit of a struggle when picking the Muggle coins apart from the bronze Knuts). Harry went down to the lobby and ordered a pepperoni-and-sausage pizza, cinnamon sticks and two large sodas. The pizza place told him they would be at the flat by five-thirty. Harry ran upstairs and told Sirius the pizza would be here soon, along with the cinnamon sticks and the sodas.
"Good," said Sirius. "I'm getting hungry."
"Hmm…have you ever been on a sleepover before?" Harry asked. "Because I haven't."
"Well, for seven years I shared a dorm with James, Remus, and Peter Pettigrew, the betrayer," Sirius reminded him. "So it was like one big sleepover every night. The older dorms have four beds, and the newer ones have five. They might have gotten rid of the older dorms by now, but there was a fair amount left in the seventies. It was fine as long as we were together, though. And if we got a dorm with only four beds, which we did, we didn't have to worry about some stranger sharing with us."
"So what do you do on a sleepover?"
"Lots of stuff," said Sirius, "from eating raw cookie dough to telling scary stories, but Truth or Dare is the best. One time I dared James to sniff Snape's school sweater for five full seconds, and another time he dared me to jump into the Black Lake naked in the middle of January. I also hear Marlene McKinnon was dared to either kiss Peter or lick the toilet. She licked the toilet. Of course, this was the girls' toilets, which meant it hadn't reached toxic levels."
"I'd rather look at the flat listings," Harry told him, imagining how a game like that could get out of hand.
Sirius nodded and Summoned the newspaper. The two of them sat side-by-side on Sirius's bed.
"Here you go," said Sirius. "Now, you should definitely get your own room, so we should only look at ones that are two-bedroom. Or maybe three, so we have a guest room."
"How's this?" said Harry, pointing to one of the ads. "Two bed, one half-bath, one kitchenette."
"I think I can afford to raise the rent, now that I've got you living with me," Sirius pointed out. "Here's a better one. Two bed, one full bath, one kitchenette, one drawing room. That would be nice—and I promise I'll try to keep it tidy."
"Or even better—" Harry pointed. "Three bed, one full bath, one half-bath, one kitchenette, one drawing room."
"Hmm…the rent is 2500 pounds per month," said Sirius, noticing the ad and grinning. "I think we can manage that, especially now that I can just write out a check instead of withdrawing cash every month. I'm sure writing a check will be much less of a hassle."
They were interrupted by a knock on their door. Sirius opened it, and there was a scrawny, acne-ridden pizza guy standing at the doorway.
"That'll be 14.41," he said nasally.
"Hang on," Harry said politely. "My godfather's foreign; I need to help him out with the British money."
Sirius carried Muggle money around with him in case he needed it, but he didn't understand the value of it or what anything cost. What he had to pay for their dinner was actually only around four Galleons, but since he didn't get Muggle money, Harry and Sirius had agreed to just tell everyone that Sirius was "foreign".
"Does he speak English?" the pizza guy demanded.
"Um, no," said Harry (earlier, Sirius had tried to imitate the accents of all the other English-speaking countries, but without much success, so they decided he was a hopeless case). With a lot of help from Harry, Sirius worked out the tip and counted out the right amount of cash. Finally, Sirius handed the money and the tip to the pizza guy, gesturing wildly. Harry tried not to laugh.
"Weirdos," the pizza guy muttered. Sirius shut the door behind him, and they started laughing again.
Harry opened the pizza and got out the first hot slice while Sirius cut the advertisement for the new flat out of the newspaper and pinned it to his bulletin board. Then he went and got some pizza of his own. For dessert, they inhaled their cinnamon sticks, which were delicious, and gulped down the biggest cans of pop they had ever seen.
Later that night Harry got to take a bubble bath. As he walked into the bathroom, eyes on the fluffy towel (which had the initials S.B. on it), Sirius gestured to his various hair potions and bubbles and said, "You can use any of these."
"Thanks," said Harry, and he didn't mind using a lot, once he finished off a delicious-smelling strawberry-scented hair potion and found that it refilled itself instantly. He filled the bath with all kinds of bubbles and experimented with the different hair potions, wondering if they would actually ever do anything for his hair. He even got the shaving cream, and although he felt childish doing it, he had never actually played with shaving cream in the bath before, and, well, Sirius had said he could use anything he wanted. So he sprayed the stone wall of the bathroom with shaving cream and sprayed it all over his face too and in the water, and among the hair potions and Special Effects bubbles, the bath was quite fun. Harry had to admit that he was acting like he was seven years old instead of almost eleven, but nobody had to know, and he had never really gotten to act like a kid for real, so why not do it now?
When Harry had finally gotten out, cleaned up the walls, put all the bottles and cans back, dried off with the Towel of Extreme Fluffiness (especially compared to the squalid state of the rest of the flat) and put on his pajamas, he found Sirius's hair gel and put it in his hair, trying to figure out a way to possibly get his hair to lie flat…It seemed that although the hair potions had made his hair smooth and good-smelling, it was still messy, and not to mention wet. So he rubbed in more of the gel, but it seemed to only be making things worse. He was concentrating very hard on finding the right method, so he jumped when he heard Sirius hammering on the door.
"What're you doing in there?" Sirius yelled.
"Trust me, you don't want to know," Harry said quietly; then he called through the door, "Hang on!"
Well, his hair looked positively dreadful now…but he couldn't let Sirius know that he had used the gel, could he? It wasn't as if he wasn't allowed, but that was too embarrassing. Harry turned on the sink and ran his hair under the water, trying to get the gel out, even though it was very uncomfortable for his neck.
"Hurry up!" Sirius hollered. "I've gotta pee!"
"Sorry!" said Harry frantically, trying to wash out the gel. But it was just no use. There was no way he was ever going to get this out. Already, he could feel the gel congealing. So he opened the door and stepped out, lifting his bangs up so he could see, smelling strongly of bubble bath and feeling foolish.
"Those sodas, you know," Sirius said quickly, running in and slamming the door. He was already wearing flannel pajama pants and an old T-shirt that read "FBI"—which didn't make much sense, considering the FBI was an American thing.
When Sirius was finished up in there, Harry was still bending backwards over the sink, trying to rinse the gel out.
"What are you up to?" said Sirius, walking into the sticky-floored kitchen.
There was only one thing for it…
"I put too much gel in my hair," Harry admitted. "Can you help me get it out?"
"Sure," said Sirius, leaning Harry's head back and running it over the sink. "You know, after watching James do this sort of thing for ten years straight, I can tell you that you'll have better luck taming a Hungarian Horntail than you will taming your hair. Just let it do what it wants."
…
It wasn't long before Sirius and Harry both decided it was time for lights-out (metaphorically, of course, since Sirius didn't have much of an understanding of the concept of electricity). Sirius insisted that Harry take the bed, while he conjured up a squashy purple sleeping bag for himself on the floor. Harry got into bed. The bed was softer than his room back home, but it was a lot different than sleeping in the suburbs.
In the suburbs, it was so quiet at night, punctuated only by the chirping of crickets during the summer, or maybe the howl of a snowstorm during winter. Here, the steady rhythm of trains and buses and cars and sirens never seemed to stop. Instead of being pitch-black, there were bright lights everywhere, so that Harry had to shut the shades. In the city, you couldn't see the stars. Perhaps you could see the moon, guardian of the night, rising above the towering buildings.
Harry waited until Sirius was asleep, then crept over to his school bag and grabbed his Prongs toy. It was good at helping him go to sleep as well. When he got back into bed and closed his eyes, he found the noise a bit relaxing; when it was too quiet, sometimes that could be a bit disconcerting. It was not long after this revelation that Harry found himself drifting off…
"NO! NO! PUT IT AWAY! PUT IT AWAY!"
Harry was awakened by Sirius screaming in his sleep like he was being attacked. Still a little out-of-it, he peered over the edge of the bed and said, "Sirius?"
"WHAT—NO, STOP, STOP! LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"Sirius, wake up! You're dreaming!" Harry shouted; he was quite sure what Sirius was dreaming about, too. The dementors of Azkaban would probably make anyone scream like that.
"ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Sirius finally woke up, wide-eyed and tousle-haired, face covered in sweat. Harry, feeling quite frightened, looked over at him.
"Are you all right, Sirius?" he asked shakily. "What were you dreaming of?"
"Never you mind," said Sirius stiffly, turning back over and promptly falling back asleep.