Harry hardly dared speak to his godfather. Sirius was completely pale, and one hand was placed over his eyes. His other hand clamped onto Harry's shoulder and turned him around.

"Go," he mumbled. "Just go."

"But—"

"I said, go."

"Sirius, I don't want to leave you like this," Harry protested.

"OUT!" Sirius yelled, and this time, Harry listened. He ran out of Sirius's teacher's quarters and slammed the front door behind him, leaning against it and panting for breath. Once he'd gotten the air back in his lungs, he ran all the way up to his dorm and lay in his bed, pulling the hangings closed around him.

Harry wasn't sure how long he stayed in his dorm. It was Saturday, so he didn't have class. Ron came in, wondering where he was, but Harry pretended to be asleep—he knew this was Sirius's secret to tell, not his, and he wasn't sure if he could trust himself not to say anything.

Around dinnertime, he heard knocking at his room door, so he pretended to be asleep again, but he stopped when he heard Sirius say his name.

"Y-Yes?" Harry said, poking his head nervously out of the hangings. Sirius looked terrible. Harry winced as a strong, now-familiar smell entered the room with Sirius—it seemed as if his godfather had taken Hagrid up on his offer for "tea".

"I just wanted to apologize for blowing you off earlier, I guess," Sirius said quietly, sitting down on Ron's four-poster.

"I'm sorry for looking in the Pensieve," Harry blurted out. "It's just, I knew you were hiding something and I was just really curious to know what it was…but I guess I should've waited for you to tell me."

"I would have preferred it that way, yes," Sirius said, frowning. "I like to think we had a good reason for keeping it a secret. You see, the further along Barbara is, the less likely she is to miscarry. So we were going to wait until the second trimester to tell anyone, because…"

"Because you didn't want me to be disappointed if she never reached the second trimester," Harry finished, suddenly understanding.

"Right." Sirius nodded, looking sad.

"So…are you really going to go through with it, then?"

"Harry, what do you take me for?" Sirius said. "Of course I am. It's the right thing to do—the only thing to do. The problem is, I don't know if I can be a good father."

"What about me?" said Harry, leaving his bed and coming to sit next to Sirius. "You had lots of practice with me when I was a baby, remember?"

"But I think being the baby's actual father will be different," Sirius told him. "It's been the worst month. Barbara isn't having her morning sickness anymore but I'm still worried. Not just worried that she'll lose the baby again—but worried that I'll be the most horrible parent in the universe. I mean, look what I had for a childhood! I don't even have a good example to follow."

"Your dad wasn't as bad as your mum was, though, was he?" Harry asked.

"No, not really," Sirius said thoughtfully. "But we weren't exactly close, either. We never really talked about anything important. He didn't shout at me or hit me like my mum did—but I grew apart from him over the years, too. But instead of fighting all the time…well, I guess we kind of just ignored each other's presence. He didn't approve of me, but he didn't have my mother's temper."

"Do you think he was upset about you going to prison?"

"He never knew." Sirius sighed. "By the time I was incarcerated, he'd been dead for two years already. He died when I was around twenty years old, just like Reg did."

"Your brother was the only member of your family you ever cared about, wasn't he?" Harry said quietly.

"Sometimes I think it's my fault for leading him astray," Sirius admitted. "We were closer when we were younger, you know, before we got Sorted and things really started to go downhill. In fact…one of my earliest memories is one about Reg, when I was about four. It was night and I was just about to fall asleep when I hear this soft knocking at my door. So I answer it, and there's little Reg, who had a nightmare or something and came to my room. I let him inside and I read him some stories from a book I had, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, and I let him sleep in my bed. The next morning my mum found us curled up together on the bed like that, and she took a picture. I guess it's still in my old house somewhere. But either way…"

"You grew apart, too," said Harry.

"As I got older I felt James was more of a brother to me than Reg was." Sirius put his face in his hands. "You can imagine how I…how I regret that now…I mean, he may have been a Death Eater, but he was still my baby brother."

"Are you still taking those antidepressants?" Harry asked him.

"Yeah," said Sirius, taking his hands off his face. "Are you allowed to take more if you feel they aren't working?"

"No," Harry told him quickly. "You've got to ask your doctor before you do anything like that—why, you think they aren't working?"

"I thought they were," said Sirius, "until I knocked up Barbara. Then the nightmares started coming back."

"Oh," said Harry, wishing he could think of something more comforting to say.

"It was pretty awful," Sirius told him. "I dreamed I walked into the drawing room of your parents' old cottage. You were there, as a baby, and so were your parents and a younger version of me. But everyone was gray and made of stone. And they were just sitting there, staring…and I could hear these voices in the background, repeating 'Preserve the memories, preserve the memories', over and over again."

"I remember you had one the first time I slept over at your old flat," Harry reminded him. "That was about Azkaban, wasn't it?"

"Well…" Sirius paused. "No, it wasn't. Not that one."

"What was it about, then?"

"It was about when I was really little," Sirius said reluctantly. "Something that really happened, a long time ago. This is going to sound a little weird, but they had this bottle of blood, pure blood, that they kept in the drawing room—for all I know, it's still there. But the idea, I guess, is that it was Black family royal blood. So when I was young, about five or so, I was made to prick my finger and put my own blood in there, too, and I kind of put up a fight about it. Come to think of it, I don't know where my father was during all this, but my mother ended up putting a Freezing Charm on my hand and pricking my finger for me, while I stood there, screaming and crying, and then she wouldn't take the Freezing Charm off or heal the cut after she was finished, just clouted me on the back of my head—and that hurt, since she had her huge emerald engagement ring. She took the Charm off and healed my hand the next morning, before the tutor came."

Harry didn't know what to say to a story like that. But perhaps he didn't have to say anything, because Sirius kept talking.

"I just know I'm going to be bad at this," he said helplessly. "I-I don't know what to do. I hate that. All I want is for everything to be all right, but I fear that one way or another, it won't be."

"It will be all right, Sirius," Harry reassured him, patting him on the arm. "It's like you told Barbara, we'll get through it together. And that…that Potiogravida stuff, it helped, didn't it? It's got something to do with pregnancy, hasn't it?"

"Potiogravida?" said Sirius. "It's a potion that's most well-known for taking care of morning sickness, but it's supposed to ensure a healthier pregnancy overall. I just hope it's enough."

"Fingers crossed," said Harry, holding up his hand to show Sirius his crossed fingers. Sirius smiled.

"Fingers crossed," he agreed, putting his arm around Harry.