I guess I'm on a roll with getting these chapters out pretty quickly.
It quickly becomes clear that Sirius cannot keep up with Harry's active play, nor does Harry want to sit and pore over old photographs for hours, as Sirius does. He'd shown Sirius the album, but he has the attention span of a gnat, switching between flying, games, stories.
Sirius is even more taken aback by televisions and video games than Steve had been. Steve had remembered screens as something only in movie theaters, requiring projectors. Sirius seems completely unfamiliar with movies as a whole, despite the magical moving portraits.
"It's a Wii wand!" Harry waves the long, white remote in Sirius' face. Sirius takes it and gives it a wave, but doesn't seem to understand that it controls what happens on the screen. "Look, it's the Olympics!"
The game case says Wii Sports Resort, but Harry is under the impression that it's an accurate representation of the Olympic Games.
"Olympics?" Sirius remains confused.
"It's where everyone in the world plays sports together. In London. They have basketball, and flying. Jarvis said he can make them fly brooms instead of planes. Or be Iron Man. Do you want to go?" Harry waves his Wii wand at the game selection screen.
"It's been a while since I've been to London," Sirius says.
"I never went there! Do you think they'll have quidditch there?"
"There's a quidditch shop in Diagon Alley," Sirius tells him. He hands the Wii Wand back to Harry and returns to getting lost in his memories, watching the moving photos in the album.
Steve, James and Thor join Harry for a game of virtual Frisbee, with cute animated dogs chasing after the frisbees on the beach. Thor swings the remote with as much enthusiasm as he swings his hammer.
Whenever it's not Steve's turn, he sketches.
Harry soon abandons the game, announcing that he wants to play fetch with Snuffles.
Sirius shifts into his huge, dark dog form and wags his tail eagerly, but three years in a cell with inadequate food have taken their toll. He's in no shape to run after a ball over and over, and can hardly manage to run at all.
Steve tries to show Harry how to throw a frisbee, but Harry struggles and grows frustrated when he can't throw it as far as Steve can. He drops the frisbee and chooses a bright yellow tennis ball instead.
James ends up throwing the ball, far, with his metal arm. Harry races after it on his broomstick, managing to catch it in the air an impressive number of times. Steve refrains from pointing out that James is essentially playing fetch with Harry.
"You're a natural seeker," Sirius's tone is proud but exhausted. He eats some more bread, kicked back in the grass and relaxing in the sun for the first time in years as Harry's laughter sounds through the sprawling lawn.
Steve approaches Sirius, who keeps an eye on Harry's dizzying flight on his broomsticks. Steve's uncomfortably reminded of that time Bucky forced him to ride the Cyclone, but unlike Steve, Harry never seems even close to throwing up.
Steve holds out a couple sketches he'd been working on during the Wii game; one of Sirius as he is now, gaunt and almost skeletal, as well as a sketch of what he imagines Sirius looked like before, with more of a spark in his eye, a smile on his lips, filling out the sunken cheeks and eyes.
Steve's gotten lots of practice from drawing James' haunted expression alongside the happier Bucky from the past.
"Which do you want in the album?" Steve asks, holding out both portraits for Sirius to inspect. It seems almost ridiculous to ask, but the album is also a way for Harry and James to visualize how far they've come, to see what they look like now versus after their escape. James doesn't look quite as tense now as in earlier photos, but there's still a haunted air to him.
Sirius, however, picks the picture where he looks less like a corpse, and Steve can't blame him.
"I don't want Harry to remember me looking like this," Sirius gives a raspy cough, likely having used his voice more today than he has in years. "He doesn't really remember me at all."
Steve and Sirius watch Harry fly back to James with the little ball held high in triumph. He'd made a spectacular catch, and James gives a small smile before throwing it again. Harry's off like a shot.
Steve sits down near Sirius. "I was… away for a while too."
Sirius glances at him, then back at Harry. "You don't strike me as a troublemaker. You're prefect material. Head Boy, maybe."
The old Bucky would have laughed his head off, because he was the one finding Steve in back-alley fights for years.
Steve rubs the back of his neck. "Not prison, but I was frozen, and when they thawed me…"
Steve looks down at his drawings. He's sure Sirius has a ton of survivor's guilt, the term Professor X used to describe Steve's feelings and actions after Bucky's fall in the war. It would be rude to talk about how James hadn't actually died when Sirius's James had. "When they thawed me, James had changed. Been hurt. He barely remembers me."
Despite the time Sirius has spent staring at the photos of the past, Steve is certain Sirius hasn't seen the photos from when Harry was about as emaciated as Sirius is now. Steve had still been in the ice then, but Harry looked even more sickly than Steve had before the serum.
Sirius doesn't even question that Steve was frozen. "How long were you apart?"
"Almost seventy years."
Sirius scoffs, but then admits, "Sure felt that long, for me. Three years, and I barely recognize him."
Of course, he had to have known that Harry would grow up without him during that time. Steve wonders if that's harder than believing him dead.
Thor joins them, and tells of how Loki had denied being his brother, how he'd changed too. Loki pops up next to him, and they begin bickering about the details. Sirius is clearly no stranger to brotherly jibes and insults; Steve misses Bucky's teasing, the camaraderie they had.
Thor and Loki's arguing goes a bit past brotherly banter, but they refrain from actually trading blows, which Loki says is a remarkable feat for Thor, who uses his fists instead of his words, like a brute.
Steve jumps in; he's been in enough alley fights to know words are often backed up with fists.
Thor apologizes for the scene they have caused, the fight ending abruptly.
Steve can sympathize with Thor and Sirius, finding themselves in a strange world. Trying to cope with loved ones changing without them.
Sirius' eyes light up a bit, hearing of some of Loki's pranks, and he shares a few himself. Steve doesn't think tricking a classmate into nearly being bitten by a werewolf is particularly funny, though Loki chuckles mischievously.
Steve starts wondering if Sirius was a bully, and knows that could end this tremulous friendship. Sirius claims Snivellus was a greasy git and a bully, himself.
Harry zooms around them and hovers in midair. "Loki, can you turn the other broom into a motorbike? Then Dad and me can race? Logan doesn't like sharing."
Sirius' face flicks through several emotions before forcing a smile. "I had a motorbike that could fly."
Harry gapes at him. "Really? Where is it? You can fly with us, too."
Sirius's smile slips. "I gave it to Hagrid to bring you… here, I guess."
Harry's smile falls as well. "Hagrid the big, bad giant?"
Sirius blinks in disbelief. "Hagrid, bad?"
"My dad beated him up even though he's a giant!" Harry brags. "He was trying to take me away, but my Dad didn't let him."
"Take you away? Didn't he bring you here? You said he adopted you." Sirius nods towards James, and now Harry's face scrunches up in confusion.
Then Harry's off again, dashing inside the mansion and leaving Loki holding the magical broom.
Harry returns, not with his photo album, but with the homemade book chronicling his and James' adventures. Some sort of therapy exercise, which had started with Harry's childish depictions, though Steve later illustrated it more realistically. Illustrating it had really driven home that they'd been through a lot together too, even if they haven't quite been together a year.
And of course there were those seventy years when Steve was in ice. James was in ice for a great deal of them, but the times he wasn't in cryofreeze is what really makes Steve shudder.
Harry flips open the homemade book, calling James over. Much like Thor and Loki, they tell the story together, but with far less bickering. James sometimes corrects the events when Harry gets a little creative, but they don't argue over them.
Sirius is quickly horrified at hearing the start of the story, seeing the picture Steve had drawn of Harry in a cupboard. James reveals that he'd envisioned a skinny blond kid being beat up, and Steve's breath catches in his throat.
Sirius snarls, looking ready to actually commit murder, as he'd been falsely accused of.
"The Dursleys are dead," James states. His expression is flat, hard, yet a tad sad. Steve agrees that Harry's aunt and uncle are horrible, but their son…
"Good," Sirius growls, though Steve's pretty sure Sirius wishes they were still alive so he could exact his own revenge on them.
"Are you going to kill the black cape guys that locked you up?" Harry asks, nonchalantly.
Sirius mutters that you can't kill a dementor. He looks at James with newfound respect as Harry and James continue the story, of their escape, of James defecting.
Clearly a part of Bucky had survived through everything HYDRA put him through- the part that led him to protect Harry and defect, even viewing Harry as a handler is rather similar to how Bucky followed Steve through anything.
Sirius listens, then asks "You broke an Imperius to protect him?"
Steve's fairly certain that the mind wipes are far worse than an Imperius Curse. He clenches his jaw at the thought.
Sirius seems somewhat amused when Harry tells of Nighty the dog, but says he wishes it could have been him then.
"You want to eat poop?" Harry asks with a shocked snicker.
"No. I could have escaped, helped look after you."
As Harry reaches the pages depicting the castle and kidnappers, Sirius's eyebrows rise. "Snivellus is a professor now?"
None of them really know how to answer it. "Can't blame you for hating Hogwarts, if they separated you from your guardian seven years too early." Sirius tells Harry. "My years at Hogwarts were some of the happiest in my life."
"I'm happy here," Harry sticks out his chin, as stubborn as Steve.
Sirius doesn't comment, glancing at the handmade book. "What happened next?"
Harry rushes through the rest of the story to play bowling, using some villain action figures as the bowling pins. Loki occasionally turns them into heroes after Harry rolls the ball, so it knocks over figures of the Avengers instead.
"Brother, this is not convincing them that you have had a change of heart."
Loki snaps his fingers again, and the villain figures become the faceless, black-robed figures. Sirius scowls and sends them scattering with a flick of his wand and a flash of bright light.
Another flick, and the figures become a mix of odd monsters that certainly aren't from earth. Harry knocks them over with a clatter.
Over the rest of the day, Sirius keeps a close eye on Harry, clearly wanting to protect him from any harm, despite the fact that James is already perfectly capable of preventing potential threats.
Sirius spends much of the day in dog form, and Steve wonders if that made prison a tad more bearable.
Harry makes sure to give Snuffles frequent snacks and drinks.
Tony, at one point, eyes Snuffles watching Harry and asks "What is it with you wizards living up to your names? You're dark and serious, Moody's grumpy and mad-"
"Dumbledore's a dumb doorbell," Harry chimes in.
Tony barely pauses during Harry's interruption. "Do you change your names to fit who you are? Would I actually be named Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist? Or would my name be Iron?
Snuffles lets out a whuff, clearly too tired to listen to Tony's rambling, yet he refuses to sleep and let Harry out of his sight.
When Harry's bedtime arrives that evening, Harry puts up his usual protest, arguing that everyone else stays up later, he's not tired and he hasn't finished coloring in Steve's drawing of Snuffles yet.
Sirius, as Snuffles, lies curled up next to Harry.
James is firm about bedtime, leading Harry out of the room, and Snuffles begins to pad after them.
"Are you going to be a member of our night parties?" Tony asks as Snuffles leaves the room. Snuffles huffs and continues after Harry.
"You can sleep in our room," Harry tells Snuffles as he heads upstairs.
Despite looking tired, Steve doubts Sirius will sleep much. Tony says "I bet he's going to be joining our night parties,"
Steve agrees. Sirius will undoubtedly have nightmares, as so many of them do. Furthermore, the beds here are likely far softer than he's used to; Steve's still adjusting to them, himself. Sure enough, when he goes to his room, he sees Snuffles curled on the floor of Harry and James' room.
I had to search my story for when I'd mentioned Harry making that storybook of his and James' experience, using the find feature and typing in words like "book" and "drawing"... I knew I'd written it somewhere, but it took several searches to find it in chapter 42.