"Er, before I begin, I won't, you know, get in trouble with you or anything?" Harry asked, apprehensively.

Sirius had never punished him before, and the only time he'd told Harry off had been when, during the Triwizard Tournament, he'd gone off alone with Krum to discuss his friendship with Hermione. Still, now that he was officially Harry's guardian, Harry wondered if he'd face more than the loss of points or detention when he got into trouble.

Or, when he told Sirius about the times he'd gotten into trouble.

Sirius smiled kindly, placed a hand on Harry's shoulder, and then shook his head. "It's true that your parents made me your guardian if anything were to happen to them, but given the way things turned out, Harry, I'm only truly going to be in the role of your guardian for a little over a year. Given that I haven't been able to be a parent to you for most of your childhood, it would be rather absurd to insist on you obeying my rules when you're nearly of age. I want you to come to me for advice without fearing punishment. Besides," he added, "fighting Voldemort aside, your father and I got into heaps more trouble than you could imagine. More than those Weasley twins, I'd wager." He placed an arm around Harry's shoulder. "I promise. You can tell me anything, pup."

Feeling rather relieved, Harry returned the smile. "All right. Well, on my twelfth birthday, Dobby the house elf appeared in my bedroom, warning me not to go back to Hogwarts..."

Sirius, Harry quickly learned, was a very good audience. When he'd told McGonagall and Dumbledore most of the story (he'd left out the polyjuice potion bit, lest it implicate Hermione), their reactions had been rather sober. He'd expected to be awarded some number of points (although certainly not 200 for himself and Ron), and perhaps a reassuring conversation from the headmaster about belonging to the right house (which he had). When he thought about it, with the exception of his fourth year encounter with Voldemort, all of his years seemed to end with an enlightening message from the headmaster, usually reassuring him that his actions had been the right ones. Still, the headmaster generally reacted to his accounts with interest, but rather contemplative silence during the retellings.

Sirius was hardly silent. Really, Harry mused, as his paused for breath, he found that he was rather enjoying himself. Sirius made all sorts of comments (and the occasional profanity, but never directed this at Harry) at all the right times.

For instance, when he explained that Dobby's hover charm resulted in an owl from the Ministry of Magic...

"Rotten timing, there," Sirius groaned, sympathetically. "If they had waited an hour, the deal would have been made and your horrible relatives might have taken it better."

"My uncle grabbed me and dragged me to my room. I should have run off. The next day, they put bars on the window and locked me in," Harry recalled, not without some bitterness.

"They did WHAT?!" Sirius thundered.

"Put bars on my windows," Harry repeated.

"Damned muggles," he growled.

"They also installed one of those flaps on my door, like for animals? To give me small amounts of food," Harry explained, wincing at the memory. "And they let me use the loo once a day."

"Harry..." Sirius looked truly horrified, and pulled him into a long hug.

Harry enjoyed this, but finally broke it off. He tried to reassure Sirius. "It's okay, really. After a few days, the Weasleys flew up the Dursleys. Their dad had a flying car, see, and the twins and Ron kind of, er, borrowed it for a rescue attempt. They pulled the bars off my window, and picked the lock on the downstairs cupboard. I spent the rest of my summer holidays at the Burrow." He grinned. "It was incredible!"

Sirius chuckled. "Glad that they suspected something after you didn't answer any of their letters."

"Right. They hadn't known that Dobby had stolen them, and Uncle Vernon locked up Hedwig, so I couldn't write to them," Harry clarified.

Come to think of it, the house elf had never handed over the letters, and Harry wondered if they might still be hidden away somewhere. Hopefully not at the Malfoy manor. No, Harry decided, he would have rather they be destroyed than read by Draco Malfoy or his father.

Sirius put an arm around Harry's shoulder. "Of course, pup." After a brief silence, Sirius asked, "Say, whatever happened to that flying car? I'd love to have a go at it with you. If they'd lend it over for a couple of hours, that is."

Looking rather sheepish, Harry launched into the next part of Dobby's quest to keep Harry from going back to Hogwarts. He wondered whether Sirius would be amused or, possibly, angry about how Harry and Ron arrived at Hogwarts.

Sirius slapped Harry-on the back. "Never been so proud in my life!"

"Er..." Harry said, bewildered.

"Not only did you and Ron show commitment to getting to school on time, you were creative!" he explained. "I hope you were commended!"

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Detention, but at least we didn't lose points or get expelled. If Snape has his way, we would have been. Or serving detention under him until the end of our last year," he added, a bit sourly.

"Hmph! It might have been a bit dangerous, but what else could you have done? You didn't know if the Weasleys would be back after you couldn't cross the barrier," Sirius protested.

"McGonagall said we should have sent an owl," Harry explained, sheepishly. "She was right."

Sirius ruffled his hair. "I wouldn't have said that. Yes, granted, it was rather risky, and a couple of muggles saw you, but it's not like you killed anyone. And you arrived on time, and more or less in one piece."

"Except for Ron's wand," Harry recalled.

As he continued with the reaction of Mrs. Weasley, Sirius became even more irate.

"She sent her son a howler over THAT?" he grumbled.

Harry nodded. "Sirius? Had your parents ever sent you one?" he asked, curiously.

"My father told me my mother came very close to when I was sorted into Gryffindor, but family honor and all that prevailed. Howlers are considered extremely..." Sirius paused, choosing his words carefully. "My family, and other likeminded pure bloods, believed that it was poor class. You know, airing your dirty laundry in public?Even if someone treats you very badly, it's low class to send one to the shop. You deal with them in other ways. My parents made their displeasure known, all too clearly, but never in a way that others could tell. It just wasn't done."

"But Neville's grandmother sent him one in our third year," Harry recalled. "After you got into our dormitory."

"Why on Earth...oh, were those passwords his?" Sirius asked in astonishment.

"Er, yeah, kinda," he admitted.

Sirius took a deep breath. "I should apologize to Neville." Turning somber, he explained, "Harry, that whole year, I was only thinking of getting at Wormtail. I wouldn't let myself consider how many people I could harm y doing so."

Harry nodded. "I understand. I would have wanted to find him, too, if it had been me. Especially after he sent you to Azkaban for twelve years."

He gave a little shudder. Having encountered the dementors for only a few minutes on several occasions, he couldn't begin to imagine what it would be like living in a small, enclosed room, surrounded by them, for years. No, he certainly didn't blame Sirius for acting rashly.

Sirius managed a smile, then placed an arm around Harry. "Thanks, kiddo," he said, softly. "Now, will you please tell me more about your second year? Before I go crazy with curiosity?"

Laughing, Harry nodded, then continued his tale, starting back up at the Deathday Party and explaining about the strange voice, which had led up to the Petrification of Mrs. Norris and the message in blood.

"Sirius," Harry asked, interrupting his tale, "did you or Remus or my dad know about the Chamber of Secrets?"

The first time it had been opened was well before he'd been at school, but his family being a pure blood elitist, it seemed like something that they might tell their children.

"James and I did. You can guess what our parents thought about it," Sirius added, with a roll of his eyes.

"Your parents approved and his didn't?" Harry guessed.

"Essentially. If pressed, my dear mother would have said it wasn't far enough. Anyone not of at least three fourths wizarding ancestry to the tenth generation should be targeted by the monster within. Voldemort being the obvious exception, of course," he added, with another eye roll.

"Sure, as he is the heir and all," Harry joked, darkly.

"Precisely. Now, about Mrs. Norris?" Sirius prodded, leaning back on the bed, arms behind his back, a grin on his face.

With a smile, Harry recounted the events of the Polyjuice potion, including the trio's stunt in Potions so they could take the ingredients from Snape's private store room.

Sirius shook his head at Snape having discovered the cause of the disruption. "Always get rid of the evidence when you prank in class, Harry."

"How?"

"Vanishing it, pup."

"We didn't learn that spell until our fifth year," Harry pointed out.

"A pity," Sirius sighed, then waved his hand in an invitation for Harry to continue, then the other hand for Harry to sit next to him.

Which he did, and Sirius planted both arms around his godson.

It felt rather nice.

Harry continued with telling Sirius about how Hermione had him and Ron drug Crabbe and Goyle, then grab some of their hairs in order to turn into them.

"How'd the potion taste?" Sirius wondered.

"I had my nose plugged, but mostly like cabbage that had been over cooked," he remembered. "The skelegrow was far worse."

"Skelegrow? When did you have to take that?" Sirius asked, with a wince.

"When Lockhart removed all of the bones from my arm instead of fixing the break," he said. "Did you ever take it?"

"Remus did, after one particularly nasty transformation," Sirius said, sympathetically. "It was his right foot. I expect a whole arm would have been worse."

"It wasn't his only injury though, was it?" Harry guessed.

"No, it wasn't. Certainly the worse one, though. So, you took the potion...?" he prodded.

"Right." Harry grinned. "It took us a bit to get to the common room, but after Malfoy found us..."

Harry recounted, with some remaining shame, about Mr. Weasley being fined for the flying car. Sirius issued some more insults about the Ministry and Fudge, in particular.

"We learned that the Malfoy family wasn't responsible for opening the chamber, or not in the way we had expected," continued Harry in a roundabout manner. "Hermione wasn't there, because her hair was a cat hair, and she didn't change back. Well, Madam Pomfrey was able to fix her up, thankfully."

"She can work wonders. Better than some of the Healers at St. Mungos, from what I hear," Sirius agreed.

"When she was still in the hospital wing, we came across this odd diary," Harry added, "except that it didn't have anything written in it."

He recounted his experience with talking to Tom Riddle via the diary, and his taking him into his memory of the night he had "caught" the person who opened the chamber. Sirius let out a deep breath.

"That was dark magic there, Harry," he said. "Very dark."

"I didn't know at the time!" Harry protested, and Sirius gave him a hug.

"I know, and clearly you're still here," he assured him. "When I think about what could have happened..."

"Oh, well, just wait," said Harry, rather cheekily.

But it was with some uneasiness that he recounted the Petrification of Hermione, although it was considerably easier, knowing that she had been fully revived. Ron had asked Hermione if she remembered anything about her time being unconscious. Had she dreamed at all? Had she been aware? Hermione had responded that she saw the eyes, and then was awake once more. It hadn't even felt like she had been asleep.

More fun, at least for Harry, was telling about Aragog and escaping from him via Mr. Weasley's car. By the time he recounted Ginny being taken into the Chamber of Secrets and his encounter with Voldemort as Tom Riddle, Sirius was listening in rapt attention and holding his godson to him in a near death grip.

"So, then, after Fawkes healed my arm from the basilisk venom, I used one of the fangs to destroy the diary. And Riddle disappeared, and Ginny woke up. We returned with Ron and Lockhart to the school, and I told Dumbledore and McGonagall pretty much everything," Harry concluded. "The mandrake juice potion cured the Petrified victims, and everyone was okay."

Sirius just shook his head, a smile on his face. "I am extremely proud of you, Harry. So are your parents, I'm sure."

Harry grinned, then turned serious. "I couldn't let Ron's sister die."

"I know. You're so much like your dad in that way." Seeing Harry's reaction, which looked rather pained, he added, gently, "What's wrong, pup?"

Harry took a deep breath. "I know my dad was a great man, Sirius. I guess, seeing what he did in Snape's pensieve..."

He trailed off. It still stung, seeing his dad treat Snape like that. Even though he still hated his Potions teacher.

Sirius removed his arms from around Harry, turning so they were sitting facing each other. Then, he placed both hands on the boy's shoulder.

"I know," he said, softly. "We could be bloody gits, back then. I promise you, though, that the hate and hexing went both ways, and there were plenty of times that Sniv-that Snape got us when we weren't looking. To be honest, I had forgotten about that afternoon until you contacted me." He made a pained face. "Remus remembered. He showed me what had happened in the pensieve from his memory. After I survived in the department of mysteries, I contacted Snape. In part to thank him for trying to stop you, but also to try to make amends."

"You did?" Harry asked, rather blankly.

Sirius chuckled. "It wasn't easy. I was sure that he would hex me when I showed up in his home fireplace. We-we aren't exactly friends, but we more or less agreed to try to get along. For the sake of defeating Voldemort and his cronies."

Harry nodded, swallowing hard. "I wish I hadn't seen it, but I also wish it hadn't happened."

Sirius pulled him into another long hug. "Me too."

Tentatively, even uncertainty, Harry leaned a little against Sirius. The older wizard smiled at Harry, then tucked a piece of hair away from his face. Harry returned the smile, closing his eyes briefly.

"Tired?" he asked, moving another piece of hair out of Harry's face.

"A bit," Harry admitted, with a small smile.

"Lie down for a bit," Sirius suggested, gently.

"All right," Harry agreed, resting his head on one of the pillows

"Hey, pup?" His voice was tentative. "If you like, I can tell you some stories from my days at Hogwarts."

"Really?"

Chuckling, Sirius tucked a couple of the blankets around them, then lay down next to Harry, holding the young boy against him. Harry closed his eyes and let himself relax against his godfather.

"Now, pup," he began, once again wrapping his arms around Harry's frame, "I will have you know that I had never played a prank in my life until I met your father. An absolutely terrible influence there, he was. But after our first class with Slytherin, he was determined to perform a hex that would make them skip, instead of walk, for a full day. Never mind the fact that that charm wasn't taught until our second year..."

"But he figured it out?" Harry guessed, grinning.

"Not before accidentally casting it on Flitwick and nearly sending him down three flights of stairs!" Sirius snickered.

"Ouch!" Harry grimaced.

"He took it well enough. Old Filch, on the other hand..."

A/N:

I felt like I got my muse back a little with this chapter. It might have helped that I was listening to CoS in between writing, to make sure I had the events in the right order. Then again, if Harry switched up the order of things after three plus years, you can't really blame him!

The next chapter is in the works right now. It's starting out somewhat heavier than this one.

As always, please leave feedback if you're enjoying this!