AN: Had a review from a guest last chap that I really wish I was able to write back to, ah well, read on to see some of your questions answered...maybe lol

As always, infinite thanks to Gamer0890, Palkey, and Red. Join us on the flowerpot discord! discord . gg/flowerpot

Chapter 4

Harry appeared on the edge of the garden, Ginny popped up a second later, and they were both frozen to the spot for a moment. The large block of flats was burning, its light illuminated the battle happening across the drive, and a pit of despair opened inside him as he took in the scene.

"Bill!" Ginny exclaimed, and she was off, he took off after her, wand already drawn.

He'd expected the worst when he felt the wards break, and the scene before him was proving to be just that. So many black robed Death Eaters were present, more than a usual attack, and as they danced among the inhabitants of the Plymouth community their numbers did not bode well. Voldemort had not sent out this many of his followers at once since the Battle of Hogwarts.

Harry dodged an orange jet of spellfire he couldn't identify, it sizzled in the air as he ducked low, and he almost stumbled to the ground as he ran through the action. He caught his footing though, and let loose a stunner at the back of a masked figure who was locked in combat with a bleeding Seamus Finnigan.

He lost track of Ginny in the melee, falling into the battle mindset he'd been fine tuning over the last few months. Step, dodge, fire, shield. On and on, in random order, he carried out his simple actions not feeling the tiredness, not feeling the pain, and not hearing the sounds of the fallen around him. Neither friend nor foe.

He did not see Ginny get hit, but he heard her cry out as Bellatrix's curse hit her. He turned in time to see her thud down onto her knees, and he could watch the life leave her eyes in the moment before she went limp and slumped over. It was Lestrange, he knew it, because the mad terrorist never bothered with the silver mask her companions wore.

With a roar of rage, blooming in him in a desperate attempt to fill the crushing emptiness that had taken root at the sight of Ginny's fallen form, he fired off the most hateful spell that came to mind. A fully formed Cruciatus that was sidestepped with infuriating ease. Bellatrix was laughing at him, congratulating his resolve, applauding his conviction.

He wanted to kill her, needed to engage her in combat, to end her. The tide of battle did not allow it however. More of their friends were arriving, he saw Neville shatter the leg of an unidentified Death Eater, and Kingsley was there not long after.

The tide turned in their favor, two of the enemy had been outright killed and three more had fallen screaming.

Their losses were heavier but their number was greater, with a final wave of arrivals the outcome apparently became obvious enough for the Death Eaters to see. They fled, sure to return, but giving enough time for the resistance to collect their injured and retreat.

He saw Neville crying over a body as he moved through the battleground looking for survivors. As he moved closer he saw that it was Hannah, her mouth agape and eyes wide, lifeless. It did not hurt, not like it should. He was empty. Hollow. Unable to properly feel anything, because somewhere in the night the only person that mattered was equally as dead to the world.

Flitwick, Seamus, Roger, Bill… He stopped looking at the bodies, he didn't want to know, not tonight.

"Come on Nev," he said, and his voice sounded as dead as he felt, "they won't be long with reinforcements."

If he were less shell-shocked he would've felt bad about the callous way he commanded his friend to leave his love's body. He was doing the same though, they all were. The dead couldn't apparate, not even side-along, and they couldn't afford to lose anyone else.

Neville mastered himself in a way that was nothing short of impressive. It was as if he'd simply been waiting for the command, giving himself a moment to grieve before he was called back to duty. He stood, gave a solitary sniff, and then a cold calm fell over his face. It was the same veneer that Harry wore.

He doubled back, now that everyone that mattered was gone he made a final pass of the killing field, and ended the two injured Death Eaters left there by their companions. He felt nothing doing it, he was not yet so far gone that he relished killing, but he was far from conflicted about snuffing out these foul lives.

Fleur was the only one left now. No more cries of the wounded filled the night, those of the light had been saved and those from the dark were dispatched. It was only her cries left, and they had devolved to quiet sobs as she lay over her husband's body.

"Come on, Fleur," he said, still a few steps out so as not to startle her. "We have to go."

She did not respond, so he approached, and after a moment's hesitation he dropped a hand onto her shoulder. Her sobs silenced, but she still trembled in anguish.

"Fleur…" She shrugged off his hand, and he almost went to grab her again and apparate her away himself when she spoke.

"This is all your fault." The words stung, or they would soon, he was starting to lose the cold detached manner that had reigned since Ginny's death. "I hate you!"

He caught her upper arm in a vice-like grip, headless to the rage in her eyes, and turned on the spot as the pops of Death Eater's arrivals sounded all around them.

-o-o-o-

Harry's eyes snapped open as the crushing blackness of apparition pressed in on him and Fleur. His chest was heaving, his shirt clinging to him with sweat, and the room was filled with the soft chittering of a concerned owl.

He struggled upright, mastering his racing heart with slow, methodical breaths. The room was dark, his east-facing windows just beginning to lighten a predawn gray over the tops of the Forbidden Forest. Hedwig hopped from his desk with a silent double flap of her wings and landed unsteadily on the bed, walking with some difficulty across the soft mattress to better thoroughly inspect him. He raised shaky fingers to her and brushed them across her wing in reassurance.

"It's okay girl," he murmured, focusing on the soft pets as the last of his panic left him.

One week. He'd been in the castle for one week and that was the second dream that was not a dream that he'd had.

Hedwig's concern was abated after a few pats and she flapped over to the window to rap at the glass with her beak. He forced himself out of bed and let her out before he fell into his desk chair. He didn't even entertain the idea of venturing down to the great hall, even with its limited population, he preferred his room. The high arched ceilings and expansive windows made him feel so… exposed.

"Dobby!" he called, steeling himself, and yet it did nothing to dull the ache in his heart as the elf appeared before him.

"Professor Potter sir!" he greeted Harry, beaming at him under the brim of an oversized hat.

"Dobbyy-" Harry warned, drawing out his name in a faux-admonishment.

"Yes, yes," Dobby bobbed his head, sending his knit cap swaying precariously, "will you be wanting your breakfast here, Professor Harry sir?"

Harry smiled, more grimace than anything, and simply nodded. With two more cracks the elf disappeared and reappeared, laden with a tray nearly as big as he was tall.

It didn't matter how many times he told Dobby that simple eggs and toast would do, the elf insisted on bringing him a full spread equipped with tea and coffee. He'd learned his lesson his first morning in the castle, with its exorbitant breakfast that had punished him heavily later in the day, but he'd also learned a lifetime ago which battles to pick with Dobby so he simply thanked him as the tray was levitated to the desk.

Over breakfast, as he had every day under Dumbledore's suggestion, he poured over a tome from the library. His morning routine of breakfast over research was a very Hermione-ish trait, something Ron would describe as not fit for normal people, but that's what he did.

Diving into the deep end of runes, enchanting, and arithmancy, day after day. Attempting to piece together his memories of what he'd seen, how it had felt, and what could have possibly been done. On the far wall of his quarters hung several large sheets of parchment, each with a different set of almost-familiar runes, each one drawn haphazardly and from memory. His own recollection of his last days in his own England were muddy at best, but he was refining the headache inducing flashes of purple light as best he could, and from his efforts he repeatedly got runes as reward.

He knew a trip into a pensieve would do wonders, disregarding Dumbledore's added eyes on the memories in that scenario, but he was hesitant to involve the Headmaster just yet. Something held him back, call it the last vestige of his paranoid post-war mentality, but he resolved day one to get something more concrete before he approached Dumbledore with it. What he did recall was on the wall now, taunting him like the solution to a problem that was just out of reach.

Today's reading was a bit more mundane though, a thick leather-bound book titled Magical Beasts and their Bonds with Wizards. It would've been classified as 'light reading' to Hermione in another life but he did not have her appetite for dry dense texts, so he relegated this research to his mornings, and left it behind when he felt like pulling his hair out.

He flipped it open to his marked page, one of the larger sections of the 'familiars' grouping, and continued his reading on owls. He ate his breakfast half-heartedly as he scanned the page.

Owls had apparently been closely associated with the wizarding world for thousands of years. It was deduced that that was the reason so many muggle cultures viewed them as ill omens or otherwise evil beings. The author clearly enjoyed muggle lore, to a degree that would put Arthur Weasley to shame, for she spent a solid twenty pages cataloging the various folk tales about owls across the world.

He skimmed the bulk of it as he drank his coffee, the tea going cold and untouched. He'd spent the past few years in a coffee household, and the effects were hard to shake even now.

Inevitably his mind wandered, the bland prose of his reading material didn't inspire much focus, and his mind turned to the coming weeks and months. An odd emotion began to bubble up in association with them.

Excitement.

Adjusting to castle life was far from easy, and he knew it would only prove more taxing when the halls were full to the brim with people and noise. They were making progress on the horcruxes though, real progress. Progress that had taken Dumbledore years to puzzle out, and more still for Harry to finish. And in a shocking turn of events he found himself looking forward to teaching.

His knowledge of runes and arithmancy was hobbled together, taught in the field, and highly specialized. Even still, Fleur and Hermione had praised him for some of his applications in his time practicing. Just as his mind began to wander a word jumped out at him from the page and pulled him back in.

… souls, as evidenced by owls' inclusion in the Fidelius.

He scanned up the page and reread the section covering something called the ritual-bond theory. The author speculated that the link between owls and the magical human species was formed in the ancient Americas some seven thousand years ago, and that the bond was rooted in the soul. The text moved on to other theories, of which there were many, and Harry stretched in his chair. The effects of two hours stooped over his desk were beginning to show themselves.

A shriek at his window nearly had him jumping out of his seat, and he laughed at his own reaction as he stood to let Hedwig back in. She hopped in, pausing to nuzzle his hand, and then flapped up to the top of the wardrobe and settled into the shadows there.

He was on his feet, he'd learned something new from his book, and that felt like as natural a stopping place as he could imagine. He moved the worn strip of fabric sewn into the spine of the book to his current page and closed the tome.

Through the trapdoor and down the spiral stair to his office, he left his studies behind and stopped at the door to his classroom. His classroom. It was still a bit dizzying. He ran his fingers along the edge of his desk and before he knew it he was pacing the length of the room between the rows of student desks.

It easier to plan his Warding sessions, it had been the bulk of his practice by necessity, and Fleur had always been the craftier enchanter anyway. He would show them the wardstones on the property, something he'd never known about in his time at the school, but his knowledge now told them they had to exist for the complexity of the wards over the school to be sustained.

The desks were arranged to allow a path down the center of his room, a path he wore into the stone regularly and did so now for the better part of an hour. It was a habit he had picked up over the years, as he wrote a loose syllabus in his head for the coming year, he paced the room. It'd started as Fleur's habit, anytime she was puzzling over something she paced whatever small space she had available to her, lost in thought and chewing on her lip as she figured it out.

He'd teased her about it, sometimes following in her wake and pulling faces of concentration when they crossed paths, but it had become somewhat of a tradition along the way. When they were crafting the protections over the tunnel community they'd last settled into, the two of them had spent hours trailing back and forth across their little shelter while they cooked up the spellwork.

It brought him comfort, and familiarity, to do it here and now. In a place that had once felt like home and now felt so alien to him.

His silent reverie was interrupted by the third Crack! of the morning as Dobby appeared at his desk.

"Merlin's balls!" he swore, staggering in the middle of his classroom. Dobby blinked at him with wide eyes that let Harry know he would be regretting his outburst instantly and then dived into a litany of apologies and self scolding.

"What is it you need, Dobby?" That seemed to snap him out of it, the look of concentration returning to the large eyes.

"Headmaster Dumbledore Sir would like to let Professor Harry Potter know that he would like to speak with him," Dobby said with far less jumping around and excitability than his usual meetings with Dobby the house elf.

"Alright, thanks Dobby," the elf bowed and popped away again.

-o-o-o-

Knocking on the door, he let himself in without waiting for an answer, figuring the headmaster would not have sent for him if he wasn't expecting him. As he stepped into the office, Dumbledore was standing next to Fawkes, stroking the bird's head lovingly as it thrilled at the contact. The large creature caught sight of Harry and a sense of…understanding passed over him. A sense of…shared sadness. Shaking off the unfamiliar feeling, he eyed the large bird carefully.

"Burning day coming soon?" he asked, causing Dumbledore to turn towards him, a smile on his face.

"Yes, probably today or tomorrow. How did you know, if I might ask?"

Harry shrugged.

"The first time I ever met Fawkes he burst into flames," he said, chuckling. "I was so scared when you appeared because I thought I had caused your pet to catch fire." A knowing look came across Dumbledore's face.

"Those who meet a Phoenix at the moment of their rebirth are said to have a strong connection with them." Harry looked up at Fawkes, who seemed to be nodding his head.

"You wished to see me, professor?"

"Right, right," said Dumbledore, returning to his desk. "I have finally made contact with Sirius. He awaits in Northern France. He said his time away has been delightful, though he is glad to return and lend whatever aid he can." He passed a small rubber ball to Harry.

"I've gone ahead and made a portkey for you," he explained as Harry examined the ball, "It will activate momentarily." Harry looked up at Dumbledore, who had settled into his seat.

"You're not coming with me?" he asked, earning a shake of the head from the headmaster.

"You should be the one to bring your Godfather back, my boy, and I believe a little privacy would be the right thing for you." Harry raised an eyebrow.

"And what do I tell him? About me? About everything?"

"Whatever it is you want him to know," said Dumbledore. "I trust Sirius implicitly, and while I do believe it may be best to withhold some information from him for the time being, I leave the ultimate decision up to you. He's your family, Harry, and it should be your decision as to how much he knows."

"And after I've made contact?"

"Go to Grimmauld Place and retrieve the locket. Bring it back here and we will destroy it," said Dumbledore, stroking his beard slightly. "I'll have more for Sirius to do once he's back, so he won't be left idle on his family property, you have my word."

Before he could respond, Harry felt the familiar pull behind his navel as the portkey activated and he was whisked away from Hogwarts.

Harry landed hard on the soft grass, reaffirming his belief that portkeys were still terrible as he picked himself up, dusting the grass off his bottom as he surveyed the area. Off in the distance was a moderate size house, its size being dwarfed by the grounds surrounding it, which seemed to stretch out forever in all directions. He could see empty stables just west of the house, but aside from that, nothing. The area seemed to be in a state of disuse, clearly the result of it being either forgotten or cared about little. He knew the Blacks owned property in France, so he could only guess that this was it.

Casting a disillusionment charm on himself, he began walking towards the house, wand at the ready, eyes scanning for threats. Briefly, his eyes glowed brightly as he scanned for wards and enchantments, yet he found none, only a peaceful calm breeze of the warm summer air. As he looked around, he nearly stumbled at the realization that struck him like a heavy blow to the stomach.

This was the first time he'd been out of the UK in almost a decade. The first time such a thing was even possible.

The first smell of grass from foreign soil.

The first breeze of air from outside the island.

It all became so incredibly real, like everything he'd experienced since arriving in the past had been but a dream. Now, outside of the lands he'd been confined to for so long, it was real. He was in the past, far removed from the horrors that lay ahead, about to be reunited with a man whose death he had made peace with long ago. Stopping, he took several deep breaths to calm his racing heart.

As he approached the house, it wasn't hard to spot the massive black dog lounging on the dilapidated porch, the sun above giving its shaggy black fur an unnatural shine. As he moved closer, the dog raised its head before standing to its full height, growling. Harry smiled as he canceled the spell, bringing him fully into view. He pocketed his wand and raised his hands in front of him, willing Sirius to understand he meant no hard.

He continued to approach the porch as the dog shifted into his Godfather, who immediately had a wand pointed down at Harry. Giving the older man a look, Harry noticed just how frail he still looked. Skinny, his figure not having recovered yet since his escape, but it was the eyes that Harry noticed most. They still held that wild quality to them that had been present the night in the shrieking shack. The eyes of a man who had been tortured for so long and had nothing left to lose. The eyes of a man who could be dangerous.

"You look like James Potter, but he's dead. I saw his body myself," Sirius said.

Harry realized he probably should have used a glamore for their first meeting. He didn't see Sirius for a long time after his escape with Buckbeak, and they never spoke of the time just after. He should have realized that the man would still be struggling with everything, and placing a James Potter lookalike in front of him was probably not the smartest idea.

"Who the fuck are you?" asked Sirius. Harry kept his hands in the air, making an effort to ensure it did not appear as if he were reaching for his wand.

"Sirius, Dumbledore sent me," Harry said. Sirius gripped the wand tighter.

"I didn't ask who sent you, I asked who the fuck are you?"

"My name is Harry…" he started to say, though at his words Sirius dropped the wand, his eyes losing their hard edge, replaced with a softness that Harry remembered. It was the same softness his Sirius had looked at him with all those years ago.

Before his life had been cut short.

"Harry…" Sirius whispered, a faraway look in his eyes. He stepped off the porch and stopped just short of where Harry was, looking at him as if a memory were standing in front of him.

"Look like James, but Lily's eyes…" Sirius whispered again. Finally, after several moments, the man's mind seemed to come back to the present and he refocused on Harry, a look of hope in his gaze.

"Harry Potter?" Sirius asked, trepidation in his voice, as if he dared not believe what he was seeing.

Harry nodded.

"Yes, Padfoot, my name is Harry Potter. It's hard to explain, and I can't explain everything, but…" he was cut off as the air was pushed out of his lungs as Sirius launched himself at Harry, enveloping him in a tight hug. His Godfather began to sob as he clung to his robes, gripping them tightly as if he would disappear without the contact.

Wrapping his arms around the taller man, Harry hugged him back, a sense of familiar warmth settling into his chest as tears escaped his own eyes. He had his Godfather back, and it took everything he had not to let that fact crush him. A part of him knew that he was holding a ghost, a memory of a person who had long since died, but he didn't care. He held the man tightly as the sobs began to recede, replaced with a ghostly soft chuckle. The chuckle of a man who hadn't had anything to laugh about for a very long time.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the two broke apart, a wide grin on Sirius' face as he beamed at Harry. Harry ran a hand through his messy locks as he began to pace.

"It's difficult to explain, and Dumbledore thinks it's best if I didn't go into everything…" Sirius raised a hand, stopping Harry's pacing.

"Are you the son of Lily and James Potter?" he asked. Harry nodded.

"Yeah."

"Then I don't need details. Knowing that is enough for now." Harry stared at him, mouth hanging open just slightly at his Godfather's words.

"Just like that? You accept it without anything else?"

Sirius shrugged as he sat on the edge of the porch, feet dangling just above the ground.

"The way I see it is that you're either telling the truth, in which case, my Godson is back and working with Albus Dumbledore on something important, and that is enough for me. Or, you're lying and here to kill me. In that case, I'd rather die here than be left to rot in Azkaban. At least it's peaceful here, and I got to see the sun one last time."

"Never," Harry said immediately, "I would never attempt to harm you."

Sirius smiled.

"Then my Godson is back, much older than the last time I saw him, and he needs my help."

Harry tried to hide the pain in his eyes at the boyish smile that Sirius sent him, but he was only partially successful. The last time he'd seen that smile had been a long time ago. Far underground, in a place that would forever haunt his memories. A place he had failed. Shaking his head to keep from spiraling into his thoughts, Harry took a seat on the porch, looking out over the expanse of the property, the overgrown green fields still giving him a sense of calm that he couldn't find back in England.

"When was the last time you went home?" Harry finally said, look back at Sirius.

"I've been away from England since Wormtail escaped. Dumbledore thought it best if I lie low outside the country. He didn't even know where I was until recently. Said it was more secure that way," Sirius explained.

"No, I mean home," explained Harry, "As in, Grimmauld Place."

Sirius scowled.

"That dreadful place? Oh boy, a good few years before I went to Azkaban. Why?"

"Voldemort is back," Harry stated plainly, earning him raised eyebrows from Sirius.

"But he was defeated the night…" Harry shook his head.

"He wasn't, at least, not fully, it's…"

"Hard to explain?" offered Sirius, a smirk on his face. Harry nodded, a gracious smile spreading on his face.

"Yeah, but not because I'm trying to hide anything. Dumbledore can just explain it better."

Sirius sighed.

"Fair enough. So, what's this about the old Black home?"

"Your brother, Regulus," said Harry, "He stole something from Voldemort just before he was killed. A locket. It's at Grimmauld Place. We need to get it and bring it to Dumbledore so we can destroy it."

"What's so special about it?" Sirius asked.

"It's keeping Voldemort alive," Harry said vaguely, unsure of how much he could tell Sirius there. Harry recognized he wasn't the horcrux expert, and his experiences were mostly just finding and destroying them, not the intricacies about how they worked. That was the headmaster's domain. "At least, one of the things keeping him alive."

Sirius nodded.

"Very well, let's go get this locket of yours," he said, jumping off the porch, a spring in his step that wasn't there before. Looking at him, Harry saw a youthful exuberance in his Godfather's eyes, like new meaning had been given to a man who had nothing. Harry smiled. An adventure with Sirius sounded fun, especially one with much lower stakes.

-o-o-o-

"So, just to recap: these horcrux things are pieces of You-Know-Who's soul?" asked Sirius again, earning a head nod and an eye roll from Harry.

The locket lay on the desk in front of them, lifeless, no longer the bastion of evil and decay it had been before. The sword used to purge it rested back in its place on the wall. It hadn't taken them long to retrieve the locket, Sirius commanding Kreacher to bring it for destruction was all that needed to be said. The elf had almost broken down in tears of joy.

"And you had one in your head?"

Another nod from Harry.

"And once you get them all he can be killed for good?"

"That's about the gist of it, yeah," said Harry, pulling out a small flask and taking a sip. Emergency firewhiskey. He had brought it with him in case the reunion with Sirius hadn't gone well. Now he was using it to stave off the headache. Dumbledore, to his credit, seemed willing to give Sirius all the space he needed to work out the information they'd just given him.

"So, there are two more?" Sirius asked.

"Yeah, his snake and the Hufflepuff cup," explained Harry. "We know where the snake will be…eventually, and we know where the cup is but it's difficult."

"Gringotts?" asked Sirius.

"Yeah. In the LeStrange vault," Harry said, taking another sip of his flask. Sirius cringed.

"Ouch, yeah, that'll be difficult."

"Not impossible though," muttered Harry.

"And the snake?" Sirius asked, looking between Harry and Dumbledore. "Do you have a plan for that?"

Harry looked at the headmaster expectantly.

"We are still working out the details," said Dumbledore, "But we'll have something soon enough. For now, we have dealt a major blow to him today, and we should be proud of that."

"What can I do to help?" Sirius said, determination setting in his face.

Harry smiled. It was good to have his Godfather back and he already looked like a new man. Purpose, however large or small, was sometimes all people needed to force back the abyss, Harry knew that from first hand experience. To see it in another so vividly, however, it was almost inspiring. Dumbledore stood and moved towards the fire, motioning for them to join him. He grabbed a pouch of floo powder and handed it to Sirius.

"Find Remus. Last I heard he was somewhere in Whales. We need to start gathering the Order," Dumbledore said, patting Sirius on the shoulder and offering a smile. "I recommend a less…recognizable form when traveling around the country." With that, the old man walked towards the door to the office, dinner in the great hall his intended destination. Before he disappeared through the door he turned back towards Harry.

"Our first staff meeting will be in a few days. I'll introduce you to the rest of the staff then. It'll be your first introduction…Professor Potter."

Harry sighed and shook his head before looking back at Sirius. He noticed the older man had a concerned look on his face.

"What is it?" asked Harry.

"Who says anything is wrong?"

Harry rolled his eyes.

"You look like a mother hen nursing her wounded chick. Spit it out," Harry said, a smirk on his face. Sirius rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Harry could tell he was unsure, their relationship being so new to him, but it wasn't to Harry. To Harry, whatever advice his Godfather could give him would be cherished.

"It's just, look," Sirius started, "the way you talk about You-Know-Who and all this horcrux business…you seem like you have a lot of pent up anger. I'm not exactly the picture of virtue, hell, I can barely keep my own life in order, but you need something that makes you happy. Otherwise that anger will eat you from the inside. Find something that makes you happy, Harry. I didn't have anything for a long time, and today I found it…and let me tell you, it's the best feeling in the world."

Harry stood at the window, hours later, as Hedwig's silhouette slowly disappeared into the waning evening light, the order forms gripped tightly in her talons.

Sirius had said to find something that makes him happy, and he'd taken a small step towards trying that. He'd accepted that he was stuck here, at least for the time, so he might as well make the most of his time. Sirius was right about one thing: his anger would eat him up if he allowed it to.

Chuckling, he realized that she would be furious with him if she could see him now, all broody and self-reflective.

Grabbing the half-empty bottle of elven wine he strode back into his classroom, intent on making more progress on his research.