AN: What can I say. I'm terrible at keeping on schedule, which therefore means I'm also terrible at updating this fic. I will finish it, though.

At least the holidays have started at my school so I'll have more time to write.

The next morning, by some miracle, James and Lily managed to get their daughter to school. After gentle coaxing from Harry, stern words from Lily, and promises which his wife said were bribery, from James, they managed to get her into the car with Harry and off to Primary school. She had met a girl with long black hair at the gate, who she had introduced as Cassie, and the two girls had ran off together quite happily, presumably to meet their other friends. To both of her parents apparent relief, Mackenzie hadn't looked too upset to be returning to school after her adventure the day before.

After that, Lily had gone off to work. Lily worked as a nurse and the hospital was pretty far away from their house, so she had gone straight there after dropping James off at home. The police station was only about ten minutes away, after all. This was their usual routine.

Lily kissed him quickly before driving away and James entered the house to find Sirius and Remus sitting in his living room. Sirius was tapping around on his phone, presumably texting someone or other.

"Why have you two invited yourselves into my house?" he asked as he entered the room.

"It was Sirius' idea," said Remus. "He wanted to come over here for some reason, I don't know why, before you ask. He texted k to ask me to come as well. I figured why not, you know?"

"Exactly, Moony," said Sirius distractedly, still looking resolutely down at his phone screen.

"Why do you even call me that, anyway?" asked Remus. "And James is Prongs and Sirius is Padfoot."

"We did the which animal are you test, remember," said James. "We must've been twelve or so, I got a stag, Sirius got a dog and you got a wolf. I guess they just sort of stuck."

Remus laughed. "Typical us, isn't it."

"Definitely," James agreed. "Why is Sirius here if he's just gonna text people anyway? He could at least be social. And if he were just going to text he could just do at at his place, he doesn't have to invite himself over to mine."

"I dunno," said Remus, shrugging. "I don't even think he understands why he does things sometimes."

James glanced at his watch and looked over at Remus and Sirius.

"Oi, you to!" he exclaimed in surprise. "You're both gonna be late if you don't hurry up!"

"Yeah," said Remus. "Even you've gotta start heading off for work, Prongs."

"Huh?" asked Sirius, finally looking up from his phone. "Sorry, was just checking Instagram. What did you say, Prongs?"

"You're gonna be late if you don't hurry up. I'm going upstairs to grab something, be right back."

James started to walk towards the stairs, hearing Sirius complaining loudly from behind him.

"I don't have class until later," he complained.

"Don't give me that excuse," he heard Remus say. "You know they still expect you in even if you don't have a class first thing."

"Fine," Sirius grumbled.

James climbed the stairs hurriedly, knowing that if here was late again Mad-Eye would definitely have questions. He opened the door to his and Lily's bedroom and walked over to his bedside table and opened to top draw, where he had stashed the piece of paper. It was gonna be so funny leaving this on Tonks' desk. He couldn't wait to see her reaction.

It would be great, James thought as he shoved the paper in his jacket pocket and headed back downstairs, for Sirius to have some genuinely nice family members. He'd met most of the Black's and they weren't exactly the best example of family, and Tonks was kind and funny and friendly. She and Sirius would get along great, at least James hoped so, and he would finally, after a long time, have a blood relative who he might genuinely like and want to spend time with.

James heard the bang of the front door closing as he reached the bottom of the stairs. At least Sirius wouldn't be late for work again. The four of them, James, Lily, Remus and Sirius had started a chart of sorts a couple of weeks ago, when summer had ended and Harry and Mackenzie had gone back to school. The chart was stuck on the kitchen wall next to a calendar, a drawing of Mackenzie's, a funny science essay of Harry's because they had gone to school with Snape, the science teacher and he was an idiot, and as of yesterday, Mackenzie's ranking, which proudly stated that he was in second last place in black pen.

The chart read across the top, in Lily's neatest handwriting, The Irresponsibility Chart, and under that, in smaller letters, how many times us seemingly responsible adults are late for our important jobs.

He had grudgingly added yesterday to the tally next to his name, which now made his score up to three in two weeks, not as bad as Sirius' four. Remus had only been late once, because of what he said was really awful traffic that day, and Lily's column remained blank.

Frowning, James noticed another name below Lily's on the list, Dora. Lily had obviously added her name the night before, most likely because Mackenzie, who found the chart hilarious, had convinced her. Picking up a pen, James added a line next to Dora's name. She had been late one day last week.

James glanced at his watch again and swore. He was going to be late again if he didn't hurry up and then he would be tied with Sirius. He picked up his keys and phone before hurriedly leaving the house.

"Wotcher James," said Tonks as the door opened and hit the wall with a rather loud bang. James didn't even stop to close it as he practically ran into their extremely messy office. Neither of them were very organised and this lead to a mess of crumpled up pieces of paper, empty coffee cups, pens, and a whole assortment of other random items.

Dora pushed a coffee towards him as he sat down in his chair.

"How late am I?" he asked resignedly. "Soon I'm going to overtake Sirius if I'm not careful."

She glanced down at her phone. "Your not actually late, just on time. And when I mean just on time, like you would have been late if you'd taken any longer." Then she paused for a moment, looking confused. "What do you mean, overtake Sirius?"

"Well, Lily decided that me and my friends Sirius and Remus are late for work way to much so she set up a sort of chart or something to keep track. Soon, I'm going to overtake Sirius."

"That's not a good thing," Tonks observed as she shuffled through a pile of papers on her desk. "I really have to be more organised."

James took a sip of his coffee. "At least your not as bad as Sirius. He's really messy and to top it all off, he doesn't ever even attempt to clean. He slacks entirely to often."

"He must be bad if you think he slacks, have you looked at yourself lately? Did you even brush your hair this morning?"

"You know my hair is always like this," James said defensively, running his hand through his messy black hair and making it stick up even more.

Tonks laughed. "Yeah yeah. If you say so."

Surprisingly, James forgot about the piece of paper in his pocket, so Tonks hadn't read Andromeda's email by the time their lunch break arrived. They both had a lot of paperwork to do, the reason both of them had been assigned desk duty for that week in the first place. James and Tonks worked surprisingly productively throughout the morning, with only the occasional laps in concentration, which James blamed on Tonks, and Tonks blamed on James, naturally.

"I just don't get it," he remembered her complaining at around eleven. "Why does iiMad-Eye have to be so old fashioned? Why doesn't he just get a damn email account and we could do all this stuff digitally. Then I could actually use my laptop and I wouldn't lose half the things he wants me to give him."

James had nodded in agreement enthusiastically. He hated paperwork, and it wasn't going to kill iiMad-Eye to set up a Google account or something.

"Wanna get Uber Eats?" James asked when lunch finally arrived, dropping his pen onto the desk with a satisfied sigh and leaning back in his chair.

"Yeah, sure," said Tonks, crossing her legs at the ankles. "Who's buying?"

"I'll do it," said James, picking up his phone.

"I'll pay you back tomorrow, just remind me," said Tonks, grinning at him.

"You don't have to," he protested.

"You sure?"

"Yeah," he insisted.

"Thanks James."

Sirius had just finished teaching a class, which hadn't been to bad. The kids had picked up football quite well and Fred and George Weasley, who Sirius had to admit were pretty good players, had helped some of their classmates out a bit.

He grinned as he walked down the corridor towards Remus' classroom, not even bothering to glare at Snape when he passed him along the way.

It was their lunch break, finally, and Sirius was determined to convince Remus to do something fun with him until both of them had to become somewhat responsible and actually teach class. At least Sirius had Harry's year after lunch.

He entered Remus' classroom without bothering to knock, Remus would probably be expecting him anyway, and found him grading essays.

"Hey Sirius, just let me finish these and then we can do whatever stupid thing you were thinking about," said Remus, not even bothering to look up from the essay he was grading. Sirius went to peer over his shoulder. The essay in front of Remus had a large lipstick mark on the page next to the name Isabella.

"Isabella eh? And why are you making the kids do stuff on paper. It's the twenty first century, Remus."

"Yeah, this was just a quick thing they had to do in class and I actually have to finish these because I have the year twelve's next and they're expecting me to give these back to them."

"Remus... come on, do something fun."

Remus ignored him, picking his pen back up and Sirius decided to just wait in his classroom until he caved. Pulling out his phone, Sirius decided to check Instagram for lack of anything better to do.

There weren't even any interesting posts. He scowled down at a picture of his cousin and her husband at some party over the weekend. Although he didn't follow Narcissa's

Instagram, enough of his followers did, so her posts often popped up on his feed.

Before he could leave a sarcastic comment on Narcissa's Instagram post, Remus looked over at him.

"Go and annoy James or something," he said. "You've probably got time."

Sirius grinned over at his friend. "Great idea Moony," he waved at Remus. "I'll be off!"

Sirius jogged out of Remus' classroom and out to the front of the school, thankful that Dumbledore, the principal, didn't mind if teachers left the campus during lunch.

After James had ordered their food, he and Dora, because he would call her nothing else now, apparently, hung out in their office, talking.

"Your friends sound awesome," Dora said, after a particularly funny story James had told about one of their pranks in school. "Why does the name Sirius sound really familiar."

Dora thought for a second before looking triumphant. "Oh yeah! My mum has a cousin named Sirius. They don't talk, though. Mum's family aren't exactly amazing."

Before James could comment about how awesome Sirius Black was, his phone buzzed from next to him. Looking down at it, he grinned. "The food's hear."

Tonks started to stand up. "I'll get it," James said hurriedly, knowing that if his friend got the food, she'd probably trip and cause the order to go flying across the floor.

Dora sat back down, knowing what James was probably thinking and knowing he was right. She hated her clumsiness sometimes. Well actually, all the time.

James left the office and was quickly approached by iiMad-Eye about his progress. Knowing he would probably be a while, Tonks picked up her phone just as the office door was flung open.

"Hey, James!" the man who entered said enthusiastically, walking into the office. "This place is a mess, not that mines much better," he admitted.

"Uh hi," said Dora awkwardly. She looked over at him. The man, probably either Remus or Sirius, Dora thought, had chin length black hair, high cheekbones a little like her mothers, and grey eyes. She blinked, remembering what James had said to her the day before. They did have almost the exact same colour eyes. It was a little creepy, James was right.

"Hi," said Sirius cheerfully, looking over at who he assumed to be Dora. He did a slight double take. She looked a lot like Andromeda, but he dismissed the thought immediately. "Dora, right? Kenzie's told us all about you. No, literally," he added at her disbelieving look. "All about you. She wouldn't shut up."

Dora laughed. "Yeah, sounds like her."

"Oh sorry," he said, grinning at her. "I'm Sirius."

"Hey Sirius, nice to meet you," Dora said, smiling at him

A second later, her phone, still in her hand, lit up and a robotic voice responded. "Nice to meet you to."

The two of them stared at Dora's phone for a full thirty seconds before she burst into fits of hysterical laughter. Sirius shot her a mock glare and went over to James' desk and sitting in his chair.

"You have to admit it was pretty funny though," said Dora after she had managed to control her laughter.

"No it wasn't," said Sirius, though his lips twitched.

"Just admit it." Dora was laughing again and Sirius grinned in spite of himself.

"Okay okay, it was pretty funny."

"James really needs to hurry up," Dora commented, tapping her fingers on the desk impatiently.

"Where'd he go anyway?" asked Sirius, lounging in James' desk chair.

"Out the front to get our Uber Eats. He's taking bloody ages, though."

Dora was about to call James and yell at him for taking an age to do something that shouldn't have taken that long when she heard the voice from outside the office. It was the familiar shout of "Nymphadora!" She wondered what it was that iiMad-Eye was on about now. This time, it was about James.

"Nymphadora!" came iiMad-Eye voice from outside the office. "Why is Potter picking up Uber Eats or whatever it is again? Tell him that he shouldn't have shit delivered here all the time! It's okay sometimes but it's the second time this week he's done it and it's only Tuesday!"

"I'll tell him Mad-Eye," said Dora quickly. She looked over at Sirius to see his reaction, but he didn't seem to be paying attention. He was to busy staring at her like he'd seen a ghost, scrutinising her face, a shocked expression on his own. Tonks looked away, embarrassed.

Mad-Eye spoke once more, seemingly having spotted Sirius. "And Tonks, tell him that Black can't just barge in here whenever the hell he wants." Mad-Eye glanced at Sirius before turning away from the still open door.

Dora stared after him in stunned silence. The name rolled around in her head. Black. iiMad-Eye had called Sirius Black. He had a habit of using people's last names to intimidate them. His exception of course was her, who normally went by hers. Instead, he called her Nymphadora.

If he called Sirius by his last name, that meant his name was Sirius Black. And how many Sirius Black's were out there? And they had the same colour eyes, she realised. This was becoming more and more likely the more she thought about it. It had to be, didn't it?

She was going to metaphorically die of embarrassment if she was wrong.

"Um... my mum's name is Andromeda," Tonks said the first thing that came into her head that might tell her if Sirius was actually related to her.

At her words, Sirius seemed to snap out of his thoughts and he grinned broadly over at her.

"My cousin's name is Andromeda!" he shouted and Dora beamed at him, leaping to her feet at the same time as he did.

"Little cousin!" and suddenly, Sirius was rushing forwards and Dora was being hugged fiercely by her cousin.

"I'm not little," she protested, grinning up at him.

"You so are," said Sirius, letting her go and looking at her. "You're so much shorter than me. Anway, you really do look like your mum."

"People say that a lot," said Dora. "But people also say I look like Dad as well so I've just accepted I'm kind of an equal mix of both."

Sirius grinned and held out his hand. "I'm Sirius Black, your second cousin," he said and she smiled hugely at him.

"Wotcher Sirius! I'm Dora Tonks, your definitely not little cousin," she said, annunciating her name.

"So you don't like your name?" Sirius wondered. "I did question Andromeda's sanity when she named you Nymphadora."

"Yep, I hate it. At least I have an okay nickname though I guess. Dora isn't to bad, though of course Mum still insists on calling me Nymphadora, even though she knows I hate it. According to her its a beautiful name and all that. Me, I just prefer Tonks or Dora."

"Nice, Tonks or Dora."

"So your James' friend?" asked Dora. "It's like the biggest coincidence."

"Yeah!" Sirius agreed happily. "I mean, if you and James didn't end up sharing an office we'd never have met."

"It's all thanks to James then," Dora said brightly.

"Yeah it is, but lets not tell him that, he's got a big enough ego as it is."

"Who has a big enough ego as it is?" James asked, approaching holding a bag in one hand. "Oh hi, Sirius. Why are you here?"

"You have the big enough ego," stated Sirius bluntly. "And why can't I just drop in to say hi?"

"Well iiMad-Eye says you can't," Tonks muttered and Sirius looked at her in fake offence.

"I can't believe you would side with iiMad-Eye over your own family baby cousin."

"So I've progressed from little cousin to baby cousin now?"

"Cousin?" James tried to sound surprised and hoped it sounded more realistic to Sirius and Dora than it sounded to himself. Really, he was surprised at how quickly it had taken for them both to figure it out.

Sirius stared hard at his friend. "You knew!" he accused.

"What?"

"You definitely knew," said Dora decisively. "When were you going to tell us?"

"Uh.. I was going to give you this, actually," said James, producing a folded piece of paper from his pocket. It looked extremely old, thought Tonks.

"That's where it went!" exclaimed Sirius as James handed it to her.

Dora unfolded it and scanned her eyes down the page. "I can't believe my mum actually wrote this," she said once she had finished reading. "Can I keep this to show to her?"

"Yeah," said Sirius. Tonks quickly refolded the page and shoved it into her own pocket.

James glanced at the food. "This is gonna get cold in a minute."

Ten minutes later, Sirius and Tonks were still talking enthusiastically when Sirius decided he was board. When he stated this, James groaned.

"When Sirius is board he gets the most stupid ideas, even dumber than some of mine," James explained at Tonks' questioning look.

Sirius stole a chip from his cousin before snapping his fingers. "I've got it! Lets play truth or dare!"

James groaned again.

"Seriously? You do remember what happened last time, right? And don't you dare make that stupid joke again."

"You mean Siriusly," said Sirius anyway. "And yeah, Siriusly. Dora, truth or dare."

Dora sighed. She supposed she was doing this now. "Dare," she said after a moment. A misschievious grin spread across Sirius' face. Dora really didn't like that look. She was going to make a total fool of herself, whatever the hell her cousin made her do.

"I dare you," he said slowly, as if for affect. "I dare you to go back to Hogwarts with me, I teach PE, and sneak into our friend Remus' English class and see if he notices your not a student."

"Why would I do that?" Dora asked. "Besides, I can't just leave work."

"You can do paperwork somewhere else," said James, realising that this was one of Sirius' better dares he'd come up with. If it worked it would be hilarious.

"No."

"Why?" asked Sirius.

"Just no."

"Just do it! It'll be fun," said James.

"No."

Sirius fixed her with his best pleading look. "Come on, Dora."