Chapter 9 - Rescuing Harry

The only downside of Dumbledore agreeing to let Harry stay with Sirius was that they had to remain at Grimmauld Place.

Sirius could unfortunately understand the logic. When his father had lived in the house he'd spent a significant amount of time coming up with new ways to enhance its security (or at least more time than he ever spent with his sons...)

"What the hell am I going to do about her?!" Sirius asked Remus, running his hands through his hair in anguish as he stood in front of his mother's portrait.

"Do portraits take sleeping draughts?"

"No." Sirius said. "Or I'd have given her the draught of living death already."

Remus looked like he didn't know whether he wanted to laugh or not.

But it wasn't just the portraits Sirius needed to worry about…

"Kreacher will do as master wishes." The elf said bitterly as Sirius told him of the plan. "Though Kreacher does not want to, no he does not. Kreacher lives to serve the noble and most ancient house of Black, not some blood traitor brat."

Sirius glowered at the elf. "I forbid you to call him a blood traitor. Or a brat. Or… anything else that you've ever called me." There, that should cover about most of the insults.

"What would master want Kreacher to call the… human boy."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "Just call him Harry."

Sirius turned up at the Dursleys' house two days into the school holidays. Dumbledore had said 'a few days', and two was a few, wasn't it?

"Hi." He grinned at the bony, horse-faced woman who answered the door of the red-bricked suburban home Harry had given him the address for. "I'm Sirius Black."

The woman stared at him. All the colour drained from her face. And then she screamed.

"Petunia!" A large man with a walrus moustache came careening into the hall. "Petunia, what is it? Who the ruddy hell are you?!" He said on seeing Sirius.

"Sirius!" Harry came rushing into the hall.

"BOY!" The man who was presumably Vernon Dursley bellowed at him. "Who is this man?!"

"That's my godfather." Harry said, giving Sirius a nervous smile. "I told you he'd be coming to get me. Don't you remember?"

"Your godfather?!" Vernon looked back at Sirius as though he and Harry were playing a trick on him.

"Vernon." Petunia whispered, frantically tugging her husband's sleeve. "Vernon!"

"What, Petunia?" Vernon said, turning to her now.

"It's him. The man from the television. He's wanted for… murder!"

Vernon turned his piggy eyes back on Sirius. "Who are you?!" He barked.

"As I told your wife, I'm Sirius Black." Sirius said, coming over the threshold and closing the door behind him. "And as your wife told you, I've been on the run from the law for the last year. I don't carry a gun, but I do have a magic wand, so unless you want an extra head (though I assure you the one you've got appears quite thick enough already), I suggest you let your nephew leave with me now."

Sirius wondered whether the man would argue with him. And if he did, whether it would be out of fear for his nephew leaving with a total stranger (and convicted murderer) or because he couldn't bear to be told what to do by anyone. Sirius strongly suspected it would be the latter.

"I was not aware you had the authority to make any suggestions at all in my home." Vernon said indignantly.

Sirius grinned. Vernon reminded him of a hot air balloon. Just one sharp prod and he'd melt to the ground like the insignificant, over-inflated little man he really was. Now how could he manage that…

"I expect what you're not aware of could fill several cathedrals, Dursley."

Vernon spluttered. "Petunia!" He exclaimed. "What do you make of all this?!"

Petunia looked nervous. "I don't like it." She said, eyeing Sirius with great caution. "But I think the boy ought to be allowed to go."

Sirius turned to Harry. "Shall I help you pack?"

As Harry led Sirius upstairs, they heard hasty running and then a door close.

"Dudley." Harry told Sirius. "My cousin. He… doesn't like wizards."

"Sorry to hear that." Sirius said, thinking again how hard it must have been for his godson growing up in this awful house.

"This is me." Harry said, leading Sirius into his bedroom.

"Nice." Sirius said, smiling around the little room.

He helped Harry throw the few belongings he had into his school trunk. "The standard book of spells." He said, holding out the familiar textbook. "It's a classic."

Harry smiled. "I've got this too." He said, holding up a photo album. "Hagrid gave it to me in my first year."

Sirius took the book from him and opened it. He felt the familiar pain in his chest as he looked at James and Lily's smiling faces.

"There's one of you." Harry said, turning to a page with a photo of the Potters' wedding.

Blimey he looked young. But he had been young. They'd all been young. And so happy…

"Sorry." Harry said as Sirius felt his eyes burn. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's OK." Sirius said, smiling at his godson as he tucked the album carefully in the trunk. "I just miss them too, that's all."

They returned downstairs to find the Dursleys sitting on the sofa like a pair of judges on an interview panel.

"Much as it pains me to do it, I'll bring Harry back the day before term." Sirius told them.

Petunia sniffed and Vernon scowled.

"I'd tell you both what pathetic excuses for guardians you are, but now as one myself, I'll try and rise above it."

"I'd like to see you do better with the boy!" Vernon snapped.

"Well I'll give him his own bedroom and call him by his name for starters." Sirius said irritably.

"He's been nothing but trouble since the day we took him in. I just hope you don't have any relatives you don't mind getting blown up at the kitchen table!"

"As far as I'm concerned Harry's welcome to blow up as many of my relatives as he likes." Sirius said, quite honestly.

"What sort of ridiculous man are you!"

"You tell me, Dursley. You wrote the book."

Vernon got to his feet. His walrus moustache was quivering and his face was a ruddy purple. "HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT IN MY OWN HOME!" He bellowed.

Sirius looked at him and almost felt pity. How pathetic must someone's life be for them to get so riled up by personal slights like this?

But then he remembered all that Harry had told him about this man. His cruel, sometimes violent temper and his total neglect of his godson's all but most basic needs. He glared at him with quite as much ferocity as Vernon was now showing Sirius.

"If it weren't for the fact that I've just had my name cleared for murder, I'd curse you right here on the spot." He said, drawing out his wand. "I'm tempted to turn you into a snail, but as you're so closed and dull anyway it really won't make much of a difference."

Vernon was eyeing his wand warily. Sirius was pleased to see a distinct look of panic in his piggy eyes.

He tucked his wand back in his pocket. "Unlike you, Dursley, I don't pick on people I have an unfair advantage over. So I'll just settle for this instead." And he drew back his fist and punched the man hard in the face. "That's for my godson." He said and, taking Harry by the arm, they left the house.

"Sorry you didn't have a chance to say goodbye to your cousin." Sirius said as they walked, scanning the roads for a decent spot they could disapparate from as they went. "Or is that something I don't need to be sorry about?"

Harry, who hadn't stopped grinning since Sirius had punched his uncle, shook his head. "Absolutely not. I'd be quite happy if I never saw my cousin again."

Sirius could relate to his godson's sentiments entirely.

"Nice punch." Harry told him as they ducked into a side street and Sirius pulled out his wand.

"Thanks." Sirius grinned. "But I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell Dumbledore about it."

He was quite sure the headmaster would appreciate his actions just about as much as he had done during his school days, presumably even less so as he really ought to know better by now.

"Your uncle's a real…" he called Vernon something that made Harry snort with laughter. "Though I can't say I'm surprised, the way you and your dad described him. Ready?"

Harry nodded and so, taking his arm, he turned on the spot and the two of them disapparated.

"You OK?" He asked his godson as they arrived in Grimmauld Place. "It can feel a bit weird at first."

"Yeah." Harry said a little shakily.

"Come on." Sirius said and, putting an arm around him, led him up the front steps to number twelve.

…

Harry acted like a patronus to a dementor in the dark, oppressive house that was Sirius' childhood home.

Having him around made even his relatives bearable, and he became able to walk past their portraits without feeling the least bit stung by their insults.

Even Kreacher was more tolerable, though Sirius suspected this was partly due to the fact that both Remus and Harry were far more polite to the elf than he himself had ever been.

He still didn't trust the elf to cook for them though, which he tended to do himself. James' mother had taught him how when he'd stayed with the Potters and it gave him great pleasure to use what he'd learned to feed Harry now.

If Harry found it strange living now with his former teacher, he didn't let on.

He and Remus had interesting (well, interesting to them) conversations about Harry's schoolwork and now Remus was no longer his teacher, they could discuss… other matters.

"I can't believe you got away with that!" Harry laughed as Sirius and Remus told him about the time they'd hexed the Slytherins' robes by sneaking into the laundry room.

"All thanks to your dad's cloak." Sirius told him. "Prefect Remus couldn't ever risk getting detention."

"Yet prefect Remus often did." Remus said. "We frequently did get caught." He told Harry. "Yet on that occasion we didn't."

"I'm pretty sure McGonagall knew it was us." Sirius said.

"Well I think she probably suspected it was someone in Gryffindor."

The four of them had written, in ink that only showed up the next day so as not to alert the house elves, the words 'I'd rather be in Gryffindor' on the back of every Slytherin students' robes (or at least all those they'd found in the laundry room).

"I think she was secretly quite pleased."

"Slughorn definitely wasn't."

"Never seen him so angry."

"He was quite angry that time you exploded Snape's cauldron in potions."

"Which time?" He'd exploded Snape's cauldron in potions about once a month at school.

Harry stared at him. "You did what?!"

"Well, he wasn't our teacher." Sirius said with a shrug. "So it wasn't such a big deal for us."

"Why?"

"Well, because he couldn't give us detention…"

"No, I mean why did you explode his cauldron?"

Sirius frowned at Harry. "What do you mean, why? You've met him, haven't you?"

It was Remus' turn to frown at Sirius. "What Sirius means to say is that he sometimes got bored and Snape was… an easy target."

"Well cheers for making me sound like a right berk, mate."

"Pleasure."

Sirius turned to Harry. "Severus Snape was a greasy little oddball from the day we first met him on the train. He spent his whole career at Hogwarts hanging out with gits who I know turned out to be death eaters and getting his jollies off practicing dark magic. He deserved everything he got."

Ignoring Remus' look of disapproval, he got to his feet to fetch dessert. He knew his friend hadn't liked the way he and James had treated Snape while at school, but Remus had never understood what a greasy pillock Snivellus had been.

"Thanks, Sirius." Harry said, taking the treacle tart from him as he returned to the table.

Ignoring the way Harry still looked a little uneasy, he grinned. "No problem. This was your dad's favourite, this was. Your grandmother gave me the recipe. She was an angel…"

Though they didn't discuss Snape again that night, Sirius knew they surely would have to at some point.

To tell the truth, he wasn't really sure what he could say about it. Sure, maybe some of the tricks they'd played on him at school had gone a bit too far, but they'd only been kids, hadn't they?

But then that old nagging feeling, the one he did his very best to ignore, came back to the surface.

He'd tried to kill Snape. Sure, he'd only been sixteen at the time, but wasn't that old enough to know the difference between right and wrong?

Of course he'd suffered enormously for his mistake. Fortunately Dumbledore hadn't expelled him for it, but hadn't exactly gone easy on him either.

Worse than that though was seeing the look of cold disappointment in James' eyes. James hasn't spoken to him for weeks, and he had been quite sure there was no coming back from it. He'd truly gone and done it. He was exactly like his dark family.

Why had he done it? To this day he still wasn't sure. And it was that, more than anything else, that frightened him the most.

...

A/N: I explore the 'prank' (for want of a better word!) in my marauders story, but I think it's an interesting one to explore here too as I do think it plays a role in the dynamic between Sirius and Dumbledore. I think Dumbledore is the kind of wizard who forgives but doesn't forget, and as Sirius himself doesn't quite understand why he did it, it is inevitably going to be easier for others to have their doubts about him too.