Chapter 16 - Godric's Hollow

Though of course not fully resolved, Remus and Harry seemed to have forgiven Sirius for his attitude towards Snape and refusal to accept the greasy moron hadn't deserved everything he'd got at Hogwarts.

He was careful to avoid talking about the Slytherin pillock in sharing anecdotes from their school days however, which they did a lot now Harry was staying with them. He did his best to focus on the more harmless fun they'd had with his dad in the castle instead.

"Of course the invisibility cloak came in handy." Sirius told Harry, who he knew had inherited James' cloak from Dumbledore in his first year. "We could do pretty much anything we wanted under that."

"Anything you wanted, I hasten to add." Said Remus.

Sirius laughed. "Remus likes to pretend he didn't enjoy our nighttime expeditions. But I know full well he delighted in them really."

"I didn't mind the time we broke into the prefects' bathroom. That bath tub was quite something."

"I know!" Harry said eagerly. "I went in there to help me figure out the egg's clue!"

"Of course Sirius had to do more than enjoy the swim…"

Sirius grinned. He'd taken the opportunity to write some 'personal notes' from his cousin Narcissa on the bathroom walls. Long 'diary entries' about her secret love for Professor Slughorn and a confession to her fellow prefects that her long blonde, perfectly curled hair was in fact a wig.

"She'd just started dating Malfoy at the time." Sirius told Harry. "She got me in trouble back at home by telling her parents it had nearly ruined her chances with him when he read it. Of course having their daughter married off to a Malfoy was more important than my health and sanity."

"You would have been healthier and more sane had you not done it." Remus told him.

"Yes but incredibly dull…"

"How did she know it was you?" Harry asked.

Sirius laughed. "Who else would it have been? No one would dare make fun of Narcissa at Hogwarts apart from me. She was far too proud and knew almost as many curses as Bellatrix did. But there was a brilliant time your dad and I…"

He felt it was safe to tell Harry about the time they'd pelted the Slytherin girl with dungbombs (helped along by Peeves) from a hiding place at the top of the marble staircase as she was coming out of the great hall.

"It was brilliant as she was surrounded by people at the time." Sirius grinned reminiscently. "Of course they all ran a mile. Slytherins." He snorted.

"It's not like I was doing anything wrong though." He added quickly, keen to make his position clear. "It was revenge on her for telling my family I was still talking to her sister Andromeda. They blasted her off the family tree when she married a muggleborn, Ted Tonks. I wasn't supposed to have anything to do with her after that. She delighted in telling my parents we'd been in touch over dinner one night. As I'm sure you can imagine, they didn't take it well."

"Was blood status that important to them?!" Harry asked incredulously.

Sirius nodded. "I'd say it was the most important thing. It's why they hated me being in Gryffindor so much. And why they disliked that I was friends with your dad. The Potters were almost as bad as the Weasleys for being blood traitors."

"Sirius was wise enough not to tell them he was also friends with a werewolf." Remus added.

Sirius grinned. "I wouldn't have minded." He said to Harry. "But I still had to live with them three months a year. And they gave me enough grief for being friends with James."

"He wasn't that bad, was he?"

Sirius smiled and shook his head. "I honestly can't explain how great your dad was."

Remus grinned too. "There was no one like him."

Sirius laughed. "D'you remember that time he woke McGonagall up one night when he'd been out night flying?"

"He used to use alohamora on the castle doors to get back in but one night Filch got wise to him and tightened security."

"He ended up having to scale the castle looking for an open window."

"And guess which one he found?"

"No way! McGonagall's?!"

"The worst luck I think any Hogwarts student has ever had."

"I don't know what traumatised him more. Seeing her in her nightdress or the bollocking she gave him for it."

"Yelled so loud she woke up Flitwick. He came running in still in his nightcap."

"I think he thought someone was being murdered."

"Then him and McGonagall had a row over favouritism."

"She gave James a week's detention. Just the week after the match against Ravenclaw."

"He didn't seem to think that was fair."

"Always a stickler for fairness was old Flitwick."

"So he gave James detention for waking him up."

"And James told him really it had been McGonagall who'd done that."

"Which didn't go down very well with either of them…"

"I'm not surprised…" Harry said.

"But still, Gryffindor won the game."

"So everyone was happy in the end."

"Except Flitwick and the Ravenclaws."

"Except them, naturally."

"I don't know how none of you were expelled." Harry said. "Especially you, Sirius."

To be completely honest, neither did he…

"You're one to talk, Harry James Potter." He said with mock sternness. "After all the hijinks you got up to over your first three years."

"None of those were my fault!" Harry said defensively. "We had to fly the car or we couldn't have got to Hogwarts, and I couldn't help it that Voldemort kept trying to do me in!"

"I'm not sure Voldemort forced you to go to Hogsmeade without a permission form…" Remus said wryly.

Sirius laughed. He couldn't very well tell Harry off for doing the exact same thing he'd done in his third year, could he?

"You do need to be careful though." He said, thinking of Karkaroff. "You're safest at Hogwarts. You mustn't go wandering off too much. Especially not alone."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yes dad."

Sirius grinned. Harry blushed. Remus smiled.

"I didn't think." Harry said quickly. "I just…"

"It's OK." Sirius said, pulling him into a one-armed hug. "I'm not your dad, no one could replace him, but I'm glad I can be the next best thing. And you can call me whatever you want. Believe me, there's very little I haven't been called before in my life."

This was a first though…

"It was just a slip of the tongue." Harry said. "You were just being all protective, and no one's ever really done that for me before…"

Sirius wanted to hug him and never let go.

"I'm not going anywhere." He promised.

Towards the end of the Easter break, Sirius and Remus took Harry to the place where his parents' cottage had been.

Sirius had to steel himself several times on the journey there. How familiar was this path? How many times had he been here to visit his best friend?

Seeing the cottage decimated like it had been that fateful night made it feel as though the last thirteen years hadn't happened.

He could have been twenty one again. Having just found Wormtail missing from his safe place, he'd rushed at once to Godric's Hollow. His heart had stopped on seeing the place. It had felt like a dream. It couldn't possibly have been real.

He felt Remus' hand squeeze his shoulder as they approached. He closed his eyes and tried not to remember.

James. Lily. Dead. The lively, optimistic, brave people he'd known so well. Who he'd seen so happy just days before…

He began to shake. He felt Remus' grip on him tighten, though he was sure this couldn't be any easier for his friend.

"You OK, Harry?" He managed to ask his godson, though his eyes were still fixed resolutely ahead of him.

"Yeah." Harry said, and Sirius turned to look at him.

He was reading some of the writing that had appeared as they'd approached the house.

Messages of regret and sadness for Lily and James and of support and encouragement for Harry.

Sirius moved over to read some of them too. His eyes filled with tears and he put an arm around Harry's shoulders. "They're not really gone." He said quietly.

Harry nodded. He'd seen the statue of them on the little village square with the epithet 'the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death'.

James had been a very pragmatic, down to earth person, far less likely than Remus or Sirius to philosophise on life or what, if anything, came after. But these words Sirius knew James believed. He had known there was more to life than what met the eye. Isn't that why he had fought so hard in the first wizarding war? He was fighting for something that went beyond words. That had a force and a power so strong it could transcend anything, including the arbitrary boundaries between life and death.

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death… Of course it was. He had realised there was really no such thing.

Harry nodded. "I know." He said a little thickly. "I just… miss them."

Remus blew his nose. "They'd have been so proud of you." He said. "I wish you could have known how much they loved you."

Harry put an arm around both men. "I think I have an idea." He said.

They went for a bite to eat in the local pub to cheer themselves up after that.

It was an odd place, a mixture of magical and muggle folk, though the muggles who were there certainly weren't like the stiff muggles in suits Sirius had so often encountered in London.

It was in fact hard to tell them apart, and some of them seemed to be mixing with the witches and wizards, even wearing robes themselves.

"It's possibly a violation of the Statute of Secrecy." The witch at the bar told Sirius with a shrug as he asked her about the set up. "But these muggles aren't like the others, and they know to keep our world a secret. Many of them feel they've been living in secret for years too."

She told Sirius of the cosmic energies around Glastonbury (not too far from them), and how many of the muggles who lived there felt the magic emanating from Godric's Hollow and channeled it into music and other spiritual practices.

"Finding out there were still witches and wizards among us wasn't too shocking for most of them." The witch told Sirius with a laugh. "Old Bill over there told me it was a blessed relief when I finally came clean to him." She indicated a man with long hair, a tie-dye T-shirt and yellowish glasses. "He said it made the world make sense at last. Can you believe it? I imagine not all muggles think that way though…"

"I know the Dursleys certainly don't." Harry muttered.

The busy atmosphere of the pub did help lift their mood. Taking an interest in Bill, they engaged him in conversation and found out that he was from the west coast of America.

"I gotta say, I do miss the sunshine." Bill admitted when they asked him why the hell he left. "But I couldn't stick around after Nixon was elected. Watergate… Vietnam… Nah man, the energies were moving me East and you gotta go where the magic flows."

"What a shame he can't do any magic." Harry said as they walked home. "He's like a squib. Lives around witches and wizards but not magical himself."

"Oh I dunno." Sirius said with a smile. "I'd say he's got more magic than sodding… Mulciber." Of course he'd been about to say Snivellus.

"Certainly the kind that will help defeat Voldemort anyway." Remus, who looked like he knew exactly what Sirius had just stopped himself saying, added.

"Which is really the only kind I care about." Sirius said.

"What about all those flutterby bushes you learned to prune at Hogwarts?" Remus teased.

"Or the dancing teacups." Harry added.

"Turning a mouse into a snuffbox is a vital life skill."

"Or a matchstick into a needle."

Sirius snorted. "Moony, you know full well my favourite subject at Hogwarts was muggle studies. Everything else they taught us was bloody pointless. Though I have to admit, learning to disapparate was pretty handy."

"They got someone external in to teach us that. Wilkie Twycross of the short robes, remember?"

"Vividly." Sirius said with a shudder. "But that just proves my point doesn't it? The most useful stuff we learned at Hogwarts was the stuff they couldn't even teach us themselves."

"Defence against the dark arts with Professor Lupin was very good." Harry said fairly.

"Yeah and a decent subject and teacher was such an alien concept to the school a year was all they could manage."

"Just make sure you listen to what Alastor's teaching you this year." Remus told Harry, choosing to ignore Sirius' comment. "Sirius is right, you need to be careful. Funny things have been happening and it's important you look after yourself."

"I will." Harry said. "You don't need to worry."

They both went to see him back off to Hogwarts at the end of the Easter break. It had been wonderful having Harry to stay and Sirius knew he'd miss him dearly. Having his godson around had given his life meaning again. He didn't know what he'd do if anything happened to him.

"I'm going to bloody kill him."

It was a couple of weeks after Harry had gone back to Hogwarts. His godson had written to tell him he'd found Barty Crouch wandering around in the forest when he'd gone off for a private chat with the Durmstrang champion, Viktor Krum.

What the hell he thought he was doing out of bounds with Karkaroff's student he could explain to Sirius when he turned up at Hogwarts and dragged him out of the Gryffindor common room to yell at him.

"Please don't do that." Remus said from the kitchen table, where he was, as usual, taking the matter calmly in his stride. "Let me see the letter."

He read it with a frown. "What was Barty Crouch doing at Hogwarts when he's too ill to go in to work?"

"Merlin knows. I don't even care right now. What the hell was he thinking?! I'm going to have a word with him."

He made to move over to the fire but Remus put out an arm to stop him. "Sirius, this isn't the right way to do it."

Oh not again.

He sighed and turned to his friend. "Alright oh wise wolffish one. What would you have me do? Send him a curse by mail?"

"Why does everything have to involve cursing someone with you?"

"I'm joking. Obviously."

"You can send him a letter. Tell him you're glad he's alright but that he's not to go wandering off like this again."

"Or else I'll curse him."

"If you must."

"He's such a bloody idiot." Sirius muttered as he summoned a parchment and quill. "Anything could have happened to him. And don't look at me like that." He said, looking up to see Remus smiling wryly at him. "I wasn't that bad at school."

"Speaking as someone who knew both you and Harry at Hogwarts, I can categorically say you were ten times worse."

Whether he was being a hypocrite or not, Sirius didn't care. He sent the owl back to Harry making him promise not to do anything that stupid again, to which he had a reply the next day.

Don't worry Sirius, I won't go running around the forbidden forest out of hours in the company of any more dangerous creatures…

"Cheeky sod." Sirius said on reading the letter, which was clearly a reference to his and the others' becoming animagi in their fifth year.

He was grinning though. He had to admit he appreciated how comfortable Harry clearly felt with him (and how he obviously didn't fear being sent a curse back by him).

Remus smiled on reading the note too. "Oh you wouldn't have it any other way though." He said, which was of course perfectly true.