Christmas morning dawned pale and drizzly, which disappointed Harry as he was really hoping to experience a White Christmas for his first one above ground. Fortunately for him this fairytale was made possible by Minerva who, upon noticing his mournful expression, cast a clever little charm on the living room as he entered, a charm that allowed for warm, dry snow to fall inside the townhouse flat. Harry spent a good hour just playing in the cotton-wool like drifts, frolicking about and having a great time.

That was until Sirius charmed a couple of snowballs to follow Harry around and perpetually bop him on the head. Ten minutes of that was quite enough for Harry, who scowled at Sirius and begged Minerva to cancel the spell, which she did with a deft sweep of her wand.

Sirius' punishment was that he had to cook breakfast. Harry watched him work at the stove, whistling away and rocking that Kiss The Cook hat that he'd conjured from somewhere. Soon the open plan kitchen was awash with the smell of frying eggs, sizzling bacon and popping, juicy sausages.

Then Harry frowned.

"Er, Sirius, why are you making so much?" Harry asked. "There's only me, you and Auntie Min."

Harry gestured towards a multi-compartment bain-marie, which Sirius was using to keep his food warm. His godfather turned his twinkling eyes on Harry.

"It's a Christmas Secret," he replied cryptically.

Harry frowned at him. "I hope it isn't the same type as putting cling film over the toilet bowl. That was a truly disgusting secret ... one I wish I'd never learned!"

Sirius barked out a laugh. "Oh no, kiddo, that was just a Christmas prank."

"Well, I'm planning my revenge," Harry moaned bitterly. "Just know that."

"I look forward to it!" Sirius hooted.

Harry left Sirius to his curious over-cooking and joined Minerva by the Christmas tree. He spent a moment looking at the real fairies darting about between the branches, swinging on the baubles and playing hide-and-seek behind the points of the star on top.

Minerva was busy tidying up the glossy wrapping paper from Harry's presents. She had gifted him two books, one a sourcebook on ancient Runes and the other a thick tome called An Idiots Guide to Advanced Magical Flight, which would be a companion gift to Sirius' broom, which was propped up in the corner behind the oversized tree.

In addition to the books, Minerva had also bought Harry a set of his very own Runestones, which she had begun teaching him how to charge.

"Each rune has a meaning, and we will get to them in good time," she was saying between casting bundles of paper into the roaring fire. "But first we need to charge them with your personal energy and magic."

"How do we do that?" Harry asked eagerly, sitting cross-legged opposite Minerva.

"The process is relatively simple to start with," Minerva went on. "You simply close your eyes, clear your mind, and hold the rune tight in your palm for three minutes. You visualise energy flowing from your skin into the crystals, infusing them with warmth and vibrancy."

"How will I know if it works?" Harry queried, turning some of the complex Runestones in his fingers.

"The Runes will vibrate with an energy that you will feel and recognise," Minerva explained. "It will be like looking in a mirror. The Runes will feel as part of you."

"Is that it? That doesn't seem so hard."

"It is only the basic level. In order to get the runes to function correctly, you will need to learn to charge them with your intent, which is a significantly more difficult practice. It will also require the use of a ritual circle, but we can build that together."

"I think you're getting a little ahead of yourself there, Minerva!" Sirius called over jovially. "You'll be turning the boy's head in circles if you carry on."

Sirius wasn't wrong. The whole thing was making Harry very dizzy. So he got up and went back to Sirius.

"Ah, good, I'm nearly done," Sirius announced. "And as you're over here you can set the table!"

Harry rather thought he walked into that one. But he acquiesced, setting three plates with cutlery and napkins. Then Sirius called over to him.

"You're missing a couple of places," he quirked.

"No, I'm not," Harry frowned. "Unless you want me to set a place for Hedwig, or a bowl for Auntie Min, just in case she decides to change into a cat halfway through!"

Harry still hadn't quite gotten used to the fact that both his guardians had the ability to transform themselves into animals. He felt slightly jealous, but also cross at his parents, his father in particular, for not showing him how to do this himself. He made a note to tell his parents off for this latest indiscretion.

Little did Harry know he'd be able to carry that out very soon.

For there was a knock at the door just then. Sirius lazily flicked his wand to open it, and Lily and James Potter strolled in, the latter's arms weighed down under yet more presents for Harry.

"Mum! Dad!" Harry yelped in surprise, leaping up. "What are you doing here?"

"What a greeting!" James laughed. "I would have hoped for Merry Christmas, but then again you have been living with Sirius for five months already. I should have known your manners wouldn't survive the experience!"

"But some happy tears or a hug will just have to do!" Lily added with a grin, kneeling down as Harry raced to her and threw his arms around her neck.

"Merry Christmas, Mum!" Harry beamed. "You too, Dad!"

Harry clobbered James around the middle, which nearly sent his armful of presents toppling to the floor.

"Easy there, son!" James chuckled. "You don't want to break all these gifts, do you?"

"No, Dad, sorry," Harry grinned. "What did you get me?"

James ruffled his hair. "How about we open them together after breakfast? I'm starving and this all smells so good."

"I'll set the extra places!" Harry volunteered, hurrying to grab plates and knives and forks.

"How was the trip?" asked Minerva, joining James, Lily and Harry at the dining table.

"Strange," Lily replied. "It's been years since I Apparated. Now I remember how much I hated it!"

"I'm not a fan, either," James concurred. "But now that we've gotten rid of that bothersome child of ours we can become fully-fledged Muggles. I might even rent out Harry's old room and save up for a sports car. Something fun. Like a Porsche."

Sirius came over and placed the food-heavy bain-marie between James and Harry with a pointed cough, that the youngest Potter was convinced contained a masked 'mid-life crisis' whisper somewhere under Sirius' throat-clearing gruff. The teasing wink Harry received from his Godfather all but confirmed this suspicion.

"I would have thought," Minerva began, after helping herself to toast and bacon. "That you might be planning a way to return to our world, now that Harry will soon be out in the open."

"Out in the open?" Harry queried. "What do you mean?"

"The 'murder' of Lily and James Potter still ranks as one of the most dramatic events of the last decade," Minerva explained. "It coincided with the defeat of The Dark Lord You-Know-Who and the suicide of his most feared and celebrated Dark General -"

"- that would be me!" Sirius grinned through a mouthful of scrambled egg. "Though I prefer Minion Number One, if you don't mind!"

"You're a little number two still, I see," Lily quirked from across the table.

"Hey, I don't have to take this abuse from the likes of you," Sirius laughed.

"The likes of me?" Lily replied with raised eyebrows. "Is that a slight on my blood status?"

"Nah, just your hair colour, Lil'-Lost-Lil," Sirius retorted with a cheeky grin. "You know I've always been riddled with ginger-vitis."

"Now I know that isn't true," James teased. "Remember that time you dated Molly Prewett?"

"Urgh, don't remind me," Sirius grimaced. "Worst week of my life!"

"Who was Molly Prewett?" Harry chuckled, eager to know.

"We went to Hogwarts together," James clarified. "Hufflepuff girl, Gobstones Club President. She had the biggest crush on Sirius. All because he saved her from an Acromantula once!"

"Acro-what?" Harry queried, in the direction of his mother.

"Giant spiders," Lily replied, to which Harry shuddered like a leaf in a breeze. "There is a whole colony of them in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts."

Harry suddenly felt a little squeamish and his sausages - which had been delicious up to that point - didn't seem quite so appetising anymore.

"A colony of giant spiders?" Harry parroted. "Is that place at Eton College still on the table!?"

James and Sirius laughed together at Harry's terrified expression.

"They don't interact with the school, and the Forest is off-limits to students anyway," James went on.

"Not that such a trifling rule would stop the likes of you two," Minerva frowned sternly.

Harry gasped in shock. "You went running around in a forest full of giant spiders!" he cried in horror. "That's so reckless!"

"Not to mention idiotic," Lily added, scrunching her nose playfully at James.

"Well we had to have somewhere to blow off steam ... and to perfect our Animagus transformations, of course," Sirius explained.

"Why did you become animals?" asked Harry. "Don't get me wrong, it's a cool skill and I hope I get to do it one day, but do all magical people do it?"

"No, it's a skill that most magicals don't ever perfect," Minerva stepped in. "I became a cat because my late husband could transform into a British Shorthair, so we wanted to experience time together in feline form. These two, however, did it for slightly different reasons."

"But equally as valid," James argued.

"And we picked way cooler animals than little pussycats," Sirius grinned at Harry.

"A dog and a stag," Harry stated. "Why such big ones though?"

"We had to," James explained. "To control our friend, Remus. That was the whole point of us learning how to transform in the first place."

"Why? What was he?"

"A werewolf," Lily revealed. "Remus became a savage beast once a month."

Harry gasped in yet greater shock.

"Whereas James was savage pretty much every day!" Sirius teased.

"James was an idiot for not telling me," Lily huffed crossly. "He only confessed when I confronted him about why he kept disappearing once a month. I thought he was cheating on me, or that maybe he was actually a girl himself, and kept vanishing at his time of the month!"

Now Minerva took a turn at laughing, which stunned Harry greatly as he wasn't sure he'd ever heard her laugh like that before. It was a belly-rolling chuckle that suited her very well. Harry wished she'd do it more often.

"So you both became large animals," Harry went on. "And that was how Sirius saved this Molly girl from the big spiders?"

"Well ... sort of," James snickered. "You see, Molly was seriously interested in Sirius and wanted to know who her competition was. There were even rumours that she was going to use a love potion on him, if he wouldn't agree to go on a date with her."

"Apparently she was quite good at brewing them," Lily quipped in.

"So I decided to put her off me," Sirius took over. "I only ever meant to upset her a bit. So I planted a rumour that I was going to sneak out to the Forbidden Forest with some girl or another, and hoped that Molly would follow me. Then I went to the Forest and laid out a trail of shoes and socks and girly underwear that we swiped from the laundry room, hoping that Molly would find them and get the hint, get angry and leave me alone."

"Only it was Acromantula breeding season," James laughed. "The trail went too far into the trees, the spiders came and nearly made off with Molly, so Sirius had to go and rescue her."

"Which made her fall even more madly in love with him!" Lily chortled. "He was her hero!"

"I thought I owed her a date after that," Sirius completed. "So we went out for a week or so. But I played the demure card, pretended all my bluster was just a cover for my insecurities and inexperience and Molly got bored after that. Said something about wanting a man not a mouse. It damaged my reputation for about a month, but that was a fair trade in my view, just to get her off my back."

Harry screwed up his features and tried to process all the silly games older people played. Then he finally got back on point. He turned to Minerva once more.

"You were saying about me being out in the open soon," Harry began. "What did you mean by that?"

"Only that your family name is famous in the magical world, due to the circumstances surrounding your parent's faux-demise," Minerva explained. "But, once you are exposed to the world at Hogwarts, everyone will know that what they know might not be the same as the truth."

"I think I see," Harry mused. "But, hold on ... wont that make me famous, too? If I survived when my parents didn't?"

"Well, yes ... I suppose it will."

"I'm not sure I want to be famous," Harry grumbled with a frown. "It will be hard enough to settle in as it is. If I have to deal with fame on top of all that, it's going to make it a nightmare!"

"He has a fair point, Minerva," James agreed seriously. "We are going to have to protect him from that somehow, once he enrols at Hogwarts."

"I concur," Minerva nodded. "Which is why I was asking about your own return. That would certainly deflect attention from Harry."

"But at the same time throw much of the wider magical community into disarray," Lily argued.

"I don't see how," Minerva replied.

"Just think of it, Minerva," Lily went on. "The magical world believes Voldemort was defeated, along with Sirius, around the time we disappeared. But there has never been any concrete proof to support this, only Voldemort's absence."

"And I am still considered to be a criminal at large," Sirius pointed out.

Lily nodded in acknowledgement. "And James tells me that there is still deep-rooted fear that Voldemort will some day return, that there wasn't enough human left of him to kill. If we suddenly turn up alive and well that may ignite all those latent fears."

"Some may even tie our miraculous survival into Voldemort's defeat," James added. "And it wont take long for some bright sleuth to work out that Harry fits the criteria of all those children Voldemort was identifying as threats to him. Hell, some may even view him as a rival Dark Lord, on account of his survival."

"What criteria?" Harry insisted urgently. Suddenly, his future didn't seem so bright and wonderful as he had begun to believe.

"Voldemort was raining a war of Biblical terror on magical Britain," Sirius took over. "He was demanding that the Government surrender to him, but they didn't. So in response, he threatened to unleash Seven Plagues on Magical Britain, to bring the country to its knees in front of him. He had carried out six already, and declared that at the end of July - exactly one year after his proclamation - he would bring about Plague Seven."

"Which was?"

"The Death of the Firstborn," Lily replied with a shudder. "You had been born the previous year, so you were one of the names on Voldemort's Hit List. So that prompted our escape."

"And now you are on the cusp of your return," said Minerva. "Or, at least, Harry is. How do you hope to explain that? Because you will have to somehow."

"We can just say he survived the attack, and was sent to live with my Muggle sister," Lily suggested. "That will explain his naivety about the magical world and his own story. We will leave people to make up the details any way they like. It will buy us time to work out something longer-term."

"And in the meantime I can save for that vroom-vroom!" James beamed. "I'm thinking I'll get it in a nice metallic red with antimony alloys."

"Don't forget the furry dice," Sirius reminded him.

"The cherry on the cake!" James grinned back.

Just then there was another knock at the door. This time Sirius got up to answer it. Two people entered the flat with jovial cries of 'merry Christmas'; the first one was the oldest man Harry had ever seen. His silver hair and beard were so long that he could tuck them into his belt. He wore hobnailed boots and half-moon spectacles, behind which sat a startling pair of electric blue eyes, that twinkled with wit and cleverness.

"Albus!" Minerva cried, standing up to greet the Hogwarts Headmaster. "What a lovely surprise!"

Harry noticed his parents seemed a little less pleased to see the newcomer. There was definitely a coolness about them when they greeted Albus Dumbledore, who introduced himself to Harry with a smile and a shake of his wrinkled hand.

But Harry forgot him in a moment, for his travelling companion had entered the flat now. And if Dumbledore was the perhaps the oldest man Harry had ever seen, this man was unquestionably the biggest. He looked too huge to even be allowed. The giant had to duck low and squeeze himself through the door just to get in.

"Merry Christmas!" he boomed as he slammed the door shut behind him, shaking the whole building. "Hope we ain't disturbin' ya. We were jus' takin' the puppy for a walk and thought we'd stop by!"

Then Harry saw the puppy, yelped in terror and leapt behind his mother for protection.

"Mum!" Harry hissed. "That dog ... it has three-heads!"