A/N: It has been more than 10 years since I last posted on this account, which is pretty wild. I don't even dare to look at the story I wrote here (I felt loving cringe for my profile too!)

I felt the need to write something as a relief or warm-up before I do my academic writing. This story has been sitting around on my computer in different drafts for many years now, the oldest draft dating back to 2016. So, I've taken it upon myself to challenge the ideas that I have.

I do not own the characters and world that JK Rowling created. With this piece of fiction, I wish to perhaps extend and elaborate on certain points. Maybe, and only maybe, I can slowly take back the world that I once felt like home to me. The story is planned to be a SiriusxOC story but in the process of writing it can be a number of things.

So, without further ado, I'll see you at the end. :D

Any peace that she had that day was immediately interrupted.

The little kindergartener stomped into the room and punched a teddy bear. Eliza startled. She was setting the table for lunchtime. Quickly, she walked over to the child, holding a tantrum just as the child proceeded to throw the plastic plates off the table.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Eliza got down on her knees and stopped a plate from falling. The other plates clattered, not that it mattered, as they bounced off the floor. The child had tears streaming down her face, her cheeks flushed with red, as her little fists hit Eliza's chest and grabbed the apron she wore.

Eliza said nothing as the child hit Eliza's chest once more. It felt like nothing. At some point, the anger in the child ran out, and she was left sniffling.

"What's wrong?" Eliza asked.

"Ms," the child, Ari, looked down at her shoes and sniffed. "They won't let me play with them."

'They' were the children of the Kindergarten group. During the first break, Eliza observed a small ring of children and a lone figure walking past that morning. She wondered if the other caretakers had noticed it, but she hadn't had time to think about it until now.

"Ari," Eliza began and wiped a tear away. "How does that make you feel?"

"It burns here," Ari sniffed and pointed a finger to her heart. "I don't like it. I want it to stop."

"You are sad," Eliza says, putting a name to the feeling. This can also make you angry. You don't know why they won't let you play, right?"

It was the same game each time, every week. Last week, it happened with one of the boys. A lot of children didn't know any better. She picked up the teddy Ari punched, gently handing it back. "Being angry is okay, but don't let it make you do things you wouldn't do. And do not ever hurt things. You could hurt yourself and other people."

"Remember to say how you really feel, okay? It feels better that way. We can't read your thoughts," Eliza reminded.

"That's not true, missus. You can," Ari said in a small voice and clutched her teddy bear tighter. I'm sorry I made a mess," Ari looked around in shame. It wasn't much—a few plastic plates—none of them had food on them.

"Let's pick up the plates together, shall we? And if the others are mean to you again, I'll have a good talking down to them."

They cleaned the plastic plates from the floor and neatly stacked them onto the table. Then, Eliza took Ari's hand, and they both walked outside to enjoy the last bits of the break time. The children were still playing ring around the Rosie.

"Do you want to join them today?"

Ari shook her head and buried her face in Eliza's leg.

"That's okay, dear. Do you want to go on the slide?"

She would keep an eye on it, Eliza thought to herself. She would not tolerate bullying, much less if it was a one-day thing.

Eliza Soraya Shafiq has lived in Surrey for nearly ten years now. Each morning, she'd grab a cup of coffee and croissant from the bakery around the corner before setting up in the kitchen of the Kindergarten. When her shift was over, she'd do the shopping for her (not directly related) aunt Arabella Figgs and then head back home. The evening would be filled with the silent sound of the television or soft music played on her radio as she read something or filled her mind with endless thoughts. It was a quiet life, one she chose for herself after all the disappointments she experienced.

Many of her co-workers eyed the ring on the finger, but she never answered the questions about it. Eliza paid no mind to the gossip. It was only talk, after all.

"You alright, auntie?" Eliza settled the groceries on the table. "I wasn't sure if you wanted to make stroganoff or goulash, so I bought both."

Arabella shuffled into the room, eyeing her and the bags on the table.

"It's like you could read my mind, darling," Arabella seemed content. "I do feel like eating stroganoff, but I cook for myself, you. You don't need to run after me all the time, you know that. I am perfectly capabale."

Eliza shook her head. "Let me do it. You can't stand that long."

She got to cooking while Arabella helped with the garnish. Eliza looked out from the kitchen. Every time she saw the cookie-cutter gardens, the big families, and the spotless houses, she wished to share it with someone. Maybe she would have had it were it not for the pains of the past.

Listen to yourself, she caught herself. Blimey, you're only 33.

She stopped Arabella from getting up when something fell from the counter. "It's alright, Arabella. I got it."

Arabella shook her head. "You know, you should get out there again," she said, following Eliza's gaze to the family across the street that had gotten out of their car. "You need to stop taking care of people too much. You should move on. You have a nice life, a rather comfortable career. Go on a few dates, or else you will end up like me."

"Auntie!" Eliza felt scandalized. Arabella gave her a look to tell her.

"Out with it. I'm a spinster and a squib. You say what's on your mind, you know, you will regret it one day, Eliza," Arabella chided. "All the things you thought and wanted to say. Besides, I need more stories of your life that isn't just children spilling food and having tantrums."

Eliza spluttered. The last date she had tried to go on ended quite bad. The guy had turned out to be double-timing two dates and left her at the bar saying sorry to the other date.

"No," Eliza said defiantly. "I've had my fair share of the dating world."

Dinner went by quite. Once the new episode of East Enders was finished, Eliza left. On her way out, she took a look down Privet Drive, where the son of her dead best friend lived in house number 4.

She didn't know how Harry Potter was faring, but she knew he was alive, and sometimes, that was enough for her.

That was her life now. Work, a visit, and nothing more. It was the routine she adhered to each day for ten years. Always the same walk, same bus, same cup of coffee, same salary.

It was the best gift she could have.

But that night as she walked down the streets, an unsettling feeling overcame her. She felt like she was being watched. Eliza quickened the pace, holding a hand around the pepper spray and Swiss army knife she kept in her pockets. It had been years since she carried her wand around with her. A knife and spray were enough. There was next to no crime in Little Whinging. She shouldn't be worried.

Which was precisely why she was starting to get worried. She trusted her survival instinct.

Eliza was almost at her door. It was chilly outside. She turned around to check if anyone was watching as she put in her keys.

There.

A pair of eyes gleamed and lurked in the bushes. But the eyes were those of an animal. It could very much be her neighbour Ernie's cat. She relaxed.

But only just a bit. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. Something was off.

It irked her so much that it kept her up during the night. After a few tosses and turns, Eliza got out of bed and stomped downstairs to make herself a hot chocolate drink. As the kettle was boiling, she looked outside the window of her house only to see those beady, cold grey eyes still staring at her from the bush.

Uneasiness crept up on her soul the longer she stared at them. Leaving the house to check was a move that someone in a horror movie would make. She was not going to leave the house. Instead, she locked the doors – a first for her stay in Privet Drive – and, in her room, cast an eye on the trunk at the foot of her bed. Her wand was there. If anything happened, it would be fine. The house had a protective spell, especially against unwanted visitors crossing the threshold.

But later, when she looked out the window again, the beady eyes were gone.

The following day, her bouts of worrying were given a name. The news sounded with an emergency broadcast.

We are here to report that a prisoner has broken out. The population is being warned that this man, Sirius Black, is highly dangerous and is armed with a gun. Should you see him -

The hairs on her neck stood up once more, and the mention of the name startled her.

Ouch!

She dropped the knife, sucking the blood on her finger. She stared at the radio as though it was taking the mick.

The gears in her head turned, and it clicked.

Those eyes she saw last night. They hadn't been just any animal. It couldn't have been.

It was him.

She should have known those grey eyes like the back of her hand.

It was Sirius.

She felt the bile creep up her throat. Eliza would have thrown up right then and there. She should have called in sick suddenly, but that was nonsense. It was the last day of school, surely she wouldn't break her long streak of not being sick. But she needed something, anything to keep her distracted from her thoughts and the dreadful feeling that settled in her stomach.

The drive looked as calm as it had ever been, and the streets were damp from last night's rain.

But perhaps the predictability of her route was not the way to go, Eliza thought as she pulled on a mackintosh. Instead, she rang a taxi to work. The chopping sounds in the kitchen brought her no comfort, knowing that every door creak could be someone, perhaps someone sinister.

"Any plans for the summer, Eliza?" one of the caretakers asked. "You're looking a little bit peaky today. You should head up to Brighton this summer. The sun will do you good."

She stopped. Yes, she needed to leave Surrey. That was an excellent idea.

"Yes, that's it. I'll head up to Yorkshire."

Yorkshire was far out of her regular route, and no one would think to look for her there.

"Yorkshire? That's highly questionable but, alright," the other caretaker shrugged. "D'yah have a lover there or somethin'?"

It did not dawn on her until later that Yorkshire was where a former friend lived, closely related to her current predicament.

As Eliza stood outside the Kindergarten that afternoon, waving the children goodbye for the summer, little Ari ran up to her again, rubbing her face into Eliza's leg. She felt herself calm down.

"What is it, Ari?"

"I'll miss you, Missus Eliza," Ari muttered. "I'll bring you a stone from Turkey."

"I think that's illegal, Ari," Eliza smiled.

"I-illegal?" Ari's eyes seemed to glisten with mischief. "Wots that?"

"Ariana," her mother scolded. "Don't pester Ms. Eliza. I'm sure she doesn't have time to listen about our travels."

Eliza let out a small laugh. "I'll always have time for them, Ma'am."

Ari went off to say goodbye to the other caretakers and her friends. They were being nice to her again, which lifted a weight off Eliza's shoulders.

"Do you have any?" Ari's mother asked. "Children I mean. You are good with them."

Eliza didn't have children, but she was always surrounded by them. From her cousins, both her muggle and wizard ones, to the children at St. Mungo's and the Order.

"I've always taken care of children," Eliza answered truthfully. I don't have any of my own."

"Ah, well, you're still young," Ari's mother noted and nodded towards Eliza's ring. "I'm sure you and your mister will have little ones soon."

I doubt it, but she didn't say it out loud. Instead, she smiled.

When the cars left, Eliza looked around and, as hastily as she could, packed up her things in the Kindergarten and left for her house. She ran up to the house door, and just as she was about to make it to the front door, she heard a crack behind her sound.

Sh –

"You know, Ms. Shafiq, I was expecting a far more fascinating arrival."

The voice was calm, familiar. All the tension melted from her body, and she slumped against the door frame, her heart beating against her chest. With his half-crescent book glasses, the man in question looked at her with humour.

"I thought your place would be so safe a curse breaker couldn't come in."

"Those were different times, Albus," Eliza cleared her throat and opened the door. She needed to have some manners for her old professor. "Tea?"

Albus Dumbledore had not aged a single day, but it was hard when you were already ancient-looking. The man must be at least a century old, a grand age for a wizard of his calibre.

"Gladly...you don't happen to have any lemon sherbets, do you? You always had a jar of them in your old place."

Eliza nodded.

"Take off your shoes while you're in the house, Albus," she called out.

Eliza went on to make a teapot of Albus's favourite tea, also lemon-flavoured. She noted her old professor looking around the house. There was her muggle education diploma, a picture of her hand and her father, and a picture that she had taken in the summer of '79.

"Nothing is moving," he noted. "This is..." he pointed to a picture.

"My father and I," she finished his sentence.

"Fine man he was, Mr. Luna," Dumbledore nodded. "Never met a muggle so fascinated by wizardry. I see you're honoring him a lot."

"Mhmm, he's still alive if you're wondering", Eliza agreed. Dumbledore only sent the occasional letter and, upon her move to Surrey, lectured her on how to keep an eye on Harry without actually being there in person. The old headmaster had no time for pleasantries about her life. She observed him taking in the state of her house.

"To what do I owe this visit, Albus?" she asked.

"I think you already know why I am here," he folded his hands before him, right to business.

"I am not harboring Black if that is what you're on about," Eliza frowned as she sat down across from him.

"I don't doubt that, after the betrayal that you experience," Albus held his hands up. "But this is on the topic of Sirius, I shall be fraink: I think he'll come for you."

She thought the night before, and a shiver went down her spine. Sirius had already been here. He had a chance to kill her – multiple, given that her front door was open– but he didn't.

He could have killed her right then and there.

He picked up the picture of Eliza and her father. "Fudge thinks that he has gone mad in Azkaban. Black will come after Harry, one way or another. And as you may know, you are standing between him and Harry. If he knows you are here, he will come for you first."

Eliza took a sharp breath though her doubts rang. "He wouldn't."

"Are you sure?" Dumbledore tapped the picture, and just like that, it came alive. The face of Eliza's father came to life as he spun Eliza around in the picture. Her heart clenched. The photo was taken at Lily and James's wedding. From the corner of the photograph, a pale hand showed up. Sirius caught her from the spin, and they nearly fell over. "Hmm, a freezing charm."

Dumbledore tapped it again. It froze, this time in a different position. Eliza was mid-spin between her father and Sirius. She wished that Dumbledore would turn it back to its original state.

"I see that you're not carrying your wand with you. You didn't use magic for tea, though."

"I've had no real use for it, Albus."

"Indeed, in a place like Surrey where only a Squib and the Boy Who Lived reside," Dumbledore sighed. "It seems you got the peace and quiet you wanted."

"For a high price," Eliza reminded him. "Albus, tell me. Do you know how he did it? How did he escape?"

"We don't know. Cornelius Fudge is rather in outrage. I was hoping you might know something I don't." He looked at her through his half-crescent moon glasses. She felt like she was being put on trial for a crime.

"I know as much as you, Albus."

Eliza did not like thinking about Sirius. She had locked the memories of him away in the deepest corners of her mind, never to see the light. Any thought of Sirius threatened the secure blanket she had around herself.

"You used to know him, lived with him. Loved him. Surely, is there not a secret that he didn't tell anyone else?" Albus noted. "Did you really not know?"

Here we go again.

"Any information," Eliza said forcefully. "About Sirius Black was already given to the ministry years ago. Where I was, if I knew, what I was eating that day – I don't know anything more. No amount of revisiting my thoughts will give new information. He mistrusted both Remus and me. You could give me the truth serum and I would tell you the same."

Albus took a sip of his tea. "And yet you still argued for a trial."

"Because people deserve JUSTICE, even if someone is guilty," Eliza said in frustration. "Some Death Eaters got off the hook just because of money and an imperius curse? That's bullboppy and you know the Wizarding justice system is a sham. By that standard, they should have allowed someone from the Black family a trial. It would have given the Minsitry the 'Trial of the Century' and the publicity they needed back then," she grumbled.

Eliza had wanted a trial for Sirius. She wanted the facts, but Barty Crouch stood stubborn as a tree no matter what she did. Everything fell apart the days after Lily and James died. She was the one who dealt with the funeral arrangements for the Potters, brought the Order of Merlin to Peter Pettigrew's mother, and ran around looking for Remus, who disappeared. By the time it was the third of November, she had broken down and left the country to live with her father.

Dumbledore nodded. "You're still in there. That's good."

"What?" Eliza blinked. The tears on the verge of spilling over disappeared in a blink.

"I needed to see where your loyalties lie. I apologise," Dumbledore held up his hands.

She leaned back in her chair. The energy left her body, and she felt the ache in her bones from being so.. angry.

"Albus, I did not leave the country and come back to keep an eye on Harry only to drop everything for Black."

"Apologies, but Love can be a terrible motivator," Dumbledore said apologetically. "I fell in love once. He was not the person I loved in the end. Facing him was the hardest thing I had ever done. If anyone knows what it's like to love a dark wizard, it's me."

The information came as a shock to Eliza. The old man in love? She couldn't see it. She always just knew him as Professor Albus Dumbledore.

"I have a proposal," Dumbledore said, making his voice louder. "We have a vacancy at Hogwarts. Our muggle Studies teacher is doing a sabbatical this year, and seeing as you have lived as a muggle for a long time, I think you are up for the job."

"Is the only criteria knowing things about muggles?" Eliza inquired.

"Yes, and I've seen you work at the Kindergarten. Pardon me for also spying on you for a bit, but think of it as…" he gave it a moment of thought. "Teaching baby wizards."

Eliza snorted. She liked the thought of it and it was very much true. Teaching wizards about muggles was to start from the basics and sometimes go against everything the Ministry of Magic told them about the muggle world.

"Is there another reason why you want me at Hogwarts? It does not escape me that we find ourselves in, uh, state of emergency."

Albus nodded. "Truthfully, I would sleep a lot better knowing that you're safe at Hogwarts. A man who has been locked up in Azkaban for 12 years will cling to any reminisces of his old life, anything that can give him a small edge."

"And if I say no?"

Dumbledore shrugged. "Then, I'll find a different way to get you to Hogwarts."

She thought about all the paperwork that needed to be completed while she was away and what she needed to do for her job.

"Give me ten days."

"I'll give you ten hours," Dumbledore stood up. "I'll tell Minerva. She'll love having you around again. You could also help Poppy out now that the Ministry wants Dementors on the grounds." He sounded rather disapproving of the Dementors. A shiver went down her spine. She hated those creatures.

"I'll deal with everything then," Eliza grimaced. At least that would give the Kindergarten the summer to find a replacement.

"If you need anything, just send me an owl – if you still do owls, of course." Dumbledore stood up and went to the door after finishing his tea. He at least had the decency to not apparate in the house. "And Eliza?"

"Yes, Albus?"

Dumbledore's eyes were watery, perhaps even regretful.

"Welcome home," he said solemnly.