To the anonymous reviewer who left me some concerns regarding characterization, and worried about being a nuisance; don't ever feel bad for leaving feedback. As mentioned in the previous chapter, I appreciate and encourage any critique, so long as it's presented in a polite and considerate fashion.

I've taken your concerns into consideration, but I feel that one in particular should be addressed. It was mentioned that my characterization of Sirius Black is, for all intents and purposes, a toned-down version of another character I've written extensively over the years: Seto Kaiba, from the manga/anime series Yu-Gi-Oh!

There is a simple reason for this. Both of these characters, in my opinion, share a great many traits. As the common saying goes, they were cut from the same cloth. Both are brave, protective, but bitter and arrogant men, from rich and illustrious families (with whom they do not get along), who eventually end up looking out for children who are not their own.

I have written Seto Kaiba for ten years now. The techniques and strategies I have used to do so have been ingrained in me to the point that they are second-nature. Hence, these same strategies will play a part in my portrayal of Sirius. I will do my best to illustrate and illuminate the various differences between them, but please don't be surprised if you see the similarities, as well.

With that said, let's begin this week's chapter, shall we?

EDIT: As an aside, I have now received multiple reviews now espousing the idea that I screwed up by assuming Lily wouldn't know what a Walkman is, since she's Muggle-born. I'm mentioning it here just in case the latest reviewer who pointed this out (anonymously) decided to continue, and thus hasn't seen my more detailed message which I have placed at the end of that chapter.

The scene takes place in 1980; the first Walkman was announced in 1979. I don't think Lily would be keeping track of Japanese Muggle technology enough to know what one was, considering she was somewhat distracted by Voldemort at the time. How did Sirius get hold of one, you ask? You'd have to ask him, but I'm pretty sure it's not beyond him to take a trip to Japan.

Sorry for those who have read this already. Feel free to ignore it.

Let's move on.

One.

He did not know where he was going.

He did not know what he was going to do. It was like a trigger had snapped in his brain at the sound of his cousin's name. Sirius did not think that anyone had ever attempted to make a mental port-key, but it certainly felt as though he'd touched one as soon as those two words, "Bellatrix Lestrange," had escaped Dumbledore's lips.

Sirius appeared on a street that he didn't recognize. The sun was just beginning to set on a collection of nondescript houses that gave no real indication of containing inhabitants. As he began to walk, his wand slipping into his hand seemingly of its own accord, Sirius closed his eyes and called upon the keen senses that had been so vital to him over the past number of months.

It was like a map on the backsides of his eyelids, like someone had drawn a bright red line along the path he was supposed to take. His pace quickened nearly to the point of a sprint, and as he half-straddled, half-vaulted over a fence, he had never been gladder to not be wearing the robes his fellows so preferred.

He was bolting down a stone pathway leading up to an old manor house, stately and foreboding, that didn't belong to anyone Sirius had ever met. He didn't know if it was a wizarding house or not, but something about it drew him forward, and he hadn't the time nor the inclination to doubt its importance.

Bellatrix Lestrange, more than any other Death Eater Sirius had ever met, enjoyed pain; of her friends, of her enemies, her own—it made no difference to her. If sadomasochism was an art form, then she was a savant. There was no telling what atrocities she and her husband would commit now that Voldemort wasn't around to temper their impulses; Sirius had heard stories, but they had been few and far between. The Dark Lord had seemed keen on making the Lestrange family his own personal attack dogs, sending them out only when he wanted to send a particularly potent message. The rest of the time, he had kept them on a tight leash; to do otherwise would have made it too easy to find them—and through them, Voldemort himself.

Bellatrix and her husband were their own masters now.

The very thought congealed Sirius's blood and set his mind on fire.

Sirius reached the front double-doors of the house, and was barely able to hold back his apprehension and fury enough to open them slowly. He slipped himself into an entryway that was as empty as it was vast. Each step echoed as though he'd settled into the limestone corridors of a tomb.

The transformation took place before he'd had time to think about it; one moment he was sneaking along on two feet, the next he was prowling on four. The huge black dog made its way swiftly through the empty halls, following the low rumble of voices caught by its dangerously sharp ears.

When those ears picked up the scream, the dog went barreling down a long, dark corridor without any heed to stealth. Another, blood-boiling scream sent a shock through the hulking black body that escaped in the form of a feral, rabid growl. In the end, this was what saved Sirius's life, as the tall, lanky, hooded figure standing guard was in no way prepared for a snarling, raging dog to come bursting into the room, and leaped backward out of the way instead of attacking immediately.

The screams were deafening.

A woman with wild black hair was laughing in the center of the room.

Sirius careened into her, and sent her flying headfirst into the wall. As Bellatrix slumped, unconscious, to the floor, Sirius slipped up onto his own two feet, wand grasped tightly in one white-knuckled fist.

"Sorry, Bella," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Guess I was a bit too enthusiastic." He turned to face the three black-clad figures behind him, still conscious and fast overcoming the shock of his appearance.

To anyone doubting that the cackling woman crumpled on the floor shared blood with her attacker, the grin that spread on Sirius's face would have made it all too clear.

Two.

For a man with a wooden leg, Alastor Moody was hard to keep up with. He'd met up with Remus not long after Dumbledore had directed him to the place where the Longbottoms were supposed to be hiding out: some five or six miles east of their current location lay the abandoned homestead of a wealthy witch, who was currently living on another continent,

"Where are you going?" Remus had asked as Dumbledore scooped up Harry and his toy broom. "Aren't you coming with us, sir?"

"There are delicate matters I must attend to at the moment, Remus," Dumbledore had replied quickly, evasively. "Go, quickly. I will send an auror to assist you."

"What about Sirius?"

"I'm sure you'll find him there." Some knowledge of which Remus was unaware had seemed to nest in the ancient wizard's eyes as he'd said this. "Go, quickly. Sirius never was one for strategy." He and Harry vanished the next moment.

Moody had caught up with Remus a few minutes later, and they didn't speak as they finally set foot on the old witch's estate, moving as quickly and silently as they could. When they entered the place and heard the telltale sounds of conflict from above their heads, they broke into an outright run. Moody's wooden leg pounded like a judge's gavel on the hardwood floors.

Old and crippled as he was, Moody made it to the master bedroom first. Remus came rushing in behind him to see Sirius in the midst of a firefight with three masked and hooded figures, all men by the look of them. Curses shot through the air like glowing, flaming birds of prey: green and red and deep purple. Sirius hopped up onto the bed, then leaped to the side as a jet of what looked like lightning made a beeline for his head. He kicked an ottoman out into the air that caught one of the men in the midriff, ripped the curtain off the sliding glass window leading out onto a side balcony, and threw it in front of him, using it as cover as he dropped to a knee and rolled into a corner, coming up with a curse that knocked another of his opponents flat on his backside.

Sirius laughed—a sharp, barking laugh that sounded about as mirthful as a rusted guillotine—looking like he was venting every bit of grief and anger he'd ever felt in his life on these three Death Eaters, and it was only his manic determination and razor-wire reflexes that were keeping him alive.

He didn't see the woman with the wild black hair rising slowly to her feet behind him. Before Sirius had even noticed his allies, before he had the chance to capitalize on his slight advantage, before Remus or Moody even had the time to raise their own wands to assist him, blinding white light exploded into Sirius's back and sent him straight into the wall. He collapsed in a heap onto the floor.

Bellatrix Lestrange rose all the way to her feet.

Moody moved, and Remus moved with him.

Huddled against a far corner, still shaking and twitching spasmodically, Frank and Alice Longbottom lay unconscious on the floor. Somewhere beneath the laughter, behind the grunts and shouts of exertion and the explosions of magic, a baby was crying.

Three.

One of the hooded men had the singular misfortune of having Moody for his opponent. He was grizzled, he was scarred, traumatized and paranoid, but Alastor Moody had another reputation, and only the most foolhardy of Death Eaters would have ignored it.

Without a word, without any indication whatsoever, Moody's wand erupted with a nova of white-hot power so condensed that it left a deep, scorched indentation on the wall behind its target. The black figure, crouched and breathing harshly, started to move. But Remus Lupin had learned from his friend's example, and sent a desk flying into the man's face. Splinters and sheets of parchment rained down and littered the floor.

The thinnest of the masked men made for the window, to regroup or escape, and Moody's curses followed him. He curled into a ball and let the momentum of one of the blasts send him shoulder-first into the glass, and fell silently to the garden below. The old auror's magical eye seemed to follow the man for a moment before turning its attention on Bellatrix.

The rest of the fight, if that's what it could honestly be called, went by in such a blur that Remus would realize later that he couldn't recall how many people had been in the room. He seemed to wake from a dream, a nightmare so vivid that it was still ringing in his ears, and found himself seated on a blackened, cracked, scratched and smoking floor, surrounded by the ruins of what had once been a bedroom.

The young werewolf struggled to his feet. He saw Moody, crouched over two figures. The four Death Eaters were nowhere to be found; Remus asked after them, blinking wearily.

"I'll catch up with them in a minute," Moody growled, with such grim finality that Remus had no doubt of it. "See to the boy."

Remus blinked. "W-What?"

"The boy, Lupin!" At this point, Remus realized that he heard crying in another room. Adjacent to the impromptu battlefield was another bedroom, this one smaller and with no furnishings other than a small bed. Huddled in a blanket on the floor was a boy, about Harry's age, howling his tiny lungs out.

"Neville," Remus whispered, and went to him.

The child struggled, but not very hard. Remus stepped back into the master bedroom with the bundle in tow, thinking that this felt entirely too familiar, just as Moody was rising to his feet.

"Don't know how long those Death Eaters were at them," Moody rumbled, gesturing to Neville's parents, "but they're beyond anything I can do." He turned to face Remus. "When that great idiot wakes up, take him and the boy and send word to the Order. I'll do what I can to…calm them."

Frank and Alice Longbottom were shaking uncontrollably, and Remus found it painful to look at them. He soothed the crying boy in his arms as best he could, and shuffled over to Sirius, who was beginning to stir.

Four.

His vision was a long while in coming back to him.

Blinking several times, trying vainly to rid himself of the fuzziness, Sirius saw a figure. A black figure, with pale skin. The face was sharp, angular, but somehow undefined. All he could see were red eyes, glowing like twin coals on either side of a long nose, and a white streak through its pale brown hair.

Then he blinked again, and realized he was looking up at Remus.

"Where's the damn tank that hit me…?" Sirius hissed, grimacing as he tried to sit up. Remus pushed him back down.

"You're an idiot," came the soft, reserved reply.

"Save your flattery for someone else, Moony," Sirius muttered. He finally managed to right himself without sending little lances of agony through his spine. "Where are they? Where's the bodies? I want that little wh—"

"Shut up about them," came a particularly sharp growl from somewhere behind Remus. "You're lucky your head's still attached to your fool neck." Clunk, clunk, clunk. The hunched and haggard form of Alastor Moody swam into his sights. "What the blue devil possessed you to charge in halfcocked against four armed Death Eaters?"

"I thought my striking good looks would surprise them," Sirius replied caustically, staring blankly at the veteran auror. "Hear told I'm right charming when I've a mind to be."

Moody seemed less than amused. His normal eye narrowed suspiciously. "And the boy? What about him?"

"Dumbledore," Sirius said. "I'm not that stupid. I wouldn't bring him into this."

"If we hadn't shown up when we did," Remus murmured softly, "you may well have died tonight. They may be spineless lemmings with barely enough talent pooled together to boil an egg," he added, seeing that Sirius was about to speak, "but four against one are long odds, even for you. What, exactly, would happen to Harry then? I can't well look after him myself. I have to spend a week out of every month as far away from him as humanly possible."

Sirius flinched as he ran a hand through his hair. He glanced out the broken window into the night sky; the moon was a blinding half-disc staring down at him. "If I should fall in battle," he started with a half-mocking lilt, then noticed the darkness in Remus's gaze, "…plenty of people will still be around to look after him."

"Indeed," Remus said. "He does have that aunt and uncle in Surrey, doesn't he?" Sirius's face turned a pale shade of green. "If you want to be that boy's godfather, you're going to have to start looking after yourself, as much as him. That means unnecessary risks are no longer acceptable. Even if they might be…entertaining."

"This is all very touching," Moody interjected, "but I wasn't talking about Harry Potter. I was talking about him." His magical eye swiveled over to regard Neville Longbottom, sleeping fitfully on the sole clean patch of floor left in the room. "The way you were hopping around like a demented frog, tossing curses around like Christmas presents, you'd have even damn well noticed if the whole house had come down on his head?"

This had Sirius on the defensive. "You don't duel with Death Eaters like a proper gentleman unless you're looking for a gravestone to sleep under. You know that better than any of us."

Moody's eyes, both of them, flashed with wrath. "Don't give me excuses, Black!" he snarled. "I know your type. A proper Gryffindor, proud and loyal and stupid. Your recklessness might have cost three innocent lives, and your own, not that that's any big loss if this is how you're going to fight the Dark Lord."

"They lived," Sirius shot back.

"This time!" Moody nearly roared. "Maybe you're willing to gamble with the lives of the people we're trying to protect in this war, but I'm not. Do yourself a favor and don't make yourself an obstacle. Now get out of here and make yourself useful."

"How?" Sirius dared, looking hurt, angry, and guilty.

"Figure it out. I'm not here to hold your hand."

The part of it all that drove the point home, the part of it that made Moody's words repeat themselves in Sirius's mind long after he left the building in search of Dumbledore, was the fact that Remus stayed stone-silent and stoic.

He didn't say a word until the next morning, when he woke Sirius and told him it was time to get moving.

I know that you were probably expecting me to save the Longbottoms. What's the point of putting it in, if I'm not going to fix things? I beg patience, Gentle Readers. Things are not quite as similar as they seem.

While the title of this story is a rather overt reference to the Butterfly Effect, and may give the impression that I intend to change everything, that's not quite what I'm going for. Some parts of canon are necessary, and the way I've handled this situation is part of that.

Things will unfold in future chapters; of that, you can be sure.

Until next time, folks. Take it easy.