Chapter 9
The cleansing of Grimmauld Place meant the discovery of another horcrux; and the Goblins started searching proactively for more of such abominations. Kreacher fairly capered.
"Master Regulus would be pleased! Kreacher will clean house now, now the house isn't home to dirty soul piece," said Kreacher.
"You're a good and loyal elf," said Sev. "Regulus would be proud. And he'd be prouder if you looked after Sirius properly after his terrible ordeal in Azkaban. After all, he was on the same side as Regulus."
This made Kreacher pause, and think.
"Mistress liked the Dark Lord, but the Dark Lord was wrong," he said.
"Exactly!" said Sev.
"Listen, boys, as this is going to be a nicer place to live, Dumbledore has asked me if we can't use it as a headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, a vigilante group opposing Voldemort. Since he has returned... or so Dumbledore says..."
"Sirius," said Harry, "What does a godfather do?"
"Protects his godson," said Sirius.
"When Mum and Dad died, what did you do?"
Sirius hung his head.
"I went after Peter," he said.
"Think very, very carefully about how you answer the next question," said Harry. "A wrong answer and Sev will kick you off the wards of Prince Manor, on my say so. And the question is, will you put Dumbledore over me, as once you put Peter over me?"
"Why, Harry! Surely it's not a comparison; Dumbledore is the leader of light... that's heading towards the wrong answer, isn't it?"
"As the song said, there was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name-o," said Harry. "Dumbledore has his own agenda. I don't know what it is, but he likes to mushroom me; feeds me shit and keeps me in the dark."
"I expect he wants you to have a happy and carefree childhood..."
"Sirius, I lived with Petunia and her whale. What part of 'happy' or 'carefree' can be associated with that? Not to mention being her fat oaf of a son's punching bag. And Dumbledore knew. He has to have known. He saw me come back every year, smaller and thinner than any of my contemporaries, in mismatched clothes, like you first teased Sev about on the train... shit."
"Time for confessions, Sirius," said Severus. "You see me as Harry's fourteen-year-old friend. But also, I am still – sort of – the Severus Snape who was your contemporary, though the memories are, for me, of the previous timeline,... fuzzy and somehow dreamlike. As if I dreamed I grew up and became a potions master, spied on Voldemort and so on. But when I heaved Harry out of Voldemort's rebirthing with an untried time-travel spell, I ended up with my adult mind sharing my fourteen year old body. Harry and I became friends, and neither of us wanted to lose that, and when I returned I was... me, as you see me now. But the things Dumbledore did to manipulate me were not nice. How he tried to get my supposed Uncle Severus to be eaten by Remus, and blame you, for one. As for our situation here, Dumbledore is expecting you to treat me badly because of the rivalry with my supposed uncle, and to be sufficiently addled by Azkaban to treat Harry like James and be angry when he isn't anything like him."
"Well, fuck!" said Sirius. "What spell did you use?"
"Tempus Frangit, Delenda est Tempus," said Sev.
"You are insane! What a Gryffindorish thing to do!" said Sirius.
"I didn't have much choice," said Severus.
"Bloody hell!" said Sirius. "Well, what did you change?"
"Me, obviously; and it seems that Harry's increased awareness of the world set Dumbledore into making sure he grew up meek when he was orphaned. As well as trying to feed me to Remus and blackmailing me into joining Voldemort to be his spy. Somehow I managed to be two of me, the young and the older."
"Well if you break time and destroy time, you should see why," said Sirius.
Sev shrugged.
"The subtlety of the Latin escapes me; it wasn't on the curriculum of Cokeworth CPS," he said.
"Delenda est... it's a gerundive and therefore an imperative... oh, never mind," said Sirius. "You were bloody good at spell crafting; you'll be better if I get you and Harry a tutor over the summer."
"You're probably right," said Sev. "I found it in an old book which I, er, liberated from Dumbledore's office. It's a Potter book, so I figured it wouldn't have anything too harmful. And it's beneficial; with Harry's help I made friends with the Marauders instead of hating you and vice-versa, and the encounter with Lupin in full-on furry little problem mode was harmless, and driven by Dumbledore. In the original timeline, it was your idea because you hated me."
"Shit, really? That seems very... unnatural... now," said Sirius. "So, no Order of the Phoenix?"
"I... don't know." Harry spoke up. "We could keep an eye on them if they used your house, but so long as you don't put it above looking after us, and don't give them control of the wards, we have the option to eject them, right?"
"Dumbledore was speaking of using the fidelius charm, and casting it for me."
"Over his dead body," said Harry. "He used the fidelius charm for my parents and see where that got them. If you add a fidelius, do it pre-emptively and stick it up before inviting him in, and use someone unexpected as the secret keeper."
"Here, Kreacher! Will you guarantee to be loyal to me, not Cissy or Bellatrix?" said Sirius.
"Kreacher pledges to be loyal to Lord Black," said the elf.
"Good; will you be the secret keeper if this house was under fidelius?"
Kreacher scowled.
"We has better wards than that."
"Yes, but I want to keep them severely secret," said Sirius.
Kreacher capered.
"Lord Black could set up a fidelius inside a fidelius so they coulds only get to certain parts of the house," he said.
"Brilliant idea," said Sirius. "Some of the first floor as well as the ground in case anyone is hurt and needs to stay."
.
.
Prince Manor was run down, but less brooding than Grimmauld Place. There were also a group of four ageing but at least willing elves.
Master Prince needed a steward whilst he was under age, so Mr. Sirius Black and his godson were accepted.
Unlike Grimmauld Place, which was a town house, Prince Manor had grounds. And that, said Harry, happily, meant flying.
"I hated flying because... well, I don't have to worry now about being bullied," said Sev. "I might even look forward to it."
"I wish you will tutor Neville in potions as someone he isn't afraid of," said Harry, softly. "You see, he's been told he's little more than a squib all his life, thrown out of windows and off piers to see if his magic worked, and it isn't right that he should be expected to use his father's wand."
"What? That's preposterous. No wonder his potions are disastrous; if his wand is wrong he can't touch his core with it, and if he can't touch his core with his wand, he'd need to learn from scratch how to touch it with his potion stirrer," said Sev. "Padfoot, get Longbottom here. I've been assuming he was just lazy and a dreamer, but... oh, and get him a wand, too."
"Bossy as always, just like Lily," said Sirius. "Most certainly, poor kid. And he is Harry's godbrother too."
"He is?" said Harry.
"Yes, his mother is your godmother," said Sirius.
.
.
Sirius managed to talk Augusta Longbottom into letting Neville stay with his godbrother, and took him to get a new wand on the way to Prince Manor.
"Is this what a wand is supposed to feel like?" blurted out Neville. "Warm, and... and friendly, as though it doesn't hate me?"
"Nev, mate, that's what a wand is supposed to feel like," said Harry. "And Sev here has a theory that you didn't know what to feel for to concentrate into potions, he's been trained by his uncle, would you like to see if you can catch up?"
"Oh, yes, rather," said Neville. "I'd like not to dread potions. Sorry to bad-mouth your uncle, Sev, but he was rather awful, looking for ways to drop on Gryffindors, and belittling people all the time."
"He told me that he had seen too many kids die or be badly wounded for being lazy and not taking enough notice," said Sev. "He figured if everyone was scared of him, they might not muck up as much."
"It made me muck up more."
Soon Neville was discovering that he could brew if he was not being intimidated. He was delighted!
"You're a great teacher, Sev, much better than your uncle. I mean, I'm sorry you lost him if he was all the family you had, but... well, you know."
"I recognise that he was not universally popular," said Sev.
.
Meanwhile, the Order of the Phoenix got their feet under the table in 12, Grimmauld Place, and Dumbledore decreed that it would be safer if the Weasleys stayed there, as Harry's girlfriend and his best friend would be targets for Voldemort.
"Harry doesn't have a girlfriend," said Sirius.
"Nonsense, he's crazy about my Ginny, just too shy to show it," said Molly. "We might as well have Harry staying here as well, he can help with the cleaning, and Hermione as well, as company for Ginny and because she's Ron's girlfriend."
"Oh, well, she and her family are in France," said Sirius.
"What do they want to go to France for?" said Ron.
"Most people call it a 'holiday,' and enjoy doing leisure activities," said Sirius. "And since when was she your girlfriend? She doesn't write to you every day, does she?"
"No, thank goodness, she writes a screed and most of it nagging," said Ron.
His ears went red.
"Is she writing to Potter?"
"No, she's writing to my ward, Sev Prince," said Sirius. "Huge screeds of potioneering notes."
"Oh, well, he'd like that sort of rubbish," said Ron, looking around at the artistic dirt Kreacher had re-introduced. "She knows better than to bore me with it. Why don't you have better house elves to keep the house clean? Mum will make us clean by hand."
"Because I've been in prison for thirteen years," said Sirius.
Kreacher was enjoying himself in a perfectly sanctioned way, in being disobliging.
The move of the Weasleys had been a fait accompli and Sirius was looking for a way to reverse that state of affairs.