Disclaimer: This fic should not be read by anybody. That is all.
Cryopreservation
The Minister turned deathly pale as the full implications of what his aide said hit her. This was bad, even worse than career ending bad it was becoming a laughingstock and having any chance of salvaging one's legacy ending bad.
"Could . . . could you say that again," Bagnold said, fighting to keep her voice even.
"Black's gone rogue, Minister," the toady replied. "Betrayed the Potter's and-" what ever the man had intended to say next was cut off by a stunner cast by her Chief of Staff.
"What'd you do that for?" Bagnold demanded.
"I wanted to ensure that there would be no spread of rumors about our most heroic Auror," the older woman said blandly. "That is what you called him in today's issue of the Daily Prophet, wasn't it?"
"I didn't know he was a secret Death Eater," Bagnold whined. "How was I supposed to know that?"
"You're the Minister, the people expect you to never make mistakes," the woman replied. "But that's not important, what's important is that Black was never the secret keeper."
"He wasn't?" Bagnold asked dumbly.
"Of course not," her Chief of Staff said with a sigh. "Because if he was the secret keeper, that would imply that he betrayed the Potters, which in turn proves that were dimwitted enough to call a Death Eater our most heroic auror."
"Oh." Bagnold took a deep breath. "So who is the one who betrayed the Potters?"
"The Potters were closely associated with a werewolf," the older woman mused. "Then too, there's the fact that Pettigrew's disappeared. Best thing to do is put out some meaningless statement about how we're looking into the matter and to fix our story after we have Black in custody."
"Then there will be a trial and then it'll all come out and we're back were we started."
Her Chief of Staff pinched the bridge of her nose for ten slow seconds as she again retold herself how difficult it would be to find another drone to raise up as her puppet. "We're not going to have a trial."
"So we're going to throw him directly into Azkaban?" Bagnold shook her head. "It'll still all come out, there's no way we can keep things quiet."
"What we're going to do is put out the word that we're not sure the Dark Lord is really gone, that he was only injured or cast out of time or something," her Chief of Staff stated. "That has the added benefit of allowing us to keep war time tax levels for at least a few more years. Knowing this, our bravest Auror Sirius Black volunteered to be placed into suspended animation until the bastard returned."
"He's not going to, is he?" Bagnold asked with a panicked look on her face. "You're sure there's not chance of that, aren't you?"
"The dead don't just rise up from their graves," her Chief of Staff snorted. "Do it my way and you'll end your career as a victorious war time Minister. Don't and learn what it feels like to never be able to walk down the street again for the rest of your life without getting laughed at."
"Okay, Martha," Bagnold sighed. "We'll do it your way."
"I knew you'd see things my way," the older woman said with a look of satisfaction on her face. "Just leave all the details to me like you always do."
The Ministry, fifteen years later:
Things would have gone differently if anyone involved in the Black matter was both still alive and willing to talk. As things were a bit of bad shrimp in one of the Ministry balls and the Very Great Auk debacle of '85 meant that there were not and that things were very different than they might otherwise have been.
"They're really doing this," Tonks said, her voice low, as a dozen masked men from the Department of Mysteries prepared to begin the ritual.
"We don't have a choice," her partner replied. "Not if there's even a chance that you-know-who might be back. As brave as the lad is, we can't expect the-boy-who-lived to save us again, he's just a child."
"Still," Tonks continued. "To awaken the-Auror-without-fear without solid evidence."
"Better safe than sorry," her partner said firmly. "You have his things?"
"Yeah," Tonks agreed. "Tell you the truth, it really changes the image of the man to know what he had in his pockets when he volunteered to go under."
"Oh?"
"Yeah," Tonks continued. "I mean, he's the whole reason I decided to become an Auror, you know. It's just kind of expected of you when you're related to the best of us."
"I suppose I can understand that." They lapsed into silence for a few moments until the man couldn't contain himself. "So what did he have in his pockets?"
"Well, aside from the usual stuff, he had an ever-full flask of whiskey, an unending book of porn, and a hand written manuscript for a book on the proper use of a swedish penis enlarger."
"They say he asked two questions before agreeing to go under," her partner stated, desperately trying to find a way to break the awkward silence that had descended after Tonks' statement.
"Is my godson being taken care of and did I kill the traitor," Tonks agreed. "He's not going to be happy that they lied to him."
"They didn't lie. It's not a lie when you believe you're telling the truth."
The two Aurors watched in silence as the groggy man stumbled out of the stasis chamber and relieved himself against the nearest wall.
"To be expected, I suppose," Tonks' partner murmured.
"You'd think he'd at least wait till he got to a bathroom," Tonks replied. "I mean-" The Auror squeaked when she realized how close her time displaced cousin had gotten without her notice and squeaked again when she felt his hand brush up against a very sensitive area.
"Best part of waking up," Sirius murmured as he undid the cap of his newly retrieved flask and took a healthy swig.
"How'd he know I had that in my pocket?" Tonks mumbled in shock.
"He's the best," her partner said in a tone of deep satisfaction. "Remember, there's a reason he, above all others, was asked to do this."
"Yeah," Tonks agreed.
"So." Sirius looked around. "I have two questions."
"Only two?" Tonks' partner asked with a grin. "Fire away."
"Which one of you did I sleep with last night and where are my pants?"
"We have your pants right here," Tonks volunteered, handing them over. "As for the other question, uh." She glanced at her partner, a balding slightly overweight wizard of middling years.
Sirius glared at his flask. "Again you betray me!"
"No, uh, we didn't . . ."
"I'm sorry," Sirius said contritely to his flask. "You know I can never stay mad at you." The man took another healthy swig. "What were you saying?"
"We didn't sleep with each other. Don't you remember what you agreed to do?"
"It didn't involve marriage, did it?" Sirius asked nervously, eyes scanning for the nearest exit.
"It did not."
"That's a relief," Sirius sighed. "For a moment there . . ." he shook his head. "So what did happen?"
"Perhaps it would be best if you heard it from a friend," the Auror suggest. "We have Remus Lupin waiting in the next room."
"Yeah," Tonks agreed. "Better him than us."
"What she means is that it's usually better to get difficult news from a familiar face," he partner hastened to add.
"Yeah," Tonks agreed. "That."
Moony looked old. That was the first thought that popped into Sirius' mind when he got his first look at his sole surviving friend. The second was that it was time for another drink, so he did."
"Hello, Sirius," Remus said solemnly.
"Why don't we just leave you two alone," Tonks murmured as she closed the door.
"What the hell happened, Moony?" Sirius demanded the second his flask and lips broke contact. "Last thing I remember is the street blowing up and then everything goes kinda blurry."
"Story I was told is that you went back to the Ministry and nobly volunteered to be put into stasis because you knew the Dark Lord wasn't really dead and that you were willing to sacrifice yourself to ensure the safety of the future."
"That's what they told me to, but be honest, that doesn't sound like something I'd do does it?" Sirius protested.
"No," Remus agreed. "So I did a bit of digging. Turns out there were a couple French veela in the Ministry when you got back. One thing led to another and the three of you started drinking and then you drank so much that you decided to go into into stasis."
"Did I at least bag them first?" Sirius asked hopefully.
"Nope. Rumor has it the twins said you were suffering from some serious performance issues, one of the reasons you were willing to undergo such a dangerous procedure. Knowing you as well as I do, I figure that was the main reason. I mean, knowing how much women like to gossip, you must have thought it'd be best to drop out of sight for a few generations till your shame was forgotten. Pity the Dark Lord's return sent that one to the crapper."
"I missed the chance to have a three way with two veela?"
"Twin veela," Remus corrected with a sadistic smile on his face. "You missed a chance to have a twin veela Ménage à trois. Something every man dreams of, something you could have achieved if only you hadn't suffered from impotence."
"I had a chance to seal the deal with twin veela and Sir Serious Thomas was unready for action?" Sirius exclaimed in dismay. "Tell me nobody knows about this?"
"Just me, the guy who told me, and everyone we told in the last decade and a half," Remus assured his friend. "Oh, and everyone they told and so on. Don't worry about the ad I took in the Prophet, I'm sure nobody read that."
"Damn it, Moony. Why'd you do something like that to me?"
"Why'd you try to arrange it so Snape would be inside of me?"
"Not like that," Sirius protested. "You're gonna have to forgive me for what I did one of these days."
"I'll forgive you after you willingly put any part of Snape into your mouth or willingly have any part of Snape go inside of you. Are you?"
"It sounds so dirty when you put it that way." Sirius looked green.
"Think how I'd have felt after I realized what I did," Remus sniffed.
"We're just going to have to agree to disagree."
"I'm not agreeing to that."
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
"So whatever happened to Harry?" Sirius asked, uncapping his flask and pouting when Remus stole it from him.
"Dumbledore bolloxed it up, best hear the details from Harry himself."
"He's here?"
"On his way over from Hogwarts," Remus said.
IIIIIIIIII
Harry waited nervously in the conference room for his godfather to arrive his mind awash with a potent mixture of emotions and questions.
"Here I am!" Sirius shouted as he burst into the room.
"Godfather," Harry said tightly.
"Something wrong, Harry?" Sirius asked, slumping into a chair. "Would a little whisky help?" He passed his flask to the student.
"I want to know why you decided to get yourself put into stasis instead of taking care of me," Harry said, keeping tight control over his emotions.
"Because someone else was suppose to be taking care of you and-" he cut off before he accidentally blurted out what Remus had told him. "And I thought the best way to keep you safe was to be on hand to help deal with the dark dingus if he ever returned."
"So . . . so my parents didn't charge you with raising me before they died?" Harry asked half hopefully.
"Merlin no," Sirius laughed. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I was on the list of people that was supposed to take care of you if your parents kicked it, but I was no where near the top."
"Really?" Harry asked, perking up a bit as the idea that his godfather hadn't abandoned him to live with the Dursleys penetrated his mind.
"Yeah," Sirius agreed. "Yer mum was of the opinion that I wasn't responsible enough to be responsible for any living creature, well, not after the gerbil incident anyway." Had stated on more than one occasion that she was worried he'd take her son for his first visit to a brothel to celebrate getting his Hogwarts letter or something. Sirius mentally snorted, as if any boy he raised would be such a late bloomer.
"Gerbil incident?" Harry echoed.
"That's not important right now, only thing you need to take from it is that you must always remember to keep their claws trimmed." He took a moment to internally chuckle at youthful folly. "She used to joke that I was on the list after the gorillas at London zoo and James used to joke that being raised by gorillas would give you all kinds of cool vine swinging abilities."
"Too bad I wasn't," Harry laughed. "Being raised by gorillas would have been a lot better than what actually happened."
"Oh?" Sirius turned from joking to deadly in an instant. "Tell me more."
It was awful. Sirius listened in horror as his godson unloaded. The cupboard under the stairs, Harry hunting, being forced to work like a bloody elf. Everything Harry said was another nail in the coffins of the bastards who'd been stupid enough to wrong someone under the protection of a scion of magic's blackest house.
"I think I need to have a little talk with these people," Sirius said, voice sounding hollow. "Who did you say they were again, Harry?"
"My uncle Vernon and my aunt Petunia," Harry replied.
"Petunia?" Sirius said thoughtfully.
"My mum's sister."
"I didn't know your mum had a sister," Sirius' mused. Years of a guilt free way of banging a Lily lookalike, wasted, he lamented to himself. In a flash, his mind conjured up one of the few times he'd caught a glance of the tasty treat that was Harry's grandmother. "Stay here, Harry. I think it's time I had a little talk with your Aunt Petunia."
"Please don't kill them, they're the only family I have left."
"All goes well, your aunt will breathing when I leave." Breathing heavy, he thought with an internal grin.
The man walked over to the door and pounded on it till the tasty pink haired Auror opened it.
"Yes?" the girl asked.
"Take my godson out for something to eat," Sirius ordered. "Or to anywhere else he wants to go."
"Alright," Tonks agreed. "Anything else?"
"I'll be back in a couple hours to finish our conversation, Harry," Sirius said over his shoulder. His eyes flicked from the boy to the Auror by his side. "Be sure to have fun while I'm gone."
True to his word, Sirius did indeed return after a couple hours to continue their conversation, his hair and clothing looking a bit disheveled even in comparison to their previous state of disarray.
"Are they?" Harry was almost afraid to ask if his godfather had broken his word.
"They're alive," Sirius assured the boy.
"So you didn't?"
"I did what I went there to do," Sirius sighed. "I did it but I'm not nearly as satisfied by what happened as I thought I would be." He put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Take that as a lesson that the reality of what we do often falls short of what we expect it to be." Ah well, he supposed he could console himself with the fact that he'd really stuck it to the wife of one of the architects of Harry's awful childhood and had an ongoing appointment to do it again every thursday afternoon. If that failed to cheer him up, he supposed the thought how awful the bastard's life would be after the entropy curses started compounding.
AN: Had the idea of Sirius taking the place of Austin Powers so I expelled this. Good? No, I wouldn't call this good. Contrived? yes, I believe that's the correct term for it. In my defense, writing this got the idea out of my head which is better than keeping it in. Couple lines in this might be worth recycling, the rest is too similar to other things I've written to keep.
Wrote the Remus the way I did because this version isn't feeling guilty about thinking his best friend a traitor for a decade so is still holding a grudge over the Snape incident and a few other things.
Typo By Alysson deMerel
Omake for Chapter 117
by Lord Circe
Potential Dumbledore Reaction:
Dumbledore looked surprisingly calm, James thought, for a man who had a pissed Lily with a wand in one hand and a... device... in the other standing in front of his desk. Lily was just winding down from her tirade after finding that Harry was living at the Dursley's.
"...in your colon, without lubricant!" She huffed for a few moments, eyes glittering with unholy madness.
Dumbledore smiled slightly and clapped. "Bravo, bravo. Not quite up to the Slug Club Speech of '85, but I suppose temporal distortion could cause adverse effects on your vocal cords.
Lily nodded. "Yes, I've noticed I've lost some of the range on my Evil Laugh, it just doesn't reverb quite right." She shook her head. "But that doesn't excuse you leaving my Harry with Petunia and Venson, or whatever his name is."
Dumbledore sighed sadly. "Yes, yes, it was most distressing. Still, I didn't want to step in and teach him any bad habits, and I figured you would be back soon enough to give him proper tutelage."
Lily and James both blinked. "What?"
Dumbledore sighed again. "Indeed, I mean, I bound three perfectly good test subjects into the same house as him, I figured it would have only been a couple of months before I heard of some monstrosity rampaging through Little Winging. If he were placed anywhere else, he would have been stifled. Selene was out of country, something to do with a lizard and moth in Japan or some such, so I figured it would be best if he was left free to stretch his wings on his own, so to speak." He shook his head tiredly, while Lily nodded along sympathetically and James stared. "Still, the years went by, and except for the extreme levels of weight gain in the Dursley Males, nothing, not a hint. He did Apparate at the age of seven, but that is fairly ordinary prodigy level." He glanced up mournfully at Lily. "I have no choice but to take responsibility for not being able to help impart your spark of genius into your son in your absence."
Lily shook her head. "Not at all. You're not me, after all. Still, I best make up for lost time." And with that, she leapt up and then vanished in a swirl of distorted space-time with a cry of "Lesson time, Harry!"
James stood where he was, gaping at Dumbledore. Lily had marched in here ready to feed Dumbledore his own colon, and she had ended up leaving with a smile. Dumbledore smiled serenely as he looked over his spectacles at James. "I survived seven years of her and Selene at this school without once being shoved into a demonic subdimension." He quirked his eyebrow and popped a lemon drop in his mouth before leaning back with a contented sigh.