Snape was the first to leave, citing that he had far more important things to attend to.

"Draco, a word," Lucius forced the words out through gritted teeth and jerked his head towards the door.

With barely disguised trepidation, Draco followed his parents out, leaving Harry and Sirius with Mcgonagall.

The woman looked at Sirius and he got the impression that there was a lot she wanted to say at the moment. To him, about him... he wasn't sure.

Ultimately she decided against it. "I'm afraid I must get going. Please feel free to use the floo, Mr. Black. It's been an... interesting morning to say the least. The next time we meet, I wish it is under better circumstances."

"Likewise."

With a pointed glance at Sirius that indicated they had much to discuss, she rose elegantly and swept out of her office. He very nearly missed the flash of guilt on her face before she was gone.

Sirius wasn't sure if he wanted to have that particular conversation. Too much left unsaid.

When Sirius had been sentenced to Azkaban, hundreds of people had believed him to be guilty.

Within twelve hours he'd gone from war hero to mass murderer.

The Dark Lord's right hand

It was in his blood anyway

Always knew he had it in him

One person had pointed the finger and the rest had blindly believed him.

Sirius just hadn't expected Minerva Mcgonagall to be one of them.

"Am I in trouble?"

Snapping out of it, Sirius glanced at his godson. "You heard her, didn't you? Detention for two weeks."

Harry shrugged. "I know. But... you're not going to yell at me?"

Sirius didn't yell. Maybe at others if they really got on his nerves. Never at Harry.

"Do you promise you'll go around beating up your fellow students in the foreseeable future?"

"I pr—" Harry frowned when he actually heard the words. "What? No! I'm not going to do that. No more fighting. Promise."

Sirius smirked at the boy, briefly ruffling his hair. "Then I don't see why I need to yell. Now, I'm not suggesting that breaking the boy's nose was the right thing to do... but you were defending yourself and your friends."

He would never hold that against Harry.

"Violence is not the right approach, it hardly ever is, but I understand why you did it. So I won't draw the matter out any further. Besides, I think you're going to be plenty miserable in detention anyway."

Harry looked at Sirius for a beat before the last of the tension left him and he knocked his godfather gently with his shoulder. "Most people would be super mad. You're cool."

"Obviously."

A little trouble here and there was okay. Sirius himself had done much worse.

Whilst Remus had hardly ever fought and James had been more than happy to settle scores with a silly little hex, Sirius' personal brand of revenge had always been more... vicious.

It was something he'd tried to shake off as a child, but as he'd gotten older— especially during the war, he had understood that the best way to control one's own darkness was to embrace it. Wield it like a weapon that everyone feared.

"Malfoy's father is a bit of a prick. You don't like him, do you?"

Understatement.

Sirius honestly felt a little bad for Draco after what he'd just witnessed.

Draco wasn't a bad kid, not truly.

"Not really. As for Draco, the things he said were definitely out of line and certainly not true. There's a lot more to the Weasleys than just money and I'm pretty certain your friend Hermione can wipe the floor with just about anyone in your year."

"I k—"

"And, most importantly, you're not an orphan." Sirius bumped his shoulder against Harry's, just like the lad had done moments ago.

"You've got me. Never doubt that."

Harry turned pink and ducked his head. "I know."

He rubbed the back of his neck, a characteristically bashful gesture. "I shouldn't have let him get to me. It's just... I heard it a lot back at Privet Drive. I sort of snapped."

Although Harry sometimes talked about the less savoury snippets of his life with the muggles, Sirius knew that they'd barely scratched the surface.

There were no words, so he settled for squeezing the kid's shoulder reassuringly. "It's okay. Never be sorry about standing up for yourself or your friends."

Sirius meant every bit of that. Yet he was certain encouraging your kid to fight was frowned upon.

He flicked the boy's ear gently. "I know I said a little trouble is okay, but I'd rather you not land yourself in too many detentions."

Harry nodded sincerely before raising his eyebrows at Sirius. "I thought you said the Marauders spent quite some time in detention."

Karma.

It never stopped.

"This is one of those moments where I would rather you do as I say, not as I do. I might not be this lenient the next time." He pointed a stern finger at Harry, then winked and gestured towards the door.

"Which class do you have next?"

"Charms."

"Flitwick's alright but don't be too late. Now, the next time you find yourself missing me unconditionally, feel free to write or use the mirror. There's no need to go to such dramatic lengths just to seek an audience."

The boy snorted. "Understood, Your Grace."

Harry hesitated just before he could leave. Then in a split second decision, he threw his arms around Sirius in a bear hug.

"Thanks. For you know... being cool. Cool and brilliant, but also kind of weird."

Sirius cupped the boy's head and grinned softly. "I'll take it."

"—me today, Dra—"

Lucius' hushed angry voice abruptly stopped the moment Harry opened the door.

The Malfoys were huddled close a little further away along the corridor.

Doing his best to avoid the family, Harry offered Sirius one last wave and headed off to class.

Judging by the slump of Draco's shoulders and the angry flush of Lucius' face, Sirius surmised that their impromptu discussion had been far from pleasant. The boy turned on his heel and all but ran from there without so much as a greeting towards his parents.

The silence that followed Draco's departure was stifling. Sirius stood in the doorway that led to the floo and Lucius would sooner bite his own tongue off before he asked the other man to move.

The thought made Sirius smile. Therefore he didn't budge.

"You've changed." Ultimately Narcissa broke the quiet.

Sirius regarded his cousin. "You haven't."

Both of those statements were true. "Although this unexpected reunion has been... interesting, I'm afraid I must get going."

He wasn't going to bring up what happened between the children. He had better things to do than point fingers. Judging from the look on the lad's face, Draco wasn't faring too well at the moment.

"How do you feel about tea?"

Sirius wasn't sure which of them was most taken back by the sudden question. Of all the things Narcissa could have said, an invitation was the last thing he had expected.

"Best consumed hot and tastes downright awful if not made perfectly. I vastly prefer coffee. Works wonders on the temperament."

Normally, Narcissa was far too proper to roll her eyes, but in that moment, Sirius could almost picture her doing so.

"I see you've not changed too much."

Sirius' mouth curved into a characteristic Slytherin smirk. "Now, now. We wouldn't want that, would we?"

He glanced absently at his watch.

"It suits you."

Although the woman gestured towards their grandfather's Patek Phillipe resting around Sirius' left wrist, they both knew she wasn't talking about just the vintage wristwatch.

"I'll see you around, Narcissa."

Mealtimes at Malfoy Manor were hardly ever cheerful, but the house elves would argue dinner that night was particularly solemn.

Not a word was exchanged between the couple as they ate. Narcissa had already rebuffed four of her husband's subpar attempts to initiate conversation.

She was upset. He knew very well why.

The dinner fork scraped mercilessly against the fine china, even as Narcissa's expression remained perfectly pleasant as she took an elegant bite.

The large clock in the parlour ticked away, taking up far more attention than necessary.

The house elf, Dobby appeared from the kitchen to clear the plates from the second course.

He took Narcissa's dinner plate first and with shaking hands, moved to do the same for Lucius.

In an impressive streak of truly rotten luck, the elf stumbled over that blasted cane leaning against the table and tripped magnificently, sending the plates crashing.

The porcelain shattered and along with, so did the last remnants of Lucius' patience.

"You incompe—"

"Dobby. Leave us. See to it later."

Lucius' right hand froze halfway to his wand.

The house elf didn't need to be told twice and was all too relieved to disappear with a crack before he was forced to face his master's wrath.

"You punish me with your silence and now when you do speak, it's to that filthy creature over your husband."

"You're a bastard."

"Excuse me?"

"A little kindness, towards your own son. Is that too much to ask?"

Lucius scoffed. "Kindness? He doesn't need kindness. Draco has everything a boy could ever ask for and yet he fails to conduct himself in a manner appropriate to his standing."

"His behaviour today was nothing short of appalling. He humiliated me utterly, in front of that filthy blood traitor no less."

"Lucius," Narcissa laced her fingers together and fixed him with a reproving stare. "He behaved exactly the way yo— we taught him to."

Narcissa would concede that she shared part of the blame. It was Lucius who had taught Draco about pure-blood superiority and the bias that existed within their circles, but Narcissa had never stopped him.

She also wasn't naive enough to believe that Draco had been innocent that day. She loved the boy more than life itself, but as his mother, she was aware that her son could tend to be a... bully.

"And yet you never had a problem with it until this day. You never said anything."

No. She hadn't.

A grave error on her part.

While she did harbour a certain disdain for muggles, she did not share her family's brutal disposition towards them. She was more than content to ignore them and carry on with her life.

Narcissa had paid the price for her prejudice years ago. She was paying it to that very day. Almost everyday.

"Perhaps... we were both wrong."

Lucius' eyes widened briefly in surprise. "Wrong? If you want to use this as an excuse for An—"

"Leave her name out of this. This has nothing to do with her."

"It has everything to do with her. It always has. And now with Black. That incompetent, unworthy—."

"I think we can both agree the man we met today was neither of those things."

Neither of them were children anymore. Sirius had certainly changed since the last time she'd seen him. Lord Black suited him far better than anyone could have imagined.

"Why would you ask him to tea? Right after he humiliated me before everyone present."

Honestly, Narcissa wasn't sure why. She could dismiss it as a moment of weakness but that would be a lie.

More than anything, she hated that she didn't hate him at all. It had been easy to ignore him for all these years, to bury all the fleeting yet happy moments they had all shared.

Seeing Sirius in person had painfully brought all those memories to the forefront.

"It doesn't matter. It was a mistake."

He wanted nothing to do with her.

She'd been close to both Sirius and Regulus once, they had grown up together after all. One might have almost called them siblings. Had circumstances been different, she would've called them her younger brothers.

Little Cissa, Andie, Sirius and Reggie.

One down, three remained.

It hurt more than she cared to acknowledge that the two people she had left seemed much farther away than the one who was gone.

"Are you going to eat that?" Tonks asked, mouth still half full.

Andromeda Tonks shot her daughter a disapproving glare that the young woman dutifully ignored.

Mealtimes at the Tonks' cottage were always hilarious.

"It's all yours."

She grinned at her dad and snatched up the dumpling rather deftly with her chopsticks.

"Sirius?"

"Yes love?"

"The next time you see your best friend, could you let him know he's a total bull-headed buffoon?"

Sirius wasn't sure what Remus could have done, but if he had to guess, he would say the idiot was being annoyingly stubborn yet again. It was no secret that Dora fancied the mild-mannered werewolf. A passing childhood crush had evidently blossomed into something more recently.

"As long as I'm allowed to make some creative additions to that," Sirius agreed amicably.

Andromeda had been the first person to reach out to Sirius after his acquittal.

Sirius wasn't one for tears, none of them were, but that day in St. Mungo's, he'd allowed Andie to wrap him up in her arms and cry her heart out on his shoulder. In the process, if an identical wet patch had mysteriously appeared on Andromeda's shoulder as well, that was nobody's business.

They had always been incredibly close, what with both of them being outcasts of the family. During the war, despite all the shit happening around them, they had made it a point to appreciate the little moments.

Every Thursday Sirius had shown up for dinner at the Tonks' place, until one day he hadn't ...

Just like that, all that remained was the single glaringly empty chair at the Tonks' dining table.

At least until a few months ago.

"How's Auror training coming along?"

"It's brilliant. Although if I were to face a boggart, there's a very high possibility that it will look like Madam Wolfe. I can't believe I was foolish enough to think old Moody was bad. I actually miss the grumpy bastard."

"Nymphadora, language! "

"Sorry, Mum." She wasn't sorry in the least.

After dinner Dora hugged everyone goodbye and headed back to her little flat since the trainees had an early start the next morning. Sirius stayed back a little longer on the Tonks' insistence.

Ted and Andromeda waved away the man's offer to help with the dishes. "Absolutely not. Tell me what's new with you."

Sirius leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. "I was called to Hogwarts this morning."

"Whatever for?"

"Harry got into a fight today."

Two pairs of eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Harry? He's such a sweet little thing. What happened?"

"He broke Draco Malfoy's nose ."

Andromeda's hands stilled when he mentioned her nephew. It had been about twenty years now since she'd last spoken with her sister.

"I'm sure there's a story behind that," she said before her thoughts could wander. "How um... how is Narcissa? And my nephew?"

Her tone was a poor attempt at feigned casualness.

"Narcissa is exactly the same. As for young Draco, that boy is more like his father than his mother."

That being said, as per what Sirius had witnessed that afternoon, there was yet hope for the Malfoy lad.

"He's still a child. He may very well grow out of it," Andromeda echoed his thoughts.

"For now, I just hope the boys survive detention with each other."

"A'righ' then. Follow me you two. Any muckin' about and I'm taking ya brats straight to Pr'fesser M'gonagall."

Of course their first detention would have to take place in the dungeon: Harry's favourite spot in the castle.

Fortunately, Snape was nowhere to be seen.

They entered the classroom and found the desks stacked with dirty cauldrons. Harry counted nearly two dozen in all and mentally groaned.

This was going to take ages.

"I'll be back in an hour and I wan' at leas' half of these done. I want em shining. Un'erstood?"

With an unpleasant glance at the boys, Filch left them to their devices.

It had been two days since the whole debacle and Harry was determined to get through these blasted detentions without getting into another fight with Malfoy.

If the other boy was still affected from everything that had happened, he didn't show it. Malfoy's characteristic disdain was firmly back in place.

So he didn't say a word and simply picked up the scrub and began with the first cauldron.

He worked silently for a quarter of an hour and was done cleaning two stubborn pots when he noticed that Malfoy hadn't moved from his spot on the bench. Nor did he make any effort to start scrubbing.

Irritation prickled his skin. "Don't expect me to do your half of the work, Malfoy." Harry forced himself to speak in an even tone although what he really wanted was to hurl one of those cauldrons at the other boy's head. It also didn't help that the prat's nose was good as new.

Draco inspected the cauldrons with an expression of pure disgust. "This is abhorrent. I shouldn't have to work here, under these circumstances."

"It's detention. It's not supposed to be fun. Perhaps you can talk Mcgonagall into switching cauldrons for Quidditch practice."

"How clever you are," the blond snapped when he observed Harry pick up yet another grimy cauldron. "How the bloody hell are you so good at this?"

Having grown up at Privet Drive, Harry was no stranger to scrubbing dirty vessels. It was a chore he had been doing daily since he was five or six years old.

It was either endless chores or no food on that day.

"Its called talent. Now get to work before Filch decides to keep us in here all night."

"That scrub looks like a troll's arse ."

Harry let out a snort. "I wouldn't know, Malfoy, since I don't go about inspecting a troll's backside on a regular basis."

"Idiot."

"Prat."

Draco glared at Harry, but he gingerly picked up the offending scrub and pulled a cauldron towards himself.

"Perhaps I'll ask Filch for some gloves."

Harry sighed to himself. It was going to be a dreadfully long fortnight indeed.

Redemption coming along for Draco? Maybe...

Hang tight for more fun, drama and fluff coming your way in the next instalment.