Chapter Eighteen: Recovery and Restraint

By the time Harry stepped out of the Room of Requirement, the corridors were lit with the hazy light of late morning. He blinked at the brightness; after a full night spent in the Room with Sirius, time felt oddly distorted. Still, there was no helping it. He had to be seen around the castle. His absence couldn't become a pattern.

Sirius had looked better already. Still thin, still exhausted, but the hollow quality to his eyes had lessened. A full day of uninterrupted sleep and steady nourishment should work wonders. Harry had left him with a few jugs of water, several bottles of restorative and nutrient potions, and a pile of food that would probably make Hagrid jealous. He'd also left instructions for how the Room worked; how to will it into existing so that only Harry could enter, keyed to his magical signature.

Sirius had grinned, half-sarcastic and half-grateful. "Good. I won't wake up to a nosy Headmaster rummaging through my snack stash."

Harry had snorted, then slipped away under the cloak.

Now, cloak tucked into his satchel, he walked into the Great Hall as casually as he could manage. The place was almost deserted. There were a few students chatting, and there were a handful of professors at the High Table enjoying their lunch. Harry sat on his own, not wishing to burden the scant few upper-year Ravenclaws at lunch, who were all lost in their books.

Nothing seemed amiss on Dumbledore's face; no new worry lines, the glint in his eyes was in full effect as he rose and toasted the new year. Harry wondered how long it would last until the news broke that one of the most hated men in Wizarding Britain had died. Well, supposedly died.

After lunch, Harry dragged himself up to the dorms and collapsed on his bed. He napped for six solid hours before waking, dressing, and heading back down for dinner.

And that's when his question was answered.

At the staff table, Dumbledore and Snape were sitting side by side, speaking quietly. They weren't looking directly at Harry, but every so often, just briefly, one of them would glance his way.

Then glance again.

He made sure not to react, keeping his posture relaxed and his expression neutral. But inside, his mind clicked into motion.

They know about Sirius. Or they think they do. Word must have reached them about Sirius' body being found in his cell.

Will they tell me? He wondered. Sure, Sirius might be wrongly assumed to have been Voldemort's right hand man, but he was still Harry's godfather. I'll have to wait and see if I get an invitation to Dumbledore's office over the coming weeks.

~OvO~

After dinner, Harry returned to the dorms briefly, just long enough to change into more comfortable clothes and take another short nap for three hours. Then, at eleven sharp, he made his way back to the seventh floor.

The door appeared on his third pass.

Inside, he froze - not from terror, or shock, or worry, but from amusement.

The Room had changed again, drastically.

Sirius, in full Padfoot form, was bounding across a newly conjured obstacle course: ramps, tunnels, platforms, floating hoops. He leapt from one ledge to another, tail wagging, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

Harry blinked.

"Sirius?"

Padfoot turned sharply, barked twice, and launched himself off the platform with remarkable agility. In midair, he transformed.

Human again, Sirius landed in a crouch, grinning.

"You're back!"

Harry gaped. "I was gone for eleven hours, not a week. Besides, I thought you'd be sleeping for most of the day!"

"I did sleep for a while, but I got bored," Sirius said. "And the Room... it just knew. I thought about running, and then poof! Instant agility course."

Harry stared at him, incredulous. "You're impossible."

"Highly improbable, actually." Sirius ruffled his own hair and flopped into the nearest chair. "So. What now, General Potter?"

Harry laughed, but there was a tiredness to it. He conjured a butterbeer for himself and, with a flick of his wand, passed a firewhisky to Sirius, who took it without question.

They sat for a long moment, letting the quiet settle.

Sirius finally broke it. "What's the plan, Harry? Why now? What do you want me to do?"

Harry took a sip, then leaned back in his chair.

"I'm trying to keep the timeline stable. Everything I do is a ripple. The more ripples I make, the less reliable my knowledge of the future becomes. So I'm trying my hardest to make very, very few of them. You're the biggest one so far."

Sirius raised a brow. "Flattered."

"I didn't come back in time to rewrite everything," Harry said. "Just enough. I need you to stay hidden for now. Heal. Rebuild your Occlumency barriers because I know the dementors did a number on you. When you're strong enough, we'll work out how to reintroduce you into the world. As The Lord Black."

Sirius whistled low. "That's a heavy title. Haven't earned it yet."

"You will."

Harry set his drink down and reached into his pouch. He sighed heavily.

From it, he pulled the enchanted pouch containing Scabbers.

He placed it on the table gently.

"Sirius, I need you to remain calm and rational now, okay?"

Sirius stared.

"Is that…"

"Yes."

The silence turned heavy.

Harry murmured a spell, and the pouch opened. Inside, Peter Pettigrew lay as a rat, unconscious and frozen in magical stasis.

Sirius stood slowly, then transformed again - fur replacing skin, teeth lengthening, claws growing.

Padfoot snarled.

"Hey!" Harry shouted. "Sirius! Don't- !"

The massive dog lunged, but a magical barrier from the Room itself flared up around the table, halting him mid-pounce. Sirius skidded to a halt, claws digging into the floor, snarling and snapping with teeth bared.

Harry stood firm.

"Sirius. Listen to me."

The growling continued.

"Padfoot!"

Sirius stopped and looked up at Harry.

"See? This is why I need you to heal. You're not thinking clearly. Azkaban tore chunks out of you. You're a bit better already, but you're not ready. Not yet."

Padfoot whimpered.

"I need the old Sirius. The one who could charm a whole courtroom into silence. The one who could face down a crowd and walk away smiling. Not the one who thinks with his claws."

Padfoot transformed back, gasping for breath. His hands trembled.

Harry walked to him and set a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm keeping him in stasis. Until summer, maybe longer. When we're ready. When you're ready. Then we figure out what to do. But not before."

Sirius nodded slowly.

"Okay. Okay. You're right."

They returned to their seats. The pouch was sealed once more and vanished into Harry's robes.

Sirius looked exhausted.

"Besides," Harry murmured. "This timeline isn't stable yet. If we out Peter now, Voldemort might never return the same way. Or worse, he comes back differently. Stronger. We can't risk that until I'm ready. I know you don't want to hear this, but we have to consider the possibility that we have to let Pettigrew find Voldemort."

Sirius was silent for a moment. Then, in a show of maturity, lifted his glass. "To patience."

Harry tapped his butterbeer to the rim. "To recovery."

They drank in silence.

"So." Said Sirius, after they each had a moment to consider the future. "What's next?"

Harry set his butterbeer down on a side table and gazed into the crackling fire.

"The rest of the students will be back at Hogwarts in a week. If it's alright with you, I'd like to use that time to get to know you a bit and help you recover."

"Hey, I'm never gonna complain about spending time with my godson, especially after a decade in hell".

Harry smiled. "Good. Let's give it five days of quality time and recuperation then. Maybe a day before the rest of the students return, we need to move you somewhere more secure".

"More secure than Hogwarts?"

"You're not wrong, but we need to get you to Gringotts and to Grimmauld Place-"

Sirius shuddered. "I hate that place Harry. Imagine having to go back to Privet Drive when you're a full grown man".

"I understand Sirius, truly I do, more than most others would. But we need it. We can place it under the Fidelius with you as the secret keeper, and we can use it as a base. No one would ever look for me there because you're meant to be dead, and besides - we need the locket, remember?"

Sirius nodded. "I really don't like it, but you know best. Is Kreacher still there?"

"He is. He's not as bad as you think Sirius - give me fifteen minutes with him and you'll see him turn into a completely different elf."

"Okay. Let's do it then. So what did you have planned for the next five days?"

Harry grinned. "How about I show you what this Room can really do?"

~OvO~

Over the next few days, Harry made it a habit to sneak to the Room of Requirement after breakfast, leave for lunch, then return until dinner. All of his 'friends' were home for the whole holiday break, so there was no-one to miss him. He did bump into the Weasley twins a few times and had a good laugh with them, offering to help with a prank or two - one of which involved charming snowballs to repeatedly bounce off the back of Quirrell's head. Harry found that one more amusing than he had the first time round, that's for sure.

In the Room, Harry helped Sirius work his way through rounds of nutrient and restorative potions that he could tell were already starting to work. Sirius' face was looking less gaunt; more filled out around the eyes and jaw. He moved a bit more easily too - less groaning when he pulled himself out of a seat, and less of a limp when walking across the Room.

When Sirius wasn't downing potions or eating bowls of fruit and high-protein food, they enjoyed themselves. They transformed the Room into a large swimming pool with a slide, a broom obstacle course, an enormous wizarding chess set (Harry drew the line at them taking the place of one of the pieces), and sometimes just a couple of beds under an enormous skylight for them to relax and talk.

At the end of the fifth day, they were planning their route out of the castle which they would take at just after midnight. Sirius had built up some muscle with all their swimming and running around, and was looking more and more like himself. Harry was thrilled.

"So we'll go under the cloak out to the main doors, slip through when Filch is far away, and make our way to the Whomping Willow. I'll freeze it and we both get through the passageway into the Shrieking Shack. I'll apparate us to Grimmauld place, talk to Kreacher, help you clean a bedroom, grab one of the comm mirrors, set up the Fidelius, and then apparate back to Hogsmeade before getting back into Hogwarts".

"Blimey… can we get all that done in just a few hours?" asked Sirius.

"We have to".