AN: Written for the AO3 Alternate Universe Exchange for Meatball42 who wanted 'HP: Harry goes to live with Sirius'. Crossposted from AO3 Silver_Queen_DoS

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The Shrieking Shack rings with silence, the calm after the storm.

Harry can barely keep it all straight. There have been so many reveals, so many things he thought he knew twisted on their head in such a short period of time — Sirius Black is innocent, Professor Lupin is a werewolf, they were school friends, Peter Pettigrew is alive and killed his parents, Snape is awful and…

Well. That one he can believe easily enough.

"We attacked a teacher," Hermione whispers, again, horrified, staring at Snape's unconscious form. Her wand is still out and pointed at him, and it's steady as a rock, with the precise, controlled grip that all the teachers had praised in her wandwork.

"No lasting harm done," Professor Lupin says to her, kindly. "You were just a little, er, overenthusiastic with your disarming charm. He's only out cold; it might be better for him to stay that way."

That Harry can agree with easily. All I have to do is call the dementors, Snape had hissed. I dare say they'd be pleased enough to give you a little kiss. Maybe one for the werewolf, too.

Snape holds a grudge. If he had the chance, Harry doesn't doubt he'd do it. Not even knowing that Sirius Black is innocent.

Harry can't think of anything worse than subjecting someone to the Dementors. He has the urge to thrust his invisibility cloak at Black — the one Snape had stolen and used to sneak up on them, befouling it with his touch — and tell him to take it and hide. Run. Get somewhere safe.

I found this at the base of the Whomping Willow. Very useful, Potter, I thank you.

Harry frowns and stares harder at Snape's body, as Professor Lupin uses a levitation charm to make him float. He twists his grip on his wand, because there's something—

"Professor Lupin," Harry says slowly. "Snape said—"

Harry isn't the cleverest of them. That's Hermione. She's usually the one to put together all the clues and find the answer no one else sees. But sometimes… sometimes Harry sees the clues.

Lupin sighs. "I can't say we were always kind to him," he says. "But Severus—"

"No," Harry cuts across, more urgently now that the pieces are coming together. You're wondering, perhaps, how I knew you were here? "Imean, that's not it. I'm not giving him the benefit of the doubt. But he said… he saw the map when he went to take you your potion."

The smoking concoction that Harry had seen him drink during their lessons, once. Wolfsbane. It makes me safe, you see.

Harry can see the realisation dawning on the faces around him too. Professor Lupin goes very, very pale.

So does Hermione. "Professor Lupin," she asks, voice trembling. "Did you take your potion?"

"I did not," Professor Lupin says, with admirable calm. He lowers his wand and lets Snape sink back to the floor. "Here, Sirius. Take my wand. Give the boy his one back. You'll have to get them all back to the castle yourself, I'm afraid. And quickly."

"Remus—" Sirius says.

"The Shrieking Shack was built to contain a werewolf," Professor Lupin says, passing over his wand. "It will be more than sufficient for tonight. But you must hurry."

Black nods, grimly. "Right," he says. And then after a second of thought, casts Stupefy on Pettigrew. "Better for him to be unconscious, too, I think. But one of you kids will need to levitate Snape."

"I can," Hermione says, straightening her shoulders. She flicks her wand precisely, just like Professor Lupin had done moments ago. "Mobilicorpus."

Snape rises back into the air.

"Harry," Black adds. "You help Ron. I'll keep my wand trained on Pettigrew. I don't want to take any chances."

"Good," Ron says, savagely, as Harry rushes to his side and helps him stand upright despite his broken leg. "Maybe hit him with Petrificus Totalus for good measure." He seemed to have taken Scabbers true identity as a personal insult.

"Good idea," Black says, and does just that. And then conjures thick manacles from thin air to bind him in as well. Apparently he's not kidding about taking no chances.

They make an odd procession down the tunnel to the Whomping Willow, with Snape and Pettigrew floating along at wand point and Ron hobbling along trying not to put weight on his broken leg. Getting them all out while the Willow is frozen is something of a challenge — the tunnel entrance surely isn't the easiest to access.

Ron is white faced by the time they manage it, but doesn't complain.

"Madam Pomfrey will fix it," Harry assures him. She regrew his bones last year after Lockheart; a broken leg will be nothing.

"Oh, I know," Ron says, jaw clenched. "We just have to get there, first."

Getting there seems like a challenge enough, but Harry hadn't really thought ahead to what would happen after they did — particularly what Madam Pomfreys reaction would be when they all walked into the hospital wing; three Hogwarts students, a convicted criminal and two unconscious prisoners.

Her mouth drops open. "Sirius Black," she says, with the exact same tone of what have you done that Harry gets whenever he's injured. Harry is forcefully reminded that Black was a Hogwarts student too.

Black gives a weak twitch and an almost smile. "Madam Pomfrey," he says, but doesn't lower his wand in the slightest. "I'd appreciate it if you could send for Dumbledore before treating your patients."

Her eyes drift across them all, resting longest on Pettigrew. "Is that—" she says. "Oh dear. Oh dear. I'll get Dumbledore immediately. The rest of you lot get on the beds, would you?"

After that, everything happens very fast. Dumbledore is there, and then the Minister is there, and Harry tells the story over and over and things get very loud and hectic for a very long time.

In the end—

"A horrible mistake," Fudge says, wringing his hat between his hands. "Terrible, terrible. The previous minister — it was Bagnold then, wasn't it. Bagnold and Crouch — years before my time."

"But, of course," Dumbledore says, slow and calm. "And no one would think to blame you for it Cornelius, not with how quickly you've worked to resolve matters. Why, faced with the evidence of the truth—"

Fudge puffs out his chest. "Yes," he says. "Why, I can use my Ministerial authority to fix it immediately," he says. "Strip Pettigrew of his Order of Merlin. Award one to Black, First Class, for his diligent, uh, investigation of the issue. Bringing it to our attention. And all charges dropped, of course. Of course."

"Of course," Black says, as dry as bone. Like Harry, he doesn't seem particularly impressed with Fudge. Given that the Minister can't seem to stand to look in his direction, let alone meet his gaze, Harry can see why.

It's the outcome they hoped for, though. Sirius Black is a free man, name cleared. It doesn't take back the twelve years he spent in Azkaban but… he's free.

And apparently the first thing that freedom means is that, as soon as Dumbledore and the Minister leave, Madam Pomfrey bullies him into a hospital bed just like the rest of them and makes him drink a truly awful number of potions, tutting the whole while.

"She hasn't got any less terrifying," he mutters to Harry, afterwards.

The lights are out and Harry has taken his glasses off, so he's just a dark shape now. He seems less terrifying as a voice in the darkness, without the gaunt face of someone who has suffered horrible things.

"Yeah," Harry agrees, yawning. "She is." He thinks he's drifting off to sleep before Black speaks again.

"You know what this means?"

"Hm? You're free now," Harry says, blinking heavily.

"Yes…" Black says. "But I'm also — I don't know if anyone ever told you — I'm your godfather. Your parents appointed me your guardian if anything happened to them…"

Suddenly, Harry isn't asleep at all. "Yeah," he rasps.

"I'll understand, of course, if you want to stay with your aunt and uncle," Black says. "But… think about it. If you wanted a … a different home …"

"Come live with you?" Harry asks, trying not to sound too eager. "Leave the Dursleys?"

"Of course, I thought you wouldn't want to," Black says quickly. "I understand, I just thought I'd —"

"Of course I want to leave the Dursleys!" Harry interrupts. "Have you got a house? When can I move in?"

There's a beat of stunned silence, then Black chuckles, a rusty sounding thing. "I… think so," he says. "A place in London. Merlin knows what kind of state it's in, though," he says. "Or we can get somewhere else, if we have to."

"It'll be brilliant," Harry says, because it will be. Anything that's not the Dursleys will be brilliant.

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The last few weeks of term are some of the oddest that Harry has ever had. For once… he's looking forward to the end of the year.

He doesn't have to go back to the Dursleys.

Even Hagrid seems to be in surprisingly cheerful spirits, confiding secretly that Buckbeak had got away. "Must have pulled himself loose," he reckons. "Maybe all the Dementors out and about gave him a fright. But he got free and they couldn't do anything about it!"

The only sad note is that Professor Lupin resigns.

"But why?" Harry asks him. "You were the best teacher we've ever had."

Lupin smiles at him, a little sadly. "Part of it is my little mistake the other night," he says. "I really shouldn't have left my office, with or without my potion. And don't think that Severus will let that go unremarked — better I go before he comes up with revenge for it. But the more positive reason is that Sirius has asked my help getting his old family manor liveable before end of term. Apparently it's quite the task."

He's going to go live with Sirius. Harry's stomach does a funny twist. "Well, alright then," he says.

"Alright then," Professor Lupin echoes, smiling. He goes to his desk and picks up a familiar piece of parchment. "And since I'm no longer your teacher… Mr. Moony presents the Marauders Map. Use it well, won't you?"

Harry grins. "I will," he promises.

He even gets a letter from Sirius, delivered to the Gryffindor common room by a tiny, excitable owl.

"It's from Sirius," he tells Hermione and Ron, excited. "He says that the house is there and they've started getting it ready. I can stay with him for the summer, if I still want to."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Hermione asks, cautiously. Crookshanks is sprawled out on her lap, purring. "I mean, you don't really know him, do you?"

Harry falters, just a little, at her doubt.

"Better than the Dursley's, though," Ron chimes in. "You just have to let us know where it is, so we can come break you out again if we have to. Fred and George would do it."

The Weasley's don't have the Ford Anglia anymore, so Harry isn't sure how Ron even would but the offer is warming all the same.

"Well, I suppose Professor Lupin knows all about it," Hermione says, relying on the presence of an authority figure more than the ingenuity of the Weasley twins.

"It'll be fine," Harry says, because his instinctive gut reaction that an escaped convict is better than the Dursleys is still holding. He glances back down at the letter and sees the PS. "Oh, and Ron, he says you should keep the owl. Because it's his fault that you don't have a pet rat anymore."

He feels awkward even saying it, but Ron's eyes jerk up to the small owl flying circles around the common room. "Really?" he sounds surprised but cautiously happy, and to Harry's surprise, glances at where Crookshanks. "What do you think, is it really an owl?"

Crookshanks flicks an ear and keeps purring.

"Good enough for me," Ron says, grinning. "Tell him thanks for me, Harry."

Harry darts up the stairs to his dorm for a quill and some parchment. He tucks Sirius's letter into Flying With Cannons so it doesn't get crumpled, and reads it dozens of times before school ends.

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When Harry gets off the Hogwarts express, he sees the Weasley's first, because it's pretty impossible to not see the Weasley's first. He even gets swept up in their reunion, Mrs Weasley folding him into an enormous, reassuring hug.

"Oh, Harry, dear!" she clucks. "What a year! Are you alright?" she holds him by the shoulders and peers down at him, as if she can see his emotions, just like that. "You know you're always welcome at the Burrow, if things- well. If you need anything, you only have to ask."

As always, Harry doesn't really know how to respond to Mrs Weasley's concern. It's nice but…

"Thank you, Mrs Weasley," he says, trying to smile at her. "I'll write loads, but I'm sure it'll be fine."

It's with some reluctance that she lets him go – but one of the twins has something sparking in hand and she rounds on him while the other twin winks at Harry – and Harry scans the crowd for Black.

The first person he sees is Professor Lupin, standing next to a man dressed in neat muggle clothes, with dark combed hair, who Harry nearly doesn't recognise. A few weeks of regular meals and cleanliness haven't quite stripped Black of the gauntness of Azkaban, but he looks a lot better.

The crowd is giving them quite the wide berth, though neither of them look like they mind.

Harry grins so widely he feels like his face is splitting. "See you!" he says to Ron and Hermione and nearly throws himself through the crowd towards them.

He doesn't have to go back to the Dursleys. It's real.

Black is grinning nearly as hard as he is. "Harry!" He throws out his arms like he might embrace him, then seems to second guess himself and takes Hedwig's cage from Harry instead.

"Thanks," Harry says, as Professor Lupin — just Lupin now, he guesses — taps Harry's luggage with his wand and makes it shrink until it's small enough to pick up in one hand.

"Much more convenient," Black says. "We're about a twenty minute walk from the station. You probably don't want to drag that the whole way."

"Cool!" Harry says because it doesn't really matter where the house is as long as it's not The Dursley's. The only places he knows in London are Kings Cross and the Leaky Cauldron, so being near at least one of them is good.

Black looks pleased with his enthusiasm and they swarm out of the station with the rest of the Hogwarts families. It's a nice, warm day for a walk and Lupin asks him how his remaining days of class went, which carries the conversation as they walk.

Eventually they reach a neighbourhood that Aunt Petunia would have called 'disreputable'. The shopfronts are grimy and sometimes boarded up. Some of the houses have broken windows and most of them have peeling paint. There are piles of rubbish on the kerbside in places.

"I know," Black says, shifting Hedwig's cage from one hand to the other. "It used to be a nicer neighbourhood back before the war. A lot of magic families used to live around here. The Allerton's, Northcott's, Barclay's, Leighton's… I suspect they're all gone now."

"I think Oliver Leighton is in France," Lupin says, with a frown on concentration, "but yes, I think all the others were wiped out."

Harry glances around at the streets and the number of empty houses. He knows about Voldemort, of course, and that people died but it's the first time it's really felt like… well. A war. Something that affected loads of people, not just him and his parents, and left lasting marks on the world. No one really talks about it, just that it was bad.

"Not that," Black hastens to add, "you need to go out if you don't want to. The house is hooked onto the Floo network… or there's sidealong apparition… we can really go anywhere just as easily."

"It's alright," Harry says. He probably fits in better here with his hand—me—down clothes and broken glasses than he does in Privet Drive.

"Number twelve," Black announces, bouncing up a set of stairs that appears little different from any of the others. Well — the black paint on the door looks clean, if not new, and there are no piles of rubbish.

"Should have cleaned more," Black mutters and discretely flicks his wand towards one of the grimy windows, which shudders. Some dirt flakes off, but it still seems more grime than window.

The door has no keyhole or letterbox but does have a silver knocker shaped like a serpent. Harry wonders briefly if it's alive and magic, but doesn't really want to start hissing to it in the middle of the street.

Black taps the door with his wand and it swings open sharply. "Careful on your way in," he says. "We've cleared out the entrance and a few rooms but my family kept some awful stuff. Real dark. And a lot of the bloody stuff is impervious to destructive charms so we haven't had much luck destroying it. Remus taught you how to identify dark artefacts, right? You'll be fine if you keep your eyes open and if anything gives you problems just give us a yell. Or give it a reducto. I promise you there's nothing in here I mind getting rid of."

He frowns towards the depth of the house.

Harry enters the house with much more caution. There's the lingering smell of must and decay but the entrance hallway seems like it's been scrubbed — or scourigified — to within an inch of its life. The walls might once have been papered in heavy floral wallpaper, but most of it has been stripped back or peeled off, leaving bare wall behind. There are old fashioned gas lamps and a snake shaped chandelier casting insubstantial and slightly gloomy light and threadbare carpet but it doesn't look that different from any muggle house Harry has been in.

"I can't, er, use magic during the holidays?" Harry offers, nervously. He learnt that lesson well enough last year. He doesn't want to cause any problems — the last thing he wants is to give Black a reason to send him back.

Black waves his hand dismissively. "The Ministry won't get a thing through the house wards," he says confidently. "My father put up every security measure known to wizard-kind when he lived here. That's half the reason we decided to keep this place," he admits. "Because it sure wasn't the decor. And we're probably going to add a few more now that you're here. We were thinking Fidelius, though that's a tricky one to set up."

"Really?" Harry says, because security wards sound important but being able to cast magic... he's only just left Hogwarts so he shouldn't miss it already, but he does. He looks to Lupin to confirm, feeling like a Professor ought to protest such a clear bending of the rules.

But Lupin nods. "If you think Sirius Black didn't spend his entire childhood testing that fact…" he says leadingly.

Black grins. "I am extremely confident that no underage magic on the premises can be detected. So feel free to magic away," he says, generously. "Though preferably not on yourself. I'm a little out of practice at reversing jinxes these days."

"I— okay?" Harry agrees because that's easy enough when he can't see why he'd want to jinx himself.

"Unfortunately," Black says, "down the left hallway is one of the portraits we can't get rid of. Yet. Try not to wake her, if you can."

Harry eyes the dark and moth bitten curtains covering — presumably — a portrait as they tiptoe past with extreme caution. The portraits at Hogwarts can be kooky, like Sir Cadogan, but are ultimately harmless. But if even magical diaries can be dangerous, portraits probably can be too.

"We've cleared the bedroom on the first floor for you," Black goes on as they climb the stairs. "Mostly because it was the closest. If you want one of the others, of course we can move you around. Remus and I are on the second floor, which is the only other one we've started working on, really."

Harry glances at the second flight of stairs and cranes his neck upwards. "How many floors are there?" he asks.

"Four, well, five if you count the ground floor." Black answers. "And the attic. And the basement. I know, it's ridiculous. And you haven't even seen what's behind the other doors yet. Or met Kreacher."

"It's brilliant," Harry says softly as he steps into the bedroom. The room is mostly empty, apart from twin beds and wardrobes, but there's an owl perch near the window and when Black opens Hedwig's cage, she flies to it immediately.

It's by far the biggest and nicest room Harry has ever had to himself.

Lupin sets down Harry's luggage and enlarges it. "We asked the Dursley's to send along the rest of your things," he says mildly, and gestures at a small cardboard box near the foot of one of the beds. Harry suspects it's filled with Dudley's cast offs or broken toys because they didn't want to admit Harry had nothing.

"Just… let us know what you need," Black says. "We can get… things. Clothes. Decorations for your room."

"It's fine," Harry says, hurriedly. "This is great. It really is."

"You know, I—" Black says and swallows. "When I was sixteen I left this house. Couldn't stand it anymore. I went to James'… to your grandparents house. They took me in, just like that. I stayed there until I was finished Hogwarts."

"Oh," Harry says. "No. I didn't know that." He knows so little about his parents and there's so much he wants to ask that he doesn't know where to start.

Black nods. "Yeah. I just… I understand. I wouldn't have asked them for anything. But they did so much for me anyway and those were some of the best years of my life and I want… I want this to be like that for you. For it to be your home."

Harry swallows, feeling a lump in his throat. "Okay," he says, quietly.

"Yeah," Sirius says, again, then shakes himself. "Well, enough of that heavy talk. I'll show you the rest of the house."

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Staying in Grimmauld Place is kinda weird. The house itself is strange, but after Hogwarts and the Burrow, Harry almost expects magical houses to be strange. It's just that there's nothing he's expected to do.

The Dursleys always have a list of chores for him. Hogwarts has classes. Even during the holidays and weekends he has Hermione and Ron to hang out with.

He explores a little, but Sirius wasn't kidding about the amount of cleaning the house needed. There's mould growing in all kinds of places and the curtains in the Drawing Room appear to have things living in them — "Doxies, probably,"Sirius says when Harry mentions it, "they're poisonous but they ought to stay there until we're ready to deal with them. Just don't get bitten." — and when Harry ventures upstairs, he runs into the Blacks horrible old House Elf who Sirius has restricted to the upper floors.

That's such an unpleasant encounter that he doesn't want to repeat it and doesn't venture up there again.

Even Sirius and Lupin don't seem to have much of a schedule. Lupin leaves the house for large parts of the day — job hunting, now that he no longer works for Hogwarts — and while Sirius says he's focused on cleaning, he approaches the task with about the same amount of enthusiasm that Harry and Ron have for cleaning their dorm. Which is not a lot.

Mostly Harry catches him listening to the crackling Wizarding Wireless, or flipping through books, or occasionally finds a large black dog sleeping in front of the fireplace. He also offers to show Harry the rest of the neighbourhood, which mostly seems to be an excuse to wander aimlessly around the streets, pointing out shops and parks and things.

"Nice to be able to get out and about," Sirius says, casually vanishing some trash and tapping a park bench with his wand until the worst of the crud on it flakes off. He collapses down onto it, as though the walk here had been difficult. "I'd go mad if I had to stay in that house all the time."

Harry thinks that might have been a terrible understatement from someone who has been in Azkaban for years, and then on the run. But it makes him appreciate being here with Sirius all the more, even if there's nothing much to be said for the park.

It's not Little Whinging and that's all he needs.

Harry spends the first few days doing what he always wished he could do at the Dursley's. He takes his Hogwarts homework out. He spreads it all out on the kitchen table and completes it with the kind of diligence that Hermione would approve of, revelling in the feeling of just being able to.

Sirius raises a bit of an eyebrow at it, and Harry gets the feeling he definitely never did his homework on the first day of holidays, but Lupin just says, dryly, "I dare say you won't be required to turn in your DADA homework."

Harry isn't entirely sure if Lupin lives there with them, or if he's just around a lot, or if he's just staying for now. He reckons that if he'd been the one stuck in jail for years, he'd want Ron around as much as possible when he got out. It's too awkward to ask and, well, it's nice to have someone around that he knows a bit better than Sirius, even if that someone was his teacher.

"You forgot to assign any, Professor."

"That I did," Lupin smiles. "I'm sure no one noticed."

Ron had, in fact, loudly praised him for it, to Hermione's disgust.

And about a week after Harry moves into Grimmauld Place, there's a full moon.

Harry has never had to track the lunar cycle before — except for Astronomy homework — so it sneaks up on him a bit.

Sirius brings it up over dinner, saying, "you'll be alright staying here alone tonight, won't you? Or Andy and Tonks have offered to come round."

"I'll be fine," Harry says, automatically. Sirius's cousin had come around once and it had been really awkward – she'd been nice but still. He doesn't exactly need babysitting. "Oh. What are you going to do? Do you still have that potion?"

Remus gives him a tired smile. "I'm afraid not," he says, "but I have dealt with this for many years and have arrangements in place. And… Sirius will be with me, this time."

"Right, well. Good luck?" Harry offers, lamely, biting back the 'can I come' that wants to escape. Of course he can't. Sirius is an animagus and immune to werewolf bites. Harry is no such thing.

But when Sirius and Remus pop out of the house with the characteristic crack of apparation, Harry finds himself drawn to the library on the ground floor. Surely somewhere in here there'd be a book with information about animagi.

They — mostly Remus — have started cleaning the library, which has mostly involved moving the books around and putting the nastier ones in locked cabinets. Harry ignores those, mostly, and looks for anything that might be about transfiguration, and takes them to his room.

The books are interesting even though they all go far over his head, and he falls asleep dreaming of bedknobs turning into broomsticks.

But even doing homework and reading advanced magic books doesn't fill all his day or capture all his attention, no matter how diligent he tries to be. Sirius and Lupin don't assign him any chores, or anything, but Harry watches Sirius cast scourify on a stubborn patch of mould and tentatively asks if he can help with the cleaning.

"Oh, you don't need to," Sirius assures him, hastily. "Nasty, boring business."

"Well, sure," Harry says, because he'd done enough cleaning at the Dursleys to hate cleaning on principle. But having nothing to do makes him feel at loose ends, like he's the layabout and wastrel the Dursleys always accused him of being. "But… are there special spells for cleaning?"

"Ah, after a chance to do some magic, eh?" Sirius says, relaxing a bit. "Want to practice your duelling in the hallway? Remus said you were good!"

Harry ducks his head, flushing with pleasure even though they hadn't really dueled in DADA that year. And Lockheart's club barely counted. "Sure."

It's a lot of fun. Sirius knows some truly wicked jinxes — Harry dodges a Pullus Jinx that hits Mrs Blacks portrait instead, causing all the curtains covering her to sprout feathers — and turns the hallway slippery underfoot causing them both to slide around. He also animates the hallway end table to chase Harry around and bind him with its spindly legs, but the slippery floor turns that into a hilarious tangle of boy and furniture.

Harry tries to shoot him with a Chattering Charm as he goes down — not that Sirius isn't already laughing too hard to speak — but flubs his pronunciation and ends up shooting soap bubbles down the hallway.

"Finite," Sirius gasps, causing the table to still, and then leans against the wall, wheezing as he laughs. The wall appears to be as slippery as the floor, however, so he very shortly joins Harry at ground level.

Harry laughs too. Which is exactly how Lupin finds them, probably drawn out of the Library room due to the screaming of Mrs Black on the wall.

"Watch out!" Harry gasps, but instead of slipping over Lupin performs a very graceful slide down the entire length of the hallway.

"A classic, Sirius," he says dryly, but his face looks brighter and happier than Harry has ever seen him. He'd never thought of Professor Lupin as particularly sad but… now he doesn't think he could have called him happy either. "Now, Harry, as a former professor, I'd have to caution you against using this particular charm at Hogwarts. The corridor on the third floor by the trophy room is particularly good for it."

Harry blinks, then grins. "That sounds like experience," he says, trying to disentangle himself and sit up. His glasses have come askew and he puts them back on.

"The trophies make a particularly good clatter if you go too fast," Sirius adds, still beaming. "We used to score ourselves by how many of them you could knock over. Then one time, in Fifth year, once we were all animagi—"

"James nearly broke all four of his legs," Remus says, reproachfully, but his eyes are still twinkling. "How would we have explained that to Poppy?"

"Oh, she'd have never asked for an explanation. He couldn't keep his legs under him," Sirius snickers. He mimes his hands flying out to the side. "Hooves flying everywhere. We called him James The Graceful for weeks. I think the Astronomy Plaque might still have a dent it in from his antlers. You know, the one with the little orbiting moon?"

Harry shakes his head. "I'll look next year!" he says eagerly, hoarding the tiny scrap of knowledge. "Did you do things like that a lot?"

"Did we!" Sirius says enthusiastically. "Here—" he tries to stand. "—Blast what's the counterspell… Hah! Here, there should still be a bunch of my old stuff in my room."

Harry scrambles to his feet and follows him.

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Harry goes a little bit mental with using magic after that, just because he so clearly can. He levitates things instead of picking them up until Sirius catches him at it.

"I was just—" Harry stammers, suddenly embarrassed. He lowers his wand.

"Haven't got up to the summoning charm yet?" Sirius offers, drawing his own wand. "That's what, fourth year? Fifth? I can show you how it goes."

So they spend an afternoon flinging cushions at each other with summoning and banishing charms.

He scourgifies his dishes instead of washing them in the sink, lights rooms with lumos and fills his glasses with aquamenti instead of tap water. Just because he can.

He joins in the attempts to clean, too, even though Sirius says he doesn't have to. It's very haphazard and half hearted — going through rooms and binning things (or boxing them and sending them up into the attic if Sirius thinks they're enchanted or too dangerous for the rubbish) — and rarely lasts for more than a half hour at a time.

Either Sirius will start talking about something, or he'll show Harry a spell, or suggest they go on a walk. When they visit the nearby muggle market, Sirius hands him two £50 notes before they go, saying, "if you see something you want, you should just be able to get it."

"I don't—" Harry says uncertainly.

"You can spend it all on sweets, it doesn't matter," Sirius says. "Come on, Remus will never take any, no matter how much I try."

Reflexively, Harry thinks of his own vault stacked full of gold and how much of it he would give to the Weasley's if only they'd take it. Sirius had brought him a Firebolt, so his own vaults must be in a similar state.

It feels weird to be on the other side of it. Maybe that's why the Weasley's wouldn't take it.

Harry takes the money. "It's a bit much for sweets," he says.

"Then buy a lot of them," Sirius says, smiling.

Harry smiles back and tentatively tells him about that first train ride to Hogwarts, where he'd done just that and brought something of nearly everything on the food cart. Sirius listens intently to the whole story as though committing it to memory, even though there's not much to it.

"Never was a fan of Bertie Botts," Sirius says. "Though they're great for making other people try."

Harry even has a quick look in the Library but while there are a lot of books that probably would go in the Restricted Section at Hogwarts, the Blacks don't really appear to have been the type to buy 'what are good cleaning spells' books. Mrs Weasley would probably know, he thinks, and it takes him an embarrassingly long time to realise he could probably write and ask her.

He writes to Ron, anyway, probably weeks earlier than anyone expects to hear from him, and includes a postscript question for Mrs Weasley, asking if she knows any spells or spell books he could pick up on household spells.

Then he feels guilty and writes to Hermione too — asking her more about animagi than cleaning. If he knows Hermione, she probably did all this research the first time Professor McGonagall even mentioned it, and if not surely has since the Shrieking Shack — and gives both those letters to Hedwig to deliver. She looks delighted with the task, even though Harry has been keeping the window open so she can come and go as she pleases, something he hadn't been able to give her at the Dursleys.

Hedwig comes back with Hermione's reply, but the Weasley's send both Ron's new owl and Errol, their elderly family owl, with a massive box of baked goods, the kind that had got him through the last summer before the twins had broken him out.

Mum's been dead worried about you, Ron has scrawled on his letter. Going to live with Black and all. I told her he couldn't be worse than the muggles and that went over like a dungbomb. But asking her about household spells was a good call — now she only thinks you're in regular kinds of trouble!

The rest of the letter, several pages of it, is filled with Mrs Weasley's neat handwriting and helpful suggestions. She suggests Lockheart's 'Guide to Household Pests' which… yeah right… but also another couple of spell books that might help.

"Blimey," Sirius says, when Harry takes the cake down to the kitchen. "Does she think we're not feeding you?"

Harry flushes and stammers something about last summer before disappearing back into his room. He doesn't mean to hide but finds himself lingering in there for most of the afternoon anyway. He's not sure why it upset him; he doesn't really want to talk about the ways in which the Dursley's were awful or why Mrs Weasley's kindness has meant so much to him over the years.

When the grandfather clock in the hallway sounds out that it's dinner time — and Remus enchanted it to say the meal time, like he was worried they would forget without consistent reminders — there's a knock on his bedroom door.

"Yeah?" Harry says, uncertainly. He's not sure either of them have come to his room, except for that first day when they showed him it. But usually he's not even in there, spending more time in the common areas of the house. "I'm coming."

The door swings open and Sirius is standing awkwardly in the doorway. "Good, good, you don't want to miss dinner," he says, eyes flicking over the room in distraction and stopping on Errol. "I, uh, I just thought… maybe… we could send the Weasley's a thank you gift. Head to Diagon Alley and pick something up for them."

"That'd be brilliant," Harry says, because the prospect of visiting Diagon Alley always is and he doesn't miss that this is an apology and an olive branch.

Sirius carefully rests a hand on his shoulder. "Great," he says, more cheerfully now. "I haven't been back to Diagon Alley since… well. Since. Might be a good idea to go before it gets crowded with everyone for September."

Harry had stayed at the Leaky Cauldron for a month last August and he'd slowly gotten used to the way people had stared at him. But it was probably going to be much worse this year.

"Probably," he acknowledges.

After dinner, they eat a slice of Mrs Weasley's cake for desert and it tastes even better than Harry remembers. He doesn't have to save it this time, to keep it until it goes stale just to have something to eat.

The next morning, Harry is awake bright and early, more than eager to go to Diagon Alley. He's already started the toast and kettle boiling for tea, which is more cooking than he's done since he's moved into Grimmauld Place. He doesn't miss it, exactly, but he wouldn't mind doing more.

"You're up early," Sirius says, bemused, when he stumbles down the stairs. "Excited?"

"A bit," Harry says, aiming for casual. "Is Professor Lupin coming with us?"

"He'll probably meet us there later," Sirius says, shooing him out of the kitchen and taking over. "We'll have to go to the bank first and he hates doing that. We could exchange some Galleons and head out to muggle London too, if you like?"

"Sure," Harry says, because he doesn't really know what could be in muggle London that they might want to buy. But Mr Weasley did really like muggle contraptions, so maybe Harry could find something that he'd like?

"Good, good. You know, your mum used to say she'd never go to muggle places with us," Sirius says, casually. He's been doing that more and more, carefully making mention like he thinks Harry might not want to hear about his parents. "We were too 'embarrassing' apparently."

"On purpose?" Harry asks, because Sirius has seemed pretty familiar with the muggle world so far — nothing like Ron's stamp covered letter or bad telephone call — and there are regular deliveries of motorcycle magazines to the house.

Sirius shoots him a grin. "Only sometimes," he laughs, and starts spinning a story that definitely sounds like he'd been embarrassing on purpose. "She nearly hexed me," he reminisced at the end. "Worse than the time I accidentally chased the cat."

Harry nearly chokes on his tea. "What, like, as—" he gestures at Sirius, "—or as…"

"As Padfoot," Sirius confirms with a rueful laugh. "If you think I ever lived that down…"

.

.

Hermione's letter is, as Harry predicted, chock full of information about animagi. She prefaces the entire thing saying she hadn't had time to do as much extra study of them as she would have liked, and Harry remembers how flat out she'd been all year, taking apparently every class Hogwarts offered.

Hermione's idea of 'not very much research' is still several pages and more than Harry has put together from the Black books.

It's very advanced transfiguration, she writes. Though I couldn't find much explanation of how it differed from normal human transfiguration. You can transfigure yourself in part or in whole into any animal through human transfiguration, but animagi appears to be 'locked' to one particular form, though no one really agrees if it's some kind of inherent personal form or just the first one you manage to transform into. And being an animagi does seem to have a non-verbal component and a wandless one, which are both extremely advanced spell types, where other human transfiguration spells are just spells!

She goes on to say a lot more than that, and most of it goes over his head there too. Ultimately, it just seems very complex. Maybe that's why no one suspected that a bunch of Hogwarts students had mastered it to hang out with a werewolf.

Harry spends another week struggling to understand complex spell books before it dawns on him that…

He could ask.

Sirius is always keen to show him new spells, and there's no reason he wouldn't. It's illegal, yeah, but so is using magic outside of Hogwarts and Sirius has gone out of his way to encourage that.

It makes sense, and even if he says 'no' it's not like Harry has lost anything.

He's just not sure he's ever asked. Teachers, sure. In class and he even asked Professor Lupin to teach him the Patronus Charm. But Sirius isn't a professor, doesn't have to teach him anything. Doesn't really have any reason to do so.

"Sirius," Harry asks, when Sirius is in the middle of throwing plates marked with the Black family crest into a large rubbish bag. It's the kind of cleaning that he hates doing and loves being distracted from. "Was it… hard to become an animagus?"

"Hard?" Sirius asks and laughs. He straightens up and stretches his arms. "It was near bloody impossible," he says. He drops a hand on Harry's shoulder and steers him towards the chairs. "I suppose it was a big arrogant of us to assume we'd manage, but once we worked out that animals were immune… I suppose it just seemed like the only choice."

"Oh," Harry says, trying not to be disappointed. It's not like he expected it would be easy. "I've never been much good at transfiguration." Not bad, certainly, but he's never received an Outstanding, like Hermione.

"Oh? James was a dab hand at it," Sirius says, "but he was the one of us that actually had the most trouble, in the end."

"Really?" Harry blinks, curiosity over this offered anecdote overriding his desire to know about the spell itself. "How come?"

"You wouldn't have started on human transfiguration yet, would you?" Sirius asked, but almost rhetorically. "No, that's not till sixth or seventh year. Well. Hmm. Typically, the components of a transfiguration are Incantation, Intention, Imagination, right? You have to say the spell correctly, you have to know what it's supposed to do and you have to have a fixed idea of what result you want out of it."

Harry nods because it's a familiar spiel from Professor McGonagall's lectures. "Especially the fine details," he says, "or you end up with a tortoise that breathes steam."

The end of year exams had been a nightmare.

Sirius cracks a grin. "Really, McGonagall should have counted that as an improvement," he says. "Tortoises are boring. Steam breathing tortoises, on the other hand…"

"I don't think she'd accept that reasoning," Harry says back, grinning.

"Pity. But animagi transformation is different because you don't have any idea of what you'll transform into."

"You don't?" Harry asks. He'd imagined running like a deer, or being a dog like Sirius, or even a cat like McGonagall. Or flying with Hedwig. "You don't… choose?"

Sirius shakes his head. "No, there's no way to know in advance, though people try. We did all these… personality tests, dream visions, basically anything we thought would tell us. That only really made it more confusing – we got all these contradictory answers. I can't even remember what I was supposed to be; an otter, a tiger, an eagle… We all thought James was going to be a lion, you know? It seemed so obvious. He could do it too, could transfigure himself into a lion. Or bits of himself, anyway."

"Wicked," Harry murmurs. Prongs is cool, but he can definitely see the appeal in turning into a lion.

"That's why it was so hard for him," Sirius says, "because he kept focusing on that and he was good enough at transfiguration that he could nearly manage it. I just got frustrated – reckless – and threw myself into it blind in the end. Which was bloody terrifying, but it's the only real way to do it. There's no half-assing a transformation."

"I can do that," Harry says, feeling a little relieved. Bravery — or foolishness — is something he's got no shortage of. A spell that you just do sounds ideal.

Sirius chuckles. "You will still need to practice transfiguration first," he allows. "Just to get the hang of how to do human transfiguration and even cast the spell in the first place. It's not easy," he warns. "But setting it all aside and just taking a leap of faith? That's the real hard part."

Harry swallows. Harry swallows. It doesn't escape him that they've switched from talking about how Sirius learnt to Harry learning.

"Don't worry," Sirius says, mistaking his pause. "I'll be there the whole time to help. I got pretty good at reversing transfiguration errors."

"I'd like that," he says quietly.

.

.

Sirius doesn't put together any kind of lesson plan or anything, but Harry does notice that the new spells Sirius shows him from there on out are more likely to be transfigurations than not.

He doesn't mind, it's still doing magic and there's something supremely satisfying the first time he turns a spare sock into a snitch and it manages to fly. It's the wrong colour – a faded grey and not gold – but Sirius is impressed and offers to apparate them to somewhere Harry can take his Firebolt out for a spin.

Harry jumps at the chance and chases his sock-snitch about the countryside until the transfiguration fades and it turns back into lifeless material.

"It lasted a bloody long time," Sirius says, proud as anything. "We should go out and get ice cream to celebrate. Fortescue's?"

"That'd be wicked," Harry says.

They drop his Firebolt back at Grimmauld Place, and apparate to Diagon Alley. Even the stares from the other shoppers don't put a dent in their good moods, and Sirius even extends their shopping trip further, until they head back home loaded down with bags.

"Well that was exhausting," Sirius says, pushing the door to Grimmauld Place open. "I vote all future shopping is done by owl order."

He throws a wink at Harry though, so he's not totally serious.

"You were the one who insisted on buying paint," Remus says mildly. "We could have done that another time."

Sirius waves him off. "I was getting bored of the walls being like this and wanted to put some colour on them," he justifies. "I had no idea it was going to be so complicated or that there'd be so many choices. But we're going to make it really Gryffindor in here."

Harry isn't entirely sure red and gold is a good paint choice for inside walls — or outside walls — but the fact that the Dursley's would have hated it on sight is really only a bonus.

"It'll be really cool," Harry offers.

"Exactly," Sirius says. "And my parents would have hated it, so that's only more reason to do it. D'you need a hand to hang up all your posters, Harry?"

"No, I've got it," Harry says, taking out his wand and unshrinking all his bags. He hadn't been able to shrink them himself — and he'd very nearly slipped up and done it anyway and got himself into trouble — but Remus had done it for him which was great otherwise there'd been no way he'd have managed to carry it all.

He hadn't intended to buy so much stuff, but they'd been so encouraging and the walls are really bland and boring. There's a whole bunch of Quidditch posters, including one of the Cannons, that he sends to Ron because they're his favourite team.

The letter Harry gets back is full of exclamation marks and delight.

And an invitation to stay with the Weasley's and attend a Quidditch match at the end of the holidays.

Tentatively, Harry shows that to Sirius. He wants to go, of course. He loves staying with the Weasleys and a real, professional Quidditch match sounds amazing…

But he doesn't… want to leave Grimmauld Place. This isn't like the Dursleys where he couldn't wait to get out.

"Tickets to the World Cup?" Sirius says in surprised. "Bloody hell, Arthur has some connections if he can get that many tickets. Of course you can go. We can apparate you over there and back, whenever you want."

And back. The idea of just visiting shouldn't be so strange but Harry has never really just visited a friends house. When he goes to stay at the Weasleys — or stays at Diagon Alley — he stays there until he has to go back to Hogwarts.

"Wicked," Harry says. He hesitates, then plows onwards. "Hey, do you think… Ron and Hermione could visit us here, maybe?"

Sirius is watching him with an odd look on his face. A little surprised, a little soft — Harry doesn't know how to interpret it.

"Maybe once we've painted," Harry rushes on. "Or cleaned up more. They'd probably help, though!"

Sirius' hand lands lightly on his head and ruffles his hair. "Yeah, of course they can, kid," he says, voice a little hoarse. "It's your home."