Disclaimer: Harry Potter? Yeah, still don't own it.

A/N: I would apologise for the sheer ridiculousness of this story, but I enjoyed writing it way too much.

Dedicated to my sister, for believing me weird enough to write this.

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Only half Sirius

1

...

All he can think the first time he sees her is that she's very… yellow.

Even from fifty feet away in the middle of a bustling Diagon Alley on a sunny day, she glows. Like a canary that was dipped in a vast of butter and then set alight. It ought to be obnoxious, what with the feather boa and the monstrosity of that sunflower stuck to the side of her head, but… Sirius finds it charming. In a morbid sort of way.

After being stuck in a world as dull and grey as the one that he's been in for the last ten years, Sirius figures he could do with a little more colour to liven things up. He thanks his lucky star (the one that is named after him, to be precise) that it wasn't someone boring that came through. Like Molly Weasley. Or Lucius Malfoy. Egads, now there was a horrifying thought.

That said, he feels the absurd need to shade his eyes against her brightness as he shoves through the crowd, occasionally whacking people with the end of the doghead-handle cane he picked up in the thrift store a week earlier. (It makes him feel imperious.)

By the time he's fought his way through to her side (leaving behind him a litany of swearing, and a motley of nicely bruised kneecaps), the witch is talking to a rack of second-hand robes set up just outside the shop doorway. Sirius (panting mildly), flicks the loose ends of his hair back over his shoulders, and runs a hand through for good measure.

The smile that he shoots her is a flash of pearly white teeth (dashing) and a subtle eyebrow raise (which enhances his natural mysteriousness). "Well hello there," he says in his smoothest, most aristocratic drawl. He swizzles his cane for good measure. (If he's going to try finding out about how his old world is fairing, he might as well throw in a bit of the old charm, for good luck.)

She… doesn't reply. Doesn't even spare him a glance. At least, not before muttering about mothballs and tugging a patterned magenta robe from the depths of the rack. It clashes horribly with the glossy, buttercup-coloured dress she's wearing. "What do you think of this one?" she asks, holding it up against herself and giving him a twirl.

Sirius blinks. And then he squints. Are those beetroots stitched in around the hemline? "I, uh… I'm not sure about the motif," he says slowly, somewhat derailed.

"Hm." She holds it out before her, tilting her head to one side as she studies it. The sunflower tilts precariously on her head, and her googly-eye earrings bob when she sighs. "It would be better if they were radishes. What a shame."

Scratching the back of his head with the handle of his cane (the dog's endearingly misshapen muzzle looks a little like it's been used on one or two bar fights over the years), Sirius resists the urge to suggest she just transfigure it, and tries to pull himself back towards a more sensible tangent. (Remus, he likes to think, would be proud.) "You're not from around here, are you?"

She pushes the robe back into the rack and turns to face him properly. There's something decidedly discomforting about being watched not only by her earrings, but by her huge, glassy blue eyes too. "Contextually speaking, that sentence is rather vague, don't you think?" The high lilt to her voice doesn't really help him any.

Despite himself, Sirius scowls. "In what sense?" If his words are a little gruff, then it's just because this witch has wrong-footed him twice already. Normally he's the one doing all of the wrong-footing. (He wonders if he ought to file a complaint of some kind, and whom he should address it to.)

"Well, in the sense that it depends what you're inferring." She taps a long finger to her chin. "For instance I could, technically, answer your question with the statement that I have it on good authority I was conceived in the basement of Flourish and Blotts, behind a crate of hunkycap infested astronomy books. " The bright yellow lady turns ninety degrees and points at the store on the other side of the street. "Therefore, no, not far from here at all. On the other hand, perhaps you mean the location of my birth. I was born in an abandoned barn in the South of Argentina, so I suppose that, considering the mileage, you wouldn't necessarily be wrong." She hums in thought. "But if you're referring to the metaphysical realm, like I rather suspect that you are,then—"

"Okay, okay, you've made your point," Sirius cuts in quickly, though he isn't really sure she has. Whatever it was she was trying to say is lost on him. Did she hit her head on the way through the veil? Pinching the bridge of his nose, he starts again, "I meant to say, I came over here because…" A dramatic pause. (To refocus himself, more than anything else.) He leans down a little, lowers his voice for affect - maybe casts a subtle muffliato on them as he does so. "I know that you came through the Veil."

The silence that follows that statement is… heavy.

He stares at her.

She stares at him.

The googly-eyes stare the clothes rack on one side, and the pavement on the other, looking vaguely shocked.

Finally, she says in a very sombre tone,

"I quite fancy some anchovy ice cream."